Episode: 4139
Title: HPR4139: HPR New Years Eve Show 2023 - 24 ep 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4139/hpr4139.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 20:14:41

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4139 for Thursday the 13th of June 2024.
Today's show is entitled, HP or New Year's Eve Show 2023-24th 1.
It is hosted by Hong Kimagoo and is about 120 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, the HP or community comes together to converse.
All right, now I got a recording going.
How is my audio, by the way? I'm doing audio through the phone
because trying to, the same problem I had last year where broadcasting through a mumble,
I can hear everything else that's on it except for me.
So from anything to be heard through the stream or then with the recording because I record the stream,
I have to record out, I have to speak on something else.
You're lit up, but I can't hear you in the minor.
Oh, about now.
Yep.
Oh yeah.
Well, when I mute it, when I denied Jitzi Audio, it must have killed the full system.
Whoops.
So I had to log out and come back.
I wondered what Logbox was like.
He's got such a cute little face.
Well, he could have put Buster up.
All right, so this thing officially starts about five minutes.
Yeah, I presume you were doing the intro, etc, etc.
Sure.
Yeah, you got to make some sort of announcement or other.
Sure.
I may mute myself from time to time while I'm listening to other media.
So we don't get naughty letters from people.
Good plan.
Mr. Magoo.
Yes, sir.
You need to check your watch.
So what?
22 seconds.
15, 14, 13, 12, 11.
Welcome to the 12th annual free culture,
Hacker Public Radio and free culture, 26-hour open podcast.
I'm not sure how you want to call it.
Listen, if anyone who's ever listened to the lug cast knows I have a script that I win through every single day.
Well, every other twice a month for the past was it since 2014.
So maybe years don't ask me to do math this time in the morning.
And I still mess it up every time or just kind of wing it.
So for those listening for the first time, this is basically just going to be a long recording
where people come on and talk and say hello and we talk tech and Linux and other sorts of wonderful things.
And it all gets recorded, it all gets edited.
And then I will edit the audio.
And then hopefully my partner is in crime, lovecraft and some guy on the internet will help me with the show notes.
And then hopefully before July, we'll get it all out and then published on Hacker Public Radio.
Actually, wouldn't we get it out last year?
I think it was before July.
Not too bad, but it went down for a while because there was quite a lot of, quite a lot of episodes sort of split down to about two hours each.
And there, because it was at the weekend, there was a lot of people and it went on for a bit.
So it's time.
It's also, I also get feedback that it's nice in the middle of the summer to get discussions about how the year is going to be when you're halfway through it.
Yeah, yeah.
Maybe we should call it the world round table since we're not doing the, the happy new year stuff.
It's a world round table, I like that hair.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Yes, the round the world round table.
Oh, this round table is missing a coffee, so I'll do a good one.
Okay.
Now, honky, that's an announcer's voice.
Yes.
Well, I should copyright that phrase.
I'm sure somebody's going, I will make millions from the rights.
Absolutely.
Well, you know, what can you do?
I think I have the notes upstairs.
Some years ago, I picked up some rights, those rights marks almost worth as much as a CSA dollar.
So do you want to bring anything for the whole day?
Just talk to your brother at all.
Yeah, talk to my brother.
He was a little busy.
He had his, uh, his, uh, stepdaughter is spending the week until tomorrow night with him and in Montana.
It's probably about the 11 degrees out there or something.
I haven't checked it, but he's been getting a little snow and cold.
Is your mic on your little pillow or something?
Yeah, there's a static back from the mic.
It's wondering what that was.
It sounds like it's rubbing up against clothing or something.
That was to net minor tough.
Sorry, this is not my usual headset.
And, uh, evidently, it's, this is the left-handed unit.
The headset that I use is, uh, usually right-handed.
He sounded a lot better now.
How old is his stepdaughter?
Who was that end-detinent minor?
He's not responding at least on mine.
No, he's not responding on mine.
I didn't see if he let it or not.
Am I using with this?
Yes, I am.
Monster, uh, decided to horn in on things.
Yeah, this, this headset's not my usual one.
It's a left-handed version.
Uh, so when I tried to position it as I usually do, it was rubbing my coat.
Oh, I had to.
Yeah, this is a secondary system.
So I got a secondary headset on it and, uh,
it's just a little different.
I mean, it's a nice headset and everything.
I'm just, just that I'm not used to using it, especially with the mic.
Gotcha.
Now, do you go out to eat at all?
Uh, usually, I just bring my pizza home and stuff.
I don't go out to eat much.
Is there anywhere good to eat in, like, walking distance, sir?
Well, there are some nice restaurants here, but, uh,
I, uh, money is pretty tight.
So, so I tend to rely on 7-Eleven, uh, 7-Eleven pizza as my treat.
Uh, peanut butter sandwiches or cereal are my staples.
Yeah, Medicaid cost me about 200 bucks a month, rather,
because they decided anyone who had money in the bank didn't need their services anymore.
Yeah, they said my income was okay.
I just couldn't put any of it in the bank.
You were talking about, was it this year?
You were able to retire?
I'm not officially retired.
I'm still on disability, but Medicare decided to stiff anyone who was 65 and had money in the bank.
And according to a friend of mine, there are other cuts coming.
I guess, uh, I mean, Biden has to fund the $1,400 stimulus check somehow.
And it looks like one way he's going to do it is by cutting food stamps and other services.
So he can be generous and give you your own money back.
I didn't hear anything about stimulus. We're going to hear stimulus.
Well, he floated a $1,400 stimulus thing, but he may have to cut back on other programs so that he can afford to buy votes with the money that he's saving.
I mean, we are funding the Ukraine's retirement system so we can't fund our own.
If I were an untrustworthy individual, I would think that part of the A to Ukraine, uh, well, let's say I suspect some of it has a loopback interface.
You can play with the pies at all?
It's still running a generic Pio S on one pie. I have one pie.
It's, it's kind of shut down at the moment because I was going to make some changes.
Um, there is a MX Linux modified Pio S that that I may load later on.
But for YouTube, I've been just using plain Pio S since it seems to be the most reliable system at the moment.
And, uh, according to the pie foundation, the web browsers, chromium and Firefox on Pio S are the most pie optimized browsers available.
Are you using the, uh, was it the pie 400 at all?
My pie 400, uh, has flaky power connector or flaky power issues. I'm not using that.
That sucks.
Well, that's, that's why I'm very glad that I got an eight gig pie.
And, well, the one that I'm using with my web browser is an eight gig pie, which, which is to say it is a 1.8 gigahertz base clock machine, which works pretty well.
It can get overloaded with too many, um, tabs open and run for too long, but it isn't too bad.
Well, how many tabs open is too many tabs open?
Uh, 20 or so probably.
How many?
I tend to really load it up so I can probably have 20 tabs open, maybe two browsers.
We're talking 10 or 40 or 40.
Uh, we're, we're talking maybe 10 plus on each, each browser. Also, they tend to be video.
Um, I'm not running the video, but the video images may, may just load it up too much, something.
Does it crash on you?
Um, if it gets upset, it's usually a freeze.
But then I just hit the Windows button that is to say the little powers, which, um, that I have in line.
And it reboots and you go on from there.
Actually, I've been having more trouble with my audio on a mini PC.
Uh, periodically, the audio just cuts out on the many PCs that you got on one particular one.
Yes. And, uh, then I just, I have to re-initialize the audio.
I don't know.
It's, it's a really weird bug.
It, it, I can be running for an hour or better.
And then it just starts cutting out.
What do you have installed on that one?
That's, uh, that one I have MX Linux.
Um, I haven't tried installing anything else.
Uh, and I'm running MX on this system.
And I'm having so far, I haven't had any problems.
Although I do, uh, need to put its summer case on.
What's the summer case?
Um, the summer case would, would, uh, mount on this G3, the I7 well ventilated case lid.
Uh, this has got an I5 in it and the case is solid.
The I7 case has two large areas of perforations for better cooling.
Unfortunately, my second generation machines, uh, minis only have the solid case.
The third generation, they improve the cooling somewhat.
Also, I've got a question about, I was given a new monitor.
Well, new to me monitor, uh, but it was delivered on a rainy day without any coverage.
It got pretty wet, but I think it's dried out since then.
I was wondering how risky it is to try, try to hook it up.
Well, the only I could say is sure it's as dry as it could possibly be,
that there's not like some lingering water inside of it anywhere.
It's putting it upside down on its side, whatever.
Make sure it's fully dry before you plug it in.
It could be fine though.
Yeah, it was definitely from a recyclable.
So, and I've just been a little wary about hooking up to any of the machines I care about.
Well, I don't think it's going to hurt the machine that it's attached to.
I think it'll just fry once you get some power to it.
At that point, it's, um, I don't have the model information.
I haven't really looked it up, but it's a rather, uh, rather interesting monitor in it.
It has HDMI VGA and, uh, a range of RCA, uh, multi-media connections.
That sounds cool.
Well, uh, I mean, uh, the VGA or HDMI are nice.
Um, the multi-media stuff, I'm not so much interested in.
I don't, don't have a working, um, DVD player, whatnot to harness that stuff.
But it, it has a full, uh, I don't know, six RCA jacks for, you know, for different, uh,
not composite R, it's, it's in individualized RCA connections, not, not composite.
Interesting.
I was set up for multiple sources.
So like you can plug a VGA into it and then swap the change between like the VGA and HDMI and one of the RCA's.
