Steam Deck Shortage; Vibe-Education; VPN Steam Blocks; Discord Age-Gate - Talking Heads Ep.421

All right. Hey, look at that. [sighs and gasps] I think we're live. >> Welcome. >> The way daddy likes it, >> right? [laughter] Welcome to Talking Heads, everyone. Episode 421, your once weekly live show for the latest in beer and tech news. I'm Jeff. >> I'm Rhett. >> Welcome to the show, everyone. Thank you all so much for watching on this Wednesday night or in podcast form over on Spotify or wherever your favorite podcasts are found. If you've never seen the show before, we talk beer, we talk tech, we talk games servers, home lab, uh sometimes some Star Trek, maybe there was a new Star Trek game that launched today that I haven't tried yet and I will anxiously be playing as soon as uh the stream ends tonight. Uh maybe we'll talk about that. Uh yeah. Uh, all super chats will run on the air so long as they will not permanently demonetize the channel. We do drink alcohol in the show. And if you're drinking along with us, alcoholic or not, let us know in the chat and we'll give some early show shoutouts as we go along. Last but not least, if you'd like to take part in the super secret chat and the even more super secret afterparty, think about joining the Patreon. Link is down in the video description. As a bonus, you can get exclusive access to my Discord server where you can chat with myself, Rhett, uh, Tom, who else is on here? Uh, Home Lab Hazards, Vince, Cheese, all the hosts from Talking Heads, and join the awesome community that hangs out over there. Uh, but will I be playing the new Star Trek game on the GB10? You know, I was actually considering that. In fact, uh, I've got Steam open right now. Can I reach back and install it? I can. Install. Install. Cool. That's the benefit of a track ball is I if you can get a finger on it, you can move it. Oh, welcome to the show everyone. Brett, how you doing? It has been a while since you've been on the show. >> Yeah, I had to bail gosh several weeks ago for had a bad headache and then I thought I was back even though I was looking right at the calendar [laughter] and knew I wasn't. Last week was funny. Like I was literally like got set up and I was like trying to join the call and I was like what is going on? And I was like oh wait a minute I bet he's so I jumped on YouTube and looked which I should have should have been [laughter] my first move you know. It's like you were already rolling. I was like oh dang. Okay. >> Yeah. I think you bailed on the last two that you were scheduled for and then you tried to join the one you weren't. [laughter] >> Yep. >> Sounds about right, doesn't it? >> Good to have you back. >> Good to be back, Jeff. >> Yeah. Uh, it's going to be a good show. Uh, we've got the latest in the storage and memory and general PC parts unavailability saga. This time hitting the Steam Deck, and I fear this will be the first of many things. Uh, we've got some AI talk, most of it negative. Uh, we've got, uh, some Discord talk, most of it negative. [laughter] Uh, yeah. I'm really tired of bad news. >> Is there anything Is there any other kind? >> When was the last time you heard good news, Jeff? >> Right. Have you heard any good news this this week? Or or just like in general? Like, what's going good right now? That's what I want to know. Screw this bad news. What's going well? >> What's going good? Well, I don't know. I got nothing. Guess I'm too much of a pessimist. [laughter] >> Uh I did go uh to the Fort George Festival of Dark Arts this last weekend. >> Hell yeah. Okay, that's some good news. >> Had a grand old time. That was fantastic. Um >> Oh, I got some good I went to Disneyland a couple weeks ago. That was awesome. >> Oh, nice. >> Yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, >> super duper cool. I wasn't sure what I was going to be thinking about it, but went had the uh six-year-old. Dude was a trooper. We walked 14 miles both days. >> Jeez. >> And rode every ride. Ate every snack. It was awesome. >> Nice. >> Yeah, >> that's cool. Yeah, we've uh >> I got a lightsaber, too. Oh, I should have brought that down. >> Nice. >> Yeah. Yeah. The from the build your own like lightsaber experience. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. You're just itching to cut my hand off now. >> Yes, exactly. [laughter] [gasps] >> I'm still mad that ad only aired once. [laughter] >> I know. >> That was one of our best. >> Great. >> H Yeah. No. Uh we've we've tried to go to Disneyland a couple of times. I haven't been to Disneyland since has it been 30 years. >> Wow. 95 96 I think. >> Wow. >> Yeah. My brother wasn't alive yet. Um and and he's 11 years younger than me. So yeah. Um it would have been Yeah. 95 96 somewhere somewhere right around there. Uh gosh, >> dude, I got to tell you, you know, I can kind of be a humbug about a lot of things and I wasn't like super excited to go necessarily. Like I was looking forward to it, but I was not like I'm a Disney head, right? Like we all know those people who are like super baked in. They know they want to like midmax like power level through Disneyland. >> And uh I'm not that and I'm still not that way. Dude, Galaxy's Edge, the Star Wars land, is so freaking cool. I wish I could have spent the entire time there. >> Yeah. >> Like the attention to detail, it's like immaculate. The theme, the vibe is immaculate. And like Stormtroopers are like walking around like heranging people about like, "Hey, where's your where's your ID?" You know, and [laughter] >> Oh, and we're back to the bad news. Papers, please. >> Yeah. Seriously. But it was fun. Yeah. But it was fun. Yeah. >> And I got to go on a ride >> where I got to fly the Millennium Falcon. >> So that was cool. >> Yeah. >> Yep. >> Yeah. No, last time I was there, it was the original original Star Tours >> uh that that I went on. That was that was one of my favorite things there. >> Um >> this is like this new Millennium Falcon ride. It's like [snorts] Star Tours but like on steroids. >> Yeah. Then that's that's what I've heard. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> It's really fun. >> Yeah. No, you're uh you're not the only one that I've heard that has either gone to Disneyland recently or is going to Disneyland. Like very like uh I I had a friend of mine who went over Christmas. Um he convinced the family, screw it. No one's buying gifts. We're buying a hotel room. We're going to Disney. And they they just went to Disney. And I'm like, that's fantastic. I I want to do that from now on for Christmas. Like, let's just go somewhere. >> Yeah. screw buying each other, you know, $100 trinkets that I would have bought myself anyway. Let's stop spending $1,200 on on, you know, each person spending $1,200. Let's just go get a hotel and spend a week in Disney. Like, that sounds way better. >> Yeah. >> Um >> Yeah, it was awesome. Highly recommend. >> Yeah. Uh then you went and then I have another friend who was just planning on going. I think my brother-in-law is planning a trip like early next month or something like that. So, yeah, maybe it's time to finally do Disney. We were going to go in uh 2020 uh because we had a plan originally when we first started having kids that when the kids hit about seven or eight years old, we'll take them to Disney. So, every time a kid hits that milestone, we'll we'll go. That seems like peak time to to take the kid. And uh 2020 was when my first turned seven and we canled the Disney trip and haven't been haven't even thought of it since. >> Did something happen in 2020 or >> uh it was it was weird. It was like not running for some reason. Yeah. >> Oh, you know there's only three times that Disneyland has ever closed. Do you think you can name all three time? What was the time before 2020, Jeff? >> It's a big one. >> That would have been uh 911. >> 911. Yep. >> Then there was one other time. This one's a deep poll. I don't think I could even tell you the date, but I can tell you what happened. >> Challenger. >> You know that that is a very common guess and I think it's a good one. I think it's a great guess. >> But it was an anti-war protest in the early 70s. They went in and took over Tom Sawyer Island. >> Uhhuh. like had a demonst they like occupied it for I don't know how long. >> Wow. >> But uh yeah, they closed the uh they closed the park because >> my guess was either going to be Challenger or Mount St. Helens. Those were going to be my my two. >> Both really good guesses. >> Yeah. >> So, >> some good guesses in the chat, too. Somebody said because Walt Disney died. I You know, that would have been a good one, but I feel like he would have rolled over in his grave if that happened. >> Yeah. Um, yeah. >> Not that I know Walt Disney. I don't. Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he wanted the park to stop, but uh, let's see. First beer for the night. Uh, Dashuites Tropical Fresh there. Tropical Fresh Hop. Uh, is a 7%. Six and a half. Six and a half. >> It's a good one. >> Yeah. Uh, I Oh, >> go for it. No. No. Go for it. >> No, it's not special. I was going to build it up. I did dry January and now I don't feel good today. So, I'm going to keep going with a lime signature select salt water. >> Excellent choice, my friend. >> Yeah. So, Dry January was a big success. I did have a couple of really good beers from Chicha ready to go for tonight, but uh alas. >> Yeah, >> next time. >> Next time. Well, we'll we'll get them next time. Uh, let's see. Cody in the chat. Drinking a Captain Morgan spiced and Coke Zero as usual. Fantastic combo. Uh, we've got Michael trying out a Guinness non-alcoholic drought uh draft that uh I have not had the Guinness, although uh I think I was talking to to Tom last week and uh uh it fantastic. We got talking about a whole bunch of different non-alcoholic beers. Um, so I I will I'm gonna have to pick one of those up. Uh, I'm not a particularly huge Guinness fan. Uh, but I'll try anything. So, uh, Doomer bringing out a Carter Blanca from the Cves de Mexico box. Excellent. Uh, not techport says, "I picked up a fifth of Mictor's, but sticking to Stone IPA again." Uh, Mictor's Rye is one of my favorite like just offthe-shelf $25 bottles of rye. It is absolutely fantastic. Uh, but I also really like Stone IPA. Uh, Nolla Hub, Lupalin Brewing, Cookie Monstrosity Stout, Coconut, Salted Caramel, Cacao Nibs, Graham Cracker, Honey, and Vanilla. Holy crap. 11%. 3.99 on Untapped. >> Wow. Uh, Patch has a Guinness NA as well. Excellent. We're We're starting a little club here. Uh, Ordinary Dude, greetings. Having a bowl of chili. That sounds good. >> Nice. >> I like a good chili. Uh, Rev says, "Living in interesting times is overrated. Could not agree more. I just want one three-year period when the world as we know it doesn't change. Just one just one uh >> you won't know about it because you won't be able to afford a computer to look it up. So, [laughter] >> uh Jeanluke Ricard in one of the best alltime screen names. Uh just jumping in to say hi. It's 2 a.m. here in the UK, so I should probably sleep. Go get some sleep. But, uh, thank you for chiming in. Uh, Jason having a Sun River Brewing Coco Cow >> local, >> one of our local favorites. Uh, let's see. We'll do a couple more. Harley uh has an adventurous brewing, easy peel complex motion, triple dry hopped. Holy crap, what a mouthful of a name. uh with an enormous amount of Nelson Savon, Citra, Halberto, Blancc finishing at 8.3%. Good stuff. Uh Rev cracking into a rum barrel-laged pecan pie Imperial Brown Ale from Boulevard Brewing. I love Boulevard. I what's funny is I I don't pre-eread these and so I was simply reading through that and I went rum barrel aged peon pie brown. That sounds like a boulevard. That sounds like something they would do. [laughter] 13 and a half% 4 un6 on untapped. >> Wow. >> I think we'll end it there. I don't know if we're going to top that. >> Uh >> somebody's drinking a me 19%. Oh, >> is it one of the delirium? >> Danskiodme dance. Yeah. Yeah. Delirium dance dens. Yep. >> Nice. Okay, there you go. >> You're around the craft beer scene enough you start to just recognize ABVs and and types, [laughter] >> right? Yeah. >> Yeah. Uh I had uh a dens uh maybe two or three months ago. I got one of the giant clay jars of it, one of the the handles of it, the 750s. Um and uh sipped on that for a couple of weeks. Fantastic. [sighs] Okay. Uh well, cheers everyone. And with that, I think let's dive into the news. Uh we'll start with this one came across uh my my feed on 404 media and that is students are being treated like guinea pigs inside an AI powered private school. [sighs] If the headline didn't tick you off the body of this definitely will. Uh, leaked documents reveal the inner workings of Alpha School, which both the press and the Trump administration have applauded. The documents show Alpha School's AI is generating faulty lessons that sometimes do more harm than good. Uh, Vibe Education, paying $65,000 so someone can prompt a lesson plan for your kids. the hell with teaching teachers how to teach or developing lesson plans [clears throat] or curriculum. >> No, you want to learn about the Civil War, we'll just, you know, type in what should I know about the Civil War >> and and it'll come up with whatever it thinks are the relevant points for you. Uh yeah, who needs a department of education or a secretary of education or any kind of oversight or actual planning that goes into school. >> The future is bleak for some of these people, man. >> Yep. Uh, these questions not only fail to meet SAT standards, but also fall short of the quality we promise to deliver. One employee of Alphas School wrote in the company's Workflowy, a companywide note-taking app where every employee can see what other employees are working on, including their progress and thoughts on various projects. By the way, this is all a direct quote from from 404. Want to give them full credit for this. From the students perspective, when answer uh when answer options don't logically fit the question, it feels like a betrayal of their effort to learn and succeed. How can we expect students to trust our assessments when the very questions meant to test their knowledge are flawed. >> H incredible. >> Yeah. >> I I don't like any of this. First of all, the name is so douchy. Alpha School. >> Yeah. >> Uh they have a Wikipedia page if anybody wants to look it up, but apparently they were only founded last or last year they graduated their first class of seniors. >> Awesome, >> man. >> Yep. Um >> um >> yeah, it is essentially an online academy. Um they do K12. Uh which online charter schools, uh some of them are great, some of them are are not so great. Um it really just depends on the exact charter school or or a lot of it comes down to the staffing and the the guidance and administration that that is running it. Um, my kids have been through a couple of different uh online charters both uh