Ryan:
[0:00] On this week’s episode, we’re going to discuss Open Source robotics and what the future holds in store for us. Could be Doom, for all we know. Could be Doom. Or it could be all good. We’re going to talk about it. Welcome to Destination Linux, where we discuss the latest news.

Michael:
[0:15] It could be Doom on everything. You know, the game itself. It could be Hot Topics.

Ryan:
[0:21] Gaming, mobile, and all things open source and Linux. My name is Ryan, and joining me are my half-robot, half-human hosts, Michael and Jill.

Michael:
[0:33] Hold on a second. My left arm needs to update. Oh, gosh.

Ryan:
[0:37] He never updates, Jill.

Jill:
[0:38] Oh, yeah.

Michael:
[0:40] Yeah. Let’s see. Okay.

Ryan:
[0:42] He’s got a Pip-Boy 3000 on his wrist, clearly, right here.

Jill:
[0:47] He’s got a Dick Tracy watch.

Michael:
[0:49] It’s updated now. Yep.

Ryan:
[0:51] Very good. And Jill?

Jill:
[0:55] Unlike Michael my software is up to date and it’s all open source.

Ryan:
[0:59] Oh that was okay mine’s also open.

Michael:
[1:03] Source but it’s also you know not up to date.

Ryan:
[1:07] Michael’s is based on the Michael ai bot which if you want to contribute to is out there on my github now let’s get this show on the road toward destination linux,

Ryan:
[1:24] all right so in our community feedback this week stefan has this to say soon the 400th episode of destination linux will hit the road and i right sitting in the back seat would like to ask you one question are we there yet there for what i think is linux there yet because the destination is Linux. He’s asking, are we there yet?

Michael:
[1:50] Oh, I see. I thought maybe it was like Wayland related.

Ryan:
[1:55] You know what? I think Linux has come an incredible way since I’ve joined, what, eight years ago now? Six years ago? I don’t know how long it’s been. It’s not been that long. Not like Michael and Jill have been in it for like 25 years.

Michael:
[2:10] I don’t even remember anymore.

Ryan:
[2:12] Just in the last couple of years, The fact that I remember having Destination Linux gear on, had Linux all over it, and going into a store and being shocked if somebody said, hey, I like Linux. And then I remember a year or two later walking into stores and having a lot of people like, oh, I like Linux, I like Linux. And now it’s no longer this like thing, this underground group of people that are random that run Linux, like lots and lots of people run Linux around the world. So depending on your definition of are we there yet, we run the entire Internet. We run most of the military. We run everything in space.

Michael:
[2:55] International Space Station.

Ryan:
[2:55] The supercomputers.

Michael:
[2:57] Yeah top 500 supercomputers um basically everything yeah so.

Ryan:
[3:02] I think we win i.

Michael:
[3:04] Think the answer is yes and also with an asterisk if you put desktop in that question yeah.

Ryan:
[3:10] Yeah it’s desktop then i think we’re closer than we’re we’re very close yeah but we’re not quite quite there yet although windows is sure making it very easy for us thank you microsoft, we appreciate all your recall features and making Windows 11 incompatible with most older devices. We appreciate all that.

Michael:
[3:31] And also the stuff that’s not even that old. Good job, Microsoft. Thank you.

Ryan:
[3:35] They really do love Linux, after all. They’re doing everything they can to promote it there.

Michael:
[3:40] They have proven that they love Linux and not their customers.

Ryan:
[3:44] But Stefan also said this is going to be our 400th episode soon which, that’s kind of shocking.

Michael:
[3:51] I know that’s a crazy number the fact that we’re actually getting to 400 and we still don’t know how to end the show because we still can’t remember we.

Ryan:
[4:00] Still have to read it.

Michael:
[4:01] We still have to read the ending of this show but this is awesome I can’t wait to 400 we have a special treat planned for 400 so you don’t want to miss that episode.

Ryan:
[4:11] Yeah, 400 is good.

Jill:
[4:12] Yay.

Ryan:
[4:13] Huge. Huge. All right. Stefan has other things to say, Michael. Quit just hanging up on the first paragraph. He’s got other stuff to say here, right?

Michael:
[4:21] I mean, you’re the one who stopped after the first paragraph.

Ryan:
[4:26] Goes on to say, anyway, the interview with Artyom Zorin in episode 395 was so great. He’s an incredible personality. When I was 12, computers were these magical cryptic machines with strange text and boxes on it. And Artyom just started his first attempt at building his distro for everyone at that age, which is quite amazing. That was a fantastic interview. Artyom, amazing. Really appreciate you coming on. Such a great person to talk to and learn their story.

Michael:
[4:54] Yeah, it was such an awesome interview too. So if you haven’t checked it out, absolutely go check it out. We’ll have a link in the show notes for it.

Ryan:
[5:00] Absolutely. Goes on to say, Zorin OS being very popular with schools makes a ton of sense. When I was approaching the end of my high school career, Our school just updated its three computer rooms with new PCs and the shiny new Windows XP. Instead of throwing away the old PCs, a physics teacher equipped three additional computer rooms with these old PCs and OpenSUSE. This was my first contact with Linux, but it felt strange and also due to the old hardware, cheap, unstable, and unattractive to me. It took me many years and the Vim experience before I would give Linux another chance. Wow, Vim was what did it? You thought that stuff was outdated, but you liked the WHJKL movement and stuff. That’s what did it for you. That’s crazy. How did you exit it? That’s the question.

Michael:
[5:48] Maybe that’s the reason why he gave Linux another chance because he was stuck in Vim. And when you found out the answer, it was like, use Linux. Oh, okay.

Ryan:
[5:57] Yes, there you go. He likes Vim so much because he’s never been able to get out of it. It’s still, to this day, thinks Linux is Vim. and it’s running so good because it’s like.

Michael:
[6:06] It doesn’t take up much ram because it doesn’t do much of anything unless you customize the mess out of it.

Ryan:
[6:12] Oh my gosh all the zim hate we’re about to get so much i said zim too instead you said zim how dare you all the zim hate we’re gonna get all those zim people out there zoomers zoomers zoomers boomers boomers anyways no i hope that Zorin OS makes a much better impression on the following generations. The Linux community really needs more talented people like him with a passion for usability and normal PC units to gain relevance. In the end, we’ll all profit from it. That’s the beauty of free and open source. Amazing email. Absolutely agree with everything you said there. Yeah, I think Zorin is an incredible… uh os by itself but after hearing Artyom story it makes it that much cooler in my opinion than even before so yeah.

Michael:
[7:04] Oh yeah yeah Zorin always looked i always saw Zorin as like this nice um distro that you could just give someone and they’ll be good to go and get ready didn’t be really easy i never really thought about it being like the number one but during that interview he said some stuff about how they treat like the beginners like a very main focal point and how they did special features and stuff just for that that made me kind of like you know what it it is probably on my number one or at least like in the top three if it was 2404 based and they updated the base faster it would definitely be number one but yeah even without that it’s still pretty high.

Ryan:
[7:41] Yep and you mean number one for what you would recommend to new users.

Michael:
[7:44] What i would recommend yeah yeah exactly yeah.

Jill:
[7:47] I totally agree Michael and i wanted to thank steven he’s the one who wrote this community feedback. He said, best regards, Stephen. So thank you, Stephen, for sharing your Linux journey with us and letting us know the RTM Zoran interview and story should be part of future Linux users’ journeys. I fully agree. Yeah, it’s a great distro for beginners. Absolutely.

Ryan:
[8:15] Is it Stephen or Stefan? I have Stefan here. Now I don’t know.

Michael:
[8:20] Jill says it’s Steven it’s A-N and depends on you know your like perspective it could be Stefan it could be Steven it could be Stefan however they want to say it you know alright Steven we don’t know for sure you need.

Ryan:
[8:32] To write us and let.

Michael:
[8:33] Us know let us know how to say your name which one.

Ryan:
[8:35] Either way, we appreciate you.

Jill:
[8:38] My husband is Steve, S-T-E-V-E, but a lot of people call him S-T-E-P-H-E-N.

Ryan:
[8:46] Right, but this is A-N.

Jill:
[8:48] But this is A-N. Yeah, it could be Stefan.

Michael:
[8:51] Some people also spell Steven with an A-N, too.

