אוקיי, טוב, נתחיל, נשארו לי כבר 25 דקות, אז אני יש לי 25 מינטים לב, אז אני רוצה להסתכל על זה, אבל בגלל איזה קצת, אני בגלל לומיגו בואו ובאותו, אז אם אני לא מנסה את כל מיני, ואיפה שאיזה קצת, תשמעו לי לבצע מלמד, ואני אראה לסתכל על כל מיני מהרות הזה. So, hello everybody, really happy to be here. My name is Or Weinstein, I'm BPR product at Lumigo. Lumigo helps developers probably shoot their applications in production. We'll talk a little bit more about how we do that in this talk. And today I'll be talking to you about how we built our Kubernetes operator. A little bit about myself, I started my career as a developer in the Israeli military, spent some time in product management at AWS and Google Cloud, and today I'm BPR product at Lumigo. So, what will we be talking about today? We'll spend the majority of our time talking about how we built our Kubernetes operator and what it does. But, to get you all there, we have to start with some context. So, what is this ability tracing? Why is it so hard to get done right? And why did we go through the lengths of building everything that I will show you today? So, where do we start? We start at the beginning. We, at least years back, most applications were built as models, right? They have many disadvantages, which is why we switched at some point to microservices, but they have one glaring advantage. That advantage is they are much easier to troubleshoot. They run on machines or VMs, you use logs and metrics, they all come from the same place, relatively easy, nothing is easy in production, but relatively easier. Now, we rightfully switched to building microservices, which have many, many advantages, I won't go through all of them right now, but one glaring disadvantage, that disadvantage is they're much harder to troubleshoot. Now, they are much harder to troubleshoot because virtually any flow in most modern applications consists of multiple services talking to each other. Now, if you look at the graph on the screen, there is one red node colored at the bottom, that's where the error is. Now, the root cause for that error isn't, in many cases, in that same service. It could be 5, 10, 15 services upstream from that in that request flow, right? So, we have an error downstream. You have the root cause somewhere upstream, and good luck trying to find that root cause using logs and metrics the conventional way. It's much, much, much more difficult. And that is why distributed tracing came into the picture. And for those of you who are not familiar, distributed tracing is basically provided with visibility into that entire request flow end-to-end. So, a visual representation of those services, which service is calling with service, the latency, metadata, payloads, a lot of things that you can attach to these services to be able to visualize that request flow and debug it in a much more easy fashion. Now, how do you do this? You use something called, a very high level, something called a trace context, which gets created once upstream, ideally, and then gets propagated downstream to all these services to be able to correlate and create that visual picture somewhere in some back end. It can be Lumigo, it could be another system. Now, for that to be possible, each service has to have a tracer, right? So, you can use that library, some means of collecting the data, processing it, and then transferring it to some back end system, right? Now, distributed tracing disproportionately benefits from the network effects. In other words, the more you trace, the better the insights, the better the visibility, the more holistic picture you get for your application, for your Kubernetes cluster, in this case. Now, that's, it sounds easy, imagine you have a cluster, multiple namespaces, multiple objects, different crime jobs, jobs, deployments, demon sets, et cetera. Hundreds of these objects running in your cluster. You have to go one by one, you have to instrument these objects with the right tracers, right? If it's Java, you have to have the Java tracer. If it's Node, you have to have the Node tracer, et cetera.  You also have to build a process to make sure any new pod, any new application that spins up in your cluster gets instrumented as well, right? So if some developer somewhere in your team spun up an application, didn't trace it, didn't go through the proper channels, didn't trace it properly, good luck when that application now has a problem in production. And that's what we experienced with some of our customers that came to us. So we saw that in many cases, you think you have everything covered, but when you have a blowout in production, you actually are missing that critical piece, that critical instrumentation, that critical trace from that application where things are blowing up. And so we saw this enough times that to me, we made it our mission to basically say, we want to make it stupid simple to trace everything. We don't want it to be complex, we don't want it to be to have our customers add lines of codes, lines of code.  So that was our mission. We basically wanted our customers to be able to say, Lumigo, trace me this thing. In Kubernetes, we elected for the namespace construct. So trace me this Kubernetes namespace and be done with it. So we did some research on how best to go about this mission. And we stumbled upon the Kubernetes operator. How many here in this room raised your hand if you've heard of what an operator is, you've dealt with it, you've played with it? Okay, most of you, great. So very briefly, an operator is just a means of extending the Kubernetes functionality. And another benefit is it's very easy to reuse and share with other developers, with other teams, companies, etc. Now, operators are used out there for many, many, many different reasons. They have many benefits. For our intents and purposes, we like the fact that it basically helps automate complex manual tasks and operations. That's what we wanted to do for our customers. So we built the Lumigo operator and in the remaining time I have with you here, next 18 minutes, according to this clock, what we'll do is we'll walk through what the operator does for our customers and then how we built it. What's the magic underneath? So at a very high level we'll dive deeper in a second. The operator does three things. The first thing is it instruments existing pods. So all the pods, objects you have in your namespace that you chose to trace, it automatically injects them with the tracers. Now, it also makes sure that any new pods that gets spun up gets injected with the right tracers as well. And lastly, it's very, very seamless and easy to clean up, meaning you decided you don't want this namespace to be traced anymore. It's very easy to uncrace everything and Lumigo takes everything away and leaves no trace that it was ever there. So how does it actually look like? What does a user have to do to get a namespace traced? Two things. The first is install the operator using Helm. So Helm repo add, Helm install very seamless, very easy just like any other Helm chart you would go about installing. So first is a Helm install. That basically takes the operator and puts it in your cluster, right? Now, the next thing the user has to do is add and you probably can't see anything here but I'll just talk about it is to add a custom object or a custom resource that we created to the namespace you want to trace. All right? Around 12 lines of code to your YAML or through kubectl apply whichever method you prefer but add the custom resource to the namespace. You also have a Kubernetes secret here basically just to keep the Lumigo credentials the token we used to authenticate to the Lumigo back end. But that's it. You're done. So you Helm installed you added a custom resource to your namespace and now your namespace is traced. Now, what does that mean? Think of this slide as your cluster. The operator, the Lumigo operator is installed in your cluster.  So if the pod is running a container running Java you'll get a Java tracer. If it's no, you'll get a Node tracer, etc. Now, now it gets interesting. So how does this work? We'll spend the remaining time answering these four questions. So the first one is how do we get the tracers into the containers? That's the basic first thing we have to do, get the tracers into the containers. But that's not enough. Once we get the tracers into the container you have to load them into the process. So how do we activate them? How do we do the equal of Node.js the require and Python the import? How do we load the package into the process so it can be used? Then how do we make sure every new pod that spins up gets injected with those tracers? And lastly how do we clean up? So let's start. Here is a Cube City I'll describe of a one-liner Python container. Very, very simple. Nothing special here. I cleaned it up also for... So it fits on this slide but very basic. Now once this application gets injected by Lumigo by the Lumigo operator with our tracer this is how the Cube City I'll describe is going to look like. Now let's walk through the interesting components here. The first interesting component is we add an ephemeral volume. An empty-deer volume. Now just to remind everybody an ephemeral volume is a volume where the lifespan is like the lifespan of the pod. Unlike a persistent volume this volume dies with the pod. So we add this volume. Then we add an init container. And an init container is a container that starts and completes before the app containers even start. So it starts and completes before the app containers even start. And this init container has an image that image contains our tracers the Lumigo tracers. So the init container spins up with the tracers it copies the tracers into the ephemeral volume that's mounted to it the ephemeral volume we saw a second ago. And then it completes. Now the same ephemeral volume is also mounted to the app containers. So the app containers start with the tracers in them. Now there's an interesting question here which is how do we know which tracers to copy into the containers or into the ephemeral volume? How do we know if it's Java, Node, Python, etc.? The answer is we do not. So we copy all the tracers. Now we'll get to a point where we actually do care which what runtime is running in the container but this is not it. Here we don't care it doesn't really matter we just copy all the tracers into the ephemeral volume no real downside here. And lastly we add three environment variables. The first one is the LD preload envir with a path to the lomingo-injector file which we also copy into the ephemeral volume and we'll get to that later in this talk. We have the lomingo tracer token which is just the means of authentication to the lomingo backend and we have the lomingo endpoint which is an endpoint to a service in the operator for an OTLP collector that receives processes and exports the trace data right to the lomingo backend. So how do we get the tracers into the containers? Covered. Now we're getting gradually more interesting as we progress here how do we activate the tracers? How do we load the tracers into the process? So as we said before we don't want our users or customers to touch their code as they do this so luckily for us there is a way in every runtime every runtime is different but in every runtime there is a way to basically load packages through environment variables. So that's what we do and as an example let's look at a node example node has the node 8 and up has the node options environment variable and we can basically append to it minus r lumigo slash open telemetry minus r is short for the require statement and so adding this statement to the node options environment variable is effectively like writing the line belief so just like writing lumigo equals require path to the package so this is an example for node we do this for Python we do this for Java as well now how do we set the right environ on the right process? this time it's not a request then we actually care this time because unlike before this is visible to the user we don't want our users to start debugging which is running a python process and for them to find on it a node environment variable the node options environ and start thinking to themselves why is this here what's wrong does this have node does this have Python this is confusing so it sounds it sounds trivial but we had to find a way to solve this we can't add all