82: A Hundred Pounds and Razor Sharp

00:00SPEAKER- Look, there's nothing wrong with a little failover.

00:03SPEAKER- Look, how many pie holes is too many?

00:05SPEAKERYou only have two now.

00:06SPEAKERWhat happens if one conks out?

00:08SPEAKERWhat happens if the second one conks out

00:09SPEAKERafter the first one conks out?

00:11SPEAKERYou need a third.

00:12SPEAKER- I regret that I have but one pie hole to crash.

00:16SPEAKER- My pie hole has been, I mean, rock solid.

00:22SPEAKER- Is that legitimate wood that you're knocking on?

00:24SPEAKER- It is a wood desk, yeah.

00:25SPEAKER- No kidding, real?

00:26SPEAKER- Have we not talked about my desk?

00:28SPEAKER- No, not like I'm knocking on

00:30SPEAKERmy apparently hollow particle board desk?

00:33SPEAKERIs particle board really hollow?

00:34SPEAKER- No, it's wood chips glued together

00:36SPEAKERwith like an epoxy type substance.

00:39SPEAKER- Someone told me recently that the inside of this desk,

00:41SPEAKERif I tried to drill into it, would be hollow

00:43SPEAKERand I wasn't quite sure that was right.

00:44SPEAKER- So like you can get doors that are like that.

00:46SPEAKERThey're called hollow core doors.

00:49SPEAKERAnd like if it's a real cheap door,

00:50SPEAKERlike the ones in my house,

00:51SPEAKERyou can not even put like a nail in them

00:53SPEAKER'cause the nail kind of just flops as soon as it goes in

00:56SPEAKER'cause it's like veneer with a frame basically.

00:59SPEAKER- It just meets empty space.

01:00SPEAKER- Empty space.

01:02SPEAKERMy desk is a like fifties or sixties era kindergarten desk.

01:05SPEAKERThe one with the three doors on each side

01:08SPEAKERthat my mom helped me rip the legs off of

01:11SPEAKERin like 1997 or 98.

01:15SPEAKERYeah, probably then.

01:17SPEAKERAnd I put legs on that are exactly the right height

01:19SPEAKERfor me to sit at with the computer

01:21SPEAKERand monitor and keyboard and stuff on the desk.

01:23SPEAKER- It's a level.

01:25SPEAKER- Perfectly, yeah, of course.

01:26SPEAKER- Pretty sure.

01:27SPEAKER- It sags a little bit in the middle 'cause it's old

01:29SPEAKERand I had a CRT on it for a long time.

01:31SPEAKER- It's not even my desk and I'm antsy

01:33SPEAKERabout whether it's a level or not.

01:34SPEAKERLike I've thought about,

01:35SPEAKERlike if and when I ever get out of this goddamn apartment

01:38SPEAKERand buy an actual nice desk

01:39SPEAKERand get rid of this old Ikea piece of junk.

01:42SPEAKERSo I've thought about building my own desk.

01:44SPEAKERLike I would probably as cliched it as it is,

01:46SPEAKERI would probably go for the good old tried and true

01:50SPEAKERIkea butcher block countertop with legs idea.

01:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

01:54SPEAKER- But. - You ever thought about standing?

01:56SPEAKER- I don't think it's for me. - Do a sit stand?

01:57SPEAKER- I don't think it's for me. - The robot?

01:59SPEAKER- I don't think it's for me. - No, it'd be nice.

02:00SPEAKER- Dude, you don't even want to know about the wiring job

02:03SPEAKERI've got on the back of this desk

02:04SPEAKERand how taut some of these cables are

02:07SPEAKERor how little slack there is on them.

02:09SPEAKER- You just hang the computer

02:10SPEAKERfrom the underside of the desks

02:11SPEAKERthen it goes up and down with your stuff.

02:11SPEAKER- Oh, of course, you hang everything on the desk.

02:13SPEAKER- Yeah, it all is like hanging from the desk.

02:15SPEAKER- Anyway, my hang ups about the desk

02:19SPEAKERnot being exactly perfectly level

02:21SPEAKERare probably going to permanently stop me

02:23SPEAKERfrom ever trying to put my own desk together.

02:25SPEAKER- So I'm going to give you the screaming heebie jeebies here.

02:28SPEAKERWhen I was at Tested, I made my own desk

02:31SPEAKER'cause I wanted to learn how to weld and I needed a project.

02:33SPEAKERSo I designed this ridiculous cantilevered

02:37SPEAKERsquare steel tube frame that I then welded together

02:42SPEAKERand like cut all the pieces and did all the welding

02:44SPEAKERand got it to the point that it was level enough to use

02:48SPEAKERand then leveled it by putting like screw in

02:51SPEAKERadjustable height feet on the bottom to get it perfectly

02:53SPEAKERlevel and I built a wood frame that sat on top of that

02:57SPEAKERthat had a pullout tray and I didn't really think

03:01SPEAKERabout how much it was going to weigh when I was done with it

03:04SPEAKER'cause the square steel, I bought the wrong gauge

03:07SPEAKERsquare steel tubing.

03:08SPEAKERSo the square steel tubing weighed about 60 pounds

03:11SPEAKERand then the wood top, which I built out of, I think

03:16SPEAKERlike three quarter inch ply, 13 ply, three quarter inch

03:20SPEAKERI think weighed another like 30 pounds.

03:26SPEAKERAnd also the square steel tubing you have to get

03:28SPEAKERpowder coated immediately or else it starts to rust.

03:32SPEAKERAnd this was right around the time my daughter was born.

03:34SPEAKERSo I had this desk that had a bunch of these really cool

03:37SPEAKERcantilevered angled edges, but they were all incredibly

03:41SPEAKERrazor sharp and I had this kid toddling around.

03:44SPEAKERI was like, this is a bad idea.

03:45SPEAKERSo I gave it away and I kept the kindergarten desk.

03:49SPEAKER- I want to see what this desk looks like.

03:50SPEAKER- There's a video, there's a seven part video series

03:53SPEAKERso Tyler who used to work with it at a game spot I think.

03:58SPEAKERMaybe, I don't know what it was a video,

04:00SPEAKERthe video producer who helped us with that was awesome.

04:01SPEAKERHe, we basically were in Adam's shop for seven days

04:04SPEAKERcutting and welding.

04:06SPEAKER- The guy who shot the desk, got the desk.

04:08SPEAKER- No, no, no, no.

04:09SPEAKERI gave the desk to one of my neighbors.

04:11SPEAKERSo I posted it on next door and somebody came and picked it up.

04:13SPEAKER- I'm sorry.

04:14SPEAKER- Yeah, no.

04:15SPEAKER- God, it was like a hundred pound desk.

04:16SPEAKER- That's um, it was, it was unwieldy.

04:20SPEAKER- A hundred pounds and razor sharp.

04:22SPEAKER- Well, only parts of it were razor sharp.

04:24SPEAKERMost of it was pretty good.

04:25SPEAKER- That's hmm.

04:26SPEAKER- So I gave it to, there's a metal,

04:27SPEAKERthe metal worker around the corner was like,

04:29SPEAKERoh yeah, I have the stuff to sandblast that

04:30SPEAKERand powder coat it.

04:31SPEAKERAnd so he, he did that and it was, it was good.

04:33SPEAKER- Not sure if that's a desk or a death trap.

04:36SPEAKER(upbeat music)

04:46SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:05SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

05:07SPEAKERI'm Will.

05:08SPEAKER- Wait, you mean we're not just going to do more cold opens?

05:10SPEAKERLike I've got like eight more ready to go?

05:12SPEAKERHere, I'm Brad, by the way.

05:14SPEAKER- Look, it's just like, we had to do one bad cold open

05:17SPEAKER'cause I had nothing.

05:19SPEAKER- We were so tapped out, the well had truly run so dry

05:23SPEAKERthat there was nothing left.

05:24SPEAKER- April Fools, by the way, we were a little late,

05:27SPEAKERbut I think that still counts, right?

05:29SPEAKER- God, was that timed with, I didn't even notice that.

05:31SPEAKER- I didn't say anything about it

05:32SPEAKER'cause I thought you'd say no.

05:34SPEAKER- I do know at least one person who confessed

05:36SPEAKERto being somewhat confused when the music kicked in

05:38SPEAKERfor the second time.

05:40SPEAKER- There were the, my favorite, the Twitter,

05:42SPEAKERI don't know if you were looking at Twitter responses

05:43SPEAKERon like Sunday and Monday and Tuesday

05:45SPEAKERwhen people were listening,

05:46SPEAKERbut it was the reactions were very good

05:49SPEAKERand thank you all for not being angry at us

05:51SPEAKERfor breaking format.

05:52SPEAKERI'm always nervous breaking format on a podcast.

05:54SPEAKER- I don't know why we thought

05:55SPEAKERthat this was going to be so divisive.

05:56SPEAKERLike, I think that, I mean, do you,

05:58SPEAKERI think you said people are gonna either love or hate this.

06:01SPEAKER- Yeah.

06:01SPEAKER- I kind of just thought everybody would hate it.

06:03SPEAKERI think I didn't see a single person who seemed to dislike it

06:06SPEAKERnot to blow our horn or anything, but.

06:08SPEAKER- Nobody complained, which is always a good sign.

06:10SPEAKERI'm sure there's probably some negative iTunes reviews,

06:12SPEAKERbut I feel like we're not going to do that.

06:14SPEAKERObviously very often that's a special treat.

06:16SPEAKER- Yes.

06:17SPEAKER- But it was, it was fun to just come in

06:20SPEAKERand do something stupid for a week.

06:22SPEAKER- Might be in those, like the semi-annual rotation,

06:24SPEAKERlet's say something like that.

06:26SPEAKER- Yeah, well.

06:27SPEAKER- Like a couple of times a year, maybe.

06:28SPEAKER- It's also, it was a good excuse to talk about things

06:30SPEAKERthat like aren't big enough to justify their own episode.

06:33SPEAKER- Yes.

06:35SPEAKER- Or like cultural touchstones of important, you know,

06:38SPEAKERit's like, it's like the slice of life color

06:40SPEAKERof the podcast world.

06:41SPEAKER- Yes.

06:42SPEAKER- Like cultural touchstones of great import.

06:43SPEAKERThat's what people come to this podcast for.

06:45SPEAKER- Yeah, plus it's always fun to break format, right?

06:48SPEAKER- Yeah, oh, you're right.

06:49SPEAKERYes, like it was a good time, it was a good time.

06:51SPEAKER- Yeah, so this week though, we're going to not break format.

06:54SPEAKERWe're going to go back to the roots and we're going to talk.

06:57SPEAKERLook, this is a complicated topic,

06:59SPEAKERso I'm not going to say in-depth, I'm going to say

07:00SPEAKERsemi in-depth, pseudo in-depth.

07:02SPEAKER- It is an in-depth topic that we will,

07:04SPEAKERthe depth of which we will plumb lightly.

07:06SPEAKERLet's say we're not physicists here or anything.

07:10SPEAKERYour notes do say information theory at one point.

