LINUX Unplugged - Episode 105: Vulkan the Metal Slayer | LUP 105

Episode Date: August 12, 2015

We chat with the chief technology officer behind Mycroft, an open source artificial intelligence for everyone. Then discuss Android’s adoption of Vulkan and the major impact it could have on desktop Linux & the nice new Linux exclusive features coming to Firefox.Plus we revisit file syncing under Linux & discuss the really great options that have cropped up recently.

You know about Amazon Echo, and you got Alexa, you got Google Now, you got Cortana, you got Siri. How about Mycroft? You ready for this? Mycroft, an open source artificial intelligence for everyone. 31 backers. They're trying to get $99,000. They currently have about $4,000. 29 days to go on this Kickstarter.

You know we got to play this video. This is like an open source. Here's it says it uses natural language. This is a natural language. You speak to it. Internet of Things device built on a Raspberry Pi. It can play media, controls lights, and more. They have all these nice little logos here.

Now I'm going to play the video for you, and then we'll talk more about it. So it's supposed to be powered by all open source technology and all this good stuff. So let's take a look. Go, go, go. Sarah, it's time to wake up. The weather in Lawrence is 73 and sunny. It will be warm today with a 10% chance of rain. Mycroft, start some coffee, will you? be warm today with a 10% chance of rain. Mycroft, play the best of the 80s on Pandora.

Ha ha. All right. All right. Okay, go. Okay. Heating up in here. I like her tux shirt, too. Mycroft, play Avengers Assembly.

So it starts a Netflix video. As she eats her breakfast of something. Is that a cookie? What is that she ate for breakfast? Toast me. Mycroft, what's on the schedule for today? Sarah has a meeting with Tim at 10am.

Alice has soccer at 4.30pm. Tuck's in the window. We arrive at the airport at 7pm. Tucks in the window. Mycroft. Lock up for the day. Turns off the coffee pot, sets the temp and locks the doors. That's Mycroft. An open source home personal assistant kind of thing. Introducing Mycroft An open source home personal assistant Introducing Mycroft

The first open source artificial intelligence I just said that It connects to your wifi And it's so affordable that you can have one in each room From the kitchen to the living room That's key right Mycroft listens for his name So anytime you want to play music

Lock a door, check the weather Or talk to to have that. Mycroft listens for his name. So anytime you want to play music, lock a door, check the weather, or talk to another room, simply say Mycroft. Mycroft is an open source, open hardware product based on the Raspberry Pi 2, which means anyone can contribute new features, develop modules, change, or even redistribute Mycroft software. Missing a key feature? Just develop your own solution and contribute it back to the Mycroft community. And since Mycroft is based on Raspberry Pi, one of the most popular open hardware platforms in the world, there are already thousands of well-documented ways to extend and improve Mycroft's hardware. That's neat.

Upon delivery, Mycroft will have 20 great modules, and more features will be coming online over time. And because it's open source, anyone with an idea can develop and share new modules with the Mycroft community. That's why we're here today. We've assembled a great team of engineers, designers, and business professionals who are experienced and qualified. About another minute left in the video here. I'll just jump ahead

and see if there's anything outrageously cool about it. But it does look like actually there's some fun left in the video if you guys want to go check it out. So they have the call and they talk a little bit more in the video, too, about the Mycroft AI. They're also open sourcing the artificial intelligence software that powers this thing. So it's not just the cool hardware. And they have different levels. It looks like if you want to get any hardware, you've got to get it at $99.

And they have just a few left. Oh, no, they have a lot left. 488 out of 500. And that includes a Mycroft unit, the enclosure with the LED display, a Raspberry Pi 2, a Wi-Fi module, or, well, Wi-Fi, yeah. Standard Mycroft backplate, Ethernet port. Oh, interesting. It also has Ethernet and a

DC 5-volt barrel plug. And then they have a $120 or $130 one. Looks like they'll be ready next summer. Wow, look at this. They have one that includes HDMI out, too. Yeah, it looks like next summer, yeah. So what do you think, Wes?

You know, it might be worth it just if all that AI software, just getting that kind of stuff out with open licenses is pretty interesting. Geez, yeah. In fact, one of the things I've thought about when the Amazon Echo came out is, man, I really wish open source had a solid answer here. And, you know, listener Scoogie Sprite and Seth, who was in the chat room

or in the mumble room a week or two ago telling us about his radio controller project, he loves his Echo. And he says it's really, really slick. And it kind of makes me want one a little bit.

I kind of like the, you know, the Tony Stark kind of Jarvis-type future. We really do need a competitor in the free software world that can modular, supports people who want to customize and add their own features. All right, so what do you think, Charum? What do you think? You guys, any doubters?

I think I found the setup for the new horror story that I'm going to be writing. Oh, wow. Geez. All right, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. I just want to say that actually the name Microsoft Project was used before for a plug-in list for Firefox. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, so they go through. Oh, interesting. Yeah, so they go through, also it includes Roku integration, Chromecast integration, smartphone app integration, and a lot of different home automation systems. They're really kind of slick, I think.

I would just love to see, I'm really enthusiastic just because I'd love to see something like this that's open source that I could be proud to have and not be a little creeped out by. And it'd be really interesting to see if it does get funded, how quickly, if they get enough community support to make it continue to be relevant, because that might be a little creeped out by. And it'd be really interesting to see if it does get funded, how quickly, if they get enough community support to make it continue to be relevant, because that might be where

it's, you know, where it can actually last, rather than the smart TV syndrome. This is Linux Unplugged, episode 105 for August 11th, 2015. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's ready for the Vulcan revolution. Live long and prosper. My name is Chris. And this is Wes. Hey there, Wes. I'll let you do it yourself this week. I figured we'd change it up a little bit.

So, Wes, I'm really glad to have you here. I guess last week you were off getting married or something crazy like that. I sure was. Lots of fun. You made it back for a great show this week, Wes. Episode 105. We're going to talk about something pretty cool right off the top. Artificial intelligence that's open source in just a moment. And then after that, we're going to revisit the topic of file synchronization under Linux. It's really heated up. And Wes here has a pretty cool solution with SyncThing and another open source tool that sort of stitches all of his machines together,

regardless if it's on the LAN or a DigitalOcean droplet or his Android phone. And then he can use SyncThing across all of them. We're going to talk about that in the show. It's really neat. Plus, there's a new version of SpiderOak out that has some specific improvements for Linux, and also the Ubuntu 1 sync source code went open source this week. Then, later in the show,

Android has just announced support for Vulkan, the graphics API. This is huge, huge news for Linux gaming, for desktop Linux gaming. We'll talk about why. And then at the end of the show, our friends over at Firefox have been listening to the Unplugged program and they have a new update out specifically to address some of the issues we've complained about under Linux in Firefox. So if you are a Firefox user under Linux or consider trying out Firefox

again under Linux, you might want to stay tuned because it's a pretty slick update for Linux users. Just don't mention it to Chris. I mean, literally, slick users. Yeah, don't tell me. Don't tell me because I like slick features. I'm a slick operator. Woo, Wes. I'm a slick operator.

You sure are. Yeah, all right. So in the pre-show, we were talking about this really cool Kickstarter called the Mycroft. And in between, literally in between a few moments ago and now since we started the show, we've had somebody from the Kickstarter join us in the mumble room. I believe he's their chief technology officer. So I want to bring him onto the show right now. Ryan, welcome to Linux Unplugged. Welcome back, I should say. Yeah, it's good to be back. I love this show so much.

Okay. So Ryan, in your own words, what is the Mycroft device and what's your involvement with the project? So in my own words, have you ever wanted to walk into your house and have it be like you're on the Starship Enterprise? Yes. Every day. Well, this project allows you to do that. It's an artificial intelligence for controlling your entire home from entertainment to your appliances, entire home from entertainment to your appliances, to your lights, to your music. Everything can run through Mycroft because it's powered by Linux. And how much of an infrastructure is there to just like if I'm a consumer, if I had something like this, I set it up, put it on my table, am I ready to start using it? Or is it like I have to write the apps for it? Absolutely. You do not have to write anything if you don't want to that's actually

a lot of questions i've gotten is okay it's open source drop the code on us right now and we're like no i we want to but we are putting in place ways to easily manage it and contribute to the project and and and we before we ever started on this we actually this came out of a self selfish endeavor we wanted we had this place it's a maker space here in lawrence kansas and we wanted to power the whole place using an artificial intelligence and so we went through all these different open source projects that were already out there you know this personal assistance type things and none of them did what we wanted. We wanted to control the lights.

