Bring Back Meddling With Tech Hardware w/ Chris Person

Paris Marx is joined by Chris Person to discuss the state of hardware and manufacturing in the tech industry, ways to hack your stuff, options to undermine Microsoft’s software dominance, and how the AI boom is making consumer electronics more expensive.

Chris Person is a co-founder of Aftermath and makes Highlight Reel.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• CES showcased some weird gadgets this month.
• Chris recently wrote about how AI is affecting tying your shoes.
• Chris also wrote about the new Steam Machine.
• Paris wrote about how to get off US tech.
• A peak inside Chinese dark factories.
• For those interested in learning more about Bazzite.
• Canva buys Affinity.
• Chris shouts out Gamers Nexus.
• For those who want to dive deeper on RAM pricing.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

That's the thing, is like you trying to align your life in which technology is not purely antagonistic requires doing some like borderline illegal shit sometimes, or like things that like the people who who make it don't want you to do this.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Chris Person. Chris is a co-founder of Aftermath, a great independent video game news site, and makes a video series called Highlight Reel. Now, I've been following Chris's work for quite a while, and I have to admit, this episode is a bit of one of those where I was just like, I find what this person does really interesting. I'm interested in having a conversation with him, so I'm gonna have him on the show. Chris writes a lot about video games, of course, no surprise there, but also about hardware and just like everyday consumer goods, and seems to have really strong opinions on those sorts of things and just likes to figure out, you know, what is good, what works well, and displays this like interest in hardware, you know, computer hardware, that I feel like is not as common anymore, but maybe used to be more common in the past. And to a certain degree, I feel like is maybe coming back, you know, as we see people talk about using retro gadgets, potentially getting off streaming services and, you know, listening to CDs or vinyl or something like that again. And just these various ways that the way that we use digital technology is potentially shifting in this moment, and how that is not just about services and software, but also like the physical manifestation of those things as well, and what that all means. Given that we're both very focused on the tech industry, there's a whole side of this that relates to the AI boom that is going on right now as well. Where, you know, as we talk about consumer hardware, as we talk about computers, prices for a lot of those things are going up right now because these massive tech companies are buying up so much memory, so many other key components that also go into consumer goods. And that means that everything gets more expensive for everybody because all these AI companies are fighting for graphics processing units, for graphics cards, and you know, for memory, and you know, all these other pieces that they need for their massive data centers, and they're buying so, so much of it that it means that there's not enough left for all of the other ways that these technologies were used before and for the consumer goods that you and me might buy, but that are not as valuable to a massive tech company that wants to dominate the generative AI game. So that's all to say that this episode might be a little bit different, maybe, than some of the ones that we usually do, but I think it's a fascinating conversation with Chris, and I was really happy to get his insights on so many subjects, and I think that you'll enjoy it too. So if you do enjoy this episode, make sure to leave a five-star view on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making tech won't save us every single week, so I can keep having these critical in-depth conversations, exploring different aspects of technology and the tech industry from the critical perspective that I and my guests always bring to this show and to these conversations. And also so that I can get occasionally do, you know, a rant on a topic that I care about, that I'm thinking a lot about, like I did last week, and hopefully you enjoyed that. So if you do enjoy the show and if you do want to support it, you can join supporters like Julia from New York, Bory from London, Henry from Vienna, and Matt from Canberra by going to patreon.com slash TechWon't Save Us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Chris, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Hi, how are you? Yeah, well, thanks. Getting back from the new year, the holidays, getting back into it. But yeah, happy to be having a conversation with you.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Likewise, uh, you know, mutual follow and listen for a very long time. Yeah, everyone's kind of groggily waking up now. Yeah. To horrors, but you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Yeah. I I even feel like I feel like my sleep schedule is still a mess. So we'll get there. We'll get there. But I wanted to have you on the show. And I feel like usually I come into these things, and like usually I I I've read something by the person who I'm interviewing, and it's like, okay, we're getting into this, we're digging into it a bit further. But with you, I feel like I've just seen a ton of articles that you've written and and like posts that you've made over, you know, the past year or two, beyond that, even, about your beat. You know, obviously you cover a lot about video games, but you also write a lot about hardware, about consumer objects and things like that. And I was just kind of fascinated to dig into some of the aspects of that with you. And I think to start, I was just wondering like, how did you get into writing so much about hardware, about the devices that we use? Why does that interest you so much?

SPEAKER_00 4:59

I think part of it is, well, two things. One is that like it's it's something I'm sort of naturally like aligned with. And the other is that like, honestly, shout out to The Verge, you know what I mean? Like Fox Media is gonna mess all over, all around the place, but like The Verge like took a chance on doing a couple of freelance pieces with me. And then I covered a very like, I'd say three-month like span of someone's maternity leave or paternity paternity leave. And that really got my footing. Cause like before then I'd I'd worked like eight years at Kotaku, but like I intermittently blogged because I was like the video guy there. And so I knew how to blog. I knew how to write quickly. I knew like the gacker era of blogging, which is like, I don't know, there's there's a like I think when people talk about what was lost with Gawker and how it went to the the four winds, for me, it's this like just this like clarity, you know what I mean? Like when you date when you get a a headline that's good and you know people are like, yes. And like that that's sort of downwind and adjacent to what Twitter used to be is just like, oh, can you write a really good headline? Like, and I think about, you know, the space that like Defector ran in and you know, what Dead Spin was at its at its peak and what Defector is kind of now, basically, you know, the just the sort of clean version of that. But I I had a chance in between aftermath being formed and me being brought on as co-founder and like being laid off in a DISO parking lot on the phone by Geo Media. In that time, you know, I did get to do some freelance. And what I found to be the thing I was interested in was the thing I was always interested in, which is like the kind of wire cutter, but we we call it wire cutter, but for weirdos, I think is the way we sort of internalize it. The angle of like optimization is kind of sort of fake. It's arbitrary and capricious, but like usually there is a good thing that you can do. But like what really is important is like the culture around how people find out what's good or make what's good. And so it's like, oh, there's a guy on a forum, like forum culture, you know, like there's a guy in a Discord who's like been testing video game controllers. And this one fucked up like modular controller is really good because they have a bunch of tools on GitHub. One of my favorite like posts from last year is I just posted about a mod to a mic from like about a full year ago. There's a mod on a forum from like ages and ages ago. And they found out that if you took a Rode microphone that it was basically like called the AKG Perception, it was basically identical to a really, really famous mic, a Neumann at U87, except they'd fucked up the values because they used a different capsule for it. And all you had to do was open it up, add not even add, like not even like desolder, but like solder on a capacitor on top of another capacitor, and it sounded almost identical to this like legendary microphone. I remember you wrote an article about that one, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And but that's the kind of thing I like, I guess. It's it's not the same, obviously, because you have to think about the headbasket and resonance and like, you know, it's not it not made by that, but like I like DIY. I like open source, I like people taking something that they shouldn't and making it into another thing. Like one of the articles I I really am proud of for The Verge was covering uh Vellitudo, which is their the open source software hack to vacuum robots. I still have mine, I still have the the unit they like sent, and uh it required getting a PCB from a guy on Telegram and then like you know, rooting the fucking robot. And like, you know, that's the stuff I like. I like, you know, I like the thing that takes a little bit more work, but is more satisfying, or the thing that like requires you to dig a little bit. And and sometimes it it's boring. And the answer is, yeah, the thing that everyone has is good.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

