hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2845.txt

Episode: 2845
Title: HPR2845: 2018-2019 New Years Eve show part 4
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2845/hpr2845.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 12:06:47

---

This is HBR Episode 2845 entitled HBRNY Show 2018 PASH 2019 Part 4.
It is hosted by Honki Magu and is about 171 minutes long and carries an exquisite flag.
The summary is, the HBR community comes together to say happy new year and chat.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15.
That's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com.
Just found this M.2 card from Canada posted in this chat here.
It's one of the ones listed.
Until wireless 7260 or the 8260, they both should work.
Sometime between January 17th and March 1st, 725 and it by January 18th.
Oh, that one's up.
I think there's a second M.2 slot that's in there also.
I'm wondering if I can, at some point, squeeze a cell radio into it.
I thought that was the hard drive slot in that.
There's 100 in total.
I think the hard drive is actually a mini PCIe or not, but yeah, there's the Wi-Fi slot.
There's a hard drive slot and then there's a blank slot.
Okay.
So a hard drive slot, a blank slot and the original Bluetooth and Wi-Fi module slot.
Yeah.
I think it's going to be built into it as well, but I'm not so concerned about losing
the energy.
Yeah, I thought so.
I want to understand on that right up on the page that I sent, the NFC still works if
you do some tweaking.
It's not something that I would use on a tablet, but I mean, it could be useful for some
nefarious things.
Oh, maybe.
It's like, hey, why don't you just slide your card underneath my laptop real quickly?
Yeah.
I'm all about that, Paul.
Here's one for five, 50, also January the end.
Is it also the, is it also the Dell?
The Intel Wireless N7260, that's one of the ones listed on the page.
Here's the full list of the ones that will work.
I didn't find most of the Balkan ones.
I think that one is only a single band.
I'm going to go with the other one that's $2.50 more.
Okay.
Let me go back over to that page.
The first one I sent over second one.
Second one.
So the one that's for $7.25, the second one, not the third one.
The one that's for $7.25, the second one, not the third one.
Okay.
Okay.
Why not the third one?
They'd look fairly similar.
It did, but I mean, I saw it just on there, just said, buy us in, and I mean, I probably
could search some more to see if it said it was dual band, but I kind of like the dual
band cable.
Okay.
Well, no.
See, I like the third one.
I said a little bit more because the description is more similar to what's on that page.
This is the AC-7266, so I would hope it's exactly the same.
Well, it's only like, you know, it's less than $10 that I'm thrown away on it.
But yeah, in some parts in El Paso here, the 2.4 gigahertz versus the 5 gigahertz makes
all the difference.
Oh, yeah.
There's some places where you can't use 2.4 at all, just because of oversaturation.
Right.
Usually along the border, and that has to do with other wireless besides Wi-Fi.
Right.
I'm wondering equipment.
Though, not too long ago, I realized that Vivint, which I think they're shutting down
now, but they're internet delivery system ran on 2.4.
Which would have happened then a couple of times.
Yeah.
Well, that would explain why I go back to the reviews for crap.
Right.
We'll give you 50 May, but if the antenna is not just pointed right, you'll get to.
Nothing.
I wouldn't mind getting my hands on some of their old equipment, though.
The virtual antennas?
Yeah.
I wouldn't mind that either.
Directional antennas.
I'm pretty sure those radios are just our network- network-based, what's the word I'm
looking for?
TCP based, and we could probably configure them for different purposes than what they
had originally intended.
We wouldn't do something like that, would we?
I don't know.
Is that part of the description of this podcast?
Maybe.
To convince your brother to jump on, too.
Oh, hey, I should.
Give me a minute or two.
He might be busy up to the soft putt.
All right.
Hey, never mind.
How you been?
Doing all right.
Well, I know I'm going to get the chat with you some more.
I'm this upcoming Friday, but it's only heard from you all in a while, being keeping
yourself busy.
Yep.
Doing some paperwork and just trying to stay with you.
I found out that if you try to print PLA in a very cold room that your print just comes
off the board.
Yeah, I don't find that overly surprising unless you've got like a heated board.
I know some people have built like enclosures for their 3D printers specifically for
that to keep it at a study temperature all around.
Yeah.
Chris has built one and he's got the same printer as I do.
And it does have a heated board, but it says recommended temperature for that filament
is like 100 to 110 Fahrenheit.
And when it was close to freezing in the room, it was barely getting up to like 95.
So I have a big glob of PLA that's stuck around my printing block and I have been lazy
for the best couple of days to take it off.
You have good around, so yeah, I'm not PLA, ABS.
But I think I'm just going to, because this guy commissioned me to pull some traps.
Oh, are you trying to print?
A headphone stand that this guy there worked with was like, hey, I'll give you some money
if you print a couple of these up.
Cool.
You want them?
You think it was a headphone stand?
No, just, you know, play no run of the middle headphone stands for a model that I pulled
off the internet.
Cool.
How much is it paying?
I figured, you know, it's 20 bucks for the filament.
I was like, yeah, just give me 20 bucks for both of them.
Why I'm at like 20 bucks for a equipment filament, which I'm only going to use probably
like not even a third of a kilogram.
Right.
You can probably get that down depending on how you do the interior spacing.
Yeah.
Though it may come down to how many different times I have to print it because I screw
it up.
Yeah.
Now, I don't know if I'd want a headphone stand per se, but you know, like a headphone hook,
something I could screw into something else that actually had a broad reach in it, the
properly hold us out of headphones.
Yeah.
Though I found with screwing, it probably would be better with ABS on that one because
the PLA gets a little brittle if you push on it from the inside.
Oh.
I wasn't planning on screwing through it.
I was planning on making a hole where it could like hang on a screw.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the same issue.
Kind of.
Though, I think the issue that I was having was that the model was slightly not exactly
the right size, but there's one of the little add-ons on there was a filament clip.
And both times I printed it out when I put in the final screw, it would split ever so
slightly on it.
But I think it was the width between the screws wasn't big enough.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
But you know, PLA.
Welcome on.
ABS is a little bit more flexible.
How much were you guys paying for the printers?
I didn't know you both got one.
I thought you guys shared one.
Well, he ended up saying here, you know, I'll pay for half of this one and here's more
money.
Go get another one for me and my kid.
And I think we paid like one thirty, one forty for a piece.
I mean, it requires assembly and assembly, assembly the model or the link.
Yeah.
Sure.
My concern would be that I'd get it.
I'd print a couple of things and then it'd collect dust.
Right.
Yeah.
Mine has collected a few amounts of that.
Because, you know, 3D modeling has never really been my thing.
$218, 91 cents, and $20 for shipping.
I'm sorry.
We got the A8, not the A9.
A8.
And prices at the end of your ranging from the lower 100s up to like almost 200.
Yeah.
See 180 on this one.
Yeah.
I mean, you could search for cheaper ones.
Absolutely.
I'm sorry about that.
I had been pleasantly impressed with the, I guess you can say, not the durability.
I have burnt the extruder nozzle a couple of times and I got like a pack of six of them
for $10.
I've been able just to swap those out when I screw that up.
So what did I miss?
3D printers.
Most importantly, cheap 3D printers.
I have been tempted, but as yes, happened taking the plunge.
Oh, and we were talking about tablets before that.
Specifically, the 7130 from the Dell venue line.
I think my biggest problem with it is is that it doesn't have like, you know, my Android
tablets battery life.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, even initially the battery life on those was not that great.
And it's because it's got an i3 processor in it.
Right.
Laptop processor in a tablet format.
So yeah, the battery life's going to suck.
And it is a bit bigger than I was expecting, but I guess I'm really not complaining about
that much.
Right.
Well, between, you know, the laptop processor and the user replaceable M.2 slots.
Yeah.
I'm not surprised it's thicker than most tablets.
I ordered a not too expensive case for it.
I hope that it will still fit like the bottom keyboard extension if I decide to get that.
Yeah.
Oh, and with that, I've also heard that that's usually one of the first things to go out
on the tablet is the dock connector, which is not that big of a deal if the Bluetooth
works.
Bluetooth is working.
Right.
Right.
But you're ordering the card to fix that issue and you say it has another M.2 slot beyond
that.
So if you wanted to, you could toss in an M.2 hard drive or they actually do make cellular
NGFF M.2 4G LTE cards for it.
Now, the one I found is the four specific company, but I'm sure that there are other ones.
Yeah.
Look at it.
Just as long as it supports the bands and GSM.
Well, I don't know about that, but I have AT&T probably.
Well, maybe.
I mean, I could figure out those details.
My problem is that the major carriers have been moving away from having such devices because
they want to have an actual hotspot device itself, they can put more control over it.
Right.
Or at least they can put more control over it for most people.
Right.
Yeah, most people.
Tinkered with too much of those yet because particularly it's like the actual hotspot
and stuff.
I don't want to break the slightly expensive piece of electronics.
Right.
Right.
I mean, now I thought with some of these YouTube stars and whatnot that get all these stuff
sent to them by the providers sometimes, or the vendor sometimes, then I might, you
know, be more willing to break some of these.
Yeah.
I started looking at portable routers again because I've still got that MR3040.
It just doesn't have some of the internal memory to properly run OpenWRT.
That's that little white one that I got from T-Link, T-P-Link, right?
Yeah.
I know you had tools.
I know.
Yeah, I don't know where one of them went.
There's one of them that I did put OpenWDDRT, I think, on there.
OpenWRT.
Yeah, whatever it is, sorry.
But I think I misplaced that one and I just had the one that I was using for work, or maybe
there was the other way around, but I haven't really touched it in a while.
Yeah.
I mean, they're good in emergencies.
I've used mine a couple of times, you know, if I'm going someplace new.
I didn't do it here, but like when I go to my parents' house, if I just want the kids'
devices to connect, I'll set up that MR3040 to look like our home network and then
run an Ethernet cable and a USB cable and hook that to my parents' internet and voila,
the kids are connected.
Yeah, I was doing that for work for a while.
I've been pleasantly...
It's a useful item.
Yeah.
I've been pleasantly impressed with the hotspot that I acquired that NetGear forget the
model number.
Yeah.
Yeah, the one you showed me.
I remember the one that you were taking out hiking.
Yeah.
And then, you know, that's got me into building some antennas and stuff.
Yeah.
Well, the MR3040, I did put OpenWRT on that for a while.
It's back to stock firmware now because with OpenWRT on it, it was extremely unstable
after I would also go in and install the EasyTether software so that I could use the USB cable
and hook it to my phone, have my phone be the internet for that.
I would get all the settings done and then it just wouldn't restart and I'd have to
do a hard reset on it.
Eee.
Yeah.
So, three or four times trying to get the settings on there and it locking up and not being
able to do anything and having to start over and I put the stock firmware back on.
Almost sounds like it's a good reason to go out and get a Raspberry Pi.
Oh, no.
If I wanted, I'd just, you know, grab an old netbook and set that up.
True.
I'm still trying to work on that project for my car entertainment slash.
Right.
Signed through.
Right.
I've redone it a couple of times just with the MoPity and you still can't get the Bluetooth
pass through working on the Raspberry Pi.
Yeah.
Do you remember if it was able to do the Bluetooth pass through, if you put on an
external Bluetooth device, no, you still can't.
That's very, very disappointing.
Yeah.
I don't know why.
I know with some of the older ones, you were supposedly able to, some of the older versions
of Raspbian you were able to, but with the recent, I don't know, kernel updates probably
can't do it anymore.
Yeah.
That like split the functionality of it like in half.
I mean, I, I've been taking that one Pi that I was playing with for my car and replaced
it the Xbox and my bedroom with it.
And so I'm watching Netflix and stuff with that.
What on your Pi?
Yep.
Though there's been some hangups every now and then with it.
Well, you didn't used to be able to get Netflix working at all on the Pi because you couldn't
get a proper version of Chrome on the Pi.
So I'm curious how to do it.
How to do it?
It does involve Chrome, but I'm using a image OSMC, which is a Cody-based distribution.
Right.
It's from the XPMC for, yeah, okay.
And that allows you to add allows you to Netflix.
It does, but recently I haven't been able to use the Netflix package that has been distributed
for Cody.
I'm not an official one, but it, the way that OSMC did it, something to do with the crypto
dome package, you have to go into the actual package itself and edit a line of code before
it will install.
And if you do that, it won't reinstall or it won't keep the updates.
So right now it's kind of bricked and I need to go and fix that.
Cool.
No, because that was one of the reasons that I never ended up using it as a proper set
top boxes that you couldn't really get Netflix going on it without jumping through some
major hoops and setting up a server on another machine to stream Netflix to your Pi.
Yeah.
And that was a problem for a while.
It does work with Plex.
So if you have a Plex Media server set up, that works pretty seamlessly.
And then with a little bit of head banging, you can get the Netflix working.
I believe Google made a package of YouTube that works with Cody and OSMC and lower end
devices.
Is that even a problem with like my X120E, my old ThinkPad, giving that to stably use
YouTube?
Probably true.
I haven't bothered using it with the older devices.
I mean, like if it, of course, this is the old time I tried to set something up as an
entertainment center.
But I may keep this image when I start trying to play around with the one for my car or
when I get one for my car, because it is, you know, it's still based off a Linux and
so I can probably throw in some of those packages for using SDR.
Yeah.
Did you get your hamlicens or are you just tinkering?
Well, I'm only receiving so I don't need a hamlicens.
I do want to eventually get one, because I do want to get a software defined radio transceiver
instead of just a receiver.
Now granted, I can still probably use that as long as I don't transmit on any of the
ham channels or just keep it to like the CB and the FRS and the mirrors channels.
I mean, I probably know all the necessary things to get that take the tests, but I've
still just been a little apprehensive about actually going out and going to test, you
know, test for it.
One I have to find one of these ham shacks around here that will actually, does the proctoring
for it?
Right.
Right.
I was going to ask, is there a community around here for that?
There is.
I know there's a lot of bugs around here.
Yeah, there is a community.
I know that if you, there's that one occasionally if you drive around like over at the top of
cotton that you can actually find a building for, you know, that's one of the local, you
know, ham groups and there's like two or three there are from my experience, mostly well
seasoned gentlemen who, uh, when those cool, yeah, hamming might be fun around here.
And I know that there has to be, you know, a community because there is a ham repeater
up on the mountain that's run off a solar.
One of the local, uh, ingress players tried to make it a portal every time he hikes up
there.
A, um, I'm reading, I'm reading a write up on the Anet A8 and it's saying it requires a
significant amount of mods out of the box, not only for performance improvement, but also
for safety purposes, um, at the moment, but most, uh, yeah, most reviews I read that say
that yeah, it does require some mods to make it, you know, print, uh, to, to up the quality
of printing to something.
I mean, on the box of prints decently well, I mean, it's not like, you know, something
that you're going to, it's functional, the printing quality.
But most of the mods that you can get, you can print yourself.
Oh, okay.
Um, did you get a MOSFET mod?
That's one of the safety ones that, uh, Christian has been suggesting, uh, and that is designed.
I think that one was to cut off the power to the heating.
In case, uh, something happens where like the temperature sensor on either heating,
the plate falls off and the, it begins to heat it uncontrollably.
And the whole thing catches fire.
That has happened a few, on a few people, uh, yeah, this is suggesting getting a MOSFET
mod, another power supply unit and replacing the extruder with something more capable.
Did you replace the extruder?
I have not replaced the extruder, neither is Christian.
