0:00

It's time for the quarterly dusting.

0:02

Wait, you only dust every quarter. I've

0:04

certainly never drugged my computer into the

0:06

PC world office to shoot a video

0:09

and then put it up on the table. And Adam

0:12

went, what the hell is wrong with your computer? And

0:15

then, and then suddenly you were shooting a very different kind of

0:17

video. Look, I was having some crashing

0:19

problems. It wasn't the dust's fault, but I figured

0:21

I should leave it there just in case, but

0:24

I have to dust way more than once. Like, like

0:26

I, before I moved to California, I'd never lived someplace

0:28

with hardwood and I'd never lived someplace

0:30

that has, that doesn't have

0:32

central, like central air that

0:35

has some sort of centralized filter that sucks a

0:37

bunch of dust and particulate out of your air. Oh,

0:39

that's why it's so dusty around here. Yeah. Well,

0:41

plus we live places where there's a lot of cars.

0:43

So like urban places are dusty because of all the

0:45

cars, which is, I'm sure great for us

0:48

too. And we live close to the

0:50

water. I don't know if that air circulation would make

0:52

it more or less dusty. Well, the fog, it turns

0:54

out, picks up a lot of particulate. And then when

0:56

the fog lands on things and condenses it, yeah, that's

0:58

mostly outside though. That's an ugly word.

1:01

Particulate. Particulate's bad. It turns out

1:03

usually. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like it. Also, I

1:06

really says everything about why you and I do

1:08

this podcast that when I talked about dusting quarterly,

1:10

you went straight to computers. You didn't even, Oh,

1:12

I knew what I look, didn't even pause to

1:14

consider. I was talking about household. You can't, I've

1:17

lived here for long enough to know, and I know

1:19

you well enough to know that there's no way you

1:21

only dust your apartment once a quarter. No, I cannot

1:23

stand it. I'd ideally a once a week. Yeah. It's,

1:25

it is a, it is one of the great things

1:27

about having kids is that now that's the kid's job.

1:29

She has to go around and does stuff. So that

1:31

means all the, well, okay. So

1:34

the thing that became clear with this new

1:36

regime is that we're three different

1:38

heights, right? Like I'm tall, my wife's the

1:41

mid-size and my daughter's the short one. And

1:43

all anybody ever does is stuff at

1:45

their eye level and

1:48

below. Sure. The internationally recognized standard for dusting. Yeah.

1:50

So like, when you look at the top shelf

1:52

and our living in our dining, you know, we

1:54

have the shelves up against the dining room wall.

1:56

There's like some stuff up at the top. It's

1:58

not good up there. It's that's a

2:01

that's a I have to get a step ladder

2:03

and get in that I get it. You know,

2:05

even even I have a bit of an out

2:07

of fight out of mind rule about dusting the

2:09

top of the microwave, which is on a like

2:11

a shelving unit. Doesn't get dusted very say our

2:14

our microwave is above the stove. It's one of

2:16

those ones that hangs up on the wall above

2:18

above the stove. And it is

2:20

a real double whammy of horrors because

2:22

it gets like grease splatter from the

2:24

stove from the range top. Like

2:27

the smoky grease. It just oh yeah,

2:29

things and gets on cabinets and stuff.

2:31

Kicky, greasy dust just. Yeah,

2:33

then the dust gets in there. It's like

2:35

a horrible amalgam of of anyway.

2:38

So as the person who

2:40

invented, I believe the hey, if

2:42

you take a swiffer and tape it over the fan

2:44

and takes on your computer, the inside of your case

2:46

will be a lot less dusty. Maybe

2:48

20 years ago now. Wait, yes. Did

2:51

you actually propagate that idea at a time when

2:54

nobody else was saying that in a magazine and

2:56

it became very popular? Wait, really? Yeah. Wow.

2:59

I swiffers came out. They were they just introduce

3:01

swiffers. I was like, oh, shit. Yeah,

3:03

this is because I've been using dryer filters before that,

3:05

but they're not as good. The Swiffer is

3:07

incredible for pulling dust out of the air. The

3:09

modern cases have fans and filters and the whole

3:11

thing. So the light lets it lets of an

3:13

issue. But back then this was pre who's built

3:15

in filter on your on your fan intake. This

3:17

would have been in an early 2000s maximum PC,

3:21

maybe even a late 90s one when I was still a freelancer.

3:23

I put it in the doctor column, if I recall. I

3:26

haven't done the science. I don't know that that was the first recommendation

3:28

for that, but it was the first time I had ever heard of

3:30

it. And I came up with it and people

3:32

at the office were like, what are you doing? And I said, well,

3:34

I put it there and then the dust doesn't go in the computer.

3:36

And they're like, wait, what? You know, even

3:38

with modern filters, it's a little bit of dust

3:41

in there. Use a little bit better Swiffer. So

3:43

what how's your dusting going? Is it I guess

3:45

the question? It's not OK. Let's say the NASA

3:47

has been running continuously since September. Yeah. Without

3:50

being touched. I bet that's pretty nasty. Probably,

3:54

probably to just it. Oh, I'm going

3:56

to pull it out. Oh, dude. Oh, getting that

3:58

thing out is a production. Oh,

4:00

is it like wedged in the corner between your desk and the

4:02

shelves or something? It is wedged as tightly

4:04

into a tiny space that is exactly the size

4:06

of that, the SLATX case as humanly possible. And

4:08

I have to like move this full upright keyboard

4:10

out of the way. I have to move furniture

4:13

to get the mass out. Yeah. Once

4:15

upon a time, I had a computer... There

4:18

was a period of time when people were making, I

4:21

think Zalman maybe made a case that had like two

4:23

cases in one big square and you

4:26

could put like one computer on one side, one computer on the other. I

4:29

put my server in one side and put my

4:31

desktop in the other and then it's just one

4:33

big case. And I had that

4:35

for about 45 minutes because like once I built everything

4:37

up in there and I put it back in the

4:39

corner and I was like, oh crap, I didn't get

4:41

a cable and I had to take it all the

4:44

way back out and it weighed about 80 pounds. Oh,

4:46

it's a nightmare. I... Don't

4:48

get me wrong. Yeah, no, I took it back to

4:50

the office and went back to my old cases as

4:52

soon as I pulled it out from back in the

4:54

wall. Yeah. Yeah. Feel your pain.

4:57

Always the trade off. Always making them tidy

4:59

versus maintenance. You know, like the more tidy

5:01

it is, the harder to maintain. So I'll

5:04

say I bought that plug-in canned air thing,

5:06

like the plug-in blower and it's

5:08

been maybe the best thing I've ever bought. Oh,

5:11

great. Because when I go out, when like

5:13

my vacuum filter is clogged up and crappy,

5:15

I just go in the backyard, put on

5:17

a breath mask and let it rip. Just

5:19

blow that thing out. Those things are so

5:21

boringly great that like it's made discussing the

5:23

actual dusting very mundane because what is there

5:25

to say? I take the cases out on

5:27

the back porch now and blow them out

5:29

for 10 minutes and that's all there is to discuss.

5:32

Mine has a light on the front, which I quite

5:34

like. That was a good... That was... I

5:36

didn't mean to buy that, but I'm glad I did.

5:38

I also have to say we got a

5:40

new vacuum cleaner this year because our old vacuum

5:43

cleaner, the battery was dead in. It

5:45

also has a light, speaking of dust. And

5:49

when you're vacuuming the hardwood floors and

5:51

there's a low-level light shining, you can

5:53

see everything. Oh, no. It's

5:56

really good. There's about a 10-minute window every

5:58

day, late in the day. when the sunlight

6:00

hits just the right angle, you can see all of

6:02

the hair and dust and crud on

6:04

the hardwood. And it's like, better

6:07

off not knowing. Well, look, I like to use

6:09

the light so that the dust sees what's coming

6:11

before I destroy it. You know, it gets sucked

6:13

up in there and then, well,

6:16

you know, it's gone. Anyway, it's the

6:18

promise of modern technology. Strike fear in the heart

6:20

of dust. I was gonna say, my vacuum

6:24

is a transformer. Okay.

6:27

It's a three-way Miele. And

6:29

it can be like a handheld dust buster, ideally.

6:32

Like that's pretty standard if you're used to your Dyson

6:34

stick packs or whatever. But you

6:36

also can jam the heavy part down into

6:38

the beater and it'll sit up vertically

6:40

and just stand. It doesn't have to be hung from the

6:42

wall or anything. Or you can put

6:44

the heavy part on the end and have it be like a

6:46

normal stick pack. So it's a

6:49

triple changer is what you're saying? Yeah,

6:51

it's like a third-gen transformer. It's

6:53

not like you can buy four others and make a

6:55

super duper big vacuum. But you

6:59

can transform it three ways. Now

7:02

I'm picturing the Devastator of vacuum cleaners. We

7:05

should probably just start this podcast. Welcome

7:28

to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

7:30

I'm Will. I'm Brad. I

7:32

am not gonna be able to go of the image of

7:35

a Gestalt vacuum cleaner, traction. I want nothing more. Yeah.

7:39

Very long time. In fact, could we just do that with

7:41

all household electronics? Could we just make, buy five of them

7:44

and plug them in the right way and they become a giant robot?

7:46

How, like what's, there's so many ways that

7:50

could go back and forth. I mean, I think it's

7:52

a very simple process. I mean, I think it's a

7:54

very simple process. There's so many

7:56

ways that could go bad though. I

7:59

want the Predacon. I like. Like the Constructicon, the

8:01

Devastator was pretty good, but the Predacon,

8:04

that was big and orange. It was a chunky

8:06

boy. Was that the Predons? I thought they were...

8:08

I think they were. No, no, the Rheomorrhizecticons.

8:11

The Predicons were like... The Rhinoceros. It

8:14

was like a Rhinoceros and a Panther, I think.

