Tech That Slipped Through Our Fingers
on this week's episode we're going to be discussing amazing Technologies of old that slipped right through our fingers welcome to destination Linux where we discuss the latest news Hot Topics gaming mobile and all things open source in Linux my name is Ryan I'm Jill and I'm Michael we're also going to be covering new malware to watch out for on your Android devices and that's not all we've got even more canonical is going distalis Plus Linux gaming software Spotlight and more let's get the show on the road toward destination [Applause] Linux before we get in the community feedback there was a challenge laid out and the challenge was Michael that you like to get all of the credit for making stuff and then it never ends up on the show in the time that you say it will so you promised us a new Jill shirt that was going to drop by this episode last episode when when did I promise this this is last episode you got to go back and listen it's in the episode I mean I was in that episode are you sure that this happened are you just making up it it did I I think Michael needs to start using rat poison for a while yeah so there's supposed to be a shirt in the store that people can go by right now and if not Michael two weeks you agreed to that is the challenge that I did technically I remember now I you're right I did agree to that all right so so go to tux.com store and check out the new shirt no no let me go see let me go see is it there it is there I don't believe cool a it is there I need to go look too oh you haven't looked you don't trust Michael Jill don't ever trust his word for oh my gosh it's there oh wow I guess there's no there's no rat poison in your future right now Michel not yet yes I'm shirt looks uh very cool I like the different text I love the floppy disc on it and everybody oh that's wonderful Michael thank you very much we'll po a vis of it watching the video so if you're a huge fan of Jill then you need to go get uh I'm unhackable shirt and then when you go and meet Jill for the first time you can wear some Jill yeah a and that might get you some extra extra um you know ability to talk to Jill more time you get an extra minute to talk to Jill if you have one of her shirts and if you have a floppy with you you get an extra three minutes three minutes yeah good job Michael very very proud of you thank thank you it's amazing that rat poison was that much of a threat to you that you actually got this done in time so I was actually um cut it close honestly I did it today so well it's still done so we count you are free from rat poison for now until the next dare comes I I can't wait till I challenge you for red poison oh that would actually be worse for me I like Michael that you you chose a teal floppy disc because my favorites in my collection are teal in fact I think I had shown some on the show during a treasure hunt there you go I wish I remembered that and did it all shuta he did he told me that he specifically that reason I did that on purpose I remember the episode that exactly that I remember the number I can't tell you right now because um you should go find it yourself so yeah exactly it's it's it's a challenge for the audience all right speaking of our audience otherwise they have to use rap poison yeah you all should use rap poison now Michael won his part so now everyone in the audience has to use rap poison uh our audience uh has posted on our discourse forum and you should go check C our discourse Forum if you have it because lots of people community uh talking there about liny stuff and all the new episodes and things when they drop you get notified on the discourse Forum as well right you can subscribe on the Forum there you go it's in response to episode number 374 and it's from Vogal sorer I don't know how to say that name so you know who you are uh and they go on to say while it's true that it's generally harder to to catch a virus on Linux by negligently clicking on downloaded files there are still ways for attackers to Target a users negligence a common example is crl and gives an example.com with a my malicious file. sh bash piping download shell files into bash is the Linux developer equivalent to clicking on a download.exe on Windows don't do this download the file first onto your disk and
have a look into compare check sums and execute it when you're sure that it looks fine another common attack surface are unregulated package repositories such as npm or pip and everyone uses python probably familiar with Pip you get a lot of cool packages using pip here a typo or a wrong name could result in installing a virus I myself had installed the wrong packages several times because I remembered the package name wrongly or because it wasn't available in Pi Pi pypi luckily those wrong packages weren't malicious sure on Linux you still have the user admin Separation by default which introduces basic security but this won't stop all malicious code ransomware doesn't need admin privileges to encrypt your precious files so that is a very good point yeah excellent so a lot of this all all these are great points so like we mentioned how the the packages won't like have executable pay permissions automatically so you don't have to worry about downloading a file and that but that's also true there other ways to do it and the worst thing about the curl version is that it would work you know seamlessly without hardly any impact because a lot of people are actually pushing stuff through this method as in like the general way to install some applications is using a curl shell script with the bash piping and then uh people are getting used to that as a normal way not knowing that that is also a way to easily get infected by these kinds of like drive by infection sort of stuff so that's a very good point but I think my favorite part about this is the last piece talking about ransomware because technically these you know pseudo Privileges and that sort of stuff escalating privileges only applies to the system itself your actual data their home files and all your home folder stuff is not protected by that at all so if something was installed on your system or you got like a flat pack or an app image that were uh basically Ransom were trying to encrypt your files they would have access to that so that's a another great Point yeah really uh everybody needs to take the time these days to become far more educated in these hacks and understanding how they're um you know how they undertake your how they overtake your system I should say and how um these different types of methods of whether it's a social hack where people are calling your number or it's a hack of people trying to get you to download something or it's a fishing attempt where they're trying to get you um to click on a link and an email those type of things or give up certain information like it's really important just because you're on Linux and it is more secure I think the ultimate point is you still have to utilize um caution when