I would also imagine that like when you're getting into that, even the times when you're like, uh, you know, there's not much that came out of it, like at least it's an entertaining and interesting like process, right? And there's there's a number of things I could dig into based on what you said there. But the thing I want to ask is like, is this something that you were always into? Was there a certain thing that kind of like got you into looking more at this like DIY hardware? What is interesting, like what what works really well, other than, yeah, as you say, what's just kind of like listed in the wire cutter reviews or whatnot. Like, was there a particular in for you to start, I guess, exploring that world and the things around us in that way?

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Learning how to solder rocks. Like, you can get a really good cheap soldering iron. I used to say the pine sol was the best one. That one's good. It's still, it's you, it still will serve you. But like um, there's one called an Alientech T80 that you can get on like AliExpress. It's like a little pen and it has a little display on it. It takes like any of the the various like USB power brett and banks that you have. And like, yeah, it's it's it's just a really useful skill to have because like the problem with learning how to solder is when you do, it's like you're like, oh man, this is just stuff. This is just stuff. This is just stuff, and I know where all the parts are from. And like the when you learn a skill, because I spend a lot of time in forums digging what forums are left and Discords, like old school forums, you know, proper ones. Yeah, there's a bunch, there's a surprising number of them that are still around. Audio science review is a really funny one because it's like idiosyncratic weird dads who still love like passive speakers and stuff. But like, you know, in that case, I looked, I looked at a mod that's like from like five or ten years ago. It's a great pair of speakers I have that was like the budget pick of passive speakers, the the pioneer, what is it, BS22. And some guy who was like a really nice old man, you know, who who did a bunch of, I don't think he made his like his bones with it, but he he was like, Oh yeah, if you use this, if you just take the crossover, which is the thing that like splits up the signal to usually the driver and the tweeter or like the various things. It's if you just take the circuit board out, like rebuild it slightly differently, and then like change one of the drivers, you're good. And you get it like you get like a way better speaker. It's a lot of work. It's like an afternoon's worth of work, but like that shit is that that shit's wholesome to me. You know, that's really that's the stuff that I really get a lot of value out of, is like you can just tweak this a little bit. It's really good. Like those um those Sony's the MDR 7506s, I hate the way they sound, but there's like a couple of pads that make them really, really good. Which would be the headphones. Yeah, yeah. They're the ones that like, if you've ever seen any movie set, they're the ones with the little blue line on them. I hate the way they sound, but there are certain people who who love them. I know people have been putting like pad swapping on those for ages, and and I think Yaxi pads are agreed to be pretty good. And and a lot of this is just like China's just better at producing hardware than us at this point, to the extent that we were ever good at producing hardware instead of just doing ODM stuff, you know, like a design designing it and then sending it to get produced in China. They got better because they have a shitload of engineers, you know. Like, I'm sorry, this is what happens when you just like max out the number of engineers you have in a country, they just you get a lot of good products out of them. And like they also I know copying's like a bad way of putting it. They just like they make it so they know what the the what stuff's in it so they can make a better version of it.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Exactly. I I've also read like it's so easy over there too, because like if you're prototyping something, it's like, oh, the factory's just over there. I can go talk to them and you know, we can kind of work out what's going on there. Whereas, you know, if you're an ocean away, that process is not as easy, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

And there is like stuff where like you get a bad Chinese product, you know, like that there is like an ocean of bad stuff in like AliExpress, but like more often than not, you're it's surprising that like, oh, this is actually really good. And like I think what happened is like the ratio changed over time of like pure crap. Something I've noticed a lot is like, for example, video game controllers, like I the people in Chinese factories are much more invested in certain Discords, for example, and actually do get feedback from people internationally in these like weird third spaces forums. Like you'll say, like, people being like, Thank you. I work in the factory. Uh that uh we we thank you for your honest feedback. And like, very nice about it. I mean, like, that's I've never had a bad experience with a Chinese factory or like uh representative, but like most of the time they're like, hey, this is free RD for us from people who want it.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

That's so fascinating. I hadn't heard of that before, but I guess it makes sense, right? And I even remember like when you're talking about the quality of some of these products coming out of China, like, you know, you could talk about a whole load of things there. But I remember Gita even did a post recently about digital audio players and things like that on Aftermath. And I've seen a bunch of people be like, you know, who are looking at MP3 players again in a way that maybe they hadn't in years, being like, oh, there are these cheap ones from China that are actually like awesome that you wouldn't expect that you just grab off of AliExpress, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:43

That was a FIO, I think, FIO Echo Mini. It's like 50 bucks or Snow Sky. I forget. It's it's it's a really decent little thing. I've been meaning to get one for a minute. But like for a while, I mean, that's like kind of the dank pods thing. It's like you would get an old iPod because they're great. Because they had um the old iPods had a really good DAC in them, which is uh the thing that like turns a digital signal into an analog signal, because you have to do that when you're listening to hair to like so peep for a while, people would just be like, all these hacks to just like shove two terabytes of flash data in an old iPod. And they're really they're good, but it's also like after a certain point, it's like, well, what do you want out of this? You know what I mean? I think the term gets thrown around as Chi-Fi, which is like the Chinese Hi-Fi is one of the areas in products where you're just like, oh, it's not even a contest anymore. Like they they fucking kicked our ass. Amplifiers, topping, funny name for a company. But topping is makes great amps. And like everybody is like, fuck, how did you do that? And they're all like I think class D amplifiers, they're all like MOSFET-based, you know, ones as opposed to like the well, some of them are, some of them aren't, but they're that's what they made their bones on. And like the the ratio of signal to noise for the amount of money that you're paying is like incomparable. Like you can get like a monoblock amplifier for like $400 that just like cleans the clock out of something now. It's not everything. They can't, they're not as good with speakers. I found speakers are still kind of like, but like speakers are also a weird thing where that's like kind of an older person thing. But like Moon, the what is it? Theo, Theo makes a great pair of headphones, the uh FT1s. And headphones were a space where it's like, okay, they they're really good at making IEM.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