8:16

Sure. I can't remember the other ones. Maybe an

8:18

Elephant? I believe that. Several

8:20

animals that I did not think of as

8:22

murderous and then a couple of giant cats,

8:24

which clearly were murderous. You know, anything can

8:26

be murderous if you're enough of an evil

8:28

robot. The Insecticons were solid

8:31

though. What are we talking about this

8:33

week, Brad? What do we got on the podcast? On

8:35

the docket this week. A twofer. Oh,

8:37

I love a twofer. I think is how you

8:39

would put it. I do like a twofer. We've

8:43

been ongoing brainstorming around the show

8:45

topics, show formats, stuff like that.

8:48

As we said before, we like the

8:50

topic episodes. Yeah. But there are

8:52

a lot of topics that we'll kick around. In fact, I kind

8:54

of wish we had a list of every time we've done this

8:56

over the last four... Oh my

8:58

God. Almost five years. Yeah, there's a lot that we

9:00

get to and we're like, oh, this is it. We

9:03

can't do a full 45 minutes or an hour on

9:05

this. Yeah. But a number of times we've kind of had

9:07

a topic that's like, man, that would be a good 15, 20, 30 minutes maybe. But

9:11

that's not going to support a whole episode. Yeah. There's

9:14

a lot of those. Yeah. Anyway. So

9:16

we have two today. Yeah. I think

9:18

we might start doing a little bit more of this kind

9:21

of like split episode, like two topics of that nature that

9:23

can be discussed pretty thoroughly in like 20 minutes. So this

9:25

week, I've been making

9:27

a new benchmark, working

9:30

on a project for PC World. And one of the things

9:32

that we're working on is performance

9:35

for game developers. So

9:38

things that you use a computer

9:41

for that take a lot of time. As

9:43

I was working on this, it made me realize

9:45

that building benchmarks... In the

9:47

past when I built a benchmark, it's usually taken

9:49

something that's found like a video game and then figuring

9:51

out how to make a repeatable benchmark out of

9:53

that. In this case,

9:56

I'm actually setting up the environment and stuff

9:58

like that that I want to test. And it made

10:00

me realize it's kind of an inherently political

10:02

experience. We'll talk about it. Interesting. Just

10:04

not the term I was expecting to hear, but I'm curious

10:07

to hear more. And

10:09

then we're going to do kind of an,

10:11

I guess, an update on matter and thread,

10:13

the nascent kind

10:16

of universal home automation standard. Longtime

10:19

listeners should get out there, print out of the

10:22

Garnet, Troff of

10:24

Despair. What

10:27

is it? Yes. I can't remember

10:30

what that's called now. I can't believe I'm blanking. Troff

10:32

of Despair, I believe. Well, the Troff of Despair is

10:34

where we're at, but they call the product hype cycle.

10:36

Oh, the Gartner? Gartner product

10:38

hype cycle. Yes. Yes. That

10:41

one. Yeah. Yes.

10:45

But it's going to be okay. Don't worry. Yeah.

10:48

You know, we talked about home automation off and on on this podcast.

10:50

And I think it was the Fospod with

10:52

Paulus from Home Assistant, where we really kind

10:54

of went somewhat in depth on thread and

10:56

matter, which is supposed to like unify all

10:58

of the warring kingdoms of different home automation

11:00

standards. I mean, I would say that there's

11:03

probably an XKCD for this particular example. That

11:05

will be referenced later. Yes. Yeah.

11:08

But I've been thinking about home automation stuff again

11:10

as like some of my Wi-Fi and smart plugs

11:12

are not the best. And

11:15

I've kind of always felt a little irresponsible about

11:17

not putting all of those on a VLAN anyway.

11:20

And I've been thinking like, what if I just got out

11:22

of the Wi-Fi automation game and

11:24

looked at thread and matter or

11:26

maybe Zigbee and Z-Wave, the older

11:28

stand. Anyway, I've done a little

11:30

reading on how thread and matter have shaped

11:33

up or rather have not shaped up. You

11:35

sweet summer child. Yeah. So anyway,

11:37

let's get into it. Do you want to talk about benchmarking first

11:39

and then get to the whole... Yeah. Yeah.

11:44

I mean, it's such an underserved market. Like

11:46

how many benchmarks are being done for game

11:48

development practices out there? Everything, like you said,

11:50

everything is Cinebench or like video games. Well,

11:52

yeah. And so Puget does... Pugetbench

11:55

has a bunch of workflow tasks that are

11:57

common for workstation users. It's really good. But

12:01

not a whole lot of like unreal compiles partly

12:03

because in order to get a realistic benchmark you

12:05

need something That's probably a proprietary asset and

12:08

and honestly getting unreal up and working

12:10

in a in a Way

12:13

that it will build a level is

12:15

is fairly time-consuming. So I Looked

12:19

at UE 5.3 and said hey

12:21

if we just take one of the default

12:24

games that they ship and then jam some

12:26

landscape and geo in there That's

12:28

stuff that we buy assets from the store Then

12:32

you know, we can make something that

12:34

is representative but doesn't take You

12:37

know 14 hours, so I've been working on this it's one of the things I've

12:39

been working on when we're not doing on camera stuff at PC world over the

12:41

last few weeks and I shipped

12:44

the first version of it to some testers this week

12:47

But as I was doing the final as

12:49

so so just to understand what we're talking

12:52

about When you when you

12:54

ship a level in unreal at least Depending

12:57

on what lighting choices and stuff you use There's a

12:59

whole series of things that have to be built like

13:01

the the nav mesh has to be built and and

13:03

there's a bunch of computational stuff that has to happen

13:05

and the lighting bakes have to happen if you're using

13:07

pre-computed lighting and your

13:09

your LODs for the foliage have to be baked

13:12

in and and LODs

13:14

for everything have to be baked in All

13:16

and and you can basically hit a button

13:18

and unreal after you've opened up that level

13:20

that says build all levels and then start

13:22

a stopwatch and Time how long

13:24

that takes to run and if you're on a production

13:27

game like I'm the game that I worked on the

13:29

end of cruises Is an indie

13:31

game made by like 20 people at most? So

13:34

it was a little for a GPU light bake

13:36

on that. It was like 40 minute 20 to

13:38

40 minutes depending on the level We're

13:41

doing the same thing on the CPU light bake take a

13:43

few hours probably for each level eggs On

13:45

on what kind of CPU are we talking to do? What

13:48

anything? For 3900

13:50

K. Oh even a very good one even a very good

13:52

one I'm

13:55

gonna I apologize. I'll probably do this repeatedly. I'm

13:57

going to ask you to define a couple things

13:59

as well. Or or elaborate on

14:01

things. Would what is an admission is for me

14:03

some navigation measure that doesn't yet have passing for

14:06

a I guess. So it's the thing that tells

14:08

a basically minded I'm not the person asked by

14:10

the strom, give an answer and people yell be

14:12

in town i'm Bronx or and and comments on

14:14

i'm wrong but it's. It's

14:17

the thing. It's the underlying piece of

14:19

unreal technology. the Alps, the a I'd

14:21

pass from notes Notre Dame. So basically

14:23

it looks at all of the places

14:26

he marches, navigable in the game, at

14:28

all the places you said hey, You

14:30

can't go here and then connects them all

14:33

to each other's best they can and if

14:35

it doesn't find ways from to catch it'll

14:37

it'll for flags and even so you can

14:39

literally hit p I think it unreal and

14:42

it'll turn the floor green where the a

14:44

i can controversy because there's there's most evil

14:46

builds up on top of that like we

14:49

built our as the and presume to the

14:51

whole context layer. On top of that that

14:53

told the i like what was like wow

14:55

to find him. It

14:58

sped more informations yeah that was needed for the came

15:00

to. Work But sir, First, you do the admission than

15:02

you do the other stuff on top of them. Have

15:04

a sense. The other thing I was gonna ask

15:06

you kind of kicked us are saying the you

15:09

basically started with of the where you put it

15:11

was one of the default the games that they

15:13

ship for the duration of so I can do

15:15

to like what what does that What do they

15:17

quote Unquote game and compass and my contacts as

15:19

a just say is just a camera perspective and

15:21

set of basic mechanics or and like are there

15:23

other geometry goes around us ago without like what

15:25

you mean by game in the context of like

15:27

unreal project So it did it. Basically you eat

15:29

ships with million the version you have a bunch

15:32

of different default projects there some you he five

15:34

ships with some. That are like architecture

15:36

and and live some generation projects.

15:38

There's several game pamphlets like a

15:40

shooter this their shooter.the Xp which

15:42

is a first or third person

15:44

shooter. There's a third person shooter

15:46

exits shooter Idiocy The first horses

15:48

here is a third person shooter

15:50

template. There's a racing game template

15:52

I think us and basically it

15:55

it ships. It means that there's

15:57

a camera. There's awesome. Some sort

15:59

of be. The the blueprints of set

16:01

up the basic menus and the first level

16:03

of a game or second level a game.

16:05

Odd that there will be lighting and gun

16:07

mechanics in the case of the first person

16:09

shooter and has likes of of oh and

16:12

i'm he messes player mess by and also

16:14

has like the first person arms that used

16:16

to hold the gun, stuff like that and

16:18

animations to basically get they got so sick

16:20

of it as a tutorial. So.

16:22

Basically they have a lot of documentation the sites.