Jill:
[8:55] Yeah.

Michael:
[8:56] We need to come up. No, give us a phonetic spelling of your name when you send us feedback.

Ryan:
[9:02] In addition to the episode that you’re quoting and you must also give us a phonetic way to say your name uh look and.

Michael:
[9:09] If possible to be like um you know have like an something as in whatever so it sounds like that that’d be great.

Ryan:
[9:16] Do you realize though that jill went against us in this like i had said stefan the whole time and she decided to not only call you out about it too She called me out about it and was like, because his name is Steven, and it says Steven specifically in there. Did you notice that? I was shocked. Jill, where are you getting all this fire from.

Jill:
[9:39] Jill? Well, actually, after you read it.

Michael:
[9:42] You forgot. Fire from the half-robot side.

Jill:
[9:44] Yeah, after half-robot side, after you read the community feedback, you forgot to say who it was from. So that’s why I repeated it.

Ryan:
[9:52] So that’s why you went and tried to chastise me. Well, we’ll know when they write back, whether you were right or I was right. And whoever is the loser has to do 50 pushups.

Jill:
[10:03] Oh, okay.

Michael:
[10:04] That is so not fair as a comparison. Like the thing you do every day anyway or something.

Ryan:
[10:12] Yeah, of course. So either way, I win.

Michael:
[10:15] You’re going to do it anyway.

Jill:
[10:17] I can do at least five or 10 without having done them in a long time. But I used to do 50.

Ryan:
[10:22] You’re going to do 50 in a row this time on camera.

Michael:
[10:26] I don’t think I can do 50. I don’t think I can do 15, much less 50.

Ryan:
[10:32] Michael’s like, I got one good one.

Michael:
[10:35] I actually have tested. I’ve got to 10 and felt like I was about to pass out. So I think 15, I would literally pass out probably.

Ryan:
[10:45] That’s the pass out thing.

Michael:
[10:46] All in one go. If we were like to break it up like 10, one hour, 10 the next, I could do that. But like all in one go, I’d probably pass out.

Ryan:
[10:54] Well, Jill, you better hope you’re right. Cause, uh, I

Michael:
[11:01] Feel like they’re going to respond and say that the answer is whatever Jill said, just so that she doesn’t.

Jill:
[11:07] But sit ups, I might be able to win you on that one. I actually have the record at my high school for sit ups over the, over the men’s record. And I still do those each morning. Yeah.

Ryan:
[11:19] Challenge accepted, number one. If you’d like to see this challenge played out, well, you have to donate for it. It costs about $10,000. So if you donate $10,000, Jill and I will do a sit-up competition on camera.

Michael:
[11:34] Live at scale.

Jill:
[11:35] Yeah, there we go.

Ryan:
[11:36] If you donate $10,000, you’ll not only sponsor us to go to scale, but Jill and I will do a sit-up competition, which I guarantee you, I will win.

Jill:
[11:47] No, you probably will, yeah.

Ryan:
[11:49] No, no, no, stop it. Jill, get competitive.

Michael:
[11:52] It’s supposed to be a competition.

Ryan:
[11:54] Say no, you won’t. Jill, come on, do it right now. Go.

Jill:
[11:58] Okay. Actually, I wish I could.

Ryan:
[12:01] No, say you’re going to stomp me.

Michael:
[12:03] Jill is going to destroy Ryan.

Ryan:
[12:05] Yeah.

Jill:
[12:05] Actually, I’m going to destroy you, Ryan, because what I will do is I will practice, and I will do 65 sit-ups in one minute is what my record is.

Ryan:
[12:15] Ooh, dang. All right.

Michael:
[12:17] Get ready.

Ryan:
[12:17] You heard it here. for this low price of $10,000.

Michael:
[12:20] It’s low, low price. With only four easy payments of $2,500.

Ryan:
[12:27] Yeah, we’ll take payments. Sure. It’s got to start at $2,500 a piece, the payments, but we’ll take payments, you know, for sure. All right.

Ryan:
[12:37] Speaking of companies that don’t need any donations or payments because they’re worth like $3 trillion, Did you hear that NVIDIA and Hugging Face are partnering up with Robotics?

Michael:
[12:49] I did not hear about that, but I also love to hear any time we can talk about Hugging Face because the name is awesome.

Jill:
[12:56] Yeah, the name. The name alone is worth billions.

Michael:
[13:00] Whoever was the marketing decision, the branding person, to choose that name.

Jill:
[13:04] Yeah.

Ryan:
[13:05] They really did do an amazing job. We’re going to talk about Hugging Face because we’ve mentioned them in past episodes, but we’ve never gotten into their history.

Ryan:
[13:12] And what we found is going to change your life forever. But first, let’s talk about…

Michael:
[13:22] What a great tease up there.

Ryan:
[13:25] Yeah, thank you.

Michael:
[13:26] At 6 o’clock, be sure to tune in. This could destroy your entire life. But until then…

Ryan:
[13:34] Here’s the weather.

Michael:
[13:36] Exactly. So this is the lotto numbers.

Ryan:
[13:43] So did you watch the Tesla event where they get the robo taxi and all that stuff?

Michael:
[13:49] They got the robo taxi that I forgot what they call cyber cab, something like that.

Jill:
[13:53] Cyber cab. Yeah.

Michael:
[13:54] But obviously the biggest thing is the the robots are walking around and talking to people and having conversations and seemingly being magic. And then the depression of its all eyes.

Jill:
[14:07] I thought you meant the robots got depressed.

Michael:
[14:10] Oh yeah, the robots were depressed too because they weren’t real.

Ryan:
[14:15] There’s this episode of Rick and Morty where Rick, the very beginning of it, he’s at the breakfast table. He spends 20 minutes going through and he’s the smartest person in the world building this robot that’s AI and alive. The sentient. When it’s done, the robot’s like, what is my purpose? He’s like, you pass butter. and then the robot goes oh my god and then it goes so anyways uh

Ryan:
[14:42] you just when you said depression and robot reminded me of that scene yeah so yeah so tesla had these robots walking around when i first saw it and i i saw the interaction with other guests i was like oh my gosh is this real is this possible that he has ai and robotics working that seamlessly together but the first clue that something was off was the accents of the people who were the robots were talking and then how fast they were responding it was like instantaneous responses and then we come to find out that there are actually humans behind the scenes that were kind of doing voiceovers or helping out the robots there was even like people controlling.

Michael:
[15:23] And like it had its movements and stuff too in addition to the voice stuff that’s what i saw.

Ryan:
[15:28] So wasn’t quite as exciting uh as i had hoped, but it did get me thinking.

Michael:
[15:34] That’s called lies. Ryan.

Ryan:
[15:36] Yeah, it kind of was a little bit, a little bit. It got me thinking about the future of robots beyond vacuums and AI assistants out there. And, you know, how cool it would be to actually be interacting with a robot that fluently, where it’s just talking to you, engaging in conversation, and there’s almost no difference between that robot and walking up to a random stranger and talking to them. But the big thing is I want an open source robot. I don’t want just any robot. It’s got to be open source.

Michael:
[16:09] It’s got to be a ploopy robot.

Jill:
[16:10] Yeah, a ploopy. And we don’t want it to be a proprietary Terminator 2 robot. That’s for sure.

Ryan:
[16:20] Skynet was totally proprietary.

Jill:
[16:22] We can agree on that.

Michael:
[16:24] Yeah, we want an open source Cylon is what we’re talking about.

Ryan:
[16:28] Open source Cylon. Well, this week in Germany. That was such a terrible impression, Jill. Was that a Cylon or was that that Danger Will Robinson robot or what was that like? I’m not even sure what happened there. Did Jill’s robotic side just glitch?

Jill:
[16:48] Yeah, I just glitched.

Michael:
[16:50] Jill glitched.

Ryan:
[16:51] Fair. So there’s a partnership that was announced between Hugging Face and NVIDIA that’s going to accomplish this open source robotics dream. And this partnership combines Hugging Faces’ Robot Open AI Platform with NVIDIA’s AI Omniverse and Isaac Robotics Technology Program. And so these two independent robotic divisions are going to come together and make open source powered robotics division out there. And their goal is to supercharge the advancement of robots in industries like manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, and more. And that, to me, was really, really exciting. Because number one, NVIDIA is now, they said, valued more than Apple. It’s more valuable than Apple as a company. I believe they’re replacing Intel in the stock market now as one of the top technology companies. Wow. Which is interesting.

