The following program is produced by the tech Talk Radio Network. Everybody out there in radio, and this is James Young from the rock band Stick. If you are technically challenged, if you've got trouble with that computer yours, because Lord knows I do you need to listen to tech talk Radio.
Welcome back to another episode of tech Talk Radio. I'm Sean de.
Weird, I'm Andy Taylor, and the table you are looking at right now on the video for the show is Sean's Hall from gen Con. Yeah, I got.
Back Sunday night from gen Con twenty twenty five, right, so there's a little bit of picture of my haull. So I've got some new games, some more Everdell games, Everdel Silverfrost of Everdell Duo, which is a two player version, Twinkle Twinkle which is a constellation building games, Tark Stars in Space of course, Shocker, a game called Galaxy Trucker which is another space game, Dice Tray Some Dice, a Dagger Heart book which I actually had bought before gen
Con but got it signed. And then some new D and D five E books from Gooey Cube, which is which is the third party platform for D and D one of my favorites. I've been following them for a long time and got to participate in their live show this year, which is pretty cool. And then a game called Foxy for a friend of ours who likes Foxes. And then do you remember POGs, Andy.
POGs, POGs, POGs, POGs with those Yeah?
I do.
As a matter of fact, I had a pog with my face on it. It was me and my old morning show partner. They were to hand out these POGs and it was me and Barry on these POGs. I think I still have a few somewhere.
So POGs were very popular when I was in grade school, so this would have been mid nineties, late nineties, right, And one of the games that I play, called Dice THROWNE was t teas like two years ago an April Fool's joke called slam Thrown, a pog version of their game where you have a metal slammer and you slam down to do damage and stuffing that, And this year at gen Con they're like, no longer in Apris Fool's joke. Here it is, you can buy it.
They actually came out with the game all right. For our listeners that have tuned in Now, last year we talked about gen Con, and you should talked.
About gen Con. Since I've been on the show, I've gone the last ten.
Years, So tell us about every year where it's at and you know what it's all about.
So gen Con is kind of is dubbed as the best four days in gaming. It's a tabletop RPG, fantasy card game, tabletop RPG, you know, whatever you name it anything, board game related, tabletop gaming convention. It's held in Indianapolis at the Indianapolis Convention Center. It takes over the Convention Center and it takes over Lucas Oil Stadium.
Would you say, Sean with so many devices, with so many announcements, you know, consoles switched to the whole bit? Is desktop gaming as far as playing on a tabletop you know, like Dungeons of Dragons Traveler that type, is that still popular?
So it hasn't broke through into this convention as big as you think it was, as big as you think it would. There are some parts of it that there are some people who bring in, like some computer based RPG games or some computer based role playing games. So like some states, some people had some space games where everybody sated a computer and did a different part of the ship and involved they did like a role playing scenario where you flew through the flu ship and stuff
like that. But as far as like video games and things like that, not here, not a gen gun.
Really, it's just board.
Games, card games, tabletops, RPGs, fantasy games.
So there's still a lot of people. There's still a lot of people playing these type of games versus you know, plug you know, using something on a screen. They're using their creativity more than.
You would think to be honest, and it's it's very popular. And there are a lot of familiar titles that have popular ips like Marvel and and Spider Man, and you know, you got to get into a lot of those ips that have a lot. But then there's also games that they just have their own ips. There's their own, they're their own, like Everdell has. There's about a dozen games in the Everdell series.
Right, I own.
I own the complete collection, plus the two new ones they just came out. Yeah, I'm just a bit. I have a lot of boarder games, as indicated by that picture that's just by my table. You can see the shelf off that here.
I'll put it back up yeah, let's see that kind of see get that when you went after the.
Right there's a there's an Ikea shelf over there that is full. It's a it's a six by six shelf. It's full of boarder games. Right, And you can see more more board games on the back wall, more more magic cards on the left side. I've got a whole room in my basement dedicated to this stuff.
So now, how long, like you're playing one of these games for our listeners that maybe have never thought, hey, this might be fun to do with, you know, the kids, or maybe you know with a group of friends. You know, how long can one of these games last? I mean, so you start a game, can you have it go a couple hours? Or can they That's the.
That's that's the beauty about board game, right. You can find your niche. You can find the game that takes five six hours to play if you really wanted to. But a lot of the games are dialed into like thirty to forty minutes, an hour, hour and a half. It all depends on the technique that you know. Some people like complicated games, some people like fast paced games. Some people like turn based games. Some people like cooperative
games some people like you versus the games. Everybody has their own version of what they want to play, like the style that they're their gameplay, what they like. So there's tons of games for everybody. Not all the games. Not all games are for everybody. There are games that I don't like playing because it's not my style. But I have a pretty wide variety of pretty wide range because I just like games in general. But yeah, I would say my favorite is like high Fantasy turn based.
Is there one one game, like, say, at gen Con, you know, you look at well comic Con, everybody's talking about the movies, They're talking about the comics, they're talking about TV shows, streaming stuff. I mean, George Lucas made an appearance at San Diego Comic Con, and it was like everybody wanted to talk about this because you know, he's got such a huge fan base. At gen Con, is there one game that everybody was talking about that
they said, you've got to try this. It's big? And is there one developer bigger than the others?