the environs we have to add the environ for the specific runtime that is running inside that's pod, that container so to understand how we do this we have to dive in a little bit into how run times like the Java virtual machine see python and node actually work a quick detour but we'll come back very shortly I promise so there are two major ways to compile applications there is statically compiled applications and dynamically compiled applications statically compiled applications result in an application a binary mostly that is self contained it includes all the packages all the code all the libraries that it needs in order to run it does not rely on anything external dynamically compiled applications are different these are how most applications are compiled and they actually rely on external libraries on DLLs now why do we care why am I telling you all this because and we're getting there because there is a library that's called libc the C standard library this library was developed initially as a helper library for C applications but very quickly it's spread into virtually all operating systems and what in virtually any runtime relies on it now what does the libc do libc has basic operations so mathematical operations string operations memory management IO and it also has a very interesting function called getenv getenv is a function within libc that gets is a parameter is a variable the key for an environment variable and returns the value so effectively any application uses getenv to request the value of an n bar now you can start to see where I'm going with this so if we had a way to hook into libc and basically control the value that it gets and receives we would be able to set the right n bar for the right process now the way we do this is if you remember in that pod spec that I showed you we had the ld preload environment variable directing to the lmigo injector that is basically telling that process to go and look for and replace basically libc with that lmigo injector SO file and so what happens here is the Node.js process spins up it looks up the Node.options n bar in this case assuming this is a container running a Node application it makes a call to the lmigo injector as opposed to libc to request for a call to getenv with the Node.options key it looks up the actual value it appends to it minus r lmigo slash open telemetry and it returns that that complete value the Node.options the original Node.options value appended with minus r lmigo slash open telemetry and the end result is that it's like effectively like the user had written require lmigo slash open telemetry in the code now keep in mind we lmigo injector if it gets a call to getenv with any other n bar that we don't care about it just gets the actual value and passes it along so it doesn't do anything to it but if and when it gets Node.options, Python path, etc something we care about and need to alter in order to load our tracers then we append the value and return it to the process okay so this is how we activate the tracers now how do new pods get automatically injected how does that process look like so we use something called an admission controller mutating webhook and this is basically a construct in Kubernetes that lets you modify incoming requests to the Kubernetes API before they are acted upon so what happens is this create new pod or deployment comes into the Kubernetes API server they say wait a second I want to see if the admission controller mutating webhook wants to do something about it they refer to us we instrument the template to insert all the stuff we talked about content container, ephemeral volume all that stuff once we finish we say without the Kubernetes API server we're done and the Kubernetes API server proceeds with creating the new object now keep in mind this is a blocking request we want to make sure that we don't break anything in the cluster so we do two things first we have a continue on fail setting so if we aren't able to do our operation successfully it doesn't really affect the creation and also we have a time out of five seconds to ensure the same thing okay so this is how we get new pods automatically injected now how do we clean up after ourselves we use a kube API watch here we elected for a non-blocking operation our operator sets up a watch on the namespace where the Lumigo object is set up and basically what we do here is once the object gets deleted the Lumigo object gets deleted then we get a notification we watch for that the operator goes and on instruments all of the pods it goes and removes pod by pod all the Lumigo tracers eventually and eventually it also removes the watch so step by step basically we're moving every trace of Lumigo in that namespace where we deleted the object from okay so we're done made better time than I expected quick summary getting the tracers into the container a combination of any containers ephemeral volume how do we activate the tracers we use a trick existing in every runtime where we alter the n-var using the lg-preload to basically inject the Lumigo injector like the get-end operation and how do we get new pods to get automatically injected how do we, how do new pods get automatically injected we use the admission controller mutating webhook to do that and we use kube api watch notifications very simple to clean up after ourselves now I hope this kind of a little bit added something to each of you how you can automate and make seamless operations which otherwise would be relatively complex using a bunch of Kubernetes constructs and we're out here on the floor if you have any other questions happy to field them and enjoy the rest of the day thank you


Hey y'all, welcome to What Chelsea Eats. Thank you so much for joining me today. I want to talk to you a little bit about cooking with clean cookware. The truth of the matter is that I think we don't recognize how much it affects our bodies when we cook with toxic cookware. The ingredients that they use or the chemicals that they use or the materials that they used to make the product is leaching into our food and when we eat it, we are ingesting all that the pot or pan was made of. So you know how whenever you, I know this has happened when I was a kid. My kids used to do it when they were little, but it was before I knew any better.  There are ridges in the Tupperware from where you have microwaved it and cooked that food in there. Well guess what? That food that you cooked in that microwave container is leaching whatever that microwave container was that you cooked it in. Same thing happens when you use a pot or a pan. Like if it's toxic like a nonstick surface like Teflon that kind of stuff, if it's nonstick even though you might have paid a whole lot of money for those pans and you thought they were good cookware, but when you cook with them, what happens is a little bit of leaching happens and it gets into your cookware, I mean into your food as you cook with it and it's all kinds of cookware. So my suggestion for cookware is to find the best cookware that you can afford. First off, it needs to be clean. I like stainless steel. Some people don't like stainless steel. I use stainless steel cookware. I use 360 cookware. I love 360 cookware. I have a discount code for 25% off 360. It's WCE25 if you're interested in it and I love it. It's great cookware, but it's not the cheapest cookware, but the thing about the cookware is I'll have it forever. I'll get tired of it before it wears out. That's the kind of cookware that 360 is. You can use glass cookware. I've had glass cookware before. I don't really know what happened to my glass cookware. It's probably one of those things where my kids probably took glass cookware out of my house whenever they moved out because they didn't have any pots or pans, but I don't really know where that is anymore. There are those green cookware products that I am not well versed in, so I can't answer your question there. The reason that I haven't gotten into them, and this is just the truth, and I don't know this is fact, so don't take this to the bank. They make these products that are green and clean and everything. First of all, I don't think that this is just an opinion. I don't know this for truth, so do your own research on this. I don't know that they last that long. They are still expensive. I don't know that they last very long, and I don't know that whatever this material is that they are using to make the products is all that great either, like long term. For whatever reason, I just got this feeling that we're going to hear in five years, ten years or something that this material that they're using is not good, but I don't know that. That's just the feeling I get. It's not of the say of the Lord or anything like that, so don't come at me with that. But that's why I haven't really gotten into it. But stainless steel, you take care of it, you wash it, you use it, it has stood the test of time. I don't know, but some people don't like stainless steel. I don't know. But all I know is that whatever you decide to do, we have to stop using toxic cookware. We have to. Whatever you see where stuff is peeling off, the pan and stuff like that, that's toxic. It's going in your food. If it can peel off, it's going in your food. Like I said, I like 360. I did two videos on 360 where I did an unboxing and how I feel like the other one was really my opinions about 360. You can look it down in the description box below for those two videos. But for your healing journey. If you're going to eat cooked food, you need to make sure that whatever you're cooking your food in is not toxic. And I'll mention this too, since I mentioned it earlier in the video, about microwave cooking is not healthy either. So if you're sticking stuff in the microwave, it's a lot of radiation and it's toxic and it's not good for if you have some type of reproductive issue. So a few years ago, well, it's actually been five years, I can't believe it. Five years ago, 2018, yeah, late 2018, my husband and I, we redid our kitchen and we bought all new appliances. We bought a new microwave because you need a microwave over the stove. I guess we could have did without it. But now at this point, I probably wouldn't have bought it because about two years ago, the microwave just stopped working. It just doesn't work anymore. I didn't use the microwave, but my husband will put stuff in there or if my kids come over there like microwaving stuff. So they would use the microwave, but one day it just stopped working. So now it doesn't work and I'm not replacing it. I could care less if the microwave works. So I think that was a blessing because I really don't want microwave waves flowing through my house. But anyway, it's just, I just wanted to share that story that I don't use microwaves and we really, if we need to heat our food up, put it in the oven. I have one of those, it's like a toaster oven. It's a Cuisinart toaster oven. I'll link a picture right here so you can see which one I have in case you're interested in it and I'll put a link down below in the description box. But if I'd have something small I need to heat up, it's just me and my husband. I rarely use my oven, but you can heat things up in your oven or just put it in a pot on top of your stove and heat it up. You don't need to have a microwave. Anyway, I hope this has been helpful for you. I pray that you get the message of what I'm saying between eating your food on toxic cookware versus non-toxic cookware because it really is important because these toxins, they go into our body and our organs don't know what to do with that. So it stores it and in our organs and glands and then we start to feel sick because of it. So the best thing we can do is just not use that toxic cookware so we're not adding to the problems. So I say that we do everything that we can to help ourselves live a healthier life within our power and whatever we can't control we just have to trust God that he is going to protect us. But I do think there is a responsibility that we need to take for ourselves to do the absolute best thing we can to take care of our temples because the Holy Spirit lives in us and also it's the only body that we get. We only get one body.  There's nothing else we can do, but we can do something right now to take good care of ourselves. So I hope this has been helpful, a lot to love to you. I'll talk to you all soon. Take care.