We wanted to be able to add new modules and essentially make it power the entire space. And everything was limited or really hard to install or really hard to configure. And we were like, this is not a good shape for this to be in. I mean, we've already got things like Google Now and Siri and Echo coming out,

and they're all super tied into their own ecosystems. They're proprietary. And we were like, this is something open source can actually do better. Well, and so a big differentiator here, and maybe also the biggest question mark, is it's running a local AI, a local AI that seems to be powering

a lot of the recognition and all of that. Is that all done locally? Is there no cloud component to this? There is a cloud component. And we've received a lot of questions about that. We use PocketSphinx for the keyword recognition. PocketSphinx is a local library that analyzes, you know, it doesn't go anywhere.

It's just listening for its keyword. Until then, you can say anything and it's not going anywhere. And that's good because you don't want everything you say in your house to be streamed up to a server. Right. So the voice processing for the trigger words is done locally. Yeah. But at that point, we actually send it off to a few different places and essentially whichever comes back first we analyze it for quality like how how accurate do we think this is and then

you know depending on how accurate that first speech to text thing is and we have our own ways of kind of figuring that out we either accept it or we wait for the next one to come in. And we're hoping that people will be able to make decisions for themselves, at least our technical users, for which services they want to use for analyzing the queries and then go from there. The machine itself actually decides what to do with the query when it gets it back. So when it analyzes what you say, and this is really complicated, and I'm sorry, there's not really a great way to encapsulate this into an easy five-second plug. No, it's actually fascinating.

So the decision, the action taken isn't made up in the cloud service. It's the answers provided to the local box, and that's where the decision is made on what to do. That's correct. That's correct. That's nice. It comes back with a confidence. It says,

this is what we think it said. And then the local machine goes through its modules very, very quickly to decide which one applies to that. So if Chris Fisher says, I want you to play the Deadpool trailer on my TV in the living room, it's going to come back. It's going to look at the media module. The media module is going to say, I'm pretty sure he wants YouTube. Then the YouTube module is going to be activated, which is going to cast that to the Chromecast in your living room TV. That's pretty slick. And I guess the nice thing here is if this really reaches its goal, regardless of how well the device does, there could be a significant contribution by having this open source AI project. So can you tell me more about that? Like, is it a server client thing?

Is it all open? Is there a proprietary aspect to it? What's going on with this AI and what's it called exactly? So the AI itself is called Mycroft. It's named after Mycroft Holmes, which is Sherlock Holmes' brother. It's also, there's this book called The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which has an artificial intelligence in it named Mycroft. And Mycroft is important because Mycroft, being Sherlock's home brother, was supposed to be super intelligent.

He was supposed to be able to just, you know, he had an excellent memory, was able to just pull information out of his head at a moment's notice. And so that's where the inspiration came from for the name. The actual device itself is is completely open open hardware open software and the entire unit and everything related to it is going to be open the only thing i can imagine uh maybe having some parts being held back would be some of our back-end infrastructure for um you know, you know, like we want everything that comes through our servers to be encrypted and anonymized. Right.

And so I don't know how much of our backend we're going to open source right away. I, being that I've, your show actually was something that I grew with as I grew in my Linux abilities. I started listening to it probably, oh God, like I don't want to guess how many years ago, but, um, and so my goal is as a result of being kind of raised in this culture and having like a lot of my, my, um, tech knowledge grow

with the open source community and my involvement in it, I would eventually like to get everything that we, that we create open source. But, um, there's also, we, we have to find the best way to do that and we have to do it at the right time or else people will be like,

this software is crap. And so the, uh, the way it interfaces with home automation devices, uh, is that through like the APIs that those vendors provide? Like SmartThings Hub or Philips Hues? Essentially, it's just interfacing with those APIs that exist out there already.

Yes, that's exactly right. Anything your Linux box can do, Mycroft can do because it's built on top of Raspberry Pi. And so anything you can run on a Linux box, the way that the modules are created is it can just send off a command through the Raspberry Pi to a device. How is that done from a user perspective

in a device that's all done with voice commands? Is there some sort of web interface? I know it's getting down to the details. I'm just curious, how does an end user do interface with something like this so there there are two ways i see it there's the for grandma you know and then there's for someone like chris fisher and grandma will use an application to install modules that others have created okay and then when they're installed like if she installs pandora it'll say on her on her phone or on her computer it will say you know log in

okay we've imported your stations you know and then and it'll say would you like to create custom names for these stations you know beyond their normal name so if you say, play my jam, it will go directly to the station you've designated as my jam. But for Chris Fisher, you might want to actually create a module that does something related to your studio over there. And the way that that works is, you can create a module and install it locally on your machine just by logging into your machine and then if you want to contribute it back to the community you can and we'll have a community repo where people can contribute their own modules back we at the makerspace we have a whole bunch of drones and we fly them and we've also got them so we can design flight paths for them and so right

now we're working on a module where we say mycroft launched the drone to do a perimeter check and he goes on a predefined uh flight path and so um so that's the point though is i was getting very upset that i could get an echo or you know one of these other devices in my house but i would have no control over what services i could use with it yeah it'd be whatever Amazon told me I could use. And that's where I think the big difference is. People are like, I don't understand what's different. And it's like, well, if you get an Amazon Echo, Amazon is going to control every single thing that can interface with. There's that, you know, they're going to, because they're proprietary, because they're this ecosystem that's going to

put their own products and services ahead of others, you know, that's something you don't run into with Mycroft because Mycroft is open and we're not going to prioritize anybody because, frankly, we can't. You know, people will be able to install whatever modules they want when we don't want to limit what they can install on their own device. $99,000? Is that enough to build an open source artificial intelligence and manufacture and ship units like this out to customers? So that's a really good question.

The $99,000, so we've already bankrolled this a lot. We come from a background of most of the people on the team, this isn't their first rodeo, this isn't their first company. And our CEO, Joshua Montgomery, has been featured in Ars Technica and a few other big online publications for his work on the Wicked Fiber initiative in Lawrence, Kansas to get one gigabit internet service to everybody in the in the town and so um we've had we've had experience and we all come from different backgrounds and maybe uh in different companies that we've played a role in in starting and everything what this says ninety nine thousand dollars yes will allow us to ship our first units you know that would be great but it will also allow us to be able to have that reassurance that we're doing something that people want and we're ready to invest more in it because of that. You know, we think that,

first off, we have a little bit of, you know, funds that we're willing to pour into the project if we know that there's some actual desire for a product like this. And secondly, if we actually do fund, that allows us to go to investors and say, hey, you know, we want to take this to the next level. And here's the here's the interest, you know, and everything. But I would love to see us get, I'd love to see us beat our Kickstarter goal and have enough resources to actually completely fund this from our fans, you know, and not have to go to investors

if we don't have to. But, you know, we've already planned for the next step in the event that we fund and everybody will be able to get their unit and we'll be very in pretty decent shape for a good long time so i would say um if something like this interests you head over there and back it yeah and if you have any questions you know hit us up you can message us on kickstarter i'm in the chat you know occasionally but you can also find me on google Plus and Twitter,

and just ask me a question. I'm more than happy to answer them. I don't know if you're going to be around for the whole show, but if you are, I was thinking maybe we could do some Q&A with the Mumble Room in the post show and see if maybe people have some questions and answer them. Give people time to check over the page and maybe come up with some questions, because it looks really cool.

I mean, I'm really excited about an open source artificial. Yeah, we both are. Yeah, I think that could be big. And so even nothing else right there, I'd love to see that. I'd love to have a little unit like that in the studio too. It just seems fun. Have it work. Come in here in the morning and be like, Mycroft, Mycroft, activate studio.

And it turns on the Hughes lights and it turns on the studio, like all that kind of stuff. That's actually something called a scene and i'm glad that you said that because you can set things that are called scenes which are multiple presets so you can say something like you know activate studio and it turns on the lights starts up you know certain machines gets your coffee going plays like an awesome music tone in the background exactly and so and that's something that's that's really interesting that we've had a lot of fun working on and uh and so really i know you're gonna maybe be doing a road trip at some point that's that's there's a rumor about that if you work your way through kansas we'd love to take you around our space and show you all the different things that you can do with Mycroft. And maybe even send you with a

unit of your own once you leave. Alright, we'll have to talk more. And I want to come in and be like, Mycroft, activate Star Trek mode. I have all my doors in my house have to make the Star Trek sound effect and the bridge sounds are in the background. Red alert, Star Trek.

