LINUX Unplugged - Episode 148: Mind on my Cloud & Cloud on my Mind | LUP 148
Episode Date: June 8, 2016After we get through a slew of great open source project achievements, we discuss the slippery slope that online services represent to Linux users.Plus we get all big picture, what can be learned from... ownCloud’s recent troubles, what we conclude by reading between the lines & more!
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Shake things up.
Shake up the world.
Shake up the world. Welcome to Linux Unplugged, your weekly Linux talk show that's about to celebrate 10 years of broadcasting Linux goodness.
My name is Chris.
My name is Wes.
Hello, Wes.
Episode 148 stacks up against the Giants as a big show.
Yes, it does. Mostly just because I've got a little NyQuil on the brain.
I've got nothing but last 10th anniversary in my head, and I'm ready to go on vacation.
Yes!
You deserve it.
But before I declare all of that, I should tell you a little bit about what we're talking about today.
So one of the things that's been coming up since our show on Sunday is what happened with OwnCloud,
and what can open source learn from this development?
What can we do differently next time?
And what's kind of between the lines when you read carefully?
We'll discuss that.
Then also, we've got a plethora of our favorite open source project updates.
We've got a whole bunch of project updates to go through.
There is some major new open source code cranking out from little known projects to big known
projects that are all great for the Linux desktop.
We're going to tell you about those in today's show as well.
And then later on, later on, I can't help it, Wes.
I've been slipping back into Google hard.
Ooh, dangerous.
Ooh, we're going to talk about how I just simply can't quit Google.
And I'm curious to hear your guys' thoughts on that from a wider context.
We're going to talk about some of the cool things that are coming out soon that work under Linux
that as somebody who's from time to time just quit Google, cold turkey,
and then kind of come back and try them in different ways,
as a Linux user that is trying to replace certain holes in what you might call the Linux ecosystem
where I find Google's offerings sort of plug in really well there,
I keep finding myself going back.
I keep going back.
I want to talk about that a little bit because, honestly, I started thinking about this
from the context of the 10th anniversary of the Linux Action Show,
which is really what's all in my mind because we've been doing a lot of work on this.
And one trend that I keep coming back to is when there's proprietary services that are bundled together in a way where they're functional under the Linux desktop, I tend to allow that compromise to happen.
And I say, ah, it doesn't need to be completely open source.
It doesn't need to be completely free software.
And even looking back, I keep making this same mistake over and over again.
But I don't want to beat up on myself or anyone else who's doing it.
I just want to talk about that dynamic that exists for Linux users and sort of look back
on that.
Yeah.
So we'll talk about all of that.
But before we get into anything, we've got to bring in that mumble room.
Ooh.
Time appropriate greetings, mumble room.
Hello.
Time appropriate greetings. Hello. Hello that mumble room. Ooh. Time-appropriate greetings, mumble room. Hello. Time-appropriate greetings.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello, everybody.
What a cheerful bunch.
Hello, hello.
So I'm glad you guys are here today because you can help me with some of this stuff.
I want to get into some of our first topics of the day.
And it comes fully equipped with a pretty awesome video with a good beat.
So if you're a video watcher, this is a treat for you.
This is the new Gnome control panel with a hardcore new design and hardcore music.
This is being worked on right now.
How would you describe this, Wes?
Like a total re-layout of the way.
Yeah, it's like a re-layout.
New UI flow, new workflow to find things.
Yeah.
And, you know, I could give you an example of what it looks like.
It reminds me a lot, and I don't mean this in a bad way either.
It reminds me a lot of the old Apple Macintosh System 6 control panel.
And I actually think it was a pretty good design.
You have a left-hand column of all of the major categories that you want to edit.
And in the right-hand column, it's all of the settings specific to that particular thing.
And it flows well.
I actually always found it to be a really easy way to dig through.
It could get a little long, but yeah.
I don't think really GNOME is doing something groundbreaking here so much as they're just taking what seemed like a concept that was based off of Mac OS X's system preferences, and now we're just
basing it off Mac OS 6.
They got that wrong. They had it right the first time.
Retro is always better, right? Retro is always better.
It is nice to see them playing around. Clearly, they're
not interested in just being done.
They want to make it better. Clearly, there's
problems they don't think are addressed perfectly
with the current settings.
We'll see if it's better.
I'm looking forward to seeing the update land.
Speaking of making GTK look good, I don't ever really cover new themes anymore or big
theme updates, but this one's just gorgeous.
The ARC theme, which I think is just great, is getting a full-on GTK theme and icons,
the whole shenanigans.
And surprisingly, a lot of people wrote in to tell us about this.
And I love the Arc theme, and I love that they're now getting repos set up.
It's up on GitHub.
There's dabs available.
Of course, I think it's in the AUR.
Yeah, that'll just make it even easier to get it everywhere.
And if you look at this, check this out.
If you click this little thing here, you see where it goes to?
Wait for it.
Wait for it to load.
The OpenSUSE software.
Look at software.openseuse.org, and you get links here for Debian, Fedora,
OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu,
which is pretty cool.
And Mr. Brown, didn't I see in the news headlines today
that the build service got an update
of a rather nice feature,
something to do with being able to link
to external data sources or something?
I just saw the headline,
but it looked like a nice update to the build service.
Yep, 2.7.
Yeah, the big headline thing is, like, we've always had support
for linking into Git repos.
Now it's leaner, faster,
like, continuous building. You do
a Git commit, there's your package. Brand
spanking new. Oh, that sounds very helpful.
That is cool. I'm going to have to play with that. We're actually using that
now for OpenQA. So
every time we commit something to OpenQA,
bang, package gets spiked out of the build service,
and then we just run Zipper up on our production systems whenever we feel like it.
So when they say it works better with external data sources, they mean GitHub?
Is that what that headline was referring to?
Any Git repo, but yeah.
I mean, GitHub already have enablement for things like triggering, so you can have GitHub triggering based on that,
but it's all leaner, smoother in 2.7.
Pretty cool.
I'm glad to hear that it's continuing on.
And it looks like being used to some effectiveness.
Do you think, Richard, do you think that that's a better solution than something like App
Image or Flatpak?
Do you think the two coexist?
I think they coexist and they cater for different markets like for me app image and uh flat pack and stuff kind of really go for the
well to stick with open suzer terms like your typical leap user like you don't want to move
the whole os i just want this one thing faster newer that's where flat pack is going to be
awesome in a in a rolling distro
like tumbleweed flat pack's just a bunch of burden for no benefit and that's where like obs is really
amazing well uh you know i should mention before we go any further that we will
we will be sticking to tradition and we are drinking no beer with this episode i should
have met west brought in knee-deep brewing company a. I got the Citra Extra Pale Ale here.
And what do you have there, Wes?
What do you have?
I have the Big Sipper.
Oh, all right.
There we go, opening that guy up.
Let's make sure we don't spill it on anything as we go along.
So there's your cue right there.
I was negligent in mentioning it.
Have you heard of Linux AIO?
Have you heard of this?
This is really something.
This is, it's
a project that, well, maybe I could
actually, I'll explain it to you in a way
that just tells you what it's doing.
So, imagine yourself
for a moment in the position of, from time
to time, wanting different various
Ubuntu flavors. I don't see this to be unreasonable.
Maybe one time for a machine you want Mate,
maybe you want 16.04 straight.
Maybe support a lot of different offices or families.
For yourself, you know, because you're not
an animal, you're installing Ubuntu Gnome Edition. I'm kidding.