Kind of like a TV.
Uh, yeah, it, um, it has a rigid mount.
But the top row on top of the monitor is a whole row of, uh, different buttons.
Uh, yeah, I mean, it's been in the house for close to a month, a month.
I'll have to think about it.
Uh, and I'll think about seeing if I want to park it on a radiator or something just to dry up just for the last, any last moisture.
Sure, how much longer will it be on this morning?
A bit up since, that kind of been up since about 230.
Well, I may go, go into a listening watch because, uh, if you leave our conversation, um, so it goes away, uh, it's true.
You know, and I can be out here just waiting for the next one to show up.
Uh, especially a lot of the reasonable people are still snuggle up to.
A warm partner.
Yeah, I got a, I'm working on a reply to a comment on sight, uh, CDC Pascal, which I used in college in the 80s.
Uh, it was a bit of a barrier to use because our system really wasn't well supported.
No good editor and the compiler itself was a command line compiler.
Also our, uh, instructor was an expert in her field and she quite frankly left a second, um, second year computer science people completely in her dust.
She would give us a project with a little bit of a hint on what she wanted.
But we were also, we were trying to learn Pascal and trying to decipher what, what she wanted in each module to be.
And we couldn't understand a lot of it.
So a lot of the projects, uh, well, the project, the final project that it passed had a lot more of Xerox in it than it did IBM.
All right, I only go away for a little bit.
Try to take a map.
Archer.
Net minor.
Yep.
All right.
Just unmuting, uh, after turning off, uh, some audio that would get us in trouble.
Hi.
The doubts in no one from time.
Happy New Year.
Nice to hear you all.
Okay.
Nice to hear from you too.
Well, it's been pretty quiet this morning.
Hunky was on earlier, but he was taking a nap.
Ken was here, but he wandered off to get coffee.
And I'm just minding the store, uh, been muted so we don't get into any, uh, copyright strike troubles.
We went up in the mountains yesterday, uh, several kilometers to look at, uh, waterfalls.
And I'm in so much pain today.
And then today we went to, uh, uh, mineral waters, uh, hot springs and manmade hot springs and spa.
Oh, and we got to see the death train in Thailand.
Death train.
Yeah, people walk on the train.
It's one track and trains come both directions.
And, uh, I thought it was called the death train because people get killed on it.
Um, but it's called the death train because between 100,000 and 250,000 forced laborers died building the rail rails, uh, the nearby Thai railway.
That would be what World War II.
Yes.
Yeah, it looked like there was an unexploded bomb that they had built, uh, like as a display.
Like they put concrete around it so it wouldn't fall over.
Um, uh, we didn't go around and read what it said.
We were walking from behind.
There's also a little cave with some, uh, with a giant Buddha and other, um, idols or statues in there and, and some bats.
Well, can't have a proper cave without bats.
Exactly.
Yeah, well, yeah, that's, uh, yeah, well, that's the Japanese winning friends wherever they go.
Anyway, uh, did the spa help?
This spa was very nice, but my legs still hurt.
I can't, I can't walk, step up or step down.
It is excruciatingly painful.
Well, it's, I'm sorry to hear you're hurting.
I mean, uh, yeah, well, leaves you got a pretty nurse.
Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, it's, it's, um, understand.
I'm just out of shape and that was way too much of a workout.
But yeah, yeah, well, I'll keep walking while I'm here.
I was in really good shape when I got home last year, too.
Yeah, well, yeah, you just gotta keep, keep working on that, walking around and, uh, hopefully you'll be back on the home front of together before too long.
Yeah.
Um, did I tell you about walking all the way to the train station?
No, I don't think so.
I haven't got one.
So, but she tells me the train station is right across the street or right down the street.
And I'm like, okay, so I go to get on the train and I'm walking down the street.
And I was like, I'm pretty sure she said it was right around here and I stopped and asked somebody.
And he goes, oh, yeah, it's way down this road.
It was actually, I just passed it.
It was on the opposite side of the street.
So I walk, it's like six or seven kilometers down the road.
And I'm like, that is not a close train station.
I was like, whatever.
So I start walking in about halfway through I get a taxi and go the rest of the way because it was super hot.
And then I'm downtown and I bought some jeans and some stuff I needed.
This was like a couple days after I arrived.
I figured out how to get the card for the train and all this stuff.
And I went to the exit to the train station I got on.
I drove back to that one and got off and started walking.
And GPS took me the wrong direction.
And I was like going down these alleys in Bangkok and then got stuck with no way to get out.
And some guy was yelling at me and Thai.
And then all the dogs down the street woke up and started barking at me.
I walked past them the first time and they were all asleep.
And after the guy yelled at me, all the dogs were working at me.
I ended up walking seven or eight kilometers all the way back home.
And then I was like, the train station is not near the house and it's far away.
And she goes, no, it's right there.
Now I feel stupid.
I was walking and he and I was like, I'm so mad at her.
I thought I was going to, when I got back to the house, it was so hot.
I was drenched and sweat.
My jeans were soaked. My socks were soaked.
My heart was pounding. I thought I was going to die.
And then I couldn't be up. It was my fault.
And Google's. Google didn't even have the train station to stop on it.
I'm going to have to add it.
Oh, well.
Well, I hope you enjoy the New Year's holiday.
If you don't in that company are well, I don't know what to say.
We are.
Grab seven bags to Bangkok.
I think we have a little later.
You're breaking up a little bit.
Over three hours and a good old party with.
You're very broken up, but it's nice to hear your voice and even nicer to hear L's voice.
Thank you.
I have to say your son.
Well, I got the pictures and most of them are pretty good.
There's more on the blog.
Yeah, could you send me a link to that blog or I may have misled the old one.
Are you on?
I sent it from my account.
Some very beautiful country.
Yeah.
Of course, it's even more beautiful with L.
Thank you.
You make me smile.
Smile.
Well, that's the best I can do with this range.
I'm sure Robert has his own ways of making you smile.
Oh, please.
It's so sweet.
Yeah, that reminds me of some of the country where my dad is from, down in West Virginia
where they have the valleys like that with the rocks uncovered up at the top.
Well, the rocks that's then thing about which Virginia is like Thailand here.
Yeah, that reminds me of some places I've seen.
Of course, it's not near as warm and everything year round like it is in your country.
Yeah, I think the lowest temperatures is hit here has been about 70.
And the highest been about 96.
And it's been averaging high 80s most of the time way too hot for me.
Oh, goodness.
Those rivers are amazing streams, whatever they are.
I see the fish.
That's the one thing that's bad about my dad's country is old coal mines have polluted the rivers
so that there's no fishing for literally hundreds of miles.
Yeah, I have some friends that are anti mining and that's one of the things that they always talk about
is how it destroys the wildlife and the fish and the water.
Well, a lot of it was what happened was the old were talking 19th century deep mines tapped into bad water.
So water with lots of sulfur and stuff in it.
The mining stuff done today and taken care of is not it is is a completely different animal from from the rubber bearing times.
My grandfather was a strip miner machine operator and strip mine owner eventually.
And they have to do a lot more remediation than they did in the old days.
Putting the land back to a more usual usable and natural state.
And they do a pretty good job.
A lot of the farms that I was I saw when I was a kid were former strip mines properties.
One of the pictures I took from the hotel across the river was a resort that went out of business before they were done building it.
And it's for sale right now right on the river quiet.
There were also some some signs there's huge amount of farmland right there along the river that's for sale also full of cassava trees.
Sugar cane rice and something else but very beautiful everywhere was really beautiful this weekend.
Robert I should really send send the link to your and else email to the Newark Department of Tourism.
I mean if she moved there the place would be much more beautiful.
Did you hear about the Polish hackers and the train?
No I haven't heard about that.
Nope.
I think it just hit the news there's a group of Polish hackers that were helping with this train.
A billion dollar electric train that's a brick and they fixed it and they revealed to the government.
They tracked and showed where the company that sold the billion dollar train bricked it so they would have to buy another one.
They sent a kill switch to it so the government would have to buy a new billion dollar train.
And they sent all that information to the government.
The government didn't do anything and they published it.
And I think now they've been arrested under DMCA violation stuff specifically for leaking the news.
I suspect somebody will step in.
I hope so.
Oh you got the link on Minix gave for the original Compusers facility.
I think so it was in the element chat.
Well I got it by email but you probably put it in element as well.
Compusers actually it was running PDP 10 computers.
These are 36 bit word machine and Compusers actually made some money by making hardware for their PDP 10s and selling it to other PDP 10 users.
The original PDP 10 used a linear power supply, the old old school type.
Compusers made a lot of money selling huge switching power supplies like a modern PC uses to these mainframe customers.
I think I've seen that.
Also somebody was speccing out a data center using PDP 10 machines up in Montreal.
And they looked at it.
They were putting this in a warehouse and they realized they didn't have to have an air conditioning heating system.
The computers would provide enough waste heat to heat their warehouse in a Canadian winter.
Well yeah got down to the picture of all eating toast best picture of toast that I've seen in a while.
Robert if you're still on could you send me a link of the pictures.
Your original website with the pictures of L and mint.
Yes I can. I'm actually going to turn that into a blog that L can just update all time.
I'll send that in a minute.
I'm finishing the update for the New Year's Eve and mineral springs.
I have tons of pictures to upload from today.
No no rush just that I've lost your original links and you know and I'd really like to get those images full size.