16:24

Okay first you can start with shooter id exceed

16:26

your video to this part of the project and

16:28

do this and this and this. and then you

16:30

can open up the simply prensa didn't do this

16:32

and this and this and bomb It's a it's

16:35

a jumping off like. I. Don't know

16:37

that everybody does as. A lot

16:39

of people start with seizure A

16:41

Cc. You're using the same basic

16:43

skeleton and rigs. For. Your

16:45

your player characters and your by paypal humanoid

16:47

characters are because then you can more easily

16:50

use asses off the sore and stuff like

16:52

that. their lot of Acid Caesar, same rigs

16:54

and skeletons. So I'm and it

16:57

is. There's real benefit to starting with. that

16:59

is my understanding that I'll make sense to

17:01

have any idea how much you would have

17:03

to differentiate from the whole project before you

17:05

can ship and per the terms of service

17:08

or whatever ice I assume you can literally

17:10

just mythical Be kind of funny if somebody

17:12

did just thought process so I mean I'm

17:14

sure he can. Ah, the default project. Usually

17:17

they don't compile out of the box such

17:19

as com you have to a buddy, but

17:21

like when you go through the whole project,

17:23

the whole tutorial series. as usually I twenty.

17:25

Hours long and Thirty hours long. You'll end

17:27

up with something the you can run in

17:30

the A fc on your desktop. I'm. I.

17:32

Don't think they would tear I don't know I

17:34

any be would do that. It's hims again of

17:37

a waste of of course it was his father

17:39

going to be financially lucrative with my for you

17:41

just avoid funny met a commentary movement but like

17:43

just him like the levels are like. It.

17:46

It's like ads basketball gymnasium

17:48

size room with no roofs.

17:51

and know wall like a great wall of

17:54

grey box walls grey box floors stays like

17:56

a couple of physics objects is a ramp

17:58

and of and that's instance And

18:00

then like a couple of pillars and some spawners that

18:02

just spit out enemies So it's like it's

18:04

not super exciting stuff But it is really nice because

18:07

it turns out when you're starting a project from scratch If

18:10

you if you haven't done that before just getting

18:13

the project up and running is pretty hard It's a

18:15

it's a it's a it's a challenging

18:17

endeavor So starting with that Bypasses

18:19

a lot of that stuff Unless you learn

18:21

about like menus when you need to learn about

18:23

menus instead of menus as the very first thing

18:25

you learn sure So

18:27

anyway, so I started with that The

18:30

shooter at exe one that has a couple

18:32

of levels that is ships I took

18:34

one of those levels and then imported a big giant landscape

18:37

mesh and put a bunch of foliage on it and I'm

18:40

gonna put down I gotta I gotta put down some

18:43

buildings and stuff like that with more pre-computed lighting So

18:45

it's a little more representative and

18:47

then I said hey calculate the light

18:49

mass inside this volume and Here's

18:52

the nav mesh volume and here's the physical You know, here's

18:54

the different the different areas that we need to care about

18:56

and hit build all to see what happened and it worked

19:00

And then I started looking at I started

19:02

changing the amount of foliage I started changing the amount of

19:05

pre-computed light to charge is for changing the amount of geo

19:07

in the world To see what it

19:09

did to the benchmark and got to a place that it

19:11

was it was interesting and working And

19:14

then I realized that I could change how long it

19:17

takes to run the benchmark By

19:19

changing the size of the

19:21

light mass volume the area that it cares about

19:23

getting good lighting for And

19:26

it's interesting because this process they like to

19:28

set up process isn't super threaded So it

19:30

favors high clock speed

19:32

low core count CPUs And

19:36

if you make the amount the area that

19:38

the light bake happens in small enough and

19:40

and not complex enough Then

19:42

that means you're gonna have a benchmark like I

19:45

could make this benchmark very easily favor say a

19:47

Quad core that runs at higher

19:50

clock speeds than say a thread ripper that's

19:52

gonna in practice be a much better Representation

19:55

of this benchmark and and I

19:57

started I started thinking about it was like everything that you're

19:59

creating content Like if you're making a premier benchmark, the

20:02

filters that you choose to run the transitions that you

20:04

choose to use all of that, whether it hits GP

20:06

or CPU, are inherently

20:09

political choices and it

20:11

determines like it

20:14

would be easy to make. And

20:16

I'm not suggesting anybody's doing this kind of, I don't think

20:18

anybody that's actually working in these spaces does do this, but

20:21

it requires a level of thoughtfulness that

20:23

I hadn't really considered before. Yeah. And

20:26

thoughtfulness into what can be a bit of a

20:28

black box. Like you see the same thing with

20:31

rendering out a video project, for example, right? Because

20:33

you're not only rendering with a video

20:36

codec or compressing with a video codec, you're

20:38

also compressing audio. You're also doing compositing of

20:40

different elements together and all of those things

20:42

are using different elements of the hardware and

20:44

different software routines and algorithms. And some of

20:46

those, like you said, same thing there. Some

20:49

of those things might be heavily threaded. The audio

20:51

and code might be single. In fact, most audio

20:53

encoders that I've seen are single threaded. But

20:55

same thing where you kind of

20:57

have to sit there and watch activity across different cores

21:00

as you're doing things to even get a sense of

21:02

like where the bottlenecks are and how to design around

21:04

that. Yeah. So what ended up

21:06

happening was I was loading up task manager and process

21:08

manager while the Unreal Engine, while

21:10

this was running and watching what was happening when.

21:13

And then I started thinking about, okay,

21:15

I need to like, because realistically, if

21:17

you're doing a production game, the setup

21:20

period is going to be a small fraction

21:22

of the actual light mass.

21:25

Like the light mass calculation stuff is

21:28

going to be the vast majority of your time

21:30

on this benchmark, even if you're using the GPU

21:34

light mass stuff, which

21:36

is another political choice because it's skewing in favor

21:38

of people who have big giant GPUs with such

21:41

and such. It's also saying that

21:43

anybody who has a GPU that has less than

21:45

I think 12 or 16 gigs of memory just

21:47

can't run the benchmark. Or

21:49

we have to use one of the third party

21:52

light mass calculations, which does support lower GPU RAM

21:54

configurations. So it's

21:57

a series of really... It's

22:00

an interesting series of choices. I don't know

22:03

that I have... I don't know that we're gonna

22:05

make this public. I don't know that I'd have to look at

22:07

what... I've agreed through license-wise to see if we even can. It's

22:09

a fair pain in the ass to set up and get running on it.

22:12

Okay. That's one of my questions, what's gonna be how portable

22:14

this is, because the nature of benchmarking in this setting is

22:17

you have to put it on a bunch of different machines,

22:19

right? Yeah. So that part isn't too

22:21

bad. I intentionally built

22:23

it without requiring any third-party UE

22:25

plugins, which is important. And

22:28

I use mostly stuff that I had

22:30

licensed to from... Let's

22:33

see, the UE store, the Quixel Bridge, stuff

22:35

like that. So it's like it should

22:37

be... I should... I think from a

22:39

content perspective, I'm allowed to distribute it.

22:41

I think Shooter on EXE is distributable

22:44

because most... Like I said, a lot of

22:46

people base their... That's the starting point for

22:48

a lot of first-person shooters, they use

22:51

Unreal. It's one of the reasons that

22:53

Unreal Engine games often feel like they

22:55

have same-y physics is because people start

22:57

with... Why reinvent? When

23:01

you start with a blank game, you're starting with

23:03

no physics and no gravity and no collision

23:06

and none of that stuff. And starting

23:08

with that stuff turned on is incredibly

23:10

helpful. Sure. I didn't realize they were

23:12

third-party... What's the term? Renderers engines for

23:14

calculating lightmaps

23:19

and stuff like that. I didn't realize

23:21

components like that were pluggable in the

23:23

Unreal Engine. I kind of assumed there

23:26

was one way to bake lightmaps and

23:28

it was their way. No,

23:32

there's a bazillion lightmap things. But there

23:34

are... I don't want to say infinite,

23:36

but there's a seemingly infinite

23:38

number of Unreal Engine plugins. Yeah, I

23:41

believe that. I've looked through the Unreal,

23:43

the asset store before, or as a

23:45

community that calls it the asset store.

23:47

Anyway, I know there's tons of stuff

23:49

out there for getting your game onto

23:51

Steam or Workshop, like mod

23:53

support, like plugins for... I guess the

23:56

distinction I'm trying to make is instead of adding

23:58

extra functionality that's not in replacing very

24:00

low level functionality. Oh yeah. That they ship with the

24:02

engine and that's what I was surprised that there are

24:05

options for doing. Yeah, so I

24:07

think that the main reason

24:10

the other Lightmass Calc exists, let's

24:13

see, it's Lu... it's

24:15

Lu Shong's GPU Lightmass Swarm

24:19

and it's a GPU Lightmass and

24:22

it's basically a

24:26

port of the GPU Lightmass accelerator that'll

24:28

run on 70 series cards because by

24:30

default, pretty much the Unreal Engine 1

24:32

only works on 3080s or 2080s or

24:34

3080s I think. And

24:38

it's because of, I believe, memory limits. I

24:41

can't remember. I see. So

24:43

that's the one example. Unreal treats

24:46

GPU Lightmass still as a beta thing. If

24:49

you're working in an office with a bunch of people, you

24:51

can run the Swarm controller. The CPU

24:54

Lightmass calculator will distribute across all

24:56

the computers in your network as

24:58

long as you have the Swarm controller installed on them and running,

25:01

which means it can go a little bit faster but it

25:03

still takes a long time. And

25:05

it means that you have to leave those computers running

25:08

if you want to take advantage of that. Sure. I

25:10

wonder how throughput limited that is. Not

25:12

very. It's not working those calculations. I assume the

25:14

amount of the actual amount of data that's going

25:16

right and forth is pretty small. It's just the

25:18

computation that is heavy. Yeah. So the thing that

25:20

I believe happens in the beginning is it breaks

25:22

up the levels into chunks and

25:25

then that's the thing that's not super threaded

25:28

or seems to be CPU bound or seems

25:31

to limit itself to a small number of

25:33

CPU threads, then

25:36

runs for a fairly long time, is breaking up the

25:38

level into discrete chunks and then it

25:40

distributes those out using that

25:42

Swarm client to the other machines on

25:44

the network. And they're not big. It's

25:46

just the math is complicated because it's

25:48

basically bouncing a bazillion rays

25:50

around the world. The difference

25:53

is we don't have to buy a big SGI workstation or some

25:55

Cray render or something to do it anymore. We can just run

25:57

it on a bunch of desktop PCs with 30

25:59

cores each. And are the days.