But that's a pain in the butt.
It's a pain in the butt to download all those different
ISOs. Well, check this out.
This from the Linux AIO team
is one ISO
that you can write to a USB flash drive
and it's all the different versions of Ubuntu 16.04
that you can choose at boot which one you want to run.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
It's a little tricky right now because you have to download two different files
because of SourceForge limitations.
And then when you extract them, they combine to one.
It's just a 7-zip.
Oh, interesting.
And then you write that to a USB thumb drive,
and when you boot up, you get the option of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME,
Ubuntu Mate, Zubuntu, Lubuntu, kind of all that stuff.
We should host that somewhere where it can be hosted as one file.
I mean, that sounds really helpful.
Or a torrent.
Yeah, right?
Because I could see, especially if you want to make a USB drive for some new user, maybe
you don't have time to install it with them, or you don't have time to really pick out
something for them.
Just bam, here, let them decide.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
It's a very nice tool, and it's a project you'll be watching.
And I think it's pretty cool, because you can also pick 64 and 32, which is kind of
nice.
So check that out.
We'll have a link in the show notes.
And that is the Linux AIO project, linux.io.net, which we're going to find.
Pretty cool work.
Yeah.
And kind of obvious, too.
You should see those.
I'm surprised we haven't seen
Those kind of things before
Now Wimpy's not in there today
Right
He hasn't joined us
I found this super neat video
That he posted
On the
Well on his YouTube channel
Check this thing out
Now it's
Again
It's pretty visual heavy
It's one of these
Code development
Visualization
Thingies
That shows you
That the
Expansion of Ubuntu
Made welcome development So this is just A visualization For the welcome thing That they the expansion of Ubuntu Mate welcome development.
So this is just a visualization for the welcome thing that they have created for Ubuntu Mate,
which we've praised quite a bit on the show.
And watch this thing here, Wes.
Isn't this a neat tool?
Yes, it is.
I love it.
I love that and it shows you that's uh so now we're into march of 2015
so i'll put a link to the video if in the show notes if you audio listeners want to check this out get down with it right look at there goes martin bam fixing all the things look at him
that wow boy that was an explosion of pngs
yeah that's pretty great i love these visualizations there's a bunch of There's a bunch of different projects that have them out there.
But that is a neat one to see that.
And there's one, there's a really famous one of the Linux kernel that you can find.
This would also make a good screensaver.
Yeah, it really would.
We should do this.
We should look at different projects and do this from time to time,
because I think you just have to look at the repo.
Yeah, I'm sure we could write up a little script to put this together.
Visualize different projects
and play them here on the show.
It'd be good to know, it'd be good to be able to click in on these
though and get more information about them.
That would really... It's like a visual JavaScript explorer.
You can inspect the commits if you want.
Oh, I would totally love that. Somebody build
that. Jeez Louise. Get on it.
Yeah.
I kind of was waiting to see where it goes.
I want to fast forward to see what it looks like.
So here we are in 20...
Oh, yeah.
It's way bigger in 2016.
And it's filled with pot.
You see that?
Those are all labeled pot right there.
So who knows what Wimpy's up to?
What?
No wonder he's not here to account for himself.
Hmm?
Hmm?
Very suspicious.
Very, very suspicious.
Well, anyways, you audio listeners can find that in the show notes.
All right.
So I don't really talk often about Triscoll.
In fact, I can't even remember if we've done a review recently.
I'm pretty sure a couple of folks here in the Mumble Room are running.
Anybody currently running Triscoll in the Mumble Room?
I know we have a few from time to time that jump in there.
And Triscoll has made a pretty big statement.
And I thought we would talk about this just really briefly.
So the statement from Triscoll essentially boils down to it's not about ethics.
I'm sorry.
It's about ethics.
It's not about technology or innovation.
Just a friendly reminder, the post reads, for those of you that seem anxious for new
releases of things like Chromium, Skype, Spotify, or maybe buying the most powerful computer
you can buy, I recommend you watch Richard Stallman's Four Freedoms.
I think many of you should remember that the point of free software is not about convincing the most shiny,
or not about conceiving or getting new shiny features.
It's about your freedom.
It's about ethics.
I know shiny features may delight most computer users,
but your freedom should be so important that you can wait a little for those things.
If you're thinking free software is not convenient, users, but your freedom should be so important that you can wait a little for those things.
If you are thinking free software is not convenient, and I will not change this district, remember freedom is worth the inconvenience.
So please, stop thinking about snappy packages and begin enjoying your freedom.
Strong words.
What do you think about that, Wes?
What's your reaction when you hear that?
Your honest reaction, is that out of touch in your estimation or is that exactly in touch for a particular market?
I think I fall more on the latter there.
I mean I don't use it and I've obviously made compromises on the non-freedom end of things on my day-to-day life and I'm OK with that.
But they do have a point i think it comes off a little bit like they're kind of cross you know
cross-talking like the people that are criticizing them or that they're perceived as being criticized
aren't maybe really interested and like they've already decided not to run that distribution
but i do think they have legitimate point that like if you are really concerned about these
things then there are sacrifices you have to make there are compromises and you should be aware of
it and you should have software distributions that are ready to
make those choices for you and won't be pulled in by the allure of things that maybe in the long run
aren't worth the trade-off. I disagree. Go ahead. So I basically disagree with this statement of
one reason. Debian pretty much by default is free. It has, you know, the separate repositories and all the things.
The only reason it's really not classified is because, well, it has the other repositories.
And when you look at Debian SID, which is the unstable branch, you still get fancy new features.
So I'm sorry.
Really slow at it.
Okay.
All right.
So that's a good perspective.
I'm having a hard time not finding this as sticking your head in the sand a bit and saying, well, don't – I guess it's particularly odd that the one they're picking on is Snap Packages.
Yeah.
No, that is weird.
I mean –
Because it seems like a pretty solid security innovation and a pretty solid user experience innovation i think
at least the second one i think the security one is being worked on anyway i guess so yeah i guess
you i mean when i when i mean security i'm thinking you know containerized applications
in wayland or mirror i suppose so i'm thinking down the road sure right um you're right it is
it is weird because if you care about freedom you probably security should be a concern as well so
there is there is right i guess you where i. Because if you care about freedom, you probably – security should be a concern as well. So there is an important angle.
I guess, see, where I draw the line is –
And you can also distribute perfectly free open source software with Snapback.
If it makes it easier, then that's good for freedom, right?
See, to me, the computer ultimately has to be a tool that enables me.
And the free software is extremely important to that.
But it also shouldn't be the thing that holds you back.
So that's, for me anyways, I find it to be a very sort of thin line they're walking between irrelevance and, but then again, at the same time,
I think if you have a core demo who that is the number one thing they want from their tool,
I think it's right on point.
Any other thoughts on Trisco before we move on? It's something
we don't give a lot of mention to, and I actually think
it's a pretty great project.
I just don't think it really appeals to a lot of us here
on the show for a lot of
different reasons, and so we don't talk about it a lot.
And I think there's a difference here, too, between what they're
trying to do, and you can definitely argue that
their execution might not be good.
Maybe you don't need to wait
for a lot of these things to be free as well,
so there's that difficulty as well.
So my last comment on Triscoll, I guess it will be,
considering the free software distros, it's pretty much the only survivor.
I'll give them credit for that.
But other than this, probably not.
I don't have much insight on this,
but there seems to be a dogma of thought from the Triscoll project and from the Tails project that precludes them from sometimes considering really good outside ideas.