uh my oldest was in an online charter actually pre2020 starting about 2018 or so. Uh and going through 2022, so she spent about four years in there. My middle kid is in an online charter right now. Um, and we've had excellent luck uh with them, but we've also had excellent teachers that we work with and and counselors and administration and leadership and and whatnot. Very connected, very plugged in, very attuned to the needs of the kids and uh not simply throwing a prompt at a at a screen and saying, "Generate a test for me on >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Well, and I think too because I think there is a difference, right, between charter schools and private schools. And so charter has like a model that's half private, half public or whatever. And so you probably do have different standards that you need to meet. in this one like the Alpha School it says here in Wikipedia the Alpha School co-founders have implemented the use of their uh 2-hour learning apps which is like I guess their primary platform that they use uh in other schools one of them is called um one of them is called NextGen Academy which is a private school in Austin Texas that focuses on competing in video games like Minecraft, Fortnite, and Overwatch. So there you go. Now this is uh there. Yeah, I took the name to mean alpha version, says Doomer. Yeah, that's that's kind of what I gathered from it as well. Um, the thing that irritated me, um, let me, uh, let me read you this this one paragraph and see if some of those dots start to connect for you. Okay. All educational content is obsolete. Every textbook, every lesson plan, every test, all of it is obsolete because Genai is going to deliver personalized lessons just for you. Joe Linmat, uh, Alphas School's principal in quotes and the founder of Trilogy, the company that owns many of the apps used by Alpha School, said in a podcast interview published this year. Amazing. There was a lot of red flags in that very brief. >> That's >> the least of which is that the principal is out there giving podcast interviews. Um, >> I don't necessarily mind that. I mean, >> okay, podcaster. >> Look, most people are worthy of at least being interviewed. Um, >> is it is I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with it. I'm saying a bit of a flag. Bit of a flag. >> Yeah. Um, I think the main issue is this man is under the employee of the school district while also owning and operating the apps also employed by the school district. >> Yeah. Yeah. And apparently that's true of like all of their schools is that they are the only vendors for the school's platforms. Yep. >> Um and apparently um none of the claims of their academic growth have ever been independently verified and none of their internal metrics have been examined or reviewed by outside >> parties. >> And uh there you go. >> Yeah. It's it's giving grift [laughter] from the top down. >> Uh I mean, look, private schools are not inexpensive. And $65,000, >> sure, that's expensive to most people, but that's not even scratching the surface of some some, you know, private schools. Like 120 is not out of the realm of possibility for some of these these super high-end schools. Um but uh man that principal is making out like a bandit. >> Yeah. >> If he's owns the software that he is licensing to the school and also an employee of the school and then telling the school how to employ his software in their education standards. All of which without vetting or or third party uh verification >> and you know [clears throat] the fact too that you have I mean I have no idea what their app looks like or how students engage with it but it's like yeah >> the fact that you can open up social media and read a new story every day about how these things drove somebody to like kill themselves or like engage in some type of risky behavior or completely lose grip on reality. It's like, is this really the best teaching tool? This thing that like accidentally unores people from real life. >> Mhm. >> Like, you know, gosh, I was just reading one about this gal who went into it full well knowing the risks and all this. Who knows? This story is super cheeky to read, so maybe some of it could be made up. But >> yeah, >> it was it was on NPR and she went into using these platforms as I don't know. I don't know what. But it started telling her that like she lived in circular time and that she was going to go meet the love of her life at this time, at this place, and all this type of stuff. And like she just got bamboozled over and over and over. It's like one step away from like a sweetheart scam. you know, the next thing would be like, "Oh, I couldn't make it, but if you send me $10,000, you know, I can make it." But it's not. It's just, you know, chat GPT messing with her or whatever platform she was using. I don't know. But it's all so bleak, you know, and there's something I wish there was something that uh I could, you know, articulate more clearly. But it's just bizarre that like we're watching sort of like the flattening of like our cultural plane in real time. And it's a part of that is stuff like this AI vibe schools. >> Yeah. >> Like $65,000 a year, dude. Just send them to daycare. Literally get a teenage daycare at that point. Plop them in front of freaking Netflix for eight hours a day and they might come out with better odds, you know? >> Yeah. Uh, Jay chimes in with a $5 super chat. Thank you so much, Jay. This school fairly screams grift. I suspect that this place is probably a reactionary political incubator. >> Yeah, I mean, that's my first thought about anything anymore is every time you open up uh the news lately, it's all about how schools, you know, these school vendors have been tied to infamous billionaires famous for their lists and files, right? you know, turns out, what was the big one I was reading this week? Life touch or whatever the Oh, yeah. school portrait company. >> I mean, so you get stuff like this and you you say reactionary political incubator, but I'm also seeing other elements as well, you know, and that's conspiratorial. I have nothing to back that up, but like come on. We we've been reading that news, right? >> Yeah. I I mean apparently there are not very there are very few things which uh this infamous billionaire famous for his lists and files didn't have his fingers in. I mean for God's sake it almost sounds like if you can believe half of what's out there that he might be partially responsible for loot boxes in video games. >> Mhm. >> Come on. AI school is not that far away from you know this type of abuse of technology. Uh, hold on. I was looking up at whether or not Bobby Cotch is in the Epstein files. >> Oh, and here I was trying not to say Epstein. [laughter] >> I don't even care anymore about saying it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Did you hear him, guys? He says he doesn't care. >> Yeah, get him. >> Epste files confirm emails with Activision CEO Bobby Kotek. [laughter] >> Boy, who could have called that? >> Oh my god, [snorts] >> who could have called that? [laughter] It's always the ones you suspect most. God. >> Yeah. >> If only we could have seen this coming. >> Yeah. >> So, that's that's bleak. I've uh been really drawn to this idea lately. I read something today that really motivated me for what the potential future could look like for creators and people who like to share online and stuff. And >> I found uh I read this newsletter sometimes called Garbage Day. >> And um anyway, it's all about preemptively the his whole premise is like preemptively deplatforming yourself, which I thought was kind of interesting. But you know he says here in this uh this quote the question of our time is how do you artistically rebel and win against a totally flat cultural landscape? Um you know he says but if if everything is just attention now and attentionally and and attention is completely commodified by algorithmic tech platforms how can you push back against that? Well I'm slowly coming around to the new theory on what's the new cool. you have to deplatform yourself. Um, and he goes into this thesis that like culture is not determined by humans who are, you know, pitching things to you based on their taste. It's pitched to you based on algorithms and clicks and metrics that happen behind the scenes. And so, you don't get these cool artistic explosions like we used to get like he sites here. >> Yeah. You know, if you're my age, uh, let's see, what does he talk about? If you're my age, you might remember grunge music or mumblecore films, Maul emo, comic conventions, um, you know, all things that were kind of made against the grain of what was cool at the time and then became cool, right? >> Yeah. >> Anyway, just put just thinking about that lately, this idea of like how do we get what's cool back on the internet? And it's like almost like abandoning the algorithm seems to be the best answer, you know. And I only say that in uh in light of this idea that there's an AIdriven private school which will in no way, shape or form ever impact my life, but it is does seem to be a representation of the direction of technology. >> Yeah. keeping on track with the the AI school and and more in line with the the grift that we know that happens with it, the the tech bros that we know support it and the political ideologies that are behind a lot of the bigger personalities that are pushing it. Um I I am of two very very split minds about AI in general. Part of me sees a lot of benefit to some of the technologies that are out there right now. I think LLMs are all smoke and mirrors period. Uh like yes, replicating natural language and being able to respond in natural language that people can can relate with or or understand very easily. That is an important aspect of achieving an actual AI, generalized AI. Uh, but cramming a chatbot into a Logitech mouse application or cramming it into Copilot where Clippy would have been just fine. Uh, or, you know, making it your entire identity. It's just a chatbot and it's a bad one at that. uh it's better than we've had because it sounds natural confident uh and it and it reaffirms that the user is asking the right questions and leading you in the right direction and and oh I hadn't thought of that hold on let me but we find more and more Gen AI cannot create it cannot make things new it can only recreate what it has been trained on now it's not going to create an exact copy But it it's only going to iterate on on what's been before it without some pretty serious guidance uh in prompting. Um I think other aspects of AI um not necessarily image generation although there are there's pluses and minuses to image generation, video generation, things like in in creative processes. I've talked about that before, like can't I storyboard something really quickly and get some visual representations up uh rather than sitting there for, you know, if if drawing a storyboard out took me 40 hours and I can do it in six, I'm more efficient as a creator now. Cool. I'm I'm going to integrate Genai into my workflow. That storyboard process isn't part of my final work, though. It's it's to guide me along the creative process. Um, it's a marker. Uh, I I really don't like the Gen AI commercials that are coming out. Uh, I I hate the Coca-Cola commercial, although they did a better job at it this year, but it was still uninspired slop at the end of the day. Uh, Liquid Death put out an AI slop commercial during the Olympics of a figure skater. Uh, that I don't know if they were trying to do it like a tongue-in-cheek way, but it looked awful. Um, like they they had the figure skater like crush a can and then they had a member of the audience crush crush a can and then like tried to do like a a spin but like the torso didn't move and one of the legs flipped around the other leg was stationary and then her head like twisted all weird and um so I don't know if they were trying to do like a AI is bad tongue and cheek joke but it was still AI generated and therefore slop. It shouldn't be the final product. It shouldn't even be a feature of the final product outside of, you know, shaders or or enhancements or or thing. You know, if you can make the editing process easier, if you can add visual effects using AI, sure. Um, but generating the whole image to replace to not hire an actor like Elenny won gold this year. Hire him. Like have him do a commercial for you. That's what you should be doing. Uh, Jay chimes in with $10. uh what we mean by AI in popular consciousness today transformer-based LLM isn't going to lead to general artificial intelligence but it is but it's still useful provided you understand its limitations and yeah the problem is companies are trying to present it to consumers as a finished product and it's not it is not that and they're not telling the consumers about the limitations we're simply getting co-pilot 365 Hey, have you tried summarizing your emails? >> I think that's a really big element of it that always gets missed is like when we frame it the way that Jay frames it, which um you know, I I I agree with you for the most part there, Jay. But, uh when we frame it that way, we're basically like, well, like, you know, you're adopting this tool and if you understand it, it's like actually we're not adopting it. It's being integrated into every product that we use. You're buying a laptop, it's AI. You're buying a mouse, it's AI. You're buying a phone, it's AI. Whether or not you want it, you have it. And so, it's not about understanding its limitations anymore because every single person has it. It's not like picking Photoshop versus, you know, or uh Premiere versus Resolve. It's not about picking Photoshop versus Affinity. It's like you're getting this whether or not you want it open wide. >> Yeah. >> And I think that's the part that's really tough is like we can tell everybody Yeah. You just got to like understand its limitations and everything like that. But like dude, like you know, if my 75-year-old father or whatever is buying a computer that has this baked in and doesn't even know how to turn it off, >> what good is using its li is understanding its limitations, >> right? And what is your, you know, 75-year-old father going to use AI for, >> right? You know, the man's been writing his own emails since the dawn of the internet. You know, it's like I don't think he needs Gemini or C-pilot to handle it, >> right? >> Yeah. I just I think that that's the strangest thing. and and and then you know that it's not very uh you know that there's something dirty going on when you know you we bring up co-pilot and it's like they just shove it into every Office 365 subscription and then they can take it to their board meeting and say look >> we have 100% adoption with our 300 with our Office 365 subscribers >> you know it's jumped from 18% across our product stack to now 80% you know or whatever. It's dirty. It's grifty. It's