Yeah, there you go. That'd be great. Chris, if you back the Kickstarter, I'll make you a Star Trek fan. I'll personally make you a Star Trek fan. I love it. I love it. Alright, thank you. Alright, so if you want to stick around, we'll do some follow-up questions in the post-show. But I, first,

before we go any further, I have to throw something down right now, right here on the show, you guys. The Gnome Foundation is very excited in their own words. They are excited to announce publicly the search for an executive director of the foundation. And I say search no further. Ladies and gentlemen, right here I have your director, Chris Fisher. He is happy to step up and fill the role of the Nome director.

I second that nomination. Thank you. Thank you. The executive director. Now, let's see. What do I have to do here? The executive director is critical for the foundation. That sounds like a good role for. Thank you, thank you. The Executive Director. Now, let's see, what do I have to do here? The Executive Director is critical for the foundation.

That sounds like a good role for me. This is the public face of Gnome. I could do that. You love Gnome. And I have a face. And I have a camera. So I could be a public face. I'm a liaison

to the Gnome Advisory Board. Well, as long as they're okay with a little bit of an ass-kicking, I think I could do that. Yeah, I could do that. All right, the primary fundraiser

for the foundation. Well, friends, let me tell you about ting.com. See, I could do that, right? Maybe I could get ting to sponsor the gnome foundation. That'd be super cool. All right. Yeah. I'm in for that. All right. Yeah, I can do all of these things. So, uh, uh, no, hold on a second. What's this say? Oh, the executive director will execute the daily business of the foundation and work with the directors of the GNOME Foundation on a regular basis. That sounds like a lot of work. That sounds like a lot of work. Wes, you want this job?

I don't think so. All right, well, anyways, if you want that gig, the GNOME Foundation is officially looking for a director. And I don't know. It's always kind of weird when you have to publicly announce these kinds of things. Yeah, it makes you think, like, have they been looking and not finding?

Yeah, exactly. You're like, yeah, they haven't got anybody yet. I do have a gnome face. Thanks. Jordan says I have a face for gnome. Yeah. Could I manage that token ring, says Ann Podcasting. Well, maybe I could just do a podcast about gnome.

Yeah. There you go. Solves that problem. And I'll just, every now and then. Yeah. Widget Cyber says, but you have to cyber everything, and we need more hacked toasters. Oh, okay. I could put gnome on a toasters. Oh, okay. I could put Gnome on a toaster.

Yeah, definitely. All right, well, before we get into, actually, Wes's super cool sync solution. Oh, and Wimpy showed up, too, so maybe Wimpy will be happy to talk to us about sync thing. And I see Poppy's here. Maybe Poppy can rub in her face that Ubuntu 1 sync has been open source. So that'll be good. All right, it should be a good segment coming up. I think that'll be really nice.

And actually, Wes was teasing me on the pre-show, I think before we turned on the microphones, right? So I don't even think the pre-show folks tuned in know your secret to how you make Sync Thing rock so hard. Ooh, secret, secret. I'm really looking forward to this. After you told me this, I'm like, I'm totally doing this. I might even do a segment on just this one piece of it.

It's so exciting. So stay tuned, because Sync Thing just got really super cool in my book. And plus, like I said, there's been some other updates in the space, like Syncing Solutions just went from ho-hum in the last six months to pretty badass. I think they're badass. I think even the commercial solutions, but

hold on, I'm getting ahead of myself first. We've got to talk about DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean.com. Use the promo code D-O-Unplugged to get a $10 credit. D-O-Unplugged over at DigitalOcean.com. That supports this show, keeps us going, and lets DigitalOcean know you heard about it here. So why DigitalOcean? What is it? It's Linux infrastructure on demand. If you need to deploy a server, if you need to deploy an application,

don't really worry about the details there. DigitalOcean has a VPS infrastructure, and they call those VPSs droplets. And the reason why they do that is because they're a little more, well, they're a lot more flexible than a regular VPS. You can scale them up as you need. The pricing is very straightforward. If you go to DigitalOcean's site, they have it broken out. And it starts at $5, then you go to $10, you go to $20, $40. And each along those steps, you get an increase in your CPU, your hard drive, your total transfer, all of that. And they also even offer hourly pricing that start at below a penny an hour.

I mean, that's kind of crazy. So that's a great way to do testing or if you just need to scale up on demand. So that's a really nice thing about DigitalOcean is it's Linux infrastructure in a really well built out cloud, all backed by Linux KVM. And it's super reliable. They have data centers in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, London, and Germany. They're really great connections. Like the one in Germany has 40 gigabit E connections to each hypervisor.

Ooh. Yeah, that's something. And, you know, the connections on these machines are nuts. So we're going to talk about syncing here in a minute. And I've used it a lot for own cloud file sync. And one of the really nice things, I've had to re-sync like an entire huge directory in own cloud a few times, and being able to pull that down from my DigitalOcean

droplet as fast as my ISP connection can take it is nice. It's just very it feels like you're getting a high class, well put together system. I really like that. And so they also have one of the best interfaces to manage this out of anyone in the business. Their control panel is super intuitive and they

have an API to take all the functionality of that control panel and really push it into something bigger. Oh, you've got to love that API. Yeah, because you've got great apps built around that. You can snap into your management infrastructure. And the thing is, like, okay, so I've told you all of this and you're like, well, this sounds like a really great expensive solution. And the nuts part is it starts at $5 a month.

$5 a month, you get 512 megabytes of RAM, a 20 gigabyte SSD, because they're all SSDs, one CPU, and a terabyte of transfer. And if you use our promo code DOUnplugged, D-O-unplugged, one word, you get a $10 credit. Try out DigitalOcean two months for free. DigitalOcean.com.

And a big thanks to DigitalOcean for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. And thanks to you guys for using the promo code D-O-unplugged. DigitalOcean.com. All right, let's start with the really good news, the open source news. You know, the thing that I think is really, I think a lot of people are happy to see. Canonical announced that they are open sourcing the file sync code for Ubuntu 1.

They say, today we're happy to be open sourcing the biggest piece of Ubuntu 1's file syncing service. The code we're releasing is the server side of the desktop clients connected when syncing local or remote changes. This is so nice. The client side code is really, really, really, I think, a weak area where my own cloud setup failed me. The code is where most of the innovation and hard work went throughout the years, where we faced most of the scaling challenges and on the basis of whether other components were

built upon. They've released it under the AGPL version 3, hoping it'll be useful for developers to read through Fork on their own projects. That is so cool. Popey, do you have any inside dope or comments or just opinions to share on this particular story? I think this is... Only, you know, we kept getting nagged about this for a long time because, you know, it was actually quite a long time ago. We said we would do this, and even our CEO posted a blog post that said we would do it.

Even our CEO posted a blog post that said we would do it. And we got a little bit of stick for shutting down the service and not making the code available immediately so people could spin up their own. But it talks a little bit in the blog post about how they had to do a bit of code cleanup and stuff. And they just didn't have the resources to do it because they were all busy doing other stuff. But they did in the end. And it's available. And it's on Launchpad. And if you want, it's on GitHub as well. I heard some people say, oh, maybe own cloud will use use this it's probably not likely because i think they use a c

sync or something under the hood i can't remember i don't know but i mean i mean yeah they may get some inspiration from it they may be able to learn something from it even if they don't actually fork the code or use it in any way you know the code's out there someone may um and that's good that's what it's there for yeah that's really. It's great to see that happen. And so I don't really talk about my use of SpiderOak much. I talk more about my use of BitTorrent Sync and Dropbox on the show. But SpiderOak actually is when I'm using anything that is a peer-to-peer sync solution like BitTorrent Sync or SyncThing, I use SpiderOak to sort of have my quote-unquote off-site backup copy. I have one copy on a DigitalOcean droplet, but that's a production copy that I sync to. And so I want to have something that has off-site revision changes,

and I want something I can trust because I have pictures of my kids and stuff in there. SpiderOak. And the only downside to SpiderOak has been its atrocious, horrible, awful, real bad, slow UI. And it's so bad, in fact, that I just opted not to use it on any of my computers except for my one main most powerful workstation because I felt like it could handle the luggage hug. But yesterday, they announced a new modernized look and feel which includes a new UI under Linux.

They're calling it SpiderOak1. They're also going to provide a SpiderOak1 backup and sync product for groups and other enterprises. They'll be looking out for that. Here's a new feature for Linux users that's actually kind of nice for those of us who have multiple machines or those of us under maybe Linux terminal services or anybody who has a shared Linux box.