Daily Tech News Show is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to all of you, including Howard Yermish, John Atwood, Pat and our new patrons, Jerry File, Mohammed, Scott, Karsten, Gerald, Brian, David, Notleet, Luke, Justin and Isaac. On this episode of DTNS, Mickey Mouse heads into the public domain, China's selling more EVs, but the U.S. is not. Nika Montford helps us understand why, plus why Apple didn't release a new iPad this year. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom there. And dancing at Studio 54, I'm Sarah Lane. From the Atlanta area, I'm Nika Montford. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Now all last year, we started the show by saying it was our 10th year, and now that's done. We're 10 years old. Yay! We're in fourth grade. We're a 10-ager. Yeah. A tween. A tween. DTNS is officially a tween. Yay! Thank you to everybody who has supported us throughout the whole year. I'm sorry we don't have a bigger celebration deal or whatever going on, but we seriously appreciate you and we're going to do what we do best, starting with the quick hits. Telegram released version 10.5.0 with a redesigned look for voice and video calls, including new animations and backgrounds that update based on call status. Telegram also says it should use less power and save your battery life as a result. And for Android fans, the power-efficient Thanos Snap visual effect is coming in that turns deleted messages to dust. Finally, bots can now react to messages and work with quoted messages and also send replies. Because it doesn't work like that. LG has a bit of a tradition of announcing lots of stuff in December ahead of showing it off and giving a few more details at CES in January. So here's a rundown of some of the things that announced over the last week or so. The Dukebox rhymes with a jukebox. It's a smart speaker with vacuum tubes. And you can see the tubes through an adjustable transparent OLED display. There's also the MyView series of 32-inch 4K monitors. Those run WebOS, so not only can they be a smart TV, they can also run Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. Those will run between $500 and $600. The Cinebeam Cube, spelled with a Q, Q-U-B-E, is a 4K projector with a handle.  New LGGram laptops will include Intel's Ultra Chips for on-device AI processing. And finally, an unnamed two-legged wheeled robot similar to Amazon's Astro that LG says can act as a home monitor. Apps like eBay and Airbnb that allow private citizens to earn money within the app will now be reporting those earnings to tax authorities based on a new agreement from the 38 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. The OECD includes Europe, the US, the UK, Israel, Japan, Korea, and more. The amount of tax you might need to pay on this income will vary by country. Counterpoint released its estimates on premium smartphone sales in 2023. It defines premium, if you're like, what does that mean, as a wholesale value of $600 or more. That equates to a retail price of 800 bucks or more. The projected premium total smartphone market rose globally, bucking the trend of 6 points to 24 percent record sales of premium phones in 2023. Such of the growth in 2023 was driven by China, Western Europe, India, and Middle East and Africa regions, with India being the fastest growing premium market globally. Apple dropped four points in the premium market, but still is dominant with 71 percent market share, followed by Samsung with 17 percent and Huawei resurgent with 5 percent. Cameramakers, news organizations, and technology companies are looking to differentiate their images from those generated by that pesky artificial intelligence, creating a free web tool called Verify, which checks for authenticity of images and is being adopted by Nikon, Canon, and Sony. So if an image has a verified digital signature, the tool will display the date, the location, and other credentials for that image. Camera manufacturers are updating firmware on professional cameras to support Verify this year, and Canon has a new camera in development coming next year that will also support Verify directly. All right, let's get to the big news then. All right, everybody, Mickey Mouse now in the public domain in the U.S. You likely saw or even heard of some headlines about this, and some people are a little confused. What does this mean? Since copyright is a big part of all of our modern rights online, let's go over what this does and doesn't mean, Tom. Okay, Sarah, first a bit of history. U.S. copyright law used to be 28 years. You get something protected for 28 years until 1976 when they started extending it, and it got extended twice to end up being 95 years, or the life of the author plus 70 years, whichever one is shorter. It's more complicated for sound recordings, so you may see that some recordings that are 100 years old are going into the public domain. But for non-sound recordings, that includes film, they go in after 95 years. Okay, so back to Steamboat Willie. The Mickey Mouse in the film is now public domain. That means there is no copyright protection for it. Anybody can use it. It does not mean Mickey Mouse itself is public domain. It gets a little complicated, and a lot of it would be up to how a judge would decide it if it went to court. But essentially, you can do anything you want with the film, Steamboat Willie. You can recut it, remix it, et cetera, et cetera, and you can derive things from it as long as what you derive is not from other copyrighted works. You also have to keep in mind that Mickey Mouse is a trademark, not just a copyright. So you can copy Steamboat Willie, but you can't make him your logo and say, this is my company logo. That's trademarked to Disney. So you can't go using the name in any way that would make people think what you made is from Disney. But, Niki, you were saying it took you a minute to wrap your mind around the fact that Steamboat Willie is just public. Nobody can get the copyright on it anymore. Yeah, so when this first came out in the news and everyone was talking about it, I initially thought, oh my gosh, anybody can use or buy the rights to Mickey Mouse. And I'm like, how did Disney let that happen? But I now realize it's because of US copyright law. And it does make it a little bit, if you don't know the nuance, if you haven't read a little bit further, you would think like I did off the top that, oh, this means that it's free game for anybody to use or to own. And so it really is kind of complicated once you look into the details around it. But I was absolutely initially concerned that, oh, wow, anybody can do anything with the imagery of Mickey Mouse and Disney not be able to do anything about it.  OK, Mickey Mouse is in the film Steamboat Willie. Mickey Mouse exists in many, many other places outside of that film. Can you only remix the film? Yeah. So OK, so then how are we seeing? Because a couple of the headlines that I was seeing are examples like, for example, the slasher film called Mickey's Mouse Trap, the video game called Infestation 88, that have Mickey-esque stuff inside. Can you not say the words Mickey Mouse? No, no, they could they could say the words Mickey Mouse, but they have to be careful of infringing on trademark if they do, right? So that's a whole separate conversation. They can show a Mickey Mouse in their slasher film that looks like the Steamboat Willie one, but if Disney could go to court and say, that's not the Steamboat Willie one, that's the one from Fantasia somehow and convince a judge of that, then they would be infringing. So that's why I said a lot of it depends on what a judge would decide, but they are fairly well protected as long as they stick pretty close to what Steamboat Willie has. There's also apparently an advertisement for Steamboat Willie that had the yellow hands and the red shorts in it. And so some people are like, well, you can now use that one too, because that was published the same year as Steamboat Willie. So it does get tricky, but yeah, it does mean that you can see people use the image of Mickey Mouse a lot more now. But it's just like you said, the Steamboat Willie version. So Mickey Mouse has, his look has evolved over the years. So you can't use any evolution of Mickey Mouse, it has to be localized to that specific version of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie.  Winnie the Pooh's first work went into public domain, believe it was last year. We saw the Winnie the Pooh horror film at that point. House at Pooh Corner is now in the public domain. So that brings Tigger into the public domain. You've also got The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie, All Quiet on the Western Front, which everybody made movies of before it went into the public domain. It's now in the public domain. Orlando by Virginia Woolf. The song, Mack the Knife in German. Interesting. It's now in the public domain. Now, you said. But not the recording of the song. Just the, you know, just the work itself. Now, you've mentioned All Quiet on the Western Front before it entered the public domain. How can a film get away with that? Well, they paid. They paid for the license, right? Got it. Got it. So there's a license in there. You get permission. Well, and I guess they might have not paid, but I'm guessing they paid. Yeah. But you get, if you get permission, then you can do it. Yeah. It doesn't mean it's completely hands off it. Just means you don't just get to kind of do what you want unless you want to lawsuit. Exactly. Public domain means I don't need to ask anybody's permission. It is no longer protected by copyright. So I can, I can go and use that work as much as I want. Interesting stuff. Well, Apple did something pretty crazy last year, something it hasn't done since 2010. Anybody have guesses? All right, I'll just tell you it failed to release a new version or even a refresh of a single iPad model. Yeah. Instead of that signaling that Apple is no longer committed to the iPad, rumors and analysts forecast point to 2024 may be being a pretty significant year for the iPad lineup with every model, including the entry level iPad iPad mini iPad air and iPad pro, possibly getting a hardware refresh. Apple has not said that they're doing this, but those, that's kind of the rumor mill. Now, if a rumored 12.9 inch iPad air also launches this year, also a rumor, that would be a record six new iPad models in 2024 and expand the lineup overall. Now, Nika, obviously we're waiting on the vision pro. That continues to loom on the horizon. Other rumors point to as early as later this month for a launch there, knowing that that's going to be kind of the thing of the year for Apple, you know, the new and cool thing.  What I actually think is like you mentioned, vision pro is to me the cornerstone of Apple's launches for 2024. And really anything that comes in addition to that barring, you know, at the new iPhone later this year, it would really kind of step on, you know, the what the vision pro stands for and, you know, Apple's crowning jewel. So I think it's likely if we do get new iPads, which we probably will since we didn't get anything last year, to me, I think it's going to go along the lines of a highly produced video announcing the launch of whatever new iPads they come out with and post it to the website, something of, hey, go check out an email, go out, hey, we got new iPads, go check out the video, learn how to buy, find out about it, barring some significant, you know, redesign or overhaul of the iPad, which I don't think they actually have the time for since a lot of focus has been on vision pro. I really think that's likely, you know, what we're going to see happen with iPads. I think it's going to be sad to say a bit of a footnote in the big year of vision pro. I also wonder how many of the iPad product lineup remains. I mean, we've got first iPad that launched in 2010, iPad mini launched in 2012, first gen of all these iPad air launched in 2013, iPad pro in 2015, no new iPad mini since the sixth gen that was back in 2021. If I had to guess, I would say the iPad mini goes away. It's never made much sense to me as a product. Now, you might be home saying, I love my iPad mini. I'm a big iPhone person. So when you got the Max Pro next to the iPad mini, they're too close to me for me. So it's never made a lot of sense to me. And yeah, the rumors have swirled that the iPad mini might not be long for this world anyway. But I also just think Apple might say, we don't need to do iPad refreshes every year. People don't buy iPads with the same frequency that they buy iPhones. No, I think Paul hit on it. I'm going to steal his take from the chat room iPad fold. Because I was thinking, oh, the reason they didn't do an iPad last year was logistical. So maybe they're trying to get everything over to the M ship and they didn't want to steal M ships from the MacBooks. And so they didn't want to switch it yet. If they're planning a fold, not only does that fit my logistical thing, which is, oh, they have a whole bunch of new parts that they need to make sure they have enough of before they launch it. It also fits what you were saying, Sarah, which is, let's get rid of the iPad mini. The new iPad mini is a fold. It's an iPad mini when it's folded. And it's a bigger iPad when you unfold. It's the best iPad mini ever. It's the best iPad mini you've ever had. So yeah, you know, I mean, I think we're right. This was our 2023 production show. That would have been a real good one. And I think there's, that makes a lot of sense, Paul. Thank you. And if Apple sticks to the rumors of releasing the Vision Pro end of January, maybe even into February, maybe the iPad fold gets pushed back. And maybe it's like a late spring type of announcement. So everybody kind of has, every product kind of has its moment to flourish. Because at the very beginning of the year, we get the Vision Pro. Everybody's, oh my God, what is it? Let's play with it. Let's see what it is.  