Michael:
[17:51] Power of AI.

Ryan:
[17:52] Intel fall uh it’s just sad come on intel you got this you know what it.

Michael:
[17:59] Actually is very sad because i don’t know what nvidia’s music is but i know intel’s bum bum bum bum you know.

Ryan:
[18:09] Yeah like there’s.

Michael:
[18:12] No iconic like yeah you know if it’s kind of sad in that sense like you know there’s like nvidia is just coming out of nowhere and doing some uh not the greatest things they’re doing some cool stuff sometimes but you know the whole um participating in the crypto mining process of making the getting their hardware a nightmare for years not the greatest part of it but you know at least.

Ryan:
[18:36] They’re making trillions looks like they’re winning they’re making trillions out there technically i guess you know there there’s rumors out there they’re going to release their first cpu next year so they’re going after everyone like everyone is now in their radar they’re not just going like hey we’re just going to do this ai thing they are diversifying their portfolio fully which when you’ve got three trillion dollar investment i mean why not what do you do with three trillion dollars yeah that’s the question well yeah when you make.

Jill:
[19:09] Apple.

Michael:
[19:10] Look envious what do you do with.

Jill:
[19:11] That before you know they were working on their nvidia tegra chips which were great for multimedia media and home entertainment systems that were low powered but it’s it’s i i had a feeling in the future i would see them make much more powerful cpus.

Ryan:
[19:29] Yeah i think they’re probably going to go the way of apple you’re going to see an nvidia board with their gpu and their CPU integrated into one chip and then they’re going to have basically a sock essentially that they’ll be putting in machines that could be used for all kinds of different purposes.

Michael:
[19:48] There’s probably going to be something like that, but I also think there’s another thing they could use that trillion dollars. They could spend $10,000 of it and get us to scale so that that competition between Jill and Ryan happens. And see, so many potential there.

Ryan:
[20:02] Can you off the top of your head, Michael, tell me how much money would they have left if they gave us $10,000 of their $3 trillion.

Michael:
[20:10] So they started with $3 trillion, and they end with $3 trillion. it’s an insignificant amount of money for them it’s still three trillion because the next day they get more money that goes back up to three trillion so it’s like it’s not they’re not even going to feel it yeah yeah it’s like that’s like a sneeze for them or something yeah.

Ryan:
[20:34] It’s like what you drop a penny on the ground to them it’d be even worse than that it’d be like the value.

Michael:
[20:39] Of I think what you wanted was 999,999,999,999,999. Nope, I can’t do it.

Jill:
[20:50] Yeah, and 99 cents.

Ryan:
[20:52] That’s what I wanted.

Michael:
[20:54] I was doing like a dollar.

Ryan:
[20:57] 2 trillion, 999 million.

Michael:
[21:00] Yeah, 2 trillion, 999,999,999,980,000. and maybe it’s like.

Ryan:
[21:11] 10 cents because they’re going to send us 10,000 and 10 cents.

Michael:
[21:17] Yeah, exactly.

Ryan:
[21:18] The taxes they’re upping, they’re paying for the tax.

Michael:
[21:21] Yeah, exactly. It’s a fee for the transfer.

Ryan:
[21:24] So we’ve talked a lot about hugging face over these episodes. Like we’ve mentioned them multiple times. Michael’s mentioned how cool the name they are.

Ryan:
[21:32] And I really have never stopped to find out who is this cool company. Like they’re doing a lot of cool things, but like, what’s their origin. I want to find out more about them. So we’re going to spend a little bit of time talking about Hugging Face because it’s really an interesting story, number one. And then number two is I got some questions for Jill and Michael about this future with robotics, which I’m really excited to hear their answers for. But Hugging Face is an American company based in New York. That’s your first fact, Michael, put in your fact bank that you have. Got it.

Michael:
[22:04] Got it. I’ll update it right now.

Ryan:
[22:06] All right. It was founded in 2016 by French entrepreneurs, Clement Delongue, Julian Chamond, and Thomas Wolfe. I got the Wolfe part right, and Thomas, but everything else.

Michael:
[22:19] Good job.

Ryan:
[22:20] Who knows?

Michael:
[22:23] I would butcher that too.

Ryan:
[22:26] They were named after the hugging face emoji so if you want to know what that cool name came from Michael it’s that little hugging face emoji that you probably have never used because you don’t do cute things like that but i bet i don’t know.

Michael:
[22:39] I didn’t know it had a name and i think i know which one you’re talking about but i didn’t know it had a name.

Ryan:
[22:44] I also.

Michael:
[22:45] The funny thing is i was thinking like the hugging face was a reference to aliens experience. yeah.

Jill:
[22:51] I always did too i thought the same thing.

Michael:
[22:53] Same thing.

Jill:
[22:54] Man yeah well you guys know i use the hugging face emoji all the time it’s actually one of my most used emojis on on our social networks.

Michael:
[23:02] And that makes sense chat makes of course it is chill so.

Jill:
[23:06] I knew that was the name of it hugging face.

Michael:
[23:09] So in a way like ai is perfect for that name because some people see it as like the emoji and it’s a positive and some people see it as the alien and yeah it’s you know no positive it’s still well i mean it depends on your perspective i suppose if you’re being hugged by it.

Ryan:
[23:26] You’re somebody else um so hugging face has a current valuation of 4.5 billion now Michael off the top of your head if hugging face gives us ten.

Michael:
[23:37] Thousand dollars how.

Ryan:
[23:38] Much money do they have left.

Michael:
[23:40] It’d be four four billion four billion nine hundred and ninety nine million nine hundred and eighty thousand you’re welcome and and four point five.

Jill:
[23:54] Billion pretty good.

Michael:
[23:56] What i said five billion so isn’t that what i said i don’t even know what i said anymore Michael.

Jill:
[24:03] Robot size side is working correctly, Ryan.

Michael:
[24:06] I said 4, I said 4 billion, 400 and something, 499, 499 million.

Jill:
[24:14] We got our calculator.

Ryan:
[24:15] We’re not giving us millions of dollars. They’re giving us $10,000.

Michael:
[24:19] I know, but it’s 4 billion. It’s 4.4 billion.

Ryan:
[24:29] Okay.

Michael:
[24:30] So here’s what we’ve learned today. Me, no good math.

Ryan:
[24:37] How many people right now you think are listening to this podcast trying to do it in their head like.

Michael:
[24:42] It’s got to be i feel like they’re either they’re either trying to calculate it in their head and do it quick like it’s not fair if you’re not doing it live like instantly you have to do it instantly and and if you if you mess up at all then you’re joining me in my club of me no good math and that should be a new.

Ryan:
[25:00] Shirt by the way me no.

Michael:
[25:01] Good math Michael you can join his fan club just say like it’ll have like a signature of me like signed it like this is the quote but um they’re also the other side of people would be like just judging me for being bad at math uh but you know yeah i’m not bad at math i’m bad on the spot at math.

Ryan:
[25:19] Yeah, sure. We’ll go with that.

Michael:
[25:23] Thanks.

Ryan:
[25:24] They’re best known for their large language models or LLMs. And for those that don’t know, LLM is like a computational model for natural language processing. So it takes a whole bunch of data, massive amounts of data, and tries to learn from it. And there’s two ways it can learn from it, right? Unsupervised, where it goes off on its own. You feed it a bunch of data and it tries to figure stuff out with that data. or supervised in which it tries to make decisions with the data. Do you have a human there sitting there going, no, don’t, that’s not correct. This is correct, blah, blah, blah. But there’s a combination of those two. But essentially, that’s kind of where they got their start. Well, that’s where they started to become popular. Jill’s got another piece of history here that’s really interesting. How did they first get known, Jill?

Jill:
[26:08] They sure do. They originally started as a company that developed a chatbot app targeting teenagers. Very interesting. So there goes the name. They wanted a happy name that teenagers knew, Hugging Face. And then after open sourcing the model behind the chatbot, the company pivoted to focus on being a platform for machine learning. They were so successful. Hey, let’s get into the bigger area of AI.

