With the latest round of California wildfires heavy on our minds, this week we ended up with a wide-ranging conversation about what to take with you when you evacuate, climate change, PCs as space heaters, crawl space water cooling, and the genius of Douglas Adams. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
With the latest round of California wildfires heavy on our minds, this week we ended up with a wide-ranging conversation about what to take with you when you evacuate, climate change, PCs as space heaters, crawl space water cooling, and the genius of Douglas Adams.
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Episode 49 - Proto-Prepping
Brad: [00:00:00] It's hot in here.
Will: [00:00:01] Yeah,
Brad: [00:00:01] It's really hot. I had to turn off three fans two Nope, actually I left one of them on it's still on. You think it's picking up? Do I have to get up to turn off this fan or can we just keep going?
Will: [00:00:11] don't, I don't hear it, but I can't, I couldn't tell you, cause the voice, the call software will filter out your fan
Brad: [00:00:18] I've zoomed as far into the wave form in audacity as I possibly can.
Will: [00:00:22] I think you should turn it off.
Brad: [00:00:24] It's so hot in here though.
Will: [00:00:26] I'm going to make you fix the audio file. If it's fucked up.
Brad: [00:00:28] 80 degrees in this house. Okay. Well, you have to keep talking while I go to turn off this fan.
Will: [00:00:32] Okay. I'm going to like the nice thing about living a mile from the beach is that even though the humidity is very, very high all the time, sometimes the fog comes and it was like 55 degrees and really foggy last night. Um, so I opened up the windows cause the fog pulls all the particulate out of the air.
Brad: [00:00:53] Oh, man. I didn't think about that. Yeah, that's pretty handy right now.
Will: [00:00:57] Yeah, it's the best. It's like, it's like a, it's like a air filter for the, for the world, basically. Uh, it does the bad news. Is it distributes to the parking particulate evenly over fucking everything. Walls, cars, the ground, windows, like there's little dots of soot everywhere when you go outside right now. I'm sure. But, but 60
Brad: [00:01:16] I had a pretty profound, the world is F a moment this week when I, we had all the windows open because of the heat wave. And at some point I walked around the house and realized that there was a layer of Ash accumulating on everything. And I've been slowly cleaning that up for the last two days.
So we did backyard camping because my daughter likes to camp. We usually go camping right before school starts, school started this week and we weren't able to do it this year because of the Rona. So we did a backyard camp set up and we were out there Saturday night and the lightening started at about three o'clock in the morning.
And I was like, well, we're going in. I'm not gonna be in the backyard. When the lightning starts in about the time we got in the wind, gusts it up to 60 or 70 miles an hour. And the tent did one of those [loud growel] things, which like impressively stayed up. I was like, okay, we can go out and have a real storm in this tent. This is like going to REI was a good move. It turns
Yeah, good road test for your tent.
Will: [00:02:08] Yeah. Um, She wasn't impressed with that. And she did not like the lightening, cause it's maybe the second time she's seen lightening in her seven and a
Brad: [00:02:15] years.
People out here really don't like lightening. It turns out I've found like my, I mean, you and I both grew up with it, you know, like in the South, like I don't people, I don't know if people don't know this, that haven't lived in this house, but like, there are stretches of the summer where you have a thunderstorm, like literally every afternoon, it's it's like, like clockwork. And then out here, like we had lightening for, you know, you have lightening maybe every three or four years or something. And people are terrified by it.
Will: [00:02:39] I mean, look, when you're among the primitive spread, then you have to know that they're going to have different feelings about the sky opening. Uh
Brad: [00:02:48] you saying we're going to have to bring these people civilization?
Will: [00:02:50] I mean, we're gonna have to explain what weather is to them is the problem, but anyway, um,
Brad: [00:02:56] Yeah, it's been, it's been a week, man. I apologize because I know some people turn to things like podcasts for kind of an uplifting escape from the world, rather than to be reminded about everything that's going wrong. But I saw a tweet last night that just summed it up. So succinctly it was essentially I'm paraphrasing here, but it was basically like we're trapped inside because of a pandemic we're baking in our houses because of the heat wave.
Will: [00:03:19] Yup. Check.
Brad: [00:03:20] Uh, we don't have air. We don't have air conditioning because there is no market incentive to provide it to people. And we can't open the windows because the air is poisoned outside.
Will: [00:03:31] Yup.
Brad: [00:03:31] kind of getting it from every angle right now.
Will: [00:03:35] So I've got one more, um, because the fire is South of San Francisco down the peninsula between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, uh, between half moon Bay and Santa Cruz are, you know, close enough that we've started thinking about what happens if we have to leave.
Brad: [00:03:50] Yeah,
Will: [00:03:52] Should we just start the show?
Brad: [00:03:53] Uh we're getting there.
Will: [00:03:55] Welcome to Brad and will made a tech Pod I'm Will,
Brad: [00:03:57] I'm Brad. Welcome to a cheery episode.
Will: [00:04:00] Hey, Brad,
Brad: [00:04:00] Hi
Will: [00:04:01] look in fire season. We do uplifting episodes of the show apparently.
Brad: [00:04:05] we should, we should chat. When did we do our disaster episode last year? Was it around
Will: [00:04:08] was like like the sixth episode. So it was a, maybe it was later fire season started later last year. Cause school was already going.
Brad: [00:04:14] it's like clockwork. Yeah.
Will: [00:04:15] Yeah, it's shocking. Um, but yeah, like I saw a, it was funny Jane McGonigal tweeted last night, uh, that like, she was like, I don't know if I can do this every year in San Francisco. This is trauma. Like, even, even if you're on a, like, I have, I have a friend, I have a friend who lives in Sonoma now whose farm, whose house burned to the ground in the Santa Rosa fires three or four years ago. And they had to evacuate two days ago and, and
Brad: [00:04:42] God, I can't even like it's bad
Will: [00:04:44] the second time.
Brad: [00:04:45] bad enough for people like us who were basically just dealing with bad air quality and heat for the, of course. I mean, you've got pressing concerns as the fire moves northward, obviously, but like to, to, to actually lose your house and then go through another evacuation after that, like I would be out of here.
Will: [00:04:59] I can't even imagine. Um, but I mean, that's the thing is I think, I think we're getting to the point that like, if everybody's working at home and. Uh, we're going to be trapped inside the house for at least another nine months because of Rona. And maybe more than that, why am I paying a buttload of money to live in a 1000 square foot house in the Bay area, but I can't do any of the nice outside Bay area things. And like, we deal with fires and horrible air for two months, every, every fall and rolling power outages and like what the California dream man,
Brad: [00:05:35] Yeah,
Will: [00:05:36] it's not what it used to be
Brad: [00:05:37] it's not the sixties anymore. That's for sure.
Will: [00:05:39] No, Now I just am looking forward to having like reliable electricity and a well, so one of the things that's been fun about, I say fun. I air quote fun about this whole 2020 experience is learning that like the gap between me and crazy prepper people, maybe less far than I thought.
Brad: [00:06:03] Narrowing year by year. I mean, that was that episode last year, right? It was like prodo prepping.
Will: [00:06:08] Yeah, really well, it's one of those things. It's one of those things that like, I don't like I was looking at solar stuff the other day. So I was like, you know, it'd be nice if we had Sol, if the power goes out again, if we had solar, so we could at least get a few hours of electricity a day and have a battery wall and all that stuff so that we can, so we can just disconnect from the grid when the power goes out and then reconnect when it comes back on.
And it's not like it's, it's expensive, but it's not. When you advertise it out over the over 20 years, it's, it's a pretty reasonable purchase, right? It's like, you're not, you're not doing anything crazy.
Brad: [00:06:43] Also, it's not, it, it ceases being a purely economical concern when you add like the, a matter of survival into the equation, you know what I mean? It's like, like people talk about, should I get solar against the cost of just staying on the grid? You know what I mean? Like it's like, am I actually, how long is it? You know, how many years ago it's like save money off of this. It's going to be 12 years before this is paid for. And I actually started saving money and nobody wants to do that. But when you factor, when you factor in a situation like this, that is now occurring on a basically annual basis, suddenly like it's, it's more of an investment in you and your family's like sanity and survival than it is like purely a fiscal thing.
Will: [00:07:21] Well, and if like, yeah, it makes it, it's funny though, through the light of what to do in case of disaster, your decisions about like, if you want to remodel the house. If I had to, if I was remodeling the house now, I think I would probably, you know, build a fucking brutalist, concrete nightmare. That's impervious to fire.
Brad: [00:07:42] Also maybe a, maybe a moat.
Will: [00:07:44] it's a moat. Seems like a good idea, Brad. I don't know, man. I, uh, so yeah, like the TLDR is that we're not in any way. We're not in any danger of evacuation right now. Um, but
Brad: [00:07:58] you personally, you mean your family where you are?
Will: [00:08:00] personally, but we are 15 miles from the evacuation zone
Brad: [00:08:05] I know. I know people up North who are basically also in the same situation as you have. We're not, we're not being told to leave yet, but it's getting worse and it might happen in another day or two, like it's, it's. But it feels like it's happening on all sides this year. Like, like it's like every year it's somewhere like, like a couple of years ago, it was the North Bay sometimes as the East Bay.
But this year it is the North Bay, the East Bay, the South Bay. It is everywhere.
