LINUX Unplugged - Episode 6: The Android Problem | LINUX Unplugged 6

Episode Date: September 18, 2013

Is that exploit in your pocket? This week we'll ask if Android is Stallman's worst nightmare, making Tivo look like a quaint abuser of Linux. And how Linux is poised to push past it's current limitations over the next few years.Then it's your feedback, and our follow up!

This is Linux Unplugged, Episode weekly unscripted Linux podcast that's been taking RMS a little more seriously. It's brought to you by our fine sponsor, Ting.com. I'll tell you more about how great Ting is as the show goes on. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. Hey, Matt. Welcome back from the trip. Thank you, thank you.

Good times. How was the trip? It was unbelievable. It was just what the doctor ordered. Oh, I bet. So I think I saw your waterfall picture. That's what it was. Yeah, we went out to Lake Chelan here in eastern Washington, and it was just amazing.

Yeah, I showed that to the kids. They're like, I want to go there. So that sounds like a must-do. And you did it just at the right time. It wasn't probably too hot, right? Oh, yes, it was. Oh, yeah? When we first got over the mountains, we were about 101, I think.

Fair night, folks. It averaged in the mid-90s the rest of the trip. Oh, wow. So I forget, you know, like you were just saying on the pre-show, there is a whole other side to our state that is like a completely different state. Oh, it really is. Yeah, it's fascinating when you go over those mountains, how warm it gets. Well, we've got a big show. Guess what?

Big show. So this week, I want to talk a little bit about losing the flame for Android. If you followed this week's Coderator, you probably know where I'm talking about. But we're going to get into it on this. Backing up a Linux server in a set-it-and-forget-it way. I'd like to maybe pick the Mumble server, their brain, folks on the Mumble server. And then, of course, we've got our feedback and our follow-up, as always. But nothing planned. Nothing planned. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. So why don't we bust through some quick FU? That's what I'm labeling the follow-up is, FU. The FU segment. The FU segment.

And probably the first thing, you know what I need? I need like an FU segment here. Let's see. Maybe this could be our FU segment bump. He's a jackass. What do you think? That works. I think it's short, sweet, and it's to the point. All right. Well, so I remember last week during the news segment on the Linux Action Show, we were saying that SystemD, build 207, is coming to all of distributions near you that run SystemD. And there was that etsy-systl.conf file that I was wondering if Arch users were going to get bitten by.

Exactly. I specumilicated out loud in the show. And we had a few people write in and tell us what's up with that. And they pointed us to the source of all knowledge in Arch, and that is the Arch wiki. And actually, in this case, it's the news section. And it is. You will have a little bit of work to do if you've been using it. But however, if you have a fairly recent installation, you probably don't have anything in there.

There is a symlink you need to do if you do have config info in there. And if you don't, just go look at that file. And if you really haven't set anything in there, you don't have anything in there. There is a symlink you need to do if you do have config info in there. And if you don't, just go look at that file. And if you really haven't set anything in there, you don't have to worry. Good times. I love that. I love the fact that their wiki really spells it out in a real clean, easy to follow way. Yeah, following the Arch news, and there's also a mailing list you can follow is always a good step. I don't always check before I run it, but I generally try to.

And we're going to have an email coming up a little bit later in the show about the Arch Challenge again, King Backup. And so I thought we'd cover that and let people know. There's also another email. Actually, this was a bit message we got. And they said in the last episode of Last, you talked about note-taking programs, which, by the way, some people loved, Matt, and then some people hated. Some people were down with it. Well, you know, some people take notes and other people have that mega memory thing going on so yeah okay yeah i guess so uh but one that didn't get mentioned and so our bit messenger

wanted to make sure i gave it a shout out is cherry tree cherry tree i think has gotten some love on the show i want to say it might have been a pick at one point cherry tree notes is great though and it's got it's got its own good uh like it, though. And it's got its own good, like, it supports rich text formatting. It's got its own syntax you can follow. And I have not actually used it beyond, like, you know, trying it out to see if it would do what I wanted for, I don't remember what it was about it

that didn't quite grab me. Maybe it was the way it implemented X, Y, and Z, or whatever it was. Sure. The UI, actually, to be honest with you. Could be. Sometimes with note-taking, part of it is, like, you know, you've got to work in this space.

You've got to live inside this application. Well, I know UI is a big – it's an important part of your space because it's, you know, you're very UI-centric. And so for me, it's a lot of times of, you know, can I, I don't know, ham-fist through it. And a lot of times I'll put up with a lot of that kind of stuff. I don't know. I'm looking at it now, and's honestly, I don't know. It doesn't look so bad. You know, it definitely kind of has a QT feel to it. So I thought one last bit of follow up that I wanted to get to, because I wanted to spot to talk about this where people would be like, oh, you guys are just saying this because they sponsor you.

Right. And that is today. The new System76 rig was launched. Now remember last week we said they're going to have a new Leopard Extreme coming. I think they're calling it like the Leopard X4, the Leo X4. I'll pull it up here while we talk about it.

So System76 sponsors Linux Action Show, but they don't sponsor this show. But we are both personally fans of System76. That's one of the reasons we were able to twist their arm to come on board. Oh, yeah. And so they updated today their Leopard Extreme rig, man. Have you had a chance to look at this thing? I was looking through it, and it's just like – I mean, first of all, the first tip I would give anyone looking at the pictures is pry your face off the screen so you can actually take in the images.

Because I was so busy trying to, like, throw my money at the screen and get it – you know, like, trying to, like to make it materialize in front of me that I wasn't able to fully appreciate it until I pulled away a little bit. Looking at it, it looks really powerful. I've already done a few builds. They're using a Corsair water cooling solution. I've used a similar water cooling solution, and it's really cool because what it does is it's not very complicated.

It just runs to a radiator, I believe. I'm guessing basically because I have a similar model. It runs to a radiator that's connected to your 120 millimeter fan in the back of the case and so it's it just uses the regular case cooling to cool it so you don't have to have like a radiator sitting on top of the rig um and and so this to me is one of those things where i think the first reaction a lot of people are going to have is it's probably too expensive because it is a it's a highly priced machine it's for it's a high-end machine for folks that want high-end performance and a high-end experience without having to monkey with something

themselves i think that's the real differential this is a this is a total pro level machine so like here i i thought i'd so if i was going to build a machine i would get the six core fourth gen intel i7 which runs at 3.4 gigahertz i would get 32 gigs of ram uh probably because if i'm gonna have a machine this nice i also want to uh play video games and i also use gpu accelerated functions so they have an nvidia graphics card here that has a fifth uh um 1500 cuda cores uh that would be the one i'm gonna go with kind of expensive but i i could use that i would probably not go right i'd go a 240 gigabyte ssd for the primary hard hard drive, and then maybe I'd probably keep it as tight as I needed. Three terabytes would probably be enough for my working space for my scratch.

Oh, yeah. You know what would be awesome with this, too, is if you're someone that does a lot of VMs simultaneously, and you just don't care about, you don't want to have to think about, do I have too many running or whatever, that would be fantastic. Anything that's really performance intensive. It actually clocked in less than I thought at 30 at 3059 oh that's actually a lot less so now i would have figured four i'm gonna go to apple.com slash store and the reason why

is because i'm comparing this leopard extreme to the mac pro i think this is for content creators is for people who want um you know like i if i'm a plumber i get myself a real special kind of exactly this is not to compare the mac mini to uh the extreme this is to prepare i would go it's slightly slower processor but i would go two cores uh or uh this is yeah six core now this is a xeon 32 gigs of ram um let's go we we can't do, we'll do a 512. You're already, without even going to step two, at $6,199. No, and I'm at $7,500. Wow. Holy crap. And the thing looks like a trash

can. Well, no, we don't even know what the price of that one's going to be. But my point is, this Leopard Extreme is, this is a professional's computer. This is something that, you know, if Chris Buise writes off on his taxes, right? That's what this is. Is this even the next gen Mac yet or is this still the one? No, that's the old one.

That's the old one. Oh, so this is the one that looks like a computer. Yeah. But I think this – because it's got – it's a tower, so it has PCI Express slots available to you where the new trash can doesn't. I think as more people move to Linux for certain functionality – I've been looking at a new generation of media production apps. One that just hit the subreddit today. It's an audio editing application. It's in beta. I've been keeping at a new generation of media production apps. One that just hit the subreddit today. It's an audio editing application. It's in beta.