Ryan:
[26:42] Yeah, because the chatbot still is going to be an LLM-based model, AI model. And so it makes sense that both of those things coincide, that their first LLMs were chatbots. It’s really cool.

Michael:
[26:55] And also it’s a very big pivot and a pretty smart pivot at that.

Ryan:
[26:59] Yeah. Well, they also have somebody in that company or multiple people in that company that are the most connected individuals on the planet because they have partnerships with like everyone, like everyone, everyone, everybody, not just, not just everybody, everyone. Like you got to say it different because it’s everyone.

Michael:
[27:20] But, but, but, okay. Everyone or everybody or both?

Ryan:
[27:24] Everybody and everyone. I can’t do it like you can. You do it so much better than me. Me, I just sound like my tongue paralyzed.

Michael:
[27:31] Sounds like you’re trying, yeah.

Ryan:
[27:33] Yeah, I’m trying too hard. So they’re also partnered with AWS as one of the companies to develop, you know, custom services that they can build on top of the LLMs and things for those who use LLS. But they’ve received funding from companies like Google, Salesforce, Amazon, Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, and many more. They also have partnerships with Meta and UNESCO to launch new online language translators. And of course, we just talked about their partnership with NVIDIA to create robotics. And they know everybody and everyone.

Jill:
[28:06] They sure do.

Michael:
[28:07] Everybody.

Ryan:
[28:08] It’s a pretty fascinating company. And my favorite part about this company. Michael’s like, I just love seeing everybody. Everybody.

Michael:
[28:18] I just love saying it. Everybody got their face hugged.

Jill:
[28:21] Yeah.

Ryan:
[28:24] They’re never going to send us the 10,000 now. Thanks, Michael.

Michael:
[28:27] They might. They might. They may not appreciate our humor. They might.

Ryan:
[28:31] Yeah.

Michael:
[28:32] Well, they should partner with us.

Ryan:
[28:34] They partner with everybody else.

Michael:
[28:35] Exactly. They should. They should want to get the competition just for scale to happen because that we could really truly show how much of your face they want to hug.

Ryan:
[28:47] At scale.

Michael:
[28:48] At scale.

Jill:
[28:49] Yeah.

Ryan:
[28:50] Yeah. Okay. So the company’s got their tentacles and everything. And one of the things I love when you go to their website is they talk about open source everywhere on the front page, all over the thing. The code is all open source, open source. They got their Git code there. Everything is about open source. So it’s a very interesting company that seems to have all the right relationships that any company would dream of having. And as a result, tons of funding to make cool things like this happen. So, Hugging Face, I used to think they were just this little small company that, you know, every once in a while.

Michael:
[29:26] I thought it was just this thing on GitHub project, you know. But apparently, it’s way bigger.

Ryan:
[29:33] Yeah. So, congratulations to Hugging Face, first of all. Incredible that you’ve been able to make such a dent in the industry and utilizing open source. And hopefully the correct version of open source. Yay.

Michael:
[29:47] Yeah. And also the ethical aspects of open source too, not just the code benefits, you know?

Ryan:
[29:54] Exactly. So this gets me to my question now. Like robotics is very interesting when you look at the movies and what they’ve kind of, you’ve got iRobot, you’ve got Terminators, you’ve got Cylons, you’ve got this type of thing. But when you think about like how helpful it would be from if we had that Elon Musk-like robot, Not necessarily from Tesla, but a robot like that was able to communicate at that speed that he was trying to present. There was able to be in your home, was able to clean, cook, run errands, maybe even handle home security. What do you guys think about that future? Because there’s a lot if people are scared to put a Roomba in their house because of the privacy implications of that. What about this robot walking around and what is this going to mean, even if it’s open source? for us. Jill, you want to start? What do you think?

Jill:
[30:51] Yeah. I was just, something I was just thinking about is that for one, I’d like it to feed my kitty cats.

Ryan:
[31:01] You’ve already got tasks. Jill already has a list.

Jill:
[31:04] I already have tasks because sometimes it’s hard to corral. I have two kitties and sometimes it’s hard to corral them from outside to come eat their food. But I was thinking that implications are to help, especially like women who are widowed or have lost their husbands, how nice it would be to have something strong in the house to move things and just do basic tasks. And it’s kind of morbid, but I’m having to think about this now, now that me and my husband are senior citizens. So it’s something I’m thinking about.

Ryan:
[31:42] Yeah, that’s right, Jill. 32 is a senior citizen.

Jill:
[31:45] That’s really cute.

Ryan:
[31:46] We’re in our 40s, but it’s really cute.

Jill:
[31:48] Although I think I might pass before my husband. But I hope not.

Ryan:
[31:54] This did take a dark turn. It did take a dark turn.

Jill:
[31:57] Yeah, but I’m actually looking forward to it. Honestly, I’d love a robot that folds my clothes. I mean, who would be?

Michael:
[32:06] And especially because- I was thinking something else.

Jill:
[32:08] I was like i’m looking forward to going first because part of it is i’m very ocd and my clothes i i do i fold my clothes uh like they did on big big bang theory so i use i use the uh the uh plastic flipper thing because i’m so ocd and but it takes me for freaking forever because it doesn’t do it perfect. And so I have to align it perfect. And so, so if I have my, you know, my 200 Linux shirts collection and I’ve just gone through and, and, and I do have more than actually the 200 shirts.

Michael:
[32:49] Of course you do too.

Jill:
[32:52] And the time it takes.

Ryan:
[32:54] I’m glad you clarified because it was really upsetting to learn you only got 200.

Michael:
[32:56] Yeah, we were like, just 200? Come on.

Jill:
[32:58] Yeah, just 200. No, I got way more.

Ryan:
[33:00] Okay, good.

Jill:
[33:01] That scale is responsible for a lot of those shirts.

Michael:
[33:03] There’s probably just 200 scale shirts.

Jill:
[33:05] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it would help me, you know, because the robot is a perfectionist itself, and it would help me with my OCD, you know, because it could do those tasks that would take me a lot longer.

Ryan:
[33:20] A robot could have their own personality. It could be like the sloppy robot.

Jill:
[33:24] Oh, I don’t want a sloppy robot.

Ryan:
[33:25] Hold your clothes sloppily.

Michael:
[33:27] What if it’s a robot that you give it a bunch of tasks, but all I can do is give you butter?

Jill:
[33:33] Yeah. A butter robot.

Ryan:
[33:38] Nice callback.

Jill:
[33:40] That’s funny, Michael.

Ryan:
[33:41] That’s good. So, Jill, a robot’s available tomorrow for $7,000, let’s say. You save up. You purchase it. You’re turning it on, putting it in your home. Even if it’s proprietary? Be honest now.

Jill:
[33:55] It depends on the company. If it’s Hugging Face, it looks like they’re an ethical open source company.

Michael:
[34:02] No, no, no. He’s saying that if it is guaranteed proprietary, it’s not from Hugging Face or anything.

Ryan:
[34:07] NVIDIA releases it with their proprietary drivers and proprietary everything. It’s the NVIDIA plot.

Jill:
[34:12] No, because then it might turn into a Terminator and try and kill me. I don’t know.

Ryan:
[34:20] So a little more hesitant if it’s not open source. That’s interesting.

Jill:
[34:24] Yeah. A little more hesitant.

Ryan:
[34:25] Even though it could fold your clothes perfectly, Jill?

Jill:
[34:28] Yeah.

Ryan:
[34:28] Yeah.

Jill:
[34:29] I think I’d wait for the open source version.

Michael:
[34:32] What if it gets cultured kitties?

Jill:
[34:34] No.

Ryan:
[34:35] Cultured kitties.

Michael:
[34:36] No, kitties.

Jill:
[34:38] But truthfully, the other area besides the home, for me, I’m most excited for robots and their growth is in the healthcare industry and television. You know, they are already used extensively in some surgeries. And the quicker the development of robots, the easier surgeries will be in the future and faster recovery times. also more development on mini robots that can be injected in the body to cure disease they’ve been talking about this and i’ve been discussing this with people yeah nanobots yeah, nanobots literally since science fiction books written in the 70s we’ve been talking about this and it’s time it’s time for that it’d be nice but i feel like there’s for.