The extruder self, like it's pretty good so far, I have found, um, I don't know what they
mean by more capable, maybe because it needs, you know, to extrude different filaments.
But so far, if you, uh, the, all the PLA that I've used, uh, you know, works pretty well.
A lot of these reviews may be trying to compare the A8 to like, you know, one of the, you
know, really high in pro printers.
Right, right, right.
And that was just one review.
And the people doing the reviews generally, you know, have a lot of experience with other
printers that I assume that I budget printers.
Yeah.
I mean, this is a budget from everything that I read though.
It is the best value for a budget printer.
If you can build it yourself, I mean, together, not a built it.
How difficult was the build for it?
It, everything says like eight hours, but it took us like, me, Christian, and I took us
like two hours, three hours, I think, okay, you come out.
And that was including us messing up and having the tear some of it down a few times.
How long?
About four hours.
Okay.
Um, one of the upgrades that you can't print that is suggested is the fiberglass belts,
fiberglass reinforced belts.
And that one is a good one because the rubber belts that come with it tend to stretch out
really easily.
So even if you print yourself a belt tensioner, it just continues to stretch out and it's,
you know, it's better to get those though I have them, Christian gave me some, I haven't
put them on yet.
And I've been printing with it for a while.
What have you been printing?
Mostly little ingress resistant badges, just a, you know, kind of test with.
I did print a couple of things that, like I printed that little ring to hold the filament
that to put in there.
I was trying to print out a cable chain for all the wires.
And everything on it, but I was still working on fingering out how to tune it properly.
So you know, that kind of fell apart.
I think one of the nicest things about it and some people may not necessarily call it
a nice thing.
But if you're just learning about 3D printing, it's a good one because there's a lot of
thing.
It, there's a lot of ways that you can learn how the process works and learn how to do
it right.
Yeah, I saw Chris said printed out an entire chest set.
Yeah, he did.
He's also, I think one of his first major projects was his, he printed out these little
braces to, well, braces in pieces to hold the plexiglass that he was enclosing it in.
And he built himself a little enclosure for it to keep it at the right temperature, like
we were talking about earlier.
Correct.
Did that work for him?
It has.
I mean, his prints are pretty good.
They are definitely better than my prints.
And I think the only difference is that he has is the enclosure.
He had the fiberglass belts already and he printed out the belt tensioners.
And yeah, there is a definite, definite quarry difference between his and mine.
I was also still figuring out the settings and I incorporated some of what he had figured
out on the settings and was able to get the temperature and the speed and everything
back to something that, that's doing pretty good now, except for that last print, but
that was because I went from PLA to ABS.
How does that one do on ABS because a lot of the right ups I've read on that specific
printer say stay with PLA?
Well, I would definitely say stay with PLA.
It's in general easier to work with for any printer that you get.
It requires a lower heating temperature, it hears a whole lot easier and stuff like
that.
But I've only printed one thing with ABS and it was kind of for a lack of a better term,
a total failure.
Oh, is that what's currently stuck on your light?
Yeah, well, yeah, it's not on the extruder or the nozzle itself.
It was a big mess, but yeah, that's what stuck on there and when I get around to taking
that off, I probably should order the PLA today because I found out that I only had black
ABS.
By the time it comes in, that's when I'll get around to taking that big mess off.
Is it that it didn't get hot enough or what, or what so or maybe it did or maybe it got
too hot or something, but it was printing pretty well, except for the fact that I don't
have the actual machine itself leveled.
I had the bed leveled to the extruder, but the machine itself might be slightly tilted
wrong.
Anyway, I think it was, yeah, that the plate didn't get warm enough and the print itself came
off of the plate and that's what caused it to happen.
And then since it didn't have anything to hear too, that was within range, it just curled
up on top of itself and turned into a big giant spaghetti mess.
I firmly believe though that if I tinkered around with the settings and maybe had a more
adequate environment, such as either a heater in the room, maybe I should turn on the
Bitcoin miners that are next to it, that might actually work.
Yeah, that could do it, eat through them nice and warm.
Yeah, heat up them in the room and that will probably make that print come out a whole
lot better.
Well, I mean by a whole lot better as in actually something successful.
Right.
Well, don't they make electric bed warmers that you could use to keep the bed warm?
Well, it is an electric bed warmer.
The hot plate keeps the heat down.
I don't know if that's what you're saying.
Yeah, okay.
So the plate does keep itself warm.
It just wasn't warm enough.
Right.
It requires about 100 to 100 Celsius and it was only getting to about 95, 97, but in the
room itself, I mean, I was, it was one of those cold days in the past week and the heater
in my...
No, it was before that.
It was one of the other cold days before that, but the central heating isn't working
in my house at the moment.
And so that room was about the temperature slightly warmer than it was outside.
Yeah, that sucks.
Yeah, so it was having trouble keeping that bed warm.
I'd see it sometimes pop up to like 97 and then drop back down to 96.
All right.
I'll be back in a few minutes.
Okay, I'm back.
Nothing has gone on.
Yeah, we kind of lost a subject to talk about.
Oh, well, you know anybody that would want to buy a couple of Linux tablets?
Aside from me?
Did you want to buy a couple of my Linux tablets?
Maybe.
Though I just kind of suck as well.
The money I got.
I'm trying to, you know, pay for that 71.30 I want to buy.
You decide you like the looks of it, too?
Well, the write-up that they did on it was really good and, you know, like everything
works.
It's faster than my other one.
Yeah, the battery sucks.
But when am I not, you know, close to a power source?
Well, and don't most of the battery sucks.
And so far, I've found that it will last like at least two hours.
Yeah.
And, you know, I'd probably keep the 102HA, but that still leaves me the Dell Venu mid-machine
that I can sell and the T100 TA, but the T100 TA has, that bezel's pretty damaged on
it.
I don't use the screen, but there isn't a whole lot I can do for the bezel unless I want
to replace the whole back, too.
Wait.
Hold on.
Which one you're talking about?
Which one did you think I got?
Hmm.
The T100.
T100.
Okay.
Now, I got the Dell Venu.
No.
I want to get a Dell Venu.
But I want to sell.
Oh.
I want to sell.
Right.
I was confused there.
Though I did found that the, it does have a micro USB charging on there, but unless you're
using the one that it came with, it does not charge it.
Like it will maybe...
Well, even if you're using...
Well, because you've got those, um, the Intelli Charger ones that will automatically put
the proper wattage to it.
I think I was using one of those and it was still not doing it.
It was a battery pack.
Oh.
You were using a quick charge?
Yeah.
One of the ones with the Qualcomm 3 on it.
I guess I could have switched it over to the IntelliQuick from the anchor.
Yeah.
Give that a try.
Tell me what happens.
Like, because I know the one that you bought, didn't it come with the proprietary charger?
It did.
Which is just a...
It's not a wall work.
But it's a plug with a USB on it and then you plug that one into it and it's a micro USB
on the other side.
I think it's like 57 watts or something?
Oh.
57.
Well, voltage?
It would be five.
Let me go grab it right now and take a look.
Yeah.
Oh, one of the things right next to me.
I was way off on my memory.
24 watts.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, your QC should be able to go up to like nine volts and lower wattage.
But your IntelliCharge should control the wattage.
And it's just five volts and how many watts?
Just like 20 watts.
20 watts.
20 watts.
So according to the sticker on the side, that's only 2.0 amps.
So I don't know why I was having the problem.
Maybe it was I was using a bad cord or something to try and charge it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, two amps, that should be really easy to get to.
Yeah.
Any of my battery packs that I have, I'll put out two amps.
At least, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of charges out there that only do one amps, but
they're all going to be mostly your older ones.
Right.
And I found that most phones that I get nowadays, if I have the screen on, I-
He's going to drink batteries.
He's going to drain faster than the charges.
Exactly.
Unless you've got at least a 2.1 amp.
Yeah.
Though I've been going to that Qualcomm Quick Charge 3 on what I can find.
And that one will charge my phone up pretty quick.
So if your phone will accept it.
Yeah.
I have a couple of the Quick Charge batteries, the QC-3s, and a couple of the chargers, because
a lot of the regular batteries that you get from like Walmart and shit just don't do anything
from my phone.
Oh, yeah.
I pretty much have gotten almost exclusively with anchor for my phone charging needs, if
I can.
Sam's song makes some good batteries, like one of my favorite batteries, QC's.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I know some of those 1860's are Sam's song.
Right.
I mean, they may not be- I don't know if they're the best brand out there.
I'm pretty sure that comes down to people's opinion.
But I've been pretty satisfied with not only the abilities of anchored stuff that I get,
but the durability.
I am really rough on my stuff.
Yeah.
The 1860's from Sam's song are high-end, what are they, the 24 hours, 25 hours, something
like that.
I don't remember.
I wouldn't be surprised if my anchor battery pack does have one of those Sam's song, or
a couple of those Sam's song, 1860's, and I like the way it works, so I'm not going
to crack it open and look.
Did you pull off the back panel on that, oh, yeah, you said you did, you said you looked
in there, and you saw three M.2 slots.
Yeah.
I did.
What else were you looking for?
I did see the battery pack, but the battery pack is removable on it.
Yeah.
Well, I saw that in the right up on that one page, which I had to pull the battery out
to do the M2s.
You don't have to, though, suggest to do that for safety reasons.
I know you, Mr. I'm going to pull out my video card while it's running.
Hey, it was only once.
Once was enough, though, right?
Yeah, pretty much.
But yeah, when I was fiddling around with those, I did take the battery out.
I didn't notice that the one I got was missing a screw to secure the hard drive in place
or the SSD.
Okay.
Okay.
So, yeah, that's the other thing I was wondering about if that, if the 128 gigabyte SSD was
replaceable, then, you know, go out and grab a frickin' 512, and toss it in there.
Yes, it is.
It's one of those slim card ones on there, but I think most of those, like the ones that
are designed for the netbooks and whatnot, come in that size.
Actually, I think I probably can...
I know that there's a two...
I know that there's a...
Yeah, but I think that that 128 that's in there is the biggest one I have around
at the moment.
The one in my ultrabook or the HB stream that I have, I think that's only a 32 gig.
Yes, the struggle is real.
Because I considered, you know, ordering one of those venues and then pulling the hard drive
and then putting another one in and leaving windows on the first hard drive.
In case I ever wanted to switch back for whatever reason.
Right, and yeah, that would totally work on this one.
Re-sale or...
Just needed to be on windows for whatever reason for a short time.
For a time.
I probably should have done that, but...
Right.
So, your brother's not joining?
Oh, I haven't heard someone.
Okay.
Has Chris seen your venue?
Um...
I don't think so.
Well, because I know he has the Pro 8 like I do, and I know he's always been in love with that little beastie.
I figured it out.
Yeah.
I haven't seen that Pro 8.
I've only seen him lug around his laptop, but that's what usually he does his designing on, I think.
But if I can...
Yeah, if I can get this venue working right.
Oh, that's right.
I have seen that Pro 8.
But if I can get this venue working right, it would...
I would pretty much replace my laptop with it.
And maybe even replace my tablet with it.
Well, I'm not going to replace my gaming laptop, which I also, you know, use as an in-place computer at home.
But definitely, my own ego has been convertible tablet of one type or another for a while now.
Yeah, I've been currently without a desktop computer, and without a gaming computer ever since my son took mine up to Ohio.
His broke down right before he left, and I was like, here you go.
Take mine.
Though I put all the pieces back together to the one that he said supposedly didn't work.
And I just forgot to stick the hard drive in, and it should work.
Give it a try.
Otherwise, like I was saying before, Facebook Marketplace, I was checking out the deals in this area.
And there's some fairly decent laptops on there.
I think there was, you know, the 700, as I switched back to Owens since we're headed back that way.
Yeah, I should probably look into that.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of equipment nearby that I could tinker around with it in a way that I could get off a Facebook and whatnot.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of doing that.
Just, you know, getting stuff cheap and then tinker around with it and either turning it back around and reselling it or putting it out of shelf somewhere.
Yeah, there's some stuff that I probably need to sell here.
Hey, you want a big like 40-inch projection screen?
Projection TV?
No.
You want a derivative of a 40-inch projection TV?
No.
No.
I have one that's taken up space.
I was getting rid of a foosball table and a total coworker.
Yeah.
Come pick it up.
And he shows up with these two projection TVs.
And I'm like, I don't want them.
He's like, well, great.
You're getting them anyway.
One, I finally, one of them, I finally eventually rolled out to the road and it disappeared in a couple of days.
So I could probably do the same thing to the other one.
Yeah, that's the nice thing about this area.
You set it out somewhere and put it on the curb, make it obvious you don't want it.
Somebody will come by and they'll want it.
Yeah, I got a dog house like that.
Well, that's how I got that one couch.
Yeah, I should really get a new couch.
Mine's a bit worn out.
And I found out that it's actually the bane of my roommates.
He tried to get rid of it three different times and it kept showing up because the...
He would get someone to get rid of it.
Like, he got rid of it.
They moved into the person that he got rid of it with, too.
So they brought it.
And then he convinced them to get rid of it.
So I got it.
And then he moved in with me.
And yeah, so it keeps showing up regardless of how often you get rid of it.
Oral.
I feel we're kind of bogarting this show today.
Well, nobody else is wanting to jump in yet.
So, I mean, if somebody else wanted to talk, they'd start talking.
What are you using to vape these days?
Oh, I've got this, what's it called, a drag.
It's 175 watt max.
Instead of my normal, it's 200 watt max.
But I don't go up that high anyway, you know.
Dual 18650.
And then still doing the dripping mods.
Yeah, I just went out and got one today.
My coworker, he wanted to get one before he took off to on loan again.
But he wanted to get one.
He didn't want to go online to get one because he didn't want his wife to find out.
Well, I know John is getting rid of his stuff.
If I can get a hold of him today, he might bring it by and just give it to me.
I don't think he's on Facebook anymore, so I don't know if I don't know if his numbers changed or what.
Now, but here, there's a Lenovo IdeaPad Y700.
It's in the local area.
I put that in the group chat here.
Let me take a look at that.
A couple of HP elements floating around.
Oh, it's this other one here.
Oh, this one's got a 960.
Terrible.
Let me send you this one too.
Oh, I just lowered myself out of debt and you want to...
All right.
I mean, lowered the balance on my credit card and you start sending me stuff to spend.
Oh, it's all like you'd be using your credit card on that.
True.
You're willing to drive to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
There's another one of these Y5070s for $270.
That's only what, $200 in guess?
Yeah.
You'd see the countryside.
True.
I am headed up that way and...
Okay.
Yeah, they might not have it for sale by then.
Probably won't have it for sale by then.
Most likely not.
The $130 off compared to the one that's for sale local.
And, you know, you send them an extra $30 and you still save them $100.
But you get them distributed to you.
Yeah, but I found I really don't need a gaming computer right now.
Yeah.
Still, you don't even have a server set up?
Oh, no.
I've got two servers.
Well, those are dostops.
Well, true.
But they're headless.
They don't have to be.
Be, though.
True.
That's what your thin client delvenuous for.
Right.
Technically, I don't have a desktop setup right now either.
I mean, I've got that little gigabit bricks running out in the garage because my server died.
And so my tower took a place in my server.
But yeah, I mean, I've got my main server, which does the file sharing and the game serving,
which I should probably split off to another computer.
And then I've got my other little one, which does all the receiving of the radio traffic and transmits that back out to the internet.
So you're not gaming at all these days?
Not really.
