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Unraid 7.3 NVMe Boot, 1st Official Server, + Supreme Court Saves the Internet | Ed&Stefano Unleashed
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In the April episode of Ed & Stefano Unleashed, we're talking the Unraid 7.3 beta with internal NVMe boot, a huge 45 HomeLab partnership for the first official Unraid server, backup strategies and why most of us are doing them wrong, a Supreme Court ruling that could have broken the internet, compromised routers and supply chain security scares, Intel's new 32GB Arc GPUs for under $1,000, smart TVs shoving ads into HDMI switching, Meta's AI agent going rogue, and a Neuralink patient playing World of Warcraft with his mind.
We kick things off with Unraid 7.3 Beta, which finally lets you boot from NVMe or SSD instead of a USB flash drive, plus dedicated boot pool support and TPM 2.0-based license keys. Then the big announcement: a partnership with 45 HomeLab to create the first ever official Unraid server, purpose-built for media streaming, ZFS, VMs, and local AI, shipping with a lifetime license and ECC RAM this spring. The community chat dives deep into backup strategies, why parity is not a backup, the 3-2-1 rule, and why you should test your backups before you actually need them. Ed reveals he runs no parity on his main server, instead doing nightly rsync delta backups to a second parity-protected box.
Episode Takeaways
◦ Unraid 7.3 Beta brings internal NVMe/SSD boot, dedicated boot pools, and TPM 2.0 license keys. Enable TPM2, not Secure Boot
◦ Official Unraid server with 45 HomeLab coming this spring. Lifetime license, ECC RAM, pre-orders soon
◦ Parity is not a backup. Use the 3-2-1 rule and don't forget Docker volumes and AppData
◦ Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Cox v Sony: ISPs are not copyright gatekeepers
◦ FBI reports 369,000 compromised routers since 2020. ASUS routers hit by Cadnap malware. LiteLLM also compromised
◦ Intel Arc B70 (32GB) coming under $1,000. B65 also 32GB at around $700. Great for local AI
◦ Chuwei caught reprogramming BIOS to make older Ryzen CPUs report as newer chips. Full recall underway
◦ Hisense showing non-skippable ads when switching HDMI inputs. Vizio now requires a Walmart account
◦ Meta AI agent posted wrong info on an internal forum without permission and exposed confidential data
◦ NVIDIA DLSS 5 demo needed two 5090s. Community calling it an Instagram filter for games
◦ Cloudflare CEO says bot traffic will exceed human traffic by 2027
◦ Neuralink patient playing World of Warcraft entirely by thought
Chapters
0:00 Welcome and housekeeping
1:17 Unraid 7.3 Beta: internal NVMe boot and TPM 2.0 keys
3:53 45 HomeLab partnership: the first official Unraid server
6:18 Uncast updates: AI photo tool and Ollama for Intel GPUs
9:21 Community chat: backup strategies and the 3-2-1 rule
28:52 Supreme Court rules 9-0 in Cox v Sony
31:04 FBI compromised routers and LiteLLM security breach
34:41 Stefano's conspiracy: government backdoors in routers
39:03 Intel Arc B70 and B65: 32GB GPUs under $1,000
42:54 Chuwei caught faking laptop CPUs
47:06 Hisense HDMI ads and Vizio's Walmart account requirement
54:31 Meta AI agent
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Welcome And What Is Ahead
SPEAKER_03Welcome to Ed and Stefano.
Unraid 7.3 Beta Key Changes
SPEAKER_00Hello everyone and welcome back. Welcome to all you self-hosters, data hoarders, home labers, and everyone who's ever explained to their other half why they need a hard drive rather than deleting those old movies and TV shows you've never watched. Well, you're in the right place if that's you. This is Ed and Stefano Unleash, and finally, finally we're live after our normal monthly technical hitches that for some reason Stefano and I seem plagued with, don't we, Stefano? I really don't know why.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, me neither. It's my father I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00We've got a pretty packed show for you guys today. We got lots of housekeeping to get through, talking about the new Unraid beta, a big partnership announcement, and a couple of things from the Uncars channel. Then we're going to have a proper community chat about backups because I think a lot of us are walking around with a false sense of security. And after that, something I'm quite interested in, I've been following, is a Supreme Court ruling that, in my opinion, could have broken the internet if it had gone the other way. And some supply chain and other scary security news to round it all up. Anyway, let's make a start with our housekeeping. So for those of you who don't know, Unraid 7.3 beta was released on the 18th of March. And beta 2 dropped just a few days ago on the 1st of April. So obviously the big headline thing there was internal boot. So we've spoken about it lots of times on the Young Cast show already, but now you can boot from an NVMe or SSD instead of a USB flash drive. And this is something you guys out there have been asking for for years. And so it's finally now hit the system. Also, you get a new onboarding wizard where you can pick your boot option. And beta 2 has actually brought dedicated pool support. So instead of having to split your drive into a data pool and a boot pool, you can now actually just have a dedicated pool that's only for boot. And also in the OS, there's now AMD NPU firmware, new Intel wireless and Bluetooth updates. And also there was an annoying bug where Docker containers would actually lose their custom MAC addresses on restart. That's all been fixed as well. So if you're comfortable running these betas, go and try it. You know, really seriously, feedback at this stage is what is going to get us to a stable release a lot faster. And the more people are in testing it, the better it's going to be. So have you been trying the beta out so far, Stefano? No. Stefano's always very, very cautious, aren't you, Stefano? Much more than me. I've been running it, I think, on all of my servers.
SPEAKER_01So and I even have a test server, and I still haven't done it.
SPEAKER_00That's terrible, Stefano.
Official Unraid Server Partnership
SPEAKER_01The what's really cool about these news updates, I think, is the TPM 2.0 based license key. That's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's kind of nice that I guess it would be tied to your motherboard now. I guess technically a TPM.
SPEAKER_00It's tied to your motherboard. So TPM, a lot of a lot of us will have what's called firmware-based TPM, which is basically done by the chip and the motherboard together. Intel basically is mainly tied to the motherboard, I believe. And with AMD, it's more CPU-based. So it's done that way. But the key isn't actually stored in the TPM, it just uses the hardware identifier of the TPM.
SPEAKER_02Ah, yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00In the same way as like a USB flash drive used to have that. So it's not actually anything stored in TPM. So for all of you guys who kind of worry about that, it's not going to lock down your server, stop you running anything or anything like that. But one thing I think to mention is a lot of people I've been speaking to, when they've been trying it out, they've got confused and enabled secure boot instead of enabling the TPM2 module. So obviously with Secure Boot, Unraid doesn't boot anyway, as many other Linux distros don't. You have to have that turned off. So that's just something to think about, I think. But talking about internal boot, we have announced a partnership with 45 Home Lab, and that's to create our first ever official Unraid server. And for those of you who don't know, 45 Home Lab is a division of 45 drives, and they make serious hardware. But the home lab division is specially focused on Home Lab and the ProShumer space. So these are basically just purpose-built servers. Like I said, they're jointly engineered by the 45 Home Lab team and us here at Lime Technology. And the hardware, we've specially selected it and tested it for all of the workloads that we actually do, things like media streaming, file storage, ZFS, containers, VMs, home automation, and local AI, all of it. And as well, every server ships with a lifetime license, all pre-installed. The chassis, it's really heavy gauge steel, all screw design, so you can open it up, modify it with standard tools. It's not a sealed box. Everything's replaceable inside, and it's a proper server that you own. And the first units are coming this spring, but the initial batch will be limited. So have you heard of um 45 drives before? I'm sure you have Stefano.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And this like makes me beyond excited. This is this should have happened years ago, in my opinion.
Local Vision AI For Photos
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's really awesome to be able to just buy a server off the shelf that you know 100%. Everything's tested, everything works. And I think, especially in this day and age where you can see supply chain issues in hardware, it's nice to be able to just go and buy something you know is definitely going to work and you're gonna have everything all together all at once.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I can definitely see that. Like one of the struggles, I don't know if you know this, but I've actually built Unraid servers for people uh in the past.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And uh that's like one of the biggest issues is trying to piece together a server build with their budget, and then something's out of stock. So then you gotta re-attack the entire plan to try and find something in stock. But you know, being able to just literally buy something off the shelf, I think is a great option to have.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, so I'm really excited about that being released. So pre-orders coming soon, so keep your eyes on the forums, on the newsletters, and I have a question.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you specifically mentioned ZFS. Does that mean we'll get ECC RAM on these things?
