455 - Reformatted

0:00Shane, you should take out half of the Rambo your desktop and sell it. You're listening to the PEPCAC podcast Well, fuck it. Let's let's do it then. I'm gonna hit create the pull request emerging Devon to Maine So I think I need to swap out all my chargers for F-150 lightings. I Support flak now rub my belly. I've always dreamt about doing curtain automation Yeah, but your storage still runs on box my mom would have That was an early adapter Vista. So I'm looking at really weird shit on the internet right now Did you hear the part where I said we were gonna podcast at your funeral? Problem exists between keyboard and chair Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the PEPCAC podcast. This is episode number 455 recording date is 3526 the time is 858 and 658 p.m. My name is Thomas. I'm Shane. I'm Dan. I'm Cody

1:05Late night Late night Nine o'clock when your hour age is late My wife said to me the other day like you're almost 40 I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I had said I'd do the math. I'm like I'm almost 38 She's like, yeah, but you're closer to 40 like fuck I am almost 40 When that's sad boy, it just really rub it in. Why don't you? Yeah, my thirties are pretty good 30 our days great you guys Thirties are when things are you have your head on your shoulders and most of your body still works Until you're 40. Yeah, yep. Yeah, I'm going to a concert next week and My wife and I are going and I found out today that it's going to be two two hour sets with a Air mission or a break in between so

2:07I Went to that Nick Offerman show and it was like oh that starts at like 10 o'clock. That might be rough You know, that would be rough there I Don't know the kids are ready to deal with either and I'm still like I don't know I kind of like to be in bed by then How much to get Nick off from and just come to my house I Don't know on that one, but he's going to be on pod save America. He's actually recording right now while oh shit All pot save America. I thought you meant love it or leave it all right. I'm sorry. You're right. I love it to leave it Yeah, that's oh sweet. We weren't recording the night. I would 100% be there So I got to make sure I'm sure maybe you could hire him for a birthday party or something. I keep getting these Instagram Reels where people hire like a Michael Jackson impersonator, but it's like they show up and it's only him at his house I've seen a couple of us if you truly want to bait him tell him that he's going to do woodworking projects with kids

3:11He's all about that So that's a real thing. He really knows woodworking He's seriously in the woodworking. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. I didn't know that yeah he ran his own shop It's actually really funny because Do they film a shot? Do they just film him in a shop for parks and record? Yeah, there was his legit shop that they would film in for parks and wreck. Yeah, I did not know that that's awesome Yeah, he has a shop manager or formerly had a shop manager So he was joking like all the stuff that you would buy from like offermanship woodshop Was definitely Touched by me at one point but probably made by this lovely woman right here But yeah, they She ran the shop forum and kind of handled all the day today stuff and he would come out and make stuff every once in a while and But he loves woodworking. He's all about it. The latest book is literally a kid's book About how to do woodworking and like basic woodworking projects like at home and stuff

4:11And then he was joking because it's him so he's got pictures of like kids playing dice and like betting and stuff like that on things so Yeah, it's a it's a cute book. I think it's like nick off him as like little wood chucks would guide or something like that. Oh, yeah, I heard about that. Yeah What a guy See he's a really good dude. I can't can't complain about him Uh Sorry, I'm dying over here speaking of getting old we're all dying. It's just how fast My arm my left arm hurt today. It still hurts and I had to call my wife at work who's a nurse I had to call her and be like can you tell me I'm not having a heart attack So that was fun That's that that's like old age mixed with anxiety So did she give you that standard like doctor answer of like you know, you should probably get checked out anyway No, no, she's like running me through like all the things she's like chest pain. No, short as breath. No, she's like you know, I have it hard

5:15Thanks any kind of it's kind of convenient. Well, I wasn't before but I am now Yeah, it's great. You know, I can ask her that kind of question. She can ask me about computers How do I uh how do I pin my word my outlook? It's uninstalled. It's on a metaspar Oh, is that we're the generation who can fix computers for the generation before us and the generation after us Yep pretty much we got fucked on this whole thing. Why can't I be ignorant my bad kid Some you could be ignorant old man. I uh old iPad man like uh when you reach your How about this when you reach your 70s when you're 70 years old Jane I am going to purchase you for you and iPad The iPad like 100 or something at that point Great assume I guess assuming the global economy hasn't collapsed and we aren't all

6:18fighting To survive you be like here's an iPad. I'm a great. I needed to start a fire and I'll snap it over my knee and throw it on the wood to Start the lithium on burning Stay warm Did anyone watch the uh Strange parts strange parts of video where he replaced the scottier place the battery in the samson trifold with um honor Uh Silicon carbon batteries. I'm I'm halfway through it. Uh don't spoil it for me if he loses his eyebrows But I Speedy a slap in the lithium for fire. Right. I I question. Okay. I want to be all right I questioned anything that's like we're a new battery tech like because a couple of like new battery tech companies That have claimed that are 100% just put like generating lithium cells And claiming their new shit so until I see like proper bench testing of that. I don't believe it But as a sponsor joint it's pretty fucking cool to watch them try to change batteries with batteries that weren't at all meant to be there

7:25Uh, it's yeah, I won't spoil it. It's a good video. Um, I will say though that This is not like the first time I've heard of all silicon carbon uh batteries um So I oh they're legit, but yeah, the tech is real. I just question whether they're actually producing Oh, okay, like or if they're just like claiming they are because it's You know you need the stock number go up because um fraud is fun Uh, it is fun to watch them spend six thousand plus dollars on cell phones though Mm-hmm So you haven't made it through the video Oh, if that number goes up, huh? No spoilers Uh, uh, I can't want to say jerryk everything, but um No, strange parts. It's got a bed of a deaf con nice guy Jerry rig everything is in or is mentioned in that video though because he had to take a part kind so right Mm-hmm. I've got his stainless steel business card somewhere around here still