Hey more and see how are things doing this out of the world.
Everything's going good honky.
Very very tired.
L's more tired. She's driving.
We have another two and a half hours to get back to Bangkok.
Hi honky.
Hello drive safe.
What time is it over there?
How much for her?
Happy New Year.
Thailand is going to be happy New Year.
7 p.m.
Cool. Happy New Year.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I have a lot of that on my hand.
We went up a mountain at a national park to see all these waterfalls yesterday and it was way too much walking up and down a mountain.
Climbing climbing and then today we went we were going down the river quiet and we went to a hot mineral spa.
That sounds fun.
Yup.
Robert's back in the Thai life again.
My mumble crashed.
Okay.
I will repeat.
Robert's back in the Thai life again.
Yeah.
It's part of my ash burgers.
Autism to be literal minded.
It is a feature or a bug depending on your view.
You are going home to crash.
You are going to go back there and find something else to do for your New Year's Eve celebration.
She is driving us back to Bangkok.
I think we are going to go to her brother-in-law's for a New Year's Eve party.
Maybe.
Just for your information.
It is just a few minutes before sunrise.
It is after 7 a.m. here.
So you are just about exactly on the other side of the world.
You said you were looking before you were looking into Diapai.
If you wanted to run any of the servers they have available.
I really haven't.
On the pies.
I am seriously thinking of getting the MX-Pio-S and trying that out.
I will have to see how that works.
In second beta.
If it is based on Pio-S it should be pretty solid.
Agreed.
The MX is usually pretty stable based on Debian.
Would you put it on the 8GB?
Yeah.
Just the 8GB.
Or the 8GB.
I have two.
I would put it on the 8GB.
I have got a 2GB that is just used as an apt cache machine at the moment.
Which does come in handy.
It is now only caching my MX boxes.
But it does a nice job.
The only thing that may be a little odd is about MX-Pio-S is that Pio-S defaults to
Wayland.
So I don't know if that is what MX-Pio is going to do or not.
You think you would notice a difference though?
I don't know.
I do know that it has been a little strange.
YouTube has got a recent review of MX-Pio XFCE from last week.
Or at least a quick intro.
So I may take a look at that.
Does MX have a non-system D version?
Yeah.
Part of your selection at boot time is whether you run System D or just a Shim that
fakes it.
I'm running System D.
But there is still an option although it isn't pushed as hard as it used to be.
I'm going to mute myself a little bit and then check out this MX-23 on Pio.
Otherwise we could get in trouble.
Well folks, I think I'm in love.
MX-Pio is MX-FCE-Pio which is exactly what I like.
I don't know.
I presume that they're going to be running the same optimized web browsers.
But I'm definitely going to be trying it out.
Good.
I want a full report by the next look test.
I will have to see what we can do about getting it downloaded and written.
So I do have a 120 gig SSD that is now unused.
And I'm sure that that will be a nice home for MX and all my other stuff.
Do you have the size of the images?
I don't know what the size of the images.
I do know that the Pio is not that big.
The nice thing about MX, Linux and Pio is that they're all now bookworm based.
The MX website says you need a 16 gig or bigger USB or flash drive.
Yeah, that makes sense.
They default to Chromium as a faster starting web browser on Pyhardware.
I used to multi-chromium on most systems.
Well, I've been using a mix.
I've been using also, you may want to look into Thorium.
You still using Thorium?
Yeah, I'm using, I use a mix of browsers depending on the system.
Thorium, Chromium, WaterFox, and I use FireFox.
Now, one of the nice things that I found is the group speed dial that I use with FireFox is also available on Chromium.
So I can get all of my well thumbnail bookmarks, translate to whatever system I'm running.
I just have to install the right extension.
Have you played anymore with that HTML5 web page bookmark system you were looking to try to do?
I haven't worked on that myself.
I've been working with a bookmark extension instead, but I'll have to get back to that.
I'm really wondering about the Py-5, but I don't know if it will be something I can afford.
I don't know if I've looked in the pricing of the Py-5.
I would probably go for the 8GB again, and if you have to go pretty much demands active cooling and a higher powered power supply.
But then again, it might be a nice birthday present.
Also, with all the other stuff that I've already gotten for the Py-4, it would slip in seamlessly.
By the way, the latest MX-py respin was issued on the 30th of December.
Hey, you know it's up to date.
It's your first boot.
It does the user set up on first boot, so it is configured more like a PyOS than the X86 stuff, but I've dealt with that before.
Not too bad.
The PyOS's are inherently single-disc, so they're a little different from your X86 stuff.
Now with the MX tools, you may be able to add other partitions, but out of the box, the PyOS tends to be single-disc with all the partitions expanded accordingly.
As part of your startup.
My children were amused by the true lug button.
Yeah, well, Danny...
Well, anyone who knows Danny knows that he's a big kid at heart.
They asked if the lugbot talks, and I'm like, ah, not really.
What lugbot says is inappropriate.
And it's usually because it was ticked and by Danny.
By the way, honky, there's some interesting news on the emulation ancient deck machine front.
Somebody has dug up and a PDP-6 operating system.
36-bit machine.
Its memory protection is largely a bounds register, no virtual memory on the original.
It was one of the original MIT artificial intelligence machines.
Volunteers typed in 133 pages of ancient assembler twice to make certain that they didn't have any typos.
Ah, it sounds miserable.
Hello, Archer.
Well, I'm going to be on the side here muted.
Looks like the kill silence module will be working over time this year.
Yeah, usually does.
Good morning, anybody who's out there.
Hello, this is Raymond.
Good morning, folks.
Good morning, Raymond.
I didn't see his keys, though.
I just heard you used the voice.
Ah, it's honky Mugu.
Well, it's good to hear you.
It sounded like it's just about time to say happy New Year, somebody, right?
I don't know.
We're really not doing that this year.
Oh, really?
It's really good.
The mate, that's good.
That got pretty confusing, confusing.
Yeah, it was a mess last year.
I remember way late in the night when a few people might have had something to drink and got confused.
My thing was, it always seemed to just people would stop the middle of a conversation or interrupt a conversation,
just be able to say happy New Year to somebody and then interrupt in the flow of everything.
So this year, we're going to go without.
Well, I guess that'll be all right, too.
It didn't bother me.
I thought that was sort of interesting from time to time.
You kind of keep up with places on the map.
You don't think about it very often.
That is good.
I think it might have been good if it was like a just a side note during it, as opposed to, like I said, it felt like it got forced into like it.
Like I said, it interrupted conversations, just be able to say it.
I thought that was the whole purpose.
Like we say talk for 58 minutes and then go away.
Oh, we missed it.
Well, unfortunately, we had trouble keeping track of the Zulu time and our local times.
So Hunky and I are in Eastern time.
Also, some of those time zones were kind of weird.
There were half hour offsets, not just hour offsets.
Yeah, I don't think I even knew that until a few years ago.
It may have even been one of these midnight things, that these HPR things that got me to even realize that were half hour increments in places.
I know I haven't known that forever, but you've got to have time zones, but once an hour would be okay with me.
And I'd be just fine if they didn't do daylight savings time also.
Yeah, I'm with you.
Or if they want to shift it and then leave it, shift it.
Yeah, I guess I have to think about that.
I don't guess it matters now.
I'm retired.
I stopped wearing a wristwatch years ago.
And so it doesn't make much difference what time it is.
I wake up when it gets light enough to wake me up and I go to bed when I get tired.
You should really go to bed.
Well, yeah, I'm up at all hours, although nearly a decade working midnight to eight.
And toward the end of my work experience, I was working 64 hour weeks.
So I was working about every hour God made.
And until we lost the contract.
Yeah, over the years, I guess you'd do the different shifts.
When I was in the army, I worked the year where we did a week of days, then a week of evenings, and then a week of nights.
And then a week of days and a week of evenings.
And then I had a job when I was in my twenties, I guess, where I worked Sunday day, Monday Tuesday evenings, Wednesday, Thursday nights.
And then I was off until Sunday.
So, you know, you can, there's all sorts of ways to do it.
And it didn't make much difference back then, probably, whether it was daylight savings or not.
Well, I was, yeah, I hadn't worked midnight to eight, except Friday nights.
I had a 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. shift to cover this residential condo complex.
And back in the day, I used to do that patrol that 16 hour shift.
I didn't particularly like to do the gate house work, so I would do a constant patrol of the site more or less.
Yeah, 16 hours is way too long.
I always thought 12 hour shifts were too long.
I would go a 10 hour shift to get, if I could do shorter weeks or get an extra long weekend every other weekend or something,
but even 12 hour shifts to me seems like too much.
Yeah, my brother was working a role in Mill, and I guess they had a rolling schedule as well, but it was pretty nasty.
Now he's a trucker, and that's, that schedule is crazy.
Well, depending on who you work for or rather what you do, I guess truckers sometimes can make their own schedule,
but they often have to hit deliveries before a certain time or after a certain time or not during lunches and things like that.
So it just depends on if you're talking across country, kind of stuff they can often go when they want to if they're independent.
Well, nowadays, everything's electronic logs, and they have two or three clocks that are running simultaneously at the time.
You have one clock, 70 hours is the maximum driving time in a week.
There is an 11 hour, which is maximum driving time per day, and then there is a forced break after so many hours that also goes in there a half hour break that they have to take.
And all of this is now managed by electronic systems, no paper logs anymore.