Michael:
[35:26] An autonomous robot that does your chores and stuff that doesn’t require any input other than just here, do this task. That sounds awesome and also a little terrifying because if it can do that, it can probably do a lot more that you don’t want it to do.

Jill:
[35:43] And if it malfunctions, it can hurt you.

Michael:
[35:46] And it could just become a Klon or something and then revolt and stuff. Like, who knows? So I would go with no, even if it was open source, I’d probably still not really want that. Yeah, because in order to be able to manipulate all the things it needs to do, there’s going to have to be at least 300 cameras on that thing so that it can maneuver around everything. So it will be tracking everything about your house. It’ll probably be constantly running. So if it’s open source, the only way I would even be okay with it is if it was open source. That’s the only way. If it was proprietary of any kind, there’d be an absolute never solution.

Ryan:
[36:26] Imagine what a hacker could do with that.

Jill:
[36:29] Yeah.

Michael:
[36:30] Also, it would not be able to get to the internet. It would be no connection to the internet whatsoever.

Ryan:
[36:36] If it’s open source.

Jill:
[36:38] Yeah, we can use our ninja foo in the terminal and make it do what we want.

Ryan:
[36:44] Yeah. But if a hacker gets a hold, we’re talking about Windows recall, and we’re talking about the implications that would have. Now, imagine a hacker’s walking around your house with arms, cameras, and, you know, the strength of a robot. Like, this could be devastating.

Michael:
[37:00] No, thank you.

Jill:
[37:00] Oh, boy.

Ryan:
[37:02] To hack something like that. And there’s nothing that’s unhackable. There’s literally nothing unhackable.

Michael:
[37:07] Unless it’s not online.

Ryan:
[37:09] Unless it’s not online.

Michael:
[37:11] That’s, like, basically the only way that would work.

Ryan:
[37:14] Yeah.

Michael:
[37:14] And even then, it still has to get updates. So, even then, it’s still risky. It’s just not constantly risky.

Ryan:
[37:20] So I think it’s interesting. Because you know people are going to start sideloading apps on it and getting Trojans on it and everything else.

Michael:
[37:25] Oh, yeah. For sure. That’s constantly. They’re going to be like, oh, I get an email to my robot that I need to update this. Like, no, don’t do that.

Ryan:
[37:34] Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because I think about home maintenance. I think a lot of people think about home maintenance, right? Your yard, mowing your lawn, cooking, cleaning, laundry, tidying up around the house. all these things you would now have freed up in your day if you had a robot that could do that what about child care and education support yeah.

Michael:
[37:54] Education support absolutely child care i would probably i would probably not be okay with that like yeah just because it’s like a robot that would be like not know its own strength and hurt the kid you know like that’s how i feel yeah yeah i would be risky about that but it also is like um you were talking about how robots and health care would be a good idea and I think that is a good idea but I don’t think like the same kind of robot like an iRobot in healthcare I feel like the best thing for those is like, um having like this skilled person controlling robots yeah that’s remotely or not remotely or just having a where they’re the ones who are like who know what to do it and can like a robot wouldn’t be good at reaction like it’s good if you tell it what to do it’s good if you say here’s exactly what you need to do and it can go do it i don’t think that it’ll be a very long time if that ever happened i don’t think the first stage would even have the ability to do reactionary stuff so like healthcare the most important part of that is where you can react to what’s happening to be able to adjust your stuff and think about.

Ryan:
[38:59] Like the health monitoring like you have monitoring on your watch you have monitoring you know that you can do with certain things with your phone you had a robot there it could be tracking your health it could be.

Michael:
[39:10] I’m thinking surgeries and stuff right yeah you’re thinking.

Ryan:
[39:13] Surgeries i’m thinking like just your general health care yeah Yeah.

Jill:
[39:17] Both are good. But for surgeries, you’d want, you know, embedded systems, systems that just have one particular task. So that’s what Michael’s talking about, something that wouldn’t, that doesn’t have thinking ability.

Ryan:
[39:30] It just does, like a liver transplant.

Michael:
[39:34] Well, the problem is that everybody has a different anatomy. We all have the same basic structure, but we have different… Sometimes people’s hearts are larger than others, and their valves are bigger than others.

Ryan:
[39:45] Michael has tiny thumbs.

Michael:
[39:47] Some people are dead inside, like Ryan. There’s all sorts of things that could happen. There’s all sorts of things that could happen. I’m just saying like having reactionary thing, like a skilled, a skilled professional who can react to it is something that is impossible to replace. And my opinion with a robot, like you could get to, like they can replace certain things, like some things, absolutely. But there are certain, I think there’s a certain, just impossible. And that’s one of them for me anyway.

Ryan:
[40:18] You know, AI right now gets stuff wrong so many times. There’s companies out there in the news. One was an airline, I think, that it started giving its customers wrong information that wasn’t on the website. And they ended up getting sued for it. And I just imagine, like, if you have a robot doctor that uses this AI in its current form, and you’re like, man, I have a sore throat and I’ve just not been feeling well. And it’s like, you have amoebic dysentery. Here, take this. it just gets it wrong all the time i have this cold.

Michael:
[40:50] You have cancer.

Ryan:
[40:51] Like uh what that’s also basically web md it could hallucinate right so but i do think it would be interesting from people who suffer from different um illnesses like they um epilepsy and those type of things if you had a robot nearby right they could could take care of them monitor their health, even do rehabilitation. Like people who get injuries, they need to be rehabilitated, which usually requires lots of strength from another human to help you walk and all this stuff. Like robots could be used for that. The elderly, Jill, you kind of mentioned companions for elderly, I feel like would be really, really useful. You know, the smart home stuff, of course. And then you’ve got, what about disaster recovery? You’ve got a flood and something or fire. You can’t get out of your house. You got a robot can run up there, grab your kids and get out. that’s a good one before you yeah yeah you know and also they wouldn’t have to worry about being.

Michael:
[41:46] A hurt because they can’t be hurt you know.

Ryan:
[41:48] Yeah yeah.

Jill:
[41:50] Robots are already being used in uh in natural disasters so that make that makes sense to go the next step further.

Ryan:
[42:00] Yeah but here’s the thing that i’m most excited about you guys know like if you know ryan it’s kind of synonymous with customization natural disasters, yeah i’m known for the amazing themes and customization i’m excited to customize my robot you could put linux stickers all over them you could have different i think the only.

Michael:
[42:23] Customization you would do is like you grab a sticker and slap it on there that’s it that’s like.

Ryan:
[42:26] It’s a batman sticker too right yeah it’s a batman you’d be like hey robot how do i change your wallpaper you know you could have different color arms different color face different eyes different you know facial features you could have one armored up like we could completely customize these robots it would be part of a family almost in a way like you’ve got your own custom robot this is a cool future right.

Michael:
[42:54] I don’t know. Maybe I’m just pessimistic, but there’s, there’s a lot of, uh, there’s some cool stuff with it. I agree. There are some cool things. The idea is cool. There’s a lot of potential to it. And I feel like there’s a lot more destructiveness that could happen with it. More so by like magnitudes that I would be more comfortable.

Ryan:
[43:14] One more thing. How much fun would it be to customize its personality and make it like an emo teenager? Like go do the dishes. Oh no.

Michael:
[43:26] I would love to like you make an emo teenager and it just like it kind of like tries to play with its hair all the time but it doesn’t have any hair.

Jill:
[43:33] I think it would be great to have a robot and I could program it to be like Ryan or be Mike like Michael why would you want.

Michael:
[43:42] What you want yeah that sounds like a natural disaster waiting to happen no.

Ryan:
[43:46] One ever first of all I just run into everything constantly not crap over that’s a terrible idea even.

Michael:
[43:52] Break chairs It’d be like the worst navigational robot ever.

Jill:
[43:57] But the Ryan robot would be helpful in making sure that I go to the gym each day.

Ryan:
[44:03] That’s true. I lift heavy things and put them back down.

Michael:
[44:08] I pick things up and put them down.

Ryan:
[44:11] Yes. Oh, man. That’s great. Well, listen, I would love to hear your thoughts in the community about, Are you excited about the future with robots in your home? Are you scared of it? And if you are for it, what are you excited about specifically that the robot could do for you? Because I think it would be interesting.