Now we got an iPad fold. And, you know, we're just so innovative. We got innovation, you know, coming out the yin-yang. So that, you know, Paul might be onto something there. The usual, with last year accepted, the usual pattern was to release iPads in March. So they might go back to that with potentially a foldable. Because I think it was the Minis that usually got released in March too. I know Charlie and Columbus is like iPad Mini's selling point was price. The key there, Charlie, is the past tense. If we do what we're thinking and what Paul is suggesting, it would probably not be a selling point that it was price anymore. And they would maybe just discount the iPad Air and say that that's now the affordable one, something like that. Well, folks, if you've got thoughts on this, like Paul did, we love to hear them. And we like to share them around. Because it helps us all understand what's going on in tech better. One of the great ways to do that is in our Discord. You can join our Discord and get in on the conversation there by linking your Patreon account. So become a patron, patreon.com slash DTNS. It's like 25 cents a show. Super cheap. And then link it to the Discord. You can start chatting with everybody you want. Toward the end of last year, a number of automakers started pairing back on their electric vehicle plans. Sales were starting to drop or slow. Rivian missed its quarterly delivery expectations. Tesla met its delivery estimates in Q4, but they had to cut prices to do it. And Ford has said it's cutting back production of its F-150 lightning for the next year. Meanwhile, China is a different story. BYD saw sales rise 61.9% on the year, passing Tesla to become the leading seller in Q4. And China's Geely also raised its sales forecasts. Nika, you've been following all of this. What's going on here? So this is very interesting, especially with the new knowledge, new to me, about what's going on with China and their sales goals. But if you'll notice, prices of EVs, I think, are exceeding some initial expectations. Everyone, maybe a couple of years ago, EVs are the way of the future. You had the federal government saying they wanted fleets fully electric by 2030. Most, if not all, of your major car players were in on it. It's like, yes, let's get these EVs out. Ford, GM, you mentioned Rivian. Of course, you already know Tesla. They're like, let's get this ball rolling. Let's get these new fleets of vehicles out. Well, now we've come to the point where it's a little bit oversaturation. There are lots of EVs available, more planned EVs to come. And they aren't quite selling so much in the US. And I think it can be attributed to a couple of things. Again, I mentioned cost or reduce in demand. And then, of course, that sneaky little I word inflation. We also have had the UAW strikes last year. So it's a lot of things kind of toiling around that can attribute to this. In addition to issues with infrastructure, as you remember in President Biden's infrastructure plan, there was a section carved out specifically for making sure charging stations were available, making sure batteries are being produced in the US. And I think the plan through the federal government with this infrastructure plan, I don't think it's quite moving as fast as production is from these different companies. And it's just one of those things where everybody is flooding the market with their versions. And again, we can't negate the fact that last year we saw a lot of layoffs as well. So I think when you couple in cost of productions, when you factor in what people losing their jobs, holding onto their cars a little bit longer. And I also think there's another thing that we may not really maybe notice so much. It's the fact that anytime there's a major shift in, especially in the US, of adopting new technology or new products, a lot of Americans meet some of these things with skeptibility. I don't know if I really trust cars with batteries. Give me my combustible engines. I know the oil works, the gas works. Let's keep up with that. So not everybody is really early adopters. So I think that has a point to it as well. And we've seen, what is it for? They've reduced their production for their electric F-150. GM once had a plan to have, to produce 400,000 electric vehicles by mid 2024. That's this year. So that's basically a few months down. They recently backed off of that that production goal back in November, I believe. So it's one of those things where there's a lot at play here. But I think it's just growing pains of bringing in something, trying to overhaul the way that we work and the way that we move in society. I think the pendulum will eventually swing back on the positive side of EVs. But right now, the water's a little bit murky. It seems like a combination of pocket books being tightened and also just market saturation. Looking at this as compared to BYD's sales rising a lot over in China, it's not that someone who doesn't have an EV will never have one in the future. But I think we're still in that period where if you want one and you understand how your life will be fine with one, and in many cases, much better, then you potentially already have your EV. There are a lot of folks who still can't quite figure out why it's worth, in many cases, the extra cost or yet changing your daily patterns enough to make it make sense.  But in the Bay Area, there were so many more Tesla's and just EVs in general that I just saw on a daily basis. And I think it does point to a lot of people spending a lot more time in their cars and the charging situation, depending on where you live, just not making a lot of sense yet. Yeah. And to all your points, BYD sells its cars in a lower price range. They're not cheap. They're still high $20,000, $30,000 equivalent, but it's cheaper than Tesla on average. So even BYD didn't sell what they thought they would sell, but they still made a lot of cars and they still sold a lot of cars. I think another thing that's happening is competition. So we're all talking about a confluence of events, right? There's that skepticism that Nico's talking about that kicks in at a certain point where companies get a little more excited about their new thing than the customer base is, and there's a little lag between it. I think we're right. I think we're seeing that. And there's just inflation, economic uncertainty. I don't know if I want to splash out on something that's a little more expensive, I'll go with a more affordable model. That's definitely happening. But there's also more choice. So Ford isn't the only company making electric vehicles, right? Even though it may be only one of a few making a truck, it's starting to see that some people are like, you know what? Maybe I'll choose a Chevy Bolt. Maybe I'll choose a Jeep Wrangler plug-in hybrid instead, which means they might have to readjust and say, you know what? We're not going to make as many because there's more competition than we expected out there. Competition is good for the consumer. It is. It should bring down the prices though. And we're not seeing that. I think partly because the subsidies in the US have changed. So starting now, starting as of January 1st, your EV tax credit applies to fewer models of EVs than it did last year because of the restrictions on where the parts have to come from. Batteries can't be made in China, et cetera, et cetera. There's a lot of details on those parts and what the restrictions are. But the upshot at the end is it's a shorter list of vehicles that get the full $7,500 credit. It's Chevy Bolt, Chrysler Pacifica, Ford F-150, the Tesla models. That's it. You want a Rivian. You want a Jeep Grand Cherokee. You want a Lincoln Corsair Grand Touring. You're getting a $3750 tax credit. You're getting a lower tax credit. That means the prices effectively are going to look higher to consumers. Yeah. And it's one of those things where electric vehicles aren't such a novice anymore. They've become quote unquote mainstream. So they are more accessible than they initially were when the original rebates were happening, incentives were happening. So it makes sense that now that it's becoming a part of our, that EVs are becoming a part of our everyday life, that the adjustments and the rebates for them, the incentives for them are going down because the goal, as with what the government and President Biden have wanted is to have the fleet by 2030. So EVs will become, in theory, more less of an anomaly, less than just combustible engines. So it makes sense that the incentives are fluctuating and reflecting that change. And I think you're right. This is probably not like, oh, EVs were a fraud. This is probably, hey, the curves are never linear. And sometimes they look like they're going down temporarily. And that's probably what we're seeing. We're just seeing a slowdown in it. I think you're probably right. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. Damon wrote in and said, with the announcement of Bird, eScooter company filing for bankruptcy back in December, and talk on the show about how much longer the eScooter market can stay afloat, one place that may never die is on college campuses. Damon says, I work at a large university. During the boom, the campus was flooded the scooters from Lyme, Bird, and others. Many of the problems that were discussed on the show, scooters ended up in fountains, rivers, backyards. Recently, the university partnered with one company, Vio, and it's been much better. Students didn't want a total ban on the scooters because they're a great way to get across campus quickly. And the university wanted one company to be responsible for the maintenance of the fleet. I feel that college campuses and other locations that are more pedestrian focused are better suited for this mode of transportation than in the downtown of a large city where automobile traffic is higher. Yeah, I don't think these scooters are going away. I think we're just figuring out where they work. Where they work best. There were some places that maybe they didn't work, so yeah.  I just don't understand. Yeah, I don't see them in my neighborhood, but I see them near my neighborhood. So I feel like, oh, they aren't working here, but they're working a couple blocks away, if that makes any sense. I also see people riding them, so it's not just that they're discarded and left to die, but yeah, they're working somehow still. And we got an email from Lance in Mississippi who said, I loved the discussion on smart car functionality with AI. I just wanted to let Sarah know that my wife has the same vehicle that she does, the Volvo XC60, I believe, and actually will do those functions of I'm cold or I'm hot and adjust the temperature incrementally. You just have to say it, just in case you didn't know. Thanks for the awesome show, as always. Have you tried it? No, no, Lance, I'm gonna try it now. By the time I read this email, I was, I don't know, I didn't have a good reason to get in my car. I had to work on the show this morning, but let me tell you this afternoon, I'm gonna give it a shot. Fantastic. Thank you, Lance. Yeah.  Happy New Year to you. Let folks know where they can keep up with you in 2024. Sure. As always, it's great to be here with you guys. You can find me at TechSavvyDiva pretty much everywhere. Also, you can head on over to snuboescast.com and get all the details on the Apple-themed podcast that I co-host with Brother Tech, Terence Gaines. Fantastic. Now, patrons, stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. I'd say we let our hair down, but that wouldn't apply to me. But we do kind of relax and kick back and talk a little more. Nika's gonna update us on what's happening with Microsoft Co-Pilot. That's the AI assistant for developers. Stick around for that. Reminder, you can catch our show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern. That's 2100 UTC. Find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com slash live. We're back again tomorrow talking about Square Enix's aggressive plan to use AI in its games with none other than Scott Johnson.


