Hi, it's Bridget. Welcome to above-life channel. The purpose here is to inspire your spirit and to fill you with hope. Today, it's a very sunny, beautiful day here in Minnesota, which is where I live. If you're new to the channel, hi. Nice to meet you. So it's warm and muggy, so my eyes will be fluttering a bit because of the allergies and such. So it doesn't mean anything, just so you know. Other than I have a human body and my eyes are sensitive to the light and I don't want to have sunglasses on for a conversation today. So aside from that, we're going to have a bit of a therapy session with Robin Williams in the afterlife because you know how much Robin seems to be kind of fitting that role for me lately. Now, this kind of a video isn't a direct channeling video where in the past you can watch the playlist for Robin Williams and you can see some conversation about him and his particular real-life human experiences. This kind of video here at above-life channel is a channeling video with Robin that you can have for yourself. I'm showing you how it works for me when I'm actually having conversation with the afterlife for me, for my advisement, for guidance, for connection.  So part of this is to encourage you to not feel like you're crazy if you have spiritual connection, whether you do it through your journals or through music or through meditation, doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter what other people think really after all, does it? So when you're dead, it doesn't matter what other people think. When you're a baby, it doesn't matter what other people think. There are times in our lives throughout our experience as a transcendent spirit, as a soul, living in a body or outside of a body where we really don't care what other people think. So I'm going to ask you to tap into that and use that as a lens as you watch this conversation today. I have a lot in my heart today. I would love to chat with you about a very interesting concept. And I've talked about it before on Ferry Grasshopper, my YouTube channel where I vlog and talk about intuitive and spiritual topics like this and real life stuff. I want to talk about gender. I would like to talk about gender. He says, oh, I know all about that. And he's like standing in a kitchen like making pancakes and making eggs and bacon and sausages and all that. He says, there's a variety of things. When it comes to gender, there's a variety. He says, as you know, as you well know, Bridget, you're right. I do. I've been learning about the wide range of gender affiliation, identification and expression. And I find there's a ton of information, you guys. So if any of you that are watching are part of genders that are not the two-party system, the male or the female. Hey, this video is for you. Actually, this video is for you to share with all your friends who don't get it. All right. I'm not saying I get it because I don't get it because I'm talking to Robin Williams, but I'm open to getting it to understanding, right? So Robin, what I know is I understand from what I have learned intellectually. Yeah, I'm writing a book about it. So there you go. So what I understand is that gender has a wide range. It's not just a two-party system, the masculine, the feminine. It's a wide range of, it's a wide range. Let's say that. So, and I understand that there are different facets like gender expression, gender identity. I also understand that gender is separate from sexual orientation. So just because someone is identifying with a gender that's outside the two-party system doesn't necessarily mean that they're on the LGBTQ plus or in alignment with the community or expressing their sexual orientation that way in relationship, etc. These two things stand alone, yet there is also a ton of overlap, which thus creates the confusion people. That's what's creating the confusion. Believe me, I need to understand this stuff. And so I'm working on it. Oh boy, I have sunscreen in my eye. That's lovely. Let's keep talking, Rob. Come on. All right. We're talking specifically about gender, gender identification, gender markers. I don't know. I'm trying. Okay. So anybody who's watching this who identifies with other genders aside from or on the scale of range of gender, be gentle with me in the comments because I will try to use the best pronouns and the best terminology, but know that I'm learning it. Okay. So be kind. All right. So gender. Let's talk about it. Can you explain it from an afterlife perspective? Because I think in human body we readily, social norms, readily look to physical body characteristics and traits, specific organs, the absence of specific organs externally, etc. to mark gender, mark gender, right?  Just so you know. Born and raised a feminist. So for me, that's like, oh, never been a good vibe anyway, which I appreciate you doing the cooking, Rob. And thank you for that. So little dig on social roles there. All right. So Jesus. Do I have a tissue?  And I want to connect with you guys. And also I get really sensitive when I channel. I notice that. So I'm stumbling with my words here. Let me feel the energy and have a gender conversation. This is super important. And I really want to honor my viewers that get it. So outside of the physical body, talk to me about gender. I know, I know angels are androgynous. They're both masculine and feminine energies. And I've always said, hey, everybody's both, especially during political season. I'm always like, oh, it's so funny when people are so and then I say homophobic, which I know is separate because that's the orientation. The sexual orientation of someone, not the gender separate. So I get that it's separate now, but I've always said in the past, like these people that are super ultra homophobic, it's like dudes and dudettes. Don't you know? You have been a sheehee. You have been a non gendered energy, which is spirit and his spirit is our souls. Our souls, all genders, all the variations of gender or are there literally just two or do we have alignments? Like, how does that work? Talk to me about gender and spirit form. He says, oh, it's so funny, you guys. He looks like the genie from Aladdin kind of. He's not blue though. That would, he says that would be my choice of expression, but I do not choose that today.  And he's like all, all knowing, like he's trying to like be all knowing this mystical wizardry. Kind of, I know all, I know all kind of a thing, right? So he says it would blow your mind. Like he literally shows me a pot boiling and like the lid blowing off.  It's kind of like that. Imagine your belly being an air fryer. Robin Williams.  He says that's kind of what would happen if you really understood or integrated the concepts of gender. He says gender is just another level of it, not just because it's extremely important for many people. And let's not disrespect to that in the word choice. My translation. It is a truth in alignment, encompassing the understanding of the wholeness of a one, which means not the absence of gender, but the inclusion. Best word I can use you guys. No, he says cohesive, cohesive. He says, it's not even diversity. He says, Bridget, you got to understand this because I've kind of said, oh, well, it's like diversity. So too big issue is cultural diversity, gender diversity. I mean, there's all sorts of family diversity. I mean, there's all these things. There's all these social kind of norms or constructs that we operate with them. And when something isn't what like a majority or a group of people get together, not even a majority anymore. Let me just say group would get people get together and have had this forever and ever. And they just pass it on lineage, lineage, lineage, generation to generation to generation. Eventually things outside come in an impact and influence and cause a change or a turning over of the old structure. And what happens is people, he's showing this kind of energy of what happens is people come. This is a big thought block from him. Okay. And I'm trying to describe it as best I can. People hold on tight to those values, which is what you'll see now people swing back to these deep for lack of a better term. Deep Christian religious values, which I know is also categorizing and I don't mean it in a negative way. I'm just I it's obvious that people go back to and what your family taught you like right from wrong. And oh my gosh, for lack of a better term, black and white. Oh my gosh, that see how terms you guys words phrases are so important and impactful and that that concept isn't enough itself. The way you use the term and understand it is embedded negative. Do you see? So that alone, like my own constructs and my own structures inside of my beliefs are starting to kind of realign and move into different levels of being an understanding. So how is our spirit? Okay, so I want to skip ahead to that because I'm getting all this infused knowledge. I want you guys to understand what's going through here. So the diversity of gender, like the diversity of culture, or the diversity of political views or the diversity of, I mean, anything, it could be literally anything. But he said it's not that that is so it's like that's making it so minute and so specifically so specific that it's able to be processed by the mind and he says your mind cannot process this. So this is why there is an awakening. This is why people are so overworked in their heart and the heart chakra and the feeling and the sensory and the emotions and the relationships and everything is really strained and maxed out because the old systems don't work. And he says kind of he's showing me like an old house with like different amps or voltages of electricity that's running in the house. And you have to in order to be able to process all the new technology and generation of things, appliances and such like the air fryer or the phones etc. You have to up redo the wiring in the house. It's the same thing that's happening. He says to many of you, he says and it's not comfortable and it's a painful process and it's not about growth. It's about rewiring. It's about reworking our standards and our standards of belief systems. And so he says, this is going to be a generational change. Wow. Wow. Wow. Okay. That's the first time I've heard that because I've been working with this for about a month. And now this energy is these energies and trying to understand kind of this whole gender thing and how it fits with spirituality and human expression and and how it relates to us and our relationships and in the world and all that. And so much sensitivity around it and rightfully so understandably. And it feels relatively new to me, but it's not probably not new actually. So it's new in my experience of war and I saw about that. Let's say that. So generation can take a generation like my children and their children are going to be at a point where there are some new social norms. That and he says, but you'll settle in. He says, but here's the thing to be aware of. You're going to settle into patterns. You're going to settle into standards again. They're just be different. He says, and then a couple of generations after that there'll be this shake up again and that's what happens. He said, it's just this process of unearthing over turning tilling the soil kind of a thing. You guys. So that's what's happening right now with gender. Right. He says, yeah. He said, yes. It's happened with race. You're watching it happen. It's not a one and done. You flip the pancake over. It's done. And he's like, it's not done. It's not like that. You know, this is one meal, one piece of the meal. This isn't the whole nurturing nutrients that your body needs to grow and expand for years and years and years to come. This is one meal. He said, that's what the experiences have been in the last year