you're dealing with any of these files that you're getting from the Internet or any of these commands that are meant to pull files from the internet and so you know it's interesting because last week I talked about the whole Microsoft thing and how I noticed this pattern where everybody's account was getting hacked well today I was listening to some cyber security podcast and the guy is talking about a story and says it's so interesting because my Microsoft account just got hacked in the podcast so uh it's like something is really prevalently going on there for instance in Outlook and then I've noticed also uh while we're sitting at the dinner table today before we uh sat down to do the show here um we started getting a phone call my son on his phone and it was scam likely so the great thing is there's some filtering from a lot of telecoms kind of letting you know if they've encountered this phone number and it's likely a scam thing well my son was like enjoying answering them and then and then just like they're like hey is so and so there and they had the name of somebody in the family which you know so their information is getting better right and they said we're from the um verification company and he's like oh that sound my son is 11 by the way he goes oh that sounds so legit the verification company huh like and he was just playing with him and me and my wife just trying to like not die laughing aw the the interesting thing was they did have names of people in the family right so information is getting out there's massive leaks um one of the biggest leaks ever this week uh has been hitting the boards in the news uh with people's information I think it's over 30 billion record 30 billion yeah I was reading about that one yeah so it's just like they're going to get so sophisticated they're going to be calling you with information that's very specific hey you bank with this company I'm from this Bank uh you know you you purchased recently from Amazon or they're going to have information it's going to make them sound super legit so the best thing to do is be very very cautious especially if these companies are calling you and most importantly uh if you want to get some information from them don't give them any information then call that company back looking up their actual phone number that way and and also like most of the time the the best tactic is like to just first of all uh what you're saying is true you should be definitely paying attention to what is being uh asked of you and that sort of thing but also most banks and things like that put they put in their notifications like emails and stuff we will never ask you for your information we will never call you we will all these sorts of things so if they are calling you and asking for anything thing like they are absolutely not real and most of the time if they are real they will tell you that they're calling you for this reason and then will tell you to uh call them back uh you know or call the main com main number like just because they know that this is a thing that is done and the third option is to uh just do what Jill does and use floppy discs there you go get a t-shirt that they'll never be able to hack you yeah absolutely all right Jill do you have any advice get any of these type of calls yes in fact I was going to mention about the um the SMS texts with the postal services that has been huge I'm getting what hit by UPS USPS and you know they're all like verification sites and we missed you missed your package or yeah exactly and that's I mean a a what's horrible about all all these uh Bad actors is that it it's targeting the elderly and I've noticed I've been getting more now that I'm considered a senior citizen you know I don't think 25 is a senior citizen Jill but whatever agree thank you we'll go with it but yeah it's been like oh my gosh when I what my last birthday I noticed I'm like oh these things are starting to come you know it's an interesting point that you make though these things do often Target the elderly and they and it makes it just that much more horrible these stories that you hear and uh people lose their entire life savings and things over these type of scams all the time whether it's the IRS claiming you allow money and you have to get a gift card which to us when we're when we talk about this stuff a lot and people listen to shows like this you're educated so if somebody ask you go get a gift card to send the IRS you're like that's ridiculous but to other people they don't hear this stuff they don't know it so it's a really good idea to talk to your family members your older parents uh grandmas grandpas that type of stuff and mention this stuff and you can mention it in a casual way of just explaining hey there's a scam I heard about you know so you're not making him feel dumb or stupid but you're just kind of explaining that these things are getting so sophisticated nowadays uh the level of attack and that's thanks to all of these companies and their fantastic amount of responsibility they take with our personal data um because without them none of these hackers would have so much it's just it's so it's so nice that they care so much yeah and speaking of caring so much I as we're doing the show you might have heard a beep in my recording because I got another email that says spam you stand in as a beneficiary and you can hi I'm a private Banker with the blah blah blah blah blah BL blah and you know that's just fun perfect timing perfect yes oh yeah and as for the npm and the and the PIP that has been a huge Tax Service like the last few years I've been a lot of my developer friends are saying yeah it's been a real big problem and also the name space is not is not reliable that's that's what's annoying is that it sometimes they even have some some of these kinds of thing have have a name space that is just like npm security yeah and it's like and people just assume that that's like an official thing and it's you know just some random thing and and there's also some things that are npm and like Pi pie and and pip and stuff like that that are that are actually like really good but then dep ated and archived and people are still using it even though they're not being touched in like a year or two so these marketplaces are you know you have to be even more Vigilant to those yeah yeah and you also got to be careful with the snaps and the cryptocurrency applications which we have discussed here on the show I mean that's true with every format for everything you know exactly not just snaps flatbacks had the same kind of thing and also like some repos get it so if it's a User submitted repo like for example the a even where those are not Universal formats but that's still possible or de so if it's used or submitted there can be bad actors who are also users and therefore can submit bad Stu no way that the dumb bad actor people as dumb as they are would be smart enough to install Arch you know I mean possible you know you would think that except that it's