Tech Won't Save Us - Bring Back Meddling With Tech Hardware w/ Chris Person

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Paris Marx is joined by Chris Person to discuss the state of hardware and manufacturing in the tech industry, ways to hack your stuff, options to undermine Microsoft’s software dominance, and how the AI boom is making consumer electronics more expensive. Chris Person is a co-founder of Aftermath and makes Highlight Reel. Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon. The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Also mentioned in this episode: CES showcased some weird gadgets this month. Chris recently wrote about how AI is affecting tying your shoes. Chris also wrote about the new Steam Machine. Paris wrote about how to get off US tech. A peak inside Chinese dark factories. For those interested in learning more about Bazzite. Canva buys Affinity. Chris shouts out Gamers Nexus. For those who want to dive deeper on RAM pricing.

That's the thing is like you trying to align your life in which technology is not purely antagonistic required doing some like borderline illegal shit sometimes or like things that like the people who make it don't want you to do. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Chris Person. Chris is a co-founder of Aftermath, a great independent video game news site and makes a video series called Highlight Reel. Now, I've been following Chris's work for quite a while, and I have to admit, this episode is a bit of one of those where I was just like, I find what this person does really interesting. I'm interested in having a conversation with him, so I'm going to have him on the show.

Chris writes a lot about video games, of course, no surprise there, but also about hardware and just like everyday consumer goods and seems to have really strong opinions on those sorts of things and just likes to figure out, you know, what is good, what works well, and displays this interest in hardware, you know, computer hardware, that I feel like is not as common anymore, but maybe used to be more common in the past. And to a certain degree, I feel like, is maybe coming back, you know, as we see people talk about using retro gadgets,

potentially getting off streaming services and, you know, listening to CDs or vinyl or something like that again. And just these various ways that the way that we use digital technology is potentially shifting in this moment, and how that is not just about services and software, but also like the physical manifestation of those things as well. And what that all means.

Given that we're both very focused on the tech industry, there's a whole side of this that relates to the AI boom that is going on right now as well, where, you know, as we talk about consumer hardware, as we talk about computers, prices for a lot of those things are going up right now because these massive tech companies are buying up so much. memory, so many other key components that also go into consumer goods. And that means that everything gets more expensive for everybody because all these AI companies are fighting for graphics processing units, for graphics cards, and for memory and all these other pieces that they need for their

massive data centers and they're buying so, so much of it, that it means that there's not enough left for all of the other ways that these technologies were used before and for the consumer goods that you and me might buy, but that are not as valuable to a massive tech company that wants to dominate the generative AI game. So that's all to say that this episode might be a little bit different, maybe than some of the ones that we usually do. But I think it's a fascinating conversation with Chris, and I was really happy to get his insights on so many subjects. And I think that you'll enjoy it too. So if you do enjoy this episode, make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues

who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work, that goes into making tech won't save us every single week. So I can keep having these critical in-depth conversations exploring different aspects of technology and the tech industry from the critical perspective that I and my guests always bring to this show and to these conversations. And also so that I can occasionally do a rant on a topic that I care about that I'm thinking a lot about like I did last week. And hopefully you enjoyed that. So if you do enjoy the show and if you do want to support it, You can join supporters like Julia from New York, Bori from London, Henry from Vienna, and Matt from Canberra by going to patreon.com slash TechWon't Save Us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Chris, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.

Hi, how are you? Yeah, well, thanks. Getting back from the new year, the holidays, getting back into it. But yeah, happy to be having a conversation with you. Likewise, you know, mutual follow and listen for a very long time. Yeah, everyone's kind of groggly waking up now. to horrors, but you know. Yeah.

I even feel like, I feel like my sleep schedule is still a mess. So yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. But I wanted to have you on the show. And I feel like usually I come into these things. And like usually I've read something by the person who I'm interviewing. And it's like, okay, we're getting into this. We're digging into it a bit further.

But with you, I feel like I've just seen a ton of articles that you've written and like posts that you've made over, you know, the past year or two, beyond that even about your beat, you know, obviously you cover a lot about video games, but you also write a lot about hardware, about consumer objects and things like that. And I was just kind of fascinated to dig into some of the aspects of that with you. And I think to start, I was just wondering, like, how did you get into writing so much about hardware, about the devices that we use? Why does that interest you so much? I think part of it is, well, two things. One is that, like, it's something I'm sort of naturally, like, aligned with. And the other is that, like, honestly,

shout out to The Verge. You know what I mean? Like, Vox Media is kind of mess all over around the place, but like the verge, like, took a chance on doing a couple of freelance pieces of me, and then I covered a very, like, I'd say three-month, like, span of someone's maternity leave

or paternity leave. And that really got my footing, because, like, before then, I'd worked, like, eight years of Kataku, but, like, I intermittently blog, because I was, like, the video guy there. And so I knew how to blog. I knew how to write quickly. I knew. like the Gawker era of blogging, which is like, I don't know, there's a, like, I think when people talk about what was lost with Gawker and how it went to the four wins, for me, it's this like,

just this like clarity, you know what I mean? Like when you get a headline that's good, and you know people are like, yes. And like that, that sort of downwind and adjacent to what Twitter used to be is just like, oh, can you write a really good headline? Like, anything about, you know, the space that, like, to fact, RANN in and what Deadspin was that it's at speaking what defector is kind of now basically, you know, just like sort of clean version of that. But I had a chance in between aftermath being formed and being brought on as co-founder and like being laid off in a DISO parking lot on the phone by Geo Media.