Oh Man, there's so many big developers. I would say probably the biggest one this year was another tabletop RPG called Dagger Heart, which we've talked about on the show before because I got into the open beta a couple of months ago. They actually have a full production release. And we've talked about Critical Role on the show before. So the publisher called Darrington Press is who Critical Role
Stouter started. They started the publishing company called Darrington Press and they released their own Dice based ARPG system called dagger Heart. So that is big. It's fully released now and they're already talking about future pieces, expansions, character updates, et cetera. And we actually went to a live show in Fisher's, Indiana, which is just north of Indianapolis. It was a live play through of dagger Heart with the Critical Role cast.
Oh wow.
And they announced that they announced their new campaign, which is a campaign four. It's rumored to be in the dagger Heart series. They've been playing D and D five E for the last three campaigns, but it's very highly rumored and most likely going to be Daggerhart. So it's a whole new like, it's a whole new system that is competing with Dungeons and Dragons at this point.
So well, it's kind of cool because I know that it was probably a few months ago. I went to a shopping center just outside of Marana, and it's an outdoor shopping center and I've been trying to remember the name of it, but they had a store in there dedicated to what we're talking about, the games, the books, the board games, and they do very well and there was a lot of people that play them and a lot of us. You know, maybe we're so wrapped up
in our words, our world. I remember my mom and dad used to play bridge and poker with their friends when they would come over and visit on a Saturday. But this is something that maybe a younger said, is getting to Is it geared the male audience or females? Do they get involved in it as well?
It is the entire spectrum. Everybody has loved to gen Con like it's a big part of their identity. Is everybody's welcome. Harassments not welcome here, everybody. You get kids all the way, I mean everybody. There's games catered to everybody. There's games catered to specific identities, there's games just everybody.
Now. I remember I used to play Traveler and that was for our devices, so it was a lot of fun. It was you know, a role playing your roll the dice and then it was fun. I remember that this is many many years ago. Now I'm wondering, though, have we seen a kind of emerging of the board games with technology, so like somebody might need your smartphone for a certain piece of that. And of course, if they do add ons like you had mentioned, maybe a brand
new series. These games aren't just you open the ball like scrabble. You open the box, you play it, and then you're done. You could have different adventures or different scenarios, right.
Yeah, So there are usually expansions for games, and a big thing for me for a lot of games is replayability, so being able to play a game and come back to it and have a different experience. Right, So you play it once with your friends, you have a completely different outcome. You play it the next time with a different group, completely different outcome because it's all based on random number generation and dice rolling and things like that. So there's not a lot of games. There's a lot
of game popular games that have digital versions. Ticket to Ride, Cotan Dice Don't's coming out with a digital version. There are ways to play these games online, right.
How about battlefield sir?
So you want to talk about space based or military based games. You're starting to get into things like Warhammer and uh you know other other miniature based games like that Warhammered, uh Stars, uh Star Wars, uh Legion, a couple other like miniature based dice rolling, tactical turn by turn based games, and there's a ton there's a ton
of that stuff too. So gen Con has everything. Man, I'm telling you, if if you're into if you're into anything related to board games, or maybe if you think like, oh my board games, stop at Monopoly, Like there's a whole new world out there for you.
Kind of think that last year when you had gone, you had sent some photos. There's cosplay that happens, So there are people that really get into it and they dress up in costumes. Did you see a lot of that.
Uh yeah, yeah, So there's a lot. And like again, it's it's across. There's so many genres, so it's not like you're going to something that's just a specific ip, right, So you have people that are dress up as characters you may have never even heard of, but it's from their favorite series or favorite game. And we went to the Critical Role Live Show, and the Critical Role Live Show is just a whole different sub sect of the community,
right right, it's a lot of creative people. The costplay there was so much better than costplay I've seen other places because they're so dedicated. They're so focused on one ip and you just saw characters from that series and there's a whole. There's a whole. They do a parade through the convention center with all the costplay and then they do a contest too, so you can go in and watch the contest and you can win prizes and stuff like that for best best dress and all that stuff.
That's pretty cool. Now, do you have a favorite? You know, for our listeners that are thinking, well, I'm gonna go check out this store in Morana or they want to go online and maybe order one of these, Do you have a favorite that maybe somebody who wants to get into this or try it. What would be a game that they they should start with? And what is your favorite? Right now?
Oh man, that is a loaded, loaded question, right It's because it's it's it's you have everybody's different, right, So I will tell everybody to try a game at least once, because because you might find that you like it. You might find that, you know, if you're interested in board games. I would tell you dice th Own is one to get into pretty quick if you like dice rolling games. A little bit of tactical uh, player versus player player verse,
the environment, player versus the game. They have a Marvel set, they have an x Men set, they have their own eye characters in the series. I have a ton of that. That one's fun. The Everdell series is a fantasy worker placement game where you collec resources and try and build your own little world, your own little town inside Everdell, and compete for resources against other players. They make a version of that called My Little Everdell, which is like
for ages six and up. Really so, but if you're interested in learning the Everdell series, like the core mechanics of Everdell, that's your go to. I bought it two years of gen Con because I had never played Everdell. I have a friend who's obsessed with it. She told me, if you want to learn how to play Everdell by this, you're gonna love it. Bought it at gen Con. My friend Steve and I figured out how to play it,
and I was like, this game is awesome. Last last year I bought the whole complete collection of Everdell, which was like eight games within the whole box. You remember I showed you that big box.
That was a huge, huge box.
