And we're live. Yes, welcome to the Home Lab Show, episode 101. Q&A plus some miscellaneous updates. How you doing, Jay? I'm doing awesome. How are you? I'm doing good. We're gonna talk about, we have with some feedback stuff, but we wanna get to a couple of news topics. And well, I don't know our change logs, news topics. I'm gonna kind of go with yes. Yeah, we could just call it the change log or something and I don't know. We're kind of adjusting the format. We're talking about it, but I don't think we're gonna change it too much, honestly. But yeah, we need to, there's some miscellaneous to talk about and I think that might be a good place to start. Yeah, one of the miscellaneous things is, and people have been, and I'll be doing a review of it, of course, people have been talking about PF Sense 2.7. Will it ever get here? Isn't it dead? In every version of PF Sense CE or Community Edition is allegedly the last version, according to every YouTube comment for the last, how many years I've been doing PF Sense videos. Yeah, all the projects dead, they're gonna change it, but they haven't and it's fun. Maybe I should go back on those videos years ago and start replying to comments and linking to the new 2.7. But it's in beta, beta release candidate, I should say. So it's pretty close. It's beta slash release. I was actually testing it even when it was in development and it worked pretty well. And I wanna bring up something though that creates a little bit of confusion. So you have Community Edition CE and you have PF Sense Plus. Those are the two versions of PF Sense. But there's always confusion because people think PF Sense Plus costs money and I wanna get it out of the way that it's free for home use, it's free for lab use and it's free if you have neck heat hardware. So there's three ways you can get it for free. So if you wanna run the Plus version, which is going to have a little bit different of a faster release cycle that's available. And PF Sense Plus is PF Sense CE plus other features. That is a confusion point that people seem to have. Like they think it's completely a different operating system. It's completely different, but it's actually just a few enhanced features. That's why if you do the upgrade from PF Sense CE to Plus, it actually is a really short process. It just goes, oh cool. Let me swap these couple extra features and it reboots and then you're on the Plus version and you can jump backwards to it. So they're not substantially different but of course the big deal going to 2.7 or they number it the 23. They're using like the year month numbering for the PF Sense Plus versions. They're all moved to FreeBSD 14 Current. Now there's seems to people who we're thinking, you know, well that doesn't come out till, I think it's maybe August is the official release date for FreeBSD 14, I'm trying to remember. And they're going ahead of time but you gotta remember PF Sense, both Plus and CE is heavily customized by the folks over at NETCATE. Therefore, they're not worried about other packages that may not be certified stable for the full OS release because one, they hand pick and compile the stuff themselves. They're not just grabbing out of beta repositories but they put it all together. But it's still great to see it coming along, moving forward and there's a blog post you can easily find, I can leave it in the show notes. You can upgrade this. It's gonna be just like PF Sense Plus, PHP 8.2.6, the open VPN is upgraded to 264. There's a bunch of other miscellaneous changes and under the hood changes, a lot of rewriting of things, including added support for the new Chacha 20 Poly 1305 to IPsec and deprecating some of the older IPsec stuff, which is interesting because I hope no one's using those really old rusty ciphers. Please tell me you're not using them. I hear when people complain about the deprecation, I'm like, don't complain about it. You should be on a path where that's like, oh, that glad that doesn't affect me. I'm not using that really insecure protocol. The only reason you use it is not because you're trying to get a PF Sense talking to a PF Sense, it's because you're talking to something that probably shouldn't be on the internet anymore. It's probably past its end of life. You have a point there and your description of PF Sense Plus kind of makes me think of it like DLC for PF Sense. Yeah, it's a couple of enhancements and those enhancements are not part of the public code repository, but if you were to log into your PF Sense Plus and poke around because you can still SSH into it, they're not block boxing it where you can't look at anything, you'll actually go, hey, look, all the packages and open source stuff that I'm familiar with that it's built on top of, the only part that's technically not part of that, but you can still see, it's written in PHP, by the way, so you can still look at the logic and poke at it is the, what is it, the boot enhancements and things like that. So I'm a big fan of the PF Sense Plus, even for home users, even if you're not using a Nekite device because it's free, I don't see any reason not to use it, but hey, they still are updated in Community Edition and I'll kind of comment on this. I wanna throw this out there as a topic that B&J will want some feedback on. Feedback at the homelab.shows. We're gonna be reading feedback, but open source isn't free and the way people think it's free. It takes time for someone to write good code to put things together and I kind of wanna tackle it as a topic. I actually unrelated to PF Sense is, and obviously PF Sense is funded by the people at Nekite, most of the people that develop PF Sense happen to be on the Nekite's payroll, but also pivoting over to things like XCPNG. I've seen someone was upset in the forums, they had kind of an esoteric problem and they suggested they buy support and a person did not like that answer. You should be able to support me in this forum. I'm not getting the support I expect and you're like, we have support contracts that we sell and by the way, you're trying to do something weird with the layered VPNs in a virtualization system. Like you're doing something that's kind of like, not like a product broken, like you want support, you're getting the product to do something there, but it's almost things where you have this weird challenge and the team over at Bates has talked about this where if you make a product so incredibly good, it doesn't need support, you're gonna sell less support contracts, which kind of create a problem of how do you fund that model of building good software and giving it away for free? Now they plan to keep giving it away for free, but it's always trying to figure out how you can have some business model. That's why I say open source isn't free, someone has to pay people the right code. Now, whether that's them doing it as a hobby or them doing it in the case of like this, who's Bitwarden for an example, the way they fund it through things like service delivery, like, hey, all the code's free, but if you would like updated package management and maintenance, we can offer hosting or offer service delivery through that and it makes enough money to keep paying the developers and Bitwarden I like as an example because one of the things not all open source projects go through, but Bitwarden goes through on a regular basis as code review. Code review is $100,000 or more to hire third party companies, to audit your open source project. OpenVPN actually did this and it was donated from PIA, the privacy internet. They had actually been the ones who funded it because OpenVPN needed a code audit and couldn't, didn't have enough money for it at the time, so a third party and it's back to some of these challenges. I want people to think about that a little bit and give us some opinion on it, hit us up at feedback at the Home Lab show. Maybe it's a topic me and Jay dive into, just probably as a video together, but it's actually, yeah, I really do. I mean, the summarize depending on my end is that if there's no statement of work, there's no SLA and nobody owes anyone anything, period. That's just the bottom line. Doesn't mean that no one will give you something and nobody will put it out there or cater to a feature. I've seen many times, you know, an open source where someone says, you know, wouldn't it be awesome if this feature existed? They put in a wish or a feature request and it happens. You know, we have that ability. So we have all these benefits from open source, but nobody's owed anything. I mean, sometimes the person responding in a support forum for an open source project could be someone that just volunteers one hour a week and never makes money from it. They just love doing it. And then you have companies, like you said, supporting it. So I think it would be good to adjust the expectations here because I feel like with some mindsets you give someone something for free and then they just wanna take an inch and go a mile with it. And you know, you gotta really just think about this in a human level. I mean, you were saying that there's $100,000 in a code audit. I think about 25,000 of that is the amount of coffee you have to purchase to get through millions of lines of code without falling asleep. It is not easy and is often not something that people want to do unless you're a computer science major that seems like an anxiety inducing like mountain of work to go through. And I tell people as well, just because the code is open and can be audited, doesn't mean it was. It means that someone can do it as they did. So we can talk more about that in a future episode, especially if enough people tell us that they want us to do it, then we might do it. And I wanna bring up a comment. I see someone said, sounds like you're advocating that having a free broken product is good because it lets you sell support. These are the exact answers people give. And I'm like, no, by no measure at all am I saying they should sandbag or leave broken or leave something out that forces you to buy it. I'm talking about people need to consider the business model how these things are supported. I'm not saying it's an easy answer, by the way. That's why it's a discussion. I didn't give you the definitive guide to how to fund open source because that doesn't exist. There's a lot of different opinions of it. And there's just some challenges that companies have run into where they, like I said, I believe Vates has a whole blog post where they just talk about it. And they are absolutely completely committed to keeping the whole exit CPG platform 100% free. That is a top to bottom promise they have. And there's other companies that make similar promises like our friends over at CrowdSec. Now