Will: [00:08:29] Well it's because of that lightning storm, actually. So yeah, the lightening, we don't normally have thunderstorms at this time of year. And like, this is another one of those unpredicted, uh, side effects of, of climate change. Right? So, um, so we thought last year we did the disaster preparedness kit. I thought maybe this year we thought we should do like what to take if you have to evacuate, because there are a lot of natural disasters you have to evacuate for floods and hurricanes
should,
Brad: [00:08:55] we should mention real quick up to about 45 minutes ago, we were planning on doing something with like the history of video game controller, sort of digging, digging into the mechanisms and mechanics of
Will: [00:09:08] It turns out there's buttons.
Brad: [00:09:09] spit balling about, but it was just, it's hard to think about that right now. There's a lot more pressing concerns, uh, on our minds. So we pivoted to this.
Will: [00:09:20] Something uplifting. Um, but before. Uh, before, before we get into that, can I ask a streaming question for you? Cause you've been doing this and it's been hot there. How hot does it get in your room when you shut the door and you're playing games and you're streaming a video game.
Brad: [00:09:37] That's what I wanted to talk about first.
Will: [00:09:40] Have you ever heard, I heard the metaphor about boiling a frog, you put them in the pot and they don't realize that it's hot until they're cooked.
Brad: [00:09:47] Yeah.
Yeah. So I can absolutely attest. That is a thing that,
Will: [00:09:50] you boiled frogs.
Brad: [00:09:52] Oh, let's not talk about our extracurricular activities here, please. That's a thought we promised. I thought we promised to save that. I thought that was going to be an us thing. Um,
Will: [00:10:03] cause sign up for our only fans.
Brad: [00:10:05] Oh, like, seriously there, it happens kind of regularly for me. Like you stream for two, three hours and you just get into you kind of, you kind of lock in, you know, you're just like focusing on what you're doing and like trying to be entertaining or like, you know, checking your stream quality. There's a lot of stuff to distract you. Right. And it's only, it's only at the moment you click stop.
That you realize I'm glued to this chair. Like I am, I am just a disgusting grainy mess. It feels like a sauna in here. And that happens quite a bit. So like, yeah, since we're in this situation where like, we don't have air conditioning, like, I mean, I don't know about you guys. We don't even have ceiling fans in this house. Like we've only got what we,
Will: [00:10:41] Yeah, well, we have central, we have central a central furnace, so we can turn on like the whole house fan
Brad: [00:10:46] okay. That helps
Will: [00:10:47] to circulate air through the house, but it doesn't help that much.
Brad: [00:10:52] Yeah, like there's, there's just, there's just no good air flow. The irony is it's like very pleasant outside right now. Actually. It's like nice and cool. And breezy. If we could open the windows, this would totally not be a problem, but we can't. But
Will: [00:11:03] You have windows on both sides, right?
Brad: [00:11:04] yes, one of the, this one in the office that I'm in faces, the kind of fire escape, stairwell, like enclosure there's, there's not a ton of airflow out there, but there's enough.
I, I, we, we do get like a good crossbreeds. If we open all the windows.
Will: [00:11:18] I was gonna say, do you have one of those fans that you like mountain the windows and blocks all the gaps? And then
Brad: [00:11:23] Oh, as like a proper exhaust fan.
Will: [00:11:25] like a proper exhaust fan
Brad: [00:11:26] No
Will: [00:11:26] that'll pull air
Brad: [00:11:27] I haven't thought about that.
Will: [00:11:28] So we have one of those and that, that thing does works wonders. Um, if you like open one window and then open the window that's on and set that thing to suck. It'll pull, it'll pull it. It'll pull a pretty good, cool stream
Brad: [00:11:43] Yeah, I bet. Yeah. We're, we're so close to the water that we get a good ocean breeze most of the time. So there's some, some air flow anyway, but, uh, I I've been wondering about that from just like a basic thermodynamics standpoint, like enclosed space, you know, like certain volume of air to fill, and then I'm looking at like, okay, I've got a windows machine here.
There's an NAS in the corner. Okay. Now I'm playing a game. So like the GPU is probably pumping out more heat than usual. You know what I mean? Like, like we, you and I both have plasma TVs and those put out a lot more heat than more modern stuff. Like I'm basically looking around like itemizing my tech life in here and trying to figure out how much heat each one of these things is putting out.
Will: [00:12:22] How many Watts each one produces?
Brad: [00:12:24] Yeah. it's, it's not an insubstantial amount, right? Like that is absolutely contributing to the heat in here. Right?
Will: [00:12:29] Yeah. So, so I have, when I stream at night, I should have shut the door. Cause I have a sleeping child, like 10 feet from me. Um, so it's the gaming PC, the streaming PC, like neither the gaming PC runs it full speed. Cause I often like run with V-sync off and it'll run as fast as it'll run. But like the streaming PC is usually a pretty low load. It's like 10, 15% CPU. Cause it's a Hexo core with a decent GPU. So, so like those, those are both tick over a little bit, but it's not, you know, it's not, it's still generates a shitload of heat. So when I leave the room, it's often 90 or 95 in here and I go out and it's like, we have air conditioning because I step out of the door and I'm like, Oh God, all the sweat dust just instantly dries off of me cause the temperature change.
Brad: [00:13:15] The differntial is so nice
Will: [00:13:17] yeah. But, but like, so there's a, there's some solutions, unfortunately we don't have a good place to dangle a window air conditioner. Cause like the window for my office would block. If I pull it out the window there, it would block the entrance to the house.
Which I mean, I guess right now probably doesn't make that much of a difference.
Brad: [00:13:35] Not that big a deal wouldn't that be? That would probably be too loud to stream with though. Right?
Will: [00:13:40] You know, it's funny. I can run with the, with one of those window fans in behind the green screen and it doesn't come across with the mic. Cause I use the, I use the closeup boom mic rather than like the big podcast mic that I'm using right now for streaming stuff. It just have to check to make sure I was using the big podcast mic.
Um, But, but yeah, it's, uh, it's not great. Like that, that ends my streams, like the temperature when it gets too hot in here that usually ends the streams. Cause you like, you don't realize that it's getting hot until like it's 85 and somebody comes in is like, Hey, I think the white balance on your camera's wrong. And it's just that you didn't refill your drink recently enough. So you have been drinking water for the last hour and your face is starting to get red. That's not great.
How'd Oh, how'd you get heatstroke Will? Well, Oh, you know, I was, I was, I was really into flight SIM and that thing really hits the GPU. So got hot in here. Fast as hell.
Brad: [00:14:36] You were just flicking off those sick headshots so fast that you
Will: [00:14:39] like, man, I can I, yeah.
Brad: [00:14:42] um, yeah, not, not to make the whole episode about this. We can move on, but like you think, do you think the, do you think the sum total of all of these types of common devices, computing devices would equal? Like what was taught like a small space heater or something like what the, what do you think the heat output is?
Will: [00:14:55] I have, well, I mean, it's easy, you know, what the heat meat intake is, and you know that most of it is converted to energy.
Brad: [00:15:01] So is that, is that the conversion? Actually, I was going to say like, cause you know what the input is, but I don't know how much it comes out as heat versus, but as it is it, is it just about all of it?
Will: [00:15:09] I think all of it comes out as heat. Right? Cause it's like, like you're even, even when you successfully do a computation that turns into heat.
Brad: [00:15:15] Oh, I guess, I guess you're right. Cause like it's not like it's being, uh, funneled into like a mechanical action or something. Right? There's nowhere else for it to go or nothing. Nothing.
Will: [00:15:23] fans and hard drives.
Brad: [00:15:25] Sure. Well, I mean, there's nothing else for it to manifest as in terms of other types of energy, right?
Will: [00:15:30] No. So, so the thing, the thing I thought about doing, I thought about building a closed loop water cooler with a radiator on the top because I have a crawl space under my, under my office
Brad: [00:15:40] Oh,
Will: [00:15:41] and the crawlspace events outside. And there's a little fan under there to blow air through. So it doesn't get, so it doesn't get damp under there if it rains.
And I was thinking about drilling a hole in the the floor, two holes Oh my God.
putting some quick release cables with a radiator under there
Brad: [00:15:56] Wow.
Will: [00:15:57] And then having, like, basically I'd have to have two radiators, right? So I'd have to have one radiator that's up here for when I needed to move the PC and not be near the, the basement.
And then the other one would vent heat into the
Brad: [00:16:09] crawspace
Oh, that's incredible. I did. It's pretty cool under there,
Will: [00:16:12] It is, it's always like 60 degrees, 65 degrees,
Brad: [00:16:15] That's a awesome. That's amazing.
Will: [00:16:17] But like, I also know that if we add. If I make it warm under there, it's going to amount. It's going to increase the amount of water that can hold under that area in the air.
Brad: [00:16:28] a lot of
Will: [00:16:28] variables here.
I don't want to like create condensation problems in my crawlspace. Cause that seems like it would be real bad. So I've kind of held off.
Brad: [00:16:37] Are there, um, what did you call them? Quick release? Like, are there connectors that are there connectors that are like, leak-proof enough that you would trust something you can connect and disconnect on a regular basis?
Will: [00:16:46] Let's say yes.
Brad: [00:16:48] Theoretically.
Will: [00:16:49] I have not used them, but I have been told they're there. I know that there are quick release cables for specifically this part. Not like not for being a dumb ass and piping your heat into the basement, but like there are quick release cables for this kind of piping
Brad: [00:17:00] Okay. Oh yeah. I mean, I guess even outside the world of PC water cooling, just to like in the actual plumbing, there must be some kind of gear that serves that purpose. Right.