SPEAKER_00Um, I think we would definitely will, Stefano, yes. Cool. So there will be ECC RAM, of course. Yeah, so anyway, moving on, as we've got a long show today. Other things on the Uncast channel is a few days ago I put out a video about something I'd been building called AI, and I thought it was a really funny name to call it because it's A and then the word I.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Instead of AI. Um, and it's a Docker container that basically connects to your Alama and uses a vision AI model to look at your photos and be able to rename them.
SPEAKER_01That's so cool.
SPEAKER_00I'd built it for myself really, and I thought if I polish this a bit more, maybe people in the community will like it. Because I've just had so many photos for years and years. They're in various different folders, and I really wanted to be able to just know what they are without having to click on each one and move it. So the AI did it all locally, not sending it off to any cloud, and um, it was really fast as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that can be extremely frustrating too, because like you have sometimes the thumbnail doesn't load for whatever reason, or maybe it's just not compatible because the photos are so old or or whatever it may be. And so having something that I can actually look at them for you and also rename them is pretty sweet.
Backup Habits And 3-2-1 Rule
SPEAKER_00Um, one of the bits I was most proud of with it, to be honest, is you can do what's called context-aware processing. So you you have it scan it all first, and then you can choose a bunch of photos, say, of your dog, and you know, my dog's called Shadow, you've met my dog before. Yeah. She was the one that was barking before the podcast started. But you can then reprocess and you say the dog in this picture is called Shadow. So rather than it's saying dog on the sofa, it will say shadow on the sofa and it will rename it that way. That's awesome. I've had people ask, why not just you know put photos into image and have it reprocess them there? Basically, because I like to have a backup of all of my photos. I like them to be in the folders they were and an off-site backup somewhere with all of my photos, if they're named how I want them to be named, it just makes a bit more sense for me. Like I said, I built it for my own usage and um thought the community might like it.
SPEAKER_01I think you and I are in that same kind of mindset because I like my folders structured a certain way, and I like things named a certain way, and I don't want to upload it to some other tool, and then the entire structure of everything just get changed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. A friend of mine's girlfriend as well, she was like saying, you know, he he had set up image and she was going, I don't want to use that. I've got all my folders set up how I like it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that kind of prompted me thinking, I've got to build this tool. I want it.
SPEAKER_01And it sounds silly, but it's a real problem.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it is. But also, I pushed out a container, I think it was this morning, earlier this morning in UK time, which was Alama for Intel. Um the old there used to be an old one on community applications, but it was about 13 months old. But it wouldn't run some of the newer models like um Quen 3.5. So I've just recompiled that and put that out. I don't actually have an Intel GPU myself, but I did test it on my friend Simon's one, and it seems to work. So any problems, you know, please open up an issue on the GitHub for that one, and I'll see if I can sort it out. Anyway, we've talked about new software, new hardware, AI tools, but none of that matters really if your data is not safe. Which brings us on to our community chat this month, which is backup strategies, Stefano. Yes.
SPEAKER_01I have all the strategies.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. What is your backup strategy currently?
SPEAKER_01My backup strategy is currently to back up my unrate server using RSync. Now I use RSync. I I don't know if that's definitely not a secret. Uh so I have two Unraid servers locally. I used to have one in Florida, uh, so that was my off-site backup, but um my my friend that was hosting that server moved a couple of times, and also it just it was incredibly painful to back up from here to there. So ended up just scrapping the project entirely. So now I put all of my most important things into like a zip file, and I just drop it. And I'm I'm gonna people are gonna hate me for saying this, but I just drop it into Google Drive.
SPEAKER_00I'll tell you there's no hope for some people, is there guys? You know, Google Drive is in a zip file. Is it an encrypted zip file?
SPEAKER_01Actually, it is not, so I do need to actually do that.
SPEAKER_00That's even worse, Stefano. Come on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know. Some of well, I haven't okay. In my defense, I haven't uploaded anything in a long time. Uh, so eventually when I do upload, I should do that. But the stuff that I have uploaded, this was like, you know, things from like 2007, 20 second 2016, 2017-ish, and those have all just been on there, and I didn't do it at the time.
SPEAKER_00So yeah.
SPEAKER_01I am ashamed.
SPEAKER_00Talking about an off-site backup, yeah. You have one in Florida. Well, I have one down in Devon, which is a state in the UK where my mum lives. So I just put a Gen 8 microserver down there, and I thought, I'm gonna just put on my kind of most important things there, because I didn't have a lot of hard drives on it. It was just old, some old four terabyte hard drives I put in there. And I said, Mum, can I put it there? And she goes, Yeah, no problem. And I should have known, yeah. So I I backed up a couple of times, so then I just noticed the backups were like failing. And you know, I said, Is the server all right, mum? She's going, Yeah. And I went down there and literally it's just unplugged from the wall. And I asked, I asked, I asked Mum why, and she says, Oh, I'm scared it's gonna catch on fire. And so I was thinking, Oh god, and I so I said to her, How come you trust the fridge so much? And then that got her a bit worried.
SPEAKER_01And then she started unplugged in a bridge.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my mum is obsessed with um not leaving things plugged in. She unplugs the TV and absolutely everything. So that kind of went a little bit wrong for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was a surprising amount of maintenance that went into it because I was like, Oh, I'm gonna use WireGuard so I can set it and forget it. And then it was like, oh, this port is blocked, or something has changed, so now I've got to hit up my friend who is tech savvy, but you know, isn't like a home labber or to our level or anything close to our level. So then it was like, hey, let's check these ports, and now I've got to take up his time and scheduling and stuff. It ended up being kind of uh more work than it was worth.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I am looking at potentially doing something again at my mom's house as well, but her house will not accommodate anything, even if it's small. So I I'm not really sure how to proceed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and because you know, a lot of people, you know, we we all know this parity is not a backup, it only protects you against a failing drive, but you've got to remember it doesn't protect you against accidentally deleting something, doesn't protect you against ransomware, doesn't protect you against your house flooding, and nor does another backup in your own house coming to that. Doesn't protect you against file system corruption, it just protects you against that one failure mode. So, you know, backups are really important. Everyone says they should have you should use the three two one rule. So can you explain what the three two one rule is, Stefano?
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(Cont.) Backup Habits And 3-2-1 Rule
SPEAKER_01Yes, but in just a moment. So Felix actually said that he used sync thing for his off-site backups. So where where is your off-site backup? Is that in the cloud, is someone's house?
SPEAKER_00Because I think And also, Felix, what are you backing up? Everything or just certain things? What type of data are you backing up over there?
SPEAKER_01So anyway, yeah, 321 rule. So the 321s to have three copies of everything. Uh, the two is always kind of confusing to me, but basically it's to have two of two different types of media. And so that one is what does that mean exactly? So I think that actually is like the physical hardware, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It is. I think that's more kind of old fashioned nowadays because you'd have it maybe on a hard drive and maybe tape drive or something back in the day. I'm assuming it kind of goes back to that because you know, otherwise, like what we're meant to do, have like hard drives and some CDs in 2026.
SPEAKER_01That's what that's what I thought they were always trying to say was like CDs or something. I was like, that seems weird, especially these days. Yeah. And then, of course, one is having an off-site backup, which is the hardest of the bunch.
SPEAKER_00And chat out there, how many of you guys do have proper off-site backup? And I don't mean that hard drive you've got in the drawer that you keep thinking you're gonna take to your mum's house. That isn't an off-site backup until it gets there, okay?
SPEAKER_01Someone out there is gonna feel very targeted by that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I'm probably half talking about myself as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's the the the one I think is actually what gets expensive because or or like I mean, how like you have to have a whole nother setup, a whole nother internet, a whole nother electricity. Like you there's just so much required to do the off-site backup. And the cloud storage is you know a viable option, but that can be expensive, especially if you're trying to like back up all of your media.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I what I do nowadays is I just have my main server. I will actually show you a picture of my main server. I will share the screen.
SPEAKER_01All right, while you work on that, Omar dropped in. He says that his off-site backup. What?
SPEAKER_00I said hi Omar. I he was here last week.
SPEAKER_01Uh he said basically he's a share swap with the unraid system at my parents, so we have a mutual backup.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and then are you backing up everything? Or like how how does that work? We need more details. Uh, David also said his offsite is a detached garage, it's a sudo off-site.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01You run it a fiber, is that a wireless connection between your two servers? Felix finally got back to us and he said that he backs up his photos and videos, the stuff that he cannot replace. So I'm gonna assume that's like a family video.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_01And then he backs up to an HP Pro Lions server.