I've been keeping an eye on it. And then another one that a video editing application that hit the subreddit a couple of days ago that is, yes, once again, another video editor. But I actually edited a mock episode of Linux Unplugged in that video editor last weekend. And it actually wasn't perfect. It definitely wasn't as fast as my current workflow, but it was the closest I've ever gotten to taking non-native Linux codecs.

These were ProRes codecs, bringing them into a Linux editor, assembling it the way I need it with the music cues and the transition spots, and then export it out to a file, a master file that I can then encode on the distributed machines that produce all the different file formats. It like actually the whole process from end to end actually happened in this environment, like on a Linux box. It was amazing.

And so we're definitely very close to the point where if I changed a few behaviors and if i changed a few workflow things and i was willing to live with maybe a little less quality maybe you know silly things too like night is not not as nice transitions maybe a reduction in audio quality slightly because this didn't have any audio processing um we are at the point where i actually think this could all be done on linux and that's pretty exciting because then it starts you start this, like, this library extreme, and now it's actually, like, you know, we're really, really close. And I think I could do 70% of it today on that. So I'm really excited about it. I'm going to, you know, I'm not sure I'm ready because, honestly, the Bonobo, I mean, the thing has two hard drives, so my I.O. problem is solved.

They're both SSDs. It's a Core i7. It's got 16 gigs of RAM. So the Bonobo has done so well. So I'm like, do I just run it on the Bonobo, or do I maybe do this towards the end of the year as like a 2013 taxes thing? I don't know. But I'm really excited about it. I say hats off to System76.

Leopard Extreme, I think people are going to think I'm crazy for saying this, but I think it looks like the best computer for Linux for this year, maybe even 2014. Oh, that's not even a question. I mean, as you just did the comparison with the Mac, there was no question there at all. And then, of course, as far as knowing the machine is going to be built to the specifications you want and everything just works, it's got a solid warranty. The company's been around for a long time. It's just a win-win. Yeah, it looks really good, too. I like the look of it, too, the size.

Anyways, really excited, and I emailed them asking them for a demo unit. So we'll see. That would be fantastic. Their inventory is tight, and they're billing a lot of them in the U.S. now, and that makes it even tighter. So I know it might not happen, but I thought I'd put it out there. Doesn't hurt. Yeah, yeah. All right, Matt.

I'd put it out there. Yeah, doesn't hurt. Yeah, yeah. All right, Matt. Well, before I get to what's been troubling me this week, deep down on the inside, and why I think maybe RMS has been right all along and we just haven't been receiving his wisdom, and now I'm rethinking everything,

I want to talk about our sponsor this week. And that, my friends, is Ting.com. Look, if you go to linux.ting.com, we've got a landing page for you, built just for you, customized just for you. Now, if you go to linux.ting.com, we've got a landing page for you, built just for you, customized just for you. Now, Ting is mobile that makes sense. They're a completely new way of doing mobile, and they give me a lot of hope for the future of this industry. First of all, probably the biggest differentiator, no contracts, no early termination fees, and you pay for what you use.

So you get a line, it's $6 a month. If you use 100 minutes, you end up just going to that 100-minute bucket, and that's what you pay. Ting takes your minutes, your megabytes, and your messages, and they add them all up at the end of the month. And if you're like me, and you're a little bit savvy on your voice, some months I squeak away with hardly any voice minutes at all. And my bill is about as low as it can get. It's usually in the $12 to $15 range. Average price, average bill on Ting for a Ting customer is $22 or $21, I'm sorry. So, you know, it's a pretty reasonable price. It's not only that, but they have a good range of phones from pre-owned phones that you can get at a great discount, feature phones, and also high-end phones like the HTC One, which has

fantastic speakers, which is great for podcast listening, but also has incredible screen, which is great for watching content like our shows. So when you go over to Ting, you might notice if you play around that they've got some shots of their dashboard. That's actually what their dashboard looks like. It is legitimately that beautiful. It is legitimately that easy to use, and it is very functional. You can do everything from porting a phone, deactivating a phone, buying a phone, transferring a phone, anything for their website. Matt, what was your impression? You know, you're on Ting too. You got the Note 2.

What was that process like setting that up on the Ting website? Setting it up was surprisingly simple. I was amazed that even though I had to release the phone from its original owner, which was you, that only took like a couple seconds just using their help file. And once that was done, the actual setup process, I think was under like a two minutes, minute and a half. That's yeah. It was something crazy.

I didn't have to talk to anybody, even though you can get a real person if you do. Yeah. But it was awesome. It was so easy. Yeah. Ting also has a great blog where they're actively posting the stuff

that they think people that are Ting users might be interested in because the Ting customer base, I think is a little savvier than your average bear. And so here's five things you didn't know your smartphone could do. Matt, this is totally, totally up your alley. Remotely control your electronics.

They highlight these Belkin Wemo switches that integrate with an app. That's awesome. Yeah, so you can control your different devices. Scan high-quality documents. Play laser tag. And here's one that I really like. Measure the speed of a moving object. They talk about this app called Speed Gun that lets you take Speed Gun.

You point it at something that moves across the frame, and it tells you how fast that thing is moving. How cool is that? Back up a notch, and you said you can do laser tag. They have an article telling you this. This is cool. Yeah, they got laser tag. They got laser tag.

Yeah, it was called AppTag, and it's designed to let you play. Yes, the Ting blog is awesome, but one of the things that I caught on the Ting blog recently is they are doing early termination fee relief. So if you're in a contract now, and you want to get out and you want to start saving money, you want to move over to Ting because you love that included hotspot. You love that included tethering. You love the fact that they don't bundle anything along that you wouldn't expect. You love the transparent nature of the company and you love what they're about. Maybe you want to get out of that contract a little early. Now Ting's going to help you with that. They're going to take up to 75% off of that early termination fee. So all you have to do, get your Ting phone, you activate it, and then you send them your ETF claim

and they'll cut you a check right there, or actually maybe a credit. But think about that. Think about how awesome that is. It helps not only relieve the blow of having to cancel that contract, but then it just increases the amount of money you're going to save on the long run by switching to Ting. So go to linux.ting.com, take $25 off your first device or $25 off your first month of service if you're going to bring your own device. In fact, they even have a concierge service to help find a used device for you so you can get a great deal on a device. I love that. And if you've got somebody maybe in your family that doesn't want a very powerful phone, you can still bring them on, have a shared family pool of minutes with unlimited lines, and you can just give them a feature phone because

Ting has some great feature phones. Yes, they're still a thing. They're out there. That's so awesome. Ting's got them, including some of the best Android devices. So thanks to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged. Dun, dun, dun. So one of the things that RMS warned us about, Matt,

was that TiVo... It's negative in the freedom dimension. Remember, he was quite concerned about the TiVoization of Linux. He was, yeah. In fact, you could say that maybe that was a huge inspiration for a lot of the provisions in the GPL3. I think so. I think that was definitely something that forced them to take a second look at that.

