Are you looking for hard-hitting journalism on this show?
Yeah.
Ask the host episode two.
I'm Joe.
I'm Dalton.
I'm Phelum.
And I'm Gary.
Hello, Chaps.
So you should know the deal by now.
You send us your questions.
We answer them.
There can be about anything you like,
except for Linux and Open Source.
You can send any questions to showaskthehost.com.
And if you were a patron,
you could have been here in this two weeks ago.
And if you are a patron, thanks a lot
for supporting us.
It really means a lot.
So the first question from Adam,
what's your worst mistake involving a soldering iron?
And my worst mistake is picking one up ever.
So I mean, other than the obvious,
I hurt myself with the soldering iron.
Remember that we you that I had?
We talked about it on Linux after dark.
Yeah.
Yeah, when I bought it, the USB port on the back,
it's got two of them.
And one of them had all the pins smashed in and stuff.
And I thought, oh, well, this should be easy.
I'll just take the old one out.
It's all through whole soldering
and I'll put a new one in.
No problem, right?
Yeah, I've tried this on a pie.
I think there's a lot of problem there.
So as it turns out, the USB port is on the ground plane
of a board because it is grounded like most things are.
And if you only have a TS100 soldering iron
that can put out like, I don't know, 40, 50 watts,
you can't actually melt the solder on the thing.
So my Wii U now has a new USB port,
but only one of them works
because I destroyed the pads going to one of them.
So I started with a Wii U that has one port that works
and I ended with a Wii U that has one port that works.
And I put it back together
and I'm never talking about it again.
Just use a hobby, it'll be fine.
I don't think it supports hubs.
Oh no.
I have a similar story where I was working on recapping a monitor
to make it work.
And I had a brand new soldering iron,
which I am by no means a soldering expert.
And I didn't realize I needed to tin the tip
of the soldering iron or anything.
So that was one problem.
So I had to desodder the old caps
and I'm doing that thing in bubble bomb
like I said, it's a new soldering iron.
And all of a sudden I looked down
and I see a bunch of smoke.
I'm like, what's going on?
And it turns out that the cord was still coiled
and everything, you know, so it was like the shape weird.
And like as I looked up to look at something
I accidentally tapped to the power cord
with the iron and started melting it.
Lovely.
Luckily I caught that before it got too bad.
But then so I finally get through
and I get the first cap installed.
And then I look at the work and I go,
I put it on backwards.
So at that point I'm like, all right, this has been an experience.
And I think I'm done for today
and I have not touched it since.
Well, I tried to fix my mom's laptop once.
The power jack broke because it was a straight connector
rather than a right angle one.
And it just wore loose after one.
So I bought the part for like a quid off eBay
and then tried to desolder the old one
because it was like, it's only seven connections.
I can desolder that without a solder sucker
and without a precise soldering iron
and without any experience.
Well, that did not go well.
And that ended up just destroying it basically.
Just destroying that motherboard.
I mean, it's only a second gen or third gen i3.
So it's not the end of the world.
But it's still very annoying
that that is otherwise a perfectly good laptop
that I just destroyed with my terrible soldering skills.
I also once upon a time had a soldering iron
that the end fell off and burnt my table
because I wasn't using any sort of protective map.
How?
Is it quality purchase that was?
Yeah, exactly.
This was a gas powered one as well
because I didn't really have any way to plug in
where I wanted to do the job.
And so I got a gas powered one.
You just, you know, you put lighter gas in it,
but you tell you know, whatever.
And it just got super hot and our soldering
and it was pretty cheap and just the end just fell off
and now there's a big burn on my kitchen table
and has been for the last like five years.
So was like the tip just that tightened all the way?
Yeah, I think, I don't know.
That's nothing.
I give you a two for one here.
So back in uni, one of my subjects was physics
and the physics lab, they had these,
it was obviously before pies and all that
and they had these technicians who built these parallel
poor interfaces to the amazing Amstrad PCs
that they had in the labs.