Tails, you can go look into the drama yourself, but there's definitely some drama around how they secure their kernel and about what outside people think they should be doing versus what they should be doing.
By the way, Tails had a new release today.
has had a new release today.
And so I find both,
I find curiousness with both these distributions
very stubborn approach
to something,
but at the same time,
you could argue the same thing
about Mint
and some of the ways
they do things.
Right, yeah.
And again,
it really does appeal
to a certain audience.
And do we benefit
from having these
almost in a Stallman-like sense,
right,
where it's like
you don't always agree with him,
but he keeps making points
that you see the side of
and it might be good just for the community to have that even if very few people end up really aligning right there.
All right.
Well, and he has been right to his fair point.
It's hard to argue with long-term results.
It really is.
There's plenty of things you said that you could probably play back that don't seem right now in retrospect.
But I think many of them were, at least their core philosophies of them.
So, yeah.
If you're a Trisco user and you have particular thoughts on that story, let us know.
Yeah, please come back.
Join our lug.
Let us know what you think about it.
Let me tell you about something I think about all the time, and that's Ting.
I think about how great it is not to have to worry that the two big providers in our area keep coming up with new gimmicks.
Actually, all three providers.
And I don't have to worry about any of that stuff.
I don't have to think about that stuff because Ting is super simple.
And when you have a busy schedule and you just want things straightforward and simple, nobody beats Ting.
Nobody beats Ting.
Go to Linux.Ting.com.
They have a very simple
setup. It's $6 for your phone line. If you bring a device or you buy a device, it's $6 for that
phone line. That's it. And then it's just your minutes, your messages, and your megabytes on
top of that. Linux.ting.com. It's really straightforward. There's no contracts,
no determination fee. You get something free on Tuesdays, like gimmicks. It's just, if you want them as a dumb pipe, they'll be a dumb pipe.
If you want them as something that is your backup data service, they're that.
If you want them as just a cell phone carrier, they're that.
They sell everything from just the bare SIM cards to feature phones,
all the way up to the greatest, latest smartphones.
Linux.ting.com.
Go check out how someone who's looking at the wireless industry from a new perspective would reboot it
with really good actual human beings for customer support.
A fantastic, fantastic control panel.
Two networks to choose from, GSM and CDMA.
I really, really think this is something you should look at.
Linux.ting.com.
Go there, support the show, and save a little bit.
When you go to the Ting, and save a little bit.
And when you go to the Ting site and you want to jump around a bit,
why not check out their blog?
They're doing customer spotlights.
They recently did some giveaways.
They've done an Ask Zach recently about expanding customer support,
tips on minimizing data usage.
Linux.ting.com.
Go check them out.
It's mobile that really makes sense. And a big thank you to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged.
Thank you, Ting.
Thank you.
So, Wes.
Now, I'm also trying not to be inflammatory here.
But we've got to talk about this.
Firefox 47.0 is out.
Do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
So, the big things that we care about
in Firefox 47 is
VP9 codec support is turned on for users with fast
machines, quote-unquote. Quote-unquote. Whatever that is.
And YouTube videos
now play with HTML5 video
when Flash is not installed. That's a big,
big upgrade.
However,
Windows users and
Mac users also received a feature
that Linux users... You mean the most important users?
Maybe the most important feature, actually.
It's that whole...
Okay, so I forget what the standard was, but basically Google was one of the companies behind it,
and it was their effort to kill out Silverlight and things like that.
Mozilla has incorporated the HTML5 DRM CDM component, you know what I'm talking about,
that allows Netflix and...
Encrypted media extensions or whatever.
The encrypted, yes.
Thank you.
The encrypted media extension.
That still allows you to watch encrypted media via HTML5 instead of having to use crappy
Silverlight or crappy Flash.
Nobody wants DRM.
But it seems that enough of us want to watch Netflix and Hulu or whatever the crap.
These are the trade-offs that we are making.
Apparently.
So Google's been supporting that for Linux for almost a year now.
Yeah.
It's been a while.
So long that I kind of forgot that Netflix used to be a hard thing to do on Linux, right?
Yeah.
The only way I was even reminded that it's still a thing is whenever Noah is visiting and he wants to watch Netflix, it's the one thing he uses Chrome for.
And I always laugh at him for it.
Yeah, it's super adorable that this hardcore Firefox user has to install Chrome on every
machine.
And so, what the hell?
I mean, seriously, straight up, what the hell?
If Google could deliver this almost a year ago, I swear this is also not the first time
that Firefox is shipped with features that don't work on Linux that Chrome nailed a while
ago.
Do you sense this?
I do.
But I do wonder, given their position and the slope of said position, I wonder if they
just don't, you know, are they spending this trying to get this out sooner than, would
it be better to do a limited release and get Linux later than wait for the Linux and do
it all if they really want this to remain, to be competitive?
I'll tell you what I think.
Because if I can't watch Netflix, you know, it's like if...
Yeah, for a lot of people, it's a deal breaker.
It's a totes deal breaker.
But if the whole Linux, you know, I don't know how that breaks down.
Like Linux market share on Chrome versus on Firefox compared to their other user bases.
It's interesting.
I bet you it's pretty high even though most distributions ship with Firefox as default.
I bet you Chromium is pretty high.
Here's what I think is going on.
I don't think it's because Mozilla doesn't love Linux,
although I think they could be trying a little harder.
I'm a little disappointed, to be honest.
But I don't think that's actually what it is.
I think it's Mozilla getting their asses handed to them by Google.
See, the things that have been happening,
like the encryption extensions for HTML5 video
and a lot of the changes in the whole arena there, other specs as well, have all been pushed by Google.
Yep.
Firefox playing catch-up.
Mozilla has, in some cases, like with OpenH264 and H264 support in general, they drug and drug and drug and drug their feet.
And it wasn't until Cisco came along
and bought up the licensing and released it
under a compatible license
and then worked with Mozilla
this is my understanding of the situation
that we actually got a decent open H.264
permutation on Firefox
thanks to Cisco doing something for the good of everyone
but even until 47
you didn't get HTML5 playback on YouTube
and it'll still use Flash if you have that installed
so why aren't they pushing the agenda forward here in a way that would seem to be You didn't get HTML5 playback on YouTube. And it'll still use Flash if you have that installed.
So why aren't they pushing the agenda forward here in a way that would seem to be taking this by the lead instead of they're always now trailing?
This seems bad to me.
This seems like a really bad sign for Firefox.
I think there are bigger issues with Firefox than just Netflix.
I noticed that Firefox doesn't even work properly
with GDK anymore.
So it doesn't scale together with GDK.
So when I install Ubuntu on my tablet,
I have an x86 tablet,
and I want all the fonts to be bigger.
I want all the buttons to be bigger, I want all the buttons to be bigger,
so everything works on the touchscreen, right?
On Chrome, everything scales properly.
On Firefox, it doesn't.
Chrome works very well, or Chromium works very well with touch devices
and touchscreens.
Firefox doesn't um and for me this is a much bigger issue than
something like netflix which is a single website and support for touch devices which
there is more and more of everywhere um this affects everything that you do with the browser. W.W., I want to give you a chance to jump in, too.
I don't think, like, video, whether it be Flash, HTML5, whatever,
it's still the heaviest burden on any web browser,
Firefox especially included.
I have Flash installed on Firefox 46.
I have, and I can still view my preference of HTML5 videos perfectly fine,
but it still weighs down the browser no matter what.