07:12SPEAKER- It's exclamation pointed and all caps'd.

07:15SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a heady topic.

07:17SPEAKERYeah, we were going back to some tech ass tech,

07:19SPEAKERlike let's get into some signal standards and...

07:23SPEAKER- Ultra wide band.

07:24SPEAKER- That's right, ultra wide.

07:26SPEAKER- Yes, hello.

07:27SPEAKER- I didn't know this existed.

07:28SPEAKERLike when you said the words ultra wide band last week

07:30SPEAKERabout what we should do, I was like,

07:33SPEAKERis that part of the 5G standard?

07:34SPEAKERIs that the opposite of no?

07:35SPEAKER- Well, there is an ultra wide band component to 5G.

07:38SPEAKER- Okay, okay, 'cause I thought I heard the term before,

07:40SPEAKERbut the point is the application of this,

07:43SPEAKERwhich we will get into, is very much not that.

07:46SPEAKERIt's kind of the opposite of that.

07:46SPEAKERAnd I was surprised to hear that, but...

07:49SPEAKER- Yeah, so this is a thing that's in a lot of new phones,

07:53SPEAKERbrand new, newer phones, let's say,

07:55SPEAKERstarting with like the iPhone 11

07:56SPEAKERand the Samsung Galaxy S21, I think,

08:01SPEAKERwhich is like two year old phones at this point.

08:03SPEAKER- Yeah.

08:05SPEAKER- But it's basically a new type of radio that allows,

08:09SPEAKERthat uses low energy, so low power consumption

08:13SPEAKERfor short range, very high bandwidth communication

08:16SPEAKERor lower data rate at a slightly longer range.

08:20SPEAKERAnd the way to think about it,

08:21SPEAKERso like typical radio communications

08:23SPEAKERare what you call narrow band.

08:24SPEAKERAnd what they do is take a slice of the radio spectrum.

08:27SPEAKERSo the radio spectrum is everything from gamma radiation

08:31SPEAKERon one end to X-rays on the other.

08:34SPEAKERAnd like that range is defined by the wavelength

08:37SPEAKERor the frequency of...

08:38SPEAKER- You mean the electromagnetic spectrum?

08:41SPEAKER- Uh-huh, yeah. - Thank you, yeah, okay.

08:42SPEAKER- And the wave, those ranges are defined

08:45SPEAKERby the wavelength and frequency,

08:47SPEAKERwhich there's an inverse relationship between those,

08:50SPEAKERof the photons that are making up the electromagnetic waves.

08:54SPEAKER- Yes, 'cause the longer the wave,

08:56SPEAKERthe slower they're gonna come at you, right?

08:57SPEAKER'Cause...

08:58SPEAKER- Well, no, they go at the same speed,

08:59SPEAKERbut the less data you can put...

09:01SPEAKER- Slower is, yeah, but when you said...

09:03SPEAKER- Sorry, I'm getting into the weeds here

09:05SPEAKERwhen you said that there's an inverse relationship.

09:09SPEAKER- Yeah, no, no.

09:10SPEAKERThe inverse relationship is that the frequency

09:12SPEAKERand the wavelength have to do with each other

09:16SPEAKERand like one is one over the other.

09:18SPEAKER- Speed was a poor, this is why we're not experts.

09:21SPEAKER- Yeah, no, no, no, no.

09:21SPEAKER- Speed was a poor way to characterize that,

09:23SPEAKERbut I think you know what I mean.

09:24SPEAKER- Well, but speed, what you're thinking about

09:26SPEAKERis that at a higher frequency...

09:28SPEAKER- Is the period, is that the term I'm looking for here?

09:30SPEAKERLike the number of times per second

09:33SPEAKERor per unit of time. - That's the frequency.

09:36SPEAKER- Yeah, no, no, I know that,

09:36SPEAKERbut I'm saying like when the wavelength is longer,

09:39SPEAKERyou're gonna get less of the up and down.

09:41SPEAKER- Yes, that's correct.

09:42SPEAKER- That's what I was trying to get at.

09:44SPEAKER- Well, and using narrow band radios,

09:45SPEAKERlike what we use in our cell phones and wifi

09:47SPEAKERand all the other things that you're familiar with,

09:50SPEAKERthe higher the frequency,

09:52SPEAKERthe more data you can pack into the same amount of bandwidth

09:58SPEAKER'cause usually you do narrow band radios

10:01SPEAKERby varying power level, frequency,

10:05SPEAKERand/or the phase of the wave itself.

10:09SPEAKERSo what wide band does is like...

10:13SPEAKERWell, okay, so let's take a step back.

10:15SPEAKERRemember when cordless phones came out

10:17SPEAKERand they were all like 900 megahertz

10:20SPEAKERand they were pretty good.

10:21SPEAKERThey had really good long range,

10:23SPEAKERbut they were really subject to interference

10:25SPEAKERand you couldn't work with...

10:26SPEAKERLike if you lived in a city,

10:28SPEAKERthey probably wouldn't work very well

10:29SPEAKERbecause there'd be too many other people

10:30SPEAKERwith the same phone in your general vicinity.

10:34SPEAKERThose were using analog signals

10:37SPEAKERin a fairly small number of frequency bands.

10:43SPEAKERSo like if they were 900 megahertz,

10:44SPEAKERwhat that really means is like there's a range from...

10:46SPEAKERAnd I'm making this number up.

10:48SPEAKERThis isn't the actual number,

10:49SPEAKERbut it's a range from like 800 to 1,000 megahertz

10:52SPEAKERthat is available in 10, 20, 30, whatever megahertz chunks.

10:56SPEAKERAnd each one of those represents a channel.

10:58SPEAKERSo that's like what your VHF and UHF

11:01SPEAKERon old school analog TVs were.

11:03SPEAKERThe channels were frequency ranges

11:05SPEAKERthat were just specified and defined by the FCC to say,

11:09SPEAKERokay, channel one is this megahertz range,

11:12SPEAKERchannel two is this megahertz range,

11:13SPEAKERand so on down the line.

11:14SPEAKER- Do you know how those ranges were doled out?

11:15SPEAKERWas it by company?

11:16SPEAKERLike this company, you can only make phones

11:18SPEAKERin this specific sub range?

11:19SPEAKER- No. - Was it the Wild West?

11:21SPEAKER- So typically, for licensed spectrum, the FCC says,

11:26SPEAKERokay, this particular piece of spectrum

11:27SPEAKERis used for ambulance and cops.

11:29SPEAKERThis piece of the spectrum is reserved for military.

11:31SPEAKERThis is for like long range.

11:34SPEAKERThis is for pagers.

11:35SPEAKERThis is for communications devices.

11:36SPEAKERThis is for communicating with satellites.

11:40SPEAKER- That's all like infrastructure critical stuff,

11:41SPEAKERnot your shitty retail off the shelf cordless phone.

11:44SPEAKER- Exactly.

11:45SPEAKERThe rules for unlicensed spectrum,

11:47SPEAKERwhich is like 900 megahertz, 2.4 gigahertz, 5.4 gigahertz,

11:51SPEAKERand on up, there's a few others,

11:53SPEAKERare as long as you don't mess with anything that's licensed

11:56SPEAKERand you accept interference,

11:58SPEAKERyou can do whatever you want.

11:59SPEAKER- So it's literally just anything in this specific range

12:01SPEAKERgoes no matter what your competitors are doing

12:04SPEAKERor your other products.

12:06SPEAKER- Yeah, just don't mess up things that are licensed

12:09SPEAKERand accept interference.

12:10SPEAKER- What a mess.

12:11SPEAKEROkay, it's good to know.

12:13SPEAKER- It's like in the 900 megahertz case, it was fine

12:15SPEAKERbecause there weren't that many radio devices.

12:16SPEAKERIt's not like we had a wifi on everything.

12:19SPEAKERBut what, and also the reason those areas are blocked off

12:23SPEAKERis probably, is usually because of some sort of interference

12:26SPEAKERthat makes them bad for reliable radios.

12:30SPEAKERFor example, microwave ovens interfere with stuff

12:33SPEAKERin the 2.4 gigahertz range,

12:35SPEAKERwhich is why when you had an 802.11b device,

12:39SPEAKERif you microwaved a big glass of water,

12:41SPEAKERthe wifi would crap out until we figured out

12:43SPEAKERit spends a bunch of other stuff

12:45SPEAKERthat we're not gonna get into today.

12:47SPEAKERNarrowband.

12:48SPEAKER- Yes.

12:49SPEAKER- Narrowband radios vary the phase of the wave,

12:52SPEAKERthe frequency of the wave, or the power level.

12:54SPEAKERAnd like that's, you see, like FM stands

12:58SPEAKERfor frequency modulated, AM stands for amplitude modulated.

13:00SPEAKERSo AM radios, the waves get shorter or longer,

13:03SPEAKERfrequency, sorry, other way around.

13:06SPEAKERAM radio, the waves get taller or shorter,

13:08SPEAKERand FM radio, they get shorter or longer.

13:11SPEAKER- Got it.

13:12SPEAKEROr horizontally.

13:13SPEAKER- Yeah, one's horizontal axis, one's vertical axis.

13:15SPEAKER- Right, right.

13:16SPEAKER- With ultra wideband, what it does is,

13:21SPEAKERand in this case, we're talking about wideband

13:24SPEAKERin terms of the amount of spectrum it goes.

13:26SPEAKERIt's a very little amount of data

13:27SPEAKERover a large chunk of the spectrum.

13:30SPEAKERSo instead of just living in those unlicensed areas,

13:34SPEAKERthese are authorized to work across

13:35SPEAKERmuch broader episodes of the spectrum,

13:38SPEAKERbut only if they don't interfere with the other thing,

13:41SPEAKERother places, and they do that by sending the data encoded

13:45SPEAKERin actual pulses of radio signals at time intervals

13:48SPEAKERover a really, really, really large chunk of frequency.

13:51SPEAKERAnd that lets them transmit over a really, really

13:55SPEAKERmassive amount of data at one time,

13:56SPEAKERbut over a very, very, very short range.

13:59SPEAKERAnd there's some other interesting side effects

14:01SPEAKERthat come with this.

14:03SPEAKERThen they specifically can't interfere

14:06SPEAKERwith the frequency modulated or power or phase modulated

14:10SPEAKERor power modulated signals that narrowband uses.

14:14SPEAKER- When you say short range,

14:15SPEAKERwe're talking like inside your house, right?

14:17SPEAKER- Line of sight in some cases.

14:19SPEAKER- Right, okay.

14:20SPEAKERSo the other side effect of this

14:23SPEAKERis because of the way it works,

14:25SPEAKERyou can also do really real time,

14:27SPEAKERincredibly precise location tracking

14:30SPEAKERusing time of flight between the devices.

14:32SPEAKERSo what that means is you can get,

14:35SPEAKERit's precise and fast enough.

14:37SPEAKERYou get instant lock.

14:38SPEAKERIt's precise and fast enough that you can get motion

14:41SPEAKERand relative position on a moment by moment basis.

14:43SPEAKERSo you can actually track movements.