And oftentimes my brother will run short on his 70 hour clock, and they have to take 36 hours off to or 34 hours off to do a to reset the 70 hour clock.
And some of their planning is a little weird as far as speed.
Well, it's certainly, I think it's good that they can't cheat as easily as I used to.
I used to work with a guy who had been a truck driver and he talked about all the ways they cheated the company owner by messing with the mileage and messing with the fuel.
And the hauling things on the side that the owner didn't get any money for and things like that.
So with GPS and all sorts of clocks and cameras and stuff, you can't do that anymore.
But he was real proud of how well they cheated his boss. I thought that was pretty bad.
Well, there was a whole, well, some of the old trucking songs where they talk about guys having multiple licenses in different states and different, different speeding or other records and a lot of truckers just, just running with, within and fed amines and stuff.
But it used to be pretty wild west.
Yeah, that was back then. When I was my friend, he was also, I'd forgotten about the pills and stuff that used to keep awake.
He talked about that too and they would drive for 20 hours and straight and get a few hours and go go again.
And then they would mark it down. He would, they had a thing where they, he said they would, he would just drive and fill up with fuel when he needed to.
And then when he got home, he would stop by the house and his wife would sit down.
She had a whole bunch of different looking receipt books and she would hand right out all the, the process, the fuel every 200 miles she would get a map and she would mark out, you know, this is a receipt for this location, this location, this location, she would make out the receipts and then he would pocket it.
And he had the owner thinking that the truck got a lot less mileage than it really did.
Well, all that stuff is pretty much regulated down, down to the dime.
Sometimes he still gets trips that are impossible to do. I keep teasing him about needing that little, the red button from men in black, you know, that turns an ordinary car into a flying vehicle.
Because sometimes they'll want him to do 1200 miles in seven hours or some ridiculous time that you couldn't do without an airplane.
Well, first I thought you said the button I was thinking about the thing it made him forget just to reach to do a reset or their memory.
But I've forgotten about the flying car that see what they they went on the roof of the tunnel in that when they, they drove in on the roof of the tunnel.
Yeah, yeah.
Yes, do not hit the red button.
When they get into trouble, they hit the red button and they go zooming off like, you know, like a rocket.
Yeah.
My brother also spent some time in the army during the Cold War.
By the way, I must thank you for your service, sir.
Well, it's been a while. I've been out for 50 years.
Well, as I said, my brother was late 70s, early 80s.
He was down in El Paso, Texas and in Germany, Albron, with a perishing outfit.
He has some interesting stories from that, including one time when they were on an exercise.
They were ordered to hide and his outfit did a pretty good job because the army couldn't find them because they actually went into German national forest or whatever.
And kept their head down so that even their own side didn't know where they was.
Well, you can't get in trouble if you do what you're told.
So toward the end of his tour in Germany, he was a mechanic.
But they had him doing guard duty while his outfit was out on a training mission because, you know, he was short and a training wouldn't do him no good.
Well, this one time he was on guard duty, he caught a couple of people going over defense trying to get at this perishing outfit.
It was a fishing base and it got pretty hot or at least I'm told.
What is that, a missile thing?
Ballistic missile, short range, intermediate range ballistic missile.
Okay, the name, when you first said I thought it was a tank and I was like, wait a minute, that's not quite right.
Now, realize you're talking about, I will decide that you were probably talking about a missile, but again, I wasn't real familiar with it.
They've had a perishing tank as well, but this was a missile.
He also talks about one time doing a drill.
Somebody didn't toot the horn the right number of times to tell it was a drill.
So somebody put a bit of plastic explosive with a detonator on the missile because that's what they were supposed to do if they had to destroy them for, you know, for real.
And he said somebody grabbed that plastic explosive, threw it up in the air, and just as it was coming down, there was a pop as the detonator went off.
Didn't damage nothing, but it was a near run thing, as they say.
Oh, you mean they jerked the plastic away from the detonator and tossed it?
Well, they tossed, they either tossed the detonator or they tossed the detonator.
Well, C4 is sort of like Plato, so they could have grabbed the whole thing and just thrown it up in the air.
And then in the air it would go pop and not hurt anything.
If the detonator was still in the plastic, yeah, it would do more than go pop.
Well, I don't know which it was. I don't know.
I didn't really nail him on that particular thing.
Did hear that the intruders, the German authorities took the intruders on the base off of the American military's hands.
Well, it was rumored that they got lost.
Yeah, her room was like that, too. Some may have been true.
Yeah, well, you know, you try to, when somebody from the east back in those days comes over, comes over the wire with mudden his eye and plastic and subguns and whatnot in their baggage, the Germans have no sense of humor for that stuff.
Yeah, well, nobody should agree with that.
So as he was out processing somebody, one of his officers said,
well, you want to know what happened to your little friends?
You know, somewhere between the base and jail, they vanished.
Well, that's that's happened a lot of times and sometimes they show up again, but I just wasn't ever involved in.
I never took anybody that did what going where they're supposed to.
I never did guard duty stuff except for when Vietnam was used to guard an ammo dump on a regular basis.
It was just like what when not I went down into the to see what are we guarding down here and there's pallets and pallets of high explosive of 155 cannon shells, you know, all men.
Yeah, well, I knew some people at MIT who served in Vietnam as low, low grade officers and they're in intelligence.
And they said the only place that they had to do guard duty was in Vietnam on the front line.
So here you have a guy whose head is full of secrets and you stick him out on a guard mount didn't make too much sense.
Well, it depends on where they were and what type of secrets they knew.
I mean, I also had a top secret clearance while I was there, but it didn't keep and all of us in the group that had crypto access stuff.
We still went did guard duty, but we didn't have secrets.
We had access to secret stuff, but we didn't have that secret information in our head because you work with stuff that you don't, you know, you don't not memorizing important secrets like people in command and control kinds of situations.
So you could have a clearance and you could even handle classified materials, but your brain's not worth that much if you got caught.
Well, my brother, when he was in the reserves as a mechanic, he was in technical intelligence.
That is to say, as part of his reserve duties, he would take apart Soviet trucks and see how shitty they were or whatever, you know.
Nothing, you know, he wasn't dealing with anything that's really hot.
I mean, you know, this stuff was was probably spread all over the near the Middle East and anybody in his brother could could have picked it up for a song, you know, in the right in the markets.
But my brother knocked up his foot four days into the service just on Labor Day and he was a year going to permanent duty station.
He was in the detachment of patients for a long time.
Now, he was a private nothing, you know, just a new recruit and the army once they had had his foot casted cast up had him doing some work in the hospital, you know, moving wheelchairs around and stuff.
Well, later on when he was doing his reserve stuff, somebody read his records and he realized some of his duty station was was in the psych ward as a patient.
Well, as somebody shuffling patients, he wasn't in the ward, he was just as part of his duties, he was moving, you know, people around.
For a while, they took his clearance because they thought he had a mental disability, but it wasn't that it was just that he was he was acting as an orderly in the psych area of the hospital.
Yeah, I can see stuff like that for people who can't actually read go through records and go look at this.
I got also here's a story that I got from a chopper guy at at a Linux users group meeting.
He said that he was up in the north part of Vietnam and he ran into a kit Carson scout, a guy with a kit Carson scout, you know, that had been over the wire into North Vietnam or into North Vietnam doing reconnaissance.
This is a guy where they had one American and one former VC would go out where angels fear to tread and snoop around to see what the NVA was doing.
Well, they ran into this battalion size group in North Vietnam having a powwow on his hilltop and then they went through their radio and tried to get artillery or airstrike or something.
And everybody thought it was just bullshit or somebody was playing, you know, mind games or they were doing stuff with captured equipment or whatever.
Anyway, nobody believed them.
Well, they got down to the last of their radio frequencies and they finally contacted one outfit and the outfit said how close are you to the enemy?
500 meters.
Okay, get two clicks and call us back.
Well, they got out to a kilometer and then called back and they said, you know, and they did the usual, you know, fire these coordinates and then then we'll adjust.
And the the distant outfit said, we do not adjust your mission is fired.
Well, that sounds like the Navy, you know, you know, 12 miles away.
That sure.
Yeah, he called, it looks over at that hillside and it just disappears.
And his people are bleeding from the airs because they didn't get the full two clicks away.
So there was a tremendous shockwave and everything.
And he calls them back up and he says, excuse me, sir, but who am I talking with? Battleship, New Jersey.
They didn't need to adjust 9, 16 inch shells.
Just remove the block that your target is on.
Never mind an individual situation.
So that hilltop just sort of disappeared in a blinding flash.
Well, I was never fortunate enough to be close to anything like that.
Although I did, I was on guard duty one night when there was a B-52 raid.
Probably somewhere 50 miles away and you could feel the ground rumbling under you.
And they couldn't have been closer than 25 miles.
I'm sure because of where I was and where I knew there was generally action.
So we were pretty good distance from anything and you could actually feel the ground vibrating
for the B-52s or just saturating in an area.
Yeah, I've seen enough of the footage that, yeah, they just turned it into a moonscape.
By the way, a more recent thing that I heard I got was that over in Syria,
a bunch of our troops were in a base and there was a whole bunch of Soviet equipment headed their way.
And somebody from our defense department called the Russian officer,
you know, Russian, his Russian counterpart and said,
do you have any troops in this area?
And the Soviet guy said, no, we have nobody there.
There's nobody there.
Nobody, none of our people are there.
Said, all right.
Thank you very much.
