LINUX Unplugged - 478: The Best of Both Worlds

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

We go hands-on at NASA's JPL and learn why Linux is the best OS for Earth and Mars. Special Guest: Tim Canham.

So we've been on the road for a couple of weeks, and this is normally the time where I come on the air and tell you how something broke in the RV. Or maybe I broke myself trying to fix whatever's broken in the RV. But I got to say, Jupes is doing great. Those investments are paying off, right? You got those shocks. You've been, I mean, fixing slides since the day I met you. Must be working now, huh? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the RV's working great. But the home server that runs pretty much everything, like home assistant, my sync thing, my media server, my documentation, my scheduling system, all of that, it died while we were down at JPL. Came back to a dead server. It's always something that breaks in the space where we aren't. I know, right? I thought it might have been down because I couldn't connect to Home Assistant. I thought, okay, well, could be Home Assistant's hung up, could be a networking issue, or it could be something much worse.

Turns out it was much worse. So now, I think you'll hear us do an episode on home servers soon because, you know, who knows what I'm going to do. I got to figure that out. In the meantime, I guess the show must go on, eh? Another episode of What Not To Do with Chris. Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris. My name is Wes.

And my name is Brent. Hello, gentlemen. Coming up on the show today, we all get a front row seat to Linux history in the making. We'll take you behind the scenes of our tour of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and our thoughts on a famous Linux platform getting shut down. And then we'll round out the show with some boosts and picks and a lot more. So before we go any further, I want to say a big good morning to our friends over at Tailscale. Tailscale is a mesh VPN protected by WireGuard. We use it. It's what connects all of our machines. It's what's making the show possible right now, and it'll change your

game. Go to Tailscale.com and try it out for free for up to 20 devices at tailscale.com. So we are on the road. We are at Listener Jeff's right now in Sacramento, California. Just got done with the big Pasadena meetup and the JPL tour, which we will tell you about in a little bit. I feel like I'm still buzzing from that experience.

There was so much great stuff there. And that might be the hangover. Oh. Or some of those chemicals they use you know for the what for the science experiments and all is it the chem chem trails is that yeah yeah he did he did break into that one room that he wasn't supposed to go into it was like i like the color red and everything was red in there but that thing said chem trails don't go in what'd you do you went in but before we get into all of that, I wanted to talk about something that's been sent into the show quite a bit. We've been asked over and over again about our thoughts

on Stadia getting shut down. Google Stadia. You remember it was launched as Google's big entrance into game streaming, and it was going to bring so many game developers over to Linux to get things compatible with Stadia. Stadia is only the newest, most logic-defined, mind-bending, absurd gaming platform on Earth. Forget boxes, forget consoles, just your games, your screens, and electric air. And this electric air is Stadia. Well, absurd might be right.

412 Linux on Twitter wrote, sadly, at Chris Lass is the first person I thought of after reading the Stadia update. He really did believe in it. Can't wait to hear his thoughts on at Linux Unplugged. And if you missed the news, while we were on the road, Google wrote that they are shutting down Stadia, changing strategies, and they will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases and game purchases to players. I didn't expect that part. I mean, it does, I think, somewhat ease my frustration because, I mean, I've been predicting Stadia's downfall for, what, a couple of years now? Yeah, we all have. Everybody knew this day was coming. And I think that's actually maybe what sort of prevented it from being a success in the first place.

Is this like the moment where one of your predictions comes true for the year? Or Wes's? Wes usually makes this prediction? I can't remember. We'll have to review. I don't know if I did this year.

We'll find out, unfortunately, soon. You know, The Verge blamed Linux. How come? The Verge writes, Google spent millions convincing publishers

like Ubisoft and take two to bring their biggest games to stadia they go on to say google had to pay such large sums because of the work to port their games over wasn't particularly easy given stadia runs on linux a platform game developers haven't paid enough attention to i mean they're not wrong in the sense that yeah that probably made this more difficult than if you were trying to set up some sort of, you know, Windows game streaming environment. But at least by Google's read,

they expected more user adoption. And I don't know if those two were directly connected. I kind of liked a take I saw over at TechCrunch, which said, Stadia died because no one trusts google i agree with that take i think that's that's why i never got into it as much as i wanted it to be a hit and i really wanted it to create a network effect where developers begin porting more and more games over to linux i think you could argue it was good for vulcan adoption yeah it does seem like the the bare bones of the like the technical side of this actually worked pretty darn well.

You know, like Linux, between all the work that Valve has put in, between the work that obviously Google and the Stadia folks have put in, between all the regular good Linux stuff. Linux is ready for games. I just don't know if the world is ready for games on Linux. Especially on Google. Is there a connection between sort of Steam doing its work and Stadia coming out at the same time? Because it seems like those two were overlapping. And I wonder which one made which possible? Is it that Google brought more attention to gaming on Linux and that Steam was able to take that sort of energy and make it really run?

No, I think, you know, the Linux side was kind of hidden over at Stadia. To me, it just seems that, I don't know if anyone believes Google can have an exciting, new independent division that exists beyond their, like, core ad tech or YouTube platform. And also the need for me personally

with Stadia was reduced when Proton got good and I could run most games that I didn't have access to before on my machine again. Right, Stadia was a little bit better run most games that I didn't have access to before on my machine again. Right. Stadia was a little bit better of a solution when I didn't have a local option for that stuff. But when Proton came along and Proton was pretty good, then I could just play that stuff on my computer again. So I think in some ways Valve's entrance maybe harmed Stadia's

overall momentum, but I don't think it really could probably be accused of anything more than that. The other side of this too is, you know, even as a Stadia, sometimes Stadia user, it feels like a lot of technologies these days, like some Apple products or sometimes Tesla products or other things where I really like the technology, but the way it ends up being presented to the consumer and all the top layers of it just doesn't work for me. And I don't know, like, I was never going to get that excited about Stadia because even in the best use case, how much was I going to really invest in it? It was never going to be fully under my control. I was just going to be dependent on internet pipes and, you know, Google to keep running it. Yeah, it's even worse than the compromise you make with the Steam store where, you know, when you buy games through Valve, I guess they could technically take them away.

But you when you install them, you're at least downloading them and installing them locally and you've paid for them and you can put them on other computers and other devices like the deck when those come out. But with Stadia, you are always tied to Google in a very direct way, in a way that made a better experience, honestly, because I've tried GeForce. to Google in a very direct way, in a way that made a better experience, honestly, because I've tried GeForce. I even tried OnLive back in the day, and none of them were quite as good as Google, because they chopped off some of that user interface stuff and just got you right into the game. But classically, like Microsoft before them, and now how Google seems to emulate what they once so much hated, they don't fully embrace a technology like this i should have been able to look up a game on youtube you know destiny 2 or star trek online look up that game on youtube watch a gamer and then one click inside the youtube ui i should have been able to transform that into a gaming

experience launch the game in my browser and start playing within seconds google has the technology they even they even talked about doing that at one point. They just never pulled the trigger because you could tell even internally at Google, they just didn't have the support. They didn't even believe it themselves it would stick around. And I guess the upshot is the only way they can save face and prevent a controversy is by refunding everybody, which is probably going to cost them a pretty little penny. Yeah.