And now we're looking back at it, and it's like, oh my god, he's right on a lot of stuff. I think the Tiivoization i think what tivo has done to linux is quaint and adorable in comparison to what android has done to linux i think what has happened where you have an open source operating system where the core is open and then there's layers of stuff on top of it that are apache licensed and then there's layers on top of that that are just commercially you know whatever their commercial proprietary license is. And then Google takes

this, bundles it all up, and hands it out to these OEMs that then inject their proprietary code at the firmware level, at the radio level, at the OS kernel level, at the user land space level, and even in the services level with the cloud services these things connect to. Every single layer, we take this

open source operated open platform and we inject this proprietary code and lockdown into it at all different levels. We bastardize this thing. We make it an embarrassment of the original intent. And then we ship it as a product out to consumers. And then to make matters worse, not only have we developed one of the most incredible fast moving open source projects that has thousands of intelligent contributors making the thing better every single day. But we managed to figure out a way to ship a product running that that doesn't receive updates. That's right. And people are excited to get new ones, you know, that are literally oftentimes running the same OS as the phone they just had. So I'm at a point now, and I think it's one part NSA-inspired fear-mongering,

because maybe it just has me thinking about cloud services in a different perspective, right? I think it – yeah, I think for you it has a lot to do with that. I think it has a lot to do with I want to find devices and tools that complement my desire to internalize my own personal cloud in my own land, not outside of it. Right, yeah, exactly. Create your own cloud. my own land, not outside of it. Sure, right, yeah, exactly. Create your own cloud. And so I think, I don't want to start this off to slam Android, because I think Android

is a really great solution for a lot of people that offers a lot of great features over the other alternatives. Let's take the number one alternative, iOS. And let's just, you know, here's a great one off the top of my head, swapping out the keyboard. We were talking about this on the pre-show the fact that the fact that ios still has this this ridiculous keyboard i mean it's a it's kind of an embarrassment right so i'm not i don't mean to demean android or demean anyone who chooses it to use it as their mobile platform because i think

there's a lot of merit to the platform however i have to bring up issues with what what google i think google has been a bad steward of this operating system. I think they have left consumers in vulnerable positions. I think it is not an exaggeration to call year-old Android devices exploits in the pocket. I think that's exactly what they are. user solutions to this, like replacing ROMs and other things, but they're not a solution for the majority of people. So I want to couch this by saying I'm about to get a little ranty on Android, but I don't want anyone to take that as judgment because I'm not saying there's a perfect solution here. But I'm looking at this now, Matt. So this last week in the Linux Action Show, I ended the Android app picks. I didn't say anything to you because it was just something internally to me. I just knew I was done doing this. Right, right.

And I said in the show, I didn't want to make a big stink about it in the Linux podcast record, in the big show. But I said in the show that I didn't feel like I need to evangelize this platform anymore. Yeah, for me it was because I knew nothing really, any backstory to it. It was very sudden. And I figured it must have been, okay, maybe he's just burned out on talking about apps. Okay, that's cool.

So I feel like it's probably deeper than that. I think I've been rethinking cloud services. I've been rethinking the treatment of this open platform by the carriers, by the OEMs, and by Google. In fact, I have a quote here from RMS that I, you know, it's been interesting as some of this stuff has come out, either be the NSA stuff or looking at the situation with Android. A lot of stuff that RMS said a while ago actually rings true with me now. And he was just kind of ahead of us. And so here's the point. So in an interview by The Guardian, Richard Stallman was asked whether Android should be considered free or open, right?

Sure. So RMS responds with, Google has complied with the requirements of the GNU General Public License for Linux, but the Apache license on the rest of Android does not require source release. Google has said it will never publish the source code for Android 3.0, aside from the Linux component, and even though executables have been released to the public, Android 3.1 source code is also being withheld. Thus, Android 3, apart from Linux, is non-free software, pure and simple. Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free software portable phone, but there is a long way to go. Hack is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free software portable phone, but there is a long way to go.

Hackers are working on Replicant, but it's a big job to support a phone model. I'm sorry, a new phone model. And then there remains the problem of the firmwares. Even though Android phones of today are considerably less bad than Apple or Windows smartphones, they cannot be said to respect your freedom. And the part that I challenge there is I think one of the things that sort of started to

shift my perspective on this is I watched it happen in our community and I watched it happen on the internet in general. When the iPhone 5S was announced, everybody took to the web proclaiming that the fingerprint scanner was an NSA mass collection device. Sure. And that this would be used to track iPhone users' fingerprints. But I didn't see the same outcry when Android face detection launched or when the Moto X

launched with always listening capabilities. Well, let me ask you this, and I'm asking this from someone that's not familiar with what's mandatory, what's not. On the iPhone, is that a mandatory feature or an optional feature? Optional. Okay. And on the Android, is that a mandatory feature or an optional feature? For the face unlock? Yeah. Optional. Both are optional. So from that perspective, I award Darwin awards to people that choose to use them you know right well yeah

there's that right yeah and there's there's a there's a there's a whole series of issues like uh like wire pointed out like pleading the fifth when you use your fingerprint or your face to unlock but well i think my point was is people i feel like our community doesn't think critically about these things like one's always good one's always evil i would say that by and large that's true but i think it i think it's we look at the lesser two evils like most people do politically I think at that. I think – and that's – and I don't support that idea, but I think that's kind of where we're at. And so for each individual one of us, the most powerful thing we can do is to have the discussion we're having now, talk about the good, the bad, the ugly, and the choices that each one of us need to reflect on to make the decisions that's right for us. I think I'll get some crap because I was particularly hard in Coder Radio.

But really, I think it's being just intellectually honest with yourself, reanalyzing this stuff and, you know, making sure that it all checks out, you know, passes the sniff test. So I think you nailed it. I think it's picking the less of two evils, right? And I think some of us sort of assume Google is less of two evils because, well, Google does Summer of Code, and Google often mentions things are open, and I love open.

They're better at marketing to geeks, quite frankly. Right, right, yeah. And their slogan is, don't be evil. Can't go wrong there, right? Yeah, I mean, so your first impression is, okay, they're probably good guys. But I think that is not necessarily the case i think there's a case to be made that that is a misplaced amount of trust but i want to back up a little bit because

way i open it so there's not a great solution either way and you've recent well not recently but a little while ago you switched from the iphone to android absolutely yep and as far as a system functionality level goes, that's, I mean, to you, it must have seemed like a pretty big upgrade. It was a huge upgrade. And my motivation, honestly, I, for a long time,

because I've, you know, you want to go back far enough. I was on very early versions of Windows Mobile, then, of course, later on Blackberry, and so on and so forth. And then I tried this whole iPhone thing, and it was just a total wake-up call, especially from the browser and all this sort of stuff,

and being free of a keyboard. It was a great experience for and it was just a total wake-up call, especially from the browser and all this sort of stuff and being free of a keyboard. It was a great experience for what it was. iPhone 1, iPhone 2, 3 and 3G. And then by the time 3G rolled around, I was kind of like, yeah, I'm kind of done. And my wife went for it and I actually went with an Android phone. And it was just like someone

pulled a kidnapper's hood off my face when I tried the Android. It's like, oh my god, there's widgets and control, and I can make adult decisions with my phone. There's a file system in here. There's a file system, yeah. I mean it appealed to someone that wanted to really play with the underpinnings of their phone a little more if you want to root it or whatever. To get that functionality with an iPhone, I would have to actually jailbreak it, and I never wanted to do that. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, exactly, right? Yeah. So I've been looking at it from the standpoint of a privacy aspect, and I think the iPhone has a better argument here. I feel like – and it comes down to kind of almost like a fundamental corporate philosophy. I feel like Android is sold to – so the goal of selling Android, and this is why Google literally gives it away, right, is because they really want to eventually sell Google services. That is true, and arguably people would point out that Apple is not motivated in doing that right now. I would counter with Bull. Steve Jobs has passed on. cook is absolutely going to keep that company competitive and in order to do that in the coming years you damn well better believe they're going to mimic google's model it will happen but here's the difference right so here's the difference is

they're making the iphone and as a checkbox on that on that box or on that spec sheet they have this companion icloud service right google is the, and they make Android to connect you to it. So Apple is making the iPhone to sell you an overpriced piece of hardware. Google is making Android to sell you their cloud services. But the problem here is those cloud services rely on extracting as much information about you as possible, logging that information. Extracting as much information about you as possible. Logging that information. And because they are a U.S.-held company, this is where the NSA paranoia comes in, anything they learn about you is subpoenable by the FBI or whoever needs to get it, right?

And arguably, Apple is not a threat in that regard yet. And I think even as they begin to ramp out more and more of those features, it still comes down to the basic alignment of the priorities of the company. Apple's a hardware manufacturer. They live and die on making that hardware. All of their margins are on hardware. They give away all of the software because they don't make any money on it. We're talking about a company that makes billions and billions and billions, hundreds of billions even, on selling little gadgets. Google makes its billions on selling advertising. That's 100% accurate. No, absolutely true. But I would also point to the evolution of, and I hate to keep bouncing back to Apple,

but that's part of the conversation. Apple computers wasn't always just Apple. It used to be Apple computers. And they evolved. They had to change their model. They were no longer just about selling an Apple computer. They were moving into a more of a, I would argue a more of a services-based experience, whether it be iTunes or iThis or iThat or whatever. And I think the iCloud stuff, and I think that over time, we're going to see them – I would even say probably no later than two years from now become on par with what Google is doing.