8:28uh I think it's on the shelf behind me. I have it in my drawer in here. Oh, well, okay Dan wins. Yeah Along with this Ah nice Sold my flipper by the way, I don't know if I told you guys that I did you Yeah, that's a that's a bummer anyway I'm still using mine to try to figure out the uh Gate opener thing I talked to you about a little bit last week, Dan. So I've narrowed the codes and the frequency down, but I can't get the fucking broad link to replicate it. I'm getting Pissed off again, so huh. We should look at that sometime Yeah, maybe you just need to get like a big boy software radio To probably you know something I've thought about because there's a guy who's made an ESP home module That will do this exact thing Where it'll it'll replicate, you know, 315 megahertz or do like SDR shit

9:28Specifically with home assistant so that might be worth just being like I'm gonna do some soldering and just do this The wrong way, but the the way that works apparently so I have a box Just out of reach full of ESP boards, so I'm glad to mail you one if you would like I I think I do have a box of ESP boards and things going right there Yeah literally right next to me Well, since we're showing off our our boards. Let's see here Uh, what is this? This is one Yes There's one probably two in this box. There's this one This is just an RFID. There's another RFID. I know I have a box of 82 Nice pretty sure I have s3 ESP32s as well

10:30I'm sure future me editing this episode be like what the frick is all at damn noise Okay Hey, speaking of home assistant Hell yeah, good transition Thomas. Yeah New new format this week Is everyone excited? A little bit Is a new format we talked last week about our new format this week starting to they're starting this week where we're shaking things up We said 2026 March 6 March 5th, 2026 is our year episode 455. We're gonna change it up. We've been doing this for a decade And realized we don't know anything about anything anymore. So we're coming to the episode each one of us has to have something prepared Can be anything inside of uh, it can be anything. That doesn't really matter Uh, does not need to be like a Current news article related thing it can be

11:33Uh, since I know what one maybe two of you have selected for this week Um, but it can be anything Who wants to go first should I be drinking? Yes Maybe maybe Shane should crack something open and uh and and I'll go first Give him time to To invite that's too late to kick in just send it. We're gonna. I'm gonna have to Criticize soberly this week. I'm gonna do it live. Okay, Dan you're up. Oh, shit. Okay. Um, Apple had someone else once this week This was like a sleeper event. I didn't even know this was happening. Yeah, there was a bunch of they updated the firmware and the polishing cloth Yep That's why nuts better than ever. That's it. That's my 15 minutes. So silence for the next 14 or No, wait, this will be the game is we like you have to have the whole 15 minutes. So if you don't talk we're just gonna sit in silence for 14

12:36No, um started out with some uh kind of boring just specbums Um, let me just find my list uh iPhone 17 E replacing the 16 E Okay, cool new chip whatever Uh studio display and studio display XDR replacing the um old ridiculously expensive one How much are the new ones? Uh prices on those they are cheaper, but they are in the thousands. Sorry. I put this as the uh Yeah, I put these as the uh, okay Let's see studio display Let's look at pre-orders for that Starts at six Starts at $1,600 Wow, that's cheaper than the old ones. How was the old ones? Old one was like six thousand. It's like pretty nice flat screen 85 inch TV territory But the XDR the higher end one. I don't know the difference between the two is too much because this is like way outside my price range for a monitor

13:41$3,300 Just check out what asus charges for one of their pro our creator monitors It's basically the same fucking thing And oh the stand is included this time. No fucking way Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, no, the stand is not there's not Okay, it's just included. Okay, that asus is asus then gets here because there's 17 higher box total What they come with the stand so you're You're good to go. It's basically included. The stand is included. You have to choose between stand or base uh Except for the lower end one. That one looks like it adds a little bit more I love that the cost difference between like we've manufactured an entire stand people of holding up a monitor or We give you a metal plate that adapts to a four hole pin out is the same value What kind of fucking loser base amounts of max studio display? That's weird

14:42Just thinking that would actually look really good. So get this stand. I guess I get this thing in an arm like the full arm Um, I guess the the XDR the higher end one has cameras built it and stuff So that's kind of I guess the uh the one that these are replaced did not have cameras or anything like that I feel like dan just talked himself into an XDR monitor Is getting more okay with this as time goes on apple should release an all-in-one with one of these things with like a mac mini inside it Right that'd be really good. Do they have the eight eight nineteen chip inside of it? We we've put the most expensive monitor attached to the fastest Garbage computer weekend. Okay, maybe it's something a little bit more spec bombed, but you know what I mean They should make it as long as they don't as long as they don't pull the bullshit with the iMacs where it doesn't do Like have any sort of video input like where you can't convert the monitor to something else useful right? Yeah I'm okay with that, but yeah The old ones you could do that you could put them in display mode But I think they for a while there they didn't do that which was like really annoying

15:44And then um what we're losing money No turn that off But other than that it's just been spec bumps for the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro is they get the new m5 chips Starting the air start at 512 gig recessed you know instead of 256 MacBook Pro started at double the original capacity. It's a one terabyte and two terabyte now Thomas As you're editing Can you go ahead and put an own Wilson wow in there for me? Yeah, any particular spot or just in general just like after everything Dan says where he's like the spec bump Be like wow or the wow echoey thing If you have you heard that before It's not that it's not the one Wilson one that's all I'll let Thomas choose All right noted But the kind of Outstanding one. This was rumored. I was kind of skeptical of it Especially at the price point, but the big the biggest thing out of this

16:48This week the kind of meh mid-year update thing or mid release cycle update thing Um the MacBook Neo new MacBook model wow Um, it's a little it's a little laptop wow starting at six hundred dollars Wow And it starts at five hundred wow Yeah, comes in cute of style colors Yeah, it's like four or five colors wow pastel like Cody said um, it's Actually pretty decent except the it doesn't have the m chip in it which is interesting It uses the iPhone processor the a9 the a18 which is on the 16 the iPhone 16 years ago a year or two ago wow um And a lot of compromises So they they put a two-year-old phone chip into a lap that like what are the other compromises? Um one that makes sense and really isn't that big of a deal in my opinion is the uh the trackpad doesn't have the like