shady. >> Here's a question I don't know that enough people have asked. Um I my business is based on Google obviously. I I post videos to YouTube. Uh I own a Google domain. Uh Google Workspace or whatever the bloody hell they call it these days. Um, I use Google Drive for all of my writing, uh, all of my scripts. Uh, it's where my email is at. It's where my web host is at. It's it's it's how I do my business. I'm a 100% Google shop. I access it through Google Chrome because Google Chrome has the best native integration of Google features and you log in and your docs just work and everything else. Firefox, it's great, but it's it's not perfect. There's a couple of things, especially when I'm switching between seven different accounts, it screws up sometimes. And so I I don't use it on a primary basis, even though I would like to. Uh my problem is Google has integrated Gemini into every aspect of every application on every front that they possibly could. Um Gemini is uh a a button at the top of my browser that says ask Gemini. Uh, when I open my email, it it says, "Here's a summary of your of your most recent five emails," or or, "Hey, do you want me to type this a response out for you?" without asking me what my response would be to a very specific question of like, "Hey, what day would you like to meet?" And Gemini goes, "How about Thursday?" You don't know what I'm doing Thursday. You didn't even check my calendar. You just you're just throwing out a day because that sounds natural because you're an LLM. You're not logical in your appropriation of what you're doing. Um, but here's the question that no one's asking. We know that Google was breaking through incognito mode to still track users through incognito. Now they're reading my corporate email. I guarantee they're reading your corporate email for training fodder. >> Yeah. I mean, that's the thing like you know, you think about how Google builds such robust profiles on everybody. I mean, you think about like your phones for example, like I changed my keyboard away from Gboard. >> So, if I want to like and I'll use I'll use Gboard still on some apps uh just to make it easy because it's got, you know, it's built its profile just to me. It knows how my hand moves and everything, but I use other keyboards, especially like if I'm going to text in like Signal for or or something. For example, >> I'll switch to a keyboard on my phone that doesn't build profiles and doesn't have online connectivity. >> Yeah. >> Your Google Your freaking keyboard on your phone has online connectivity and it's storing data about how you use it. >> Yep. About what word follows what word and and your typing habits and including a full history of what you've typed. So, even switch your switch your browser from Chrome on your phone to Firefox or whatever mobile browser you want to use. If you don't switch keyboard, they're still knowing what you're typing and what you're doing. Like, >> yep, >> it's alarming. And yeah, now they're just flat out looking through corporate email. I mean, I've >> been trying to think of a way I can kind of divest away from the Google ecosystem. I mean, anybody who watched the show, you know, eight years ago or whatever, you know, you hear me always talking, well, I just live on Google now. That's where I am. It's where my work stuff is. It's where my personal stuff is. I use file storage. I used our phones. And, you know, I always knew that it was a bad idea, but I didn't know how bad it would get, you know. >> Yeah. >> And now I'm like, great. Well, do I have to switch to Proton? Do I make the switch now? Like, how long do I have? If I switch to Proton, how long do I have until that goes bad? >> Yeah. >> You know, um I mean, if I can help it, I don't even send like a standard SMS text message anymore. I use Signal, >> you know? I because all of these other things, it's just like they're opening up like a tin can and harvesting any data that they possibly can. And I'm I'm not even saying Signal is not, but at the very least, >> Yeah. Oh, so >> well I mean signal trust trusted by the Pentagon. So you know >> for for all of their impending chats. >> Yeah. Fist emoji, American flag emoji, fire emoji. Let's go. >> Hash gonna bomb Syria. [laughter] >> Right now they're on their way to Iran. >> Iran. Yeah. Oh, sorry. I was I was leaking tomorrow's playbook. That's That's my >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Um >> Jay says, "What do we use that isn't G Google Keyboard but has the same prediction ability and gets swipe typing right?" Yeah. And I think he knows he's being cheeky because I don't think there is anything remotely as close as as Google keyboard. It's so good. >> That's why I leave it on for some things like if I'm going to use the browser, if I'm going to um do whatever, I'll leave it on. But for certain apps that I do want privacy, I I switched to F2 keyboard. I think it's F2 keyboard. >> Yeah. Uh David says the privacy policy directly says they don't train on your Gemini Pro. Um >> they also said they don't track you through incognito and that turned out to be 100% false. >> I love that we live in a world where we know that companies can just say that they're doing whatever they want and not actually do it. Mhm. >> Yep. >> Yeah, the locally hosted servers is is a really good uh really good idea. Uh like even like with Discord and everything, and I know we'll get there later, but with everything going up now, everybody's looking at what >> it's on the list. [laughter] >> Yeah, everybody's looking at alternatives, you know? It's like and I'm I'm impressed by how many like self-hosted options there are. I think that's pretty cool. You know, it sucks because Discord is so good. Yeah, >> it's been so good. We all talk about the old like Ventrillo days or or TeamSpeak days, but how long did you ever have like a ventril ventrillo server? >> Maybe eight months, >> right? Like we've been all using Discord for over 10 years now, probably. >> My my craft computing Discord is eight years old. >> Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if you can see when they were made because like I Yeah, I've got one that's got to be 11 or 12 years old now. >> Yeah, >> it's perfect. It does everything you want it to do. And it's we all kind of like, well, back to your old Ventrillo days. But like, dude, the longest we ever had a ventrillo server was like three years or something, you know? And maybe you come and go because you don't want to keep it up. It's used only when you're logging in for Dota 2 or >> Counter Strike or something. I don't know. But >> yeah, >> the the old dark age of Camelot servers or WoW servers or something, but >> um Yeah. >> Yeah. Gosh, just nothing had the same power that Discord did. >> Nope. And and it's not just it's not just it's organized on the web app. It's easy to connect. It's easy to create a server and everyone is ubiquitous on there because you have one unique, you know, login and you can access multiple servers. With Ventrillo, it was self-hosted which was great, but you had to create a user on every person's server that you connected to. >> Yeah. >> Uh it wasn't a unified login, right? >> Um >> and and the problem with well, what's a Discord alternative? Well, the problem is Discord has 95% of the market share right now. It's It's like asking, "Well, what if I didn't want to use Windows?" >> Um, well, [laughter] >> yeah, good luck. >> Not a lot of options out there. Yes, you can switch to Linux. Which Linux is your app going to work 100% of the time in whatever DRO you choose? >> Good luck. >> Yeah, it's uh Yeah, >> and I'm a Linux fan saying that. I'm I'm someone who went full-time to Linux a while back. I'm also someone who dropped Windows entirely uh four months ago and I'm on Mac now. I'm back at Mac. I started this channel on Mac. I started this channel uh I think my eighth or tenth video on this channel was rebuilding a Mac Pro that I bought on Craigslist for $300. Um and that Mac Pro I used for three years uh to run this channel. >> Hell yeah. You know, I think like and one of like the broken things that I think could show you just how good Discord was for how long it is. One of the first things I ever did was open a server and invite only myself and use it for file sharing and storage. [laughter] Like it's been going for like nine or 10 years now and it's full of stuff. You know, I'm now that like, you know, something might be happening. I'm like, well, I guess I better find the stuff that's important, you know? [laughter] But it's like the fact that I've been able to do that with no repercussions or anything. I mean, honestly, if it's going to go to hell in a hand basket, everybody should get on right now and create your own >> private Discord server just to share files with yourself. It's perfect. It goes across all my platforms. It goes onto my phone. You know, >> I've totally sent myself pictures because I didn't feel like sending them through Google Drive or texting or whatever else. And so just drop a picture into one of your channels and then download it on your phone or vice versa. >> Create create different rooms for different things. You know, I've got one that are notes for work. I've got ones that are notes for uh personal projects. I've got one that's just, you know, files that I need to transfer. >> I love that you literally turned Discord into Evernote. >> Yes. Because Evernote was amazing until it [laughter] went bad. You know what I mean? We've I've been there, right? But yeah, it's like everybody should do it. It's fun, man. I've got my own themes and everything. >> Yep. >> My own logos. I log in, it's like my own private paradise. >> Yep. On the subject of self-hosting, uh while I enjoy building out my home lab and have spent nearly 20 years as a professional I uh in professional IT, uh not every business has a Jeff working for them. And managing your own network infrastructure without a Jeff can be a challenge. dealing with different vendors for firewalls, switching, Wi-Fi, and when something goes wrong, it's all still your fault and can grind your business to a halt. That's where Meter comes in. Meter delivers an all-in-one networking stack that bundles everything you need into a single package, including high-speed wired and wireless networking, power delivery, firewall, and routing, and even cellular, all in a single integrated solution that's built for performance and scalability. Meter handles everything from network design, procurement, installation, and will even negotiate with ISPs to get you the best rates on internet connectivity. All of that shows up in a single cloud-based dashboard, giving you clear visibility into every layer of your network. You get the connectivity your business needs, all for a predictable monthly cost. Best of all, there's no upfront expenses. Meter ships the hardware you need today and will automatically upgrade your hardware as time goes on, ensuring your users and your business always have the tools and connectivity they need. Whether you're starting a new business, expanding to new locations, or simply modernizing an aging network, let Meter take care of the hassle for you. Visit meter.com/craftcomputing to book a demo today and see how they can help you out. Again, that's me.com/craftcomputing. And a huge thanks to meter for sponsoring today's episode. You got a pun for us today? >> They paid me not to. I tell I said that [laughter] already. right there on the uh on the uh agreement we made with him. It says Rhett will not make a pun at the end of live ads. [laughter] >> Forgot we put that in the writer finally. >> It's amazing. It's amazing. I guess I really can be bought off. [laughter] >> You are such a shill. >> All right, for an extra 5% I will shut [laughter] up. You know, I tried to show them all the metrics how well the how well the puns and the rhyming schemes has done for other partners, but >> alas [laughter] uh not tech support sends over $5 in a super chat. Thank you so much. It's about time we remembered how fragile the internet can be. Everything old is still old and often doesn't exist. Shout out to Internet Archive. Yeah. Uh we all think we have this idea that once it's on the internet it's it's forever. Uh YouTube died yesterday. >> Yeah. >> Uh for like four hours. Um can you imagine if YouTube just went away what what the repercussions of that would be? how much knowledge would be lost, how many businesses would fail. Uh like I said, my entire business hinges on YouTube being functional. >> Yeah. >> If if there's some kind of hostile act that takes out a keynote on YouTube and and destroys it, I go out of business flat out. >> Yeah. But then again, so does that guy who eats raw meat. So, >> right. >> I don't know. >> Yeah, >> I'm just kidding. >> Yeah, it is really fragile. And it's uh I mean, it's crazy. I mean, I don't if if you've ever tried to, for example, um scrub through the old archives of MySpace. Um because MySpace, yeah, we think about it as people's pictures and top eight. >> Mhm. >> But before it was that, it was really like the best place to share your band's music, book shows. >> And I was thinking about this. I was talking with my buddy. We had band music on MySpace that we never had anywhere else. And for a long time, even when it switched hands and the whole, you know, UI of MySpace changed to what it is now, we were able to access it very limitedly if we like went right to our URL and things like this, but now it's all gone. >> Yeah. And on the internet archive, there are gigantic files that you can pour through to find bands in their music. But it's like, man, maybe like half the files that bands have are they don't function. They don't do anything. And it's like literally like MySpace was working one day. They were trying to migrate it to new servers or I have no idea what they were trying to do, what the lore is, but now it's like literally all gone. >> Yeah. It's just like a It's just like a graveyard with some billboards there. So, people go in to remember their top eight and the owners get clicks or something. I don't know. >> Right. But I mean, remember how many how many social media networks have we seen come and go over the years? I mean, how many Vines have been have been lost? How many Tumblr posts? How many, you know, uh and and you think that's all innocuous. However, some of that was people's livelihoods. Some of that was kid photos, blast videos of people alive, uh, you know, pictures of family that doesn't exist anymore. Like there there's stuff there that >> that is seriously important to a lot of people. Um, I remember uh one instance we were doing a phone migration for a company um company that we'd worked with for years and uh I knew many people in that front office on on a first-name basis including uh one of the bookkeepers there. Um, we went in to uh to take out their old pots based phone system and put in a brand