Will: [00:17:09] well, and they have to be real, like the connections have to be fast and not bubbly. Cause you don't want to add a bunch of air to your water cooling loop. So, yeah. Anyway,
Brad: [00:17:19] Yeah. Leaks leaks are always the thing that has scared me off of water cooling. I mean, I've dabbled with it. I had a water cooling setup back at like 20 ish years ago.
Will: [00:17:27] wow. Really? That was early.
Brad: [00:17:29] Yeah, I dude, I was using a literal, like small.
Will: [00:17:32] Aquarium pump
Brad: [00:17:33] Yeah, like actual, actual aquarium pump and like the radiator was about, I don't know.
Mmm.
Will: [00:17:39] Like 12 by 12 centimeters
Brad: [00:17:41] Something like that. Like where would that have come from? That's not a car radiator. Let's uh,
Will: [00:17:45] no, they, you could buy PC radiators back then, but
Brad: [00:17:48] It didn't, it did not. It did not look like it was made for a PC, like purpose. I'm not sure where I got it from.
Will: [00:17:54] it could have been for like a fridge or a small compressor,
Brad: [00:17:56] it might maybe or something like that, but that was absolutely before there were all in one water cooling solutions and you had to just roll your own and I was on some forums, just like, it was a bad idea. Like
Will: [00:18:06] I feel, I feel like the first time we did water cooling at maximum PC, it was in like 2002 or 2003.
Brad: [00:18:13] it was around that time
Will: [00:18:14] it being a real novelty, but then like, like there was no, there was one company that made parts basically at that point. And it was some, some guys in Oregon, maybe who I think were like air conditioner guys. I don't know.
Brad: [00:18:26] Right. Like I was, you literally had to source all the parts from, from aquarium supply. Like you said, you know, like plumbing stuff. Like I went to the hardware store, like you were literally Jenning it all up yourself, except for the, you know, the water block, obviously it was made for that purpose, but that was like some boutique shop with machine tools, like machining it themselves or whatever.
It was like very a DIY.
Will: [00:18:46] Like those early blocks were just a big old slab of copper or whatever, whatever material with like water channels cut in the top. And then they bolted a piece of plexiglass on top with a couple of pipe fittings on
Brad: [00:18:58] Yup. Uh, to be clear at work, like I never had a leak or, you know, never ruined any equipment. Like it did what it was supposed to do, but like I got algae buildup and the pipes, because nobody was talking about additives to prevent that sort of thing back then, like it, and I had to cut a hole in my shitty old case to like run the
Will: [00:19:13] All right. There were no hose
Brad: [00:19:14] piping out.
Yeah. Cause there was no accommodation for that stuff. So it was like a Frankenstein's monstrosity. Like it just wasn't worth the hassle. It was, it was novel.
Will: [00:19:22] The one, I only did one custom loop and then switched all in ones. Cause they're so much easier. Uh, but the custom loop I did was for, uh, a, I can't remember it was, it was like a pre quad core, probably one of the Pentiums with two CPU does on the distinct CPS, on the di um, like our late pentium fours probably.
And, and. When I moved, it had an external radiator. I was so afraid when I moved that I would bump the cable and knock one of the fittings loose that I was like, I just going to drain the whole fucking thing and then I'll refill it when I get there. And yeah, and it, it, it was, it was a huge pain in the ass.
Brad: [00:20:02] Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if the hassle was worth it these days. Also the biggest reason I would get water cooling is for the, the noise factor. Cause I just, I just want my machine to be as quiet as possible, but a lot of people say that a good air cooler is actually quieter these days.
Will: [00:20:13] Well, I think on the CPU side, that's absolutely the case. There's some, there's some, uh, really, really quiet air coolers these days for CPUs. The problem is the GPU is when you, when you hit your GPU hard, like when I run flight SIM or PUBG or literally anything that hits the GPU, it sounds like a jet turbine.
And I'm like, So here's the other, here's the other ridiculous idea I had for cooling the PC without cooling, warming up the room. What if I just got a five gallon bucket of water and put a, put a heat exchanger in there with the water loop through that. And then at the end of the night, I just dumped the bucket of water in the tub.
Brad: [00:20:51] That's not the worst idea.
Will: [00:20:52] and, and get a fresh one for the next day.
So, so, you know, cause the water will hold more heat than the air in the room. So anyway.
Brad: [00:21:00] Yeah. Uh, ha have GPU has gotten worse about that stuff. Like I've got a regular GTX, 10 80 non TI version and it doesn't get that loud. And I just, you know, I, I wonder, I wonder if they've gotten a lot noisier.
Will: [00:21:13] Um, it depends on the GPU. I know that there are some third party coolers for the 2080s that are quieter than the founder's edition, which is what I have. Um, the, you can tweak the fan profiles. Like one of the things I do to, to make the noise less annoying is instead of having it, like, I, I don't, I don't.
Like by default the fan curve on the, on the 2080 TI founders will spin up and spin down pretty dramatically, which is the thing that annoys me more than anything else. Um, if you, if you set that to like bump up once it crosses a certain threshold and not come back down and set the, I can't remember, there's a term that means that it basically averages out over a longer period of time to decide if it's going to spin up or down.
That that helps a ton. Uh, there's also some like, like I was looking at this NZ, the NZXT, I'd be curious if anybody's used one of these, but NZXT has this thing that basically is like a frame with a fan that goes on and then holds a CPU all in one cooling block on the GPU.
Brad: [00:22:13] Interesting.
Will: [00:22:14] And it's like 20 bucks. And I have a couple of spare all in ones that I'm not, I have a spare on one that I'm not using that compatible with it.
And I've kind of thought about grabbing that, but we're so close to the 30 eighties that I'm just like, I don't know if I want to invest any time or energy in making this work.
Brad: [00:22:28] Might as well wait and see. Have you seen that? There are, uh, there are three slot cooling solutions now for
Will: [00:22:34] my 2080 TI is a three slot. It it's not, it is a 2.5 slot, but you can't put anything in the, in the adjoining slots now
Brad: [00:22:43] Yeah. So that's the other, that's the other reason I wouldn't get water is that, uh, You know, there you get an all in one system that's just for CPU, you can probably be pretty sure that it's lead tested and like enclosed properly and all that stuff. But there aren't really all in ones that also incorporate at GPU.
Right. And I would absolutely want that meaning I would have to open it up and do a customer loop. And at that point, like I'm subject to my own errors and have to worry constantly about leaks. And it's just the whole thing just doesn't seem worth it.
Will: [00:23:12] The late in a, in a GPU generation. It definitely does not seem worth it early in a GPU generation maybe,
Brad: [00:23:20] Maybe, maybe things will look very different in a couple of weeks.
Will: [00:23:23] Yeah. Um, okay. So let's get to the topic at hand
Brad: [00:23:27] That's that's old enough about
Will: [00:23:29] the longest cold open we've ever done, I think. Um, so you have to leave your house.
Brad: [00:23:35] yeah. Are we talking short notice?
Will: [00:23:39] I mean,
Brad: [00:23:39] I guess they're all, I guess they're all short notice, right? I guess nobody really thinks they're going, but nobody plans long term for an evacuation. Right? If you have to evacuate, you have to do it soon.
Will: [00:23:48] You have at most, I would think a few days. Right? So like, presumably your paperwork is in order, your main documents, your birth certificates, your passports, your, uh, your car titles, your house stuff, your social security cards, your YubiKey. Your recovery codes for your, for your password manager and your, and your Dropbox and whatever your Google account, all this stuff that you need to get back in.
If you, if your phone gets destroyed, um, are all in your fire safe, which is probably gonna come with you. Um,
Brad: [00:24:24] I don't have, I still don't have a fire safe.
Will: [00:24:25] You should get a fire
Brad: [00:24:26] I've been looking at them since the last time we talked about them, which was god was that last fall.
Will: [00:24:32] I feel like we talked about it a few weeks ago.
Brad: [00:24:33] maybe they're all sold out. Like everything else. They're all sold out now. Like the, the, you know, the prices prices are jacked up on Amazon. They're not easy to come by.
Will: [00:24:44] Um, I I'm, I I'm, I mean, just to be clear part of this as I'm doing this so that we can talk through it and I don't forget anything.
Brad: [00:24:51] Sure.
Will: [00:24:53] but, but yeah, I think like I'm trying to like marriage certificates, um, and then also like, I have in there, like stuff of real sentimental value, like, you know, a drawing that my daughter did for me in kindergarten that I love.
And, and, um, a thing that my grandmother, uh, that my mom got me from my grandmother's house when she passed and, and stuff like that. So,
Brad: [00:25:20] Gosh. I mean, if you're starting to incorporate sentimental objects, this could get tough for me. Cause there's kind of spread all over the house. Like they're not, but certainly they're not categorized in a way that I could grab them all and just run.
Will: [00:25:31] Well, so that's like, that's part of the process, right? As you walk around. Well, first off, one of the other things you're, I think you're supposed to do is walk around and shoot video of all of the objects of value in the home so that you can. When the insurance situation arises, you can say, look, here's, here's a record of all the things that are in here.
Here is our Lego collection and comprised 40 kits that have these, you know, blah, blah, blah, this much value. Write me a check, please. Um, yeah, the. But on the documents front? I think so my strategy on the documents front was to go through and think, okay, what do I need to get a new passport? What do I need to get a new driver's license?