and a half in regards to race. Whoa. And he's like, so the gender, gender is a piece of, it's not unveiling. It's the piece of uncovering what has already always been there below the surface. And that is the constraints of traditional gender norms and the constraints of traditional gender roles and society. And he says, that leads into Bridget. What you were raised as women are strong and girls are powerful and never underestimate the power of a woman and all the things your dad and your mom taught you about being a girl, being a woman, and to claim what you need, what is right for you, what is fair, what is just in relationship to your work environment, and relationship to job fairness and relationship to non-discrimination, all of that, all of it. And it's not just accepting or rejecting the traditional roles. It is, he said, it's far deeper than that. So the feminism, the feminist movement, and then he shows me like in the 60s, like related to gender specifically the, and then he says, this is a bad, I don't want to limit. But he says like the gay movement is what, that's the best. Those are the best two words that come together. I know orientation is a total variety now, but back it was coming to public. It was coming into, it's coming out of the homes and into life, other aspects of life. I don't know how to explain this right. I'm not explaining this right. Yeah, without being so cliche, like the coming out of the closet thing, that's horrible to say it that way, because it's so limited and minimal, but you guys know what I mean. I'm really struggling with this because sensitively wise, like Claire, Claire Sentience in my heart, I feel so like I just love everyone. And I want to honor everybody that's watching as a viewer and understanding that people are going to be, there's going to be the person that's just like a lot of dogma with their, you know, Catholic upbringing, not to dig on the Catholics. I love you. I love you. I love Jesus. I love Jesus. And I do actually. So hello, thanks, great healer. But I know that some of you are watching this and as part of my work and you're struggling with those things for yourself. And then I also know that I have LGBTQ plus people who are viewers who are watching this who are like, okay, Bridget, you know, really, you know, say it like it is and help educate people. And that kind of thing.  People have asked me that too early on, which really frustrates me. But I understand because I don't know. I mean, maybe I'd be a cute guy. I don't know. But or a variety of gender. Let's just say that variety and non conforming, not choosing of one or the other. And I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility and I also care deeply and I really legitimately want you to see my learning process because I don't know. So it's not just gender diversity. That's the thing here. And it's not just expansive. Not like we just transcend gender, but he's talking about like this oneness and it's cohesive. It's like everything is part of it. Everything. The way you act, the way you feel, the way you talk, the way you connect with your source, how you connect with source through earth energies, through the elements, through rituals, through meditations, through Buddhist practices or shaman practices or religious based practices like Catholicism or Baptist or whatever it might be. I would be surprised if I had any, maybe Methodist or Baptist that would watch me. I don't know, maybe not. I should tell you guys the story of wearing pants. And maybe I have. Have I shared that? I wore pants when I was in like fourth grade to a, I think it was a Baptist church and people were very upset with me. I was like identified and singled out some of the other kids, not the adults. They were trying to be, you know, they were very welcoming and gentle, but other kids were like, she has pants. She can't hold the flag or whatever it was. I was like, Oh my gosh, are you kidding me right now? Super turned me off to religion. Let me just tell you what I can and cannot wear. Are you kidding me right now? Are you kidding me right now? Which does lead into the gender, doesn't it? It's a way that we move through the world. It's a way that we flow our energies. And he says, yes, Bridget, it's not just a masculine or feminine and it's not just a third gender. He says it's when the masculine and the feminine alchemize and they come together in union. It's a relationship that is the bedrock, the core, the core antenna for the soul and the spirit. And so then the expression of the body can evolve and change over time. Yes, this is true as the awareness and this understanding of, I want to say union, but it sounds like then they're separate and they have to come together and that's not what he's saying. He's saying it comes from the whole. It comes from this core whole and then it comes out into our energy awareness and out into through then our body expression or even like the perfumes that we like or the scent candles that we choose or the air fresheners that we choose or the way the cars that we drive or the way that we hold their bodies when we walk or I mean it's just there's so much. We have so many choices. That's what it feels like. There's so many choices like a buffet like he says yes. And he goes back to and he shows me this little kitchen with pancakes and eggs and bacon and sausage and all of the things. So many choices. So many choices, but they're all breakfast, right? They all nurture us and guide us. And he says so it's not separate genders. That's a body choice that is made by the soul. Is it a soul choice? That's a good question is gender a soul choice. So that's the case. Then what the soul know what kind of body it's choosing. Remember it's a whole experience. So by choosing a gender that feels different than what the soul wishes to express in the human life context. It is not about comfort when you incarnate when you come into the body when you make a choice. It's not about the comfort and the ease of life. It's about the understanding and the experience provides understanding. So this is where like we struggle. We have pain. We struggle to love ourselves or become one with ourselves. Or this is about that bigger conversation about being who we are, whatever that looks like or means to you and how it's so fluid and it's on a continuum. And it might not be focused on the topic or issue of gender or gender choice of human body versus spirit. But what you're telling me is the soul doesn't have a gender. There's not a gender and it's not non-gendered or agendered. It's not that it doesn't it's not above gender. It's not that it's this oneness of all of the components. It's a complete cohesive energy that's at the core. That's what our soul is you guys. And so there's all these codes and they show me like sacred geometry. My team thank you for that. I literally just see thank you for that. I see Meditron Archangel Meditron and what looks to be Archangel Raziel and perhaps Melchizedek who I also work with as well as a spirit guide. And they're showing me that there's encodements at the core of your spirit in your soul and you know this. And you know that there are choices and freedoms for your creative expression your co-creative expression. And so you utilize the body in ways that best aligns with the understanding and the experiences that you have in your lifetime. And he says they're not all Robin's showing me.   It's not like that he's saying it's not like that. It is not that way that this is one of the codes at the core of you that you choose an expression of to connect with to understand the balancing of things at the core of who you are. So this is like the universe of the cosmic consciousness and this is really hard to explain in human words which is probably why my team is coming in to help support this explanation for you and also for me and understanding thank you. I literally see that I'm going to breathe it in you guys in the heart here right now. There's many layers to this for your intellectual processing and this is more of a bird's eye view. He literally says bird's eye view. I don't feel resolved though. I hope that I feel like I'm just talking in circles here because I'm trying to it literally does look like a moving kind of spiraling pulsing kind of rhythmic pulsing energy and like with codes with like sacred geometry and with like numbers and all this stuff about choices and the co-creative experience I understand that and the cohesiveness and how this is the core and there's not masculine feminine and gendered alignment for the afterlife and it's not necessarily the best term to describe that either and there's not a third gender which some people may be identifying with. I mean for you if that's what you believe and that's how you feel that's your experience, that's your perspective and your reality and I will honor your position. And yet what I'm feeling here is that it's just this, it's not as complicated as I've come to make it be I think with the intellectual processing of the psychology of things but the patterning of the expression of this how where the rubber meets the road what it looks like living a life that is somebody that doesn't have a traditional gender identification or marker that that's where it gets complicated because of everybody else because it's not just this internal processing that people are going through with the difference between their body maybe not matching how they feel about gender specifically and then the added layer of relationships and what does that mean in the context of your family or family nucleus, family of origin with your parents but also with relationships in partnerships in the future and that's when then the LGBTQ plus and the sexual orientation comes in also to play into play with the gender expression, identity, marker, etc. So there's a lot but if it's one person's journey it's their journey they get to own and be empowered by whatever they're experiencing so if you are a person who is working with the concepts of gender and gender identity or you have been through this process and you know that there's layers upon layers upon layers wow like I am inspired by you because this is not something that is got a nice simple formula and so many studies and so much trailblazing has already been done this is you are the trailblazers with regard to gender you are the trailblazers I mean what we are we are and I'm just like wow you know it's like new territory here and whenever there's something new a lot of people think it's weird like when psychic stuff wasn't cool like back in the day yoga wasn't cool people thought that was like woo woo or meditating oh my gosh that's woo woo oh my gosh are you doing witchcraft which now there's whole groups about witches and all that wickens and pagans and everybody has their own groups and vibes just like the Catholics and the Lutherans and the Baptists and the hey do you do you you do your thing you know and so this with the gender is so profoundly well it's very interesting to me and it so profoundly opens up this like opportunity for our self expression as humans and human bodies as spirits our souls can express because one day your soul might feel inspired to express in alignment with one gender over another and that's there's nothing wrong with that and it's rather beautiful to me and curious to me like I'm like hey you know huh interesting so hey so this has been a very interesting gender discussion with Robin Williams in the afterlife I hope there's good content here I really don't know at this point because I am just like mind blown or my the door is blown off my solar plexus might where my spirit is and just like an air fryer like Robin said oh I love you so much you are such a great therapist I'm gonna need more counseling we're gonna have to have