CrowdSec has a different way of monetizing it, but it might be like I said, a fun discussion on there of all the different ways you can monetize it because there's more than one way to do it. And there's just some of the challenges. And I like when companies or groups and individuals that run open source projects have things like just donation options. Is that enough to do it? I've actually heard people say the problem they run into with donations is it's so inconsistent and people seem to want to have a regular salary to do their work. And they said the donation stuff is so hit and miss, like great, we got a donation. We've got three more months of runway to pay employees. If we don't get another donation or a donation, enough donations, what do we do? Stop the project. Everyone has to go get a job somewhere. There's some real challenges from business management stuff. That's why I think it's a fun discussion. I know it sounds a little off topic for the homelab, but we also are pretty heavy litics in the homelab. And I think it's in the wheelhouse of something that's interested to a lot of our audience. So hit us up feedback at the homelab.show me and Jay love hearing from you. I would also say that it might be more on topic than you think because there's all kinds of homelab people some people that are beginners, right? They don't know as much and they're learning. Then you have the expert level people that are able to submit a bug request or a bug report or something like that to an open source project that, let's be honest, we scrutinize our homelab more than enterprises scrutinize their entire data center. And I'm not even kidding. Like the average homelabber, I would bet anything has built a better set of infrastructure than some data center people because they're all spread different directions, but we use it and we'll be more likely to find a problem in the code. So if anything, I would say, it might be more on topic, but then on point about your mention about, that I think that was more like a snarky comment that person made about it where, what do you do? Just put flaws in there. That's more of a just a dry joke in my opinion. Nobody is gonna do that. I mean, think of it this way. If a company did do that, I can promise you, they will make the face palm section of the network podcast that I do, the enterprise network security, or enterprise Linux security podcast that I do. I can't talk today, but it would make the face palm section of that podcast if that ever happened. And that is just, yeah, no, I totally understood what you meant. It's not to speak that person's comment too seriously. They're just being hypothetical about that. But the thing is, it's difficult to build a support model around something that's free. And you and I do that more, we have to realize we already do that. We put YouTube videos out there. And yeah, we might have courses one day, but we'll always have free videos out there in just the same frequency we have now. And we give that away for free. And we're building a way to pay the bills by giving out information. So it's not all that different for us as it is for them. No, it's definitely related to that. So onto another update. I did a video on it. So that'll be where the more in-depth version is, but yes, to an ass scale is moving right along. They've got some new features, new updates, well, and new deprecations. They actually titled it, new things deprecated. I thought that was interesting. And I knew it would cause a little bit of confusion. So I tried to be as articulate as I could on the video I did on there, but essentially they're getting rid of R-Sync modules running as a service in the UI. You can still, at first I thought they were getting rid of R-Sync, which was concerning, but it's actually just the modules. I guess the modules natively, because they just listen on a port, I think it's eight, nine, seven, none the less they just listen and there's not really much security on that. I don't know if you've ever used R-Sync as a module. You probably use R-Sync as a- I mean, like as a system service or a demon. Yeah, I have. I personally haven't run into a use case for it that can't easily be done a different way. Like I've never, as long as I've been using R-Sync and I use it a lot. Oh, I mean, like I can't even tell you how many hours of R-Sync transfers have happened over my career. And not one time have I found anything personally that would need the demon or service to be running. And I'm not saying there's no use case for it. I'm sure there is no one's gonna develop it because they have nothing better to do and it serves no purpose. I get it, it probably does. But I don't know if that has anything to do with it. If other people agree with me on this, is it the case that the use case is going away for that in particular without taking away from R-Sync? I mean, I've never been handicapped with R-Sync by not having that feature. So that's just me anyway. Yeah, I'm assuming most of them you're doing it over SSH and they're still leaving the R-Sync within the build, because it's back to our, hey, check out our show on appliance versus build, but appliance means they're gonna limit what you may or may not have, but they're not removing it from TrueNAS, they're just decided it's not going to be a module with a menu anymore. They also took out, but well, removed where it is. Took out was probably the wrong way to word it. MinIO, which is a really cool project, you should check out independently. But MinIO also is built into TrueNAS. The problem is, MinIO has actually got pretty rapid release cycles, they're always adding new cool features, but the appliance problem is it doesn't update individual things. It updates the whole operating system at once, each update. So they are deprecating it being built into TrueNAS and moved it to being an app option. So you can install it as an application, which applications then can get updates on whatever release cycle they want. So there's a new version, cool. There's a new version of it. I haven't really tested setting it up that way, but because it's officially supported from the people over at TrueNAS, hey, I think it's going to be a better way to do it because you're going to get a newer version. I imagine this just makes sense. If you're building appliance, how much can I remove from the core of the appliance and put in as an application to get updated on a more regular basis? Because, oh, there's a new version of MinIO or what if there's a security vulnerability in MinIO, we want to get that updated. We got to re-spin the whole OS. Oh, that doesn't sound like the way we want to manage that. I imagine we're going to see, well, they have a list of all the things we're removing as that, but most of these things that are removed with the exception of the R-Sync modules are going to, they have another way of doing it through the apps. But check it out, the new version of TrueNAS scale. I'm pretty happy with it overall. I updated on June 13th and today is June 21st and all my updates went smooth and things went well. I want to just, so it doesn't get lost because I want to ask the question, they said they have a Neckate 3100 and I want to know if they should update to the 23 release. I think it's going to be 23.05 of PF Sense. Plus the answer is yes. All of our clients that have 3100 still in service, we've updated them to the latest version. So I don't think there's any reason for a Neckate 3100 not to be on latest version, but back up before you do it. Right, absolutely, absolutely. I wanted to address or at least acknowledge the news from Red Hat today that you asked me this morning what my thoughts were on and I'm like, well, I don't have any thoughts. I just found out about it from you because honestly I overslept this morning and as you texted me about this, I'm just getting the haze from my eyes and whatnot and I had a chance to read it. So I do want to put out some initial reactions. I don't want to call these thoughts because I feel like that means that I thought more about it, but I'm going to be thinking a lot about this. So what I'm talking about is the news that the source code repositories for Red Hat are going to be sent to us stream, okay?  Sent to us stream, they've been positioning that as upstream kind of thing, but let's peel that back a layer and just think about the distributions that are based on Red Hat. We have all my Linux, you have Rocky Linux. There's a number of these and they basically do what sent to us used to do. They repackage the source code and give it to you without the branding. They're able to do that because the Red Hat branding isn't there. They have their own branding. That's why it's all my Linux OS and not Red Hat or play on the name or Rocky for that matter. Now, according to Veronica's, which is the link that you gave me, it does kind of seem like this is something that's gonna make it more challenging for these distributions to exist. And this is really concerning to me. It's like, I look at their blog on the Red Hat site where they made this announcement and there's a section at the end that says, why make this change? And it's just like they may as well have not even included that section in my opinion because it says nothing, like literally nothing. It's like in the open source community, we're really good at making software. We're not as good about communicating changes as we would like to be. That's why I feel sometimes people get concerned and upset because they think something's happening and they don't know because of the communication. But the communication this time doesn't even recognize the rebranded enterprise Linux distributions at all. And the reason they give in summary is, there's lots of engagement and excitement about CentOS Stream. And at first, that's a warning sign to me because I'm like, is there? I mean, don't get me wrong. I know a lot of people like it. I'm not going to say that no one likes CentOS Stream but I talked to a lot of Linux people on a regular basis, countless people. Not one person has brought up CentOS Stream in conversation other than to express frustration over the new normal. Now, again, I think CentOS Stream probably is a good product. And when I look at it, it doesn't seem flawed or anything. I don't have anything against it from a technical level. But it just kind of seems like I just want some numbers. Like if they're saying there's lots of excitement and engagement over CentOS Stream and that's why they're doing that, that's fine. I just want to see numbers. I want to see adoption numbers. And maybe I'll look it up after this podcast is over but that's a little red flag to me. But that aside, I'm going to be talking to some individuals