What do I need to replace titles or whatever on cars that are destroyed, potentially. Um, What do I need to recover digital access to anything that has gone on the computer? Is the, is there an offsite backup with the computer? I, I fired up Backblaze last night just to make sure it was up to date and it is, um, do I put the NAS drive?
Like the NAS backup drive, I think is maybe going to go in the, in the fire safe too,
Brad: [00:26:41] Okay.
Will: [00:26:41] because you know, Or maybe I'll just pull the drives from the NAS . I haven't decided yet. I I'm that I'm still working through.
Brad: [00:26:49] What form is your external backup?
Will: [00:26:52] It's a one, one giant 10 terabyte drive.
Brad: [00:26:55] One drive. That's it? I would just, if that has everything on it from the NAS, that's what I would do. Like I
Will: [00:27:00] it doesn't have the movie collection. It has all the documents and photos and stuff
Brad: [00:27:03] okay. I've got a, Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.
Will: [00:27:06] I might, I might just pull, I have, the other option is to pull for eight or 10 terabyte drives, whatever I have in there now. And, and just then rebuild the freenas machine when the time comes.
Brad: [00:27:17] Sure. That that would totally work. I've got a, I've got two 10 terabyte USB externals because I did put my movie collection into the backup. That backup is my entire Nas, but, uh, I would, I would grab those. I would leave the NAS cause it's a full size, you know,
Will: [00:27:33] Yeah, I'm not bringing the machine for sure
Brad: [00:27:35] uh, I don't know if just pulling those things without like, uh, what's the, what is the, ZFS term exporting the pool, whatever, the, whatever, the like formal disconnection processes is.
I don't know if, I don't know if, just like, if we're talking like you literally have 30 minutes to get the fuck out. Uh, I don't, I don't, I don't know if like, just yanking the drives from the connection is safe or not, or not
Will: [00:27:57] If you turn off the computer, you can just grab them. I, cause I,
Brad: [00:28:00] you're right. You're right then that's pretty fast.
That takes 90 seconds to just hit, hit, shut down and wait.
Will: [00:28:05] I mean, even if you have to pull the power plug and just grab the , yanked the cables, you're still probably fine.
Brad: [00:28:10] I guess if you're, if you're, if you're in a situation where you don't have time to shut down a computer, you're probably not. You're probably
worry about the data.
thinking about the NAS backup to begin with.
Will: [00:28:20] Yeah, where you let your offsite backup, be your, be your guide in that case
Brad: [00:28:24] Do you have, do you have an offsite?
Will: [00:28:26] Uh, so all of our photos and home videos and stuff are on Google photos
Brad: [00:28:30] That's what I, that's basically the type of stuff I need. A backup is an old home movies and stuff like that. And some old like digital Apocrypha and the salami.
Will: [00:28:41] I'm trying to think there's, there's a public like there's the public folder on the NAS is like our dumping ground for shit, like documents that are going back and forth between Gina and me and stuff like that. So I need to look at that and make sure that there's cause that, that isn't probably on the, it, that's not cloud backup backed up, but I could put it in a folder.
That backblaze covers, like I get miror it to a folder in the backblaze covers on my PC and that would solve that problem,
Brad: [00:29:07] you, would you trust a somewhat more kind of consumer service, like Dropbox for stuff like that? Or is that too open for you? Okay.
Will: [00:29:14] I mean, so the problem with Dropbox is if you have two factor on and you lose your phone, how do you recover it? If you don't have those codes, which are probably stored in Dropbox, because that's why most people put all of that. Like my recovery codes are in a, uh, um, uh, Vera crypt, a file on.
Dropbox that I remember the password too. So I had to print out the Dropbox codes and the one password recovery codes and put them in, you know, they're in the fire safe now.
Brad: [00:29:44] that makes sense. Yeah, I've been, I've been meaning to set up something like an Azure blob storage. Volume for quite a long time, like in a cold, cold storage kind of way. Cause that stuff. Did we talk about that
Will: [00:29:55] Yeah. We talked about a couple of weeks ago. It's really, I went and looked at the pricing. It's ridiculous. It's basically nothing. Once you transfer in.
Brad: [00:30:01] for, for hundreds of gigabytes, uh it's like I didn't do the math on, this is super fuzzy, but why isn't it like a dollar or two a month to hold to store? Like maybe even, maybe, maybe even terabytes. Does it go that high?
Will: [00:30:13] They're I assume they're storing that stuff on like people's little Slack X-Box drive space or something. It was so cheap.
Brad: [00:30:20] So totally possible, but, um, and again, yeah, I think we talked about it before, but again, that's like, that's the kind of storage that you expect not to have to access, right? Like if you, if you do need to retrieve data from it, you are going to pay a substantial amount of money.
Will: [00:30:32] It's it's worth paying the money to access if you, if you have to access that data.
Brad: [00:30:36] if you need to get data out of it, you're going to be, you're going to be happy to pay the couple hundred bucks it's going to take to get it.
Or, I mean, I'm, I'm spit balling that number. It's, it's going to be a lot, but like, if you're in the situation where you need to access it, you will be happy that you can access it at all and you will gladly pay the money. But otherwise, otherwise that's a place to dump super valuable sentimental data and expect to not touch it.
Unless disaster strikes.
Will: [00:30:58] Well, and I mean, in a lot of ways, the Google photos, I think I pay for. As part of a Google one subscription. I can't remember. I have to pay for that separately, but basically I have multiple terabytes of space available for photos and video and, and it serves the same purpose, purpose, and it's searchable.
It's really nice. So you can search by the content of the photos cause you know, machine learning.
Brad: [00:31:21] Even if you're a, even if you're willing to juggle free accounts, there's like there's Dropbox, there's one drive there's Google drive. Like there are enough free services out there that you could spread stuff like that out across them and kind of have some redundancy, but then you get into, then you get into a situation of like, if you two factor all those services, where do you keep those codes?
And you still have to have a way to get into that stuff.
Will: [00:31:41] Well, and, and also like having, having done the thing where I have a backup, all the backups on hard drives in the garage and I'm like, shit, which hard drive is this? Went on it's is it this one? Or is it this one? Or is it this one? Like, if you're in a disaster, you don't want to have like, just, you know, find some pay for something.
I mean, Backblaze, isn't even very, it's like less than 10 bucks a month. I think for the, for the basic thing, they're not paying us. They're, they're the ones doing that, that I've used in the past and liked, um, Okay, so documents in the fire safe. Right. Can you think of anything like that should go in the fire safe that we're not thinking about?
Brad: [00:32:17] I mean, how big of fires are we're talking to like the sort of briefcase, like little tiny suitcase size fire, safe, not like a, for like a, a standing floor safe. Right.
Will: [00:32:26] So, so the one and I have is like a, it's like the size of a mid sized cooler. It's like maybe a foot and a half of normal with file hanging file cabinet. So you can put your hanging files in there and there's room in the bottom for some shit that goes underneath the bottom of the files.
Brad: [00:32:41] a decent size. You could get some stuff in there. The one I was looking at was like, Like a briefcase size. Like you wouldn't put much more than like documents and some USB sticks in there. Probably.
Will: [00:32:51] well, this one I bought because I had all this, I had all the paperwork for my business and I was like, if I lose this, if something happens to the house and this has gone that I'm, I have a hard time.
Brad: [00:32:59] Yeah. You've you've, you've got way more considerations around that. So you run a business, you're married, you have a child, you own a house. Like I don't I've I've I live a bit more off the grid.
Will: [00:33:09] Let me tell you. Yeah, Brad's ready to grow a beard. Moved to Montana
Brad: [00:33:12] I am working on it. It's getting there.
Will: [00:33:13] Montana's is nice. It seems, I don't know. Maybe my time, maybe I get by a missile silo in Montana , Montana and just move in
Brad: [00:33:19] don't hear a lot about disasters in Montana.
It turns out
Will: [00:33:22] Yeah, well that's because they don't let anybody leave the state anyway.
Brad: [00:33:24] What do
Will: [00:33:25] Um,
Brad: [00:33:25] What do you think the internet connections are like there?
Will: [00:33:28] uh, it depends on the municipality and whether they did municipal fiber or not.
Brad: [00:33:32] I'm going to guess. No. If you live in a community in Montana with municipal fiber police, let us know.
Will: [00:33:38] Yeah. And, and Hey, if you like it, even actually, if you live any place in the Northeast or Northwest, that's not on the coast. And then the fire on holler, we'd love to hear about place?
Brad: [00:33:48] Well, you know, mid Midwest has its own problems. Ask, ask Iowans right now. How,
interested in tornadoes or I don't even know how you say it. Duretcho
um yes, that stuff
Will: [00:33:58] that sounded bad.
Brad: [00:33:59] We'd we know, we know someone in Iowa who was having a rough time of it, and that sucks a lot.
Will: [00:34:04] well, I mean, the thing and the thing is it's funny, Bruce Sterling wrote books about this. There was a book called heavy weather that he wrote like 2002 that basically was like, Hey, here's, what's going to happen in the flat middle parts of the country. If climate change is real, when climate change is real and it was set in 2050, but we're seeing it now, cause the tornadoes are bigger and we're getting all these, you know, hundred mile an hour wind storms and all of this stuff.
So I'm a little skeptical of any place that's flat. Um, at same time Southeast hurricane zone,
Brad: [00:34:34] Yeah.