new VOIPE system. We converted their entire company 100% over to VoIP. Um, we got a question about will you be able to save voicemails? Uh, you know, when you do this migration, are voicemails going to move over? And no, any voicemails that are on there are going to be lost. there there's not there's not a way to save those or or migrate them over or import them or anything else that that's not the way the system works. And we got the oh okay is there anyone you could it and then we got a question is there any way you could save one and I went oh well what's that? And it was a voicemail from the head bookkeeper's husband the day before he died that she had been saving. and uh about once a week she would relisten to it. >> And we saved that voicemail. We we we made sure to do that. But how many of those circumstances that I've gone on just as an IT guy swapping out systems or upgrading systems had data like that that I had no idea ever existed and people just kind of accept and move on and oh, I guess that data doesn't exist anymore. And when you get to the the human level of of things like that of of things going away, >> it reminds you what's important a little bit. >> Yeah. >> Because of the way YouTube treats legal gun content, I will never give them a dime. Yeah, that that whole situation was was really messy for a long time. Uh I I was a huge fan of a number of different channels. Uh I know Forgotten Weapons is still around and Hickok 45 is still around. Uh there's a number of channels that just got decimated because of the decisions, even ones that were not even like necessarily gunrelated. Uh one of my favorite channels that I used to watch all the time is is a guy named Ted's Holdover, uh who did air gunning. uh showing you going out uh he would test and review air rifles and and he would take live game and pigeons and and and sparrows and starings and things like that, but he would tell you how he was aiming and setting up these shots and the way the gun would react and why when he would take a shot and why he wouldn't take a shot and things like that. And I always found those super interesting and super informative. um you know at as someone who you know look I'm about as left as they come but I've also I'm also a gun owner like uh and and I like to be able to use the things that I that I have and and be proficient at them and and he taught me a lot about you know not only that he he mentioned the eth he talked all the time about the ethics of it and don't take a shot if you can't you know guarantee it's an instant drop you know don't and and he's talking about squirrels and pigeons and and sparrows and and whatnot. And yeah, even small animals, they there's an ethical way to do it. Uh so yeah, the the whole uh you know, gun apocalypse uh on YouTube, that was a nasty situation and that cost a number of people their jobs and their livelihoods. What happens if all of a sudden YouTube gets a thorn in their side for people who promote self-hosting? What happens if Patreon shuts down? What happens if this, if that, if one company that I rely on makes a decision that is now counter to my business or or my business is counter to their interests? I just go away. There there's no recourse. There's no there's no taking 370,000 subscribers with me. Trust me, I've tried. If I can get 370,000 people who subscribe to me on YouTube to give me $1 a month, I think my content's worth. But I can't even get a thousand people to do that. >> Yeah. 3D printing. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> If tonight's show is bringing me down, lol. I'm sorry. Well, >> you know what? >> Go outside and do something about it. >> You know what? Uh, number one, it's 7 o'clock, so it's time for beer number two. Uh, >> oh, now we're talking. >> That's not just any dragon's milk. That is a 2022 Dragons Milk Reserve release 3. This has been aging in my fridge for three and a half years. That's going to lighten the mood. >> Good. >> I always wondered why you guys drink so much. [laughter] >> Hey, it's a hard news day and I'm drinking seltzer water. >> Yeah, >> I do have a ginger ale over here though, so I'm gonna really step it up. Rev, I will see your brown ale with a 40-year aged [laughter] dragon's milk reserve. >> Guess who's taking their shirt off in the super secret after show? Graham cracker. >> Right up on the nose. Graham cracker. Uh, White Fang says, "Dragons Milk, local beer for me. We are a huge fan of of New Holland." uh brewery. Uh all things Dragon Milk. Um but uh just tuned in. What the hell did I miss? Uh the vibes in general. Uh let's see. Do we have any good news? Uh no. >> You know what? the the very last one that I added in the notes. Um, we could spin this into some good news. Uh, [laughter] recently a survey of almost 6,000 corporate executives across the US, UK, and Germany and Australia found that 80% of respondents, more than 80% of respondents found no discernable impact from AI on either employment or productivity. >> Um, yeah. You're right. >> Yeah, >> that is good news. >> Yeah. >> Um Jay and I were actually talking briefly in the Discord before the show uh a couple hours ago. Uh and I think Vince chimed in and a couple others as well about um AI accelerating coding. Um, and uh I'm going to try not to put any words in anyone's mouth, but uh the general con conversation went um I think it was an article that I posted about uh gosh hold on where was that one at? Let me find the article and and we'll we'll round it. There it is. Uh so we'll back up one step here. uh thousands of CEOs just admitted that AI has no impact on employment or productivity and it has economists resurrecting a paradox from 40 years ago. That paradox was with the advent and popular adoption of silicon of you know micro silicon wafers um uh uh microprocessors, integrated circuits, memory etc. Uh we thought that there would be an explosion in productivity in the workforce. uh because those products were developed in the 60s, started getting business adoption in the 70s and became super popular in the 80s. Um however, productivity growth dropped from 1948 to 1973 from 2.9% to just 1.1%. Productivity increase slowed with the advent of computers and the introduction of computers into the workforce. It seems counterintuitive. You've got this thing in front of you uh that can do calculations on the fly, can keep track of your books for you in real time. Uh you know, some of the the early killer apps were spreadsheets and and things like that. you know, business accounting uh uh documents or uh you know, applications. Um however, it only made people about 1% more efficient, more productive at their jobs. And the idea was that no matter how much technology you throw at a problem, if it requires a human to audit, the human auditor is the speed of your process, regardless of the process. Um, is kind of what this article is breaking down. I'm paraphrasing, but that's that's basically it. Um, and then we see today 6,000 corporate executives, 69% of which have implemented AI in some form into their business. 80% of them see no discernable difference between preAI and postAI adoption on productivity levels or employment levels. They're not hiring anyone. They're not firing anyone. It's the same people, just a different application. And the reason is it comes back down to the human audit process. Humans making sure the process is done correctly. Uh for coding, uh Jay made a point and and Jay, I'm going to stick some words in your mouth, but I think this is basically what you said. um it significantly sped up the time or the the amount of patches that you guys are able to introduce to your specific application and the amount of bug fixes that you're able to do because you can get a bug report in. You can use AI to find the bug in the code, correct it, validate it, and send out a correction much faster than okay, let me sift through this documentation. Where's this line? Oh, what is this bug? What is the error? What was it doing? What was it trying to do? What function was implemented? That is, you know, rather than trying to sift through all that, you could very quickly use AI to identify what particular process was running a foul, issue a correction, and then publish it out. That's an effective use of AI. An ineffective use of AI is vibe coding everything. Why? Because there's no documentation with that. There's no checks and balances with that. There's no validation with that there. At the end of the day, if there's a bug, a human is going to have to go back through and find where the bug is at to patch it out, having no documentation to go on. And so, while a vibe coder might be able to go, oh yeah, I spun up this application that just spits out results like crazy. If there's ever a problem, you have nothing to go on. You might as well not even have the source code because no one understands it. No one documented it. It's going to take you ages to find a bug, which means you publish really quickly, but your bug fix is going to take 10 times longer because no one's understands the code that's actually been implemented. And that's the point. So while some industries and some specific applications and this is I think my greater point to AI, AI can be a fantastic tool and is very powerful. I've seen you know uh uh rag implemented LLMs where uh they are very laser focused on specific tasks or specific problems or specific applications. They can speed things up exponentially. But AI in general is not a magic bullet that's just going to make your business more effective. I can't vibe code a PCB to develop a solution to ship out the door. This had to be done by a developer. While we could probably vibe code some of the process that went into the software back end, that still has to be validated by a developer so we know the source code so if there's ever a bug, we can fix it. It It's not going to make my business any faster. I'm not writing with with LLMs. I'm not writing scripts with LLMs because everything that I'm reviewing is typically brand new. No one's written about the Dell GB10 before except maybe 10 people. And so what am I going to do if I ask an LLM about the GB10? I'm literally just going to plagiarize the 10 reviews that are out on this. It's not going to be my opinion. It's going to be the opinions of the 10 people that it that it Vibe wrote from. That's not fair to my audience. That's not something I would ever do because you sign in for my opinions. AI is not going to make my opinions come out any faster. I'm the bottleneck. And in almost every industry, the human is going to be the bottleneck. It's the way it is. >> Did you get Vince's super chat? >> Uh, I did not. Vince, $20. Thank you so much, good sir. HTTP421 misdirected request. I'm away at a private party at my favorite bar tonight. Can't listen in. So, I guess that makes me the misdirected request. Um, well, your request has been received and so when you're watching this probably tomorrow, uh, I I hope we summarize the vibe code conversation well enough. [laughter] Perfect timing, by the way. Uh, especially as I mentioned you and then like two minutes later your your super chat came in. That was great. Uh, Cossworth, this one made me giggle and I've only read the first sentence. Uh, sends over $5. Thank you so much, Cause. For the third time this week, I was just hit in the head by a duck. I need my AI object detection to also function as radar for me right now. [laughter] And as Michael says, you should have ducked. [laughter] [snorts] Uh, Effect FTW says, "I find AI chat bots can be useful for code debugging, but it should also be trusted in the same way you trust Stack Overflow. It might fix your issue, but it might break something further down the line." Precisely. Uh, hold on here. There we go. I think it might be time to think about upgrading my my Mac Mini to something with some more CPU or simply not using Chrome for my live stream anymore because uh man that studio page is having a hard time tonight. I'm going to pop out the chat and then I'm actually going to close the studio page. [snorts] Hold on. Chrome is almost frozen. There we go. Yeah, it's it's taking some frames away from my Google using 78% of my CPU. Thank you so much. >> Good lord. >> Might have I'm going to close Google and I'm going to close Chrome entirely. >> This is It hears us talking bad about Gemini. It's like, well, >> it did. >> Time to blow you up. Yeah, 98% CPU usage. Hold on. Hey, now we're back down to 28. Okay, I can reopen Chrome now. Cool. might just have to start using Safari for the uh the live show since Google refuses to fix the glitch on Mac OS with Google Chrome that if you're in the stream live view, it has a CPU leak that will uh eventually take over your entire chip. It's great. >> I'm sure it's not intentional. Wink wink. >> Right. Sure. It's just I don't know. I don't know how that happened. If only you weren't on Mac. >> Uh Zeus, $5. Thank you so much. This is why I know my job is safe. AI can't write new stuff, and even if it could, it would be more uh effort to correct it and no one to yell at. Exactly. Um I know what Zeus does for a living. I'm not going to go into into detail, but uh um yeah, much like me, you're writing things that don't exist yet, don't have a frame of reference that could have possibly been trained from. Um I'm writing hardware reviews for hardware that may not even be public knowledge yet, let alone be in an AI training model. Um, there's no frame of reference for AI to assist my writing, which means my writing is the speed of whatever this is today. And sometimes it's quick and sometimes it's definitely not. Um, so yeah. Yeah, you know, I'm thinking about that old Intel Maxim or was it Intel or uh freaking um IBM, maybe IBM Maxim about a computer can never be held, you know, accountable. Therefore, a computer should never make decisions. >> And I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I'm like, you know, if everybody wants LLMs to run the show, then like let's allow them to be held responsible for when like their advice or their work leads to issues, >> right? >> So far, that's not the case. We're holding the users responsible. Well, you got to know their limitations. Well, you should have known better. >> Yeah. >> Well, you should have been careful. Why didn't you verify? Why didn't why didn't you try that prompt in claude and co-pilot before chat GPT? >> Yeah. Now that said, AI certainly powerful enough to do repetitive tasks, to do predictive tasks. Um, you know, uh, summarizing reports or even generating new reports based on new input of data, but based on the same sources that it's input data on before. You could certainly train models to be able to do that. Um, but uh, yeah, it's it's it can't create I I don't even know how I would prompt an AI without simply giving it all of the base information in the first place to be able to write a video in my style with my