But he was very funny about these. You don't even have to, I mean, you don't have to write the jokes, the jokes make themselves. This is wild, man, Mike. I apologize. The first thing after I hit the live button, I started yacking my lungs out, fantastic. I'm just glad it stopped me. So welcome to the Linuxcast, everyone. I apologize for the cold. Also, I don't know if the live button caught it or not before we hit the live button, but we were discussing the brand new exclusive $99 Trump trading card, digital trading cards that are NFNFTs.  Yes.   Like, who are those people? And like, do you want to be them? Like, what? Makes no sense. Whatever, I mean, whatever, folks, I don't, like I said, if you have a chance, check out the late night guys because man, where are they? They're just pure gold. All of them. Josh, I don't know what you're talking about. Officially late now, dude. We're going, we're here. I hit the live button at 4.15 and I can't help it if YouTube is behind. All right, so if we, now that you guys have all heard us for a little wall yak and can we get some yeas or nays on the audio, I'd appreciate that. I have been having audio issues and the most entertaining part about the audio issue is that I made a video, I think it was two days ago claiming that pipe wire was finally ready and the audio was bad on that video. Yeah, I was going to ask if it coincided with that. And of course it was pipe wire's fault. Even though I didn't think it was pipe wire's fault but it was actually like multiple bug reports were filed because of the distorted audio. It got fixed very fast, but man, that's irony right there. It was good. So we got some yeas, that's good. We need some more talks out of Tyler. Tyler says words. Yeah, so this is me saying words. I did also get a good chuckle out of the Fawson story. He's like, will Tyler simp on Apple again? Of course he will.  Eventually it'll just be normal. He won't just talk about it anymore.   But yeah, I mean, we'll wait till we get to like what we've been doing this week in Linux. Talk about that. Yeah, it should be fun. Like look guys, we know that this is a Linux podcast but even people who use Linux do use other platforms including the Linux foundation. I mean, that's all that's happening here is that I was going to call you Linus but Tyler over there has joined the Linux foundation and in order to be a part of the Linux foundation you have to use Macintosh. That's just a given, that's how you get in the door. So I'm just trying to get my feet ready, you know? They just hand those things out like candy over there. I mean, it could have been System 76 but they couldn't get a good deal. Like a bulk discount or anything. So they had to buy Apple products. I do like that they couldn't find a deal bit. That's nice. They are a little level sound fine. Oh, okay, good. I thought that sounded or I thought he was saying the exact opposite. He wants me to test plus sign. Please bring pizza pronto. There you go. There was your plus test. I mean, I could make them worse by getting right up on the mic but no, I don't need to do that. You don't need to eat the mic. Yeah. All right. Platinum placating platters on planes. There you go. There's all my plosives. I stole mine from a podcastage. Okay. So do you have Audacity open? I do. All right. So there it is. Yeah, let's go ahead and I'm gonna hit record in Audacity. I'm gonna hit record in OBS and you can do the claps whenever you like. All right. Here we go. Three, two, one. I have no idea if that was good or bad. I don't know. I actually don't need it because I can never hear the clap. Like I can't hear it. It sounds perfect but whenever I edit it, I go back and find out that we're like 10 seconds off. It's not that bad, but it feels like it sometimes. It's never as bad as when you're on BSD because BSD is always Oh, yeah, that delay. Yeah. Technically, you are in fact using BSD. So when? I mean, because Mac OS is based on BSD. So all right, do that. It's just if only open BSD had all of these features would be so nice. But then also it would not be open BSD at all. Not anymore. It'd be closed BSD. Before we go ahead and start the podcast, I will go ahead and say I'm just going to go ahead and close out of the Trump Trading Cards website. And hopefully I'll be able to like scrape that for my website. The most the best part about that is it'd be hilarious if it used flash. I mean, I know flash isn't really supporting more, but it'll be hilarious if it used flash. Like for anybody who's watching the podcast and who hasn't at least seen the website, you need to treat yourself like it is such a laugh. Like, oh, my God, it's so funny. The thing is also very saddening that people are buying them. That's like what hurts the. Well, he got he got covered on all the news yesterday, like even the local news cover because he came out like early yesterday afternoon and said we got a big announcement.  Or is he dying? Or, you know, they all speculated it was a really big news. And then he came out and like digital trading cards, NFTs. Yes, he is the best troll in the world. I'm just saying I like I never liked him as a president, but man, does that mean I know how to troll? Like I I genuinely also don't get it. Because there's like this is like right at the time when like everyone's bailing on NFTs, like everyone trying to get in on NFTs is like failing or like there's regulators coming in and like actually enforcing legal. Every crypto exchange in the world right now is like dying. One guy's just got arrested and triple like, yeah, good idea. It's like it's like there couldn't be anything better to make money right now. This is fantastic. You know, this is a scam. I got to get on it. Naypyx says just because there's to be a butthole make y'all lose focus on on topics. Super chat for the wind. Thanks for the super chat. You could have you timed it well because we have a target. But we get we get distracted by things all the time. All right, let's go ahead and get started. We won't talk about the Trump or anymore. Dorn. All right. Make sure I'm actually recording because I did actually press the buttons, which is good. OK. Hey, everybody, welcome, Michael and his cast. I'm your host, Matt. And I'm Tyler. Yes, he. Yeah, he is Tyler. I'm pretty sure and unless he's not Tyler, in which case. We need to find the real Tyler, because this is a very good imitation. I'm just I'm just saying he's got the whole doppelganger doppelganger thing going down pretty good. If so, anyways, what a way to stop. Very hard to the Steve Pike. Yeah, really, not Tyler. Actually, Luke Smith. I'm just saying it's just Luke Smith over there. He's got it going. And he's obviously, you know, he's Luke Smith because of all the various fruit related products around him. Yes, yes. And and in typical Luke Smith fashion, we're going to focus a majority of this podcast on religious debates and topics. So now that I've ran off most of the listeners, let's do the intro. Yeah, so this is the Linuxcast. We talk about Linuxy things just to alert you to the schedule. This is the last episode of the year. This is it. You know, it's just I mean, the end of the year is like tomorrow. It's like it feels like it's tomorrow, but really it's not. But next week is like Christmas. I mean, it's like two days before Christmas, a week from today. And then after that is New Year's. So we're taking the next two weeks off. We'll be back the first week of January with season seven of the Linuxcast. So for those of you who do watch live or actually watch this after the fact, there won't be episodes in the next two weeks. So yeah, just wanted to let everybody know that. So Tyler, what have you been up to this week, my friend? Well, I don't know exactly why, but my back's been killing me like really bad here lately. So I've been like pretty much just laid out, like not really doing very much. And also just because of the way my back's been hurting, I haven't really been able to sit at a computer because I've been having to focus on like my posture and doing a whole bunch of stuff. So I've been catching up a lot on TV shows, but I have been messing around on the iPad I've got with ISH. And what that is is kind of like, it's a Alpine Linux essentially virtual machine that's just like inside of an app that you can run on your iPad. And it's actually really, really cool. So I've been like just messing around with it, like I installed Rust, messed around with some cargo packages. I've just been doing small stuff with it, but it's been a lot of fun. Like you can install pretty much anything inside of it. It's actually pretty like responsive, like especially for a virtual machine, assuming you do have like a newer tablet to run it on or a newer phone, it's really fast. So you can, I mean, you can also install on your iPhone. I don't have it installed on my iPhone, but you can. So it's just like a, it's a really cool like portable virtual, like Linux virtual machine for like iOS or iPad OS like devices. It's pretty cool been messing around with it. But yeah, that's pretty much mainly what I've been doing other than work, which has just been boring. So yeah, what'd you been up to, man? All right. So I have a couple of things that I need to talk about. So first one is I've been working, I too have been learning about virtual machines. And you know, I've been using virtual machines for a long time, but I've been working on some tutorials for the channel and I needed to learn how to do UEFI in a virtual machine, which I'd never done before. So I've learned how to do that. Turns out it's just the, you know, a dropdown invert manager, not hard at all. I thought it was gonna be like, ooh, it's gonna be super difficult. And then I, I Google it and like, no, it's not too difficult at all. And then I've been learning how to do butterfs on Ubuntu, cause that's going to be a video that I'm going to be doing. So I, I'm just gonna talk about this because it, it needs to be talked about. So I've been promising a butterfs video for literally forever, like six, seven months, I've been talking about butterfs. And I've wanted to do video, like I want to do an overall tutorial video on how to use butterfs, but the problem is, is that every distro test is different, slightly different. Some of them are pretty much the same. If you're using Debian and Ubuntu, the process is mostly the same, but if you use Arch or Fedora, they're different. So yeah, sometimes you have to deal with weird sub volumes. Like if you use Fedora, Fedora doesn't use the traditional sub volume layout if you install, it uses butterfs by default, but doesn't use it, it doesn't use home and at and stuff for your sub volumes. So it's a mess. So the overarching butterfs video that I've been promising is not going to happen. It's just, it's been canceled. Instead, what I'm going to do is do separate butterfs videos for different distros. So Ubuntu is going to be the first one. I chose Ubuntu simply because other people have done Debian, so I decided to do Ubuntu. They'll come out sometime this later, like the next week or so, I think. So yeah, that's what I've been working on there. But the other thing I wanted to talk about is I was having phone problems. So I haven't had a brand new phone since the iPhone 6. So it's been a while. I've bought other phones, but they've all been used. So when you buy a used phone, you risk getting a phone that has just a crappy battery in it. So the last phone that I bought was probably an early this year. I bought a Galaxy S21 Plus and it's a good phone, but the battery did not end up lasting where the dam. So by the time I got to this point here, I was using it in the last few weeks and I had to charge it four or five times a day. It just was not, it would almost immediately go to like 50% and then it would just go down from there. It would last a couple hours and I'd have to charge it. So I needed a different device. I looked into use, I decided I was gonna get a, at this time I just, you know, I'm gonna get a new phone. I haven't had a brand new one in a while. So I went with the OnePlus 10 Pro. I had that for a few days and it had some serious software problems. Like OnePlus's software is just, it's garbage now. So I sent that back and ended up with the Pixel 7 Pro. I'm showing this on camera now. And yeah, I love this phone. It's fantastic. It's one of the things that I always have a problem with a lot of Android phones is they issue wider screens for really tall screens. Like they have the wider, taller aspect ratio. This one is also a very tall phone, but it's also just a little bit wider than the majority of the rest of the Android phones that I've had recently. And I like that because I have big man pause. You know, so I like to have a phone that it feels like an actual phone and not like something that I'm gonna squeeze too hard and break it half. Obviously that's never happened.  