Well, the defense department decided to deal with the problem.
They took about everything from B-52s, fighter jets, everything.
And they just pounded like the square mile where that shit was coming, turned it into the moon.
You see, the operation was being handled by Wagner types and other, you know, other deniable persons.
So, nope, there weren't no Soviet troops there.
Well, once we got done, there was probably not a Soviet rat neither.
Yeah, I stayed away from the fighting.
I was, I fixed electronic devices to ease drop them on what the other side was saying,
rather than having to go into the jungle with a rifle and pick them off one at a time.
So I was, I spent my time there without, without too much risk.
We got mortars and an occasional rocket, but those are kind of, those are less personal.
Those are actually shot at the jungle and the jungle.
Yeah, one of the guys I ran into as a civilian sometime around the turn of the century
was a former first force recon guy.
And evidently, he'd been in enemy hands because his hands were pretty scarred up.
But those guys are, they're out on the sharp end plus two feet.
Yeah, I never wanted to be that kind of hero.
By the way, if you pick up John Ringo's ghost, the guy that sells accessories is the guy that I knew.
50 shades of gray stuff.
But I knew that guy personal, nice gentleman, but clearly he'd seen the elephant and gotten gourd by it.
Yeah, I've heard good war stories from people who did it personally, but yeah, that was, my war stories are second and third hand.
Oh, I got one that I thought was a wonderful story from the Korean War.
Battleship with constant was off Korea.
And it got shot at by 155, 152, whatever the Soviet six inch artillery was.
And it actually got damed by one shot.
Well, captain of the Wisconsin found that to be unacceptable.
And he returned fire with their main battery.
The North Korean battery sort of disappeared.
And a destroyer or an escort ship came by and flashed him a signal after seeing this opera, this thing go down.
The signal was temper, temper.
That's good. I like that.
Well, I've seen over at MIT back in the day, they had some of those big armor piercings or whatever inert shells and they called ROTC paper weights.
They were impressive son of a bitch.
I mean, you know, man high and 16 inches across.
Yeah, the power of those big guns is kind of crazy.
It seemed like they should be using rockets, but they take something the size of the mass of a car and throw it a dozen 20 miles.
But from just an explosion, you just got to think of how much you've got to accelerate that projectile just in the length of the barrel.
And it's just ridiculous.
It seems hard to believe that they would have gone from learning to make little pistols and rifles.
The things that they do, well, just make it bigger and apparently it works up to to some extent.
Jules Burns was thinking that you could probably send somebody to the moon that way.
So things have gotten miniaturized.
What got miniaturized?
Your atomic shells, your 155 can fire an atomic shell.
Those things.
The craziest atomic weapon that I've ever heard of.
I think they called it David Crockett.
It was a atomic warhead stuck on the end of a recoilless rifle.
Really, that's what that is.
I have heard of the David Crockett, but I didn't know what it was.
My older brother was also served in Germany in the army.
And he was all into knowing about the different kinds of weapons and missiles and things like that.
But my war was one where you held the weapon against your shoulders.
And I never paid much attention to the others.
I don't even want to think about what the other ones, the other ones will do.
Yep.
And apologies if this is a painful subject.
I grew up in a very combative home life.
I got my PTSD across the dinner table.
So my attitude towards a lot of things may be unconventional.
Everybody is a little different.
I guess most people think they're normal or the same as everybody else.
But everybody is a little different.
Some are more different than others.
Actually, here's an interesting story.
Back when I was in my late teens, early 20s, a buddy of mine who was an old hippie.
In fact, if you ever listened to the Belly Me Brothers, old hippie song pretty much describes him pretty much, at least the first one.
But the deal was this guy prided himself on reading body language.
And he said my body language was completely off the wall.
Well, in my 40s, my mother was driving me crazy enough that I went to mass rehab and got tested because my nerves were shot.
They found out that I have ashburgers syndrome, an autistic spectrum disorder where I'm tone deaf on the standard wavelengths for nonverbal communication.
So it took around about 20 years for me to get a name for what was making me different or one of the things it was making me different.
Another one was being raised a 50s kid during the 60s, which was, that was an interesting trip.
Going to school, leave it to beaver, sports shirt, slacks, polish shoes when everybody else is wearing jeans and t-shirt and sneakers.
So I've been...
They'll help you make friends, right?
Well, my dad was from a small town in West Virginia and my mother was from a small town in Maine.
And they were very comfortable with the traditional 50s era structures.
They didn't really acknowledge that the 60s had actually turned into the 60s.
And because it was an alcoholic household, they were enforcing their views extremely firmly.
And also, I had some coordination issues.
I have dyslexia and some other stuff.
But it was interesting, but I spent my formative years trying to keep up with my parents because in our household you didn't want to be a kid,
because kids were basically gophers and you wanted to get as much high ground as you could to try to get some kind of independence or acknowledgement.
And with my Ashburgers, I was always very much a bookish sort and what not.
And dealing with my folks, you had to have your A game on just to get by.
I can understand that.
That sounds like you had a couple things going against you.
It's nothing else because you're forced as a kid to, like you said, act like you're from a different generation and going to school which makes it difficult to make friends and among schools besides your other problems.
So I can see how that is probably a different, difficult childhood.
Well, the deal is also I'm living it in the Boston area.
My roots are in small town, West Virginia and small town, Maine.
One of the things my folks did agree on, one of the rare things, is the house here that they were raising us in was not our house because they had their name on the deed and we didn't.
So it was their house, their rules to 70 decimal places.
When I went to West Virginia or went to Maine, there was family who actually welcomed me, who actually seemed to give us yet about me.
The place where my alleged home address, I was more of an inmate.
Also, my mother had definite ideas about Christmas, including one of the things I have is clinical depression, I wonder why.
When I was sad at Christmas time, I would be yelled at for spoiling her Christmas.
Also, she was a good church going woman, which gave her the moral high ground to deal with the heasons she was living with.
Now, because she'd gone to church one hour a week, she was inoculated against the flaws of mortal men, you know, to errors human, but to forgive damned unlikely.
I like that. It sounded like you told the story before.
Well, also, I had some, I have an interesting bloodline.
My mother made it clear that my grandparents and her relatives in Maine were part of her family, which meant when they died, she'd went up to Maine and she was allowed to go to their services and mourn them and do the usual.
Since those people were not part of my family, because I wasn't born in Maine, I was born down here in South of Boston, we didn't have the privilege of mourning her relatives.
Well, that's just weird.
Well, my mother was a toxic narcissist. The funny thing is when I went in to get my head shrunk about all this stuff,
I ran into an expert on an official expert on Ashburgers syndrome and whatnot.
However, this person was a PhD from an Eastern Educational Institution, and evidently, she was such a good student of her professors that she didn't have to go to a master's program,
which meant that she drank all the liberal Kool-Aid.
Yes, I was going to a narcissistic psychologist to treat the wounds of a narcissistic family background.
Testing, can I be heard?
I think you are heard.
Is it, does it sound okay? I mean, it might do some sounds and I don't know, I'm not on that, I'm not on headset.
Oh, it sounds fine to me.
So, I was listening for a little bit there before I came on, and we got into the, or you two got into the so-called normal discussion, yes.
And I liked how someone said, everyone thinks they're normal, but we're all a bit different, and it's true, isn't it?
And then one, that's very true, I think. Lots of people think they're so-called normal.
But then it's like, what is normal?
And also, in some way, if we were all pretty much the same, then imagine how boring the world actually be.
Plus, actually, saying that certain things probably wouldn't have been invented and things like that.
I mean, you've got usual people talking about, for example, Elon Musk these days, who said he's got autism as well as an example.
And there's various people like that.
By the way, I really should write this down somewhere.
But the spread spectrum communications that is used for Wi-Fi and cell phones and whatnot.
A lot of these ideas were originally originated with a World War II era movie star, a woman.
I can't tell you her name, something like Hetty Lamar or something like that.
Yeah, but that was kind of my point as well, is that, yeah, you talked about mobile signals.
Okay, that could be an example, tech, mobile signals, even a Linux kernel.
I've heard that that's very complicated in some of these programs that we have in desktop, Linux, servers, etc.
And, you know, you'd have to have some very good technical expertise that most so-called normal people simply do not have.
You see one again out here.
Well, an interesting subject, the Israeli intelligence service recruits autistic Israelis
because some forms of autism are very good at pattern matching and stuff like that.
Yeah, I've heard that sort of thing before as well.
That there are like special abilities or interests and perhaps I have a little bit as well.
But, you know, I want to just topic, actually, because I've been on this new year show before where we were someone talked about autism.
And now, to be honest, without offending anybody, right, they might end up listening to this.
There are probably lots of people that are in this HPR community in some form, let's put it that way,
have got at least somewhere on the spectrum, right?
Have at least some sort of autism or something if it's diagnosed or not, you know, because that's,
and it's probably true and probably all know that, really, or most of us.
So, like I said, without offending anybody that might hear this.
But we are like, you know, it's like the event as syndrome maybe as well,
like not say that all tech people have it either necessarily,
but inventors and programmers and all this.
And then you can have issues with social skills and, you know, being out with people socially or so they say.
And I'd be breathing a lot about autism this past year, actually, online as well.
And I say online, I mean, not the medical website so much, but actually more like forms,
things like some website called Core, the form website and Reddit and places like that, you know.
