My Robot, My Rules
The crew tests USB cables with a Tredix tester, breaks down the FCC's move to restrict imported robot vacuums and lawnmowers, unpacks the Windows 11 GDID tracking story tied to a Scattered Spider arrest, and shares AI-coded side projects including a plane tracker and a homegrown Nextcloud calendar replacement.
What we cover
- The FCC’s move to restrict imports of foreign-made “advanced robotic devices,” what it means for robot vacuums and mowers, and whether open firmware projects like Valetudo and Oomwoo can route around it.
- The Windows 11 GDID tracking story that surfaced through a Scattered Spider arrest, how Microsoft ties activity across services to a device identifier, and what it means for privacy on a Microsoft account.
- Alex’s ESP32-based ADS-B plane tracker for his plane-obsessed kid, built by forking an open-source project and extending it with AI.
Geoff walks through the FCC’s new rule restricting imports of foreign-made “advanced robotic devices,” which effectively targets Chinese-made robot vacuums and other similar products, including lawnmowers. Alex shares his experience running Valetudo on his Roborock vacuums, Adam questions the stated rationale behind the rule, and Geoff introduces Oomwoo, an upcoming open-source, 3D-printable robot vacuum project he’s eyeing. The conversation turns personal when Geoff explains that his Mammotion Luba robotic mower lost its multipoint-turn feature, likely a liability response to an unfortunate injury, and Alex draws a parallel to how Tesla frames “supervised” self-driving to manage legal responsibility.
We then dig into the Windows 11 GDID tracking story, which came to light through the arrest of an alleged Scattered Spider member. Stephen and Geoff trace how Microsoft associates a device identifier with a user’s IP address and account activity, how that information can end up with law enforcement, and why the lack of any clear disclosure bothers them more than the tracking itself. From there, talk shifts to the Linux desktop’s climb past 10% market share. Adam shares his new Steam Machine, destined for a Bazzite build, while Stephen details his switch to CachyOS after growing tired of being tracked by Windows.
Finally, the show turns to AI-assisted side projects. Alex describes building an ESP32 plane tracker for his daughter by forking an open-source project and extending it with AI, sparking a broader discussion about what “vibe coding” means for hobbyists. Geoff reveals he built his own AI-coded, self-hosted CalDAV front end to replace part of Nextcloud, and Stephen reminds us all that AI-assisted development still requires understanding how to secure what you build. The crew closes out talking through File Browser’s move to maintenance mode and the tangled lineage connecting OwnCloud, Nextcloud, and OpenCloud.
Topics: USB-C testing, robot vacuums, robotic lawnmowers, FCC import restrictions, right to repair, Valetudo, open-source firmware, Windows 11 telemetry, privacy, Linux desktop adoption, Bazzite, CachyOS, AI-assisted coding, self-hosting, Nextcloud alternatives, OpenCloud.
Links
- FCC Robot Order
- Windows GDID
- ESP Radar
Transcript
Alex: everybody’s got that random box of cables somewhere don’t try and deny it and this week steven I have introduced you to a device that I think means that your box of cable of shame box of shame of cables is now a little bit lighter at least 00:00
Stephen: it’s actually pretty much gone um a Tredix has solved all of my problems 00:17
Alex: let’s say that three times fast 00:22
Stephen: i’d rather not so uh this annoying little device um has taken every single one of my usb cables that I thought was good and told me that they were utter trash um basically this handy thing I can turn it on it has a little screen basically will tell you what the capability for speed, what standard of USB your cable is certified or can work at. And it’ll also tell you how much power can go across your cable. I found, I’m sure that this is what Alex found as well, but a lot of cables can do power, but pretty much no speed. 00:26
Geoff: Have you tried one of the LTT TrueSpec cables with it? I’m just curious. 01:07
Stephen: I haven’t, but I feel like that’s what I have to order now. Yes, I 01:11
Geoff: think you do. 01:15
Stephen: The availability of what I can trust online is pretty small. There’s like one cable that looks maybe trustworthy on Amazon, in Canada anyway, that I’m probably going to order and test out. But if not, I can’t trust anything anymore. 01:15
Alex: Thanks, Alex. 01:34
Alex: You are very welcome. This little Tredix device, it’s probably about the size of the palm of your hand. It’s got a little LCD screen on it. You can connect USB-C cables, so you can test the C to C cables. You can test A to C cables. I have a video about this on KTZ Systems. I’ll link it into the show notes if you want to see what the device actually looks like. But long story short, $50. You can test all your cables. And I know from the affiliate link in the description of my video that hundreds of people have bought it as a result of that video. So, yeah, go grab it, test your cables and figure stuff out. 01:36
Adam: Now, let’s talk about. Does it have a color 02:16
Alex: screen? 02:19
Adam: Is it color? 02:21
Adam: Yes, it 02:21
Stephen: does. 02:22
Stephen: I mean, it is color-ish. That’s not going to be very clear on the screen. Yeah, it is color-ish. It’s not just $50 though, right? Because it’s going to ruin your life of cables and then you’re going to buy a lot of cables. So just, he says $50. He gets a little bit of money every time you buy one, but it’s not actually just $50. Yeah. 02:23
Alex: Well, look, you know that that cable that came with your game controller is now a charge-only cable. So when you go and reach for that cable to update an ESP32, which we’ll come on to later in the episode, you know that it’s not going to work. Or at least you know why it’s not working now, which is half the battle. 02:44
Adam: Awesome. 03:02
Geoff: Fair enough. 03:02
Adam: You guys made me buy something again. Thanks a lot. 03:04
Alex: you’re welcome anytime now the FCC have moved to ban the import of foreign produced advanced robotic devices which includes robot vacuums yeah that’s really that sucks doesn’t it 03:08