So yeah, I went with the Pixel 7 Pro. It's a fantastic size. The software is amazing. It does have some really weird touch response issues that Google has apparently had forever, but yeah, it's a good phone. And I'm glad I went new. So this should last me a couple of years, I think. And somebody in the chat asked me what laptop I bought. I bought a used XPS 13 from eighth generation Intel wine. Yeah, so that should be here on Monday. Haven't got it yet. But yeah, I bought that from eBay. It should be fun. When it comes to laptops, I don't care about battery life. That's gonna stay plugged in all the time anyway. So I don't mind buying used. Anyways, that, yeah. So I've been on a little bit of a bug. Well, and also the XPS line is a really good line. So I'm pretty sure I used one of those. It's not gonna have really a problem with it. Plus if you had to, you could replace the battery in that. Replacing a battery in a phone is not easy. So yeah, I will. And also it depends on how you use a laptop. Cause if we're being honest, there's many people who like really don't use a laptop like has a really all that much of a portable device. It's mainly like they just take it to another place that's near a plug and plug it in and sit down with it. Like it pretty much never really runs off battery. That's basically how a lot of my family members are. Basically it's gonna be me. The only time the battery will matter is when the lights go out. Like the electricity goes out and then I'll say like, oh, why is this battery so horrible? That's the only time that I would ever use the battery. But other times it's like I sit next to a plug. I don't mind cords. It's fine. But it made me think like why hasn't somebody made a wireless charging like dock for your laptop? Like you could just set it on there and it would wirelessly charge with no cords, but I don't know. That's a good point.  Like why has there's no manufacturer that's done that for laptops? The reason why it has to be is because there's no wireless coil that can deliver 100 watts as far as I know. Well, yeah.  So like when you're using your laptop on your desk, it's constantly charging and like. It just stays wherever it's at. Like it never is gonna go up, but it just stays where it's at. It just has enough power to run it. Yeah, like or if, you know, it's in standby mode, it'll at least like charge at the very least like a decent drip charge. Like, I don't know. Like I get the reason why we don't have a full powered one, but at the very least, like, you know, some type of desk stand or whatever that comes with your laptop. That'd be pretty freaking nice. Yeah. I mean, we're already at the point where we spend so much on laptops like come on, give us the goodies. A lot of people will put them on like a laptop stand and then they use it with a monitor. Imagine not having to have an extra cord. It just sits there and it charges.  So yeah, I chose the XPS over the ThinkPad 5 Pro for one reason, one reason only. The XPS does not have a numpad and I can't stand a numpad on a laptop. I guess it's a complete and utter waste of space. Now we want to talk about bloat. That is bloat. I can't stand it. Like I understand people want them but I want an option without it. Like you can't find other than Apple and Dell, a laptop that is 15 inches that doesn't have a numpad now. Like you can't find it. Like every once, I mean, I say you can't find it but there's like, it's very, very rare. It's just you can't find it widely available. Most laptops that are 15 inches or bigger have a numpad and I don't, I use a 75% keyboard for reason. I don't need that extra stuff, you know? I ain't got a lot of space here, guys. And I mean, if we are also being honest when it comes to trying to get a laptop in that kind of size without a numpad, normally the reason it doesn't have a numpad is that's one of the areas that they skimped. And if they're gonna skimp on just the keyboard aspect, like an aspect where literally every user is going to be using it constantly with the device, they've skimped in other places where they really shouldn't have, like at least a majority of the time, right? Well, we'll end up seeing how that XPS is. It's a very good line, so it should be fine. No. Oh, excuse me. So moving on to the contact information, which is a section that I always end up messing up because I don't have it written down properly, to be honest with you, the template that we've been using for, I don't know, two years is not in a proper order for me to actually read this out to it. So I never read it out in the same way twice. That's the reason why. All right, so if you wanna get in contact with us, you can do so in any number of ways. The best way is probably email, email at thelinxcast.org. I do get your email emails if you email them to me. I get them and read them almost immediately. I never reply to them because I'm a horrible person. I just, I'm sorry, I'm bad at replying to emails. But I do see them and maybe eventually someday we'll do some reading of emails on the podcast. Maybe that's something that we can do. So email at thelinxcast.org is the email address you can find all of our other contact information, including mastodon, odyssey, all that stuff at thelinxcast.org slash contact. And speaking of thelinxcast.org, you can head over there. You'll find all of our latest episodes along with all the blog posts that I do. So those are all there on the website. And Tyler is also online. I don't know why I even bother saying this because the boy just does not know how to make a YouTube video. I swear to God, he's forgotten how to edit or something. Maybe he just can't figure out how, I'm assuming because all of the Apple stuff he's bought, he just can't afford to buy, premiere, whatever the Apple one is, Final Cut. You know, he just can't afford to get those because they're really expensive. And maybe that's the reason why I can't use that. Stop telling the truth, man. This is just cut it out. But anyways, if you want to subscribe to our YouTube channel that doesn't make any YouTube videos, youtube.com slash Zanio G.  I don't, like seriously, man, what the hell's wrong with you? Go make a YouTube video. Even if it's on Apple, go do it. Anyways, you can subscribe to the Linuxcast on YouTube at youtube.com slash linuxcast. I truly appreciate everybody who does. This is where I always get problems.  Okay, youtube.com slash linuxcast. Subscribe if you enjoy this stuff at all. I do appreciate it. And that is it. Oh, patreon.com slash linuxcast. If you want to support me through, you know, dollars. Okay, so moving on to the main part of the show where we discuss the latest, breaking, most awesome news relating to Linux, open source, and anything else really that catches our fancy. We've become CNN is basically what we're saying or Fox News, if you're, you know, whichever way you want to go. We've become, we're gonna become 24 hour news network. So that's gonna be the thing in the, in the new year. That's what we'll do is we'll just around the clock. Tyler and I will sit here in front of our computers and talk about the latest breaking Linux news. But nobody's gonna watch it. Exactly what Tyler said. We're really gonna be like CNN because nobody's gonna be watching that stuff. And then, yeah, yeah. Anyways, so Tyler, your first link of the week. Mine is, so apparently there is a big effort going on to kill Google Maps, which is kind of interesting. So, well, let me get the full list of the companies here in this article. Apparently it's Meta, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and TomTom are all getting together with the Linux Foundation to try and like create a data set that developers can use to build navigation programs that will rival Google Maps, which I think is an admirable goal. I think this is something that we should probably do. However, I just, I just don't know.  I don't think, look, Amazon's really good at getting, wait, yeah, go ahead. Who knew that TomTom even still existed? I mean, I thought that that was from like the fifth, that like the 1990s. I mean, I knew Garmin was still around, but they've moved to Spartan watches, you know? But yeah, I don't know that TomTom is like really all that relevant, but like I don't understand what Meta's bringing to the table other than just sheer money. Like I don't see how Meta being involved. Like also, can we just like stop for a second and go like, okay, look, yes, Google Maps is kind of egregious in its data collection. Yes, it's very, the mainstream, like it's what everyone uses, at least the majority of people use it, or at least use something that relies on it. So yeah, that's something to fight against. But like when Meta is the one who's like gonna be the competition, can we just like not, like we are, can we just stay with the devil we know, please? Yeah, so I mean, at least it's gonna be open, but first of all, there's a couple things here. First, it's the Linux Foundation. So how open is it really going to be? Second of all, this already exists, right? It's called OpenStreetMaps. They've been around for a long time. It's truly open. I mean, you can download their application and contribute to the maps all you want. I mean, you can, there's many different ways you can contribute.  It exists, OpenStreetMaps is here. This is so Linux, okay? This is so open source. We have something that works, that has been worked around for a long time, but we don't use it. So let's create something new. It's the package manager thing all over again. Let's create a new package manager. Let's create a new installer. All those other installers, they work. Why not just contribute to OpenStreetMaps? Like, why not? Why? Do you know how much good they could have done with OpenStreetMaps? Like, hey, OpenStreetMaps, how would you like $10 billion, you know? Well, I mean, like also the kind of odd part about it is like pretty much from what I can tell from their goals that they've laid out, especially here in this article, it seems like they wanna build a dataset software like OpenStreetMaps pulls from. So...  Like, we've been doing this for 10 years, 15 years, however long it's been. So I mean, this existed, they could have just... But the reason why, I'm guessing here, this is just 100% conjecture, but the reason why they're creating something new is because the Linux Foundation is controlled by corporations, we all know this, it's just facts. I mean, the biggest contributor to the Linux Foundation is Microsoft and Google. So that's just the way it is. So the reason why they decided to do it this way, the Linux Foundation wanted control over whatever they created. They wouldn't have that control if they just contributed to OpenStreetMaps because somebody else controls that. So this is all about who controls the data as Google does. They want the same control over the data. Even if it is open, they still want the control. And that's the reason why I'm guessing that this is something that is separate, new. I do also wanna point out that it is very, like just, it's an odd little detail, but something worth mentioning that they don't mention Tom Tom's like relevance until the last article, like the last paragraph of the article where they go, they state, though Tom Tom's market share has seriously depleted since highs in 2008, the company has survived against Google Maps with deals in countries where the top performing app wasn't available. Okay, so. Like they save that. I don't know if anybody's actually ever used Tom Tom recently. And I don't know if this is still the case, but back in 2008, if you wanted to use Tom Tom, you download the app, the application was free. But if you wanted a map, you'd have to pay for it per map. It'd be like going and buying an Alice, you know? And it wasn't cheap. If I remember, it was like 50 bucks. If you wanted a map of Chicago, it was like $50. And you don't just like get the whole world. And that's the reason why Google. Not even state, like let's make that clear. You're like most likely you wouldn't even, if you're in the US, you didn't get like a whole statement. Like normally it was like a local region. It was a city because the map files were huge. I mean, like I'm talking about gigabytes and stuff. Sometimes you wouldn't even be able to get, cause you download them to your phone and it'd be offline. And it'd be cool. But the idea behind it, cause basically that's all that there was. Google Maps was just really in its infancy and it wasn't very good yet. And it was just available at least at that time. I think just, you know, in the major countries. And now it's available everywhere. It's free. It's really, I mean, which we'll about Google, but it's really good. If you want to get somewhere, you use Google Maps. I mean, it used kids back in the day. If you wanted GPS in your car, you'd have to buy one of these really expensive three or $400 navigation units that you stick to your windshield.  