In that time, you know, I did get to do some freelance. And what I found to be the thing I was interested in was the thing I was always interested in was just like, the kind of wire cutter, but we call it wirecutter, but for weirdos, I think is the way we sort of internalize it. The angle of like optimization is kind of sort of fake. It's arbitrary and capricious, but like usually there is a good thing that you can do. But like what really is important is like the culture around how people find out what's good or make what's good. And so it's like, oh, there's a guy on a forum, like forum culture, you know, like there's a guy of Discord who's like been testing video game controllers. And this one fucked up like modular

controller is really good because they have a bunch of tools on GitHub. One of my favorite, like post from last year is I just posted about a mod to a mic from like about a full year ago. There's a mod on a forum from like ages and ages ago. And they found out that if you took a road microphone that it was basically called the AKG perception, it was basically, it was basically identical to a really, really famous, Micah, Noyman at U-87, except they'd fucked up the values because they used a different capsule for it. And all you had to do was open it up,

add, not even add, not even like de-sodder, but like solder on a capacitor on top of another capacitor, and it sounded almost identical to this legendary microphone. I remember you wrote an article about that one, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's the kind of thing I like, I guess. It's not the same, obviously, because you have to think about the headbasket and resonance

And, like, you know, it's not made by that. But like, I like DIY. I like open source. I like people taking something that they shouldn't and making it into another thing. Like, one of the articles I really am proud of for The Verge was covering Vallitudo, which is their, the open source software hack to vacuum robots. I still have mine. I still have the unit they, like, sent.

And it required getting a PCB from a guy on telegram. and then like, you know, rooting the fucking robot. And like, you know, that's the stuff I like. I like, you know, I like the thing that takes a little bit more work, but is more satisfying or the thing that, like, requires you to dig a little bit. And sometimes it's boring. And the answer is, yeah, the thing that everyone has is good. I would also imagine that, like, when you're getting into that, even the times when you're like,

you know, there's not much that came out of it. Like, at least it's an entertaining and interesting, like, process, right? And there's a number of things I can dig into based on what you said there. But the thing I want to ask is like, is this something that you were always into? Was there a certain thing that kind of like got you into looking more at this like DIY hardware? What is interesting? Like what works really well other than as you say, what's just kind of like listed in the wirecutter reviews or whatnot? Like was there a particular in for you to start, I guess, exploring that world and the things around us in that way?

Learning how to solder rocks. Like you can get a really good cheap soldering iron. I used to say the pine sole was the best one. That one's good. It still will serve you. But there's one called an alien tech T-80 that you can get on like Ali Express. It's like a little pen. And it has a little display on it.

It takes like any of the various like USB power bank banks that you have. And like, yeah, it's just a really useful skill to have because like the problem with learning how to solder is when you do. It's like you're like, oh man, this is just stuff. This is just stuff. This is just stuff. And I know where all the parts are from. And like, when you learn a skill, because I spend a lot of time in forums digging, what forums are left and discord. Like old school forums, you know, proper ones.

Yeah, there's a bunch. There's a surprising number of them that are still around. Audio science review is a really funny one because it's like idiosyncratic weird dads who still love like passive speakers and stuff. But like, you know, in that case, I looked at a mod that's like from like five or ten years ago, it's a great pair of speakers I have that was like the budget pick of passive speakers. the pioneer, what is it, BS22. And some guy who was like a really nice old man, you know, who did a bunch of, I don't think he made his bones with it, but he was like, oh, yeah, if you just take the crossover, which is the thing that like splits up the signal to usually the driver and the tweeter or like the various things.

So if you just take the circuit board out, like, rebuild it slightly differently and then like change one of the drivers, you're good. And you get it like, you get like a way better speaker. It's a lot of work. It's like an afternoon's worth of work. But like, that shit is, that's just wholesome to me. You know, that's really, that's the stuff that I really get a lot of value out of is like, you can just tweet this a little bit.

It's really good. Like those, um, those sonys, the MDR 7506s is. I hate the way they sound, but there's like a couple of pads that make them really, really good. Which would be the headphones. Yeah, yeah. They're the ones that like, if you've ever seen any movie set, they're the ones with the little blue line on them. I hate the way they sound, but there are certain people who love them. I know people have been putting like pad swapping on them.

on those for ages. And I think Yaxi pads are agreed to be pretty good. And a lot of this is just like, China's just better at producing hardware than us at this point to the extent that we were ever good at producing hardware instead of just doing ODM stuff. You know, like designing it and then sending it to get produced in China. They got better because they have a shitload of engineers. You know, like, I'm sorry, this is what happens. When you just like max out the number of engineers you have in a country, they just get a lot of good products out of them. And like they also, I don't know, it was copying is a bad way of putting it. They just like, they make it so they know what stuff's in it. So they can make a better version of it. Exactly. I've also read like it's so easy over there too

because like if you're prototyping something, it's like, oh, the factory is just over there. I can go talk to them and, you know, we can kind of work out what's going on there. Whereas, you know, if you're an ocean away, that process is not as easy, I guess. And there is like stuff where like you get a bad Chinese product. You know, like there is like an ocean of bad stuff in like Ali Express. But like more often than not, it's surprising that like, oh, this is actually really good. And like, I think what happened is like the ratio changed over time

of like pure crap. Something I've noticed a lot is like, for example, video game controllers. Like the people in Chinese factories are much more invested in certain discords, for example, and actually do get feedback from people internationally in these like weird third spaces, forums. Like you'll say like, people being like, thank you. I work in the factory. Thank you for your honest feedback. And like

very nice about it. I mean, like, that's, I've never had a bad experience with the Chinese factory or like representative. But like most of the time they're like, hey, this is free R&D for us from people who want it. That's so fascinating. I hadn't heard of that before. But I guess it makes sense, right? And I even remember like when you're talking about the quality of some of these products coming out of China, like, you know, you can talk about a whole load of things there. But I remember Gita, even did a post recently about digital audio players and things like that on aftermath. And I've seen a bunch of people be like, you know, who are looking at MP3 players again in a way that maybe they hadn't in years being like, oh, they're these cheap ones from China

that are actually like awesome that you wouldn't expect that you just grab off of Valley Express, right? That was a Fio, I think, Fio Echo Mini. It's like 50 bucks or Snow Sky. I forget. It's a really decent little thing. I've been meaning to get one for a minute. But like for a while, I mean, that's like kind of the dank pods thing.

It's like you would get an old iPod because they're great. Because they had, the old iPods had a really good DAC in them, which is the thing that turns a digital signal into an analog signal because you have to do that when you're listening to here. So for a while, people would just be like all these hacks to just like shove two terabytes of flash data in an old iPod. And they're really, they're good. But it's also like after a certain point, it's like, what do you want out of this?

