Jill:
[0:00] Welcome to Destination Linux, the Dexter’s laboratory of open-source invention, where every commit is a wild experiment, sparking techtastic chaos. I’m your deity this week, Jill, twirling through the Linux lab with my tech-savvy crew, ready to zap proprietary nonsense with a mega-laser of code while giggling. Ooh, what does that button do? Ryan is our Dexter, brilliant cybersecurity hardware guru who can hack a firewall faster than he can scream, Dee, get out of my lab. Michael is our Mandark, scheming, marketing, and web design maestro, cackling over slick Linux promos while trying to sell you a glowing KDE wallpaper. His mantra? Ma-ha-ha-ha. Open source is my cash cow.

Michael:
[0:56] What is happening?

Ryan:
[0:58] I didn’t like this, Michael.

Michael:
[1:00] You 100% wrote this.

Ryan:
[1:02] Okay.

Jill:
[1:03] This week’s experiment, we’re dissecting Google’s new Pixel device launches, including their Pixel Watch 4 marketing oopsie that flopped harder than Dexter’s robo-hamster in a maze. We’re celebrating the Pebble Watch’s comeback with its open-source Pebble OS revival and throwing a birthday bash for Linux, the OS that powers our lab. Plus, more surprises from the secret vault. So grab your lab goggles, sync your repos, and remember, in open-source, we don’t just invent the future, we blast proprietary limits to bits. Ooh, let’s press that button. This is Destination Linux.

Ryan:
[1:44] And Jill, there’s one more thing though, because it was last minute, we didn’t get to talk about this coming on this show. And that is, we have the CEO Sandfly coming on. And they’re going to talk about a truly righteous kernel hack that’s going on that, you know, of course, well, you’ll see, can Sandfly detect it? That’s the question you’ll find out in the segment.

Michael:
[2:05] Of course. Of course.

Ryan:
[2:14] In our community feedback this week, we received feedback from Lewis, who says, Ryan is awesome.

Michael:
[2:21] No, it doesn’t.

Ryan:
[2:21] But I truly love the humor from the show.

Michael:
[2:23] No, it doesn’t.

Ryan:
[2:25] It doesn’t.

Michael:
[2:26] First of all, there’s no way it says that.

Jill:
[2:28] Ryan put that in there.

Ryan:
[2:29] No, they did say that.

Michael:
[2:32] You also forgot the part where it says, I guess. You forgot that part.

Ryan:
[2:37] Okay. Let me reread it. Fine. I didn’t know we were going to be like, I usually ad lib on these, Michael. I don’t read the thing verbatim, but you’re going to make me read it verbatim. I guess we’re going to break the rules this time.

Michael:
[2:49] We read about 98% accurate usually. That was like 3% off, so we got to fix it.

Ryan:
[2:55] Here we go. Ryan is awesome, I guess. But I truly love the humor from the show. I just wanted to post a comment about the whole AI discussion about how it can’t do more advanced features. The main thing to remember with AI as we know it today, it’s only simulated intelligence. What I mean by that is that it’s really good at simulating and predicting an answer based on previous inputs. There’s also the matter of overtraining it, and then it can provide hallucinated answers because it went down the wrong path with calculating the answer. So with that said, the models we mainly interact with, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc., are actually just really good at text processing and response. If you want something specific like math, you can always use the other models trained on it. Wolfram has an assistant trained only on its tools and can potentially in the future answer math questions based on true calculations. Also, 500 plus computers is an impressive number, Jill. That’s what they’re saying. Keep up the awesome shows. Love to hear you guys weekly. We love hearing from you. Thank you for sending in the awesome email. And I think that’s a really good… differentiation between what what ai we’re using today and maybe what’s behind the scenes that we don’t know exists or doesn’t exist because i think there’s probably way more powerful things out there that we don’t get to get our hands on uh that may be able to do more than what we see in chat gpt and stuff yeah but also.

Michael:
[4:24] I mean i still feel like the ai concept is still nowhere near actual ai so uh that that simulated intelligence thing it’s like it’s a good point There there is it’s really good at predicting what you’re wanting it to say and that sort of stuff. But there is an interesting thing about, you know, over training it. And that is something that you’re you’re inherently going to do if you use one tool all the time. And I’ve run into that myself because I was just doing some tests, you know, about different tools and different models. And one of the things I noticed is that there is some prompts or some models will allow you to tell it to ignore things. So if you say disregard all other previous mentions or instructions or whatever.

Michael:
[5:13] Some models will actually ignore them. But for me, a chat GPT would sometimes just completely ignore that request and then reference things that I said, you know, months ago. And it’s an interesting situation because there are times where I don’t want it to use what it knows about me or the things that I have previously asked because I’m asking something completely different and has no relation to anything else. And then it still starts trying to ask me, do I want to do this thing that you did yesterday? No, I don’t want to do that. That’s the reason I said don’t do this. But some of them do actually adhere to it. But for the most part, they don’t, typically.

Ryan:
[5:58] Yeah. This is going back to the dead internet theory. My cousin came up. He kept talking about this. I hadn’t really heard this theory. Well, I didn’t hear the name for the theory. But I understand the idea, which is a conspiracy theory that asserts that around 2016, the internet consists mainly of just bot activity and generated content manipulated by algorithmic creation. and therefore the internet’s dead. All right. And that it’s being used, you know, I think the theory parts that’s being used to manipulate population stuff, which, you know, there’s probably a lot of truth to that. We’ve seen that with Cambridge Analytica and other stuff. However, I think what’s interesting is AI is trained off of the internet. And if it’s training off of a lot of bot activity, you know, then it’s going to get a lot of mixed messages and there’s going to be a lot of hallucinations. Meaning, if you notice, there’s a lot of AI prompts, specifically when you use search engine AI stuff, you know, where the first option is kind of the AI generated answer for your search. A lot of it pulls from Reddit, like a lot of it. And there’s a lot of great stuff on Reddit, no doubt. But there’s a lot of nonsense, too.

Michael:
[7:07] There’s a lot of garbage on Reddit.

Ryan:
[7:09] Yeah.

Michael:
[7:09] Like a lot.

Ryan:
[7:10] And a lot of opinions. And those opinions aren’t always right. Surprise, surprise.

Michael:
[7:17] So if you’ve ever seen a Reddit thread, there’s a lot of mixed opinions.

Jill:
[7:22] Yeah.

Ryan:
[7:22] So I think it’s interesting when you think about that a lot of these chatbots are trained on the internet and that can be a good thing when you’re looking at certain stack sites for programming code and stuff. You can get some really cool workarounds, unique ways to code, but it’s also going to put a lot of garbage in there and things. And so I think it is, you know, Louis, really great point that, you know, these models are just really good at predicting and simulating answers based on other inputs that it’s, you know, read. It’s still very powerful. It’s still very cool. But I do agree that these specific models that are made for very specific purposes and trained maybe differently than, say, your standard chat GPT and stuff can be much more effective when they it’s kind of like a Swiss army knife versus, you know.

Ryan:
[8:12] I don’t know, a machete to get through a forest, right? Swiss Army Knife is great. It’s got all kinds of tools. It’s not so great for hacking through a bunch of tall weeds.

Michael:
[8:20] Awful in that situation.

Ryan:
[8:22] Yeah. So, you know, but it’s got a lot of other tools. So it’s great. Is it great?

Michael:
[8:27] I mean, I mean, that’s okay. That’s a fair analogy. I was just saying like Swiss Army Knife, I think is a little overrated. But anyway.

Ryan:
[8:36] You don’t like Swiss. Do you not have a Swiss Army Knife?

Michael:
[8:38] I do. I have multiples, but I feel like there’s.

Ryan:
[8:41] I was like, if you don’t have a Swiss Army knife, first of all, I want to make this clear to everyone in the audience. If you don’t have a Swiss Army knife, You are not a geek. Do not claim to be a geek anymore. Stop saying you’re, if you have geek gear, burn it or order a Swiss army knife. And then you’re allowed to keep it.

Michael:
[8:57] I guess you can keep everything you want. As long as you have a Swiss army knife.

Ryan:
[9:00] If you don’t have a Swiss army knife, you’re not a true geek. Watch this, Jill, do you have a Swiss army knife?

Jill:
[9:05] Absolutely. And it’s on my, my, it’s a key chain Swiss army knife for when I need to have an emergency tools to get inside computers.

Ryan:
[9:13] I do keep one in my truck, not on my key chain. Cause mine’s heavy and has all of the tech tools. It’s the blue one. so I can get into a computer, whether I’m mobile or whether I’m at home. I’ve got some, Michael, do you have a Swiss Army knife?

Michael:
[9:25] I do. Yes, I do.

Ryan:
[9:27] Good job.

Michael:
[9:28] As someone who’s not really even a hardware person, I do have a Swiss Army knife. And I think that it’s important for someone to have it just to have the tools that they may or may not need. I just feel like they’re a little overrated because they’re not really good at any particular thing. like each tiny tool around when you need.

Ryan:
[9:49] The little scissors.

Michael:
[9:50] Like they’re they’re fine in that sense like they it’s better to have it not have nothing right it’s better to have it and nothing but yeah now they’re really.

Ryan:
[10:01] Cheap swiss army knives which really suck and their scissors like constantly yeah they.

Michael:
[10:06] Break yeah they don’t work right they just break when you squeeze them the first time yeah that.

Ryan:
[10:10] Have the actual like piston and spring with yeah and then those are cool yeah yeah that’s when you got it’s that’s that’s upping your geek level that’s taking it to the next level it’s like the uh whatever name brand stuff crap people wear.

Michael:
[10:25] Is the name.

Ryan:
[10:25] Brand swiss army knife you know.

Michael:
[10:27] I also have a swiss army knife that is like a it’s it’s not really i guess it’s like in the concept of a swiss army knife but it’s not really like designed that way but it’s the same kind of thing of having multiple tools but it’s um separated like a butterfly knife style, and inside the middle of it is like a wrench, like a full-size wrench.

Jill:
[10:47] Yeah, yeah.

Michael:
[10:48] No, not wrench. Those are cool. pliers it was full-size pliers.

Ryan:
[10:51] Oh yeah the pliers that’s good so we all agree then if you don’t have a swiss army knife you are not a geek i.

Michael:
[10:57] Guess i was i guess i’m actually uh correcting myself in the sense that maybe they’re not overrated i don’t know yeah.

Ryan:
[11:03] Yeah so.

Jill:
[11:04] Ryan i still have my original red swiss army knife it was the first one they specifically made for computers.