So, I mean, getting HTML5, hey, that's great for Linux users and Windows users and whoever else.
But if you just have, you know, maybe you go from one video to the next,
it just loads up the memory
usage, even if you
have, you know, so
yeah, we got HTML5,
great, but you're just trading one
Flash for a different one,
and you still have to pretty much
watch your usage of HTML5
video. It's true. I mean,
the advantage, right, though,
is you don't have that horrible, god-awful,
zero-day-riddled Flash runtime.
Well, Chrome eats your memory
regardless of whether you have it in your ears or not.
Or like the old age-old Flash bug
where you couldn't have it open on one screen
if you clicked on the other screen.
All that crap.
Oh, Flash has been the bane of X11 users for years now.
Yeah. So my take on this whole thing is If you clicked on the other screen, all that crap. Oh, Flash has been the bane of X11 users for years now.
Yeah.
So my take on this whole thing is if this continues to happen, and I'm not – and I would really love for someone who really thinks I'm wrong to speak up
because what I'm worried about is Firefox slowly slipping into a lot of little scenarios
where Firefox just isn't kind of going to work for that job.
And the more you have, right, it kind of snowballs.
It seems like they catch up at the same time, but at the other –
One thing I have seen, like their stuff for web extensions, that seems like they're kind of pushing the ball a little bit.
If Roden Corpse is in here, I think he would be disagreeing with me because he's a Firefox fan.
But Richard, I haven't heard from you.
Are you particular for Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, and do you feel like you disagree with the direction we're taking this?
I'm more of a Chromium fan lately just because it seems to work better for me.
But I don't use Flash.
I will never use Flash again.
And I'm quite happy living without it.
Hell!
The glorious future. Oh! The glorious future.
Oh!
My beer overflew.
Well, so it sounds like you're sort of, that's okay.
Thanks, Wes. Wes jumped up into action.
So it sounds like, Richard, you're kind of in
somewhat agreement with us in that
the trend seems to be that a lot of us
have switched over to Chrome over the years.
Or Chromium, which is a better option probably
for the Linux desktop
in a lot of cases.
Alright. Well, I'll
save my thoughts for the rest of it as we...
Jeez, I got beer all over me.
As we get into the
rest of the Google discussion later.
So yeah. Alright. Any other thoughts
before we move on from the topic, guys?
Going once on
Chromium and Firefox, going twice.
All right, moving on.
If you want to tell us, if you want to give us any feedback,
you can always join us next week.
You know, I should probably, before we change complete topics,
I should mention Dio real quick.
I want you to go over to DigitalOcean and use our promo code DioUnplugged.
That'll give you a $10 credit over at DigitalOcean.
Hey, thank you, Wes.
Look at that thing.
Look at that thing.
That went crazy on me. That, thank you, Wes. Look at that thing. Look at that thing. That went crazy on me.
That went legit crazy on me.
I...
Beer all over the place.
If I had my phone on me, I would take a picture of the...
It looks like I piddled all over the floor.
It really looks bad. It's really just a shame we didn't have one of Noah's
laptops around we could ruin. I know.
I swear. See, this is
why I don't drink beer on any of the other shows.
Because I end up spilling it like once every three episodes at this rate.
This is horrible.
So that's why, you know what, for somebody like me, DigitalOcean's perfect, because apparently
I can't even be trusted with a beer.
But DigitalOcean knows how to manage their infrastructure.
They manage the infrastructure, and I push the pretty buttons.
And they are very pretty buttons.
They have a great interface and a great API.
Use our promo code D1PLUG to get that $5 rig.
Try it out two months for free.
Did you say that right?
$5?
$5. I know. I know. It's for free. Did you say that right? $5? $5.
I know.
I know.
It's really nice.
And they just step it up from there.
They got FreeBSD, Fedora, Debian, CoreOS, CentOS.
They got data centers all over the world, including a brand new one in India.
I think one of the better things about it, though, is the documentation.
Yes.
Super good.
I was just over there right now.
And, you know, you wouldn't think it, but they're still
they just
revved an article for Ubuntu 14.04.
There's still people out there doing that. An introduction
to configuration management, a three-part
series.
That's great. My favorite part is that you can tell
just by the documentation that people like
you are the people that use DigitalOcean.
They're not like 10-year-old
people who haven't updated their software. It's like people who use DigitalOcean. You know, it's like they're not like 10-year-old people, you know, who haven't updated their software.
It's like people who use DigitalOcean, they're learning how to deploy Nginx because that's what you deploy today.
You know, they have modern deployment practices, best guides.
It's awesome.
Yeah, and they have the entire stack, which you can deploy with everything ready to go,
or you can set it all up from scratch yourself, which I like both of those things.
And, you know, the snapshots and the quick spin-up of the machines make trying different versions of that stuff super easy, too.
DigitalOcean.com.
Just use the promo code DEOUNPLUG to support us.
And a big thanks to DigitalOcean for sponsoring the Unplugged show.
Okay.
So I wanted to do that spot right there because I want to give us some room to talk about own cloud.
Because there seems to be a lot of confusion about what the hell is going on here.
And if you didn't see Sunday's show, we had a talk with Joss and Frank from NextCloud.
And if you didn't see Sunday's show, we had a talk with Joss and Frank from NextCloud.
And I don't really have a particular agenda with this topic, not anymore so than I would typically.
But it seems to me that people still are a little unclear on why they left, why they couldn't just fix it at OwnCloud.
And it seems to me that people are a little unclear as to which lessons we should be taking away from this to avoid this thing in the future.
And like I mentioned at the top of the show, Swampy over at CIO.com has a pretty good write-up that I think is worth sort of digging through and discussing a bit.
And it's titled What We Can Learn From OwnCloud's Collapse.
Now, I want to make it clear at this point in time, the OwnCloud community and company are still around. The US
division of the company has
been shut down, but OwnCloud is still there.
You can still download OwnCloud. Theoretically,
there's going to be an OwnCloud 10 or
whatever. So OwnCloud has
not actually collapsed, but
there's been a shift in momentum
events. A lot of the core team
is left, including the original founding developer.
There's a lot of press.
I mean, NextCloud is probably the horse to bet on, I would suspect.
Anybody in the Mumble Room disagree before I?
Yeah.
You guys are so easy.
People probably think I just pick out Yes Men.
I really don't.
I swear I don't.
We invite curmudgeons.
Yeah. So my take on what we could learn in a moment, but first I just want to clarify
a couple of things on why it happened, I think, based on my reading of our chat with Frank
and Joss and based on the reading of this post here. A couple of things that stood out.
Frank and Joss, and based on the reading of this post here.
A couple of things that stood out.
I guess let's start with what was really the obvious one was investors seemed to be a problem.
And I think if you read between the lines, what they were saying is that a lot of own cloud's features were held back because developers had to convince an investor in 30 seconds.
And every conversation led to a comparison with Dropbox.
Which make it sound like these lead developers, in particular the people that we're talking
about here, like, if you're constrained in that way where you feel like you can't do
what the community wants and what the people who are really interested want, I could say
that would be very frustrating.
Yeah, basically the investors go, yeah, well, Dropbox doesn't do that, so we're not going
to do that.
Will that make us money right now?
No?
Yeah.
This is when MariaDB left Oracle or MySQL.
Right, right.
Very much so.
I think there's some lessons there, too.
Swampy writes, no matter who you talk to, from SUSE to Red Hat to CoreOS,
every company that has built its business around open source values the community the most.