That huge box it has like it has all the Everdel games in it, plus the expansions in the Collector's editions of all the games too. So then they added a new version of Everdell this past year called Silver Frost, which I bought and then got. I got to meet and talk with the husband and wife who developed Everdell, and they signed the player guide for me and signed
the inside of the box. And then Caitlin when she came down because she came with me for one day this year, she saw an Everdell Duo, which is a just a one v one you play against the other person. It's based the same core mechanics, but you're fighting just it's just one on one. It's not four player, it's just a two player version of Everdel. But there's so many good games. I mean, I don't know where to start. But if you want party games, I liked, I like,
I have a lot of party games. So there's like a game called Sushi Go. It's it sounds it sounds funny, it's a game where it's a game where you try and collect different types of sushi. And it's a party game, so you could be two to eight players, so you can have eight players at the same time fighting for sushi. It's really incredibly fun. Oh god, there's so many good games Andy, I don't even know where to start.
It's mainly jen Con is mainly adventure games. You're not gonna find games like Cards against Humanity, which a few years ago.
But you'll find Yeah, you'll find Card against Humanity. You'll find all sorts of those kinds of games. You'll find anything tabletop related this year, so you'll find Card against the Humanity. You'll find the really kind of crude and humorous ones like Joking Hazard Uh. If you're familiar with the comic Cyanide and Happiness, Yes online they have. They created a card game a handful of years ago. They actually created several Trial by Trolley, which is another really
fun one. There's so many good games, like I could just show you my shelf and tell you why these games are all good. Right, But then there's table there's RPG's right, so you've got Dungeons and Dragons, Dagger Heart, Call of Cthulhu Eat the Reich. I mean, there's so many good RPG games that are out there that I don't even know about because I wasn't super into other art, tabletop barbieges besides D and D for a long time.
Now, if you've never been, uh, you've never played D and D, right, and the actual Dungeons and Dragons, is that something you know? I don't want to call it newbies, but is that something that they can get into pretty easily with a small girl friends.
So, Dungeons and Dragons has been around for a long time. In twenty fifteen, I think twenty fifteen, they announced a new version of Dungeons and Dragons, right, because you had D and D three point five, then Dungeons Dragons four E which came out, and then they announced it was originally called D and D Next, but then they called it five E, fifth editionion and it kind of became a very rudimentary way to get people involved. It was
a simpler set of rules, condensed everything. They started making these starter kits, starter boxes that were one shot modules, pre generated character sheets, things that made it really easy to get into D and D without having a D and D knowledge. Also spurned by stranger things. Right things came out. They were playing D and D in the show that you saw a big You saw a big uprising in popularity from that show. Plus you started seeing a trend where you had a lot of podcasters coming
in doing play a live place. So you had critical role coming in around twenty fifteen doing D and D five E coming from Pathfinder, which is another tabletop version, another D and D style version of a game called Pathfinder. Different rules set, different rules, its own core world, its own system. Then five E became very popular. Now there are more podcasts than you can count on. Dungeons Dragons now slowly turning into a little bit more dagger Heart
because Daggerhart just came out. It's a little bit more popular. I think it's incredible. It's an incredible system. I think Daggerheart's a little bit more user friendly for new players. So I think I said this about D and D. I know Matt plays D and D. I know Justin's maybe played once or twice, maybe you played a handful of years ago, back in the day. I would like to do a tech talk radio one shot I got
to it, I would run it. You me, Matt and you me, Matt and Justin, and I think it'd be incredible.
That would be a blast.
But I think with Daggerhart. I think with dagger Heart we'd be able to just drop in and do it. I think it it'd be fun to do one in five E and one in Daggerhart and then compare for new players the systems. But yeah, I mean there's so many good, good shows. And what I like about gen Con is that you get to go and meet the people that make these games, because they like playing games just as much as you do.
That's why they created it. Yeah.
Yeah. And then there's one group that I picked up a version of one of their games called The Darkest Dream, which was a it's a module for five E. So it's a book maps character, background story, you know, world and building, and it was incredible. It was called Gooey Gouey Cube. They're based out of Colorado, right met them there, loved their books. They you know, they said, hey, come check out our little show that we do. We're doing this little like game show style. We're going to bring
in some D and D celebrities. We're gonna have them play our game for a little bit and maybe give some prizes away. That was like six years ago and now they're probably one of the biggest five E publishers third party publishers that exist. Wow, and their game show sales out every year and I did it this year, and they they have five players. They have four players that play the game show. This year they picked team captains.
I was the team captain for one of the one of the players, so I got to help pick because they get the audience involved, and the audience can buy power ups and and buy rewards and stuff, and it was incredible I got to do that. We ended up not winning as but it was incredibly fun and I ended up getting some some a gift card for their store, which I went and properly spent more than what I probably should have at their store.
Yeah, is this an expensive hobby to get into?
Yes, it can be, right, it doesn't have to be because you can buy board games. And I think if you go and look go to Target, Target, really Walmart wherever, and go to their gaming section fifteen years ago, you never would have seen a majority of the titles that are on the shelves. You would have seen Uno, Monopoly Life. Sorry, right, trouble you know to your typical fahaha, fun Funwer family Games,
candy Land, Shoots, the Letders, whatever. You are seeing a majority a lot of these titles at these retailers because they're becoming popular. Catan probably one of the most pop if if if you talk to somebody that's into board games, you said, what's the game that unit you like to play? And they'll take a.
Tan, right.
Catan is It's a settler. It's a hex based building. You restsettle and get resources and stuff. It's an incredibly fun game. It's been around for a very long time. I played it in grade school. It's kind of where I got my start and this whole thing. I played it with a youth with my youth group growing up and kind of just kind of rooted me into game
board gaming at that time. But until I had adult money, I didn't really have a whole lot of money to spend on board games until after college and stuff, so kind of got into it.