And it'd be horrible. And of course, because they're, you know, got to remember back then it was really, really, really, really bad connectivity. So you probably weren't going to have a cellular connection to that thing. It's very unlikely that you did. So you'd have to download all of the maps that you wanted to use onto the device before you left. And if you didn't, and you went off somewhere where the map didn't cover, well, you were screwed. Because despite the fact that the thing has GPS, it didn't have the map data on it. You had to download it. So, yeah, that was back in the day. And then Google Maps comes along and say, here, hey, we've mapped the whole world. Have it for free. All we're going to do is take all of your data and your soul. Yep. Yeah, so. I remember the pain back in the day of having to help my grandmother load up maps onto her GPS. That was, those were bad days, man. Josh says he still uses Tom Tom. Probably the only one, bro. I'm just, I'm just guessing. Well, I mean, he brings up a point.  So like there are like certain industrial, like businesses that make use of other things other than like just straight up Google Maps. But that doesn't mean that they can't easily be replaced by Google Maps. Like if we're being honest. Well, yeah, all Google has to do is add those features, right? And eventually maybe they will. Which I'm, I'm, I am sure there is like a, like a deal that you can get with Google where they include that, like, as some enterprise feature or some BS. Like I'm sure. I mean, look at all the things that they've added. They've added walking routes and bike routes and all this stuff. And those, those features have killed all a ton of applications that did those things. So, but back to the story, open street maps is what should have happened here. Like they literally should just take in the money and give it to open street maps. And they would, I mean, it would have been good. Oh, I'm sure open street maps would have accomplished the same thing. Yeah. Like, like, cause it's already existed and it could have used the support. I'm sure they would have been happy with how many, I don't know if this article ever said, they may not even be putting any money into it at all. They just, maybe they just created the overture maps foundation.  But, you know, they could just take whatever money they're going to put into this and then put it into that and it would have been good, but they, they didn't. So, yeah. Welcome to open source folks.  Well, I mean, like, it's just, to me, I find it so ironic that like, people see Google Maps as an issue, which I don't, like I'm not saying I find that funny, but the idea that Meta and Microsoft should be the ones to fund the fix to it is just like, what? And like, it seems so backwards. Like, we'll gladly take their money to do this, but why put it in the places they've put it? It doesn't matter. Also, Nate picked, it makes a good.  I was just gonna say, he talked about putting maps when you had dial-up internet on your GPS and it took forever. That's the reason why you could buy little, they weren't SD cards at the time. They were something else. Like, they're probably. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. You could literally buy maps on like, digital storage cards at like Barnes and Noble. And you just slide them in. It was like, it was like buying a cartridge for your Game Boy. Life used to be so obtuse. Like, if we're being honest, like, I don't think people realize just how easy we have it nowadays, like, it's pretty nice. Yeah. For those of you guys who don't know, Barnes and Noble bookstore books, these things they printed on paper, you know, just follow them. I totally forgot about that. People might not know what it is now. Okay. What were you gonna say? Oh, so, well, I was just gonna finish it off with, I think it's, one of the things is like, even though you might be fine with Meta and like Microsoft's money coming in, there is a, with any amount of like cash, especially large amount of cash, there's gonna be some level of oversight. And I just, I'm surprised that anyone who would be upset with Google and their treatment of data would be like Meta, Microsoft. Those are the guys to also do better. Like, I don't, I don't, my perspective on corporate interaction with open source stuff has always been different than everybody else's. Simply because I know that without Microsoft and Google and Facebook and whatever, funding a lot of projects in open source, Linux wouldn't be where it is right now.  And he, you know, that's where he makes his money. Now, granted, he got paid mostly by stock options back in the 90s. So that's where he made most of his money. But since then, he's been getting paid by the Linux Foundation. So I'm assuming he probably doesn't wanna work for free.  Yes, Microsoft and Meta and whatever, probably not the least evil people we could have paying for this, but it's better than nothing. I don't know. Maybe I'm just a corporatist at heart. I don't, like, you're the Apple user here, man. No, like, look, I do agree with you. It is better than nothing. It's just, I don't know. It's like, it's better than nothing. But at the same time, like, there has to come a point where it has to make sense for you to get the money, I guess. Like, cause I mean, if you think about it like this, if we have corporations and like massive companies coming in to donate and like give money to these projects and nothing really happens with them, just out of the sheer amount that there's already like seven different. Cause I mean, if we're thinking, like if we're being honest about this whole topic, a Google Maps competitor, there's, when it comes to open source, there's already like eight different competitors. There's probably only two that actually are worth their, like, weight in anything. But still, there's already competitors coming in. And if you're dumping all this money in, you're not really seeing that much innovation that you can really apply inside of your own company, they'll eventually stop doing it. So like, to me, I'm like, if we're going to have corporate investment come into the Linux space, it does need to be on things that actually push, like not just Linux, but open source in general forward. And I don't think another project that's competing with another open source project that's already been around for like a decade plus, it really makes any sense. Like, I don't see it as a long-term benefit to the Linux community. The whole creating something new is not a corporate problem. That's just an open source thing that goes on. We know this, right? Let's make another installer, let's make another package manager, let's make another browser, you name it. Someone didn't like the way something was going and they wouldn't make something else. That's just the way of open source. And that's part of, I think that's part of the reason why they're doing it, but other than that, you're right. It's about control and data and influence and all that stuff. So all right, but moving on, let's go ahead and move on to the next one. My first link of the week is something dear to my heart and that is tiling window managers. It's awesome. If you should use, you should definitely use a tiling window manager. If you don't, I don't know what's wrong with you. I'm just, I'm not judgy at all. You should just definitely use one. Anyways, the KDE folks are working on built-in default custom tiling for KDE Plasma. And it's, I'm not sure if this is actually out yet or if this is something that they're working on, but there's, there've been Kaywin scripts that do this for a long time. And they've been varying levels of good and bad. So some of them were just God awful and just broke everything. Bismuth was actually really good. That's the most popular one as of right now. They say that the features in its infancy and not designed to completely replicate the workflow of the tiling window manager, which is disappointing because it definitely should, but they expected to grow in advance over time. And there's also, there's, good Lord, man. Seriously. I'm right here with you, man. Thank goodness this is the last episode of the year because I've lost all the ability to talk. Words are freaking hard. Like. I like that you're doing most of the talking. Okay. Like you're saving me a lot of embarrassment right now. Anyways, they're creating some, well, I've completely lost the training method. Trying to train them a thought. Yeah. Anyways, tiling functionality inside of KDE by default.  I'm assuming it's probably not going to be deep, you know, like on by default, but it will allow, they'll have custom key bindings that are already set up for built in inside of the actual shortcuts panel. And they'll have the ability to choose how, what bindings are for, you know, moving windows and stuff around. So it'll be interesting to see how this is actually going. I haven't tried any of it yet. I'm not, like, I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure. Oh, they're releasing in 5.27. So this will be out before Plasma 6. So that's nice. I will say this though. Plasma, ease off on the new features. Like, I love this feature. It's fantastic, but man, fix some bugs. Would you, would you please? Like, I do like that they do have a whole section, like talking about some very significant bug fixes that they fixed. Like, that is good. That is good. Like, like, look, like, let's just, let's give them credit where credit's due. They fixed seven high priority Plasma bugs. 47 15 minute Plasma bugs and 166 KDE bugs. I know. I always rag on them for not fixing bugs. They do definitely fix bugs. Yeah, I know that settings is still garbage. But guys, then I just upset like I said, like 15 people. No, no, I even Plasma fans agree with you that the settings panel is a mess. Like, they know it is like the developers admit to it that it's that it's not as good as it could be and that they're working on it. But I and I don't know if this idea just hasn't occurred to them. One guy just said that it's not possible, which I don't begin to understand. But I mean, here's the here's the thing. Your settings panel is a mess. Stop adding to it.  Maybe don't keep adding to it.  Like it's it's totally fine. Like to keep adding more stuff, just like for a short, a very short period of time. Take a break, organize and then get back to adding stuff. Like. I'm just waiting for the KDE and Plasma like update where they're like, look, guys, settings completely redesigned.  Let's see what KDE has to offer. Like, yeah, that's a big one. Like that's that's really just it's one of those things that you don't really think about it that much when you're actually using KDE.  