They fixed an issue with Linux users that would sometime prevent multiple users of a local machine from using SpiderOak concurrently. So that's been resolved. Like if you sit down on somebody's machine and they already logged in on one X session and you log in on another X session and you from using SpiderOak concurrently, so that's been resolved. Like, if you sit down on somebody's machine and they already logged in on one X session and you log in on another X session and you both start SpiderOak, there would be some issues. Something else that's kind of nice is they've upgraded the toolchain with updates

to Qt, Python Qt, Python, and OpenSSL. On Linux systems, a symlink is placed in the previous location where a path used to be, so they've moved locations, but they thought ahead and symlinked to old locations, including cron jobs and stuff, will continue to operate. So if you've croned SpiderOak stuff in scripts, it's not going to break with this update, even though they're moving file locations.

So it's nice to see them thinking of Linux users pretty thoroughly, it seems. Definitely. First class support, or almost. Yeah, it's not open source, all of it, but components of it are. It's a pretty good product, so it's nice to see them releasing Linux support. And then then last but not least i was kind of hoping uh wimpy would share a little bit about his more recent successes with sync thing and just kind of an update if it's still if he's still recommending it because i know we've kind of you and i have uh sort of shared our woes over bit torrent and their their changes to a paid model and then you win then i sort of fell back

to dropbox and you kind of fell back to Dropbox and you kind of moved forward to SyncThing, Wimpy, and have been pretty happy with the result. And so I kind of wanted to check back in with you and find out how you use it and what kind of challenges you had to overcome if you want to share them with us. Yeah, sure.

So, well, I'm using SyncThing on some Debian servers, some Ubuntu servers, some Ubuntu desktops, and Arch Linux workstation as well. So across those different platforms, it all works just fine. On the desktops, I'm also using SyncThing GTK, which is a front end to SyncThing, which makes it much more familiar, you know, if you've used Dropbox or anything like that and the UI and how to add shares. So this is an alternative to the web UI, so you don't have to use the web UI. Yeah, so what it does is it sits in front of SyncThing.

It uses the SyncThing API locally. You can still open the web interface. And all of the same facilities are exposed through that user interface, but they're just wrapped in a desktop GUI. So everything you see works. And one of the nice things is they've added all of the integration for the different file managers. So they've got plugins in the file managers for Kaja and Nemo and Nautilus.

So you get like sync status icons in the folders and whatnot? Yeah, you get those right-click content menus, you know, add this to sync and all the rest of it. So it all works very well and what has improved is you've now got this concept of one of the sync thing nodes being an introducer so when you say this is an introducer when you add a client to it it then tells all of the other nodes this new box has been added to the cluster do you want to have it added as well which alleviates some of the key exchange but it's still not you know it's it requires i

approve it but i wouldn't it makes it much more seamless i just basically have to click hitting yes yes yes yes yes yes yes right but, right? But if you've got five machines, for example, you've got to go to all of those five machines and at some point you've got to go and approve it. That's a bit of a bummer. Because I'm talking hundreds of people. Yeah, it's not

a suitable replacement for how you were using BitTorrent Sync. You know, you can't use it to syndicate content in that fashion. Okay. But speed-wise and moving large and small files around, everything's worked good there? Yeah, it's not eaten any data.

It synchronizes the files just fine. There's a number of different versioning schemes you can use. So you can have no versioning. So if you delete stuff, there's no history of that. Or if you modify files, there'll be no history. And then there are different versions of how it retains history and how many versions it will retain history for. And you can configure that on a per-node basis.

So that's quite nice. So if you know that one of your nodes, you really don't need the history, you can turn it off there. You can also designate one of the nodes, the master copy. So it will syndicate the content everywhere, but you can't delete or alter the content

on the cluster nodes that aren't the master copy. So the master copy is the read-write copy, and everything else is a read-only copy. So that's quite useful because if I want to use it, for example, to back up the family photographs off-site, I know that my master copy is authoritative, and I know that if anything untoward should happen on one of the nodes and I accidentally delete a load of stuff,

I haven't just deleted the master. Oh. Yeah, it's very handy. Yeah, so Wes here is also using SyncThing quite a bit. And so I'm curious, is your experience kind of reflecting Wimpy's so far? Oh, yeah, definitely. I think Wimpy covered most of the key features.

The introducer especially has been very helpful. One thing I'm curious, is your experience kind of reflecting Wimpy's so far? Oh yeah, definitely. I think Wimpy covered most of the key features. The introducer especially has been very helpful. One thing I'm actively looking at is it's mostly just configured with an XML file under.config slash sync thing. So I'm working on trying to get that into Ansible. I think it should be possible to be able to replicate those files so that you could set up nodes and have them added

without having to deploy with Ansible. So you could configure all the ones you wanted, which ones you wanted those added to, and then hit deploy and have them all spread out without. That might make it a little easier. I think that's the one limiting factor. Wimpy, what are you doing for your setup when you're going across multiple machines? What's your solution for that? Are you just doing it by hand each time?

On the desktop machines, I eventually visit those at some point and I'll just click a button. It doesn't matter that there's a node waiting to introduce itself. When that machine gets turned on and used, just accept. On the servers, I'm using SSH tunnels. So I create a connection to the web UI on sync thing on the remote server instances. So I actually connect to the web UI in order to accept the new nodes and to change the, you know, which computers are in the sync network for that particular folder.

Because on each node, you can say who's, you know, participating in this synchronization. So you don't have to have all of them synchronizing all of the folders. You can be discreet about that. Yeah, I back up my phone's pictures this way, and so I don't want my gigs of pictures going to every one of my nodes. You can just easily choose. I want it to go to my home machine, I want it to go to

my bigger droplet, etc. And the apps on the phone are pretty good for that, too? Honestly, I've just been using the web interface on the phone as well. I use the web interface for pretty much all of my devices. Really? Yeah. The app on the phone are pretty good for that too. Honestly, I've just been using the web interface on the phone as well. I use the web interface for pretty much all of my devices. The app on the phone is pretty good. I'm still kind of playing with the always on. I've had some issues, but that might

be the state of the phone. So let's use this moment to jump in. You do something kind of cool you were telling me about on the pre-show. You are looping in something called Tink, T-I-N-C. And Tink is a virtual private network daemon that uses tunneling encryption to create an open-source secure private network between hosts.

It's kind of like, I don't know if mesh VPN is the right phrase or what you want to call it. It's almost like a peer-to-peer VPN because you can have a bunch of different desperate machines that will interconnect over this sort of ad hoc VPN. So imagine a machine on your LAN, a digital ocean droplet, and an Android device, right? Exactly.

And can you explain a little bit about how you use Tink and how different ways to use Tink? Because you were saying there's a couple of different ways you could use it and how you're using it. Yeah, you know,

you can use it kind of like a traditional site-to-site VPN or like a layer-to-bridge. So you can have it, you know, you can use it to play StarCraft with your friends over broadcast. For LAN gaming.

For LAN gaming. Very nice. You can use it to bridge two sites so that you can access all of your home stuff from your office or et cetera. Right now, I'm using it just as a Layer 3 VPN. So I have an entirely separate subnet setup so that one of the nice things about Tink

is that it runs entirely as a, as long as you have, you know, TuneTap support, then it runs entirely as a user space application so you don't need lots of crazy setup. You don't have to compile a kernel module. It also has support for a lot of, let's see here, it says Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, OSX, Solaris even,

Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and more. So you can pretty much run it. It also has a very good Android app. So mine's set up that all of my devices have a statically assigned IP on their Tink interface, and so I just have all those IPs. And so you can set it up. It has a systemd service. So when you install it, it creates a virtual interface.

And this virtual interface gets a 192 address or whatever the heck. And each machine you install Tink on sets up a virtual interface, and you set the 192 IP on. So they're all on the 192 subnet. Exactly. Okay. And then they can all instantly see each other. And the way it's set up is that it uses certificates,

which can be a pain to manage, but if you've got a configuration management solution already, then it's not too much of a big deal. Not all of us do, Wes. That's true. I'm still working on that myself, in all fairness here. But you only need the certificates for hosts

that you want to directly connect to. So I have one droplet. I actually have two droplets that serve kind of an HA system where all of my nodes try to connect to both of those. So if one goes down, it still works. But once you have a certificate and you've connected to one node, it can connect through that node to any other one. And once it's established that connection, it negotiates how to directly connect those two peers.

Oh, so Exciter just takes care of that for you. Yeah, exactly. And so that's the mesh aspect of it. I gotcha. So that once you, as long as you have enough nodes that each node knows about, and they don't have to, as long as there's some route between all of them, they can actually figure out, they can work it out and talk to each other. That's like, and so by you throwing a couple of droplets in there, that probably helps

quite a bit. Yep. I've got another server over in the Netherlands with a bigger hard drive that just sits there so I can mirror stuff up there. So when you're looking here at your SyncThing setup, are you looking at a droplet you're doing? Are you on your Tink network when you're doing that? When you're pulling up here, what is that?