So I think you might be right. So if you lock yourself into that ecosystem, yeah, you buy yourself a little time. But but are they truly going to do you trust Jim? You know, do you trust Cook enough that you're going to believe that he's going to tell you, hey, by the way, we're changing everything around and we're going to start doing this stuff behind the scenes? Probably not. I think I might be a heretic in this room, but I think I trust him cook more than I trust the Google boys.

I really do. And like I'll give you an example. Let's just say all of this information that Google is collecting on us never is used against us. It's never leaked. It's never given to the authorities. It's never used to build a creepy database about knowing what you want before you notice. It's never anything like that. What happens when the next regime comes in and they have all of that data? They have access to all of that information. They have all of that. It's going anything like that. What happens when the next regime comes in and they have all of that data?

They have access to all of that information. They have all of that there. It's going to get twisted. And, you know, the other thing that I want to just mention before it leaves the chat log is, GQ in the chat room, GQ says, Android is open source and iMessage is backdoored. Well, how do we know that? Because what we actually have documented is that iMessage has a key on both ends and the messages are encrypted between the two parties.

That's what we know about iMessage. What we know about Hangouts with the comparable on Android is we know everything on Hangouts goes through Google and is logged by Google. That's what we know. Those are things we know there. And you can't call Google open because it's completely locked down by the carriers, right? And the other thing is, when you say the iPhone is more locked down, everybody's always talking about the App Store, right?

Oh, well, the iOS app store is super locked down. Well, you know what? I'm the jackass that just got a crap ton of spyware on his Android device because I installed a $5 Star Trek application. Right? So maybe that is a little reasonable on a phone that's meant so I can call my wife to see how the kids are doing. Maybe that is partially reasonable. But also, if the measuring stick for what makes a platform open or closed is how you load apps, if you can sideload apps or not, or who gets into the Android app store, then let's talk about Ubuntu Touch and Firefox OS because those would also be considered locked down because they don't even have an app store. The only – they're as open as Safari is on iOS or Chrome is on Android, right? HTML5, baby.

It's an HTML5 app. That's open. There's your openness. And I think that's really where the focus needs to be is less about Apple, less about, you know, if Android's, you know, a concern for folks. And believe me, I get it. I understand that. I just don't buy into that Apple's going to be wholesome for two years down the road. I think that's crap. I think at some point they're going to, just if they want to be competitive and get onto that whole database tit that everybody's making all the money on,

I think they're going to have to jump on at some point. But for now, they're not. I get that. But I think the HTML5 stuff, I think that's where people need to be looking. I think you're spot on with that. Absolutely. I mean, I'm not, again, I mean, I'm not like throwing my HTC One in the garbage, but I just want to throw a few things back to people and just get them to think about this a little more because I look at like trying to move away from google now and i think about in a lot of ways i'm kind of locked in here i got my contacts syncing through google i got my calendar syncing through google all of these cloud services in a form are a type of data lock-in and even if you go to data liberation whatever the hell it is

that google offers they still retain that information so that's legitimate as well you think what then you get it in like some big old file and it's just a pain right and you got to deal with it yeah i hear you i i just i just wanted to put the brakes on everybody and say okay think about this a little bit because you know i uh i had an iphone over the weekend playing with ios 7 to talk about it on coda radio on monday i actually thought it was um i thought it performed better than any Android device I've used. I hadn't used iMessage before. I think iMessage is great. I think it's all – I actually thought it was a fantastic user experience. I thought the battery life was way better than I expected.

I couldn't believe how good the battery life was. And to be honest with you, when I'm looking at the two, I think we – I don't think you can really be mad at anybody for choosing one platform over the other because I think they both have this long list of disadvantages. No, and we're – in my household, as in yours, we run all of them. So I totally get you. No, I think for me it's that I look at iOS 7 and it's like, oh, look, I should put on my Stussy t-shirt and get my TNC Surf Shop gear because I'm looking at freaking this neon mess. It kind of does have elements of iOS's Vista.

It's like their Vista of iOS. A little bit, right? So if I wear sunglasses, I can enjoy the performance. Well, you just wait. That's going to make it everywhere else. You just wait. And then all the Linux distros are going to start mimicking. I know. Oh, man. That's going to be awful. I'm harshing on it.

I want to see Mumble Room. You guys have been quiet. I know this is something we kicked around on the pre-show. What do you guys think? Am I just off my rocker here? Am I losing it? That was to you, Mumble Room. Definitely not losing it. Like I said in a previous one, they do lock you down with the ecosystem.

Both sides, though, right? You get locked into play. Both sides are using gasoline, though. I experience that now. It's a necessary evil in many ways. That's interesting. It's like using gasoline. Hmm.

At the end of the day, you have to choose what's best for you and your condition, your situation. You can't have ideology around very critical aspects of your life. Yes, if you believe Android is better for certain reasons, you'll use that. But if iOS offers you something that you absolutely need, you can't just abandon it. You can't just ignore it because

you believe in something. So I think you have to choose what's best for you at the end of the day. That's rational. Very rational point. I actually have a specific analogy that I use to describe an Apple product. It's akin to having a stake in your front yard and your chain to the stake on your front yard. And within this radius, you are happy.

But if you ever want to get out of this radius, you will never, ever get out of this bubble. But in it, it's pretty. What about... As soon as you ever want to get out, you're screwed. Yeah, okay. I mean, I think, but I feel like they both, even like BlackBerry does that to an extent.

But what about my issues around, a linux user i'm a little incensed that they're taking my baby and they're making it a whore a two dime whore at that a two bit whore i mean do you am i way off on that what do you guys think apache allows anything but i mean if we were going to get upset about what tivo did how come we're not upset about what this what's happening here? Because I think Android and any, I won't even say Android, I think any passionate mobile operating system experience that we're passionate about

spoon feeds us BS and sunshine to a point where we're fat, dumb, and happy. And so regardless of what mobile platform you're in, if it involves an app store and some level of vendor lock-in, you're so into that because you're enjoying the experience, you're really not interested or even that concerned about the negative side of it.

I know I fall into that category. I'm aware of it because I like to be educated. I just can't get myself to care enough to do anything about it. That's a terrible thing to say, but it's true. That's why I'm happy with Android despite knowing the fact that I've been indexed and Dewey decimal system by Google. I don't know. I almost feel like the rational thing to do when I sort of weigh all the pros and cons and I go into more depth on Coderadio is I kind of feel like jump off Android and wait for a couple of years for Firefox OS to get rocking

and wait for it to get a good messaging application, wait for it to get WebRTC integrated, wait for some kind of ecosystem to build up around it, and then get a Firefox OS phone, and then just be like, okay, I'm going to live here. Or Ubuntu. In the meantime. T-Volization is important,

because a lot of TVs and embedded devices run Linux, whether we know or not. It's allowed the use of many, like it to spread to many factors of our life, without us even knowing. It would never be able to be put in a, what is that new electric

awesome car? Yeah, the Tesla. We'd never have the Tesla running Linux if it wasn't Tuvo-izable. Right. Go ahead. The Tuvo issue is also, Tuvo never acknowledges Linux is there, whereas Google does actually acknowledge it, but just they don't market it.

Sure. Yeah, but remember what just happened with the Chromecast. I mean that's disappointing. That is not encouraging when it's just basically a bare Linux installation. I think it might have been Ubuntu-based or Gubuntu--based, with a binary named Chromecast running, or Gen2, that's what it was, Gen2, with a binary running, that's the Chromecast app. It was a Linux box. It's a Linux device. Why not promote that to make, I mean, because if they base their stack on Linux, then doesn't it benefit them

to show how Linux can be used in all of these different use cases? It seems like it's not just good for Linux, but it's good for them too. Not from a marketing perspective. If I'm not mistaken, yeah, it is a marketing thing, right? The Chrome ideology is that it's easy to use. So if they call it a Chromecast, not like a Linuxcast, it then

sounds like it's this easy-to-use thing that sort of relates to the web. And so it relates to the Chrome streaming thing, because a lot of what they do is they stream from the Chrome browser to that device. So they want to make it sound like the two products are linked is sort of my understanding. Yeah, right.