Well, OK, so the thing about search in set in the plasma settings isn't that it's bad. It's that it requires the user to have knowledge of what to search for. If you don't know what to search for, you can't find it. Like the search functionality in the plasma setting is actually really good. But you can't you can't just say something very vague in general of what you want to do and have it, you know, expected to find it. You have to have a very a good idea of what you need to find in order to actually find it. And if you already know what you need to find, chances are you'll be able to find it without the search. So, you know, it's. And I feel like it would be I feel like this is something good to point out. I feel like it would be a much bigger ask to have them try and make it to where like generalized searches are much more likely to find you the setting you're looking for in the settings app than it would be to just reorganize everything in a more, I don't know. Tyler, all they need to do is integrate Google search and it'll be fine. Oh, my God, I was totally expecting something else. That's all they need to do. Google search is fantastic. Just put some Google search in there. I mean, and like add a sprinkler of some Amazon. What could possibly go wrong? OK, we went off in that. Tiling and Katie Plasma, it's going to be awesome. Probably we'll still just use Tiling Winner Manager, but still, if you if it will allow people who need the plasma stuff and the plasma settings and stuff to experience proper tiling, and that's a good thing. So, Tyler, moving on to the next one. Mine would be or my second one would be the first look at Ubuntu's 2304's new installer written in their water thing. I'm doing a video on this in a couple of days. So this should be very interesting. I am glad to hear it because I will be very excited to see what you what you think of it. I mean, like, look, if we're being honest on the surface, nothing's really changed. Like, yeah, like there's some slight improvements to like just the layout of things. It like it looks much cleaner. I may be the newest thing would be the dark mode or light mode switcher. But I'm not sure about animations. Like it has animations now.  But yeah. Look, it seems nice, but I don't think it's going to be something that really, in all honesty, is something that people needed. It's just I feel like it's this is probably a change that's going to make it easier for them to build on to the installer or even the community at large. This has to the reason why they did this has to be for development purposes. It has to be. Yeah, this was this was this was not. Done because the old one was bad from a from a client perspective from a user perspective. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's there's realistically not many changes. They look almost identical. Like I'm showing I'm showing a page of it right now for the updates and other software. It looks literally exactly the same. Not I mean, not a speck of difference. So and that's fine. You can redo something to make it easier to develop. That's perfect.  I mean, that's one of the reasons why they've moved from Xorg to Wayland. Right. You know, Wayland is easier to develop. OK, fine. It's just what colors. Well, what feels really weird to me, Tyler, about all this thing is is that it took them two years. Like this thing took them two years. Like it's almost two years to the day that they announced that they're going to do a new installer. And it took them two years. Like we were expecting this to happen before the last LTS and it wasn't ready yet. And then it didn't come out in the either of the two interim releases between the LTS and now. So it was just it's just maybe it was one interim release. But still, it just feels like there has to be something that went off in the background that caused them to kind of had a delay on this for some reason. And it'd be interesting to know what that was. But also, what about this makes it easier to because that has to be the thing like this has to be easier to either that or either that or they just like they really, really liked Flutter and like, you know, let's realize we write in Flutter, you know, as like a side project, you know, like I'm with you because I feel like this came out like came out of a decision to make Flutter allows them to do something or at least gives them more options to do things down the road than they currently had. But I mean, it to me, it's it is it is a little crazy that this took two years to get essentially the same installer. Yeah.  I did a video on it and you can tell they're putting work in it. That thing looks completely different, you know, it's also very, very simple, right?  So I don't want to be like that because because there are good there or there can be good underlying development reasons to do something that make that looks exactly the same. So I'd love to be interested to find out what those are. So one thing I want to ask, do you get the sense that the chat just completely ignores us and talks amongst themselves? Sometimes. I'm pretty sure they've been having a Microsoft or a Linux versus Apple conversation this entire time. And then I'm paying attention to a word we say. Let the Apple war rage on. I don't think it really matters. I mean, like to me, like, I don't know, like a lot of people, like if we're being honest, like a lot of people dual boot their Macs with Linux anyway, like I feel like Apple is one of those weird ones where it's weird that so many people want to fight about it. Because I know a lot of people that have MacBooks with Linux and just Mac OS on it, like a lot of people, much more than people who have like Windows laptops. Like most of them just stick on it. They don't want to install anything else on it. I rag on one of my family members. Your laptop runs the door. I rag on people who use Windows and Mac all the time. But really, at the end of the day, just use whatever you need to use and just let me use what I want to use. And that's really all I care about. Well, I think that's a problem that we run into a lot, especially in the Linux community. There's there's us. I don't know of a more like better way to put it, but like saying people who like when we joke like or when we're talking about somebody who uses something like Windows or Mac, like we're really just joking about it.   Like it's just like, whoa. You use Mac.  I'm not kidding. I actually heard that like, I think it was the day before yesterday. So someone said that someone using Windows was a fascist, like just I think they were talking about Windows 7 or something. And so if that's true, if that's true, if Windows users are fascist, that means that there's like two billion fascists on the on the planet right now. Like, first of all, I'm pretty sure like half of those people probably couldn't even spell it. I mean, I mean, like I I'm just being honest here. A lot of people forget the idea of like there's a C in there. OK, there's a C in there somewhere. All right. I like the idea of like my grandmother like was a fascist. She used Windows like such a great argument. OK, yeah. The best topic, Flutter, new Ubuntu installer. Probably going to work to same. Checked out. I am excited to see what you see of it. Yeah, subscribe because I have downloaded ISO and I'm going to be testing it and making that video in the next couple of days. So it should be it should be interesting because. We always need new installers because it's not like Calamari isn't like right there and really, really good. And you guys can just use that. No, we all have to have our own installer.  Just saying it is really good. Why can't you use it? You can even make it like I mean, you can change the look and feel of it and put in your own features. I mean, just use Calamari is it so good? But no, I'm with you on that one. All right. Moving on to the next one. And this is this one here, it was a shock to me. It was an absolute shock to me because. Valve doesn't do sequels like they don't do sequels when it comes to their hardware, at least. If you look at all the hardware that Valve has ever released, they've never come out with a version two of anything. So the fact that they're working on a steam controller to was a shock to me. And apparently they are working on a steam controller to which gives me hope, Tyler, it gives me hope for a steam deck to because if they can do a sequel to this to the steam controller, which was an unmitigated flop, like nobody bought this thing other than nerds. I mean, it never went mainstream. It was. Pretty good, but it had some really weird ideas. If they always want one, but I never ordered one. I feel so bad about it because I feel like I'm the type of person that made it like such a monumental failure because like I wanted one. I would have bought one, but I just never pulled the trigger on it. So and I feel like I probably would have really enjoyed it if I'd actually gotten one. But. Yeah, I feel like I'm part of the reason why it failed so much. I think people. There's a lot of people like me. People. OK, so when that came out, that was really before the whole PlayStation touchpad thing came out like the PlayStation has a like a little touch area on it. Now, or at least it didn't like at the PlayStation for something. I don't know. But nobody really uses it because they just use it like a regular controller. But they saw they they saw the steam controller.  And this was meant to work with steam. It probably works for other stuff too, but it was meant to work with steam. And it had these big giant honking touchpads on them. Right. And really weird design choice. Also, not the way most people expect to interact with a game while using a controller like or playing a game at all. Do you know anybody who plays a first person shooter with a trackpad? I mean, can you can you imagine? And also what threw a lot of people off was the concave touchpad design. Like that one was just like, I know for a lot of people, they were like, what? Like, because the touchpads were like, I mean, concave inwards. So like a lot of people just a touchpad, like a lot of people don't trust touchpads because like, look, if we're being honest, there's way too many laptops out there with like just utterly terrible touchpads. So when you're talking about something that's supposed to like beat an analog stick, a touchpad isn't what most people like bring to mind. They're like, oh, perfect touchpad. I always wanted. The thing is, is like, I understand innovation, right? Like we like innovation. We like people trying new things. But the controller is a thing that we've pretty much perfected. Like there's a reason why both Xbox and PlayStation controllers look and function basically the same. Yeah, they're slightly different, you know, shapes and, you know, some people prefer the smaller PlayStation controller to the larger Xbox controller and all this stuff. But for the most part, you know, they have regular designs. And you know why? Because we perfected it back at the Game Boy.  You know, yeah, sometimes they've added, you know, weird features and they've added triggers over time. But they've basically, I mean, we have the blueprint for a really good controller and people got really used to use it. You know, there are keyboard and mouse guys when it comes to gaming, there's controller guys and they don't really cross over all that much. The controller guys like the way the controller works and changing the way the controller works, probably not going to be something that they're all that interested in because they're used to the way the controller works. So I don't know. But I mean, if we're going to be honest, even though it flopped, a lot of people are starting to get their hands on the deck and pretty much almost nobody is really having major complaints with their devices. Like it's, most people really enjoy it, especially, especially if you're in the target market for it. Like if you're not really a gamer, then a lot of those devices are still mixed. They're not just all bad, but they're mixed. But I think with a lot of people like with... I use fedoresis basically what, I'm paraphrasing here, basically what the stream controller was missing was a steam deck attached. Well, I mean, no, like I think, I think with how much people are, with how much success the deck is having, people now have more trust in Valve hardware. Because if we're being honest, most people's real like perception around Valve hardware is their steam machines because they marketed those so heavily and their Valve headset and their VR headset. And the VR headsets $1,000. So a lot of people were like, hell no. So most people don't have an idea of Valve's hardware prowess. I understand that that stuff takes time and that everyone who listened to this might not know this, but Valve is actually a very, very, very small company. Mozilla employs more people than Valve does. By an order of magnitude. Like think about that just for a minute. Valve makes games and hardware and actual things. All Mozilla ever does is make a browser and Mozilla employs more people. At least they did. Something that's still the same. Well, they don't just make a browser. That's all they should do. True.  