Yeah, so here I've just SSH'd into my home connection from one of the machines. And I just did a tunnel there or what? Yeah, and so the way I've set it up is that SyncThing is running, I've configured it so that everything, SyncThing only connects over the Tink VPN. Right. And so each one I've just set in, when I've added a peer to the SyncThing is running, I've configured it so that everything, SyncThing only connects over the Tink VPN. Right. And so each one I've just set in, when I've added a peer to the SyncThing,

it just has the local, you know, the private address on the Tink network. Yeah. And they all just instantly find each other. Yeah. And that way I can go to any, you know, I know like. You're syncing over the internet, but over VPN over the internet. Right. And so it doesn't matter if I change or if I bring my laptop here.

You know, once I've turned on Tink, which it does at boot, then it has the same address. Everything else can instantly find it. It's worked really well. Hmm. That's pretty slick. That's a nice way. And so you also have Tink on your Android device? And honestly, it's been, I've been very impressed with the Tink Daemon. I'm not sure if it requires root, but it's very aggressive. Do you have root? I do have root. I know that's the funny thing. Like once you're at your device, you kind of lose track of what requires root. Oh, okay. I know that's the funny thing. Once you're at your device, you kind of lose track of what requires root and what doesn't. Yeah, definitely. But it's very aggressive when you change connections from Wi-Fi to LTE.

Yeah, it keeps up with that. You can even run it over OpenVLPN if you have really trouble with that. I've had some problems with that. And so it's good about your change in network conditions, your moving between wireless and LTE, and it's not sucking down your battery like crazy? No, hardly at all. So your phone has an interface that's on your Tink network? Yeah, so wherever my phone is, I can just

ping it. I know the IP. I have a static host file set up, so I can just ping Nexus 5 and it will automatically route over the Tink network. If it can't, if there's like some really crazy firewall and it can't, you know, initiate a connection directly, it'll go through the droplet if it needs to. And do you have any problems like when you bring the device back home and you

put it on your local LAN, stuff doesn't try to talk to go over the Tink interface and starts talking over the LAN interface? Not generally. I have most things I've configured at this point

to just do it. So like on the Tink thing I've set it up to only talk over Tink. Yeah. And so you can do that too. So you can set up like, you know,

if you only want SSH to listen you can just have it listen on that port. I like, the chat room's impressed that it has Solera support. I know. It's kind of crazy. And I would be interested in the Mumble Room if there's other mesh VPNs.

I know I've looked at Freeland. There's Peer VPN. And a lot of them look maybe easier. The one thing that Ting has going for it is it's kind of like 30, 10 years old. It has a long established. It has an active development. It also has the Android app, which a lot of the other solutions might not have. That's nice. And it sounds like it's an actual functional

Android app too. Yeah, it definitely works really well. Yeah, I don't know. Does anybody in the Mumble Room know of any other sort of Mesh VPN kind of solutions like this? I don't know if I do. I remember that there used to be like a... Amahi. Yeah, Amahi. The Amahi from LogMeIn folks used to have that, but that's not around anymore, is it?

I thought they shut that down. It still is, but it's hard to get. Okay. All right. And then there was kind of a long end-to-end is being mentioned by API. I think that's been no longer developed, right? Yeah, and then like you mentioned, Freeland is also available. PeerVPN, the open source peer-to-peer VPN, and ServoMesh. So, okay, there's another topic, there's another kind of sync that we don't really talk about when we talk about taking control of sync in your own files, and that is the browser sync.

And that's, you know, my favorite feature about Chrome, honestly, is I think it's got the best browser sync. The tab sync is real quick. The Mozilla Firefox sync has gotten really good in the last couple of years. And it's got a huge leg up over the Chrome stuff. And this came in from a link in our subreddit. And I think it was also linked in the Linux subreddit. You can run your own Firefox account server on your LAN if you want. And sync your Firefox browser to your own sync server.

And so I have linked here. It's a guide. It's kind of early. They say, the author says it's quote unquote vastly incomplete. But you can ask questions if you want to drop by their IRC. They have some devs available, I think, for Ubuntu machines and things like that. But this walks you through setting up a local Firefox sync server and then how you configure Firefox to use that local sync server.

So, you know, or you could put this So, you know, you could put this on a droplet, you could put this on a LAN server. This is another component to sync that we don't talk a lot about. But I think this browser sync stuff's getting super important. The browser for me is like one of my number one applications now. And you kind of expect, you know, you expect it to come up with your history and your bookmarks wherever you are. Oh yeah, and my extensions.

Right, oh yeah, definitely. You know, like now when I install Privacy Badger, I expect that boom, Privacy Badger's on every browser. Even though that has its downsides too, it's just kind of what I've come to expect. Exactly, and. You know, like now when I install Privacy Badger, I expect that, boom, Privacy Badger's on every browser. Even though that has its downsides too, it's just kind of what I've come to expect. And it doesn't feel like it's your setup if it's not there. All right, Mumbleroom, any thoughts on the sync topic before we move on to our Vulkan topic?

Put it out there. Go on once. No? Go on twice. All right, now, you know, we've been using, we kind of fell back to dropbox a little bit because i needed a hell of a lot of space i didn't want to manage anymore i needed i needed like five terabytes of space and uh dropbox worked for that it's working pretty well for us

but geez louise is expensive it's like eight hundred dollars for five people to use the enterprise version yeah that is expensive five terabytes yeah so i don't know yeah but it gives you gives you nice functionality like I can revoke files so I can if we got rid of somebody I can pull all the files off their machine and things like that so those kind of things are nice and they seem to make Linux support

they definitely support Linux pretty well which is really nice what was that? did you see that there's a small business slash enterprise version of spot spider oak that has unlimited uh data i saw that there's a couple different like they have and they have like a enterprise edition they have a backup only edition i didn't see it was unlimited storage though holy crap yeah it's like 50 per person i think but you get it sounds

like if you're paying 500 you, you know, for five people, then that might be something to look into. I'm not sure. I use the, I use the, uh, one terabyte, um, subscription and I, I love it. I think I got it. Like, I got it like on a, like I had like a crazy deal for the one terabyte, like a, like a one day deal. And so I bought in on that one day deal for like $9 for the year year I get a terabyte or something. I can't remember. It was really super great, and so I jumped in on that, and I love it. And SpiderOak for me has been really good except for the UI,

so I was really super happy to see them update the UI. Same here. I have not updated my machine yet, but I'm hoping it comes down soon. All right, well, let me take a moment, and let's thank our friends over at Ting. You know, if you go to linux.ting.com, you can support the unplugged program, but also you'll get a discount on your first Ting device. Or if you have a Ting service, or if you have something that's compatible with Ting service, I mean,

you can get a $25 service credit. So Ting is a wireless network that is able to offer certain advantages that the sort of established duopolies can't. Because the big guys that are duopolies have this massive, massive amount of money that is just totally sunk into those towers. Those antennas they put up, and it's not just the antennas and all of the negotiation to get those. I had a client that they did the architect for cell towers. They were the architects for cell towers. And you'd think, oh, that sounds like an interesting gig. It was a super boring place because 90% of their office was for all of the legal stuff

they had to do to get the towers approved and all the different places they wanted to put cell towers. And the process and work is a multi-year process for a single tower. And then you have to trench and install all the fiber and connect all of that and get all those negotiations and secure the line. It is an unbelievable cost. And you can kind of understand why these duopolies have turned into such jerks after all of that. You know, I mean, I guess I'd be going to be a jerk if I had done all that too. Ting rolls in and they say, you know, we're going to do mobile differently.

Now that this has all been laid in, it's been commoditized. We're going to come in here and what we're going to do is we're going to buy off the top of your wireless infrastructure. And so we'll take what has now been commoditized. And that way, Teams can spread across GSM and CDMA networks. They can bridge the two different types of networks, and then you can take advantage of it as a consumer for whichever one fits you better. That's really slick. Then they're also able to focus on things like customer service,

no-hold customer service, or a super awesome web app that lets you manage your account in just every single way you could possibly want. And they're able to focus on things like crazy good deals. Here's what it is. $6 a line. That's it, plus any taxes that your local state's going to apply. It's $6 a line, and then it's just your usage on top of that. It takes your minutes, your messages, and your megabytes to add them together.