more sessions yes we are more sessions all right so you hear viewers on above life channel talk to me in the comments if you feel comfortable doing that about how you feel about gender like I'm a mom of like four kids and I'm so open I'm like huh what does this mean for me for my life what does this mean for the generations to come like my grandkids and stuff and I'm like huh this is interesting to me I'm like I think this is really good a good we're in a time where we have great possibility for more unconditioning of our society and unconditioning of love and full expression of love not just for relationship one-to-one based but love as in accepting embracing encouraging creativity and co-creation and this cohesive energy that is at our core our soul our spirit that's why you're here you like the spiritual stuff you like the interesting conversations with afterlife celebrities that gives you an insight makes you more curious and want to know more about yourself and your own intuition I know that I know it and so I thank you for being here I'm so curious to read the comments on this one I'm very very curious and if you have so there are the Trevor project is a great resource and that's the one that I have been looking at and there are many many others as well and if you put links below just know that they won't show up on the comments it's not I'm not editing them it just doesn't show up because YouTube doesn't allow that that's considered spam just so you know on my channel the parameters are set so that's considered spam and so I'm trying to think of a good way to share that maybe on my Facebook page maybe on my Bridget inspired Facebook page you could do that if I put a post up maybe you could do it there or you could send me an email with some resources that I could share them in future videos especially working with the younger generation I think it would be good I do have some clients that are in this experience and so families that are and so I I really I appreciate that so it's the Trevor project for you if you're a kid dealing with this and moving through stuff or if you're a parent parenting a kid that's moving through stuff or if you have a partner that is etc just or friends that do try the Trevor project because they have like texting they have online communities they have just basic guides to talk about like gender expression versus gender identity versus sexual orientation and how things are different and to help people that like me that don't have a clue about some of this stuff I guess I'm more well-versed than I thought I was but helps you kind of learn and gives you kind of a stepping off place to go so I hope I've inspired your spirit I'm sure I've piqued your curiosity today with Robin Williams as our therapist in the afterlife I love these sessions they're so fun I hope you do and if you don't oh well some of you do so it's worth sharing I hope I've inspired your spirit filled you with some hope today oh hope for this generation the future generations oh my gosh good vibes you guys good vibes it's your life after also live it you have to live it please just live it you're doing the best you can be yourself I totally believe in you yes thanks for being here


Recently, I was at the East Coast Rep Rep Festival, and it was a blast. Let's check out some of the things that I saw and did. My name's Jim, and this is The Edge of Tech. The East Coast Rep Rep Festival, or IRF, is held in Bel Air, Maryland, and this is the first time since 2019 that it's been actually a live show. It's a two-day event, a Saturday and a Sunday, and it's filled with exhibitors, sponsors, presentations, and the best thing of all, the community. With everything going on at IRF, I have to admit that one thing caught my attention more than anything else the whole weekend. That's d*** racers, or, uh, I'm sorry, DIRF racers. I think that's what we were supposed to call them at IRF is, uh, DIRF racers, that. This. There were various events put on over the two days we were there, and they were brought to IRF by the real, not the fake one, but the real, Sam Prentis. All of this was backed and sponsored by PolyMaker. Now, PolyMaker actually supplied filament to print your whole racer, if you were going to IRF and if you were going to battle.  Not everybody took them up on that offer, and there were some absolutely amazing looking racers at IRF, but the other cool thing is that PolyMaker put up over $3,000 in prizes for all the races combined. And it was just awesome of them to step up and sponsor this like they did. Now, there were three races on Saturday, and it started with a figure eight race, and that kind of went a little rogue. The race started, we were supposed to do five laps, like five figure eights, and then come back. But most of all, everybody just kind of went after everybody. I think only one or two people actually did, uh, the figure eights. And I know there was one clear winner. And I don't think many laps were actually made around the filament boxes as you saw there. The second of the three races was actually a team event, kind of captured the flag-ish. There was some of PolyMaker filament boxes on a rolling cart, and the idea was each team had to gang up together and push that to one side or to the other to win. Now, our team ended up winning. It was a whole lot of fun to run around and try to push this thing around. We had an amazing great push towards the end of the race. We won, and we actually gained 15 seconds of kind of sit time before the third race started. So we didn't have to start for actually 15 seconds after the rest of the team started. It was, it was so much fun to do this event. There was really a lot less bashing and more actually like teaming up and trying to figure out how to move this box. It was so cool. Last but not least was the main death- derp, derp race, derp race. This was everybody against everybody, and the idea was your racer sits like this, and this is your head of the racer. Under your head sits a little switch right here. That's the on-off switch for your racer.  During the death race, the idea was to knock everybody else's heads off by either hitting them with a bludger that's usually right here. Mine is actually still in my luggage, so I didn't attach it for this video, or tipping them over and running their head over. However you could get their machine to turn off, but once their machine was turned off, they were eliminated from the race. This was an epic battle. It went on for roughly like 10 minutes. It was crazy, and I think one or two racers actually smoked, like kind of smoked up or it didn't really catch on fire, but I think there were motors smoking and ESC smoking and stuff, so you had to pull them out of the race, which was really cool. Over 25 racers started the day, and in the end it all came down to me and Pooch. You know that guy, Pooch. I only had one working track, so one of these actually stripped out, but I had a bludger. I had something to swing. Pooch actually kept leaning his racer all the way forward, and he didn't have a bludger. It fell off in battle, and he was actually using the Tom Llama Poochacorn hat that he had on his racer and just trying to ram everybody. So it came down to Pooch and I. I was going in circles and like flipping my bludger around, and he was just ramming things, trying to ram me and knock me over, but the only way he could ever kill me is to actually get my racer knocked over, because he didn't have a bludger. And I kept swinging right over the top of his racer with my bludger, because his racer was like laying flat as you're seeing in the video here. It's kind of like Pooch was sleeping on the job, just throwing it out there. It was at that point where we kind of like had this going on for a couple minutes, that Sam picked up Pooch's racer, and before he could announce the winner, everyone was chanting, let him race. And Sam set Pooch's racer back upright, set him back on the ground. Pooch kind of started towards me. I turned, I aimed my bludger, and Pooch ran straight into it, knocking his head off, and I was victorious. My racer, beaten, broken. I didn't even know how broken it was, but it, you know, it actually won the first day of races. I won some great prizes from Polymaker, and I kind of want to pay it forward to the community. So stick around towards the end of the video, and I'll tell you what I'm going to do with some of the winnings, actually most of the winnings that I actually won this weekend. But I was victorious. Pooch, I took you out, man. It was you and me, and you went down. You're winner by default. They let it go. We got a Pooch win after he finally sat up and took his punishment. Now, I did mention there was two days of racing, and after the first day with the help of some fellow racers and their grinder, we fixed mine. We got it all back together, and we were ready for day two. Day two, one big death race. Everybody against everybody who actually had a running racer in day two. The field was significantly cut down. I would say probably at least 10 racers were not racing on day two, whether they were broken or couldn't make the race or stuff like that. I was out pretty quickly. Sam Prentice said go. I was still walking. I had no idea where my racer was. I just hit forward, came around the top of a box, and boom. I got my head knocked off within seconds, 10 seconds tops. So I was out for day two already, but it was a great battle. The top three winners, as you're seeing right here, totally deserved it. Their racers were on point. They were custom. They were great. They were fun. They really deserved to win the prizes from Pollymaker and a couple of printers from Foucault's as well, or Focus. I think you say it Focus. It was Focus? But the really cool thing about the death races, I'm sorry, durf races, thank you Denise for this amazing sign, by the way. Denise, you rock. You rock. Thank you. The best thing about the durf racers club is everybody helped everybody put stuff back together, fix their stuff. If they needed extra parts, people brought extra parts.  Kind of like a giant pit stop all over different tables and we helped each other get each other's racers together and running. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for all being a part of it. And congratulations to our top three, totally deserved. You guys are amazing. While the durf racers had my attention most of the weekend, in between battles, I got to see some absolutely amazing stuff. Here are some of the really cool things that I got to see at IRF 2022. Shown so far. Let me know in the comments below. I'd be super interested to know what you thought was cool because there were so many cool things at IRF 2022 to show off. Also, if you haven't subscribed yet, I invite you to do that at this time. We have some really cool videos coming up. I would really appreciate that. Hit that bell if you want to get notified when the next cool videos come out. But if you're not subscribed, I definitely invite you to hit that button and check out more cool stuff that I have coming up. Now I've shown some pretty sweet stuff from really cool models to custom 3D printers to amazing displays. And I tell you what, I think you'd be very surprised to know what my favorite thing from IRF 2022 was. It was Chris Riley's custom candy claw machine. It was a combination of 3D printers and printed parts. It was filled with candy and benches from Chris's private Benchy collection. Chris said the only rule was you have to take what you win. And that was a genius way to shed some of his Benchy load because we know he has a ton of Benchy's. It has buttons and lights and even had sound. And if that wasn't cool enough, it was running a custom Marlin firmware. And Chris said one of the hardest parts was to actually get an extruder to home. Because if you watch, the extruder actually comes down with the claw on it. So that is, it was just such a cool machine. It lit up. I was there when he was putting it together. And it, I mean, it was like a masterpiece. People absolutely loved this machine all weekend. With that being said, great work, Chris. This was my favorite machine of IRF 2022. Now it's safe to say that IRF 2022 was a smashing success. I heard rumors of upwards of almost 2000 people coming through. And that is, it's amazing. But all of that would not be possible without the organizers and the volunteers that IRF has. You guys are excellent to work with. You are organized, everything has its place, and everybody knew what was going on before the event even started. So thank you guys so much for putting this together for us for an amazing weekend and having such awesome volunteers to help run the show for the whole time. You guys are awesome. It's because of you that this event has grown so big over the years. Now it's time to circle back and talk about my smashing victory from Saturday's death race. I'm sorry, turf race. The prizes won on the main event were 10 spools of polymaker filament and a $500 3D printer. This could be any printer with the included shipping cost up to $500. So that is an amazing grand prize for me to win on the first day. I don't need another 3D printer. So I talked to Nick at Polymaker and he said that I could give the $500 for a 3D printer away to you, the community. So what's going to happen is I'm going to announce a contest or some way to win this coming up soon but hit that subscribe button in the bell to get notified when that video comes out because I cannot wait to give someone in the community the $500 for a new 3D printer. That means you could have a shot to win my prize from IRF because I want to pass it on. I want to pay it forward to the community who keeps this channel and all of our channels running. So stay tuned. In the beginning of the video, I talked about community and that's how I want to end it. It was amazing to meet and talk to people and shake hands and fist bump or whatever everybody was doing just to talk and give advice and answer questions and BS for a little bit with different people. The icing on the cake when we get to do these live events. So if I saw you there, if you came up and said hi, if you waved at me from a distance, anything. Thank you. And to everybody on the DeathRacer team who helped everybody else or helped my vehicle as well, thank you guys so much. We have one of the best crews out there and I can't wait for the next one. And whatever the next one is, we'll see you there.


Did you know that Linux Foundation research is one year old? I'm Hilary Carter and I have the honor and privilege of stewarding the investment that the Linux Foundation has made into a research program. In the past year, we've published insights by the community for the community. We've done this along industry vertical lines, including industries such as financial services, education and film and entertainment. As well as looking at technology horizontals, including enterprise blockchain, AI and machine learning and storage technologies. As well as ecosystem-wide issues including diversity, equity and inclusion and importantly in cybersecurity. There are great things ahead.  I look forward to collaborating with all of you in the year ahead. Thanks so much.


No, no, no. Thank you for fixing my overhead camera. Yeah. I think what happened was it has a drawing feature. Oh, no. And I think you were drawing on it. Well, I think the cable was draped over it. I think you were drawing on it. Okay. Sorry. Whatever. That's a business. Okay. So you've got these magnetic, actually last week, we put in these really cool magnetic tip cables, their data and power. And on one hand, they've got on one end, they've got the USB a USB C on the end, other end, you can have adjustable different tips. And so last week, we got the USB C tip in this week, we got the micro USB and the iOS lightning, which I will show as well as this wonderful demo. Again, it goes it goes either way, it's USB C and you pick different tips. And what I thought was nice about this is that you could have one cable, different connectors and like these, I'll tell you, like I've tried other ones. And there was the reason we haven't carried these until now is they were always like never that great. But they're much, much better now and actually really like this cable and I like these tips. So let's go to the overhead real fast. Okay, I will show it off newly refreshed overhead, the newly refreshed over it. So this is the cable. So we showed this off last week. And I will lock.  And then I'm going to plug this into my little extension cord here. One thing I like, it has a little power LED tells you that it's lit up. It does data and power. This is the micro USB. It works great. Or if you want the USB C tip, it comes with a tip USB C. But it also there they go. This is running the demo I'm going to show later USB C demo. And then you've also of course, of course got a lightning connector, which I forgot my iPad is dead. But if it was not dead, it would be charged. I left it unfortunately, for a couple days. But the tip does work. Yeah, I'll turn on a second if you like that. Oh, yes, he's like, Hi, why, why did you do that? Now we really could tell it's really upset. It's like, you please put that back in. So yeah, that's one of the things a lot of times there's interesting stuff out there. But we have to test it all. And a lot of it doesn't work. Yeah. And so we're only willing to stock and support the things that we've tested. And then we've also been using these for a while and kind of went through all its paces. Yeah. And I like this just got like a nice woven cable and it's got the USB C or a at the end. And it's nice and you can get extra tips and plug it in. I find this useful because I don't want to have five. I don't have to plug in all the things at once but I do need to switch between all these different kinds of cables all the time. Yep. Okay, next up. Yeah. Okay, next up. I got this for knowing Pedro's project. But the project got finished before the cables came in. This is a USB three to SATA adapter. Basically, you know, every time there's a new Raspberry Pi, people are like, Hey, why haven't you added SATA connectors? It's like, well, because they didn't. It's very small. So $35 computer. But if you want to add SATA, it's really easy. This cable gives you the SATA power and data on the ends. And it has a USB a 3.0 on the other. So it goes like, I think it's like six gigabit per second speed. You know, I do have it plugged in here into a large laptop, I will say USB is only really good for like about an amp. So it's best used with SSDs, not necessarily a or laptop drive. I happen to have only this really big old Western digital. I'm actually drunk. Where do we shoot this photo because it's honestly should be an SSD. I don't want to promise that it works for these gigantic old disk drives. By the way, this is not included if you buy it. Yeah. So yeah, it's very handy. And then of course, check out knowing Pedro's awesome guide on how to turn a Raspberry Pi or other single board computer into a multimedia server for your home. Okay, next up, we've got from Monk makes our favorite one of our favorite British makers, we have no favorites. They're all our favorites. That's favorites for you. Monk makes makes adorable electronics for micro bit but also micro Python and Arduino in general. This is designed for the micro bit and it's got a humidity and temperature sensor and a moisture sensor and RGB LED. It's designed to make gardening projects and sensing projects really easy. It's low cost. It's very affordable. pair it with a micro bit or just use alligator clips to clip it on to your favorite micro controller circuit Python, a clue, what have you a Pico. There's header started on the back and there's no solder required. And he's got a whole bunch of code as well. So check out that and all the other great Monk makes products. And these are all of the wireless LEDs. This is this is the badanza. Yes. Tonight. Okay, cornucopia. Yeah, I'm gonna show all these videos that we did. They did a good job.  Yes, we didn't have the big ones. And people wanted the big worthless. So there's two sizes of wireless LEDs that I will actually admit. At first, I did not realize that there was multiple sizes. But if you look at this photo, yeah, and just by the way, if you go to our site, we have we have, you know, the selection page where you can you can do this. So you want to show the Yeah. So on the right, there's the small inductor. And on the left is the large ones. So we've had the small ones in stock. But they actually, you know, the way the inductive chargers work, of course, is we've got the big ring that forms the primary and these coils form the secondary, the magnetic field passes through the coil and and charges up the LEDs. And if you're using the small ring, you know, you pretty much have to be right there. But what's nice is if you have the big ring, and the large wireless LEDs, they can work as far as like 30 ish centimeters away. The red LEDs are particularly dim, but some of the white LEDs, and I think the green ones in particular are very responsive. Um, yeah, let's show him the overhead. The impact of 10. I love doing the demo for these because it's great as you don't have to take them out of the bag. I don't have to take them out of the bag and like lose them. They're right here. So of course, the best transmission you're going to get is when they're coaxial, which means that the ring is in the center, well, this means center, but you know, close the middle, not on the outside of the ring. Put this on my hand here. Yeah, just isn't this neat? In this cool. It's it's magical. It's magical. Yeah, look at this. But it'll always work best if it's coaxial.  So you can get about 10, maybe about up to six, 10 inches away. Look, it's still lit. It's still lit. It does get them or then it stops. So we did a couple measurements. So each one has the using the big ring at 24 volts, how far away it'll work with white, blue, and the colors do act a little differently. Another thing we learned is not all the colors are work at the same distances. So red in particular, I think it's dimmer a little earlier than the green, because the green is just ultra bright. So there you go. So you get the large ones, you have the small ones, of course, the larger ones work at farther distances, but they are larger. So you'll need to be, you know, you can't fit them into his tiny spots. But that said, we have all the different colors. So choose your favorite color, and your favorite size. And yeah, you can go to the one page destination on our site, if you want to. And then don't forget you need the coil as well. But one coil can power dozens of LEDs, as you see. Okey-dokey, next up. Okay, by popular question, finally getting to some more iSpy boards, there's just been so many revisions. And hold on, I actually had the demo. And then of course, I saw the, you know, I'm going to use this magnetic cable. I hit the sorry, five, six, one, three. Okay, thank you. So this is the iSpy breakout board. So all of our displays that we've been making lately, you know, people have said like, wow, you know, the quick STEM IQT stuff for iSquared C has been awesome, because it makes it so easy to plug in iSquared C sensors, no soldering, you get power ground data clock. Wouldn't be cool if you did the same thing for displays. And so the idea here is, is you can't use just wires, because you need a lot of pins for displays, because there's, you know, the SPI and the SD card and the touchscreen and the memory and reset and backlight. So basically, it's 18 