And you know, we do things like, you know,
solar or a circuit to do gravity.
You drop a weight on a motor on a piece of string
and it would spin the motor and then you detect, you know,
what gravity was, all this type of rubbish.
And I was like, I know I had to solder.
This would be no big deal at all.
I proceeded to solder to fix something
after the circuit was partially built.
And every time I touched the soldering iron
off the board, it would spark.
And I was like, huh?
What's going on here?
And I'm like, okay, I'll keep going
because you know, this is weird.
Until I realized Jesus Christ has still got the power plugged
into the board that I've got to solder to.
And to try and cover my tracks of,
I've just been a massive mupper.
I put the soldering iron into the holder.
It fell out.
I can't deal with that now.
I've flipped the pair off in this thing real quick.
Went to get the soldering iron just out of habit
or sort of distraction.
I didn't grab it by the handle.
I grabbed it by the thicker part of the tip
and picked it up.
But because I was so stressed,
it took about a second before I realized I was sizzling.
I don't know.
Yeah, it was quite sore.
Jesse asks, where does the I've been name thing come from?
So at the end of episodes, I'll say I've been Joe.
Yeah, I've been failing whatever.
And so, yeah, where does that come from?
I bet none of you have a no idea
because you're not from the UK.
Nope. Nope.
Is it from Nevermind the Bullscocks to Comedy Quiz?
It is from every TV show in the UK
that involves people not being scripted.
So every panel show, every...
Just that kind of light hearted light entertainment show.
It's just what you say at the end of the episode.
You just say, I've been whoever I've been and I've been,
whoever.
It's really that simple.
And just people ask this all the time or not all the time,
but every softener comes up.
And Americans just don't know that.
I thought you people had our panel shows over there.
Sure you have Nevermind the Bullscocks,
because that's surely everywhere.
So what do Americans say at the end of similar shows?
My name is, or what?
Goodbye.
I don't think they really like,
how to reduce themselves, is that a thing?
I'll introduce, like, introduce, right?
I can't think of anything that really does that, really.
No.
Firefu rounds off into the lights above the camera
and go yeehaw.
Well, there you go.
Jesse and everyone else who has asked,
it's just a British thing.
What can I say?
Jo asks, not me.
What are some other vote with your money-type decisions
that you make in addition to preferring to sport-foss
versus proprietary software?
Almost knocking a mention of Linux and IP sauce.
We're not allowed to talk about that.
But what are the vote with your money-type decisions
do you make?
I refuse to pay for streamed music
that I don't get to keep at the end of the month.
So I have always used seven digital,
because I can't get Amazon and Ireland,
despite the fact that European headquarters here,
you can't use Amazon.co.uk or DE or.fr to buy any music,
and you certainly can't use.com
because the whole license bullshit that goes on
with regions and stuff.
So seven digital has been the primary one,
but they've kind of gone a bit rubbish of late.
I don't know, it's like they lost contracts with music producers.
So Quobuz Q-O-B-U-Z is one I've been using of late,
but it's really expensive,
because it's flax for about $250 roughly, and it's painful.
What about iTunes?
Why don't you buy it from Apple, eh?
The audience probably didn't hear the few second pause
between that and that.
That was the point where I died a little on the inside.
No, I am not going to fund my enemy to give me music
that I know, just know.
Just listen to music on YouTube, come on.
Well, I mean, I do do that,
but I love the stuff I find on YouTube,
I then buy, because I like to have my own music.
If something's good, I'll pay for it.
Yeah, fair enough.
I do the same thing,
except most of my digital music comes from like the Amazon
digital stuff, or using Amazon day delivery stuff.
Yeah.
But aside from that,
the most things I do with the vote with your money,
I just basically boycott it in certain stores
and other businesses that are known to have bad practices,
you know, and stuff like that kind of stuff.
So you just never spend any money ever then?
No, I mean, obviously you've got to deal with some of that,
but I mean like the really bad ones,
like I'll just say I won't eat hate chicken,
if that makes sense to you.