And they're able to offer a crazy competitive deal that nobody else can offer because they didn't have to spend all the billions on putting all of those things in the ground. They're able to come around later on and say, okay, thank you very much for all that hard work here. Now we'll just take some of that for you. We'll borrow some of that. We'll give you this here and we'll sign on the dotted line. And boom, then Ting became an MVNO of these networks and it allows them to be competitive in a way that nobody else can. No contracts, no early termination fees. They even have early termination relief programs. So if you're stuck in a contract right now, they're going to help you get out of it. How slick is

that? And they have some really, really, really great devices, GSM and CDMA, basically the best of the bunch. They have really great value devices. They have all the high-end phones. Like the S6 is super slick. They got the iPhone 6. Anything that basically works on that huge GSM network and they have a coverage checker, it's probably going to work on Ting. Including just they have $9 SIMs that you can just go grab, throw on your device, and boom, Bob's your uncle. You got cell service. Bob is indeed your uncle.

Just ask Robert. Go to linux.ting.com. You get $25 off your first device. If you already have a Ting compatible device, and you might because let's be honest, cell phones have been around for a while now, and there's a lot of GSM and CDMA devices out there. They support so many devices. It's incredible. Yeah.

So you could probably get a $25 credit, and if you do, well, that'll pay for more than your first month if your usage is around mine, especially if you're Wi-Fi savvy. It's really awesome. It's really awesome. And there's a lot of cool ways to interact with Ting as well. They have the no-hold customer service. They have their forms. They also have the Ting subreddit.

You can go to reddit.ting.com. They have the Ting social pages like their Google+, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and their YouTube channel where they're posting stuff all the time. Go check them out. Linux.ting.com. Linux.ting.com.

Support this show. Put Linux in your browser bar. Get it in your history after all. Just go check them out. Try the savings calculator. Visiting them and just exploring Ting and learning more is also a way to show your support for this show. Linux.ting.com

Mobile that really does make sense. Okay, maybe somebody can talk me down, but I don't often have extremely, extremely good things to say about Google, but holy moly am I really, really, really excited about them announcing support for Vulkan on Android.

This, to me, is a ginormously huge deal. And so in a very wordy post, they essentially say, in order to address some of the sources of CPU overhead and provide developers with more explicit control over rendering, we've been working to bring the new 3D rendering API Vulkan to Android. Like OpenGL ES, Vulkan is an open standard for 3D graphics and rendering maintained by the Kronos group. Vulkan is being designed from the ground up to minimize CPU overhead in the driver and allow for your application to control GPU operation more directly. Vulkan also enables better parallelization by allowing multiple threads to perform work such as command buffer

construction at once. And Vulkan is sort of being touted as the successor to OpenGL. Apple introduced Metal. Are you familiar with Metal? I am. Can you describe Metal for me, Wes, while I take a sip of my soda? Go for it. You want to take a crack at that? Well, it was their version of a new low-level API on the iOS platform.

Yeah, and didn't they just reintroduce it for Mac OS? I believe they did, which I believe you predicted. I think I did. Now here's the thing. That is a little precarious for OpenGL. Definitely. Because one of the things that put more momentum recently behind OpenGL was the fact that mobile developers to target iOS. Which is one of the biggest platforms for games and other graphics.

Were right into OpenGL. And same with Android. Definitely. And so if Android came along and said, all right, we're going to introduce Liquid, the new low-level API for graphics on Android, it almost feels like that would be a death nail for OpenGL in a way. I mean, not in a huge way,

but it'd definitely slow down momentum. So I guess death nail isn't the right word, but it feels like it would slow down momentum in a big way. And as Linux users, OpenGL is kind of the one thing we have. Yeah, and so Vulkan is, you know, they're already working on getting Linux support. In fact, I think this video here might be being done under Linux right here.

I'm not sure, but I have a video I'm playing. It's Gnomes Per Second, and on the right is OpenGL, and on the left is Vulkan. And as I zoom out here, you'll really see the difference between OpenGL and Vulkan. And you'll see there's a CPU reader there, and OpenGL is just punishing the CPU, and it's still dropping frames like crazy. And then as Vulkan continues to go up, Vulkan does hit the CPU when things get really crazy,

but way, way, way, way less than OpenGL is. So look at these knowns-per-second differences between OpenGL and Vulkan. Pretty big. The Vulkan is much smoother, much less CPU overhead, especially when you start applying real-time coloring effects. Then OpenGL really starts beating the CPU. And not only that, but you see how much better Vulkan is.

It's a little hard to see there, but Vulkan's much better at paralyzation across CPUs too. So once it does start punishing the CPU, OpenGL hits like two threads, where Vulkan's hitting all four threads. Yeah, it's designed from the ground up to be easily to paralyze like that. Yeah, and these are on PowerVR graphics chips,

so these would be like on Nexus devices or something like that. That's where this is being done on, this demo. And so Vulkan's supposed to be the big hotness. Ryan, are you familiar with Vulkan, and what do you think about this? The big hotness. Ryan, are you familiar with Vulkan?

And what do you think about this? Well, specifically in regards to Android getting support for Vulkan, I just think that this is another instance where there's so many things that we're doing now with our mobile devices that it's almost like a foregone conclusion. with our mobile devices that it's got, it's almost like a foregone conclusion. Like we need to have the best, you know, on this platform to manage these 3d, you know,

games and applications that, that were inevitably getting more and more of every day. And, uh, I just think that I've, I've been watching some younger relatives on their mobile devices and they go to it for everything for like games, entertainment. And, and it's so funny because it's like, this is the same type of thing we used to

do back, you know, with our desktop rigs that we made, you know, and everything. And, and they're talking about the differences between their devices and these are just, you know, their, their phones that they have around with them and what games are playing on them and everything. you know their their phones that they have around with them and what games are playing on them and everything and so for so while some people like i know a couple people who are my who are my friends who can't see how it's a gaming platform and how it needs you know these these different like for instance vulcan to make that experience all the more better when you're playing 3d games or interacting with 3d applications on the platform they don't see the need necessarily but but there's a bunch of people who they do everything

you know including gaming on these on these devices and so it makes sense that they would try to you know a close that gap between them and and the iphone with with metal but also b just improve their platform and and have and add this so that more people will consider creating at 3d applications on the platform and and will feel comfortable taking advantage of this is not my strong suit and i hope to learn more about vulcan as it becomes more and more relevant but uh my understanding is is that uh vulcan is pretty capable of, when it starts up, Vulkan can start up and sort of assess the graphics capability of the system. And developers just sort of write to Vulkan, and instead of having to wonder if there's

going to be a certain OpenGL extension available on this system and just maybe assuming it's not there, so just not being able to do that thing, they'll write to Vulkan, and Vulkan will just sort of expose what's available sort of on demand based on the hardware, and it's going to range from PowerVR chips all the way up to NVIDIA's big rigs. In fact, NVIDIA has just announced they're going to be showing off a couple of different demos at an upcoming conference using Vulkan under Linux. So obviously these demos we just watched here on the show are on PowerVR chips, but NVIDIA in a couple of weeks will be showing it on Linux desktop rigs.

So Vulkan's going to scale across the entire spectrum there. So Google throwing in behind this is a huge deal because through Coder Radio, I've gotten emails from developers who tell me, we moved our game over to Linux because we learned more about Linux than we expected when we started developing our game for Android. That's awesome. Yeah. Finally, Android's paying off.

And I was like, really? And they're like, yeah, well, when you make a game, you're not making a Java app. When you're making a serious game for Android, it's a native app. And when you start playing with that stuff, you start monkeying around with the Linux level a little bit, and you start learning a little bit about this stuff.

And it's not a one-to-one, but it gave us a starting point. And this isn't one or two times I've heard this either. It's a couple of times, but it's been a little bit about this stuff. And it's not a one-to-one, but it gave us a starting point. And this isn't one or two times I've heard this either. It's a couple of times, but it's been a little while. But I've probably heard it half a dozen times over the history of Coder Radio. And so I've got to imagine Vulkan's only going to play into that even more. So that's why I think it's a bigger deal than we can even realize right now that they're doing this. It's like the biggest favor that Google could do for desktop Linux gaming. And just seeing all these people actually supporting it even at this early stage

is heartening yeah yeah that too yeah that too that very much is so uh and i know yeah oh i was just gonna say and chris this is just something that that your show has been tracking for a while now but as as steam os you know gets out there it's going to i feel like it's going to be the android of you know gaming pcs because it's everybody's gonna just license it and throw it on a machine and there's going to be this i think that the all these different platforms are being built on linux now that developers are getting introduced to it and they're saying like, it's not that it's not as big of a problem as I thought it was to go ahead and write, you know, this application for this platform. And, and so I'm really excited to see, maybe as more people get introduced to like Vulkan, for instance, through Android,

like you said, they that they see, okay, well, maybe it won't take that much more time to port this over to the desktop. And frankly, there's really not a downside because it's just potentially more customers because I've already done a lot of the work. That's the hope. North Ranger, you wanted to make a comment about how Vulkan is sort of hopefully going to avoid

the extensions hell that OpenGL found itself in after years. Yeah, definitely. I think Chronos has a leg up here, and one thing that they did, lessons learned from OpenGL versioning and all of the proprietary extensions and the vendor-specific

extensions that these engines and these games had to test for is grouping up all the individual extensions into feature sets. So instead of having a separate OpenGL ES and an OpenGL 4, you know, your engine just tests for the feature set. And the real key, I think, you know, improvement in the process is that Kronos will be able to define those feature sets if the platform owner doesn't step in. So Google will take care of it for Android.