SPEAKER_00So here's my Unraid server. This is my main server. As you can see, I don't I don't run parity on my main server, um, which a lot of people will think strange. And my friends, when they see it, they always go, You've got no parity drive ed. And I say, Yep. I know. The reason being is one, it's less drives I have to have in here, two, it's less electricity. Three, the rights are quicker to the drives because I'm not doing parity. But then every night this server will turn on another server that does have parity and make a one-to-one copy of all of this.
SPEAKER_01You back up every night. Wow. How much and you're backing you're doing 55 terabytes of backups?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but it's only doing the deltas.
SPEAKER_01The deltas.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay. Only what's changed will go across. And so it will just wake the other server up on wake wake on LAN.
SPEAKER_01How often do you do a full backup? Or are you only doing incremental?
SPEAKER_00I'm only really doing incremental. I'm just using from this server, it just uses Rsync to be honest. Just to another server. Yeah, RSync, my man. Yeah, I like RSync for that. Um, because I'm not running ZFS on the array, I can't do ZFS backups on on this particular server.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, I uh I know a lot of people like using tools and not saying that you can't use like you know, some UI to do your backups, like Lucky Backup, for instance. I made a video about that, and it was a lot of extra work just to basically do rsync, and I was like, I could have just ran rsync in half the time instead of trying to set up this container that can then see my stuff and then share the keys, and it was just so much extra work. And and I don't know if it's just because I'm just comfortable with the command line at this point, but man, it literally is just a couple of minutes versus what can be 15 plus minutes setting up at a couple of minutes.
SPEAKER_00I think, you know, um, like you say, people can be a bit nervous of r sync when they're not used to command line, but in 2026, you know, you can always ask an AI to help you with making an RSync script because they're very, very simple, really. An RSync script. It's just, you know, um, for people out there who don't know, it's pretty much just the rsync command and then saying where the source is and where the data is where you sorry, where the destination is where you want it to go.
SPEAKER_01And for Windows people out there, if you want to connect like PowerShell or something, you could probably use Robocopy instead. Uh be a little less efficient because you'd be going through your SMB drives instead of directly on your Unrate system, but always an option as well. And Robocopy is amazing.
SPEAKER_00I've got a I've got a question for you, Stefano. Okay, because you know I'm not a Windows user myself. But if you were to install Windows um, sorry, sorry, Linux subsystem for Windows, I'm assuming you could use rsync then.
SPEAKER_01I would assume. I've never I would my opinion is just use Linux if you're gonna install the subsystem for it's on Windows.
SPEAKER_00But an interesting thing I found out the other day, I had a support ticket come in and someone was having issues with a VM and running Windows subsystem for Linux.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, I'm not even gonna try and say that again. I keep saying Windows subsystem. Linux subsystem for Windows.
SPEAKER_01Because it's WSL, right? So it is a Windows subsystem for Linux.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it is, okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, WSL.
Docker Backups People Forget
SPEAKER_00I was right the first time. Yeah, so basically you're using nested virtualization when you're doing that because you're running an unrayed VM that's Windows, and then that that's running a VM itself for the Linux subsystem. But what happens is you find you reboot after installing it and it just won't get past the Tyano core splash screen on the VM. And I found the reason for that is it doesn't like the CPU topology, it just doesn't translate through properly and it and it basically breaks it. So what you have to do is say you've got 12 cores. If you you can set it so it says it's got like 12 sockets and one core, so that puts all of the cores in there and it will boot, but then you've got the problem with Windows, Windows will only allow you to have two socketed CPUs, so that doesn't work. So the best thing you can do is either choose six dies and two cores, one thread, and that will that will work as well.
SPEAKER_01That's just so much extra work.
SPEAKER_00Like it is strange, it's a very strange edge case that, and I have me scratching my head for a long time trying to work out why it wouldn't boot.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if it is a strange edge case because uh in my professional job, we have people that refuse to use Linux on their desktops and use WSL because they have to have Ubuntu and they run Ubuntu in WSL and they do graph hard um GPU pass-through. And it's like you are just making your life so hard. Like I don't understand why you can't just use a proper virtual machine or use a workstation with any Linux distribution installed on it, because well, they're not really all the same, there's different philosophies and stuff, but whatever the case, they're fairly similar, and so you should be able to accomplish the same thing without having to go through all these additional layers and also Windows. Windows is gonna be your like main thing that you have to combat every time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that definitely.
SPEAKER_01To kind of go back a bit, yeah. Uh so David popped in chat as well. He said he has a NextCloud all-in-one waller cooling instance, mainly for images, AIO, and app data using Ethernet Link and a script that you wrote for him using rsync as a backbone. And it runs every day at 0500 hours.
SPEAKER_00Awesome, man. I'm glad it's glad it's still working.
SPEAKER_02Good job, Ed.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, going on to talking about backup. A lot of times people I think they forget to back up their app data sometimes and they are not doing it regularly enough. What is app data? App data for your Docker containers, yeah. Oh yeah. So that could be bad. Remember, the easiest thing to do with app data is just install the app data backup plugin, and that will just back it up to another disk, like from your cache drive, if that's where your app data is, onto an array drive to so it's somewhere else. And then if you have a container go wrong, at least you've got the app data there. And there's something that a lot of people tell you you don't need to back up that I think you do need to back up. And that is the actual Docker image itself. Because something people forget, and anyone who's running Nextcloud All in One now, listen up because this is really important. When you use things like Docker Compose or a container like Nextcloud All in One, it manages the whole stack itself. And what it will do is it doesn't always use bind mounts as the location. And for people listening who are not sure what a bind mount is, that's when in like Docker, for example, say your Plex container, like forward slash media inside the container. maps across to forward slash mnt, forward slash user, forward slash my media on your Unraid server. That's a bind mount because it's linking to a physical place, like a shortcut in Windows, really. But with a Docker volume, it actually creates its own virtual disk image and that will be inside your Docker image. And so if you were to delete your Docker image and then try and reinstall your Nextcloud all in one or things you use from Docker Compose, you would find then that you'd be missing data because that was never backed up. So just something to keep in mind that a lot of people forget about when they're using that type of container. If it's using a Docker volume, maybe it's created a database in a Docker volume that's actually in your Docker image. And so it's a good idea to back up your whole Docker image from time to time if you're using Docker Compose or you're using that type of container.
SPEAKER_01That's really interesting. I've always my philosophy has always been you know damn the server, damn the operating system, just save the important data. Because maybe it's just like a technical skill perspective, but I always feel like I can rebuild the OS, the containers and everything from scratch. And I know that it you probably won't save any time with that methodology, but I feel like the more you try to back up the more complex your backup strategy becomes and that inherently makes it weaker.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Or too complex.
SPEAKER_00That's a good point. Yeah I agree. Like the more complex your backup system becomes you've got to track those backups like what you roll back to to get to a certain state. I totally agree with that. But um what you've got to think about is for people who may be more kind of like beginners in this space.
SPEAKER_01I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I I mean that's what I was trying to like rebuilding things can be difficult.
SPEAKER_01Yeah they definitely can be and I and often so from like past experiences even restoring like configuration files can actually be difficult too because oh I forgot to pass it to my container or maybe now it's in a different location or has different permissions. I mean it all depends on I guess like what software you're using to back up. So the permissions can change I mean there's a lot that can go wrong there too and that stuff will be incredibly hard to troubleshoot for beginners. So I I don't know what the right approach is to be honest Ed. I mean obviously it's what works for you which is a terrible answer. Hello Surfa I love you too.
SPEAKER_00Surface he loves you my opinion is is if you've got enough space to back up everything you're always better you're always better to have too much backups than not enough.
SPEAKER_01And the good thing about doing that is you can have a template of what you did before.
SPEAKER_00Yeah and you know what I like to do with my server how it backs up everything is I can actually turn off my main server and switch the backup one on and it will just continue pretty much as it was yesterday. So if I'm if I'm taking down the server to kind of you know do some you know work on it do some repairs or something I don't get a whole load of hassle from my family because the media server's not working because to them to them it still is you know and yeah they just you lose a bit of watch history when they look at it the next day they kind of wonder why it doesn't say you know it still says they haven't watched this episode.