They're nice, they have some like wood uh detailing there. It's walnut.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

It was walnut. Yeah, it's really good. They they they got American walnut for that. And they're like 150 bucks, and they have these giant drivers. And for a while, like Chinese headphones were like okay. And the the FT1 was like really killed it. It was probably one of the most interesting products to come out in that sp in that very niche space where like it's like the best closed back headphones you can get under $500 now, just and for $150. And it's really, really good. It's very high quality, basically better than the AKG equivalent, and it's better made. And like everyone's like, fuck, man, they got us there. You know what I mean? And like that's there's a there's a feeling of wanting it more and wanting it more with like tangible products in certain ways. It just hasn't felt like that for a very long time. I think that's what people like think about with tech in America, you know, was just there's a time when like Steve Jobs was good at making a physical product that you wanted to touch, understanding that, and it hasn't felt real, particularly looking at CES.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

And we can get into CES, but but I wanted to ask you about that in particular, actually, because as I was preparing to talk to you, and and even something that I've just been reflecting on lately, like for me personally, I feel like 20 years ago when I was in my teens, I was a lot more interested in hardware itself. You know, I was interested in how a computer worked and kind of putting one together and swapping out parts and all that kind of stuff. It felt like, again, maybe this is just my own personal experience and I'm kind of like putting this onto other people, but it felt like we were generally kind of like more aware of the hardware we were using, how it worked, what went into it. And it felt like we kind of went into a moment where, you know, especially as you had all these devices that were like really kind of locked down, it was hard to repair them, all that kind of stuff, that it felt like there was a period where we kind of like lost touch with what we were using and just kind of went along with what the companies were were pushing on us. And it kind of feels like, again, I like I wonder how you feel about this. It feels like there's kind of like more of a resurgence of that recently, of like people wanting to get back to understanding what we're using, you know, the effects of it, all that kind of stuff. Like, I wonder how do you think there was that period that I'm talking about where we kind of lost touch and now we're getting it back? Like, I wonder what you think of the past 20 years and and what we've gone through.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Yes and no. I think that like things were very locked down in very specific ways back then that we kind of forget about. I mean, like, I do agree with an enthusiasm though. There was like an enthusiasm. Like, I forget which Connor O'Malley video it is. I think it might be in Dorfinport, where he's like, he's always sucks to be on the computer now. But there's also like a chair company rant from the first season. This for not not that the same person, obviously, but but that it's just sort of like, you know, everyone's lying to you and everything's made of shit, and this overwhelming feeling that it's all garbage and you're being scammed and like but like when you get something that's really good, it's like, oh man, I I worked for this and I like being on the computer. You know, I enjoy being on the computer. I should enjoy being on the computer. And yet they make it harder to be on the computer. That's the thing, is like you trying to align your life in which technology is not purely antagonistic requires doing some like borderline illegal shit sometimes, or like things that like the people who who make it don't want you to do, or opting out of that, or you know, like I'm basically just looking at, I've been trying to look at the ways in which I can get off of Windows for a very long time. I think a lot of people have. Their fucking complicity in Gaza, everything they do with AI. I mean, mainly the Gaza thing, actually, but like the everything they do with AI and like, man, did you see that shit yesterday where it was like Office 365 has rebranded to copilot 365? Really? I did I'm not surprised. They rebranded it to copilot, and it's like something I was asking is like, what's the thing preventing everyone from moving over to Linux? You know what I mean? What's the thing that prevents you guys from getting off of that? And a lot of that is just like, man, the legal profession uses Office. And like, I fear that like for most people, it's just gonna be like, well, we'll be on Google Docs, which isn't a solution either. You know what I mean? But like, but like you need to identify these pain points if you want to get out of this system and like figuring out the things that really piss you off about being on the computer and then uh just attempting to extricate yourself piece by piece. And oftentimes the solutions suck too, unfortunately, or just are made by people who are doing this in their spare time. But the you find out you in the process, you find out what you it is you like about technology, and that interrogation is good, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Aaron Powell Absolutely. You know, I I feel like on the Linux point, I feel like another one of the roadblocks, of course, is if you're just, you know, a regular person who uses the computer for for work or you know, what you do in your life or whatnot, if you go into a store to buy a computer, usually a Linux computer is not gonna be an option, right? At least last time I bought a computer, it I don't remember seeing anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

No, it's never an option really. Or it won't be, it might be soon with Steam. Oh, yeah, and the Steam Machine. I have my problems with Valve. They are a weird company, bizarrely flat libertarian, but you gotta give them credit. They fucking hate Microsoft. Yeah. You know, they give them credit. They fucking ate Microsoft's launch in games on computer. And to me, like the the proton compatibility, for people who don't know, the Steam Deck is probably the greatest single Linux device ever sold to a mass consumer like market. And that's like a handheld gaming device, basically, right? It is, yeah. If you know what a switch is, imagine that, but it runs Linux. And imagine that, but it runs most of the computer PC games on Steam that you that aren't too resource intensive. And you know, a lot of that is the fact that it has to do like proton compatibility layer, which they put a lot of money and resources into, which is like one of the problems with open source development, is that you need like, I think in the case of Fedora, I think IBM throws a bunch of money at them, which is not great, but whatever. But like you need somebody who's gonna come in and be like, I hate Microsoft and I would like to eat their lunch. And how can I do that out of spite and a way that like feeds me? And and and and the Steam machine, we don't know how much it costs, and it might cost a lot because RAM is now obscenely fucking expensive because of AI and because it's made by three companies. But if it works, it might solve a lot of the problems that uh the usability problems that people have. Like Microsoft tried to launch a handheld Xbox last year, and uh everyone's like, This fucking sucks to use. It's just because you just Put windows on it. You didn't make an Xbox. You put like normal-ish windows with like some things on it. And then people immediately realize, wait a minute, I can just put Bazite on this. And Bazite, a lot of people have been catching on to Bazite because Bazite's an immutable Fedora distro. And so you can't fuck it up. So I think more people because of the Steam Deck are like, hey, maybe I'll try this on a dual boot system.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