Okay, from like a, okay, okay. Yeah, from like a, oh, I know what that is kind of standpoint. Well, to give you an example, I work for a company that recently went through a name change. And of course the original name, no one ever heard of, but the brand name, people are well aware of it. And we don't – all the branding efforts go into the flagship product name and the flagship brand name versus the underlying technology behind it because honestly no one cares. Geeks might care, but Joe user doesn't give a flying rip.

I mean a lot of Windows users, you ask them, well, what version of Windows do you have? I don't know. I got the one that came on my computer. They don't have a clue. I have an HP or I have a Dell. That's the brand that they've been taught to associate with. So I think that's the same thing with Google. It's really the same thing. And there's still that mindset that, oh, it runs Linux.

Oh, it's just for hackers. It's just for command line and all this other stuff, which is obviously wrong. Yeah, you get a Windows Power user aware of it, and then they start spreading thought everywhere. Absolutely. The thing about open source is that you don't actually have control

over what somebody else does with it. If Rome disagrees with what Cinnamon is doing, they can't stop it. If Ubuntu disagrees with what elementary OS is doing, they have no say in it. So similarly, if somebody takes a Linux kernel under legal licenses or whatever, and does whatever to it, nobody else has a choice.

Nobody else can stop it because it's open source. They have the option to modify it and use it as they see fit. I agree. Okay, let me give you another aspect of Android that's bothering me. And I've mentioned this before on previous shows, but it goes back to the original getting into the carriers. So let's hit the way back machine. Back when Jobs was still kicking it at Apple and in full evil Jobs force, he went around to every single carrier,

starting with Verizon, and said, here's our product. We'd like to sell it on your wireless network. And then as soon as the conversation got too great, we'd like to preload our applications and do things like Carrier IQ. Does everybody in the chat room who's giving me a hard time about iOS being a spy device, does everybody remember Carrier IQ? Because that got loaded up on our free phones, and that was a nightmare. If you don't know what Carrier IQ is, go Google that because your device probably still has it. So Apple said, no, go screw yourself. And they walked and they ended up going to the smallest wireless carrier in America. And that was Singular. They were the small fry that everybody thought was a joke. And they were the only ones

willing to take Apple up on their offer. And then we all know what happened to singular they they blew up and they became at&t and now to this day apple rolls into verizon store and it's not shitted up with a bunch of verizon apps and when they roll into sprint you don't get your sprint sportscast broadcasted to your iphone right they still to this day say go go f yourself and even in china they just blew off a deal with the biggest wireless carrier in China because they wanted to load it up with some crap. And Google has never, never had the balls to do that. In fact, Google sells it on the exact opposite,

just like Ubuntu Touch is going to. They sell it on, shit it up all you want. In fact, shit it up so bad, you can never get an update, ever. You can have the top of the line, number one Android phone, best built phone ever, still being sold as a top of the line phone, and it can never get an update ever. You can have the top-of-the-line, number one Android phone, best-built phone ever, still being sold as a top-of-the-line phone,

and it will never get an update. We don't care. And that is a complete FU to the users. That is an FU. That is disregarding every lesson we have learned about Internet security, about software update, about platform maintenance, and about being a good steward of a platform and pushing it forward so that way developers can take advantage of new features.

They forfeited all of it just for market share because they want the information. And at the end of the day, that really upsets me. Oh, yeah. No, I can understand being upset by it, but I think you've got to understand the motivation behind it. Apple's motivation for doing that is not to benefit the user. It is because they're purist and they want to have it their way, and that's how they've always been.

Think different. It's all about their approach. I agree, but doesn't that exactly line up with a customer's needs? Oh, it does. In this case, not always. I mean, it can lead them down routes. No, it's definitely an important – and it's an important thing that people need to know. I think that's an important differential that when people are making the decision what phone to get, they need to know this stuff.

That's really important. I feel like every Android device sold in the store should have a big warning label on it that says, warning, in six months to a year, this will be a walking exploit in your pocket. This will not get updates. This is a security flaw. If you want a good device that's updated, please go to play.google.com and buy it there. Or check out CyanogenMod. I mean, every Android box needs to have that disclaimer because when I bought my Android device, I assumed I would at least get six months' worth of updates. I got no idea.

Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. But you know what? Tomorrow, every freaking iPhone user for the last three years is getting iOS 7. And there's no reason Android can't do that. Well, I suspect that… The thing about Apple is that they have the ability to tell the carriers to just bend them to their will, unlike Google who has it the other way around. That's crap. Google had that power.

Google just didn't want to exercise it because they wanted the market share. They could have stuck to it. But you know what the other thing was is their product wasn't good enough. I mean if we go back to the G1, let's be honest, that was not good enough. It wasn't really until the Droid, right, that Android really was usable. I mean that's when I switched. I suppose so, yes.

So, I mean, I feel like they torpedoed their users to compete with Apple. Well, I think part of the difference is, too, is that Google is interested in their penetration into the market at all costs as much as possible, and that's their goal. Market, market, market, market, market. Where Apple is ideology,

ideology, ideology. In this particular case, it aligns with good user experience, and that's great. But I do agree with the whole disclosure thing. I think that's important. But I know better than to think. I think that we got lucky with Apple in that it just happened to fall under our benefit. Maybe they're even smart enough to realize that.

I don't know. Maybe they're even smart enough to realize that. I don't know. I think what Apple, I think honestly what did it in a big part was Steve Jobs wanted to be able to get everybody to push the latest features out. They wanted essentially this update thing because when you look at it right now, it's something like some ridiculous stat like… This is the distributor to the Android OS. See, this is the problem though. They could have. They could have structured the licensing the way Microsoft structures the Windows Phone licensing, where they allow for some time, but it's within the contract that they have to meet a certain window. And I think that would have been completely appropriate. And it's Microsoft learning from 25-plus years in the PC licensing business how to handle this. And the reason why Apple wanted to have a pristine OS on there is that way they could push out the updates. And the reason isn't just security, because it probably isn't their primary

motivator. The reason is, is because they want developers to target the new features, which is a massive train wreck on Android. And they're now beginning to fix it with the Play API, which is, by the way, completely closed source. So great. They're fixing this fragmentation problem with more closed source software. Yay, Google, way to but in the meantime every every like it's like something like 95 of iphones run the latest os that gives developers this massive opportunity for creating brand new feature-rich applications that take advantage of everything these new os's and phones can do that isn't as that is not as optional on android and it is just yet another it's, so it's not just the security thing. It's the feature, it's the end user,

and it's about getting the investment out of my $600 device. I would agree. I would even go so far as to say, I suspect at some point, you're going to see toward individual hardware manufacturers a couple of class action lawsuits. I'd say the odds are fairly reasonable

in that regard, just because there's not a, there's a lot of marketing promises that make it sound like this is going to constantly be updated when in fact that's not the case that's for a court to decide i don't know but i suspect that it's probably going to end up taking care of itself at some point because eventually people will have enough and we'll have to make that decision of wow i'm not buying that model i'm not buying htc again or i'm not buying motorola again or whatever it may be they're going to have to make those choices, you know, based on those experiences.

You must have, you know, an update repository. So then future phones will fill this void of, like, security void. They will eventually have repositories that you can update the kernel or operating system. But right now, it's a void. That's up to Google if they want to do that or not. Well, here's an interesting idea that Dream points out. If HTC One sold me this overall, not warranty, but if I could pay HTC $35 or whatever, kind of like you go buy a new OS. If I could buy the new OS for my HTC One, like I would buy it for a computer, I would do that. I would totally do that. And I think that would actually be

not an ideal solution, but it's totally what I would, it's at least a workable solution. When I think squeaky wheel gets the grease, I think if people continue to educate non-aware folks of this situation to where they can then become noisy about it, then I think we might begin seeing these changes. But I think that's the thing, The best thing we can do right now is to make people aware of it. Not to say you should go one direction or the other, but to be like, hey, by the way, when you're buying your phone, are you asking these questions? And are you implementing that into your decision? Because I think that's an important thing to do. But you can have company

A, company B, company C, and they're all going to have different business models. B, company C, and they're all going to have different business models. The way that they're successful is either they have great marketing and or their business plan or their direction aligns with customers' needs and wants, or they just have a fantastic product. You know what would be nice is if Google, in their contract, like with HTC and Samsung, said, after a year, you have to release X to the community so that way they can maintain it or something. That'd be great. Well, no.