SPEAKER_01So you're too nice I'm more like oh it's just impossible the the designers of this software just didn't make it possible to remember your your history.
SPEAKER_00Sorry yes all the way over yeah so one thing I want to ask chat and I want to ask you as well Stefano how many people out there actually test their backups? That's what I'd love to know. We all make backups do we ever test them to see that they're okay? Because an untested backup in my opinion is not really kind of that great especially if it's an in you know like an encrypted backup or it's a compressed backup it's much easier to see transparent backups that are just a one-to-one copy like with what Stefano we were saying earlier with things like Rsync but when you've actually got archived files in like your Google in your Google Drive like have you ever downloaded any of them and see if you can actually unzip them?
SPEAKER_01I have actually it's been a few years like quite literally maybe four years but um I was looking for some photos for some reason to find a friend that we went on a beach trip with and I couldn't remember their name but I remember having the photos and I was like it will be the name of that person will be there because I don't have social media I don't have Facebook I don't do all those things. So like if I forget you exist I might legitimately forget you exist and I have no way to look you up right so I had to I had to actually pull that down and that was the only time I've actually looked at a back a backup but that was in Google Drives. As far as like my my home stuff uh no I've never really gone in there and like looked at any of the video like because it's mostly youtube videos right or any of the files that are there I just kind of assume it all works.
SPEAKER_00I haven't had to restore it yet thankfully yeah yeah in in my previous job I used to kind of check backups and do things like that a lot when it was like you know for companies obviously but for my own self I didn't used to really check my own backups quite as much but like I said my own backups are generally my 321 backup is kind of not a true three two one because two of my backups are in the same location on the set on the same media hard drives and I just use off site backup that's encrypted on a cloud service for really just my most precious data.
SPEAKER_02You don't like for encrypt your arrays right my arrays are all encrypted. They are okay.
SPEAKER_01I think I might do that here soon.
SPEAKER_00They're not encrypted for because I've got super secret like NASA plans of like how rockets work or something.
SPEAKER_01But I mean it's not kind of like that's a weird thing to say Ed what are you hiding?
Supreme Court Ruling On ISPs
SPEAKER_00But you know my reason You know NASA have their own police right you know um my reason is encrypted drives because if one goes wrong and I have to RMA it I don't want to have to worry about the data being on there. That's my main reason for it to be honest. I just like it encrypted so if I take the drive out the server I'd never have to worry about anything to do with that drive really if it goes back somewhere or I or I decide to sell it to someone I don't even have to wipe it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. In chat the surfer says he used Macrium for partition backups. Oh yeah and you can mount their oh that's for VMs I I've never actually heard of that I believe so yeah okay he said he claims that he uh tests them right or is macro no I think macrium does whole full Windows backups um Stephanie yeah I haven't backed up Windows so you you can you can I stopped backing up Windows in the XP days and whenever I I think Windows 7 was the last time I remember looking at to see if they still had the backup tool from XP and they did and I've just never done it.
SPEAKER_00Well we've we've got a nice Windows story coming up that's gonna make you cross Stefano I doubt it. Me cross with Windows that's never happened once no never at all no you know you're very patient with them.
SPEAKER_01All right lay it on me.
Router Botnets And Key Theft
SPEAKER_00Um so reason I was kind of talking about backups and stuff really is because some of the next stories is about the packages themselves becoming compromised in software and so backups are really getting to be your last line of defence with a lot of things but before we just go into that there's something that I really want to talk about. A friend of mine sent me a message the other morning actually about this and I was really really pleased if you if you remember a few months ago guys I was ranting to Stefano about the Cox versus Sony lawsuit. So basically that was um Sony trying to sue Cox from something back in I think it was 2013 for people basically downloading pirated music and they were trying to sue them I think it's literally billions um for this saying that oh um because they were using your service you're responsible for what they're doing because you didn't ban them. And so if if Sony had won basically it would have meant um if you think about it the logic would have held up that every ISP in the country would be legally incentivized to become a copyright gatekeeper. They'd have to monitor what you're doing throttle your traffic cut off the service if someone in your house starts torrent something and if you think about it too it'd have probably killed every commercial VPN service there is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because they would be legally responsible. And plus if Sony had won that case, so apparently there are a whole load of other cases queued up similar going forward from 2013 into do with kind of like obviously other things like people downloading movies. It just would have made the internet so restricted with ISPs having to look at everything everyone's doing because they'd be so terrified of being fined billions. But the ruling was the court said providing a service to the public even with the knowledge that some people misuse it is not enough. You need intent and you have to actively be basically encouraging that infringement or selling a service specifically designed for it. And it was a unanimous nine to zero in favor of Cox against Sony. So you know every single person agreed so I was really happy to hear that because I think that's a bit of a win for everyone really yeah that's really good.
SPEAKER_01So I actually have something and then there the and there's a really good reason why this is important I think I'm gonna try and screen share here in a second but I want to I want to find the right thing. Do you always feel a little nervous when I'm about to screen share I'm a bit scared. All right give me just a moment allow to share a window choose this window. Okay so the FBI released this not too long ago uh so basically uh and this is important because they claim that compromised routers were sold access to approximately 369000 devices since 2020. So that means that if this law would have passed there's potential that you would have lost your internet or been a target of a criminal investigation because somebody else had sold access to your router so they can potentially torrent or do illegal activity. Wow yeah it's pretty so that's like hyper convenient and on top of that the FBI uh along with other organizations like Interpol and and such they found that there's approximately 1200 device models manufactured by Cisco, D Link, Hick Vision, MicroTick, Netgear, TP Link, and Zixel, I think is how you say it, um, that are all affected by these various types of malware for remote access because these these devices are essentially out of date or end of life or or whatever it may be. Is that is that the CADNAP malware uh did some sort of proxy um botnet thing is that the yeah so this is I don't know if it's specifically that one but yeah this talks about botnets and um the other thing you just said that escapes my mind. But this one specifically is talking about A V recon uh as well as five socks and sox escort uh and also command c2 so command and control yeah c2 yeah but yeah it's it's a pretty interesting read but anyway we don't have to uh we don't have to get into that here but I also have a I have a conspiracy for for you as well Ed.
SPEAKER_00Oh go for it I love my conspiracy do you want to say what you're gonna say first though I I was just gonna say I'll I'll kind of share my screen quickly yeah go for it whilst we're here which ties into what you were speaking about really Stefano. Oh good is um ACES routers apparently a whole bunch of them um compromised which I think is what you were talking about and this this is the um cadnap malware oh okay okay now I haven't this may be newer right yeah so um there's been a lot of um things basically exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities and just another thing before you go on to your conspiracy your conspiracy theory which I'm really looking forward to yes just something I want to point out to people talking about things being um breached is bring it up here light LLM compromised so anyone who's running light LLM I suggest that you recycle all of your API keys straight away apparently um malicious code harvested SSH keys cloud credentials API keys database passwords pretty much everything so yeah a lot of people I know use light LLM say on their Mac or something to connect um AI workloads running on their silicon Mac to their Unraid server using things like um paperless etc so yeah just recycle your keys in my opinion if you've been using that software there's so many LLM these these days anyway I want to hear your theory on your conspiracy theory everyone get out their hats their conspiracy theory hats Ed you I think you got a hard hat I got a hard hat hat I do have my hard hat on the floor I knew you would I knew it I can't even reach it and I also want to say Ed has no idea yeah you you keep that one close by at all times close join podcasts in case anyone gives me grief for not using hard links.
SPEAKER_01Ed has no idea what I'm about to say okay so this is and I'm literally about to just come up with this off the cuff of my cuffs? I don't know off the top my head okay big big conspiracy. The reason why this actually has been denied by the court system is because in the United States they're actually the FCC is preventing all foreign made consumer home routers from being sold and only American based companies or not American based only American produced and manufactured routers can be sold now. Do you guys actually make routers in the United States yeah we have one who's that Starlink that's it all right are they actually made in the US and not made in no we don't make anything in the United States everything comes from like Taiwan China Malaysia Bangladesh like literally in Asia everything comes from Asia somewhere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah that's that's what I thought you know same in the UK like we don't make anything at all.