26:01

And the nice thing is you can set the

26:03

swarm thing so it just it's like to corps

26:06

which most people won't even notice when they are

26:08

losing their computers happier. Now

26:10

than whatever the reason to spend work is

26:12

interesting though is if you're was seen, environment,

26:14

artist or level designer or work in those

26:17

spaces new have to rebuild these levels frequently.

26:19

You'll often. Think. If you're doing

26:21

the good build of for the shipping levels

26:23

when the game is ready to move when

26:25

you're ready released to the gamer we are

26:27

updated new level in the game or whatever

26:29

you do the good lighting calculations right before

26:31

it ships right in that battle run for

26:33

hours and is decided to me. but if

26:35

you're making like. See. If you're changing

26:38

the position of a boxer, a door or

26:40

tree or something, you'll run a preview version

26:42

of Calyx more often than that because you

26:44

wanna see the shadow for the tree in

26:46

the right place. Mason it as an ear

26:48

for something else or or whatever and and

26:50

that can get fairly touches me. that kinda

26:53

takes you out of work. He would

26:55

give you have to do it during the day it is

26:57

a d d you do pre going for lunch. we do

26:59

it at the end of the day. It's because is going

27:01

to prevent you from doing anything for the rest of the

27:03

day now. so. Guy on

27:05

my door.kind of excited when you told me you're doing

27:07

this because some months ago with your sword on the

27:09

increases, this was not for this benchmark. It was for

27:11

shit, a game of the time. But you saw me.

27:14

As. Around the time of the line, computers remember

27:16

this oh yes well as baking lights You

27:18

just send me and didn't you send me

27:20

a screenshot of Task Manager. With. Every

27:23

single core on your thirty nine hundred K

27:25

pegged, flatlined, other than a hundred percent which

27:27

yeah, I couldn't even do And like. I've

27:29

been experimenting with different eighty one software encoders

27:31

recently. And. Even do a math stuff like

27:34

I haven't been able to get a to. I mean it'll

27:36

You know it'll in, load each toward pretty steadily. be still

27:38

see a bunch of spikes up and down. But.

27:40

But this, this was the only kind of

27:42

the only thing. Except maybe compiling

27:45

with the linux kernel or some some some

27:47

heavy sauces mothers and babies. maybe maybe some

27:49

meat eating as others have to do it

27:51

the like. I'd I have not

27:53

seen anything else besides that input of are

27:55

unreal calculations you're doing that. So.

27:57

Heavily thoroughly completely. pegs

28:00

each core all at once. Yeah,

28:03

so it seems like it seems ripe

28:05

for testing. And that was, and just

28:07

to be clear, that's even using the GPU light mass. It

28:09

still pegs all the cores. Like it

28:12

makes the, it made the power

28:14

cable coming into the computer get

28:16

warm. Wow. Just probably good, right?

28:18

Interesting. Yeah, so anyway, that's

28:20

what I've been working on. I'm curious what people think.

28:22

I'd be curious to your feedback. Like

28:25

I said, this is coming from a

28:27

place of wanting to mimic something

28:29

that's a semi-realistic. It's a little bit weird because

28:31

I think a lot of UE5 games are probably

28:34

not shipping with a lot of pre-baked lights.

28:36

They're probably doing global rendering, meaning

28:39

that the light is all the main light for

28:41

the world is dynamic. But,

28:44

you know, like we're doing fog and

28:47

other stuff that requires a little bit

28:49

of pre-compute. So it's, I

28:51

think we'll have something that's at least representative

28:54

of the performance you'll

28:56

get if not of the actual

28:59

game. Yeah, that's very cool. You know, at

29:01

first I was thinking to myself like, how big is

29:03

the audience for this kind of benchmark? It's limited to

29:05

the people who are working game developers, of course, but

29:07

you could see this, like, especially if it's something you

29:09

can release, you could see this just becoming

29:11

part of like some more standard benchmarking

29:13

suites. Like because it is a

29:15

legitimate real world, very heavy and

29:18

often very, very parallelized workload. I think

29:20

if I were releasing this for wider

29:22

than this one particular project we're working

29:25

on, I'd probably want to do like,

29:30

I think I'd probably want to do something

29:32

that's a little more representative of an actual

29:34

game. Like I think there's probably games out

29:36

there that would be willing to give us

29:38

access to like a level from the game

29:40

to do the calculation on. That

29:43

would be cool. Yeah, I guess to put it another

29:45

way, what I was trying to say, it's like, if

29:47

you look at a lot of the benchmarking suites that

29:49

are used in reviews for CDUs and graphics cards and

29:51

stuff, like they're Fairly robust, but

29:53

in some cases it feels like they're kind of

29:55

struggling to actually really load. modern hardware, you know,

29:58

and so having another. Real

30:00

World Something's not another son, just yet another

30:02

synthetic benchmarks but something that is a real

30:04

world workload the you can point out and

30:06

say here's how this actually worse absolute or

30:08

on is cool with I'm I'm excited that

30:10

the would more formula take ultimately video. It'll

30:13

be a video, will be part of

30:15

a video about a different thing. Occur

30:18

there and things are intentionally vague. I'm

30:20

sorry Marines. I look forward

30:22

to hear it. It's a thing about a saying

30:24

brad's yes or it shall We move on it

30:26

was hear about matter threat. I I'm sure does

30:28

get like I feel like it seems like I

30:31

haven't heard much syllabus. Every is going great I

30:33

bet swimmingly I am wrong with there's work. There's

30:35

only one. Might have

30:37

heard this one before. We need one standard

30:39

to unify all the standards it in. Today's

30:41

a month later Now there's only one Santa

30:44

right now. there's and with it's to number

30:46

seven. there were four plus wire. Something I

30:48

want. I don't think it's fair. This case

30:50

I seek. Okay, well or

30:52

had already has gone brand okay

30:54

might I drew a lot on

30:56

a i'm a kind of Urine

30:58

review in December that The Verge

31:00

ram. By Jennifer Pat

31:02

Patterson to eat or who apparently

31:05

has kind of been pushing matter

31:07

and thread to one and will

31:09

be taught thought the absurd explain

31:11

matter and thread again. We've covered

31:13

it. Fairly extensive yeah be bit

31:15

better. but the ideas that matter

31:17

and thread of threat is radio

31:19

sending matters a and interoperability kind

31:22

of communication standard said. it's theoretically

31:24

all of your devices, all your

31:26

smart home devices colloquial live cult

31:28

colloquially known as the Internet of

31:30

shit Ah, will. Toss each other and

31:32

worked with the with each other. Now. This.

31:35

Is a thing you could have done before if

31:37

you had some intentionality with your purchases via As

31:39

or even if he didn't Actually, especially if you

31:41

didn't that's how I ended up with homes her

31:44

son was. I've got a couple smart plugs for

31:46

my god because they advertise with us on a

31:48

podcast women I've got some others because we lot

31:50

of like a free pack on Amazon the was

31:52

on sale and and I've got yet a third

31:54

vendors plugs. as a christmas gift you

31:56

know what i mean we have some point that's how i came

31:58

home says and was just like And it's

32:00

like retroactively, I was like, I've got all

32:02

these competing things. I wish they all just

32:05

worked in one interface. So, yes, you could

32:07

and maybe will continue to do

32:10

this the old fashioned way

32:12

with something like Home Assistant rather than

32:14

standardizing it at the radio and

32:16

application level like Matter promised. I

32:19

mean, just to be clear, I have Matter

32:21

running on my Home Assistant box right now

32:23

and all the Matter and Thread devices in

32:25

the house, including the Apple TV and the

32:28

smart plugs that I have and the handful of other

32:30

things that I don't actually use except for Christmas time

32:33

because they're Christmas lights are

32:36

working off of the Home

32:38

Assistant Thread radio using the

32:40

Matter standard. Like, it's been pretty good for me. Yeah,

32:42

okay. That's fair. I've only used, like I

32:44

said, a handful of things and I don't like

32:47

the... So the interesting

32:49

thing about is it Thread? I always get

32:51

confused about which is which Matter. The interesting

32:53

thing about Matter is that they have the idea of this

32:55

edge router thing, right? The more

32:57

border routers. Yeah, where things that are

32:59

plugged in around your house like smart

33:02

speakers and digital picture frames and your

33:04

refrigerator maybe and made

33:06

by Google and Apple and Samsung all

33:08

can like expand the mesh of your

33:10

mesh network. Right. Like

33:13

the theory is that you would never have

33:15

to buy a dedicated controller or hub. Like

33:18

it's not like what I guess what SmartThings is or like

33:20

the Philips Hue Hub, stuff like that. You

33:22

know, like a thing that is just a little lump of plastic that serves

33:24

no other purpose than to unify all the actual

33:26

client devices. But that's also what Home Assistant is,

33:29

right? Oh yeah. Like that's what

33:31

I don't... I did not... When they initially pitched

33:33

this to people, that was not the thing I

33:35

took from this. The thing I took from this

33:37

was that all of the smart hubs would work

33:40

together on the same protocol so you wouldn't have

33:42

to have... Okay. So

33:45

I use Home Assistant to take all of the

33:48

different disparate stuff in my house and glue it

33:50

together into one application. And then

33:52

I'd dole it back out from there to

33:54

things like Google Home and Apple

33:56

Siri and Alexa if that

33:58

was a thing that I used. used so that

34:00

I could access them from the different places that I

34:02

wanted to do like voice assistance. My

34:05

understanding was that I shouldn't have to do

34:07

that step with Matter. That all

34:09

of the Matter devices should just be able to talk to

34:11

each other and like my home assistant would see HomeKit

34:14

and Google Play and all the

34:17

different Nest things and my

34:19

Nest things would see the HomeKit and the Google Play

34:21

and all the different standards. And

34:23

it seems like that's just not happening. That

34:25

is the promise. Every device is supposed

34:27

to work with every vendor's ecosystem and when

34:30

we say ecosystem we're talking Apple Home,

34:32

Google Home, Alexa, Samsung. What

34:34

is the smart things? Are

34:36

there other big ones out there? Yeah,

34:38

Philips Hue is one. Yeah, okay. I

34:42

don't think Lutron has signed

34:44

on but Lutron has a hub with their Cassetta

34:46

products. There's a

34:48

bunch of different places that this fires in. The

34:51

interesting, the good thing about

34:53

this was there were kind of two,

34:55

in reality there were a bunch of ecosystems, in reality there

34:57

were two, right? Because there was like HomeKit

34:59

which had some specific hardware requirements and

35:01

then there was everything else which was

35:03

more or less hubs using Zigbee or

35:06

some or Z-Wave or some variation of

35:08

one or the two. And

35:10

then Lutron had Cassetta which is on set of radios which is

35:12

quite nice but is off on its own. Yeah.