already happened you know darn it so we love you sending in your comments whether you're leaving it on our forums whether you're talking to us in Discord or sending us emails uh you can do that by going to destination linux. netc comments or you can go to destination linux. netforum and join either one of those and send in your comments and we may read it on the show so last week we talked about tech that slipped through our fingers and when we started talking about it I was like no I want to do a whole main topic on that because to me there there are moments in my life where I saw Tech as a kid uh even as an adult that I couldn't afford and really dreamed and wanted to get a hold of it and thought what it would be like to hold that Tech in my hands and I was very fortunate kid because my dad had a computer store so a lot of the computer stuff that people dream about I had access to although the downside of having your dad be in a computer store is your computer was always the potential for parts if we didn't have them in at the store you never knew your computer would video card gone when a bumer yeah um but you know there there's a couple of items and some of this stuff is irrelevant small things that you think about as a kid like gaming systems and stuff and the first one that came to my mind when I thought about this was the Neo Geo that's a fantastic one yeah yes yeah back in 1990 I remember walking through the mall we had these things called malls back then and the malls had arcades in them it was really cool you go in there your parents would drop you off and you just sit there and play arcades your parents would literally leave you in an arcade with a bunch of other kids and go shopping for like hours and it was okay I know seems like medieval times at this point but there was also this thing called was it okay or just people were just kind of I don't know man like we were fine I'm here I mean I had the same experience I was in arcades all the time as a kid yeah were just all paranoid with the 24-hour news I don't know or maybe just people are crazier but there was also little EB Games and EB Games had these front-facing windows and with those windows they would put their hot items that they were selling and I remember the first time seeing the Neo Geo there and I'm like oh man that looks so cool so I remember going into that store and walking up to the guy and asking him how much is that game console I knew nothing about it because we didn't have internet and YouTube and all this stuff I just saw this advertis walked by it walked in and it was like $679 and back then like that money was like huge like celebrities had that kind of money maybe but nobody as a kid that I knew had $679 nine-year-old me certainly not to spend on a console a gaming console like that and it was so expensive that people just like didn't understand how what they thought they were doing like if if you compared it to any other console it was at least double and sometimes like triple like it it was ridiculously priced and but it's funny because uh I also was like when I when I saw Neo Geo on Ryan's list I was like oh I can't do it so I'm just gonna pick you back off this one because the Neo Geo was a really cool one that I was looking forward to talking about because it's such a an for those who don't know Neo Geo is a console that was actually arcade games as a console so you could take you could actually take the uh like not necessarily cartridge but you could take the the the data from an arcade machine and play it on a Neo Geo because they were it was made to do that so the quality was so much better than like regular cons system 24 bits was amazing in the super early 90s like it was a very impressive thing Unfortunately they priced themselves out of the market and no one could do that and also maybe they had to maybe it was it was such a outlandish idea that they couldn't afford not to have at that price who knows but what we do know is that it did not work what's thing is they did seem to sell well because I'm looking at the numbers here and it says neoo CD sold 980,000 units combined worldwide as of March 1997 1 million Neo Geo MBS units had been shipped as of April 1997 so like that's seems like pretty good numbers to me well that's also different because it's Neo neoo CD not Neo like the a version was the arcade style right and I think that's like they I think they pivoted into the CD version yeah but either way it was out of my little grubby hands capabilities to get this thing and they even tortured you because they had a little television and these back then TVs were pretty thick they had a little television in the window and it was playing the samples of the games like was fighting game was it fatal Fury or something like that oh yeah they would have and you were looking at these Graphics like this is like a movie me of course now I look at him I'm like it's so ridiculous looking it's terrible the games are on phones are better looking now yeah but oh Spazzy mentioned king of the monsters I remember that one specific king of the monsters was the jam yeah thought man did you guys ever get a hold of the Neo Geo Pockets because I I did get one of those later I didn't even know that existed yeah it had one of the best color color screens but I couldn't see it so because my my vision was problematic so a couple years ago you know my wife's heard this story I cry about it constantly and a couple years ago my wife bought me a little mini arcade machine that had a bunch of NE Geo games loaded on it and you could play uh some of those but they weren't quite as fun as I would have had back in 1990 you know kind of lost a lot there I just looked it up king of the monsters I I didn't know what it was called but that I I remembered it's like the Godzilla written like knockoff thing it was such a cool looking game I wanted to play it so much you could play it in the arcade I'm pretty sure because I'm I'm I'm fairly sure games I think you could play in the arcade but you know wasn't the same as having one of this yeah you could have one at your house that's imagine the bragging rights to your friends if you could have had them over and be like oh you want to play on my Neo Geo the 24-bit system inste your little Nintendo 8 bit 16 bit thing you know you think you you think your NES is cool yeah I'll show you what's cool got Neo Geo yeah the Neo Geo pocket was really cool also I was given it given it uh to me by my aunt and I remember my parents saying well Jill can't see a screen that small so it was a very expensive gift and I still have it but I was about to ask if you still had it yeah of course you do Shield yeah now one of my favorite pieces of tech that I have from a kid was when I first got my first IBM blue Lightning processor and I have it in a case back there little IBM blue Lightning so you know there are some things I kept as a kid that were really special to me that was like when I had the Ivy and blue Lightning all my friends with computers were like