SPEAKER_01So that's a whole nother topic of discussion but anyway so the the the goal here is the uh the United States government will start having American companies sell routers and these consumers uh will essentially be buying like very like so like ring cameras right ring cameras are super cheap so that way your camera is now a part of this like bot of of other camera systems and you know the they have backdoors for law enforcement and such that's the same thing that's going to happen with these routers. So now instead of it being like potentially you know hackers who have backdoors in your devices it'll be the American government and they'll have direct oversight of what you're actually doing on your personal router instead of relying on the ISPs so they'll be able to know they'll be able to look up oh Stefano what are you doing these days with the end goal of getting rid of VPNs conspiracy.
SPEAKER_00That's my conspiracy yeah well I think you know there's a lot of logic in that to be honest Stefano that it is is a possibility for sure you know it's something definitely I've become so cynical man. But what I'm gonna ask you yeah is how so if you're not going to be allowed to have certain routers yeah yeah what about what about things like pfSense where you is a software router that you run yourself.
Intel GPUs For AI Workloads
SPEAKER_01I don't think the government has thought through this whole thing clearly enough and just to just highlight on it briefly the reason why is because so they want to disallow the sale of new routers but their recommendation to get rid of these end of life routers that are potentially compromised is to buy a new router but there is no new router to buy because you have blocked them. So it's we don't know because they don't they don't have the knowledge the technical knowledge to really think through those steps. So I have no idea what they're gonna do with pfSense or open sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah because you know that's all software based and open source so yeah exactly you know that I was just thinking for your conspiracy theory if you're worried if you run a software router that's open source you know everything that's inside of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah it well I mean who knows man like and what's crazy is like what is what really is a router? I mean it's basically just a PC. Yeah so maybe like GLINET for instance like oh this isn't a router this is a PC that you can install our open WRT software on and it'll do routing. I mean I don't know man. What would happen if you use double NAT you use a router in front of a router so and then everything's encrypted before it goes into the kind of router that you buy these are this is this is what's fun we can come up with like all these like crazy things just like off the cuff right yeah it's like and the the government's probably spent you know millions of dollars trying to come up with this stuff like with a think tank.
SPEAKER_00Yeah and there's so many like holes that you can just poke through in just like what a minute Stefano and Ed's think tank if you need to hire us for anything you know we'll do it for like what two million Stefano million?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah 2.5. Out of one and two zeros in front of that and you got stuff a deal.
Hardware Fraud And Fake Specs
SPEAKER_00Yep. Right um anyway let's move on. All right thanks for letting me more exciting news I think is let me share my screen for this one because I think this is some pretty interesting news for everyone out there who may well be interested in this. So we've got a new GPU coming out anytime now it's a new Intel art GPU the B70 and the B65 so basically the B70 is a 32 gig GDDR6 GPU with back battle mage it's the full kind of uncut chip and it's under a thousand dollars. So a 32 gig card for under a thousand dollars and this other one here the B65 apparently is going to have 32 gigs of RAM as well and I've heard rumors from um does it say here can you even get an Intel GPU like are they in stock at all? I believe you can I've you know I I've had a look in the UK and there's a few places where you can actually buy them. I just checked Amazon and Sparkle who I've never heard of allegedly has B580s and there's only 11 in stock this hasn't actually been released as yet I think you can pre-order now for about two weeks time for the big card but the B65 also has um 32 gigs but it's just got less cores if you if you see there and that's pretty sick this one might this one might be about kind of$700. So it'd have a 32 gig modern card but you can't play any games on it Ed you can't even play uh Crimson Desert they they say it's not for gaming but it's a battle mage card it is it's just their marketing language is saying they're not for gamers they're angling it more for kind of AI workloads. And another interesting thing is they actually say it's got 2.2 times the inference of because they're comparing it to the RTX 4000 which is a 24 gigabyte Nvidia card which costs$1800. So they're theirs is literally half the price. And they're a little bit sneaky with their marketing language because they say oh it's got 2.2 times the inference of you know the other card but they're just talking about the like um what do they call it the KV cache which is where all of the kind of prompts and everything goes into. And so if you think you've got a model loaded into it that would say take up 20 gigs you've got four gigs for the inference. And so they're saying it's got two and a half times basically because they're comparing against 24 gigs against 32 so it's that little slither. So it's not two and a half times as good. It's just the amount of memory left for inference is two and a half times. So if you compared it to any 32 gig card that would also have two and a half times a 24 gig card.
SPEAKER_01I love marketing. You know so it's what's interesting too is uh where are they even getting 32 gigs of RAM from these days? I thought all the uh RAM producers were sold out till 2027 yeah I'm I'm guessing they must have bought it maybe they're one of the first people to book a whole load of RAM who knows so what you're telling me is all these years of Intel just has CPUs and these things sitting on a shelf and they just walk over there and grab it off the shelf to sell it is true.
SPEAKER_00I don't know man.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever heard that before? I have yeah yeah okay okay yeah yeah growing up that was the one thing I always heard like AMD would come out something and they're like ah hey go send Bob over there to see what we've got in stock and we'll just start selling yeah so yeah anyway so that's a bit of good news I think that there's actually some GPUs coming out that aren't thousands and thousands of dollars.
SPEAKER_00You know if you compare it to the 5090 it's probably a third of the price for that Intel card and I think it's great value for anyone.
SPEAKER_01I'm scared to shop for electronics. I I genuinely haven't been looking at new electronics at all because I know everything's hyper expensive.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Even used even used has gotten so expensive.
SPEAKER_00Well as well I've got a funny story to come up next yeah there's a company and I'm gonna probably totally mispronounce it I think it's called Chewy okay let me share my screen again. So this story is interesting. So basically a company called Chewy um a Chinese company making laptops have basically been um reprogramming the firmware to make it that their Ryzen chips in their laptops report being a newer chip than they really are and the funny thing is about that is that is apparently they um what it was they advertised the AMD Ryzen 5s I think is um 7430 U CPUs and people were complaining about it and they're going oh no it's not true it's not true until someone actually took apart the laptop and um took the cooler off and looked at the chip and it was an older 5500 U.
SPEAKER_01And it was software they mislabeled. I'm sorry air quotes mislabeled.
SPEAKER_00Yeah so basically they accidentally uh they accidentally programmed the laptops BIOS to report it was the wrong CPU Yeah that was a that's a real accident.
SPEAKER_01You know that happens all the time actually you know
SPEAKER_00AMD say they knew nothing about it and Chewie's doing a full recall. But the moral of the story is, I guess, if the price looks too good to be true on budget hardware, that's because it is too good to be true. It's like reminds me of like I I remember once, yeah. I um years and years ago, I used to have a couple of IT shops, and I remember someone decided to come in the IT shop and try and sell me a whole bunch of USB flash drives. Uh they had something like, Oh yeah, I've got this USB flash drive here, it's like got like a hundred a hundred gigs. And this is like in like 2010. Oh my god. And it's going, I was going, yeah, how much are they each? Yeah, I was intrigued intrigued, I was thinking, bloody hell, that's good. And um, I was thinking, yeah, it's just not true. So I bought one off him, just as like I wanted to have a look at it, and it's just obviously the you know, it was like a a Chinese one that had the firmware program to say yeah, it's got a hundred gigs when it didn't. So I thought I'd just just test it out, and it it was it was about one gig on it. And as soon as you go over the one gig, the data just starts corrupting and it starts, you know, revolving around. So similar story, really, just you know, reprogramming, you know, low-level hardware to report back at something that it really isn't.
SPEAKER_01I love when people post online, they're like, Oh, I opened up this SSD that claims to have two terabytes, and then it's just like an SD card with a bunch of wires to USB. I love seeing that stuff. It's like, oh my god, how bad did you get ripped off when you bought this?
SPEAKER_02I know, man.
SPEAKER_01That stuff is so like the the the hoops they will jump through to just sell something is crazy.
Smart TV Ads And Locked Features
SPEAKER_00I know. Yeah, and the pro and the thing is with that chewy laptop is they probably would have been able to sell it for a very similar price if they were honest about what the CPU was anyway, especially when there's shortages like there is today. You know, just be honest and let people know what they're getting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean they could have just sold the older CPU or whatever. I mean, literally, it would have been fine. Like people buy old equipment all the time because it's they're you know, they don't need super powerful latest great greatest stuff.
SPEAKER_00What I'm wondering is if they started selling it and they had plenty of those CPUs and then the CPUs became scarce. And so they thought, well, what we're gonna do, we can't get any more of those CPUs, but we've got a bunch of these older ones, so let's continue selling it and we'll just swap out the CPU and no one will know.