People are also concerned that all those controllers out there, unless Google enables Bluetooth on them, which they have the hardware for, I'm led to believe, but just wasn't ever turned on, well, that could also be a bunch of e-waste. I guess we should probably make it clear that this isn't actually going into effect until January, I think it is. So you still have a few months. Yeah. January 2023, they said, you've got some time for, you still have a few months. Yeah. January 2023. They said,

you've got some time for quote unquote final play sessions. Yeah. Yeah. You know, go get your gameplay out now, I guess. But I imagine that if you've spent like, I don't know, 80,000 hours or so on playing a game and you can't even transfer it out. So what the heck? It's so dumb. Yeah. That part I just don't get. I don't understand why they didn't like give you the option to maybe get a Steam key or something. Maybe it's the competitive angle. I don't know what it is, but not good enough, chief. Not good enough. This is disappointing to see. And the refund helps, but it's not going to make me stop thinking everything Google launches they eventually are going to kill. Now it's just like they just confirmed it.

Stop thinking everything Google launches, they eventually are going to kill. Now it's just like they just confirmed it. We are on the road again. On the road again. Just can't wait to get on the road again. This one has been a busy blur. There has been multiple phases of this road trip. I think we're like on the fifth phase right now because we got down to Grants Pass

like two weeks ago. We had a meetup down there. Then we got down to Sacramento. We had another meetup there and we got to park here at Listener Jeff's house where we've got power and Ethernet like kings. Yeah, it's nice over here. Then we switched from the RV

and we switched to the car and we took the car down to Pasadena, which is like another seven hours from Sacramento. Yeah, in case you've never been to California, it's obscenely giant. It's huge. It's way too huge. This is definitely, it should be two states. There's no doubt about it in my mind. And then you get to Pasadena where we had an Airbnb as a team. So we flew in some of the team and we hung out there and we did the JPL tour, which we'll tell you about here in a little bit. And then we did the Pasadena meetup,

which was our largest meetup yet and just an absolute blast. And along each of these major five phases of this road trip, we have been dropping geocaches all along the way as little treats for you guys that could be listening today, that could be listening a year down the road. Maybe you couldn't make it to a meetup. Maybe you're not even in that area today, but one day you will be. We have little treasures for you that we have stashed throughout the West Coast. And Brent, you did one of the first ones in Southern Oregon, just north of Grants Pass at that little rest stop that the Seven Feathers Casino has. just north of Grants Pass at that little rest stop that the Seven Feathers Casino has.

Yeah, Hadiyah and I figured, we actually talked a long time about like, how hard do we make this? Because we want people to find it. That's definitely true. But we don't want just random people finding it. We want JB listeners to be the ones finding it. So that was a bit of a tricky go. But we did find at this rest stop a giant wall of boulders that seemed like just the perfect place. So we stashed this little geocache.

It's got a bunch of really great stuff in it. It's got some swag, T-shirts. It even has a freaking computer in there. So I feel like it's wonderful to find. If you do find it, well, please work hard to find it because there's some great stuff in there. And if you do find it, take some audio and take some video as well. Send that our way. We would love to hear about how you found it.

And also feel free to take the stuff and put new stuff in there and even, I don't know, start a journal of all the people that have found it. Just get creative. I like that. I like that. But no BSD stuff, right? Right. No kidding.

Jeez, gross. but no BSD stuff, right? Right. No kidding. Jeez, gross. We like the idea of something that people could go look for when they're visiting the area. So look in the Canyonville, Oregon, Cow Creek rest stop area, and hopefully you'll find the first stash.

And then the lady and I, we stashed the second geocache in Sacramento, in Folsom, California. There is a hydro plant that has been retired that's open to the public worth going just for that i think johnny cash played a really famous concert near there okay nice good little hint too and at this retired hydro dam there is a little nice space down by the water a little park area just to hang out. And there is some burnt trees. That's your hint. It's in that general facility. We will have GPS coordinates for all of these, but they only get you within so close. So you're going to need these

hints too. And that one, so that one's in Sacramento, in Folsom, California area. And also some good stuff in there. Again, a little mini computer in there, some t-shirts, California area. And also some good stuff in there. Again, a little mini computer in there, some t-shirts, some stickers. Feel free to leave a note and take the note that we've put in there for you and leave something else because that's just too much fun. And then, Wes, you got to hide one in Pasadena. Yes, I did. Well, here I am in beautiful downtown Pasadena.

The meetup's over. the JPL trip is done, and it's time to go home. But, before that, I've got one last task. I've got a geocache to hide. Ah, here we are. This looks like a nice little spot. Good luck, Pasadena. Wes, I would love to know, like, give us more hints. I feel like I'd need to know kind of what's out there. Was it on a beach? Was it in a forest? Was it kind of in the middle of the city? Oh, it's in the middle of the city. All right. And let me just say downtown Pasadena,

absolutely lovely. I hadn't been back there since we went to scale a few years ago. So it was nice to get to spend a little bit of time there on my last day. Let's see a hint. Okay. Well, there's a nice little park in downtown Pasadena with some beautiful trees. Those trees, they seem to have more than a few nooks and crannies. So maybe start there. Hmm. All right. That's a good hint. I can almost kind of picture it already.

The Sacramento one, I think, is only hard because there's so many nooks and crannies it could be in. So we'll see. The Pasadena one, I imagine, is a little tricky, too, because there's probably a lot of area there, you know. Well in. So we'll see. The Pasadena one I imagine is a little tricky too because there's probably a lot of area there, you know. Well, can you trim it down? Is it in a nook or is it in a cranny? I'm not going to classify that.

Come on, that's above my pay grade. Okay, fine. This road trip has been a blur. It feels like it's been one long Monday. In fact, do check out Office Hours 13. We recorded that down at the Airbnb, and we recounted a lot of the story behind the scenes stuff getting down here. So if you're curious about what the trip has been like, some of the stories, some of the meetup stuff, do check out Office Hours 13, officehours.hair. But I want to get more into some of

the history we got to see being made at JPL and some of just the real world uses of Linux. You know, we talk about it here on the show, but to go somewhere and see them using it in these mission critical situations, it's always so educational. So I want to talk about all of that seriousness, but before we get there, I want to have a little fun. And there was a moment where listener Jeff, who's been hosting us here at his house, took us out to one of his favorite local diners. Great staff there. They seem like a lot of fun.