Welcome, first of all, to the main charitable mechanics hall. I'm Megan Reedy, a member of the main charitable mechanics. I do make some things. I sew stuff and I do some paper stuff, calligraphy and bookbinding and that kind of thing. Really intrigues me. We are here as part of Makers at the Hall, as you probably know. It's a monthly series. We're supported in this by the Warren Memorial Foundation, which is awfully nice. Due to them, we can have a couple snacks and a glass of wine at the end of the evening. And we are here tonight with Neon Dave, Dave Johansson. Is that how you say that? Splendid. Who started in California and went sort of whew across the country and now he's here making Neon signs. And so the way the evening is going to work, him and me, we're going to chat a little bit. I've got some questions I'm going to ask. And so we'll have a little conversation up here. And then after a little while, we'll turn it over. We'll make the conversation a larger conversation. So questions and things from you guys will be part of the thing in a minute. Alright, so let's get started. Hi Dave. Hi. So first off, I just said, here's Neon Dave. And you went like that across the country. Yeah, how did you get to Portland? Just super fast? Super fast. I was originally a summer person in Maine. And I was always coming back and had moved around the country a lot. And I think like a lot of people end up, you know, coming to Portland. Yes, splendid. Well, we're glad you're here with a one person Neon studio. Is that the right thing to say? You could say that. You could say shop. You could say... A shop. That sounds better. No, no, no. It really is more of a studio than a shop. Okay. Great. And what do you do in that shop? How do you make a neon sign? Because I realized in thinking about this talk that I never really thought of a person making a neon sign. It always seemed like... Yeah, I think a lot of people have it. Or they think a factory or a printer makes them or something or just never thought about it. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, a person makes every single one. Wow. Every single one. Even if it is in a factory, it's still, for the most part, people...  And so that sounds like that's shorthand for some pretty complicated processes.  Light it up. Line it up. And so there's a lot going on in there. Yeah, so you can think of it as in two main steps, which would be the bending of the glass and the lighting it up. So the bending of it, it basically comes in tubes, in four-foot tubes of different diameters and different colors. And with a series of torches, you basically work with a pattern, unless you're making it up as you go. Run. There's a whole different series of bends that you do to get the different sort of directional changes that you want in the glass. And so it's really a combination of these sort of essential, whether it's a long, gradual curve or it's folding back on itself or just making a 90-degree angle is sort of like a different amount of glass you heat up. You could use a different torch and you're blowing into the tube. One end is sealed off with a quark and the other end has a tube in it. And so as you make these bends, you blow into it because otherwise it would be like if you picture a garden hose and you bend a garden hose. Glass would be even worse than that, even worse than that because it's hot glass and it's melting. So as you bend it, it would be really, really ugly if you didn't blow into it. And so the best bending is the diameter always stays the same. As you look at it, it looks like just one fluid tube. And you could have a slight kink and you could get away with it but it would be sort of something another bender might notice wasn't so great. But much more than that and it just won't work. Or the glass itself will break because it will be stressed. It'll be one side if it's a lot thicker than the other or it's literally kinked, then it's most likely the glass will crack right there. Right, because that's a weak point. Yeah, a glass gets a lot of stress on it and so when you have things cooling and heating up at different times, that's going to cause a problem. Wow, and that's part of the magic of looking at a neon sign too, isn't it? Because it sounds like there are really practical reasons that you don't want kinks in there. And you said, oh my word, that would be so ugly. Well, yeah, I mean if you were doing something on purpose and artistically using some other glass and you want to blow a bubble, you can do that. But that's more advanced technique, it's not just sloppy bending. Right, and to the lay person, just sort of idly viewing neon as you're driving Route 66 or whatever, the smoothness of that piece of glass looks inevitable. Like obviously there are no kinks in it because it's a neon sign. So it winds up being part of the magic, but whoa, it's also important. It's important and you don't put something out there if it doesn't look like that. So you're making it, you've got a pattern, it's not necessarily all one section because that would be too many feet and it would be fragile and it would be hard to power. So at some point you have to break your pattern up into sections or if you wanted to have different colors it would be different sections and then those are wired together at the end to make one piece. So each section would have an electrode on either end. So what an electrode is is basically just, it's like a cylinder of metal that's inside a cylinder of glass and it has wires coming out of it. So you weld one of those to either end and then you have your complete unit pretty much. So then you take it to your processing station where you do what we call pumping or bombarding, is what it's called? I like bombarding. Because we use a thing called a bombarder and so we call it bombarding. But you also call it pumping because we use a vacuum. Right, when a vacuum is the opposite of a pump. I guess it depends on where you're standing. I guess it depends on which end you're at. We call it pumping. So one electrode is completely sealed off and the other one has a thin tube coming off the end of it. So this thin tube gets connected to your manifold which is part of your pumping station. So this is how you are going to get the light to light up. Basically you've got attached to this glass apparatus, a manifold, and you're vacuuming out the air. So you're pulling out all the air down to as little as possible. And then the bombarder comes in. Then you're going to bombard. So what that is is it is a power supply on steroids.  It's putting out serious juice. So you hook that up to your unit and while it's almost completely empty of air, you're hitting it so hard with this juice that it's heating back up, not to the point of melting but getting really hot and those electrodes are starting to glow red. And you're still pulling out as hard as you can with a set of pumps. So the whole idea is to get it completely evacuated of anything, to be cleaner than space, to be nothing.  I mean, as you were blowing it, maybe a little spit got in. There's all sorts of stuff in the air. So you're burning it all basically and pulling it down and getting it to as hard a vacuum as possible. Once you achieve that, while it's still hot, you're still pumping down. Once it's sort of cooled and it's down as far as it's ever going to get, you put a little bit of a rare gas in it. Right, and when you say rare, what do you mean rare? Rare means it doesn't make up a huge percentage of the air you're breathing, but it does make up some. And so what they are are inert gases. So if you had the periodic table, I think it's just the far right-hand side pretty much. What they are are gases that don't react with it. An inert gas doesn't react with anything else. Right, like the gold of gases. Gold forms compounds with things. Oh, I see. So you can make a molecule that's gold and something else, I think. Whereas neon, the classic inert gas, it doesn't combine with anything. Right. It's just neon by itself. So it doesn't make advanced chains. It'll never be in a long chain of carbohydrate or something. Neon is neon. And so that is basically, those gases, they can enter an excited state where they're emitting light, but they're not burning. They don't burn. Burning is like an oxidization effect that happens with things, but they're essentially burning without burning, in a sense. Wow. So they, like burning but without changing state? They don't change state. It doesn't go away by being on. Right.  Wow. It does, the neon doesn't go away. It doesn't get used up inside. Yeah. So I talk about the inert gases. Neon is red. Neon's red. Neon blows red. So are all, but not all neon signs are red? No. It's sort of a misnomer. Oh, okay. We call them all neon signs. They're not all neon. Most of them are argon and mercury. Wow. Right. And so, okay, mercury, not a gas. Okay, but mercury has the property of emitting light also when it's excited by electricity. And so it forms a sort of vapor and intermingles with a gas inside the tube and is the main, is actually the main emitter of light. So it's a mercury discharge tube at that point. We don't have any fluorescence here, but that's what a fluorescent light is. Oh, I see. Okay, so a white fluorescent light is essentially the exact same thing as a white neon tube. Right. It's just, it's got a little bit different power requirements and it's made in a factory, you know, not by a person, but, so essentially, essentially they're all fluorescent tubes. They're all gas discharge tubes. Right. But only red are actually neon. And neon, because that word has gone so far beyond signage too. Right. It's like a whole color. Well, usually it's sort of miss, it's sort of always a misnomer. Yeah. It's because of signs. It's because the first experience most people have with a sort of unnaturally bright colored thing are these lights. So we call, I don't know if it's just America or if that's a cross-cultural thing. We call fluorescent colors neon. Neon, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What they are is fluorescent. But they're fluorescent. Wow, trying to be more accurate for now.  