It's done. Somebody makes that. Please God, somebody make Bingo cards for the show. That'd be so awesome. Pick off season seven with Bingo cards. It's going to be great. Anyways, yeah, so the thing about this is surprising. Like I said, was that they're thinking about making a second one. And it gives me hope for the steaming, but it also kind of gives me hope for the index, because the index was actually really good when it came out, because all VR was expensive at that point. If you want, when you bought it, all of that stuff was $800, $900, $1,000. Now, you can get the quest for like what, 300 bucks or something. It's really freaking cheap. So the index doesn't look nearly as thing. Plus it's also like four or five years old at this point. So that's the thing about their hardware that's always bugging. It's like, guys, I understand you're a really small company, but you can't leave hardware languishing there for five years and expect people to continue to buy it. It'd be like Apple coming out with a laptop every five years. It wouldn't work all that great. Apple tried that. Apple tried at one point to only come out with a laptop every once in a while, and they still do that with the Mac Pro. It's just you're like business-wise. It makes sense to come out with a new product every year. Sure, there's a lot of people that aren't going to buy them, but there's a lot of people that would buy a new product from you, but if you haven't released one in two years, you're not... Even with a regular, just a computer, it makes sense because computers really don't change all that much. Yeah, the speed and the memory and stuff get faster. But it still works like a computer with VR, with the rate of change that VR has seen over the last few years. The fact that their product is still that old, and there's not even rumors of them creating a new one. It's very weird. That is a very good point. VR is rapidly changing. That's the thing that you'd expect to see. Like, oh, yeah, we're going to come out with one of those every year. Or even every two years would make sense because they're a small company, but it's just a little odd. So, yeah, a new Steam controller should be interesting to see if and when that comes out. It should be fun. All right. Excuse me. Moving on to your last one, Tyler. Yeah, and I'll make this one quick. GNOME's File Picker has added a thumbnail view after 18 years. I want everybody to hear that.  GNOME, thank you. I don't have anything to say about this. Yeah, I don't think you have to say anything. Like, the headline pretty much says it all. You got it. I could go on a rant about File Pickers and asking why we need three different ones. But I won't do that. I will say, however, that depending on what distro you use, depending on what version of Firefox you use, you're going to get a different File Picker, and it drives me nuts. Sometimes, KD uses the KDE File Picker. Sometimes, it uses the GNOME File Picker. The fact that it can use both is still kind of cool, but also, it's infuriating because you don't know what you're going to get. It's just a little weird. I think I'm using the GTK portal right now, because I finally did fix the bug with the text box. Moving on to the last one. That was a quick one. That was the quickest news item ever. Moving on to the last one. Pine64 has announced that the PineTab 2 is coming next year. I don't know a single person who actually bought the first one, but anyways, the PineTab 2, the PineTab 2. The PineTab 2 has been announced. It's going to be using... Let's see if I can... I saw the processor here somewhere. RK3566, I believe. Yeah, it's going to have a 10.1 IPS display with a tempered glass over the top. I expect it to feature smaller bezels than the OG model, though exactly how small is to be decided. It's going to be powered by a 64-bit... yep, RK3566. A modern mid-range quad-core Cortex-A55 processor that integrates a Mali-G5-2 MP2 GPU and supports up to 8 gigabytes of RAM. ChipRunsCool has fast I.O. and delivers a major performance boost over the Owlwinners A64S. We'll see those in the OG. There'll be two variants, one with 8 gigabytes of RAM and 164 gigabytes of EMMC storage and 4 gigabytes of RAM and 64 gigabytes of storage. Can we... Hold on. I understand that this is going to be a very cheap device, but can we just not do 4 gigabytes of RAM anymore and 64 gigabytes of storage? Those two things should not exist anymore. Apple does this... Apple and Google do this too. They'll put 64 gigabytes of storage into something like that. That's not enough anymore. Yeah, but even more so, what's upsetting with this line of tablets for me is we have to be able to get something better than a modern mid-range with quotes around it. I mean, okay. It's PINE 64, so it's going to be very... It's meant to be... This thing is going to cost $150. I mean, maybe $200. I get that. I genuinely get that. But at the same time, when you're competing with an iPad, a used iPad probably had... Look, I get it. It's not open source, but also at the same time, we're talking raw performance and most likely software compatibility. An iPad is going to be better. Sadly, nowadays with stuff like ISH, you can just emulate a pure Linux distro on your iPad. If you spend an extra $400 or $500 on your tablet, you get something that can do all of your Linux-y stuff and more. So it's just like there's not a big value to these. With that being said, though, I do hope it succeeds. I'm going to disagree with you because you said something that really bothered me. You said, if you spend $400 or $500 more... Yeah. If you spend $400 or $500... If you spend three times the price of what this one's going to cost you, something good is basically what you just said. Well, no, you would get something that can do a lot. Look, if we're being honest, I could do the whole podcast off my iPad. I understand, but that's like saying... That's like looking at somebody who buys a Volvo and say, well, yeah, if you spent $10,000 or $20,000 more, you could get an Audi. Technically, true, may go faster, but also $10,000 or $20,000 or more. You do have a very, very good point. Well, look, a Linux tablets definitely have not had the greatest thing ever in terms of software compatibility. That's absolutely true. But you can say the same thing about Linux itself. If we're going to go so far as to say, you shouldn't use something because you can't use all of your Apple apps or your Adobe apps on it, then Linux wouldn't be around either, and we wouldn't be talking about this on a podcast. We'd be talking about Windows or Apple or something like that. You do have a very, very valid point. I guess the real thing that I want to see out of these kinds of tablets is, at the very least, a version come out that's not cheap. Sure, it's like a lot of money, but it's got the performance to back it up. A premium one would be interesting, but we tried that with the jing pad. I don't know if you remember this. It was called the jing pad. First of all, number one mistake, calling it the jing pad.  Seriously, half the stuff that fails in terms of hardware is just because you guys have really, really bad at naming stuff. Come up with a good name. That's the first thing. But also, it didn't get support. Immediately, the support just died immediately after it came out. It had some issues, but they tried that. I think that maybe there's a space for it, but it's going to have to... I think the best way to do it is to get a reputation for doing it good cheaply first and then come out with something that's premium. Because the reputation of Linux hardware right now, at least in terms of tablets and stuff like this, in terms of ARM stuff, is not so good. So you have to be able to prove that you can do it in a cheap manner first and get people to buy it. And then if you come out with a premium one, you'll have a better reputation where you know, oh my God, that thing was good cheap. How good is it going to be when it costs $500? So I think that that has a potential. My biggest problem with this isn't going to be anything really wrong with it. I understand going in, you have to have the expectations that this thing... And if you buy a Pinebook Pro, you don't go into the expectation that you're going to be doing video editing on it. You buy that thing to froze the web, right? That's what this thing is for. My biggest issue with it is the storage, right? The most storage you can get is 128 gigs right now, and that's just, it's not enough. It's just not enough. So that'd be my biggest problem. But I don't know, maybe I don't see this here in this article. Maybe they have expanded storage in which case... That's actually what I was looking for. I was looking for if they say they have a micro SD card slot, but it does say that it has one. Then it doesn't matter all that much because you can just buy a SD card and it'll be fine. I was getting worried because I was really looking for it, and it's just plopped in a paragraph. So I missed it a few times reading through, so I was like, oh my God, does this thing really not have one? But yeah, with a micro SD card slot, that's pretty much where the Steam Deck's at. I think I've got the 256 one, which is, to be honest, for something like this, for a tablet that you're mostly just going to be doing internet, like video browsing, that kind of stuff on, like 128 or 256 would be, in my opinion, would be pretty much perfect on a device like this. You've got plenty of space for some movies. 128 should be the minimum. It should be the cheap one. And then 256, 64 gigabytes. 64 gigabytes is just... It's not enough. It's not enough. If we're being honest, if you have, I believe, if you have four or five, like good TV show, like series, like maybe not the full series, but a majority of the series, I mean, that's easily closing in on 128 gigs. Definitely, especially if you're going to do 1080p, and if you're going to watch it, I mean, you might get half of a season, or a full season, depending on what show you're watching. But it's things how there's expandable storage I'm not as upset about as I was. Yeah, so that's the news. Awesome, right? Breaking news is over. No more breaking news. All right, moving on to the last... Wait, hold on. I do got to say this. I feel a good treat to actually be able to argue for a bit and have opposing opinions on a topic. That was nice. Yeah, we do agree an awful lot. So it is nice to discreet once in a while. We're not the same person. He's not just like a deep, a deep, a skinnier version of me. Okay, moving on to the Linux. God, talking is freaking hard. This is right here why we're taking a break. Okay, so the last part of the show, we come up with a section that we entitled thingies of the week. Of course, it still says apps in the week in the show notes.  But we've called it thingies... I'm going to put bets on that it's not fixed for season 7. I'm just betting right now. Definitely not going to be. Anyways, we could have called it any number of things. We're obviously going to call apps the week, but then we decided to broaden the things. Other people have done apps of the week. People have done tips, tricks, all that stuff, software pics of the week. I know Destination Linux called it tips, tricks, and software pics like they're rhyming geniuses. Freaking Dr. Seuss is a lot of them. Anyways, for us, thingies of the week is the thing that we came up with. Get your mind out of the gutter. That's not what we were talking about. So, Tyler, your thingie of the week. Well, I've mentioned it a couple of times, I'm paying attention when I did. ISH. If you do have an iPad, like I'm not saying you need one of the super new ones, but if you've got at least a semi-modern iPad, you should be able to run ISH on it.  