And Bazite, just to be clear to for listeners, is kind of like a Linux distro, right? Kind of like a version of Linux you can install.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

It's basically similar to what it's not Valve's OS, it's not Steam OS, but it also uses KDE Plasma. It also uses the same same guts are basically in there. And it's if you want to run Steam OS on something that isn't an approved Valve device. But you can actually install SteamOS on you can install the OS on like a bunch of stuff. There's a bunch of handhelds that they've they now just are like, because they don't care. They the hardware makers don't give a shit. You know what I mean? They they're like, yeah, sure. Will it sell more? Sure. Yeah, here you go.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

I did really enjoy kind of like Microsoft over the past few years has spent, well, just on Activision Blizzard alone, 68, 69 billion dollars to capture this company. They bought a bunch of other gaming companies. Obviously, the model of what Xbox is has been like transforming as they've tried to figure out what the new business model is. And it just feels like Valve kind of came in and like completely upended any plans they had to turn into whatever it was they were going to be. Feels like their cloud thing isn't working. Their attempt to be more of like make their consoles more like PCs doesn't seem to be really working out. And it's like, are they just gonna make video games now because they bought all these people and the games aren't even always that great?

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Or like the the them cutting their own legs off with Game Pass to serve cutting off Call of Duty to do that, and like just the sort of weird internal targets that Microsoft has for every part of itself that doesn't serve a good long-term purpose. But also just like, I don't know, I feel really bad for there's like a handful of things that Microsoft has that are good. And much of that is like the people who work at these game companies, you know, these publishers. Like I like a lot of the games that they make. And it fucking sucks that I kind of have to just not play a lot of them, you know what I mean? Like I think I feel a little complicated because I do think that like there's a debate as to whether or not press should withdraw coverage of Microsoft, and I kind of disagree a little bit. Like, for example, in the case of that hardware that they ran last year, I think it was good that the press covered how bad their handheld sucked. You know what I mean? Because if you see the project of moving away from Windows onto Linux, and you have Microsoft putting out a handheld, falling on their fucking face, and everyone installing the OS, installing Linux on it and it running way better, that is ultimately good coverage for the process of getting people off of Windows. And so I I don't think all coverage is necessarily positive, and you can use that sort of force to be critical of it in a way that serves what you think, which is that like Microsoft's an evil company at its top level, with very good people who work in these individual things. Like they just bought a bunch of, they're they're a publisher now. They're they're just a sh they're just a bad publisher now.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

You know what nobody tells you about weeknight dinner? It's the thing that never goes away. Every single day around 5 p.m., there it is. HelloFresh doesn't make you a better cook, it gives you your nights back. Dinner isn't about being good at cooking, it's about the mental load of figuring it out every single night when you're already exhausted. HelloFresh removes that completely with pre-portioned ingredients and step-by-step cards that mean you're done in 30 minutes. When I tried it, I was surprised by how easy it made the whole process of putting together a good meal. HelloFresh has over a hundred recipes every week. You pick what sounds good, not what you can figure out how to make. When dinner tastes this good and takes this little effort, you finally get your nights back. I found it worked for me, and it might for you too. Go to HelloFresh.com slash tech10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free zwilling knife and $144.99 value on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last, free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan. That's HelloFresh.com slash tech10fm, T E C H 10 Fm. It sucks because like they spent all this money and now they've closed so many studios, laid off so many workers who have been, you know, working on these on these games, and it feels like they kind of sold a particular message of what they were going to be like as a publisher, you know, one that is more open, that's willing to take bets on more experimental projects, all this kind of stuff. And then it feels like what they've turned into is actually quite different from what they tried to lay out to make the argument that they should be able to make this transformation, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Aaron Powell Well, but also like games was never a huge part of their portfolio. I mean, it was always a thing they did, it always felt like uh like a thing they kept doing. You know what I mean? Internally, I've said that there is like a third cursed space in the console wars at all times. There's a third guy who who gets knocked out, and like ever since at least PlayStation, it's like, okay, we have Sony, Sega, and then we have Nintendo. And it's just like, okay, Sega and Nintendo is still around. Eventually, like the Dreamcast used a lot of Windows stuff, and you can make bring a lot of commonality between the original Xbox and the Dreamcast, just in terms of like things that were on the platform, like ways that the hardware architecture worked, you know, like, or software architecture worked at least. And just like the continuity of they just took over Sega's place and then they just never really got it back. Like they had one really strong, one or two really strong console generations. I think the 360 was great. The three everyone loved the 360. Everyone loved the 360. You're like, wait a minute, maybe this rules. And then everyone's just like, man, this sucks ever since. And I I think it is Valve's destiny to take third place again from them. Not first or second yet, but they don't need to because they've had they've been, they own PC gaming more or less at this point. So like it's really like fascinating to see like it organically makes sense that the logical conclusion is is doing that. And also like they had the games for Windows thing, which never fucking worked. And like every time like the one time I was installing PC games on my PC through the Microsoft store was like they just threw games at you for Game Pass for a minute. And PC Game Pass was a good deal, but I don't have an Xbox because why the fuck would I have an Xbox? They've there's nothing on there that I can't get on PC. It also became a worse deal. But also, I think the the big thing is that you know, Microsoft's an Azure company at this point, you know, Azure. It's like they do cloud stuff now. And like you can't really opt out of cloud stuff, like because you're not the market, but you can sort of chip away at the margins of it. And I think you kind of have to, because it's like, I don't know, people don't want to fucking use Office. People don't want to use Teams. Man, Teams pisses me off so much. I don't even have to use Teams and it makes me mad because they killed Skype.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

I get so annoyed, like the occasional time that you know, I'm asked to do an interview or something for media or whatnot, and they're like, Yeah, we're gonna use Teams. I'm like, can we use anything else, please?