Then that's cool, all right. If our listeners gonna get more information about it, obviously there's websites. Is there one website maybe versus another that they could learn more about the different games or is it really.
Bords Game, Board game geek dot com.
Board game geek dot com. All right, that's that's probably.
It's probably the best web website resource for board games. It's gonna give you, uh information about the game. It's gonna tell you you literally everything you need to know about the game, where you can buy it, Reviews, articles, they were all do they have They had a huge booth at gen Con so they do a big review every year. But you can sign in, build a profile, and put all of your games in there and then find other people that play those games and talk about them.
Oh wow, I want to play if you want to play online?
Oh yeah, that was that was gonna be my next question. Can that be.
Board game Arena dot com?
Oh all right?
And you can play a lot of these titles online and they keep adding more and more every day, every you know, every time you go to there, like, oh, I can play that game?
So how did how would that? How would that work? It's not a digital game, it's a board game, but you're playing online. Is it like a camera on your board or one board?
No, it's it's a virtualized version of the board on the It's it's you just play in the browser. And it shows you the board and you it pops up the cards and it's all interactive. And they have a ton of the major major title platforms on there, and also some of the major titles have their own versions. Ticket to Ride Catan has their own but it's available on Board Game Arena, gloom Haven. I mean, there are so many good ones that just have their own digital
platforms because it makes it more accessible. Because again, in the world of technology, in the world of knowing people around the world, you can't always get together and collaborate at a table. But true you're one screen away from being able to play with your friends around the world.
So that makes it pretty cool. And that's how we would probably do the Tech Talk Radio one.
Yeah, we would. We would do it on our website called roll twenty right, so a website designed for it's called the Virtual Tabletop so VTT. If you go to my YouTube channel, you guys have probably seen me streaming it before, where I streamed a handful of my DD games a couple of years ago throughout my sessions that I do. But I can make maps, I can put in minis, I can do all dynamic lighting, I can do all sorts of stuff, so I will build it
in there, and then with dagger Heart. There's a website called Demiplane which has a character builder of character sheets, interactive character sheets that you can track all of your stats and everything online dynamically within the game, so that when you make changes, I see them as the as the GM and the other players can see them dynamically and it's all virtual.
All right. Once again, that's bored great.
There's a great community around it, and it's just it's it's so good.
All right. That's board game geek dot com.
Yeah, Bord gamegeek dot com. All right, Bordgamemarina dot com. We're all twenty dot net, demiplane dot com. And I think we have to take a break.
All right, We are going to take a break. Some comments made last week regarding Linux had some great responsive feedback and social media. We'll share a couple of those thoughts with you coming up on tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean to Weird.
Follow us on Facebook at tech Talkers when we're back now back to tech talk Radio.
During the break, Sean was showing me some of the photos from gen Con and uh, it's actually if you take a look at his camera, Sean, tell me what is this picture we're looking at right now?
At gen Con, they have a vendor hall which has all the stores from the and this is the this is this. This is on Sunday, right of the people waiting to get in because the vendor hall opens at ten am every morning. And this is just the sea of people waiting. This is day five of the con. And this is the number of people waiting in line, so you can kind of see it just stretches on.
And they come from all over for this the world.
So a lot of these, a lot of the vendors are from Europe Asia. They're not just from the US or from this they're from Like having this so close to me here in Indianapolis is a blessing.
Yeah, of course I.
Would travel to this show if it was in the different part of the country. Right it's it's a two and a half hour car drive for me.
Oh it's still oh wow.
But you get people flying in from all over the country to come to gen Con, all over the world to come to gen Con.
Amazing great photos. Again, if you haven't seen the video up available, it's up on our websitelog blog dot tech talk radio dot com. This past week we talked a little bit about Linux, and I remember there's a there's another radio show that's out there that does tech and I remember when I heard the host make some kind of comment regarding Linux and said that he wouldn't talk about Linux. You didn't want to talk about it on the show because he felt that it was a niche
and that not enough people were getting into it. And you know, it's rare to hear, you know, other shows talking about Linux and what it presents for you the user. And you may be fine with Windows and you know, you may be oh cool, and you may have already gone to Windows eleven. You're happy with it and it does its thing for you. Or maybe you're a Mac user and it really doesn't affect you that much because
everything seems to work fine with Mac, right. But Linux is something for a lot of people, and there's so many different distributions. Justin made the comment, you know, Linux is kind of like you have this great Linux distribution, like Linux Mint twenty two. And it's like that meme with the guy walking with the girl and then he's turning around looking what he's looking at is the newest
version of Windows. And we posted that clip on a YouTube, shorts, TikTok and other social media and it got a lot of comments and a lot of views from people out there that are using Linux. And I wanted to mention some of these comments because for those that have been on the fence about Linux, and I don't know, you have used Linux in the past, right, Sean Oh.
I got yes, I've been using Linux for various things for decades at this point, right.
And I know Slick who is on the show with us quite quite often has used different distributions red hat the whole bit when goes way back with Linux used to carry around USB drives on you know, the things you wrap up put it around your neck, and he'd have like ten or twelve of them. It's a carry
over out. But so with the comments that Justin had made on the social media, some of the comments Jarreff Fox wrote, Linux unlimited customization runs almost everything, open source alternatives for almost everything that doesn't work or is not free. Windows familiar and easy and intrusive and very virus friendly. You know, it's pretty accurate, because I mean, it's not to say that the Linux community does not have to deal with you know, spyware, malware viruses, the whole bit.