And I got myself a nice stack of pancakes. And after I got done eating these pancakes, I wanted to know what our local maple syrup expert's opinion was on what I had just eaten. Okay, Brent reviews the local syrup. Okay, this is actually a very small mug of syrup. Presentation is top notch. Fragrance is nice. It seems a little more on the golden side than that darn Kirkland brand we had the other day. Ready?

Oh my god. Okay, so. It's definitely not maple syrup. And I thought it was. Controversial. What did I just eat? It's like corn syrup or something. With a tiny bit of maple in it, perhaps.

But the texture is all wrong. So, that's my review with Brent. I'm still trying to get that mouth feel out of here like i just it was such a bad experience i i kind of loathe that you put me through that i thought when i handed it over to him so you got a picture it's in a mini um what are those mugs called brent like those uh hmm it's kind of like one of those mason jars with the handles on it yeah it's aason jar mug, but it's a smaller one and it's filled with syrup. So they give you a ludicrous amount of syrup. It was just right. Okay. All right. Canadian. So I put on the pancakes and I, you know, I was hungry and I ate them all up and I'm like, this syrup, it's not so good. And I wanted to see what his take was. And then when you just kind of like tore into it. You troll.

That was one of my highlights of the trip. So as you can imagine, I've had some fun with Brent. We tell it all in Office Hours 13. So do check that out. Linode.com slash unplugged. Go there to get $100 in 60-day credit on a new account, and it is a great way to support the show while checking out something awesome because Linode is fast, reliable cloud hosting with the best support in the biz.

I'm talking about like real humans, all-day, everyday humans that are right there fixing your problems on the first call. Not like this multi-tiered weird support system where you've got to start a chat with somebody and then like they can escalate you to a phone call, but then that person can't. No, no. Linode has built their business differently so that way they can provide you great support while also continually investing in their infrastructure. Linode is going to go crazy. Crazy Linode is blowing out the doors and they're adding, I think it's 11 more data centers or something like that. So they got 11 data centers now and I think they're going to like 12

more additional data centers. It's wild, you guys. Linode is just really moving these days. They invest back into their infrastructure and just make it better and better. Since I've been a customer, I have seen MVME hard drives. I have seen new AMD EPYC processors roll out. I've seen upgrades to their infrastructure. I've seen new services come along like managed database services, I've seen improvements to their physical servers that you can deploy, and of course, I have begun to just use the absolute heck out of their S3 compatible object storage. And they're 30 to 50% cheaper than the hyperscalers that just want to lock you into their crazy esoteric platforms. 30 to 50% cheaper is no joke that adds up immediately and on top of that they got

the best performance that's not chris saying that's not brent sitting over there quietly saying that you go google it it's been tested right right see brent's nodding he knows he knows he knows and it's just got great features as well easy backups backups and so much more. So go build something, go learn something and try it for yourself. And thank them for supporting us on this road trip too. Head over to linode.com slash unplugged. Get that $100 and 60 day credit on a new account. You know, treat yourself. You deserve it and support the show. linode.com slash unplugged. Unplugged. We have a few things I want to tidy up around here before we get into the rest of the show. We have one more meetup I want to let you know about. Friday, October 7th in Portland. It's the last meetup of 2022's West Coast Tour. Come hang with us.

We're at the brewery, which I cannot remember the name of at the moment, but the details are at meetup.com slash jupiterbroadcasting. We'd love to see you there. These meetups have been absolutely fantastic, and it's the last one. Then we're done talking about it. And if you're in that West Coast crew, stick around. You'll hear about future meetups there first. bit.ly slash westcoastcrew for our Matrix room. Migration brewing. Thank you. Look at that. Wes coming in with the hot facts right there. Migration Brewing. Very nice. Thank you, Wes Payne. So check it out. Meetup.com slash Jupiter Broadcasting for all those details. We'd love to see you there. with the show and the way to exchange a little value for value. And we want to highlight the big boost that come into the show every single week. And ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves because he's done it for a fifth week in a row. John A. is our big baller for Linux Unplugged

this week. Unbelievable, sir. Unbelievable. He says, yes, I, uh, he, cause we prerecorded. So he got in on a technicality last week and he says, yes, in fact, that was an accident on my case, but I am more than fine with that. You guys have been on fire lately. He sent in 50,001 sats into the show this week. So we really appreciate that, John. Thank you so much. The big ballers, those are the moments when those come in, you're like, okay, this gives me a little energy. It's like a little hit of like dopamine.

Yes, all right, let's go. Let's keep working. And boy, did we need that today. So John, thank you very, very much. We appreciate that. Unfortunately, we were not able to stream live this week. So we did have some tech issues we weren't really i actually thought we weren't gonna have an episode i thought we weren't gonna have an

episode then you see boosts like that come in you're like no we gotta keep going we gotta do it we gotta do it for john out there so thank you very much john we appreciate it and we have more boosts that we'll get to later in the show if you'd like to send one in get a new podcast app at newpodcastapps.com. Coming in hot with the boost. So let's talk about how we ended up at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, because I think not everyone is familiar with the story. And it starts with a mutual love for Linux, doesn't it? With listeners and brothers that listen to the show and work at JPL.

And we started talking with Tim, who was at the time, like the Mars Helicopter Operations Leader. I think he's had a title upgrade since then. And we knew Tim was a kindred spirit when we started talking Linux and Solaris with him on the show. So JPL for many years was a Solaris house. Right. You know, when I came out of school, everybody wanted a big Solaris workstation. Yep. You know, the old Spark work of school, everybody wanted a big Solaris workstation. Yep. You know, the old Spark workstations.

They were pretty cool. They were cool. And so I got, you know, I kind of came up the, you can call it the Unix curve, learning how to work on Solaris. And, you know, the flight project side used Solaris a lot. projects I'd used Solaris a lot. And prior to getting on Curiosity, which is the big rover that's still on Mars and operating, I had been on a project where we were doing a lot of software technology development. And we could kind of see the writing on the wall that Solaris was starting to decline in the marketplace. So in our own project, we went and started looking at alternatives. And I just bought a PC made out of random parts,

you know, just commodity parts at the time, and loaded Linux on it, and took the software that we had on that project and compiled all that software on Linux. And it was kind of a somewhat comical moment because one of the senior engineers in the project had gotten his $15,000 Sun Solaris workstation that he, you know, he wanted as a senior guy. And we had the software compiling on both. And I took my little commodity

level PC and compiled the software. and it compiled twice as fast. And he just had this look of... What did I waste all my money on? Yes, he just, just this look came over his face like, I can't believe that. And he ended up pawning off the whole system to an intern and then went off the butter. It was kind of funny. You know, when we were talking with Tim at the meetup, that theme kind of came up over and over again about how things have flipped where JPL and NASA used to be seeding the technology

that would then create the consumer tech that we all used. Now things have flipped around, and the consumer tech, like Snapdragon processors and lithium-ion batteries and blades for drones and whatnot, have become so good that they buy the consumer stuff. And they can buy it cheaper. And they can tinker with it easier and quicker. Yeah, I think on the tour we heard that back in the old days they even made their own physical nuts and bolts.