Ryan:
[11:13] So we have our new that’s awesome specifically made for computers specifically.

Jill:
[11:18] That was what it was marketing ads and then i also have the credit card one and those are great because you can pull out all.

Ryan:
[11:26] The cards yeah those are very cool too uh we have our new mod community that was a recommendation from our community to have a mod community where you can show off all the customization stuff you do to linux uh you also are welcome to share your swiss army knives there as well it will be accepted as a fee as official currency oh yeah exactly so.

Michael:
[11:46] It’s like a peripheral role for being a geek so you can put it there if you want to.

Ryan:
[11:49] Especially if.

Michael:
[11:50] You customize your swiss army knife.

Ryan:
[11:52] Oh if you have a picture of your custom desktop and on the desk is a swiss army knife super bonus points super there we go yes and if.

Michael:
[12:01] If you have a desktop with your the swiss army knife lay in there and also wallpaper for destination linux i mean it’s just.

Ryan:
[12:12] Everything The Tux Penguin.

Jill:
[12:15] You have that somewhere.

Michael:
[12:17] Exactly. So much bonus points, you know?

Ryan:
[12:19] So much win.

Michael:
[12:19] And also, I was thinking we’d change the name. So Ryan made it Ricing Custom something. I was thinking we’d change it to Rice Fields.

Ryan:
[12:28] Rice fields. That sounds terrible.

Michael:
[12:31] Because it’s rice. We’re cultivating rice fields. Yeah, where you grow rice. How about rice patties?

Ryan:
[12:40] Maybe. Maybe rice patties. That sounds so much better. Great suggestion, Michael. All right. Thank you, Louis, for sending in your awesome feedback. We’ve got more AI content to talk to you about. In the next AI content we’re going to talk about later in the show, it’s crazy what’s happening. Crazy. so you guys stay tuned for that destinationlinux.net slash comments send in your comments, destinationlinux.net slash forum if you want to post there instead also we have our discord room but if you want to get on the show destinationlinux.net slash

Ryan:
[13:11] comments or the forum and you may see your comment on the show Michael what we’re going to do now is craziness wild stupid, craziness we’re going to go on the razor’s edge you’re going to be like I’m going to let you and Jill join me on like an Arch, feeling like an Arch user where you’re on the edge. Because we are going to travel from North Korea to Vegas in less than 20 minutes.

Michael:
[13:38] Awesome. How are we going to do that?

Ryan:
[13:40] From North Korea to Vegas. What a random choice of places to travel to. But we’re going to do it. I mean, I’m going to be our pilot. That’s Craig from Sandfly. We’re going to do it right now. Let’s do it.

Michael:
[13:50] I am excited to go from North Korea to Las Vegas figuratively through the stories. Real quick pro tip, don’t go to North Korea.

Ryan:
[14:03] You wouldn’t want to go the other direction. The fact that you’re going from North Korea to Vegas means you’re escaping back to something normal. Is Vegas normal? Anyways, Craig’s our pilot. We’re safe. We’re good. Let’s go.

Michael:
[14:19] Today, we’re joined by Craig Rowland, the founder and CEO of Sandfly Security, to give us our security scoop. So, Craig, what is the recent security news or stories that are on the top of your mind this week?

Craig:
[14:31] Well, I was very lucky that I just got back from Vegas. I was able to go to Black Hat and DEF CON. And I went to a party where I got a hold of one of the print editions of Frack. I know I’m showing it on the screen right now.

Craig:
[14:44] Your listeners can’t see it, but they had a special edition I was able to get. And one of the articles in there was someone hacked into one of the workstations believed to be used by either Chinese or North Korean threat actor. And they basically downloaded their entire hard drive. And then they went through it and basically dumped the entire tools, operational information, things they were stealing, certificates, all sorts of stuff. But one of the things that was interesting in it was a dump of a rootkit that targeted Linux. and this rootkit was a full stealth rootkit and it enabled the attackers basically once operational it was a kernel module rootkit it would hide itself and then when you sent a secret packet or magic packet to the box it would then activate a backdoor and then that backdoor would allow you to run commands on the host but also to do lateral movement and set up proxies between systems to kind of burrow deeper into the network again connecting to other rootkits that might have been installed so pretty interesting piece of tradecraft uh that was out there and we wrote up um But FRAC had an awesome article. It’s online. You should read it. But we also wrote up a blog post that went into more details about what it was doing and what we were doing in terms of detection of it. Because we were able to find it pretty much without any modification. But we went into more details about what you could do if you want to do manual investigation.

Ryan:
[16:08] Very nice. So people who have SandFly, this would have detected this threat. And that’s because it’s not specifically looking for signatures, but more so looking for abnormalities, right, that are occurring in your system.

Craig:
[16:23] Yeah, the tactics of it. So this rootkit was based on a rootkit framework called k-hook, or library, I guess I should say. And k-hook is designed to basically make it very easy to hook kernel functions and intercept them and do things. So in this particular case of this rootkit, it did several kind of traditional classic things, one of which was hide files and directories by intercepting the system calls that you’d use to do LS and basic commands. It would also hide network ports that hit it active. So if you did traditional commands like netstat or SS, it wouldn’t show the commands. And it also would hide the processes. Now, we’ve had these detections for these types of tactics in our product for several years. So out of the box, we didn’t have to change anything. If we saw this running on the system, you would get alerts that there’s directories hidden. We would decloak what they were, what they were hiding. We also would show kernel taint that there was something that was tainting the kernel, a rootkit that was introduced, that was unsigned, that would be malicious. And also, we would decloak any hidden processes and say, hey, this process or this process ID is actually hiding from you right now. So that was all the basis of this rootkit.

Ryan:
[17:29] Very interesting. So this creates a persistent backdoor as well. So if it goes undetected, it uses like a magic packet where it just continually… creates new ports for itself to connect through is that right.

Craig:
[17:42] Yeah so you could send packets over and the frack article went into it now that and this could all be changed by the authors i’m sure they will update it but essentially they could send packets over various protocols i think the basic one here used ssl or tls but then once that backdoor is activated it would then it would work on any port so meaning like the packet could be set to port 443 and the backdoor then intercept that packet and then forward the attacker’s packets to its backdoor that would operate on another port on the system. So even if you’re watching port 443 and you’re like, hey, the traffic’s encrypted, all’s fine. Well, mixed in with that traffic could be this malicious traffic, right? So that’s kind of what it did. And once the backdoor activated, it then had a variety of built-in commands the attacker could do that included things, like I said, again, like running commands.

Craig:
[18:33] Executing processes on the host, also had the ability to, again, forward and connect to other systems with either a SOX 5 proxy or their own lateral movement, which again would set a magic packet on your behalf to another backdoor in the chain to kind of move itself around. And it had some other interesting things too, such as a feature that, not quite sure what it did, but if you run the backdoor, you could use a time delay on it. This either might be to enable them to not drop packets during a chain, if they’re chained together multiple backdoors, or possibly to help with IDS evasion, because a lot of intrusion detection rules will be state-based. So what they’ll do is if you just wait a little bit of time, it might lose the state and drop watching that connection, and then it could kind of maybe slow roll through a network and you wouldn’t see what was going on. So it had some interesting things with it.

Ryan:
[19:25] Very interesting. And so one of the things that I think is interesting about this is thinking about the use cases for it. And my understanding is they think that this was initially designed, and I use that word initially, and I’ll get to that in a second, but initially designed for more government-to-government activity, right? Trying to maybe spy or do something on other governments, but… The one thing I always think about is once these things are in the wild, right, once we’ve detected them, we know they’re there, then anybody can start using pieces of this and utilizing it to attack anything, right?

Craig:
[19:59] Sure. So that, yeah, this particular piece of malware and this group was targeting a lot of South Korean companies, telcos, big industrial concerns over there, also probably through the Asia-Pac region. But yes, the malware, the full source code is there. It built perfectly fine on my, I did, I think I did a Ubuntu 25 host. It just kind of built out of the box and a few small modifications. So yeah, I mean, it’s basically turnkey, ready to go. You know, and, you know, assuming you wanted to go load it on FRAC, they have, they link to the Proton Drive, you can download the entire data dump. It’ll have this rootkit plus other things that they might be doing on Linux based systems and Windows systems as well. But to your point, yeah, the malware is kind of out there at this point and it would commodify it for their purposes.

Ryan:
[20:50] Now, you guys provided the download link in your article on the Sandfly blog, as I recall, but there’s a warning there. If somebody wants to play with this in a safe environment, how would you recommend them do that? Because maybe not as security…

Michael:
[21:07] And also for someone named Ryan who puts stuff network traffic on his own network, How would you recommend…

Ryan:
[21:15] Listen, one time while I was learning, I ran some really deep scans on an ISP and they got mad at me. Yeah, metasploited my ISP, but it was an accident, Craig.

Craig:
[21:26] That activity is frowned upon by most. So you could download it. I think the Proton link we got was probably through the Frack social media account, but we do have a link to it as well. So I’m not sure who put it up. I suspect it was Frack running it. It’s about four gigabytes in size. So it’s quite large. It’ll have a large variety of things. Look, obviously, if you download the thing and you go clicking around, you want to archive, you go clicking around. Hey, what does this EXE do when you’re on a Windows box? I mean, you’re going to be sorry, right? So don’t be an idiot. That’s my advice.

Ryan:
[22:02] Right. So step one, don’t be an idiot. Got it.

Craig:
[22:05] Step one, don’t be an idiot. Step two, obviously, the Linux sources, there’s some scripts there. you just want to not don’t go clicking on things right if you want to look at through an editor that’s fine i would probably say bring the archive onto a vm that’s hopefully not on your internal network you know somewhere isolated and then you can look at it you’ll be all right.

Michael:
[22:23] Gotcha vm go to starbucks is what you’re saying.

Craig:
[22:26] Go to starbucks exactly no don’t be an idiot use a vm don’t clicky click stuff there’s lots of cheap vms being sold by some some russian providers I’m sure you could load it up there.

Jill:
[22:41] Oh, boy.

Craig:
[22:44] They probably have it already. I don’t know.