that are behind these distributions like Rocky Linux, Normal Linux OS and off camera get their reactions because I feel like they're going to be able to give me a very well researched opinion because this affects them and either this is not going to affect them and they didn't communicate it right and they're still going to be an avenue for them to exist or I don't know, I guess we'll find out but I wanted to just put that out there that literally today, I guess this is as close to breaking news as we've ever had. Red Hat is changing the game again and this is why if anyone wants to know why I don't cover Red Hat on the channel it's not because, well you laugh but it's not because of any disdain because regardless of how I feel about it if people want to learn it, they want to learn it. They don't care if Jay loves it but if Jay can teach it then Jay will but the situation is imagine if I just recorded a tutorial series on Red Hat just to wake up to this news and I have to rerecord a number of sections and Red Hat has been changing things so often that it's hard for me to do a tutorial series on it because for all I know in a month now it could change again and invalidate the series. It already invalidated the CentOS tutorial series as soon as they made that change. So if anyone out there is waiting for Red Hat coverage you'll get it, I just can't tell you when it might be a month, a year, a couple of years just whenever they decide to settle down with all these changes but I just wanted to mention that too. Yeah, so it's definitely, it's interesting and it kind of relates back to some of our open source stuff. Obviously IBM bought Red Hat, things seem calm for a while but they're clearly not calm now. Well, if everything is as they say it is then I feel like what this might cause is people to double down on not using Red Hat. Like they might, I'm not saying that this is to kill the rebranded distributions because that, I mean we don't know it might very well might be that might be the reason why they're doing this or that might just be a coincidence, we don't really know. Hard to say. But it does affect everyone and I feel like this is gonna push these enterprise Linux rebrands to become their own thing separately, their own thing away from Red Hat and then Red Hat will lose, you know another wing of its adoption which they really can't, with the layoffs they can't afford to lose that right now this is not a smart decision so far. Right. Anyway. If you're going, if not Red Hat then what? Well, go to the Home Lab show, episode 100 where we go on about DBN12 and we really like it. So definitely if you're just going, what instead? Cause I don't like to complain about something you never talk about the problem unless you have a solution or are working towards it or asking for the community effort towards it but there is a solution, it's called WN12. And I wanna just, you know, you mentioned that so I wanna know, and maybe there's a way to do this it'd be kind of fun, just to look at like if there's a way to see installation numbers for Debian in a reasonable amount of time I know that it's hard because we could have a flash drive with our distro on there and not report to anyone that we installed it we could even have a machine that's running an emulation computer in our closet that maybe is connected to a TV or something and not the internet, we really don't know but if we could know, it'd be interesting as drama starts with the corporations and the company and if you watch the Debian numbers go up so as this news is breaking about Red Hat you know, is Debian servers seeing more downloads? I would have to say probably because a distribution that doesn't change much is going to look very, very, very appealing right now. Yep, so that's definitely interesting. I'll answer just a couple of questions that popped in there I'll actually pose this question to Jay blindly if a project updates more frequently does that automatically mean it's more secure because this is an argument people make all the time? No. Okay, yes, there is a slower release cycle for the PF Sense CE and some people like Open Sense I don't have any problems with Open Sense but it does update more frequently maybe that's something you want as a home lab you go and I want the latest greatest updates and I love that they have tons of package updates and I don't mind doing them that's fine, that is your choice if someone who manages businesses with many of them I kind of like the fact that there's not a ton of updates now you can say that Fortinet has many more updates substantially more updates than other products but I also did a video on Fortinet and just how many CVEs that were above nine that they had because they keep forgetting and putting a password inside their own VPNs in a whole series of problems they have a history of it so once again, update frequency is not an indicator of whether or not something is secure it comes down to how well the code is written and even though PF Sense CE is based on 2.6 the current release, there's not any known vulnerabilities in PF Sense so just because it's old doesn't mean it is they have been good in the past as NetGate has when there's been a problem for example, there was an IngenX problem a number of years ago and they used IngenX in the backend so they had a point release to fix that IngenX problem this is like four or five years ago so they do stay on top of if one of the things that they have has a flaw they will send out a patch but if it's not flawed, it doesn't need a patch so it doesn't need an update I'm going to elaborate even more on that so let's just think about this in terms of I'll call it scope, the update scope or whatever clever term we want to put on this if we look at Debian since we were just talking about that, last time I looked and I'm going to warn you this number is inaccurate it's just the last time I looked it was like there's like 65,000 packages in their repositories, okay so when you look at Debian or any other distribution I mean Debian's getting security updates all the time why? Well, the scope is much larger they don't know what you have installed you might have installed PHP you might have installed IngenX or maybe you've installed neither of those and you installed something else they're the general purpose operating system and other distributions are the same they have to keep updating everything because there's more to update now when you have open sense I can understand the excitement around updates because, and here's the difference between Linux people and Windows people, okay if you're a Windows person and you get that notification that there's an update you're like, oh, again really I just did this now a Linux person gets an update like, ooh, new features it's like getting presents under the Christmas tree constantly this is one of the reasons why Arch is so popular because there's always new features in things so if these updates give people new features in open sense I'd say, yeah, no wonder they're all about it because they really love that and I love that but to your point when we get down to security updates open sense isn't gonna have 60,000 packages the scope is much smaller they're gonna cherry pick the kernel they're gonna cherry pick this whatever they need is what they're going to include because the threat surface is larger when you have more packages so there's interest in keeping it slim but as you slim it down the number of things that can be updated diminishes and you're going to get into a situation where yeah they didn't patch this vulnerability well it didn't apply to their users because they don't even include the thing in the first place so why would they need to patch anything the best way to think about it from a security standpoint in my mind is match the CVE if there's a CVE in the news and it affects routers how fast did they patch it? That's all that matters nothing else matters but that alone when it comes to security if it takes them three months to update a security vulnerability that's critical that's not good but if there's never any update for like months and then there is because a CVE was announced and they patched it immediately that's what build confidence it's not the number it's the response it's quality over quantity and time to response that's what matters but with HomeLabbers it's strange because it's not just about security it's like ooh why regard ooh this I want this I want this because we get those things and we're excited about those things and I will admit when you have something like PF Sense that changes less often it's not as exciting in HomeLab people a lot of us some of us don't like exciting but some of us really do so I think that's kind of what it comes down to and why that mindset exists we just have to think of it in scope of new feature or security patch lack of security patch is there an actual issue or is it just not something that applies to the distribution so I think that's all that matters and we've seen this both in the feedback that was messaged to us like just people asking to do a HomeLab episode on on Raid neither me nor Jay use on Raid I don't have anything against it I just don't use it it's I know it's not as performance oriented as Shurnass and it doesn't use ZFS being that I'm a big ZFS fan and so is Jay due to the integrity and all the wonderful features of the ZFS file system that's one of the reasons I don't really use it now on Raid is getting ZFS I know they're working on an integration for two problems I don't know very well how they're going to be implementing it to it will eliminate the number one reason people want us to do an on Raid video the reason they want us to is because on Raid offers this flexibility of just adding drives and expanding the Raid kind of on the fly the problem is with the way ZFS works you can't do that so if on Raid uses ZFS they don't magically solve that other problem at all they actually now create the reason that you thought you wanted to use on Raid so I don't know that it's really going to push me towards it unless there's some killer feature that they have some enhancement that would be better than Shurnass then I'm like cool but for now Shurnass and I've also talked about and me and Jay were actually on this topic last night 45 drives with their just running Linux and then you throw Houston OS on there to manage ZFS that's a great solution I have that running in production with clients it's a great system so there's other ways to do it and on Raid doesn't I don't know where on Raid fits in that like what is the reason Tom would use on Raid over the alternatives I already I'm familiar with I like learning new things when that new thing comes