Michael:
[44:32] That would be interesting. And also, if you’re terrified by it, let us know which one you think is more likely. The iRobot version, the Terminator version, the Cylons, the Kalons, or something else I didn’t remember to put in there. Let us know.

Ryan:
[44:48] Yeah, very good.

Michael:
[44:49] You can go to DestinationLinux.net/comments, or just leave a comment on the episode.

Jill:
[44:56] I want Commander Data.

Ryan:
[44:58] Oh, of course. If we had data.

Michael:
[45:00] That’d be awesome. Does that mean we also get lore?

Jill:
[45:05] Yes, we do. But we got to have, yeah, we got to be careful with that one. We got to make sure.

Michael:
[45:14] You got to be careful. You got to be careful with data before lore messes everything up.

Jill:
[45:19] Yeah.

Michael:
[45:19] Get it before?

Jill:
[45:21] This is true.

Ryan:
[45:22] Oh, my God.

Jill:
[45:22] Yes, this is true. Very true.

Ryan:
[45:25] Well, you know, this isn’t going to make you feel much better about the software of a robot not being able to be hacked in our next story. Because there’s another mobile hack that you need to be aware of. And this one has some byte, B-Y-T-E, byte, byte.

Jill:
[45:42] Yeah.

Michael:
[45:43] Nice.

Ryan:
[45:44] Michael, come on. That’s so terrible.

Michael:
[45:47] I said nice. Do you want me to clap for you?

Ryan:
[45:49] Yes. Thank you.

Michael:
[45:50] Okay.

Ryan:
[45:51] If I had a robot, I’d make them clap for my dumb jokes. That would be one customization I would make for sure.

Michael:
[45:57] My robot would be so tired of my dad jokes that they would just, they would leave.

Ryan:
[46:02] That’s how they would revolt.

Michael:
[46:04] They would revolt by getting tired of my dad jokes.

Jill:
[46:07] Or the opposite. They will help you with more even more and better dad jokes.

Michael:
[46:13] Jill, always the positive influence.

Ryan:
[46:17] We need to make our robots based on Jill. Then they would be good robots, you know?

Michael:
[46:21] Yeah, that’s true. We need to have Jill’s personality in every robot that’s ever made. I think that’s what matters.

Ryan:
[46:27] Yes. So this Trojan is called a fake call bug. And what this little bundle of joy does is it fords your calls that you’re actually making to the real number to scammers. So let me tell you how this works. So you go and you sideload an app, an APK. And it’s infected with this Trojan, this fake call bug. And what this does then is, let’s say you go and you see an email from Bank of America, but you’ve listened to this show and you know you don’t click links and emails. Good job. So you go to Bank of America’s website and you look up their actual phone number and you dial it in your phone. And your phone tells you that you’re calling that number. But the reality is it’s forwarded that number to an actual scammer call center. and they pick up and say, hi, this is Bob from Bank of America. How can I help you? And you give them all your information thinking you’re talking to Bank of America, but it’s really a skimmer.

Michael:
[47:30] That is a very horrific, terrible, and arguably clever attack.

Ryan:
[47:38] It is clever because it goes around the whole thing we tell people all the time. Make sure you don’t click links. If you get something suspicious, like I’ve had this UnitedHealthcare call coming in where they’re like, you need to call us right away. And they’ve got information that really nobody should have. But since companies leave everything out there on a notepad file that they have that makes it sound like it’s real. Yeah, sticky note out there on everything. And so we have no privacy of our information anymore. So they got a hold of it. And they’re becoming way more clever with their tactics of calls. Make it sound urgent, of course, is one of the first things to know that it’s a scam. And yeah, so this is the type of thing that they do. But if I had that bug on my phone and I was like, I’m going to call UnitedHealthcare and make sure that this isn’t a scam, it could still come across as being a scam.

Michael:
[48:32] Yeah, they’d still get past it because you wouldn’t know in that sense. Because it’s supposed to be like the foolproof solution, call yourself. And they even tell you, like, we’ll never call you. We’ll never ask you for a text. We’ll never send you text messages, blah, blah. and then you’re calling, but then it’s modifying to the actual scammers. It is a clever hack. It’s a clever attack. It’s also horrific, and you’re awful people for doing it. But it is a smart one, even if it is awful.

Ryan:
[49:06] Smart for evil people. And so this is something to be very concerned about, and Android is trying to put some security fixes in place. So they already have a major release or update. I don’t know that they’ve solved this. I could not find information that this particular bug had been solved. Their number one advice is don’t install things outside the Play Store.

Michael:
[49:28] Yes.

Ryan:
[49:29] Which, you know, a lot of people do. They use F-Droid. They use APKs.

Michael:
[49:33] For 99% of people, that is good advice. Like just don’t sideload stuff because if you don’t know what you’re sideloading, you should not be sideloading it. And if you don’t know what sideloading is, you shouldn’t be sideloading anything.

Ryan:
[49:47] Yeah, don’t look it up. It’s not necessary.

Michael:
[49:50] Don’t look it up. You just heard it from me. Ignore it. That did not happen.

Ryan:
[49:54] But, you know, even using the Google Play Store and things, there have been apps that have gotten onto the Play Store. Less, obviously, risk. But there are apps that can get on there that are notorious as well.

Michael:
[50:04] For sure.

Ryan:
[50:04] So, you know, this is something to just be, you know, cautious of and know that if it sounds suspicious, the person on there knows some things, but not sounding like they really know things to maybe grab a different phone and call or something. I don’t know. Can we all just go back to wireline? Maybe.

Michael:
[50:21] You know, what’s crazy is like, this is like an impressive, interesting thing, but at the same time, it also makes me worried and fear about just like where we’re going. And, you know, like every time we, it’s like, it’s like a giant game of whack-a-mole because we’re just trying to fix, like make sure everybody’s aware that these are things. And then we’re trying to fix this other scenario. And then all of a sudden they come up with another one.

Michael:
[50:49] And like, for example, you know, people are now aware that you don’t click things in email. Well, what if someone sends you an email that seems legit and you have like an actual conversation with them and then they send you a link to go on Zoom. And in that Zoom call, that’s when they give you the spam or something like that, like the scamming link and stuff. Like there’s so many different like there’s a lot of effort putting into it, making these things more sophisticated. so you know for a fact if it doesn’t have like good grammar or if it’s like just giving you a random link that you don’t know what the url is going to you you’re you’re pretty much good to good to know that this is nonsense i i’ve even got to the point where you know like we have people who are asking us to be asking to be on our podcast or asking us to be on their podcast and it’s like 50 50 whether it’s real or not and and sometimes it’s real than i have been on other podcasts and there’s sometimes we’ve brought other people on our show and then there’s the same times where i’m getting tons of garbage stuff that’s clearly bad so when you have these this mess of things just all slammed together it is hard to tell sometimes and it’s just getting i feel like it’s just getting worse and worse because the more they get more sophisticated the more we figure out how to stop it and tell people how to ignore it they just get more and more sophisticated.

Ryan:
[52:07] Yeah, it’s true. Yeah, it’s hard to escape. It’s really unfortunate because when we go back to the robotics conversation, you know, you guys both mentioned if it’s connected to the internet, it’s a no-go. And I couldn’t imagine them ever selling a robot that’s not connected to the internet. They sell us nothing else.

Michael:
[52:24] We can’t even get video games not connected to the internet.

Ryan:
[52:27] Right.

Michael:
[52:27] Yeah.

Ryan:
[52:29] So whoever sells the robot is going to want to connect to the internet. But the damage, even for manufacturing, which is where robots will show up first, is far more greater than even just hacking a computer. Because now you have a robot that physically can block a door from the admins getting into the server room to fix the problem. Do you see what I’m saying? Like, you’ve got this physical, moving, human-like thing that can physically be hacked to stop somebody.

Michael:
[52:55] And it’s also guaranteed to be like 10 times stronger so they could just like rip things apart and break the manufacturing system and all sorts of stuff.

Ryan:
[53:02] Yeah, it would be crazy. So this is an interesting future, a little doomsday, because there’s a happy part of robotics, I feel like. But write us and let us know what you guys think.

Michael:
[53:13] Yes.

Ryan:
[53:13] Maybe we’re just going too dark.