I want to come to your house and see this thing it's 75 megahertz man yeah actually there there's also so I had the same thing but there was there was one thing that I I was able to get as a kid and I still kind of cherish it so for those who are watching the video version you sometimes can see it depending on the setting of The Views and the camera but I'll just step away for the side and you'll see my uh Sega Dreamcast right there oh yes there it is yeah so I had I got that when I was a kid and it was awesome like and also was not very it was only like around for a year or two maybe they they it it was ended very quickly that was the end of Sega after the Dreamcast actually yeah it was and it was it was so sad it was so sad because the Dreamcast was actually very cool and was the first thing to have it was the first console to have online play and all that stuff I mean it was dialup so it wasn't great online play but you still could do it it's interesting you say that because everyone I know that had a Dreamcast absolutely loved it the problem is that list of people I knew that actually had one was very small somehow it just was not marketed well because the people who had one thought it was the greatest thing ever but I loved it and it was it was also um I think it wasn't marketed well but also they didn't give it enough like they they they marketed in a way that wasn't ready so like they were marketing for online play and it wasn't really Avail like you could technically do it but it's the same it's it's the N late late 90s early 2000s you don't have internet that is capable there are people who were saying that sometimes internet is not capable now and back then it's like not a chance so they promoted it that way what they should have done is promoted just the quality of the games were better the graphics were better like like the responsiveness was better like there were so many cool things uh and also another thing is like the controllers were really weird yeah they were different they had like little screens you could add into them and stuff but Michael what's some tech that SLI through your fingers that you couldn't get okay so um the first one I want to talk about is a Palm Pilot Blackberry now this was like I was an adult technically but I I was like 19 so I don't know like you know depending on your opinion of what an adult is this was a time period where um phones were already like kind like they're already popular and that sort of stuff mobile phones were already popular and palm pilots and blackberries were actually kind of expensive and by the time I could afford to buy one they were uh obsolete by smartphones and the iPhone and stuff like that so I never really got a chance to use a Palm Pilot or a Blackberry but I did get a chance to try the Palm Prix which was the web OS phone that still had the physical keyboard and I really like the physical keyboard I still like the physical aspects so I wish I could have actually used a Blackberry or a Palm Pilot during the time where they were usable um but you know it is what it is I remember watching our Executives at the company I was quite Young when I started in Corporate America I was 17 I remember them having Palm pilots and blackberries and thinking man they're smart they must be really smart they got all these schedules and things they're figuring out on their calendar on their you they look so fancy you know look at those those phones got keyboards they got keyboard boards and they're over there doing fancy emails and stuff right on their phone and I was like man one day I'm going to be an executive and have that and uh well that didn't happen but anyways the the point is that's some really cool Tech that I also remember envying as well but I eventually did get a Blackberry uh not a Palm Pilot I was kind of gone by the time I had enough to get money I did get a Blackberry but it was a storm oh way later yeah so it was technically a BL BlackBerry it was like 2008 I think yeah yeah by the time I could yeah by the time I could get a Blackberry I had the money to get a Blackberry it was like why would I you know yeah so I got of the storm and I was like this is terrible so yeah and uh I I did not keep it I tried it for like a week I like no this is bad interesting well I've got a phone one too but first we got to get to Jill Jill what's some tech that slipped through your fingers back in the day well there's a cool piece of tech that I was actually drooling over that I couldn't afford when I was in college and Ryan remembers this one yeah it is called the Atari portfolio oh yeah and I was feature and it was featured in one of my favorite films of all time Terminator 2 Judgment Day and I got it back out again you know what the cool thing Jill about being an adult is is we can go buy this stuff that we missed out on exactly exactly and I've have I've made that my mission um is is to collect all the old Hardware that I loved as a kid and it's mostly of course computers and computer related but uh you covered this on a treasure hunt as well I sure did people want all the details on this you need to go find that treasure hunt but this was a special treasure hunt for me because I remember craving this as a kid as well after watching Terminator 2 yeah absolutely the thing that was special about it is the an IBM PC compatible Palm top PC released by Atari the Atari Corporation in June of 1989 and it was the world's first Palm toop computer so this is what started the the revolution yeah and in ter no idea what a palm top is oh I've never heard that before oh oh really yeah I've never heard that ter that's that's Jill's way of going really dummy she goes a Micha a hard one that's right I mean I I felt the I felt the snark from Jill you didn't have to point it out Ryan you you felt the sting that's so funny but it's funny because it's like I understand what it means it's like Palm laptop I get it but I've never heard that term oh okay all right that's very cool so in uh Terminator 2 Judgment Day the young John Connor and his mate jump on John Dirt bite and head to the mall to hack the ATM and get some cash to play at the arcade machines like we were talking about earlier those awesome arcade machines we all like to he punches in a little program and he pulls out the money and goes Easy Money Baby yeah easy money come on and it was used in two scenes in the 1991 film and so I I had to have this machine I mean it it ca it came out earlier in 1989 and I wanted it then but then when I saw it featured in Terminator 2 in uh Judgment Day I I had to have it and uh like Michael and Ryan were saying if you would like to hear all about the details and history of this Innovative machine I featured it on my Joel's treasure hunt back on destination Linux episode 296 it really is a worthy show to go back and listen to because that device is so cool um by the way Jill just like you know did you ever maybe kind of hack around an ATM with that I no guilty guilty look how she hesitated totally guilty