Hate chicken.
I didn't want to name the company,
but there's a certain company that helps fund anti-LGBTQ stuff
and stuff like that,
so they got nicknamed hate chicken.
Since a lot of my friends are in the LGBTQ community,
I obviously don't support that company at all.
I don't like McDonald's,
I don't like anything they stand for,
and so I'm not giving them my money.
There's times when I've been starving,
and there's nothing else around,
and I'd rather just go and get a packet of crisps
or something from a petrol station,
even though I would love to go and have delicious,
horrible McDonald's,
but no, they just don't get my money.
I have heard that there's kind of this thing of
slow food taking hold in Europe,
and well, obviously you're not in Europe anymore, but.
I like that. Nice, nice, Dalton, nice.
Is that the kind of reason why you wouldn't go to Mickey D's?
Well, no, because I go to a small fry chicken place,
although I haven't been for a long time to be fair,
but like you know, it's independently owned fast food,
I have no problem with that.
I mean, it is obviously really bad for you,
but yeah, I'll get a pizza and fry chicken and all sorts.
It's just the fact that McDonald's
I just don't like what they stand for.
So we're not allowed to talk about technology, right?
Basically it's trying not to buy any new electronics
if I can help it,
or if I can buy something used or refurbished,
I'll try to do that,
support someone who's actually fixing something
instead of just making a new one.
That's a pretty significant amount of where
my buying habits go.
Yeah, that's kind of like the whole thing
of the most ecologically friendly car
or laptop or whatever is the one that you have already got.
Right, and the one of the times where I broke that rule
was when I bought the framework laptop
and that was an absolute mistake.
Everyone else disagrees with you on that for some reason.
What did framework do to you?
I mean, can you point to on the dial
where the framework laptop touched you?
I think it's the USB point from the Wii,
was the problem, though.
I don't hate them.
I just don't recommend buying one.
And maybe they've gotten better
in the 12th and 13th gen stuff
and the AMD stuff that isn't out yet.
I don't know,
but I don't want to buy a new laptop to find out either.
I'd like to say that I don't spend money
with disruptive companies like Uber, Airbnb,
but the bottom line is that it's just too convenient
and too cheap and I have done in the past,
but that's what I'd like to vote with my wallet on
because I saw that funny tweet,
like what's your favorite modern tech development?
Is it a legal cab company,
illegal hotel company,
digital money for criminals or something like that?
Just taking the piss out of all the companies.
But I wish I could not use those kind of services
because they're no better than the likes of McDonald's.
They're worse.
But Uber's just so convenient and cheap.
The problem is the way they come in
and inverter commas disrupt IE,
they use a load of free fake money
to destroy other companies.
And then you're left with nothing
but a wasteland of their crap afterwards
when they then do actually jack the prices up
to the level that they need to
to actually function as a company.
Or completely go out of business
and then there's no options left
because money isn't free anymore.
Yeah.
Well, it's like Amazon night.
I feel like I shouldn't spend money with them,
but it's just so convenient
to get stuff delivered the next day
for a reasonable price still.
Oh, you just can't do that in America anymore.
You don't, I do.
I do all the time.
Yeah, but you live in a proper city, don't you?
Yeah, I suppose.
Eric, whereas Donald lives in the back of beyond,
as we would say.
Yeah, I'm like, there's at least two distribution centers
within like tens of miles.
One of them's like 10 minutes away.
The other one's 45 minutes away.
But you know, they're not far.
Yeah, whereas up in the frozen tundra where you are,
it's a little bit harder to get stuff to you in the next day.
It's very nice outside today.
I can't tell you how warm it is
because you won't understand the number I say.
I know plenty of Americans who use Celsius these days.
And I'm too stupid.
I'm just usually give both.
All right, Lucifer looks afar.
Don't know how you say that.
Ask, what are your strategies to make sure
you're not getting trapped in your own bubble
and don't get trapped in an echo chamber?
I wish I could say I had some.