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Like I hate that shit so much. Teams, okay. Something they killed, this is gonna be an extremely niche thing, was Skype for content creators was so good because you it had NDI hooks. For people who don't know, NDI is this like it's a proprietary protocol that lets you basically stream video locally over a LAN, like pretty high quality. So as long as you're with like wired and eventually wireless, you could do it. But it also is really useful because there's just like a lot of open source plugins that like let you bring that shit into OBS, like break out the individual videos in that. And like you could do that with Skype for content creators. Could you do that with Teams? I don't know. I haven't checked because Teams sucks to use, you know, and that's the problem is that they they they had good stuff, you know, like some of the stuff in early Windows 11, you know, or mid to early Windows 11, like power toys. I think the sounds are better in Windows 11, you know, like they they they were okay for a minute. And now it's just like, I don't know, get a Mac or something, which is not a good solution, you know, like the the hardware rocks. I hate that fucking Apple was right. You know, ARM processors are great.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

Even with Skype, like it's wild that there was this popular program and they just destroyed it, right? As like everyone needed video calling and have to go on to Zoom and all these other alternatives instead. But you know, as you're talking about getting off of Microsoft, like I've been kind of working on this project of what does it look like to get off of US tech? And of course, you know, one of the roadblocks is on the one hand, the operating systems, whether you're on Mac or whether you're on Windows. But then the other piece of it is, of course, like the cloud services, right? Even if you're trying to get off of US-based services, a lot of that stuff is still on clouds that are run by Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. And at a certain point, it's just like maybe you have to accept some of this because, and maybe try to eventually push those like providers to do something else. But otherwise, you're just never gonna move to something else or try to move away from it. And my approach, you know, as you talk about like, why is it so hard to get onto Linux, is like, okay, how do we try to make this like easy for people, right? How do I find the solutions that are not going to be really difficult for people to adopt, but easily replace the things that they're doing now and make it so that they're able to make this transition like relatively easily, especially thinking about, you know, regular people who are not super technical. In some cases, it's like really difficult, but in other cases I find it there are decent options out there.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

It's interesting because a lot of that is my job makes me use it. And so I do think you have to figure out how institutions get off of Windows. Some very interesting news in the last month or two, which is kind of morally neutral to sort of good, is that Canva bought affinity and it's fascinating because I don't know if you people, if you use do video editing, uh Resolve is what you should use. So Apple years ago had the best color grading software. It was uh called color. The entire industry used it. Most of the industry was on Final Cut Pro 7 and maybe Avid. But for the most part, it was like you were editing on either Avid or Final Cut 7, and then you did your color grading in color. And then they killed it. And people were like, What the fuck, man? Because like we were using that. And they're like, well, you'll use Final Cut 10. And everybody hated them for it. Premiere became popular because they they were like, hey, do you want to use your old keyboard in here? Here you go. And would you like it to, if you're switching, we'll give you a deal, you know, all that stuff. So Adobe made a smart play, but nobody figured out the color thing. Eventually, because Blackmagic has un is about color correction, they introduce Resolve. Resolve starts being a color grading program, and eventually they add basically Final Cut Pro 7 back into it, to the point where the keyboard for Final Cut Pro 7 is the default keyboard for Resolve. It is made despite Apple. Then they add a motion graphics component. The motion graphics component looks a lot like Shake, which is a node-based motion graphics software that people really like that Apple used to run. That they moved over for motion, which nobody liked, and then they integrated back into Final Cut Pro 10, which nobody liked. And then they added a DAW that looks a lot like Logic. And so the entire work, and then they gave it away for free. Except you unless you need like the pro version, which is $300 you pay once, comes with the cameras, comes with all their hardware. That's great. That's a spite move. Affinity, whom is bought by Canva, they're doing something similar in reverse, I think, which is you know, the the play that Black Magic has is hey, everybody who edits video on YouTube needs something professional. How do we c get them into our ecosystem? For me, the affinity thing seems like the opposite, which is this is functionally a rounding error to con to Canva. Why don't we just give it away to people? The pro users are annoying. We want to get normal people and then upsell them on Canva. And I think that's actually a really smart idea, despite the fact that I do not trust those motherfuckers for a second. However, they said they're open to a Linux version. And that to me is very good because you know they already have a Mac version, you just download it, it's free. Nobody likes GIMP on Linux. Few people like LibreOffice. You can make LibreOffice look nice, but like basically it's just what are the pain points? Is it Adobe? It's mainly Adobe and Microsoft, and like you need like replacements for the entire Adobe Suite, which most exist sort of exist. And then you need to get Office and then like, I don't know, like a handful of other things. You know what I mean? Like you just need to keep pushing at that. And it needs to not just work, it needs to work like flawlessly. It can't have weird UI stuff. It has to be a pro it has to be an active project. Like if you really want to want people, if you really feel like this, you gotta like treat it like you're trying to kill someone, you know, like you gotta, you gotta have a crew, you know?

SPEAKER_01 34:51

I totally agree. And like it's good to see the companies doing it, but I'm also like, can we get some more government funding in here to like help aid this along? And like I know in Europe, some governments are actually looking at like, you know, more like often kind of local and state level or whatnot, but like switching away from using Microsoft Office and like figuring out what that alternative looks like, what kind of like alternate suite they can kind of put together and improve to make it work. And it's like, maybe if more people are doing that, that also makes you know some kind of like alternative more realistic because there's more money being flooded into again making it more usable and adoptable in the way that you're saying, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Yeah. And I don't know, maybe maybe it makes sense for IBM to invest in an office suite that is not, you know, like they have fucking investment with Red Hat, I guess. I don't know. It's it's weird. There is that's the other thing, is that Linux is used by like fucking everybody. You know, like you you probably have a Linux device in your house that you just don't know is a Linux device in a weird way. Like it's not zero, non-zero chance. Like robot vacuums, I found out, are all running some version of like an open source Linux-based router firmware that they hack to be bad. I mean, like, most of the time people don't want to like they'll just use an off-the-shelf thing. And a lot of times that's open source software that they then, you know, find a way to not make open. But like, you know, it it makes sense for there to be a thing to kill Microsoft. I there's uh there's just a lot of people who want to kill Microsoft, and I think you should. I think you should want, I think you should enable their ops on some level. But I don't know. I I I I just CES is also depressing. I would want to talk about that for two seconds.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Totally. So this is this is what I wanted to pivot into based on this conversation is okay, we're talking about all these services, we're talking about these alternatives. Obviously, there's this big show that happens every year. You know, basically I think they lost one during the pandemic, but that shows off all these kind of like visions, I guess, for what the future of technology are gonna be or or whatnot. What do you make of what we're, you know, people make a lot of jokes about this show. It's quite ridiculous. What do you make of kind of what we're seeing out of it this year?