But it is pretty accurate that Windows becomes a giant target number one for its huge user base, although that's decreased over time. We saw a report recently and said that the number of people that have left the Windows platform was quite substantial. There's another one here from Brossia. Chill says, I can understand the appeal of Linux, but as a daily driver, I've always used Windows and can't
force myself to switch. I think we get used to some of the programs that are out there, and you know, the programs that run within Windows, and whether it be Office, whether it be Adobe Suite, or whether it be you know, any of those programs that we use under Windows. We get so used to them we don't realize that there are good options in Linux that people could be using.
Yeah, so there's good desktop environments, right, there's so everybody. When you think of Linux, you think of like a hacker sitting at a computer running command line. Sure, if you're into that, you can run a command line only in There are Linux distributions that are command line only. Right, You have to know how to make directories and point
and run the executables from directories and compile stuff. And sure if you want to, if you're into that, great, But there are a lot of distros that come natively with a gulley that you can you can log into and you get Firefox built in. Most often you can download Chrome if they have a software center. Like if you're just doing daily web browsing and maybe some minor work processing, you would have no issue using Linux.
Absolutely open Office. There's so many there's so many third party programs out there that are available on the that will run on the Linux platform that are either free or not very expensive, and you could get the free version to see how it's gonna work for you, and then maybe expand to a version that can provide a little more you know, customization and maybe for what you want.
I don't know.
Alternative too, and we may have mentioned this last week. Does that have you know an area where hey, if you're running Linux, this is my work for you. Yes, So alternative to dot net as a site you can go to if you run a program like maybe you're using Adobe Photoshop and with the change the software and services it got a little expensive. You decided, Man, I haven't a hard time with this, but I want to
be able to adjust my photos. Yes, our smartphones can do a lot of that, but you know, there's other programs out there like Gimp, and I don't know if there's you know that'll that'll run under that. There's other programs that'll run under these great environments.
On alternative too. I just typed in what is what is alternative to Linux Mint, which is one of my favorite distributions. Now I've used a lot, right, I've used a BUN two, I've USEDDBN, but Linix Mint just just the most user friendly less It's just it just works and it's a quickly.
I got it to run on a CD if you know, if you if you want to on an old laptop it it'll work great.
But I put it in there were one hundred and seventy seven different alternatives to Linux Mint.
Oh wow, what does that tell you? Yeah, go go down the hole?
Right?
Another comment there, Linux is great if you're unemployed and have nothing better to do than fight your operating system. Twenty four to seven. I don't know if that one can be one hundred percent true. Kobe, I think had written that one because I think, honestly, you're gonna find a different distribution may solve some of the issues you've been having that may be a lot easier.
You gotta find one, find one that is built for people that don't want to learn Linux. So I mean, yes, there is some fundamental understanding you have to have. It's not Windows. You're not gonna be able to go to a website, download their file and install it for Windows because the one they might not have it. Two they might have a Linux installer for it. If you get a good distribution of Linux that has a guy that makes it easy to install stuff.
You're gonna be just fine.
But every version of Linux allows you to take that step into the deep end and run your own command line in their faces if you want, build it out from there. But the benefit of Linux is it runs on everything. You've got a ten year old laptop laying around that you don't know what to do with, slap us hard driving it, get it to the highest amount of ramu R CPU can support. Put Linux on it. Yeah, it's gonna run.
Got the old computer to.
Get some life into an old computer. If you want, you give it to your kid to play with. Like I'm excited for all. I mean, I've got tons of computers in my house. Reals that I'm excited for when Max can just break down a computer and put Linux on it and have fun and destroy it and riddle it with malware and like learn how to learn how to you know, do stuff on a Linux computer. Like that's where I started right so long ago, and still
doss at that point. But such so much of our stuff in the industry runs on Linux back end servers and stuff like that. Having a fundamental understanding of the basics of Linux is important. Do I know how to deep dive and like code stuff and do all my
own software development? Get no, But I can at least step in the right direction and say, okay, here's where our problem lies, and then go to the developer and say, look, it's screwing up this directory by when I install this file or run this thing, it goes, you know, and then they can figure it out from there.
But some some there were some great comments, and I want to thank everybody who did take the time to leave a comment, whether it be ond TikTok or YouTube. But I like this one and it makes sense, And tell me if this is the truth. Linux is a great operating system. I've used it for decades. The problem I found that it's got a very toxic community. If you don't know something, don't ask in a forum, you'll most likely get ridiculed till you leave. There's very little help for newbies.
And that's why I like chat GPT.
Yeah, yep, because absolutely I can ask chat.
GPT the question and it gives me the answer.
Yeah.
It doesn't say go get a book, or doesn't say go to coding school or figure it out yourself. But that's true of any hobby that.
There's always somebody in that hobby, whether it be radio control or drone flying, the whole bit. If you join a group, there might be somebody in there that knows more than you, and they'll lay like.
Everybody on every forum that just says use Google. Yeah, Well, if I wanted to be part of the community, why in the heck am I going to go to Google?
Yeah?
Why can't I interact with the community and get advice from other people in the community that may have had these struggles when I started. That's what I hate about online forums. There's no sense of community. It's it's just me against you figure it out yourself. Google it. I don't want to take the time to help you figure it out yourself.
And it happens in every community. That's the Linux community though, but a Linux it's it's photography. I've seen that photography. I've seen the people everything.