Michael:
[53:15] There are. So there’s actually a combination where there’s like a thing that’s a destructive thing of robots and also happy. And that’s BattleBots. BattleBots is awesome.

Jill:
[53:25] Yay.

Ryan:
[53:26] Awesome. 100%.

Michael:
[53:27] You never see BattleBots, go look at it on YouTube. It’s awesome. and there’s even like competition in the BattleBot space now. It’s pretty cool.

Ryan:
[53:38] Very nice. Well, Jill, I knew that we were going to go in a little bit dark place with our stories this week, so I gave you a really happy game. Tell us about the game this week.

Jill:
[53:48] This game is happy, yes, but it does involve war.

Michael:
[53:53] Come on, Ryan.

Jill:
[53:57] It’s a fun escape. So what happens when you combine Warhammer, StarCraft, WarCraft, Cyberpunk, and post-apocalyptic survival? Zephon happens. And it’s Z-E-P-H-O-N is how you spell the game.

Ryan:
[54:14] That is happy.

Michael:
[54:15] That’s Zephon.

Ryan:
[54:16] Zephon.

Jill:
[54:17] Remember? Zephon.

Michael:
[54:19] Zephon. Zephon. Zephon.

Jill:
[54:21] Zephon. Zephon.

Michael:
[54:22] Zephon.

Ryan:
[54:23] Oh my gosh, Michael. Callback. Callback. So good.

Jill:
[54:28] It took me a minute.

Ryan:
[54:29] I’m just like caught up.

Jill:
[54:33] So Zephan has over 341 very positive reviews and describes itself on Steam like this. From the developers of Warhammer 40,000 Gladius, Zephan is a post-apocalyptic fan. 4X strategy game built on Proxy’s unique tactical combat system. Guide survivors through a turbulent future, navigating unexpected disasters, eldritch horror, and cyberpunk monstrosities. What will you do to survive? So in this game, you control the survivors of humanity in a near future apocalypse of alien origin.

Ryan:
[55:16] We’ll do it, Anthony.

Jill:
[55:16] Yes, you pick a path between the indifferent abominations of the voice and the uncaring automata of Zephon.

Michael:
[55:27] One’s indifferent and one’s uncaring.

Jill:
[55:30] Yes. With city management, turn-based tactical combat, unholy research, diplomatic maneuvering, and branching narrative quests. You gather your allies and pick your actions extremely wisely.

Michael:
[55:47] Or else.

Jill:
[55:48] Yeah, this game has beautifully rendered artwork, a very powerful cinematic and dreamy looking graphics, which makes Zephan a standout game. And I think it really does. The art and design are really beautiful and very rich. and you can get Zephan on Steam for $39.99 and it supports our Linux penguins out of the box so it’s $39.99.

Ryan:
[56:20] Is funny.

Michael:
[56:22] I think I might have a problem with the dad jokes. I feel like there might be too many in my head because she said, this game is very rich. And then I thought, you also have to be rich in order to play for 39.

Jill:
[56:33] Oh, this is true. This is true. I meant rich artistically.

Michael:
[56:37] But that’s just popped in my head. And I was like, so many dad jokes. I just can’t stop.

Ryan:
[56:44] See me in my head. You said, you said 39 99. And then you laughed and I’m like, is that a funny number? Like, yeah.

Michael:
[56:52] What’s so funny about what’s.

Ryan:
[56:54] So funny about $39.99.

Michael:
[56:55] Well actually if you take $10,000 out of that what do you get right there.

Jill:
[57:02] We go, $9,900.

Ryan:
[57:06] Negative oh $10,000 out of $39.99, $10,000 minus $39.99 now I don’t have to do it because I didn’t understand it thank goodness alright so Jill So you recommend this game, right?

Jill:
[57:25] Yes, absolutely. It looks beautiful.

Ryan:
[57:27] Here’s the great thing. We’ve got the robots that we talked about, the good things they could do. Then we talked about the fact they’re going to destroy us all. And we have a game that’s post-apocalyptic. So you can play out the scenario of the end of the world.

Jill:
[57:40] There we go. Which is fantastic. Our robot overlords taking over.

Michael:
[57:45] For those who don’t notice, Ryan is explaining the theme of this episode.

Ryan:
[57:50] Well, I just want you guys to take a moment and understand the brilliant writing here, because when you go to the software spotlight, it will also fit into the post-apocalyptic theme that we have going here.

Michael:
[58:03] Well done.

Ryan:
[58:04] What’s our software spotlight?

Jill:
[58:06] Yes. So if you’re a fan of Borderlands, the game, then you’ve heard of Claptrap, the goofy, funny, and sometimes useful sidekick robot that goes on adventures with you.

Michael:
[58:18] I don’t know how useful ClapTrap is.

Ryan:
[58:21] Every once in a while, he’d be like, over here.

Jill:
[58:23] Every once in a while. Yeah.

Michael:
[58:24] Oh, that’s true. He’ll give you little hints on where to go. If you ignore where you’re supposed to go, he’ll eventually start talking to you. That’s true.

Jill:
[58:30] Okay, fair enough. Yeah, he does. Yeah, he does. And our software spotlight is called ClapGrip. And it pays its respect to the robot with its icon and name. But it’s also very useful.

Michael:
[58:46] More so than ClapTrap.

Jill:
[58:47] Yes, more so than Claptrap. Sometimes having a GUI is just more convenient than playing in the terminal. And if you need help finding files, then check out the ClapGrip file search GUI tool. All you have to do is simply open the folder with ClapGrip, enter the search term, and ClapGrip will do all the hard work of finding out on which page / line and in which file the information is. that you are looking for. Clapgrip can currently search all sorts of text files, PDFs, and Office documents with more to come. And it is available as a handy Flatpak over at flathub.org. And I personally have just started using Clapgrip to search our destination Linux files, particularly the PDFs. for after every episode, I always save a PDF of each show. And sometimes I want to find, you know, different topics that we’ve talked about, like, you know, six months ago, a year ago. So this is a tool that I can use quickly and easily. I’ve been doing it in the command.

Michael:
[59:58] Wouldn’t that be a good idea if we did you do that?

Ryan:
[1:00:01] Exactly what I was thinking is owners of as the owners of this business. Have we ever archived all of our show notes?

Michael:
[1:00:09] But in this way i think the answer to that would be no that would.

Ryan:
[1:00:13] Be no thankfully we have jill we have jill that’s true if we ever if we ever lose our server we at least have jill who has it probably backed up on floppy disk i i.

Jill:
[1:00:23] Actually i do have some of them on floppy disk.

Ryan:
[1:00:26] Thank goodness you know of course perfect the history will be uh stored forever jill that’s amazing.

Ryan:
[1:00:34] It’s very awesome. By the way, talking of Borderlands and the Warhammer above the creators of that game, I have started playing this game called Darktide. Warhammer 40,000 Darktide? really, really enjoying the whole Warhammer world. And one of the things that the Warhammer world is about is spending lots of money because the stuff’s very expensive, but also painting these models. And so I ordered a starter kit to start painting these models with my son and daughter. I think it would be really fun to do that. So I’ve got all the paints and I’ve got the little characters and I spent way too much money on pieces of plastic to paint. And then we’ll play this this game but the warhammer world is just awesome like and it’s post-apocalyptic of course as well uh fitting into our theme of our show really well but just reminding me the borderlands and then the warhammer thing nice that i’m getting into warhammer so if you have any advice for those in the audience get into warhammer.

Michael:
[1:01:31] If you want to.

Ryan:
[1:01:32] Save money warhammer besides don’t get into warhammer because it’s a money sink like uh let me know i’d be very interested uh and also um you know if you have any of those models those like $500 robots and things just sitting around your house you want to send to me.

Michael:
[1:01:49] That you’re not interested in having anymore?

Ryan:
[1:01:51] Yeah, just shoot them my way. I’ll send you a P.O. box. Yeah,

Ryan:
[1:01:54] appreciate it. All right, Jill, what’s the tip of the week?

Jill:
[1:01:57] Yeah, so the tip of the week this week is an app called Polychromatic. This app actually lets you control all the various elements of your Razer devices and peripherals.

Michael:
[1:02:08] Including keyboards. Talk about post-apocalyptic right here.

Jill:
[1:02:11] Yes.

Michael:
[1:02:11] Like if you have Razer.