SPEAKER_00 36:49

God, it it's it's I mean, like, it's a lot of robots because I think they're looking for the next scam. Was it was it the Dell guy? Yeah, Dell basically said, like, oh, consumers don't care about AI. And it got a huge pop because everyone's like, oh, yes, we fucking hate this. We have to cover this. Nobody gives a shit how many like tops or whatever are in it. Like, nobody cares that there's a TPU in your fucking computer. You know, nobody gives a shit about that. And he kind of let all the air out of the room with that. And that's like, I think, one of the most interesting things to happen. But like also everything's down with the fact that Rams, like, nobody knows if you're gonna be able to buy a computer. Like, that's like so fucked up, man.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Like, do you want to talk a bit about that? Because, like, you know, I feel like these stories are like coming out on the on the margins, but like I feel like it's not kind of a central part of the story around data centers and AI at the moment. Like, obviously, we're seeing we have seen these significant increases in the prices for GPUs, and now that's hitting RAM and and kind of other components. Like, what is going on there? Is this all just AI and data centers kind of driving up prices?

SPEAKER_00 37:48

Part of it is just like three people make RAM. It's like SKI Nix, you know, Samsung, and like Micron and shit. And it's just like it's it's literally just like they said, yep, we're we don't care about you guys anymore. It's a lot of it. It's it's it's the consumer like, yeah, we could just sell this for way more money for the data center build out that is currently happening. And we're gonna get in on that as much as we can before this shit crashes. And if you don't like it, uh go to hell. And the problem is like other stuff uses RAM other than just like if you're getting a laptop and you know, RAM is now as a result of this, like like if you bought RAM like it was a stock, it would be the highest appreciating asset in that you can imagine. It's just like fucked up. It's like you go on, look up the like price charts of that stuff. Um I follow Gamers Nexus, I like those guys a lot. The I would highly recommend uh their YouTube channel because uh Steve's just been going insane very slowly over time. Is I've been fascinated with like the trajectory of like YouTubers who kind of used to leave politics out of away and now are just like, I can't lie to you about who I am anymore. Or if not that, I have become a different person. I think both of I think he was already pretty sympathetic to that sort of sort of stuff now, but like I think there's just it's just so reviled. And now it's fucking up the thing that makes his channel work, which is just we need to review graphics cards and stuff. And as a result, he's the only like one of the like the guy who the guy with the long hair who looks like a metal dude who who who reviews this has become like the guy doing like pretty serious work on like GPU stuff.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

And it's like I'm sure it reflects the anger to a certain degree in the audience as well. Like I'm sure regular people are pissed off about this too, if they're going to have to buy a GPU and seeing how expensive they are or RAM or whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Even guys like who work on LLM, like who use LLMs are like, fuck, I don't I like my laptop. I like my my game, I love my little treat. It's fucking with the treats. It's not good. You don't do that. And and it also is like it impacts so much stuff. And when does it crash? Does it crash the bubble? Like, is that the thing that does it? Is that like it fucks up so many other things that it becomes unsustainable? I've seen people, I think, sort of float the idea that they want to, they just want you to talk to AI and that's it. But like, I don't know, it also fucks up the fact that you can't buy a device to talk to AI with. You know what I mean? Like, it's bad.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

I remember when Apple started rolling out like the phones and the laptops, and they were like, now it's ready for Apple intelligence. And of course, you know, you see all the the Windows computer makers and stuff. It's it's the computers are like being framed as though they're for AI now. And it's like, who cares? Of all the people buying computers, which ones are going out? Like it has to be a very small number going out and be like, yes, I need to make sure my computer is like AI forward or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

I think I'm the only person who thinks has like a specific use case for that that isn't like talking to a fake girlfriend. Yeah. Which is like, which is like you can do like TPU stuff locally on like a mini computer. Those coral AI things used to used to be able to like use the coral units to do like facial recognition. You can use it to identify bird species if you like run a Docker container, you know, that like is like, hey, use this this thing to go through and visually identify what kind of bird this is. That's literally the kind of shit I think it's useful for is like image recognition. Hey, my girlfriend's home. I'm running it on a local model. That's about it. But you don't need now that shit's just in the processor, so who cares? You know what I mean? And like nobody, nobody wants this crap. At least it got them to put more RAM for a year into like the base Mac Mini, you know. Like I guess the Mac Mini went from being like eight gigabytes to 16 gigabytes, and now like the M4 Mac Mini is like a really good deal. It's a really good deal. I have one on my desk. It rocks, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

Especially with RAM prices going up, right? Going back to CES, one thing I'm seeing is like a load of laptop reviews all the time and what this laptop maker is doing in that one and whatnot. You know, I just kind of like honestly I tune a lot of that stuff out. But is there anything else that's kind of standing out to you from this show or from how these companies are trying to frame what they think the future is is going to be?

SPEAKER_00 41:56

I do think that uh we did just write about the bad car, the bad PlayStation car. Yeah, what is it, Honda Sony car or something like that? The Honda Sony car, two companies that are like fucking up specific things. It's like that's nice. Uh that's way too much money, is the is how I would uh describe both Honda's electric cars and a lot of and some of the hardware Sony tends to make for the PlayStation. I think it's called the Aphila, the car, if I remember correctly. It is $90,000 for a like mid-car. Like you can't be pulling that shit, man. China's you can eat your lunch. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

I was gonna say, especially with these Chinese EVs, this is not gonna work.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

Yeah, like the only reason you would buy that is like you can't or legally own a Xiaomi. That's really it.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

Or if you're that hardcore of a PlayStation fan, you need PlayStation in your car.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Literally, the part of that thing was he's like, and it includes Microsoft Azure. And I'm like, don't put that in my car. Wild. Do not put Azure. Are you kidding? That my car's gonna crash into a tree. Like, what the what are you doing, dude? It's bad. I don't really I don't know. It like I will say the Samsung has a new folding display that's like, oh, that's gonna be in whatever folding iPhone probably comes out in like a year, because that's always the case. It's like it's always like a weird Samsung device. And then there's the freak stuff, like there's uh the taint zapper that people were were joking about, which is like the thing that zaps zaps your taint to prevent climax, which is is a very which now got FDA. It's been around for a while, but now has FDA approval. And I think it uses basically like modified tens pads, basically. So perverts are there, you know, laptops are there. We are ever increasingly making TVs better, which, you know, I think the the that's that's something I really like was that computer OLEDs now have RGB stripes that makes the text a little bit better because that was always a it's a flaw of of OLEDs. But like, man, a lot of the stuff is really just like comically depressing. Like the the razor robot in a jar. I haven't seen that one. Oh, it's really bad. It's um it's like a girlfriend in a jar. Oh my gosh. Like a little hologram girlfriend in a jar.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

That feels very like uh of the moment though. Girlfriend in a jar. With the chatbots and all that. Yeah. It literally is hooked up to Grok. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 44:04

It's a glass jar hooked up to Grok and they're like, well, you can add other stuff to it. And I wonder if they saw that like Grok was making CSAM and had to be like, hey man, you just gotta tell them that you can put any any model they want in there. Yeah. Like please tell them that they that it isn't just it isn't just the sex crime robot.