opinions in coherent. You may as well write the script at that point, >> right? If I'm going to have to write a two-page prompt, I might as well just write a four-page script that I don't have to edit after that. That's the other thing about me is my writing style is very conversational. Um, so I will I'll I'll write down a couple of bullet points of like things that I need to cover. Um, you know, for the GB10 review, I wrote down, hey, we're going to go over specs. We're going to go over what it runs. Uh we're going to go over uh that I'm not testing AI workflows for it. You can go check out some of the other people who've did a fantastic job and probably more in depth that I would be able to do it. So go watch them instead. Um we're going to write about my experience of using it for the last two weeks. Uh here's two issues that I ran into that I want to make sure to cover and that's about it. And then I will literally just start writing based on that timeline. And I correct myself as I go. I I'm not a first draft, second draft, final draft, ledger notes, anything else. I'm I'm literally a Okay, there's a paragraph. Let me read through that real quick. Make sure it makes sense. Okay, cool. Let's write the next paragraph. And then when I'm done with my process, I can just go shoot it. Like once I'm done with with writing something, it's done. I don't need to feed it through AI to correct anything or you know get recommendations or >> I mean what would it tell you anyways you know >> right you know one of my favorite phrases is words have meaning and and I like to use very specific words for very specific things and sometimes people don't interpret those words properly like when you say wine is an emulator of sorts Well, you said wine is an emulator. It is an emulator of sorts. Almost like those last two words added meaning to the whole phrase. And just because wine is not an emulator is the name of wine doesn't make it true. >> [snorts] >> Uh, someone asking, "What did you have open in Chrome?" I literally had six Chrome tabs open. Uh, it's just the the YouTube Studio Live stream dashboard, the the controller for the stream. Um, it and it doesn't even matter if the video is playing. If you are on the dashboard in Mac OS, it has a slow but steady CPU creep that will absorb absorb your entire CPU. It just uses it all. I don't know what it's doing. It's trying to ruin our show. Yep. Can you use AI to adjust audio or color correct? Actually, I do use AI to adjust audio in uh in Da Vinci Resolve. They have an AI do dialogue leveler uh that you can just turn it on and it detects if there's human voice and will level audio across all your tracks. Excuse me. And it's pretty freaking effective. Also, the uh we've been using, you know, noise reduction algorithms for years. I'm gonna sneeze again. They come in threes. Hold on. [snorts] There's going to be one more. I promise. Um, [snorts] >> me one, bro. >> Yeah. Um, I can feel it. Hold on. Gosh [laughter] darn it. >> Look at the light, Jeff. Look at the light. >> No, cuz I'm also a photo a photoic sneezer. Um, bright >> get it out. >> Bright light makes me sneeze. >> [snorts] >> Uh, if I if I'm inside and I walk outside into sunlight, I will sneeze guaranteed. [snorts] Um, what was I saying? Uh, oh yeah, we've been using uh noise reduction for years. You know, RTX Voice popularized it. Uh, but uh, you know, Da Vinci Resolve has a noise reduction built in. Um, if I'm out at my server rack, you've noticed like the last three, four, five times I've been out at my server rack, there's no fan noise when I'm out at the server rack. It's because I click a box and the fan noise dies. And you can adjust the level at which you want the fan noise to die. If I want a little fan noise for some ambiance, or if I really want you to hear what I'm saying and I'm behind the server rack and the microphone is literally going, [gasps] I can cut that out and you can hear me clear as day. It's incredible. People have pointed out. It sounds like you're yelling. Why are you yelling? It's Oh, it's because there's 110 dB in my right ear right now. That's why I'm yelling. [snorts] Uh, that was once. Says, uh, I was using Nvidia noise reduction on my 1070 with the patched installer forever. Very nice. Something something RTX not actually required. [snorts] >> [sighs] >> RAM prices got me thinking of those stricks Halo machines instead of a less powerful machine and putting RAM in it. Um, it all depends on what you need or how much memory you actually need. Um, [snorts] if you're looking at buying 32 gigs and spending $500 on memory, um, and that's going to make, you know, a gaming machine with an RTX 4060 and and some i5 or a Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 or something like that, cross the 1500, $1,700 price point, get yourself a Stricks Halo machine with 32 gigs, spend 1,300 bucks. Um, that is by far a better deal. uh and it's unified and and now you have a graphics card that can use 16 gigs instead of only 12 or eight of whatever the you know the entry- level card would be. Um that is definitely a better deal. Uh if you don't need 128 gigabytes in any capacity whether it's video or or system, don't buy the 128. You're wasting money. More memory is not better. More memory is just more expense unless you're going to utilize it. Um, that's why I mentioned today in my GB10 review, I would love to see a 32 GB GB10. I would love to see that uh as as a general use desktop system. uh you know, ARM power, 140 watts, RTX 5070 level graphics, 6144 CUDA cores, and 20 cores of processing, equivalent to about a 13600 K in a box this big. I love this box, but it ain't worth four grand. That's for darn sure. Unless you were going to spend N grand on an RTX 6000 Pro Blackwell, then yeah, maybe it is worth, you know, four grand to you. But the hardware that's in here is not worth four grand. [snorts] I'm considering an SFF Blackwell just to get the VRAM. Then yeah, you might you might actually want to consider a Stricks Halo system then. uh if if you seriously actually need the VRAM, um you know, something like the uh the 4,000 ADA SFF, uh the 4,000 Blackwell SFF, you know, coming with 20 24 32 GB of memory on a on a small form factor card, um if you're someone who's going to utilize that, Stricks Halo is a fantastic buy. Uh Jay says, "Trix Halo increasingly looking like a good idea for local inference with 100 with the 128 version, especially now that you can definitely cluster them with RDMA." Yeah. Um yeah, with the the Rockom, what is it? 7.1 update that that clustering is actually kind of working now. Yeah. Um, especially if you get one of the desktop systems or maybe the minis forum MSS1 uh that has a PCI Express slot that you can add 100 gig networking to. Yeah, Minis Form MSS1 for what 2200 bucks with 128 gigs of RAM. You add a a connect X5 for another 150 bucks. Add 100 gig networking to it. That's a pretty sweet system. And hey, that was once says on my minis forum 7945HX uh mini PC. Excellent. I've I've got uh one of those builds as well. In fact, it's it's my gaming rig. It's sitting right below me here. Yeah, that would be killer. 32 GB GB10 pop that bubble even if they they did you know a slightly lower-end GPU skew. Um the fact that AMD, Apple, Nvidia, and to some extent Intel are coming out with some pretty killer APU type systems with uh unified memory inside of them. Dynamically shifting memory between CPU and GPU tasks. They're all pretty incredible. That's that's one of the things that I wanted my video to say today was there's no reason to buy a 32 GB graphics card if you're going to use it for gaming and at most it's using 14 gigs. It's stupid. If there's no reason to buy 64 GB of memor of RAM for your system, if you're using 38. However, a 64 gig unified platform where you can dynamically shift between and you can put 32 to a system and 32 to video and you're using 14 of that on uh you know for whatever task or you give 48 to the CPU and and six you know 16 to to the GPU. That's that's a pretty killer concept and the performance is now there to back it up at least on the the entrylevel desktop to actually mid-level desktop including the 5070 class cards. Um yeah, there there's some options out there now. Yeah, the MSS1 is like three grand now. Yeah. Um, uh, memory pricing, man. 128 gigs ain't cheap. Newer, uh, AMD and Intel APUs make the Apple pricing look not so bad after all. Yeah, it turns out Apple was just pricing the scalper prices to begin with, and now they're actually not a terrible deal. [snorts] which is sad and pathetic and I hate it. Um, also most of the Apple Reverb store has been bought out. Uh, and so deals on like Mac Studios, you can get Mac Studios for like 1,500 bucks. I think the cheapest one in there is like $3,800 now. >> Oh my god. because I I was looking at picking up one. Uh Tom Lawrence bought one in November. Um one of the M4 Max Studios and I was looking at something similar and uh Nope. Those are those are dried up. Those don't exist anymore. >> Wow. >> Uh oh no, it's back. Uh you can get an M2 Max now. Okay. The M4s are still completely dead and gone. Uh, you can get an M2 Ultra, 24 core CPU and 60 core GPU for 3,100 bucks with 64 gigs of unified memory and 1 TB of storage. Um, or you can get an M2 Max with a 12 core CPU and a 30 core GPU with 32 gigs of unified for 1529. The 1529 is not an awful price. Yeah, the Mac minis are completely sold out everywhere. Uh because most of them are people are buying Mac minis to put onto OpenClaw so you can have an agentic AI social media for some reason. This is an AI grift that look 2% of my brain understood NFTTS. [laughter] Okay, 2% of my brain went, you know, I like Pokemon cards. And if there's a digital equivalent to that, God bless them. >> 98% of my brain went, this is freaking stupid. You're paying $1.3 million for a monkey. That's not even unique because the news article that was talking about NFTTS posted a JPEG of your NFT. >> Yeah, come on, dude. Don't you want to own your items in video games? >> But 2% of my brain went, "Okay, whatever." Open Claw, I got nothing. I have nothing. I have no concept of an idea for why you would want to host a machine to agentically social media on behalf of the machine. I don't understand. >> Well, it's got to be another grift, right? >> It has to be. >> Let's start there. We can untangle it. Yeah, >> just assume that this is another way to move money away from dupes and we'll go from there. >> Yeah, [sighs and gasps] that was once says uh I wonder how well OpenMW runs on the M2 Max. >> Here we go. [snorts] >> Oh boy. >> You know, it's bad enough that we gave Rhett a Morowind icon. uh on on the main screen here. >> Yeah, bad enough. Do you guys hear the way he talks to me? God. [clears throat] Yeah. H What else should we talk about? The news is bleak and I I'm kind of with everyone else. Like I I started reading like it's going to be a good show. Oh, that sucks. Oh, that sucks. Oh, that sucks even more. I don't like this show. Uh, scrap it. What else should we talk about? Chat, ask us questions cuz I'm I'm done. >> Here we go. [laughter] Buckle up, chat. >> Let's get into it. Oh, >> MicroEnter had the MicroEnter had the base model M4 Mac Mini on sale for $3.99 a couple days ago. Uh, incredible deal. Holy crap. >> Um, for those who don't know, since early December, late November or something like that. Um, I've been running my entire channel off a base model M uh M4 Mac Mini. Um, that's what's running this stream. Uh, that's what's been editing all of my videos. uh editing in ProRes 42:2 um or ProRes uh LT 42. So I'm I'm still in 8bit color, but uh yeah, Pro ProRes LT as far as the bit rate goes. Um talk about your fluffy cats. Um I have any recent cat photos? I do. Hold on. Uh I don't know if I have any recent A to Choco. He tends to to stay downstairs in my daughter's room. Um, oh, you know what? Here's a here's a fluffy dog. So, I uh I introduced uh people to the dogs right after I got them when they were about this big. Um, doggo ain't that big anymore. [laughter] >> Big doggo. >> So, so this is Shadow. Uh, we we got a a pair of litter mates. Uh we got Shadow, that's this one, and Stormy. They are second generation uh golden doodles. Um not golden in color, uh but they're 3/4 poodle, one quarter golden. Um and so this is Shadow. Uh and she is a character. Um she one of her favorite things to do. She she'll play fetch. Stormmy doesn't play fetch, but Shadow does play fetch. But one of Storm's favorite things to do, or Shadow's favorite things to do, is she likes her toys. She She specifically likes stuffed toys. Uh like the crinklier and the squeakier the better. Um and so she has this bunny that she carries around and she just wants to show you her bunny. She doesn't want you to play with it. She doesn't want you to like pick it up in tug-of-war or anything like that. She just wants you to see it. And so she'll walk over and when she realizes someone's paying attention to her, she'll run over and she'll grab her bunny and then she'll come over and she'll sit and she doesn't give you the bunny. She doesn't or if you take it, she'll she doesn't resist. Like she doesn't tug on it or anything. She just wants to show you the bunny cuz it's cool. Um she's got a couple of stuffies that she does that with. And uh and it's the cutest thing in the world. You'll just be walking through the kitchen and she'll walk up next to you with the bunny and just sit down. You go, "Oh, that's a good bunny. I like that. Thank you for sharing your bunny. [laughter] [snorts] Uh, I got a recent Rambo pick. Here we go. Um, this is how Rambo sleeps with me most nights. >> You [laughter] So, yeah, there's some uh some recent pet picks for y'all. Uh, what you planning on replacing Discord with? Zeus wants to know, I I thought we were done with the Fire and Brimstone stories. Uh we we had a Discord story up about Discord walking back some of their their age verification, but not really walking it back. Um that I didn't want to talk about. Um we we've been in some discussions on the Discord over the last week or so um uh about hey, what would a Discord alternative look like? because where my community goes, I'm going to be perfectly honest, doesn't feel like it's entirely up to me. Um, I talked about this a little bit last week with Tom uh while we were on the show and and I've had another week to talk to to think about it. Um, the inherent advantages to Discord right now, despite the politics and the the censorship and and the age verification and the and the the Palunteer uh, you know, implications and Peter Theal and all that kind of stuff. Discord as a platform works and was successful because it is a standalone application that runs on any platform that has a single login. So I log in as Craft Computing and I'm connected to any server that I'm a member of and I can chat as myself. Um, I get notifications to my phone that I