The community is what creates their projects. They have to strike a very fine balance between business needs and community needs. Yeah.
trying to be in control. For example,
OwnCloud Inc. had the majority control over the foundation, which gave them the power to
expel any community member.
Doesn't make it feel very much like a community
present. No, it doesn't.
Richard, he name drops SUSE there,
and OpenSUSE
is, I mean, you have to agree
with that statement, I would imagine. Every company that's built
its business around open source values the community the most.
He goes and talks about that
they would,
they did not understand how to put community first in a dramatic sense, in a sense that sometimes would perhaps not lead to greater revenue,
but would lead to a greater community.
Do you have any thoughts on that particular aspect of this situation, Richard?
I think the part of Swapnet's point is accurate.
I mean, I don't know enough about the Unclad situation to say, you know, did they get that totally wrong?
I mean, I think there's lots of different factors at play there.
But the core message that if you're going to be doing any kind of open source business, you can't forget about your contributors.
You can't forget about the developers.
They're the heart and soul of the whole thing.
And you have to find some way of striking that balance between the two.
And yeah, if you get that mix wrong,
then stuff like what we're seeing with own cloud and net cloud
definitely is the kind of thing you'd expect to see.
Yeah, it does.
That feels pretty genuine to me.
Joss also expressed his frustrations on Google+, where he wrote that he had learned that often
with venture capital, you have to limit yourself to doing things investors can understand rather
than what users, and in this case, probably community, right, and customers ask for, or
what maybe could even make money.
This doesn't always have to be an issue, but can be crippling.
And it's frustrating because management ends up forced to make short-term decisions that they know are bad.
This is why business angels are better than venture capital.
Yeah.
Yeah, it seems particularly that venture capital and open source are very rocky.
Sometimes at odds, yeah.
I mean, they screwed Diaspora, really.
Yeah.
Venture capital killed Diaspora.
Mm-hmm. That is true. Yeah, Diaspora, really. Yeah. Venture capital killed Diaspora.
That is true.
Yeah, Diaspora did get the wiener. The situation was a little bit different with the attachment group and therefore SUSE and therefore OpenSUSE.
But, I mean, that worked out pretty well.
But do you look at that as an investor so much or do you look at that as a parent company that sort of has strategic alliances or alignments, I should say?
Well, the attachment group was primarily VC-ish.
Yeah, investment group backed.
Not anymore.
That's all micro-focused now. That's a public company in the UK, completely different structure.
But, yeah, for the post-Novell attachment group years, there's definite parallels there.
And I guess we just got lucky and got a group that understood that
and had goals that kind of fitted in nicely
because it wasn't really an unhealthy relationship at all.
Yeah, it does seem like it's worked well.
It doesn't seem like it's worked well.
It did not work well for OwnCloud.
N3, you wanted to jump in here. Go ahead.
Yeah, I mean, if you're justifying stuff to investors you're forgetting the fact that like the point
of open source is you're not limited by the narrow minds of your investors
or profit motives or any of these things that normally block you okay okay go ahead most of
my work is uh it has a huge base of open source, and we do release code, and our deal is to make money.
Sorry.
Well, it seems to me it would depend on the people involved, because here's the scenario I see happening.
A community comes along, somebody contributes something that's great for your project.
It's just a great new feature or an obvious direction that you
could go in. Maybe it's something to do with sync. Or maybe it is a rebuild of something
that was done in PHP to something more, well, different. And you go to the investor, you
say, look at this great new code that somebody's brought to us. If we spent time expanding
upon this, we could really build this into a super serious feature.
And you could see the investor going, take some third party's code and alter our trajectory
and our plans because of something that somebody in his basement put together for us.
That's a ridiculous idea.
You could see the way they would look at that would simply be, that's impractical.
We shouldn't, that is, that would be irresponsible.
I'm sorry, that's not a real investor i'm sorry that's not a real investor though that's not a real investor in the sense that investors look at free money like they they look at oh somebody gave us
something to have an edge on something else so i would think it would depend on the person though
and and honestly there there is the other side.
Like if somebody just contributed a piece of code to your project and you have a vision and that's going to derail your vision, maybe you should be focusing on why you had the first vision in the first place.
Actually, it's part of staying in planning to do what you set yourself to do first.
Then you, you know, this side away from it.
You have to have room to do that.
And it's part of being an actual
team that can produce results.
It's not just about investment.
You as a project, you have to set goals and to
meet those goals. Otherwise, you fail to everyone
you committed to.
Indeed. Maybe I should have said
monetary investors or
VCs instead of... because you can invest
code too.
I think it's a really good point.
And I think this actually – this is like full-blown Richard the Individual Conspiracy Theorist going on here.
I know nothing about this.
But if you look at some of the graphs that come out from the GitHub from OwnCloud,
you see a period back in 2014 2014 where like obviously own cloud inc was
doing all of the work there was no community there was no momentum there so in that kind of
environment i can imagine an investor going well we're doing all the work we we can't trust on we
can't rely on this community so you know it makes it this foreign unreliable entity and you you think in sort of
traditional software development company terms of what do we do what do we control blah and i guess
this goes back to the earlier point of with tropical mate you know for this to all work
properly happily and healthily you you need to have that balance between community and company
yeah so if you have so if you have the community who are
you know doing a significant portion doing the majority do it yeah you know then that story to
your investor becomes completely different of yeah we have these guys who are basically giving
us free stuff and we pay nothing for it besides maybe a little bit of sponsorship here and there
you know this is awesome it makes us millions there's no funder in the world who isn't going to buy up that idea.
I suppose so.
But the community has to have, you know, it has to have maturity,
strengths, credibility that, yeah, if you look back at own cloud back in 2014,
there's a clear sign that wasn't there then.
Yeah, that's a great point.
Skooki, you make a point about the corporate perspective in all of this.
Well, OK.
So on one hand, you have – OK.
There has never been a more litigious time in terms of from a corporate perspective to
build in – to bring in open source libraries and code into any sort of real project that you want to package because now –
Just like all the stuff around Android and all of the patent wars that we went through the power of free and open source software is that we adapt where a need is presented.
We fill – we move, we fix where larger, blah structures do not want to blah.
Yeah.
And also, I would say we also stay focused in areas that are no longer sexy and marketable
to large companies.
Absolutely.
Yeah, no, totally.
Well, the thing is, like, you know, we fix problems.
And what I mean is like, oh, well, you have a crazy use case, you know, X.
Well, fine.
You know, Microsoft isn't going to fix that or come up with some sort of solution for that for you.
Well, that's why free and open source, you know, blah is so powerful.
And that's why it's I mean, this is this is the first I've heard about on cloud.
This is really depressing.
Oh, yeah.
You got to check Sunday's last.
We covered all in there.
All right.
Any other thoughts from the member room before we move on?
Okay.
So this is all interesting.
It's funny how even when unplanned, there ends up being a thread that sort of connects the whole show together.
And I want to kind of wrap that thread up in the next segment.
So this is a perfectly natural spot to stop and say thank you to Linux Academy for sponsoring the Unplugged program.
Love this sponsor.
This is a great idea.
This was a brilliant way to, honestly, make a little money by producing Linux content.
Really clever.
And the key was to actually make something useful.
So they've got 2,465 self-based courses with videos and comprehensive study guides and downloadable material that you get to keep and own.
And they come with virtual labs that spin up as you need them and give you SSH access.
You can choose the distro, which will adjust the virtual machine and the courseware.