SPEAKER_01 44:20

Or like make a last minute change to be like, uh, that's not the one that we're powering this whole thing with. Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Razor's such a bad guy. I hate their mice. I hate their software. I mean, their mice are good, their software is bad, but you can get a better mouse at this point from actually AliExpress or even just like the people who used to make Ben Q. I have I think which one do I have? A Vaxxy. This is my Vaxi. It's a great mouse. It's phenomenal. It doesn't require you to have a login for your mouse. I can't use Razor because I'm on Apple products and their software doesn't work. So this works pretty well. I think I'm pretty sure this works with it. It has a little dongle. My stuff uh my mouse is Logitech at the moment, but yeah. I did see that there was a problem with Logitech mice that just came out. There was like a security flaw. They forgot to renew cert on something and then it's on one specific mouse, and it like made it so that the the mouse was mouse mice were crashing.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

That's exactly what I want my mouse to crash. Yeah. I I've never been to CES, so I can't give like a first hand commentary, but every year, like when I see the coverage, I just think like this seems like such a ridiculous thing that I don't know, almost feels like a holdover to another moment that has passed almost. I did find it interesting. There are a couple final things I want to get to before we before we wrap up. I did find it interesting. I saw you comment on on the robots. You know, you mentioned the obviously there's this big push. We've seen it from Tesla, we've seen it from a bunch of companies that humanoid robots are gonna be the future. And I saw you comment recently that like if anyone's gonna win in human robots, it's China for the same reasons you were you were talking about earlier. Do you want to expand on that a bit?

SPEAKER_00 45:49

I mean, I don't think anybody's wanna win on human robots because robots are Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

I remember even a few months ago, I think like China was like, there's a big bubble in human robots right now, just like heads up.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

Yeah. I mean, like I one, I think it's hubris to make a robot in the shape of a man because walking like a person is unnatural. And I think they kind of, I forget, I think it was like Boston Dynamics who, you know, military contract or whatever, like found they did the whole like, hey, and it can do it the other way. I mean, like, the main thing is that like getting this stuff to pilot is annoying and difficult. And every time they just do the mechanical turk thing where they're like, right now it's being driven, but it won't be in the future. And I'm like, that's the hard part. I mean, aside from the fact that this stuff is expensive and normal people don't want to do it, the hard part is getting it to walk around and not fall down. Robot vacuums only work because they're like extremely limited. And I have a robot vacuum and it fucks up a lot. It's like owning a dog. It you just have to are constantly pulling shit out of its mouth. No, no, I love you, but no. Uh, you don't work as well as my my actual bagged vacuum.

SPEAKER_01 47:00

I have to be honest, I have one too. And I was really like wishing there was a way, and maybe there is, to like change the voice on it from speaking to me to just barking like a dog. Okay, there is, it's annoying.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

Okay. There's a way to replace the voice pack in Valley Tuto for a while before I thought about changing it to sound like uh Roger from American Dad. And then I realized I couldn't post about that anymore because the moment had sort of passed in which like I could I could do do voice changing stuff and it and people wouldn't be mad at me. But also it would just be annoying at that point. But you know, you can actually change the change it to like your voice being like that would be weird though. It would be like, hello, Paris, to yourself, your robot vacuum.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

Yeah, I wouldn't want that. Just want it to be, you know, it's like a little pet. I just want it to be like a dog. I want it to bark. I don't need to hear what it's actually saying.

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Yeah, just just just clean stuff up and I'll ru I'll take the sock or like weird piece of string or part of carpet that you ate and yank it out of there occasionally. The robots I'm scared of, scared is a bad way of putting it, are the industrial ones. Like that's that's always been the case. It's like the things you should be worried about are the weird ones that take people's jobs in like a factory setting. And like they're really good at those. I mean, what is it, the the dark factories in China are like wildly terrifying. They're really neat though. This is like factories where the lights are off because the robots are doing the work, right? Yeah, you don't need they don't need eyes to work, and it's like three guys or there, or 15 people work in the in the car factory. And it's like that's that's uh fascinating from a I guess Marxist perspective. Just like, okay, now it's like now it's just the managers, but like I think it's also part of the reason why they're able to I think Xiaomi operates a lot of their stuff at a loss, but I think those ones are in the black because of the labor costs and because it's just a way faster and more efficient way to make a car. But it's also like, I don't know, man, like that's the things that's the stuff, and that's really competitive. It's not new. Like they can't do the magic trick with LLMs again with robots. And they think they're convincing themselves they can, and it's not real. So you talk to Chat GPT and it's and it's impressive for a second, is like a once-in-a-generation fluke that fucked up basically investment forever. It's it's really it's really bad. And I think and I think that they they went from like crypto to NFTs to this, and they're running out of runway and they don't have another place to go.

SPEAKER_01 49:19

Yeah. The you can you can tell that they're looking for the next thing to be ready for when this kind of falls off a cliff, right? Since we're talking about hardware and hardware coming back, people looking at devices again. I'm interested to get your thoughts because I've been intrigued the past few years seeing like this movement of young people really paying attention to it when you start to hear about the Luddite Club in in Brooklyn. And now I like regularly visit the our dumb phone subreddit just to like see what's going on there and like what people are doing, and like, I don't know, this desire to like move away from smartphones or not be as dependent on smartphones and go back to some gadgets that are not as internet connected as the things that we have now. Do you see an actual movement there away from this kind of like, I don't know, internet connected gadgets or or even just the way that we've been using technology for a while? And what do you think about it? What do you make of it?