Yeah. And it's like a 10x savings when they can buy it just from the market. It's a massive savings, they said. But it also means they can prototype quicker. And then the other thing that Tim mentions later is that, you know, it also means that they can find people who already know this stuff. So just having that relationship with Tim was great because of what they're working on and that Linux copter that they've built that has just been so incredible and really become probably a real future part of all Mars exploration that has a rover. I mean, just incredible to watch that history.

And so Tim started chatting with us and said, you know, I think I could probably arrange a little bit of a tour for you and some of the listeners if you're interested. I'm like, well, yeah, okay, we're interested. How are we not interested? Come on. Yeah, of course we are. And so then it was just a matter of, well, how do we get down there? And so that's when I started talking to Linode,

and I said, hey, what do you think about doing another road trip this year? We could do a series of meetups, and then we'd get down to JPL, and we could do a tour of JPL. And Linode said, well, how are we going to make money on that? No, they didn't say that. They said, of course. They said, that'd be great. We'd love to support you in the community doing that. And so they worked with us to make it possible to get down here and do this. And I'm telling you guys, even as we were walking up to the entrance of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it just wasn't feeling real until we came around the corner and we saw everybody there. Hello, sir. Good to see you again. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome to JPL. It's real. It's actually happening. And you're all early. Good job.

Now we'll just take over the place because I think we got the numbers. I see a BSD shirt. You're going to be our frontline guy. How about everybody showing up on time? How great is that? I mean, we were on time and I felt late. So what'd you guys think of the tour? Wes, I didn't capture your thoughts much afterwards, so I'm curious to know your overall take on the tour and if anything surprised you. I was really quite impressed with our tour guide. You know, he not only relayed a crazy

amount of information, but I think did a pretty good job of bridging the gap because, you know, you gotta have, much like doing podcasts sometimes, you gotta be able to accommodate all kinds of different knowledge levels and backgrounds. And even as a science and space nerd myself, I felt like I was getting lots of little tidbits to hang on, but it also seemed like you did a good job,

you know, engaging some other folks. I'm thinking partially here of your wife, Adia here, Chris, in, you know, engaging some other folks. I'm thinking partially here of your wife, Adia, here, Chris, in, you know, being interested in the crazy stuff going on in space, even if it feels very far away sometimes. I appreciated, too, that especially with our crew that was there, you could throw a few of the technical questions at the tour guide, and he had answers for like 99% of them, which was really, really impressive because we do have the best nerds in our audience and they geek out on this stuff oh jpl was awesome uh i i really enjoyed seeing the cassini space probe and all the other space probe models in the auditorium uh but uh since i i mentioned

galileo before i i was really happy they built the entire museum around the Galileo ground model and that they left the high gain antenna deployed in its undeployed arrangement, just like in real life. Nice. And then how was it to see the control room? Because we weren't sure we were going to see that. Oh, getting into where the magic happens. It was incredible.

And I'm glad I was able to sneak a couple peanuts out of one of those tubes, too. Sneaking the peanuts. The control room was great. Hey, did either of you get any peanuts? No, I didn't even think of that. Oh, well, I did. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, man.

I was so focused on not touching any buttons. Yeah, I sat next to you, and you did touch a few. You just touched them really lightly. Yeah, and I actually caught my hand once reaching out on its own. But seriously, that was that was amazing. I mean, I've watched so many streams, you know, and seen images on the Internet of that control room. I reckon, you know, you recognize the little details and to be to be set physically there and watching the little animations. But they're not for show, right? Like, sure. I mean, they're a little for show because they're on big tv screens but that it's real data we could see in real time like what's the transmission bit bit rate across the deep space network to these probes out in the

universe i'm just pausing for a moment because you're right wes like i i the whole time felt surreal for me and i at a few moments tried to ground myself and be like, wait, wait, wait, this is actually happening for us. We're in these places that we've only seen on TV or dreamt of. And that's what stood out for me was, you know, everybody who was on the tour with us was super invested in the experience, super respectful of everyone who was there trying to work really hard. You know, we got into some places that people were actually working and we were trying to like, just shimmy around them while they're working and take photos quietly. And so that we weren't

disturbing them. And I think that's what stood out for me is like, we got an amazing audience who really took everything in and appreciated every bit of it. Yeah. And the other thing that was a lot of fun from a technologist standpoint is just watching the eras of technology. When you go in there, you see like, oh, that was clearly state of the art in the late seventies. And this is the mid eighties and here's the nineties and here's the early aughts. And you can see that with everything from like the storage medium to the operating systems and how the operating systems could get more complex. And that all is extremely fascinating. And hearing too about how they're now they're struggling with, well, we deployed this up into space with an Ubuntu 16.04 base, and now we can't get modern

software to build on an Ubuntu 16.04 base, but we still need to reproduce production. And so they're like discovering kind of Linux specific challenges in a way. And hearing a little bit about that was enlightening. You know, these are the real problems that they face out there in the world. It was such a great tour. Unfortunately, they weren't very cool with us recording the tour. They were not okay with any kind of press or professional gear or anything

like that. So we did our tour and then we had to say our goodbyes and do the swag giveaway thing. Well, thank you guys for all making it. This is a lot of fun. Okay, so we do have some great swag provided by Linode. Got to tell the lady your t-shirt size. They run a tad small. Not atrociously, but a tad.

Yeah, just a tad. Nothing too bad. We got updated shirts this year and, you know, Brent's got one on right now. Yeah, it's actually really comfortable. I like this. We wanted to get Alex's thoughts, too, from self-hosted, because he was able to join us and is also a big space nerd. I think I'm just struck by the fact of how amazing

this whole experience has been. The audience that turned up were fantastic. You know, all interesting people, all had stories. Some had driven 25 hours to come and see us and take the tour too and i couldn't believe some of the cool stuff we got to see like the clean room we actually got to see the next europa satellite or next europa mission that's about to happen uh we got to see, there was this really cool picture, paint by numbers, picture of the first image from Mars. And I used to have that in a textbook from when I was a child. And I got to see it in person. My mind is still processing that.

So huge thanks to Tim, Chris, Hadiyah, everybody at JB that made this happen. But from a personal perspective, it was super cool. But I know from talking to several of the audience members as well, that they had a blast as well. Alex probably would have joined us on the show today, but he's flying back home. So he captured that in the airport for us. So we had the JPL tour.

It was absolutely fantastic. And then a lot of that crew, plus a whole bunch more people, Absolutely fantastic. And then a lot of that crew, plus a whole bunch more people, joined us the next day for a big meetup at the Congregation Brewing Ale House right here in Pasadena. Hi, we're here at the meetup just after our JPL tour yesterday. And there's a bunch of ton of great people here. So hello. How are you both? I'm doing great, man. And tell me your names. I'm Zach. I'm Alex.