Will: [00:34:35] Got two hurricanes heading toward the Gulf coast right now. That's that's bad buckle down and leave if they tell you to please,
Brad: [00:34:41] Yeah. We were inland enough that the hurricanes just manifested as like really bad rainstorms. And that was kind of it.
Will: [00:34:47] Oh, so floods then.
Brad: [00:34:48] Well, no, cause we were in the mountains, so it couldn't flood. It was actually like
Will: [00:34:52] Well, it can flood it just doesn't often.
Brad: [00:34:54] resilient area, but a hell, I don't know if we've talked about this before. How much do you check yourself when you.
See what looks like a freak weather occurrence, and immediately go to climate change as the explanation, like, do you, do you try to moderate that response or do you just like assume everything is because of that at this point? You know what I mean? Like, like, do you, do you try to mentally draw a line between like, cause you know, like you look back at like the last hundred years of record keeping or whatever, and you see like, even before the industrialization of the world ruined everything.
No, there were free like temperature spikes or whatever, you know, there were
Will: [00:35:28] 500 year storms.
Brad: [00:35:30] and climate problems in, in the pre-industrial past. Right. So like, do you, do you try to, do you try to distinguish mentally between like, that is definitely climate change. This could just be like a freak, a normal freak.
You know what I mean? Is that, is that distinction even worth making at this point.
Will: [00:35:44] So, um, I am not an expert on this. My rule is when somebody, when a meteorologist describes something as a 500 year storm or meaning, it's the kind of storm we have roughly every 500 years. And we have three of those in, in sequential years. My assumption is that something's up
Brad: [00:36:04] that one is, that's a safe assumption. Absolutely. Yes. Uh, and there, and there are, um, there are certain entities out there that I think are considered kind of universal authorities, you know, like they're like, Oh, whatever, I don't want to get into a. I'm going to go off on a political tangent here, but there's like a pretty obvious war on expertise over the last few years.
Right? Like there is a tremendous, tremendous amount of undue skepticism around, around the experts and the evidence. Yeah. But it's based fact finding that sort of thing. You know what I mean? Go on.
Will: [00:36:33] Are you suggesting that the people who are blaming China for climate change are perhaps doing that without the best of intentions? I am shocked, sir.
Brad: [00:36:42] not gonna, I'm just gonna I'll, you know, I'll leave that as an exercise for the listener, but what I'm getting at is that there are certain institutions, I think that are the, that withstand that kind of skepticism, such as let's say the military or firefighters, you know, like people who work in really hands on nitty gritty disaster response, or heavy logistics type stuff.
And you will see those institutions. Very honestly, you talking about the effects of climate change, you know what I mean? like firefighters, like they like the guy the last time the fires were that bad in California. Like you saw people in that line of work saying like, yeah, that's exactly what this is because they can't, they cannot afford to pussy foot around and like play with the truth.
Right. Or like,
Will: [00:37:25] If they do the then you know, massive parts of the state will burn and people will die
Brad: [00:37:30] like, like, like, like the military has to be able to deploy insane amounts of manpower and machinery around the globe on a moment's notice. Right? Like they cannot, they cannot afford, excuse me. They cannot afford to equivocate about, you know,
Will: [00:37:44] Yeah, they can't take the political line. That climate change is not real. I'm a dipshit Republican,
Brad: [00:37:50] like factors, like factors that affect their, their ability to do their job.
You know, they're the, the logistical variables. They have to be extremely realistic about all of them. And like, like when I, when I see institutions like that talking honestly about where the climate is going awry is I think when I really start to worry or a bit, but also that's the kind of thing that at least like most people will recognize as an authoritative assessment.
Will: [00:38:15] There's a, there's a couple of things to always remember. One of them is that we are literally the only developed country in the world where this is a conversation that goes on, right? Like the rest of the world. It has, it has accepted the man climate change is real and there's not a scientific there's I'm air quoting scientific.
Again, there's not a scientific debate about whether this is a real thing. So sometimes taking your cues from the rest of the world and assuming that the other, you know, 6.7 billion people on the planet, maybe know what the fuck's going on is a useful exercise. Um, so yeah, like. If the, if it's a cold winter, not climate change, I mean, maybe climate change, but it doesn't matter if you have four record fire seasons back to back because of a, of a 10 year drought that has barely, barely seen a dent in terms of rainfall.
Probably time to think about maybe some shit's going bad with our choices as a species.
Brad: [00:39:14] Yeah. Yeah, definitely the most uplifting episode we've ever recorded
Will: [00:39:20] if. If, if, Hey, look, if you see a few back-to-back records, hurricane seasons, because the Gulf stream is slowing down and solidity of the poles are bad because the ice sheet on Greenland's melting and giant chunks of ice are breaking off the Antarctic.
I don't know. It seems like maybe that could have the climate change impacts there. Who knows, who knows? If methane in Siberia in the, in the Tundra is being released in unbelievable quantities because you know, the ground is literally on fire because it's falling for the first time in tens of thousands of years,
Brad: [00:39:51] Safe Assumption.
Will: [00:39:54] I think probably that's bad. And maybe our fault, like at this point, I'm kind of hoping that we have a giant fucking volcano that just blasts a couple of years worth of Ash in the air to give us a little bit of a pause.
Brad: [00:40:06] Let's not even talk about Yellowstone. Is that where it is? Is it
Yellowstone, right? Isn't that? Where the super
Will: [00:40:11] Yellowstone. Yes. I've been doing some research on this for unrelated things lately.
Brad: [00:40:16] why could that be?
Will: [00:40:18] well, it'll be cool if we get to talk about it. Um,
Brad: [00:40:22] That's a, that's a weird one. I don't know what this episode, even about it at this point, but like, I feel like that's a weird one that really gets into humans, skewed perception of time, because
Will: [00:40:30] that that's don't you don't have to worry about that when we're fine on that one.
Brad: [00:40:33] But that's, that's an interesting one where like, is it that volcano or is it another supervolcano?
I think there's one out there that they say like, Oh yeah, we're due like that one is going to erupt like any day now, but in, but in a geological timescale any day now means sometime in the next, like 20,000 years or something, I'm making that number up. But you know what I mean?
Will: [00:40:51] It's like Mount Rainier, right? Like Mount Rainier geologically. Due we didn't know that there was a fault under Seattle until a few years ago, right. Where there was a big earthquake and, and, you know, there's always been earthquakes there, but like, they were like, Oh shit, there's a fault here. We didn't know about.
And by the way, probably Mount Rainier is going to blow up at some point in the not too distant future, but geologically, the not too distant future is fine.
Brad: [00:41:14] Or, you know, like a, which I'm God, which a, which major star in a constellation was,
Will: [00:41:19] juice. Uh, it's beetle juice. Yeah.
Brad: [00:41:21] I'm pretty sure it was it bettlejuice that they thought might be preparing to go supernova.
Will: [00:41:25] The bottom half is dimming the top half less. So yeah,
Brad: [00:41:28] Yeah. And like that one is, you know, they're saying that thing is due, but like, due you could be a million years from now, you know?
Will: [00:41:35] I think it's, I think the range is a hundred thousand, a few hundred
Brad: [00:41:37] I was at that close,
Will: [00:41:38] don't have as much high bread
Brad: [00:41:39] right, exactly. I mean, whatever, it's
Will: [00:41:41] your bunker.
Brad: [00:41:41] like, it's the same, uh, it's the same psychological effect is when people hear about the, our suns red drawf phase or not red dwarf from, um, red giant phase,
Will: [00:41:51] Red Giant Yeah
Uh,
Brad: [00:41:53] like,
Will: [00:41:53] we
won't go super giant. We're not big enough
Brad: [00:41:54] Right. Like about like, it will consume the earth in 5 billion years or so. Right. And like, people start to panic when they hear about things like that. It's like, you know, I think you'll be fine.
Will: [00:42:02] Yeah. If
Brad: [00:42:02] you'll have to worry about
Will: [00:42:03] If humanity makes it 5 billion years, we've really fucking lucked out in some important ways
Brad: [00:42:07] but, but also you as a, an individual, probably not a concern.
Will: [00:42:13] I, I mean, look, there's a whole other question. Like if you had the opportunity to upload your consciousness at the end of days, does some sort of orbiting computronium facility that just lets you run in simulation for eterunity
Brad: [00:42:25] we, are we, I feel like this podcast is this podcast is becoming a cliche or we're going to have to get into theories of mind here where I ask if
Will: [00:42:30] just call this popery. Yeah.
Brad: [00:42:32] is that actually you, or is that a copy of you?
Will: [00:42:35] Look, that's a different conversation for a different day
Brad: [00:42:37] is the,
Will: [00:42:37] I'm just saying, would you take a turn of life in the comptronian space cloud?
Brad: [00:42:40] well, I, yeah, I would just be giving the digital version of me eternal life. Right. And the, the meat version of me would languish here on earth.
Will: [00:42:48] What if in order to upload the digital version of you, it's a destructive process and they have to like dismantle your brain one neuron at a time.
Brad: [00:42:55] Oh, I don't know. I have it doesn't sound so bad as, as ways to go rate that one's pretty novel. It's pretty novel.
Will: [00:43:04] So, um, one of my favorite things in the Stevenson book that came out last year, the, the, the one about, uh, Dodge in hell is one of the characters realizes he has a terminal illness and he builds an elaborate suicide machine that also preserves his body. So it's perfect for the uploading process, like at, at the moment of death.