but I get why you deny it Jill it makes sense you don't admit to that because why you deny it but I I did get um the Michael AI running on it as you can see in the Treasure Hunt if you remember that yeah Michael AI is incredible because it can run on nearly anything you know like yeah it's Michael's entire brain yeah you could check out my GitHub if you want to see Michael AI the get I'm curious which one which one is actually the like the predecessor which one predates the other is Michael AI older than chat GPT yeah I was first yeah yeah oh okay so yeah I was first out there and then chat GPT came along and tried to steal my thunder they stole my code that's the problem with open source you know you can steal your code that's 100% yeah so yeah on my treasure hunt I actually you could see it running on on the Atari portfolio Michael AI well the next piece of tech I'm going to cover proves that movies can make an impact on things that you want you know because a lot of times they do product placements in movies and stuff yes and I was a huge fan very tempted to have some kind of product was like what do you mean Ryan right like TI or something you're holding up yeah uh for me I was a huge fanatic of the Matrix films like to me the first Matrix revolutionized movies in a way that I had never seen movies before and just absolutely fell in love with the entire concept and they had released a phone after the Matrix Reloaded movie dropped which as you know the matrixes progressively kind of got worse they didn't get better unfortunately but I was still a fan after reloaded because I was like no they're going to do something amazing with the story still and there was a phone in there specifically a Samsung model SP into 70 and they would flick the top of this to take calls and things and it looked so cool in the film it was so cool when they would take calls and flick it up and stuff and I remember walking through a Best Buy and they had the big Matrix display in the front of the Best Buy store and they had these phones piled up and they had the Matrix box and everything and it was like the phone featured in the movie and I don't remember what it cost but at the time I knew I couldn't afford it I was working it was 2003 but I was really early in my career and I was living p check to paycheck and I remember picking up that box and looking at it and thinking about being able to own that phone and never got one but to me that was one of the coolest looking phones uh ever out there so I actually never heard about this phone I mean I saw the movie but I never heard about this phone being a real thing you could buy so I looked it up and I thought no I wouldn't have bought that it's so dope looking man the way you can just flick thing up it's it's very stylish ISC I'll say that yeah I would rock this St you know like I would totally I might just get one I me so I I can't I can't knock that at all because my my next one is also a phone that I mean technically it's another phone but but my first one was W really a phone it was a PDA so it's not the same thing whatever uh but it's the same kind of thing as yours I mean mine is a brick phone like I talked about in previous episode because of Zach Morris on Saved by the Bell no way you admit to watching Save By the Bell Dude I watched almost every episode probably I I no idea I watched almost all of them I watched them it's so embarrassing Michael but I watched them no it was so it was so good like time out okay okay there was good it was never good let's be honest it was yes it was it was good for people for for children who don't have good taste I mean that's like all children you're not gonna have like that that's why um that the baby shark thing is so popular because kids just like terrible stuff that's right it was a great after school program you know yeah yeah for little kids yes but also Michael starred watching us at 23 but no no no I I I was like six or seven but here's the best part is that it REM it it actually was one of the first shows that made me think like towards the later end of the show it made me think like how are these people in high school they look like they're 25 or 30 or something yeah yeah but anyway that that show uh introduced me to The Brick phone and I really want the brick phone like I want one now old school big giant one he had right the big the big gray one that's like a like literally the size of a brick and it has a giant antenna so I did have one of those what y so I didn't technically I didn't it didn't work I went and get I got one as like a used thing and like a garage sale and I was like I have to have this and uh yeah it didn't work at all wanted to have one and I don't know where it is now but I I wish I still had it and I but I wish they actually would make them work like if we could have but I was thinking like that modular thing so what if you could have like a front face that's a smartphone like a modern version of The Brick phone and you could change the pieces have like a replaceable battery and all these sorts of stuff I would I would 100% buy this yeah you'd walk around with a giant brick phone 100% hello Mom how are you today welcome through rest I mean not that big of a I'm talking about I'm talking about like like season two or three of the show yeah you know uh spazy said that would be one big battery for that phone and he's right you could probably get three four days maybe even a week of battery life with space you have with that phone so I like your idea though let's stop going thinner let's just make them super thick again replaceable batteries and yeah you know or do or or do the the uh Matrix thing and make them super like stylized and like elaborate his designs you know actually you know what's funny is that I was surprised that Samsung did it and not LG because LG is the ones who are like always doing crazy different types of phones yeah Samsung had that good product placement in there all right Jill what's your second okay so this is a big one literally and you know I've been collecting computers since the 1970s and I wanted one of the big irons the cray one super computer designed manufactured and marketed by cray research that was huge had a beautifully modern design and that you could walk in the center of and even sit on that Tak you a lot of space yeah wow Jill that's just that's just cray cray yeah that's just Jill don't laugh at his jokes please that was good Michael good D joke okay it was announced in 1975 uh the first CR one system was actually installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 eventually eight cray ones were sold making it one of the most successful supercomputers in history and one of my favorite movies of all time was last starf fighter which actually came out in 1984 the last star fighter was rendered on a cray x-m supercomputer which came out in 1982 at the whopping cost of $15 million well that's it I don't know why you don't have one that that Neo Geo sounds really cheap now it sounds really cheap