I think probably the key thing to Linux Academy, though, is their insight into the community because they are Linux enthusiasts and users themselves.
And part of the reason they created the Academy was to promote Linux adoption, they follow
the trends extremely well.
They had stuff on containers when containers were just brand new.
When the big switch from IP tables was happening, some of the first courseware here at Linux
Academy, they follow this stuff super closely because they are Linux users themselves.
They have instructor mentoring available, which is fantastic for this level of courseware.
They have graded server exercises, which will help you with your test anxiety.
They have some of the best courseware out there on the topics they cover.
They've hired staff recently.
They've gotten some funding, and they are doubling down on making sure their back catalog
stays relevant, which I think is brilliant, as well as researching future topics
and building new features into the platform all the time.
Your membership is constantly getting more valuable.
Start by going to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged.
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and you get a great deal if you go to linuxacademy.com slash unplugged. Whether you're
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they've got it and they've got great
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slash unplugged.
Thanks, Linux Academy.
You guys rock. It's a
nice resource. It's a great resource.
It's really kind of nice to have a resource out there like that and to have them want to be sponsors on our little podcast.
Thank you, guys.
Now, I've got to talk about something.
So I'm getting all reflective because of the 10th anniversary.
And we were talking like, hey, should we do like, hey, let's talk about something that we thought is just the funniest thing over the last 10 years
or the biggest dramatic thing or some of the big stories.
We just would kind of do them here as a little fun to do segment.
And I started thinking about it.
I said, John, you know, if there's one thing that's haunted me for the last 10 years is that I keep slipping into services.
Services.
I've managed, I feel like, to pretty much free myself from proprietary software in my daily life and in 95% of my media production.
It's getting way up there now.
Like, I'm feeling really good.
But when it comes to services, specifically ones that I'm actually a little paranoid about, and you know who I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the Googs.
Google, honestly, I think we don't spend enough time conceptualizing how much they actually know about us. When I hear people
talk about Google Photos, I don't know if they fully realize the amount of data that
Google can get when you take family pictures and then have them back up to Google Photos.
Google has the capability of analyzing the emotions on your face. They have the capability
of analyzing those faces to see what other people are in your social network.
Not your fake online social network, but your actual real social network.
Because you're taking pictures of people and they're associating those with your account.
They have location information in those photos.
They have the phone information, like what model it is, so they can see how often you buy new phones.
I mean, there is so much information out of every single service that they get.
And if you ever want to know, you can just go look at your Google dashboard and be sort
of blown away by all the stuff that's in there.
My favorite one is going to the voice activity page, because they record every voice command.
And that's big for me.
I do a lot of dictation, because I'm a horrible speller, often because I've got my hands busy.
You're very busy.
And I also will use the OK Googs feature to search for stuff.
And sometimes I even use it because if I can't find it on any of my home screens, instead of tapping the application drawer and bringing up all the apps, I'll use the Google Launcher to just launch the application.
And it's so creepy when you actually stop and realize that they have all of that.
So here's me yesterday at 7.04 p.m.
Okay, Google.
Open the new egg app.
Creepy.
What's creepy is there's a good second before I even say okay Googs, right?
Yep.
And here again.
Okay, Google.
Open the Twitch app.
So you can hear my kids are watching DuckTales in the background.
And here I am again.
Okay, Google.
Best Twitter app for Android.
I barely remember doing any of these things.
Did you find that app?
Here I am talking to my Android TV.
Hydraulic RV slide maintenance.
I was looking for YouTube videos.
The audio quality is horrible.
Yeah, wow.
You just go through your Google dashboard
and it's remarkable
what they know about you. It's really
stunning. And that means they can do whatever they want
with that, right? They can break down how your voice works.
They could be building samples.
Whatever makes sense. Another example
is I
have Google Now turned on,
which I find to be very valuable as you start to use
it more. And I have an Now turned on, which I find to be very valuable as you start to use it more.
And I have an Android Wear watch that has Google Fit.
And when you enable Google Fit, you turn on an extra layer of accuracy for your GPS tracking.
And so it literally tracks me so closely now that it knows when I cut across a driveway versus going down the pathway. It plays it all back through the Fit application.
And to that degree now, they have noticed, Google has, that I've started taking certain
side roads on my home route.
And now it has begun giving me my estimated time of arrival using these side roads that
it would never map you if you didn't go that way.
Yeah, because the route I originally started taking was the way Google Maps sent me the first time.
And then as I learned the area, I started taking side roads that I prefer.
And now it is automatically when I pull up my Nexus here and I look at the Google Now card,
it will automatically represent my preferred route.
Right. And that data probably goes into Waze and now they recommend it to other people too.
It is weird because I find myself fascinated by some of the advances that actually have
proved to be over the last, I would say, year or so that I've really been experimenting
with Google now, actually useful.
Right.
Like about a year, two years ago, it didn't really feel.
You're like, okay, great.
You know I'm at the mall.
Fun.
It seemed obvious.
Exactly.
And I think it sucks that it's mostly only on mobile.
And so if you really want to take advantage of it, you have to be on a mobile device.
However, it's gotten really good at guessing what kind of news stories I like to follow.
Yes, definitely.
It's gotten really good at looking at my shipped packages and telling me when they're going to arrive.
All of that stuff I've actually found helps me when things are
really busy and I'm doing a really shitty
job of being a human being and I'm just not keeping
up with things. You just don't have that spare cycle
at all, even to track your packages or like
So I had a Google Now card came up that said, hey,
you know, your Amex bills do
like right now. Do you want to pay this? I'm like,
yeah, I do. I do want
to pay that. Thank you. Yeah, I've been super busy. I
hadn't thought about that. I was going to yeah i was um and so it does seem to be patching some holes that i find
as a regular as a just as a as a dis as apparently a dysfunctional member of society i can't keep
track of these things sometimes and so it's nice to have this big brain that is augmenting to some degree these weak spots for me.
However, when I think about the amount of data they are collecting on me,
all of my email, all of my text messages, all of my location information.
I'm just looking at my location history right here, yeah.
And all of my docs that I put in Google Docs, all of this stuff is,
they have so much on me
that also at the same time feels like it's not actually sufficient
to how much they can actually do.
It feels like it should be more than that for the amount of privacy
that they have taken from me.
And so I look at this and I think,
how come now 10 years into doing these shows,
I have not gone just,
why have I not become a hardliner on this?
Why have I not drawn a hardline that says, I just refuse to use these services? Why am I not a Trisco user?
You know, what is it about, I feel like I am being irresponsible in a way. Like, I feel like
part of me legitimately knows that they are probably building a profile that is much deeper and richer of me
than I can probably even conceptualize.
I mean, let's look at the resources they have and all of the information and data input they have,
especially when you start using an Android device and Android Wear,
and it's constantly monitoring my steps, my heart rate, and my location.
It's about the best tracking device you could hope to design right now.
Yeah, and when I do voice commands, which I do all the time,
they're capturing my emotion at the time, they're capturing my emotion at the time.
They're capturing my kids in the background, the voices that are in there.
When I take photos on my Android device, they're automatically uploaded to Google Photos.
Oh, right.
And I can type in Dylan hugs, and I can see every time I took a picture of Dylan getting a hug.
So they understand what a hug is.
Yep.
So I don't think I'm even conceptualizing fully how much they know about me.
So I don't think I'm even conceptualizing fully how much they know about me.
And yet even knowing that and knowing the downsides of getting locked into proprietary closed systems.