And it's, it's very grim and wonderful in a Neil Stevenson way that I, I fall it's fall as the name of the book. Um, anyway. Okay. So back to the topic,
Brad: [00:43:40] I did real good. I just wanna say real quick, if you haven't played Soma, if anybody listening to this has not played Soma
Will: [00:43:44] Oh Jesus.
Brad: [00:43:45] that game that game, that game deals with the digital consciousness question better than just about any game I have seen.
Will: [00:43:50] I had the monsters were too scary
Brad: [00:43:52] that, well, they, they have, they added a mode where you can disable that stuff.
Will: [00:43:55] Oh really?
Brad: [00:43:56] Well, I don't know if, I don't know if it fully disables them or maybe just makes them harmless. I forget. They're really kind of disabled, disabled, the stealth aspect or something like that, but like they basically added a story mode, like a don't worry. Don't bother me with this stealth crap. Let me just, did you finish it?
Will: [00:44:09] no. I stopped playing because the monsters were fucking
Brad: [00:44:11] Dude you have, you have got to go play through that game.
Will: [00:44:13] Okay.
Brad: [00:44:14] It's so good. Anyway, I'm sorry
Will: [00:44:17] okay. So I feel like documents. I feel like we're pretty good on documents, right? Birth certificates, titles, social security, passports, marriage certificates, um, uh, your, your digital backup stuff, your YubiKey, your recovery codes, all that stuff.
Um, probably for,
Brad: [00:44:34] Oh, go ahead.
Will: [00:44:34] probably for the Apple account too, or your whatever your phone account is, whether it's Google or Apple.
How would you feel about, uh, physical tech items that are like not, you know, not super easy to replace? Like, do you have. No, I've got a couple of boxes of old games from pretty much my entire life. Like the ones that I wanted to keep. Like I kinda, I kinda, I kinda, I kinda winded my collection of games down to the ones that I truly care about from, you know, basically the NES on and those are boxed up.
Brad: [00:45:02] Like, would you something, something that
Will: [00:45:04] I mean if there's room in the car, right? Like that, that, that for me falls firmly in the like, okay. I have the things that I need to pick up my life. And then I have the things that are important to me from like that fits into the category of things that are important to my like, spiritual, like the important, the mentally important possessions.
Right? So it's like things from my grandparents and like copy of a book that I love and pictures from. You know, that are, that are not easy to replace of people who are past or promulgation scan all of these when I'm thinking about it, but like existed before the digital days or whatever.
Brad: [00:45:42] I guess that's a, that's a slippery slope though, because you could, that list could get very long if you kept adding to it, like, you know, like I've got my grandmother's cast iron skillet in the kitchen, you know, like, do I have time to go fish that out? Like, but there's a, there's a zillion of those things.
If you, if you really let it get to you.
Will: [00:45:57] Yeah. It's it's um, Like the grandmother's cast iron skillet is a good one because that's actually a useful go-bag item. If you end up camping on the side of the road and some sort of Trump, Trump tent town, uh you're. You're like the Castro and skillet is a real, you can be the breakfast guy
that's actually survival mechanism. Sure.
Um, so, so I guess that's a good, uh, let's see medications and toiletries, obviously medications and prescriptions are important, but prescriptions are mostly digital now.
So, uh, I figure at least a few days worth of clothes so you can wash stuff and have time to dry it. Um, I don't, I don't kind of beyond that. I don't really know what to grab. Right. It's like, what maters? Like what do you, what do you need.
Brad: [00:46:42] Like I'm looking around this room here and like, All the stuff. I, all the stuff I care I care about.
Will: [00:46:49] Yeah You have Pets.
Brad: [00:46:49] Oh, well of course that goes without saying like, that would be, that would be tough actually for us. Cause like they have certain material needs that it would be hard to satisfy for more than a few days with the stuff we could carry with us.
If that makes sense.
Will: [00:47:03] Do you have like a portable cage for him?
Brad: [00:47:05] Yeah. Yeah, totally. We have like a little crate type thing that we take to the vet and stuff like that, but like that that's not a good longterm solution, but a bigger thing is like, and this is, you know, this varies by animal, but in their case they need, they need hay. Then you grass hay all the time.
Like it is a,
Will: [00:47:21] It's what they eat. Right.
Brad: [00:47:22] well, not only is it the staple of their diet, but it is literal. Uh, it's the thing that keeps their digestion going. Like they're, there's somewhat, there's somewhat cattle like in that they have to be grazing at all times. And if they don't get hay for, it varies, but like, let's say 24 hours or something.
Will: [00:47:38] These are Guinea pigs.
yes, these
a listener who does not know about Brad's proclivities,
Brad: [00:47:43] they're not the word I would use, but,
Will: [00:47:47] I like the piggies.
Brad: [00:47:48] um, their digestion will shut down if they don't eat grass hay, within like a pretty short amount of time, like a day, uh, they'll go into, they go into something called gut stasis, which is very hard to reverse and is very quickly fatal.
So like what I'm, what I'm getting at is that like, Hay, it takes up a lot of space. If you've ever been around a farm or had to deal with that kind of thing in bulk, you know, like it's, it's a, it's a large, bulky, heavy item. Right. And we would carry whatever box we had with us, but in some kind of disaster situation, like that's only gonna last so long and then
Will: [00:48:19] Well, and the other challange
Brad: [00:48:20] more
Will: [00:48:21] I mean, the other challenge is that. Like a lot of times, if you have to go to a shelter or something, there's no, they don't allow pets. So, I mean, this was always the problem we had with when Chloe was around was if we had to evacuate because of an earthquake or fire or whatever, we just assumed we would be backyard camping for the, for the duration, but in a fire situation, that's not an option. Um, one of the things I did order. For the, for the go bag that I didn't have before, as I ordered a couple of fire blankets, the survival ones that are both like for, for putting out fires in your kitchen or whatever, or without there, it's like a fiberglass blankets, lovely insulated, and you can use to smother a fire.
But if you're in a, in a, in a wildfire situation, you can also like often they'll pass over you so quickly that like, you're, you're fine. If you can maintain oxygen, not burn. So if you, you know, wrap up in that thing on the ground, Um, and get low someplace that stuff won't fall on you. You can, you can survive a lot in those under those apparently.
Yeah, I was looking at, um, I was looking at photos of big basin state park this morning, which are heartbreaking. Cause the facilities are literally gone. Like they just visitor center and all that stuff has basically been wiped off the earth. Except for the chimney.
There were pictures of the claw of the trees that were glowing red,
Brad: [00:49:38] right.
Will: [00:49:39] where the, where the outside of the trees had burned.
Brad: [00:49:41] right. But in some of those photos, you will see spots where the gland or the ground looks almost untouched, you know, like, I guess it really is just a matter of like, what is there and flammable, right?
Like if you can, I guess if you can, if you can find an open spot with nothing around you that will burn, then you're somewhat
Will: [00:49:56] Yeah it will zip right over your quickly. You just have to survive the heat wave. Um, we have a friend, we have a friend. I know this is really, really upbeat. We have a friend who hidden his pool under one of those, um, one of those blankets for like four hours in the Santa Rosa fires, four or five, three, four years ago.
Um, but yeah, anyway,
Brad: [00:50:20] Something, it's Something I just thought of. I don't know if you want to get into it too much. And this is, you know, so somewhat you need to the geography of this area, but you were talking about like, The direction you would have to evacuate because parts of parts of our area are surrounded on multiple sides by water.
And one of the two land directions you have to work with is where the fires are. So like, like the, the logistics is kind of the traffic logistics of funneling, a large number of people through a small number of bottlenecks. Like I wonder how that would play out.
Will: [00:50:49] I mean, so. Having talked to people who survived Katrina and the evacuation of Katrina to Houston and points North of, of loss of new Orleans when Katrina hit, um, as well as like the stuff that happened in the campfire last year in California, if the campfire was so dangerous and deadly, because. The, because there was only one road in and out of that town.
And, um, I mean in Pacific, we were in a similar situation we have two, but if one is cut off because of either earthquake shutting the tunnel or a fire in one direction or the other, then, then like we're in a, we're in a not great bottleneck situation. So I think your key is to like one of the, it's funny, one of the things that.
That the coronavirus has, has taught us as, as a, as a family, is that we should trust our instincts when we are worried about something. And it, like, it seems like it's going to be bad. You know, the downside of overreacting is really low and the downside of under-reacting is very high. So we're going to err on the side of overreacting and if we look like dumb asses, that's fine.
Brad: [00:52:00] that's a good way to put it. I never really thought about it that way.
Will: [00:52:02] Yeah. Like, like one is shame and embarrassment and the other is real bad. So
Brad: [00:52:10] Yeah.
Will: [00:52:11] anyway, um, flight Sims real good Brad.
Brad: [00:52:16] Yeah,
Will: [00:52:16] You should take a look. If you
have a computer, they'll run that thing. It's worth the 15 hours it took to download.
Brad: [00:52:21] Yeah. Hi. I want to check it out. Eventually. I need better hardware. I've got a, I don't know if this is the time to get into it. I've got potentially a couple of new monitors on the way, a, nice, substantial upgrade. And then there's maybe do.
of, what kind of refresh rate you're looking at?