I've been enjoying it. It's really fun. I don't think there is a ton of valid use cases where you're using it for real, real intense development work, but you could definitely. But I don't see a lot of people running out and buying a magic keyboard case or whatever for their iPad just so they can develop Linux on the go. You probably already have a laptop. Do you have any other stuff on it? Could you access Samba shares and things like that? Yeah. As far as I know, you can do a surprise. I'm not even sure all that you can do with it because it is surprisingly not limited. I've tried doing a few things that I didn't really think would work on it, but it does. I haven't tried running anything graphical on it yet, but it does work that you can do it. I don't I would be interested to see what you could install on it and actually interact with it because a lot of now I got to remember I'm not an Apple user and I haven't been for many, many years. But from what I remember, they're pretty restrictive on what ports the apps can get out of. So it'd be interesting to see if you could actually access a Samba share or if you could SSH into another computer or you can. You can definitely use open SSH and SSH into another machine. Then you could basically do anything in it because if you can SSH into something you can do pretty much anything. It's surprisingly it's surprisingly good. Like when I first heard about it, I genuinely didn't even install it because I'm like, this is going to be some BS that like it's going to be super limited and stuff and I saw somebody had a blog article where they were talking about doing like some type of like I think they were working on like some like they use NixOS on their machine and they were messing around doing some stuff remotely through SSH on their iPad and I was like okay, I'll give it a shot. I'll try it out and it's it's pretty fun. Again, I haven't done a lot with it but I've played like 15 minutes here 15 minutes there with it. It's pretty fun. I was actually bored at dinner with my Mexican food to get there and I was just like just I was using the iPad screen which I'm telling you typing into a Linux terminal feels so unbelievably wrong. Sounds weird. Yeah. Alright, my pick of the week is going to be something that is proprietary. I apologize for that but mine is peak cloud. So I think I may have used this as a as a thing of the week in the past but I don't really remember so I'm doing it again. I've been for months now trying to find a good way to back up my system. Now I never have had the aspirations of backing up all of my media files because I have like four terabytes worth of videos and music and stuff like that all that stuff I'm fine with not backing up if I lose it. Not that big of a deal. I just want to make sure all my pictures, tax documents, you know, writing and stuff like that is backed up. So I've been searching through and stuff and there's many many many many different options out there. Some of it is cheaper than the way I went. Some of it is harder and easier things but anyways I decided to go with peak cloud for multiple reasons. One, you get two terabytes for $100 you can also buy a lifetime plan for like $350. I didn't do that yet. I may do that next time. My biggest problem with a lifetime plan is like what does lifetime really mean? You know what I mean? Peak cloud has been around for a very long time. So I'm not worried about them going out of business but I'm also not, you know I don't know. Lifetime, the whole lifetime things always kind of worried me a little bit. Also $350 seems to be quite a lot of money to play for storage even though it would be significantly cheaper if you're going to stick with it for a while. So I may end up doing that but anyways I got the two terabyte plan they also offer up like 10 terabyte plans if you wanted to do that. So if you have a lot of stuff you could do that it works really well with Linux even though it comes in in an app image form it installs fine which is a first for me when it comes app images. If you click on it and it just shows up in Rofi it worked really well for me. I haven't been able to get it I haven't been able to get it to auto start yet so I have to open it up speaking of that I should do it now I have to type it in open it up by myself every time but it's good and like I said it works really well on Linux the one thing I will caution you and this is not going to be for everybody is that if you want encryption and then encryption you have to pay extra so that's that's not great I don't really prefer that at all but whatever I just bought the lifetime version of the encryption I am with you from a cheap perspective I don't want to pay for into an encryption but also at the same time that does kind of give me a little bit of security because if I'm paying for it I know they're actually doing it it's not just something that they promised and it's not actually there I mean if it was just my writing stuff my pictures and stuff if somebody wants to hack and see my family Christmas photos have at it I'm putting tax documents up there it needs to be encrypted so yeah anything else I wouldn't care about this what I haven't decided yet is whether or not I'm going to back up all of my YouTube videos and the related raw files up there that would eat up the two terabytes really fast so I want because I want to be able to keep all that stuff I've learned my lesson that external hard drives are not reliable whatsoever so I haven't decided whether I'm going to put those up there and I know other people say you use Borg backup Josh is saying that in the chat but I just haven't got to that yet I know that you can use R-Sync to do that and it seems like a nerd thing to do so maybe eventually I'll look into that but as of right now P-Cloud is the thing that I'm using so that is it for this video that is it for Season 6 of the Linuxcast Season 6 just Jesus Jesus Pete's we made it to Season 6 we have made it through Season 6 36 episodes of the podcast this year which is I believe one more than last year one viewer than last year not sure basically around the same that we did last year anyway so that is it for this time we will be like I said every year every time at the end of the episode I completely forget how to talk we'll be back in January with Season 7 continuing on as we have been we're going to string some episodes together right at the beginning of the years that way if we decide to take some time off later in the year we have some kind of you know in a string of you know a streak if you will anyways so before we go patreon.com.cl if you want to support me on Patreon we're all absolutely amazing thank you for your support so very very much if uh I believe we'll be keeping the same streaming schedule in the new year as we do right now we haven't really talked about that but I'm assuming Fridays around 3pm Eastern time is usually where we go and we'll probably stick to that so if you want to watch live youtube.com hit that subscribe button we'll see you next time thanks for watching help everybody has a fantastic holiday season bye


This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. People have been growing chrysanthemums for more than 2,000 years. Mums make bright and colorful gardens. People in China and other Asian cultures make tea with the flowers. Giacomo Puccini, the great Italian composer, even named one of his works after chrysanthemums. Chrysanthemum. One basic kind of mum is the hardy or garden mum. The other basic kind is the florist mum. The garden mum is better able to handle different growing conditions. There are many varieties of mums. The decorative mum is often seen in gardens. Another popular type, the quill mum, has long straight petals like a tube or needle. Chrysanthemum blooms can be white, yellow, golden, red, or other colors. The plants often grow one meter high. The soil for chrysanthemums should be kept moist but well drained so it does not get too wet. Newly planted mums should be watered two or three times a week, depending on conditions. Plants established in the ground may do well just within normal rainfall. Mums grow vast in full sunshine. They produce colorful blooms when days get shorter and nights get longer. The life cycle of the plant depends on the amount of daylight. This is why experts advise against placing mums near nightlights or streetlights. The light may interfere with their normal growth cycle. The plants may develop buds too soon. In climates where temperatures fall below freezing, plant mums at least six weeks before the first frost is expected. That way, the plants will be well established for cold weather. Placing mulch around the plants can protect them from the cold. Consider using straw or shredded leaves for the mulch. The material will also add nutrients to the soil. Some gardeners say the most beautiful presentation comes from planting mums close together. But be sure to leave enough space to let air flow between the plants. If not, there may be a greater chance of disease. To get more blooms, gardeners pinch back the branches when new growth has reached 15 centimeters. Squeeze about 5 to 7 centimeters off each branch. Pinch it again when a branch grows another 12 to 15 centimeters. Stop the pinching about 100 days before you want the plants to bloom. For VOA Special English, I'm Mario Ritter. For more gardening advice, along with activities for learning English, go to voaspecialenglish.com.


Wangari Mathai, the Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, and we were looking around and we were thinking about forests because of course one of the reasons that Professor Mathai won the Nobel Peace Prize was for planting trees and recognizing desertification, loss of forests and the effect that that had on communities and health and the climate and water. So we were speaking with somebody who had helped fund that film and we were talking about ecosystem services and corridors for animals to migrate north as climate change gets worse and they asked us have you heard about the biomass industry and neither of us had heard about the biomass industry I'm ashamed to say because we thought that we were relatively well informed on environmental issues and so we started looking into it and we were stunned and we thought well here we are we're stunned so you know we got this is what this film has to be about and we can include you know ecosystem services and other aspects of what we were going to include in the film we thought we might make so that's how it began just realizing that there was very little knowledge out there about this industry and what the detrimental sides of it were which are pretty much all of them so that's how it began and then Chris has worked with us previously on other films and he was he jumped in it was April 2015 I think and he's been just incredible did a lot of research traveled with us went to the UK with us to look at Drax and he's been steady and really wonderful in the outreach aspect of it and making small modules which we've made that you can use in social media all on our website thank you there was a as another framing piece for people because I'm not sure it was clear the film was made between 2015 and 2017 was finished so it's been three years that we've been taking to festivals for you know I don't know that was three or four months at the beginning and then into this outreach phase where we've done screenings really all over the world there've been about 150 screenings in those three years in the United States primarily in the southeast the northeast and then in Hawaii also where they used it to actually shut down plans for our power plant on one of the islands and then internationally about 50% of them a lot of them focused in the UK around Drax but also in other countries like Nova Scotia they did a they really used the film as a great organizing tool to to stop cutting and what they call there the crown forests which are the forests that are basically owned by the government the state you know the the the forests of the people there and one other important framing thing is and this was had to do with sort of our knowledge of pellets and biomass you know when we came to the project we you know I personally thought of biomass as being what we put in a residential in our in our stoves in our pellet stoves at home there's a lot of wood burning that goes on in New England and in Vermont to heat homes but that's not you know just have to make it clear that's not what the film is about and we need to remember that people very easily slide into thinking about oh are all pellets bad are they all the same and this is really about industrial scale electricity generation and you know we'll get into that I think in the discussion about you know the difference between heating and electricity generation