I mean, I do some mobile gaming's, but they're not like gaming games.
I don't know.
Okay.
No, I just started playing watch dogs, which is pretty fun.
And I still played a shit out of some borderlands, too.
And started playing some of the Batman stuff.
And started playing Skyrim again.
And you know, it's steam sale time until the third.
Yeah, I found that I spent way too much time doing those.
And I was more productive doing other things.
So that's kind of where I don't play those games anymore.
No, man, I do missle.
You know, I do pick like a day or two here and there.
And I'll do three or four or five or six hours.
But then, you know, it'll be another week week and a half before I play again.
Right, right, right.
I'm not saying that's something, you know, anyone does it over excessively.
And then, you know, sometimes I'll just turn on the quake because I'm having a bad day.
And I see the shoot to shit out of some things to feel better.
Oh, yeah, that's always fun.
And I mean, I have found that I am more of a not voyeuristic gamer.
Why do you like one tube of other people playing?
Well, watch, like if I need a gaming fix, I'll watch my roommate.
He'll play some Overwatch or, oh man, what's that one?
Rainbow Six Siege.
Oh, well, I don't know.
I still enjoy it.
Yeah.
And I still manage to get time to get my Linuxy stuff in.
I still do my work, still hang out with my kids and hit the gym every now and again.
And occasionally I'll sleep.
Oh, yeah, that gym thing.
I need to do that.
Yeah, I don't know how much I'll be going in January.
Pete going to the gym in January.
Yeah, I'll be as you get all those people who are just going to be there for two weeks.
Yeah.
She'd start a bar called New Year's Resolution.
It's a gym for two weeks and then the rest of the year, it's a bar.
Yeah, I saw that meme.
I'm going to get back into podcasting.
Well, I'm going to try.
Well, if your gaming is now on, what was it, Saturdays?
No, that was on Saturdays.
That was only this week.
Uh, okay.
Well, it's back on Wednesdays then.
Yeah, yeah.
Wednesdays going to be the normal week and then it's, yeah.
It's actually schedule wise.
That's what worked out for everyone the most.
But with Christmas, the way it fell Wednesday.
Or Wednesday was a no good.
So they just did Saturday and that's way ended up causing all the problems.
Okay, guys, happy New Year from the Netherlands.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
We're going to go out and have some fun.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Now, well, you could still try out the Linux lug cast, which is the first and third Friday of each month.
Oh, yeah.
Um, I should do that.
I'm always horribly forgetful.
I guess our sending your reminders again.
Oh, yeah.
That'd be nice.
Maybe I'll get mine.
Yeah, mine.
That mine is on that show.
And so it was honky Magoo, who I haven't heard anything from, but I see that he's on here.
And 50 was on earlier.
I really need to do a write-up on me or on the radio server that I built.
That would be cool.
Well, you could put that on hacker public radio.
I mean, that's kind of what it's designed for for anybody to be able to provide content and get it out there.
I'll look into that.
You would as a podcast and upload it and it'll hit my RSS feed.
All right.
I'm going to take a little break for a while and come back on later.
Hopefully we'll get supper with the family out the way and I'll hit you up.
You can show me your tablet.
And Chris is going to be at X later, right?
Yeah, I'm going to, at some point, I think probably about now, I'm going to head over to Game Vault and play some board games.
Unless you wanted to meet all of them and then I can, you know, scratch that.
No, because I have no idea what time they're going to want to go out to the ring cone.
And if I can go, and if I believe me, I'll never hear the end of it.
All right.
Well, I mean, if you guys want to play some board games, that's always fun too.
Well, that's awesome.
I think everybody's taking a nap right now.
I was going to go join him for a little bit.
How are you getting old?
I am.
I am so old.
Ancient.
I'm falling apart here, Paul.
Yeah, I'm not that far behind you.
Yeah.
Before you go, could you, what kind of radios are you serving?
Oh, that was Joe who's going to go.
I'm just, I'm monitoring the local city, police and fire department.
And they are doing 800 megahertz and 150 megahertz P25 radios.
And what are you using for reception?
I have five of those 10 to 20 dollar real tech SDR dongles.
Well, I was planning on getting into it.
And I didn't know whether I should go with the SDR or something like a
RSP1A.
Well, those cheap SDR dongles, I can tell you that they have performed remarkably well for the fact that they're between 10 and 20 dollars a piece.
And one of the things, I don't know, you know, since I don't have a ham license, I just do scanning mostly.
But one of the benefits of having the SDRs is that compared to like regular police scanners, these receive everything and then can just queue it in afterwards.
As it goes on, what was the other one that you mentioned?
RSP1A, it's a C note for a single receiving unit.
It definitely does have a wider range of receiving frequencies than those RTL SDRs.
And the 10 megahertz of bandwidth is pretty good too.
Also, they have some things like broadcast, notch filtering and stuff that may come in handy.
Yes, it definitely was or definitely would.
That is beyond my expertise to use at the moment.
But well, I'm in the Boston area and WBZ 1030 AM can be picked up on everything except perhaps your dental work.
Yeah, I wouldn't got the non-metal dental work. Right, I know what you mean.
But I'm just saying that having a radio that has a blocker for that would may make my life easier.
Yeah, it definitely would.
The real evil device is the RSP2 line.
It has two receivers, completely independent and three antenna inputs.
And that comes in regular and pro. I'm just saying that one is you could get lost.
Yeah, I see that looking at like 200 for the pro.
Yes, well, I'm just saying all the choices you have there is like, you know, gives you a, you could lose yourself in SDR land.
So what do you usually use or what do you usually like to listen to or what would you use that for?
Well, one of the things that I'm looking at is seeing what kind of aircraft band reception I can get.
No, that's interesting.
Well, if you follow your hack a day, you can also not only get aircraft voice, but you can get what do they call it?
ADB, which is the aircraft transponder stuff.
Yeah, I have been looking into that the ADB on the, I think it's 1090 megahertz.
Maybe it's 1090.
The interesting thing is that if you go into hack a day, you don't even have to pick it up.
There's what they call virtual radar server.
I've thought about actually setting up something like that with one of the free dongles that I have here or I could add another one on there.
Well, there is one where with a little Python, you can get the ADB data and you don't even have to receive the signals locally.
Interesting.
It's on hack a day.
Yeah, I'll go look at that.
I'm wondering though if that has to do with something along the lines of what I do with mine here where I receive the radio traffic and then I give it to a content provider.
It's possible, but I'm just saying you can do, you can, you can figure stuff out.
I'm, I'm just thinking about stuff at the moment.
The one thing with, with the RSP is that I have to think about what I'm going to use for antenna.
Yeah, that was actually kind of a big issue with mine.
I ended up building my own disco and antenna, which surprisingly wasn't all that hard or expensive.
Though I haven't provided any kind of weather proofing at all for it.
So that may be a needed improvement.
Well, one of the things that I can do here is I'm down in the valley, but I can go to the second floor fairly easily.
Yeah, mine is actually on top of my roof.
I have questions about how anything that's not weather proof to some degree would survive in New England.
Yeah, Opaso has significantly less amounts of water than New England.
But we get it in such interesting form.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I mean, we get it not only, uh, do we get it liquid?
We get it solid in several forms, you know, sweet, freezing rain, ice, you know.
We, you know, not just the rain and snow, we get, we get everything in between.
True, true.
I'm pretty sure I could put some lacquer or something over the, uh, over everything on it.
And that would probably take care of that.
But, uh, the last, uh, I actually replaced the last one that I had, which was up there for two years.
And it did have a bit of resting on some, on some of the inside.
But for the most part, it stayed together pretty well.
Well, I also have an attic that I can get to with a little work, but that might, that's what I might have.
Yeah, I was wondering, um, maybe you could tell me how one of those RTL units running off of something like a Raspberry Pi would do is a remote sensor.
Well, if you're doing just EDB, the, the reception on that, um, and some regular voice, it would probably work very well as a remote sensor.
So what I'm doing is it has to do, or it's the P25 is a digital trunking protocol.
So there's a lot of extra overhead that it has to do.
But I've been told that even with the software for that, it still will work on a Raspberry Pi.
Well, what I'm thinking is, uh, having, having the Pi and, uh, an RTL act as the radio.
And then since most of the processing I've seen for digital signals, there is a front end.
And then it is broadcast, it is processed into some kind of, uh, data stream.
I would have the data stream processed, perhaps on a secondary machine.
Yeah, I've actually, there's a lot of, uh, software out there that is designed around, um, remote streaming of, uh, these RTL receivers.
So I'm, I'm thinking that if you set that up, that you would have a pretty good experience with that on a Raspberry Pi.
Actually, the, the one thing that I haven't heard is with a 3B plus you, you have the ability to use power over ethernet.
Really?
You need a power over ethernet hack, but I don't know it seems like it could power at least an RTL.
I don't know if it'll power a full-blorn RSP.
I don't think the RSP would work, but a single RTL should work.
I have found that if I try and use like four RTLs on a hub, they don't like to work unless it's powered.
So a single one should be too much draw for that.
Now, under those conditions, uh, things do, you do get a, uh, sort of, uh, cumulative cost, but, uh, you might want to think about that for your, uh, for your scanner system.
I have, and actually that, that concept was something that I was, uh, toying around with when I'm, I was going to try and take a Raspberry Pi and replace my car stereo with it.
And I wanted to use one of those, uh, SDR dongles as the main radio source.
That way I can listen to AM FM, listen to, you know, watch some TV.
And then, you know, what I usually do is start looking at the local radio, you know, the two way radios to see what's going on.
Though if I could get a Raspberry Pi set up and find a place to put that on top of the mountain via solar power, that might be an interesting little project.
Probably would run me about a hundred hundred and fifty dollars.
And local radio, hey, how's it going?
Well, it's a little quiet right now, but folks come in and out.
Yeah, I'm just kind of here waiting before everything starts up here at the, at our place.
Uh, just watching the, um, this video on, uh, Doom, uh, by Retro Ahoi.
So that just heard you, uh, pop up there, so I figured I just, uh, answer the call.
Well, I've just been waiting for folks to come in and be listening to some other stuff on the side.
Yeah, I hear you.
Just, uh, while I'm watching this, I'm just enjoying myself, uh, a pre-New Year's Eve, uh, get together beer.
Having a, uh, George Killian's Irish Red.
Well, that sounds like a real beer, not a lot of the junk that's, uh, served around here.
I'm in the Boston area.
I see. Yeah, no, I'm down in Miami.
So, uh, why there's kind of warm here, but not too bad. It's kind of nice outside.
So we're planning on doing a little barbecue.
My cousin's coming over.
Uh, it's my sister, my niece, my dad.
So we're going to do a little barbecue here and kind of eat outside since the weather's nice.
Well, we're having a little rain storm here. It's about 36 degrees.
Let me see what the weather's like here. I know it's not that cold.
Uh, around here. It's probably down, like, probably in the 70s.
It was a beer, will it?
Yeah, it's 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
So, it's 24 degrees Celsius.
So who else we got here on the, uh, on the livestream?
Well, I'm Paul from Opaso. Uh, Joe brought me in.
Hey, Paul. How's it going?
Pretty well. I'll be here in and out, uh, as the night goes.
Yeah, pretty much the same here. Uh, I just have it there in case, uh, anything picks up.
I'm on a plumble on my phone right now. So it's connecting that way.
I was on it earlier this morning, uh, talking to 5150 and a couple other people.
So, and I just been listening here and there.
Yeah, plumble pretty much the only way I connect these days.
Yeah, it's a, it's more convenient considering you don't have to pull out a microphone or a headset,
or whatnot with, uh, you know, in case you got, you want to use your mobile client.
And plus it's easier with a phone than it is with a laptop or a desktop.
Kind of easier to get around.
Before I forget it, uh, Paul, thank you for all, all the SDR tips, uh,
whatever receipt, whatever, uh, receiving module I get,
your tips will be priceless.
Oh, you're most welcome.
I'm thinking of going with a high low mix, the, uh, RSP
for general coverage and then cut the, uh, the other dongles, the RTLs,
or something like that for, um, you know, different hacks.
So any of you on, uh, some sort of federated, uh, social network,
like mastodon or something like that?
No, I've been interested to moving into one of those though.
I'm actually digging it.
Uh, I did so, what about maybe a month ago?
And, uh, it's been pretty good.
A lot of interesting interactions.
Uh, and it's interesting how it all works together too.
Um, I guess the closest thing you can think about it, think of it, is like,
kind of the way email works, where you can have your own email address
at a particular domain and someone else and y'all can communicate with one another.
It's very similar, although it's more like a very Twitter-like interface.
Um, but still very interesting.
I should really look into that.
I've been known to say things that are not exactly politically correct.
Often.
Oh, trust me.
You'll find everything on, on, uh, on the Fediverse.
On the federated universe.
Yeah, both of me and my brother end up in, uh, Facebook jail kind of, you know,
more frequently than we prefer.
What is this Facebook used to go?
Good answer.
I have a boyhood Facebook, uh, being infected by Facebook.
Yeah, uh, earlier this year, um, well, actually, I should say later this year.
It's probably like a couple of months, uh, before the end of the year.
Uh, don't remember exactly when I decided to log on to my, uh,
original account that I had from years ago.
I said, let me give it a try.
Uh, because I said that, you know, maybe I can access my pictures or whatever from before and,
and, and, and kind of download it in some way.
And scary enough, uh, it was, I was still able to log into my old account.
So it's been the activator for, I don't know how many years.
And then, uh, yeah, then it was nice to see the, um,
how truly it was to download all the pictures and the data and, uh,
yeah, I grabbed all of that and then I closed it up again.
Where would you say the starting point is to get into, you know,
the federated universe?
I think the main site is, uh, join mastodon.org.
And from there, you're given a bunch of, uh, different instances that, uh,
you can look at and see if they put your interest and then just join in.
And my other question is, you have the ability to host your own at some point, correct?
Yes, you can host your own, um, it's, uh, open source.
So yeah, you can host your own and create your own instance.
And if you want, you can have other people on there, uh,
or have it just be you.
And it will, um, it will, uh, federate with all the other instances out there.
Yeah, I really do need to look more into that.
That sounds like it has a whole host of opportunities.
And it definitely looks like this has, uh,
the more of a possibility of, uh, getting,
I guess getting more popular compared to the stuff from before,
because I used to be on identical,
and then that changed to kind of try to make it more Facebook-like.
And I didn't like it.
And I think just, one kind of downhill from there.
Um, I like the format of how identical was back in the day.
Uh, it's very Twitter-ish.
Um, and this kind of goes back to that,
although it's, it's,
it's a little bit different from Twitter,
but it kind of has that feel of Twitter.
Where you're dispensing your thoughts in 35 characters, a piece?
350, say.
Well, actually, I guess it depends on the instance.
This one instance that I'm on is,
uh, mastodon.xyz,
or xyz, as they would say in other places.
Um, this one has, uh, a minimum,
I mean, a limit of 500 out of curiosity.
Is there a lot of background noise from my end?
Not really.
If there's broadly background noise,
I'm betting it's on my end.
All right, just curious,
because I have my, uh,
my, uh, tower right here next to me,
and the fans are a little loud.
I mean, you can kind of hear a little bit in the background,
but it doesn't sound any more than, you know, everyone else.
Gotcha. Yeah, because I'm, uh,
currently charging my phone,
so it's right near it.
So you, you'll hear in the background.
Otherwise, I'd have it pulled away a minute.