Ryan:
[22:47] So the great thing is, you know, this thing is detectable now. The bad thing is, as it gets out there, people will modify it, do different things to try to change this. But they’ve got some very powerful code in the hands of everyone now because everyone can go look at this stuff. But the good news is now other people, security companies and things can kind of research this and potentially be able to break it apart some more. But this type of thing is what we kind of talked about last time, that we’re going to see a lot more of these government-to-government attacks or government-to-business attacks that are very sophisticated, generally heavily funded to produce, getting out into the wild. And once they kind of get executed, they’re out there for anybody to start utilizing, manipulating, which makes it very scary, which is why we’re very happy that we have Sandfly here helping out on the Linux side. But there’s something else we wanted to talk to you about, too, and that is you went to DEF CON and we talked about how jealous we were of that. Now you get to make us more jealous by telling us how awesome it was.

Michael:
[23:55] How much we missed.

Craig:
[23:56] Yeah, we were able to go to Blackout. We’re running a booth there. And then I stayed on extra days to go to DEF CON. So, you know, 109 degrees, August, Vegas. And yeah, I mean, it was a great conference as usual. A lot of people there, a lot of activity. And I got to meet up with a lot of people in the industry that I know. So it’s always good to kind of talk shop and see what’s going on. So I think a general, again, great experience.

Ryan:
[24:31] Any new zero days get released at DEF CON this year?

Craig:
[24:34] I don’t, you know, I didn’t pay too much attention to, to it this year. So I’m sure there were. I probably should be paying closer attention.

Ryan:
[24:43] I didn’t hear of any this year. I usually hear about it on the news cycle, but there were no zero days that came up in my cycle.

Craig:
[24:50] There could be. The problem with it, and this is why I told people last, you don’t need to bring a burner phone to DEF CON. The problem is some of these zero days have become so valuable that why would you give it away for free if you think you could make a half a million bucks by doing a bug bounty to a vendor or something. So I don’t know how many of these zero days… I think the day of free-flowing zero days is long past. People are either monetizing them or red teams are keeping them private because they don’t want their tradecraft ruined. Because look, I’ll tell you what, the minute a zero day comes out, we’re all over it. We’re going to find out because we want to find it. So I’m sure a lot these teams i think it’s harder and harder to release see a good release of a zero day at these conferences um that makes sense at least that that’s my view maybe i’m wrong your viewers think i’m wrong but in general if you’re sitting on a half million dollar lottery ticket are you gonna just like hand it out to someone that’s so my idea of walking around.

Ryan:
[25:48] With a hundred dollars taped to my suit and be like this could be yours for a zero day probably won’t work if.

Craig:
[25:52] It’s five hundred for.

Ryan:
[25:54] A zero day they.

Craig:
[25:55] Might just.

Michael:
[25:56] Rip it off and you.

Craig:
[25:57] Know like oh craig.

Jill:
[25:59] What was the highlight for you at at both uh defcon and black hat.

Craig:
[26:04] Um you know a lot of times for me it’s just catching up people face to face you know so we live in this we live this virtual world and it’s hard to make you know just having that direct connection and seeing people and it just nothing beats it right yeah you can do video calls and stuff. But at the end of the day, I think humans want to be in front of each other, share experiences and laugh and kind of exchange information directly. So I think that’s a big piece of why these conferences are important is you could just meet people there. Even if you don’t go to the talk, I rarely even go to the talks. I’m usually just meeting people around, just walking around. So I think for me, that’s the best part.

Jill:
[26:43] The hallway track.

Craig:
[26:45] Hallway track.

Michael:
[26:46] So meeting people is very cool. But I have to ask, based on the things like CNN and how they present hackers, they’re always wearing hoodies and balaclavas or some kind of face mask. How many people were in the hacker garb?

Craig:
[27:02] Oh, probably quite a few.

Jill:
[27:06] Hacker.

Craig:
[27:06] I like I completely avoid it. I learned a long time ago as a teenager that the more normal you look, the less questions you’re asked. Right. Like, and so the more hackery you look actually, the less of a threat I think you actually are. So yeah, the most normal, the most normal look at people are by far the scariest in terms of actual skillset. That’s my experience. So, so yeah, I saw a few, yeah, I saw a few Mohawks and a couple of hoodies and 109 degrees Vegas or whatever.

Michael:
[27:39] But when I first thought I was like, maybe there’s not going to be anybody because you’re in Vegas. why would you be wearing a hoodie but apparently.

Craig:
[27:47] Uh they they do i’ll tell you what at our company i tell i tell our team like like graphics of people with hoodie like you’re not allowed to post anything with a hoodie or the matrix the the green matrix tax all that i’ll just give for totally verboten like do not post anything with that we don’t want it i’m.

Michael:
[28:04] Very tempted to make the thumbnail of this episode with just you standing normal and we’re all wearing.

Craig:
[28:10] Oh no the.

Jill:
[28:12] Garb there we.

Craig:
[28:12] Go i’m saying we like them stop sometimes i sometimes i’ve done talks that people have given me hoodies as a you know speaker gift i always give them away i always give them away i don’t even own a hoodie i don’t like i so i don’t like long sleeve shirts so why do i want long sleeve shirts and basically a long sleeve for my head i just like yeah make.

Ryan:
[28:37] Sense yeah It’s kind of very similar to like how they talk about fighters. If you ever, you know, got into an altercation with somebody and they’re extremely calm and they’re not running their mouth, you should be very afraid. The person who runs around, you know, talking all this stuff that you generally don’t know how to fight.

Craig:
[28:54] Yeah.

Jill:
[28:54] Yeah.

Ryan:
[28:55] That’s the same thing with hacking a little bit. A lot of show.

Michael:
[28:58] I’m always calm because I’m such a good fighter.

Ryan:
[29:00] Yeah, exactly. The UFC champion of Colgate 1999 backyard fight. Michael won.

Michael:
[29:09] Was it the prize toothpaste?

Ryan:
[29:11] Toothpaste. Absolutely.

Michael:
[29:14] Is that why it’s Colgate?

Ryan:
[29:17] Colgate 1999 Backyard Championship, Michael.

Michael:
[29:20] So actually, you’re confusing with the Aquafresh Championship of 98.

Ryan:
[29:25] Oh, my bad.

Michael:
[29:26] Yeah.

Ryan:
[29:27] All right. So look, there’s one thing that I’ve been wanting to talk to you about, Craig, and that is we got a comment the last time we had you on the show. and somebody said, hey, I keep hearing about how great agentless is, but what are the downsides of agentless? Because there’s got to be something that’s a downside of an agentless platform like Sandfly. And I wanted to pick your brain and let you answer that.

Craig:
[29:53] Yeah, so positives and negatives, right? Everything’s a trade-off. So the biggest negative with an agentless is we are not on that system full-time, so we do not give you a real-time telemetry. So if you absolutely say, I want to see every process that’s starting and stopping constantly, that’s not what we do.

Craig:
[30:13] The advantage, though, is by giving that up, we have way wider compatibility and visibility, right? Because we’re not tied into the kernel and we’re not impacting performance or we’re not impacting stability. So it just depends what your priorities are. The other thing you run into with an obsession with the real-time telemetry, real-time telemetry is very valuable. I don’t want to downplay it. But people can also overuse it or put too much emphasis on it to the point where you’re getting completely overwhelmed. So I mean, it’s like you want to track every process that starts on Linux. That’s great. But you know how many processes a Linux system may start to stop? And that’s cool if you’re cleaning up an incident and you want to see exactly what an attacker did and you’re reviewing the logs and assuming you have the capability to actually store and use and review all this data, right? There’s a lot of other things going on. But a lot of times, you can also get in a situation where you just overwhelm your SOC because you’re just looking at way too much stuff. So each will have its advantage and disadvantage. The other advantage that we would supply over a real-time system is we tend to supply more context of a full attack chain. And what I mean by that, I always use an example of a log tampering. And I might have used this example before, I don’t recall. So if someone tampers with a traditional audit log on Linux, there’s some legacy logs, for instance, called WTemp and UTemp. Newer ones, they’ve replaced it, but let’s just talk the legacy ones.

Craig:
[31:38] So a real-time system may say someone opened this log file, and they read it, and they wrote something, and then they closed it. And that’s fine, but Linux logs and files get opened and read and written to all the time. This is not a unique thing. so what we do instead is we would look at it and we’re like entry number 16 has been overwritten with nulls to hide that they were present so this is a lot different view because we’re saying this is a definite side of a log tampering where a real-time system may just show you know general traces of something might happen you completely ignore it the type of thing we would find would be more confirmation of the attack or in the case of north korean rootkit for instance um you might not even be able to get a system. They’re targeting embedded devices and routers and all sorts of stuff where you can’t even get an agent running. But we could go in and immediately decloak the entire chain to say, there’s something on this box. The kernel’s tainted. These are the six files that we know are hiding from you right now. And oh, by the way, there’s also a process that’s hidden itself. So I think it just depends what you want to do. We could use the long-side real-time system, real-time agents. That’s fine. We work fine. But if you can’t get an agent, we’re also a really great idea. Because the Your other options do nothing, and doing nothing is a bad idea on Linux.

Ryan:
[32:53] Yeah, that’s the worst idea, for sure. No, that’s a brilliant answer, and I appreciate that so much. And thank you so much for always being willing to come on here and talk about this stuff. I find it absolutely fascinating, and I think we’re going to see more and more, as I mentioned. I hope we don’t, but we’re going to see more and more of these type of things.

Michael:
[33:14] We actually had Craig on last time and thinking, how soon for the next one? Well, next episode. That’s when the next one comes out.

Ryan:
[33:22] Honestly, we might have Craig on every week at this point.

Craig:
[33:24] Because every week there’s something right. A new report dropped today about a CISA report from multiple governments about assault typhoon attacks going against routing infrastructure and Cisco and Juniper and all sorts of other stuff. So we could talk about this next week as well. We watch those devices as well. So we’re joking about it that we’re just going to use the Chinese SSH device. backdoor they left behind so we could log into the box.

Jill:
[33:49] Oh.

Craig:
[33:53] Half-joking. Maybe it’s not a full joke.

Ryan:
[33:56] Yeah, half-joking. Might be a great way to get in. That’s fantastic. Well, thank you again for coming on the show. It’s always great to have you. We’ll have you on real soon again. And for those who are now thinking, hey, I need to do something, go check out Sandfly by going to destinationlinux.net slash sandfly. and, Craig, you’re still making available to our listeners 50% off the Home Edition out there.

Craig:
[34:21] That’s right. Yeah, we have a Home Edition if you just want to try it out. Very affordable. But it’s even more affordable if you put in the code DESTINATION50, a checkout. It’ll be $50 a year for 10 hoes. So it’s great for Home Lab.

Ryan:
[34:34] Brilliant. Absolutely love it. Thank you so much, Craig. We’ll have you see you back real soon.