with hey you're going to spend some time learning that new thing but you get with it this incredible feature or performance enhancement so something against on Raid I just don't know what it's what it holds over the other systems that I currently use that would make me want to go over to it yeah I think a lot it's that for me too it's also time you know because some of the things I've covered lately have especially oh by the way the system D videos out today I totally meant to bring that up at the beginning of the video but that took a bit and it's just and I realized even in that video there's more to do but there's just a lot to cover and sometimes it's just down to time yeah that's that is always what it comes down to is much as we like to bring you the latest and greatest and the cool things you can run in your home lab that often the NAS is kind of like just a stable base that we build things on because we have to keep our videos recording and have to keep all of our data somewhere we want to talk to you about new features in NextCloud or something like that because that's you know Jay's got some great tutorials on NextCloud that's something where people there's a lot of questions around I think it's a great system if you are privacy oriented you are going you know maybe I don't want to stick all my stuff in one of these large cloud providers NextCloud is a pretty good alternative and definitely popular in the home lab world for people looking for that so you know Jay's got a whole tutorial about getting started with it and I think it's a great platform yeah I think another thing for me is hardware because I use my hardware like I always tell people you know look at look in your closet and repurpose something that you know you're not using that's what we home lab people that we do that all the time but I don't have I mean I literally take my own advice I have nothing other than maybe a couple of hard drives nothing consequential that is just not is being unused I'm using my stuff so maybe one day I'll just set up a program or someone can just let me borrow a server and I'll just use it as the basis for a tutorial to teach people something because I feel like you know it's probably getting to that point now because if someone donates a server it's going to enter into production and then it won't be a test server so if I have to send it back to someone that'll probably keep me honest so I guess it's a hardware issue as well but we try there's only a million things to cover but we'll cover them eventually yep and as I just want to remind that we're seeing a couple more times because we think one of our format changes is making sure people know feedback at the home lab dot show that's an email address that's what the symbol is we actually don't mind we actually get less email we were really hesitant to use the emails we thought we'd get overwhelmed with it we're underwhelmed at the moment not that we want spam or anything but we're just saying hey if you want to reach out to us we haven't taken the time to engage with people we like engaging with people that join the live stream here as well so this is we do want to make sure we are is interactive with the audience to make sure we're fulfilling any of the requests you have and hey reach out that's something we really do want to very directly engage with the community exactly and another feedback item I actually lost the comment because it's in one of the YouTube videos I think it was it was in our Debian one is you know because I feel like we answer comments in YouTube videos but sometimes we might want to bring them up yeah but this was in regards to actually my Debian review but it was list is mentioned on our episode 100 because we are talking about Debian and bringing up the fact that Debian you know works well on old hardware and has a great community and all of that's true I mean that that's absolutely true it was about a comment I made in the video about Linux isn't just for servers I was just talking about the mentality other people have however true or false that might be that's what people will say and sometimes it's just me reporting on the general mentality of things but but it absolutely is true that Debian has an amazing community and it's not just like this version is the only good one I mean it's always been good it's just that I've had issue with the fact that they don't cater enough to people that aren't fortunate enough to have open hardware maybe whatever computer they can afford the only thing they have has an Nvidia GPU or has a Wi-Fi card or something and I think that's important and in the comment it basically looked down on Debian for adopting this change to and the comment said something about whiny users but that's not that's not what it is at all and the person called it bloat and it's not let me get rid of the bloat thing right now I'm looking on Amazon and for $21 I could buy a 512 gigabyte SSD drivers are megabytes it's not bloat I don't care it's just not bloat if it gets somebody's hardware working it's necessary but not only that it's not going to be installed or even in use if there's no hardware that needs that driver so it pretty much the definition of bloat just doesn't fit here this is a necessity because we've been trying in the Linux community for decades banging the drum letting proprietary hardware companies know that you know they're doing a disservice to us by not giving us the source code because we you know are running into bugs security issues and some serious problems because of these drivers and we're asking to fix them you know we want to we we want to make this stuff work for the users and Debian wants to make their distribution work for their users but the reality is these companies aren't listening and we we have to let people make full use of their hardware while we're trying to figure this out I would hope there's a solution that requires no proprietary drivers but Debian made the right choice and I think every distribution absolutely must facilitate hardware because even though the criticisms against it are all true and I agree with all of them the reality is if you if you talk about Linux to your friend for years and then one day they're like fine I'll try the Linux thing and they do and their wi-fi card doesn't work their Nvidia card doesn't work guess what you lost that person forever they will never try Linux again ever okay I want to be doubled down on that they will never try it again it's not and these people unlike us they don't care about the politics they just want to use they just want to use the system they don't want to know what new arguments led to it exactly that that's what we are up again it's either we get that user or we don't it's just that simple and no amount of telling them how evil proprietary hardware is is going to make them feel like they're going to be okay with not making full use of the hardware they bought so I mean yeah it's true that Debian is a great distribution for older hardware absolutely their community is amazing and by no means am I criticizing Debian here or trying to because they're the subject now but I mean other distributions have the same mindset they're not unique when it comes to this so I'm only pointing the finger at them because they're they're the current topic but the reality is Debian has a very hard situation it's like do we cave to what we believe in to give users a good experience or do we double down on that and try to educate users but the education thing isn't working because the only people that could really make people hate Nvidia is Nvidia themselves Nvidia is the only company that can make users hate Nvidia okay we Linux users cannot push people to hate Nvidia only Nvidia can ruin themselves okay they're the only ones capable of this so in the meantime we just got to get everything working while we you know figure out how to make hardware drivers suck less yeah it's it's an ongoing challenge getting them on there and I'm excited to see even to the hardware manufacturers it's getting more accessible for people in the home lab to be able to get these I know maybe one day I'll review and buy one when I need another upgrade the framework laptop because I think that's one of the cool things out there because we just had this discussion at work where you had to buy some new laptops for employees and we were talking about Lenovo has I think it's a firmware blob and they won't let you change the Wi-Fi card because it expects that Wi-Fi card to be in there that's still the thing now because I ran into that like five or six years ago or something yeah and it's still a thing that some of these companies are still doing with different locks that you can't swap the Wi-Fi cards in them and it's like they just they're not favorable to the community I could tell you why that is Oh yeah the actual reason why they do that and and this is something that a lot that is a little bit of trivia Windows trivia surprisingly coming from the Linux guy there's a I forgot how many points it is on the scale but basically I'm sure you remember how you know if you had like Windows XP Vista whatever you changed the hardware and you got to reactivate it so what ends up happening is if I remember correctly the network card is worth three points and I think it's up to 10 points there's a different point value for every hardware that's changed Oh yeah for the changes right so a network card is like I think everything is one point the network card is three so that's going to be the most likely thing to trip the activation and you know they're selling OEM licenses and everything so technically the light the installation image is going to be fixed to make this very unlikely to happen but the situation is licensing and it's matched to the hardware such that the network card is that important and they'll get more support calls if they let people do it it's not just my network card I just installed doesn't work it's my computer onactivated which is a completely different support call but the thing is I'm not advocating for what they're doing by no means am I saying they should be putting that restriction because my mentality is if the user decided to make a change they decided to take responsibility for that change when they call support it's not their job to enforce it it's what the user is going to do what the user can do they can people I've seen ThinkPad people change the screens just because they want a better refresh rate it I mean when we have people with the ThinkPad they go to extremes here okay but there's still no excuse and I wish they would stop doing that I really do yeah it's just a lot of tediousness on there and you know we're always advocating and back to the