What are these phones you speak of?
Come on, you can't tell me you're not using a phone.
Yeah, I got one here with,
with a dial right next to my computer keyboard.
You mean those newfangled things?
Please.
Well,
yes,
but it's interesting when I call,
uh,
some,
call some people they,
uh, say, well,
let me send you a picture.
I said, sorry,
this phone does not have picture capability.
So how do you have that phone set up,
or is it connected to an actual landline?
Yeah, at the moment,
it's actually set down in,
in this little cradle.
Landline,
DSL, you know,
the usual.
Cool.
Yeah, no,
I've been seeing some people using,
uh, I think,
Sigflop actually recorded a couple of,
uh,
well, I think one HPR episode
where she had connected,
uh,
an analog phone,
uh,
to a,
a voice setup that she had,
had been working on.
Well, back in,
in the midst of time,
when I was doing security,
I read about this,
uh,
they were using cordless phones,
hooked to a box on her,
on a yacht,
that did, uh,
cellular connections.
So you have a wireless phone,
talking to a box,
that talks to the cellular network.
Oh, cool.
So it was,
it was some sort of,
uh,
how was that all set up,
a conversion box of some sort,
or what they had was a box
that,
that your,
uh,
ordinary phone jacks on,
on your yacht,
or vessel of choice.
It made those,
uh,
outlets seem just like,
they were going to be
dialing a regular phone,
and they recommended
cordless phones
as they were easily
replaceable,
and they didn't,
you didn't have a cord
to run around.
Also it meant that, uh,
if you drop something overboard,
it wasn't a very expensive cellular phone,
it was, you know,
$50,
holy shit.
Gotcha.
Yeah, I was looking up the episode
that Sigflip did,
and it's HPR 2627,
uh,
entitled Home Phone Setup.
Well, since,
all of my network so far
is hardwired,
I love,
whether,
playing a telephone,
or ethernet.
I have to think about that,
but it sounds like
you do ability.
I've been thinking about getting
some kind of Wi-Fi only,
phone,
or, uh,
tablet.
I remember back in the day,
I was interested in,
um,
um,
setting up something
with the asterisk,
um,
but I just never got
around to it.
And now, at this point,
I don't know,
it must be my,
my age or something.
I just, uh,
don't have the patience
for it.
Maybe I would,
at some point,
who knows?
I'm really not that familiar
with asterisk,
and stuff,
but, uh,
especially since,
because I'm on DSL,
I have to keep a
landline anyway.
Right, right.
Yeah, I don't,
I,
I used to be,
I used to have a
landline age
as a go,
and I was always, uh,
a proponent for it.
I always said, you know,
you got to have,
at least, a landline to,
just in case of emergencies
or whatever,
but it's just gotten
to the point where,
even that's going away,
and, uh,
I'm just,
it's basically my
cellphone.
I'm just living off of that
right now.
Yeah, I understand, um,
most people do,
uh,
again,
my landline with
the usual bells
and whistles
is about all I can afford.
Gotcha.
Now, uh,
with Mazda Dawn,
if you set up a server,
does that mean you
have to have a
24-7, uh,
instance running?
To be honest,
I don't know exactly,
uh, but I don't think so.
I think it's just you.
It's, you know,
if it's,
if you're the only
person that's going to be
on, on your own instance,
then I don't really think
it's necessary.
Now, if you start hosting
other people, then,
yeah, you,
you may have to,
you may get questions
from your,
from, uh, your users,
saying, hey, uh,
how can I
access my,
my account on this instance?
Well, I,
I have some
reluctant to run
anything that, uh,
that has to have an
open front
to the world.
Now, I understand.
I mean, if that's a
case, and you can always
join one of the
other instances,
that's what I did.
I don't have one set up
on any of my machines.
I just joined one
that was out there.
Uh,
I looked at the ones
that were out there,
and, uh,
I just picked the X,
the .xyz1
because I knew
that's where,
not Clot 2,
or Clot 2,
I should say,
was on, so I say,
hey, why not?
There is a main one,
which is
messadon.social,
but everyone signs
up to that one.
So they usually say,
try to get,
try to go into one
that's, um,
that's not as overloaded.
By the way,
uh, how would you find
what topics are on
messadon?
I have,
I have, uh,
specific interest in
ashburgers
and, uh,
autistic spectrum
disorders.
That's a good question.
Um,
I would start
with the
join messadon.org site.
Uh,
I think they,
they,
you're allowed to search,
I think, um,
there's,
there's a section I'm looking
at it now,
or if you go to,
you scroll down,
and there's a sign-up section,
and there's a drop-down
that says,
I am an artist,
musician,
or writer,
or whatever.
And there's,
uh,
a second drop-down
that, uh,
asks what language
you speak.
Uh,
I think there might be another
way to search,
uh, for,
one specifically,
but I haven't
even gone that far.
I just kind of,
they have a list,
um,
that you can look at
right underneath those
drop-downs,
and they give a description
like,
there's one that's the
BSD.network instance,
which is,
uh,
it's, uh,
specifically BSD-centric.
Uh,
there's one for
witchcraft.cafe,
which,
I guess is about that,
um,
one,
anarchism.space,
uh,
there's a Linux rocks.online,
uh,
there's other ones
that, uh,
I guess you can look at,
I'm not going to bring them up here,
uh, but, uh,
you know,
you can just take a look at the list
and see which one interests you.
Yeah, well,
I'm interested in many things,
um,
firearms to,
uh,
as I said,
artistic spectrum stuff,
um,
uh,
well,
um,
you could see the nice,
I haven't tried this yet,
um,
I don't think I will need to,
but you can actually migrate your account
from one instance to another
if you feel you need to change,
like for example,
if you feel that the,
I don't know,
I guess the,
the topic or the subject matter
isn't to your,
to your taste,
you can always take your account,
along with everything,
and I believe all the users
that you,
all the followers you have
and those you're following,
you can take them
with you over to another instance,
um,
and just continue on from there.
Okay, so it,
it sounds like,
um,
how would this compare
to old school IRC?
I'm familiar with that,
but I haven't done anything
more modern than that.
It's,
it's hard to tell,
because I guess,
I don't know,
IRC,
man, I don't know IRC enough
to know if you can,
uh,
communicate with other servers,
uh,
that I don't know,
because I know I'm on free node,
I'm on a few other,
uh, IRC servers,
uh,
with the same accounts,
but that's because I've
created accounts on each.
But,
as far as,
um,
they're
inter-connectivity
with one another,
I don't know if that's even possible.
I could be wrong,
I hope someone comes on
and corrects me.
Um,
but I know you can,
I know that the,
the mastodon instances
tend to be,
um,
quite integrated.
Uh,
it's almost,
it's very mesh-like,
so you can,
you know,
you kinda,
it can move,
it's easier to move
from one to the other
and keeping all your stuff.
Uh,
but like I said,
I haven't tried this,
so this is all in theory.
That's from what I've read.
Uh,
now,
there are generic,
uh,
instances that you can get on.
Uh,
there are specific ones
that, you know,
they're particular subject matter.
Uh,
either way,
everyone sees it
because the way it's set up,
it's,
I believe it's kind of like
tweed deck,
the interface,
the webinar face.
So, on one column,
you have the timeline
of the people that you're following.
Uh,
and you see the stuff there.
On the second one,
you have your notifications.
On the one after that,
you have the timeline
for that look,
for,
for the accounts on that instance.
And then the last column
shows the federated instance.
So you see a timeline
from all the instances.
It kind of goes by a bit fast.
Uh,
so,
if you were to join,
let's say,
mastodon.social,
and then you were to
put out that question out there,
uh, about an instance
that, the instance
that you're interested in,
someone will see it,
and someone will respond,
and probably let you know
that there's one out there.
Uh,
again,
I can't say this is
exactly what will happen,
but that's a theory.
Well, I think
before I join anything,
I have to learn a little more
about how such things work.
I mean,
I don't even tweet.
Yeah,
it took a little bit for me
to wrap my head around this.
But it kind of clicks.
Um,
it's actually way better
than what Twitter is,
because Twitter is all centralized.
And this is completely decentralized.
So,
like I said,
I think the closest description
would be email.
Uh,
you can email,
I have a Gmail account,
and I can email someone
with a Yahoo account,
Yahoo email account.
So,
it kind of works in that way.
So,
I can follow someone
in a different instance,
and they can see it,
and if they choose to follow
and if they choose to follow me,
they can do so.
And then they'll see
what a riposte
on the timeline,
and I'll see whatever they post
on the timeline,
even though we're on different servers.
Yeah, again,
I,
I think I need to study up,
but, uh,
and,
and these are
short messages,
uh,
that you send.
They can be,
I know in the instance
that I'm on,
uh,
the limit is 500 characters.
So, it can be quite long,
uh,
just not extremely long.
Yeah,
it sounds like a sentence
or a paragraph.
Yeah,
pretty much,
but definitely more than
what used to be the case
with Identica
or with, uh,
or with Twitter.
I don't know what the limit is
on Twitter,
because I haven't had
a Twitter account
for ever.
Uh,
so, I don't know.
I haven't kept up
with Twitter.
All right, well,
I'm going to lurk here
for a little bit,
and, uh,
about maybe 20 minutes,
I'll be signing it off.
Uh,
if I'm not back on,
I hope you all have a
happy,
very happy new year.
Uh,
and to say...
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
This,
this is open a new area
for me to look into.
Uh,
I'm glad I can help.
Have a good one.
What did I miss, net?
We were talking about, uh,
Macedon,
how that works,
and what the possibilities are.
Uh,
since I'm not really,
uh, aware of
how Twitter and such things are used,
I need to study a bit more
before I can
consider jumping into that pool.
Okay.
Cool.
Well, if anyone's interested,
um,
at ClaudioM,
at mastodon.xyz.
So,
there you go.
Have a good one, everyone.
You too.
Well,
if you, uh,
yeah,
I do need to look for some more
ashburgers resources.
Uh,
apologies if I get into a ratchet job
because that's
tends to,
sometimes,
that's what happens
when my ashbees
get,
gets rolling.
Anybody else been on
that I've missed?
Not really.
We've, uh,
been pretty quiet.
Um,
um,
the tilts guys were supposed
to be on today.
I just haven't really seen
any of them.
Yeah.
Thanks, Arthur,
for the,
uh,
for the link.
Hey, Paul,
you're back.
Kind of soda.
We're eating.
I dropped off
when I went off my wife.
Yeah,
it's not you,
uh,
yeah, I saw you,
uh,
ended up back in the lounge.
So,
I knew you were off,
off.
Paul, thanks for your help,
uh,
apologies if I get to be
a little bit of a
ratchet job.
Uh,
it's part of the ashbees thing,
but you've been very helpful.
I will do a corny,
but we like this.
Yeah, no,
um,
I'm very appreciative to
talk to you.
Sorry, I was kind of
hoarding food.
No.
Hello.
I didn't know why.
Before we're doing,
like, a,
a silence thing for
just putting up the,
uh, episodes or,
or what there.
You got kind of quiet for a
while.
And that might,
he is.
I wasn't sure about
massaging on it first,
either.
I only started in January.
You got clipped,
uh,
I just said I just started
in January and I just
wasn't sure about what I was
doing at first,
either,
but I haven't caught two
there.
Help the little,
because I can bounce
out of my post off of him,
too.
Yeah.
Well,
I don't know how many
podcasts that I used to,
but I followed
plateau back in the day.
He's good people.
I listened when he was in
the bad apples.
And then he switched
over to that, uh,
new world,
a good new world order.
Yeah.
I remembered the good
new world.
He's still doing it.
And it's,
he has some pretty good
serious going.
Yeah.
That's one reason why I
want to get either a phone
or a tablet.
So I can do podcasts,
uh, listen to podcasts
and stuff like that.
Do you listen at
normal speed or do you
speed it up a little?
I used to listen at normal
speed,
but I haven't listened to
podcasts,
um,
or at least downloaded
podcasts.
I've been making my own
with, with our friends
on Linux Logcast.
But, uh,
yeah, I may try speeding it
up.
Uh, again,
what little I knew about
podcast,
blog catchers has faded
over the,
not using them for a couple
of years.
One I use is called
podcast addict.
And so has,
I don't know how,
it goes up to about three
speed, but I only do it
about 1.6.
Well,
I've been doing YouTube,
and I do that up to two
sometimes on audio,
but 1.5 or,
or six would probably be
more reasonable.
Also, my library has
got itself a new
digital media system
that I don't have to explore.
So, it's supposed to be
more browser friendly
and what not.
The previous generation
was, uh,
strictly Windows
or Mac
or Android.
Good evening.
Hey, no matter what's
up.
Oh, we're having a quiet
evening on, you know,
HPR.
Reminds me of my youth.
I thought your youth
was anything but,
well,
does the term silent
majority ring any bells?
Yeah, we've been
pretty quiet for a lot
of the time I've been
out here,
but usually, perhaps
except when I'm running my
jaw, things have been
very helpful and very smart.
Well, they're usually
very helpful and very smart.
So, I had just gotten
one of those
rolls of LED lights
that I was going to put
around my desk,
and I thought it was
you're supposed to peel
one side of it,
and it's supposed to be
sticky,
and you can just kind of
stick them on the things,
but it doesn't feel
that way.
It feels like the other
part that you're
peeling off is a
sticky part,
but that doesn't help you
because then you can't
stick it to anything.
I'm going to get a
conundrum here.
Well, that sounds like
a job for Velcro
or a double-sided tape.
Right?
At this point,
I think I'm just going to
kind of stream
like a steamer
lights at this point.
What do you need to power
such a strip of light
lights,
or does it come with a
power board?
It comes with a,
this one has a
dimmer tool.
It's a 12-volt
power supply.
Speaking of strings
of lights in the
season and all,
if you can find
things that use
what is incandescent
Christmas tree bulbs
or similar lights,
there is a
40 watt
chandelier bulbs
that will fit
those sockets
and its LED
powered so it uses
less energy than
the Christmas tree bulb
you're replacing.
Good, you know.
This also means you can
take most of the
incandescent
light lights and
turn them into
real light.
This may be a
job for a staple gun.
Yes.
You may want to look
around to see if you can
get one of those
used for telephone
line,
where it's designed
to staple a cable.
Yes.
That's true.
That might be the
safest way to go.
There's something
more of those
larger type
staples.
The thing is that
the ones that I've
got here,
I think I've got
one somewhere around
the house.
They don't try to
flatten the staple.
They leave a
u-shape.
Oh, I haven't tried
putting any of those
LED chandelier
lights into
a Christmas tree
and a lot of
white
light.
If I can find a
short one around
here, I may try that.
Sounds like an
interesting way of
getting a lot of
long term light.
It's other
cool idea.
If I try to do it,
we'll probably try to
find a supplier where I
can get them it is
somewhat better
than the local
hardware store.
In the Northeast, in the Boston area, I've heard of Monards, but I don't know of one.
If there's a place similar to that, then you can get good lights, LED lights after the season.
What is a local hardware?
My local hardware. Well, I have a very local hardware that I believe is true value.
But then again, I have big box stores like Home Depot here and some surplus stores.
Like there's an ocean state job lot and whatnot.
Did I hear right that you wanted the candelabra style ones on?
No, yes, the candelabra, rather the lights that are usually used on a candelabra,
the small base will also screw into your Christmas tree type sockets.
Those would be the same size as you put it in, say, at night light.