Hello, hello. And I gleaned from our conversation that you've come a long way. Yes, we came from central Arkansas in Little Rock area. That's amazing. And how long did that take? So we did it over two days. It's a 24-hour drive. We left Saturday morning.

We finally got to L.A. Monday. Isn't that something? You know, Chris, I'm realizing that you and I are not the only ones on a crazy road trip. Right. The audience is definitely making their own road trip to feel like they're here with us. I believe listener Optimus Gray did about a 24, 25-hour one-way drive himself. And listener Steve came from Wyoming just to hear people talk about Linux. My name is Steven Ng, and I'm from Lander, Wyoming.

And I, yeah, I first went to the Salt Lake City meetup. I happen to be in Southern California, so I thought I'd join you guys here. And it's really cool. You know, it's a lot of fun to be among. I consider you all to be friends and colleagues because I don't have friends outside this world who are into things like Linux. They kind of look at me with that kind of scared stare, you know what I mean?

Well, thanks for coming all this way. Tell me something you hate about Linux and what you love the most about Linux. The one thing I hate about Linux is that it is so complex and it's so many pieces all over the place. And that's also the thing I like about it because there's just so much there. It's funny how often we got that answer. We ask people that a lot. Complexity, number of choice, too many options. It was the thing that was the number one thing they hated and the number one thing they loved.

People really like a lot of different packaging formats, it turns out. And Wes. Everybody had thoughts on that, too. And you know, when you're doing a trip like this and you're doing the meetups and you're doing these tours and all that kind of stuff, there's so many logistics, so many.

And just to give you a taste, one of the many things that has to be solved is somebody has to watch Levi, the podcast dog. Like, he can't go to JBL. And while he could go to the meetup, it's probably not ideal. Yeah, my wife and I watched Levi during the JBL tour yesterday. This is listener Tim. My wife is watching Levi right now during the meetup. Well, thank you for that. I mean, I heard he had a really great time. So he was talking all about it when he got home yesterday. Yeah, it was fun. We enjoyed Levi as a wonderful dog. Very, very chill. And made himself right at home. That sounds like Levi.

Yeah. Well, it must mean they don't have any squirrels over there. Right. And they're probably not podcasting. Longtime listener Eric, who made it to the meet have any squirrels over there. Right, and they're probably not podcasting. Longtime listener Eric, who made it to the meetup, also attended the JPL tour, and we wanted to get his thoughts. It was epic. It was really good. As someone that doesn't follow NASA or JPL too closely, I was a little bit like, oh, is this going to be too much? But I knew it was going to be an opportunity of a lifetime, and I really, I loved it. I loved every minute of it.

And as we talked to him, it's like stuff really stuck, like stuff he never knew. It really registered with him, and I think listener Eric is slowly turning into a big space nerd now. I don't think he knew too much about it beforehand, and it really stuck with him, and I think he's going to be geeking out a whole bunch. This was a pretty fun meetup. We were there for at least five and a half hours. We had so many people come and go. We had food,

we had drink, and Tim, who helped set all this up at JPL and has, you know, just been like our tour guide to Linux in space, he made it to the meetup as well and he sat down with Brent. It's been a great time. It's been great to meet everybody and the hosts and all the other people that come along because we're all engineers and computer geeks and we love space, so it's been a great time to meet everybody. Great. I saw you brought a little something

that you've been showing people. Are you allowed to talk about that? Yeah, sure. I brought an example of the processor or one of the processors that's on the Ingenuity Mars helicopter. And it's a tiny little helicopter computer. It's about the size of a matchbook box.

And it's great to show everybody the kind of computer that we're flying and how small it is. Something they could just take a look at. Yeah, previously on Linux Unplugged, we've talked about these things. But seeing the scale of it and some of the stories you've been telling about batteries and stuff is kind of incredible, actually. It's incredible, but it's also concepts people can understand, right? There were people here who did drone development, and they looked at the board and they said, hey, that's almost identical to the board I use. And yeah, I understand.

You're using these Sony batteries that I've used before, and you're using these sensors and things, and you're managing software, so I get it. So it's at the same's the same time it's exotic but it's also approachable that a lot of people here who've worked in the industry and or just as hobbyists could understand it is it nice for you to see people out in the world who understand the concepts that you deal with on a daily basis kind of back at work yeah it's nice to talk to people who understand some of the concepts because often with being an engineer, some of the family and friends, they just kind of stare at you blankly when you try to explain the technology.

Whereas with this crowd, they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I understand. That's Linux, and you do these kinds of things in Linux, and that's flash memory, and it's running a computer, an ARM processor that's like the Raspberry Pi and so on and so forth, so they get it and they can relate it to things they've done in their own career, so it's in many ways easier to explain it to that crowd. These meetups that we do, we've done a few of them now, and it's always a treat because you learn something new,

you meet people who have these wild backgrounds, and having you here is a special treat, but actually every single one of them is great great to talk to you as well yeah absolutely it's it's not like i'm some special person i'm just a somebody who grew up probably similar to many of the people here i was just fortunate enough to get a cool job at a place like jpl and apply the skills that i learned and you know i've i always take time to step back and just realize, even though I'm an ordinary person, I've really had a chance to have an extraordinary career at a place like JPL. But, you know, all these people, too, have their own special niche where they've learned something

and they've had fun doing it and they're enthusiastic about it. That's why they're listening to the podcast and coming to events like this, because they just enjoy it. Okay, Tim, I've been asking a few questions of almost everyone, so hopefully you're ready for this one. The question is, what do you hate the most about Linux, and what do you love the most about Linux? What I love about it is it's a really nice, stable environment to do software development in. It's one of the reasons we picked it for the helicopter.

It's very stable. So that part I like about it. I've been living in that world for a long time doing software development. And compared to an environment like Windows, where you just feel like you're always forcing yourself to do unnatural ways to do things, Linux just has a smoothness to the whole development environment. And all these tools, especially open source,

you can take advantage of. I think the thing that is the most frustrating is that even though it is in its core really stable, a lot of the user-facing features just seem fragile at times. You try to configure a program or a desktop or try to set up a video card or something like that, and things just break with mysterious errors and you just don't know why. And so I think you live with the good and you live with the bad, right? You live with the nice parts and you live with the warts. You've just got to know how to manage a system like that and use it for its strengths.

Yeah, you were talking about using 1604 and just trying to port a few GUIs, and that's actually some of the worst stuff you're dealing with because it's just super annoying and you want to move to more modern stuff. And that was interesting to hear you talk about that. Yeah, we just had to reconstruct an older environment, and a lot of the hardware's moved on, a lot of the software's moved on, so kind of rewinding back to that era. You know, 16.04 would be 2016, which is an eternity

for something like Linux. But having to do that and trying to reconstruct this environment was tripping me up. And so I was gnashing my teeth a little bit trying to do that. But, you know, it's still, on the sum, it's a great environment to work with.