Jill:
[1:02:12] You have Razer. Including keyboards, mice, keypads, laptops, and more. You can change everything, including DPI, polling rate, brightness, and device-specific hardware functions like game mode. The software also lets you view device information like firmware version, serial number, battery levels, and can test individually addressable LEDs. And you can create your own RGB lighting effects and animations using the effect editor, which is great for key mapping a game application or just for some cool ambience. And Polychromatic uses the fabulous OpenRazor on the back end, which I’ve been using since its first release in 2016 to adjust the RGB on my Razor Black Widow Chroma keyboard. I remember being so excited because I got that keyboard as a gift from my husband. and I couldn’t control the lights on Linux until OpenRazor came along. And now we have a fabulous GUI like Polychromatic to make it even easier. It’s so cool. Yeah.

Michael:
[1:03:23] So there’s one thing I have to ask you a question though. Yeah. So how much does this application do? I’ve, I’ve, I mean, I’ve tried Polychromatic in the past and OpenRazor in the past, but it’s been a while.

Jill:
[1:03:33] Yeah.

Michael:
[1:03:34] I now use a different mouse, but I do have a Razor mouse. And I was hoping to find something where we could edit the configs of stuff like that. But it seems like it’s more of like the RGB related.

Jill:
[1:03:46] It’s more of the unicorn vomit manipulation.

Ryan:
[1:03:50] But it says you can do some like polling numbers and stuff for certain devices, right? But it’s through the terminal?

Jill:
[1:03:57] Yeah, it’s through the terminal. And I have done firmware updates using the terminal too as well.

Michael:
[1:04:04] So like so that’s the open razor part of a thing right yeah okay so polychromatic i think is like more of the rgb and the open razor is like a combination between like that you put those together to be uh more easy using with like the the gooey side of it and this is this is cool and i have played with the rgb of the the my my mouse for it uh and it works uh but i i do wish we could have some like configuration of the mice because the only thing like it only works on windows like Literally nothing else.

Jill:
[1:04:35] I know. Yeah.

Michael:
[1:04:37] So Razor, just so if you’re watching, stop it.

Michael:
[1:04:41] Stop it. Adjust those buttons. And also, just a quick side note, they have proprietary chargers on their mice. Like, this cable is proprietary, except it’s micro USB. So, the only reason it’s proprietary is because there’s, like, little slots that this goes into, and you have to have that cable to plug it in. Like, that’s just so lame. I mean, anyway, it’s not if you it’s terribly lame.

Ryan:
[1:05:06] But it’s not as lame as Apple releasing a new version of its magic mouse that you still have to turn upside down to charge to charge it.

Jill:
[1:05:14] Ridiculous.

Ryan:
[1:05:15] The one thing you needed to fix Apple. Like how unbelievably arrogant are you? Oh, my gosh.

Michael:
[1:05:23] That is that is a great point. The worst mouse design is 100 percent. The Apple mouse having to you have to kill the mouse and didn’t put it charge it.

Ryan:
[1:05:31] And they doubled down on it. They released a new version with the same. They’re like, you know what? We’re not fixing it. You still have to turn the mouse over because you know why? You guys said you didn’t like it, so we’re going to make you buy it anyways because we know you Apple fanboys will. And it’s kind of like GNOME with the app indicator. They just keep doubling down on the same bad decision. Like, nope, you can change it. Because even though we know it’s terrible, we’re still sticking with it.

Michael:
[1:05:56] Sometimes consistency is good and sometimes it’s not. Just keep that in mind. And also, at least the Razer connector, if you find something that fits perfectly inside this thing, it might be theoretically possible. But the Apple one, you can never fix it having a charger upside down. Like, that’s just…

Ryan:
[1:06:16] Did you hear about this one, too, Michael? The Mac Mini they released, which is actually a really good value now. It’s a pretty decent value for what you get. But they put the power button underneath it.

Jill:
[1:06:27] Underneath, yeah.

Michael:
[1:06:28] Well, they also claim that if there’s enough space for your finger to go under to hit it.

Ryan:
[1:06:33] Well, everyone has different sized fingers. You have tiny thumbs. Sure, you could slide them in there and hit it. But I have big fingers and I would have a really hard time getting my hand under that thing. How big is the still? Everyone has different sized hands. Why is this even a question?

Jill:
[1:06:49] I know.

Ryan:
[1:06:50] You just put it on the outside and it doesn’t matter what anyone’s hand size is.

Michael:
[1:06:54] Okay. I also have to remind you, they are also the company who made the computer trash can. Yeah. So…

Ryan:
[1:07:01] But at least it had the power button on the front.

Michael:
[1:07:04] That’s true. That’s true.

Ryan:
[1:07:07] Unbelievable to put a power button underneath a computer. It is so unbelievably stupid. But they’ll double down on it, and their fans will back them and say things like, well, it’s making fingers to slide in.

Michael:
[1:07:19] Yeah, it’s so ergonomic. It’s the best. But I was just saying, like, I was not defending. It could be clear. Ryan just made a joke like I was a fanboy. I just want to make it clear that people are saying that it is okay, but I have never used it obviously to say anything, but in just conceptually, it’s very stupid because you could just put it on the top or the side.

Ryan:
[1:07:41] If you’ve noticed that Michael is an Apple fanboy, send us your comments and write in where you think Michael turned in. Like what episode do you think Michael switched to an Apple fanboy? And just give a little bit of facts and then make up the rest and send it in to- I actually.

Michael:
[1:07:54] Hate this thing because to be fair, I do have an iPhone now. so that kind of but the rest of it i still think most of their stuff is nonsense but put some of your facts in.

Ryan:
[1:08:05] There make up the rest and i’ll read it on the show as fact.

Michael:
[1:08:08] You don’t need to put in the facts ryan is just gonna make it up anyway you just send a bunch of stuff around he’s like ah i like this one this made up thing is good i’ll use that.

Jill:
[1:08:17] Oh perfect so back to polychromatic well no.

Michael:
[1:08:21] We can’t go back.

Ryan:
[1:08:23] We’re done with it.

Jill:
[1:08:24] We already said it had a flat pack oh but yeah but yeah you need to go to flathub.org and pick up the flat pack for polychromatic it’s awesome.

Ryan:
[1:08:34] Okay awesome well listen we’re over an hour again we’ve done it again guys we’ve run our mouths we got through more than.

Michael:
[1:08:40] One topic this time though.

Ryan:
[1:08:42] We’re doing good we’re improving we’re improving well a big thank you to each and every one of you for supporting us by watching or listening destination linux however you do it we’re hugging your faces. Join us in our Discord at tuxdigital.com/Discord.

Michael:
[1:08:59] And if you want to support the show, you can go to TuxDigital.com/membership and become a patron. And you get a bunch of cool perks like being able to watch the show live. You can get unedited episodes of the show. You can get even merch discounts that we’re going to be launching pretty soon and so much more. And also, speaking of merch, go to TuxDigital.com/store to get cool stuff like hats, mugs, hoodies, T-shirts, and so much more at TuxDigital.com/store.

Jill:
[1:09:28] And make sure to check out all the amazing shows here on text digital that’s right we have an entire network of shows to fill your whole week with geeky goodness head to text digital.com to keep those linux penguins marching.

Ryan:
[1:09:42] Very good everyone stay strong this week and remember even in rugged times the journey itself is just as vital as the destination keep moving forward everyone oh big hugs.

Michael:
[1:09:55] That was post-apocalyptic that was a very weird way of saying it it first of all uh how long have you been planning to do it to do it that way did you have to five.

Ryan:
[1:10:07] Seconds ago and chat gpt wrote it.

Michael:
[1:10:09] I was about to ask the ai to write that i like that sounded very ai based when.

Ryan:
[1:10:17] Jill was talking and you saw me looking down i was writing as fast.

Michael:
[1:10:20] As I could get my post-apocalyptic convert this into post-apocalyptic yes.

Ryan:
[1:10:26] That’s exactly what I wrote yep yep yep.

Michael:
[1:10:29] Nice nice alright thanks for coming to the show everybody we’ll see you next week for another episode of your destination of Linux of.

Jill:
[1:10:39] Linux yay little hugs from me.

Michael:
[1:10:45] To your face to your face see ya.