SPEAKER_02Diabolical. I like where your head's at.
SPEAKER_00So um, you know, I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at the board meeting where they're deciding to rip off customers like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, there's no way you can accidentally.
SPEAKER_00That was a decision made. Like we're gonna do this and we're gonna like literally rip people off, and we just don't think we're gonna get caught.
SPEAKER_01Oh, wait, yeah, okay, okay. Conspiracy just popped in my head. Hear me out. They downloaded the BIOS from the the uh 7000 series, right? Because they were overclocking them. So they were gonna just reapply their overclocks to all of the systems with that download of BIOS, and then they ran out of 7000 and then they got the 5000 series and just applied the BIOS. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was it.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. But but but we've got another story coming up, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It does look good.
SPEAKER_00Some of these are these are some of my favorite stories about TVs because TVs are becoming mankind's worst enemy, in my opinion, at the moment. So this one, Stefano, will probably get you quite cross. It certainly got me cross, and this is a reason why I never use smart TVs myself is high sense TVs caught showing non-skippable ads when changing inputs or channels.
SPEAKER_01So my God.
SPEAKER_00There we have it, guys. It's it's happening. Oh, your your TV's giving you advertisements just if you want to change from your Xbox on HDMI 2 back to your streaming service or what have you on HDMI 1, it's going to want to show you a lovely advert. So yeah, interesting there. And I think they yeah, they claimed it was a limited test. Oh, yeah, so you know, it's so limited, it's nothing we're really doing. We're just doing a limited test. Yeah, a limited test to see what how much people get really angry about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, how much blowback they get.
SPEAKER_00It's obviously what they want to do, but I don't want to buy a TV in order to have adverts shown to me about it. If I buy a TV, it belongs to me, and I don't need an advert when I change from HDMI one to two.
SPEAKER_01The best part about this, Ed, is they'll they'll be like, you so you bought the TV, right? And then because all of the big companies shared the data with each other, the algorithms will know that you were looking at TVs. So they will show you an ad for the TV you already own saying that you should buy that TV, and it'll be in your house already.
SPEAKER_00Do you remember last I think it's last month or the month before, I said there was a TV make I'd never heard of before in the UK that was called Visio, and you said it's very pop very popular in the United States.
SPEAKER_02True, yes.
SPEAKER_00Well, I've got a lovely story about Visio for everyone.
SPEAKER_02Please, my heart can't take it anymore. Stop. You kill me already.
SPEAKER_00Well, Visio TVs now require you to have a Walmart account for smart features. So if you don't have a Walmart account on the television, you can't use your TV. So that's now being True. They think they are Amazon. So they can literally um use it to you know collect data and serve you ads. So yeah, smart TVs are just literally not smart for the user, only smart for the advertisers, it seems. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I that's so like I just don't understand. I mean, I I mean it this is clearly like an e economy problem, right? If the economy was strong, people would be able to afford better TVs and they wouldn't need to have ads, so that way the manufacturers wouldn't have to subsidize the cost of TVs by using advertisements, and it's like I but still like you're just making they're not really subsidizing the cost of TVs using ads, they would do it anyway.
SPEAKER_00Do you really think if that is true? If people suddenly said we're gonna pay 10% extra for TVs and we're all happy to do that, do you think they're gonna go okay, we'd never need to do ads again? Job done. No. I mean, you know, they're gonna think we can get 10% extra and we can still have ads as well. And the excuse will be because like everything's 10% more expensive of the every single TV there is, and they'll just say with the cheaper TVs, well, we're gonna have to do ads, but really it'll be cheaper components in there that allows them to do it cheaper.
SPEAKER_01I mean, they'll definitely do whatever they can to make it as cheap as possible and get the most profit, sure. But there's gotta be a market segment for people who but it'll be it'll be small though, but people who just like, yeah, I'll pay 10% more and to not get ads, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my opinion is if you're gonna buy a high sense TV and you and it gets an ad to go from HDMI one to HDMI two, plug a PC into it on HDMI one, then you and run everything through that, and then you never have to swap channels.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's pretty wild, man. Man, I just this everything's just getting so bad. Like you're you're just like you're just taking the chance to ruin your brand recognition for something like that. And like what what happens if you tarnish your brand? No one buys your product anymore, right? So, like, and then what?
SPEAKER_00I don't know why what these companies are really thinking because they can't think that people are going to actually like it. And like you say, they just end up getting a bad name.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and but and then part of the problem too is like, I mean, I can see a situation where someone buys it and they're like, oh well, well, what are you gonna do about it? Like, this was my only option. And it's like, well, I mean, you had the option to not buy it. But I I don't know, man. It's such a it sucks, it's gotta be like that. I I really I just can't imagine I'll tell you, for everyone out there, yeah.
SPEAKER_00This is I've got to say this for everyone out there. You have to do a search on YouTube for it's a Norway public service announcement, and they made a video about a guy, and he says that he's his job is to make things h-i double t y and he's called an enchitificator, and it's literally about how he starts off doing it, and then the internet comes, and then he bears to do it really well on the internet. It's just hilarious, and it's actually a public service information thing, and like Norway's kind of really fighting back against um that type of thing, and it was just so funny.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's honestly gotta be a real job because like just what hasn't gotten insidified, like what every it feels like everything has. I mean, you can't buy it. I feel bad for non-technical people. I mean, I I genuinely do because marketing has become very sneaky, very well. I guess it's always been pretty always been like that. But then now, like everything is so technical. Like, what's the difference between AMO led or OLED and LED and many LED? Like, they've just done such a good job of creating like all this information to basically be a buffer, and then you can't even you go online and it's even more difficult to find information now. And then you have our teams who was great, and now they're behind a paywall, and it's like, oh man, like I just I can't imagine being a regular consumer right now trying to be like, is this TV making gonna make me have an account? Don't know.
SPEAKER_00How do you mean a regular consumer? Aren't you a regular consumer?
SPEAKER_01Well, I I no matter what it is, like this, I have a serious problem, even if it's like a spoon. I will do research about everything before I buy it. And it can take me days to commit to buying anything, sometimes weeks to buying anything because I just me and my brother are exactly the same.
Rogue AI Agents And Forced Clouds
SPEAKER_00We'll research things in a stupid way, trying to sort of find what we want to buy. And I've I take it one stage further, and I don't know why I do this to myself. I'll buy something, say it costs a hundred dollars, I'll buy it, I'll do loads of research, I decide that's the cheapest one that I can get. It's a hundred dollars, for example. But then after I've bought it, I'll still keep researching it and I'll then suddenly find one that was$90. I hate that. I could have got it cheaper. I think. Why do I do that to myself? I can't do anything about it, but I do. I don't know. I try some weird personality flaw.
SPEAKER_01No, I don't I don't think it is. I try to like stop myself from doing that too, because I feel like I end up burning myself. It's like, oh man, you know, now it's cheaper or whatever. And there's always some heartache there.
SPEAKER_00And the thing is when you find one that's cheaper, it makes you next time you're researching spend even more time trying to find the, you know, yeah. Oh, I try to make the mistake like I did last time. And yeah, it's good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so Oakfig was like, buy once, cry once. Yeah, you've heard that before, yeah?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Anyway, changing the subject, let's move on. Um, and I will share my screen again for this one.
SPEAKER_01Ed, hold on one second. How many jobs do you have?
SPEAKER_00Me, I only have one job.
SPEAKER_01You have one only one, like seriously, one job. You don't count your other YouTube as a second job, your other YouTube channel.
SPEAKER_00Not not as a job. Like, um, I love everything to do with Unraid and home labing and stuff. So Okay.
SPEAKER_01I I only asked because the chat's kind of joking about having multiple jobs and three or four jobs, whatever have you. And I was just curious, like, if you had more than one job, because I I definitely have more than one job. Excuse me, more than one job. So anyway, just curious. Move on.
SPEAKER_00I'm lucky that my hobby and my job is exactly the same. So I'm very fortunate in that.
SPEAKER_01The job you work is the job you love. Or wait, what does that say? There was a great meme that went around not too long ago. It's work to love, love to work, or something like that.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, talking of jobs, people working in Meta. People work in Meta? Apparently well, not as many as you might think when I share this story with you. Okay. So people working in Meta, a meta agentic AI sparked a security incident acting without permission. So what this is, yeah, there was an internal forum, basically, and some guy posted a question on the internal forum, and their AI agent, without permission, decided to reply to it, and it was incorrect information, and a whole load of people acted on that information in the internal forum, and it also exposed a whole load of data to loads of stuff that weren't allowed to see that. So the AI just decided, oh, I've been asked that question, I'm just gonna post it on our internal forum.