You know what I mean? I think the term gets thrown around is chify, which is like the chif, the Chinese hi-fi is one of the areas and products where you're just like, oh, it's not even a contest anymore. Like they fucking kicked our ass. Amplifiers, topping. Funny name for a company. But topping makes great amps. And like everybody is like, fuck, how did you do that? And they're all like in class D amplifiers. They're all like Moss Fed based, you know, ones as opposed to like the, well, some of them aren't some there aren't. But that's what they made their bones on. And like the ratio of signal to noise, for the amount of money that you're paying is like incomparable.

Like you can get like a monoblock amplifier for like $400 that just like cleans the clock out of something now. It's not everything. They're not as good with speakers I found. Speakers are still kind of like, but like speakers are also a weird thing where that's like kind of an older person thing. But like Moon, the, was it, Theo, Theo makes a great pair of headphones. The FT ones. And headphones were a space where it's like, okay, they're really good at making IEM.

They're nice. They have some, like, wood detailing there. It's walnut. This shit was walnut. Yeah, it's really good. They got American walnut for that. And they're like 150 bucks. And they have these giant drivers. And for a while, like, Chinese headphones were like, okay.

And the FT1 was like really killed it. It was probably one of the most interesting products to come out. And that's in that very niche space where, like, it's like the best closed back headphones. You can get under $500 now. just in for 150. And it's really, really good. It's very high quality. Basically better than the AKG equivalent and it's better made.

And like, everyone's like, fuck, man, they got us there. You know what I mean? And like, that's, there's a feeling of wanting it more and wanting it more with like tangible products in certain ways. It just hasn't felt like that for a very long time. I think that's what people, like, think about with tech in America, you know, was just there's a time when like Steve Jobs was good at making a physical product that you wanted to touch, understanding that.

And it hasn't felt. real, particularly looking at CES. And we can get into CES, but I wanted to ask you about that in particular, actually, because as I was preparing to talk to you and even something that I've just been reflecting on lately, like for me personally, I feel like 20 years ago when I was in my teens, I was a lot more interested in hardware itself. You know, I was interested in how a computer worked and kind of putting one together and swapping out parts and all that kind of stuff. It felt like, again, maybe this is just my own personal experience and I'm kind of like putting this on to other people, but it felt like we were genuinely kind of like more aware of the hardware we were using,

how it worked, what went into it. And it felt like we kind of went into a moment where, you know, especially as you had all these devices that were like really kind of locked down, it was hard to repair them, all that kind of stuff, that it felt like there was a period where we kind of like lost touch with what we were using and just kind of went along with what the companies were pushing on us. And it kind of feels like, again, I like I wonder how you feel about it. this, it feels like there's kind of like more of a resurgence of that recently of like people wanting to get back to understanding what we're using, you know, the effects of it, all that kind of stuff. Like, I wonder how do you think there was that period that I'm talking about where

we kind of lost touch and now we're getting it back? Like, I wonder what you think of the past 20 years and what we've gone through. Yes and no. I think that like things were very locked down in very specific ways back then that we kind of forget about. I mean like I do agree with an enthusiasm though. There was like an enthusiasm. Like I forget which Connor O'Malley video it is. I think it might be endorphin port where he's like, he's like, he sucks to be on the computer now. But there's also like a chair company rant from the first season. Not that this person obviously, but but it's just sort of like, you know, everyone's lying to you and everything's made a shit. And it's overwhelming feeling that it's all garbage and you're being scammed. And like, but like when you get something that's really good, it's like, oh man, I worked for this. And I like, I like being on the. computer. You know, I enjoy being on the computer. I should enjoy being on the computer.

And yet they make it harder to be on the computer. That's the thing is like you trying to align your life in which technology is not purely antagonistic, required doing some like borderline illegal shit sometimes or like things that like the people who who make it don't want you to do or opting out of that or, you know, like I'm basically just looking at, I've been trying to look that the ways in which I can get off Windows for a very long time, I think a lot of people have. Their fucking complicity in Gaza, everything they do with AI. I mean, mainly the Gaza thing, actually, but like everything they do with AI. And like, man, did you see that shit yesterday where it was like, Office 365 has rebranded the co-pilot's 365?

Really? I did. I'm not surprised. They rebranded it to co-pilot. And it's like, something I was asking is like, what's the thing preventing everyone from moving over to Linux? You know what I mean? What's the thing that prevents you guys from getting off that? And a lot of that is just like, man, the legal profession uses office. And like, I fear that like for most people, it's just going to be like, well, we'll be on Google Docs, which isn't a solution either.

You know what I mean? But like, but like you need to identify these pain points if you want to get out of this system. And like figuring out the things that really piss you off about being on the computer and then just attempting to extricate yourself piece by piece. And oftentimes solutions suck too, unfortunately, or just are made by people who are. doing this in their spare time. But you find out, in the process, you find out what it is you like about technology. And that interrogation is good, I guess. Absolutely. You know, I feel like on the Linux point, I feel like another one of the roadblocks, of course, is if you're just, you know, a regular person who uses the computer for work or, you know, what you do in your

life or whatnot, if you go into a store to buy a computer, usually a Linux computer is not going to be an option, right? At least last time I bought a computer it, I don't remember seeing anything like that? No, it's never an option, really. Or it won't be, it might be soon with Steam. Oh, right, of course. And the Steam machine. I have my problems with Valve.

They are a weird company, bizarrely flat libertarian, but you got to give them credit. They fucking hate Microsoft. You know, they give them credit. They fucking ate Microsoft lunch in games on computer. And to me, like the proton compatibility. For people who don't know, the Steam deck is probably the greatest single, Linux device ever sold to a mass consumer art like market. And that's like a handheld gaming device, basically, right?

It is, yeah. If you know what a switch is, imagine that, but it runs Linux. And imagine that, but it runs most of the PC games on Steam that you, that aren't too resource intensive. And you know, a lot of that is the fact that it has to do like proton compatibility layer, which they put a lot of money and resources into, which is like one of the problems with open source development is that you need like, I think in the case of Fedora, I think IBM throws a bunch of money at them, which is not great, but whatever.

But like, you need somebody who's going to come in and be like, I hate Microsoft and I would like to eat their lunch. And how can I do that out of spite in a way that, like, feeds me? And the steam machine, we don't know how much it costs, and it might cost a lot because RAM is now obscenely fucking expensive because of AI and because it's made by three companies. But if it works, it might solve a lot of the problems. that the usability problems that people have.