pins. And if you look on, like this image, you'll see our 1.9 display, which I'm also going to demo, has a latchy connector on it. If you use this flex cable, and you can use a very long flex cable, because flex cables are pretty good at high frequency data passing, you can then easily wire up displays that are not right next to your screen. So, you know, normally I'd have solder and wire and plug it all in. But this is actually just plugged in via this flex connector. And I'll just show I'll just I'll disconnect with my magnetic USB cable. And then I'll show it's really easy to insert this cable in. We have these in various lengths from short, medium, long, and you can of course get flex cables very easily in other lengths. And then this is just a break it because you're like, Okay, well, I've got the cable, I still have to wire it up on the other side. But this way it's like, you know, you don't have to pass long cables for the data. There's also another issue people were having where they're like, Why am I not able to pass the 80 megahertz clock data so quickly through my jangly wires? It's like, well, you got jangly wires. This way, you've got nice short breadboard wires. And they go to the cable and the cable can snake out and then you can mount this wherever you like, without having to worry about cables hanging up. It's a much neater collection. Of course, we'll we'll have a little add-ons that are designed for feather wings and raspberry pi. But we want to start with the breakout board version. Okay, Doki. And then the stars issue tonight besides you, lady, our community, our customers, our staff, everyone here in data for to make things go community. This wonderful world is wait, what? We just did that one? Yeah, we did that one. Yeah. Now it's this one. Yay. The LT, the LTR three 39 and LTR three 30. These are this is a two, a two and one. These are very similar sensors. I just want to grab the, the magnetic cable. Yeah, so now my well, it's okay. They all look the same. Yeah, some of my my some of my photos got out of order sick. No, we should do magnetic stem is one day. We will we have those magnetic connectors. Okay. Yeah, these are kind of blending in the one right now. I know they're well everything. Okay, so the LTR three or three and the LTR three 29 are both light on I squared C digital sensors, they're good up to I think like 64 kilo lux. They both have adjustable gains and they have like different integration rates and measurement rates and they're just really nice little light sensors and they're very inexpensive. And here's just the demo showing get this stuff out of the way because there's a lot going on here. Yeah. The sensors have visible plus IR and then infrared diodes inside there's two channels and then you know when you cover them up that goes down and when you you can change the game just put you know basically it's up to 16 bits and depending on how bright you want it you can adjust the gain to give you a good range. They both have semi QT connectors. The drivers actually are living the same libraries. We have Arduino and circuit Python slash Python library so you can use it with any Arduino board you can use it with a Raspberry Pi single board computer desktop with the FT 232H etc. The 329 is the simplest version and then the 303 explain why I have both actually so originally I wanted to do the 329 because I was going to use it for a project and I thought let's make a breakout. The 303 is basically the same sensor but it has an interrupt pin and like you you know it's it really is just not connected on the 329 they only exist on the 303. You know do you need the interrupt pin if you don't go with the 329 if you do go with the 303 you know again the driver code is basically the same on the back you can cut the trace to get rid of the green LED. They only have one I squared C address. That said there is no simpler easier smaller light sensor that we found especially if you're going to replace we've got this to replace an analog light sensor and we want it to be extremely compact. This one's definitely smaller than the BH 1750 it's on the Vemmel 770 for sure which is huge and chunky and the code is very easy to use and it's a very simple interface and it kind of does everything you want. So you have two nice simple light sensors great for every day you know visible infrared and then you subtract them to get just visible light sensing and then if you want threshold interrupt support check out the 303. Alright, and that is new privacy.


So, welcome to this session, where we now take further the very important principle that we derived in the previous session, namely the impulse response of a linear shift invariant system and its importance in the characterization of that system. We would do well at this stage to consider an example, but in order that we understand that example, we need to build an auxiliary principle, which we shall do in this session after first explaining the example that we want to consider. Let us go back to that famous simple first order system that we saw, which inspired us to build an analog from a mechanical and an electrical system and we shall take the electrical system as the exemplar here or the context in which we want to discuss the example. So, let us go back to the simple RC circuit. So, we have this resistance and capacitance excited by an input voltage and studied in terms of the output voltage. Now, we have analyzed this system before. So, we do not need to go through the whole analysis again, but then we do understand here an important principle namely that this system is linear and shift invariant. So, if we accept the result of the previous discussion that we have just completed, then we should be able to characterize this system completely by means of its impulse response. So, we would like to ask what is its impulse response? This should give us an interesting answer and what does that mean? You see if I wish to find the impulse response of this circuit, theoretically I should be able to apply a unit impulse at the input and seek the output. What do you mean by unit impulse? A unit impulse voltage, remember. So, let us put that principle apply a unit impulse. Now, what does this mean? You see, what is a unit impulse of voltage? Let us go back to the definition of an impulse. So, we said an impulse is the limiting situation when I have this tiny little pulse with a width of delta and a height of 1 by delta. Thus maintaining the area at 1, 1 by delta times delta which is 1 even as delta tends to 0. Now, what is the area of a voltage? You know what physical significance does it have? Now, you know for this we will have to look at the equation that describes the capacitor or the equation that describes anything that has a derivative operator embedded. Now, the current in a capacitor is related to the derivative of the voltage. Is that right? So, let us see. So, we have for a capacitor the current is well, if the capacitance value is c, then the current is c d voltage dt. And if I integrate both sides, then I have the integral of the current with respect to t is c in principle v. So, in some sense, there is an integration operation involved on the equation of a capacitor. Now, we will understand this better when we actually complete the derivation. Just let us keep this idea in mind right now. But what it tells us is that instead of trying to deal directly with applying an impulse and then trying to find the output, we should do something indirect. We should try to deal with an integrated form, you know because then you have a voltage, deal with an integrated form and then come to the conclusion of the impulse response. Sounds a little mysterious, but I will explain. So, let us ask the question, what would happen if I created an integral of the impulse? What would I get? Right? So, let us put that down. What if I integrated an impulse? Because, you know, the integral of an impulse gives us something interesting. Now, let me again do this by using a limiting argument. So, I have this tiny little pulse here of width delta and height 1 by delta. And this point, let us call it t0. So, I create, this is the variable t and I have delta, delta located suitably. So, you know, I will say delta, delta t0 just to make it clear that we are locating this at some place of t. Now, delta, delta t0, t is the function I have drawn, not quite an impulse, but moving in that direction as delta tends to 0. And now, I consider the integral of this from minus infinity to every t. This is called a running integral. We call it a running integral of this impulse or this very narrow pulse which is moving towards an impulse. And let us see what I would get. Now, you know, there are three situations possible. Let us draw all the three situations. So, I identify this point t0. This point is t0 plus delta. This height is 1 by delta. And this variable is t. And now, I identify three regions, region 1 up to here, t less than equal to t0, region 2. So, you have t between t0 and t0 plus delta. And finally, region 3, where t is greater than or you can even say greater than equal to t0 plus delta. And we will take these three regions separately. Now, you can visualize the running integral. The running integral captures all the area that has come up to that point t from the beginning of time. So, I will straight away, it is not very difficult to calculate this running integral. You just need to look at the total area that we have encompassed up to that point t. And you can see that in region 1, any way that area is 0, there is nothing to encompass. It is only in region 2 and in region 3 that we have encompassed some area. Let us look at it. So, in region 2, the area encompassed grows linearly. And finally, in region 3, all the area, all the unit area has been encompassed. And therefore, we can now draw the running integral. So, the running integral is minus infinity to t delta delta t0 lambda d lambda and can be drawn as follows. Up to t0, that integral is 0. From t0 to t0 plus delta, the integral rises linearly and then remains constant at 1. This part is linear. Region 1, region 2 and region 3. And now that we have drawn this, it is obvious what is going to happen as we start reducing that width towards 0. The running integral is going to go to a unit step. So, we will become a unit step at t0 as delta tends to 0. So, I have made a very important conclusion in this little discussion that we have had. The running integral of a unit impulse is a unit step located at the same point where the unit impulse lies. Now, what is a natural corollary? Let us take the derivative of both sides. So, unit impulse running integral gives you a unit step at the same place. So, if I want to go the other way, I should take a derivative. You see, what is the derivative? When you take any x lambda d lambda and make a running integral on it, let us call it x i of t. What is d x i t d t? i stands for running integral. What is d x i d d t? It is very clearly seen to be x of t. That is not too difficult to do. One can easily derive it from basic principles of calculus by making the perturbation on t. And in fact, I leave it to you as an exercise to complete this little proof that the derivative of a running integral gives you back to integrand. So, what is the conclusion we have here? Before we go to the next discussion, the derivative of a unit step, whatever that might mean, you see, it is not fair to talk of the derivative of a unit step actually, because the unit step is a discontinuous function. But then now I am being able to generalize this load. So, in the generalized sense, the derivative of a unit step is the unit impulse. Now, with this very important conclusion, we shall proceed to our next discussion where we will use this idea with greater depth and meaning. Thank you.