in terms of efficiency and the power plant that doesn't get mentioned in the film that's in Vermont which is McNeil and Burlington which is considered to be renewable and kind of blindly accepted as being okay and part of their sort of their great energy situation in Burlington. So can you tell us what's happened since the film was released in 2017? The subsidies in the UK have gone up to 136 billion pounds a year. I don't think that has been changed in this version of the film yet we have changed it we are in the process of updating the statistics and many of the pellet plants that are in the southeast have increased their output and there are many more plants in the southeast and there are ones under construction and Drax owns two major plants in Alabama or is it Mississippi or maybe both places. Anything else Chris updates? Well yeah you're covering the negatives which is the industry growth I would have to say you know watching the NGOs who are campaigning against biomass in this country and around the world I would say there's been a growth in them as well and in media coverage which just comes from sort of relentless kind of work by activists on the ground and with that there have been some victories which maybe Rachel could even talk about you know on the change regulations in the UK around CO2 footprint and what's allowed now divestment kind of campaigning so Rachel do you feel about that? Yeah I mean in the UK there is definitely a growing awareness of the problem especially among people and less so among policymakers but the renewed renewable energy directive in the UK did step back some from the prior version as far as biomass but not nearly enough but I just would add to say that this issue is not just limited to the pellet trade that's going on between the southeastern United States and British Columbia which is the second largest source of pellets to Europe. There are many other huge power plants across Europe because Europe had taken on commitments to reduce their emissions and this was a big part of how they were going to do that but it's now become much more global we have a really fast growing trade of wood pellets going into Asia and particularly Japan after Fukushima and into Korea as well and that's really taking off just today we had a conference call with some activists in British Columbia because that's where a lot of the Asian pellet exports are going coming from so this has really expanded globally a lot since you know since the film was made in spite of the fact that this has been a very useful organizing tool it has still been growing globally because you know when the rubber hits the road politicians need to do something about climate change and this is one of the sort of low hanging fruit for them in terms of just being able to say that that they're addressing emissions in some way they can convert coal plants without as Duncan said in the film without much infrastructure change trees grow everywhere they can be harvested 24-7 and burned 24-7 so it is a problem that has grown globally and very rapidly very rapidly and I think we need to be really prepared to address it in a much more unified and powerful way than we've been able to do so far. I want to add one thing I think that part of the reason that it's growing is because it is labeled renewable and that is one of the things that needs to be removed from the biomass industry definition of you know what they do it's not renewable on any timescale that means anything for this planet. I would just add that you know one of the reasons I was excited to to be involved with Standing Trees Vermont was to be fighting for the protection of forests and instead of against bioenergy because we've worked really hard to fight back against this bio biomass juggernaut and the thought was that if we could at least get some forests off limits to logging and protect it against that industries make it unable them unable to access these forests that would be worth doing so that's coming at it from another angle. So another question what does Standing Trees Vermont hope to accomplish? We passed that one to Mark. Yeah I was going to ask if you want me to take that one. I think we want to accomplish several things. We want to first educate people and raise awareness about what's happening in the Green Mountain National Forest and in some of our state forests. The fact that logging is increasing the logging plans are increasing. If you see the picture behind me this is from a section of the Green Mountain National Forest it's in the northern part of the greens it's in the Rochester area and this is part of one of their timber sales. So we want to raise awareness because a lot of Vermonters are not aware of what's happening in our public lands and we're focused on we want to be clear we're focused on public lands that we and that is our federal and our state lands not private lands and we're not focused on anything other than trying to put these lands off limits to logging let them rewild let them grow old let them do the best they can for ourselves and for our environment. So we want to raise public awareness. We want to talk to legislators and talk to forest managers both for the national forest and for the state forest to talk to them about making policy changes making management decision changes to to start looking at how to manage our public lands differently. So and then we are looking at would we like to take on some some sort of direct actions to see what we could do to try to stop these these logging plans and these logging actions that are taking place. So that's what we want to accomplish ultimately we'd like to see our public lands the forest on our public lands off limits to logging. Thank you Mark we're getting a lot of really good questions. There are a number that have a similar theme. Can you contrast large-scale biomass burning with home heating by wood and rural Vermont? I'll be happy to at least start to address that. I think it's a it's a you know a very nuanced it requires a much more nuanced approach because we do need to heat somehow or other. We need to start out by figuring out how we can do that most efficiently but our choices are that we have available right now are somewhat limited and you know there are situations and places where heating with wood may make sense and places where it may not. I don't think it's appropriate to just have a blanket everyone should heat with wood instead of gas or one of the other options nor is it appropriate to have a blanket never never heat with wood. It's a much more complicated landscape trying to assess that and that's you know I think what we need to keep our focus on right now is these very large-scale pellet trades and those are real clear no-go territory. It is totally polluting inefficient not renewable energy. There's no question about that when it comes to residential heating or even commercial and other other kinds of heating that's a much more complicated discussion and I would leave it at that. And Rachel to piggyback off of what you're saying I didn't mean to give wood heat a free pass when I sort of was framing what the film was about and like you said it is more nuanced but as us in a kind of a scale issue I was looking back in research and I had a Vermont 2016 comprehensive energy plan and just to give people a sense of the difference between one power plant that McNeil in Burlington 50 watt power plant. 50 megawatt yes it can light one light bulb that's a 50 watt power plant and of all the biomass used in the state they used in 2016 they used 90 percent of it. So all of the other uses of pellets and chips for biomass that would include schools, businesses, state office buildings, colleges, residences that was 10 percent of the biomass so you can you get a sense of the scale that of the amount of wood that's required to as fuel stock for electricity generation it just blows everything else out of the water. Yeah I will add to that that you know EPA recently set new standards for emissions from wood stoves and I upgraded my wood stove in my own home because I do heat with wood somewhat and I was amazed at how much more efficient and how much cleaner that was so there's a lot of things that even burning wood for residential heating that can be done to improve how that's done because there's no question if everybody in the world decides to heat with wood we'd have a lot of air pollution and a lot of problems for supply but the commercial and industrial scale is a clear target we need to address. So here's another question I've heard the word proforestation what does that mean? Take that yeah go ahead yeah give me just a second I was I was pretty sure that question would come up so Bill Mubow who was in the film was the one he and some others did a literature review a lot of really good previous research that was done around carbon sequestration how to effectively manage our forests etc and they came up with this term proforestation and what it is is growing existing trees intact to their ecological potential largely free from human intervention except primarily for trails and hazard removal so basically other than for trails and for getting rid of hazards it's letting the forests grow naturally this as opposed to terms like aforestation or reforestation which can take years a lot of money and there may not be enough available land to to achieve what we need to do as far as co2 capture proforestation is cheap let our forests grow let them continue to do what they they do naturally our forests in northeast have not recovered they are recovering they've got many more years to go before they return to their former glory so the idea behind back to what the standing trees are not want to accomplish we want to see our forests on our public lands be allowed to grow and and and be natural and not be managed the forest service and our state forest management they want to actively manage these lands and they come up with a lot of terms about why it's good to manage the forest as opposed to letting them grow naturally and that gets to part of our education that we want to let people know that that our forests are better off if we leave them alone they capture more carbon they provide more ecological benefits and biodiversity as opposed to if we try to put some man-made management on top of them so I hope that answers the question so could you talk a little bit more about what the forest service is planning to do the amount of clear cutting that is in the works and what people can do about it yeah thanks Annette that's a good question and so to give you an idea of what's happening in the Green Mountain National Forest there are four forest projects that have been approved the Early Successional Habitat Creation Project the Robinson Integrated Resource Project the Somerset Integrated Resource Project and the South of Route 9 Integrated Resource Project they all sound like they're good things Early Successional Habitat Creation Integrated Resource Projects they all have very nice names to them you add them up and it's over 40,000 acres of logging within the Green Mountain National Forest 40,000 acres may not sound like a lot from western views 40,000 acres is 10 percent of the Green Mountain National Forest within these plans the Forest Service uses different terms for the type of cutting they're going to do they do in their plans have identified certain areas for absolute clear cuts and that's somewhere between 600 and 700 acres but some of it is still evolving because one of the projects they haven't yet identified all the types of clearing they're going to do but they use other terms like Early Successional Habitat Creation or what you see behind me this is not called a clear cut but if you look at this I don't see many trees standing they pretty much went through and just cut down every tree in sight so when you when they're the names that they use aside of that 40,000 acres a good majority of it is going to be clear cut type projects so another question how can I help let the Forest Service know that I don't support what they are doing I'll take that one too and we're going to talk about this when we wrap up at the end because and I'll repeat myself at the end too but you know many times when when you attend events like this you wonder what the heck can I do this is this is very interesting I learned a lot but what can I do there's a