can customize down to the nth degree, down to the individual server, down to the individual channel, down to the individual user of who I want to hear from, what I want to be pinging about, all that kind of thing. Um, it's an always connected application. So part of my morning routine is I go through my front page of of recommended news stories. I go through four or four media. Uh I go through usually couple pages of Reddit. Uh and I go through my Discord chat and I catch up what was happening on on Discord overnight uh with a lot of my my users on my channel. Um and uh that's just part of my normal routine. If we were to move off of Discord, it needs that same level of ubiquitousness. It needs to be present for a community to be successful. Um, my community is highly engaged and I think it is because my community has it on all the time. We're an engaging community. We we are constantly talking there. There's never a chat room that's empty. Um, you know, and it's only 1100 people. It's not the biggest server in the world, but it is a very engaged set of users. If those users needed to go to a website and log in or go to a forum page or any other method that you would normally go to to get your news or posts or see things like that, this community dies because it's that instant responsiveness that keeps the community engaged. So where we go from here is whatever people decide to go to. And that's whether or not Discord fades into the to the ether of forgotten platforms or whether it succeeds and and you know rises from the ashes. It's whatever people are on. Um I would love to go to something federated. I would love to go to a matrix server or a sto or or you know any number of the ones that have come up where you can self-host an instance and that instance is part of a larger login network and people can join your server with a unified login but at the end of the day you host your instance. I think that'd be fantastic. Um, I tried to do Mastadon. Uh, but Mastadon just didn't work for me. And in the end, it was Blue Sky that ended up winning my vote over Twitter. And Blue Sky won a lot of people's votes over Twitter because it was centralized, not federated. And that and that's a hard pill for the open source people among us to swallow is sometimes centralized is a better way to go for community engagement. Yeah. Unfortunately, [sighs] where do we go? I don't know. I wish I had the answer. Uh Jay says, "Taking suggestions for fun ideas for something to do in relation to the microenter opening in Austin later this year." I don't know. Should I go to that? We could make a phone call. Pretty cool. >> We could make a phone call. We could Should I build a PC at the opening? Like that'd be fun. Should I build a PC and give it away? When do they open in Austin? >> Uh sometime later this year. >> Yep. >> Yeah. But no, I I mean I obviously work with MicroEnter. Uh we've worked with them for years and uh uh just ran an ad earlier today uh for them and always love working with with MicroEnter. >> Uh should we pitch something to them to be at the grand opening in Austin? like should we do a craft computing meetup and and some kind of giveaway or something like that? Like what would you guys find interesting? >> You know, when we were talking to them about this current ad, >> I had pitched to them that we can go to the store and we can do stuff. Of course, I suggested the, you know, closer location, but uh >> yeah, Santa Clara, >> they sounded like they were open to certain things like that. They wanted to just get this ad out to uh break the ice. Yeah. >> So, maybe we got to keep that conversation going. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, I I pitched a couple of different brands about like, hey, why don't we show up on site and, you know, do kind of a meetup. Like, I don't think I can draw a huge crowd, but if I could draw 20 people, you know, if we could let let enough people know and and draw 20 people in, is that a big enough surge to to move the needle? Um, especially if we do content around it. Like if if I live stream the whole thing and and get eyes on the new store and, you know, meet some of the staff and talk to some of the community, like, does that move the needle? Could uh Zeus sends over $10. Uh, okay, fine. Less fire and brimstone, but you can't stop me from bringing this from drinking this Clamato Bud Light. Uh, >> I would never dream of stopping you, >> right? >> Sounds delightful. >> Yeah. [sighs] Novella says, "Is that an instant server ban?" [laughter] >> I don't think so. I'll veto that one. You can stay, Zeus. >> Yeah, Mastadon's vibes are horrendous. Um, I wouldn't say that. Here's my problem with Mastadon. And And I'm going to try not to offend anyone, but I'm going to I'm going to call out a particular community that's simply not my vibe. Uh, and I've said this once before when it comes to Mastadon, I thought the the idea of a federated social media network was really intriguing. Um, where it wasn't necessarily unified login uh because each server instance has its own login and approval process for creating a user account. And so you would create a user account on one particular server, one particular instance of a node. Um, but then your login was recognized by other nodes. Uh, so you had your own unique domain name that went with your account name and that was fine. Uh, but you could browse other servers and and get feeds from other servers and and it all worked pretty well. My problem with Mastadon wasn't necessarily the architecture behind it. I'm just going to come out and say the furries got to it first. And when I go to a social media platform to talk about tech and beer and political activism and the things that I do on social media, um, I don't need 50 instances of furry fan art on my feed. I appreciate if you appreciate that art form. It's not for me. And I spent more time blocking people and and saying, "Please don't share this type of content with me," than I did engaging with anyone ever on that platform. So, the best and worst of the internet. I'm glad they found a community. I'm glad they found a forum that works for them. Um, but it did drive me away. you know, they were all over Blue Sky as well. >> They were um >> just easier to block people like that. >> Not necessarily. Um the the algorithm for Blue Sky was a little bit different. Um and it it more you can still view it purely chronologically and and you can view by followers and you can view friends of your friends and things like that. Um, but the the Mastadon algorithm was who posted to your local server, let's deliver their feed to you, >> regardless of whether you follow them or not, >> right? >> Um, and so the problem was I never actively once followed anyone who posted anything like that, but I'd be scrolling through and oh, there's another one block. There's another one block. There's another one. Please stop recommending this block. you couldn't go on specific servers because the proliferation was so much versus Blue Sky, they're on Blue Sky, too. I said, "Please stop showing this two or three times and it's never been a problem since." >> Yeah. >> And I know those communities exist, and I'm glad that they exist, but I no longer have to see them because they're not my vibe. >> And that's that's an effective algorithm tool. Um, Macedon didn't have that. >> Makes sense. >> Yeah, Blue Sky has been pretty good. >> Yeah, >> I do think technically Blue Sky is federated. We said that it wasn't, but >> Mhm. >> I just think it's the way it's um structured and organized is definitely like more centralized with everybody. >> The the overall control is centralized. Yeah. Um uh yeah, you can host an instance of it, but it's not your instance to manage. You're simply hosting a node for the greater good. The greater good. Stop it. Sorry. Little hot fuzz joke. Um yeah, bring back MySpace. At least that's what I've been saying. >> Yeah. Civic says it's federatedish. Yeah. It's it's >> like the way I've understood it is that each page is its own website and the feed is RSS. >> Yeah. >> So it's like you are when you follow a page you are subscribing to that page's RSS feed. >> Yeah. >> Which is an interesting like I you know getting more technical than that I have no idea but that's what I've read before. >> Yeah. Well, cool. Uh, what else we got? What else we got? >> How's your g is your game downloaded? You gonna jump on for >> uh I think we are going to jump into some Star Trek Voyager. And in fact, uh, two people independently have pinged me and said, "How far have you gotten in Star Trek?" Um, uh, so I never played the demo. Um, but uh yeah, for those who like rogue likes, um there's a new Star Trek Voyager game out uh that is essentially the Oregon Trail with Star Trek Voyager. Um and so it slings you to the other side of the universe or the other side of the galaxy and you have to make it home. And very much like the Oregon Trail, you pick your load out and then different situations pop up, whether it's a social interaction with your crew or a uh an enemy in space that you have to navigate around or negotiate with or attack or or defend against or whatever the case may be. Um the decisions you make impact your voyage and the the losses you take impact your voyage. Uh but you're trying to get home. Uh and so yeah, I am looking forward to it very much so. >> Cool. Yeah. Reminds me of like FTL based on kind of what I'm looking at on the Steam page if you'd ever played FTL. >> Yeah. just kind of that rog like uh ship management jumping star to star to try to >> get across somewhere. Well, in FTL, you're out running people, but >> yeah. >> Yeah, it looks cool. >> Yeah. So, I think we might uh fire that up in the afterparty and uh see see what it does because like I said, I haven't even played the demo. I I've seen some screenshots from it, but that's literally as much as I've done. Uh, I I didn't want to spoil the final release. I didn't I didn't want to spoil it by playing the demo and then going, "Oh, this is there's so many more options now. What do I do? I had like a thing." I tend to minmax games, especially rogue likes. And so I will find a loadout that works and I will play that load out religiously. Um, and I didn't want to do that. I wanted the full thing, >> I guess. You know what rogue like you got me on like crazy? >> What's that? >> I played so much of it. It's been a while, but uh Noida. >> Oh yeah. Oh god, I love Nida. >> God, that game is so good. >> Yes. H [sighs] um the whole concept of Nida comes from uh what was the name of that? There was an applica is it called powder keg which is basically a physics simulation. It's a 2D pixelbased physics simulation with multiple elements um that uh you know this pixel is made of wood and wood reacts with the environment in specific ways. It floats on water. It can be lit on fire. Uh it it can decompose. It can it it is eaten by acid. It is impervious to this. Uh this pixel is steel. This pixel is fire. This pixel is a gas. This this one's an acid. And uh and so you would on just like a 2,000 by 2000 grid of pixels. You could draw out structures uh whether they be made of steel or bridges or anything else. And then you would apply elements to them and see how they interact. steel would rust in the presence of water and be enhanced by salt and water vapor. Um [snorts] uh and and a uh if you had a pure oxygen environment, it would o it would rust even faster because you're adding an oxidizer to it. Um uh really really interesting and and uh you know cool tool for science. But Nida is a game that's built on that concept where it's a 2D pixel physics simulation uh or chemistry simulation of interactions with with different elements. >> Yeah. >> But also a roglike wizard shooter uh that is just hell of fun. >> It's it's so much fun and once you figure start figuring it out, it's just so addicting. You It's got the perfect like one more run >> Yeah. >> formula. And it's like you can't control it. Like dude, I've had some godlike runs where, you know, it's like, oh, I'm going to take my time. You know, this is going to be the one. I'm gonna I can kill anything. One shot. I can carve my way through the cave walls. I can do all this. And then like, >> whoops, you accidentally cast a bad spell or you accidentally step somewhere you're not supposed to. Or you're >> you stepped in poly potion and got turned into a sheep and lost all of your invulnerability. >> Oh, god damn it. Yeah, >> the poly has killed 90% of my godlike runs. >> I've had some nuts runs, too. It's like literally I I I I look like some freaking like, you know, godlike being with spells just zipping around me at all angles. I'm like, "Yes, I'm going to win." And then, yeah, die. >> Yeah. poly potion or freaking I don't you're covered in oil and slide off a cliff into [laughter] a big fire pit or something. You're just like, "God dang it." >> Or what's worse is when you don't realize that like you you don't realize that there's something where you're shooting and your spell interacts it with the wrong way and kills you. It's like uh >> Yeah. I know. I I've had spells that uh don't penetrate an object and bounce and all of a sudden they just hit you instead. >> Uh you bounce it off a steel plate and you're oops. >> Yeah. Like I love the saw blades, right? That's so cool. But god forbid you shoot it the wrong way and it comes back and kills you. >> That's responsible for the other 10% of my daruns dying [laughter] is the saw blades bouncing back and eating me alive. >> So frustrating. [laughter] 90% poly potion, 10% saw blade bounce. [laughter] >> God. Uh, the one Kia says, "Here's my Star Trek hot take. The only Star Trek films you need to own on Blu-ray are The Motion Picture, The Voyage Home, Undiscovered Country, First Contact, and Galaxy Quest." >> Nice. Ah, [sighs] Jay likes the final JJ verse movie, right? Interesting. I liked that one, too. But >> I didn't I wasn't sure where it would land in those three cuz I like them all three of the JJ ones in their own way. >> I loved the first one. >> Yeah. >> I hated the second one. I hated Into Darkness. >> I liked it. Um, I' I've talked about it before. I hated Into Darkness. Um, the third one, uh, I didn't mind, except Star Trek has one of those sci-fi problems where you have a piece of technology that can solve almost any crisis that you're in. And that is what if we use the transporter? You have it. You have Scotty. Scotty developed a warp transport algorithm on the fly in the first movie. Yet in the third movie, there's this McGuffin that they're trying to get to in space uh in zero gravity, and the evil captain is trying to to fight off Kirk to get to it first by hurling themselves around. What if we just transported the McGuffin on board? What if we just transported Kirk to the McGuffin? I don't know. >> And then >> and then they discovered that the whole drone army of of intergalactic space