Coming up on DTNS, are you a PCDI wire? Trisha Hershberger's here with some cool RGB stuff to tell you about. Plus, Motorola wants you to wear the metaverse around your neck, and Sony tries to make earbuds you'll like putting in your ear. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, February 15th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. And joining us, TV host and streamer, Trisha Hershberger. Welcome back, Trisha. Hey, everyone. I'm so excited to be back. And thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. If you would like more of all of us chatting, Trisha and the rest of us, there's a longer version of the show called Good Day Internet, which you can get at patreon.com slash dtns. Big, big thanks to our top patrons. Today, they include Brandon Brooks, Hector Bones, and Tim Ashman. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Got a couple of interesting Windows 11 updates. Rollin' out today, the Amazon App Store preview is available in the Microsoft Store with more than 1,000 apps and also games. Previously, you had to be an insider to try out and write apps on Windows. So open it up a bit. Windows 11 is also getting the redesigned media player, notepad apps, and new taskbar improvements. Ars Technica also noted that Microsoft said in its blog post about the updates, the new features will keep arriving on Windows 11 through a variety of update mechanisms. Microsoft is moving towards continuous updates rather than piling everything into the big service updates twice a year. Intel has agreed to acquire chip foundry tower semiconductor, which makes semiconductor components for automotive, medical, industrial, and consumer electronics companies, as well as aerospace and defense. The transaction was unanimously approved by both boards of directors and it's expected to close in approximately a year. India has banned another group of 53 apps with links to China, including 10 cents X River, Garena's Free Fire, net eases on Myoji Arena and Astrakraft. India has banned more than 300 apps from China since mid 2020, and many of the new rounds are rebuilds of previously banned apps. India says, uh-uh. On the other hand, Free Fire Illuminate had more than 40 million of its 75 million monthly active users in India, according to what app Annie told TechCrunch. So, huge markets. The game maker is owned by C, which is based in Singapore, but has significant backing from China's 10 cent. Yikes, is a riot next? I don't know. Apple received a 5 million euro fine from a Dutch regulator over dating apps being able to use payments outside Apple's app store. Now, you may think, Tom, I know you told us right here on DTNS that Apple had fixed this. Yes, they had, but the authority for consumers and markets in the Netherlands found that Apple's change, which does allow third-party payment systems through an in-app link to the developer's site to complete the purchase or a built-in third-party system, required the company to submit a separate binary if they wanted to do that. That would only be shown on the Dutch storefront, and of course, they would also have to report external sales back to Apple because Apple wants to take a 27% cut. The ACM found that the requirement to create a completely new binary was unreasonable in their opinion. So Apple will continue to be fined 5 million euros each week that it does not meet the regulator's standard, though the fines will cap out at 50 million euros. They've paid about 20 million euros in fines so far. Apple says it will comply and it will also appeal this order. It can also go five weeks. Not every company could. Epson has a new long-throw laser projector that delivers what it calls a zero-compromise 4K picture due to a three-LCD chip system with new pixel-shifting technology. It's called the Pro Cinema 4K Pro UHD LS12000. Just rolls right off the tongue. Comes with an HDMI 2.1 port. That supports 4K gaming at up to 120 frames per second, so some people are gonna be pretty excited about that. The laser light source can handle 2,700 lumens and lasts up to 20,000 hours with deeper blacks and a claimed contrast ratio of over 2,500,000 to one. Now, there's no Dolby Vision for those who are worried about Dolby Vision, but Epson is offering HDR10, HLG and HDR10 Plus with the latter supported on Hulu, Amazon Prime and YouTube, however, not Netflix. Yeah, still, that's a nice bright 4K projector there. Well done. All right, let's talk about OS Flex. That is not just a flex, although it is a bit of a flex for Google, now that I think about it. Google launched Chrome OS Flex in early access Tuesday. It's built off of Neverwares Cloud Ready. If you were familiar with that, it's very similar, not exactly the same, but very similar, Google acquired Neverware in 2020. Flex is meant for you to install Chrome OS on an Intel-based Mac or PC for free. You just install it. And if you use Cloud Relay now, you will eventually be transitioned to flex as soon as it's ready for stable release. There are some feature differences you may wanna look into, but mostly it's the same. While Chrome OS Flex is probably immediately appealing to those of us with an old laptop or desktop that we've been wondering what to do with, it's also meant to appeal to businesses and organizations like schools. Among the features of flex are network deployment, so you can push it out to a bunch of devices at once, the ability to set user policies and manage updates remotely, and IT controls that can do things like prevent data loss if a device is lost or stolen. So it's meant for enterprise management. That's why flex can be free. Enterprise clients pay for the management of Chrome OS. And the idea is keep them happy by extending the life of their own old gear and keeping them in the system. Still, if you wanna try it out on your own, you need to fill out a form and then you'll get an email which will include installation instructions, certified compatible device list, and of course the download of Chrome OS Flex itself. The way they suggest installing it is to create a bootable Chrome OS Flex USB drive. So just create a bootable USB drive, you'll put Chrome OS Flex on, plug that into your Mac or PC. You might have to go into your BIOS to install from USB and from there you can deploy it to other devices either by putting USB in other devices or doing the network deployment. Chrome OS Flex has the same code base as Chrome OS so it should feel and look the same, though it is an early release so they say expect bugs and not every feature works on every type of hardware. The features like Google Assistant need a certain level of hardware to be able to work. There are no plans to include Android app support at this time, a few other things that aren't included but mostly, Sarah, this is kind of a cool way to put a free OS on a machine and certainly a boon to organizations who have aging hardware that don't wanna spend money on upgrading. No kidding and I know Tricia, you have young kids so please weigh in on this but I don't but I have a couple old machines laying around and with so many families who have had to make use of the fact that we're all home and kids have to be in school and be interacting with other kids. I know some of my friends who also have young kids have said, if this just worked a little bit better we'd all be in good shape. We don't have a computer at the house that is even capable of the stuff that the school needs from us, et cetera. So yeah, it's not just about schools but I think this is, it gives new life to older hardware that isn't dead yet. Yeah, and with you, Sarah, I absolutely love the idea of being able to kind of recycle your old tech but in a more kind of reused type of way and it does when it comes to kids, Chromebooks are where it's at. I mean, for a lot of different reasons but when you have a really young tech user not having to worry about drivers, not having to worry about viruses installing themselves on the machine, not having to worry about kids downloading and playing games instead of doing their homework. Like there's a lot of benefits to having your Chromebook for a child. And now of course, like you were saying, Tom there's gonna be differences between Chrome OS Flex and getting an actual Chromebook right out of the box but as someone that has lots of gadgets lying around my house, I don't wanna have to buy brand new for my little guy if I can just put Chrome OS Flex on like an old gaming laptop and call it a day. That's awesome. Plus it opens your options as far as gifting old hardware. I like to get anything I can rather than just like take it to a recycle program. I'd rather like take my old consoles to the local hospital children's ward for example or completely factory reset an Android tablet and install like baby monitor type apps on it or make these things, I guess is upcycle the right term then maybe make these things reusable for someone else in your life that might have a different set of needs than you. I think it's awesome. And the fact that right now Chrome OS Flex is free two thumbs up for me. Yeah, it's a great reduction of e-waste to do this. I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft pushing something like this as well. They've got a lightweight version of Windows that they could do something similar with. So yeah, the more the better. Yeah, we'll see Apple doing exactly this, but who knows, you never know. Speaking of Chrome OS though, nine to five Google has a first look at an Android 13 developer preview build that will allow cross streaming from Google Pixel phones to browsers on Chromebooks. So even if you don't have Android support on your Chromebook, you could do this if you had a Pixel phone. Nine to five Google was even able to run the web app on Windows 11, not just on Chrome OS. So that's kind of cool. Let's talk about earbuds, shall we? You know, people like the earbuds that they like. Certain earbuds work for folks and other earbuds do not. I'm a fan of in-ear earbuds, but not everybody is. Sony created a new open style earbud that might appeal to you. They're called the link buds. They go for $180 and they fall somewhere between the company's premium 1000XM4s and the WFC 500 buds. So kind of in the middle there. They have a much easier brand name to remember as well. You can call them the WFL 900, that's the official name. We'll call them link buds for the purposes of this conversation. They come in either dark gray or white. They have a donut style hole that's cut right into the middle of the section. And that is a little bit interesting. It goes into your ear, but your ear has a, there's a pass through. There's an air pass through that is involved. Some folks say it actually makes wearing them more comfortable because not only are you not shoving something in your ear, but it's kind of connecting to the outer part of your ear. Again, it'll appeal to a lot of folks who don't like that in-ear earbud experience, kind of like earplugs. You either like them or you don't. Blocks out too much of the real world sound for a lot of folks, but they still fit snug.  