in comparison yes and I wanted that machine so bad because the last star fighter is one of the movies that inspired me to go into a career of Animation this was huge to me uh but of course you know that was out of my budget you don't say I really thought like oh my gosh Maybe we could pull together as a community Michael and $5 million computer you know everyone donates a dollar yeah everyone donates a dollar and tells everyone they know to and then tells everyone they know and then tells everyone they know maybe we could 15 million times later million times later yeah and every man woman and child you know on the planet yeah so for me the desire actually was especially made stronger when I had the opportunity to walk inside the original and magical cray x-m supercomputer that rendered the movie the last star fighter I was I had goosebumps and I was shaking I was so excited oh my gosh I love how much you love Hardware that is so I did a research paper on the C XMP and it's rendering of the last star fighter for my animation class in college and had the this exciting opportunity because of one of my awesome professors awesome wow and you know honestly I would be happy with any cray for my collection but those two are the ones I want most for my computer hardware Museum and require like an entire room in your house in order that that that's the thing I would have to literally build another room on the house for that yeah it's it's only 5.5 tons Michael though great and moving it is another yeah thing I'll deal moving it will cost you as just as much as the price of the computer I was going to say 5.5 tons you're talking hundreds of thousand dollar in shipping cost there it reminds me of this uh this meme I saw I don't remember what it was but it was showing like uh this scene of someone in installing in the 60s or 70s a supercomputer and it was this massive thing where like 10 people were pulling it in and then someone else uh now went to that same location and held up a Raspberry Pi just right in that same spot oh yeah it's more powerful yeah more powerful than than the supercomputer like minuscule in comparison like it it was a it was a it's a fun way to look at it in the terms of like how far we've come but also absolutely like this the idea of like you know recreating that stuff was fun too so this I think that I I would love to have a supercomputer at least not even just have one just to kind of walk around one like that yeah that'd be cool yeah yeah well you know the last one on eBay sold for millions of dollars so I probably won't get one in this lifetime well here's some interesting news so that computer was a super computer back then but by comparison uh just a Google Nexus 10 or an HTC1 which older form of phones run at about one G flops and this cray 2 was capable of 1.9 G flops yeah and and iPhone 11 runs at 154.50 G flops so it was a superc computer back then but it's slow it's slow today right like it's not even equivalent to a phone so that's interesting is that amazing equivalent to a phone from 15 years ago yeah exactly pretty wild so Ryan what is your last thing that you wanted to talk about all right so the last thing I want to talk about actually is more of an adult decision I had to make not to get these things because I really wanted them when they were marketed out there and I know I'd Rock them and make them look cool is the Google Glasses uh I know privacy all that stuff was a big part of me but the hardware attic would have overcome the Privacy part of me for the Google Glasses because it was really the first time that you kind of saw something functional in an augmented reality setup when I say functional kind of the only last one too yeah like it didn't have these gigantic glasses and goggles it was you know form fitted frames and they even had Partnerships with Rayban and other companies to make you know even cooler looking frames Oakley for made frames for them and so this Frame design was really cool but when they announced these back in 2013 they released them for a limited period of time at $1,500 and there was just uh let's see 2013 um pretty sure my son uh was about to be born during this time there was just no money that was going to be going into Google glasses at that point in my life so uh it was really cool idea concept but oh yeah still is actually awesome it's amazing it's it still looks like a futuristic product yeah yeah you know it looks ridiculous but also looks like a futuristic product and um I remember when this came out I was so excited for it and then I found out that it doesn't work with people who wear glasses you get you get frames that were glasses but you actually didn't have lenses in them so I don't know eventually they maybe did that but did eventually they did create a prescription lens program for people by that time I was kind of like B like it was like a year or two later by that time I was kind of like you know I saw all the negative reviews and people talking about how the Google Glass depending on the climate if you change like drastic climates they would break and you'd have to send it off to get replaced and like oh okay so if you go from a place that's hot to a place that's cold your Google ass that you spent $1,500 on is now destroyed that's not great still this was at Google when Google was like at the peak of their engineering and there was no stopping what they could do I also think this was before they got rid the don't be don't be evil don't be evil thing yeah so this was back when Google was kind of a beloved Company still and you know the first prototype of this to give you an example was eight pounds they weighed eight pounds when they were the engineers were making the prototype for the Google Glasses and then by 2013 I feel sorry for the engineers who had to put that on their heads by 2013 which was just two years later from their 8B prototype they had these super thin glasses that look like you know the size of regular glasses you would wear on your face and so the the amount of talent still at Google but the amount of talent was allowed to be talent and work on things that were this cool and produce things this cool and you just don't see stuff from Google like that anymore I mean they just kill off the products people love and their engineering is terrible and the reputation's terrible and it just it stinks because Google has some of the most talented people in the world working for them and if you just let them alone and work on stuff you would get cool crap like this but you know the the suits had to ruin it the suits came in and ruined it and it's also kind of funny considering how many of the cool services that Google has now that started because of that you know like Gmail was started because people were just messing messing with stuff and making cool stuff or like Google wave which was really awesome and they killed H so there there's a lot of stuff that they did but it is kind of funny that the Google Glass it still has potential if they were just to