like the homeland people like you want to be able to tinker with the hardware that's part of the joy of doing this is being able to tinker with everything so I'm always trying to avoid companies that lock you in and don't let you tinker because you should be able one be sovereign over your data to be able to tinker with the hardware you have to customize it to your needs and how your use cases fit so yeah I'm not a big fan of any of these companies that make that harder for you to do I think the best way to think about it in my mind is that the company's involvement between you know in between you and the product should stop at the cash register you buy it you own it they're out of the picture and unless you and unless you have a warranty claim that you need to you could have the the vendor back into the picture but that whole involvement should end at the cash register when you pay for the product and then if you need to warranty it RMA it whatever their policy is that's fine but it's like they want to keep having their hand in the relationship after the cash register imagine you know buying a movie and then having a company contact you for a review constantly I mean we might end up there someday but usually it's generally agreed upon you buy a retail product and it's yours but they would have you believe otherwise it's just a weird mentality if you think about it it is yeah but nonetheless uh is that all we have are we at the end of the list Jay oh gosh we have like so many more things I think we'll need to do another QA and I probably hog way too much conversation this time so um but you know what just give us some feedback and hopefully my long-winded responses will generate some uh feedback from the community because we would love to hear from you guys where are you guys come on yeah and we also um one of the things I'm looking at is possibly there's there's a tool and I'm gonna see how it works that allows you to record and embed a voice call so we can actually play your voice if you want to this is we're still gonna keep feedback at the Homelab show but for people you know I've like type in all those words I just want to press record and send these fellas a message that they'll play on the show and answer the questions uh we like doing a lot of this like I said we want to make sure we're really focusing on a lot of this community engagement uh because we do care about the communities we're in we care about supporting and we care about bringing more people into the homelab and uh which is it's been fun you've got to in me and Jay over our career got to engage with people a lot we were talking about missing the old distro parties that happened or the actually I think it was even before Jay's time I think it was in early 2000s when we used to have Linux install these parties yeah we had release parties but we haven't got all of us at the Linux user group meetups and things like that it's harder to do that with a global audience but hey if we can at least have some feedback and engagement with people they just we want to make sure we're helping everybody out and getting people started on this because it's never been a better time to be a homelab we did an install fest of penguin remember that we had a oh yeah we did that was when you introduced me to gosh it's right in the tip of my tongue that you I did a video on I can't remember the name of it um the ventoy that that's when I saw Ventoy for the first time was at penguin and we did that install fest so yeah they're a lot of fun we should do that again sometime somewhere yep yeah the arranging install fest for an international audience is a little bit more challenging but it can be done somehow we'll figure it out download this link let's all let's do a big I don't know group party and get get everyone installing Linux I think we could make something happen yep all right well thanks everyone for joining us and uh we'll see you next episode see you around


South Pacific, a new kind of mercenary is stalking the globe, but these are not the traditional dogs of war, more an advance army for commercial interests. It was an outrageous plot that ended in humiliating capture. Simon Mann, of the privileged English background, would spend five years, some of Africa's most notorious prisoners. And you might have to think because you can't take a prisoner because it's your risk of error, that everybody takes their own charge. You don't have security, you don't attract non-investment.  Simon, how are you, sir? I'm good, thanks. You're in Joberg, did you say? I am in Joberg, yep. Wow. Lovely weather, no lockdown. It's fine. Oh, wow. Yes, I was there when I went to work in Mozambique. We stopped, obviously our flight came into South Africa, and we stayed at a lodge there in Joberg called Brown Sugar. Have you ever heard of it? No, no. Oh, it was, let's just say one night in Johannesburg, it's as good as one night in Bangkok. Okay, really? Maybe not so many girls, but well, not where we were. But yes, it was quite a memorable occasion. Well, as you can see from the background, I'm in a very nice house in Santon, so. Yes. Yes, I had a great time there, and I'm of that age. I grew up seeing the, I don't know what you call it, the uprising on television. So the Zulus reacting against the security forces. Yeah. Our young people listening might be surprised, but our news every night was filled with people running down a road with spears chasing after the police or in the police firing off their, firing off their baton rounds. Yes, incredible. So when I got to Johannesburg, Simon, it was quite, I don't think emotional is the right word, but it was certainly a special moment to see a place that had been so much in my history and my youth. And to see the big mind dumpings just incredible. Yeah, well, I'm actually half South African. So my mother was South African, and I have a South African passport. So I'm very familiar with what you're talking about. And yeah, quite amazing.  I did. Yeah. It was a great day, funnily enough. Okay. I never thought in my life I'd be talking to eating students but they seem to appreciate the realism in what I said. I mean, I know a bit about Africa's colonial history. You had some vicious fighting. I think obviously Angola. Yeah, I just wondered how is it, you know, if you're half South African, does that throw up issues or do you notice a sort of lack of. I mean, the first time I came to South Africa, I was six. And it was 1958. And we came by sea. My parents obviously were living here.  And I mean, I tend to find that some, you know, all sons of the empire to a certain degree, one, you know, more or less, very few English people have no connection with any part of the old empire. You know, cousins in Canada, cousins in Australia, this that something or other. And I think probably not so much now, but certainly my generation was very much the norm, I think, you know, the people born in India, their fathers and served in the Indian Army or God knows what but there were loads and loads of that sort of those sort of connections. And it's actually a bit of a hobby horse of mine because what I find in Africa is an enormous residual goodwill towards the UK. And funnily enough, that is as strong sometimes stronger in the non British colonies, because they had the misfortune of being colonised by somebody else. Yes. It is such rich history in Africa. I've read a lot of Wilbur Smith's books. I don't know what his reputation is over there, but certainly gives you a flavour of the depth of history that there is that. Yeah, I'm a big Wilbur Smith fan. Yeah. I actually thought that they were some training manuals for a while. Yes. Yes. Were you were you living in England when you joined the army? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, so we never, well, actually, no, that's not true. I mean, but as as in terms of how I was brought up, I didn't live in South Africa. I think the longest I was here continuously was 18 months. And in fact, went to live in South Africa in 1997. And we lived there for six years, which was great. We lived in Cape Town. So I didn't live here as a boy. Yeah. And you were Scott's guards, is that right? I was, yes, Scott's guards. Yeah, absolutely. With a bit strange because not even slightly Scottish. But my grandfather joined Don Scott's guards in the First World War, and that's why it became family regimen. I see. Is that usually if you come out of Sandhurst that you can go to any, I mean, you could go to the Gurkhas, right? Well, yeah, I mean, certainly in my day. So now we're talking quite a long time ago. So 1969. I mean, when you went to Sandhurst, it was your idea because in those days there was Sandhurst and Mons. Sandhurst was regular officers. Mons was short service. I wanted to go to Sandhurst, become a regular officer. And you kind of pretty much sort of booked your place with your regiment probably before you went to Sandhurst. You knew where you wanted to go and you would have had an interview with them before you went to Sandhurst. And so they would sometimes reject people and they'd say, well, you know, good luck at Sandhurst, but we don't think you're what we want. That obviously didn't happen to me, but that could happen. And so it was a whole sort of jockeying, you know, and also even then there were only a limit. There were a fixed number of places that the regiments could fill. So if they had too many people wanting to come in, then, you know, they couldn't take them all. Although that definitely wasn't the case with the Scots guards in my day. We were very badly recruited for officers. The SCS for an officer, I'm assuming the selection is the same as the men, is that right? Yeah, you do the same. You have to get a better grade than they do on Test Week.  What's hard about it? I'm guessing physical. Well, no, it's because you're, well, in my case, we've just finished Test Week and come straight off Test Week onto Officers Week. So you're tired anyway. So they've achieved that. You're absolutely knackered. The difficult part about it that I found is that on Test Week, it's purely objective.  