So they're, you know, they're pretty sensitive. The Verge also notes that the style makes heavy bass less possible, because again, it's kind of not going into your ear. Waste quality is very good, but with just 5.5 hours of battery life on a single charge, a lot of folks will say, well, that's not sufficient enough for everyday use. Trisha, but where do you stand on earbuds? I mean, earbuds are such a personal experience and I was reading recently that the shape of everyone's ear is different. And so you're actually going to get different sound out of different buds based on your ear shape. And that's why you might have some people swear by a certain brand's buds and the next person sitting next to them could absolutely detest the sound quality coming out of those buds because it has so much to do with how sound reverberates in our actual ear canal, which is just fascinating. Some people are going to prefer an open ear design. Some people prefer the completely closed design, like you were saying, Sarah, and that's just for how the sound sounds to you, open versus closed. And then of course, there's also how it feels in your ear if it falls out, if you like kind of the hook design that goes over your ear or if you're fine with it just plugging right in there. And then some people go for like the jawbone conducting technology, but I really do believe it's a personal experience. I get to try out a lot of different buds in my time, kind of doing various tech correspondent type work. And the only buds that I personally don't care for are the ones that are so beefy that they fall out of my ear. I'm also a hobbit sized human, so it could just be me. But yeah, when they're too beefy, even though the sound quality is usually a little bit better if they fall out, it doesn't help me. Tom, how do you feel about buds? Yeah, I have luckily not run into problems with earbuds falling out, but I know so many people that do that I think this is one of the biggest advantages to the link buds is you gotta look at the picture to really understand it, but they go in your ear and then they have a little thing that kind of props out and props them up and it doesn't matter what shape your ear is in, they're gonna be in there. Now, not everybody's gonna like them because the sound is not gonna be the same, but since they're open air design anyway, it doesn't matter if there's a little propped up there, right, it's still gonna sound the same. The look actually reminds me of some ear plugs I use when I go to concerts, except for those, the circular hole is meant to pull them in and out of your ear rather than be in the ear like the Sony ones. I am looking for new earbuds because I've had AirPods Pro and something inside got a little bent and they buzz and I just don't feel like it's worth it to take them back and get them fixed. I probably should, but they're not in the warranty anymore because they're old and so I don't know if these are what I want because I do want some of that ability to be like, yeah, noise cancel, yeah, not and these kind of take that choice away, but I'm fascinated with that tapping on the skin to, you know, to control them. Not for any practical reason, just cause it looks cool. I'm like, oh, that's interesting and apparently it really works. Well, and they're sensitive enough that you can do that, which is pretty cool.  I've loved them for, since I did a Live With It segment several years ago, there are updated models of the Jabras I just haven't gotten any and I don't mind that in ear experience. In fact, I'm kind of an earplug fan in general, but I know not everybody feels that way and it's cool that Sony is saying, all right, well, we're gonna give you some options. You definitely get passed through on real world audio because it's a donut, right? We're not actually plugging your ear up, but you do miss out perhaps on certain audio quality. It depends on what you're listening to. Yeah. You know, for a podcast, I would never care. From music I would. And I'm just gonna bring up quickly before we move on to the next topic of conversation because Tom, you shouted out the AirPods, but I'm like, for my Android friends out there, I have both the Samsung Buds 2 currently that I'm testing as well as the Pixel Buds and I gotta say Pixel Buds, for me, for my ear type, there we go, are totally where it's at. I like these, they're my faves. Well, if you're in the market for earbuds and battery life is of utmost importance, you're wearing them all day, you're talking on the phone, you're doing all the things, all the things that you might wanna do, Audio Technica has a new pair of wireless earbuds that might appeal to you. Again, great, great name, A-T-H-C-K-S-50-T-Ws, and they go for $200, that's at the high end of earbuds, but they give up to 20 hours of audio playback, this is according to the company, and 15 hours when using the Buds Active Noise cancellation feature, which that brings it down for all companies, but 15 hours is still pretty solid. Audio Technica also says that battery life can reach up to 50 hours, when you're using the earbuds with your charging case, all the charging cases will give more life, but 50 hours is pretty good, pretty impressive. By comparison, if you look at the Beats Fit Pro, offers six hours of continuous playback with noise cancellation, Samsung's Galaxy Buds Pro, and Sony's, that's the top of the line, WF-1000XM4 earphones that I mentioned earlier, both offer five hours of playback, so it's coming down, coming down a bit, and Apple's AirPods Pro only offer 4.5 hours with noise canceling enabled. Those are, that's pretty good battery life then on those. Yes, I haven't tested it personally, but boy, that would be great. All right, let's talk augmented reality. Augmented reality glasses need chips and modems, and a power source somewhere, and if you put that in the headset, it gets bulky. So designers often use a phone, which may not be really designed for it, or some pocket or clip on your belt. Motorola and Verizon want you to wear it around your neck, like you're at a conference, or if you raised Catholic like I was, a scapular. Motorola and Verizon announced a 5G neckband on Tuesday. Brian Meekam of Verizon told Engadget, we're making 5G wearable.  The front pendant weighs 100 grams. That's where the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip, the 5,000 milliamp hour battery, the SIM card slot, the gyroscope, the accelerometer, GPS and barometer are all, most of it's in the front. The back module is 75 grams. That just has stereo speakers in it. The magnetically attached cable contains the coaxes and signal lines to connect it all. The whole neckband is covered in 5G antennas, so it's supposed to get great reception. It's meant to work with a lot of different kinds of glasses. The photo shows it with the ThinkReality A3 headset. That thing needs a laptop usually to power it, so that's interesting. The Verge writes that it's compatible with Qualcomm's VR platform, Microsoft's remote network driver interface, and that it also has USB-C and DP 1.4 ports. Motorola and Verizon seem to think this is an enterprise product, not a personal consumer item. They talked about it being used by sports teams or schools or virtual reality theaters. We have a lot of people coming in to use VR. No price are available yet, but they are in a lot of talks, they say. You know, at first, when I read the story, I was like, I thought of it as like a choker necklace. Rather than, this is not gonna work, especially if somebody likes turtlenecks. No, no, no. It really is just more like a necklace rather than a neckband. So call it what you want. But yeah, listen, if you're not wearing a full-on thing on your face or going the eyeglass route, this makes the most sense of getting a sense of what your body is doing and what it can pick up as you navigate the world. Yeah, I think they're definitely spot-on with the enterprise approach here because my first thought is, okay, great, we're gonna wear all the bulky stuff around us like we're going to a convention and it's a lanyard or a badge. And then I was like, so the glasses are gonna be really sleek, right? And obviously there's going to be different glasses. They can come out with them for this, but at least for the pictures that went with this story, they're still bulky glasses. So I thought, you know, okay, I feel like with the consumer market, the big deal with AR, if you're going to go the AR glasses route is making it fashionable, like making it something people actually want to wear as well as functional. But I don't know that we're quite, they're yet. So for enterprise purposes, I think AR is the bee's knees, you know, for helping to train surgeons or people operating having machinery or I've seen AR teach people how to do public speaking. Like all of this is awesome, but in those use cases, people won't mind wearing a big badge modem around their neck. So that's awesome. Yeah, I had the exact same reaction with especially when I read about the speaker on the back, I'm like, why would you want that? Nobody wants that. But then the amusement park was the one that got me.  