Like Microsoft tried to launch a handheld Xbox last year, and everyone's like, this fucking sucks to use. It's just because you just put windows on it. You didn't make it an Xbox. You put like normal-ish windows with like some things on it. And then people immediately realized, wait a minute, I can just put Bazite on this. And Bazite, a lot of people have been catching on a Bazite because Bazite's an immutable Fedora, distro, and so you can't fuck it up.

So I think more people, because of, of the Steam deck are like, hey, maybe I'll try this on a dual boot system. And Bazelite, just to be clear to, for listeners, is kind of like a Linux distro, right? Kind of like a version of Linux you can install. It's basically similar to what, it's not Valve OS. It's not SteamOS, but it also uses KDE plasma. It also uses the same, same guts are basically in there. And it's if you want to run SteamOS on something that isn't an approved Valve device.

But you can actually install CMOS on, you can install the OS on like a bunch of stuff. There's a bunch of handhelds that they've, they now just are like, because they don't care. The hardware makers don't give a shit. You know what I mean?

They're like, yeah, sure. Will it sell more? Sure. Yeah, here you go. I did really enjoy kind of like Microsoft over the past few years has spent, well, just on Activision Blizzard alone, $68, 69 billion dollars to capture this company.

They bought a bunch of other gaming companies. Obviously, the model of what Xbox is has been like transforming as they've tried to figure out what the new business model is. And it just feels like Valve kind of came in and like completely upended any plans they had to turn into whatever it was they were going to be. It feels like their cloud thing isn't working. Their attempt to be more of like make their consoles more like PCs doesn't seem to be

really working out. And it's like, are they just going to make video games now because they bought all these people and the games aren't even all these that great? Or like them cutting their own legs off with Game Pass to serve. cutting off Tall a duty to do that and like just the sort of weird internal targets that Microsoft has for every part of itself that doesn't serve a good long-term purpose. But also just like, I don't know, I feel really bad for there's like a handful of things that Microsoft has that are good. And much of that is like the people who work at these game companies, you know, these publishers. Like I like a lot of the games that they make.

And it fucking sucks that I kind of have to just not play a lot of them, you know, what I mean. Like, I think, I feel a little complicated because I do think that, like, there's a debate as to whether or not press should withdraw coverage of Microsoft, and I kind of disagree a little bit. Like, for example, in the case of that hardware that they ran last year, I think it was good that the press covered how bad their handheld sucked. You know what I mean? Because if you see the project of moving away from Windows onto Linux and you have Microsoft putting out a handheld falling on their fucking face and everyone installing the OS, installing Linux on it and it running way better, that is ultimately good coverage for the process of getting people off of Windows.

And so I don't think all coverage is necessarily positive. And you can use that sort of force to be critical of it in a way that serves what you think, which is that Microsoft's an evil company at its top level with very good people who work in these individual things. Like they just bought a bunch of, they're a publisher now. They're just a bad publisher now. You know what nobody tells you about weeknight dinner? It's the thing that never goes away.

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That's Hellofresh.com slash Tech10 FM, T-E-C-A, H10 FM. It sucks because they spent all this money and now they've closed so many studios, laid off so many workers who have been working on these games. And it feels like they kind of sold a particular message of what they were going to be like as a publisher, one that is more open that's willing to take bets on more experimental projects, all this kind of stuff. And then it feels like what they've turned into is actually quite different from what they tried to lay out to make the argument that they should be able to make this. transformation, right? Well, but also like games was never a huge part of their portfolio. I mean, it was always a thing they did. It always felt like a thing they kept doing. You know what I mean? Internally, I've said that there is like a third cursed space in the console wars at all times.

There's a third guy who gets knocked out and like ever since at least PlayStation. It's like, okay, we have Sony, Sega, and then we have Nintendo. And it's just like, okay, Sega and Nintendo is still around. Eventually, like, the Dreamcast used a lot of Windows stuff, and you can bring a lot of commonality between the original Xbox and the Dreamcast, just in terms of, like, things were on the platform, like, ways that the hardware architecture worked, you know, like, or software architecture worked, at least. And just like, the continuity of, they just took over Sega's place, and then they just never really got it back. Like, they had one really strong, one or two really strong console generations. I think the 360 was great. Everyone love the 360. Everyone love

the 360, you're like, wait a minute, maybe this rules. And then everyone's just like, man, this sucks ever since. And I think it is Valve's destiny to take third place again from them. Not first or second yet, but they don't need to because they've been the own PC gaming more or less at this point. So like, it's really like fascinating to see like it organically makes sense that the logical conclusion is doing that. And also like they had the games for Windows thing, which never fucking worked. And like every time, like the one time I was installing. PC games on my PC through the Microsoft store was like they just threw games at you for GamePass for a minute. And PC GamePass was a good deal, but I don't have an Xbox because why the fuck would I have an Xbox?

There's nothing on there that I can't get on PC. It also became a worse deal. But also, I think the big thing is that, you know, Microsoft's an Azer company at this point. You know, Azure. It's like they do cloud stuff now. And like you can't really opt out of cloud stuff like because you're not the market, but you can sort of chip away at the margins of it. And I think you kind of have to because it's like, I don't know, people don't want to

fucking use office. People don't want to use Teams. Man, Teams pisses me off so much. I don't even have to use teams and it makes me mad because they killed Skype. I get so annoyed like the occasional time that, you know, I'm asked to do an interview or something for media or whatnot. And they're like, yeah, we're going to use Teams. I'm like, can we use anything else, please?

I hate that shit so much. Teams, okay, something they killed. This is going to be an extremely niche thing. was Skype for content creators was so good because it had NDI hooks. For people who don't know, NDI is this like, it's a proprietary protocol that lets you basically stream video

locally over a land, like pretty high quality. So as long as it with like wired and eventually wireless, you could do it. But it also is really useful because there's just like a lot of open source plugins that like let you bring that shit into OBS, like break out the individual videos in that.