14:45SPEAKER- In basically real time.

14:45SPEAKERHave you seen this in action?

14:46SPEAKERLike is it, does it appear like,

14:48SPEAKERI was wondering what this would look like

14:49SPEAKERif it were updating on a screen?

14:50SPEAKERLike, is it a little bit jerky?

14:51SPEAKERLike it kind of hops multiple times a second

14:53SPEAKERor is it very smooth as things move around?

14:56SPEAKER- Well, so we'll get to this.

14:57SPEAKERIt's not really being used for a whole lot right now.

14:59SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.

15:00SPEAKERI guess there aren't a lot of opportunities

15:01SPEAKERto see it in action yet.

15:03SPEAKER- The one example that I have personal firsthand experience

15:06SPEAKERwith is the updated AirPlay post iOS 13,

15:10SPEAKERwhich sorry, AirDrop, where you,

15:14SPEAKERwhere when you like, if you pick up your phone,

15:16SPEAKERyou're trying to AirDrop something to somebody,

15:18SPEAKERlike send them a link or something.

15:20SPEAKERIf you AirDrop it and you point it at somebody

15:22SPEAKERwho has a phone that also has a UWB chip,

15:24SPEAKERthen it will put that person at the front of the list.

15:27SPEAKER- Interesting.

15:28SPEAKER- So like, if you're in a subway station,

15:29SPEAKERthere's a billion phones around, everybody's on them

15:30SPEAKERand all their AirDrop stuff pops up.

15:32SPEAKERIt makes it easier to find the one person that you want.

15:35SPEAKERAlso, like you can aim it and kind of,

15:39SPEAKERyou used to be able to flick.

15:40SPEAKERI don't think you can in iOS 14 anymore.

15:43SPEAKER- But there's actual directionality to this,

15:45SPEAKERnot just proximity?

15:46SPEAKER- That might only be in the dev kit.

15:47SPEAKERI can't remember.

15:48SPEAKERI saw it someplace when I was noodling with something

15:50SPEAKERand I haven't seen it since.

15:51SPEAKER- But the tech does let you kind of point

15:54SPEAKERspecifically at things and kind of establish.

15:56SPEAKER- Yes. - They don't signal that way.

15:58SPEAKER- The resolution is a centimeter scale right now.

16:00SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

16:01SPEAKER- And it goes up when you add more antennas.

16:03SPEAKER- That's pretty good.

16:04SPEAKER- So theoretically, you should even be able to use it

16:05SPEAKERfor like positioning for AR audio and stuff like that,

16:08SPEAKERfor spatial audio that's tied to elements in the room.

16:11SPEAKER- Can I throw this out there?

16:11SPEAKERThis is something that I gathered

16:13SPEAKERfrom reading a couple articles about this.

16:14SPEAKERLike it might help to contextualize for this for people

16:16SPEAKERbecause there aren't a lot of real world examples yet

16:18SPEAKERthat it seems like it might fill a similar role to Bluetooth.

16:21SPEAKERIs that accurate in your understanding?

16:23SPEAKER- I don't know what,

16:24SPEAKERit depends on what the power requirements are.

16:26SPEAKERIt's the how much power this stuff uses

16:29SPEAKERseems to be a pretty tightly held proprietary secret

16:32SPEAKER'cause nobody publishes that like their UWB chip

16:35SPEAKERis this many Watts compared to say a Bluetooth LE.

16:39SPEAKERThe white papers that I've read strongly imply

16:42SPEAKERthat it is comparable to Bluetooth LE.

16:45SPEAKERI'm curious if we're gonna see,

16:46SPEAKERlike Bluetooth is a really widely accepted standard

16:49SPEAKERand every phone sold since like 2009 has Bluetooth on it.

16:55SPEAKERI'm interested to see if we're gonna start seeing

16:56SPEAKERUWB headphones in the future.

16:58SPEAKER- I was wondering, that was the first question I had

17:01SPEAKERwhen I read through all this stuff.

17:02SPEAKERI mean, we'll get to it.

17:04SPEAKER- Yeah, that theoretically should let you do

17:05SPEAKERlike full lossless audio.

17:07SPEAKER- Oh, that sounds great.

17:08SPEAKER- And ridiculous bit depths and all that wirelessly.

17:10SPEAKER- As someone who like excised the entire iTunes

17:13SPEAKERlike Apple music ecosystem for my life

17:15SPEAKERand replaced it with things that play flack.

17:18SPEAKER- Yeah.

17:19SPEAKER- As someone who has a bunch of flat,

17:20SPEAKERa hundred gigabytes of flax on their phone.

17:23SPEAKERI would love to have some wireless headphones

17:24SPEAKERthat could play those losslessly.

17:26SPEAKER- Well, and it's an interesting question

17:29SPEAKER'cause like, I don't know that I would trade battery life

17:32SPEAKERfor losslessness on like most of what I listen to these days.

17:35SPEAKER- Totally, you're totally right about that.

17:36SPEAKERLike I'm not that out of my mind.

17:38SPEAKER- Yeah, just use a wire if you care that much, right?

17:41SPEAKER- Yes, yes, so it's not a big deal, but...

17:44SPEAKER- Yeah, we'll get into some of the potential applications

17:46SPEAKERlater, but that does, I feel like that at least gives people

17:48SPEAKERsome context for what this might be useful for.

17:50SPEAKER- Yeah, like it's interesting though,

17:52SPEAKER'cause like, so Apple and Samsung seem to be the two people

17:54SPEAKERthat are shipping the most stuff that do UWB.

17:59SPEAKERI was surprised when the AirPods Pro and AirPods Max

18:02SPEAKERcame out without the U1 chips, at least for the phone,

18:06SPEAKERat least for the AirPod case, maybe.

18:09SPEAKER- I guess the M1, the ARM laptop, the M1 MacBook

18:12SPEAKERalso does not have the U1 chip either, so.

18:15SPEAKER- Or if it does, they don't put it on the spec sheets

18:17SPEAKERand nobody found it when they tore it down.

18:20SPEAKERI mean, it could be in the SOC, who knows?

18:21SPEAKERAnything can be in the SOC, I guess.

18:25SPEAKERSo it's interesting, 'cause like when I was reading

18:29SPEAKERabout this, I was thinking about the ways

18:30SPEAKERthat devices can communicate with each other

18:32SPEAKERand like my Palm 3 had an IR port.

18:36SPEAKERDo you remember those?

18:38SPEAKER- IR ports, yes, I saw that you wrote in the notes

18:40SPEAKERabout, sorry, I was looking.

18:46SPEAKERNo, I'm sorry, I misread this.

18:47SPEAKERYou said, I'm just gonna quote from your notes here.

18:49SPEAKERYou said, remember when your phone's data channel

18:51SPEAKERwas an IR port and in my head, I have so conflated

18:54SPEAKERthe term phone with iPhone that my brain tried to fill in,

18:58SPEAKERthe first time I read through these notes,

18:59SPEAKERmy brain tried to fill in like an early model of iPhone

19:01SPEAKERthat had an IR port on it, which obviously did not exist,

19:05SPEAKERbut like I was trying to think back to when that was,

19:07SPEAKERbut that's obviously a pre-iPhone thing.

19:10SPEAKER- Well, so yeah, like PDAs, like Palm pilots,

19:12SPEAKERI think all had after the two or the three

19:14SPEAKERhad infrared ports that you could use as like,

19:17SPEAKERlike you could download a universal remote for your phone,

19:20SPEAKERfor your TV that your PDA could control.

19:23SPEAKERIt wasn't a great experience

19:24SPEAKER'cause touchscreen remotes kind of suck,

19:25SPEAKERbut the, and that thing was limited to a hundred,

19:30SPEAKERI think it was serial port speeds,

19:31SPEAKERit was like 112 kilobits per second,

19:34SPEAKER112,000 bits per second or 112 kilobits per second,

19:37SPEAKERsomething like that.

19:39SPEAKERNot, I remember Windows mobile phones all had those

19:43SPEAKERand Blackberries all had those, I believe.

19:46SPEAKERWhen the iPhone came out and it didn't have that,

19:48SPEAKERit was kind of a big deal.

19:51SPEAKERAnd I don't actually remember

19:53SPEAKERwhen Bluetooth came to the iPhone.

19:55SPEAKERI don't think Bluetooth was in the first iPhone,

19:56SPEAKERbut I didn't think to look that up.

19:58SPEAKER- That sounds right, I can say for sure.

20:01SPEAKERI mean, definitely like the proliferation

20:03SPEAKERof Bluetooth headphones was much later.

20:05SPEAKER- Oh yeah, Bluetooth audio wasn't a thing until they bought,

20:07SPEAKERuntil aptX became a part of that whole thing.

20:10SPEAKERAnd that was in like iPhone four or five days.

20:14SPEAKERIt was like early 2010s, probably.

20:15SPEAKER- Sure, since you mentioned data transfer

20:19SPEAKERof the IR port and so forth, should I drop the,

20:22SPEAKERI looked up the, on the FCC's site about UWP.

20:25SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah, UWB rather.

20:28SPEAKER- UWP, I'm sorry, too many acronyms

20:30SPEAKERand too many different spheres to keep track of.

20:34SPEAKERThey say that the effective transfer rate

20:36SPEAKERof UWB is a hundred megabits a second,

20:38SPEAKERwhich in wifi terms is not amazing.

20:41SPEAKER- But it's huge compared to Bluetooth.

20:43SPEAKER- They similarly quote Bluetooth at one megabit a second.

20:47SPEAKER- Yeah, for LE though, there's higher speed Bluetooth

20:50SPEAKERthat require more power.

20:51SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

20:52SPEAKER- But my assumption based on what everybody was saying

20:55SPEAKERis that the UWB transfer and the Bluetooth transfer,

21:01SPEAKERBluetooth LE transfer about the same rates

21:03SPEAKERfor comparable power.

21:04SPEAKER- Oh, interesting.

21:04SPEAKER- I don't know if that's true,

21:05SPEAKERthat's my assumption based on the way this was positioned.

21:08SPEAKER- So it sounds like maybe more for like positional tracking

21:11SPEAKERin the short term rather than data transfer for this.

21:13SPEAKER- Dude, a hundred megabits is hella fast.

21:15SPEAKER- Well, I mean, if the power is too significant for that.

21:19SPEAKER- I mean, that's the question is how much does this cost

21:23SPEAKERto hit and how much does it cost when it's active?

21:26SPEAKERLike is the reason that this isn't in the AirPods Pro

21:29SPEAKERbecause the chip was too big and the antennas are too big

21:32SPEAKERto put into a tiny little AirPod, I don't know.

21:36SPEAKERAnd also can they work through your head, right?

21:38SPEAKER- Right.

21:39SPEAKER- Is the giant bag of water that is your brain a problem

21:42SPEAKERfor the radio to penetrate?