35:15

Anyway, this piece that Tui did was basically

35:17

kind of a year in review of spending

35:19

2023 testing Matter and

35:21

Thread devices and to be fair it sounds

35:23

like she's got so many things on her

35:25

network. It's like far, far beyond what any

35:27

average consumer would probably do. Well,

35:30

it's worth mentioning 2023 I think

35:32

is really the first year that Matter and

35:34

Thread stuff started shipping in any kind of

35:36

real quantity. Yeah, that's true. It's been almost

35:38

a year since I was looking at some

35:40

Nanoleaf Thread smart bulbs that had

35:42

I think were like kind of the first

35:44

Thread smart bulbs to the market. Yeah, the first

35:46

thing I bought was an Eve, what was

35:48

it I said it was, Eve Electric maybe? Yeah.

35:52

It was an Energy Smart Plug and I

35:54

bought it just to test the Matter implementation

35:56

on my home assistant box. Yes.

36:00

I think actually, let me see if I can find it

36:03

in the story. I think even, yes, it's the

36:05

Eve and Natalie for the two companies she

36:07

mentioned kind of bet

36:10

everything on Matter and Thread and are now pivoting

36:12

back to making non- making Wi-Fi

36:14

devices again, if that tells you how things are

36:16

going. Well, it's worth mentioning that the Eve

36:19

box that I got

36:21

started out as a Bluetooth device and

36:23

then got Thread updates over

36:25

time so that it was able to connect to the

36:27

Thread border routers. Yeah. Okay,

36:30

so it was a rough year.

36:32

Yes. Is the TLDR. Yes.

36:35

I guess I just kind of will address some of the main points raised

36:37

in the story and we'll link this. There's also a

36:39

couple of R's pieces that we read for this. Those will all be in

36:41

the show notes. But just kind of going

36:43

bullet point by bullet point of what Matter and Thread we're

36:45

supposed to deliver. Okay. So

36:48

like the first one is you can use any

36:50

company's device in any other company's ecosystem. That's the

36:52

idea. Like if you're an Apple

36:54

Home user primarily, but you end up with some

36:56

devices that are made for Alexa or whatever, theoretically

36:58

those are still supposed to work in the ecosystem

37:00

of your choice. And that works,

37:03

right? Sort

37:05

of, yes. It sounds like, I'm just going to

37:07

quote from the story here, it sounds like basically

37:09

at a baseline, yes, but

37:11

the actual functionality that you're going to get

37:13

is going to vary by which ecosystem in

37:15

and what features that ecosystem

37:17

supports. I mean, that's kind of how open standards

37:19

work, right? I guess so. Everybody supports

37:22

which parts of it they want and

37:24

everybody else supports the parts of it that they don't

37:26

support the parts that they don't want. So

37:28

like, is there a, for example here,

37:30

I guess? Yes, there is. I mean, you're not wrong,

37:33

but also as a consumer, I, that's the last thing

37:35

I want to worry about is well, do

37:37

I need to eyeball a table on the back of the thing to

37:40

know if all of its features are supported in home or what

37:42

Apple Home or whatever it is I like to use? Okay. I

37:44

mean, I will say this morning I got up and the power had

37:46

gone off last night and all of the light bulbs were on the

37:49

house and I had to open up

37:51

the Wyze app and go in and toggle on

37:53

each light bulb the, on power

37:56

off return to last state

37:58

rather than full blast. Because

38:01

at three o'clock in the morning when the power went off

38:03

and all the lights turned on in the bedrooms, it wasn't

38:05

great. Oh, good. Yeah. That sounds

38:08

fun. Okay. Yes. Here's

38:10

a quote talking about devices working in different ecosystems. If

38:12

you connect your Philips Hue smart bulbs to Apple Home

38:15

via Matter, you can't use Apple Home's adaptive lighting features.

38:18

If you pair any Eve Energy smart plug

38:20

with Amazon Alexa, you lose its energy monitoring

38:22

feature. If you add the GOVI's

38:24

Matter light strip to your smart home platform of choice,

38:26

you can't play with any of its cool lighting effects.

38:30

All of these things are able to

38:32

connect at a basic level and have

38:34

their basic functionality work, but higher

38:36

level stuff or anything that requires any vendor

38:38

specific support is not working across platform at

38:41

all. Okay. So I

38:43

can use adaptive lighting with Philips Hue

38:45

bulbs in my... I

38:48

have to do it from the Apple Home app. And

38:50

I can use... I have one of those Eve

38:52

Energy smart plugs. In

38:55

Home Assistant, I see the energy usage. In

38:57

the Eve app, I see the energy usage.

39:00

But if I ask Google about the energy usage, the Google

39:02

Home device isn't going to know what the hell I'm talking

39:04

about because it doesn't understand that. I

39:08

guess I don't see that as a problem. I

39:11

see that as... That's like saying,

39:13

hey, Google added a

39:16

bunch of proprietary shit to Chrome that

39:18

Safari and Firefox aren't going to support.

39:20

Well, but I mean, that analogy

39:22

would hold if there were some global browser alliance

39:24

that had promised all these browsers were going to

39:26

be able to interoperate. I mean, what's the W3C

39:28

then? Oh, geez.

39:31

That's a whole other episode. Yeah, yeah. Trust

39:34

me, I get up to my elbows in

39:36

enough half-based tech to absolutely understand why the

39:39

stuff wouldn't be working right at

39:41

a high level. But again, I'm coming at

39:43

this from the angle of... This thing

39:45

is supposed to take all the guesswork out of this process of

39:47

buying stuff. But the idea of this whole

39:49

standard is you're supposed to just be able to buy

39:51

devices and have them all work. And

39:54

the second I have to start doing homework to actually

39:56

figure out what that's going to mean in practice is

39:59

the second that... I'm just never going to

40:01

touch this standard and I think that's

40:03

probably where I'm going to end up at at the end of This

40:05

episode. I think I think we're in

40:07

the trough of despair, man Yeah, I

40:09

think I think this is like we've heard

40:12

the promise everybody got all excited about it started

40:14

coming out It's not living up to the promise.