Craig:
[34:39] Right. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Ryan:
[34:40] I’ve got good news for everyone here who likes calculator watches.

Michael:
[34:45] Yes.

Ryan:
[34:47] Do you like calculator watch, Jill? Did you have a calculator watch?

Jill:
[34:51] Absolutely. I had a calculator watch too.

Michael:
[34:54] When I was like a 12 or something like that. Yeah.

Ryan:
[34:59] Did you have one?

Michael:
[34:59] Absolutely.

Jill:
[35:00] Oh, good.

Ryan:
[35:01] That’s awesome. So everyone likes calculator watches. And well, it’s not quite the calculator watch, but just as cool and niche. It’s the Pebble watch is back, baby.

Jill:
[35:13] Woo-hoo.

Michael:
[35:13] Pebble.

Ryan:
[35:14] Nice.

Michael:
[35:15] And it’s not even just in like, you know, in spirit, it’s back officially. It’s really like the Pebble name, the Pebble software, like everything is back.

Ryan:
[35:26] Official, official. So Pebble was a really a pioneered this whole e-paper smartwatch kind of setup back in the day before smartwatches were what they are now. It started via Kickstarter in 2012, sold over 2 million units. and then fitbit went and bought it in 2016 and then fitbit was bought by google and and then in january 2025 google did something kind of cool here they open source pebble os so.

Michael:
[35:57] That part was cool yeah so when fitbit bought uh pebble everybody was like uh well i guess that’s not that bad because it’s a combination that kind of makes sense fitbit plus watch and then google bought fitbit you’re like oh man yeah that did not work out very well for anybody uh but they redeemed themselves by open sourcing pebble os recently so it only took a few years but it happened so that’s important and.

Ryan:
[36:25] Even more recently, Oh, go ahead, Jill. Go for it.

Jill:
[36:30] And even more recently, they got the trademark for the name.

Ryan:
[36:35] It’s a very important part of it, right?

Jill:
[36:37] Yes.

Ryan:
[36:39] Google open sourced it. Then Eric Majofsky, I think. I’m probably slaughtering the name. Sorry.

Michael:
[36:45] I’m going to attempt it and I’m probably going to butcher it as well. Majikovsky.

Jill:
[36:49] Majikovsky.

Ryan:
[36:50] That sounds way better than what I said. Wendy, go ahead and edit it so I said it. put Michael saying Mijakovsky over my voice saying whatever I said.

Michael:
[37:01] But you just said it.

Ryan:
[37:03] Oh, okay.

Michael:
[37:04] She could just like revert that.

Ryan:
[37:05] Just use that, yeah. Or actually, she’s totally going to take the time to do this. And it’s not going to be raw like it is right now and just running.

Michael:
[37:11] She wouldn’t do that. She would never do that to us. What if she was to take that and combine when you said it, I said it, and Jill said it into a harmonic convergence?

Jill:
[37:20] Oh, poor baby.

Ryan:
[37:23] All right. So we got new models of pebble watches the core 2 duo inspired by the pebble 2 features modern chips heart rate sensor step and sleep tracking and a 30 day battery life priced at 129 the only thing that comes even close is a garmin watch like garments get weeks of i don’t know if they get quite 30 days i don’t think so i think the most i’ve gotten is two weeks 14 weeks yeah off of my garmin um core time too, also based on the unreleased 2016 Pebble Time 2.

Michael:
[37:53] Well, they changed it so the Core 2 Duo became the Pebble 2 Duo and the Core Time 2 became the Pebble Time 2 and all that. And also, they made a very important note. And when they announced that they got the brand back, they noticed that they answered the very important question, did Intel scream at them for calling it Core 2 Duo first? They did not, apparently. So that’s good.

Ryan:
[38:19] Yeah there you go well you can head to their site store.repebble r-e-p-e-b-b-l-e.com.

Michael:
[38:27] Actually i i don’t know of repebble so like here’s the thing uh this is a very confusing situation with their websites and their things because like the only time i could find it was uh on uh because i think repebble is a third party thing and then like i only time i found it was through his website, So I’m not sure if that is it, but…

Ryan:
[38:51] I mean, in the FAQ, it sounds like it’s coming from Eric himself, because it’s like, is this a Kickstarter? And he’s like, no, I’ve personally funded the development of these on that RePebble page. And I think it’s RePebble because it’s relaunching the Pebble.

Michael:
[39:03] Okay, the reason I was wondering is because they said RePebble before they had the name, so I was just worried about that kind of thing.

Ryan:
[39:10] Yeah.

Michael:
[39:10] But if it is, great.

Ryan:
[39:11] But the Pebble Time 2, by the way, It has the 1.5-inch, 64-color e-paper screen, touchscreen, metal frame, heart rate sensor, and it’s $225. They’re IPX8 water-resistant, both models. 10,000 watch faces and apps, step and sleep tracking, microphone and speaker. These are cool. You’re not going to get all the features that you get on a Garmin or an Apple Watch or any of those things. what you do get is a very unique watch that not a lot of people will have uh it has tons of battery life and has some of the basic features that you’re looking for however for people like me like to do fitness tracking that type of thing this probably wouldn’t work as a daily driver for me but it’s still super cool and not everybody needs all that stuff that i like to have, and at least has the heart rate monitor and stuff for the pebble time too which i think that’s probably more worthwhile to invest in that because that there’s a lot of safety features I think in having a heart rate monitor regularly like it’s good to be checking that stuff on a regular basis for general health and stuff so this is very cool I like the concept but,

Ryan:
[40:23] we got that you know Google doing some good things but Google also launched their own new devices this week we got of course the Pixel 4 launched now this one includes AI features Michael You’re.

Michael:
[40:36] Talking about the Pixel Watch 4.

Ryan:
[40:38] Pixel Watch 4, yeah.

Michael:
[40:39] Yeah, but you said Pixel 4, just to clarify for everybody who’s listening. Pixel Watch 4.

Ryan:
[40:44] We just launched the Pixel Phone 4.

Michael:
[40:46] The Pixel Phone 4. But the Pixel Watch 4 has AI, which no one asked for.

Jill:
[40:53] Yeah.

Michael:
[40:53] And…

Ryan:
[40:56] Especially it’s coming.

Michael:
[40:57] Cheap too except not really.

Ryan:
[40:59] Some of the actually the the price of the watches is not bad 41 millimeter at 349 for wi-fi 449 for lte um a little more money for the 45 millimeter so you do get you know multiple options there if you want one of those um watches well i’m talking about.

Michael:
[41:15] The price of all of everything you ever do is being sent through their ai and all.

Ryan:
[41:19] That’s oh that price yeah um so what’s interesting is they have the circular screen. And when me and Michael were looking at this last week, you know, Michael being a marketer and all, I generally do not look at like, I don’t pay much attention to the pictures that people utilize for products and stuff. I’m just looking for the overall information.

Michael:
[41:41] It’s also usually like the most optimal way you can imagine looking at something when they do products like stuff like that.

Ryan:
[41:47] Yeah. Yeah. Well, we, we kind of had a little bit of a laugh, Michael, when we looked at.

Michael:
[41:51] Their pictures not optimal because.

Ryan:
[41:53] What did they how would you explain what they did in their pictures for their watch.

Michael:
[41:57] So if you ever watched it like an old-timey tv situation where like the majority of what you like you see a restoration you’ll notice that the restoration has like extra content of that data because they were stretching it out and over scanning the content so they would fit on the the whatever old technology you had like the the tube tv style and stuff like that and now when you people don’t even worry about overscan because everyone hates it and it’s always turned off for most part most of the time not everybody hates it i guess for some reason but uh with this new pixel watch 4 with ai features it also includes the ability to cut off content of the screen for no reason so there’s text that’s going across the bottom them and it’s a circular interface a circular device you’d imagine that they would create the interface to, compensate and adjust for that. But that is not what happens. So your notifications are at the bottom and they just cut off towards the edges because that is attention to detail.

Ryan:
[43:07] Until you scroll up, right? And then you give it more space in the middle where it can expand out. But the problem is in their actual picture showing the watch, you’re seeing the text cut off. And I actually picked up on it like, that doesn’t look good. And if I pick up on it, it doesn’t look good. You done messed up. I don’t pay attention to that crap.

Michael:
[43:27] I mean, Ryan was okay with the default XFCE.

Ryan:
[43:31] Yeah.

Michael:
[43:32] That’s the comparison.

Ryan:
[43:34] Because you know what? The text wasn’t cut off, now, was it?

Michael:
[43:36] That’s true. It wasn’t.

Ryan:
[43:37] The text was just fine, a default XFCE. So, by the way, you know, I think this kind of goes with a lot of Google products. They’re kind of half-baked a lot of times. and you could tell that i don’t know that the people who work on it actually use the stuff that’s what it kind of reminds me of where there’s not a lot of quality control in that essence now the hardware is good it’s not what i’m talking about i’m talking about the software like customizing the software for that specific device that they launched they kind of just like, hey we made this really cool piece of hardware oh look we load our software on it but to michael’s point they don’t try to customize anything so that it specifically works really well in that form factor like you see with an apple device typically although apple’s been falling off the bandwagon a lot with that too but um typical apple you know you could tell that the software was specifically modified to work perfectly on that specific device whereas google just was like we have software that does text message stuff just load it on that thing and see what happens you know with android you can.

Michael:
[44:42] Still say that they are not putting in that much effort because It’s been a.

Ryan:
[44:46] Mess for.

Michael:
[44:46] Like every single like every year there’s always like some kind of weird wonkiness that they output, you know.

Ryan:
[44:54] My personal opinion is every watch, and I’m not talking about the Pebble watch because it’s kind of a different thing, but every watch from Samsung, the Pixel watch and Apple watch are all garbage compared to the Garmin. Specifically because Garmin has all the great features of EKG, heart rate monitoring, all of that cool stuff. and it has a built-in fitness tracking system where I can track reps, I can track strength, and I get two weeks of battery life from the same watch. You cannot get any say that about any of these watches from Samsung, Apple, or Google. So in my opinion, I wouldn’t buy any of them.

Michael:
[45:31] So with the Apple watch that I have, you can track steps, you can track… um heart rate you can track um other things and you get 18 hours of battery life so i mean like you know they’re close yeah right two.

Ryan:
[45:49] Weeks 18 hours and then you can’t track reps you can’t track sets.

Michael:
[45:53] And it doesn’t steps and sets and steps are they’re they’re that the words are close you know the.