17:50haptic feedback click it's just it's a physical click so the whole thing just press it down like the older MacBooks did wow Okay, fine. It's not gonna affect anything. I don't I don't really get the force press stuff I don't use that ever really often so for me it's not a big deal, but wow That's one cost-cutting measure the other one is the LCD screen. It's not the Pro XDR whatever your marketing they use for all that it's just a regular IPS LCD screen wow 24 away by 1506 13 inches wow It works. It's a laptop whatever wow someone put this into comparison for me or contrast for me um What is like peak-knit brightness on a on a phone Because this laptop is 500-knit brightness and I'm trying to like Compare that to something. I think iPhones modern new iPhones like the pros are around a thousand net Yeah, they're usually trying to go for a thousand net for proper HDR range Is uh is generally what that's considered all per usage outside and the sun and stuff I suppose

18:55Yeah, I think you missed out on one thing Dan Is like I'm not gonna lie. I heard a little bit about this. Oh, I have a list Yeah, I also have some things that he's not mentioning Keep going Um one thing is uh no mags if it's just usbc Um Let's see the a18 pro same as the iPhone 16. It's probably just a band or something Um, I'm six CPU cores to performance for efficiency whatever Five core GPU whatever whatever that means um no backlit keyboard Yeah, whatever that's fine Uh touch ID it does have it But you have to spend an extra hundred dollars to get the 512 gig model So it comes in two two separate level uh storage capacities 256 which is the base and then the 512 512 comes with that touch ID sensor. That's the only difference They have the same monoram 8 gigs which is low

19:59But usable unless you're doing like heavy apps if you're web browsing using it for school or something It's fine. You're gonna be okay Uh the biggest thing I can see some people getting upset about this but since it's that lower power Uh a18 it can only support one external monitor And and then there's a quirk. There's a pretty big quirk with those usbc ports One of them is usb3 the other is usb2 What the fuck's that now we got there? What oh hi So both can both can charge it so it doesn't matter which what you plug in the charge it yeah Cuz it'll charge that 20 watts 20 watt yeah, so it comes with a 20 watt brick which is really low. It's interesting um So like yeah, you can like literally charge it with whatever you use for your iPhone Can I can I say that the first thing I thought when I saw this thing and looked over at speclists I go oh

21:01Apple built the Chromebook Basically Yeah, this is their this is the low end. I think it's focused on education and just trying to get people that are feeling the pains of windows 11 into the apple side Is my speculation Uh, I don't know if you're gonna get that shift over but A lot of people choosing Linux for sure. I've got feeling here has me almost wondering how Many of these are legitimately made with salvaged phone hardware Oh, like there's a lot of like trade in your iPhone shit, you know that I'm like Huh, I wonder if those chips are just winding up in that puppy like they're just laying on a bunch of 16s I think for people trading in and that this is You're getting some some fucking chip that's rotar out and some dudes ass pocket for two years But dude getting a Mac for 600 bucks A full Mac you get a you get a fucking phone with forced to run macOS

22:02It's not forcing you to use like uh, I've had a was or anything though So I when when we're talking about these rumors in a in a slack chat at work I I said something. I think everyone thought I was an idiot But I said it's gonna come out with the iPad OS just watch like it's gonna be I've had OS It wasn't but we're close because it's a phone running macOS So yeah, don't take which now leads me to beg the question is why can't they go in reverse and put this shit on Fucking iPad, but that's yeah Yeah, that's a good point segment yet I don't know I don't know the iPad like even with their official keyboard folios and stuff like that It seems I've had this always seems kind of chinsies a desktop like you've run a laptop I just like it for watching videos on planes otherwise it just sits so I think I'm it's like with iPads It's single thread turd like You know like that's the biggest problem is the iOS whole like It doesn't hold up if if you could have like a macOS mode

23:03For your fucking twelve hundred dollar tablet like that would make a lot more sense Maybe this is a stepping stone to them just turning macOS into a tablet I don't who knows I don't know It's kind of a weird gray space between the two, but um you can already run like iPad Apps and shit on macOS devices. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now with the M1 chips you can install Um mac or sorry iPad and iOS apps right native natively on your mac So there's like no reason you couldn't load like macOS underneath it and then just like Have the like iPad Interface launcher like run on top of it because everything's already running natively anyway, so Yeah, I kind of forgot about that like you can do uh iPhone promoting to so if it is something that requires touch and won't isn't By the developer they don't want to run it on macs. You can just like remote your iPhone basically So you can remotely connect your iPhone to your Bigger iPhone with a keyboard now where you're saying that's cool

24:06uh What kind of upset me about this? Oh wait two two two that's one uh the oh the Touch ID and The 512 SSD are like the two things if you want like a larger Maybe like that that that's all it separates the two devices and it's a hundred dollar difference right um The usb two speeds that's kind of like just There's got to be a reason for that like uh on this on the dire on the chip like that says like it's the chip Yeah, yeah, so in the first m series CPUs came out there were some pro there were some limitations with external displays and Port speeds and stuff like that um So yeah, so there's a difference the the one closest to the back of the machine is 10 gig usb3 It can support one 4k screen at 60 hertz pretty low um other the other one is again usb 2.0 480 megabits per second um works for keyboards and all that lower-end stuff storage it might even bundle neck obviously

25:10Um apparently There's a feature in macOS now where if you plug a screen into the wrong one the slower one It'll actually tell you to plug it and plug it into the faster one so We know you're using that. Thank you apple Yes, we're leaning into the Tesla style software solutions for hardware problems So Hey, here we go uh Shane Macbook neo is made with 60% recycled content Yeah, 90% recycled I'm 100% recycled coal wall to see I want them to like 59% Two iPhone batteries and a fucking iPhone chip in each one of them and they're just used as iPhone batteries like I I am looking forward to the iFix it's air down for sure Oh, I want to see what's inside of that thing and two I just have a picture in my head now 60% recycled 59% is those videos you see of people in China like sawing the chips off board

26:12Like through the board and then they desotter the smaller piece later Um, as I said the other thing that has me a little like leery is This is really going to kill a MacBook resale Apple coming in just be like we're just gonna make a six hundred dollar device like that's gonna A lot I think we're just gonna at least bring values down because the average person would be like Fuck that I can just go get a six hundred dollar brand new one I think there's a lot of people that are gonna think that until reviews come out and they're like this thing fucking socks Well, at least it does away with the does away with the mean $3,000 Facebook machine Yeah, yeah 600 dollar Facebook machine now Now I think it feels a niche especially for education um, but I don't know It might be switchers. I mean who knows it's Apple saying fuck you to Google because Apple was like king of edu