couple things one is we're starting a campaign for people to send letters to the supervisor of the Green Mountain National Forest and let them know that they're not happy with the management plan for the Green Mountain National Forest and I'll talk more in detail about this at the end but in case people drop off if you go to our website we've got a link in there under the I think it's the get involved tab where we have information on how to write a letter to the supervisor of the Green Mountain National Forest addresses of where to send that letter people that you should copy with your letter and and ideas thoughts to help you write your letter the Forest Service doesn't do a really good job of making the public aware of their plans they announced their plans through things like a small ad in the Rutland Herald okay and they meet with people that they engage with on a regular basis whether it's recreational clubs whether it's the logging industry but they don't do a very good job of reaching out to the public to let them know what they're planning we want the Forest Service the supervisor to hear from the public that people are not happy with with what's being planned in there in your letter you can request that they that they give you a response to your letter in writing so that's one thing the other thing on our website is it's under the contact us a tab or the take action tab again i'm sorry i don't have it up in front of me but you'll see it on our website which is in the which is in the chat box right now you also can send us a message of if you'd like to get engaged do you have any special skills or talents or something you'd like to do to work with us as we as we try to fight for protecting our public lands so we're getting a lot of questions about politics senator lehi have we met with senator sanders in burlington where is ed markey on this what about the subsidies so who would like to address the political problem well i can start and probably others can help with that too and there are other people in the um in in our audience here who can also contribute to that i can say that you know i mean bernie sanders was actually responsible for the mcneil when he was governor here for the mcneil power plant um in burlington and i've tried many times to talk to him about it i think uh by now he kind of understands that it's not the greatest thing and maybe has some regrets about it but um doesn't really want to it doesn't not too eager to talk about it um and um we are currently uh contemplating how we might reach out to patrick lehi because in particular around the green mountain national forest area because he has some particular relationship to some of the areas that are that are slated for logging so that's something that we've been thinking about how to do um i will say i was you know a couple days ago on a call with a bunch of people from the many different NGOs and organizations that have been working on this issue talking about how to engage with the current new administration on this issue the epa um went through a process uh some years ago of um considering how to deal with the emissions from biomass the so-called biogenic versus fossil fuel uh co2 question and there uh they had a scientific advisory board that went through spent like three years um studying the issue and concluded that um that it was a problematic and has never really taken action on that meanwhile there's been a lot of uh and so there's some hope that maybe the new epa might actually do what this scientific advisory body had advised years ago and there'll be some pressure to do that um we also talked about the fact that we have not ever had a champion in congress at the federal level of any sort on this issue um other than maybe uh um senator markey at one point was something of a champion but it's been very difficult to get any traction on this and part of that is because it is defined as renewable energy um people who support you know uh understand that climate is a problem to support uh policies for renewable energy they feel that it would be divisive to try to split off the biomass from the solar and energy and wind that we need to have a united front politically in order to get anywhere uh in in in the political sphere uh so that's been the problem that we've been up against with that as as part of a response to the questions about what to do politically um you know approaching let's just add another perspective for folks uh approaching people at the top you know in a top down kind of way is one way to do it so you know people in NGOs that are trying to push an agenda uh it's that's an important tool as important is uh the bottom up approach so all the folks you know the 200 folks that were on this call which is about half the population of vermont I think um you know writing writing letters uh to the editor uh calling your uh calling politicians and and uh other bureaucrats in the state of vermont that's as effective and I think both of those tools are important so you know getting involved in that kind of way and um learning more about the issue by visiting the various websites you know you can visit our the film's website burnthemovie.com we have resources biofuel watch has resources on their website and a bunch of other groups that were represented in the film dogwood alliance n r dc um other environmental law center yeah so um you know educate yourself and um get involved in that way I just encourage you to do that and be in touch with any of the groups uh that I've just named with questions about what what you can do without the subsidies this industry would not exist so that's a really um really something to go after but of course all energy companies get subsidies you know the oil you know the oil industry gets subsidies but um this one would go be gone without subsidies and that's actually happened in the state of new hampshire um or I live in new hampshire by the way just over the border from braddleboro um and uh our uh republican governor for various reasons uh vetoed subsidies to six smaller biomass plants that were in the state of new hampshire meanwhile the big one that's in the film of the burgess plant which is a 75 megawatt plant uh up in berlin north of the white mountains is still being subsidized but the other six the subsidies were cut out and they closed down and a similar thing happened in Maine so um that really is what's propping up the industry okay I would um I'm seeing the time it's 8 15 and um so I just want to ask the panel is this the best time now mark for you to give the wrap-up of uh other actionable items of what people can do sure and um there's been some I want to just quickly because we are being very sensitive time then some good questions and comments in the chat about our position on logging and wood products etc um we're not saying that we're against logging and we're not making any negative statements against wood products what we're saying and what we're working toward is to protect the forests on our public lands um the amount of forests that are protected from resource extraction is very small in the US and in the northeast so we're not saying to take forests out of production we're just saying that there's a place to protect our public lands and allow them to provide the most benefit they can to us by allowing them to grow there are many many um and part of our education is to point out that there unfortunately is some incorrect information out there that cutting forests is good for them um wood products do store carbon but the process of cutting the forests transporting the logs manufacturing etc releases carbon and the amount of carbon that's actually captured and stored long term is very very small related to if we left the forest alone so we just want people to understand that there's a place for protecting forests on our public lands and we want to make people aware of some of the incorrect information that's put out there about why we should cut our forests because cutting our forest is not good for our forests it's good for industries but not good for our forests it's not good for the plants and animals that depend on them and it's not good for providing us with clean water and protecting us against extreme weather events which are going to happen over time so I'll just drop it at that I would like to say thanks for all the questions that were in the chat and I think it was very good and gave an opportunity for sharing sharing a lot of information so um you know a lot of what I was going to say has already been said I hope everybody found the film and the q and a session educational as I said when I go to a lot of events like this I always at the end walk away thinking what can I do so I'll repeat what you can do if you visit our website which we've put in the chat box several times but if you just google standing trees vermont it's standing trees vermont.org um you go to our website and you'll find in there an opportunity to learn how to write letters to the supervisor of the green mountain national forest and let them know what you think about their logging plans and what you think about their management plans and also there's an opportunity that you can send us a message and let us know how you'd like to get involved or if you'd just like to be on a list for future communications we're a brand new group we're all volunteers we come from a lot of different diverse backgrounds but we have a common common goal here and that is we want to protect our forests on our public lands we haven't put together yet our communication strategy we do want to figure that out and if you give us your name and you'd like to be on that list we will we will communicate with you in the future as we work on that it's under the get involved tab on our website I'm sorry I was struggling to remember where it was after this event tonight we are going to send out one email and only one email to everybody who registered for the event and that email is going to contain information about what I just talked about the letter writing campaign it'll provide you links to our website and our facebook page and as I said at our website under the get involved tab you can get information about letter writing or you can send a message to us so I want to thank everybody for joining us tonight you can watch our website and our facebook page for announcement about future events I'd like to say take care everybody stay healthy and get out and enjoy the forests that are near you hey mark could we have a last word absolutely you have four last words I just saw in the chat someone asking about links to the film and so at burn the movie calm just the website on the homepage is a link to the 30 minute version that is free for anybody to watch at any time the film is also we have a 45 minute version that's really tailored to the Europeans and the UK situation and the original film is actually a feature length uh 74 minute film and you can find out how to watch those versions on the website what did I forget lisa um just you did mention that there is a resource tab on our website that has for example the article that mark was referring to by bill mum on susan misino and edward facing and a lot of other articles that and we continually add new new information there and also I think I said this before there are 21 modules about biomass that can be used for social media they're all like a minute minute and a half or something like that but there's a lot of a lot of good information there and we are actually going to be putting all versions of the film for free on youtube as fast as we can so thanks for watching yeah thank you may I ask a question but there's so many great questions in the chat will they be saved or I've saved them all and I guess we'll figure out what to do with them okay okay good I've made a point of saving them all because I agree they're really good questions yeah thank you so much Annette that's good because we can't obviously get to them all but there's some great I have a list of 51 well there's 99 plus new messages I've got here so maybe they're not all questions they're not all questions thank you who all you people out there for thank you attending tonight thank you thanks everybody thanks to the panelists thanks to everybody who attended tonight it's very inspiring to see so many people here thank you thank you for helping us help each other great job