21:44SPEAKER- The Macworld story that you sent me mentioned

21:47SPEAKERlike pretty much like the one feature

21:49SPEAKERthey have really shipped with this so far,

21:50SPEAKERat least in the Apple sphere is kind of seamless

21:54SPEAKERsort of positional handoff of audio

21:56SPEAKERbetween like a phone and a HomePod

21:58SPEAKERthat you could essentially,

21:59SPEAKERI don't know if this required you to point the phone

22:01SPEAKERat the HomePod or just kind of wave it near it,

22:03SPEAKERbut it would seamlessly hand off the music

22:05SPEAKERthat the phone was playing to the HomePod

22:07SPEAKERjust by proximity.

22:08SPEAKER- You just kind of get it next to it

22:09SPEAKERis my from the videos I watched.

22:10SPEAKERI watched a couple of people doing it.

22:11SPEAKERI didn't buy a HomePod, Brad, this may shock you.

22:16SPEAKERIt's only in the mini also the big chonker HomePod

22:19SPEAKERdoesn't have the U1 chip.

22:21SPEAKER- And is that one still a going concern?

22:22SPEAKERLike they discontinued at least part

22:24SPEAKERof the HomePod line recently, right?

22:25SPEAKER- I think the big one's gone, but the mini is new

22:29SPEAKERand is the hotness, yeah.

22:30SPEAKERSo as TechCrunch, they discontinued the big HomePod

22:34SPEAKERand we'll focus on the mini.

22:35SPEAKER- It turns out it's cheaper to have a bunch of small,

22:39SPEAKERpretty good speakers than one really big chonker.

22:42SPEAKER- Yeah.

22:43SPEAKER- So yeah, it's an interesting thing.

22:45SPEAKERLike learning about how this works,

22:47SPEAKERwe're not gonna get into how it works

22:48SPEAKER'cause I did a bunch of reading

22:49SPEAKERand it's all like crazy information theory stuff.

22:51SPEAKER- We're gonna skip the information theory?

22:53SPEAKER- Well, we can talk about it a little bit,

22:54SPEAKERbut I'm not gonna get into it.

22:55SPEAKER- You mean the study of quantification storage

22:57SPEAKERand communication of information as per your notes?

22:59SPEAKER- That is exactly what the information theory is.

23:01SPEAKERAnd it's like a mixture of physics

23:02SPEAKERand computer science stuff.

23:03SPEAKERIt's like, the people who do information theory

23:07SPEAKERare the ones that say, okay, this is how much data

23:10SPEAKERwe can conceivably send using a fiber optic cable.

23:14SPEAKERAnd like they're working on everything from like compression

23:17SPEAKERloss, it includes stuff like lossy and lossless compression

23:20SPEAKERand all the way down to like, how is it,

23:27SPEAKERdo you get more data into a light pulse

23:29SPEAKERby modulating the frequency or the length of the pulse

23:32SPEAKERor both or the phase or polarity or, you know,

23:35SPEAKERlike it's really the intersection of physics

23:38SPEAKERand computer science, like hardcore computer science stuff.

23:42SPEAKER- Should I assume this is the same use of information

23:44SPEAKERthat you see in cosmological or astrophysical contexts?

23:47SPEAKERDo you know what I'm talking about?

23:48SPEAKERLike you'll see the word information to describe,

23:52SPEAKERlike for like the, like I was, you know,

23:55SPEAKERI was reading about quantum entanglement the other day

23:57SPEAKERand the point being made was like, yes,

24:00SPEAKERsomething is happening at distances faster than light,

24:04SPEAKERbut like information is not being exchanged faster

24:07SPEAKERthan light because there's,

24:07SPEAKERaccording to our standing physics, that's possible, right?

24:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

24:11SPEAKER- Is that the same, but like, but in that context,

24:13SPEAKERinformation can mean like, you know,

24:15SPEAKERstates of matter and right?

24:17SPEAKER- Yeah, like in the idea that the information,

24:20SPEAKERonce the information passes the event horizon

24:21SPEAKERof a singularity, you know,

24:23SPEAKERceases to exist for all intents and purposes.

24:25SPEAKER- Yes.

24:26SPEAKER- Yeah, the same idea.

24:27SPEAKER- This is the same use of the word, okay.

24:29SPEAKER- The idea is it's related to entropy

24:33SPEAKERand stuff like that is my understanding.

24:34SPEAKERSo like, and it shows up a lot in crypto cryptography

24:41SPEAKERas well, so, because obviously like you're with cryptography,

24:45SPEAKERyou're trying to make something that contains information

24:48SPEAKERhave be retrievable, but essentially look like

24:51SPEAKERthe background entropy of the universe

24:53SPEAKERfor somebody who doesn't have the right math to unlock it.

24:58SPEAKER- Easy peasy.

24:59SPEAKER- Hmm?

25:00SPEAKER- Easy peasy.

25:01SPEAKER- Yeah.

25:01SPEAKER- It sounds so simple when you describe it that way.

25:03SPEAKER- Yeah, these are the, look, I spent a lot of time

25:05SPEAKERon the ELI five Reddit reading about this stuff

25:08SPEAKERbecause it turns out it's a really good resource

25:10SPEAKERfor scary physics stuff that my 25 year old memory

25:16SPEAKERof whatever physics classes I had to take

25:18SPEAKERto get my degree are there.

25:23SPEAKERSo we talk about bandwidth in this case, ultra wide band,

25:28SPEAKERwe're talking about bandwidth and usually

25:30SPEAKERwhen you're talking about computers, you say bandwidth,

25:32SPEAKERwhat you really mean is throughput,

25:33SPEAKERwhich is the amount of data per second

25:34SPEAKERyou can get through some sort of pipe.

25:37SPEAKERIn this case, bandwidth is the actual width,

25:39SPEAKERthe amount, the width of the spectrum band that we are using.

25:44SPEAKER- That tells you what the bandwidth is

25:45SPEAKERbecause it's sending in pulses, right?

25:48SPEAKERNot in a sustained way, or?

25:50SPEAKER- No, no, no, no, we're not, we, in this case,

25:52SPEAKERbandwidth means something different

25:53SPEAKERthan what you normally mean it to mean.

25:55SPEAKER- Okay.

25:55SPEAKER- So normally you mean bandwidth, when you say bandwidth,

25:58SPEAKERyou mean this is the amount of data transferred per second.

26:00SPEAKER- I should have said throughput is what I meant to say,

26:02SPEAKERI'm sorry.

26:03SPEAKER- Yes, through, so the bandwidth is determined

26:05SPEAKERby physics and radios and antennas.

26:08SPEAKER- It's a terminology heavy episode, I'm sorry.

26:11SPEAKER- We'll put a little, I'll put a glossary at the end.

26:14SPEAKER- Yes, can we put a parental advisory sticker

26:16SPEAKERon the front of this podcast?

26:17SPEAKERI've always wanted to.

26:17SPEAKER- You could do that if you want, smack it on there.

26:20SPEAKER- Parental advisory explicit terminology.

26:23SPEAKER- So the, there's the name right there.

26:25SPEAKER- That's right.

26:26SPEAKER- It's warning explicit terminology.

26:27SPEAKER- Yes.

26:29SPEAKER- The thing that's fun about this is

26:30SPEAKERI was reading about this stuff, I realized,

26:32SPEAKERlike I knew this before, obviously, but you know,

26:35SPEAKEReverything from X-rays to gamma rays are,

26:39SPEAKERyou know, like basically it's photons moving through space.

26:42SPEAKER- I think we've talked about that before,

26:43SPEAKERthe EM spectrum, I think is a really elegant

26:46SPEAKERand fascinating and like incredibly fundamental idea

26:48SPEAKERto our existence, right?

26:49SPEAKERI mean, it's one of the most fundamental forces

26:52SPEAKERin the universe.

26:53SPEAKER- Well, and so radio is just a small slice of that.

26:58SPEAKERLike it's a small part of that,

27:01SPEAKERwhat we call radio is a small part of that spectrum.

27:03SPEAKER- I thought it was pretty big part of the spectrum, right?

27:05SPEAKERI looked up some graphs before this.

27:08SPEAKER- But the point is it's a sub,

27:11SPEAKERlike radio is a subset of the EM spectrum.

27:13SPEAKER- Yes, yes, it absolutely is a subset.

27:14SPEAKER- So theoretically you can use this information theory

27:19SPEAKERand this stuff to make a device that communicates

27:22SPEAKERinformation wirelessly using anything in the spectrum.

27:26SPEAKERSo we used, we talked about the IR port before,

27:28SPEAKERbut like, I mean, I was gonna say,

27:31SPEAKERthere's nothing to say you can't, but there is.

27:33SPEAKERYou could use X-rays to transmit information, right?

27:36SPEAKERYou can make X-ray lasers that transmit information

27:38SPEAKERthat way, you could make, you could do it with gamma rays.

27:42SPEAKERI mean, there's downsides to both of those.

27:43SPEAKEROne is gonna give you cancer

27:44SPEAKERand the other is gonna turn you into the Hulk.

27:46SPEAKER- It's kind of very safe, yes.

27:47SPEAKER- Yeah, conceptually it all, like, I mean,

27:49SPEAKERthey use microwave transmitters for a long time.

27:51SPEAKERI think they probably still do to transmit,

27:54SPEAKERto repeat before they had satellites to transmit video

27:57SPEAKERfor TV around the planet.

28:00SPEAKERSo it's all, this is one of those things

28:05SPEAKERwhere you're like looking at the screen,

28:06SPEAKERright, it's all connected.

28:10SPEAKEROkay, so I think that's the high points on the tech, right?

28:13SPEAKERIt's using a really wide swath of tech.

28:16SPEAKERIt shows up in some other places

28:17SPEAKERthat are not this specific kind of UWB.

28:21SPEAKERThere's a high speed external,

28:25SPEAKERI can't remember what the spec is

28:26SPEAKER'cause I didn't write it down,

28:27SPEAKERbut the Vive wireless, a lot of the VR wireless kits

28:31SPEAKERthat are PC VR, but don't have a cable,

28:34SPEAKERuse a form of ultra wide band radio

28:37SPEAKERthat can transmit massive amounts of data

28:39SPEAKERover like the higher spectrum.

28:43SPEAKERSo like the one that HTC shipped

28:45SPEAKERwas like 60 kilo, 60 kilohertz or something,

28:47SPEAKERI can't remember, it was really high frequency.

28:51SPEAKER- Should I assume the latency is extraordinarily low on this

28:55SPEAKERfor an application like video for a VR headset?

28:58SPEAKER- For the ultra wide band, for the stuff that I tested,

29:01SPEAKERyes, the latency was indistinguishable

29:02SPEAKERfrom cable pretty much. - Wow.

29:05SPEAKER- But that's a factor of encodes of hardware,

29:10SPEAKERof like the hardware encoder and decoder stuff too,

29:12SPEAKERas much as it is the pipe at this point, I think.

29:15SPEAKER- Sure.

29:17SPEAKER- And also how it handles error correction.

29:19SPEAKERLike a lot of times your latency

29:20SPEAKERis because a packet comes through

29:22SPEAKERand it doesn't pass the error correction check

29:23SPEAKERand then it'll ask for it again

29:25SPEAKERand then it's like 10 seconds late.