And like you could do that with Skype for content creators. Could you do that with teams? I don't know. I haven't checked because team sucks to use. You know, and that's the problem is that they had good stuff, you know, like some of the stuff in early Windows 11, you know, or mid to early Windows 11, like power toys. I think the sounds are better in Windows 11, you know, like they were okay for a minute. And now it's just like, I don't know, get a Mac or something, which is not a good solution, you know, like the hardware rocks. I hate that fucking Apple was right.

You know, arm processors are great. Even with Skype, like, it's wild that there was this popular program and they just destroyed it right as like everyone needed video calling and have to go on to Zoom and all these other alternatives instead. But, you know, as you're talking about getting off of Microsoft, like I've been kind of working on this project of what does it look like to get off of US tech? And of course, you know, one of the roadblocks is on the one hand, the operating systems, whether you're on Mac or whether you're on Windows.

But then the other piece of it is, of course, like the cloud services, right? even if you're trying to get off of U.S.-based services, a lot of that stuff is still on clouds that are run by Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. And at a certain point, it's just like, maybe you have to accept some of this because, and maybe try to eventually push those, like, providers to do something else. But otherwise, you're just never going to move to something else or try to move away from it.

And my approach, you know, as you talk about, like, why is it so hard to get onto Linux is like, okay, how do we try to make this, like, easy for people, right? How do I find the solutions that are not going to, going to be really difficult for people to adopt, but easily replace the things that they're doing now and make it so that they're able to make this transition like relatively easily, especially thinking about, you know, regular people who are not super technical. In some cases, it's like really difficult. But in other cases, I find it, there are decent options out there. It's interesting

because a lot of that is my job makes me use it. And so I do think you have to figure out how institutions get off of windows. Some very interesting news in the last, month or two, which is kind of morally neutral to sort of good, is that Canva bought affinity, and it's fascinating because I don't know if people, if you use do video editing, resolve is what you should use. So Apple years ago had the best color grading software. It was called color. The entire industry used it. Most of the industry was on Final Cut Pro 7 and maybe avid. But for the most part, it was like you were editing on either avid or Final Cut 7, and then you did your color grading in color. And then they killed it. And people like, what the fuck, man,

because like we were using that. And they're like, well, you'll use Final Cut 10. And everybody hated them for it. Premiere became popular because they were like, hey, do you want to use your old keyboard in here? Here you go. And would you like it? If you're switching, we'll give you a deal, you know, all that stuff. So Adobe made a smart play. But nobody figured out the color thing. eventually because Black Magic is about color correction, they introduce Resolve. Resolve starts being a color grading program,

and eventually they add basically Final Cut Pro 7 back into it, to the point where the keyboard for Final Cut Pro 7 is the default keyboard for resolve. It is made despite Apple. Then they add a motion graphics component. The motion graphics component looks a lot like Shake, which is a node-based motion graphics software

that people really like that Apple used to run. that they moved over for motion, which nobody liked, and then they integrated back into Final Cut Pro 10, which nobody liked. And then they added a DAW that looks a lot like logic. And so the entire work, and they gave it away for free, except you, unless you need the pro version, which is $300 you pay once, comes with the cameras,

comes with all their hardware. That's great. That's a spite move. Affinity, who is bought by Canva, they're doing something similar in reverse, I think, which is, you know, the play that Black Magic has is, Hey, everybody who edits video on YouTube need something professional. How do we get them into our ecosystem? For me, the affinity thing seems like the opposite, which is this is functionally a rounding error to Canva.

Why don't we just give it away to people? The pro users are annoying. We want to get normal people and then upsell them on Canva. And I think that's actually a really smart idea, despite the fact that I do not trust those motherfuckers for a second. However, they said they're open to a Linux version. And that, to me, is very good because, you know, they already have a Mac version. You just download it. It's free.

Nobody likes Gimp on Linux. Few people like Libre Office. You can make Libre Office look nice. But, like, basically, it's just what are the pain points? Is it Adobe? It's mainly Adobe and Microsoft. And, like, you need, like, replacements for the entire Adobe Suite, which most exist, sort of exist. And then you need to get Office.

And then like, I don't know, like a handful of other things. You know what I mean? Like you just need to keep pushing at that. And it needs to not just work. It needs to work like flawlessly. It can't have weird UI stuff. It has to be a, it has to be an active project. Like if you really want people, if you really feel like this,

you got to like treat it like you're trying to kill someone. You know, like you got to have a crew, you know? I totally agree. And like, it's good to see the company's doing it. But I'm also like, can we get some more government funding in here to like help aid this along. And like I know in Europe, some governments are actually looking at like, you know, more like often kind of local and state level or whatnot, but like switching away from using Microsoft Office and like figuring out what that alternative looks like, what kind of like alternate

suite they can kind of put together and improve to make it work. And it's like maybe if more people are doing that, that also makes, you know, some kind of like alternative more realistic because there's more money being flooded into again, making it more usable and adoptable in the way that you're saying, right? Yeah. And I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe it makes sense for IBM to invest in an office suite that is not, you know, like they have fucking investment with Red Hat, I guess. I don't know. It's weird.

That's the other thing is that Linux is used by like fucking everybody. You know, like you do probably have a Linux device in your house that you just don't know is Linux device in a weird way. Like it's not zero, non zero chance. Like robot vacuons I found out are all running some version of like an open source Linux-based router firmware that they hack to be bad. I mean, like, most of the time, people don't want to like, they'll just use an off-the-shelf thing. And a lot of times it's open source software that they then, you know, find a way to not make open.

But like, you know, it makes sense for there to be a thing to kill Microsoft. There's just a lot of people who want to kill Microsoft. And I think you should. I think you should want, I think you should enable their ops on some level. But I don't know. I just, CES is also depressing. I would want to talk about that for two seconds. Totally.

So this is, this is what I wanted to pivot into based on this conversation is, okay, we're talking about all these services, we're talking about these alternatives. Obviously, there's this big show that happens every year. You know, basically, I think they lost one during the pandemic, but that shows off all these kind of like visions, I guess, for what the future of technology are going to be or whatnot. What do you make of what we're, you know, people make a lot of jokes about this show. It's quite ridiculous. What do you make of kind of what we're seeing out of it this year?

God, it's, I mean, like, it's a lot of robots because I think they're looking for the next scam. Was it, the Dell guy? Yeah, Dell basically said like, oh, consumers don't care about AI. And it got a huge pop because everyone's like, yes, we fucking hate this. We have to cover this. Nobody gives a shit how many like tops or whatever are in it. Like nobody cares that there's a TPU in your fucking computer. You know, nobody gives a shit about that.