I mean I think CyanogenMod and Google Play devices and Nexus devices are not a good enough answer because they only apply to the people that are in our IRC and on this Mumble server and listening to this podcast. They don't apply to the immediate group outside the tech circle. There is a solution to that though. Like with, for example, Nexus devices could, if they, the reason people don't buy Nexus devices is because they're too expensive and they're not even that expensive. They're like an extra $150, $100 maybe. But if they had a plan where you could buy the Nexus devices from Google on a monthly basis, just kind of like the jump plans or something like that, then a lot of people would see that as a much better option. And then people would have phones that are not like mine where it took 18 months to get an update.

Yes. However, I don't think Google can actually do that because that would require them to sell the phone through the carrier. And the carrier is not going to want them to not put the carrier software on there it all comes back to that original deal it all hinges on that that is why google sells the phone separately yeah yeah and i think all of this goes back to the evolution of the smartphone market apple with steve jobs took a risk by not selling it to these carriers that wanted to put their crapware on it and i think because he was that they were the first ones to the market, that they had the ability to say no and not just install the crapware and go for market penetration because they were

there pretty much first. They also had the button. They were able to do that. And as soon as they rose to power, now they have the market by the balls and they can say, well, Verizon, they're selling the iPhone in massive quantities over at AT&T. If you want to sell it, you can't put your crapware on it. And they sort of have Verizon by the balls now because they don't want customers to go to AT&T.

Yeah, it took them like two to three years to get them on Verizon. And so I think that's how they had the handle. Whereas Google came late to the party, just like Ubuntu phone is, and now they really need to cater to the carrier so that they can push their phone everywhere and try and gain market capitalization, whereas Apple already had this. I mean, we see what Google had to do reflected in what Ubuntu Touch has to do, only magnified, right? I mean, they have this massive carrier advisory group, and they're literally pitching it as a carrier customizable platform where you slot in your own services. In fact, one of the quote unquote features is that you can put your own app store in there. You can put your own, you know,

media back into it. Um, but that sounds worse than Google. Yeah, exactly. It does. It does. It does. And I guess the thing is, I have to ask myself is if, if we're getting to the point where, uh, for some of us, like, you know, we could get the Nexus devices, you know,, we can get the Nexus devices, and we can get the CyanogenMods, and we can make buy, we can make do. We're fortunate like that, but what do we do for everybody else? I mean, this is a problem where I feel like I don't know, because I see an opportunity

for a business and or a non-profit foundation. One or the other. It's very unfortunate. And it sounds like they're trying to go back and retroactively fix this by making all of their Google applications a separate package from the OS now. Right. And it sounds like, you know, they acknowledge that they kind of screwed up on the deal where they let carriers and let vendors customize the phone OS. And now they want to distribute their apps separately.

And that controls most of the software functionality on the phone. So now you can get updates to most of the core applications. you still can't get complete core os updates you can't get kernel updates necessarily right but at least you get the google and and you get some security updates but not necessarily all security yeah yeah it's not a good it's not a good solution you get the chrome browser updates right yeah i mean i think that's probably one of the most important things that they're going to be giving out with that. But I think if enough geeks get passionate about this enough to where they want to come together and they want to look at the more open source centric solutions like what you're talking about in our community, if that gets to be loud and scary enough and enough people care, I think eventually you're going to see some entity catering to that at some level. It's not going to appeal to Joe Average, but to people, to geeks that do care about these things.

I think it'll take care of itself. So then why do we have, so all this sounds completely reasonable, so then why do we have things in our community like Ubuntu shame, iPhone shame? Why is there this lack of critical analysis on Google and why is there this lack of critical analysis on Google and why is there this sort of pre-assumption that somebody must be an idiot if they're using the iPhone? They must be naive. It's because we're – it's honestly – and pardon my French, but we're fart sniffers.

Geeks as a whole, especially Android geeks, and they are. It's like, well, clearly I know what I'm doing. You're an idiot. Well, clearly I see the benefits and the functionality benefits of using the platform I'm using, and I'm their king in that regard because I look at Android and then I look at iPhone. Yeah, right. I can understand it. Yeah, and so I get in that mindset, and so I will be your representative tool bag here in pointing out that I walk around looking at iPhone users going, oh, god, why the hell would you use that? Not really stopping to consider

there are, in fact, some advantages to it. And I'm definitely guilty of that. So I think that as a whole, as a community, a lot of Android folks do fall into that. But I did use an iPhone for a long time, so I can back it up and not just say I'm just talking Android. I, you know, I used to, you know,

I've been, I walked that path. It's all about your personal preferences. It about your preferences and your needs and you're going to use what fits your needs not because it's popular i mean i know people go out and buy new phones because it's the new hotness but it's it's it's it's what it's what you need and and people as us as a community or maybe not us but people in general should really just stop hating on other people just for the sake of hating out other people because they're using something different or look down on instead of the grass is always greener the grass is always browner on the other side yeah i think for geeks and our people in our community i think that's absolutely true i think for joe average i would absolutely say 120 people buy the latest idiot

thing on the television. Just average people. I see it all the time with my nephews, poster child. Oh my god, you see that one phone? I don't even know what the hell it does, but god, it looks great. I got to get it. You've got those types of folks as well. Yeah, non-tech savvy people purchasing new hardware that they don't really know what's

going on. You don't even need it. Things like that. know what's going on. You don't even need it. Things like that. Or here's something that doesn't really help the case is you have the marketing, the commercials that, what was it? I think it was one of the Samsung's commercials that was showing the old folks in line waiting

for the iPhone. That was awesome. Yeah. And kids pay attention to that. Believe me. They really do. You asked my nephew. He's 16 years old.

Would you want a brand new iPhone or would you want my used Note 2? There is not even a conversation there. He wants the Note 2 because that's what he's been told is awesome. He's been told the iPhone is something dinosaurs use. Well, all right. This sucks. As far as the geek community goes, I think there's a stigma attached with something popular. Because, I mean, what I'm saying is Ubuntu is popular.

Apple iOS is popular. That's why we must hate it. We must always root for Luke Skywalker, the underdog. That's true. Yeah, that's an interesting perspective. I'm considering that. Yeah, perhaps. I think maybe for a future conversation, I want to talk about how a lot of these open platforms end up saving their data back to closed source programs and platforms that are really generally meant for tracking users. But I think that could be a conversation for a future episode.

Yeah. All right, guys. Well, good on you. Thanks for kicking that around. I leave it kind of buttoned up with, you know, I'm left with, I try to find the zen of the situation and tell myself that, honestly, the HTC One, which is running 4.1.2, does everything I need. Really, I mean, there's nothing like in the new updates that I have to have. Sure. And I'm trying to be careful, although I did just get recently bit with spyware crap. But I try to be careful and studious. And so it's not really functionally – if there was something really confidential and secret that I didn't want logged by Google, I'd probably just not put it on my phone.

Well, as someone myself who is – I would say I'm reasonably new to Android, so I can still be kind of a newbie in this regard. What's your view on things like Lookout and anti-security software? Is it crap? No, I mean I've tried it. I had... Because I have no idea. I mean, this is all new to me. No, I used one of those programs actually to clean it up.

I have a program on here that scans it, and it went through and found and cleaned it up for me. So, I mean, they don't seem to be totally a waste. It seems so ridiculous. It is, yeah. And that's what puts all the overhead on my old phone. You know, you were talking about how it was slow. That's where a lot of the overhead comes from is running lookout.

And it seemed to have kept my phone. It actually caught me from keeping a few things off my phone, as a matter of fact. I remember when I switched, because I followed the same path that you followed. I even tried Windows Phone. You know, I had an old HTC Windows phone that was just like this ridiculous joke. And so when the iPhone came, I was impressed. And I didn't buy the first one because I was impressed and i got uh like i didn't buy the first one because i i was like no way i'm gonna buy first gen apple anything um and i think

i got like the the 3gs i can't remember yeah three i got somewhere around in there and i remember thinking it was pretty good and i waited until the droid came out on verizon and then when the droid came out i remember switching and thinking god this feels like an actual computer. Right, exactly. That was my feeling. So Android fits my user style. I'm a power user. Android fits that better. And I have options out there like CyanogenMod.