And that's on the watch and on the paper. Officers Week is much more about whether they like you or not as an officer. And so it's quite hard not to start trying to second guess it, you know what I mean? So they ask you a question or they throw something at you and you're, instead of just reacting, you're thinking, what do they want me to say, you know, what am I meant to say? Which of course is potentially fatal. Was it always on the cards you were going to go on selection? Was that your goal from the beginning? Yeah, it was actually. My cousin, Lockheed McLean, was in the SAS in the 60s. And I mean, he went to Borneo, served in Borneo, he's Garza Independent Parishing Company then SAS. In fact, he was one of the founding crew commanders of G squadron for SAS historians. And so I was at school and hearing about my cousin's exploits and I thought, right, this is what I want to do. Wow. And I've seen pictures of you in the Northern Ireland conflict, haven't I? Might have done. Yeah. I did a lot of tours. In fact, I did the Santas, I did what was called the Edward Bear course, which was the, you basically did the parachute course as an officer cadet. So I did that for fun, basically. I mean, you volunteered for it. And then, of course, you do parachute training in the SAS, everybody does. Yeah, you do a lot of it, don't you? Quite a bit, yeah. Because if you're a free-faller, if you're in free-fall troop, each squadron has a free-fall troop.  The rest of us sort of muddle along. The funny thing was that the one thing that the free-fallers absolutely hated was static line, which is what we all do. You know, they were fine jumping out at 20,000 feet at night with oxygen and a berg on their legs. And oh my God, I don't know how they did it. But you say to them, OK, we're going to jump at 600 feet on a static line. They say, oh my God, no, we don't want to do that. Yes. I did two parachute courses. The first one we got as far as the balloon jump. And then it was cancelled because all the Hercules went out to the first Gulf War. Right. But I shared my room with two SES guys. And they were probably like the two most humble people I've ever met. I think that might surprise a lot of people, but you just would not know that these guys were the elite of the elite. No, some of the guys are very surprising. There was one time where they were bumbling along. I think we'll go into what you guys would call scoff, what we call scran. And the RSN came out. He went, you two, put your effing berries on now. And these two troopers just went carried on walking. Is he talking to us? They were like, nobody talks to us that way. Sorry. Yeah. I remember when I did my parachute course the second one time I did it with the, which was with the SES. And obviously, I don't think I need to say that, but as a young officer, you're pretty nervous. And the parachute course is at the end of your SES selection and continuation.  And now you've got two weeks away from camp and you're just going to, you know, do these do these jumps, which we'd all done before anyway. So we were with, I don't know, 40 or 50 parachute regiment recruits. And they really were parachute regiment recruits. You know, they've just done P company and now they're going to do their, their jobs. And so I think we're about eight or nine of us SES guys on this course with these 40 or 50 parachute regiment guys. And I think we've done the first jump from the aircraft. And the, the SES guys formed up to me as the Rupert and said, right, boss, listen, we want you to go and talk to the commandant of this place, because we're not going to jump with those beep, did he beep, beep, beep again. And I said, well, what do you mean? They said, well, they're just dangerous because they're so gung ho. All they want to do is charge out the back of that airplane. There's no thought of timing between the doors, you know, left, right, left, right. And we don't want to jump with them. So I thought, God, now what, you know, so anyway, have to go and form up to the REF commanding officer. Tell him the situation. He looked at me and he said, you know what, Simon, I don't blame them and I don't blame you. It's fine.  It was quite funny. Yes. As a Marine, I always had to make sure I was the first one out because we, we had a load of baby paras in with us as, as well. You know exactly what I'm talking about. And one time in the balloon, they say, right, number off.  So basically for friend, our friends listening, that means you're first in the door. And he said, right, number one to the door. And I step forwarded arms across the reserve. And I just turn around and said, I'll see you guys on the ground. And then when I caught up with them in the hangar, I said, yeah, did you think it was funny when I said, I'll see you guys on the ground. And he said, actually, Chris, we were just shitting ourselves. Didn't really didn't really hear what you said. Yeah, gosh, great experience throwing yourself out of airplanes. Yeah, I preferred airplanes to the balloon, actually. So there was something very clinical about the balloon jump. Yeah, it's like, it's all, it's a base jump technically, isn't it, which is kind of, it all seems so much more serious if it's going to open or not. If it doesn't, you haven't really got much height to rectify it. And in the airplane, you've got all that noise and the smell and the shouting and the, and the sort of the whole stick going out and all of that. Whereas the balloon, it's very quiet. There you go. Off you go. So kind of thing. And very different. And then of course you're going to fall straight down. You're not going to go sideways with the movement of the aircraft. They took the balloon up to four or five commando.    And we used to do that because I was a boat troop. And so we were quite a lot of water stuff with pool actually. And in those days, they used to allow non power trained civilians to jump off the tailgate of the C 130 into the sea because why not, you know, what, what can possibly go wrong. And it turned out that actually quite a lot could possibly go wrong. Because one guy dropped his reserve. You know, so when he released one side of the reserve, he didn't release one side of the reserve. He released both sides of the reserve. But I mean about 500 feet up. So this reserve comes down. And the booties in the in the Gemini's. So laughing to have to make sure they land on them. And then the next guy that came out misjudged the distance completely. And I don't know what highly was when he fell out of his harness, but quite high, high enough for everyone to go. Yeah, the things you do when you're young. It was pretty good fun. I loved it. Has it been a help or a hindrance Simon being you.  Well, obviously, throughout social media is is how have you found that. It was a pain. Because, you know, mercenaries so fairly pejorative word among for most people. And it's, it's a sort of pointless debate because you know you can talk about what is a mercenary all day long. And some people would say with any professional soldier surely is a man. And then you have well no, no, because that's the Queen and country. Really, well, Garko isn't, you know, he doesn't come from here. So is he a mercenary. And that whole debate is completely pointless really. And so I sort of avoid it. And in fact, on LinkedIn, for those who follow LinkedIn, I've been arguing that we ought to be called com dot he airy, which is the Italian for mercenary and it just sounds so much better. It's, it's, it's kind of funny to place you even in that scene because I mean I've had guys I was in the Marines with they've gone out and they've done, you know, security on diamond mines in Africa or Angola and it's not unusual for guys to come out of an elite force or a special force and go and do that line of work isn't it not not really caring what the parameters of the, the, all the politics are but if there's a big paycheck at the end of it. But you, you, am I right in thinking you were more trying to do the right thing. Or was there an element, was there a met element of, I'm going to get paid a lot for this as well.  Actually funny enough, it's behind me. This is my friend's house, but the books actually somewhere up in there. I'm going to put a link for it under our video Simon. Okay, cool. Yeah. And so, I mean, basically, I rejoined without telling you having to tell a whole story again, but I mean I rejoined the British Army, because of the first Gulf War, and I was on the staff of Peter killer Billy air. And that all came to an end in February. In 1992. And I was offered a job back in the special air service actually arranged by Peter, because I was on a TA attachment to do my service with him.  And then Tony Buckingham at the same time started heritage oil and gas which I actually helped him a little bit with.  Come and join me in heritage. I said, okay, I really actually probably ought to try and do that and make some proper money. And lo and behold, what was it about seven months later, I was a general in the Angolan army at war. So my attempt at becoming a civilian was an abject failure. And the reason we got into we were in that position was because basically, you need to, who will be gorillas. Having signed an agreement and having made all sorts of promises went against their agreement and against their promises and they went back to war. They lost the elections of November 92. It's a really big deal because I mean that was, that was what the Russians and the Cubans and the South Africans and the Americans all out of Angola, all in the lead up to that election. Long story. Anyway, they went back to war. And the first thing they did was they attacked our operating base, which is a place called so you on the mouth of the river Congo. We decided that we would fight back that we wouldn't just say okay we're going home and pack our bags. We thought no, you know, these guys are committing a huge crime against humanity going back to war they signed an agreement they made a peace treaty they've got no right to go back to war whatsoever.  So we pitched the pitch the idea to the Angolans, they liked it, and that was effectively the beginning of executive outcomes I mean executive outcomes existed before that, but hadn't done anything of that sort at all. And the next thing we're in a pitch battle to recapture Sawyer, which is all quite well known, quite well documented. And so, you know, it wasn't like a deliberate decision to go and fight or become a security guy it was actually the opposite I was hoping I was going to become an oil and gas. But it wasn't that wasn't going to it wasn't to be. And so the whole mercenary thing there is quite annoying in a way because you know, how are we mercenaries you know we we firstly we're acting almost in self defense we're acting in on behalf of our company and our livelihood. And secondly, we're like girkers because we were all signed up into the Angolan armed forces, you know I had an ID card badges of rank for the rest of it. So that doesn't normally fulfill the mercenary, you know, definition. Yeah. My gosh. So yes I see. And how did you go from there to the equatorial Guinea situation. Oh that was much later so that the Angolan stuff all happened in 93. So that's when that's when executive outcomes really started as a mercenary company. And I think it's important to actually differentiate between you know private security company private military company and what executive outcomes was because you know a lot of these what they call PMC's what are they actually doing they're doing an embassy or their escorting VIPs around. And yeah if they get shot at they'll shoot back. Fine, but they don't go to a government and say will help you win your war will come and fight this war with you and will help you win it, which is what executive outcomes did. And that is a rather different thing. Well Angola was going on we started Sierra Leone and shortly after that while that was going on the Papua New Guinea happened that big mess, and then the arms to Sierra Leone scandal, which resulted in the resignation of Robin Cook, all of those dramas happened. And that was basically when I thought I think I'll take the family down to Cape Town and relax in the vineyards of Constantia, which is what I did until 2003. And that was when I was recruited to do the Equatoria Guinea failed to attempt. Am I right in thinking you were tricked into or just was it double crossed. No, it's again it's a long story but you know now I was recruited to do it I thought I said yeah I agreed to do it. I wanted to do it.  