27:14And then Google's like here's a four dollar Chromebook You don't need an iPad here's a four dollar Chromebook and the entire management ecosystem And that epic demo that epic demo that they did Where they brought one on stage and then they had people like destroy them And he would just like log back in and pick off or we left off Gotta get should find then post it because I'd love to watch that again The one of you signs out like some like high up at Google Signs out and just hand the laptop to someone at in the audience like that's yours now forever Yeah, I don't know if you've ever come across this, but they have a whole Like automated check-in checkout process for Chromebooks these days Like you can walk up to a rack of Chromebooks and like Enter a business idea or something like that and like it'll take it out And it'll just auto load your like account and the imaging and stuff like that And then like start a return timer and like bother you to check it back in and all the sort of stuff So yeah, I remember that piece of shit software

28:14Uh, it's actually I'm sure it's interesting, but I remember Uh, setting up that bullshit uh like 10 12 years ago Yeah, it's so fucking janky jank It was good as long as your workflow Involved a web browser for 99% of your shit I mean legitimately it does for basically everything these days even for a lot of my Microsoft stuff all the Microsoft stuff really Okay, I still have I still get kicked to fucking desktop app on the regular whenever there's a script or anything involved so Like it's Some Microsoft stuff all the macros you run in an excel Hi, hey, I didn't get to pick how the workflows work Sure, I'm gonna check what the uh uh Uh trade-in value is on my MacBook Yeah, I think I think this thing is going to be basically the education market answer for the short term Uh, obviously, I think it's a better answer than iPads

29:17Because Apple continues to put way too powerful chips in iPads to sell them for too much money So I think this is kind of like The throwing the educational market a bone slash No more keyboard folios to lose. So, you know, that's bonus. Yeah Just cheap cheap machines people can abuse the fuck out of like I saw I read it post Like from someone in education. Must have been a pretty big school. They had pallets of chrome books that students had destroyed Oh, yeah, it's a constant running thing for you markets. That's it's ridiculous I Don't so that's my thing for the whoa There's one more thing Look at this guy Look at the smile on his face. I wasn't planning on doing that. I'm like I'm fucking going there. No, is it that my rumors put out yet another article about how the new Apple Home TV or Apple Home devices and out

30:21Oh, yeah, Cody. I'm sorry that there's no Apple TV upgrade. I was supposed to be a thing It's supposed to be the last three years Yeah, but I'm like, what are they gonna do? I mean this thing It's already overkill. I guess they could do a spec bump, but why it plays more cake content. Just fine. Whatever Do Apple invented gaming since that was a release. So now they have to have a gaming several times in fact I'm I'm kind of like a new home pod will be kind of nice because I'm I have very few echoes left to my network More they're actually just living my sonos system now for the most part except for like two So I'm like thinking about Gemini Oh for the Apple no, I don't give a fuck about that. I just needed to turn my lights out enough But I need I just haven't been impressed with the home assistant stuff Maybe I don't have the right hardware for it. So I've been patiently waiting for that to get better That's the ultimate goal. Just keeping it local, but I don't know

31:21But whatever wise Be keeping it local. What's your weight? What's your one next thing? Oh, yeah, thanks. Thanks for mentioning that Uh, so with this Neo announced when I'm like, oh, that's like a cheap computer I need to replace my jump box. I was at work reading all this MacBook Neo crap and then I'm like This little fucking ten-year-old plus intel knock. I'm using is like It takes forever to render web pages now. Even I'm running like just straight-up Linux Debian Linux on it and it's just kind of trucking the I'm using KDE plasma desktop all that good stuff and it's like still just It's feel the age is starting to show it's It's starting to I'm starting to feel it a little bit So I'm like, you know what? Well, maybe I'll just do this Neo and have that be my replacement knock or whatever I'm like, I don't want a laptop just like sitting there closed like that's Pointless and I'm probably overpaying for screen, keyboard, trackpad and battery and all this other shit

32:26So I started talking about it in chat and uh, who was it? Um It was our friend from Chicago. I can't remember his screen name now. I'm in a message computer fest. What's that? Royal Royal, right? Yes. Thank you. God fuck. Sorry. I'll call Um So he started talking about oh, there's a sale at microcenter on the the MacBook air the the Mac mini The 20 late 2024 Mac mini like 16 gigs of RAM 256 gig hard drive For like 500 bucks at microcenter. So it's like a full hundred dollars cheaper than what you get from Apple I'm like, huh. This is interesting So long story short short story shorter I went out to microcenter last night and got a Mac mini son and this point Yeah, no one asked you

33:30So I got it originally from Holly so that's my big things. I got to be able to access my whole lab from work when I'm in the office and it works. It's a little laggy Sometimes things don't pop like when you like do like a right click menu You have to like scroll through it to get it to finally pop up in the show on the screen but from home um apple Remote what is it called again? um screen their app that lets you remotely control stuff in vnc natively is Fuck screen right What's that? Sorry No, what'd you say? Sorry screen Isn't that what it's just called screen It is called i'm in the folder right now screen sharing um Whatever secret sauce they're doing between their server on my Mac mini and the client side on my work laptop or my personal laptop Makes it near as if I have a monitor directly plugged into the fucking thing

34:30Even passes keyboard shortcuts and everything just natively it is quite awesome to say the least it's pretty quick So I'm really happy with it No, it's just having it's just nice having I'm way more modern piece of hardware that can do this stuff from now And not having to like figure out shit between Linux and macOS. There's always a little bit of difference, but I was happy with the Linux side wayland and uh KDE plasma are pretty fucking amazing not gonna lie. I felt kind of bad going to a mac again, but I'm happy with it. It's cool. Nice If If I can if I can strum in here for you just for a second and just just make sure Shane heard this part say he might he might That passed out Shane He bought a computer to vnc into Through a web Damon while he's not home that is 98% of this things job