Tim, thank you, A, for inviting us to JPL. And we had an amazing tour yesterday. I know you wanted to join us on the tour, but you didn't quite get a chance. But you were there for a little bit. So thank you for that. You're welcome. And I always love to meet up with people who are kindred spirits.

And I'm glad that the group was able to get together and have a really good time exploring a place that I've really loved to work at over the years. Nice. And also, thanks for coming to the meetup as well. I mean, it's been a real treat to have you here. Yeah. It's nice to just kind of sit back and relax, enjoy the crowd, enjoy the food, and just talk about life, even apart from technical issues. It's been a great group. Great.

Well, thank you. You're welcome. And we really can't say thank you enough because it just gave us a great opportunity for us to come together as a team. And it gave us a great opportunity to do something that will last with us forever. We created some great memories there. Yeah. And I feel like some great friendships, too. Tim has already invited us back.

He said, anytime you're back, say hi. Maybe the Airbnb could have been a little better. That was a funky Airbnb we stayed at. It had some gems and it had some rough edges that's true you're just mad because you started a grease fire there was the grease fire i blame barbecue maintenance on that one i don't blame that on me i i am grateful for the star trek the next generation live stream that played the entire time we were there we made it through 94 episodes of star trek the next generation and we didn't even plan that no when

we walked through the door episode one of season one just happened to be playing on the television. And when we went out the door, Cupid was playing. We didn't see all of them, obviously, because we had to go to bed sometimes. Wes and I tried. Yeah, you did. You got to a lot of them. It was good memories. It was a good time.

And it's so exciting to see Linux and all of this technology coming together at a point that makes it approachable and accessible for these kinds of missions. And then they're performing and exceeding expectations. Like, for example, those little Sony batteries that Tim mentioned there, they're holding up in the deeply, deeply, deeply cold March and winter. The way Tim put it is the lithium batteries are turning into battery sickles every single night. And they were paranoid. They were absolutely afraid that that would destroy the batteries. But they're holding up. It's making it. And the Linux helicopter just had its 33rd flight recently. I mean, we've got one planet down. How many more to go for Linux, right? bitwarden.com slash linux go sign up for yourself or an enterprise account go try it and you know october is cyber security awareness month and bitwarden would like to remind everyone about key actions that the federal agency for cyber security recommends that you take and it starts

with what i always say use strong passwords bitwarden can generate and store strong passwords for you enable multi-factor authentication on all your accounts, including your password manager. They also recommend that you keep your software up to date and take steps to recognize and report phishing as well. Remember, weaker stolen passwords represent the majority of successful hacking attacks. Using a strong, unique password for every account protects you and your business from these attacks. Bitwarden can create, save, and autofill passwords for you. And multi-factor authentication, that's the easiest way to add extra security to your accounts. Enabling two-step login on Bitwarden improves the security of your password vaults. And there's options like verification through email or an authenticator app that's available

for all your accounts, FIDO2, or YubiKey ODP if you're a premium subscriber. Premium subscribers can also have Bitwarden generate time-based one-time password authentication codes for your accounts, adding strength to your passwords. And Bitwarden supports security for all with fully featured free accounts available to everyone. This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, protect yourself and help protect loved ones by educating them about password security and by starting up a free Bitwarden account today. So get started today at bitwarden.com slash Linux. That's bitwarden.com slash Linux. As always, we got some great feedback this week, so thank you very much for sending some in. Sid wrote us about some photo adventures. Sid writes, I wanted to add to the discussion around replacing Google Photos.

I've been using Image since last week when you mentioned it, and it's been working great for me. Regarding storage, though, I've written software on top of storage, and I plan to use it for automatic off-site backups using something like Duplicati or Restik. However, I found that their documentation is pretty bad, and overall it was a headache to implement. I would not recommend it for anything sensitive, and I feel like you should definitely use encryption on your end if you're using it. Yeah, I agree on that. It sounds like Sid is still pushing ahead with using storage, so those weren't enough of a deal breaker. Yeah, isn't that interesting? I am too. And I think the documentation point,

that depends on what you're looking for, right? Like I found pretty good documentation on getting Duplicati configured, but I could see if I was trying to write an app that lives on top of storage, maybe I wouldn't be as happy. And then you got to figure it's kind of early days too. In regards to image, I-M-M-I-C-H,

which is a Google Photos alternative, also early days. What I love about image is that it has a local app. So it'll run on your phone and uploads to the server. That's great. It's got a nice UI. Nice. But it doesn't have all the classifications and search features that something like PhotoPrism has right now. So in my book, PhotoPrism is the further along solution for the problem that needs a solution today. But I am definitely keeping an eye on Image, and I have a suspicion that we will do future coverage of Image on the self-hosted program.

If you'd like to hear more, we did talk about some of Chris's early investigations into some of this photo syncing in Linux Unplugged episode 476. Yeah, and shout out to listener Tony. They stayed up to the double up and watched it on Jupiter dot tube last week. Wow. That was a five hour live stream. So that is very impressive.

I have to say, I don't know. I don't think I could watch it. I don't even know how we did it to tell you the truth. I don't even know. Have we mentioned that we have the best listeners? And now it is time for the boost. Speaking of those best listeners, listener Michael B. boosted in with 3,000 sats and said,

I was just listening to your chat about package managers and I wanted to share something. I just recently switched from Ubuntu to Fedora. And now, due to work and other reasons, I ended up with four different package managers. I've got DNF, Flatback, Homebrew, and Snaps. I admit that sounds crazy, but so far, it's all working without issue. Thanks for the great show, Michael. Okay, now we tell Michael about Nix so we can get to lucky number five. Exactly.

There's also Pip that can come in handy. Oh, he probably has that. He probably does have Pip installed. He's just probably not using it very often. I mean, Michael, I think you could add a couple more to that list. Is that a problem or is it a gift? You tell me, because according to our listeners at the meetups, it's the thing they love the most and the thing they hate the most.

So I don't know what that tells us. Gene being boosted in with 2048 sats. Boost! Hey, Chris, if you edit a synced photo on your internet phone, does that updated image get pushed to your server? Reminder, I'm using Photosync with Photoprism. He says, for example, say all your photos are synced up. Then you decide to crop a picture from full size to a square on the phone. Does that one on your server also now appear cropped? If not, how would you deal with this?