Ryan:
[45:59] Words are close.

Michael:
[46:00] Uh so.

Ryan:
[46:01] I would recommend the garmin watch personally but.

Michael:
[46:03] I would i don’t actually have a garment so i can’t recommend it but i would also say like you know look around yeah.

Ryan:
[46:09] Look around um but this new one comes with heart rate ecg this is new google pixel blood oxygen again garment has all that skin temperature stress score a loss of pulse detection which is cool so this one will automatically if it loses pulse for a certain amount of time um call the emergency line i love.

Michael:
[46:26] Those kind of features that is very cool but how does it know when you take it off or if you’re just like whatever you’re like because for me well they know.

Ryan:
[46:33] They know when you put it on and it has skin contact because.

Michael:
[46:36] Every time you take your watch off.

Ryan:
[46:38] And put it back on it’ll have you do your passcode like it knows.

Michael:
[46:41] Well yeah that part but i’m saying like in terms of like the whole uh the signal when they send out the stuff because i i’ll take off the watch a little bit just to scratch my arm where it’s sitting the whole day uh so like probably when you take it off a little bit maybe like.

Ryan:
[46:55] Beep beep hey michael are you dead beep Michael, you dead? Michael, hey.

Michael:
[47:01] Hey, you dead? You dead?

Ryan:
[47:03] You dead?

Michael:
[47:04] No? Tap me to tell me you’re not dead. Okay, great. I think that wouldn’t get annoying.

Ryan:
[47:10] And then the Gemini hallucinates. So you are dead? Calling authorities. No, don’t call authorities? Yes, I’ll call them right away. Yeah, that’s how it’ll work. Something like that.

Jill:
[47:18] Oh, boy.

Ryan:
[47:20] Okay, maybe that’s not a great feature. Recycled aluminum. You know, that’s good. IP68 dust, water resistant, 5 ATM water rating. and then charging, of course. Okay, so…

Ryan:
[47:30] Um, pixels in the news though, because they also launched new phones, Michael, they have the, uh, fold, the new fold, and it’s supposed to be very impressive. Very thin, by the way, I have held the new Samsung fold seven. I believe it’s the fold seven. And it is rare these days, especially that I hold technology and go, Oh my gosh, this is actually something revolutionary and new. and the Fold 7 did that to me. It is so thin. It is thinner than an iPhone folded. Thinner. It is lighter than an iPhone folded. At least it feels that way because if it’s not actually, I didn’t actually look at the specs, but I was holding both phones. And when you unfold it, the beautiful AMOLED screen just like punches you in the face. It’s so colorful. and the cameras that they put in there the ultra cameras so you no longer have to get a fold to be like oh i got these garbage cameras that come with it because a lot of the folds had really bad cameras uh samsung has done something spectacular with their hardware their privacy policy however their.

Michael:
[48:42] Software is trash.

Ryan:
[48:43] That’s a whole nother story worst privacy policy in the entire industry uh by far uh if you ever want good reading uh for a weekend yeah because long weekend.

Michael:
[48:54] If you want a horror story to read to your kids.

Ryan:
[48:56] You can read Samsung’s privacy policy and cringe, just cringe because it’s everything you wouldn’t want to see in a privacy policy and more.

Michael:
[49:06] But anyway, they’re really happy to tell you about all the stuff.

Ryan:
[49:08] Their hardware is, Michael, spectacular. I highly recommend people take a trip to a hardware store where they have phones just to hold a Samsung Fold. And then the edge is even lighter. Oh, we’re supposed to be talking about Google. Okay. So Google launched some stuff too. They’ve got the Google Pixel 10 and the Pixel 10 Pro XL. The only difference between the two is the XL has, I think, a 50 megapixel wide camera, additional lens, and also has a bigger screen. But otherwise the same processor, same RAM, same everything else. So they have those out there. But Google also announced something else, that they’re going to require apps to be signed with cryptographic keys via the Play Store to verify authenticity and reduce malware. So essentially restricting sideloading and unsigned apps. So, This is really, I’d love to get the community’s take on this as well. This is a really interesting thing. The Play Store has been plagued with the fact that a lot of people can upload malware or, you know, things like that. This is a different example, but like the extension we talked about last week, they can just take screenshots randomly. They can upload apps.

Michael:
[50:32] That was the Chrome Store.

Ryan:
[50:33] Yeah, that was the Chrome Store. They can do devious things. In a Play Store, though, they can do similar things where they can make an app do devious things or request access to stuff it shouldn’t have access to, like a map app that wants access to all your photos or whatever. There’s a lot of problems with the Google Play Store. Now, they’ve done a lot to try to clean that up over the years because it was kind of the wild, wild west. It’s gotten better.

Ryan:
[50:55] Apple obviously has much more control over their Apple Store with their closed ecosystem, which is both something we don’t like, but also something that helps Apple when it comes to the security of their store. So Google’s going more Apple here and basically saying, hey, if you want to have an app run on a Google Android device, it has to be signed. And that includes sideloading. So this is going to majorly impact things like F-Droid because F-Droid apps are going to have to be signed for them to essentially work, as I understand this. Now, things like Graphene OS, Graphene OS is saying this isn’t going to affect them since it doesn’t include Google mobile services. So they’re saying those Google apps can be installed on Graphene OS only as regular sandbox apps, which can’t block installing apps. Play Protect already has malware blocking, and this is likely an extension of it. So, Michael, I don’t know if you can explain that in human words, but that was Graphene OS’s official response on X was that this wouldn’t be a huge impact to them. There are other things that are going to impact them that Google is doing, but this isn’t one of them.

Michael:
[52:09] Yeah, so I think it’s interesting because they’re saying that some of these apps don’t, some of these apps will require the Play services and some of them necessarily don’t. But for things that don’t require the mobile service, that it can just, even if it does, They can kind of isolate it in a similar style that the Flatpaks do, where they have them in their own little containerized structure and we’re able to lock it down. But that also means you’re not going to get certain features that are dependent on these APIs.

Ryan:
[52:39] Because it’s well known that certain banking apps and things do not work on Graphene OS. You cannot get them to work.

Michael:
[52:43] That’s because they require access to maybe… So some banking apps require access to Google’s Integrity API. And if you don’t have that, it just won’t run. So in those cases, it would require the play services to function.

Ryan:
[53:01] So Graphene OS itself is not necessarily… impacted but the apps you would use on graphene os will be impacted yeah it.

Michael:
[53:11] Feels like their response as well technically it doesn’t impact us but in the you know that kind of thing.

Ryan:
[53:16] That’s what it that’s what it kind of feels like what you say about graphene os because they’re very aggressive on x they’re very they’re very aggressive in the responses mike we don’t want do we want to pick about i mean no we don’t we don’t i mean we’re we don’t we don’t.

Michael:
[53:31] Pick battles with anybody, really.

Ryan:
[53:32] No, we’re the nice people.

Michael:
[53:33] We’re not interested in that sort. Yeah, we’re the podcast you go to listen to and actually like it. So…

Ryan:
[53:39] All right, let me pick this battle. Because Michael and Jill are that way, but I’m not. So here’s the thing.

Michael:
[53:45] That’s true, based on a previous episode. So that’s…

Ryan:
[53:47] Graphene OS, I love their product. And I’ve said this before.

Michael:
[53:51] Yeah.

Ryan:
[53:52] I’ve said this before. I think some of the greatest code writers and one of probably the most important projects, one of the most important projects out there from a privacy standpoint, do not take away from the incredibleness that is Graphene OS. It is so important to have something like that out there that makes Android on par and in some cases superior to even Apple when it comes to privacy. By the way, those are Graphene OS’s, a lot of those are their own words mixed in when they were comparing themselves to other devices. Sometimes really brilliant people are not really good at managing social media.

Michael:
[54:31] Yes, and this is an example.

Ryan:
[54:33] This week, again, I should say, is having a battle with this other company. And they’re all just throwing all this mud at each other. And it’s all public. And Graphene OS has a lot of things to say about a lot of other different projects. And some of the stuff they’re saying has some validity and truth to it. Some of it’s a little bit exaggerated, in my personal opinion, like some of their attacks against EOS and some of their attacks against Fairphone. but they need to stop. They need to get a social media person because brainiac people, really smart people, and there’s no doubt in my mind, the Graphene OS people are some of the most intelligent programmers. They are not always the best at doing the other thing, which is a completely different skill set, which is social media management.

Michael:
[55:24] Marketing in general is a completely different type of thing.

Ryan:
[55:28] I feel like I handled that well, Michael. i wasn’t ugly i wasn’t super ugly face joe i was using the tracker and i felt like that was more like a joe response do you could i give myself a check mark there i.

Michael:
[55:38] Mean i mean like 35 jill response.

Ryan:
[55:40] 35 i’ll take it yeah it’s better than zero percent joe i was previous week so i’ll take it.

Michael:
[55:46] I mean that is better um i don’t know.

Ryan:
[55:49] Real quick.

Michael:
[55:50] Jill you’re muted um, There we go. Now I go back.

Ryan:
[55:59] All right. So I feel like I’m doing better. Jill, would you rate my response like 35% Jill, 45% Jill? How good was my…

Michael:
[56:09] Okay. Okay. Now you’re being too nice to yourself. 45%? Let Jill answer.

Ryan:
[56:13] Shut up, Michael. Quit interrupting her.

Jill:
[56:14] Yeah.

Ryan:
[56:14] I’ll say 32%. I got left? Wow.

Michael:
[56:20] I was over-esitating.

Ryan:
[56:21] Never mind, Michael.

Michael:
[56:22] I was over-esitating.

Ryan:
[56:23] Anytime you want. interrupt jill anytime you want going forward michael.

Michael:
[56:27] Anytime you want appreciate it but yeah i do agree with what you’re saying in terms of like uh any if you’re going to talk about a competitor you want to talk about like how you are your service or your product is better and that sort of thing that’s totally fine as long as it’s legitimate you know claims but there’s also like that you know there’s ways you say it like drama say.

Ryan:
[56:50] I think our product probably does a little better than this one because we do this versus saying blah blah blah is trash not saying they said that but i’m giving two very.

Michael:
[56:59] Well i mean there there’s been examples over the over the years that graphene has not done has been involved in some drama like that that’s that’s definitely i i’ve seen that myself um but it’s really just if you want to have a you know if you if you want to have that kind of that there are some companies that get away with the toxicity but they’re doing it in a funny way. And in that sense that they kind of, they kind of get away with it. But in terms of like, just, you know, calling out people and just having battles on, on social media, there’s usually no winner in that.