35:35It's to be a desktop so they can avoid work at work No, I'm using it for I'm using it to learn. I'm using it for my one-labbing stuff and what is it literally doing other than that what I just described Converting electricity into heat he looked at it real hard before we still talking about change printer or are we talking about Dan's Mac at this point Oh Don't worry Cody. I'm sure we got some sense on you that we can throw you into the bus for too Probably many things. How's that? How's that steam machine coming around? Are they announced the price yet? Here's one cool thing. I was like don't be throwing rocks in a glass house bro Like we all got shit on each other. We've been around way too long. I'm looking at my desk over here. I might My shelf over here and I see a Mac mini that has bluetooth in it and I also see my mesh tastic radio I could just use it as remote mesh tastic for wherever I'm at you can just attach mess tastic via Wi-Fi

36:40Shut up Shane I was gonna be over here and we're like oh, Dan I'm sorry that your hardware is suffering like that why I happen to have an older PC that I need to recycle that I would send to you for literally the cost of shipping that has like an 8th gen i5 in it And what do you know a PCI slot that you could maybe do some cool AI shade in addition to Running dude, you know just sell just sell the ram just sell the ram and the GPU and you can pay off your house Fuck actually. Yeah, I might pull that. That would be actually pretty good Yeah, I'm really glad they might have ram in it That's worth something Shane. You should take out half of the ram or your desktop and sell it Probably killing on it That kids were that kill kit is selling new stuff. That's all you do is play Call of Duty. Do you really need that much ram? Have you seen how big Call of Duty installs are these days? Just set the textures to low. It's something I only have two dims buddy if I had four I would think about it But it's a two dim kit

37:42I have the intrusive thought of being like Do I need 96 gigs of memory in my server here's I have a file what's that going for I still have a pile of server ram right now sitting on on my shelf that I listed For prices that I thought were aggressive and optimistic, but not crazy They're now selling for past that and no one and I've gotten like two people that have started to hit me up to try to buy them at The old prices so I need to go and get those listed because it's nice. Are my server it's climbing. Are my server hard drives worth anything? They're all like four terabyte say to drive Probably not much. No, you know, no hard drives haven't haven't gone through the rough just yeah All right, just SSD stuff Yeah, at least not smaller Yeah, yeah, sure yeah 10 anything over 10 is is probably fetching above Historic market on that one, but yeah below 10 not so much

38:48All right, can I do my can I do my topic? Uh-huh, you can actually can I do a filler topic while we get to my topic Yes, okay, we got we got broke We got we got we got palm bomb We have a stroke we got we got we got geckoa What do you guys think the the Pokemon company released uh the new starter Pokemon and it's like the first one and like I don't know like 10 years or something. Oh, I thought we were gonna play like one of these is a Pokemon and two of these are infectious diseases Pom-bon is just a pomeranian sorry. Yeah Yeah, and pom-bon blazing kind of won the internet so Because of just being a pomeranian Uh, well, I honestly don't know how I feel about this in general because my lover Pokemon is like Gen 1 Gen 2 Kinda and then beyond that I

39:50I haven't looked at Pokemon. Oh man. There's so many good ones though, and you gotta love the starters Right Dude that lizard is high as fuck Which one she'll do that that lizard goes to fish Concerts yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah All right, hold on. Let me pull it my uh my article here How did I lose it in this amount of time? I Appreciate you having those images on hand ready to post into into chat Gecko, of course Dude, why would I want any of these when I can have Fucking Hawaiian tourist Pikachu's That one in the right's looking pretty sexy to be honest That I love really carries it Is there anything like unique about this new game or is it purely just like we're gonna make another Pokemon game? It looks like a like badass open world game. I don't know. It's gen

40:53Still to be new Pokemon. There's not a lot out about it. Yeah, it won't be out till next year About trying to find the difference is the game are are monumental between the two versions. It's a their hats change color Yes These are the important details. No, my my actual article this week is that um The epic games versus Google android saga is finally come to an end Oh after what was it now six years of ongoing litigations After epic pulled a gigantic stunt and Did all their stuff with the with the fortnight? Um, yeah, so google is opening up Android to They're calling it like a registered app stores Um, which will be like a supported list of app stores that sign up through them

41:55Um, there's gonna be like a 20% service fee Uh for new installs instead of the 30% that they've been taken forever Um, and then there's some other discounted service fees dependent on which the google services you use and I think it's like a 5% extra fee if you decide to use their Um, their own billing Stuff for your own apps So is Nintendo gonna have a store that I can buy Pokemon's on It could be a possibility. Yeah Yeah, they they can like they can do all the stuff they can link to third party sites for payments. They can um I install their apps directly without side loading directly from their store from your phone app or whatever I can buy a Kindle book without having to be like We're not telling you to go to the website to buy this book But you should probably look elsewhere to buy this book and then it'll show up here Intent yeah, yeah, I'm sure that's coming so they said this um that

42:56The litigations are not done, but they've already like agreed to do all this so they're doing it in other countries first and then Um, they're gonna do it in the US after all the lawsuits wrap up Sure Six years and untold sums of cash Lit on fire That would yeah, this is where we got Yep Yeah, it's crazy, uh, and I think there was some deal where um Was the the Tim Sweeney guy like can't like make fun of google or whatever for like a couple of years now or something as Oh, they gave them Are you serious? I don't know if the article is truthful or not with that, but I gotta look this up Yeah, holy shit, it is real Yeah, there's a non disparagement clause in the epic google deal Until 2032 I love that because they probably saw what happened with Apple and they're like, you know what we got to get some paperwork

44:01Holy shit, that's a body as hell Tim can we don't we don't want any keyboard warriors on this Yeah The clause silences the epic CEO who previously called google's android a fake open platform Yeah, it was a crazy saga like there was so many different lawsuits and like Apple winning some and epic winning some and Like little things changing here and there to open it up, but it never really did and Um, I think this is what they ultimately want it as a result when they Started I just I had no clue it would take six years Wow That's obscene Yeah, laws pretty slow on a lot of stuff. Is there anything uh any appeals or anything getting filed? Or is it they're just like this is where we're at? Um, I don't I don't think so at this point that the article is kind of like You know, it's called a new era for choice and openness other