Just like I can use encryption and I can use bid message or whatever. I have all these options. I wish that when we just stop at the end of the day, I wish we would just think more critically about some of it. I'm holding out a lot of hope more and more for Firefox OS. I really want to see this be the solution with a company behind it that's going to keep the value. Even if Firefox OS is great, you've got a couple years of – Oh, it's going to be a little bit. Yeah. But I'm holding out hope long term.

I'm thinking long game here. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I want to read be a little bit, yeah. But I'm holding that hope long term. I'm thinking long game here. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, I want to read a couple of emails before we run. Peter wrote into the show. He says, hi, Matt and Chris. I just backed a 0AD on Indiegogo and then later had my credit card compromised by a payment made to Samsung Telecom in the U.S. That's pretty strange since I'm based out of the U. I've had no other US transactions except for Indiegogo. Who knows?

He says, but by the way, I also moved to Mint 15 and the Chrome browser on all my machines. Steam was the last thing holding me back from Linux. I don't think Linux games are cheap or gamers are cheap. Going back to our conversation from a few episodes ago, in my case, I already own most of the games. That was my thought. Yeah. And then, of course, when he moved moved over he just downloaded them on the Linux version

and what we kind of sussed out, I don't remember how we got to the bottom of this I think somebody wrote into the show Steam, it's not just the survey so Steam collects usage stats via that survey but then also after you've played a game on a certain operating system

after a certain amount of time it also then logs you on that operating system. So, if you have a bunch of games that you bought on the Windows side, all of those purchases are counted for Windows. And then when you move over to Linux, which probably some people are doing, and you re-download them, it's not until you've played

each one of those games for a certain amount of time that they're still counted as a Linux user. Oh, so that's a double whammy then. Okay. And then he had a question after being bit by that credit card problem they had. He said, can you guys recommend what internet security software I should be using? On the now syncing Windows platform, I used a combination of McAfee and Spybot Search and Destroy.

Thanks in advance, Peter. Is he asking about security software for Linux? Yeah. For Linux. Well, a good firewall. Yeah. Uh, well. I would, I mean. A good firewall? Yeah. So here's what I would say. Don't run as root, which you're not probably, on Mint 15.

And use really good passwords everywhere. Maybe use something like keypass or lastpass, my personal favorite. Don't execute random commands or random binaries or things of that sort. I would say the most important security precaution you could take on Linux is don't run random binaries, like Matt just said, and use a different password for every website. Yeah, yeah. That's really, oh, and don't install Java.

That would be another. Yeah. You know what? Yeah. Don't use Java unless you need to. Yeah. And don't bother with the browser plugin if you don't need to. Right?

Yeah, that's a good one. Why not? And then like Jedediah said in the chat, keep your updates. Stay current with the OS updates. And when Mint 15 stops getting updates, just remember that on Mint

you're going to do a full reload and you're going to upgrade. There's not an upgrade path. You're going to load the next version. But I mean, let's be honest, sometimes it's good to start clean. And if you're really, really concerned about you know, that's the elephant in the room, of course, is people who surf adult content. If you're going to be one of those guys, and as an ex-PCVPare guy, I dealt with a lot of men, a lot of married men that came in begging for help. And I actually had a special program for them. It's called the Live CD or the Live USB without writable options.

I'm telling you. What about like a porn VM? I never thought about this. I just thought of a great business, like totally just go all QVC with it. Right. Like a porn VM that lives inside a true crip volume. Right.

Okay. Shows the wife coming in. Oh, are you busted again? He's all, uh, now you can have another, here's the pitch.

Now you can have another computer in your computer and it's encrypted. Right. Oh my God. Call it the porn box. And it's encrypted right oh my god call it the porn box and it's based on virtual box prano s oh my god that's brilliant i'm on this this is gonna happen this is the next moneymaker i have no ethics yeah let's do it all right uh distribute it via bintorrent right um all right uh so i had it let's see i i think't I have another one? I just accidentally closed it. Oh, man.

I'm a bad person. I'm a bad person. I just closed the other email. Sorry about that. But I'll look for it. And I got off on a tangent. I got all excited. But talking about Perron gets me going.

I did have a bit mess. So here's the Arch Challenge follow-up. This came from Carl. He says, hi, Chris and Matt. I started to watch the show about three months ago, and I've been a fan ever since. I know I'm a bit late to the Arch Challenge, but I wanted to mention it anyways. Hmm. Okay. So that's quite a while ago. But, uh-oh. This is where it goes south, Matt. There's always a but.

But after moving to Apple for a good 10 years, I forgot most of it. Anyway, I saw the episode with the Arch Challenge and I thought, yeah, I should give it a go. So I did install a Varch. And when I first came out and got it started, I was a little disappointed when I found out there wasn't an installer. OK. Yeah. So I'm kind of. Well, there is and there isn't.

Should we have not? I mean. There is in a separate ISO, but not officially. When we did the Arch Challenge, I didn't mean for somebody to take the Arch Challenge that was at that level. Yeah, right. Because you didn't know that about Arch. Well, it was intended for you. So I'm impressed that he went for it, especially after living on the Mac for 10 years. So good on you, Carl.

So he goes on to say, I did the Arch install. And after three tries, I succeeded, and now I'm running Arch. And he's sticking with it. The bad point about this, and here's the downside, he says to Arch. And actually, I have found this to be the major disadvantage to Arch, too, and I'm wondering if you agree, Matt. He says the bad point is now he can't go back to any other distro because there's no match for Arch. You know, I would say that it depends on the person. For me, I dual booted Arch and Manjaro for a long time

just because I wanted to really understand what that was going to be like. From a meta standpoint, I consider Arch, Manjaro, Linux, all that to kind of be the... Yeah, I did find some... There's definitely some differences. There's definitely some differences. I would absolutely say Manjaro is totally not Arch.

It just happens to share some similarities. Does that bit you now? Did that bite you in the butt? Honestly, no. With Arch, I think it's actually still in the partition. I just hardly ever use it. With Manjaro, it's like all the stuff that I was reading that was negative or they screwed this up or screwed that up.

As long as you're on the mailing list and you pay attention, and yes, officially they say it's Arch, but they use their own repos. There's a lot of things that they do completely differently, age software, that sort of thing. But it's kind of like for – it's Arch for people who don't care about security. I would say it's for people that don't really – aren't paranoid about security. I'd say it's a more accurate statement. Yes, it's often a month or two older, but I've yet to experience... That's probably still fresher than a lot of distros. Yeah, well, and on all

these horror stories I've read are generally... There's never anything to really back up an actual use case scenario. So based on my own usage, I would say that Arch is awesome, and if you want to go that route, go that. But as far as Manjaro being scary, bullshit. I'm sorry, it's just that's bull.

I have not had a single problem with it. Neither with Arch either. You and I have been off camera and talked a little bit recently about preparing for the Ubuntu 13.10 review. Yeah. And the problem I have with it is, now I got

a good way to do this because I've got on the Bonobos, I've got USB 3 and I got a USB 3 1TB drive and it's one of those hybrid drives that has SSD and then so it's pretty fast. And I'll load Ubuntu on that and

I'll be fine. I'm not looking forward to it at all and not because, I mean, honestly, I used to run it. That was my previous distro, but what it really is for me and I know I've said this a lot, and it's so funny because it's what I was like, what's AUR? That's what I was like. The AUR. No, dude. It's all about the AUR.

It's all about it because at the end of the day, KDE is KDE. GNOME is GNOME. It doesn't matter what. You put your theme on it. You set your background. You load your favorite apps. They're all the same. But the AUR, buddy, I mean, like – That was it for me, and that's what – let's say Maduro disappears tomorrow. That's not a big deal. I still got the Arch installed.

Just roll back to it. No biggie. That, for me, was the AUR experience that I cared about. The Arch way is awesome. I just don't care. What I cared about was the Arch user repository. That's what sold me on the experience in general, whether it be whatever it is, whatever the distro is that happens to embrace that as long as it does it seamlessly. Hey, Matt.

Awesome. President Obama is here. Hello, everybody. He wanted me to make a point that – Hey, Mr. Obama. How are you doing? He wanted me to mention that Gen 2 is awesome and that Gen 2 is incredible. There.