40:16

Yeah I've got look I'll

40:18

cop to I'll cop to having been fairly excited about what

40:20

they were pitching for Matter and thread a year

40:22

and a half ago when we did that false

40:24

spot episode and it does not seem to be playing out

40:27

Okay, let's move on to the next point I mean is

40:29

this one is more pretty flatly damning I think matter

40:31

has something called multi admin mode, which I had not

40:33

been aware of but like it They

40:36

defined it in the spec enough to give it

40:38

a name Yeah That tells you anything and the

40:40

idea there is basically you can kind of the

40:42

inverse of what we're just talking about where it's

40:44

like You can use multiple products in any one

40:46

ecosystem of your choice in this case You can

40:49

use one product in multiple ecosystems So you could

40:51

have like I guess I guess the best

40:53

use case example is like You like

40:55

Apple stuff and you like to use the Apple

40:57

home interface, but your wife likes Alexa or Google

41:00

home ideas that the device

41:02

would show up in all of those Home

41:04

hubs on say everybody's phone and you could access

41:07

the basic functionality of the device from any of

41:09

those Sounds like that absolutely just does

41:11

not work. Yeah, I don't I'm

41:13

doesn't surprise me at all. I this one

41:15

this one again This

41:18

feels like not being intentional Like

41:20

I get that normal people aren't intentional

41:22

about computer stuff often But

41:25

all of this feels like hey you have to think about Think

41:28

about how this works and how

41:31

this is going to work Maybe this is just maybe

41:33

I'm just so damaged from years of covering this stuff

41:36

that I can't I can't Like

41:38

I yeah, I don't know. I'm kind of how I

41:40

feel. I'm kind of like don't cut them too much

41:43

slack I mean again I get I get in practice

41:45

why all of this stuff is such a huge mess

41:48

Also, my assumption is we're first

41:50

year like if I if

41:52

I have one argument with this One

41:55

complaint with the standard I'd say that they pitched something

41:57

that was way way way way

42:00

optimistic for something that's going

42:02

to have some really gnarly teething pains when

42:04

you're talking about five enormous worldwide

42:07

global companies that all want that

42:10

all agreed to the standard because they think they can own

42:12

it and like

42:16

yeah it doesn't surprise me that Phillips made a

42:18

thing that doesn't work with everybody yeah I

42:20

mean that that seems to be the case is that everybody kind

42:23

of wants to do their own thing even within a

42:25

spec that says they should all be working together so

42:27

I will say when I moved the

42:30

Eve thing from my home kit network into

42:32

the home assistant network which was a little

42:34

bit of a process I had to download

42:36

it I did I did go

42:38

to a setting on the app I had to

42:40

download generate a new pairing image

42:42

print that out take a picture of

42:44

my phone from the home Apple home

42:47

app it was a weird process yeah

42:49

but like I made the

42:51

choice to pair everything with home and

42:53

let it with a home assistant and

42:56

let it propagate out to home kit and

42:58

Google home from there rather than thinking I could

43:01

add it to the Apple home and have it get

43:04

sucked into home assistant and Google home from there like

43:06

oh yeah yeah I would never do that to be

43:08

clear as a home assistant user I also would add

43:10

everything through home assistant yeah I like I guess a

43:12

lot of my a lot of them a lot of

43:15

this the both the first two points are like I

43:18

don't think this is a problem if you I think

43:20

home assistant is the good implementation of all of these

43:22

technologies yeah I agree with you that I also still

43:24

think like home assistant has gotten way more accessible than

43:26

it used to be but I still don't think it's

43:28

within reach of the average consumer who doesn't want to

43:31

think about any of this stuff oh it's definitely nerd

43:33

shit yeah yeah yes extremely third

43:35

point is about the the thread border

43:37

routers that we were talking about where

43:39

basically your fridge or your light fixture

43:41

can be a device that routes traffic

43:44

from other clients instead of

43:46

a dedicated dedicated box sounds like that

43:48

is still a giant mess she says that most

43:50

of the devices on her network are still running

43:52

through dedicated boxes and that's specifically

43:55

I'll just quote this he

43:57

does are so thread border routers in my home formed

44:00

their own proprietary thread networks based on

44:02

their manufacturer and adults talk to each

44:04

other. Yeah, this is bad. Like, just

44:06

to be clear, this seems like either

44:09

ideally the apps should look and say, oh, hey, there's

44:11

three thread networks here. Do any of these belong to

44:13

you? Do you want to join one of the existing

44:15

networks? Any time you add something, so

44:17

you end up with one thread network instead of a

44:20

bazillion thread networks. There's

44:22

probably political reasons they don't want to do that because everybody

44:24

wants to own this network. The

44:27

benefit of having a big giant mesh network

44:29

with a bunch of border routers is that

44:31

you have everything connected to the same network

44:33

so that when you add something new, it

44:35

benefits from the breadth and width of

44:37

the net mesh and doesn't get

44:39

disconnected. This is both an onboarding

44:42

and installation and setup failure,

44:45

a communication failure. This

44:47

sucks all the way around. Yeah, for sure. Sounds

44:49

like a giant mess. Also, I haven't

44:52

mentioned so far, some manufacturers have kind of backed away

44:54

from this a little bit, like Belkin almost

44:57

a year ago, I think, announced that they were stepping

44:59

back from the whole thing and kind of leading. From

45:01

a matter of thread? Yeah, yeah, yes. I

45:03

mean, it doesn't surprise me. And other manufacturers

45:05

who are participating are kind of trying to, it

45:08

sounds like, carve out their own fiefdoms within

45:10

it. Well, but I mean, it's

45:13

quite literally saying, hey, we're going to take

45:15

the thing that makes this good and then

45:17

just not do it. Yeah, yeah, that seems

45:19

to be kind of how it's shaping up.

45:22

She talked about the thing you were talking about with the onboarding. She

45:25

says that the simple onboarding of you

45:28

can use any app you want and just basically

45:30

scan the matter code on the device and it's

45:32

just on, actually does generally work pretty well or

45:34

when it works, it's quite elegant. But I think

45:36

she gave the same example you did. You said

45:38

your thing fell off in that work and you

45:40

had to get it back on, right? Well, no,

45:42

no, I wanted to switch from the Apple Hub

45:44

to the Home Assistant Hub. It was switching, I

45:46

swear. Yeah, because just to be clear, sucking

45:49

it from the Apple Hub into the

45:51

Home Assistant Hub wasn't working particularly well,

45:53

which meant that it wasn't accessible in

45:55

things like Google or Alexa. So,

45:57

yeah. But

46:01

I think my assumption, and this

46:03

may be naive, but my assumption

46:05

was that at least for this

46:07

first generation, maybe two generations, probably

46:10

you're going to have to use some proprietary app

46:12

to do most of the configuration stuff for everything.

46:14

That's kind of exactly where she's at here. She

46:17

gives an example about some TP-Link TAPO light

46:19

switches that she could not get

46:21

to connect to the network

46:24

for Apple Home because they're TP-Link. She

46:26

says, I quickly defaulted to the TAPO app where they

46:28

paired immediately. When I went back to add them

46:30

to Apple Home and then Google Home through Matter, two

46:33

of them dropped offline on both platforms but continued to

46:35

work fine in the TAPO app. So

46:37

yes, it's still a lot of vendor

46:39

siloing. So

46:41

I have some of those TAPO switches that I use for

46:43

like Christmas tree and Christmas lights around the house. And

46:46

I had the same exact experience until I paired

46:49

them with the Home Assistant Matter

46:51

network and then it was fine. Your

46:54

mileage may vary, I guess. Yeah. And

46:57

then she talks about, you mentioned some of your

46:59

devices have upgraded to Matter that used to be

47:01

like what, Bluetooth? They were Bluetooth and ZigBee or

47:03

Bluetooth at HomeKit, I think is actually what they

47:06

were, which is really good ZigBee pork, I think.

47:08

I can't remember how Apple does that. She

47:11

says, for example, her Philips Hue Hub has gotten

47:13

less reliable since she did the upgrade to Matter

47:15

support for it. Like,

47:18

yeah, this is

47:20

the thing. The problem with this kind of thing

47:22

is everybody is using, it's up

47:24

to everybody's implementations, right? And

47:27

if your hub has a bad implementation, if your

47:29

endpoint has a bad implementation, if

47:31

you're like, yeah, I just,

47:34

I'm bummed. Yeah, it is a bummer. I

47:37

was hopeful about this stuff. Although again, because we're

47:39

deep into the Thomas isn't rabbit hole, it kind

47:41

of covers that use case. Well,

47:43

it covers that use case but it also, like

47:46

I have ZigBee Z-Wave and HomeKit. No,

47:48

I don't have HomeKit. I have ZigBee

47:50

Z-Wave and Matter and Thread all

47:52

running on the same box. It's in the center of my

47:54

house. It's powered with power

47:56

over Ethernet. It's relatively easy to access and

47:58

maintain. But mostly I just let it

48:01

sit there and I update it every couple of months when it

48:03

gets an update and then I don't think about it too much.

48:06

And in that regard, it works exactly the way I

48:08

want for this kind of stuff I just don't want

48:10

to think about. I just want it to work. Yeah.

48:12

I mean, the one aspect of this that is not

48:16

supported by the home assistant use case is the

48:19

onboarding, the initial setup for a new device.

48:21

Yeah. Because you're still even with home

48:23

assistant, you're still, well, unless it's matter, it sounds like if

48:26

it's matter, you're going to add it straight into home assistant,

48:28

right? Like you mentioned. It has to

48:30

be matter out of the box. But

48:32

still, I think I would use the

48:34

on the official app to set up

48:37

the pairing would be my guess. That's

48:39

the thing I cannot stand. Honestly, that's the thing. That's

48:41

the aspect of all of this that

48:43

annoys me the most is just having like half a

48:45

dozen different smart vendor apps on my phone and having

48:47

to get a new one every time I buy somebody

48:49

else's product. Oh, so I just put them on a

48:51

folder and then never think about it again. Yeah. I

48:54

mean, if you don't have to make an account in one, it's way better. But some

48:56

of them... Well, okay. I

48:59

don't really buy anything that's cloud mediated, so I'd never have

49:01

to do an account. Yeah. I mean,

49:03

well, generally, once you do set up, once you might

49:05

want to check and make sure it... I'm

49:08

going to look at Wwise. I think Wwise might have an account.

49:10

I can't remember, but those balls were pretty good. They were really

49:12

cheap. I think I'm pretty sure TP-Link Casa has an

49:14

account. I think the Belkin WeMo stuff

49:16

does as well. It's not it's not

49:18

routing like control signals for the devices

49:20

through the cloud. But it's... Yeah.

49:24

But you do have to make an account just to get past

49:26

the app onboarding to let it actually pair something. I have a

49:28

Casa account. I have a Wwise account. Yep. All

49:30

that stuff sucks. It doesn't bother me. I try not to worry

49:33

about it too much. So

49:35

the thing that I found, I was

49:37

early on Zigbee and bought a whole

49:39

bunch of Cree Zigbee bulbs, which were

49:41

great. When they started clunking

49:43

out about 10 to 12 years in, I

49:47

replaced them all with Wi-Fi bulbs because

49:49

the Wi-Fi... It turns out, I

49:51

spent a fair amount of money and time building a

49:53

really robust Wi-Fi network that covers the entirety of my

49:55

house. And it

49:58

was infinitely more reliable than Zigbee. radios

50:01

in what are often

50:03

met metallic fixtures that

50:06

would block Zigbee with radio signals. And

50:09

as a result, I would have bad

50:11

radio drop off on the far side of the house

50:13

and like light bulbs would just stop working. So once

50:17

I switched to Wi-Fi, I haven't had that problem. Yeah,

50:19

that's fair. I mean, I guess your average house is

50:21

just inherently going to have way better Wi-Fi coverage. Then

50:23

it's not like you're going to put multiple Zigbee radios

50:25

all over the house, right? Although, or it is a

50:27

mesh network. So I guess... I mean, theoretically, each of

50:29

those bulbs should have been a note on the mesh.