And he kind of let all the air out of the room with that. And that's like to think one of the most interesting things to happen. But like also everything's down with the fact that Rams, like nobody knows if you're going to be able to buy a computer. Like that's like so fucked up, man. Like, do you want to talk a bit of? about that because like, you know, I feel like these stories are like coming out on the, on the margins, but like I feel like it's not kind of a central part of the story around data centers and AI at the moment.

Like obviously we're seeing, we have seen these significant increases in the prices for GPUs. And now that's hitting RAM and kind of other components. Like, what is going on there? Is this all just AI and data centers kind of driving up prices? Part of this is just like three people make RAM. It's like SKINIX, you know, Samsung and like micron and shit. And it's like, it's literally just like, they said, yep, we're, we don't care about you guys anymore.

There's a lot of it. It's, it's the consumer, like, yeah, we could just sell this for way more money for the data center buildout that is currently happening. And we're going to get in on that as much as we can before this shit crashes. And if you don't like it, go to hell. And the problem is, like, other stuff uses RAM other than just like if you're getting a laptop. And, you know, RAM is now as a result of this, like, like, if you bought RAM like it was, stock, it would be the highest appreciating asset in that you can imagine. It's just like fucked up.

It's like, you go on, look up the like price charts of that stuff. I follow gamers nexus. I like those guys a lot. I would highly recommend their YouTube channel because Steve's just been going insane very slowly over time. I've been fascinated with like the trajectory of like YouTubers who kind of used to leave politics out of away and now are just like, I can't lie to you about who I am anymore or if not that I have become a different person. I think both of I think he was already

pretty sympathetic to that sort of start of stuff now. But like I think there's just it's just so reviled. And now it's fucking up the thing that makes his channel work, which is just we need to review graphics cards and stuff. And as a result, he's the only like one of like the guy who the guy with a long hair who looks like a metal dude who who reviews this has become like the guy doing like pretty serious work on like GPU stuff. It's like, I'm sure it reflects the anger to a certain degree in the audience as well. Like, I'm sure regular people are pissed off about this too if they're going to have to buy a GPU and seeing how expensive they are or RAM or whatnot. Even guys like who work on LLM, like who use LLMs are like, fuck, I like, I like my laptop.

I like my game. I love my little treat. It's fucking with the treats. It's not good. You don't do that. And it also is like, it impacts so much stuff. And when does it crash? Does it crash the bubble?

Like, is that the thing that does it? is that like it fucks up so many other things that it becomes unsustainable. I've seen people, I think, sort of float the idea that they want to, they just want you to talk to AI and that's it. But like, I don't know, it's also it's like it's also it's like it's also fucks up. It's like you can't buy a device to talk to AI with. You know what I mean? Like it's bad.

I remember when Apple started rolling out like the phones and the the, the laptops and they were like, now it's ready for Apple intelligence. And of course, you know, you see all the windows computer makers and stuff. It's, it's, the computers are like being framed as though they're for AI now. And it's like, Who cares of all the people buying computers, which ones are going out? It has to be a very small number going out and be like, yes, I need to make sure my computer is like AI forward or whatever. I think I'm the only person who thinks has like a specific use case for that that isn't like talking to a fake girlfriend.

Yeah. Which is like you can do like TPU stuff locally on like a mini computer. Those coral AI things used to be able to like use the coral units to do like facial recognition. You can use it to identify bird species if you run a Docker container, you know, that like is like, hey, use this thing to go through and visually identify what kind of bird this is. That's literally the kind of shit I think it's useful for is like image recognition. Hey, my girlfriend's home. I'm running it on a local model.

That's about it. But you don't need now that shit's just in the processor. So who cares? You know what I mean? And like nobody, nobody wants this crap. At least it got them to put more RAM for a year into like the, the, base Mac Mini, you know, like I guess the Mac Mini went from being like eight gigabytes to 16 gigabytes. And now like the M4 Mac Mini is like a really good deal. It's a really good deal.

I have one on my desk. It rocks. I love it. Especially the brand prices going up, right? Going back to CES, one thing I'm seeing is like a load of laptop reviews all the time and what this laptop maker is doing and that one and whatnot. You know, I just kind of like, honestly, I tune a lot of that stuff out. But is there anything else that's kind of standing out to you from this show or from how these companies are trying to frame what they think the future is is going to be. I do think that we did just write about the bad car, the bad PlayStation car. Yeah, but is it Honda Sony car or something like?

The Honda Sony car, two companies that are like fucking up specific things. It's like that's nice. That's way too much money is how I would describe both Honda's electric cars and a lot of, and some of the hardware. Sony tends to make for the PlayStation. I think it's called the Afeel. the car, if I remember correctly. It is $90,000 for a like mid car.

Like, you can't be pulling that shit, man. China's, you can eat your lunch. Yeah, I'm just going to say, especially with these Chinese EVs. This is not going to work. Yeah, like, the only reason you would buy that is like, you can't legally own a Xiaomi. That's really it. Or if you're that hardcore of a PlayStation fan, you need PlayStation in your car. Literally, the part of that thing is he's like, and it includes Microsoft Azure.

And I'm like, don't put that in my car. Wild. Do not put Asia? Are you kidding? My car's going to crash into a tree. Like, what the, what are you doing, dude? It's bad. I don't really, I don't know.

Like, I will say the Samsung has a new folding display that's like, oh, that's going to be in whatever folding iPhone probably comes out in like a year, because that's always the case. It's always like a weird Samsung device. And then there's the freak stuff. Like there's the taint zapper that people were joking about, which is like the thing that zaps your taint to prevent climax, which is a very, which now got, it's been around for a lot,

God, he's been around for a while, but now is FDA approval. And I think it uses basically like modified tens pads, basically. So perverts are there, you know, laptops are there. We are ever increasingly making TVs better, which, you know, I think that's, that's something I really like was that computer OLEDs now have RGB stripes that makes the text a little bit better because that was always a flaw of, of OLEDs. But like, man, a lot of stuff is really just like comically depressing. Like the, the Razor robot in a jar. I haven't seen that one. Oh, it's really bad.