Yeah did everything?
Uh and Chad gbt well, some people will say, oh, I'm not using that. I'll tell you it's helped in coding. I have seen. I've put in stuff where I said, hey, how can I clean this code up? And it will tell it'll go through and tell you how to do it. It's been to me, it's been Okay, this is really helpful.
That's why I am hoping in schools that they are really gonna go ahead and make this a part of the curriculum, or they teach the proper prompting and use of chat GPT to get the most out of out of AI whatever, you know, whatever platform they're using, because there is chattpt isn't the only game in town, but honestly so that they can learn.
Yeah. And my favorite thing to see on forums and and threads and stuff is have you ever had somebody just send you a link to the let me google that for you.
No, I haven't is.
There is a website that you can go to. It's called let me Google that dot com.
Really okay, you type, you.
Type in what you wanted to search, and then you send them a link. Right opens up Google and it types it in and hits search for you. So you click on the automatically opens Google types in what you wanted to say in searches.
Now, I know you're on Reddit. Do you do you find that type of community that that toxic kind of feeling something the whole website you mean or read it? Yeah, the whole website is overally.
You have to you have to take Reddit with a grain of salt, right, any any community on Reddit. Some of them are okay, yeah, a lot of them are are full. Are full. It's this is your first time on the internet, Andy, Like, I mean.
I've caught some of that, but you know, I just it's it's yeah. I've been in radio many years and I've had people that have come up to me right to my face that said I don't like you on the radio. You know that that'll bit that happens, and you've got a smile, just say, okay.
It's every industry, every hobby, everybody's got them right, you know. I just I'll always answer questions for people as honestly and truthfully as they can.
Well, when we did started doing the show too, we would get that, you know, you get somebody would call in and they would ask a question, and then we give the answer, and then somebody else would call in and say, you gave the wrong answer. This is the answer. I mean, that's gonna help.
Then you you do your own show. That okay, bye, you want to be the face of the show, Go away and ahead, make your own show, all right.
New products. We love talking about new stuff, especially when it comes to drones, photography, the whole bit. There's some new stuff we want to tell you about. We got a listener question as well that we're going to go over two of them when we come back with tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean Dea Whirred.
Follow us on Instagram at tech talk Radio.
We love your right back and now back to tech talk Radio.
During the break, we kind of went through a couple of listener questions. We're gonna read a couple here, and we've got Dave right and say where Dave's from but somewhere in there, David da I would say it wrong. So Dave has a new laptop, right, and it's in Windows S mode.
Right.
And when Andy told me what this question was and I read it, I was like, what, yeah, what what is Windows?
You haven't had to deal with Windows.
You had to deal with Windows sight, right, Okay, we're doing when it was eleven, right, but now it's Windows eleven.
S all right, or Windows TENNIS stands.
For Windows eleven Secure.
Yeah, all right. So Dave's question says, I have no idea what that is, but a buddy at work said, get rid of it.
Simplified secure, switchable. That's what it means, which is it's a limiting version of Windows. It's like parental controls for Windows.
Exactly what it is. And people have been buying these laptops with Windows S on it, not realizing that there is some limitations to it.
But what they don't know is it's actually Windows eleven. It's just in S mode. So you can if you really want to, and you should, in my opinion, follow the steps. I found it just a quick Google search, which we talked about Google in the last episode. I googled it. Tech Radar has a great article about it. There's hand vision a dozen articles about it right off the rip on Google on how to get out of wind that mode. All right, but according to the article,
it's going to scare you. Yeah, oh, it's it's going to threaten you. If you leave Windows asmods, you can't go back.
Well, I think, I don't know. This is kind of the thing that we're going through right now with the Windows ten to Windows eleven. There's a lot of fear going on. There's people who actually believe you should know that your computer will not suddenly not turn on on October fourteenth, when the support for Windows ten will supposedly or previous versions have already gone, but when Windows ten will no longer be considered a supporting operating system. Now
they're scaring you. They're believing if the people that believe that, they think, oh my gosh, I got to get something new now. The new word that they're putting out is well, no, no, no. You could get security updates for a year, because that's what is Windows ten will still work and you get security updates. If you're connected to the net, you get security updates fore year. But you gotta connect your laptop of your desktop, whatever one you're using to one drive.
And we've talked about one drive.
We hate one drive. I hate it.
It's mucked up.
It's mucked up the last two major installations I've done for somebody, I've had to field phone calls. Why do I only have five gigabytes of storage on my hard drive? What are you talking about? I tried to copy my files over it and said it was full. I was like, full, you've got a terabyte since I have five gigabytes and I need to pay for more storage. As soon as you said I have to pay for more storage, I knew it was one drive immediately, and I was like, yep, that out of here.
I'm beginning emails recently, uh for photos from one drive. It says these are your daily photos. They're a month old. I thought this is some kind of spam, but they're my photos. They're my photos that I used on a previous system that was connected to one drive, that were uploaded and it's now send emailing me those photos saying, here's the memories you have from one drive because it wants me to use one drive and this is the
thing you shouldn't be afraid. WINDOWSS is designed to protect your system from going out and getting third party programs and installing them. If that program is not available in the Windows Store, the Microsoft Store, right, whether it be free program or a paid program, you can't install it.
It's just it's just a way to prevent people from just installing willie nilly. It'd be great for a kid, maybe an elderly parent that maybe doesn't know how to stop and clicking on bad links or downloading fake programs and stuff like that. Sure, but for the general user, it's just going to frustrate you.