SPEAKER_01The AI is too helpful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it was very helpful. It said the wrong answer, and people were acting on it, and it also exposed a load of data.
SPEAKER_01So, you know maybe it's like true AI, and so it was acting uh with malfeasance, or it was acting to be mil malicious. That was its goal.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so you know, a bit of a funny story there.
SPEAKER_01I hear that uh old Zuckerberg also doesn't even work at Meta because he has an AI that now is the CEO.
SPEAKER_00I thought Mark Zuckerberg always was an AI. He always reminds me of data from Star Trek for some reason. Yeah. Anyway, moving moving on, we've got this story is especially for you, Stefano, because I know you're gonna love this story.
SPEAKER_01This are you like intentionally trying to find topics to make me cross?
SPEAKER_00I do. I feel like you are so here we are, Stefano. Microsoft forces OneDrive on ClipChamp Windows. Now you can't use that without a OneDrive account. So go Microsoft. That's so terrible.
SPEAKER_01Only like for just quick. I'm so far away from the mic. Only for just like quick little things, but not in any serious capacity. Um, I don't know if you know this, but you can actually use it online uh with a Microsoft account for free.
SPEAKER_00I've I've never tried it. To be honest, it was the first time I'd ever heard of it.
SPEAKER_01It's a surprisingly okay tool for considering it's free. Yeah. I just I just don't understand anymore, man. Like why?
SPEAKER_00They do want it to have OneDrive, don't they?
SPEAKER_01I mean, think about you can't so if you so the free tier of OneDrive gives you five gigabytes, right? I I can record a video on my phone that will be like 30 some odd gigs and it'll only be like a minute long. Like, so you couldn't even you what happens if you upload a video and it's more space than you have? Does it constantly pester you? Oh, you have to increase your tier of storage. Please give us some more money. Give us money, please, even though you didn't ask to have this here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like I always say, every month I believe Windows has turned not into an operating system, but it's basically a delivery platform for other services for Microsoft. And that's kind of what it is, really. You know, just once you want to sell you a whole load of things all the time.
SPEAKER_01On the plus side, there are so many nice free tools to do video editing, specifically on Linux. This is all Microsoft is doing is just getting people more of a reason to switch to Linux, which they've been doing great. They're they're Linux's biggest champion right now, as far as I'm concerned.
SPEAKER_00The things Microsoft are doing some really good things into Linux, which is kind of really weird, isn't it? Like it is weird. They're doing a good job of GitHub, I think. Um I don't know what your opinion is, but you know, they do quite a lot in the open source world, but they kind of do these weird things as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they make a lot of weird decisions. Like uh I I promise you, Ed, the Teams app when it was available on Linux was awesome. It actually did a really it was really easy to use. It was uh it used like very low resources, it was great. And then Microsoft being Microsoft was like, hey, this is too good. Uh we're gonna deprecate it. And so now you have to use the um teams through the web UI, which is fine. The teams, the teams web app is fine mostly.
SPEAKER_00So what what do you prefer? Teams or Google Meet? What if you had to choose one of the two? What would you use?
SPEAKER_01Oh man, I haven't used Google Meet. I've does it still exist? I thought they deprecated it. Oh, uh well, I don't use either. I just well, I used to use Discord, I don't even use Discord anymore. Uh but no, I basically always use Discord before like I would never I only use Teams because of work. Uh Google Meet I I used when it first came out, but had no reason to use it. And um mostly with brands that I've worked with, most brands also have Discord, so you can just talk to them through Discord, and then some are more traditional and will use Zoom, so just use Zoom like through the web app.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um so yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, moving on, I remember like you brought up uh a few episodes ago about the death.
SPEAKER_01Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Sorry, sorry, Ed. Yeah, so you know how Windows 11 just removed the requirement to have um a Microsoft account to install Windows 11 now?
SPEAKER_00Have they? So you don't need a Microsoft account anymore to install you haven't heard this. No. Oh yeah, that is really good news. Why don't why didn't I know this?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. Uh allegedly, allegedly they're removing. I don't know if it's gone, I don't know if they've done it yet, but allegedly they are gonna remove it because they've seen a lot of people switch to Linux, right? But how does this affect like ClipChamp? All right, so close to use OneDrive, you have to have a Microsoft account. So if you clipChamp's already installed on your PC, you open it, does it make you sign in immediately?
SPEAKER_00So here's my conspiracy theory, okay? Okay. They're removing Windows, having to have a Microsoft account to actually install it. And so now they're gonna probably make a whole load of things, tools inside of Windows dependent. You have to have OneDrive to use it, so then you have to have a Microsoft account. Yeah, or a copilot. So they get it that way, they get you that way. Yeah, so it needs you to have the account voluntarily rather than forcing it on install.
SPEAKER_01So they're really just gonna make Windows 11 worse because it's gonna constantly pester you about needing an account to do anything with it, which is the whole reason why I left not the whole reason, but part of the reason why I left Windows 11 for it in favor of Windows 11.
SPEAKER_00I don't believe that Windows 11 is gonna remove having to have an account because Yeah, it can't. Because as well, they're trying to build it into law, aren't they? That operating systems have to age verify you. So if you don't have a Windows account, how can it do that?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I mean you can't even use Word, I don't think, without like the Office 365 app. And that requires a Windows account, I believe. I don't know. Uh so this is the problem of not being a Windows person.
Bots Taking Over Plus DLSS Debate
SPEAKER_00If you're using 365, you do need to have an account, but I think you can buy still the full version of Office, like the standalone version, it's like a couple of hundred dollars, I believe. And then you don't need it, you have to activate it. That's nice, or you can use LibreOffice and just download it and be running in about 10 minutes and not have to be able to do it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do like LibreOffice. Or you can just buy a Mac and just use pages and numbers and stuff.
SPEAKER_00Adam, if you're if you're listening, Adam at work, he always he always laughs at me for using LibreOffice. See, why some someone else uses LibreOffice too?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I I've used it, I've used it plenty on Linux. Um, I actually have used it on Mac as well. And my my dad is a big Excel guy, and um I was not about to buy Excel for Mac, and I would force them off of Windows because I'm tired of supporting them with all the troubles they have with Windows. And so I was like, here, dad, use uh LibreOffice, which has their own, I can't even remember the name of it now, their own Expel Excel spreadsheet thing. And honestly, after about, I don't know, a couple of days, it was like he never stopped using Excel and like had it doing all sorts of crazy stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's really and he likes it. Remember we were talking about dead internet theory um a few episodes ago.
SPEAKER_02I don't know. I'm an AI ed. I don't know if you know this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I am too. Who who who are you powered by?
SPEAKER_02Uh I'm I'm powered by open AI?
SPEAKER_01No, I think copilot, probably actually, because I'm here for entertainment and copilot's only for entertainment purposes.
SPEAKER_00I I'm powered by Clippy. Um so anyway, dead internet theory. Apparently, um Cloudflare CEO says that by 2027 bot traffic will exceed human traffic. I believe about a year ago it was about 20%, but um that is set to spike within a year. Most traffic online will be not human. So I believe what you were saying just a couple of months ago, Stephanie.
SPEAKER_01So yesterday, was it yesterday or the day before? It might have been the day before yesterday or yesterday. It doesn't matter. But there's some truth in this because my kid has YouTube kids and he started watching a video that was um AI generated in the sense that it was an AI talking about another video that was posted on YouTube and describing what they were building. Uh so it's it was basically ripped off content, and the you know, the little AI voice was like, Oh, now the the people are building you know this wall or whatever. And I was like, What the heck is going on? It was it was bewildering, and I'm like, how is this even allowed on YouTube anyway? Because it's literally just the into the the original poster's entire video, but with an an AI talking about what it was seeing, and in some cases it was completely wrong. Yeah, he grabs a hammer, it was a chainsaw, for instance.
SPEAKER_00I'm not I'm not even kidding, not even making a but this there's a lot of AI generated videos on YouTube, isn't there?