45:03I think they want to be done with it all at this point and Now it's about making a shitty situation as good as they can for themselves Sure Makes sense, but I wonder what it'll change for other I mean like I'm sure like steam's gonna register as a like a supported registered app store or whatever I don't know if I don't know if other app stores are like Change their cut to be less certain or what they're gonna do It's gonna be interesting because I can see amazon very quickly becoming one of those because they already still have their own Uh APK you know app store distribution for fire tablets so like and they've done app stores for You know android devices a usb stuff for a while then they just kind of like We don't want to support this anymore But obviously if there's a shitload of money to be made and they can go undercut Google by like 5% and rolling it like they're probably gonna

46:05Yeah, so yeah And uh and Dan too, it's probably pretty good that you got your PlayStation now because uh Sony's also gonna stop doing so many ports to PC with their first party games. I heard about that Yeah, they I think they kind of said with like Microsoft cozy enough to steam a little bit more than they just see no reason to Put their stuff there Which honestly I don't know I it's kind of an interesting choice because I don't think It hurt them that much to do it, you know, because it's like They still making solid money on the game releases. Yeah Uh and You know, there's obviously some porting money and stuff like that they have to spend to do it But it's also like There's a lot of people who will just not buy a PlayStation to play those games. They'll just won't do it Yeah, well they they did it really well too like they'd put out like um

47:07Like the first title like the last of us or something when like the last of us two was coming out So they get everybody hooked on the first one and then they wait like two three years and then port it over to PC And then people just buy the shit out of it again. So It'll be interesting. I you know honestly if anything I kind of think part of it is like Protecting their assets because there's been a couple of games and I think it was Sony who's come on said like We are not gonna release this on PC specifically because like You guys are gonna hack the game files and then I'm gonna get more like Character X bent over character. Why? What people would not know that's why they release it on PC Yeah, that's why he's gonna be late enough in the cycle that they don't have to worry about the follow-ups I'm just gonna miss I'm just gonna miss the Resident Evil mods like uh replacing Mr. X with Thomas the tank engine

48:10Yeah Thomas the tank engine coming in clutch at every game is what we really need in life Because they're in in the R2 remake There's the scene where he's revealed the helicopters crashed into the police station The mr x lifts it up With this one arm and then Leon Leon says holy shit And they were they were placed mr x was so many different things on that particular scene made it in fucking credible You know if they would just make the effort to go make their own game engines again This would be a lot harder to do but now that everybody's using like unity or yeah, yeah, yeah, that it's like oh well Shit, that's pretty easy to move resources between them. So let's just we'll do that I love the game mod where they dropped Thomas the tank engine in instead of a dragon Yep, that the in the opening kind of scene I've seen that whole cut scene that I've laughed my ass off because it does Thomas the train whistles off in the distance and like what's that dragon?

49:15And so a dragon Roaring off the distance. It's choo choo I think when it comes in a wreck shit like the steam song starts playing to like you really drive at home This is the kind of joy that we're not gonna be able to get out of Sony games anymore like this is a problem, right? Yeah, come on kids aren't gonna know how good they had it yep Although I kind of feel like a lot of kids can't mod games these days anyway just because They're iPad kids, but you know, I don't know they have like a halo forges and stuff for that now like that's kind of yeah built in I guess They're they're they're an ingenious Generation though think of how many people have had a hack Whatever they could to get it to run Minecraft like Jack jankass shit on their chromebook or whatever to make it run Minecraft like We're gonna see some up and comers in that space man Yeah, maybe

50:16I mean Cody's kid Cody's kid named his character in a game poop today. I mean The future is bright If there was any question whether or not it was Cody's son before it's it's that question is eliminated now You know every time you caught a Pokemon and fucking red and blue or yellow or whatever that you you gave it some name like that I mean once I figured out that you could name Gary asshole and it would take it. Oh your your rival in the game. Yeah That's his name forever because it's always hilarious like professor I was like hey asshole like well like you know like don't don't do that The best part was when he was naming him like I knew what he was doing and I'm like aren't you even gonna capitalize it? Kids don't capitalize anymore man. Come on. Okay. Is everything that's the vibe What do you mean auto correct doesn't he also said bra like a thousand times all you explain What about six seven?

51:18Occasionally we'll do those but It's barely But yeah, that that was my article. So I'll pass good good. Yeah Uh We're at 50 minute. Do we got we got we want to do one more? Yeah, I got a I got one that's uh open here Yeah, you want to go for a a truly Majestic an important piece of film history Is coming up for sale at auction in the next I want to say week or two here Uh prop store auctions if you're not familiar with them are amazing about Finding all this weird movie collectables and collections and stuff like that and they truly have found The pinnacle item Geez for their for their uh think I know auction coming up here think I know the answer to that is The full-size Plastic rhinoceros featured in ace venture or win nature calls

52:20but That he crawled out the answer. This is the this is the anus This is the anus prop. It has the latex butthole in it that can be stretched To release a naked gym carry into the wilderness Where he can then scare the locals and this is available and they're only estimating that it's going to be selling between Four and eight thousand dollars and I don't know how that's possible. Yeah, such a Anvil comically low Of film art is available for such a low amount of money like this is this is truly this imagine Being able to keep this in your living room And just like recreating the birth of your children anytime you want just be like get in there and crawl out You know or or or you know Maybe this is how you have a breakaway entrance into your furry sex party Push right through it like there's just a thousand different uses for this particular prop in your home

53:26So or work. I mean really you could spice up your entrance to your next port learnings report By just just Lopping out on to stage from the ass hole the classic right now so truly Thousands of different uses for this so as you say that Shane I've debated showing this movie to my kid when when is it how old is Old enough to see that movie how how old is he now because the answer's probably I'm gonna give it probably a yes, but yeah Yeah, he's okay look he is you he is named a character poop. He's ready Okay, he's ready Um So here's the fun part is that apparently Uh If you weren't if you're not familiar with the props or auction stuff is that Adam Savage regularly will do like videos with prop store when they go for sale I've seen he has done He has done a video on this particular item available at prop store auction And he's talks about he's like can you imagine Jim carry coming in and saying like