make like a a new version that was like's gonna do it now exactly you know and also if they were able to make it like a make it built into a pair of glasses that looked like glasses and it didn't look like a you know it it looks kind of weird still it does yeah and if it was just a pair of glasses that they somehow projected it onto the lens itself that would be amazing and it would be like drastically does matter what they look like you just get Taylor Swift to wear them at a concert everybody will think they're cool and everyone will be wearing them you know I mean there will be some people there would be some people who buy it because of that but I don't think the people are going to look like think they're cool it's just going to be like oh because Taylor Swift Our audience is huge Taylor Swift fans I hear I mean okay fair point I guess I hear 90% of our audience are huge Taylor Swift fans they're swifties you know they're swifties yeah speaking of Swifty Spazzy in our chat uh wanted to add to Jill your your uh mention of the supercomputer saying his dad used a cray when he was at University and saying if your print job took longer than a millisecond to render they killed it for being bad code right yeah cool yeah that's pretty cool that's awesome thank you for sharing Chris he likes to be called by Swifty if you don't mind yeah Swifty all right Michael what's your last item you have so it's it's kind of funny because it also re is relevant to being an adult and um putting something on your head so kind of like accidentally being associated to yours twice somehow you want a hat no I've worn hats and I've gotten feedback from people like you should not wear hats like we actually had comments on one of our shows like the last one I time last time I wore a hat they're like you shouldn't wear a hat you don't have a head for a hat it's funny the funny thing is like I agree I don't think I look good in hats but anyway doesn't matter moving on yeah let's talk about what I actually meant and that is a VR headset I still have not tried a VR headset of any kind you still haven't tried one no not not one okay yeah so I I want to but also I don't want to enough to go get one it's a weird thing where they they are still too expensive for me to justify even though I could afford it I'm I can now I'm not a kid anymore right but still it's so expensive just to get you know like I mean think the meta Quest is the most like uh approachable as far as cost goes right it's about the same price as a console or something like that at the same time um you know I've had a lot of experience with VR headsets of various kinds and your first impression of them is always like amazing like it blows you away and then you start getting that kind of either sick feeling or you just get tired of wearing this heavy thing over your face the whole time so it quickly wears off and I say that as an adult an old boring adult but my kids absolutely and I think Wendy mentioned her kids too love the VR world and they play this game called gorilla tag that sounds the graphics first of all are ridiculous like Zeb would have hated gorilla tag okay like it's pixelated gorillas that you know you're we need to have Zeb come on and have him play that okay it's somehow the social aspect of it and then playing tag with each other is so much fun that they play it more than they play their PlayStation or anything else now so I think part of it is growing up with that kind of Technology but it always Wows me some of the stuff they have absolutely blows me away but yeah I I kind of get why you're not dropping the money for it because it's one of those things where I think as an adult you'd have it you'd play with it for a little bit and then it'd be $600 sitting there doing nothing but collecting dust exactly yeah I mean it it is something I've always wondered about it because I I do have a not great vision so like the only thing I do have is like very closeup Vision so a VR might be allow me to use it without using my glasses so that there is that that potential but at the same time just to find out is not worth getting it you know so I I wish I could get like something that's more useful than just playing a few games here and there I've seen people use it like to have this virtual desktop and that sort of stuff but then they get their their neck gets tired after a little while and it's just not practical so I wish there was like a more you know functional justification for it than just you know occasional playing games or you know that sort of thing and if that if there was that I would definitely get it but I I would like to try one at some point just to see what it's like overall but we'll someday they've opened like arcade places around where there was actually one that was here and I went to go to it and I heard about it and then I never got a chance and three months later it was gone yeah they oh I was going to say they don't seem to last very long I like the concept I've gone to a couple of them but they're I think it's hard for them to make a lot of money because first of all they charge a lot like to use the stuff and you know I don't know you know Michael uh before the pandemic and and before you guys came to the Southern California Linux Expo there was always one of the VR headsets on display so I've played with all of them and now my brother he he owns like four different ones oh my goodness and and in fact that was going to be kind of I I was thinking the irony of this is I was thinking of this for my my third item was a VR headset that would work with my vision because I want that immersion I want it but because I only see out of one eye it's a little difficult yeah and but there was one company um and sadly I haven't heard from that company in a long time but uh quite a few years ago when it was becoming very popular there was a company that was making a VR headset that was not two lenses but just a band that went around your eyes and they said it was really good for people that had visual impairment and it it just never I haven't heard anything about it since what the name of the company that's what I'm I'm trying to remember it didn't last very long Vendetta no I yeah I I know it was did you see the thumbnail for last episode you did so good with thumbnail Michel so good for those who don't know we named that episode AI powered chocolate chip in Vendetta for smartphones yeah and I actually used an AI generator to create an A V for Vendetta cookie chocolate chip cookie just to put on the thumbnail and I was I was so proud of how stupid that was I thought it was great Michael yeah it was amazing but yeah the the this company they featured it and what I can't remember it the top of my head they featured it was featured at twitchcon and several other gaming conventions I had gone to and Community can find it and we can find out what happened to that company but that makes a lot of sense Joe like you know um being able to experience that how did the band help you experience the