29:29SPEAKER- There's a consortium that's working on a standard

29:33SPEAKERfor the types of UWB applications that we've talked about.

29:36SPEAKER- Of course there is. - It's in your phone.

29:38SPEAKER- There's always a consortium.

29:39SPEAKER- This is a good thing.

29:40SPEAKER- No, dude, I...

29:42SPEAKERLook, sometimes when you just do internet content,

29:46SPEAKERyou kind of play up certain things, little words.

29:50SPEAKERI don't actually distrust consortiums.

29:53SPEAKER- You gotta trust the consortium, man.

29:54SPEAKER- Yes, I think so.

29:56SPEAKERSome consortiums track records are a bit spotty

29:57SPEAKERas we have discussed before.

29:58SPEAKER- This one, I assume.

30:00SPEAKER- I know that standards bodies are a good thing.

30:03SPEAKER- Well, I mean, yeah, we don't, yeah.

30:05SPEAKERSo this one I assume was made by somebody

30:06SPEAKERwho's really into "Final Fantasy," I guess, I don't know.

30:09SPEAKERIt's the Fira Consortium, F-I-R-A.

30:12SPEAKER- Fira, Fira? - Fira?

30:14SPEAKER- I think in a "Final Fantasy" context

30:15SPEAKERthat's pronounced Fira.

30:16SPEAKER- I only played the ones without voice acting,

30:18SPEAKERso I don't know.

30:19SPEAKER- Firaaga, I don't know that that's ever been voiced before.

30:21SPEAKERI'm sure, if anybody knows of a "Final Fantasy" game

30:23SPEAKERwhere they actually say the word Firaaga out loud.

30:27SPEAKER- Yeah, fire raga, I would love to know.

30:29SPEAKER- But this is just Fira.

30:31SPEAKER- Oh no, I know, I know.

30:32SPEAKER- This is like the role level version, right?

30:33SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.

30:34SPEAKERWell, I think it's fire, Fira, Fira, Firaaga?

30:37SPEAKER- I can't remember.

30:38SPEAKER- Yes, I don't know.

30:39SPEAKER- I mean, I played all "Final Fantasy VII" remake last year,

30:41SPEAKERbut clearly it stuck with me.

30:44SPEAKERThere's a wide ranging splosh of corporations in here.

30:49SPEAKERSamsung, Apple, Oppo, Bosch, like the dishwasher people,

30:54SPEAKERQualcomm, the radio people, HID, Cisco, Facebook,

30:59SPEAKERSony, ST Electronics, and Hyundai among others,

31:03SPEAKERamong a ton of others.

31:04SPEAKER- Yes, potentially going to be widely adopted.

31:06SPEAKERMaybe now's a good time to ask you if you happen to know.

31:10SPEAKERSo I tried to nail down how long

31:12SPEAKERthis technology has been around.

31:14SPEAKERI found competing dates,

31:16SPEAKERbut like they all appear to be more than a century.

31:18SPEAKER- It was a, in the, yes, it was a top secret thing

31:24SPEAKERfor a really long time.

31:25SPEAKERIt was a way that we sent like protected data

31:29SPEAKERwhere our terrestrial enemies would not be able to find it.

31:33SPEAKER- Okay, so maybe that starts to answer the question

31:35SPEAKERI haven't actually asked yet, which is the,

31:37SPEAKER'cause yeah, like I'm seeing roughly 120,

31:40SPEAKER130 year old technology.

31:42SPEAKERAnd the inevitable question is,

31:43SPEAKERwhy is this only now being adopted in consumer devices?

31:46SPEAKER- So licensing issues prevented it for a long time.

31:50SPEAKERIt was, my understanding is it became relevant in the 90s

31:55SPEAKERwhen we started to see cordless telephones

31:57SPEAKERand consumer devices that had problems

31:59SPEAKERwith frequency and spectrum interference.

32:03SPEAKERThere were other cheaper technologies,

32:05SPEAKEReasier to use technologies that allowed us

32:08SPEAKERaround those problems for most people.

32:10SPEAKERSo like spread spectrum stuff

32:12SPEAKERwhere it would bounce from channel to channel,

32:13SPEAKERor channel changing, automatic channel to channel changing,

32:16SPEAKERstuff like that kind of worked better is my understanding.

32:19SPEAKERBut I didn't get too far into the history on this.

32:22SPEAKERI just thought it was an interesting,

32:24SPEAKERit was interesting to me that we used it

32:26SPEAKERfor spy communications for a long time,

32:27SPEAKER'cause it just looks like background noise

32:29SPEAKERwhen you're looking for narrow band signals.

32:31SPEAKER- So it's just not where the R&D was earlier.

32:34SPEAKER- Yeah, and for better, cheaper, like there,

32:38SPEAKERwell, and also before the rise of phones,

32:39SPEAKERthere wasn't really a need for a high speed,

32:42SPEAKERpersonal area sized network.

32:44SPEAKER- Sure, that is absolutely fair.

32:46SPEAKER- Like if you had kept coming at me in 1995

32:48SPEAKERand we're like, hey, we have this radio technology,

32:50SPEAKERit's just gonna give you a really fast signal

32:52SPEAKERin like a space of five feet, I'd be like,

32:54SPEAKERwell, what up with that, do I need something that's five?

32:57SPEAKERIf it's five feet away, I'll just put a flop,

32:59SPEAKERI'll plug a zip disc in and then copy it over

33:01SPEAKERand plug it into the other zip disc.

33:02SPEAKER- No, you may not have $50 million

33:04SPEAKERto further develop this technology.

33:05SPEAKER- Yes, exactly.

33:08SPEAKERSo the interesting thing about all of this

33:11SPEAKERis that it's showing up in a lot of,

33:13SPEAKERlike it's in a lot of devices right now.

33:14SPEAKERYou probably, if you've bought a phone

33:15SPEAKERin the last two or three years,

33:16SPEAKERit's pretty likely that you have one that uses this.

33:21SPEAKERIt's in all the iPhone 11 and newer phones,

33:25SPEAKERexcept for maybe the budget phones

33:28SPEAKERthat they released last year.

33:29SPEAKER- Yeah, see, actually, let me see.

33:30SPEAKER- Yeah, it's in the latest Apple Watch,

33:33SPEAKERthe HomePod mini, the Samsung Galaxy Note 20.

33:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I was surprised to, so yeah, real quick,

33:38SPEAKERthe new iPhone SE does not have the U1 chip,

33:41SPEAKERso it's not capable.

33:42SPEAKERI was surprised to see that like the new Apple Watch

33:45SPEAKERand the HomePod mini and some of these like ancillary

33:48SPEAKERdevices in their lineup also have that.

33:50SPEAKERBut again, like the laptops don't,

33:52SPEAKERthe most recent iPad refreshes don't.

33:54SPEAKERIt's a little scatter shot

33:55SPEAKERwhat they're putting it in right now.

33:57SPEAKER- That is the, the speculation that I read

34:00SPEAKERis it'll be in the iPad Pro,

34:01SPEAKERbut probably not the regular iPad Airs.

34:05SPEAKERThe assumption is that it's gonna be used for AR stuff

34:08SPEAKERas well as like, so, okay.

34:12SPEAKERSo Samsung released a thing called the SmartTag Plus,

34:14SPEAKERwhich is basically a little, it's a UWB chip with a battery

34:19SPEAKERand you can stick it on things that you don't wanna lose.

34:22SPEAKERSo then when you wanna find it,

34:24SPEAKERyou open up an app on your phone and it like ARs,

34:27SPEAKERlike it paints it the object with augmented reality

34:30SPEAKERon a picture of your scene and kind of breadcrumb your way

34:32SPEAKERthrough your actual house to find the thing

34:34SPEAKERthat you've lost.

34:36SPEAKERPresumably Apple is gonna launch a product

34:38SPEAKERthat's very similar.

34:39SPEAKERIt seems like, that seems like an absolute slam dunk

34:41SPEAKERfor people who lose stuff all the time, like keys.

34:44SPEAKER- Yeah, especially if it integrates with your phone.

34:45SPEAKERI mean, there are products on the market

34:47SPEAKERthat are not associated with a phone ecosystem, right?

34:49SPEAKERLike Tile, right?

34:50SPEAKER- Tile does that, is that with Bluetooth LE, yeah.

34:53SPEAKER- Oh, they're Bluetooth, okay.

34:54SPEAKER- So the problem is the Bluetooth LE isn't super positional.

34:56SPEAKERSo you, it tells you, it's like, it's like,

34:59SPEAKERit's the difference between somebody blindfolding you

35:03SPEAKERand telling you to walk 15 feet right and turn three feet

35:06SPEAKERand then, you know, take five feet left

35:08SPEAKERversus playing hot and cold, you know,

35:10SPEAKERwith when you're, when you're a kid.

35:12SPEAKER- Sure.

35:13SPEAKER- So the Tile stuff will tell you how to,

35:14SPEAKERTile also is part of that Fira consortium for what it's worth.

35:18SPEAKERTile tells you hot or cold.

35:20SPEAKERThe SmartTag, the smart thing, SmartTag Plus tells you,

35:26SPEAKERlike it's four feet away,

35:27SPEAKER30 degrees off your starboard bow and down, you know.

35:31SPEAKER- Right.

35:33SPEAKERI'm sorry.

35:34SPEAKERHow big are those fobs, do you know?

35:36SPEAKEROr, I mean, maybe the UWB ones,

35:37SPEAKERit will be a different situation,

35:38SPEAKERbut I'm kind of curious what,

35:39SPEAKERlike a little embedded device with this tech in it.

35:43SPEAKERSo that is going to look like how big it's going to be.

35:45SPEAKER- The Tile ones are pretty small these days.

35:48SPEAKERI haven't looked at the SmartTag Plus, so I don't know.

35:50SPEAKER- Oh, is that actually on the market?

35:52SPEAKER- I believe so, yeah.

35:53SPEAKERSeems like it.

35:54SPEAKERI'm going to go look right now.

35:55SPEAKER- Let me look that up as well.

35:56SPEAKERThat looks fairly small.

35:58SPEAKER- It's got like a key chain size.

35:59SPEAKER- Yeah, it's got to have literally got a hole in it

36:01SPEAKERas if it were a key chain.

36:04SPEAKERYeah, I was kind of curious about, you know,

36:06SPEAKERlike how big the chip is,

36:07SPEAKERlike what kind of antenna, if any, or.

36:10SPEAKER- It's usually like a printed circuit board antenna

36:12SPEAKERwith a circle.

36:13SPEAKER- Okay, yeah.

36:14SPEAKER- It's like an NFC antenna type thing.

36:15SPEAKER- Got it, got it.

36:17SPEAKERSo pretty compact.

36:19SPEAKER- And Apple revealed the existence of the AirTag stuff

36:21SPEAKERin a YouTube video a few days ago.

36:23SPEAKERSo like that's clearly coming,

36:25SPEAKERwhether they release it soon or not.

36:26SPEAKER- Wow, that's kind of not very Apple-like to just sort of.

36:30SPEAKER- Look, these things happen.