Ryan:
[57:34] Yeah. It doesn’t, it just doesn’t look good. And I think graphene OS has a real possibility and they may already have some of this, but expanding even their corporate interests. Like a lot of people are really worried about a lot of things that are happening from a privacy standpoint. point graphene os is a great alternative um they also have some really exciting news like they they’re working they won’t tell us which one yet but they’re working with another oem so i have something outside of pixel that potentially in the future you could install um graphene os on it should be a fair phone but we know where they went with that one so maybe though maybe you never know it could be a surprise to all of us it could come back around it would be cool it would be cool In any case, I just wanted to make that point that Graphene OS also has some really super smart educational posts that I love. Like, they teach me stuff all the time. And they also reinforce the fact that I was correct about Android and iPhone the entire time. So, you’re welcome.

Michael:
[58:33] What about that?

Ryan:
[58:35] Well, you know, a lot of people in the community are like, oh, you can take a regular Android and make it more private than an iOS. and the Graphene OS themselves are like, look, uh, You could do Graphene OS or you could do Apple, but you’re not going to make an Android device as private as an iPhone. So that’s essentially what I’ve been saying and got a lot of flack for. Kind of like the AMD days when everyone’s like, AMD will never be as big as Intel. And then I was right with that one too. I don’t want to brag, but that’s two for me, zero for all you Cheeto fingers. So that’s all I’m going to say.

Michael:
[59:09] Okay.

Ryan:
[59:10] Jill, hold on. Let me mark that I messed up. you’ve now gone to.

Michael:
[59:14] You’ve dropped at.

Ryan:
[59:15] Least 12 yeah right moving on they did however michael i will give them i will give them this i will give them this there are certain times when it’s okay to attack like what i just did uh but specifically specifically the librum five they they went after librum oh that is 100 deserved yes i mean they’re.

Michael:
[59:39] Talking about like the hardware claims and the I mean, just the stuff, like pretty much anything that Librem 5 claims is ridiculous.

Ryan:
[59:46] Every once in a while, you’re allowed to kind of have a gripe and put that out there. But honestly, truly, I mean this, Graphene OS, you should get a social media manager. Maybe someone will even volunteer for it. I think it’s very important. I think there’s a lot of commercial application possibilities for Graphene OS, but commercial companies may look at some of the posts and stuff and not want to get involved in the drama or the tea. Is that what kids say these days, tea? They don’t want the tea.

Ryan:
[1:00:09] So, you know, anyways, Jill, um, I don’t know if you know this, but, uh, I have a birthday coming up soon.

Jill:
[1:00:20] Yes, you do.

Ryan:
[1:00:21] And I hear that you wrote an entire article about my birthday. So let’s hear it.

Jill:
[1:00:25] Aw, happy birthday, Ryan.

Ryan:
[1:00:30] That’s so sweet. That’s what it was all about, right?

Jill:
[1:00:34] No, actually, there’s something else that’s very, very special. And that is close to your birthday.

Michael:
[1:00:41] I mean, there’s something that is special.

Jill:
[1:00:43] Yes.

Michael:
[1:00:44] Not something else.

Jill:
[1:00:44] So on monday august 25th our favorite open source operating system linux turned 34 years old me too and but you’re older you’re older no me too 34 both of us wow what are the odds cool yes so it was on august 25th 1991 when 21 year old finnish student linus benedict torvalds made his now famous announcement on the comp.os.minix newsgroup that he’s working on a free operating system for 386-486-AT clones just as a hobby. So Linus wrote, hello everybody out there using Minix. I’m doing a free operating system, just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like GNU for 386 486 AT clones. This has been brewing since April and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like, dislike, and Minix as my OS resembles it somewhat. Same physical layout of the file system due to practical reasons, among other things. Linus.

Michael:
[1:01:57] I wonder if Linus, if anybody’s asked him, they probably have asked him this, but I wonder if Linus just regrets the message, the first message he put out for this. Is there anything in here you would have changed kind of thing?

Jill:
[1:02:11] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:02:12] It’s so perfect.

Jill:
[1:02:14] It’s his snarky sense of humor, you know? It’s so simple. And, you know, as many of us Linux users know, including me and Michael and Ryan, the rest is history. Today, Linux is almost everywhere. In fact, it helped start this podcast.

Michael:
[1:02:32] It is everywhere. St. Linux is.

Jill:
[1:02:34] Me and Michael both have our Linux is everywhere shirts on.

Ryan:
[1:02:38] Me too, it’s just black on my shirt.

Michael:
[1:02:40] Ryan’s just, it got too much damage in the wash.

Ryan:
[1:02:43] He’s using a visible ink pen to reveal it. It’s really cool.

Jill:
[1:02:46] Yeah. So it is used in our smartphones, our Wi-Fi routers, our smart assistants, our satellites, big screen TVs, and airplanes. and Linux runs the entire internet and powers the top 500 supercomputers and is also used by Wall Street and the ISS or the International Space Station. It may not be the year of the Linux desktop, but our Linux penguins rule the world nonetheless.

Michael:
[1:03:15] And also Linux desktop is growing exponentially.

Jill:
[1:03:19] Absolutely. So we’re even getting.

Michael:
[1:03:24] Thanks for making Windows recall. That’s very much. We’re also getting a bunch of AI slop that are like, I tried this distro. You should use this. And it’s just ridiculous nonsense AI garbage. And that’s a sign of progress.

Ryan:
[1:03:39] We’ve made it.

Jill:
[1:03:39] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:03:40] We have AI garbage.

Michael:
[1:03:41] Yeah.

Jill:
[1:03:42] Yeah. Yeah, and Microsoft is also, with Windows 11, deprecating a lot of people’s computers. And those computers will run using Linux.

Michael:
[1:03:53] That is true.

Jill:
[1:03:54] So much. And so celebrating Linux’s 34th birthday actually makes me feel really old. LOL. But I am proud to be part of its journey. So my Linux journey started. I had downloaded and experimented with the early versions of Linux floating around the BBS systems back in the day. But getting Slackware Linux installed with 24 3.5-inch floppy disks in 1993 was really the start of my Linux journey. And not blowing up my CRT in the process with the xf86 config file. That was a thing. and slackware linux because it was my first linux distro you know it has a very special place in my heart and i actually still have my original install of slackware on one of my 486s and a few weeks ago i recently fired it up and it still boots and runs great and i’ve just just just kept that distro on that computer it’s just part of my computer museum sometimes jill jill sometimes she’d.

Michael:
[1:05:03] Say things and.

Jill:
[1:05:04] I’m like there’s no way Jill could.

Michael:
[1:05:06] Get more cool like.

Jill:
[1:05:07] It’s just not possible and.

Michael:
[1:05:09] Then all of a sudden like Jill has 600 computers Jill has used.

Jill:
[1:05:13] Everything.

Michael:
[1:05:14] Jill knows everyone Jill.

Jill:
[1:05:16] Has a DOS geek t-shirt I mean I.

Michael:
[1:05:18] Mean whatever but.

Jill:
[1:05:20] Backpack and a hat.

Michael:
[1:05:22] Well she does have a Ryan is.

Jill:
[1:05:24] Okay I guess t-shirt and that means that’s good but.

Michael:
[1:05:29] And then all of a sudden she just kind of like casually dropped. So, you know, the first one I ever used, I still have the machine and it still works and it still has the same ends. Like, I never would have thought… do that. And I wish I had Jill’s brain to remember all these things, you know?

Jill:
[1:05:48] Aw, thank you, Michael and Ryan. And by the way, what was your guys’ first Linux distro?

Ryan:
[1:05:56] So I like this story because as you guys know, real quick, I started a YouTube channel. I used Windows, somehow stumbled upon Linux from a security because I was investigating security. and somebody in the comments was like I was showing people how to secure Windows and they were like if you like security and privacy you should check out Linux. I believe the distro was either WANIX or Tails. I think it was Tails that they recommended to me to try first and I think that would technically my first distro was Tails thanks to a commenter on a YouTuber who had like no views at the time like near zero somehow got the attention and the hug of death from the Linux community and the rest is history But I believe Tails is what kicked it all off.

Michael:
[1:06:40] Nice.

Jill:
[1:06:41] With that really nice Windows XP theme.

Ryan:
[1:06:44] Yeah, there you go.

Michael:
[1:06:46] Yeah, I forgot what they called it, but the one that’s like pretends to be Windows kind of thing.

Jill:
[1:06:50] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:06:51] The first one I officially used for a long time was, of course, Ubuntu.

Jill:
[1:06:56] Nice.

Ryan:
[1:06:57] Yep.

Jill:
[1:06:58] Sweet.

Michael:
[1:06:59] Yeah, I remember that. And the first time I met you was on Destination Linux. We actually met on the show, which is pretty cool.

Ryan:
[1:07:10] And we almost fought like our egos were just like, I mean, almost had a street fight.

Michael:
[1:07:16] I mean, to be fair, we almost fight every episode.

Jill:
[1:07:19] What’s new?

Ryan:
[1:07:21] It’s never changed. It’s to this day.

Michael:
[1:07:25] We are. I mean, we’re super consistent. You can’t you can’t say anything about that, you know, but when we first met, he mentioned that I went back and watched the stuff and looked at the comments. And there’s just a plethora of, you know, the videos like you, if you care about Linux or you care about security, you shouldn’t even be using Windows. And then they’re listing off the stuff. But then then he does the 30 day challenge that never stopped.

Ryan:
[1:07:51] Yeah. Which is a challenge that’s awesome. Five years later.

Michael:
[1:07:56] Exactly. That’s the that’s the power of Linux is that you do a challenge and you just get the hug of death. And Linux wins. That’s the challenge.

Ryan:
[1:08:05] I had no choice at that point. They were my only fans. How could I go back to Windows? You know, like I could.

Michael:
[1:08:12] You did it for the views. I get it.

Ryan:
[1:08:14] You did it for the views, man. Oh, my gosh. That reminds me. The kids these days, Michael, they’re one of their things they say is they know my kids was like, oh, we don’t say something’s cool or it slaps anymore. We say something like, hey, chat, this is cool, right? Yeah. So they use as if they’re live in a like they’re live streaming to say something like, hey, chat, isn’t this awesome? Hey, chat, W’s in the chat if this is great. Like, but they’re just, oh, my gosh, brain rot is a real thing.

Michael:
[1:08:47] Yeah, that’s that’s a confusing thing to do. But I mean, it is what it is.