immersion was it a band with that was just closer to your eyes or you didn't need to have two individual lenses yeah there was something about not needing I I didn't get to try it because the line for it was like five six hours so I didn't stand in the line and um I had heard from a few people who tried it and said their Vision was too bad for it but some other people said it worked pretty good so oh very cool yeah well maybe there's a future there where somebody can create an attachment to because I know in The Meta stuff it's two different lenses but I could see you could put maybe an attachment to combine them into one and maybe that would allow for that be cool I mean even if you're not getting the full 3d effect just to have you know you can you can actually you know Buy by the um the computer screens the that are just one lens that go around your and those exist and so you putting that into 3D speaking of things that uh so this week is about tech that we didn't get a chance to maybe next week or a future episode of some kind um we have talk about tech that we want to exist but doesn't oh there you oh there we go because I just thought of one as we were talking about it and I won't remember it later so uh Jord viser and we'll get back to it yeah jordy's viser there we go it reminds me of Jord could just wrote it in the show notes and then you know next week we I already have like three or four other ones like oh wow okay interesting all right well we've got to move on from this this was a lot of fun it was neat thinking back and we'd love to hear from you on some of the things that slipped through your fingers Tech that you wanted as a kid that you couldn't afford or wanted to try out in Jill's case she picked a $15 million supercomputer so I feel like you know so little basically four people on the planet can afford it oh man so um let's move on to our news topic so that is canonical is looking to make itself the premier partner for Enterprise Solutions with its latest move of going distrist you might be wondering how does that work because canonical makes auntu oh they're still going to be keeping making auntu but they're also making drist Docker images so people can be able to essentially deploy applications and services on whatever they want like basically as minimum as possible so you have just a container that all you need I forgot what it's called but it's like just enough Os or something like that and uh that's what they're doing for these they're essentially offering Docker images that are auntu free or with auntu if you want but with 12 years of security support huge and like that that's crazy and they're like Customs so you can have them build they they can build them for you and they deploy it and support it and that comes with like the auntu pro subscription and that sort of stuff and they'll be compatible with other dros they even specify multiples like rail that they're going to have support so this is a very interesting move by canonical you know there's so many devices out there that they're kind of being made by these I don't want to say no-name companies but not well-known companies small electronic manufacturing companies and things like such as uh cameras for your car um you know different cameras dash cams and stuff dash cams yeah cameras for outside your home never heard of any of those dash cam companies ever yeah you know I'm like what's the best dash cam company there's like some random gibberish thing zyo Bob yeah you're like I never heard of that but it's rated five stars probably all bought but anyways there's a guy in a suit from Amazon that does commercials now saying they're fixing their um rating system and comments so he's in a suit I I tend to trust him we believe believe you because you have a suit ton exactly in any case my point is that there's a lot of these little devices and I think the biggest problem is with these devices is that they're probably put with a specific Os or uh on them that doesn't get any updates ever after its initial release right uh and the fact is is that they probably couldn't afford because these devices are generally lower cost uh it could be tablets it could be anything uh any type of iot device uh to go and provide that kind of maintenance and you're kind of like getting a $60 tablet when most of them are $300 so maybe you just kind of accept that hey you're probably not going to get any uh updates on this but with canonical kind of saying hey we're going to do 12 years of security updates when you use this drus that's that that allows these companies now to actually release and support right at least from the security standpoint these devices for much much longer this is a good play from shuttleworth yeah especially the whole support part because they're basically making like a lot of these iot devices are just thrown out there and never updated and this makes it actually possible regardless of what D show they're doing so that's it's very cool idea so you know Ma mad props to canonical mad yeah Jill what did shuttleworth have to say about this oh boy so this was just so exciting it was there there are so many good quotes to use and this is one of our favorites he says can nle will deliver distalis or buntu based Docker images to your spec which we will support on rail VMware aunu or major public Cloud Kates K8 our Enterprise and isv customers can now count on canonical to meet regulatory maintenance requirements with any open source stack no matter how large or complex wherever they want to deploy it well nice and for those who don't know what Kates means that's kubernetes yeah kubernetes why is kubernetes Kates as the uh initialism or the acronym or whatever uh who knows if you do know send us an email let us know why it's K I want to know K8 uh canonical also partnered with Microsoft to create chiseled containers which are mere 100 megabits megabytes for the net net community so a self-contained net application runtime base image is only 6 megabytes when compressed so this is pretty cool too they've got some Partnerships with Microsoft and creating these little things and I just find it really interesting that Ubuntu rather than just getting their customers on a Ubuntu based microsystem and say hey we're offering just our customers this 12 years of support if you're using Ubuntu specifically um that would be a move I would expect but they're kind of making this dist list doesn't mean they're they're supporting re or anything else but they're creating this dist list they're supporting the particular images on whatever so like you if you're using rail you still need a rail support thing right exactly Red Hat yeah but uh I think it's really cool man iot devices and companies I think will really benefit from this and I think this will be a big splash for canonical for sure it's also an interesting play if they're trying to get people to use canonical stuff and then kind of slowly push them away from the rail side who good yeah cool good good point an
2024-07-23 03:08