Yes, that's the kind of thing. The candelabra bulbs are a little bigger physically,
so they may or may not fit your night lights, but you get 40 watts with a far lower energy budget.
I'm hopeful you can find them on bulk because we found two for $5.
It was, it can get pretty crazy at that rate.
Yeah, that's why I've only put them in the original.
Well, I've picked up a few of the single candelabra, Christmas lights.
And that's what I'm using right now.
I haven't gone either to the night lights or to a string of Christmas tree bulbs.
Yeah, I think I'm going to have to go with either double-sided tape or some metal fasteners,
something to hold these things up.
Like you're right, think the staple gun idea is going to be a bad idea.
Well, you can also pick up the kind of stuff that you use to mount the coaxial cable.
You didn't want those things that are like screws with the alarms on them?
Well, I'm thinking of a loop that has a tack on one side.
Yeah, I think we're thinking of that exact same thing.
Yeah, that's one thing.
And there's something like that or the double-sided tape.
I think the double-sided tape would give me the cleanest look.
But the problem is, I think just the way that this, that how old this desk is and stuff that I'm trying to put stuff on,
I mean, I can clean it and clean it and clean it.
But I'm not sure how well that double-sided tape is going to stick to it and stay stuck to it.
That would be my one concern.
Now, how good is your job lighting? Would your job lighting have something like that?
I don't know. I haven't gone there in a while.
It's not exactly in the most convenient location for public transportation.
They seem to have located it exactly between two subway stops.
Now, so are you, are you relatively close to Brain Tree then?
Yes, I'm close.
Well, yeah, I'm close to Brain Tree, Quincy, you know.
Yeah, I'm along that second of the South Shore.
Hello, everyone.
Hey, Joe. How's it going?
Good, how are you?
Yeah, I can't complain.
A little bit drunk, a little bit tired.
What have everyone been talking about then?
At the moment, just kind of rambling about trying to hang some stability lights,
nothing really fancy or technical.
Let me hang them where?
Inside my desk area, I got kind of a little step area here.
I was going to hang it underneath the desk, the top lip,
and kind of shown on the bottom part where all of my computers and most of the stuff is.
It's long enough, it's a 16-foot thing,
so I can run all the way across down the other end where my 3D printer is.
Because right now I have two big honking fluorescent lights that hang.
So I got one that's a smaller one that hangs right over the desk area.
Another big one that hangs over by my 3D printer is a little workbench area.
And what I wanted to do was I bought this strip of LED lights
that I wanted to basically just run from one end to the other
just to give some more light to my computer and workbench area.
And I bought it on the assumption that when you,
that the choice shows that you can kind of peel the backside of it
and it's supposed to be able to stick, but when you peel the backside,
it just, it doesn't stick at all.
The sticky part is on like the black, the gray side that you're peeling off,
and that on the side that actually is supposed to, you know, where the lights are.
So we're just going back and forth in different ways to
be able to tack these things up and whatnot.
All right, because in my experience of that, it is sticky,
but it's not as sticky as you want it to be,
and you can get a specific rail with it that is kind of nice and flat
and it sticks to perfectly.
Because if you try and stick it to wood or MDF or something like that,
it just generally isn't good on a stick properly,
but if you get the specific rail for it,
then it generally sticks pretty nicely, I've found,
although not forever.
Otherwise, you need to get some really strong double-sided tape
or something for it.
We were talking about getting something kind of like what they used
to hang like coax or cat-five cable.
Well, those things where it's got the tack on it and like a hook.
Yeah.
The cable clip, basically.
Sort of like FPE clips, I think we call them here.
It's like FPE 100 or something like that?
I think I saw a couple of packs with some of the things,
the strips of lights that came with four or five or something like that.
I think I'm going to need a lot more than that,
but we're figuring that's probably the best way to go to try and hang these things.
I once found these adhesive clips that are just the most adhesive in the world.
You stick them on and you're pulling paint off if you try and pull it off.
You know, you get one go just to get where you need to stick it.
And then it's just kind of very soft aluminium.
And you can just kind of bend it around whatever you're clipping
and they can get them in various sizes.
So that's what I would be looking for, probably.
That's the easiest thing to do.
Do you have the name of them or maybe have a link?
No, I don't actually.
I just got some from a hardware store one time.
And I added a cable, like a telecom cable.
I think it was a phone cable that I needed to clip up.
And the guy suggested those to me and they worked brilliantly.
But except for, as I said, if you got one in the wrong place,
then it just pulls the paint off because it's so sticky.
That was several years ago and it's absolutely fine now.
I'll have a quick look, see if I can find it.
Thank you. Even a bug one.
Okay, that is what it looks like.
I didn't take the width equals off the link,
but I put that in the channel there.
They have exactly what I was using for mine.
I presume you can get them in different sizes.
The ones I got were just perfect for the cable that I had.
But the clip part is super soft and you can just bend it exactly how you want it.
So you just kind of curl it around the cable in this case.
But depending on the diameter of the LEDs that you want to clip up,
maybe, I mean, because this thing is probably, I don't know,
trying to translate into inches here, like maybe half to three quarters of an inch long.
Each one, I think there's what are five in the row there,
two sets of five in there.
So you can probably get one that's like a couple inches long.
Maybe I don't know, three quarters of an inch wide that might do the job for you.
That looks awesome.
Yeah, the surprisingly expensive though.
I mean, you're not talking hundreds of dollars or whatever,
but for such a simple thing,
it's sort of surprisingly expensive.
Like, I don't know, for a box of them to do what I need to do,
it's sort of 10 quid or something.
One thing that I used to use for mounting USB hubs
was double-sided 3M squares.
You could get that were available,
even like at a CVS or any kind of,
what would you call it,
a military department in your stores,
you know, crafts or whatever sewing and stuff.
Yeah, and again, you want to get one go with those.
If you stick it wrong, then it's pulling paint off.
Well, I'm not really worried about it with this desk.
Is that the no good paper here or anywhere?
Well, you could try and construct something a bit more elaborate
with some wooden screws and stuff.
Because one thing that's really nice with those LED strips
is to not actually see the source of the light
because it can be really dazzling and, you know, blinding almost.
Whereas if you put a bit of wood downstand in front of it,
then you only see the kind of result of the light reflecting off the desk
and, you know, the surrounding area.
So you're not actually looking at the light source itself.
Well, I've definitely gone more for function
than I am for aesthetics.
Yeah, but go ahead.
With a fluorescent,
it's a very even light across the length of it.
Whereas with these LED strips,
it's so many millimeters or so many inches.
You get each point of light on it.
And that means that it can,
rather than being just one constant,
you know, across the length of it, light.
You get these kind of spots.
And that's why, you know,
if you don't see the source of it,
then it's not too bad.
But if it's there staring at you,
then you have all these points of light
rather than this kind of continuous bar of light.
Right. And what are you saying?
Sounds like two strips side by side
might also be a nice lighting effect
so that instead of just having the individual,
you could space it so that
where there was a gap in one strip,
there would be an LED in the other.
Well, that's the thing that,
depending on the quality of the LED strip that you get,
the higher quality and the more expensive it
is going to be the higher the density
of the LEDs along that strip art.
And if you go for the really super expensive one,
then they're so close that you don't notice it.
Whereas if you go for the super cheap,
like cheapest on Amazon one,
then they're going to be, you know,
potentially an inch or more apart.
And that's when you're really going to notice
that it's several lights rather than one continuous one.
All right, guys, I got to drop off for a little bit.
Thank you for all your help.
I'll hopefully be back on a little bit later.
Yeah, all right.
So what else is going on then?
What else have been people been talking about?
Oh, let's see.
Massaging systems,
software-defined radio,
3D printers.
Well, it is new year,
so should we do some predictions, maybe?
Well, I'm coming from USA
and the only prediction that I'd care to make
is that the government will be cocked up.
Well, what's going on with that shut down?
Is that still going on then?
I don't know.
In a couple of days,
if my kit doesn't come in,
I will probably find out.
So quite a funny thing floating around.
And it was, I think it was like a flow chart thing
that said, are you still paying your taxes?
You know, and if you are,
then the government hasn't shut down.
Because it's kind of a funny way to say it.
It's a government shutdown.
Because it's not really,
because essential things are still running,
but it's just stuff like parks
and stuff that don't run, right?
Well, also, who defines essential?
Well, indeed.
But as I was talking to a relative trying to put
effective frontiers on the U.S.
is a non-trivial problem.
Yeah, it's quite a long border, isn't it?
Yeah, it's not only that,
but the people who know how to put up such borders
are currently unemployed,
Eastern Europeans.
It can't be that hard to build a wall.
I mean, politics aside,
surely is just a pretty basic construction project.
If you've got enough money to actually do it.
Yes, you can put up a wall.
Now, however,
a wall that will stop
the kind of pressure,
the economic pressure you have
would require East German expertise.
Sure, he could just contract that, though, right?
Yes, but where you're going to contract
the soldiers to manage?
Tony, I have the biggest military in the world.
But we don't have it deployed domestically.
Well, I thought he was pulling out of foreign countries.
Well, the thing about it is that,
with the economic pressures,
it's been rather put and take fishing.
I'm not sure what that means.
That must be an American phrase.
Well, there are places where
they stock streams and ponds
and whatnot,
and people fish them out,
and then they put some more back.
All right, yeah.
So what happens when we catch somebody crossing the border?
We deport them to Mexico.
What does he do?
He comes across the border again.
Yes, it almost seems like solving the problems
that cause people to want to do that in the first place
might be a better use of funds than building a giant wall.
But then your president likes to,
well, he tends to favor this simplistic solution
rather than the nuanced one.
Well, there is something that people talk about.
The dope people don't talk about.
There isn't,
there is a problem with American immigration
and deportation systems.
What's that problem?
Deportation only works if the country
you're deporting them to wants the people back.
But surely with the political
and military might of America,
they don't have much choice
but to take the people back.
Well, I know that there are some people who have,
let's say, petty criminals or whatnot
who would be deported to other countries.
I'm not specifying because it's a fairly broad topic.
And these people are caught in a catch-22.
They are in immigration holding,
but their countries don't want them back
because they've got a criminal record or whatnot.
Right.
And the children and cages thing that I've heard about.
That,
I've heard that that actually dates
to the Obama administration,
but I don't know that source.
Yeah, I've only heard things on the internet about that.
Really, I don't,
I'm not much about it.
But the problem that we've had
is because of the immigration regulations
being rather straightforward.
There have been liberal administrations
that have gave executive exemptions.
So when somebody starts reinforcing the actual regulations,
they think it looks mean.
I see, just a quick question.
Am I coming in distorted?
Do I sound okay?
Because I've changed my audio setup recently
over the last couple of days.
Oh, it sounds fine.
Okay, great.
Oh, I was just testing in audacity
and I'd been messing with the levels into audacity.
That's why I thought it was distorting,
but presumably I'd sound completely,
well, I don't sound any different from how I did
before I just changed the level just there.
Well, it's slowly through my headphones just fine.
I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know.
Because I've changed something just now,
but this is Pulse Audio for you.
It's very confusing.
I was changing the level into audacity
because I've been messing around with a new audio setup,
but I want to go back to my original setup
and I had tweaked some levels,
but hopefully now everything is all good
because it's looking good in audacity.
I'm just doing a test recorder,
which I'll get rid of once I'm finished talking now.
But yeah, otherwise, sorry,
sorry to drag it off topic.
I see.
It's a thorny issue, isn't it?
The whole immigration situation.
And it seems very easy to blame Trump.
I mean, it's easy to blame the current government
in any situation for serious problems that arise
when, in reality, that current government
may well have inherited those problems from previous ones.
Yeah, well, there are...
Immigration is something that Congress has blustered about,
but has not really touched.
I knew someone who was married to a lady from Brazil
and this gentleman was having a heck of a time
getting permission to bring her to the United States,
legally married to an American citizen.
Don't you normally get a green card
or something in that situation?
Well, yes, and I know that there are certain
including sensitive positions I have heard
in, let's say, certain international airports
in the Boston area where the contractor
through political connections has been able to get visas
for people from the Middle East
rather easier than the average show
can get visas for people.
Well, that's just greasing the right palms
and corruption, essentially.
And of course, an international airport
is not an area where you have to worry about security.
Yes, and if you believe that,
I've got to slightly use one on the South Shore to sell you.
But of course, any institution is made up of people
and people generally have a price.
I think that's what's interesting.
Certainly in this country,
we see other countries around the world
in Africa and Asia and Russia and things
and South America, particularly.
We consider them to be corrupt
where everything is, what we call backhanders,
bribes and stuff like that,
whereas the more I've grown up, as it were,
and seeing how things actually work in the real world,
I think it's incredibly hypocritical of us in the UK
to consider these despot countries or whatever
to be really corrupt because corruption is just everywhere.
It's just almost part of human nature to be corrupt.
And I think while we just do a better job of hiding it.
Well, I really wonder
at somebody who's actually looked into Patriot Act,
which was rather a serious knee-jerk reaction,
perhaps with the capital jerk after 9-11.
What aspects of it, in particular?
Secret courts, detention without
for national security reasons.
Remember that guy who was running an email system?
He could even tell his lawyer what he'd been charged with.
Really, I'd not heard about that.
I mean, obviously, I know about Guantanamo,
which I believe is still open and still detaining people.
We're talking over a decade without charge.
Well, also, even I understand the problems we had
in Algarab, or whatever, over in the Middle East,
was an interesting question.
The detention facility was not producing information,
probably because the prisoners were low-grade,
just gathered up from anywhere.
And who knows how many scores were settled by somebody
saying, by the way, that guy over there is deep in the
administration or what not.
So some people with lots of authority and no names
came in and took over.
Well, yeah.
My understanding is that a lot of the people
who ended up in Guantanamo were effectively innocent
and just people didn't like them or whatever
and just informed on them to the American authorities.
And then they just get locked up there as enemy combatants
without trial and without access to basic human rights,
basically.
And that, you know, is a bit of a scar on America's,
well, public image.
And I remember very, very shortly after Barack Obama was elected,
he promised to close down Guantanamo.
And I don't know whether he did his best to do so.
And I know that it's not a simple case of,
you know, you're not elected president,
and then suddenly you become a dictator who can do anything
that he wants or she wants potentially.
But he wasn't able to do that or wasn't willing,
or he certainly didn't deliver on that promise.
And he doesn't look like Trump has any inclination to do so.
And he's got what six years left by the looks of things.
So it's going to end up being, you know,
20, 25 years potentially that some of the people
who will have been there before we get another president
who might actually sort that out.
And it just seems, well, it just seems like an embarrassment, really.
And it's funny that the way the news cycle works is
that everybody gets incredibly interested in one story,
usually something of limited consequence,
but extreme outrage.
And that lasts for 24 to 48 hours,
and it's just this incredible thing.
And then suddenly the news moves on.
And this serious issue of Guantanamo,
and probably lots of others that I don't know about,
just get buried by all this sort of almost inflated,
made up outrage.
And yet here we are.
It was shortly after 9-11 that Guantanamo started
to detain people without trial.
And there are still people there now almost 20 years on it,
you know, over 15 years on.
And it just seems absolutely outrageous to me
that Americans will stand for that.
And not stand up and say, hang on.
This just doesn't make sense if there's people there.
Let's try them.
Let's have some due process.
Well, remember when America was all about the right to privacy?
Now, the government says, yeah, you can have privacy,
but we need a key to your back door
so that you can't be too private.