50:31

In reality, there's

50:33

a limited number of hops you can do with

50:36

Zigbee. Zigbee is, I think, better than Z-Wave. Z-Wave

50:38

is like four hops or something ridiculous. But

50:41

in practical terms, when

50:44

somebody would walk across or sit in a different place

50:46

in the house, the light at the

50:48

far corner of my daughter's bedroom, which was as

50:50

far from the Zigbee radios you would get, would

50:52

just stop responding. And it happened

50:55

often enough. And then because of

50:57

the age of those bulbs probably, when it

50:59

will stop responding for a lost signal in

51:01

a frequent enough period of

51:05

time, it would eventually need a reset to come

51:07

back on. And I got tired of

51:09

doing the leave it on for a second,

51:11

leave it off for two seconds, leave it on for a second, leave

51:13

it off for two seconds, leave it on for a second, leave it

51:15

off for two seconds, thing five times

51:17

to reset the bulb. So

51:20

I just replaced them all with Wwise bulbs. Yeah, that makes

51:22

sense. All of that is good to hear. I did

51:25

talk to some people on the Discord and the Home

51:27

Automation channel, and there are definitely some fans of Zigbee

51:29

in there. I think Zigbee is generally

51:31

pretty good. I don't know, man. Maybe

51:34

I should just stick with Wi-Fi stuff at this point.

51:36

Here's the thing is, if I had a bunch, if

51:38

you have, if you're in a

51:40

situation where you can put Zigbee switches in

51:42

your wall, but serve as mesh nodes, as

51:45

mesh routers, I think it's pretty

51:47

solid. The wiring in my

51:50

house is old. So all of our wires are

51:52

two pole wires. This is not a neutral wire.

51:54

So that means I couldn't run

51:56

any modern switches basically in this

51:58

house. So, there's

52:01

a Luchron Cassetta makes some

52:03

two wire switches. They

52:06

are not Zigbee. There were

52:08

some GE Z-Wave switches that were

52:11

two pole wires that were a little

52:13

scary. They don't make those

52:15

anymore. They're really hard to find. They got really expensive

52:17

after they stopped making them. That's

52:20

pretty much it. So, the option

52:22

for Zigbee mesh nodes was big

52:24

giant wall warts that dangle out of the

52:27

wall to plug appliances or other

52:29

things in. And I ended up just

52:31

putting a couple of those in like disused plugs in

52:33

corners of the house so that

52:35

I would get a solid enough network so that

52:37

my daughter's light would turn off at bedtime. Literally

52:39

just using them as repeaters. You don't even have

52:41

anything in them? Straight up just repeaters,

52:43

yeah. So, I was just burning

52:45

electricity to make the radio better. And

52:48

like I said, the Wi-Fi network's real good. So... Yeah.

52:51

Do you have any concern about... I don't know how...

52:53

Well, you can speak to this. If you reach a

52:56

certain critical mass of internet of shit, devices on your

52:58

Wi-Fi, like at some point your Wi-Fi network is just...

53:00

The Wi-Fi radio, I should say, is fairly crowded.

53:03

Yeah. The bulbs are low traffic enough that I

53:05

don't really care. That's fair. Like I can open

53:08

up my UniFi console and tell you how much

53:10

traffic the average bulb

53:13

does. But it wasn't... When

53:15

I looked, it was not very much. It's probably not

53:17

a lot. I mean, there's got to be some kind

53:20

of like fairly regular keep alive kind of signal

53:22

going back and forth though, right? I think it's

53:24

like... I think it's like... I don't

53:27

think it was very many packets. Hold on. Probably

53:29

not. Maybe I'm overthinking that aspect of it. Or

53:31

maybe... I mean, that was a

53:33

concern that was raised on the Discord, was not cluttering

53:35

up your Wi-Fi networks with this stuff. So,

53:37

one problem I will tell you is I'm

53:39

getting close to the number of... I'm going

53:42

to have to move into a second subnet

53:44

before too, too long. Interesting. Wow. I

53:47

mean... Because I'm going to be more than 200... Well... What's

53:50

the size of your address range? I

53:52

mean, there's... Talking of what? 8-bit subnet

53:54

mask? Yes. What is that?

53:57

255 addresses? Yeah, but I have some... I

54:00

fixed IPs reserved at the front for reasons

54:02

that I don't remember. I

54:04

don't remember what they are now. So I'm afraid

54:06

to mess with them. Maybe you can just release

54:08

them and see what happens. Nothing breaks. You're fine.

54:10

Also have, uh, I

54:12

also have, okay. So here's a wise bulb. I can

54:14

tell you how much data it uses now. Um, it

54:18

has in the last 16 hours

54:22

and one minute, it's done. I'm trying

54:26

to find, oh, uh, a

54:28

hundred and 1250 packets for 101 kilobytes down and 4,490 packets for

54:31

270 kilobytes

54:36

up. That's not a lot of data. I

54:38

mean, I wonder, I wonder if it's more of the

54:40

interval that it's actually touching the radio rather than the

54:42

amount of data that it's sending that matters there, but

54:44

either way that doesn't seem like much. Yeah, it's, it's,

54:46

it's not much. The bigger problem is the congestion on

54:48

the, on the, um, on the, um, on

54:51

the subnet. So yeah, you can put it, you

54:53

can put all this stuff in a separate VLAN

54:55

if you wanted. I mean, I, again, like we

54:57

mentioned at the top, he probably should do that

54:59

anyway. I've been meaning to do that for ages

55:02

and just haven't done the homework. So I generally

55:04

just buy stuff from reputable places. I don't buy

55:06

a bunch of like sketchy Teemu

55:08

or Ali express wifi devices,

55:11

things devices. Um, but

55:14

yeah, I mean, there, there is a lot

55:16

of this stuff has firmware that's released and

55:18

then is never looked at

55:20

again and security vulnerabilities aren't patched or

55:22

whatever. So it is a, it

55:25

is a concern. Yes. Um, everything I've got

55:27

is it's all I devices, Belkin and TV

55:29

link, except for I've got one kind of

55:31

no name. Uh, it

55:33

is a home. Well, it's home kid enabled. It

55:36

isn't I Haper. I think it's

55:38

how I, I already shipped that it's probably HAPER, which

55:41

is now defunct. Like you can't even find anything about

55:43

that company. I've had it for like five years. It's

55:45

like kind of a, a no name light strip led light

55:47

strip, but it is home kid enabled. Unless

55:50

they found some way to spoof the home kid

55:52

or required home kid hardware. I

55:54

assume it is legit enough that it's probably fine.

55:56

Um, but you're, yeah, you're right.

55:58

I think most of the stuff I have. is pretty reputable as

56:01

well. I have thought about

56:03

I have thought about replacing that light strip with the, you

56:05

know, you can just buy the kind of light strip

56:07

by the foot LED strips by the foot. I love

56:10

those and cut those and get like the little ESP

56:12

32 controllers. Uh huh. Kind of I

56:14

thought I have thought about getting away into that stuff.

56:16

But at any rate, we just had

56:18

an earthquake. Whoa, I didn't feel

56:20

anything. Live earthquake reacts. What

56:23

is your what is your go to? What's your

56:25

go to geological source? Usually go to earthquake. I

56:28

go to USGS. First I post on blue sky

56:30

was there just an earthquake. That

56:32

was my method for years was run to Twitter and see

56:34

if everybody's going to earthquake. Like I

56:36

want my last thing, my last

56:39

thing that happened to be me asking if there

56:41

was an earthquake. Um, I

56:43

just, it sounded like a bus driving by and there was

56:45

a little bit of a rumble, but

56:48

I didn't feel a whole lot. I

56:50

could have gone. It's been a dust bus driving

56:53

by you use GS. Yes.

56:55

Where is San Juan Batista? That's pretty far

56:57

south. It's like by happening Bay. Uh, closer

57:00

to me than you though. Oh yeah, it is. Yeah,

57:02

that is down past Santa Cruz. 7 14 UTC. Oh,

57:07

I didn't, I didn't look at the time.

57:09

Oh, it's 10 minutes ago. No, that's not

57:11

it. Okay. Well, who knows? We're

57:14

still in the window for it to be on though.

57:16

It wouldn't, it wouldn't have hit. Yeah. It usually takes

57:18

a minute or two. Stay tuned as earthquake watch continue.

57:22

Um, what were we talking about? Uh, those

57:25

little light strips, the little, there's, there's a

57:27

whole scene around like open source firmware for

57:29

those little ESP controllers. There's so much fun

57:31

stuff you can, like if I next, next,

57:33

when I move into the next house, uh,

57:36

I'm going to run those all

57:38

under the edge of the kitchen cabinets. Yes. Cause

57:40

I want more lighting on my old and my

57:42

eyes are bad and I want lighting there. Great.

57:44

Yeah. To be able to, especially if you set

57:47

it up on like motion sensors or even if

57:49

it was just on your phone or standard stuff,

57:51

but like having like nice out of the way

57:53

under lighting where you're not actually staring at the

57:56

bulb, but you still get the good kind of ambient

57:58

bounce light and off under. And

58:00

stuff have you seen have you seen the new hotness

58:02

on the internet of shit stuff? No

58:05

presence sensors that use Wi-Fi

58:07

radios signals as radar

58:11

So they can tell like where you

58:13

are in the house where you are in the room

58:15

Oh, wow, whether you're like laying on the sofa whether

58:17

you're sitting up whether you're awake or asleep. Oh It's

58:21

a little creepy Definitely

58:23

put that on its own VLAN. Well,

58:25

yeah, cuz it just needs ambient Wi-Fi It

58:27

doesn't it doesn't need it's not actually using

58:30

data. It's just using the radar to radio

58:33

as radar It's basically

58:35

replacing motion sensors. There's a little like puck things

58:37

you put in the ceiling. That's kind of cool

58:40

It's honestly it's the thing I've always

58:42

wanted because they're more sensitive and they're like

58:44

sensitive enough to detect moving a mouse or

58:47

something Because often I'll be in my

58:49

office and the motion sensor isn't sensitive enough to detect

58:51

that so it just turns off the lights in Here

58:53

after a while and I would I'm thinking I'm gonna

58:55

put some in the in the in the house I've

58:59

never really been big on setting up automations against motion

59:01

sensing because I just feel like there are way too

59:03

many edge cases where I Wouldn't want the thing. It's

59:05

not great Like every single time you open

59:08

a door having a light come on like I don't think I want

59:10

that actually Well, so I have I

59:12

have a door sensor on our back door every time you

59:15

go out the back door and it's after dark The back

59:17

porch light turns on which is awesome Physical

59:19

switch right next to there. So if I don't

59:22

want that happen, you just flip the switch off.