They have those already. I can see them handing these to everybody, putting them over everybody's head as they start the ride. Then the speaker in the back. Obviously now I can make, it makes sense. Okay, or if it's virtual laser tag or whatever you're doing. So yeah, if you're looking at this saying, I never want to wear one of those. You won't have to if you don't want to. I don't think it's for you to just walk around your neighborhood with. We'll see. Folks, we love to hear from you. We ask if you got a couple of minutes and only a couple of minutes to fill out our latest survey. Let us know what you think of the show. It helps us make it better. So tell us what you think is working or not working about DTNS. Head over to dailytechnewshow.com slash survey. Really, we'll only take you a few minutes, just a few questions. Dailytechnewshow.com slash survey. Well, Trisha, you are fresh off of hosting Corsairs announcements this morning, including a new case, among other things. We were kind of excited when we read PCMag described the Corsair 5000T RGB Mid Tower PC case as smooth with easy cable management. Music to our ears. So what else can you tell us about the announcement? Yes, it was so fun getting to kind of unveil that this morning to the world. So the 5000T is a Mid Tower case and it is a very premium like top of the line case. It came out from Corsair and it basically has a lot of components that some PC build enthusiasts might purchase separately to put in their case, but already put in your case in a way that A makes the build a lot easier and B is styled to look pristine together. So it's a Mid Tower case with 208 individually addressable LEDs. Three included LL120 RGB fans. It includes the Commander Core XT already. It fits multiple 360 millimeter radios as well as it has these really nice cable management options in the back. So you're getting a lot of things that one would expect out of a more premium and high end case. But yeah, it ships with, like I said, three of the LL120 RGB fans already built in and there's these really cool lighting accents that they accent like the curves and the architecture of the case itself. And it just looks really sleek. It comes in black and white as of right now. And of course it's Corsair so everything can be controlled via IQ software. So there's certain things you can do with that specific combination. Like for example, you could set your entire PC to glow a certain color if certain components are getting too hot. So you could see in a moment's notice if there's an issue rather than having like a temp control window or something like that up in the side, which could obviously be very useful for people who love overclocking or if you're streaming and just need to catch something out of the corner of your eye, if it's positioned where my PC is, et cetera. That's really cool. So I mean, you could go out certainly and buy all of the RGB fans, the lighting strips and put everything in there individually yourself or if you want kind of that more premium experience where it's all orchestrated for you, the 5000T is really built from the ground up specifically for that. And I know not everyone is a huge RGB fan. I like RGB, but for me, when it comes to DIY PC builds, I'm happy to see all the RGB, not because I think RGB should be for everyone, but because I love the idea of customization in the PC build world.  But making it your own is one of the things that's so special to me about DIY PC building because you're really custom crafting it for your needs. So in my opinion, the more options, the merrier, which speaking of that, the other thing we revealed in the Corsair live stream this morning was all about RGB, the LC 100, which are these lighting panels that a lot of people in stream chat were asking if they were nano leafs, but they're actually significantly smaller. They're these tiny little triangular LEDs that magnet into the case. So I'll use my PC as an example, kind of off to the side. If you don't have a liquid cooling reservoir, if you're not doing that, you have kind of this empty artists canvas, if you will, with which you can light things up and a lot of like GPUs don't have built-in lighting. So you could make your GPU look really shiny. And of course, all of that's controlled through IQ as well. So it's- So you're talking about inside the case, you just magnet this thing up to the side of the wall. That's cool. Yeah, and it bends at each LED. So you can have it like crawling up your PSU shroud or, you know, and you can put it in all different configurations. Like we kind of did like a very silly design challenge. I made a kind of big try force out of mine with different colors. Someone else made a dinosaur. Someone else made like a little cat. So it's again, it's all about customizing your build and really making it your own. And that was something that I don't think anyone's really seen before. Like we've seen not only beyond your wall in your battle station room, but never something that's actually meant to go inside your PC. So that was kind of cool. Those were some of the highlights for me of the event. I don't know if either of you got a chance to check it out. Yeah, I actually, it's been a while since I built a PC myself. And part of that is because I can still feel the scrapes and cuts of trying to shove all the cables in there. So the cable management on this looks really good. The PC Gamer article about this convinced me that this is probably one of the better cable management systems out there. So if you're into cable management, you might want to take a look at it. Yeah, it's super nice. Sarah, I don't know how into the DIY PC build world you currently are, or if you still mess. Oh, I mean, listen, it's been a while as well for me, but I am into lighting. Lighting is my jam. In fact, I forgot to turn on my light behind me on the show today, so whatever. But yeah, I think this looks really slick. All right, well, Trish, thanks. Appreciate you giving us the scoop on that. They're pretty. I like those lights. Pretty. Yeah, it's so pretty. Really fun. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it, Tom. Reed Fishler sent us this story from IT News in Australia. Australia's NBN operates satellite internet called Skymesh through its SkyMuster satellite network. And on December 21st last year, 40% of Australia's NBN SkyMuster users were knocked offline for about seven hours. And in fact, some of them didn't get back online for two weeks. Now, you may say, OK, Tom, you talk all the time about how you don't talk about outages. Why are you talking about this one? Well, it's because NBN announced Tuesday it believes the outage was caused by a micrometeorite hitting one of its satellites. The satellite's optical recognition tech saw meteorite activity, and the satellite is no longer pointed where it used to be. So that seems to indicate it got hit by something and knocked it out of alignment. And then there was a configuration error in some of the customer's reception boxes that caused it not to be able to mitigate. That's why some people were only down for seven hours while other people out for two weeks. There was another error involved there. But if you had meteorite on your bingo card of possible ISP outages, well, mark it, because we had a meteor-caused outage, which I thought was very interesting. Man, satellites have had quite a week, really. And train the atmosphere bad for many satellites. Meteorites also bad. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Also, if you have anything that you'd like us to talk about on our future show, any feedback you have on a previous show, please do send it our way. Your emails make us smarter. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We also want to extend a special thanks to Kepper67, who's one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Thank you for all the years of support. Kepper67. Woo-woo. Oh, yes, thank you, Kepper. Oh, that's great when you clap. Just kidding, Kepper. Kepper, we're giving you two rounds. The audience just gasps. Especially because Kepper's good with us from the very beginning, too, so good to appreciate it. Absolutely. Also, thanks to you, Tricia Hershberger, for being with us today. Let folks know where they can keep up with all that you do. No, thank you guys so much for having me. It's always such a joy to come and chat tech with y'all. If you want to follow me on the socials, I am that girl, Trish, with no I in the girl. So it's just that GRL, Trish. And then on Twitch and YouTube, it's just slash Trisha Hershberger, just in the name. That's it.  And yeah, my MO is generally gaming-related, PC gaming related tech and passionate about games development. So if you like that stuff, come find me online.  And we really appreciate it. And so yes, if you're not following Trish on all the socials, do so now. Do it now. We're also live on this show Monday through Friday at 4 30 PM Eastern. That's 2130 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We are back doing it all again tomorrow with one Scott Johnson. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.