It's the way, I mean, it's the way we speak. It is. It's the way people talk. It is. And so before we go away from talking about, because I'm fascinated by how this stuff happens. So you only named three gases and neon always makes red. No, I named two, right? Neon. And you said mercury makes this white one. No, argon. And argon. Neon and argon. Mercury, let's put that to the side. That's the diffuser. Mercury, mercury. If you add mercury to any one of the gases, it's always going to sort of turn the same color. But the gases themselves all have their own. Argon, you're not going to see it without mercury very often because it's pale. It sends out a light, but it's like a pale purple. Oh, I see. It's a very pale lavender. If the lights were on in the room, you probably wouldn't even notice it was glowing. If you turn the lights off, you'd see it better. So how do you get all those colors? Because like, you know, the arrows and things. Right. Yeah. So the colors are, it's, you have the gas. Uh-huh. Then you can have colored glass. Right. And then you could have a powder called a phosphor that's on the inside of the tube. Like a fluorescent, the same as the fluorescent light. That white is a powder that's coated on the inside of the tube. Right. So they come from the factor that way you order it. You don't have much of a choice. Sort of like buying a crayon. You know, you pick a color. Uh-huh. You can experiment by putting different gases in the different colors and get variations. Uh-huh. But you are fairly limited to the range of phosphors that are available. Uh-huh. And that has shifted over time. Right. So is that partly like chemistry has revealed new ones? Things have been invented. Yeah. I think definitely. Things that were cost prohibitive in the past become sort of more mainstream as far as the industrial process goes. Sometimes it's in conjunction with being used in a different technology. Like when televisions, I mean televisions have completely changed from how they worked. They've been a leader in phosphor production. And then maybe Neon just gets the sort of drugs or whatever they discover. Right. And then in its, there have been things that have been discontinued. Right. That are no longer available. You know, just coral doesn't sell. And so it's gone. So we're done with that. So the pallet has shifted then, essentially. The pallets definitely shifted. Yeah. So you can think of it as originally, I mean probably the reason we call them neon is because it was clear glass with red neon gas in it. That was, and so the first commercial signs was that. Was that? And so can you say a little more about like the trajectory of neon? Cause I feel like we're edging into that direction anyway. Right. And when we were talking first on the phone, you had, you said this great thing. You were like, well, you know, neon signs have kind of gone from super futuristic to retro in around a hundred years. Yeah. And that seems pretty neat. Like that's long enough for there to be a tradition. I feel like they're retro from not just one time period too. Yeah. It's had waves. It's had waves. It's had waves. And we probably don't even think of it in its first earliest forms, being like in the 20s, you know? We don't really think of neon too much in the 20s because it was probably pretty rare at that point. You know, there were a few things and people thought they were amazing, but it wasn't as ubiquitous. It wasn't quite everywhere. But you start to get into that with the 50s.  I mean, 50s and probably early 60s was the real wave of neon. And then it took a serious dive to almost none in the 70s. Wow. And was that because people were just like, ugg with the neon? Or was it? Probably. And new things that now we don't even like, new plastics, new plastic signs. Right. And it was, yeah, people thought, you always, I mean, you have nostalgia, but not till multiple things have come and gone.  So yeah, they were just like, that's so 50s or whatever. Right. That's so 50s. And it took a big dive to being almost none. And that's actually, you can look at that as an example of a big cut in what was available as far as pallets, too. Because companies stopped making it. They stopped making the raw materials for it. Right. Even if you did want to make neon or someone called you and said, I really want to sign. It changed the industry. So, I mean, Corning glass, the famous American, biggest glass, they used to make the majority of tubing. They haven't made any tubing since, I don't know, I think the 70s. Wow. Or earlier. They used to make it all. And then we started importing Italian glass. And so if you want to get colored glass now with actual glasses colored, that's Italian now. Wow. Still now. Still now. So, Italy just kept doing that. Well, they always made glass. Yeah. Italy has always made glass. Venice, Marano has always made glass. So, they can still make a batch of ruby red neon. The colored is harder because the properties change. You could make a batch of colored tubing, but you couldn't bend it. Right. If it wasn't the right properties. Yeah. That's fabulous. Because I just realized, as you say that about Italian glass and well Venice, it's so easy to put categories of glass in totally separate spaces in your head. I mean, there are differences in them, but it is sort of one... But it's glass. It is. Yeah. It's variations on a material, yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. So then it took off again in the 80s.  And now we think of it as sort of a retro 80s thing. More than the 50s and 60s, we liked the 80s. But also what that did was in the 80s, if you're so popular, it almost insured another downfall because what they did was, it was used in movies and things to signify a bad neighbor. If you wanted a bad neighborhood, you just get some neon props and put them out. It was so widely available. We had that Girls, Girls, Girls, XXS stuff and it was almost so overdone in the 80s that there was a bit, again, of a backlash against it, including a lot of ordinances in a lot of communities against it. Right. It's pretty common to have an, if not outright ban in a town on neon specifically, then at least heavy regulations. Right. Mostly I think because of that, because of a sort of stigma that it got through the 80s and Miami Vice and stuff like that. Wow. And then, you know, still fairly productive through the 90s. And now I would say the biggest hit to it would be the new technologies again. I mean, as far as the industry itself goes, not really replacing that classic look, but there were a lot of usages of neon that you didn't really see that much, like inside of a giant letter, like say Hannaford sign on the front. Inside of those letters, it used to be neon tubing, right? They would make the light go. Yeah. The Eastland Hotel would be neon up there, you know. So that's not that exciting for a vendor type work, but it was a lot of work. Yeah. It was a lot of work. So it drove the industry, drove the production, and that's been replaced for the most part, mostly because, you know, it's cheaper. Right, right, right, right. And that sounds like bread and butter work. It was. I think it was. Sort of before my time, but it was the channel letters, those are called.  And that's your bills, and then you do other things. That would be most of the stuff, and then you do custom things that, you know, people really notice. Yeah. And now I was, I didn't do a whole lot of poking around about neon, but I was really intrigued after you said that about this sort of 100 year time span, and it feels like our conversation certainly has mostly been about signage, and so even these channel letters, like where we don't see the neon, it's still kind of about signage and advertising. But I found little hints that there were other uses in the very, very beginning that it was like minors and like different little applications.  It's neon is getting invented not that far after the incandescent bulb, really. I mean, you've always had different lights being invented, but it goes back pretty far. So yeah, there's definitely other uses, including small indicator lights that would now be like an red LED. Yeah. It'd be like linking on a thing. It would make tiny neon in a tiny little glass, and that would be a small red bulb glowing. You also had the same technology. It was actually argon.  It's something that's glowing after that, not do wonderful... Dead eye doctors. Exactly. You have this wand of light over you and placebo effect as the rest. Yes! Wow, that's hilarious. I bet someone is still out there waving one of them. You can find them on eBay. They're pretty neat. They're pretty sought after. And then, you know, it's held its place in the art world, which has changed. I mean, that probably... I don't know what the earliest example of that was, but definitely back to the 60s. And that's evolved quite a bit as well. But yeah, I mean, it was immediately recognized for its commercial potential. A man named Claude in France patented it. So in 1910, he invented it and patented it. He sold... The first thing was a Packard Cars sign. So he immediately went to sign it. I mean, that was what the patent was, was sort of the shaped glass tubing to make signs, and that's what he patented. And so that's sort of, I think, why it's always held that... I mean, it plays maybe because it was effective to begin with, and he went with that for a while. It closed in the dark. It closed. And I mean, as far as other applications, like with that original bright red color for your house, I mean, they were trying to make a really nice light for people's houses, and they were trying to make incandescent lights and all this stuff, but Neon just wasn't going to cut it. They would never consider that. They were always looking for a nice warm white. Something more candle-like. Yeah, so it's always been a battle for quality of light, between effectiveness and quality of light as far as in the house goes. People sometimes don't like the fluorescence these days because of the quality, but that probably goes more to the efficiency and the effectiveness. And in comparison, the quality is actually not that bad. It's not as bad as a high-pressure sodium lighter. One of those yellow, like if you're on a construction site. So in any case, Neon was never... No one took it that way. You know, I don't think Edison did anything with it. I don't think anyone did anything with it. Yeah. Neon people like to say that Tesla invented it. Oh, I would like to say that too. Does everyone love Tesla? Yes, Tesla, Bombard.  I mean, I don't know about that. I haven't seen any evidence of that. He certainly made a lot of things glow and light up, and he probably knew all about the gases. I mean, that had been discovered just as far as when they were discovering the elements themselves. I mean, they had to discover each element in the periodic table one at a time, and when they found these gases, they immediately found that they glowed. That was one of the first things they noticed, was like, we've got the gas, it glows. Yeah, but one would notice that it... I mean, they were conducting experiments, and I think they must have had electrical charges around when they were separating the gases out. That must have been a neat moment, the first time that weird glass glowed. Well, I think Mercury, they knew that from even longer, because they were always using that in industrial practices, and there was something about shaking a bottle of Mercury and making it glow, and they knew that it could do that. Yeah, wow. So, I have two more questions for you. One is, what's the deal with the hum, when neon signs hum, because they don't all hum? What's going on when they make that noise? Okay, well, we've got a mystery. I mean, not really. They all have a bit of an electric field around them, you know? That could be indicative of... You could perhaps rewire it. It might be that the power supply itself is on its way out. Something could be sort of grounded to metal, and it's sort of trying to pull the electricity out of the sign and into the metal. Right? It's really... I mean, neon is very scientific, but not very exact. It's not a very exact science, because otherwise we would spend all our time trying to figure out why it was humming instead of making the next project. Right. So, I honestly don't know. I know sometimes it hums, and sometimes it doesn't. If it's really bad, you probably have a problem. If not, I don't know, turn the music up. Excellent, excellent. Wow, and then the last question I wanted to ask you is, what do you love about neon signs, and where, as we walk around in Portland noticing the neon around us here, where are the good ones? Where are the good ones? Which signs are your favorites that we should keep our eyes peeled for? Why are those the great signs around here? What should we be looking for? I don't really like anything that I didn't make. Oh, yeah. Sort of, not really. That's not true. There are ones I don't really mess with outdoor work. It's just too large scale. That's usually something for a big company and stuff. So there's ones I can appreciate. Certainly that I, you know, they're outdoors. I couldn't have even worked on it. Yeah. I like the Pizza Villa sign. Okay. Down that way. It's all old school, and they've got nice signs in their windows too. A good outdoor one is on commercial. The Boone Slopster place I think is pretty good. Okay. My favorite that I've made is the Downtown Lounge, which is on Congress and High. It's a scorpion. I've seen that scorpion. Scorpion, yeah. That is a good scorpion. That's probably my favorite. Yeah. People like the Bar Arcadia one a lot, which says live nerds on it. Excellent. And I recently did one at the Burger Bar, which is pretty close to here in between High. I mean, it's free in Congress. Yeah. It's a pretty elaborate girl holding a burger. Oh, I think I know that sign. It's pretty new. Maybe I don't know that sign yet. It's pretty new. It's inside.  