59:24

Okay, you go out Yeah, that's good. The other

59:26

the other one was when the kiddo was young

59:29

having Having a

59:31

motion sensor and are the master bedroom where we take her out

59:33

of the bath To dry her off and

59:35

get her dressed for bed Was incredibly useful

59:37

because you have a baby and a bunch of shit

59:40

in your hands And you just walk in and the

59:42

light turns on that was that was really nice. Yeah,

59:44

there are these cases But that's what I got. Yeah

59:47

home automation. It's yeah still

59:50

In progress. I so here's the

59:52

thing We're at

59:54

the end of basically the first year or

59:56

18 months that the stuff is shipping. Yeah.

59:58

Yeah, I should I should say the right

1:00:00

up from 2B on the Verge and also

1:00:02

the Kevin Purdy on Ars Technica. I read

1:00:04

some stuff from him. Like both of them

1:00:07

conclude by saying, yes, this stuff is

1:00:09

all a giant mess, but like, we're still hopeful that this

1:00:11

is going to be the standard of the

1:00:13

future in X number of

1:00:15

years. The thing I will

1:00:17

say is it took a good 10 years before

1:00:21

Z-Wave was usable at all. Like

1:00:24

it was, it launched, it was terrible when it was

1:00:26

new. ZigBee took a similar

1:00:28

length of time. These

1:00:31

are, the interoperability adds

1:00:33

a level of complexity that goes far

1:00:35

beyond what ZigBee and Z-Wave were able

1:00:37

to do. I think like

1:00:40

the initial bug, that there are bugs

1:00:42

with complicated things like the

1:00:44

mesh, the devices

1:00:47

connected to the mesh spreading out from

1:00:49

one vendor to another vendor's networks

1:00:51

and vice versa. It doesn't surprise me.

1:00:54

I think it's really, really unfortunate that

1:00:57

the hubs, that the default for every

1:00:59

single edge

1:01:02

router isn't, hey,

1:01:06

is there a thread network here that I need to connect to?

1:01:09

Maybe there is, and then connect to that rather

1:01:11

than just setting up their own stake in the

1:01:14

ground. Yeah, that's terrible. Like that

1:01:16

is a dopey decision that should be rectified.

1:01:18

Yes. I will say though,

1:01:20

the danger of all these, even if these

1:01:22

problems are understandable at this early date, the

1:01:24

danger is creating this kind of retroactive chicken

1:01:26

and egg situation where because it's a mess

1:01:28

early on, nobody adopts it, nobody buys in,

1:01:30

and the manufacturers get scared and they all

1:01:32

back off from it. Not worried about that

1:01:34

at all. No. Nope.

1:01:37

They've sold enough stuff already, we're fine. People are going

1:01:40

to be, yeah, because here's the thing. It's

1:01:43

in the manufacturer's interest for this to

1:01:45

work. Because then, because if

1:01:47

it doesn't, if

1:01:50

there's competition and there's room for other

1:01:52

devices on your networks, then

1:01:54

there's opportunity for Apple to eat

1:01:56

and to Google and Samsung Share

1:01:58

and Google and... Samsung to eat into

1:02:01

Apple's share. If this doesn't

1:02:03

work, then that opportunity goes away and

1:02:05

there's just gonna be two silos forever

1:02:07

and ever. And there's never an

1:02:09

opportunity for Google to capture iPhone users

1:02:12

and Apple to capture Google users and

1:02:14

the silos get deeper and deeper. So

1:02:17

they're gonna continue pushing it and they're right to.

1:02:19

It's gonna take a while. It's gonna suck for

1:02:21

a little bit. It'll be fine eventually. Read reviews.

1:02:23

Brenton Boucher, Jr.: Yeah. So it just leaves you

1:02:25

in a weird limbo right now if you're looking

1:02:28

for new stuff. I'm not sure what to get. I

1:02:31

will say is a much smaller

1:02:33

sample size than the people that we talked

1:02:35

about who've read about this have. But with

1:02:37

the handful of devices I've used, the home assistant

1:02:39

implementation has been pretty good and

1:02:41

it just works with the other

1:02:43

stuff automatically. So your mileage may vary,

1:02:46

I guess. Brenton Boucher, Jr.: That's promising.

1:02:49

that's as good a place as any, I think, to wrap it up

1:02:51

this week. Please let us know what you think about the twofer. If

1:02:55

you do, we will do these more often. If you like these, we'll

1:02:57

do it more often. I think it's nice to be able to talk

1:02:59

about things that maybe couldn't sustain a

1:03:01

whole episode on their own. Brenton Boucher, Jr.: Yeah, I

1:03:03

agree. be back next week with

1:03:06

more of Bren Will Made

1:03:08

a TechPod. As always, this podcast is

1:03:10

brought to you by the listeners. You. Brenton Boucher,

1:03:12

Jr.: It's true. Thank you,

1:03:14

listeners. Brenton Boucher, Jr.: You did this. is

1:03:17

your fault. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. And it's

1:03:19

especially true of our patrons. So

1:03:21

we don't take ads. We don't take ads. The

1:03:23

only way we make money on the show

1:03:25

is by the generous contributions of almost

1:03:28

3,000 patrons. So thank you

1:03:31

so much, patrons. And as

1:03:33

always, if you'd like to find out how

1:03:35

to support the show, you can go to

1:03:37

patreon.com/tech pod, where for five bucks a month,

1:03:39

you get access to the fabulous TechPod discord,

1:03:41

which is full of beautiful nerds, even though

1:03:44

they're advocating the use of Z-Wave, which I

1:03:46

strongly disagree with. To be fair, I

1:03:48

think it was like one person who was in on

1:03:50

Z-Wave. Most everybody was into Zigbee.

1:03:53

I'm not going to pick on the Zigbee or the Z-Wave people, but I'm

1:03:55

just going to say, like we

1:03:57

sometimes disagree, but I still love each and

1:03:59

every person. there. And

1:04:02

for, like I said, five bucks a month, you get

1:04:04

access to that. You get the patron exclusive episode where

1:04:06

we've been threatening to talk about hell divers, but haven't

1:04:08

yet. And and oh,

1:04:10

my God, the fucking this flying enemy thing

1:04:12

is so amazing. I haven't seen the flying

1:04:14

enemies yet. I haven't seen the enemies either.

1:04:16

But the way they are handling it is

1:04:18

you mean the the the fact that we're

1:04:21

forcing the bugs to evolve by killing them

1:04:23

more efficiently with the gas? Specifically, it's this

1:04:25

weird, plausible deniability stealth update thing they're doing,

1:04:27

or they snuck them into the game without

1:04:29

telling anybody. And then when people started finding

1:04:31

them and it seems like they're finding them

1:04:33

sporadically, like the spawn rate is quite low.

1:04:36

And then the developers are basically denying that they're in the

1:04:38

game. I don't know how

1:04:40

I feel about the developers gaslighting players. I

1:04:42

think it's I mean, considering it fits

1:04:44

with the brand, it fits with the game.

1:04:46

Considering the political milieu that this game is

1:04:48

lampooning, I think I

1:04:51

think propaganda that turns truth on

1:04:53

its head probably makes perfect sense.

1:04:55

Did you see the propaganda on

1:04:57

YouTube where somebody who's data miners

1:05:00

pulled an upcoming video that explained

1:05:02

spoilers, I guess, for Helldivers two, if you care

1:05:04

to come back in 45 seconds. The

1:05:07

bugs, the gassing that we're

1:05:09

doing of the bugs right now is causing

1:05:12

them to evolve. So we're going

1:05:14

to get new varieties of bugs that are

1:05:16

super bugs because of the gassing that's happening

1:05:18

across all the planets. It

1:05:20

is backfired. They seem like they

1:05:23

went into this game with some ideas. They

1:05:25

said this game is most

1:05:27

ideas per per gigabyte.

1:05:30

I've seen in a video game in a

1:05:32

long time. Yeah, it's pretty exciting. Anyway,

1:05:35

thanks to all of our patrons. You can

1:05:37

go to patreon.com/check pod. Like I

1:05:39

said, five bucks a month. We appreciate everyone's support.

1:05:41

But we especially appreciate our executive producers, your patrons,

1:05:44

including Paddle Creek Games, make us fracture, which

1:05:46

is out now. You should check it out.

1:05:49

I mean, it's pretty good. Oh, cool. Andrew

1:05:51

Slosky, Jordan Lippitt, tech buddy crimes

1:05:53

dot com. That's a URL now.

1:05:57

Just wedge Joel Krauska, Twinkle Twinkie David

1:05:59

Allen. James Kamek, and Pantheon,

1:06:01

makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D

1:06:04

printer. I'm sorry, can you repeat that

1:06:06

URL again? Tech.buddycrimes.com. Okay.

1:06:09

That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Did you

1:06:11

go to it? Maybe. I'm

1:06:13

going now. That'll do it for us this

1:06:15

week. Thanks, everybody, for your support, and

1:06:17

we will see you all next week.