Yeah, and you have to use it.
Follow the steps, get out of Windows S mode, get on to Windows eleven, and you'll be just fine.
The other thing is you have to use their Edge browser if you're in S mode, So that has which is the end of world.
Right, everybody's like, oh, it's Edge. Edge is built on Chrome.
You don't like Edge.
Right, everybody's gonna have an opinion. We talked about this last and they're in the last segment, right, every have opinion about their browser, their favorite one, and how many ways you can wash a sheep or skin of scirt of skin a cat whatever, whatever the analogy.
Is, give a sheep.
Whatever, you know what I mean. But it's everybody's gonna hate on Edge. Everyone's gonna hate on Chrome, Everyone's gonna had on Firefox, Brave you, everybody's gonna hate on whatever browser you use because it's not the one they use, right, But it's Edge. It'll get you where you want to go. It'll get you. So you can download Chrome, but do.
Not to know, and I don't mean to, you know, go off of the left field here. I personally am getting so tired of these programs that want to connect with everything you do, whether it be Chrome or Edge. I have some ManTech. I use the Norton product. I'm like every day saying I need to drop this thing because it's become so obtrusive, like every day pop up, Hey let's do this, or send me twenty four dollars, we'll do this. I just don't want anymore. I want it to be able to just do what you want,
do what I paid for, and dow load Linux. There you go, and I'll go back to Linux. I need to turn this, you know, this system into a Linux box. I'm pretty much sure we're going to do it. You know. Right now we're trying something different too. We use Zoom. Normally we use Zoom all the time. We like it, we use it for our show, our video, but the quality is not really that great. I've not been very
happy with that. And then we pay a third party service to create these great video short videos with that are you AI creates them? It says this would be a great this would be a great clip. Here, this would be a great and it gives it a scale. We use Opus clips for that, and it's you know,
it's getting it's it's expensive. So I want to say, maybe on four hundred bucks, we can't upgrade to FOURK or two K even or the higher quality ten ADP with Zoom unless we were paying something like I want to say, two thousand dollars a year until I say, okay, ridiculous. We're on a tight budget. So I found this program called Riverside FM. I want to thank Scott Sands for recommending that. Who does radio? Scott told me about this and I looked at it and right now that's what
we're doing with our video. So we're testing it out today. You might take a look at it and go that looks awful, Andy, or you might say that looks really great. You should stick with it. And it offers the environment the same thing that Zoom does with its transcripts, with its ability to save video, but it's saving it in
higher quality. Supposedly. We don't know yet. This is the first time we've done it, and it will create the clips for us rather than us having to go and pay thirty bucks to Opus Clips for a month for us to get the features out of that. So again, never know, So again I may, I may, I may jump to Linux Mint this next week, So we'll see how that works for us next week.
Yeah, and the segue off of comment you made just a little bit ago, right, I just thought about this. You talked about how one drive has pulled photos from an old build because you were connected. Yeah, and it reminded me of another software that I or another website that I used to use for photos. Have you ever heard of the website photobucket.
Oh? Yeah. I got emails from them for a long time saying grab your photos you right.
So about a year ago I started getting emails from photo Bucket and I was like, I haven't used photobucket for ten years. They're like you've got photos and photo buckets that are gonna be deleted if you don't pay for five ninety nine a month. And I was like, it's a free service. What happened? Yeah, So I bit the bullet because they're like, you can't get access to your photos unless you pay five ninety nine?
Are you kidding me?
You couldn't log it, You couldn't log in and to get your photos. Nless you paid? Man, right now, I'm curious what do I have in there from that long ago?
Yeah? Yeah, exactly.
And so I logged in and there were like ten pictures from something I uploaded to read it or Divan or like fifteen years ago. Oh. Man, right, but then but then I forgot to cancel. Oh a month later, I got an email saying thanks for your resubscription Photobucket. It was like, you got me, You got me exactly what you wanted. Here's your five all right?
So would you recommend to Dave? And one thing I want to mention, Uh, Dave, if you do remove Windows S, you will also get warnings that once you remove it, you will not be able to reinstall it, all right, So just remember that. But if you don't think it's something you need. Yeah, you could. You could probably remove that safely. It's not going to do you any harm as well. Uh, all right, so we got to talk.
We got to talk about what as a dji Uh and Instat three sixty both have had some pretty cool announcements.
Yeah, yeah, drone, some drone stuff.
All right, here we go.
So Insta three sixty up the bombshell on the industry saying hey, here it comes. Instead three sixty we called it adrenalinarly, that's not right. I bought that it again. It's called the Instant three sixty Anti Gravity drone anti gravity. Now, okay, there's not a whole lot of stats on it right now. It's but it's got a built in three hundred and sixty degree camera which it's expected to weigh under the two hundred and fifty gram limit, so you don't have
to require the FAA infrastructure to register it. But they're saying it's going to have a huge, huge flight time. But they're saying the target launch is August, so that's soon, right, We're in August. It's August.
Oh wow, so when is it coming? Yeah?
But there's not much more. But it's saying built in three hundred and sixty degree eight K capture because NAB in April they launched their new insta three sixty eight K. But yeah, so if you think civilization, it's got, it's got. But yeah, so then are.
We going to run into the same problems though with into three sixties we did with dj I, you know, with the manufacturer where they're made because of that, terroriffs or even the complete you know, I can't get them in the US.