It's like a girlfriend in a jar. Oh, my God. Like a little hologram girlfriend in a jar. That feels very of the moment, though, girlfriend in a jar, like with the chatbots and all that, yeah. It literally is hooked up to Grock. Oh, my God. It's a glass jar hooked up to Grock and they're like, well, you can add other stuff to it. And I wonder if they saw that like Grock was making C-Sam and had to be like, hey, man, you just got to tell them that you can put any model they want in there.

Yeah. Like, please tell them that they, that it isn't just, it isn't just. the sex crime robot. Or like make a last minute change to be like, that's not the one that we're powering this whole thing with. Jesus. Razor's such a bad. I hate their mice.

I hate their software. I mean, their mice are good. Their software is bad. But you can get a better mouse at this point from actually Ali Express or even just like the people who used to make BenQ. I think which one do I have? A Vaxi.

This is my Vaxi. It's a great mouse. It's phenomenal. It doesn't require you to have a login for your mouse. I can't use Razor because I can't use Razor because I. I'm on Apple products and their software doesn't work. This works pretty well. I'm pretty sure this works with it.

It has a little dongle. My mouse is Logitech at the moment. I did see that there was a problem with Logitech mice that just came out. There was like a security flaw. They forgot to renew cert on something. Oh, my God. On one specific mouse and it like made it so that the mouse was mouse, mice were crashing. That's exactly what I want my mouse to crash.

Yeah. I've never been to CES. So I can't give like a firsthand commentary. But every year, like when I, see the coverage. I just think like this seems like such a ridiculous thing that, I don't know, almost feels like a holdover to another moment that has passed almost. I did find it interesting. There are a couple of final things I want to get to before we wrap up. I did find it interesting. I saw you comment on the robots. You know, you mentioned the, obviously there's this big push.

We've seen it from Tesla. We've seen it from a bunch of companies that humanoid robots are going to be the future. And I saw you comment recently that like if anyone's going to win in human robots, it's China for the same reasons you were you were talking about earlier. Do you want to to expand on that a bit? I mean, I don't think anybody's going to win on human robots because robots are. Yeah. I remember even a few months ago, I think, like, China was like, there's a big bubble in human robots right now. It just like heads up.

Yeah. I mean, like, one, I think it's hubris to make a robot in the shape of a man because walking like a person is unnatural. And I think they kind of, I forget, I think it was like Boston Dynamics who, you know, military contract or whatever, like that they did the whole like, hey, and it can do it the other way. I mean, like, the main thing is that, like, getting this stuff to pilot is annoying and difficult. And every time they just do the mechanical Turk thing where they're like, right now it's being driven, but it won't be in the future. And I'm like, that's the hard part.

I mean, aside from the fact that this stuff is expensive and normal people don't want to do it, the hard part is getting it to walk around and not fall down. Robot vacuums only work because they're, like, extremely limited. And I have a robot vacuum. And it fucks up a lot. It's like owning a dog. You just have to are constantly pulling shit out of its mouth. No, no. I love you, but no.

You don't work as well as my actual bagged vacuum. I have to be honest. I have one too. And I was really like wishing there was a way and maybe there is to like change the voice on it from speaking to me to just barking like a dog. Okay. There is. It's annoying. Okay.

There's a way to replace the voice pack in Vallitudo. for a while before I thought about changing it to sound like Roger from American Dad. And then I realized I couldn't post about that anymore because the moment had sort of passed in which I could I could do do voice changing stuff and people wouldn't be mad at me. But also it would just be annoying at that point. But you know, you can actually change the change it to like your voice being like that would be weird though. It would be like, hello, Paris to yourself, your robot vacuum. Yeah, I would want that. Just wanted to be, you know, it's like a little pet.

I just wanted to be like a dog. I wanted to bark. I don't need to hear what it's actually saying. Yeah, just clean stuff up and I'll take the sock or like weird piece of string or part of carpet that you ate and yank it out of there occasionally. The robots I'm scared of, scared as a bad way of putting it, are the industrial ones. Like that's always been the case. It's like the thing you should be worried about are the weird ones that take people's jobs

in like a factory setting. And like, they're really good at those. I mean, what is it? The dark factories in China are like, wildly terrifying. They're really neat, though. This is like factories where the lights are off because the robots are doing the work, right? Yeah, they don't need eyes to work. And it's like three guys. Or there are 15 people working in the car factory. And it's like, that's fascinating from a, I guess, Marxist perspective, just like, okay, now it's like, now just the managers.

But like, I think it's also part of the reason why they're able to, I think Xiaomi operates a lot of their stuff at a loss. but I think those ones are in the black because of the labor cuts and because it's just a way faster and more efficient way to make a car. But it's also like, I don't know, man. Like that's the things, that's the stuff. And that's really competitive. It's not new.

Like they can't do the magic trick with LLMs again with robots. And they think they're convincing themselves they can. And it's not real. So you talk to chat, TPT, and it's impressive for a second. Is like a once in a generation fluke that fucked up basically investment forever. It's really bad. And I think that they went from like crypto to NFTs to this. And they're running at a runway and they don't have another place to go.

Yeah. You can tell that they're looking for the next thing to be ready for when this kind of falls off a cliff. Right. Since we're talking about hardware and hardware coming back, people looking at devices again, I'm interested to get your thoughts because I've been intrigued the past few years, seeing like this movement of young people really paying attention to it when you start to hear about the Luddite Club. in Brooklyn. And now I like regularly visit our dump phone subreddit just to like see what's going on there and like what people are doing. And like, I don't know, this desire to like move away from

smartphones or not be as dependent on smartphones and go back to some gadgets that are not as internet connected as the things that we have now. Do you see an actual movement there away from this kind of like, I don't know, internet connected gadgets or even just the way that we've been using technology for a while? And what do you think about it? What do you make? Well, let me tell you about what teens are doing. I say, yeah. Okay. Inform me.