Hundered and actually let me
Will: [00:52:39] overclock it, you got the overclocking ones. You can go
Brad: [00:52:41] I don't think I'm
Will: [00:52:42] or
Brad: [00:52:42] going to, but let me,
Will: [00:52:45] you should crank those things up. See what 200 Hertz looks
Brad: [00:52:48] Oh, it doesn't go that high, but it is.
Do you remember when we, the like one of the first episodes of this podcast, when I got into how I was going through press releases of LCD panel manufacturers,
Will: [00:52:57] Oh I'm aware.
Brad: [00:52:59] Uh, an AUM Optronics had a announced. A very appealing looking line of low of low latency, high refresh IPS's
Will: [00:53:08] Yep, they're out?
Brad: [00:53:10] They're finally out. This is one of those,
Will: [00:53:14] Is it a G-Sync or a free-Sync?
it is a free-sync, but branded G-sync compatible.
Okay, so it's one of the ones. Okay.
Brad: [00:53:20] so it'll do enough. Um, it's uh, let's see here. I
Will: [00:53:26] This is what I've been waiting for too for the record.
Brad: [00:53:28] I believe stock 165 Hertz.
Will: [00:53:31] Okay. That's really good.
Brad: [00:53:32] it will do one 70 Hertz, which they consider overclocking, which I don't know if I'm going to get into, like, I'm fine. I'm fine.
Will: [00:53:38] five Hertz.
Brad: [00:53:39] Right. I'm I'm fine. At 144, honestly.
Will: [00:53:43] I mean, honestly, you're probably gonna end up running everything at one 20 because of, because if you're streaming. Yeah. Because
Brad: [00:53:49] is that, is that really? So I, this, this cheap monitor is 144 Hertz that I bought a few months ago. Like it's too small for what I need. So that's why I'm getting bigger ones, but it is one 44. So I've been working with that, but is it a bad idea to run at that rate and stream
Will: [00:54:04] So my understanding is if you are actually running it, the full speed, this is from talking to streamers who are fairly prominent and, and play games that run it 144 know faster than 120 Hertz. Um, my understanding is that if you are running it faster than 120 Hertz, and you have v-sync off, which you have to to get the adaptive refresh rate stuff working, right.
You'll see tearing. Because if you're doing a two PC stream setup, if you're doing one PC with OBS, it's fine. Cause OBS knows to grab full frames. Um, when you're doing the two PC stream set up and you're basically duplicating one monitor and piping that out to, to OBS on the other computer, this the capture cards usually run only at 60 Hertz.
So if you're doing two PC, you'll get tearing. Cause it'll only, it needs to be a even common denominator. Like it needs to have a shared common denominator to get to 60 Hertz.
Brad: [00:54:57] that makes sense. Yeah, I'm just
Will: [00:54:59] one 80 or one 20 are the, are the numbers?
Brad: [00:55:01] No, I'm just doing software capture with OBS. I do get some weird stuttering in certain games though. And I may wonder if that's related, but that's a topic for another day, I suppose. Anyway, uh, I get these new monitors and hopefully some hardware upgrades.
Cause my PC is aging a bit in that department, but, uh, once I can jack flight SIM all the way up, I might have to take a look at that thing
Will: [00:55:21] Uh, it's I got out the HOTAS. It's the hot ass. It's good. Yeah. I flew, I fired it up the other day at the end of the stream, thinking I was gonna like, see if I could take off the airplane. And I crashed a couple of times. And then, uh, I ended up flying from San Francisco SFO almost to Portland, I guess, in a two in like a two engine beach.
Like little six passenger, a private plane.
Brad: [00:55:48] was it pleasant? Was it was, it just was a nice.
Will: [00:55:51] So I did the first, like probably 40 minutes, like you, like you're supposed to at like 12,000 feet. And then I did the last 40 minutes, like a drug runner flying up the coast. I was
Brad: [00:56:01] Both,
Will: [00:56:02] cliffs on the right below the, below the radar horizon, like a hundred feet off the waves.
It was awesome. It was so like flying up,
Brad: [00:56:10] valid
Will: [00:56:10] flying up past Eureka and gold beach and Crescent city and all that stuff and like avoiding fog banks. And it was, it is. Like, I don't think I'm going to get like yolk. Like, I don't think I'm gonna go buy a yoke. I mean, I don't know, but I'm not going to rule anything out at this point, but like, it is fucking cool and it looks like a return to my first video game.
Right. Flight SIM three was the first PC game I probably ever played. So yeah, it's weird.
Brad: [00:56:38] Lastly, the last thing I'll say about it before we go. I mean, my, my favorite thing about that game so far not having played it is, um, there's kind of a genre of tweet emerging about it.
Will: [00:56:47] Oh, the jank the janky data
Brad: [00:56:49] yes, the, the janky cause, cause because they used, uh, you know, they're using a massive dataset to, uh, sort of render the world.
And a lot of that I think was AI or machine learning driven. So this genre of tweat is people finding weird idiosyncrasies that were dynamically generated by the machine learning they use to create this depiction of the earth,
Will: [00:57:10] did you know that the world's tallest building is in Melbourne? I thought it was in Dubai, but here we are.
Brad: [00:57:15] so did you see the explanation that came out for that?
Will: [00:57:17] The typo, right?
Brad: [00:57:18] Yes.
So people, if people haven't seen it, there is in the game is it's like a suburb of Melbourne, right. It's like a very. Like from the looks of, from the looks of the ground, it's like, we're talking like two story houses at most, right? Like,
Will: [00:57:29] And like this looks like maybe an office, like a small commercial office building or something.
Brad: [00:57:34] This is, this is one of those very plain boxy skyscrapers.
That's just all glass on four sides, you know, like nothing out of the ordinary, except for the fact that it is emerging thousands of feet into the air, probably like it
Will: [00:57:47] 212 stories or something I
is, it is
comes up.
Brad: [00:57:50] the tallest building ever seen. On earth in the middle of this suburb. So yeah, like somebody, yeah, somebody tracked it down and I don't know what, um, I don't know, public data.
They were pulling from what mapping data they were pulling from, but somebody
Will: [00:58:04] So they were pulling from bing mapping data is my understanding.
Brad: [00:58:05] It being okay. So, so they traced it, pack somebody who had manually gone in and entered information about that building. Yeah. I had made a typo in, what was it? Just the number of floors that they had specified
Will: [00:58:14] I think they put the wrong number of floors in.
Brad: [00:58:16] Uh, the funny, the funny part is people realize like the, the typo had been corrected long ago.
But Microsoft, Microsoft must have taken a snapshot of that data before somebody even noticed the typo and fixed it. So the, so the building, they got generated based on their bad data, based on somebody fumbling, their keyboard created this like monstrous, Outlandish, skyscraper. I think it's amazing.
Will: [00:58:37] Well, so the fun thing about the fun thing about the way those. So the first thing I did of course is like fired up and fly over the house. And then I went to like my parents' house, where I grew up in. And it's funny because like, when, I don't know, if you remember when Google started doing the three D maps, you could go to Google warehouse and like, Build, you could, you could do the photogrammetry edges yourself right before they taught the machines.
How to do that. Like people would load it up and they would do their houses. And that you feel like you they'd show you the satellite imagery from all the different angles and you basically draw lines on the corners and roof lines and stuff like that. And then it would make a three D model out of that.
And, uh, at some point, I guess they collected enough data to just like, let the machines do it. But the weird thing is it still does stuff like it'll map. It, it has like a bunch of different common roof types and it'll map what it thinks is the right roof onto the roofs that it sees in the, in the satellite photography.
But it often gets it hilariously wrong in the best possible way. So like, you'll see, you'll see a house that like, you know, absolutely does not have weird Gables and, and like, um, uh, dormers and all that stuff up on a roof. And then you zoom in on it, on the, on the plane. You buzz it on the plane. You're like, Oh, that's yeah, the computer got that one wrong.
Brad: [00:59:56] This is, this is an example of the good type of future to me. This is, this is, this is,
Will: [01:00:00] is the dystopia I crave.
Brad: [01:00:01] Yeah, there's a harmless manifestation of weird future tech, not the, not the much more harmful variants that are out there. Uh, the last one I'll mention that I saw was, uh, somebody posted a bunch of photos up close of some spots in Southern California around LA and said that apparently the terrain generating algorithm has no idea what to do with Palm trees.
Will: [01:00:21] Oh yeah. I can see
Brad: [01:00:22] And instead of Palm trees, it just inserted these like ghastly, like jagged looking obelisks poking out of the earth. Like literally just these like, like Onyx, like teeth just gross looking like black, sharp rocks, sticking out of them, like lined all down, like freaking, you know, Santa Monica, Santa Monica Boulevard or whatever.
Will: [01:00:42] Are you sure that's not, um, like a long now monument that shows you which way to avoid the, the nuclear that's an episode we have to do is like, how do you make a monument? This sort of survives the English language that tells people to stay away from the nuclear waste dump.
Brad: [01:00:57] I love that stuff. Like, yeah, kind of universal universal pictogram type stuff.
Will: [01:01:01] Yeah, exactly.
Brad: [01:01:02] how will future peoples that are completely disconnected from our civilization mentally process information. Yeah.
Will: [01:01:10] Yeah. Um, so. On the subject of the evacuation stuff. If people, I know that we have people in the audience who've had to evacuate because of hurricanes or fires or whatever in the past, uh, if you have suggestions, things that we've not thought about, uh, obviously like stuff like tents, tents and sleeping bags seemed like they would make sense depending on the individual situations.