I ask because a lot of my post-processing I do as an amateur on my phone. Great question. You know, I've noticed doing this on Android in a variety of different apps that it typically saves a duplicate photograph with the very similar name, maybe an extra prefix or suffix that means that you just have two files. You have the original and now you have the crop version. And I would assume that both of those would get synced. Yeah, I think it would on Android. I think on the internet phone, they do like a layered thing of revisions. And so when you crop a photo, photo sync,

and this is a photo sync issue, doesn't necessarily see it as a new photo. If you saved as a copy, it would. But if you crop the original, photosync is like, what? There's no changes. What's the big deal? Also, it doesn't even sync the edit. Rather than the edits wiping out the original, you just don't get the edits.

Yeah, it doesn't see it as a new file as far as I can tell on the iPhone. I think it would on Android. But if I tap it and manually sync that file, then it updates on PhotoPrism just fine. It overwrites the one in PhotoPrism the way you'd expect. So I'm going to play around

a little bit more with that. Even with these kinds of things, I'm fine with working these out because not only is there all the issue with Google and the things we talked about recently, but just after we recorded our episode about getting rid of Google Photos,

it turned out that Google Photos was messing up old backed up images for some users, like way back in their archive. And people's images were getting screwed up. And they've been rolling out a fix. But I mean, I just think it's just time to get off Google Photos. And I think that just sort of underscored it.

Agreed. We're going to have a big LAN this week. So Nextcloud introduced a new photo feature that I think we got to dig into and try it before this week's LAN. Because that could be another option. Could be. We'll see. In the meantime, Sky Push boosted in with 1,000 sets. I've been running Kallax for about a year

now, after the privacy bug bit. I wanted something that straddled privacy and stock functionality. The majority of my apps come from F-Droid, while Aurora Store anonymizes the two proprietary ones I still need. Kallax is kind of perfect for my use case and blocks creepy Uncle Google. I commend the devs, and at this point, we'll never go back. So the number one thing I've heard since I've installed Graphene OS on my Pixel is that I should try out Kallax. I have to tell you, it's something. You know, this happens every time I do an Android ROM. Whatever ROM I didn't try

is the one I hear about a whole bunch. Have you heard about Stockbro? At the meetup, a lot of people liked Kalyx, again, a lot. And what I've kind of pieced together, I don't know if this is true or not, because I'm new to all this, but it seems like Kalyx is really popular with the Linux community,

and it seems like Graphene OS is really popular with the security community. And I'm kind of going more for the security angle of things, and the one thing that Graphene OS has going for it that seems super appealing to me is you can install, via their tool, Google Play and the Play services in a sandbox, and then you can restrict everything the Play and services can get to. And you can run apps that require the Play API or are only available in the Play Store or the new one I discovered is a pain in the butt, require in-app purchases

and sometimes then require the Play Store. With Graphene OS, you can sandbox all of that stuff. And that is so appealing to me. So I'd be curious to know what people think about that, what they think about the quality of the sandboxing and how that compares to what Calix think about that, what they think about the quality of the sandboxing, and how that compares to what Calix offers. Well, on that subject, Bon boosted in with 1,234 Satoshis.

Former iPhone user here turned Calix OS user for about one and a half years now. And I'm loving it. Calix makes Google Camera available in the Aurora store, but turn off network access to it and don't allow any permissions before you open it. Then you get the best phone camera available without the Google access. That sounds like a really nice trick and actually fairly simple.

Yeah. No sandbox required, it sounds like. Yeah, but again, with Graphene OS, I just install the Play Store and I can just get the Google Camera and it all works pretty well. And now the Google Camera is also sandboxed and limited on what it can like. Yeah, but again, with Graphene OS, I just install the Play Store and I can just get the Google camera and it all works pretty well. And now the Google camera is also sandboxed and limited on what it can do. I like it. I like it a lot, but I'm open. I've heard a lot of good things about Calyx. Well, we've got a little more for you then. Four-legged emu boosted in with 3,000 sets. Coming in hot with the boost. Calyx OS is worth looking at for your pixel i haven't tried graphene

but i'm very happy with calyx and uh frozier boosts in with 5 000 sets a little representation here because frozier is a three-year graphene os user everything works perfectly no paper cuts at all and i think they're throwing a little shade at you here chris google play services can be enabled if you wish i get that i do get that like like i when i mentioned this to people in person like you realize the point of this was to get away from google right like yeah i know i know it's just sometimes i want to be able to take pictures that look decent too true grits wrote in following up on some of Chris's questions around listening habits with 2,468 sets. Even.

Live long and prosper. I try to listen to all the episodes as they come out. However, sometimes, such as during the summer, I get a few weeks behind. Been slowly catching up and I'm almost there. No worries, True Grits. Thank you for letting us know. I've been curious to hear people's various listening habits

and how far behind they are, just so we have data on that. So if you want to share that with us, please boost it in. But how far behind was True Grits? When did we pose that question? I think about three weeks ago. There we go.

I just want to creep a bit on True Grits. That's my angle. There you go. I feel like listening math is hard. Yeah, because we pre-recorded, so it's technically maybe a month. The Golden Dragon also boosted in with a set of lead sets. Love mascot. Golden Dragon writes, long time, no boost.

So Gold by Imagine Dragons seems cool. I'm not a huge pop rock guy, but that song kind of grooves. I was aiming for something from Free Music Archive, but it's a bit of a mess over there. Also, what do you think of Magic Wormhole? As far as I've researched, it's a great way to send files across long distances that's encrypted and compressed, kind of like Bitwarden Send. Yeah, okay. I like Wormhole a lot. Wes and I use it frequently to move files back and forth, and I think the encryption's probably adequate for what you're looking for. And it means, you know, you can transfer that file.

And then once you're done, walk away. And one part I really like is just that, you know, it's a Python program. So to Brent's point earlier, it's really just like a pip install away. And that means it can work on your Mac, on your Linux, or even your Windows box. And it does. And it's also packaged by everything, too. So, you know, brew Linux packages. They've all got it.

And the syntax is so easy. It's wormhole send. Then you point at the file. If I were a little more paranoid or doing it for myself, I might just use tailscale send since I have that on all my machines now. And that's kind of like airdrop, but using tailscale on the backend. Or, you know, maybe you can look into bitward and send. I think that'd be another option as well. Just kind of depends on what your security requirements are. I have another one to throw in there as well. Simply wormhole.app. And I think what really gets me there is just really the background. Seems to work fine. And of course, with lots of these tools, you can host your own

little relay server if you need to. And that's another way to add on some layers of security. Oh, whoa. See sneaky double boost this week from Frozier with 5,000 additional sats. sneaky double boost this week from Frozier with 5,000 additional sats. DWM was very difficult with NixOS for me because it's meant to be configured by the user in the source code before it's built. So I gave up and I used awesome WN. Here's my config. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, I could see that being a little tricky. You know, I mean, Nix is great at building stuff, but then you got to kind of maintain your own version and hook that up to everything. Surely possible.