Teen knower. Yeah. I'm just like one of those people from the 90s. It was like an elderly person talking about what teens are into. I don't know. To be honest, I think the truest thing you can say is that young people are always attracted to retro tech as an aesthetic thing because it oftentimes was simpler in some capacity or the ways in which it was complicated were different and knowing in a different way. different way. I know a lot of people who do like retro gaming stuff who are young and who like retro games who are young. And I think a lot of that comes from actually social media culture,

but aesthetics, you know, like the Y2K aesthetic. And this is like something that we, that has perpetually happened, you know, people getting by always getting back into film before they realize that film's expensive. I think like it's hard to parse the degree to which it's about a real need. and the witch and which is aesthetic, I think the two are not inseparable. No, I think that makes perfect sense. I just find it really fascinating. Like, I enjoy going on to the dumb phone subreddit

and see how many people are carrying around old PSPs that they've, like, modded. Me and more, the Vita, the PSP, lovely. Can we please make... Actually, I will say my one, like, return with a V moment is... So there's a lot of devices now that are gaining popularity that are mainly emulation. devices. I'm Thor. The fact that DS prices are like 3D, the 3DS is a very expensive thing to buy now again. A lot of that's just speculative market stuff, but I think another part of it is literally my thing is that I think that they made handhelds too big. I think the switch, everything's now an iPad, and you can't just put a Game Boy in your pocket the way you used to. And so you have these little tiny retro devices that just play Pokemon and they just play enough. And like what we lost with the DS to switch, the 3DS to switch movement.

was like this thing that you could just truly put in your pocket and game with because cell phones are annoying and nobody makes cell phone like cell phone games are like fucking gotcha games and shit it's it's like the the golden era of the good iOS game kind of went away and that's annoying and then playing a full game on your I like that but that's not what you want to do all the time sometimes you just want to play Pokemon or you know links awakening or like a little game on your I like a little game on your I like that's not what you want to do all the time sometimes you just want to play Pokemon. on your little tiny screen. And that's why I also think that's a partially because people don't have money. And these like Ann Bernick devices are like 50 to $100. And you can just like buy them and they look pretty okay. But also comes from like YouTube culture, like people being like retro game corps and all these different YouTubers who are like, hey, here's a tutorial on how to do this. You know what I mean?

Like there are economic needs, their cultural needs. And I think I think that a lot of people don't like iPad. now. I think a lot of people hate AI. I think the one thing you can say is like a lot of teams hate AI is the anecdotal thing I've heard from teachers is that they they use it like as a pejorative or as a derogatory thing. But yeah, I think I think that's natural. I think it's natural to go back and do retro stuff. I literally have an arcade cabinet next to me that I'm restoring. So the Taiwanese arcade cabinet called an okay baby I've been restoring for a year. I was thinking about swapping at the CRT chassis. I've done CRT repair by the way, which

is dangerous. And I'm going to do it again because I can't be stopped. But I had to stand and spray paint the whole thing, get reproduction decals on forums, all that. It's part of a grander project I'm going to write about again. But no, I understand the desire because I'm that guy and I see young people do it. And also it's easier to get hardware that works again. There's like a lot of FBGA devices that like the mister is great. That like just runs like a kind of, it's hardware emulation, but it's very close hardware. emulation in a lot of the cores. And like, it's phenomenal.

It works great. I was watching something about CD players, like portable CD players the other day. And they were like, the ones today are so much bigger because they're not being made mass market in the way that they were 20 years ago or something. And so you just can't get the part small enough to like make them the size that they used to make them, even though this is like an old technology. Like it's wild. Yeah, that's actually a thing that people forget about is that like economies of scale get

abandoned, like, you know, instant film. Like the internal combustion engine is like is just built on like a bunch of stuff. You know what I mean? That like is is really hard to do. Or like ballpoint pens was a really good example for a very long time, which is China couldn't make a good ballpoint pen until like five years, three or four years ago. Because like the precision machining to make a ballpoint pen is some shit we made in like the 50s, you know what I mean? And it just takes a lot of R&D and you just can't reproduce it because the tolerances have to be so specific is my understanding. I'm not a ballpoint pen expert.

I'm a fountain pen expert. So if that's wrong, please let me know. But that was the example I used. I've seen used for a really long time. And like, yeah, sometimes like people forget how to do stuff. There are a couple of good portable CD players, though. I've seen a couple that are like pretty okay. I think Theo has pretty decent one for like 160 bucks.

Shout out to Theo. Yeah. It's just what I was reading is like kind of like the size of the old Sony ones were basically like the size of a CD, right? And now it's like they have to be bigger because, you know, you can't get the components to make it that small anymore, which is not something I had thought about, but I was like, I guess it makes sense. Chris, it's been really fascinating to talk to you. And just to end off our conversation, you pay attention to a lot of hardware. You're looking

into a lot of this DIY stuff and whatnot. Is there anything in the hardware front that is exciting you right now? Do you think, you know, what direction do you think we're heading in at the moment, if you have any thoughts on that? I mean, mainly the steam machine is like the thing I really want. It's like almost existential because the thing about the steam machine is like it's like kind of like a PS5 Pro like a little bit. Maybe if they get the efficiency going. Looks a lot nicer though. It looks like you are like you're going to Hajj. You know what I mean?

Like it looks like it looks like the cube. But smaller. It's a little black cube and people forgot how to make. Actually that's the one thing about the most recent Xbox revision that I really like the last generation was they like they just got a big tube. a black tube and it was a really attractive. It was so much more attractive than the PS5, which is like Zaha Hadid's ghost. It looks like the Guggenheim's evil child,

you know, who's who's into crypto. It's like an evil device. And the PS5 is, especially comparing it to like the beautiful PS4. I love the PS4. PS6, they need to figure something out there.

The PS2 Slim is probably, is not a great device as much is in terms of reliability. But the PS2 and the PS2 slim, man, And they never were cooking that hard to give her again. I would just obviously recommend people go follow you, go check out your work because, I don't know, I always really enjoy reading what you're writing. I find it really fascinating, whether it's about video games or about the hardware stuff that you're looking into. And I wish you really well on the effort to get off of Microsoft. Certainly we'll be watching that.

Any progress that you make will be interesting to hear about. So thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show. I really appreciate it. My next article is about tying your shoe laces. So look forward to it. Somehow AI is involved. Chris Person is a co-founder of Aftermath. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine

and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Houston. Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash Tech Won't Save Us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening.

Make sure to come back next week.