Well, there's so much on there and it's, some of it is very sad to read in the way,
as someone who has, you know, I've got an old diagnosis from long ago, 14 years old,
I don't need, it's like, or they thought I had ADHD at the beginning, you know,
it's such a long time ago.
But when you read about some of the struggles that people have had you,
sometimes it's like, okay, I'm not the only one.
There's been other people that have gone through this, but in other ways,
it's like, oh, geez, why does it have to be like this?
Why can't somebody just, you know, it's just sad to read about.
And you think, why does it have to be this way?
Why can't it be that way?
Why can't I've had a girlfriend or sort of thing, but she had autism and a physical disability, actually.
But, you know, it's like things like that as well.
Why is it, why is it so hard to get into relationships for certain people,
set from, expect from, although saying that, we've got, I've got,
I've got, I'm from somewhere money out for this, I've set it for her,
but she should be able to go to this still.
Fossed there, met an example, the open source conference is coming up in Brussels
and at the beginning of February, and they have been running a partners and spouses
tour for a very long time as well.
It's for, we're mostly the marriage women or girlfriends of various guys,
software developers, end up on this tour instead of negotiating,
so it kind of shows that, despite having autism or possible a little bit,
obviously some people get into relationships, et cetera.
And, and obviously, I have kids and you name it.
So, so it's a bit of a, so I don't know quite with that one, but it's,
I know that relationships and making friends is difficult,
and I just happened to listen to some guys podcast from the other month
about making friends last yesterday, which I thought was interesting as well,
from about three, three months ago on the HPR archive now.
YouTube has some pretty good sources for autistic spectrum stuff.
One of, one of my early discoveries was a Danish young lady.
She was a teenager when she first started posting stuff,
who has, yeah, I think, I think the pop, I think the other thing is,
I mean, some ways, yeah, I mean, the UK, England,
and yeah, if you say that you're autistic or have Asperger or something like this,
and some ways it can be a good thing, because you can have,
because there's, there's at least some support available under sort of the health care,
slash social care system support workers, et cetera,
so that that can, you know, that can be a good thing in some ways.
Now, you know, you can have a support worker who helps you clean your flat, for example,
or helps you cook, or helps you go out shopping, or whatever it is,
so that could be a benefit, or you can go in a place where you don't have to pay normal rent,
because getting a place is really a flat we say over here,
or apartment, if you're American, you know, you went, you went a place,
or by a place, it's all very expensive,
and there are some benefits that can help,
housing benefits will help pay the rent,
and but the actual benefits that you've got to live on each month is just mostly awful.
It's the amount of money that comes in is just not very good.
It's hard to get through, get short of money,
and there's in cost of living in inflation,
I believe in America, and on most of the world now,
as well after this COVID pandemic as well.
But the thing is, somebody said to me that,
yeah, a lot of people are also high functioning,
and that's somebody who I've met want to use.
I don't know, he's got very messy flat,
doesn't like cooking in his own place.
I don't know what it is quite, not being there.
But I think it's true that a lot of people are high functioning as well,
as in, you know, we will do, you know,
we'll do some amazing things,
some of these people, open source is a great example of this,
and that's what I like with a conference as well,
because it doesn't actually matter if somebody is on the spectrum.
You go through a Linux or open source conference,
it really doesn't matter.
If somebody is on the autistic spectrum somewhere,
because it's all about sharing knowledge
and finding out more about things,
and it's just great.
And as one example, I'm sure there are other things like that,
maybe in science or other communities as well,
which is a bit like that.
But the idea that autism is a disability,
it's a bit like in some ways, yes,
or you may have a mental health condition with it,
or I've got an obsessive-compulsive disorder as well.
For example, that's the thing that causes problems for me mostly.
I'm not an employment currently,
because of that paid employment, actually.
Because it's a certain problem with timekeeping,
except for it's not just hand washing and whatever people think.
The idea, it's a disability in some ways,
but I think it comes with a mental health condition
or maybe learn difficulty, but everyone's different.
That's the thing.
So we're not all the same.
And then some ways it's good to say, yes,
it's a disability because there's some sort of help possibly,
some extent, like I just mentioned.
In other ways, it's like, no, I just want to be like most other people really.
I want to get married possibly at some stage.
I want my brother got married this year and all the other.
I want to get, maybe have kids.
I'm an uncle now.
My brother's got a little baby now.
And I don't know.
It's annoying.
And then the idea that we're supposed to be moving into a more accepting society as well,
where we're supposed to be accepting people that are different in general.
Now, we're not quite there yet.
I'm talking to the UK here.
I'm talking to Europe.
I'm talking to America.
I'm sure as well.
I'm talking probably most of the world really here when I say that.
But we're not quite, we're not quite here yet because they've set people for who they are.
Doesn't matter if you've got autism or disabilities or whatever.
We're all people at the end of the day.
But we're not quite there in some ways because society still judges.
And and stuff like that.
Some east of it.
If I was just talking to myself mostly.
Wait, Netmind, are you still here?
Or somebody else?
Anyone here?
Well, I just said.
Yeah, I'm listening.
Netmind, are you still there?
Well, what are you there that I've been doing my thing for about?
I know I was on the on the pressure talk for a while.
I was basically under that like just talking to myself basically or the podcast where it finally
goes up or something.
I don't know.
No one actually heard me that was on the podcast.
Whoops.
Now, there's lots of people in this room.
They may not answer but they're listening.
You know, I was saying about society and various other things.
You hear what I was saying about society and other things.
Netmind, are you there?
He's there.
He's just, I don't know.
He may have walked off or something.
Yeah, you're right.
But did you hear what I was saying about society?
What was them and so on and so forth?
Oh, yeah.
I heard you.
Claudio's there too.
How you doing everybody?
Happy New Year's Eve or Happy New Year's depending on where you are?
Happy New Year's, buddy.
Yeah, well, I see you two in America.
I ain't that bad for you.
Maybe you'll free that on the other one.
Yeah, UTC minus five over here.
So yeah, now I, on the, I'm in the UK with the BBC News site was like, I mean, I'd just seen,
went on there and had the video from Sydney of their, of their fireworks and their music thing and I,
and I looked at it and I watched it and I thought, I mean, I had a little bit of late pine now but went back to the beginning.
And I thought, you know, well, actually, this is, this is a good one.
Even the first song about New Year's Eve is good.
Yeah.
I've been up a leaf and come very good.
Maybe about the world.
Well, I had a couple of things that you do very for hopping on here.
I'm going to send off to New Zealand.
I just want to make sure I caught everyone here.
You know, I just wish everyone a Happy New Year.
I'll be here chatting with you guys.
My partner's still asleep.
So, uh, so whatever you guys are chatting, I haven't been able to listen too much to the conversations.
But, uh, we were on, well, I was just seeing first and I came on.
Well, no, when that minus started talking about autism, I had to come on and say something.
Sure.
And we were talking about normal and not normal and the spectrum and all that stuff.
Ah, okay, gotcha.
And then mind you, you flashed it up, are you here now?
We can't hear you.
We can't hear you.
You might be having some audio issues or something.
I'll be here too.
I'll be off and on throughout the day.
Yeah.
In here basically off on, off here, off.
So any, uh, New Year's resolutions that anybody plans to break right after?
Yeah, that's the reason I don't make New Year's resolutions.
So, um, hmm.
Oh, I got to, uh, different subject now.
Different subject that I got to like do a speech.
Haha.
And it's going to be about installing.
But, you know, that's actually it.
One of my groups, public speaking group.
But, I won't, but I won't and tested, uh, or tried to test the project there the other week,
with my laptop.
And, okay, this laptop pad, um, was it.
Sori and OS originally that, and I basically turned it into a bunting.
So I went through all the repos and updated a few times.
It's probably not a clean distro and sent in that sense really installed.
But, that's one thing.
But it's also got call boot on this laptop because I intentionally had a choice.
And the AMD will have the other bias for the call boot.
And I thought, yeah, okay, that's an open source bias.
Why not?
But anyway, I went with this many, many, many HDMI cable to test into an Epson project with somebody had.
There's one in the room as well, but it's got other ports, not the cables.
And the second work was mapped.
But I try with, with this, this, um, mini micro HDMI mini micro HDMI cable.
And it just doesn't work.
Does it?
And I'm like, why am my friend said you should be able to disconnect, press control P, maybe change the resolution.
And it's really frustrating because I got, I don't got TV.
I could polyconnect it into here, but I don't have a projector here.
But I've got to like test next week again on the fourth Friday.
And then I'm supposed to be doing a speech with, with slides on the 18th.
Plus, I'm not, uh, 21st plus I'm not doing it.
I'm not even worried about the slideshow.
I'll do, um, screen shots and some text.
Put up in, um, the office impress.
I'm not using PowerPoint or discussion on the WhatsApp about with someone twice.
About PowerPoint or Google Drive.
And I really don't care.
Well, I don't, I don't want to use, I'm going to use the Microsoft stuff.
I don't want it.
But it's, I've only got a clicker as well.
And I'm a little bit worried like what if I can't get it working or do I really have to try and think, hmm, what should I use instead?
I've got a GP Win 4 for example.
It's, uh, it's a small device.
It runs Windows with people gaming really.
Maybe if I got the right connector there, that could be work work.
But it's just safe for straighting when you, all you want to do is you'll protect, uh, get it working.
And then for some reason, the other thing is, because I've said Linux Linux and I've got one guy's next Windows guide.
The other guy's gone to Mac.