Um, but yeah, holler and send an email to tech pod@content.town. If you have, if we miss stuff and we will, we will add them back probably next week is the, is the, uh, is the reader mail episode.
Brad: [01:01:44] Yes it totally is
Will: [01:01:45] so that would be a great, great kickoff, a great uplifting kickoff for next week. But I think like, like the disaster preparedness episode, this stuff is easier.
If you think about it in advance, then when you need it.
Brad: [01:01:56] Nobody wants to think about it until they have to, but it's a good idea.
Will: [01:01:59] Yeah. Like, I think we're going to make a list so that if we have, if we find out we have six hours, then we can actually take advantage of the six hours and get out on the early side of six hours rather than waiting till the last minute.
Brad: [01:02:11] Yeah, that's, that's smart. And I think it's, I feel like it's, it's really a sign of the times. You, you, you guys are one of three families that we know that all spread out in very different parts of, of this area who are all on, on the,
Will: [01:02:24] Like, just to be clear. We're not, we're not in immediate. We're not in any kind of immediate, like, we haven't very easy compared to everybody else, but, but like, starting to think about that stuff is not ideal.
Brad: [01:02:34] One of our friends sent us a photo. They took out their front door and you can see the fire off. A mile or two, or like literally you can literally see the flames on the horizon.
Will: [01:02:42] we're nowhere near that now, which is good, but
Brad: [01:02:46] it's an interesting time
Will: [01:02:48] always, I hate fire season.
Brad: [01:02:50] Yeah.
Will: [01:02:52] The thing, the thing I realized that we need to do, we need a, what happens when we get a thousand patrons goal, Brad
Brad: [01:03:00] party hats,
Will: [01:03:01] party hats for everybody, all thousand people.
Brad: [01:03:03] Noise makers. Yeah. Let's just ship them out. Let's see if, see if we can do it a thousand person, Jitsicall, just get everybody in there to put on their party hats and make noise at the same time.
Will: [01:03:14] that actually sounds really good. I was thinking we should do a book club episode.
Brad: [01:03:18] Yeah, we, yes. We talked about that a little bit.
Will: [01:03:22] Um, I learned once upon a time during a failed cold, cold open a few weeks ago that you have never read Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.
Brad: [01:03:31] It is true. It is shameful.
Will: [01:03:34] one of my dad's friends. One of my parents' friends gave me a copy of that book when I was probably 12 years old.
Brad: [01:03:40] That seems like the right age.
Will: [01:03:41] It was exactly like, it was a formative book for me.
It shaped my opinion of journalism and politics and technology and all this other stuff. Douglas Adams, absolute genius. Um, I'm really interested to see how that book lands to somebody who is not 12 years
Brad: [01:03:57] Yeah. I am also curious about that. Cause I have had similar experiences with other kinds of like revered childhood sorts of properties. Uh, that didn't land, especially well with like, this is, um, does not in any way comparable, I don't think, but the Goonies, for example,
Will: [01:04:13] So I saw Goonies a couple of weeks ago for the first time. Yeah,
Brad: [01:04:16] no kidding. I, I didn't, I saw it in my twenties.
It was okay. I thought.
Will: [01:04:21] it probably landed for me because I have a kid that's in the age for that. And I'm like, that makes you more able to see stuff through their eyes.
Brad: [01:04:28] can, you can live a bit vicariously there, but also not to say that Goonies is on the same level of kind of sociopolitical relevances as Hitchhiker's guide,
Will: [01:04:38] I, um, no, not in terms of sociopolitical of relevance, but in terms of like, I mean,
Brad: [01:04:45] but should it be Being a formative piece of media? You know, like something that people will look back on very fondly.
Will: [01:04:50] Yeah. I think true
Brad: [01:04:51] it's, it's similar in that respect, but, um, yeah, I, I should read that book.
Will: [01:04:59] So we're at 956 patrons right now, patrons right now. Sorry. Uh, and I think when we hit a thousand, we should do a Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy book club, um, episode where we, cause I haven't read the book in probably 10 years. We're approaching the time that I'm going to introduce my daughter to it when she's a couple of years older.
And uh, I'm curious what your takeaway is.
Brad: [01:05:23] I've got a copy. I years ago, this came out, I had mentioned it to somebody and they bought me. Um, they bought me. I mean, there were what, five in total four something like that, but he did,
Will: [01:05:35] So he wrote,
Brad: [01:05:36] they bought me a single I'll. Go ahead.
Will: [01:05:37] he wrote four, he wrote one. Do you know the story of this? Actually, it's a fantastic,
Brad: [01:05:42] Not really, well, maybe we should, should we see if we should save that for the episode?
Will: [01:05:46] I want to give just the barest hint of teaser. Cause it's fabulous. Sorry. I know we're running late. Neil Gaiman wrote a book about this called don't panic, like 25 years ago before he was famous for being Neil Gaiman.
Uh, when he was a teenager, he basically called Douglas Adams and was like, or send him an email or post letter or something and was like, Hey, I would like to write a book about the making of it, the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and the upshot is it was originally a BBC radio drama. Radio play. And because Douglas Adams is one of, was one of the world's great procrastinators.
The episodes were literally being written while they were being recorded. So like he would be writing the end of an episode while they were in the other room, performing it. And as a result there are, I think there's so there's a BBC radio drama. There's the book. There's a novelization. There was a TV show in the eighties.
There's the movie now. And then there was a dramatize cast recording that was separate from the radio drama. That was like an audio book version, but an acted audio book version of the, of the books. So there's like five canonically true and completely different versions of Hitchhiker's guide. And it's just, it is like, it was adjacent to Monte Python at the time.
Um, it was adjacent to dr. Who and in the seventies, dr. Who it's it's it's, uh, I love it. I'm a, I'm a huge fan.
Brad: [01:07:11] I assumed the, the, the, the novel is the version of record though. Right.
Will: [01:07:16] I, you know
Brad: [01:07:17] Even if it
Will: [01:07:18] I would recommend, if you are new to Hitchhiker's guide, I would recommend you read the novel first. And then I would say if you're still curious, burn an audible credit on the first radio series and, uh, and. The cause the first radio series is really, really good. Like all the radios here, these are really, really good, but, but the first one is, is especially notable.
Brad: [01:07:38] But he wrote what four followups is that right?
Will: [01:07:41] So there's yeah, it's a Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, the restaurant at the end of the universe, life, the universe and everything, uh, so long and thanks for all the fish and mostly harmless. And then there's this fifth, there's a six partially completed thing that he died while he was writing called the salmon of doubt.
Um, that is that's fine.
Brad: [01:07:58] The reason I bring it up is that, uh, when, when that came out a number of years ago that I had never read it to someone I know. And they went and bought me the, the, the, the single volume collected works kind of version. And the thing is like the size of a phone book, which, which led me to think that it would be a massive undertaking to read.
But I guess the to the actual, the book is probably not that long. Right.
Will: [01:08:18] That actual books are like 300, 250,300 pages. Probably. They're not, they're not they're they're good. And they're fast. Cause they're they're there. They're very funny. He was a very funny man. Um,
Brad: [01:08:29] I think I can, I can budget time for that,
Will: [01:08:31] they're probably more relevant now in the world of smartphones and technical dystopia than they were in the eighties when most people didn't know what a computer was.
Brad: [01:08:39] that is, that's actually quite intriguing to hear. Let me just ask a, did, knowing through osmosis about 42
Will: [01:08:49] No, it's not going to make any differance
Brad: [01:08:50] affect anything at all. Okay.
Will: [01:08:52] Look, there's a, there's a thing in mostly harmless that I save and have quoted that basically that basic, just I'm going to fuck up the quote. So I apologize in advance, but the basic gist is that the only difference between a thing that cannot fail. And that is that that might fail.
Is that the thing that cannot fail is the people who designed it. The thing that cannot fail did not include any thought into what would happen when it fails. So like they had, they, because of this, after some robot uprising or something, they had to put a rule on every machine that says this machine, this device might, may fail.
And here's what happened, you know, it's, it's like he saw that this distopia coming. He may have gotten bits of it wrong, but like in the, in the way that Neuromancer, doesn't feel as weird when you read it now, because it doesn't include any talk of cell phones like this does not because the fucking thing that they use is basically an eye.
Like the iPhone is the hitchhikers. Anyway, you should read these books. They're good. Read, just read the first one.
Brad: [01:09:51] I'll do it.
Will: [01:09:52] Um, thank you as always to all of our patrons, uh, very special things. To the executive producer level patrons, Andrew Cotton, David Allen and Jacob chapel. And, uh, thank you all for listening.
If you, if you're, if you support the show through the Patrion, that's great. If you support the show by tweeting about it, we've gotten a lot of the last couple of weeks about the things that people liked and were sharing with their friends. I love seeing those and it's, it's really, really lovely to see people telling their friends about our goofy podcast.
Brad: [01:10:20] It's incredibly gratifying.
Will: [01:10:22] Um, and, and how many patrons do you think we have right now? I haven't looked into it in a day or in a week or a month?
Brad: [01:10:28] I'm not sure. I thought,
Will: [01:10:29] 956 now.
Brad: [01:10:31] That's a good number.
Will: [01:10:33] So we're 44 away. Maybe we should have shot higher with the number of patrons,
Brad: [01:10:36] You mean we're not quite 42 away
Will: [01:10:39] God dammit.
just yet. Okay. We have to stop
Brad: [01:10:41] See all next week.