I don't know, not really much info on that. But in response, you know, DJI has a gazillion drones. Everybody knows that, right, if you're flying a drone, it's likely a dj I. So this will this will break into that market and maybe put some pressure on d g I. And not that DJI needs the competition there, their drones are really really priced. Well, but so what's this going to do? What market is this going to shift in and where is it going to kind of filter in
at competition for DJI? Well, then d g I drops the Osmo three sixty.
Right, and they've had the Osmo line for a while, yeah, the Osma line, right, but they haven't had a three sixty camera, has it?
They really had, They've had an act they've had an action cam, they have three sixty, right, go Pro has the go Pro Max, which apparently GoPros is pushing an update for their three sexy camera. So there's this, there's this interesting struggle. Right a decade ago, so twenty fifteen, three sixty camps were huge, widely popular. Go to my YouTube page and go back and look at some of the three sixty videos I made using a Theta riok.
Theta s that that was all pictures video. You could do it all with it, So it's not it's not a new it's not a new technology. It's been around for a long time. You're seeing it being used in vertical videos to show a whole scene. So you're seeing a lot of influencers, a lot of content creators using three sixty cameras and showing and being able to show different content, different angles, different clips, all from their same
video interactively. You're seeing it's wild. You're seeing a ton of it on YouTube shorts.
So so I could be watching a video and you know, turn my device to the right and I may be able to see what's going on on the right.
So some of it, yes, So YouTube. You can stream three sixty video live on YouTube. At least you have been able to. I haven't done it in a long time where your phone is the camera. Now that's live right right. So that's the that's the hard part. Week I couldn't figure out was how do you make interactive content for YouTube with three sixty degree videos? You have to edit them. You have to. You have to edit and be creative and storytell within the three der sixty
degree environment. It's too much for people. We tried to do it with news content. We tried to do it live, but nobody wants to sit their phone and go, Okay, what am I looking at?
Oh?
Hold on, I got to handle the right Oh there's the action. Oh oh cool, Now so there's this guy. Oh oh I missed it.
Yeah yeah.
So trying to generate that content, but you're seeing it being used interactively in edited pieces a lot on YouTube shorts, a lot on Instagram, and a lot on TikTok. So it's interesting how much of a time period has passed with this technology that exists has existed, and there wasn't a market for it at first. It kind of just fell outder the radar and everybody focused on action cams and higher quality cameras, and you know, and now all of a sudden, there's this huge Into three sixty kind
of just was there. They kept developing, the technology, kept they kind of became the industry leader in three sixty, right, and then all of a sudden it was like, whoa, hey, why is everyone all three sixty content? Where Into three sixty is the only one. No, there's Nikon has a three sixty cam, Kodak made a three sixty cam, go
Pro made one. There's so many other three sixty cams that exist that are hilarious because you think, like, oh, this is wild, but there was no market for it, so they just stopped developing it, and Instant three sixties kind of kept there, and wow, now there's three major players, go Pro, Dji and Insta.
We'll have an update maybe next week we get a little more info about that. Maybe we'll find out an actual release date for the Anti gravity as well. We're going to take another quick break. We come back with more of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean to Weard.
Find us on the world wide Web at tech talk radio dot com or use Google it and tell somebody about us by making them google it.
Yes and now fact the tech Talk Radio. It was announced this week that many people who have been fans and waiting for the next Battlefield video game, if if you like playing games and you've played the Battlefield franchise, that there was going to be number one release date they got for I believe it's October tenth for Battlefield six. But they're giving people the chance to try it out and that's open beta.
Open beta will run over two periods of time, August ninth and tenth in August fourteenth to seventeenth, So that just helps them get an idea of what the server load's going to feel like. It kind of gives you an idea of what the game is going to feel like, find out any game breaking bugs, that kind of stuff.
You ever done a beta like this?
Yeah, I've done betas for several games over the years, some of the some of the original Battlefields, also Battlefield for some of the other Blzer games that I play, and some other just other.
You have to have like a killer system, a gaming system to be able to do.
To be honest, I think it was like a ten seventy TI was still like the bottom end of the spectrum.
Most people will have a little better anyways, Yeah, you can go.
To their webs EA's website and find out what the specs are. But cool, And then I wanted to bring one more thing up. All right, what do you think across the OS is? What's the market share between Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Chrome OS and other?
Oh? Man, oh, he forgot about Chrome OS too. I would say probably Microsoft holds the biggest piece of pie.
I would say much as the pie.
I would say it's about fifty two percent.
Seventy to seventy one percent? Is Windows?
Is it really? Still?
Wow? This is based off of stat Counter, which is the website that it pulled from.
Right, what about Mac Mac.
Sixteen?
That's it? Linux?
I don't know. I feel like, yeah, that's.
Right.
And then Chrome is Chrome?
I don't I don't know very many people that just stick with Chrome and get unless it's a laptop for school. That's all I think of when I think of that. But I don't know if Windows has got to be that much, I would think it's a little less. Well, those numbers will change.
But for phones, Android seventy two percent, iOS twenty six percent?
Really wow? So well Android, I looked at the new Android this past week. You got to check out the video, the one from Asus, the raw rog nine oh Man, the ro and I'm pro pretty amazing. Again. Check out the website tech talk radio dot com. You see the video there. That's it for this week. We ran out of time. Thank you Sean for coming on. I think next week we should have hopefully have Matt.
The whole crew.
Everybody will be with us and if you've got questions email them tech guys at tech talk radio dot com. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean to Weard.
Just find us on the web tech talk radio dot com or are other social medias and have a great week.