36:32SPEAKER- Oh, do you think it was a slip?

36:34SPEAKER- It seems like it was an error.

36:35SPEAKERYeah, the idea is that your Find Your iPhones

36:39SPEAKERis going to add support for more devices,

36:42SPEAKERincluding like headphones and things like that

36:44SPEAKERfrom other manufacturers.

36:45SPEAKER- Okay, since you said Find My iPhone,

36:48SPEAKERmaybe now is a good time for a slight tangent here.

36:51SPEAKER- Yeah, of course.

36:54SPEAKER- I think this is again from that Macworld story

36:56SPEAKERthat I pulled this quote,

36:58SPEAKERthat they mentioned that Apple's expansive Find My network

37:00SPEAKERuses Apple devices to anonymously locate

37:03SPEAKERany nearby lost objects and report their location.

37:05SPEAKERIs that actually the case that other people's devices

37:08SPEAKERare, is that what they're?

37:10SPEAKER- I didn't know about that,

37:11SPEAKERbut I presume that the UWB stuff enables that.

37:13SPEAKER- I did not like either, yeah.

37:15SPEAKERNot that I'm like nervous about it.

37:18SPEAKERI mean, it's a little bit strange

37:19SPEAKERto have other random people's devices

37:21SPEAKERsort of helping to triangulate the location

37:23SPEAKERof your lost device.

37:24SPEAKER- I mean, you're kind of doing that now

37:26SPEAKERwith the COVID exposure thing.

37:29SPEAKER- You're not wrong.

37:29SPEAKERWhen I read the way that,

37:31SPEAKERread about how the COVID tracking stuff

37:34SPEAKERworks seamlessly and anonymously,

37:35SPEAKERit sounded actually like pretty elegant

37:37SPEAKERand the right way to do something like that.

37:39SPEAKER- Yeah, and I mean, I think,

37:41SPEAKERI mean, if you took the model

37:43SPEAKERthat's used for the COVID thing

37:45SPEAKERand apply it to, hey, I lost my AirPods,

37:50SPEAKERthen you could have an anonymous number

37:52SPEAKERthat just the Apple knows belong to you,

37:55SPEAKERbut nobody else does.

37:56SPEAKERAnd presumably you could find that.

37:59SPEAKERI mean, as always, this stuff is every bit as secure

38:03SPEAKERas the weakest math in the chain.

38:06SPEAKERI don't, this is a personal bias,

38:10SPEAKERbut I don't think I trust Google or Microsoft

38:12SPEAKERor Facebook or Amazon to do that right.

38:16SPEAKERI don't know that I trust Apple,

38:18SPEAKERbut I think Apple is the one I'm most likely

38:19SPEAKERto trust to do that right.

38:21SPEAKER- I agree.

38:22SPEAKER- And generally their stuff is opt out.

38:24SPEAKERSo if, I mean, you have to, my guess,

38:28SPEAKERmy hope would be that they launch that as an opt in,

38:30SPEAKERalthough with a wide user base,

38:33SPEAKERif people won't know that that service exists

38:35SPEAKERuntil they need it, and then they won't have opted in,

38:37SPEAKERso the device won't be on the network,

38:39SPEAKERtherefore it won't matter and won't be useful

38:41SPEAKERfor the thing.

38:44SPEAKERI will say that when I left my bag in a cab at CES,

38:48SPEAKERI really wished I had paid for the internet connected iPad,

38:52SPEAKERso I could have found my iPad that way,

38:54SPEAKERrather than having to call the cab company

38:55SPEAKERand do the whole rigmarole.

38:57SPEAKER- Did you get it all back?

38:58SPEAKER- It was all, yeah, they brought it back

38:59SPEAKERtwo minutes later, I gave the iPad 50 bucks.

39:01SPEAKERIt was a fantastic transaction.

39:02SPEAKER- Oh, that's not so bad.

39:04SPEAKER- No, I was, like, imagine rolling in the night

39:08SPEAKERthat you get to E3 and leaving all your stuff in a cab.

39:13SPEAKER- Oh, that's bad news.

39:14SPEAKERWow, I'm glad that worked out.

39:15SPEAKER- It was a really bad feeling.

39:17SPEAKER- What is the most expensive or most crucial device

39:20SPEAKERthat you have actually lost and not gotten back?

39:24SPEAKER- Man, I don't think I've lost anything.

39:25SPEAKER- Really?

39:26SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm pretty good.

39:27SPEAKERThat's the only time I've ever left a bag in a car

39:29SPEAKERor anything like that.

39:31SPEAKERI smashed a couple of phones, but that's a,

39:33SPEAKERI think everybody does that eventually.

39:34SPEAKER- Different kind of error.

39:36SPEAKERThe only one for me was doing a multi-leg red eye.

39:40SPEAKERAnd on the last leg of my flight,

39:42SPEAKERI got my Kindle out thinking I would read it

39:44SPEAKERand then immediately passed out

39:45SPEAKERand it fell out of my lap onto the floor

39:47SPEAKERand I didn't notice and then just got off the plane.

39:50SPEAKER- Oh.

39:51SPEAKER- That Kindle was gone, despite repeated calls

39:53SPEAKERto the lost and found at the airport

39:54SPEAKERthat Kindle was long gone.

39:58SPEAKER- I left a Kindle in a seat back pouch

40:00SPEAKERon a Virgin flight once.

40:02SPEAKERAnd I realized just as I cleared the secure area

40:07SPEAKERof the airport, like as I was walking, I was like,

40:10SPEAKER"Oh shit, I left my Kindle on the thing."

40:12SPEAKERAnd I walked over to the Virgin counter

40:14SPEAKERand the gate agent who was just getting me to shut up shop

40:17SPEAKER'cause it was really late, was like,

40:19SPEAKER"Oh, I'll run back and grab it for you."

40:20SPEAKERAnd she took off running through the back of the airport

40:26SPEAKERand came back out like five minutes later.

40:28SPEAKERAnd she's like, "Yeah, I got them

40:28SPEAKER"just before they closed the gate.

40:29SPEAKER"It was still in the pouch.

40:30SPEAKER"You're good, here you go."

40:32SPEAKER- That's amazing.

40:32SPEAKER- Yeah, so I wrote a nice letter for her.

40:34SPEAKERThat was the other thing.

40:35SPEAKERThat's the only other thing I think I lost.

40:36SPEAKER- They do not mess around about closing the--

40:40SPEAKER- Yeah, no, once the door's closed, you're hosed.

40:41SPEAKER- Yes.

40:44SPEAKER- So yeah, there's a bunch of really interesting,

40:46SPEAKERlike the weird thing about this is I thought

40:48SPEAKERthat there were gonna be more applications

40:49SPEAKERwhen I started digging into it.

40:50SPEAKER'Cause it's been, like usually when something's been

40:52SPEAKERin phones for a couple of years,

40:53SPEAKERthere's a few hundred million phones out there with it.

40:55SPEAKER- Yeah, this topic ended up being

40:57SPEAKERalmost a little frustrating to read about

40:58SPEAKERbecause it does sound like pretty interesting technology.

41:00SPEAKERAnd then there's kind of next to nothing

41:03SPEAKERin terms of applications to actually dig into there.

41:06SPEAKERWell, I think there's nothing,

41:06SPEAKERthere's not much fun to do with it yet.

41:08SPEAKER- Yeah, it's interesting 'cause like one of the things

41:12SPEAKERwhen the AirPod Pros were rumored that people talked about

41:15SPEAKERwas that this would have a UWB chip,

41:17SPEAKERa U1 chip in it with the UWB stuff

41:19SPEAKERso that you could positionally locate the AirPods

41:22SPEAKERin your room for AR purposes,

41:24SPEAKERwhich would mean you could do something cool,

41:27SPEAKERlike make the sound from your app.

41:28SPEAKERYou know, like if you're sitting there watching

41:30SPEAKERsomething on your Apple TV,

41:32SPEAKERyou could make it sound like the sound actually

41:33SPEAKERis coming from the speakers on the TV

41:35SPEAKERlike it would using HRTFs and stuff like that.

41:39SPEAKERBut in order for that to work,

41:41SPEAKERthe phone, your phone and your ear has to know

41:45SPEAKERwhere your ears are and where the TV is

41:47SPEAKERand where the phone is in that space.

41:51SPEAKERSo like it ends up being a weird,

41:53SPEAKERlike there's a lot of weird use cases on that side

41:56SPEAKERthat I don't think are actually probably real.

41:58SPEAKERThe AirDrop thing is nice.

42:00SPEAKERLike if you're in a big crowded area

42:01SPEAKERat a conference or something

42:02SPEAKERand you're standing next to somebody

42:03SPEAKERand you want to send it to them,

42:04SPEAKERthat makes it really easy.

42:05SPEAKERAnd that remains one of the most useful features

42:07SPEAKERon the phone, I think, the AirDropping.

42:11SPEAKER- And then the location fob stuff

42:13SPEAKERsounds like it would be a massive hit

42:16SPEAKERif and when they roll this out.

42:17SPEAKER- Yeah, like that stuff's a slam dunk.

42:19SPEAKERHopefully, my hope is that the standards body

42:22SPEAKERwill have like, this will end up like Bluetooth

42:24SPEAKERwhere there's profiles,

42:26SPEAKERwhere there's both an open way to extend it

42:28SPEAKERfor manufacturers if they come up with a novel use.

42:31SPEAKERAnd also there's built-in profiles

42:33SPEAKERthat just like all the devices know how to use.

42:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I would love to, again,

42:39SPEAKERI would love to see this become a wireless audio standard

42:41SPEAKERif there's application for that.

42:43SPEAKERI mean, it may shock you to hear

42:46SPEAKERI have continually held off on buying nice

42:48SPEAKERwireless headphones for exactly reasons like this.

42:52SPEAKER- This is my shocked face.

42:53SPEAKER- I have bought a succession of $30 Bluetooth headphones

42:56SPEAKERover time as they've gotten better.

42:58SPEAKER- I don't think that's a bad--

42:59SPEAKER- I can never bring myself to buy a $200 pair

43:01SPEAKERof like AirPods or Beats or whatever,

43:03SPEAKERbecause what if I have better audio standards,

43:07SPEAKERbetter, lower power, it never feels like it's quite there.

43:11SPEAKER- I'm gonna tell you somebody who bought a pair of first

43:14SPEAKERor like first or second gen AirPods

43:16SPEAKERthat are now three years old and the batteries are shot on.

43:19SPEAKERI don't, I probably, they're really good for calls

43:23SPEAKERand I'm probably never going to buy them for music again.

43:26SPEAKER- Okay, that's good to know.

43:28SPEAKER- The contactless keying is the other thing.

43:32SPEAKERThe reason Hyundai is in this consortium

43:35SPEAKERis because like conceptually,

43:37SPEAKERthis is a really good replacement for NFC as well.

43:42SPEAKERIt's probably more power consumption than NFC is,

43:45SPEAKER'cause NFC is not necessarily powered always.