And Lord arrested. How did Mark factually get involved what what what did he, what was he looking to get out of this. And how he got involved was that basically the guy who should have been backing the whole thing, and driving the show. Who is the guy who recruited me. The guy called Ellie Khalil, who's now dead. And he wasn't backing us properly and basically the whole thing was going to fail. It was just going to be, it was just going to fall apart, not going to happen. It was going to be $200,000 to keep the show on the road. And I thought well who is crazy enough to just, you know, right out to check $200,000 to be a part of this and to make this happen. And Mark was, you know, a friend really I mean more of an acquaintance and a friend but he was a friend in a way down in Cape Town. He had dinner parties together and all that business but I didn't really know him that well but I thought yeah well I hope Mark would love to do this.  Yes I bet. When you were arrested in, was it Harari Airport. So you're on your way to Equatorial Guinea. Yeah that's right. And you were going to pick up your weapons in Zimbabwe. Harari, yeah.  Well actually I'd been there for a few days because what we were doing was collecting the arms and ammunition as you say, and the airplane came in my lovely Boeing 727 which was just bought. And with the men on board. And the idea was, you know, they were just going to stop load the stuff on and away we go. So I went to collect actually check over the weapons and go on to the back of a truck and there was, there were very few weapons there and I thought oh something's really wrong here. And then I heard this voice saying get down from the truck. And that's it, we were under arrest. Oh my God, did they arrest all of your men? Oh yeah, yeah everyone went to prison. For 18 months. A year or 18 months in depending. In Harari, Chigurubi Max, Chick Max, they call it the Harari Hilton. Yeah. These places get the tag Hilton don't they? Not a good place. I'm guessing ironically. And where did you recruit those guys from?  No, no, they were all from executive outcome. Almost without exception. Yeah. And where did executive outcomes recruit from mainly? Was it ex-Paris and Marines? Ex-executive outcomes was almost exclusively ex-South African defense force. Either Parachute Parabat or Recky, which is their equivalent of Special Forces. But many of them were from the notorious 3-2 battalion. Because I mean 80% of executive outcome for Black. And these guys came from 3-2 battalion. Who were basically people who the South Africans recruited in Angola to fight for the South Africans against the MPLA. The then Angolan government. Actually, still the Angolan government, but yeah. It's a complicated and long story. I mean Angola was the worst.  And it was real war.  And most people actually in the UK pretty ignorant of the whole thing. They didn't even know where Angola is, most people. But it was a major war. Yes. Well, they saw that, I mean, they had it bad, didn't they? Back in, I mean, originally Portugal didn't want to give its colonies up. So there was a brutal fight there. Then they had all the civil war again. It's just... Yeah, well, the poor old Angolans. I mean, actually, this was one of the reasons I was so angry when UNITA went back to war. I just thought it was outrageous thing to do. Because as you say, they'd had this incredibly long war. They fought against the Portuguese. There were about three or four different factions and fought against the Portuguese. Portuguese packed it up and ran away in 76 when they had their own coup in Portugal, if you remember. And then the civil war started, which was MPLA backed by Russia and Cuba against UNITA, the guerrillas, backed by the United States and South Africa. And I knew Zavimbi. I mean, I actually spent four hours with Zavimbi talking about the whole thing, the whole story. And he promised I was with Lord Steele, the leader of the House in Scotland. David Steele is a very good guy. And he and I went and saw Zavimbi. We spent four hours with them. I mean, the only reason I saw Zavimbi, because I was with Lord Steele, because Zavimbi wouldn't have seen me otherwise, that I was sort of David Steele's bag carrier. But actually I was a little bit more than that, because we wanted to make sure that if Zavimbi won, the oil company that I was by then working for would be still regarded as friendly. The whole thing there about him, and he looked in the eye, I actually don't think UNITA intended to go back to war. I think they were pushed back into it. I don't think it was their decision. Well, there's massive wealth in that part of the world, isn't it? The massive, massive natural resources and... Well, I mean Angola is just the most incredible country. I mean, it's three times the size of France. Oil, copper, gold, diamonds, fish in the sea, fantastic farmland. I mean, it's just the most fabulous place. Yes, and destroyed by years of civil war. I mean, how many land mines must be in the ground there? Yeah, I mean, you know, they are working their way through it. They're sorting it out slowly, but surely. Simon, I'm conscious of your time here. Can you just give us an idea of what was it like in a foreign prison and what mindset you have to adopt? Yeah, the mindset thing is pretty important. But, you know, people come to me and they say, well, you know, it doesn't compare with you, but I actually spent two weeks in a jail in, you know, wherever, Burkina Faso or something. And of course, that's nothing like what you had to do. I said, no, no, no, it's fine. One day is a day too many.  So I understand exactly what you're talking about. And I mean, one of the sort of weird things about it is that it's almost it's a double punishment or even a treble punishment in a sense, because, you know, I'm sure UK prisons are not all that pleasant. Although some of them look pretty good. But your family can come and visit you. Yeah, my family couldn't come and visit me.  If you're in Zimbabwe, they don't. And so you're in a kind of exile. You know, you're hot. You're in a cultural exile. And I think that makes it much harder. And then of course, when I got to Equatoria Guinea, because United two, so I did four years in, in Chikurubi, in Harari. And then I was kind of kidnapped out of that prison. And I was smuggled to Equatoria Guinea, where they put me in Black Beach there. And in Black Beach, I was in solitary confinement, strict solitary confinement for 18 months. God, that's like that's either character building or character breaking, isn't it? Yeah, probably. But I mean, you've got no choice. So you just got to. What did they feed you? Well, in Zimbabwe, they just feed you SADSA, which is, you know, boiled up meal. SADSA in the evening and what they call BOTA, which is the same meal, but cooked a different way. A porridge in the morning. And that's it, basically. Luckily, having a super wife and family, I had extra food. Oh, they could subsidize you, could they?  And Simon, if I may say so, you look remarkably healthy for, are you 70 now, would that be right? 68. Yeah. My God, you're out doing, well, a lot of guys in their 50s, I'd say. Well, I try and run every day. I really try and keep fit. Yeah. What are your times like? Do you find them slipping as you get older? Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, of course, yeah. I try and stick to this thing that you should be able to do 10Ks in the same number of minutes as you are old in years. Okay. Now, obviously, to 25, that's going to be extremely difficult. But it's quite a good benchmark as you get older. Yeah. I'm not particularly good at doing mass on the spot, but I'll have to work that out. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm running 200 miles this month. Oh, my God. Yes. One of these silly things that I do, I've got this project called running homeless for Christmas. Okay. And I'm just going to hit my running track and just run 200 miles. And if I can do it in two days, great. Then I, then I get home for Christmas Eve. If I don't, then I'm, I'm out for the, for the long run. I want to just do what I can to highlight the veterans plight, the amount of our service personnel that suffer with trauma and subsequently housing problems. Yeah. But yeah, I hope that day doesn't come when, when I can't keep pretending on 21. Yeah. No, well, it will. I mean, I'm very lucky, but I find now, you know, you get an injury, you pick up a minor injury, like a tweak knee, you know, which back in the day would have cured quickly. And now it sort of stays with you. You can't run for quite a while. And then that, that means, you know, when you do start running again, you want to be very careful. You don't pick up another injury.  Yes. I bet body management. Yeah. But I think it's also the same, you know, with the whole mental health thing as well. And I think the guys, some of the guys have a real problem with asking for help and sort of, you know, understanding that they can't do what they used to be able to do, you know, because we all, you got your background, my background, we all such such an incredibly high. We set very, very high standards for ourselves, a fitness of mental toughness and all the rest of it.  You don't want to tell anybody you're not feeling well. And that is a real issue, I think. Yes, very much so. Anyone out there struggling, there's phone numbers at the bottom of my YouTube video that you can reach out and talk to somebody.  