Even all that, I still find myself slipping into Google services all the time.
I just feel like I'm crazy.
Skooky Sprite, am I crazy?
Of course you're crazy.
Are you out of your mind? Are you crazy for the fact that every, I don't know, I've been listening to Jupiter Broadcasting for like, what, three, four years now?
And yeah, every time you have this moment of reflection, everyone in the audience is like, yeah, Chris, you are the product.
You are just realizing this and you work.
I know that.
That's the problem.
I mean, look at you, though.
You have the Amazon Echo.
I echo, but the echo.
OK, so there's a big difference.
The Echo doesn't follow me around.
That's one thing.
The other thing is like, you know, fine.
Amazon, I buy everything through Amazon anyway.
I got nothing really to hide from Amazon.
Amazon doesn't follow my traffic to work and blah, blah, blah.
But anyway, have you looked at how easy it is to spot two people in a cloud?
This is not anything that's tracking your heartbeat or anything like that.
How easy it is to figure out two people, 500 people like, you know, 500 people in a metropolitan area who are
going to meet each other surreptitiously.
You know, I mean, okay, so that's the unhappy
side of this. You're still coming to grips with the happy side of it.
Yeah, sure, they're using all, you are the aggregate of your data.
You are an advertising product.
So that's not even the thing that I was claiming to be different.
I guess one of the reasons I'm able to step aside and not get so much sucked into those services is basically because I can and try my best to shut down on news.
So I consume my news from curated sources, which tend to have already
freedom and perspective and things like this. And I still participate in the show.
And on the other side, because you are collecting information for the show,
you are exposed to all of the cool features and the cool things that are coming out.
You have to talk about it. So you're like, all right, I did the research. I did all this stuff.
Let me try it out so that I have a firsthand experience.
And I respect that.
That is actually, your point is pretty valid because the entire reason I went back to the Nexus platform was to try out Android N so I could have an educated opinion about the current version of Android.
Because people, I think, often consider me a Google basher.
And I try to weigh the good and bad of every situation.
And I think there's things that Google does that are awful. and I think there's things that Google does that are awful,
and I think there's things that Google does that are actually fairly compelling.
And so I think N, honestly, if you put some of the current performance issues aside,
N, and I just talked about it in yesterday's Tech Talk today,
is a super solid release with really great security features.
And I thought, okay, well, I got my Nexus 5 back from Noah.
It's time to give this a go.
And then that one thing led to another, and now I'm all in. Now I'm all in again.
We always knew you were an Android fiend at heart, Chris.
You can't always take that reflection moment to cut it off completely. You have to gain
the courage to actually, when you are in that momentum, to cut it off.
Not just to deactivate the accounts and delete the accounts.
I think that's the problem is I actually am feeling like maybe I'm going to continue to go all in.
I think I'm starting to feel like it's worth the – I guess I'm starting – I should say this differently.
I'm trying to conceptualize what the absolute worst case scenario is. Right. And then from that, I'm trying to figure out if it's worth the cost for the convenience it brings me.
Again, I'm a dysfunctional human being that apparently the only thing I can really reliably do is make podcasts.
And beyond that, I'm unfunctional.
And so it's helpful.
Thankfully, we have an economy where you can outsource some of these things.
Yeah, it's helpful that I've outsourced part of my brain to this machine.
And on top of that, it is good from a research standpoint, from a content point of view.
But I find myself considering going further with it and continuing to just go further
down the rabbit's hole.
And that's, I think, what's really alarming to me.
And not like, I tell you, I've tried to conceptualize the worst case scenario.
And the way I see it is, try to avoid putting directly sensitive information into the Google scenario. Yeah. And the way I see it is try to avoid putting
directly sensitive information
into the Google machine.
Absolutely.
However,
there's always going to be
the slip ups
and the things you didn't realize.
There's a ton of leakage
just because of the way
all the services report back.
Right.
But like if I had,
say one day I decided
to make a dirty video
right here in the studio.
We take the green screen
and we make a nice dirty video
because why not, right?
It's what everybody jokes about
when they come visit the studio. Everybody, oh, you know what make a nice dirty video. Because why not, right? It's what everybody jokes about when they come visit the studio.
Everybody. Oh, you know what this would be great for?
No. What?
You should do a porn set!
Nobody's ever told you that, huh?
You'd make a ton of money. You mean they don't watch JB
After Dark?
Seriously, though,
if I was going to do something like that, I wouldn't put that in my
Google Drive or cloud whatever
or up on Google Photos. But I think that's where you're fooling yourself
if you think you're still not leaking a ton of information to them. My worst case scenario
when I conceptualize it, what's the worst thing that could happen to me?
It would seem that I could get, that information could be subpoenaed
if down the road I decide to do some sort of
active civil disobedience
and I get caught up by the law,
they could subpoena my Google Fit data and see exactly where I was at
at the time that big dong got spray painted on the side of the building.
And so far we've seen like the Apple hacks and the celeb breaches
and that kind of stuff.
But I don't know, at least publicly,
there hasn't been that much of blackmail, extortion control.
But eventually, these data sets, in the wrong hands,
if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time
or you did something, even the wrong picture,
even if it's an innocuous picture,
you have enough of them, you can find a picture
that looks like someone's doing something wrong.
Yeah.
It is concerning, too, when you,
I don't quite understand,
if Google was really clear about
what the policy around my data was, for example, like, go Google how many times Eric Schmidt visited the White House.
Why is Eric Schmidt going to the White House all the time?
What kind of relationship is between Google and the federal government?
And is that something I should legitimately be concerned about or is that just conspiracy bacon?
If they would just be super clear about this is the way we use your data –
So you can make the tradeoff yourself with full knowledge.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
It also brings up to me like the larger question of as tech literate people,
like where do you draw the line between hosting your own stuff and outsourcing
that to other services?
Right.
Because it's like,
we all have those skills,
but when is the right trade-off?
Yeah,
go ahead.
I have a crazy proposition.
There's this project Ethereum,
which is based on the blockchain concept,
but the mathematical pretty much function that has to be solved for the blockchain to work
is actually random operations of any type of software,
which essentially means that you can distribute your applications.
Eventually, we can get the Google compute power on all distributed machines.
It's not going to be as fast, but then you can, maybe you buy DigitalOcean, for example,
and put it running a node so that you have a little bit faster response.
Then you solve that type of scenario.
That's a pretty, the blockchain, that's an interesting solution.
Blockchain means, we talk about it.
Popey shows up.
Popey, you were going to make a comment about Alibi.
Go ahead.
So like you're looking at it from the negative point of view that they've got all this data and they could be – correlate some data about you in a particular place at a particular time.
But the flip side is that could actually work to your benefit sure like if someone in you know a town near me with
fitting my description you know looks a bit like elvis a good smelling fellow right yeah sounds a
bit like a robotic device you've got on your desk you know all those kind of things right
uses arch linux you know all these things are dead giveaways that
it could be me but i also happen to have maybe an android device nearby that i'm using mozilla
stumbler to report my location to help the mozilla project i'm using ingress the game when reporting
my location in that i'm using google maps i'm sending messages via Telegram, which I'm getting my IP address.
So there's like 10 or more
apps on my Android
device that are actually
my alibi. So when
something goes wrong, I can
call on, potentially, those people
with a request
for my data and prove
my innocence that I wasn't at the
location where the crime occurred.
The difference is you are in Europe and you can make data requests.
Unfortunately, our U.S. friends don't have that ability.