National security, don't you know?
Well, I think that it's fair enough for a country
to take national security very, very seriously.
And you would expect any country that has military
and infrastructure and all the rest of it to do so
and to take it incredibly seriously,
to try and look after the population.
But it's very, very easy for laws to be passed
that are ostensibly to look after the population,
especially in a knee-jerk reaction to something like 9-11,
which was just absolutely shocking to the entire world.
But it's easy for those laws that have been brought in
to be abused by subsequent administrations.
Well, yes, well, look at the clipper chip
that they were trying to put off.
Yeah, you can have encryption as long as the government
has a back door into your systems.
By the way, this is also effectively
what Australia has legislated already.
Yeah, I've heard about this.
I've been reading about it.
This doesn't seem practical,
because if you are talking about open-source encryption,
then you can't put back doors in that very easily at all, can you?
How can that possibly work?
I can use GPG now to encrypt a file and send it to you.
And as long as you know the password,
we can do key pairs and key parties and all the rest of it.
I just don't see how they can put those back doors into it.
I mean, obviously things like Facebook Messenger,
WhatsApp, you know, proprietary software.
Of course they can put those back doors in.
But I've never been particularly worried about this move
by various governments to put these back doors in encryption,
because open-source software just has natural defenses built in.
If the GPG devs were forced to put back doors in,
someone would just fork it and remove them.
But the thing about it is that with the Australian ruling,
if you use GPG to protect your private data trying to keep it like private,
you are violating the law.
Yes, but like with most laws,
if a sufficient number of people disregard that law and disobey that law,
they can't put everybody in prison, surely.
Well, that's, there was a movie called The Enemy of the State.
Well, what Australia is doing is saying,
if you want to keep your data private,
you are security risk to the nation,
and therefore you are de facto a criminal.
But what does that mean for open-source projects then?
Does it mean that we couldn't have an Australian Linux district, for example?
Well, let's see.
Do you know when the law comes into effect?
I don't. By the way,
yes, you can.
The only thing is that because your password data is encrypted,
you'd have to have a government key.
Right, but if I'm running a Linux distribution,
then I can just create my own keys
and I can encrypt my files using GPG very easily with one command.
Excuse me. Your password is encrypted.
Every, they're outlawing encryption systems that do not have a government key in them.
And therefore it would be technically illegal to carry around a laptop
that had, you know, say I had full-disc encryption enabled
with a key that they didn't have access to.
And yes, and the fact that the government couldn't automatically check it
if one of their government keys was,
would therefore you'd be labeled a terrorist?
Yes, but isn't it far more likely that they're not going after the enthusiasts,
like us, and, you know, if you are white,
and, you know, if you're a white middle-aged bulldy bloke
who's a bit fat with a beard,
like me and I assume most people who would listen to this,
then you're going to be fine and they'll just go,
you know, whatever, but if you've got brown skin and look like a terrorist,
they are the people who they'll go after and start calling a terrorist.
And, you know, that might sound like a terrible thing to say,
but it sort of feels like the reality of the situation.
Well, I have to step away for a moment, but I'll be right back.
But then again, the regulations about selective enforcement
make the law stupider than that.
Well, a law is stupidly enforced.
That's a bit of a shock, isn't it?
Well, let's talk a little, ladies can be scanned and searched
because their number comes up to make certain that they're not just
double-checking ethnic minorities, you always say.
Well, yeah, they have to be saying,
it's like stop and search here in London,
where the reality is that police want to stop and search young black men.
But they have to be seen to be stopping and searching
other demographic, you know, people who fall into other demographics
so that it's not just young black men.
But, you know, I'm a, I suppose, I must admit, middle aged
as much as it pains me, white man who's been living in London
for a long time now and I've never been stopped and searched.
So who else is around then?
Looks like just me then.
So I wonder, should I leave silence?
I assume that when Ken makes this into a podcast,
he will use some sort of script to strip out the silence.
But I'm not sure I've never listened back to any of these.
So maybe I should leave silence until someone turns up
or maybe I should fill dead air, not sure.
I'll leave a bit of silence and maybe someone can chip in and tell me.
Please repeat, I just had to step away for a moment.
I was asking if anyone else was around and no one replied.
And then it made me think, when Ken turns this into a podcast,
does he use a script to remove the silence?
So if there are, you know, a couple of minutes here and there
without anyone talking, does the script remove that silence
from the finished thing?
So I wondered whether I should fill the dead air
just by talking nonsense or whether I should just leave it a silence
or the script could remove it.
Actually, I believe it's our friend, Ponky Makoo,
who will be doing that way.
All right, I didn't realize that.
Yeah, well, we have the Linux Logcast
try to help out Ken and he helps us out.
You know, get the family thing.
Okay, how long have you been going then as a podcast?
A couple of years now.
All right, how's that going then? Do you have many listeners?
Well, we have a very few people who show up live
like this and then we have some downloads
which I wouldn't know about.
You don't monitor that then.
You're not particularly interested.
I'm not really wired into that end of things.
Do you just do it for fun then and just for the conversation?
I do it for there.
I'm sort of the sidekick.
There are three or four people who do the hosting
and I'm just there to show that they have an Indian
to go with the chief.
I see. I don't think you're supposed to say that sort of thing anyway.
It always fascinates me to talk to people who do Linux podcasts
just for fun rather than like I do for a living.
Because when I first got into it,
that was my goal and I have achieved that in 2018.
And so it's always fascinating to me
because whenever I do anything in life,
I do it to try and be the best that I possibly can.
Well, maybe that's not true.
But whenever I do a new thing,
I tend to get quite obsessed with it
and push it as far as possible.
But a lot of what most Linux podcasts are just people doing it
just for the fun of it.
So unless you're like the cheaper to broadcasting in America?
Yeah, exactly.
For whom I work now.
Well, I haven't been keeping up with my Jupiter broadcasting.
Otherwise, I've recognized your thoughts.
Yeah, yeah.
And yeah, well, it's been a big year for Jupiter broadcasting.
I was sort of contracting for them in sort of mid-2017 into 2018.
And then Jupiter broadcasting joined with Linux Academy,
which was one of their sponsors.
And as a result of that,
I'm still a contractor.
But it's kind of enough to dedicate most of my time
to producing shows for them,
which has been really nice.
And so I've managed to turn it into my job now,
which is pretty sweet.
And I do have my other podcast as well,
Late Night Linux, which brings in a little bit,
not as much, but it's good fun to do.
Well, if you do what you love, you know,
they used to say, you never work a day in your life.
Well, exactly.
And here I am on New Year's Eve.
My wife's gone to bed.
And, you know, I could do pretty much anything.
I'd just watch Netflix or whatever.
But instead, here I am doing a podcast,
which is what I do for living.
It's a bossman's holiday, as we say in this country.
And, you know, it's what I love doing.
And, you know, sometimes it feels like work when it's late
and I'm tired and I've got to edit the show
and, you know, compare it and everything,
get it all published.
But it is what I love doing.
And I worked hard for it,
and it is really paid off now.
And it's great.
But, you know, circling back to that,
doing it as a hobby.
Like, what motivates you to do it?
Do you do it every week or every two weeks or what?
We have a schedule first, Friday,
and third Friday of the month,
which is not necessarily every two weeks,
but roughly that.
Yeah, kind of twice a month.
And how do you motivate yourself to stick to that?
Well, personally, I'm virtually retired.
And it's one of my few outlets for my technical knowledge.
Okay.
And, surely, there must be times when you're tired
and something else has gone on
and you just would rather not do it.
And what happens in that situation?
Do you force yourself to do it?
Or do you just say,
I'll do it next time?
I think I missed one show recently
by missing the schedule,
but I generally don't miss the shows
because they are my connection
with this part of the world.
So it's kind of a social event,
more than anything.
Largely social event.
Again, we call ourselves
the Linux lug cast
because we're trying to create a
mumble Linux users group,
which is why just like this,
it's much, much on the same standard
as this cast tonight,
where we invite people to drop by
and we're very sort of unwell.
We're kind of liberal focused
in that a lot of chat about
random things,
gets an interspersed with the Linux.
And so do you just do recording
from mumble and then just put that out
more or less as is
or do you do any editing or anything?
I believe it's somewhat edited.
Again, honky tends to do that,
but we often have a
an extended pre-show
and then the official show
and then a closure.
How long does it take all in then?
All in depends on when you show up.
It's officially nine o'clock
to whenever it's on.
It's been nine to midnight.
Although if people start early,
it could be eight thirty
the official show may start
at nine thirty as in
when the intro is read.
All right. Is that on this mumble
server then?
It is on, no,
it's on skyhaven.net.
Look at the Linux
logcasts or logcasts
and we have directions to it.
And so those times you said is that
Pacific Mountain Central Eastern?
Eastern time.
We probably should,
I should probably memorize the GMT.
Yeah, you see is the best one, isn't it?
Because that never changes.
Whereas GMT,
then you get to British summer time
and it all gets confusing.
Whereas if you just know the UTC,
that should in theory never change.
But I'm a strong advocate for
getting rid of time zones
and everyone just becoming,
it doesn't matter to me what time it is.
You know, if I'm eating my breakfast at,
you know, seven o'clock at night,
you know, seven p.m.
nineteen hundred,
that's fine.
Just as long as we can all agree,
this is the time that we're going to use
from now on all over the world.
It would just make life so much simpler.
Yeah, well, I'm on the east coast
and they've recently expanded
the daylight savings time
March to November.
All right.
Let's talk here of removing
just completely abolishing
daylight savings,
which is a good start,
as far as I'm concerned.
That would make my life
that little bit easier to
not have to deal with the time changes
because we moved to daylight savings
two weeks before America does.
And then you've got people in the southern hemisphere
and just trying to organize interviews
and trying to organize anything
with people across the world
is just, it just becomes very difficult.
Well, actually,
the problem that you have fundamentally,
especially with the modern
technological society,
is people are tied to a single clock.
Which mean by a single clock?
What we have all this power here
and it would be quite simple
to make our LED clocks
or computers,
suddenly computers and phones
and everything keep two times.
A neighborhood time,
shall we say,
and UTC.
Yeah, although that would get
a little bit confusing,
whereas if we just all use DTC,
then I could just say to someone
right, I'll see you at five o'clock
on the 27th of January
and they would know exactly
when to show up.
But then you have the problems
with sunrise and sunset
and local.
Oh, you've got to do is say,
hey, the sun sets over here at five o'clock
or it sets at three o'clock.
Exactly.
Yeah, well, also,
you've got to deal with people
who are 12 hour about.
Well, it would be a shock to the system
for almost everyone.
Obviously, I advocate UTC
because that would mean
I wouldn't have to change anything.
But I'd be perfectly happy
with Pacific Standard
or whatever,
as long as we can all agree on it.
And I would just accept
that breakfast happens at whatever time
and I got to sleep at whatever time.
It would be a big change for people,
but I think that as we go
into an increasingly international world,
it just makes perfect sense to me.
Actually, I think what you might call
the dual display option
is probably going to be more practical.
Well, that to me,
sounds like a good stepping stone.
Well, just remember
that how many cars,
both in Europe and in America,
have both kilometer
and English miles.
Markings.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mine, mine, mine.
I travel to and from Mexico,
and so what I cost over,
I got to remember,
oh, yeah, use the small numbers,
not the big ones.
Do they have kilometers?
I suppose they do.
Yeah, it's only really the UK
and the US that has miles.
I just assumed that
Mexico would be different,
but yeah, it's like
almost the entire world
in that they use kilometers.
Pretty much,
which makes me think that
the US is kind of backwards on that
and we really should just adopt
the metric system.
Well, yeah,
but you end up in a situation
like we have in the UK,
where if you want to buy
lumber here,
you go into a timber yard,
and you say to them,
I'd like three meters
of four by two, please,
which is just absolutely
madness.
You're talking about three meters
of four inches by two inches.
I don't think anywhere else,
you wouldn't do that in the US,
you wouldn't do that anywhere else.
It just becomes too confusing.
Yeah, true.
Now, you go get a six-foot
two by four.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Although I suppose
people are just used to it,
you know, we would just say
a length, you know, three meters
of four by two,
and people just know what that means,
and just kind of convert
to millimeters or whatever.
But yeah, we have
this weird situation
where the weather is
generally in Celsius these days.
Distance is always in miles.
Weight is generally in kilograms
for if you want to buy carrots
or whatever you're going to see
kilograms.
It's just a mishmash
in this country that's very
confusing.
Yeah, well, there was
speaking of cap
of commonwealth,
there was an interesting incident
where, as part of a
conversion to metric system,
the Canadian airliner ran
out of gas.
Well, because of a miscalculation.
Yes, because they were
going from pounds to kilograms
of fuel,
and they didn't do the
conversion right.
So this aircraft got about
half way and had to find
an emergency air strip.
And the air strip they found
was being used as a drag strip
at the time.
It was a decommissioned
air base.
That sounds alarming.
A heart-known was hot.
Due to some amazing flying
and some amazing luck
because the air strip
that this guy happened to know
about, and chose was
had been converted to a
drag strip as
is somewhat traditional.
It was, no one was
hurt, but it was a new
run thing to use.
Use the quote about
one of those.
I'm sure there were
a lot of scared individuals,
but a lot of grateful ones
when the expert pilot
managed to land that one then.
Yeah, it was almost like
this other land.
But somewhat less dramatic
because it was on land,
even though really it was
probably just as dangerous.
Yes, and there were more
people to get out of the
way.
The river was probably
mostly empty.
Yeah.
What, so was there a
meat in progress then?
Yes, there were activities
it was on the weekend.
Well, that must have been
quite something if you're
just there to watch some
drag racing and suddenly
an airplane lands.
Was there any kind of
call ahead on that or
did he just decide I'm
living here?
I don't believe that there was
any call ahead.
I don't because it was one
of those things where my
engines have gone out.
Where can I put this thing
down?
And the guy knew about that
he was close to this.
What he used to serve at
this airbase and he went,
where he, you know, he felt
that he would have enough
of a flat surface to land
to put the plane down.
And he wasn't
current on what space was
actually available, what
runways might be in use
or open and not.
Was this in 1983?
I believe so.
Yeah, I found an article
about it.
Yeah, that's, wow.
It says a crowd of
sports car enthusiasts were
having a post race barbecue
on the airstrip where the
pilot is intended to land.
Wow.
To use an old American
isn't there was a hot
time in the old town
tonight?
Yeah.
Affording to that in the
mumble there.
Well, also, in the
state of Massachusetts,
there was a recent bill
pass that made it illegal
to own possess or sell
certain weapons that were
determined by the
legislature to have primarily
a military purpose.
How did that work out
with a second amendment?
A second amendment?
Well, the legislature just
said these are militarized
weapons and you cannot
sell them, you cannot
transfer them, you cannot
do anything with them.
They were legally
yesterday, but they're
illegal today.
There must be a lot of
pushback though from those
who are strong advocates.
No, the rest of it is
what they have also said is
you cannot transfer them,
which means if you own them,
you cannot get your money
back and you cannot
dispose of them in any
fashion.
You are just, you have been
criminalized because we
don't like the look of your
gun.
The fact that we have a
federal government agency
that says any weapon in
private hands generally
speaking has to have a
sporting purpose unless
somebody wants to pay big
bucks and get basically
federally licensed.
Well, so people who were
in possession of these
weren't able to just take
them to the police
department to hand them in.