43:50SPEAKERBut you can do things like your car will know

43:55SPEAKERthat it's, that your phone is live and next to it

44:00SPEAKERand will open, unlock the door when you walk up

44:02SPEAKERrather than having to walk up and hit the button

44:04SPEAKERto wake up the radio and the NFC fob, stuff like that.

44:08SPEAKERThe same thing for like garage door openers,

44:09SPEAKERthe smart thing, smart doors, smart IoT,

44:11SPEAKERyou know, the internet of garbage, internet of shit doors.

44:15SPEAKER- Yes.

44:15SPEAKER- So that when somebody steals your phone,

44:17SPEAKERthey also have the keys to your house.

44:19SPEAKERThat's always what we want.

44:20SPEAKER- Yes, internet of shit, by the way,

44:21SPEAKERis a fantastic Twitter account.

44:23SPEAKER- It's a good follow.

44:24SPEAKER- Yeah.

44:26SPEAKER- But I mean, as somebody who programmed

44:28SPEAKERtheir home automation stuff

44:30SPEAKERto turn on like the front porch lights

44:31SPEAKERand the house lights when you get close.

44:33SPEAKER- I did not even think about

44:34SPEAKERthe home assistant applications for this.

44:36SPEAKER- Yeah, dude, it's super nice.

44:38SPEAKERAnd unlike all of the other home assistant stuff,

44:41SPEAKERthis gives you the ability to tell where things are

44:44SPEAKERin like which room they're in.

44:46SPEAKERSo like, I mean, if I'm sitting in my office,

44:49SPEAKERmy phone's always with me.

44:50SPEAKERRight now I have a complex series of rules

44:53SPEAKERabout how much motion there is

44:54SPEAKERto keep the lights on in the office.

44:56SPEAKERAnd with a UWB radio in this room,

45:00SPEAKERit would just know that I'm sitting in here,

45:02SPEAKERso it should leave the lights on, right?

45:03SPEAKER- Right, like I was wondering almost,

45:04SPEAKERcould you see a situation where you end up installing

45:07SPEAKERlike a number of UWB receivers throughout your house

45:10SPEAKERjust to give yourself multiple like kind of locator points?

45:13SPEAKER- Wouldn't surprise me, yeah.

45:15SPEAKERI mean, the price would have to be right,

45:17SPEAKERbut it's a pretty cheap chip,

45:18SPEAKERwould be my understanding at this point,

45:19SPEAKERsince they're making hundreds of millions of them a year.

45:22SPEAKER- I'm sorry, let me, before you move on,

45:24SPEAKERI wanted to ask one more question about the car stuff.

45:26SPEAKERAre all those NFC fobs like standalone

45:30SPEAKERsort of key chain external fobs right now?

45:32SPEAKERHas no auto manufacturer actually integrated that

45:35SPEAKERwith a phone in any capacity yet?

45:37SPEAKER- So Tesla, you can do with just the phone.

45:41SPEAKERLike most people who I know that drive Teslas

45:44SPEAKERthat are relatively new ones,

45:45SPEAKERyou don't even carry the fob with you

45:47SPEAKERexcept for like to give to valets and stuff like that.

45:49SPEAKER- Interesting, I'm surprised nobody else has done that.

45:50SPEAKERLike we use Zipcar quite a bit

45:52SPEAKER'cause we live in the city and we don't own a car.

45:54SPEAKERIt's a very handy way to just get a car on short notice

45:57SPEAKERand they totally just use the phone.

45:59SPEAKER- Yeah, you just walk up to it and unlock it, right?

46:01SPEAKER- Yeah, but I'm surprised more manufacturers

46:04SPEAKERhave not gone down that road yet.

46:06SPEAKER- The Tesla's the only one I know of,

46:07SPEAKERbut I don't really pay that much attention to that space.

46:10SPEAKER- How do you feel about that conceptually?

46:12SPEAKERLike I remember, God, this must've been like 2003, 2004,

46:17SPEAKERI think one of the first times I went to Japan

46:20SPEAKERand this again, like '04,

46:21SPEAKERlike that's several years pre-iPhone still.

46:23SPEAKER- This is no docomo high point or whatever?

46:27SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, in the US that's still candy bar phones

46:29SPEAKERand shitty Motorola flip phones and all that stuff.

46:31SPEAKERAnd like going to Japan and seeing people swiping

46:33SPEAKERinto the JR or the subway with their phones

46:36SPEAKERwith no external card, no nothing.

46:38SPEAKERIt's just like your phone activates this turnstile

46:40SPEAKERand then you go through.

46:41SPEAKERIt was like a profound living in the future moment for me.

46:46SPEAKERAt that point, I came to like really almost fetishize

46:50SPEAKERthe idea of like, how cool would it be

46:51SPEAKERif you had one device that did absolutely everything

46:53SPEAKERin your life, but now that I'm actually a bit older,

46:56SPEAKERI think like-- - There's pros and cons

46:57SPEAKERit turns out. - Yeah, like it's,

46:58SPEAKERmaybe the future has got a little darker since then,

47:01SPEAKERbut it's like maybe having one single point of failure

47:03SPEAKERthat you can lose or break easily is not the best idea.

47:06SPEAKER- Well, I mean, I think the point is

47:09SPEAKERthat there's always alternates available, right?

47:12SPEAKERI would love to have, I would love to be able to use Bart

47:16SPEAKERwithout having to carry a clipper card, right?

47:18SPEAKERJust use the NFC chip on my phone and a Bart app

47:21SPEAKERand add money with that and pay for parking

47:24SPEAKERand all the stuff that you have to do with Bart.

47:27SPEAKERI feel like I've read an article about New York

47:30SPEAKERdoing phone-based MTA payments now or soon.

47:36SPEAKERI can't remember, maybe it was being trialed someplace.

47:40SPEAKERLike, I don't know, like I really don't know.

47:43SPEAKERLike I see, like when Norm pops into his Tesla,

47:46SPEAKERhe just leans up against it with his car and it unlocks.

47:48SPEAKERAnd I'm like, this does not seem,

47:51SPEAKERlike I am very careful with my phone.

47:54SPEAKERIt still is like not as reliable a device

47:57SPEAKERas I would like to be for the thing.

48:00SPEAKERLike there's the story about the guy who drove his Tesla

48:04SPEAKERout of range of cell service in the Eastern Sierras.

48:07SPEAKERThis is an old story at this point, it's like 10 years old.

48:09SPEAKERIt was when Model S was new and he got outside of range

48:12SPEAKERand he couldn't use, like the phone connects to the internet

48:14SPEAKERto open the car door at that point

48:16SPEAKER'cause it was before NFC on the phones.

48:18SPEAKER- Oh no.

48:19SPEAKER- And he didn't have his key with him

48:20SPEAKERand he got out of the car

48:21SPEAKERand then he couldn't open the car door

48:22SPEAKER'cause there was no internet.

48:23SPEAKER- Oh boy.

48:24SPEAKER- So, and I could be getting the details of that wrong,

48:27SPEAKERbut I think that's how that story went.

48:30SPEAKERI feel like when it's point to point

48:32SPEAKERand not internet mediated,

48:33SPEAKERI'm probably more comfortable with it.

48:35SPEAKER- Yeah, but even then a battery can die

48:37SPEAKERor you could drop it and break it or lose it.

48:41SPEAKERMaybe this is not the best idea.

48:43SPEAKER- It's like the smart locks.

48:44SPEAKERThe smart locks, like the Yale smart lock that we had

48:47SPEAKERon one of my old offices had an eight volt,

48:50SPEAKERa nine volt battery point, contact point on the bottom.

48:53SPEAKERSo that if the 10 year battery inside it conked out

48:55SPEAKERwhile you were away, you'd go get a nine volt,

48:58SPEAKERjam it in there, put the code in and get into the building.

49:00SPEAKERSo this is the thing I think that we're gonna see

49:06SPEAKERprobably sooner rather than later that will be shocking

49:08SPEAKERis the advertising stuff for this.

49:10SPEAKER- Okay.

49:11SPEAKER- I don't know if you remember,

49:11SPEAKERbut Apple did beacons a few, like eight, nine years ago now,

49:16SPEAKERwhich were these Bluetooth fobs

49:18SPEAKERthat basically would talk to the phone

49:20SPEAKERwhen you walked into Banana Republic and say,

49:21SPEAKER"Hey, hey, there's a deal and banana,

49:24SPEAKERyou can get khakis here."

49:26SPEAKERAnd you'd get a little pop-up on your phone,

49:28SPEAKERnotification on your phone.

49:29SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause I instantly started

49:31SPEAKERto make the minority report comparison

49:33SPEAKERand I assume what you're talking about is

49:34SPEAKERthat's the last time that somebody made

49:36SPEAKERthe minority report comparison in the press

49:38SPEAKERwas when they were doing that.

49:39SPEAKER- And people still make minority report,

49:41SPEAKERyeah, but yes, it's that.

49:44SPEAKERThe, presumably that's gonna be privatized

49:48SPEAKERso it's not them saying,

49:49SPEAKER"Hey, whoever Tom Cruise's eyes are belong to,

49:53SPEAKERhere's your ad."

49:54SPEAKERBut yeah, it is a concern and it's like,

49:59SPEAKERI feel like Apple at least is aware

50:01SPEAKERthat people don't like notifications, spurious ones.

50:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

50:05SPEAKER- We'll see.

50:06SPEAKERAnd then the last thing is the AR stuff.

50:08SPEAKERLike I think, if you're talking about headphones

50:12SPEAKERor earphones, AirPods, what are those things called?

50:15SPEAKERHeadbuds, earbuds.

50:17SPEAKER- What?

50:18SPEAKER- The non-branded ones are called the earbuds.

50:19SPEAKER- Just the generic term?

50:20SPEAKER- Yeah, I couldn't come up with it.

50:21SPEAKER- Yes, earbuds, yes.

50:22SPEAKERGod, they're marketing his,

50:24SPEAKERwe're on its way into every level.

50:26SPEAKER- Oh my God, that's a shmuck.

50:30SPEAKERBut if you have two of those UWB radios,

50:32SPEAKERone in each ear and gyroscopes and accelerometers

50:35SPEAKERin your ear and/or a pair of glasses,

50:37SPEAKERthen you have, using the math that lets you take

50:41SPEAKERthree GPS transceivers and get really precise,

50:46SPEAKERwell within the limit of accuracy on the GPS signal,

50:50SPEAKERyou can tell exactly where somebody's head,

50:53SPEAKEReyes and ears are, which then lets you do things

50:55SPEAKERlike project directly on the wall and source sound

50:58SPEAKERand all that, which is part of the AR puzzle.

51:00SPEAKERSo there's a lot of interesting, weird stuff.

51:06SPEAKERSo I don't know.

51:08SPEAKER- Yeah, it seems exciting.

51:09SPEAKER- This is a, as with a lot of technologies,

51:12SPEAKERthis is a neat potential technology if used appropriately.

51:16SPEAKERIt could be really powerful and cool and convenient.