And then it's there. Did you do food and beverage? No. That's outside. It's outside. Yeah. No. Yeah. I guess I like the material more than I like signs themselves. Yeah. Nothing made me go out and say, I want to make signs. Yeah. I wanted to make neon, and the only thing people want is signs. It's all we know to want. Well, I don't consider a lot of them signs. Like the scorpion. Not really a sign.  I mean, they have a scorpion ball, but if it's not text or the logo of a business, I don't really consider a sign. I consider it neon. I mean, people, I understand most people connect those two words, neon sign. You can't say one if you don't say the next. Yeah. But I have a pretty clear view in my head of what's a sign and what's not. Right. If it says the name, yeah, that's a sign. It's clearly a sign. If it says what you're selling, that's a sign. But that scorpion, it could go anywhere, though. It's a piece of neon. Yeah. What do you love about that scorpion? Because it's just neat. But there's got to be more to say than it's just neat. What was enjoyable about creating that? Well, I like to make things a little... Not just in neon, but in most things. You don't really see the point in doing something unless you're going to do it a little different or a little better. Yeah. Just to do something, just to do it. I mean, sure, bread and butter, whatever, you got to do that. But when I make something like that, I try to put enough into it so I can be relatively certain that it's probably the greatest neon scorpion ever. Yeah. I mean, if someone makes a better one, then I'll have to make another one. You have to make... Right. Clearly. Yes. So yeah, I guess I like that. And I like that it's something that sort of affects the character of the place I live. And when you do something local like that, that's like a little mark on a city. It's a little something that even if people recognize that they're even seeing it, they are maybe on the corner of their eye. They're getting hit with some of that red light, whether they like it or not. That's right. And so I feel like if I can dot them around, that's probably one of the things that's more enjoyable about the work itself is that it's sort of... It's visible. It's out there. Yeah. And it makes me think there's a neat term I saw recently, urban acupuncture. What's that? Which is teeny weeny interventions in urban life that have a really big impact. And so there's a little book by Jamie Lair with that title. And he talks about things like the all night little tiny corner store owners in New York City are... They are all urban acupuncture points because they're open all night.  And it seems like there's something similar about these little points of light being dotted around a city that have this aesthetic impact. It brings life to the night. Yeah. And in this particular way, there's a style to it. There's an aesthetic to every piece of light that goes out in neon. That's just really neat. That's really neat. Wow. Did you see what they... What? You were curious to know? Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much. It's been so much fun talking with you. So let's open it up and see what people think or are curious about if there are questions or... Yeah. In the back there. And then I see you in the... I see you next. Who makes neon? Where do you get it? Does it come in a big... The gas. Okay. So you don't... And how long will it last? I mean, if you found a sign from the cities that haven't been cracked or broken, could you plug it in again? And it wouldn't work. Okay. So first question. It comes from the air, right? It is in the air. I think there's more of it the higher up you go. Companies that make gases, hoover a bunch of the air up, and separate out all the gases from each other. When I was talking about making that tube as much of a vacuum as possible, you're putting very little of the rare gas inside. Just a... It's still under vacuum.  So it's very little. So I have one bottle of neon this big, and I have no idea when it's going to run out, but it seems like it's lasting forever. Italy or New Jersey? Germany. Germany. Okay. How long does it last? Neon doesn't go bad. The tube breaks. The tube will break, or if it's on for a very long time, those electrodes that I said were on either end have a little bit of metal in them. Those will get degraded. Basically, they're getting... All the electrons that are hitting them are sort of like meteors hitting the moon. So over a long period of time, they're going to get pitted out and degrade. If everything was completely optimal, that would be how it failed. It would be in the order of a long time. A long, long time. At least 80, 70, 80 years. The longest continuously operating piece of neon, and I believe that's actually Argonne in there, is out in LA. It's like 77 years has been on. They found it in a wall. Someone had walled it off and left it on. Only in LA. Walled it off with the power supply and everything. They were doing renovations. They took down a part of a wall, and there was a light on inside of it. And it's still... Now it's like a tourist attraction. Go see the longest continuous operating tube. Did you have a question? Me? Yeah. This sounds like an expensive thing to experiment with. As far as when you're making signs, can you explain it almost like I am a fourth grader, as far as the equation of how much script you can get if you're doing an 80-inch script? Because you said it's not an exact science. Is that a fair question? How much? Like how much before you have to disnick and then start the... How many feet can you... How many feet? How many feet? Okay, that's partially a requirement of your system itself for processing. If you have the best Bones Badass system ever, you can get a lot more. Because you've got a stronger bombarder that's going to be putting out way more juice and your vacuum is going to be capable of drawing a really tight vacuum really fast. So it is somewhat variable. So if you're talking about just straight... a straight tube, then you're limited by how long your table is. Basically, like...  By table do you mean like glue windows? The table... No, like the actual table that you're... the actual table it's sitting on. I mean, I can't go further than six or eight feet because then I hit a wall. But then if it's all knotted up, I would probably go... I mean, it depends on the diameter of the glass a little bit too, but I would probably... I could go close to 20 feet probably. 20 feet in... Total. Total, total, total length, yeah. Probably about 20 feet. Okay, so is this something that you obviously map out on a chalkboard before you do it or is it loosey-goosey-like? As far as when to do it, it's more about your pattern. It's really more about your pattern and what's going to make sense. What's going to make sense as far as where to break it? Because there's going to be a break there and it's just... sort of how it's easy is to handle as well and put it all together and wire it all up. It seems to me like... maybe at this point it's a little bit instinctual for me. You know, but it's... you sort of just have to break things up into blocks and if it's a word, if it's say it's really long, you're just going to go every couple of letters. Okay, so you eyeball it this way? Definitely. You definitely eyeball that. You do have to sort of have a vague idea of your total footage, cumulative, all the pieces together because that's going to dictate your power supply that you use and how much power it's going to require. But as far as each one goes, it doesn't really matter. It's going to be cumulative anyway. You could have a short one and a long one right next to each other. And if you want to switch colors too, say you had an eyeball that you wanted glowing red neon and the whole rest of the head was going to be argon, you can make just that little eye in neon so it's only less than a foot of glass. So you can have really small sections too. And just because it came up, it's the second time it's come up, the notion of patterns. And what does a pattern look like? Is it on paper? Right, so... What is that? Usually on paper. It could be on... If say you wanted to reuse it a whole lot of times, if you were doing something mass produced, you could have it on a flame-proof cloth so you could reuse it and reuse it because the paper does sort of get burned up eventually. It's backwards because you're doing it on a table and so face down.  And it looks like a line drawing, basically. Yeah, it's two lines. You do the width of the tube and you would make it skinnier or fatter based on what size glass you were using. And there's different ways, certainly different ways of making them. I am pretty old-school and low-tech in most things I do and so mine are mostly hand... I start off with a pencil and end up with a Sharpie and use an overhead projector to do a lot of stuff, but I would say in larger-scale operations they would 100% be made on a printer. Right, right, one of those big plotters. A big plotter would blot it out, yeah. Cool, cool, cool. Are there things that people are curious about? Want to hear more about? Yeah. More about your market and if you're selling commercial or residential applications and also is it more local like in Newland or is it all United States or international? Are you shipping? How are you managing that? So I have a fine art practice as well as this commercial, the commercial stuff so I sort of split my time with that. I'm not really sending, I don't really have shipping-type sending stuff so it's pretty much local. I've done a few other things but for the most part local and that also really helps because these things do sometimes electrically-need servicing and troubleshooting it helps to be nearby to take care of that. So I would, and then I've definitely done some residential things for people. I'd like to do even more of that. The thing is it isn't cheap. It's hard to justify the amount of work that goes into something and then undersell it for just because, you know, because it gets expensive but certainly done any sort of commission really. I keep my overhead pretty low by being in a sort of group work environment so that helps me to keep the cost down for myself and then I can sort of focus on this stuff. I would say locally for me 80% restaurants these days. I mean, it seems to be where the local economy is and that's who needs neon so that's what I'm doing now mostly. But I am certainly interested in doing more home stuff and eventually online and shipping stuff out having some sort of line of things that I can maybe not mass produce but replicate somewhat and have be somewhat affordable and have a sort of streamlined shipping operation and I think that would be probably one of the avenues that would be best for me to go down as far as that goes. I have one more question. Does neon have to plug into the wall or could you use solar power? Could use solar power? Well, it's essentially this solar power or wall power both basically power. If you were to have a solar powered unit that wasn't if there's solar power wasn't powering your whole house you would definitely you would need a battery. I think you would solar power a big like car battery and then you could power the neon with that through a 12 volt inverter but yeah, for the most part what the neon runs on high voltage so the wall you need a transformer