Ryan:
[1:08:51] Kids are cute.

Jill:
[1:08:52] So, Michael, what was your first distro?

Ryan:
[1:08:55] So I actually still on it to this day.

Michael:
[1:08:57] Never, never.

Ryan:
[1:08:59] WSL.

Michael:
[1:09:00] So I did actually recently get a new laptop and I wanted to test windows on it. And I just because I haven’t used it for like a decade. And I I’m so infuriated by the process of just booting up windows for the first time. It took like two or three hours and it had constant like upselling trying to advertise stuff to me. And it’s like, oh, my God, this is just infuriating.

Ryan:
[1:09:28] You want Office? Are you sure you don’t want Office? Want OneNote? Want our chat? Want our this? Want Teams?

Michael:
[1:09:34] Yeah. So if I ever get rid of the laptop, I kept the drive because I feel like that’s a good tip for people who, if you want to replace it, you can swap out the drive. And some people still want Windows to be like if you try to sell it third party or second.

Ryan:
[1:09:48] Yeah, for sure.

Michael:
[1:09:48] So I finished the install, took that drive immediately out and put in another one to put Linux on. uh but anyway so the question.

Ryan:
[1:09:59] What was your first distro i.

Michael:
[1:10:00] Am saying it i’m saying it don’t don’t don’t be don’t be rushing the lead don’t rush me uh so that i actually can’t remember exactly which one was first but i’m pretty sure it was redhead linux it might have been debian but i’m pretty sure it was redhead linux and the reason is because uh when i was a kid uh about 13 i think i saw a episode of the screensavers on zdt awesome yes and uh for those who don’t know zdt eventually became tech tv and then g4 tv and then canceled it was very sad day for me canceled tv.

Ryan:
[1:10:33] I’ll have to check.

Michael:
[1:10:34] That out the whole network was canceled it was unfortunate and leo laporte is.

Jill:
[1:10:38] Still around doing tech.

Michael:
[1:10:39] Tv yay yeah uh well doing this week in tech but uh but this i was very i was very sad when it for when it went away but uh it reminded me of the the original time where because it was like a segment on the screensavers where linus torvalds was there and was promoting linux and he was showing off redhead linux and explaining it and all that sort of stuff and this is how you you were truly you know you’re truly a linux nerd is when you see a segment about the thing and then you can’t get it because one, you have dial-up, it’s still the 90s, and you… You can’t go buy it because you’re a kid and you tell your parents, hey, I want to put this new operating system on the computer. And they go, no, not a chance. Then you wait for like six months or so until your friend gets broadband so that you can go and – or cable for those – so you can go and download the ISO so you can play with it on a machine. That’s when you know you’re dedicated. When you wait for six months just to try it for the first time. And that’s what I did. And I’m pretty sure it was Red Hat Linux because of the segment. But I don’t remember if it was actually the first one I tried because I downloaded Debian and Red Hat Linux. And then eventually my main distro that I stuck with was Mandrake.

Ryan:
[1:12:03] What do you think about Michael’s story? W’s in the chat if you like it. L’s in the chat if you don’t.

Michael:
[1:12:08] Tons of W’s. Love it.

Ryan:
[1:12:10] Perfect.

Michael:
[1:12:12] So I’m glad you asked the chat because that way we know for sure that it was a good story.

Ryan:
[1:12:17] We allow our patrons to come and watch this show live. And we have our patrons chat right now not going because we forgot to bring them on again, Michael.

Michael:
[1:12:28] We forgot. Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. Sometimes. We don’t not do it on purpose. We sometimes just forget to go into the room.

Ryan:
[1:12:35] We could go in there right now. We’re going to do it right now so they’ll still get part of the show.

Michael:
[1:12:39] I feel like there’s only three minutes left of the show.

Jill:
[1:12:42] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:12:43] No, because I have more to bring up here. Thank you. Michael, as soon as Jill’s done with her story.

Jill:
[1:12:49] Okay.

Ryan:
[1:12:50] Jill, what else you got for us?

Jill:
[1:12:52] And speaking of installing Linux on floppy disks, one of the oldest drivers on Linux, the floppy disk driver just got a patch update.

Ryan:
[1:13:04] Yes.

Jill:
[1:13:04] This makes me so very happy. And I squeed with joy because honestly, I had thought maybe it would be deprecated and it isn’t. They just updated it.

Ryan:
[1:13:17] They deprecated it. I’m done with Linux. Let me tell you.

Jill:
[1:13:20] And just in time for Linux’s 34th birthday, I still have to be able to access my passwords on my floppy disk.

Ryan:
[1:13:28] Unhackable. Unhackable.

Michael:
[1:13:31] That’s true.

Jill:
[1:13:32] So the floppy disk driver has been largely unmaintained for nearly three years and is considered orphaned. And yeah, like I was saying.

Michael:
[1:13:42] I thought it might be deprecated.

Jill:
[1:13:44] Is that it’s been.

Michael:
[1:13:45] It’s been orphaned.

Jill:
[1:13:46] Yes three years three years not a decade yeah two decades not a decade just three years so the patches were posted by andy shevchenko of intel and includes removing an unused macro and sorting headers alphabetically and quite a few other important changes but i want to thank aris for sharing this exciting floppy disk news with me on our destination linux discord chat thank you aris for bringing this to my attention and yes it does make me squee and because i love floppy disks i still run linux off floppy disks what i love is if the fbi ever.

Ryan:
[1:14:29] Needed jill’s house and they’re like we need to get all the computer evidence we can they would take these little things and.

Jill:
[1:14:36] Throw them to the side and be like no.

Ryan:
[1:14:38] We’re looking for at least CDs you know they.

Jill:
[1:14:40] Wouldn’t even know what I feel.

Michael:
[1:14:42] Like what it would happen if the FBI went to Jill’s house they would see the the the, smorgasbord the plethora of these computers and they would be like too much paperwork never mind.

Jill:
[1:14:55] Oh so make sure to check out destination linux episode number 275 where i talk about the history and my love of floppy disks with visuals on jill’s treasure hunt there’s even a computer in there too and it might be a 46 jill.

Ryan:
[1:15:11] People have been asking about another treasure hunt do you think.

Jill:
[1:15:14] We could I have some ideas. Yeah. Okay.

Ryan:
[1:15:18] We got another treasure hunt.

Michael:
[1:15:19] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We’re on episode 434. For those who don’t know, we’re on episode 434. And Jill only has 700 computers to pick from.

Jill:
[1:15:30] Yeah.

Michael:
[1:15:30] So what could possibly be left?

Jill:
[1:15:34] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:15:36] Absolutely. This is the news that I forgot to cover, Michael. I buried the lead when I said at the beginning of the show, we would talk about some AI things. things and we talked about the pixel phones but we we talked about we didn’t talk about the new magic cue that comes with the new google phone that’s the big change that they have let me explain to you the awesomeness of this imagine you go online and you make a reservation at a very fancy restaurant for you that would be like wendy’s and so you got your wendy’s reservation Come on.

Michael:
[1:16:11] Applebee’s.

Ryan:
[1:16:12] Applebee’s, okay. You got your Applebee’s reservation for two.

Michael:
[1:16:19] Appreciate there’s someone coming. I appreciate it.

Ryan:
[1:16:22] Well, I think you’re just being hopeful, but whatever. So you take your reservation, and it emails you confirmation of your reservation. So you’re like, I want to prove to Ryan that I have a friend. And so I’m like, hey, Ryan, I’m going to Applebee’s at 5 o’clock tonight. And MagicQ will be like, hey, it’ll pull from your email and say, do you want to go ahead and send him this reservation we found in your email? And you can be like, yeah, this will show him. And you send it.

Michael:
[1:16:51] I’d be like, no, because this is my girlfriend. Why might I tell him about it?

Ryan:
[1:16:57] And then MagicQ goes, you don’t really have a girlfriend, Michael. Let’s stop pretending. You know, like that’s okay. Anyways, so the point is that.

Michael:
[1:17:07] What is the point of this?

Ryan:
[1:17:09] The point is, is that now you have a new AI power capabilities that can suggest helpful information right as you need it. You know, like if they say, do you have the address for tonight? It’ll automatically know that you went on Google Maps and looked at the address to Applebee’s and it will populate a little message. You want to send them this address and it’s going to save you so much time. time michael think.

Michael:
[1:17:33] About yeah that sounds that sounds amazingly invasive to my privacy.

Ryan:
[1:17:39] Oh so you picked up on that.

Michael:
[1:17:41] Oh yeah all right it’s basically saying they’re gonna they’re gonna my favorite thing about this is that it completely reverts the the promise that they made before which is also hilarious in the first place because they’re a whole like we know google has been you know notorious for abandoning the idea of don’t be evil that’s a thing that they did years and years yeah it’s it’s basically ancient history at this point and every single day is a is another day farther away from that mantra but this one is that you know back in i think it was like i mean maybe it was 10 years ago at this point but i i feel like it may be not and not as not as far, but they announced google announced that gmail would no longer be tracking your email and they would no longer be reading your email which is just them them admitting for a decade which they claimed they never did in the first place but then they’re admitting admitting it that they are tracking and reading your email for a decade so now this new ai tool is reverting the promise that they’re not going to read their your email and they’re actually like pretending that it is good for you that they’re doing it.

Ryan:
[1:18:54] They’re saying it’s processed locally on the device, which we know the marketing company, also known as Google, has never lied about not tracking you when you turn off location services and stuff like that, too.

Michael:
[1:19:08] It’s not like there’s literally documents and articles proving that they had purposefully ignored requests of you turning things. Wait, there is those things. I forgot about that. There is those things.

Ryan:
[1:19:20] So if you trust Google, probably don’t listen to this show if.

Michael:
[1:19:25] You trust Google, How?

Ryan:
[1:19:28] If you trust Google, I have some ocean property to sell you as well for a really good price.

Michael:
[1:19:34] In Wyoming.

Ryan:
[1:19:38] There are some cool things that they’re doing, and this is going to be the battle that we’re all going to have to face is some of this stuff is super cool. Real-time call translation in people’s natural voices. So if we speak different languages, Michael, It’s going to translate your voice back to me, but in your voice, in my language. And so things like that are like, that’s Star Trek translator cool stuff.

Michael:
[1:20:04] It is very cool and still creepy.

Ryan:
[1:20:07] Super awesome.

Michael:
[1:20:08] And a little creepy.

Ryan:
[1:20:09] A little creepy, but super awesome.