But as a former awesome user myself, love it. And thanks for sharing the codes and the bits. That's great. Yeah, we'll put a link to that in the show notes if people want to check that out. Wolfman 2G1 boosts in with 1500 sats you're doing a good job just got my ham license and it got me thinking is any of the jb crew amateur radio operators oh no another ham question what's happening i know i think our next boost is about

ham radio too ask my little read that i'll be 1984 boost in with a thousand cents. First boost ever! Heyo! Hey! Congratulations. Hey, you know what? You're doing a good job, too. You're doing a good job. Oppie goes on, I also would be interested in a ham radio discussion. Here's a link to a ham site with some dedicated ham Linux

distros. We'll keep that one in the notes. Nice. Hmm. Okay. Alright, alright. Well, you know, something that we should mention on air and rustic cast of Versa boosted with 2000 sats Linux and ham. Did you know there's a whole podcast around this called Linux in the ham shack? Maybe a little special with Noah would be cool. That is the best Linux podcast name I've ever heard. That is pretty good. And you know what? It would be know what? It would make so much sense to do it with Noah. So I think that's something.

Maybe that's how we'll handle it. We'll talk a little software-defined radio, because the Matrix room has been talking about this quite a bit in the LUP feedback rooms. And they think we should do something around software-defined radio. So maybe we bring in a little Noah. We get a little brown bear going on the topic, and we have some fun.

I could see that coming down in the future. So keep your radios tuned. You never never know there might be something in the near future rusta also boosted with another 2000 sats it's a dubs he writes was the dev one unboxed in the bat cave i swear i hear lots of water running yeah you know i meant to address that when we recorded the dev one unboxing um brent has a urination issue it's true it's just all that hydration so we've rigged the studio up special to handle it because you know there's sanitation issues no i have a frog tank in the studio in the living room and we were doing the unboxing and it's one of those things that i'm totally used

to because it's been in there forever but it does sound a little obnoxious in that particular recording it sounded like you set your recorder right on top of it it was so bad i apologize about that um you know just think of a little ambience rusta you know picture a little froggy in there swimming around while we're unboxing the dev one it's pretty great also i just want to say a big thank you to some folks who boosted in but we didn't read their boost on the air. There's so many that come in. We are just selecting some of them now. But just a couple of quick shout-outs here.

90 sats from Retro Penguin. A long-time first-time sending in their very first boost. We got 50 sats from CouchFox, who earned his first sats that day and then sent them into the show. Absolutely amazing. It's so great. And then we got 9,000 sats from Soltros, who just got himself an HPX360 convertible laptop. And he's running Debian testing on that thing with GNOME. And he says the touchscreen support works.

I like it. Fancy. I i like it fancy i'm loving that i'm loving that keep keep the hardware reports coming in folks we can just slowly but surely let people know what's working out there so they know what hardware to get if you'd like to boost into the show go get a new podcasting app at new podcast apps.com get one that supports podcasting 2.0 like fountain or podverse which is gpl and available for the web android ios and like Fountain or Podverse, which is GPL and available for the web, Android, iOS, and it's an F-Droid. It's right there in F-Droid too.

So go check that out. And if you really want to nerd out, you can use Boost CLI or Breeze. And then you don't got to change your podcast app. I'll tell you what. And we should mention too, thank you everybody who's boosted in. We've been doing splits with Brent so that way he has some sats for his gas tank.

In office hours 13, we bought some steaks with those sats too since we had a few extra ones and we grilled up some steaks for everybody. And then the barbecue caught fire. Yep. The barbecue caught fire. Like not intentionally,

not like we turned the burners on kind of fire, but like an emergency fire where we were afraid to open the hood because we thought we might get back drafted kind of fire. Thankfully, we saved most of the food. And we talk all about it in Office Hours. Pretty great clip. If you're curious how we convert the sats

into real life goods, well, we just send Brent out on the street and he comes back with cash. I'm not exactly sure what he does. We don't ask. No, we thought about doing that. But instead, we went for the easier option. We went with BitRefill.

And BitRefill.com lets you actually use Bitcoin on chain or Lightning, and then you buy a gift card, and then you spend that. So like Chevron, Texaco, Instacart, the grocery store, banks, there's so many gift cards on there. And so it was actually pretty trivial for us to be able to convert those sats and then, you know, put them in Instacart. And we ordered groceries for the Airbnb. That was something else that we were able to do with those sats. So thank you everyone. That split worked out fantastic. Not only did it give us the funds

to get Brent down here, but then we're able to treat the crew to some steaks as well. And, you know, sometimes we did that just kind of on a whim, like we weren't even really planning it, but it was like, we got a couple of hours tonight. Let's just get this, let's do it. And we just had a lot of fun. So thank you, everybody. That was really a treat. We have a pretty special pick. I don't know if this is for everybody, but those of you who are into this kind of thing are going to absolutely love this. Up on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory GitHub page, they have the open source rover project yep that's right the open source rover project and it has so many goodies on here about the little rovers out there including just like stats and specs and information on how to build your own and even how to emulate one and control

it with an android device an xbox 360 controller and a raspberry pi that is so incredible goodness it's so perfect so we'll link to this in the show notes you can go check it out because it looks like a lot of fun even if you just want to geek out on the 3d models that they have there and the different parts it's really amazing that you can build this with just off-the-shelf stuff now you know if we built one for the studio we'd have a little company for the days that levi is not here with us and maybe we could teach this one to bring us a cider hmm we could just build a little cooler into its back oh now you're thinking you know i've been pretty impressed at jpl's open source mentality tim's mentioned several times how much he loves that uh paradigm and way of working with

software and hardware but they just really prove it with their GitHub page. There's like projects galore on there that you can dive into. Chris, you and I had a blast just trying to pick a pick for this episode. And I mean, this one's pretty great, but there's a lot of other stuff in there. So there's a lot we could have picked. Totally. Yeah. Why didn't you pick this automated low latency global glacier flow and elevation change data set? I mean, come on. Obviously, we were saving it for next week. Spoiler. You know, speaking of next week, hopefully, we're back in studio.

We should be back at our regular live time, which is noon Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern, over at jupiter.tube. And, you know, things are just going to be back to normal. No more on-the-road shows. Just, really, now that we're back, it's going to be time to start working on the taxis. But I'll still be on the road.

That's true. But you'll be at the studio. It's home away from home. It's like home 2.0. Home B for you. You know, I'm telling you what. Home, but with better internet. Home with benefits.

Podcasting benefits. So join us on jupiter.to for that. See you next week. Same bad time, same bad station. And, of course, links to what we talked about today will be at linuxunplugged.com slash 478er. Same bad time, same bad station. them and they are investing in our ongoing content. And last but not least, there is more Linux content out there and it's going to be a big episode this week. So go check out Linux Action News. LinuxActionNews.com. Don't miss it. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in this week's episode of the Unplugged program. And we'll see you right back here next Sunday. Sunday! Thank you. you