Yeah, well, that's the problem with, you know, separating away and becoming one of the separate
colonies.
You know, they should have not done that.
You know, I tell you, the other thing that struck me, too, is if I'm going to worry about
Google, then I probably should be crapping my pants about the credit card companies and the carriers.
Because they're –
They've got their fingers just in there, too.
Yeah.
And they're doing super cookies where they're monitoring all of your web traffic.
Or in the case of the credit card companies, they're selling your data to data brokers, what you buy, where you buy it, how much you spend.
All of these things are happening in – and it's a big industry around it.
Huge industry.
And they do not – trust me, when it comes to respecting privacy, not at the top of their
list.
Nope.
Yeah.
And I might change my tune because right now the UK government are debating the investigatory
powers bill, which will enforce ISPs to record for a year or more every website that I visit.
So I'm probably going to make some changes in my life as a result of that
because I'm actually less worried about Google having access to all this data
than I am my own government.
That's actually why I worry about Google is because it seems like it's just one
national security letter away, which is concerning for all services, really.
That's not a Google-specific one.
It's just how much information do they have.
Popey, what kind of changes?
VPN, what would you?
So I can already, like,
my employer already provides me with a VPN,
and I could potentially enable that on every device,
or I could do it system-wide on my network at home
and route all my traffic through that VPN.
That would help.
I might consider using Tor.
There are some really nice Tor apps for Android, for example.
We don't have any on Ubuntu phone, but I do on the desktop.
So I'm certainly looking into these things if this legislation passes.
I bet.
I bet.
Before we wrap up completely, I thought, looking back at the last 10 years, this seems to me
for Linux desktop users to be a big, the services aspect.
We could move over to a free platform and then end up locked into a bunch of services.
That's not something we haven't talked about, but looking back at the last decade, something
that seems like a bigger problem than it's ever been right now.
And I feel like I'm in the middle of it.
Popey, before we go, before we wrap up,
I saw in the G Pluses that you have one of them,
they're Raspberry Pi Nanos.
Is that what they're called?
Pi Zero.
Pi Zero, right, Pi Zero.
Pi Zero.
Well, I was thinking it'd be a fun little piece of kit to get it.
What have your thoughts been on it?
So I have a couple of them.
I have one, the original Pi Zero when that first came out.
And then this is the second generation Pi Zero,
which has a camera connector on the end, right?
And they're both destined to go in small projects.
They're not really designed to be desktops.
They're not designed to be media centers or anything like that.
My goal is to put them inside something quite small,
but I haven't.
I have some plans, and I have some things in pieces,
but I haven't quite decided exactly what to put them in yet.
I say robot body parts that connect back to a Mycroft head unit.
Yes.
Walking around.
And the only command it accepts is to watch the JB livestream.
There you go, Wes.
All right, so we'll probably be screeching to a halt here because I got a telegram from Mr. Chase Nunes a little bit ago.
He is Chase Nunes?
Yeah, he is en route right now.
It's a big day here.
Wow, he's only like 30 minutes away too.
It's a big day here in the U.S. of A.
So we're going to switch gears over to our unfilter show here in just a moment.
going to switch gears over to our unfilter show here in just a moment.
So before we wrap up, I just wanted to say that if you are around on Sunday, we would really love if you'd come and visit us at jblive.tv.
I hear it's kind of a huge show.
Well, we're looking forward to it.
I'll tell you this.
It's doing a couple of things that I've wanted to do for a really, really long time.
And I think they turned out pretty fun.
So yeah, we're doing that on Sunday.
And there may be a few things that are worth turning up live for at jblive.tv.
You can get it converted to your local time at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar.
Now, this show here, this show is on Tuesdays, Wes.
Did you know that?
Yes, I do.
Yeah, Tuesdays.
Tuesdays.
You can join us live.
You can hang out in our virtual lug and also in our chat room.
You can find that at the calendar page as well.
LinuxActionShow.reddit.com is where you can go to submit topics.
Like a lot of times we'll look for open source spotlights.
We'll go out and scour the web.
I'll link Roundup.
But one of the things that –
If you guys have stuff you want to talk about, let us know.
Yeah.
One of the things that helps is that subreddit, LinuxActionShow.reddit.com.
Feedback at JupyterBroadcasting.com slash contact.
Just choose Linux Unplugged from the dropdown.
You can follow me on the Twitter at Chris Elias.
Are you on the Twitters, Wes?
Oh, yeah, at Wes Payne.
Who knew?
All right, everybody.
Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode
of the Unplugged program,
and we'll see you right back here next Tuesday. Thank you. JamieTitles.com.
Oh, yeah.
Let's go pick our title.
Thanks, Jess.
Thank you, Mumble Room.
Hey, everybody.
All right.
Bobby, it was nice of you to join us.
Towards the end there.
I'm glad you made it in.
Yeah, sorry I dropped in late.
Oh, I'm just glad you made it.
Catching up with a friend on Mumble. Good for you. That's a good thing to do. It is. I'm glad you made it in. Yeah, sorry I dropped in late. No, I'm just glad you made it. Catching up with a friend on Mumble.
Good for you.
That's a good thing to do.
It is.
I'm just as happy I made it.
There we go.
Sujebititles.com.
Mind on my cloud and cloud on my mind.
That's pretty good.
It's super long, but that's pretty good.
NSA endorses Googs.
You like that one there, Wes?
The money and My Cloud.
Chris Lask was Alex Jones.
I don't think so.
You just go look it up.
Just go look it up.
I'm not saying.
I got the documents.
Yeah, you haven't got the croaky voice for Alex.
I got the documents right here.
It's real.
That mustache.
Mustaches.
Actually, now I think about it.
When I did the recording of the voice for the mic off, at no point did they ask me to go.
That is worrying.
Did they have you repeat mustaches in various different ways, though?
Because that's what's important.
I am the world's biggest lightweight.
Yep.
Oh, man.
So I've been fighting a cold.
But it's been like, it's been one of those things where it's, instead of getting like
really, really bad on me like they used to, it's just sort of been real mild now for about
two, three weeks.
I've been working crazy hours, so I think maybe I just haven't really had time to heal
necessarily.
So yesterday I started to suspect, well, maybe it's allergies.
So right before we started Tech talk today, Angela was like,
take this Zyrtec.
And I'm like, this is non-drowsy, right?
And she's like, yeah, it's absolutely non-drowsy.
Which I believe.
I take it.
Two hours later, I'm asleep.
I could not.
I was out.
So then I woke up after a few hours.
Still felt sick.
I'm like, oh, I don't feel good.
And now I'm not tired because I slept.
So my lady's like, here, take some NyQuil.
I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, that's a great idea.
And I'm like, this has got a decongestion in it, right, because I would love to be able to breathe through my nose.
Yes.
She's like, yes, it does.
So I take the NyQuil, down the NyQuil.
I don't get particularly sleepy at nighttime, although I did sleep solid all night long.
But today, I have not been able to shake that drowsy, slow, oh, I have like a NyQuil hangover.
I need to have each little thought.
And yeah, yeah, exactly.
That's a good way to put it.
And like I'm reading, like it's not supposed to last like this long.
Why does it, why does it, why does that happen to me?
So I tried going out, going for a walk, got some sunshine, took a cold shower, tried to
take a nap although I couldn't fall asleep, did all those things, still barely made a
difference.
So it's good to have caffeine.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
So I'll probably, you know, I'll probably pass out during Unfiltered tonight.
That's fine.
Yeah, that's good.