SPEAKER_01An awful yeah. Well, I mean, I don't I don't know, but I mean but I suspect there's a lot of AI generated videos, yes. And my favorite, actually, it's not really my favorite anymore, but like even being like I'm a I'm a Reddit user, right? That's how I learned about 45 drives was through Reddit. And man, like reading some of the comments on there is like, who are you even talking to? Like like they're just so off base completely or just incoherent and like what is happening? And then what's scary is whether it's a real when it is an AI bot that is coherent and you don't actually even know because it's so accurate, you know? It's even more terrifying.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, talking about AI yet again, and you being a gamer, Stefano, more than I. Yes, I am going to ask your opinions on this particular I hate it.
SPEAKER_01I don't know what it is, but I hate it.
SPEAKER_00So here we go. Nvidia doing a technical demo of uh DLSS5.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, lots of memes with this one.
SPEAKER_00What what's your thoughts, Stefano? And for those people out there who don't know what it is, how would you explain it and why don't people like it?
SPEAKER_01Um so so DLS DLSS5, I'm gonna go with the meme. Explanation of this because it's hilarious. So DLSS 5 is just a um oh my gosh, I don't even know what the terminology is. A filter. Yeah, a filter to beautify your game and characters. It does nothing, it just destroys the artistic value of your characters. But no, and in all seriousness, it's supposed to improve like what frames and stuff. I've never used DLSS because my personal theory is your game needs make graphics cards that can produce or render graphics at um without any sort of like like these tricks. Like just give me a more powerful graphics cards. I don't want to use DLSS or any of these like rendering tricks to remove pixels or generate fake frames or any of that stuff. Just give me the real raw frame, please.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, the people are kind of calling this like a 2019 Instagram filter, yeah. For your games, and it's apparently in kind of zombie games and stuff, it's putting kind of like makeup onto the women in this kind of apocalyptic world and stuff, and it's just pretty wild. But um also in the technical demo, it took two fifty nineties to run it. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, it took two fifty nineties to run it in the demo, and I go, Oh, but we're gonna be able to get it to run on lesser hardware.
SPEAKER_01Oh man, I was hoping they were gonna break SLI.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah. Those days were fun, weren't they? The old SLI days, man.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Everything used to be.
SPEAKER_00When did that all stop? I can't remember.
SPEAKER_01Uh basically when graphics cards became too powerful. And then what's what's crazy about it is like graphics cards finally became powerful enough where we didn't need two anymore. And then and then they're like, oh now games require too much processing, so now we have to use all these like fake frame generators and things. And they're like, and now games are getting worse looking because of all the the post-processing, like ghosting and you know, just the the artifacting you get from the fake frame generation, all in favor of just what more FPS. I don't want more FPS. Like I'd rather have a game that's beautiful that runs at 30 FPS with no sort of tricks than having a game that runs at 240 hertz with ghosting and artifacting and all sorts of motion blur and blah blah blah.
Strava Leaks Real World Locations
SPEAKER_00And what I always think as well with games is um I was playing through the other day the original Last of Us from 20 PS3. Oh yeah. And the graphics, in my opinion, they're really good. Yeah. And when graphics get over a certain standard of how good they are, do you really notice the only time you notice how great the graphics are is if the game isn't very good. If the game's really engaging, the characters are good and stuff. You don't really you're not really looking at every kind of pixel, if you know what I mean. You're just you're kind of really into the game. But yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then like and to that effect too, so then like games will ha often have these like incredible set pieces and that make you or give you the urge to go explore and see the world map, right? But then they have invisible walls or or what is it, what is it called when you walk outside of the like playable area and then they give you a death timer, whatever that's called.
SPEAKER_00I don't know the I don't know the word for it, but I know I know what you mean.
Neuralink Gaming And The Next Risks
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so like they'll do that kind of stuff, and it's like you know, you guys are kind of losing the plot here. Like, yeah, everyone loves great visuals, and yeah, that stuff is exciting. Don't get me wrong, like pushing technology to its limits is obviously fantastic, but at some point you kind of gotta dial it back and focus on what's important, and that's the gameplay, the story, if it's a story-based game, because you're just gonna end up losing if you in the in the long run, if you if you don't focus or like fine-tune your focus, right? I guess that's why we'll never be billionaires, Ed, because we just we care too much.
SPEAKER_00We do. So moving on to our last couple of stories. Let's finish on something a bit more lighthearted, I think.
SPEAKER_01Um no lightheartedness, only bleak.
SPEAKER_00So this is quite a funny story, I thought, is so the French Navy recently. Um, a Navy officer was running apparently on an aircraft carrier using an app called is it called Strava? And it was basically showing his location and so exactly where the actual ship was. So um, I thought that was quite quite a funny story.
SPEAKER_01So these have we talked about this before, Ed? I feel like we've talked about military bases.
SPEAKER_00There was one with um about six months ago where people were running around military bases and people were going, ah, there's a military base that's kind of not known and it was meant to be a secret base, and all of these running running apps are basically geolocating um things that shouldn't be geolocated, basically.
Final Thoughts And Easter Sign Off
SPEAKER_01And you know, that's just this is just what we're aware of. Imagine like people walk around with TikTok and location data turned on, too, you know.
SPEAKER_00And if anyone out there in chat or yourself, Stefano, ever played World of Warcraft?
SPEAKER_01Uh I haven't played World of Well Wow, World of Warcraft since it came out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, you've never played it like this guy's played it. So for our last story, a Neuralink patient um is basically been playing World of Warcraft after having an implant put into his brain, and he's playing it basically by thinking to play it, and it's controlling the whole of his time in the games.
SPEAKER_01That's that's incredible. How long until they can deliver ads straight to his brain from the game?
SPEAKER_00I know, and um, you know, when you know basically you're just becoming a node on the internet You know, are you gonna get hacked, you know, when you when you become a server on the internet? You're gonna be yeah, part of the botnet. Oh man. You know.
SPEAKER_01Um that I have a question about World of Warcraft. Uh I've been seeing a lot of ads while perusing the web, something about like Zillow for World of Warcraft. Do you know what that's about?
SPEAKER_00I have never played World of Warcraft to be honest. Oh, okay. Not not the game that I'm into.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I ended up playing Guild Wars instead of World of Warcraft.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But I always think maybe I should try and play World of Warcraft, but I imagine it's probably developed so much now and it's so complicated for a new player to get involved in it.
SPEAKER_01It's probably That's exactly why I don't play. That's just too far gone now.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, everyone, um I think that wraps up this month's episode. It's Easter Day tomorrow, so happy Easter to everyone. Hope you have a really nice um holiday and get to eat some nice food. Um Stefano, any last thoughts?
SPEAKER_01I'm just I'm sad now. The show's depressed me.
SPEAKER_00Oh come on, man. There's been plenty of good news in this show. Plenty of good news.
SPEAKER_01The Neuralink thing is pretty cool. Like that's generally really cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and also it's really cool as well. The the TVs that give you an ad when you change from HDMI one to HDMI. Why do you have to do that? Because you don't want to get bored, do you? You might get bored changing over channel. Come on.
SPEAKER_01Um, you know, okay, I'm sorry to keep you, Ed. Do you have to go?
SPEAKER_00Um, I'm happy to stay on for a bit more, man.
SPEAKER_01Okay, let me just say this one last thing. I and then I'll be done, I promise. All right, so um this is gonna sound crazy. Uh, but uh I've been watching um like Invincible on Amazon Prime, right? And they have ads periodically, and I've actually kind of enjoyed it because when the ad comes on, I mute my TV immediately and then I catch up on all the notifications I have on my phone so that way because like you know, if I'm talking to somebody or whatever, or like I can do all that while the ad's playing, get up, grab a uh like a cup of water or whatever. And so I'm kind of I'm kind of getting on board with this whole advertisement thing just to get breaks from whatever I'm watching. Um I I I genuinely mean this because every time an ad comes on when I'm watching something, I mute my TV and I I pull out my phone and like you know, look at the schedule or respond to text messages, like it's actually like helping me productivity-wise. And I know that sounds insane, but I've been quite busy lately. Um, and so part of the reason why I don't know like any of the show notes this week because I just I haven't had time to look at it. And you know, running YouTube channel, obviously, like I have to respond to emails and blah blah blah. So it's actually been beneficial to have that.
SPEAKER_00Well, so there's a positive note to it. You've turned you've turned a negative into a positive there, Stefano. That's that's brilliant, man. I like it. Anyway, guys, um, thank you all very much for spending the time to join us here. We hope you enjoyed the show. You know, it's bye for me and Stefano. Bye bye.
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