I think it, it's just basically me embarrassing if I can't get it working with Linux.
If you see one, if you see what I mean.
Um, yeah, no, I totally understand.
I have a core booth and Libra boot.
All those have intrigued me.
I've never really played with them at all.
I don't know if my friend suggested, okay, one thing is your OS is not a clean install anymore,
who came from one OS to the other, all kind of thing.
So maybe that's partly to do with it.
Or it could be that I've got core booth.
I don't know.
I literally, it's a bit weird because there's an application from the core booth.
Completely gave it pre-installed.
And I thought, why not?
I mean, I've been in, I've been in Brussels, I've been to the core booth stand.
And I remember, I remember with some previous year, or maybe last time,
or the year before, or before the pandemic, or the pandemic killed me in between.
But I went there and I said to them, like, oh, um, okay, core booth.
Nice idea and everything.
But who actually uses core booth?
I mean, the neighbors saw the source BIOS.
And they were like, I think it's a few server companies or something.
But it's one of those, those, you know, niche BIOS is that, I mean,
no one really uses core booth set for people I class potentially.
Everyone else, they don't even know what it is.
And I think it's configured a bit differently somehow, maybe, as well.
From a normal BIOS where you press F12, and I'm not sure.
I mean, it's basically just those aren't my laptop.
Are you using X11 or...
Or...
I wonder, maybe that might have something to do with it?
I thought something similar as well.
So when I was on the projector, I had GNOME3 under way, and they think
when I went to, like, try to switch back to the Xorg.
And then Martaibon.
And then what annoyed me with some of the guys?
It said, click here on GNOME3, and you can change something.
And it's like, no, I didn't even see those options in the settings.
And then Martaib, obviously, the old stuff.
But I mean, I have to, I don't know, I have to get these slides working somehow
and test on my TV or maybe buy yet another cable.
And I don't know, but it's not just that.
It feels like this is now...
I mean, we had hybrid meetings as the pandemic eased down.
And...
Because I've been reading a lot online meetings on the all around the world for this.
Because the clubs are all around the world.
But then we were like, we're going to do some hybrid as well.
And glad they never went and pushed the idea of Linux into that properly.
Like, yeah, no, God, I have the nuts.
Can't be a Mac.
It can't be an iPad.
It can't be Android tablet.
I mean, I couldn't care less what really, what they were using for the hybrid,
as long as the sound and audio and images work.
But it wasn't like a Linux event.
I did with my log in 2014.
And they wanted a bundle for Unity or kind of a send.
Like somebody does.
And then somebody was all open-soons and he wanted KD.
And then I wanted the actual GNOME with the digital I was in at the time.
And they were like, no, we're going to have free distros and that's it.
Or two actually.
And it was like, what?
How do you not have GNOME?
You've got KD, you've got Unity, but you don't have GNOME.
I can show people on my netbook.
Some of the stuff I want to share anyway.
Plus, but...
But yeah, it should have been GNOME, KD, and Unity, I think, at the time, really.
But then you got a few people.
They didn't get the public to get them into the Linux back then.
But yeah, you've got to have Linux.
But I think I've got...
And then I had the guy last week go to me at the end, like, oh, maybe help more.
But you're on a system that no one else uses and it's like, well, yeah, more on a system that...
I've been using since I was 17 years, 16, 17 years old.
And for the most part, it's not perfect.
That's stopped Linux.
But, you know, it mostly works for most things, really.
Or can do.
And...
And yes, I'm not using it.
And it should be more mainstream, really.
But, well, no.
Well, Chromebook is there, but that's a bit still a bit different.
Yeah, no, I still have my old net, an EPC 901.
That thing is still kicking.
Yeah.
After all this time.
But, well, well, that's...
Okay, well, I have an old EPC...
Ooh, X1C8, whatever it was, the 2012.
But that doesn't really work.
That net has still some battery.
I can't remember.
It's something, something wrong with it now.
That old net book.
Although this laptop that I've been trying to use for the projector, actually,
is a bit like a net book as well.
Because it's from StarLabs, a UK Linux...
...complete it pre-installed Linux, normally.
And so, yeah, it's been like a net book anyway.
But they've got other...
They've got more height.
They've got bigger and more powerful machines as well.
And that looks quite good, I think.
I had another one, full that from another company.
You know computers, and I ended up breaking the...
...the charger, they were dropped a few times in the pandemic.
And I ended up breaking the charging port, basically,
or I could push the cable in.
And it was kind of charged, but then we'd get worse.
And then I gave it to my friend who fixes computers and stuff.
And he still got it now, a year later.
And he'd wake up on the things, me, oh, actually, the charging port's bit different on some machine
or a little bit specific.
Well, there's not many of them, and you can't just stick a Dell one in or a HP one in.
But now he's told me more recently that he's apparently found the right charging port.
However, I would have to get it...
I would have to come in from Germany, apparently.
And the shipping is, like, £60, just to get it in from Germany.
And it's like, ooh, that's a bit pricey for shipping, isn't it?
But he said he might be able to get cheaper somehow.
And I'm thinking, okay, well, that's a start.
Plus, from that same laptop, somehow, I ended up...
...blow...
...I ended up actually breaking the speakers.
Like, doing poles all due past 10% that you can do.
I've done that on other laptops, no problem.
I'm like, it distorts the sound, but some reason this laptop, it broke.
The sound, the speakers, and it was like, it's like, really, it never done that before.
And there's a bent from it dropping, but that's just another thing, using that minor.
Well, it was nice to get that one working, actually, because it's a good laptop otherwise.
And it was about £700 or something, as well.
Guys, I have a question for you.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, as I just continued treatment with my shrink some years ago,
because she didn't accept patient input in her program.
I was wondering, should I email her and ask her how my program's doing?
What's that medical question?
Well, since whenever I actually showed up in her office, she would reject anything I said,
I would ask her, I was wondering if I should inquire how my treatment program was doing without me.
Was you in treatment after the medical health?
Psychologist, a liberal psychologist who, she knew exactly what I needed to do.
Well, the Ashburgers is a logic-focused type of autism.
However, my logic could never match her logic because she was the PhD.
And I just wondered if I should say happy new year.
By the way, how's my treatment program doing?
No, the thing is, I think you missed some of my stuff earlier that I was talking about autism,
I think the thing with autism is that, Ashburg is that,
in some ways, yeah, fine, okay, let it be seen as a disability then,
because you can get some support, it might be a last show.
Was that, sorry, Chloe, saying, Claudia?
I was saying that I think I vaguely remember Netmine bringing that up
last year's New Year's show when they put out all the,
I didn't get to, I wasn't on the, on the livestream at the time,
but I did get to hear the recordings as they came through throughout the year.
Yeah.
I remember Netmine mentioning something about that.
I would definitely check out, at least for the happy new year.
I find out.
No, no, no.
I was just, I was just trying to stream originally just now,
and about blah, blah, blah.
And then he started talking about autism and I thought,
oh, yeah, no, I wanted to do autism chat again,
because I've done that one here, but,
now I've got, I've got some apparently, but I was like,
like age 14 when Netmine got diagnosed,
it was quite ADHD, and it's like, that's quite a long time ago.
So quite a lot, you know, quite a lot,
certain things, a lot of things have changed since then and now.
So by now we kind of getting at it,
but the thing with autism is that,
whilst getting that, it's fine to get ahead of it.
In some ways, it's like, yeah, they say it's a disability in Asperger's
and in some ways that could,
can be a good thing, depending on,
on certain things, for example, in the UK,
if you have autism or learning difficulty,
there's certain support under the sort of healthcare system
and the social system, like social workers council,
you can get into certain places that are nice to live in,
where you have your own flat for example these days,
but the place is actually a supported place,
really, there's an office, possibly, quite possibly,
probably don't, it may not do that much,
but in case the thing that happens,
the neighbours have autism or learning difficulties as well,
but you don't live with these people,
it used to be that people had to share a lot of places together
and like share the kitchen and all that,
and people struggled with that,
but now it depends on where people are and what council
and what money and what's out there,
what housing association companies, etc,
that's one thing, or maybe in the workplace,
you say you've got autism and that could probably be anywhere,
or in a sickle developed UK, America,
maybe Canada, whatever,
and in some ways maybe they'll treat you a little bit better
just because you've got autism, or they won't,
depending on where you are,
but on the other hand, disability will maybe,
in some ways, what comes with it then,
difficulty, slash, a different way of thinking,
hospital or mental health, couldn't have got
obsessed with compulsive disorder as well,
that's mostly the problems I have,
well I think I'm not working currently
because of that, for example,
because it affects timekeeping,
on bristly and all that all and so on and so forth,
but these things generally come with something else as well,
it could be a mental health condition
or learn difficulty,
or possibly a physical disability,
but it may not be the autism as such,
I think I'm trying to figure it out myself
because there's so much about it,
I've been reading a lot of, like,
a few of what's it called,
Corolla and Reddit this year,
or there's online forms, yeah,
various topics about autism and so on,
I think autism is actually part of someone's personality,
really, and then these kinds of things,
so if it's part of someone's personality,
then you can't read,
then that's how it is,
you can't really cure that,
unless you start faking who you are,
completely and then, you know,
you can't really do that either,
but it's also, like,
maybe like the inventors syndrome and stuff,
and I said this just now,
and I'm going to say it again,
because somebody might have missed me,
but I reckon not offending anybody
can end up hearing this as well.