I don't believe the
legislation gave any way
of disposing of them legally.
So what did people do?
Just bury them or
something?
That wasn't the
legislature's problem.
These guns look bad,
therefore they were illegal.
And so you were
talking about this at
what?
Sorry, go ahead.
I'm sorry, I was wondering
if you're talking about
like the past machine gun
bill or a more recent one.
Oh, no, this is a
idea put up by the people
in the state of Massachusetts
to protect people from
legal guns.
All right.
I, I, well, if they
do end up doing it, I
wonder if it would pass
to be able to pass the
Supreme Court.
Is this a law that has
come into force yet then
or is this just a proposition?
As far as I know, it's in
force.
I, I haven't really
followed it.
My lifetime FID card was
shortened to five years by
government fiat.
And I, because of the
disability that I have, I
cannot get a new one.
What does FID stand for?
Firearms identification.
Okay.
And what does that card
mean?
By ammunition, by
firearms, by air.
I can't even buy an
air rifle.
It was my understanding
that, um, well, okay, let me
ask the question then.
Does it, does it depend on the
state where you reside, depending
on your access to firearms?
Depends on the state.
Depends on your relationship
with your local police chief.
You can depend on many factors.
Because my understanding was
that in most states, if you
have no criminal record, um,
and in our generally
an upstanding citizen, you can
just go and buy a gun
because it's your right to
protect your house and family
and everything.
Well, yeah, well, I have, it
depends if you're being treated
for certain diseases.
I say, um, mental illness
or physical diseases.
Well, I'm being treated for
depression, and that disqualifies
me.
I say what?
Because they, um, perceived
suicide risk.
No, perceived, uh, risk that
you would go out and kill
someone.
Not just yourself.
I see.
Not that I, yeah, not that I
agree with it.
I think depression is, you
know, the treating depression
like some of the other forms
of, uh, mental issues is this
kind of, uh, overboard in my
regard.
Believe.
Well, but some states have gone
that far.
Also, uh, because I don't drive,
uh, a, uh, it would be difficult
for me to get anywhere where I
could use a, um, a true
firearm.
My understanding is that, um, to
get anywhere in the USA, unless
you live in a major metropolitan
area, you need to drive, because
the public transportation is not
really much of a thing there
outside of, you know, places
like New York.
Yeah, that's pretty much the case.
And also, generally, the size of
everything, the distances between
it, even if you do have a good
public transit system, it could,
the amount of time it takes to get
there is just insane unless you
drive there yourself.
Well, at one time, I live on the
south side of Boston, and I used
to work on the north side.
I would get up and leave about
6 a.m. and I could get to work
maybe at 10 o'clock.
This is with, uh, public
transportation, is it?
This was with public
transportation.
I see.
So you live in Southy, then?
No, I live outside of the
Boston area, but on one of
this, um, bedroom communities
get south of the city.
Oh, okay.
I was going to say you don't
sound like you from Southy.
No, I'm, I'm, um, not my
roots are in Maine and West
Virginia.
Oh, you have a very, um, well,
there I say generic American
accent.
You don't sound like you from
that area at all, because
generally, there's quite a
heavy accent, um, in that, that
part of America.
Yes, what you see, I was raised
here, and you should use a Z
with that.
Thank you.
I got my post-traumatic
stress domestically.
I see.
Yeah, my dad was a nasty
alcoholic.
I'm a very friendly alcoholic.
Well, but then again, my, you
know, he was raised by my
grandfather, which would make
us with a grudge seem like, um,
a good humor, man.
I'm sorry to hear that.
It sounds like you, uh, generally
a lot though.
Well, I've, I've gotten by.
I, that's one of the reasons
why I have a certain non-PC
act, uh, attitude towards gun
control.
What because of the art
bringing?
Yes, I was raised by people
who came from small towns in
Maine and West Virginia, where
it was very common, where
everyone has a gun, right?
At one time, my dad had a
rather large collection upstairs.
Um, would you go as far as
to say it was an arsenal?
Well, since they were all basically
hunting calibers, um, you could
call it an arsenal, but it just
that he had along the way he got,
uh, access to someone who had
collected guns over the years,
and he was able to buy a job
like that, don't
it is reasonable price?
I know some guys in
Washington, um, nothing to do
with Jewish progress in the other
side of Washington, who, uh,
prior to the last election,
not the midterms, but the,
uh, the election where Donald
Trump won, and they had
stocked up on firearms,
in a kind of plan to sell them
after Hillary was elected, because
they suspected that's what would
happen.
Because they expected that the
price, the value would go up
significantly, because when
Hillary was elected, there would
be, you know, various measures
brought in, and it would make
the value skyrocket.
But, uh, unfortunately for that
plan, that didn't happen.
Give it time.
Also, um, I don't know who's
going to get elected next time.
I do.
I'm not going to be
gambling right now, although that's
generally illegal there.
But I would strongly suggest putting
money on Trump.
I must say that I'm not, uh,
particularly happy about this
prediction. I'm not not much
of a fan of Trump, shall we say?
But that doesn't change the
reality that he is almost certain
to win again.
Well, um, that's, that's
a possibility.
And then again, I wasn't a great fan of the Arkansas given.
Indeed, I think that was a big part of the reason why he's your current president, because
the alternative was not very attractive to a lot of people, even people who are traditionally
voted Democrat, were not particularly fond of Hillary Clinton, and perhaps it's a pipe
dream of mine, perhaps I'm being unrealistic as a European socialist, to think that Bernie
would have had a chance, but it would have certainly been more interesting to see Bernie
go up against Trump.
As a Trump supporter, I would have been happy to see Bernie take Hillary's place, and
I think it would be a very interesting election to see Bernie go up against Trump.
May I ask why you're a Trump supporter?
What is it about him that makes you support him?
Well, simply because he set out to break the system that has been established that tends
to keep the same people like Hillary and Bush, and all of them being elected and re-elected.
I see, so it wasn't his policies in particular that made you one of our firm.
Well, I mean, I am a fan of his immigration stance.
A lot of his policies do tend to line up with mine, not all of them.
I was like, people asked me, is there anything he could have done wrong?
And I tell him, yeah, I didn't like the fact that he was still in Syria up until, you know,
very recently.
And what about his dishonesty, his catalogue of lies that he is told publicly?
Ah, see, that's a very interesting subject.
I believe that his dishonesty, regardless of what has been presented, is on par with
typical politicians.
So you think that he's as bad as the other, so that's fine?
Basically, I mean, you know, I have seen him say some lies.
I've seen some people say he says lies that aren't necessarily true, but I've, after,
you know, I've been watching politics for, I want to say like 15 years, you know, as
I'm not that old, but I've seen, you know, several presidents and other politicians
who blatantly lie and carry on as if they didn't.
And so it's really nothing new to see a politician lie.
Yes, but what is new is the brazenness with which he lies.
The fact that he doesn't even care when he's found out about it, whereas at least, well,
okay, maybe not at least, but let's just say that it is a fact that previous politicians
did not want to be found out for their lies.
And on the occasions that they were, they showed at least public remorse for that and shame,
whereas when Trump lies, which is seemingly to me, almost everything he ever says is just
an untruth, he seems to be almost proud of that.
And he shows absolutely no shame and no remorse there.
And that sets him apart to me.
I mean, there's no doubt that he is different from every other president that you've had
certainly in my lifetime and certainly in sort of the memory of the people who I know.
But I don't think that that is necessarily a good thing that he's so shameless with his
dishonesty.
Well, I mean, I can agree with you on that.
I don't quite see it the same way as in I haven't seen him quite as brazen.
I mean, if we had a chance to sit down and go over, perhaps, maybe lie by lie, we might
come to a different conclusion or I might.
But I find that a lot of the ones where he's been said to be so brazen about it really
aren't lies.
He is, you know, being honest and they're being interpreted as lies.
Now please don't take that as me believing that everything he said is true because we both
know that's not true.
Well, yes, indeed.
I mean, I don't know enough about it, I haven't done enough research to give you concrete
examples of it, but I've heard other people talking about it and citing, you know, proper
citations here that show that he has lied on a number of occasions.
And, you know, I mean, well, take, for example, I assume this is family friendly, so I
can't quote him verbatim, but the instant with the recording that he didn't know just
beforehand, where he was talking about women in a very disrespectful fashion, did that
not put you off him then?
Well, I laugh because that's kind of an interesting subject as well.
It did not put me off for very different, several different reasons.
And I assume you're talking about the access one video where, you know, about grabbing.
Yeah, grabbing by something, yeah.
Yeah, I, this disrespectful of this is, you know, and it may be that I'm just a horrible
person, and so I didn't find it as disrespectful as other people do.
It didn't come off to me as being disrespectful.
It came off to me as he was in his attractiveness to a certain group of women.
That's the way it seemed to me.
Right.
But when he talks about grabbing women places where it's not acceptable to do so, do you think
that it's not really an offensive thing to say because that's sort of the kind of thing
that you and your friends would say when there weren't any women around and you didn't
think you were being recorded, you know, is that really what that was down to?
That is kind of what it boils down to partly, yeah.
You know, the other part is, I mean, back to that, this is nothing new with politicians.
I've seen offensive things like that come out of politicians, just whether or not it
becomes newsworthy.
I see.
And so presumably you are keen to vote for him again in the next election.
I was, yes, I was definitely keen to vote on him on the next election.
The previous election I was worried about it up until like the very end when I was like,
you know what?
I kind of do like where this is going with him, particularly in his stance, kind of what
you've been hitting on, the fact that he's not very PC, he's not very, I don't know how
to say it.
That he's, you know, going against this culture of don't offend anyone.
And that, you know, I have found this culture of don't offend people to be kind of offensive
sometimes.
Are you talking about things like trans rights and, you know, bathrooms and stuff like that?
Kind of sort of, I mean, depends on how you define trans rights.
I mean, I think that everyone should be treated equally and, you know, they should have all
the same rights.
But whether or not you use the proper pronoun for someone is kind of, and you can go to
jail in some cases, well, I don't know if it's gotten that far yet.
But you know, you definitely do run the risk of sometimes losing your job if you don't,
if you forget to call for someone by the, the pronoun that they prefer, one of the things
that I think will happen by the end of Trump's term.
First, it may be one of the few times when the presidential term limit amendment actually
totally works.
Yes, there will probably be people are happy about that.
The second is that by the end of his term, there will be enough ox's gourd that people
will realize that their votes really do matter and who they elect does matter.
Trump will stir the pot enough that that anybody is going to look very closely at who follows,
whether it's Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Green Party.
So one of the other issues that I have with Trump is that I have to be very careful how
I say this, but he has engaged in some business practices that have been questionable, shall
we say.
He claims to be this really successful businessman, but you know, his university situation,
the stakes thing, this foundation that has now been shut down, there certainly seem to
be financial irregularities there.
How does that make you feel about him?
I know that you want to be careful about answering that, and I want to be careful if you're
directing that directly towards me, but that's not what I meant, but anyway, sorry.
I can agree that there was definitely some irregularities that I've seen, and the more
that come out, I would be interested to see what exactly had happened to some regard,
but I also think that it should be painted in the picture of this kind of behavior is
actually not uncommon among business people, whether you agree with it or not, and whether
I agree with it or not, it's actually not, if you look at the whole, there's a lot more
that goes on that's worse, and there's also people who deal much more above the board.
I do think it's interesting to point out that after the last two years that have been
gone on with all the investigations, this is the only things that seem to be of question,
the only question that practices that have come out, so in the grand scope of things,
does that actually make him sound like he might be better than seemed to be for?
I mean, that's, you know, for everyone to think about on that.
So, has anyone applied similar scrutiny to administration since the Clinton administration?
Well, indeed, there's almost no doubt that Clinton's been into some shady things, whether
that's financial or otherwise, but, you know, that kind of goes back to this idea of, well,
he's, Trump is not any worse than anyone else, so therefore it's fine.
That doesn't seem to stand up as an argument to me, particularly.
It feels like that it wouldn't be better to go for someone who had a bit more honesty,
a bit more integrity, rather than, like, our, well, the old business people are like that,
all presidents, all politicians lie, you know, that old thing, how do you know if a politician's
lying is lips are moving, I mean, you know, it shouldn't be strive for better than that.
Well, what would anyone, would anyone, would anyone better stand up to the kind of mauling
that the presidential candidates get?
Well, I like to think that Bernie perhaps might have, but I don't know much about Bernie.
I mean, perhaps he's as corrupt as all the other politicians, but he strikes me as probably not,
but maybe he's just a good salesman.
Well, not only that, but he also is not, he was not beholden to enough people to get support.
Well, that is debatable.
There is some debate about the institutions within the Democratic Party, not allowing people.
I think that the part of the problem was that there wasn't anyone of higher integrity available on the list.
And I think the ones that if there was one or two and that they themselves would have been destroyed by the political process,
actually, they were destroyed by the political process, even though that they were of higher integrity people.
It sounds like you've arrived at the party, and I assume the silence confirms that then.
Well, the problem that Hillary Clinton had is that a large chunk of the country knew who she was beholden to,
and they weren't buying, supporting that.
Well, yes, I presume you mean the arms industry and things like that.
Arms industry, unions of various kinds, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Well, yes, you don't get to be a successful politician without support and, you know,
there's a fundamental flaw in how politics works in that you necessarily have to be a bad person
in order to rise to the top because there's not really any other way of doing it if you're a good person,
then bad people will push you aside.
And so you are necessarily not going to have good people running things.
And I heard a somewhat flippant idea that it should be anyone who wants to get into politics,
shouldn't be allowed.
And it should be people who don't want to be in politics a force to do so.
And then you might actually get some integrity going on.
Obviously, that's another ridiculous idea.
Well, a British friend of my father's had a suggestion about how to clean up politics.
He suggested politicians should be lined up against the wall and decimated based on the binary system, of course.
Well, that was something I would never advocate as a pacifist.
But I think certainly removed from office, I would agree with.
Well, an algorithm that many people are using is that candidate for reelection means what for the other guy.
Yeah, but then you know, what for the other guy ends up with Trump in charge.
And something that I was going to get into, but no more seems to have well become no more as he appears to be at the party now.
But something I was going to get into was that there is no doubt that Trump has good salesman.
He is a very slick talker in his own way.
He is very charismatic again in his own way.
And I don't know, Colony cynical, but I don't fall for his stick.
And I would feel I would ask anyone who has, in my opinion, fallen for it or in their view gone along with his great leadership or whatever to kind of stand outside for themselves for a second and think, well, hang on.
This is a man who has a history of being good at business and good as a salesman and, you know, good gift of the gab as we call it.
And is that really who you want in charge of things?
Because, you know, I'm not going to go as far as to calling him a con man because that's not fair.
But it's the he has a lot of a lot of what makes a con man a good con man.
Those qualities are qualities that Trump has.
And he's managed to parlay that into a legitimate business career that, you know, doing his various real estate deals and everything.
And so, you know, those smarmy characteristics don't appeal to me at all.
And I like to feel, well, you know, I like to think that I just wouldn't fall for that really.
And, you know, maybe that's an offensive thing to say to people who have bought into his message.
But I do feel that they've fallen for something rather than, you know, they've fallen for a cult of personality rather than his policies.
Because as policies seem to be just sort of made up on the hoof really just like whatever, you know, just say whatever he thinks to convince people.
I mean, it's not seriously thought through policies, you know, like we're going to build one and we're going to make them pay for it.