54:32Hmm, I don't think I'm gonna be able to push through that the late sex is a little tight like having to try like different versions And like standing in a warehouse while Jim carry tries to push himself through. Oh, he just did a video on the asshole Yeah, it's like just came out like this week. I think that's nice Yeah, so your opportunity to buy this is coming up March 25th Auctions are gonna start at 9.30 in the morning Pacific time, so I had so much love for them to be on when I was a kid As they are They're absolute film of their times because of like like The villain is like a Trans football player in the first one like okay, that didn't quite roll out quite as smoothly anymore, um, but They are still You know, you can't They're a product of their time and you could still go back and enjoy them nostalgicly, but I don't think they Quite hold up the same way anymore. Sure

55:33Yeah, but uh, I had to see this and I thought oh this is like this is just fucking hilarious that this is coming up as as a thing I'm prop store maybe the I'm like our media people buy it Sorry, maybe the red letter media people buy it they buy uh They buy a bunch of random props I I would love that I you know It could be really interesting to see how this goes pricing wise I think it's worth more than the 8k that that they're as you oh current absentee is already at 12 grand if 18 bits So like that's won't want miracles obviously it's worth more than eight so Yeah, the epitome of the man cave trophy piece It's the right not through his asshole Mm-hmm You could really make that the entrance to your man cave At the exit but yeah, I was gonna say entrance because you could butt it up against the side of the house And just have it as like a lawn ornament and then you can open the side panel and

56:34I feel like this is something that probably goes in a prenup Oh clearly Hey, they have to do it as I'm keeping the butthole No, it's just if you ever buy this fucking stupid problem to force in your head Okay It's good shit, and then on of somewhat more serious note Android released their pixel update this month, and it includes desktop mode, which is kind of cool. I played with it a little bit. So They're they're going the opposite direction of iPad I guess where they're gonna like let you have a desktop interface Keyboard mouse connect extra monitor all that sort of stuff Yeah, I've actually heard a little bit about this um because Samsung has a native function called decks That has kind of been fallen on his face lately like it it's great When you have the use case for it, but it started to really kind of show its age and I think it's because they knew this was coming out

57:39The one that was surprising me was when I plugged it in It's very much the same interface is like a Chromebook or a A pixel tablet yep, but when I plugged it in and I launched chrome I don't know why I expected any different, but it's 100% the chrome that was running on the phone like all my tabs are available That I had like in chrome on the phone like this is actually pretty sweet so And now if I want to cut down on carrying a computer all I have to do is pack a keyboard and a mouse and a monitor and a adapter for all those Uh, and you know now I don't have to carry a laptop So I think we'll probably see some something coming out Uh, in that space The speed of the decks though if you look at um the decks Those are decks book or decks pad Or the the lap dock it was basically this It's it's a laptop that just runs off your phone um yep I mean, it's a fun idea and now your phone is is capable right of powering or

58:44I would I would love to see them lean and know where the phone can still be like a second monitor Yeah, or like like you get the desktop interface on the external But you get the like the phone interface still so you could like put you to bond and like do some work or something You know Control some music like cool things like that. I'd feel like would be be cool way to go with that, but I'd like to feel like my uh wireless That was one thing that uh samsung was getting with decks was wireless decks um Little leaky here and there depending on your situation, but really nice for carrying a very teeny little android phone and running wireless decks Yeah Well, I got a new USB-C hub for a couple of different reasons uh this week So and it supports display pass through which is one of the the reasons why so Yes, I'll be given it a try with the old uh Uh with my external portable monitor and keyboard and mouse and stuff to see what that What that kind of full experience works like because it was a little chunky when I tried to put it on the big

59:48Work monitor because I have a new USB docking for that as well and it was like the resolution was off or something But I think that was because I have an ultra wide monitor on that. I think it was like I don't know how to deal with this So That's cool. We'll see Dig it Yeah 59 minutes 48 seconds. I think we'll save my uh my bit for next week Well, let's let's be all of 10 minutes that we want to When I get to it 10 minutes Oh Cody got 10 minutes. Yeah, we're good. It's between you watching the new episode of the pit I'll give you 10 minutes. All right. All right. I'll be quick. My printer is left I I Teased Dan about this because I said I turned my fridge into his fridge With some magnet tape strips So dance fridge has a screen on the front of it now my my fridge has a screen on the front of it now, too

1:00:51And you're talking about Dan about not being satisfied with some of the home assistant stuff to replace like that that interface Uh, oh, yeah, just the limitations of the of the Tizen OS Check out view assist I've heard you mentioned this before. Yes This is what you're running on your on your your rotodacos and stuff, right? Yeah, sweet. Yep. So I'm also running it on a little blue A lot of second a little blue phone BLU the cheapest phone that they sell at Micro Center, and I'm running it on a like 10 inch Android tablet Uh, it is a series of automations integration into microphone and speaker and device management app so

1:01:51So What it basically does is it replaces Like a Google home or an echo with a similar kind of look and feel But everything powered on the back end on home assistant So the default clock face the weather integration into playing music thermostat control some of the stuff that you use your Your your google Assistant or whatever for it's a project that spawned out of my wife and I shared frustration for Google home Most recently or nest or whatever most recently we tried the AI Gemini update and I fucking hated it because she would talk back to you in like a natural way She's like, oh well now that you have the the timer started do you want me to tell you how Potatoes to peel there's some bullshit like that. We're like fuck this. We don't want this in our lives

1:02:52They're just reaching trying to get you to use the AI. It's so fucking frustrating. It's like Amazon Echo start doing this too like you Hey Turn on the light. Oh by the way, I can also set tainers and stuff. It's like fuck off. No, just turn it on get out of my way So you conduce with basically any android device um I started the project using it with some rooted echo devices I think we've talked about those but like the gen one gen to echoes echo shows are rid of all um Yeah, that one. Have you ridded it yet? I did I Unfortunately installed the google play services um, and I think I'm gonna go a year out because the reason why I did is Homuses an app. I wanted to be able to install that and then have it auto update But if I use a view assist. This is the web page, right? I'd use the homuses snap. Oh, okay Yeah, I don't know so still work. Anyway, let's go ahead