That's all I can say.
Guys, I'm pretty sure I'm trapped in an echo chamber.
Yeah, well, I mean, that's the whole master on thing.
Now that I've left Twitter, and even when I was active
on Twitter, I would just block anyone who I disagreed with.
And on Master on, you can block whole instances.
And anyone who comes in the telegram group
and is an asshole gets banned.
And so I don't have any strategies
and it's probably bad, but I don't care.
I wouldn't say blocking assholes really makes an echo chamber.
I think it just, you know, sets community guidelines.
But like for me, I mostly just try to run ideas
and stuff past everybody I can,
even the unwilling sometimes.
Rando's at the bus stop for the year of frosting, essentially, yeah.
Hey, have you heard of this thing called pigeon?
Yeah, yeah, see exactly, Jesus.
Especially when I'm like talking about like a design
or something, I want to change in pigeon.
It's, I want to go and talk to as many people as I can kind of
to get different input, right?
And that's the same thing for everything in daily life too, right?
Like I constantly run into this battle with myself
where like I'm hungry, I don't want to cook food.
I need to find food.
But I have like four restaurants I go to
and I get tired of them, right?
So I'm always like, Hey, anybody got any recommendations
for food, you know, stuff like that?
Cause like, you know, I don't know, I need to have something different
because I always had to get burnt out on it.
But you know, it's the same thing, minus, you know,
political ideology or something like that.
It's the same concept, right?
Equal chamber of food.
I don't know, maybe I'm stretching it here.
I don't know, man, it sounds like you need to listen to
some of the other late night and then it shows
and visit some of the sponsors, just saying.
Recently, I was trying to look up a few different sources
on this greed flation thing.
This idea that corporate greed is the main thing
that's causing inflation right now.
It's a hot button topic.
What I mainly just did is duck duck goat, the term
and then found all the new sources that I know are
left and right and left and right.
Cause it basically alternates as you go down the page, right?
And read a bunch of them.
And when you do that, you do end up finding that.
There are similar things that are said in both
and that's probably where the truth lies.
And there's a lot of things that are just
completely different between the two.
And well, that's probably where the opinion came from.
Well, I said that I have left Twitter.
I haven't fully left.
I've just stopped posting.
I still lurk there and I get notifications randomly
for the various accounts that I'm signed into.
And sometimes you see some really unsavory shit there
from right wing assholes.
I mean, I don't even think right wing is the word for it.
But I do kind of sometimes get down a rabbit hole
of just seeing how far it goes, how bad it gets.
And I suppose that's my way of attempting at least
to not be in an echo chamber and trapped in my own bubble.
I don't know if I'm trapped in an echo chamber.
I'm sure I am, but I don't know.
Is that an echo chamber of just decent people
being like human to each other as opposed
to lunatics on the internet?
Yeah, I don't think that looking at right wing
Twitter is really the way to not be in an echo chamber.
I mean, yeah, it's like, well, okay.
So you watch the day you show, you find that funny.
And you all have a laugh about people
or you watch John Oliver.
And people maybe would on the other side
would go, oh my god, that's so libertarian blah, blah, blah.
It's like, well, now it's just funny.
It's the pointing fun at people being ridiculous.
And I think it's very hard to say,
oh, I'm in an echo chamber.
It's like, no, you're just lunatics over there.
And we all know you're lunatics.
And you can call that whatever you want,
but it's been lunatics.
And just not associated with that.
Is that not just being like customized
to finding decent folk about the place?
I mean, yeah, fair enough.
You might, if you constantly look at news
and it's only on Linux stuff, then yeah, fair enough.
I know we're not supposed to mention it, but I mean,
the really the only news I check are like military stuff
and Linux stuff online.
So I can't talk about anything else really.
Like normal news stuff, whatever.
Just go to the news channels.
We don't have a, I think, as bad here where, you know,
there's a right wing and a left wing media.
It's not quite the same.
Yeah, because Murdoch's not in charge of your media.
Thank fuck.