But, you know,
I reckon a lot of people that are into Linux and OpenSource
and things like this,
and here we are on HPR New Year's show,
I reckon that,
at least some, you know,
and then probably most of us,
or maybe all of us,
you know, at least somewhere on the autistic spectrum,
somewhere,
and that's fine,
that's how it is, I guess.
But not everyone is diagnosed,
so in some ways it's good to be diagnosed,
because there's certain help,
depending on what country you're in,
and where you are,
or it's useful, it can help to know,
because then it's like,
whatever, to confuse it,
they're just calling all autism now,
and not people high-functioning,
so you could be like a software developer,
who's very passionate about that,
and that was the other thing.
Let's look at somebody, you know,
looking at somebody's OpenSource projects and things now,
and I believe they're doing the kernel,
the Linux kernel,
actually programming that,
and contributing to that one,
is quite a difficult project
and time consuming,
to go and contribute to,
and there's probably things like,
oh, my friend gave me an example,
come and what he said,
there's even some women
that are so clever,
but they're contributing to some of the
actual wayland, or something like that,
but something complicated, you know,
and they were so,
they were so like passionate,
and so clever,
and, you know,
and doesn't have that,
that kind of knowledge,
the average person doesn't really get tech,
I've done speech about,
early public speaking as well,
I've done speech, two speeches recently
about the history of software,
and people got the jest,
but a lot of people don't really,
really say a minute,
but a lot of people don't really get tech enough,
that's why,
it's not just tech, it could be science,
it could be engineering,
it could be engineering,
but average people don't get
a lot of the tech stuff,
and then they think that people
maybe have autism or something,
or, oh, I know, I used to,
some used to work with me actually,
who, um, I think you used to think
that people interlince have autism,
basically, which,
which isn't quite true,
or maybe it is true to an extent,
but I think, well, well,
we're different, like,
someone said just now,
before I came on here,
I think that the normal,
it's something like, everyone thinks that the normal,
but we're not all normal,
but we're all different, basically,
and I think that's true, as well.
Um, are you two still here?
It's fun, not minding you,
I'm still here,
but I keep getting drop off,
so I think it's, it's my phone,
because I'm trying to troubleshoot here, so.
I know, I just wanted to make sure I was being heard,
because I feel like,
so I did it last time,
in a couple of minutes,
and we're not three minutes,
but when you, when you're doing, like,
debate or discussion,
and then, like, proper discussion,
and then anything like hang on,
and no one heard me.
That was on the podcast.
I mean, the recording afterwards,
that's one thing,
but I went to,
oh yeah, I went to,
uh, one of the, um,
Linux events,
it's been going on for like 10 years,
well, and then there was the pandemic,
as well, and, uh,
I mean, it was a 10-year anniversary,
just before actually.
And I mentioned, um,
autism or Asperger's on,
on here before,
so one of the people
into, one of the people
was like, uh,
rather than, I've met before there anyway.
I think it was like,
it was like,
it says something about autism.
I was like, oh, oh yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
I think it's a good topic, though,
to be honest, because it's a whole big spectrum,
and, and everyone's different,
and there's people that are diagnosed officially,
and there are people that are not diagnosed at all,
that probably are on the spectrum somewhere,
and they make me note themselves, even.
Um, I haven't uncle,
I have no idea,
but I know, but I've,
done it recently, I think,
um, and whatever,
but, yeah, you can check your number of things.
Claudio,
listening to the stream,
yeah, by, with nothing on it,
for now, it's going to be a guess.
Are you batting that, minor?
Yeah, just taking care of a few things,
here at home.
I see, yeah.
Anyway, well, I wanted to say it well in the way.
He was talking about,
talking about psychiatrist,
or something, I think,
and he said autism,
and he said that her logic,
or her thinking is,
like, so,
and you're thinking he is, like,
so, sort of thing,
or, oh, and,
I mean,
I gave up on, I gave up on a CD,
Farrah Press years ago,
the so-called Mental Health Professionals,
because, because, I mean,
I went to a place,
in 19, and I was way too young
to, first time to, like,
sit there and openly talk about,
OCD,
obsessive compulsive disorder,
and how it affects me,
and so on or so forth.
There was a mental health nurse,
and there was a, um,
a psychologist.
Plus the mental health nurse was nice,
but do you psychologist,
reminding me of a former
different from America, but,
and against that, um,
to teach a lecturer,
so that didn't help either.
Then years later, I thought,
right, I'll try this sort of thing again,
why not, um, and I went back,
no, no, I actually went to my doctors,
and once I was going to go in for the call,
CBT, you know what that is?
CBT?
Because it's used on various mental health conditions.
Ah, no, I don't.
I think it's used for other things,
recently.
Yeah, I'm still here.
Do you know what CBT stands for?
I mean, it's OCD,
and it's made me.
No, I don't.
And it's used for, I think,
maybe some other mental health.
It's called, I think it's called
collectible behavioral
therapies, I mean, I think.
And I don't know, it's basically
certain tasks, and then
paperwork, and,
because while getting in late,
anyway, and well, actually,
actually, one time I turned up to one,
she was like, oh, I don't really,
I've got OCD, but, uh,
actually, I'm, so quite,
I don't know that much about OCD,
and it's like, really?
I went back to this other place,
and that didn't really go so well either,
and I did some group therapy once,
or sessions down the city centre,
with other people there as well.
But they were trying to do everything OCD
for six weeks, now and a half
session with slide show,
and it was very full on.
And I remember a guy sitting there
and he had gone to intrusive
thoughts as well, which is part of OCD as well,
those weird thoughts you might get in your head.
And then you're not supposed to act upon
and actually do what they say first.
You get this and think
other mental health conditions too.
And there was a guy who said,
like, yes, that he had
caught these thoughts, and I remember
this therapist, or at the end of the group,
parapued, saying in terms of mean like,
oh, you know, it was amazing that you
said that to people,
because I'm just a therapist,
and I don't know.
And what I think as well, personally,
with these things is that,
which is the problem
in the benefit system as well,
is that they don't really understand.
I mean, you can learn certain things,
go and buy the book,
or doing, I guess, or going,
doing a psychology degree, or something,
or a psychiatrist degree, or whatever.
But I think with mental health,
to really understand mental health,
you have to, and anything later,
I'm going to put autism now as
under mental health, even though I don't,
even though it's not necessarily mental health condition,
but it kind of links in with mental health.
He's checking us all here,
can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can.
You left these ones there, yeah, hey.
Yeah, I, uh,
yeah, I mean,
I mean, I need to take a break from,
I just want to say that for you to create,
right?
I think with mental health autism,
you have to basically, um,
experience, you can learn certain things
from a course or book or whatever,
come a so-called psychiatrist,
PhD, whatever.
But I think, to truly understand
these things, mental health,
OCD, whatever,
you have to basically just,
or autism, which is kind of under mental health,
or the pen in the context.
You have to basically experience these things for yourself,
ideally, and go through the struggles yourself,
and then you get an understanding,
or possibly maybe,
you have to be very close to someone
with something,
and through them,
start to understand more.
So I think you can just learn stuff off the course,
and then be told by these circles,
like, a psychiatrist.
But I mean, it works for some people,
they go there, they do the paperwork,
they do what they're told,
and they get,
and they get help with that,
and it kind of works for them.
Other people, I've never been a picky good student anyway.
So I don't like doing,
all right, whatever.
Okay, well, he's gone for break.
I will go for break myself.
Oh, and when this comes up as a podcast,
I assume there was some interesting points I made here,
and I hope somebody will listen to this,
and find interesting, I guess.
Had anyone been,
keeping an eye on the,
countdown and the time zones?
And Magoo said that they weren't doing that this year,
that we're not doing that.
Huh?
Oh, got some else in there.
What were we not doing this year?
That we're not doing the countdown,
and I'm happy new year,
at each time zone.
Who said that?
Honky Magoo told me that a couple hours ago.
No, what I think,
what I think that means, really,
is that officially,
I mean, it was done years ago,
on this, and somebody was doing it really well,
you know, really did it properly,
every time zone,
and we're going through the various countries,
and so on and so forth.
However, when we try that after that,
it becomes a bit hassle,
because then you're like, what time zones were,
and what city or country is it now,
and all that,
and that's why I think that's probably what he meant.
So what I think it means in reality,
is that if you want to do the time zones,
you can do it anyway.
But officially, it's like,
when it was all going through,
we would stop in the chat,
reach time zone,
and all that.
Well, clearly, if you want to say happy new year,
nobody's going to try to stop you,
so you can,
you've got 20 minutes to figure out
who to say happy new year too.
Well, yeah, I know.
I think it's,
Asia, somewhere next.
Yeah, I mean,
it's good to know.
I wasn't sure, because I was so used to that being the,
you know, the tradition
of calling it out.
But, you know,
I think we can do it.
We decide, if we're doing,
if we're on the podcast,
okay, the other guy said,
blah, blah, blah.
That's because it was a hassle with the notes,
and the time zones,
and the,
like I said, you have to figure out
where these time zones are,
to decide it to actually do it,
then who's going to stop those, right?
I know that on the
Harker Public Radio main page,
there's a link to you time and day.
And I think it takes you directly to the link that's on the
HPR page, takes you directly to the multi-countdown.
It seems to simplify things, but, you know,
I mean, it is.
Yeah, 20 minutes to figure out where it is next.
Someone can do that.
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