We have fulfilled our duty. If our president says that it's awesome then clearly yeah you know i guess obama's i guess obama's a big gen 2 user who knew you'd think he'd be busier than that you thought he was an apple guy but you know it's good to know uh he also says by the way he's loving the new show and uh he also just wanted to point out that he liked the star trek segment just oh no kidding oh he's a star trek fan we got we got a star trek fan we got a star trek fan and he sent that in carl sent that in via bit message uh and we have the bit message address in the linux action show show notes um i'm gonna just uh mumble room just one quick uh shout to you guys if there's

anything you guys want to touch on if anybody had the last thing on the tip of their tongue before we run uh now is your chance i wanted to say was uh why can't system 76 just make phones gosh or put whatever we want on it. Or, dude, I'm saying, I'm thinking more like a tablet. I think a tablet, it would be awesome. A phone, tablet. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. A tablet. The whole pack down. Yeah. You know, I'm kind of. A tablet that would be a use for Nome 3 and Unity and all that. I mean, you know, one of the things. That's true.

One of the things we got a little S for last week, Matt, was we talked about that. Remember that block phone where like each thing? Oh, see, that's where I'm, that's where, that with Firefox OS. Oh, yeah. I have to be honest. I mean, I acknowledge that's pretty impractical that that thing's going to ship. And even when it did ship, like it might not really work out really that well. But I love to just think about that in a different way. And when you think about a hardware platform like that, I mean, one of the things that really makes me sad about what is apparently a self-fulfilling prophecy of the post-PC era because PC manufacturers can't figure out how to make computers people want to actually spend their money on.

I love the idea that we all pretend like we haven't just had this global economic meltdown and that nobody's got as much money as they used to have and that everybody in the in at least in the middle class that is the is the bulk of people who buy these machines is struggling but let's all pretend like instead it's tablets that's causing the sales to drop down right no it's the fact that everybody's money is a little more precious and i'm not going to spend it unless you give me something to pay for that i really really want it's more about yeah it's value so instead they make these cheap tablets that's fine whatever i'm not going to get all worked up about but what what pains me about the loss of the pc is this build it yourself if you want option and load any os you want option and i want that same and that's what i loved about the block phone right i mean even if it doesn't happen

i love that it was just making us think about a future where that kind of possibility existed. Where you have the choice of deciding not only what hardware is going to go into it, but also what operating system and what software you're going to plug into it to where you – if something screws up, it was your fault because you did it, right? That's awesome. Democracy of a phone. Yeah, exactly. Right, exactly. Yeah. I have a question.

How is it going to be different than how is it now because you still i mean if it's a lot easier to install cyanogen or whatever on it uh you still have uh 95 users being windows and uh you know uh just like that you still have a certain percentage being android certain percentage being ios if you want to uh load another os you still have to do a lot of work you have to install it yourself so So we'd be back in the same position if that was an option. Well, that's where other third-party companies would come in. That's what I'm thinking. Those little stores down the road that would unlock your phone, that would say,

do you want to try something else? We'll do it for you overnight, if you like. Or in the next five days, whatever. Exactly. Going back to System76, you could have vendors like System76 that take the hardware, either they custom build it or they take an OEM product and they create a solution around it,

and then they put the OS that that market wants, right? And then they support it and they back it up and they build a whole business around it. You could have that. So, yes, I mean… So are you taking this to Danica then? Here's a new business idea. Hey, baby. I mean... So are you taking this to Danica then? Here's a new business idea. Hey, baby.

I like that. Why hasn't that happened? I mean, that hasn't happened on PCs yet. Why would that be more possible on the phone? Well, aren't companies like System76 and Zara Reason examples of that happening? Yes. Right, but they're not as popular. They're nowhere near as popular as they should be.

Or they could be. Windows still controls the market. Linux is still 1%. I mean, Windows Vista has more market share than Windows Vista. Well, I mean... Basically, it would shut us all up, though, wouldn't it? We wouldn't have to be moaning about this. We'd just move over to a system 76.

Or there's actually something out now called the OpenMoCo device. Yeah. I remember that. I remember that. I think some of this, I mean, we've got to scratch our Gabe beards here for a second and look at his conference keynote that he just gave that we're going to talk about more on Sunday. You know, he says Linux is the future of gaming. I don't, I mean, who knows if he's right, but I've been saying now for a while that as Microsoft just continues to screw it up real bad, and they're going to just keep screwing it up because they have to because that's the direction they've got to move it.

And you just wait for Apple. Man, they are going to bone the Mac desktop like nobody's business. You just wait until they iOS that thing and put ARM in their machines. Everybody who needs a truck is going to have to bail. And good old Linux is going to be there with SystemD and Wayland and great video drivers and Steam and hopefully a desktop that is usable. And I really think that while these are today's problems, these might be solved in 2015, 2016 and beginning to be solved in 2014. They're already starting to be solved.

Exactly. How I said that everything is going to be, you know, thin client, remote. Like, remote processing of everything. And only thin clients. I hope not. Microsoft will eventually do that and screw us. And that's what Chrome and OS is going to be, and that's what Android is going to be.

That's their value proposition. Nothing anyone just should have a little nasty in the corner cryptography all cryptography's math is correct the implementations something buggy right math of crypto is correct yep don't worry about being tinfoil hatty about it so i i leave us on that point i mean like, we have some today problems with Android that really bother me. And I'm not actually sure that we've even scratched the surface of this conversation around Google, Android, cloud services, monitoring, all of that. But I think what we do see is solutions that are being created, right? We see solutions in the PC industry that might actually

end up being a lot of people's salvation. And we might eventually, with things like Sailfish, Ubuntu, and Firefox OS, I think we'll see solutions there too. And we'll just talk about them as they come up. But as of right now, I don't begrudge anybody for going out on Friday and buying themselves an iPhone. I say, good on you. I'll be happy with my HTC One. I'm going to stick with it for at least now.

I don't know. I could see you hanging out in a car somewhere with a hoodie and sunglasses and a baseball bat watching for folks at the Verizon store. With sunglasses on. Yeah, I could see that too. All right, Mumble Room. Well, thanks, you guys, for joining us. Hey, you guys in the download audience, if you want to join us live, you can. audience if you want to join us live you can uh we do this on uh tuesdays over at jblive.tv at 2 p.m pacific which i believe clocks in at like 9 p.m utc if you want to join us over jblive.tv

or jblive.info we have a mumble server which you can participate in or we have an irc chat room and we watch that too and we also have a little pre and post show that is pretty great and don't forget to tune into this sunday's linux action show we got a big show coming up. I am going to talk a little bit about, there's a topic that's been coming up and over and over again, is this building the personal cloud, right? Building your own cloud on your LAN, because that's really the most secure, but it's not just about security. It's also about reliability, performance, and it's about being able to, for example, my house could be a, my house is a big netflix house but netflix doesn't run so good on the linux so we've been moving that in the house

if there's a series the family likes i rip it and i put it on the server for them there's a lot of things you can bring into the internal cloud but how do you protect that home cloud well one of the oldest standing popular topics on linux action show goes back to the very first couple of episodes it's firewalls this sunday we're going to retackle that topic also bring back some of the things this standing popular topics on Linux Action Show goes back to the very first couple of episodes is Firewalls. This Sunday we're going to retackle that topic, also bring back some of the things we've talked about, cover Gabe's speech at LinuxCon and a whole bunch of other stuff, Matt. So I think we're going to have ourselves

a great show. I'm excited about it. There's some great topics in there. And you're fresh back from a little trip. That's awesome. And I had Saturday and Sunday off. That was actually quite nice. And you know, I was even able to play our pre-show from Friday on Sunday's live show. So people who showed up on Sunday still got to see a little bit of the live experience. That's awesome.

Yeah. That was good for them. Yeah. All right, everyone. Don't forget, you can contact the show. You can go over to jupiterbroadcasting.com. Pop that contact link at the top of our show and choose Unplugged from the drop-down box. Or even better, start a thread in our subreddit over at linuxactionshow.reddit.com.

We check that out. All right, Matt, well, I'll see you on Sunday. I will see you on Sunday. Thanks. Yeah, thanks to you, man. All right, everyone, well, thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. See you right back here next Tuesday. Bye.