to take the power out of the wall and turn it into the kind of power that neon uses. I love the inverter it feels like an inversion like a paradox to have a solar powered neon because neon is always on at night I feel like or it goes better in the dark. I saw a guy I worked for had a prototype sort of system thing that was a big battery and a big solar power panel and it powered like one tube. Right, catch the sun power the sun. But you could theoretically get it all get fill up a battery all day long and then have a neon sign in the middle of the nowhere for a couple hours definitely at night. Yeah. You mentioned your own commercial hopes. Do you have some ideas for non-commercial? For you mean neon? Yeah. Well I think of it well I mean I work on my own artwork which I have a couple series going on and plan on showing and sort of in the fine art world but then I also think of like this more simplified home design type of things that people would like that are sort of non-text based I think that that's never been my focus and there's plenty out there if you wanted to get a silly word on the wall there are already people sort of doing that so I want to take it more in a different direction it's a little more like minimalist and retro cool and have something that's in the affordable range that I could easily easily ship out. Yeah. I've been to the downtown Lash so I've seen your Scorpion outside it's the bright red but on the inside it's black do you dip it in the sun? No, that one's not dipped. Is it the same red? That one has a as a tinted acrylic sort of backer so it's dimmer on the it's dimmer on the inside because it's it's in like a sunglasses sort of material but then there's other times when you dip the back of you dip the back of more likely text in black paint and that's sort of that's a way to sort of erase the connections and the parts that you don't that aren't part of the letter that goes behind it and so you sort of dip the whole back of it into black paint. Wow and that so that means just thinking about the logistics of that which is kind of neat that so when you're making text that there's a it needs to kind of it reads in it in two dimensions essentially but it has to be deep enough that you can just dip the whole thing to get those connections Well basically if you think of it in sort of two planes so you have that face down and then when it comes off the table that's behind the sign but it's when you're bending it that's up and that's how you go in between letters that's how you connect letters together and then say it's cursive you wouldn't you probably wouldn't dip it because you want those connections but if it's text you can you can you can go pretty you can you know you can even go like this on the back and then once you paint that out you just see the glowing letters you don't see the the connections Right Right more things I'm glad you noticed that because I you mentioned that on the phone about painting stuff out and it just seems to me any concept yes what does it take to make something just something simple is it days is it a week you know could you what's simple what's what's simple what's simple is it like is it like a word or just a line like the fireplace you know could you show somebody how you do this in an afternoon with it and get a finished product you know you could not okay it's probably the scale the you I could get something done in one day I could bend all the glass and process it all in one day but the majority of my projects take more like a week of bending and a day of processing and often times I'll get a lot of stuff ready before I do it and then I can just have one day of processing so I'll have you know upwards of 10 or 12 things that I need to do the pumping with and so yeah so it's not it's not usually a one day thing suddenly when you say that that you get oh sorry when you get several things going like you make a stack of signs and then you're going to process them all that sounds like storage is a delicate it seems like it's a delicate process it's kind of just laying all over the place excellent I feel better yeah what were you going to say and then I see a question in the very back so are you busy with a satellite or nap gas or no natural gas it's just natural gas straight from the city you could use propane in tanks propane burns a little hotter I think and then it's mixed with forced air so it's a I have a blower that's just blowing regular atmosphere I don't need oxygen or any I don't need anything in a tank actually it's just the gas from the city and the forced air are you using rosebud tips to own the end of the torch to pinpoint or make more brawl when you're trying to heat up a certain bend do you have different tips that you screw on? no I have two different hand torches that are mostly used for welding and then I use mostly a ribbon burner for almost every bend which basically you can get your long curves with because it's very long or you can shorten it down and just get a little sort of square of fire and then I'm turning the glass on top of that wow I love that how your inner pyromaniac has a little bit of an outlet oh yeah the fire part's fun yeah yeah was there a question in the back did you have something I was thinking about those ones that have like the girls you know the lights animated right there animated do people make those yeah sure I haven't actually made one of those but I have worked in a shop that's made them in New York basically in that case instead of the whole thing being powered by one power supply each one of those ones that flashes has to have its own little one and then you have a controller that's saying now you turn on you turn off you turn on you turn off and it just has a little program kind of a light it would actually have a rotor going around and switching it now we have little computers that you program basically that are going to turn things on and off I'm not dying to do it myself they are cool I'm not dying to do it and then you could get also things that flash on and off just for one thing to flash on and off or something and sometimes like that that's a question within the same shop right large time shops still are usually like that where they are going to be they are going to have a lot of different departments including professional installers and boom trucks yeah painters everything back to the designers and the project managers and things like that yeah full on bureaucracy yeah but did you have a question too? I did there's an earlier question about how how long the piece you could make but and you mentioned that that there's often times the different colors the patterns will dictate where you bring them where one piece stands the next piece starts but it also seems like I mean is it a case that part of what drives that is this idea that even though you could make a sign out of a single tube that if you like screwed up on the last bend that you would lose all the work that you had done you know what I mean? it depends where yeah sort of sort of I think that I mean you can connect two colors together two in the same tube as long as it's the same gas in there you wouldn't lose all of it necessarily as long as you weren't trying to do it I mean if you now because you if you were connecting multiple pieces together you'd be welding them together anyway so you'd already have weld marks the only the only case I could see in which you would mess up and then have to redo completely would be if you were trying not to have any welds at all like say you have your four foot length of glass and you didn't want to have any connections on this piece you just wanted one thing you didn't want any welds then yeah if you mess up at the end you messed up the whole thing but usually you can cut back you can you can find a place to cut back and weld more on but you could certainly lose a couple hours of work one more question anything else yeah great who's like blowing your mind right now and neon or any other kind of realm that's really inspiring at work hmm well it's interesting because Instagram has kind of changed everything as far as my world conception goes of neon because now I'm sort of seeing it's not everything everyone's doing in the world because people obviously aren't on Instagram sometimes but they are on it all over the world so I'm seeing what people are doing in Japan in Brazil I'm seeing both the strictly commercial and the strictly art side of things as well and then the few people like me that are sort of I've got our feet in both worlds what is blowing my mind right now aesthetically it's not necessarily neon but it's this I do like this sort of retro wave 80s aesthetic that's that's pulsing through the internet like this sort of Ferrari Testarosa sunset um that sort of that sort of drives me um so yeah I have my favorite Instagram type of benders where it's like they post the right pictures and we have a bit of a thing where people you know you can tell when you're putting up pictures for other people in the industry not to impress people who aren't in it and so you're showing when people show the bends and they show it maybe not even lit you know just from behind on the pattern show the bends just like look I nailed it and as opposed to as opposed to this needing to show the finished product I would say in the most commercial aspect and then in the more sort of artistic aspect the opposite of that of people who don't really show their work ever they just show like oh I'm a I do neon I do this I do that but they don't really actually show me the work so I'm more into I'm definitely more into people mastering and showing their mastery that seems like a great moment to end on the notion of people showing their mastery and but please feel free stick around there is there are two colors of wine back there one is red and one is white if you mix them you have three and some sparkly water and some brownies and a couple snacks and some brown and chit chat and I'm so glad you're all here thank you so much thank you thank you


Pysgota yn Ardal Bledig Cynwy. The Pysgota yn Ardal Bledig Cynwy project was a fishing project developed to encourage and motivate young people to use Welsh language skills in their social time and to also learn about local Welsh history and traditions. The aim was to work with Welsh language speakers and those who live in homes where the Welsh is the second language of the home, but the young person attends a Welsh medium school. Through fishing and creating fishing skills videos, the young people were enabled to feel confidence and pride in their Welsh language skills and learn more about where they live. The Erdys Clwb i Yng Nghymru provides an opportunity for the county's young people to socialise outside school through the medium of Welsh in a safe and supportive environment. The club provides a unique opportunity in the area and allows young people to develop personally, socially and educationally through their chosen language, Welsh. Over 40 young people attend the provision regularly and some travel a long way to access provision in their chosen language, which demonstrates that it is a valued asset to Welsh-speaking young people. The project was set up by Menter Jaeth to deliver and co-ordinate social opportunities for Rhondda Cynonthaf's young people and as a way to deal with the substantial decrease in the numbers and percentage choosing to speak Welsh socially and leaving education. As part of the project, regular Welsh medium forum meetings were held across the county, enabling Menter Jaeth to organise and promote Welsh medium youth work activities. They also created opportunities for young people to socialise and communicate in Welsh outside school hours, develop skills and employability and ensure that young people participated fully in planning and delivering activities.