Valve might take care of it for SteamOS. But if Microsoft doesn't define a feature set for Windows Vulcan, then they'll just step in and go ahead and work with the driver vendors directly. That's actually really great. So we could still have a first

class implementation on Windows. That could be nice. Actually, it might even be better if you take Microsoft out of the picture. Heyo! Alright, cool. That's really, boy, that's I think some of the best Google news that I've seen in a long time. I mean, I think it was really, that was a really good guy, Google,

and that was actually an example of them being a good open source citizen, too, there. Definitely. Alright, let's talk about somebody else who's a good open source Google, and that was actually an example of them being a good open source citizen too there. Definitely. All right. Let's talk about somebody else who's a good open source citizen, and that's Linux Academy. In fact, they have a $5,000 grant program where their stakeholders can help them decide where they're going to contribute that money out to open source projects. And the reason is is because they're a bunch of open source and Linux nuts, enthusiasts just like we are. They have a great platform for you to go over there and learn about Linux and and all of the technology around and associated with it open stack and the red hat

technology stuff for the certified courses and of course all of the things like android development and ruby on rails that kind of run on top of linux but the core fundamentals of linux itself too they've got almost 1700 videos to give you the experience you need and they have a really nice system that allows you to choose from seven plus distros, and then it automatically will adjust the courseware to match the distro you've chosen, and then when the courseware has a virtual machine, it matches the virtual machine. All of that all syncs up, but I think what I really like about it is how they all sort of map it out in their management dashboard. You go in there, you see all the stuff you're currently taking,

what percentage you're at, how long it's going to take you, how long you've spent, any notes, any comprehensive study guides you want to download. And I think something else that they've done that really helped me sort of actualize what I was reading and learning is the scenario-based labs. So you get lab servers, and then you go in there, and you get put in the middle of a common task in an everyday environment. And you work in these advanced lab environments and complete these scenarios from beginning to end and you walk away feeling, gosh, I've actually done this now. And if you ever get stuck, they have instructor help available. They have live stream

sessions that are really great and they often will post them online later for the community. And speaking of the community, stacked full of Jupyter Broadcasting members which is kind of fun. And these nuggets are a great source if you just want to do a deep dive into something that lasts 2 to 60 minutes. They're constantly adding new material.

Go over to Linux Academy. Check them out. See what they've got. Like, you know, I think one of the things that really helped me click with Linux Academy was when I decided, well, what would it take to learn Python?

What would it take to learn Ruby? And how would you answer that question? How do you answer the question, what would it take to go Python? What would it take to learn Ruby? And how do you, how would you answer that question? How do you, how do you answer the question? What would it take to go learn a new language? Well, the answer is pretty obvious. I logged into Linux Academy. Oh, it's going to take me six hours. Well, it's going to take me five hours, whatever, you know, it depends. I think like one was an hour longer than the other. I can't remember which one was longer. That's ridiculous. You're telling me I could learn how to do Python development in five hours. What? That right and it's it's it's pretty inspiring and you could just go try it out for a little bit and you get a 33 discount linuxacademy.com slash unplugged try out some of their nuggets as well and they have an availability planner which is really great check them out

linuxacademy.com slash unplugged and a big thank you to linux academy for sponsoring the unplugged program okay so there's this really great update from mozilla about firefox and they sometimes give firefox a hard time but uh version 40 that's that's a that's a that's a big ass version number holy crap i remember i remember when firefox was announced so version 40. Support for Windows 10. There you go. I bet you like about that. They're blocking unsigned extensions. That's a big one. But here's the one for Linux users that I'm pretty... I think each one of these

could have been a bullet point and they just put it all in one bullet point. Improved scrolling, improved graphics, and video playback performance, and off the main thread compositing under Linux only. Linux exclusive feature, buddy. Finally catching up to Chrome here.

Off the main thread compositing, improved scrolling, graphics and video playback, Linux exclusive features. Come on. Well, at least in this update. Maybe they already had them for Windows. Off the main thread compositor seems like a really big deal to me, though.

Definitely. I think that's one of the main Firefox's pain points in the past is it's main thread heavy. Yes, yes. So they have also smoother animation and scrolling on Windows via hardware V-Sync, so the Windows got a little something, too. You know, those guys over in Windows. A bunch of other new changes as well, but I just thought it was particularly

cool. So there you go, Popey. You can relaunch your Firefox challenge now. Wait, are you still on? Not happening. Oh, you went back to Chrome. You did go back to Chrome. Yeah, I'm back on Chrome now. You gave me such a hard time for going back to Chrome, too, and then you just never said anything to me

about that. That's not how I remember it at all. Okay, okay, alright. So, okay, why did you go back, can I ask? I mean, I don't want to get into the whole war again. I'm just kind of curious because I never heard. Because Firefox was a crashy, horrible mess. No matter what I did. And everyone kept telling me, oh, it's your extensions,

that's what it is, it's the distro version of Firefox. They would give me all the different reasons, and I just gave up and switched back to Chrome. I heard those reasons too. I totally understand, as someone who's using the Ubuntu version of Firefox right now now it's it's fine doesn't crash that's always what we hear that's always what we hear yeah and you know what it must be true it must be true because it's still and now rotten have you uh do you can you do you know anything about this off the thread

compositing off the main thread compositing all these lin Linux updates? Yeah, it's one of the stepping stones to electrolysis. I thought so. Excellent. Okay, good, good. That will be just right around the corner any day now, I'm sure then. That's good stuff. I think whatever we think about it, it's just nice to see them keeping pace, right? Absolutely. Firefox, I think we need as a member of the open source ecosystem.

And to be honest with you, I have Firefox still installed on all my machines. Me too, definitely. And totally going to get the update. Totally going to try it out. But yeah, I keep going back to Chrome, but you know what? I'm very, very happy. Like you said, they're not leaving us Linux users out. That's a way to put

it on a positive note there, Wes. I like that. That's my job, I guess. So next week is some crazy shenanigans going on. We're going to be hopefully live at LinuxCon for Linux Unplugged. I have no idea how we're going to do that. I have no idea how we're going to do that. I have no idea how we're going to do the mumble room from down there.

And Wes is going to be out of town on his honeymoon. Woo! So Wes won't be here, but... Unfortunately. I think that probably... Noah will probably be in your seat. And if all goes as planned,

everybody should just be able to show up at jblive.tv around our regular live time. I'll try to be there from Hawaii. Really? Dude, no, come on. You should be humping or something. You should not be able to show up at JBLive.tv around our regular live time. I'll try to be there from Hawaii. Really? Dude, no, come on. You should be humping or something. You should be listening to the show. A man can do two things at once. That's a good point. You know what? If you want to just send me a telegram, I'll just start talking like this. I'll keep it low.

So I don't know exactly how next week's show is going to shake out, but please do try to show up because it would be so cool to have a nice showing at LinuxCon. I don't know exactly what we're going to do, but we want to do something. And then we might also be live later in the evening next Tuesday for the open source T-shirt contest that Angela is going to be judging for. Oh, that's very exciting. So next week is going to be a little crazy, and hopefully it will all work out just fine.

And one more bit of crazy shenanigans that I wish I could kill with fire, but it's not avoidable. It's unavoidable. We're moving last from Friday back to Sunday for one more week. Noah's going to be traveling Friday morning here to Seattle for LinuxCon,

and my dad's getting married Friday evening, which makes doing last on Friday totally impossible. So we just moved it to Fridays, and then all of this stuff happens. So we're going to go back to Sunday at our regular live time one more time. We'll probably go back to Friday after that for a little while, for at least a little while, maybe through the summer or something. But I know it's super confusing. Remember all this stuff, jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. And hopefully those of you who are still listening can get a heads up and show up because we'd love to have a good live audience.

And when you move it around, it makes it super confusing. And it's only because of LinuxCon. But we're going to get down there. We're going to hopefully get some great interviews. We've already got some stuff planned. We're totally going to prank Linus. No, I'm kidding. Linus, if you're listening, I'm kidding.