Well, here we are sort of two years on and the government shut down because Mexico is certainly not going to pay for it.
Of course, they're not going to pay for that.
It was just ludicrous.
Absolutely.
As ludicrous as the lies that were put on the bus during the Brexit situation right now.
And now he's going to pay for that.
So say again, I said, yeah, I knew Mexico wasn't going to pay for that.
Right. And so therefore that was a lie.
You know, we return to that situation where that was a bare faced lie that he consistently told.
He said we're going to build wall and we're going to make them pay for it.
And by then he clearly meant Mexico or the Mexican government and Mexican taxpayer.
And you know, that everybody knew that that was just a fantasy.
And yet he just seemed to get away with that.
And I just don't understand how anyone could fall for such blatant lies and salesmanship.
You know, he's not a genuine person who, you know, he's just a smiley salesman who managed to sell his way to the.
And so here we are in a situation where the government shut down returning to how we got onto this topic.
You're not supposed to talk about politics, but here we are.
And you know, because he had promised the electorate that Mexico would pay for it.
Nobody really believed that.
And now he's trying to get several billion dollars from the US taxpayer to pay for this wall,
which is absolutely integral to his reelection, really, because how can he stand for election again without at least starting construction on this wall?
Because it was such a key promise.
But that's been cut down on the wall.
And that is one of the key reasons why he was elected is because there is a good portion of the United States who believe that the wall is necessary.
Well, there's no doubt that there are a number of, you know, about half of your country, just over half.
Actually, just under half, isn't it, because he actually got fewer votes than all that is.
Well, let's just say it's roughly equal number of votes.
There is clearly a lot of people in that country of yours who believe that the immigration situation is out of control.
And that erecting a large wall will help with that.
The reality as far as I see it is that if that wall was erected and did its job and stopped these illegal immigrants, whatever you want to call them, people from Mexico, because there are people coming across that border.
Then your country is specifically in the southern states like California and Texas would be worse off if the flow of my great that you know, let's say, you know, all his rhetoric came true, built the wall and absolutely no illegal immigration continued.
That was it. There were no more people illegally emigrating from Mexico to the USA.
And also he managed to deport all of the currently undocumented migrants or illegal immigrants, whatever you want to call it from America back to Mexico.
That would have a negative impact on the economy of the southern states of the United States.
And then, therefore, as a whole, the rest of the economy would suffer because those people who come over do so not for fun, not because the weather is a bit nicer.
You know, not because they enjoy going to football games and baseball games or whatever.
They do it for economic reasons because they want to come over and work because you don't really have much of a benefit system there.
You certainly don't have free healthcare like we have in this country.
So there are very few reasons that it's not a particularly attractive country to go to.
I wouldn't want to go there with no qualifications and, you know, be illegal there because what would it you know, I'd have no healthcare, I'd have no prospects.
My prospects would have to be pretty grim in the country where I was living and therefore one can only assume that the prospects are quite grim in Mexico.
And so they want to go over to America and work hard doing things like construction, things like yard work.
The jobs that Americans don't want to do because Americans want to do tech jobs and service jobs and, you know, not work physically hard.
We're not obviously there are many, many exceptions to that, but that's the general trend as I understand it.
And so it seems to me to be just quite a strange idea that you don't want these people to come over and do the jobs that no one wants to do because who's going to do those jobs?
You know, Americans don't want to do them because, you know, if someone can come over from Mexico, spit barely speaking English and can take your job, then that's not really their problem, is it? That's your problem.
Well, that's just it. We would have to arrange a real immigration system of the Ellis Island sort to manage what was actually going on.
Right. Okay. And so you could arrange a system where like in the early 20th century where you had a number of migrants coming over and building the country for one of their word, you could do that and have a lot of Mexicans coming over.
But then if they were there legitimately, then they would probably not want to do the jobs that Americans don't want to do.
Not many people want to dig out swimming pools by hand, dig foundations for new construction projects, you know, work hard in hot conditions, sweating dusty, just horrible, horrible conditions.
Not many people want to do that. But if you have people who come over illegally and they have nothing else that they can do, then they will do that and they'll work for cash and they'll send some of that home to their family.
But ultimately, those jobs need to be done by someone and, you know, you could say, well, that should all be unionized, that should all be done by trained US citizens. But that's not how capitalism works.
You're basically, yeah, you're saying that if we had a legal guest workers system, no one would want to do those hard jobs.
Of course, they'd want to do the more skilled high tech jobs that pay way more and have great benefits, have dental and medical and stuff.
You know, they wouldn't want to come and work for cash and then just pray every night that nothing happens to them medically because they can't afford to go to a doctor.
You know, it just seems really strange to me that any American would imagine that people would want to come there and feel out because you can't feel out in America.
America is like the ultimate capitalist society. If you don't work incredibly hard, then you just can't do anything there.
So why would people want to come there if they didn't want to work hard?
Well, actually, there are a couple of things that are going on.
For one thing, in a lot of areas, the voting rules are being open to non-citizens. That's an interesting one.
And to counter this, the federal government has a real ID program where citizens getting their driver's license have to re-identify themselves.
Basically, at the same level as somebody getting a passport so that the citizenry is thoroughly identified.
What happens if you're an undocumented migrant or a legal immigrant?
The real ID situation, if you opt in for the real ID program, the only right that you actually really get from real ID is the, well, first, you're identified nationwide because it's a federal database.
And second, after a certain date in 2020, you will be able to enter federal buildings.
And so this means that people who have come jump the wall for one of the better word will be able to integrate into society properly and not be deported.
Well, there's a question there because if someone without proper ID cannot enter a federal building, how do you get them into the immigration system?
So what's the result of this then?
Well, the result is there are two currents. One is to, if you're a resident, we don't check your citizenship and we want you to vote in our elections because we will give you voters rights.
And the other is the federal, we can't trust state, we can't trust the current state system. So we want tighter identification on people who have real ID.
And if you, if you get just your license renewed without real ID, you are de facto suspect.
Well, just let's do a thought experiment here, right? Supposing that I put you in charge or I was put in charge of deporting all of the illegal immigrants on document migrants, one of you want to call them.
And I was given a serious budget to do so. It would be trivial for me to do that. As far as I can see, it would be a matter of months before I deported thousands of people.
All I would do is drive around the southern areas near the border and go to construction sites, go to other factories and other places where these people work.
Because anyone who seemed Mexican to me, you could just force them to take you to where they live or force them to produce documentation to prove that they are here legally and move them if not.
Now, obviously I don't agree with that as a course of action. It's not what I would do what I would want to do. But if that was my job, then I could easily do that, I think.
And that's perhaps a gross oversimplification and it would probably take a lot longer than I would imagine to do so. And it would be more complicated with human rights lawyers and things like that. However, if there was any benefit to the country to do so, then that would have happened by now.
It just would have happened because it doesn't take a vast amount of intelligence or organizational skill to put that together as a program. But that hasn't happened and why hasn't happened because of what I said before.
Because the economy, I'm not going to say it would collapse, but it would certainly not benefit from these people being removed from new country.
And similarly here with Eastern Europeans, a lot of whom came here before they were officially allowed before their countries joined the European Union and things like that.
But, you know, and if after Brexit, if that goes badly, as far as I'm concerned, and we get a hard Brexit, no deal.
And if we were to suddenly deport all of the EU citizens, then our country, our economy would be in tatters, things like fruit picking, things like construction, things like the service industry would just have no one working there.
And we're already seeing this in this country after the Brexit vote because nothing has changed in the last two and a half years since June 2016.
Nothing's changed. We're still completely under the same laws that we had for the last 40 years. And so people can still come here, they can work here, but they are increasingly going home, you know, or going to other EU countries.
And already we are seeing problems economically as a result of that. And this idea that we want to close the borders and stop immigration is just a very naive view of how the world works.
Because without migration, without immigrants coming into your country, wherever your country happens to be, your country is not going to function as it does now.
And it's very easy to blame these people who, you know, would you want to leave your country? Would you want to leave your town?
If people do move around for work, you move from city to city, whatever. But, you know, would I want to move from London? Well, if I had to, I would move to a different part of the UK reluctantly.
I like London. But if that's where the work was then, then I'll do so. But would I want to go to a country where I don't speak the language? No, definitely not.
So you have to ask yourself, why are these people doing that? There must be some benefit to them. And, you know, you could argue that people come to the United Kingdom are doing so to take advantage of our excellent NHS, the National Health Service, where you get free medical care.
You know, if I cut my hand open and I need stitches, I go, I could go right now, I could get a cab, I couldn't drive because I've been drinking, but I could get a cab to a hospital right now.
I might have to wait a few hours, but I'd get stitched up and sent home completely for free. So you can, there is an argument to say that people come to this country for that benefit, which is huge.
But you don't have that in America, so I just don't understand this anti-immigration argument because your country is benefiting from these immigrants. So what's the problem? Why do you want to stop this?
Because the media have sort of managed to trick you into thinking that it's a bad idea for them to come here and that they're taking your jobs, but they're taking the jobs that no one wants, people who barely speak English.
Well, also the power of disenfranchisement and blaming the disenfranchised is keeps people from looking to carefully about how the rest of the things are being managed.
And I think that's also the immigration people who do speak multiple languages and whatnot can keep or otherwise keep the immigrant population functioning have influence in a power base.
So on both sides, people are playing power games.
Well, clearly, but that doesn't change the facts on the ground that countries like America need immigration and whether they regulate that properly or whether they just turn a blind eye to illegal immigration as they have done for many, many years.
That it needs to happen. Stalking up the fires of hate against them and blaming all the problems, which are actually caused by politicians and bankers and big business, the arms industry will rest of it.
The whole subprime thing in 2008 when that came to a head, you can't blame that on the poorest of the people in your society who are scraping a living doing the jobs that no one else wants to do.
Well, I say you can't blame them, you can and you have not you, but you know, the powers that be the media and the likes of Trump and his whole band back and have done that and have been riding high on it to the point where people are still under his spell.
And you know, this isn't a unique problem to America. This is worldwide, certainly within Western, you know, Western Europe and American, you know, Canada and everything that we, we are under this spell of blaming the people who are the least possible.
You know, they have the least influence. These poor people who have come to our countries, in search of their life. And the reality is that the people who should be blaming are the very people who are demonizing these immigrants and are going to then use billions of dollars of taxpayer's money, tax dollars that people, you know, taxpayers in that country have earned and given to the government to try and better society.
You know, waste that money building a giant wall, which may or may not be effective when, you know, it's, it's just madness to look at it and just to see how people are under this spell. It just, it just blows one mind.
Well, if you look at a border that is far more serious than anything proposed and see how leaky it was, I'm talking about the Berlin wall or the iron curtain and for an iron curtain, it was more like an iron screen door for a lot of, in a lot of places.
So whatever they're doing is, is not going to send the kind of tide that economic tide that's forcing these are driving these people north.
Right. And the Berlin wall is a great example. How have things been since the Berlin wall came down? Pretty good. Germany's doing all right.
Right. But what I'm saying is a lot of the reason it's doing all right. I'm just saying as long as you have one side,
the Eastern block or East Germany with the economic pressures between one side and the other, anything that you put up this passive is going to, going to have limited success.
What do you mean by passive exactly? Well, as far as I know, there this wall will have no anti personnel features.
So by passive, you just mean a giant wall that is very hard to climb over and it won't have troops with guns and, you know, giant flashlights or whatever.
Right. I mean, anything you put up, somebody with scaling equipment can go over or out in the middle of nowhere, somebody will have bulk cutters and whatever needed to go through it.
Yeah, they'll dig a Shawshank style tunnel. Yes, especially if they're, I'm just saying, I don't care if you put the Hoover Dam across the entire border.
If it's passive, somebody's going to climb it. Right. Exactly. And so I think we can agree that it's complete ways to money then.
Well, I think it's a low performance solution. However, while people are assuming over this, they're not looking at whatever else the politicians are getting up to.
Well, indeed, classic distraction tactics, but, you know, here's a crazy, crazy idea. What if we had a situation where we had effectively international socialism where every country was equal where wealth was genuinely distributed, you know, redistributed across all countries and all people.
And everybody had the same economic situation. Everyone had access to free health care. Everyone paid tax to fund it. All, of course, and everyone had the right to accommodation and, you know, we didn't have homelessness.
Then people wouldn't want to move countries, would they? They'd want to stay with their family and friends and where they grew up. And, you know, that is a mad radical idea that just will never happen because of the greed of humanity.
But if we had that, just a picture that for one second, where everybody was economically equal and you didn't have trillionaires and 1% and everything.
And we had perhaps robots doing all of the farming and jobs that no one wanted to do. And, you know, automation and people were just free to just do whatever they wanted. And we had this utopia.
Then that would solve the migration problem for good because people were just sort of, well, really, people would probably go where the weather was good, I would have thought.
I mean, I would probably, well, actually the weather in London is pretty good. It's generally pretty mild in the winter and it's not too hot in the summer.
But, you know, as climate change kicks in, people will probably end up moving further north where it's not quite so hot all the time.
You know, in mainland Europe in Germany, over the last sort of 20 years, it's gone from being nice and hot in the summer to unbearably hot.
And I would imagine that a similar situation has happened in many other places. And so people will probably ultimately or would in this thought experiment would probably tend to move further away from the equator.
But, you know, it's just never going to happen, is it? This is just complete pipe dream, never going to happen. But it's a nice dream.
Well, also our social security system, which if it wasn't run by the government, it would be illegal as a Ponzi scheme. It's the only tax tax in the country where if you make enough money, you stop paying it.
Well, indeed, if you have a similar situation here where, yeah, if you feel a mega corporation or a very, very rich person, then you can avoid paying tax almost completely.
I mean, they will say if they could limit the amount the government pays out per month to some, you know, some level.
And just say, sorry guys, if you make $3 million, you've got to, you know, pay your 30,000 into social security or whatever it is.
But people will say, well, if we limit the benefit that we pay out, then little old ladies will starve to death.
The people who really object to paying more social security are not the people who are going to become little old ladies. They're the people who are using it for tobacco money.
Yeah. The people who are making big money and we're talking multi-million dollar salaries and whatnot, they are the ones who will get listened to the little old lady who these people are support purportedly saving is too busy trying to fill out the forms for food stamps to to get on the horn with his with with her congressman.
Yep. Well, I did not expect to be having a big political discussion here tonight. I expected to be talking about, I don't know, Microsoft and Linux and things and how they've embraced it over the last year massively.
But I think I, it's one three thirty. I think I need to go and get a bit of fresh air and then go to sleep. So it's been good talking to you and happening here.
Well, hopefully I'll get back on my podcasting and I'll be hearing the programs you're producing. Thank you very much.
Yeah, yeah, check out Linux Action News dot com and late night Linux dot com, but also check out user error, which is error dot show, which is a little bit of Linux, a little bit of technology, but what we call 42 topics, life, the universe and everything.
We just talked about anything where I'm the last one we talked about whether or not it's a good idea to lie to children about Santa and we had a nice debate about that.
So there's all sorts of topics and that that's my latest show and I'm quite happy with it. So do check it out error dot show.
Thank you very much. See you later.
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio dot org.
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday. Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by an HBR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then click on our contributing to find out how easy it really is.
Hacker Public Radio was founded by the digital dot pound and the infonomicon computer club and it's part of the binary revolution at binrev.com.
If you have comments on today's show, please email the host directly, leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself.
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released on the creative comments, attribution, share a life, 3.0 license.