1:03:54So you you use a device management app that someone created To basically install the device and then you control screen on screen off volume that kind of stuff Get access to the mic get access to the speaker and then you install um Like the homuses snap and then you install an integration of view assist integration and a view assist companion app Into your homicist and server and then there's a very easy pairing process to say like this screen is this physical device And then you just enable all these great automations that create a dashboard Inside of home assistant That it's formatted very nicely. It hides all the interfaces and everything and it pushes that page to the to the device And it gives you and I'll show you guys this and if you're watching live you'll see this on discord if not you'll set the You know live without it, but uh, this is a video of me

1:04:59Uh, you know I'll hear the voice the video I suppose Okay, well, there's just a picture of my Android tablet running View assist sorry. I'm trying to place them again talk at the same time There we go So that's it playing vampire weekend And I realize you can't hear the audio on my phone, but um yeah Okay, I was thinking about this big project. You've been running getting this all working and stuff and I'm sitting here like Dan's like oh, I was looking at a new home pod like all I do is use it to turn my lights on and up and like boom How's this not the better answer for yeah If you if you're on the whole bandwagon of like I want to detach from all these services like that's definitely the It's it's it's that and I don't mind using um the echo Lady a thing in my sono speakers because they're like good sounding speakers So if I want to play music I want to be able to tell to play music so

1:06:00So one thing you can do is when you set up this device uh as a uh View assist device you can separate the speaker and microphone from the display What I mean by that is you could say like I instead of like Using the speaker on the echo Use the speaker on my sonos assuming sonos is inside of um Home assistant Uh, and you use this with an with a uh integration That I had never heard of but it's awesome called music assistant It's an integration into home assistant that creates a player and links to whatever your audio library services are and allows you to play Music on any device that as a speaker And as I found out it works on my doorbell so Nice that was kind of funny, but uh, so all local I can I linked it to my plexam library. I linked it to my local like disc um

1:07:05I can just say hey Jarvis play the artist vampire weekend and it takes two seconds Translates the request starts the stream Immediately so uh kitchen timers what's the weather uh shopping list All it works perfectly it's really really good So here's my other thing too found out that we mostly use uh Apple watches now for a lot of stuff too So that's my other thing like figuring out how to just get Siri to control everything because I have this thing I'm a wrist wherever I am in the house. So why do I need all these devices It's true Uh, the big thing for us was like all this processing as everything is is local So like even the I have the voice you had that the voice pipeline already created which is easy enough easy very easy Yeah, you don't need any like custom GPU hardware you can do it all local I have mine offloaded to olama different server, but it doesn't matter um

1:08:11It yeah, it'll translate commands for home assistant too, so it could be like Hey Jarvis turn on the fireplace and it'll Run my automation that like fires the fireplace on with like eight or nine other settings so Uh I this this is like endgame The the project is complete Now it's just like Using more of the functions and probably getting a couple more devices just to drop around the house because it If if nothing else, it's a really nice looking clock and alarm um But obviously it's useful for like my project years ago like whole house audio like stream music every room my house Perfect The one in my office uses a google speaker With the microphone turned off as the speaker for the display So it's like a really nice bassie sounding speaker so I was thinking for you Dan you could literally do that with like your

1:09:12Sonos So me they have a home assistant integration. Oh sonos works fantastically with home assistant I've done some cool stuff with it. So nice Yeah, if nothing else just install music assistant on your home assistant server and just play around with the casting functionality it works really well and the music assistant You don't use a severed app. It's in home assistant in your side panel and we open it I'll show you guys It Just looks like a separate app even though it's all running inside of home assistant inside the home assistant Android app Thanks, so Yeah, super happy with it. Um, I'll probably talk more about another episode later on as I kind of tweak and tune it Uh, the other thing too if the documentation is flawless and the uh community on discord is very very helpful

1:10:13so Oh, uh, unify camera integration I can say hey Jarvis display all the cameras and it just does a nice little four panel of all my Cameras in the house or I can say hey Jarvis showed me the baby camera and it'll be like yep, here's your nursery camera So and then you can use it to like you can tie other automations to it because it's just a device Or an entity inside a home assistant so Unify can detect crying on the camera And then I can set the display in the kitchen just show The nursery camera for 30 seconds that kind of stuff so It's great. Um, everyone should check it out. Yeah, just google view assistant. You'll find it Uh, oh, yeah view assistant music assistant music dash assistant. I owe. Yep um, I had trouble getting the dockerized version like the docker separate docker container working and linking into my home assistant I ended up choosing the music assistant add-on in home assistant itself

1:11:15So as long as you're running home assistant OS you can run the containerized version that way But your mileage may vary That's the ballgame. That's it That's it we did it because I think I have a drawer full of old ass android tablets that might be a perfect use case for this It requires nothing. I mean obviously like speaker microphone quality and everything but um, you could look at the intent like that the words that it captures after you have your wake word Um triggered uh, which you can do custom wake words some of the people on discord have done that on our discord um Uh, uh, you got to say that's where I'm not gonna say it um But the ability to separate it out to say like The microphone is and I might try this actually because I have that home assistant little microphone device I might set that up as like the mic because that I can put somewhere else and it's got uh, directional microphone on it

1:12:21That could be my trigger the display could be the display and then that google nest speaker or whatever it could be the audio output uh, that you can get and put anywhere Oh, it's really good like a ESP 32 or anything like that for like remote microphones. Yes That's essentially what the device that I got home assistant had a year of voice was it last year, I guess and uh, I ended up buying one of those Yeah, yeah, that'd be cool But yeah, you I mean again as long as it as an integration at home assistant it can be uh Fiddled with here Plus the the companion app is really cool. If you just want if you all you did was install this and set it as like the default home or whatever or not Uh, and you want to do something completely different. It's just a free kiosk app to be like I want to do full screen I want to do like turn on turn off to screen and all that so

1:13:23Yeah That's it ladies and gentlemen peb cack podcast is over for the night 455 in the books the date is still March 5th 2026 times now 1010 and 810 p.m. For the peb cack podcast my name is Thomas I'm Shane. I'm Dan. I'm Cody And remember the next time you were troubleshooting the first step is to reboot in the second step Let's go ahead and pick that pomeranian Pokemon and start your journey is just I can go out and touch grass. Oh, he's so cute