I mean, that's meant to sort of send anybody around the twist. And I say, well, you don't ask me. I might be thinking I'm Napoleon and everything's fine. But I did a talk actually to the SDS Regimental Association just before Christmas, actually. And I knew that the Association wanted me to talk about the whole business of sort of, you know, asking for help. And I thought, God, I cannot stand up in front of them and tell them they've got to ask for help. You know, that's not going to work. So I turned it around completely. And I cited two people who I knew were here as to the audience, you know, all of the SDS guys. David Sterling, who I really knew quite well. And Peter de la Bilia, who I also really knew quite well and worked, well, I worked for both of them actually on different occasions. And I said, you know, the amazing thing about both those guys is that anybody feels felt with them that they could go and talk to them. Considering who they were, they were fantastically approachable. So if somebody wanted to ask for help, they would accept that 100% and they would welcome it. And I thought my idea was that by turning it around, I got the same message across to the guys without sounding patronizing, you know. Yes.  Do you know Damien Lewis? No, I don't. Damien writes a lot of SDS type memoirs, not personal memoirs, but about the regiment. Okay. And yeah, we were just, he came on the podcast the other day. He's a very famous author. And... No, I've seen his book. Yeah. He was saying how much, like the amount of trauma somebody like Paddy Main must have accumulated during their service with the, you know, the untold acts of warfare that he was involved in and how back then you just had the drink and you didn't have this thing where you could reach out to people. Yeah, it's quite nice. I agree with you. And I was actually quite... What was that book called? SDS Heroes, the one... It was a big success two or three years ago. I can't actually remember the name of the title, but it was the official history of the SDS in the war. And I was shocked how much they were drinking at the time. Never mind afterwards. Yes. But Paddy Main, in fact, actually at the dinner that I did this talk, I just talked about just now, mentioned just now. There was a guy there who had served in two SDS in the war. And he said, well, I was lucky. I didn't have to do selection like you all did. He said, really? You didn't do selection? He said, no, we didn't do selection in those days. I just got interviewed by Paddy Main. And I said, well, I think actually probably selection would be easier than the interview by Paddy Main. Yes. I got a feeling a bottle of whiskey came into that interview. It's a benchmark. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I must admit, I've thought, legislately, people have asked me about the lockdown and all this, the whole COVID-19 thing. So what do you think about it? What do you think Colonel David would have thought about? I said, well, I don't think he would have regarded stay safe. That's a very good way of saying goodbye to people. Stay safe. Yes. There's nothing safe about him. It's amazing that you know him. He's obviously legendary David Sterling. Totally. Absolutely amazing guy. I mean, just incredible guy. I was very, very lucky to get to know him actually quite well. It wasn't entirely luck, actually, because I sort of blagged my way in and got to know him and started working for him. But I kind of cold called him, which was an interesting moment for anyway. Sounds like you can get away with that sort of thing in the essay. I appreciate the normal thing. He really was very approachable. And the first time I met him, I was absolutely terrified. I knew who he was. I was a very young officer in the Scots Guards and I was very bored. I'd been to North Nile twice and that was pain in the arse. I knew he was up to all sorts of interesting things. And I went in and see him in his beautiful office above Goods in South Ordley Street. 22 South Ordley Street. So it's 22. The address is 22S there. And lovely office. Went in. It was evening with no lights and it's a great big desk. Beautiful office. And he's sitting there. He said, oh, come on. Come on. Sit down. I'm just about to light a cigar, but it's the last one. But I haven't lit it yet. I'll tell you what. I'm just going to toss you for it. And it's just, it's just a super small thing, but he had the gift that he could put someone at ease. You know. Yes. A leader of men. Absolutely amazing guy. So thank you ever so much for your time. It's been a fascinating chat. I'm going to put all your links. What should I put your LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Page I can put. Because I don't really do the others. Yeah. And you can mention the book if you like. Yeah. Long, long gone. And will you send me the. Send me the link so I can put them on my. LinkedIn as well. Absolutely. Yes. Thank you. And let's chat again. If that's okay. That would be. That would be my pleasure. Sure. Well, that's fine. I enjoyed it. My pleasure too. Yes. Take care. Speak soon. All right then. Thanks. Simon. Cheers that. Bye bye. Bye bye. Hello friend. I hope this finds you well. My name is Chris. I'm a former. Royal Marine's commando. And I fought my way back from chronic trauma and addiction to live, work and travel in 80 countries across all seven continents, achieving all of my dreams and goals along the way. Now I pass my simple system on to other people, but I can only help you if you like and subscribe. So please do so because you get one life. And if you live it right, one is enough.


So I want to talk about the alteration of olivine and plagioclase because they both create common alteration mineral products as in clays and oxides. So I'd like to talk about plagioclase weathering first. So we have calcium, aluminum, silica on oxygen and it reacts with acidity to form calcium ions and the clay mineral kaolinite, which has yield to Si2O5OH4. So I need to balance this. So I have my calcium's okay, my aluminum's okay, silica's okay, I have nine oxygens on this side and only eight on this side, so I need to add a water and I have two charges on this side and only one on this side. So now we have four protons. So basically what this reaction shows is that plagioclase plus acidity forms calcium ions plus kaolinite easily. And so when you react the plagioclase here, it changes the pH of the water and it produces these kaolinite clays. And so there's this confusion or a mixture between clay-sized grains and clay mineralogy grains because they were named before scientists could actually tell the mineral structure from the grain size. But one of the interesting things about this is these are clay-sized in addition to being clay minerals. And so here the resulting product almost always produces a lot of suspended sediment. So we can also weather olivine and the acidity helps with that as well. And the iron in the presence of acidity will dissociate with the silica and you get two reduced iron and then the silica can also be in solution if it has enough protons. You have to basically replace the four charges with the ions with the protons here. And so we need four protons. So I have my charges balanced and I have my elements balanced here. So this iron will react with oxygen. So I'm going to use four of them to balance out the equation. And the reason for that is each one of the irons goes from two plus to three plus. And so if we have four electrons we can use one oxygen here. And then we're going to need some water to provide some extra oxygen. And the iron will oxidize to an iron oxyhydroxide, but I'm just going to use hematite here because it's a nice mineral phase, it's a little cleaner. And so this iron is in the three plus state. And so we actually, there are two of them in each one, so I need a two here. And then that means that I have three or six oxygens. So I have two here and so I need four more here to get six oxygens. And that leaves me with eight protons and I also need something to balance the charge. And so we end up with eight protons here. So we are charge balanced, we're oxidative state balanced, and we're element balanced. So one of the things that happens that's really interesting in this process is that when you oxidize the iron, you produce acidity. Some of you might have heard about the problems with acid mind drainage. That occurs when you expose iron two plus to water and oxygen at Earth's surface and it oxidizes to produce all these protons. If we look at the reaction of the olivine as a whole, this first part of the olivine weather and consumes protons and the second part produces them. So we can combine these two equations to have both the dissolution of olivine and the oxidation of iron. So I'm going to multiply this equation times two. So I have two olivines, eight protons, four irons, and two hydrated silica. When I add these two equations together, we basically now have eight protons and eight protons so we can get rid of those two. We have four irons and four irons so we can get rid of those two and everything else stays the same. So we end up with two olivines and on this side we need plus an oxygen plus four water molecules. Then we have our products on the other side. This canceled out with this. We have two hydra silicas and two hematite. So basically our olivine, when it's exposed to water and oxygen, goes into hydrated silica and hematite. Now again, this hematite is not a clay mineral but it's often clay sized. So it ends up in suspension in the water and this silica often goes into clay minerals but it requires other mineral reactions to actually form these minerals because the clay minerals all have aluminum in them and olivine doesn't have that aluminum. It's also possible that this could form microcrystalline quartz or chert or hydra silica like opal is a hydra silica mineral. So when you have pyroxenes and amphiboles they also release oxides if you have oxygen present and silica and aluminum to form these alteration products. So in summary the composition of sediment consists of lithic clasts of the original host rock if they haven't had time to alter. The least reactive minerals, quartz in particular is most common and then alteration and weathering products and those are mostly clay minerals and oxides. If you have very little chemical weathering you can have some of these more reactive minerals present but through time with alteration and exposure to water and oxygen they will disappear. So the composition of the sediment can give you a really interesting history about the protolith of the rock that formed the sediment, the weathering processes and how long and what types of weathering they've experienced. Thanks for watching.