51:20SPEAKERLike it would be nice to not have to carry a key fob

51:22SPEAKERor like if, I mean, like Gina and I find ourselves

51:27SPEAKERin situations a lot where like she'll drop a car off

51:30SPEAKERfor me someplace and then she and the kiddo

51:32SPEAKERwill go do something in the city on BART

51:34SPEAKERand I'll take the car home and we have to make sure

51:37SPEAKERwe both have the right keys to do that

51:38SPEAKERand like it would be amazing if you just like were like,

51:41SPEAKERoh yeah, boop, here I am.

51:42SPEAKER- Yeah, if it all lived in your phone,

51:43SPEAKERI guess there are some upsides there.

51:45SPEAKERYeah, this seems cool.

51:47SPEAKERAgain, those seem a little weird

51:49SPEAKERthat the tech led the application.

51:52SPEAKER- I mean, I guess the tech always leads

51:53SPEAKERthe application though, right?

51:54SPEAKER- Well, yeah, but maybe not for this long, you know?

51:56SPEAKERLike the iPhone 11 has been out for a year and a half now

51:58SPEAKERand they're still not really doing much with that.

52:01SPEAKER- Well, think about how long Bluetooth was in phones

52:03SPEAKERbefore anybody used it.

52:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess so, okay.

52:05SPEAKER- Like I remember I used to squirt my contact to people

52:08SPEAKERoccasionally when my old Sony Ericsson phone.

52:12SPEAKER- Did you ask permission first, I hope?

52:13SPEAKER- Look, yeah, they have to accept.

52:15SPEAKER- Before you squirted anything in any direction?

52:17SPEAKER- Wait, was it Zune that squirted?

52:19SPEAKER- I don't know, that sounds like something the Zune would do.

52:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I feel like you squirted with the Zune.

52:24SPEAKER- Boy, they really need to work on their metaphors.

52:28SPEAKER- Hey, you know what?

52:29SPEAKERDoesn't need to work on their metaphors though.

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52:59SPEAKER- Yeah.

52:59SPEAKER- I was pretty, I used to be able to keep on top of it all

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53:07SPEAKERand categories and topics in there

53:08SPEAKERthat you can just kind of dip in and out

53:09SPEAKERand it's, I've been real hot and heavy

53:11SPEAKERin the network channel lately.

53:13SPEAKER- You getting in there?

53:14SPEAKER- Dude, oh my God.

53:15SPEAKER- Getting that 10 gigabit?

53:17SPEAKER- Maybe, I might have a lead on that particular actually.

53:24SPEAKERI don't want to get ahead of myself.

53:25SPEAKER- Okay.

53:26SPEAKER- But 10 gigabit might be old news.

53:28SPEAKER- You mean network, outwards?

53:30SPEAKER- 10 gigabit might be old news.

53:34SPEAKERLet's just say that there are faster speeds to 10.

53:36SPEAKER- Am I going to come to your house?

53:38SPEAKERHold on, are you talking about internal network

53:39SPEAKERor external network?

53:40SPEAKER- Yes, we're talking about internal, internal.

53:42SPEAKERYes, yes.

53:44SPEAKER- You don't have to get SSDs in that server box

53:46SPEAKERif you don't.

53:47SPEAKER- I've got NVMe drives in both.

53:49SPEAKERAnyway, we'll touch on that later.

53:51SPEAKERBut the other thing I was going to say

53:52SPEAKERis we've really need to do a scene drama episode

53:55SPEAKERat some point.

53:56SPEAKER- You got scene drama?

53:57SPEAKER- Oh dude, it's all over the place.

53:59SPEAKERThere's the PF Sense drama,

54:01SPEAKERthere's the Ubiquity drama.

54:02SPEAKERThere's another one that I cannot remember

54:04SPEAKERoff the top of my head.

54:05SPEAKERI need to be keeping better track of this stuff.

54:07SPEAKER- Yeah, we needed to mark that scene drama.

54:09SPEAKER- Oh, I know what the other one was.

54:13SPEAKEROh man, I don't know if I even want to get into it.

54:16SPEAKERI bought a chair.

54:17SPEAKER- Oh yeah?

54:18SPEAKER- I bought a Steelcase Leap,

54:19SPEAKERwhich I'm very excited about getting my hands on,

54:21SPEAKERbut it's going to be a while until it gets here

54:23SPEAKERbecause it's a refurbished because steel cases

54:25SPEAKERare very expensive.

54:27SPEAKERAnd they said that their supply of one of the parts

54:30SPEAKERthey used to refurbish them was sitting on a ship

54:33SPEAKERoff the coast of the United States,

54:36SPEAKERunable to dock for a while.

54:37SPEAKER- Oh no.

54:38SPEAKER- Maybe a while before I get the chair.

54:39SPEAKERBut in the course of that, have we talked about this?

54:42SPEAKER- I love my gesture, by the way.

54:44SPEAKERThey sponsored my stream for a while a few years ago.

54:46SPEAKERIt's the business.

54:47SPEAKER- Very jealous of your chair

54:48SPEAKERto the extent that I went and bought one,

54:50SPEAKERbut different model.

54:52SPEAKERI should save this for another episode,

54:53SPEAKERbut did I talk about this?

54:55SPEAKERThat in the course of researching office chairs,

54:58SPEAKERI ended up on our office chairs, the subreddit.

55:01SPEAKER- There's a subreddit for office chairs?

55:02SPEAKER- Of course there's a subreddit for office chairs.

55:04SPEAKER- I should have known.

55:05SPEAKER- There's probably like three of them.

55:06SPEAKERAnyway, there's a whole weird flame war

55:10SPEAKERbetween the two vendors of refurbished office chairs

55:13SPEAKERthat I was looking at buying from.

55:15SPEAKER- I love this.

55:16SPEAKER- Where like the CEO of one of them

55:18SPEAKERposts under his real name there,

55:19SPEAKERbut there's apparently somebody anonymously

55:22SPEAKERwho was affiliated with the other vendor

55:24SPEAKERwho was like flaming him all the time,

55:26SPEAKERlike trolling him.

55:27SPEAKER- They're shitposting each other?

55:28SPEAKER- They're like literally shitposting each other in public.

55:32SPEAKERAnd like, I'm so irony poisoned at this point

55:34SPEAKERthat I don't even know if I can take that at face value

55:36SPEAKERor I'm like, what if they're actually collaborating

55:38SPEAKERwith each other?

55:39SPEAKERThis is like some weird third level meta marketing exercise

55:43SPEAKERwhere they're trying to like drum up attention

55:47SPEAKERby having this war of words on a subreddit.

55:49SPEAKER- Do you think this is, was it the second Deus Ex game

55:54SPEAKERdid this?

55:55SPEAKERThey had two competing coffee Starbucks clones

55:58SPEAKERand then it turned out,

56:00SPEAKERspoilers by the way for a 15 year old game,

56:03SPEAKERthey were the same company.

56:04SPEAKER- I believe that like a part of this narrative

56:06SPEAKERis that these two companies used to work with each other

56:08SPEAKERand then one of them dumped the other

56:10SPEAKERand started selling the chairs directly.

56:12SPEAKERAnd it's an ugly scene.

56:14SPEAKER- I love it when a disgruntled employee

56:17SPEAKERgoes out and starts a new business story.

56:18SPEAKERThose are always great.

56:19SPEAKER- It was, yeah.

56:20SPEAKERSo yeah, there's that.

56:21SPEAKERThere's this crazy ubiquity breach that happened recently

56:24SPEAKERthat they seem to have covered up.

56:25SPEAKER- Yeah, the PFS stuff is off the hook.

56:28SPEAKERThey're fucking crazy over there.

56:30SPEAKER- The Netgate PFS stuff is like maybe the most insane.

56:34SPEAKER- It's making the true business look good.

56:36SPEAKER- Example of a company like torching its own reputation

56:38SPEAKERthat I've ever seen.

56:39SPEAKERHoly crap, we should think about maybe digging into this.

56:44SPEAKER- Look, okay, so we're at 1700 patrons right now,

56:48SPEAKER1700 and change.

56:50SPEAKERWhy don't we promise scene drama when we get to 2000?

56:54SPEAKER- Okay, sure.

56:55SPEAKER- You think that's reasonable?

56:56SPEAKERI figure that's a few months.

56:57SPEAKER- Unless you think scene drama has a short shelf life,

56:59SPEAKERI mean.

57:00SPEAKER- I mean, look, I don't,

57:01SPEAKERmaybe scene drama is a whole nother podcast.

57:03SPEAKERI don't know, people are enthusiastic about scene drama.

57:05SPEAKER- The drama is hot right now

57:07SPEAKERand we don't wanna let it pass us by.

57:09SPEAKER- That's true.

57:09SPEAKERWell, maybe we should, I don't know, maybe we'll try.

57:11SPEAKERAnyway, if you wanna find out about the tech pod,

57:13SPEAKERincluding about the Patreon, the tech pod Patreon,

57:16SPEAKERincluding finding out how you can get the monthly patron

57:18SPEAKERepisodes.

57:19SPEAKERLast month, we had a patron spotlight for Twinkle Twinkie,

57:22SPEAKERwho taught us about soldering.

57:24SPEAKERLike they're gonna do a bunch of like advanced soldering

57:26SPEAKERtechniques and the hardware you need

57:27SPEAKERand all that kind of stuff.

57:28SPEAKERIt was really useful.

57:29SPEAKER- It was wildly informative, that episode.

57:33SPEAKER- And yeah, that's it.

57:35SPEAKERYou can find it at patreon.com/techpod.

57:38SPEAKERIf you can't subscribe to the Patreon, that's fine.

57:40SPEAKERKeep listening, we love you anyway.

57:41SPEAKERAnd just tell your friends, yeah.

57:43SPEAKERThat's how people find our podcasts by telling us

57:47SPEAKERwhere they are.

57:48SPEAKERThe other thing is, if you think we should do collabs

57:51SPEAKERwith other podcasts that are similar and aligned

57:53SPEAKERand interesting, maybe suggest them.

57:56SPEAKERWe'd love to hear from the email at techpod@content.town.

57:59SPEAKER- Absolutely.

58:01SPEAKER- I guess that'll do it for us this week.

58:02SPEAKEROh wait, we gotta thank our patrons.

58:03SPEAKERHoly crap. - Yes, please.

58:05SPEAKER- This is the part of the show where we thank

58:06SPEAKERour executive producer level patrons,

58:08SPEAKERthe Bunny Fiend, Jacob Chappell and James Cammock.

58:11SPEAKERThank you all so much.

58:12SPEAKERWe appreciate it.

58:13SPEAKER- Absolutely.

58:14SPEAKER- Thank you.

58:15SPEAKER- And I guess we'll be back next week.

58:18SPEAKER- You guess?

58:19SPEAKER- I mean, I plan on being,

58:20SPEAKERare you gonna be back next week?

58:21SPEAKERI'm gonna be here.

58:23SPEAKER- Let's say resolutely.

58:24SPEAKERWe will see you back here next week.

58:26SPEAKER- Very good.

58:27SPEAKERBye everybody.

58:27SPEAKERHave a good one.

58:28SPEAKER(upbeat music)