Michael:
[1:20:11] It is better than YouTube, where if you listen to the audio versions of this show or other videos where they have like a different voice dubbed things, it does not sound like you in any way whatsoever.

Ryan:
[1:20:22] Like it’s completely well okay but it also has a feature where you can like tell your phone hold it up and say what am i looking at and it will tell you what you’re looking at so linus tech tips he has the device already of course and so he has a watch on and he points it at his watch and he says what kind of watch am i wearing give me a link to the store to buy it and it tells him what the watch is the first time it was wrong so he says no you got it wrong try again and then he showed more of the watch and the second time it got it wrong but it says it was such authority and then he’s like no that’s not it either let me do it again and then it guessed another watch which was also wrong and so the point is michael this sounds really cool but it doesn’t seem like it’s all that reliable yet but it will get better you know this stuff will get better but there’s some cool things the translate i think is really cool i like the idea but here’s the.

Michael:
[1:21:15] Thing the translate is cool but when you compare it to everything else that they’re showing as as a you know translating the language we have no idea if you have insert a random language and then take the what you say in english and converts it you have no idea so.

Ryan:
[1:21:32] If it’s doing it correctly yeah.

Michael:
[1:21:34] This hallucination of not knowing what a watch is by looking at it even though they claim they can do that and then claiming they can change the language to is whatever like what are the odds that you’ll say something that’s just benign and then it’s translated to someone that you wanted to talk to and.

Ryan:
[1:21:51] It’s incredibly vulgar.

Michael:
[1:21:52] I mean, who knows? Because we don’t know.

Ryan:
[1:21:56] Hey, I made a reservation for Applebee’s and it translates, hey, I just wanted you to know I eat fleas. And they’re like, wow, okay, I’m going to hang up now.

Michael:
[1:22:06] Okay, so I don’t think that the other language would rhyme with what you’re talking about.

Ryan:
[1:22:14] How do you know? You don’t know.

Michael:
[1:22:16] I don’t know. I guess it depends on the language.

Ryan:
[1:22:18] You don’t know nothing.

Michael:
[1:22:18] Let us know. Let us know if you have a language that you can translate that will end up sounding like fleas in terms of Applebee’s.

Ryan:
[1:22:27] Yeah, that’s what I want to know. Can’t wait to hear that one.

Michael:
[1:22:31] Send us a comment.

Ryan:
[1:22:33] I just wanted to make sure. I wanted to make sure people knew about the AI thing. Because this is the battle I’m saying that we’re going to have is there’s going to be really cool features that come out with AI. It’s going to come at the cost of your privacy. We’re going to have to decide to weigh those two things. Or we actually have a company that we trust does on-device-only AI processing that we can use, which I think is going to be a very important thing for privacy. Because these tools are going to get so good, you’re going to be left behind, I think, within 10 years if you don’t have access or utilizing them in some way.

Michael:
[1:23:09] The local-only thing I do think is important. If they bring local only, I think that the AI value can be absolutely worth it. It’s when they send the data out to the cloud, that’s when I’m not on board. But in terms of the features that can come, and some of these are actually kind of cool if they worked. There is one thing that I think is really cool, and I would prefer it to be on a local thing too. But if you’re traveling and you’re in a different location, it has different languages. So I went to Europe for the Ubuntu summit a couple of years ago and there was a lot of signs and different languages, but you could put your phone up and then look at the camera and you could translate for you through the camera.

Ryan:
[1:23:54] Yeah.

Michael:
[1:23:54] That is a very cool feature.

Ryan:
[1:23:56] I love that feature. We use that. We took my daughter to a claw, I guess a claw vending machine store. It’s all claw vending machines and it’s like wall to wall. And we came back with bags of stuff. but a lot of them had tags that were in Korean and other things. So my daughter was like, what are these? So we were just sitting there translating the text. So cool. Like you could never do that in the past. You’d have no idea that it says like you stink or whatever, but they didn’t say that. They were all happy things. But my point is we went, no, but now we do. And it’s such a cool feature. It’s a really good point, Michael. Like I don’t want to lose these features, but we have to have a company we trust is going to do actual on hardware AI. Like a company that does hardware like Fairphone or a company like Frameworks, when they release their phone frameworks, they’ve been wanting you to release forever frameworks. That would be nice too. Something like that. You know, something like that.

Michael:
[1:24:54] So when you ask someone to do something, it’s probably not the best to yell at them.

Ryan:
[1:24:59] Oh, okay. Please. Framework, Fairphone.

Michael:
[1:25:05] I like how you exact same volume and the same cadence, but you added please to it, so it’s okay.

Ryan:
[1:25:10] I’m being nicer. Yeah.

Jill:
[1:25:12] And make sure to say it correctly. Framework computer.

Ryan:
[1:25:15] Framework computer. Thank you, Jill. But my point is, those two companies are examples of companies I would totally trust to have on hardware AI and keep it on hardware AI.

Ryan:
[1:25:26] you know so companies like that that’s who i want to to invest in this in this world all right jill software pick because we are so far over it’s ridiculous.

Jill:
[1:25:36] Yes we are so sometimes the best apps are the simplest ideas there are a lot of people with no or limited access to the internet which is so sad so any application that can bring important educational information offline is very welcome. That’s why our pick this week is WordBook. WordBook is an offline English-to-English dictionary application powered by WordNet and eSpeak. And some of the features are it is fully offline after the initial download, it has pronunciations, random word, favorites, history, Double click to search, which is really easy to use. And, of course, dark mode.

Ryan:
[1:26:22] Which makes us all happy. I think this app is great for all the reasons you described, but also because I found a whole plethora of new words to describe Michael. I found words like dunderhead, harebrain, lunkbrain, nincompoop, and simpleton, which all perfectly describe my friend Michael.

Jill:
[1:26:39] Oh, bad Ryan. Remember our software pick two weeks ago called Table Habit, where you need to say a positive affirmation about Michael each day and track your progress? Well, I’m holding you to that, Ryan, and you are failing big time.

Ryan:
[1:26:57] Okay, but I said my friend. That was nice.

Michael:
[1:27:00] Yeah, I was about to say you need a thesaurus. I said something nice. You need a thesaurus that will give you a different word for friends.

Ryan:
[1:27:05] Cancel each other out.

Jill:
[1:27:06] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:27:06] I called him a dunderhead, harebrained, lunkbrained, nick and poop, simpleton. But I also said friend.

Michael:
[1:27:12] That doesn’t count because you have five examples of negative and only one friend part.

Ryan:
[1:27:18] Are they negative?

Jill:
[1:27:19] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:27:19] That you’re a harebrain?

Jill:
[1:27:20] Yeah.

Michael:
[1:27:22] So I’m not really sure if a harebrain is necessarily a bad thing. Lunk brain sounds like a bad thing. I’m not really sure what lunk really does.

Jill:
[1:27:29] Income poop is not nice. Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:27:32] Yeah, that’s the one I got dinged on from Jill.

Michael:
[1:27:35] Yeah, that’s got to be it.

Ryan:
[1:27:36] That’s the one that really hurt Michael too, deeply.

Michael:
[1:27:39] But the hair brain could be good because I’m fast as a hair, you know?

Ryan:
[1:27:42] And you actually have hair, so there’s that.

Michael:
[1:27:45] That’s true, I do.

Ryan:
[1:27:47] All right, a big thank you to each and every one of you for supporting us by watching or listening. However you do it, we love your faces. Come join us in our Discord room at tuxedigital.com slash Discord, where you can provide more words that can describe Michael there in the chat in our Discord. Also, we have our customs room now where you can show off your Swiss Army knife and your totally customized desktops and terminals and all of that cool stuff. We’ve got already so many cool things in that chat right now. So go check that, including my official wallpaper is in there. So if you want to be more like me and why wouldn’t you want to be, uh you can get my official wallpaper right there in the discord and it’s.

Michael:
[1:28:28] Incredible it’s incredible is it just batman yes it’s just batman, um so also yes you need to go check out the discord server and check out that room if you want to share some stuff also there’s a really fun uh setup that someone had was it’s like it’s really hard to choose sides and they had a wallpaper that was split in the middle between a muffin and a cupcake and it was just such such a good art such good so if you want to check it out that tuxus.com slash discord and also if you want to check out the patron only section of our discord server you can do that becoming a patron by going to tuxus.com slash membership you get access to that plus tons of other stuff including live watching of this show sometimes and then And also access to unedited episodes of the show most of the time. And the fact that we said that in unison, it’s crazy. And you get a bunch of other perks, too, by going to tuxedils.com slash membership. Of course, you’re getting to support the show, which is the main reason you’d want to do it anyway. And also, if you want to support the show, you can go to the store, tuxedils.com slash store, and you get a bunch of cool stuff. We have hats, mugs, hoodies, and so much more. Tuxedils.com slash store.

Ryan:
[1:29:47] Actually, if you also want to support the show, go to DestinationLinux.net slash Sandfly and check out the Home Edition.

Michael:
[1:29:54] That’s true.

Ryan:
[1:29:54] Get 50% off by using Destination 50. Or if you’re a business, you need to be on Sandfly. Go check that out. That helps support the show a huge, huge amount there.

Jill:
[1:30:04] Yeah. And make sure to check out all the cool shows here on Text Digital. We have an entire network of shows to fill your whole week with geeky goodness. Head to textdigital.com to keep those Linux penguins marching. And everybody, ooh, remember to push that Linux button. Have a great week. And remember that the journey itself is just as important as the destination.

Ryan:
[1:30:28] Jill, you know, your intro was perfection, but also when you were doing the, ooh, I need to push that button. I was like, I really feel like that’s you. I really feel like if there was a button in a room and no instructions, you would eventually push that button. Am I right?

Michael:
[1:30:46] I guess it depends on the button. So, Jill, if the button was just a random black button somewhere, would that make you? Actually, I guess the really the big question is there’s three buttons. there’s a random black button then there’s a big red button and then there’s only little corner is a nice like little pink button i.

Jill:
[1:31:04] Would push the pink one.

Michael:
[1:31:05] There we go.

Ryan:
[1:31:06] Okay so the pink one you push and confetti falls are you satisfied or do you now feel the need to push the other buttons no.

Jill:
[1:31:13] That’s that’s fine with me that makes me happy.

Ryan:
[1:31:15] I know ryan wants to put that’s where we differ i’d be jamming on all of them i’m like this is cool i’m gonna jam all exactly well thanks for.

Michael:
[1:31:27] We’ll see you next week.

Ryan:
[1:31:28] See you next week.