killer things could be killed by blasting sabotage through subspace and we'll ride it like a wave. >> And then Kurt gets to ride a motorcycle. >> Really cool visual. Some of the most [ __ ] storytelling and world development that's ever happened in Star Trek. >> You just don't like this one because of Sulu, huh? [sighs] >> Getting it cancelled. Let's go. >> No, I liked the third one from like it's a good ride. >> Yeah. >> Uh perspective. I hated it from a storytelling from a we're gonna explain away 90% of it with technobabble and and then not use the obvious solutions and uh and and whatnot to in the third act like um I loved Jayla as a character. I love Jayla so much. Uh that was a list on our baby name list, Jayla. Uh for for our third kid ended up being a boy, but uh it was on the list. Um >> yeah, >> my second kid is purely named after a sci-fi character who will remain nameless. Uh it's it's uh it's not in the Star Trek universe, but it is after a sci-fi character. So, um, yeah. Um, I don't know that I would have Undiscovered Country on my Blu-ray short list. Um, I would probably have Star Trek 2009. I think your list is solid except just with that one addendum. Like, that would be my addendum. I'm not even a huge fan of the motion picture, but at the same time, the motion picture gave us some of the best star some of the earliest like starscape shots. you know, the shuttle approaching, uh, the Enterprise A, uh, you know, it's got some really good moments. Your daughter is named R2-D2, [laughter] >> except it's like, you know, A R T O like they do in the books. >> Yeah. >> R2. >> That was one of the stupidest things. >> How dare you? >> Yeah. or 3 PO. Spell it out. >> S E T H R E P E I O. >> Yeah. [sighs and gasps] >> No, you caught me. My my my daughter's name is K2SO. Um yeah, the the motion picture is the only other one that I have. Like look, it's not a great movie. Um, the only great movie in the original six is The Voyage Home. And I said what I said, and I know all of you are going, "But Wrath of Khan, Wrath of Khan's terrible." You're terrible. You have terrible taste. Voyage Home. Voyage Home sucks. >> It's the one with the whales, man. >> Yeah, stupid. What a dumb premise. Could have been an episode. You got cling on Christopher Lloyd. Like, come on. It's great. >> Here's my hot take. All of the original series pretty bad. [sighs] >> People don't like to hear it, but >> they they have their place. >> Their place is not on my TV. [laughter] >> Sometimes it's fun. You know, I used to really like watching the original series when you'd catch episodes on TV. Yeah. Because you didn't get to choose. You just kind of like, "All right, I'll watch this." And it was fun. >> You see some of the like greatest hits, you have a good time. Same thing with the movies, you know. Um, but yeah. >> Yeah. >> I mean, all of us watch Trek because of the n, you know, next generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager. Yeah, very few of us grew up on on original series and and while I while I've seen all of the original series episodes, I've seen all the movies, um they're not they're not repeats for me. Uh like I appreciate them for what they were and the time period that they took place in. They don't hold up to modern storytelling, modern cinema, modern standards. It was very campy. It was very lowbudget. And that's fine. They're great. I I don't I've got a couple trash flicks that that I go back and watch all the time that are low-budget terrible movies. Hackers was a low-budget terrible movie that is one of the greatest films ever to be put one of the greatest movies ever to be put to film. Um that I will watch religiously two or three times a year. Um so I get watching a crapfest. Um, it's just the original series kind of a crapfest. Uh, TNG the first two seasons kind of a crapfest. >> There's a couple like alltime episodes in there, but like certainly by the time you get to seasons three, four, and five, which are literally just backtoback knockout episodes for three seasons straight, it's kind of like >> they they finally caught they they finally got their feet under them. They finally knew who the characters were, what they were doing, what stories they wanted to tell, what topics they wanted to tackle, and and they had really also figured out the how to film it and how to build your set pieces and and and how to create that suspension of disbelief for a TV show. It took him two seasons, though. >> Um, >> yeah, which was normal, man. All the shows back then were like that. XF Files is another >> great show that I don't think had a really good episode until season 3 in my opinion. >> Yeah, >> that's why it's so frustrating to watch shows get green lit. They do like one season of 10 episodes that took a year and a half to make and then the next season doesn't come out for three years. >> Mhm. and then they can it and it's like dude >> and it has a completely different director because he's off on some other project. Completely different, you know, crew. Half the cast doesn't return because blah blah blah. >> Um, >> yeah. And they wonder why, you know, TV isn't successful anymore. TV is a grind and you need the same people working on the same thing day in day out to make it successful. >> Um, >> I mean, there's really not any shows like that anymore where there's 26 episodes a year, >> right? you know, it's like they got to like move to wherever the show is filmed and have their lives there and like, >> you know, it's been a long time. >> One of the last that I can think of is probably Star Trek adjacent, which sounds weird, but a lot of the crew that was working on this show worked on DS9 and Voyager. That's Leverage. Uh, if you've never seen Leverage, it is a campy, low-budget crapfest of a TV show that is so near and dear to my heart that had Jerry Ryan in it when she left Voyager. >> Um, and and filmed in Portland. Uh, >> uh, they started set in Chicago. Uh, and they got so tired of trying to recreate Chicago landmarks or pay for licensing to Chicago landmarks, the crew moved to Portland and they just started shooting in Portland. Um, although the show was shot in Portland the whole time. >> Um, has episodes directed by Jonathan Franks and and Jerry Ryan and and you know, lots of lots of Star Trek alum and and producers that were working on on DS9 and Voyager. They worked on Leverage when they left. >> Go watch Leverage. It's so great. Now that Stargate is coming back, how many episodes will it be? That's a good question. >> Eight. That'll be three seasons spread out over 15 years. >> Yeah. >> You know, though, if anybody hasn't watched it yet, you know, uh I'm not super hot on TV shows much anymore, but uh I've been watching Night of the Seven Kingdoms, >> which is one of the like Game of Thrones spin-offs. >> Yeah. Yeah. It is so good. It's so great. It's, you know, if everybody was unhappy with the way Game of Thrones ended, if you were unhappy with House of the Dragon, like >> this is so different because it's not like epic where it's like tracking multiple plot lines. It's just like here's a homeless knight and watch him try not to be homeless anymore, you know? It's like it's like the opening premise is kind of like a night's tale, you know? >> Yeah. >> He's going to a tournament. His his knight just died. He's a squire. >> Yeah. >> And it's really good. It's Game of Thrones, so it's filmed very well, and it's actually really funny. It's very charming. >> That is such undiscovered material for so many different shows. And I wish I have said this so many times about TV in general, about the lifespan of TV shows that >> the story outgrows the premise where um >> yeah, >> Game of Thrones threaded the needle at least for six seasons um of telling this grand multiaceted hundred character story um where anyone could die at any moment. Stakes were never higher on a global scale every on at the crux of every episode. Um uh that's the exception. Most TV shows that fall off the rails, it's because the stories they want to tell start off. Let's look at Rick and Morty. Okay, Rick and Morty early seasons. It's Rick, it's Morty. We're gonna go gather these these seeds. They're really important to my work, Morty. And they go to this planet and he shoves seeds up Mort's butt. And then Morty goes crazy. And that's the story. That's the pilot episode of Rick and Mort. >> We're gonna go on adventures, Morty. >> Yeah. Okay. Um, by episode four. Yeah. I I I I guess I'm a father now because I this planet um like the the story they have to tell grows to the point that it it's too big to tell. The stakes are too high. >> Yeah, >> it should have just been Rick going on a stupid adventure with Morty and telling that story. Instead, it's every single episode, the fate of the galaxy hinges on the decisions that this madman scientist makes. And that wasn't the original premise. >> Yeah. >> Um, so many TV shows do this. I think that's why I don't like Star Trek Discovery, to be perfectly honest with you. is Star Trek up until Discovery. um even including DS9, even though DS9 told a really great overarching story >> was about one one crew, one captain, one ship trying to do something going on exploration missions and >> occasionally the fate of the universe depended on on a decision that Bquard made and sometimes, you know, Cisco would save the Federation, but it wasn't every goddamn episode. >> Yeah. And that's why Mandalorian was so good is here's just an outcast Mandalorian from a dying order trying to make a couple of bucks and eat dinner. Tell that story. >> Yeah. Yeah. that story is so much more engaging and and can branch out into so many more different areas um than the fate of the universe, you know, requires you to well, we know how it's going to end. He's going to save the universe, which means he's not in any peril. You've taken all the all the circumstances away that I'd be worried for this character. I know he's going to live. You're not going to kill, you know, Dindarjen. You're not going to kill Grou. Luke Skywalker I know lives. You're not going to kill all. You introduce so many characters that are literally immortal. >> Yeah. Serious. >> There's no peril there. But I I wonder if they're going to escape with their ship unscathed. Now we have stakes that we can talk about. I know he lives. Lower the stakes and now we have stakes that we can talk about. >> Yeah. I mean, I that's what made old TV work. Like, especially you think like I keep coming back to that era of like TNG of X Files. You're watching these things unfold and it's X-Files. Yeah, you're dealing with this big grand conspiracy. Does is the government know what's happening here? But no matter how close Moulder gets to the truth, he starts in the same place the next episode that he started this one. >> Yeah. and he's just going to keep going to work and keep solving mysteries and doing all that. Same thing with TNG. These people just wake up, >> go to work on board their starship. >> They start in the same place that they did the last time and we just get to see how these characters react to new situations every week. >> And sometimes there's an overarching little plot or an overarching little theme and it's really fun and it's really rewarding. It makes watching it all worthwhile. But the part of the reason I love TNG so much is because I want to see Picard give the speech at the end of the thing, solve the the thing, and go back to work the next day. >> At the end of the day, we're from two different worlds, but if we come together right now. [snorts] >> Yeah. And it's like there's stakes and they don't always feel like they impact the ship all that much, but they take the stakes seriously because it impacts other people, >> right? Yeah. It's it's when there's stakes that you don't know how they're going to end. That's the reason I think that Game of Thrones was so intriguing is every character was on the chopping block. like from the word go. Like, spoiler alert for a 10-year-old show. Sorry. Uh, you know, the story follows Ned Stark and then episode seven, they cut off his head. Where's the story go from here? >> That's great, >> right? It It was nothing off the table. Everyone has a stake. Everyone can be killed. Decisions have consequences that will build throughout the series. and you might meet your maker and you don't know when that's going to be. And so I think that's what made that show so great is at every single turn you felt legit peril for whatever that character was facing that character. This might be their last episode and you don't know that. With a syndicated TV show, they're rolling the opening credits. >> Those characters are going to live. It was national news when Tasha Yar died. Yeah, >> but the stakes aren't that high every single time in 24 or Westwing or or any of those other shows cuz no one's going to die. They're going to bring back the the main characters. So, what's the risk? >> Yeah. The other nice thing about Night of the Seven Kingdoms, Jeff, the episodes are all like 30 minutes long. >> Oh, I'm fully on board for that. >> It's good. You would really like it, dude. I was for the first time in years, I've already rewatched episodes. >> Wow. >> I never do that ever. >> I don't have time for that. Yeah. Um, like I I've been talking for the last two or three weeks about um uh cuz people have gone, "Oh, have you watched Night of the Seven Kingdoms or have you watched this or have you watched that yet?" Um, and I'm like, "Man, I haven't even started Fallout season 2 yet." >> Yeah, I haven't either. Uh my my wife wanted to rewatch Fallout season 1 so we could start season two and she'd be back caught up because she she's never played the games but she really really likes the story. Um, and and she goes, "The TV show is actually making me want to play the game." And I'm like, "Um, but uh, so I only get to watch like two hours of TV a week." And so for the last six weeks, I've been re-watching season 1. And we finally made it to season two. And actually this afternoon I got done posting a video and and we both went I have exactly an hour until I need to be at my next place. You want to watch episode seven? And so we're on episode seven of season 2. We have one episode to go. >> Nice. >> Um and so finally tomorrow I think we'll we'll cross Fallout season 2 off the list. Um I can finally get to I think Starfleet Academy is next on my list. Um not of the Seven Kingdoms has been on my list. Um, and there's so much in the backlog that I just have not had a chance. >> Yeah, I got I got to get to uh Fallout. I just I ditched my Amazon Prime subscription, so it's uh >> it's on my Plex. >> Oh, good. That was my next question. >> Good to know. [laughter] >> Yes, I do. Sweet. Well, >> I gotta get to Fallout. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> Yeah. Uh, we have Prime, but I I was uh we were kind of waiting to start it until the last episode dropped and so I could get it onto the Plex and then and then watch it. So, it's just so much more convenient. >> Yeah. >> Uh, yeah. Yeah, White Fang says again, "I I binge watched Fallout uh season 2 last week. It's so good. I have been really really liking it. I'm not going to spoil anything." Um, not spoiling characters, not spoiling prop plot points, but it has been so good and and I'm one episode away from finishing it. Wait, you guys are paying for subscriptions? I have Amazon Prime and so we by default have Prime Video. Uh, >> you know, you know what a crazy little secret about Amazon Prime I found? >> So, what's the main perk of Amazon Prime, right? You get two-day shipping. >> Yeah. >> I don't have Amazon Prime anymore. And yet, I seem to continually get twoday shipping even though I don't pay extra for it. >> Yeah. >> I take the option that's like, "Oh, yeah. It'll take five to seven days to get here." Oh, it's here early. Yep. >> 36 hours later. >> Yep. >> It's been pretty glorious. You all should think of it. Maybe it's because of my unique position close to like a distribution. >> We're close to a ve to two very major distribution centers. >> Yeah. >> We're we're equidistant from two of the of from the two largest in Oregon. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Well, that one in in Woodburn's like one of the biggest in the world or maybe just the country, but it's huge. I mean, >> um, but so maybe that's why, but I would encourage everybody to maybe just double check, you know, why pay for it if you just get it. >> Yeah, that's solid advice. >> Yeah, as an avid fan of Fallout, I really like what they have done with the TV series. They have done so much right with the TV series. It's very good >> both as far as storytelling, world building, uh show but don't tell elements. Um not needing to explain everything. Um uh I'm I am going to say one thing. It'll be pretty obvious. Obviously, super mutants exist in universe, right? They introduced a super mutant in season 2. They didn't they didn't even explain what it was or tell you anything about it. >> Um, he's just there. Doesn't I don't think they even say super mutant at any point in time. you don't even know what the thing is called, but you know there's a creature out there that feels kinship with ghouls and and he goes, you know, you and I should stick together and and the humans have been terrible to us kind of thing. And uh and that's all it is. Like they introduce a super mutant and then they immediately like hustle him back to the shadows. So they exist, but it's they don't hold your hand like with some voice over going like, "Oh yeah, super mutants were the product of the Enclave and genetic experiment that failed in 227 and they got out and they formed this whole community and they've hated humans ever since." And they don't do any of that. They just went, >> "Here's a super mutant. Enjoy." >> Good. Love that. >> That aspect of Fallout has been spectacular. Um, I feel real stakes every every with every decision, with everything that happens. Um, there have been so many callouts to the storytelling methods of Fallout. Um, of just just like the actor behavior of some things. Um there there was one scene with uh with a guy who's basically an NPC repeats the same line over and over as he's dying. >> Oh, I love that. >> Which is hilarious. >> That's funny. >> Um you know, he he's just walking through the Commonwealth, walking through the wasteland. Um uh beautiful day today, isn't it? Beautiful day today, isn't it? Like something like that. [laughter] >> Oh, yeah. And the Super Mutant was Ron Pearlman. >> Nice. >> Cuz of course it was. [laughter] Look, if anyone's going to play the Hellboy inspired character, it's got to be Hellboy. Okay. season one where Lucy just talks to an NPC while her gun is drawn pointing at them. Yeah. >> Like we all do in game, >> right? All right. Well, I know what I'm doing after the show. Yeah, that was a freaking good beer. >> I bet >> I needed that. And I'm glad we could uh kind of lighten the mood a little bit in chat. Look, I'm as disappointed by a lot of the new stories as you guys are. Um, this is going to be a rough year. The Steam Deck is out of stock because there's no storage or sto uh storage or memory available. Um, they are the first of many OEMs, vendors, system builders that is going to run into that. Um, Raspberry Pi prices have already increased because memory prices have increased. Um, don't expect a lot of new components to be announced this year. Nvidia's already been pretty clear they're probably not launching graphics cards this year. I I don't know if AMD is going to either. And roadmap wise, I don't think Intel is either. I don't think there's going to be new graphics cards this year at all. I don't think there's going to be new CPUs this year outside of Zen 6. I think we're going to see Zen 6. I think that's it. We're going to see an increased number of pre-builts, but pre-builts with inflated prices because storage and memory still cost them money to produce, but it's probably a lower price than you could do it yourself. And so already I've got a couple of pre-built reviews lined up because I think that's where the market is shifting to. Um, lower cost solutions are going to be in vogue. uh systems like minis forum uh doing mobile processors on ITX motherboards. I think that's going to be increasingly in vogue. You know, 7945HX with a motherboard for 400 bucks, whereas a 16 core processor on desktop would cost you 500 by itself and you get a free ITX board. That's $300 off. I think we're going to see that a lot more. Uh I think it was ASUS also launched a very similar product where they had built their own board with a mobile Intel processor and a small RTX 560 that they're selling as a pre-built. Um, we're going to see a lot more of that, lower price silicon with lower memory values and an increased emphasis on APU type systems. Uh, handhelds gonna go up in price. Cell phones are going to go up in price. Cars are going to become low stock because infotainment units use storage and memory, which is what killed the car market in 2020 and 2021 was unavailability of electronics and and processes for that. It is not going to be a fun year. And the thing that sucks is it's entirely self-inflicted. Not by us, but by the companies that make this [ __ ] Stick around. I'm going to be doing plenty of budget builds. I'm going to be doing plenty of old school builds. Hell, this might become a retro channel for a while. I don't know. We're still going to be doing server stuff. We're still going to be doing self-hosted stuff. Maybe there will be a self-hosted Discord alternative that that we point everyone to within the next six months. But one thing's for sure, it's going to be a long year. And I'm sorry. I wish I had better news. [sighs] If you've made it to this point in the episode, leave a comment for me. Not in chat, but if you're watching this on VOD, leave me a comment down below. What kind of content do you guys want to see? I've been looking at doing a lot of game optimization content. I've been looking at doing a lot of budget build content, a lot of, you know, AliExpress as as Home Lab Hazards chimes in with $2 DDR3 Supremacy. Uh, I've been looking at doing some DDR3 builds. I've been looking at doing a whole bunch of of other off-the-wall things, things that will keep us busy and interested and engaged. But I'll be honest, I don't have thousand budgets for for videos on this channel. And companies are increasingly no longer having thousand budgets for videos on this channel either. So, software tutorials are definitely on the list. Pre-built uh reviews are definitely on the list. Um, Scrapyard War style builds definitely on the list. Uh Jay says, "Very interested in Cascade Lake home lab possibilities. Not with DDR4 pricing. You're not. You want 64 gigs. That's $1,000." That's great that you got the CPU for 100 bucks and the board for $300. That That's amazing. It's $1,000 for 64 gigs of memory and you didn't even fill out memory channels yet. It's going to be a long year. So, >> yay. >> Jeeoff going back to X58. I won't go back that far. Uh, Nalmir, look, they had their time in the sun and they run at the temperature of the sun. Uh, which is great, but X79, every X79 CPU performs better than the Halm did. Um, and there's some X99 options that run on DDR3, which we have some of those in the pipeline. So, stay tuned. Yeah, DDR2 will rise again. Man, if I have to go back to DDR2, I might just shut the channel down. Look, I still have 16 gigs or 16 sticks of FB DIMs on the shelf [snorts] if a project ever came around that was interesting enough to put DDR2 FB DIM 800 modules into. But so help me if I have to use them. [snorts] Okay, so prices have calmed down slightly uh because Jay says uh 64 gigs, 259 on eBay. Uh here's a 2x32 for $215. That's still $4 a gigabyte. Here's a single 64 gig dim for 285. Here's one that's selling new for 650. DDR4 3200 210 227 217 275 275. Not even match sticks. He's got three out of four. Yeah. Okay. So, not quite as bad. Rambus will rise again. I already made that joke earlier this week. Thank you. Uh, last super chat and then we'll we'll cut everyone off and I'll let RC go pee. Uh, HomeLab Hazards $5. Can't believe Craft Computing uh is making slot one content again. Rambus will be the clear winner at the end of these wars. I'm coming back, baby. [sighs] Zeus, to you I will say, do not recite the old magic. I was there when it was written. [laughter] [sighs and gasps] If he's clothing slot one, that is before he was born. Zeus is a 478 baby, so [snorts] Anyway, thank you all so much for watching episode 421 on Talking Heads. Sorry to be a bummer. I'm also a realist. It goes with the package. Join us every Wednesday night at 600 p.m. Pacific time for the latest in beer and tech news right here on YouTube. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already. Drop this video a like. Leave us a comment. Like I said, what do you want to see on this channel? what interests you right now that might also interest me. And that second point is important. If you tell me to do Docker swarms and whatnot, I'm out. I'm sorry. That's that's not my jam. I I don't care. Uh but if you want to see like weird esoteric hardware, if you want to see AliExpress builds, if you want to see uh you know, Scrapyard reviews, I'm your guy. What do you want to see? Let me know. Uh Rhett, anything good of the order before we close? >> No, nothing for the good of the order. You can always find what I'm doing with my podcast, uh dndpodcast.org. Um or I'm posting updates about things I'm putting out over my Kofi blog, kofi.comawesome. Otherwise, just vibing, you know, living working through the apocalypse, you know. So [snorts] >> maybe this is a great opportunity for us all to explore our old Steam libraries and just play those. >> Hell yeah. That's the attitude. >> Yeah, >> let's do it. Y'all ever heard of Morowind? [laughter] >> Let me let me tell you the good news. [laughter] [cough] >> Yeah. No, I I've been noodling around different content ideas around uh like game optimization. Like, hey, do you want to play the latest games, but you think your graphics card's a little too out of date? Drop those settings to high, you son of a b. Play at 1080p. Like, it doesn't have to be 4K ultra to get the best gaming experience. You can play a game on anything. And so, maybe we'll start doing some comparisons between new and older CPU architectures. Maybe we'll do some some X99 or even X79 hell with like an RTX5090 installed. Like, let's get weird and [snorts] let's see if you're actually missing something. Let let's take uh a 2667 V2 against a 9850X3D and let's see what you're actually missing at 4K. Like, let's get weird, but let's play games. Let's not forget why we're in this. Let's not forget why we're enthusiasts. We're enthusiasts because we love hardware, but most of us like playing games and tinkering with hardware. That's not exclusive to new, brand new hardware that's now exponentially expensive. You can do it with anything. So, let's remember why we're here. >> Let's do it. >> That's going to do it for me. Thank you all so much for watching. Like, subscribe, all the things. Uh, join the Patreon. patreon.com/craftcomputing. Buy me a beer. Get access to the Discord. It's a great time. Hang out with me and join us in the afterparty, which I am going to be going into in about two or three minutes time. Until next week, we'll see you later. >> All right. >> I don't know why I kicked you off the stream right there. There we go. Okay, cool. >> Why not? >> Good night, everyone. >> Cheers. [snorts] Not doing it this time. I'm growing. [laughter] >> Is that also in the meter contract? >> Yeah. Like you got to stop that thing you do. >> You got to stop that thing you do. [laughter]

Thanks to Meter for sponsoring this episode! Check out their full network stack, and book a demo today at http://meter.com/craftcomputing. Wallets, Coffee Tumblers, Pint Glasses and more available at https://craftcomputing.store Welcome to Talking Heads, your once weekly show about everything happening in the world of tech, computers, gaming, craft beer and cocktails. Check out this episode in Podcast form over at https://open.spotify.com/show/31ZxkU6RwPHG8A4jQjxSG3 Support us on Patreon or Floatplane and get access to our exclusive Discord server. Chat with all of the hosts from Talking Heads all week long. https://www.patreon.com/CraftComputing http://www.floatplane.com/channel/CraftComputing Want to fuel Craft Computing? Parts, beer, gifts? I've got a mailbox! Craft Computing 1567 Edgewater St NW, #51 Salem, OR 97304 Follow Jeff on Bluesky @Craftcomputing.bsky.social Follow Rett on Bluesky @rettisawesome.com On tonight's show... Private Schools are vibe-teaching… https://www.404media.co/students-are-being-treated-like-guinea-pigs-inside-an-ai-powered-private-school/ La Liga (Spain) wins court order requiring VPNs to block illegal football streams https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/la-liga-wins-court-order-requiring-nordvpn-and-proton-vpn-to-block-illegal-football-streams-in-spain-but-vpn-firms-say-they-have-not-been-notified The Steam Deck OLED is out of stock. Yep, no RAM or Storage available. https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/valve-breaks-its-silence-on-steam-deck-oled-scarcity-and-yes-its-because-of-the-ram-and-storage-crisis/ Discord trying to defend their age verification as people cancel Nitro subscriptions https://www.techradar.com/computing/social-media/discord-tries-to-share-clarity-on-disastrous-age-verification-plans-amid-mass-cancellations-but-safe-to-say-its-not-helping-its-getting-thoroughly-community-noted Nvidia to unveil chips “the world has never seen before”. Isn’t that the point of an unveiling? https://wccftech.com/nvidia-ceo-to-unveil-chips-that-the-world-has-never-seen-before/