I love you. It's amazing to have it so close. I mean, this is a serious conference. Yeah. Yeah. Having it in Seattle is great. It's great not to have to fly somewhere for this. Well, Noah has to fly. Yeah, he's flying all the time. But he has's great not to have to fly somewhere for this. Well, Noah has to

fly. Yeah, he's flying all the time. But he has to fly out here and I don't feel like super guilty about it. Like sometimes he

flies out to the West Coast. I'm like, I'm sorry, dude. But hey, I can't help it if the Linux Foundation decided to have LinuxCon in

Seattle, man. Out of your hands. Seattle's legit. That's what's up. That's what's up. So we'll be giving out swag at LinuxCon. We'll be shaking

hands. We'll be doing recordings and all that stuff. Maybe even getting interviews and clips from you, the people. So come say hi to us. We'll probably have a meetup at some point

too. Meetup.com slash Jupiter Broadcasting to finalize that. Of course, you can just come say hi to us at LinuxCon. So we might not need... I want to do something. I want to do something. So stay tuned to meetup.com slash Jupiter Broadcasting for that. And I'd love to see you guys there. Popey's going to be out there at LinuxCon, so that'll be...

What? What? What? Oh man, Popey, I wish you'd come out to the West Coast. It's so nice out here. I'd take you around and show you how great Washington is. You gotta have... I would love to. I'm sure someone will put you up. One day, one day, you'll have to have an excuse to come out here. Maybe, uh, maybe like some... I'll see if I can orchestrate something. There you go. I'm telling you,

we'll make it worth your time. It's delicious. It's actually a little paper beer the whole time you're here. Yeah, Popey, you'll be drowning in Washington beer. And curry if you want it, I guess. Do they do barbecue out there? Oh, don't get me started on the barbecue. Don't do that

to me. Oh, man. And you know, it gets worse. Oh, geez. Noah scours Facebook, and if anybody in my family or social group calls anything barbecue or grilling, he jumps on them in Facebook, and he starts defining barbecue and grilling in the comments. It's horrible. When does he work?

All right, I don't know. Well, that's the amazing thing is he actually just doesn't sleep, I think. That's actually how he does it. It's pretty impressive if you think about it. All right, so we'll be live next week at some point. At least I think we will. We'll have an episode live from LinuxCon. We should be on the air. Go to jupyterbroadcasting.com slash calendar.

I'd love to get your feedback for this episode. LinuxActionsShow.reddit.com, also a great place for topics, suggestions. We'll have a feedback thread for episode 105. All of the shenanigans happens live over at jblive.tv. Normally, if we're here and all that, it's Tuesdays at 2 p.m. Pacific. But, you know, go to the counter and get it converted to your

local time zone. All right, Wes. Well, thanks for joining me in studio. Thank you for having me. Pleasure, Mumble Room. Yes. Thank you, Mumble Room. And don't forget to follow the network at Jupiter Signal for updates from LinuxCon and Jupiter Broadcasting on Instagram for pictures. See you next week. man that was a fun show and uh i i gotta say if anybody in the mumble room has any questions for ryan if ryan you're still here right yeah right still here yeah I'm still here if anybody has any questions about Mycroft open the room up to that or any post show topics

what would you need to what would someone who wants to code something for Mycroft need to know to code to code for Mycroft it's in Python all the modules are in Python. We have templates already set up.

And so we've tried to make it as easy to just pull out, just plug your own stuff into the template. And then frankly, if you understand the API you're working with or the application that you're working with, Mycroft shouldn't be, like, coding the Mycroft side of it shouldn't really be a problem. If you're familiar with Linux, it takes no time to get up and going with whatever module

you're trying to create. Some funny titles over JB titles. Mycroft, Start the Show. That's kind of funny. Vulcan, The Metal Slayer. Mycroft, Holmes' Smarter Brother Sync Everything So we had some good topics Today

Definitely Yeah Thanks both to Wimpy and Wes For their sync thing stuff Guys are making me really Especially with Tink It's really making me Want to try that

We just don't want to Have to hear about Your horrible Syncing troubles anymore Nose derail I know Data loss It was bad

Boy I guess we wrapped Can you hear the lawnmower in the background? We wrapped up just in time. JBTitles.com, JBTitles.com. That was a jam-packed show, too. About Mycroft, though, is it going to have, like, I assume it could be done, stuff would be done with, like, with Cron, too, so you don't have to do the voice automation.

You could just use it as an automation tool. Yeah. I mean, there's no, well, that's the thing. You don't have to do the voice automation. You could just use it as an animation tool. Yeah, I mean, there's no... Well, that's the thing. I get a ton of questions like, well, what if I don't want to use Mycroft in the intended way? Well, that's the greatest thing, is because it's open hardware and open software, you can adjust it and have it do whatever the heck you want,

however you want. We don't have anything in place that would prevent you from just having these things. I mean, honestly, if you look at the Mycroft Extended version, it's got the HDMI port so you can just literally plug in and

use it as a computer if you want to. That's cool. Alright, we gotta get more titles voted. JBTitles.com, oh my gosh. I hate to be a title driver but jeez. That's cool. Alright, we've got to get more titles voted. JBTitles.com, oh my gosh. I hate to be a title driver, but jeez. We need to break these ties. Yeah, and we've got to... The votes are way too spread out.

We've got to hunker in behind some titles. It's getting gross. Getting real gross. So, Chris, can you explain a bit more about how you're using Spyderoke? I've not used it for ages. I've just installed the new Chris, can you explain a bit more about how you're using Spyderoke? Yeah. I've not used it for ages.

I've just installed the new version 6 client. Oh, nice. I'm not doing anything all that really sophisticated. I have, like, my main workstation here at the studio has both my BitTorrent sync folders on it and my sync thing folders on it when I had it active, which are just now kind of dead, and my Dropbox folder on it, and my own cloud folder on it and my sync thing folders on it when I had it active, which are just now kind of dead, and my Dropbox folder on it, and my own cloud folder on it. So all of my different sync things, all my different syncing are on this one machine, and then I point Spyderoak's backup folders to those different individual folders, and then let Spyderoak do the revisioning and the offsite backup, quote unquote, and that's how I kind of use Spyderoak. I don't use any of the,

like, the, what do they call it they have like a mesh network that they have for syncing files across the machines I don't use that I forget what they call that but not using that feature so they've got backup and sync and the hive the hive that's what I'm I don't think I'm using so when you

do a backup that's sending you content to them as a backup. Right. But it doesn't necessarily then mean that that data is restored stroke synced elsewhere. Right. I mean, if I do a restore, it restores it back to one of the folders

that's synced, so then it would then sync that file back to all the other machines because I have syncing both ways on that machine. So, they've got the Hive, which is like a default sync folder, but can you add other folders that synchronize?

Yes. That's one of the big selling points, right? You can pick folders from the whole root directly down? Yes. Because I'm confused about how you do that. I'm not sure with Hive, because I don't use Hive. Yeah, that's precisely my point. I don't want to use it because it's in a place I don't want to have data stored.

Right. With Hive, I don't know if you can, but with their other backup system, you can just choose the folders to get backed up, and you go through it. It has a tree of your file system, and you just check the folders you want it want it to grab well this is in the old ui i actually haven't tried it in their new ui yet oh okay so actually you have to back something up before it appears in the sync options so the only things you can sync are things that you're actually backing up okay yeah and and if i recall correctly uh that essentially like i if I recall correctly,

that essentially seemed to me like the same thing that Hive was, only from any folder. I couldn't remember, I couldn't really grasp why I wanted Hive at all. That's why I never used it. Sink is like local folder syncing. It's very confusing, I have to say. I mean, the UI is much improved, but it's

still confusing. Yes, I agree. I think we're going to go with Vulcan the Metal Slayer. It has the most boats, and I think Vulcan's going to be a big deal, and I think the audience has some interest in it, so I think it'll drive clicks. I think that's good, too. Good, too. So maybe we'll get the word out by Mycroft,

and I'd love to see some open-source artificial intelligence. I'm going to try the update, Wimpy. So I'll try the update, and maybe I'll just do a little five minutes on it as a follow-up on what I end up doing. artificial intelligence i'm going to try the update uh wimpy so i'll try the update and kind of maybe i'll maybe i'll just do a little five minutes on it as a follow-up on what i end up doing i kind of yeah i think i see how this works now so you you have to have multiple devices so i've just got one device using this so when you choose sync you choose uh the device and folder path that you want to see i have i recall i recall I have an Archbox on my home network

and I have my Archbox here on this network. And so it's also how I back up my home file server too. Yeah. Okay. I think we're good. I think that was everything. I think 105 is in the can. Thanks you guys. You guys were great.