SPEAKER_00 50:09

Well, let me tell you about what teens are doing as a uh inform me, teen knower, yeah. Teens speak. Yeah, I'm just like uh like one of those people from the 90s who was like an elderly person talking about what teens are into. I don't know, to be honest. I think the truest thing you can say is that young people are always attracted to retro tech as an aesthetic thing because it oftentimes was simpler in some capacity, or the ways in which it was complicated were different and annoying in a different way. I know a lot of people who do like retro gaming stuff who are young and who like retro games who are young. And I think a lot of that comes from actually social media culture, but aesthetics, you know, like the Y2K aesthetic. And this is like something that we that has perpetually happened, you know, people getting back always getting back into film before they realize that film's expensive. I I think like the it's hard to deparse the degree to which it's about a real need and the which in which it's aesthetic. I think the two are not inseparable.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

Aaron Ross Powell No, I I think that makes perfect sense. I just find it really fascinating. Like I enjoy going onto the dumb phone subreddit and see how many people are carrying around old PSPs that they've like modern.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

Miyamor, the Vita, the PSP. Lovely. Can we please make Actually I will say the my one like return with a V moment is So there's a lot of devices now that are gaining popularity that are mainly emulation devices. I'm Thor. Um the fact that DS prices are like 3D, the 3DS is a very expensive thing to buy now again. A lot of that's just speculative market stuff, but I think another part of it is literally my thing is that I think that they made handhelds too big. I think the Switch, everything's now an iPad, and you can't just put a Game Boy in your pocket the way you used to. And so you have these little tiny retro devices that just play Pokemon and they just play enough. And like what we lost with the DS to switch, the 3DS to Switch movement was like this thing that you could just truly put in your pocket and game with because cell phones are annoying and nobody makes cell phone like cell phone games are like fucking gotcha games and shit. It's it's it's like the the golden era of the the good iOS game kind of went away. And uh that's annoying. And then playing a full game on your I like that, but that's not what you want to do all the time. Sometimes you just want to play a Pokemon or you know, Link's Awakening or like a little game on your on your little tiny screen. And that's why I also think that's a uh uh partially because people don't have money and these like Ann Bernick devices are like fifty to a hundred dollars, and you can just like buy them and they look pretty okay. But also it comes from like YouTube culture, like people being like like Retro Game Corpse and uh all these uh different YouTubers who are like, hey, here's a tutorial on how to do this. You know what I mean? Like there are economic needs, there are cultural needs, and I think I I think that a lot of people don't like iPads now. I think a lot of people hate AI. I think the one thing you can say is like a lot of teens hate AI is the anecdotal thing I've heard from teachers, is that they they they use it like as a as a pejorative or as a derogatory thing. But yeah, I think I think that's natural. I think it's always natural to go back and do retro stuff. I literally have an arcade cabinet next to me that I'm restoring. So the Taiwanese arcade cabinet called an okay baby, I've been restoring for a year. I I was thinking about swapping out the CRT chassis. I've done CRT repair, by the way, which is dangerous. And I'm going to do it again because I can't be stopped. But I had to stand and spray paint the whole thing, get reproduction decals on forums, all that. It's part of a grander project I'm going to write about again. But no, I I understand the the desire because like I I'm that guy and I I see young people do it. And and and also it's it's easier to get hardware that works again. There's like a lot of FBGA devices that like the Mr. is great, that that like just runs like a kind of it's it's hardware emulation, but it's very close hardware emulation to in a lot of in a lot of the cores. And like it's phenomenal. It works great.

SPEAKER_01 54:08

I was watching something about CD players, like portable CD players the other day. And they were like, the ones today are so much bigger because they're not being made mass market in the way that they were 20 years ago or something. And so you just can't get the parts small enough to like make them the size that they used to make them, even though this is like an old technology, like it's wild.

SPEAKER_00 54:27

Yeah, that's actually a thing that people forget about is that like economies of scale get abandoned. Like, you know, instant film, like like the internal combustion engine is like is just built on like a bunch of stuff, you know what I mean? That like is is really hard to do, or like ballpoint pens was a really good example for a very long time, which is China couldn't make a good ballpoint pen until like five years, three or four years ago. Because like the the precision machining to make a ballpoint pen is some shit we made in like the 50s, you know what I mean? And it's just takes a lot of RD and you just can't reproduce it because the tolerances have to be so specific, is my understanding. I'm not a ballpoint pen expert, I'm a fountain pen expert. So please don't so if that's wrong, please let me know. But I think that was the example I used, I've seen used for a really long time. And like, yeah, sometimes like people forget how to do stuff. There are a couple of good portable CD players, though. I I've I've seen a couple that are like pretty okay. I think FIO has a pretty decent one for like a 160 bucks. Shout out to FIO.

SPEAKER_01 55:23

Yeah. It's just what I was reading is like kind of like the size of the old Sony ones were basically like the size of a CD, right? And now it's like they have to be bigger because you know you can't get the components to make it that small anymore, which I is not something I had thought about, but I was like, I guess, I guess it makes sense. Chris, it's been really fascinating to talk to you. And just to end off our conversation, you pay attention to a lot of hardware. You're looking into a lot of this DIY stuff and whatnot. Is there anything in the hardware front that is exciting you right now? Do you think, you know, what direction do you think we're we're heading in at the moment, if you have if you have any uh thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 55:58

I mean, mainly the steam machine is like the thing I really want. And that's like almost existential. Because like the thing about the steam machine is like it's like kind of like a PS5 Pro, like a little bit. Maybe if they get the efficiency going. Looks a lot nicer though. It looks it looks like you you you you you are like you're going to Hajj. You know what I mean? Like it looks like it looks like the cube. Um the smaller, you know, it's a little black cube, and uh people forgot how to make actually that's the one thing about the the most recent Xbox revision that I really like the last the last generation was they like they just got a big tube, a black tube, and it was a really attractive, it was so much more attractive than the PS5, which is like Zaha needs ghost. It looks like it looks like the Guggenheim's evil child, you know, who's who's who's into crypto. It's like an evil device.

SPEAKER_01 56:46

And the PS5 is especially comparing it to like the beautiful PS4. I love the PS4. PS6, they need to do figure something out there.

SPEAKER_00 56:54

The PS2 Slim is probably is not a great device as much is in terms of reliability, but the PS2 and the PS2 Slim, man, they fucking they never were cooking that hard agaver again.

SPEAKER_01 57:04

I would just obviously recommend that people go follow you, go check out your work because I don't know, I always really enjoy reading what you're writing. I find it really fascinating, whether it's about video games or about the hardware stuff that you're looking into. And I wish you really well on the uh effort to get off of Microsoft. Certainly we'll be watching that. Any progress that you make will be interesting to hear about. So uh thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show. I I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 57:27

My next article is about tying your shoelaces, so look forward to it. Somehow AI is involved.

SPEAKER_01 57:34

Chris Person is a co-founder of Aftermath. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening. Make sure to come back next week.