Geoff: yes yes I had to 03:26
Alex: make the pun I mean it was just it was just sat right there 03:27
Geoff: So yeah, so there’s a whole political side to this that I think we’re not going to steer into. But I think just to give some background, so you may remember that a couple of months ago, the FCC did something similar with routers where they basically put… Any foreign, non-U.S.-made router onto what they call the FCC’s Covered List. And unless it was previously available in the United States, it’s not allowed to be imported unless they get a waiver from the government, in essence. A 03:30
Alex: waiver? 03:59
Alex: By a waiver, do you mean a bribe? 04:00
Geoff: I’m not saying that. 04:04
Alex: It’s about a 04:05
Stephen: million dollars. 04:05
Alex: We don’t say that out loud, do we not? We just let the people in office talk about buying access to their social media. 04:06
Geoff: Not touching that one. 04:15
Alex: One rule for thee, one rule for me. Got it. OK. Yes. Just so we’re clear. 04:16
Geoff: Yes. 04:21
Geoff: But so that they have done basically the same exact thing now for what they’re calling advanced robotic devices, which essentially is, I’m going to read basically from the rule. It is capable of locomotion, obstacle avoidance, navigation, or movement on the ground, operates at a distance from a human operator, has a combined weight, including the ground station or dock, of 4.4 pounds, so really not that heavy, and basically has some kind of sensor to navigate things around and has a radio that can receive radio waves. So really… Robot lawnmowers and robot vacuums are really what it is. And, you know, of course, who makes the top brands of robotic vacuums in the world? China. I mean, Eufy, Dreame, Roborock, all of those are Chinese brands. So… I’m not really sure. Again, we can go on the politics side of this. I think aside, I think the more interesting aspect, at least for us on this show is obviously we’re nerds. We self host things. Is open source the answer I mean I put Valetudo in all of my robotic vacuums I know Alex you’re kind of the one who introduced me to it um. 04:22
Alex: I mean I stopped running Valetudo a while ago like my Roborock vacuums I bought maybe seven years ago now still going strong they’ve been great they they just they just work And one of the issues I found with Valetudo was you have to, certainly in the old days, I actually haven’t run it now for at least three or four years, you had to man in the middle the update server. So that was how you got around the Roborock thing back in the day. Geoff’s shaking his head, you can tell us what we do these days now. But then it would reset itself back to factory every… It was just long enough that I’d forgotten how I did it. It was like every six to eight months, something like that. And so then every time the goalposts had moved slightly or the exploit had stopped working, it was a pain. The Roborock firmware itself honestly isn’t that bad. And do I genuinely need root access to my robot vacuum? Well, maybe now I do, but so far it’s been just fine. 05:37
Adam: So I have some thoughts about this one in that I think, first of all, it’s incredibly not serious in the way that this is being set up from the perspective of the actual concern that they’re trying to solve with this based upon the fact that, you know, I’m taking it at face value, okay? Based upon the fact that they’re not removing things off the shelves that have the exact same types of components. It’s just like, oh, well, just going forward, this is the new rule. What about everything else that’s already on the shelves? What about, you know, we’re not pulling things. It’s got the same technologies in it. So that’s why I really just don’t trust the core intention behind this. And I’ll just leave it at that. But then the problem that I see, so I would love if open source was the solution, right? Open firmware is great. But that doesn’t solve the problem of getting the dang thing into the country so that you can load said firmware, right? So… Funny 06:37
Geoff: you should mention that, actually. So Alex, again, put me on to this one. Apparently there is, and there will be a link in the show notes, there is Oomwoo, which is, you know, it’s basically the same thing mirrored and upside down. And it is… promising to be a completely self-built, you can 3D print the parts, you can buy off-the-shelf stuff, you throw a Raspberry Pi in it, and it’s supposed to be a robot vacuum that you can run in your house that is as good as some of the stuff that’s in the market. Now, they have not released any kind of build instructions yet. They are slating to do that in the fall, but I’m keeping my eye on this one. I think I will volunteer as tribute to build this if and when they actually come out with the pieces to do this. 07:39
Alex: We’re getting to a point with anything made by companies. like that has proprietary firmware or proprietary parts or just just the where we’re at as an economy as a civilization right now we’re getting to a point where I am just tired of how expensive things are and I wonder if a project like the OMWu or the Oomwoo or whatever it’s called it going to be cheaper probably not up front I don’t know it’s just speculation but it’s going to be cheaper in the long run isn’t it because it will be you know right to repair friendly it will be open firmware there will be no shenanigans with people that wear orange face paint deciding they’ve had enough this week of something you know i’m just sick and tired of it am I turning into an old man right now like i’m just tired of it 08:25
Geoff: no because 09:25
Geoff: Okay. 09:27
Geoff: I was going to save this rant for a little bit later, but I will use this one now because I think that’s a perfect segue. Get 09:28
Alex: the soapbox out, dude. Do it. Let’s go. 09:32
Geoff: So I have a robotic lawnmower, which again, another type of product that would be affected by this. And it’s a Mammotion Luba and I’ve had it now for four seasons. It’s been generally, I’m not going to say everyone should go out and buy one, but the idea of a robotic lawnmower is fantastic for me because I don’t want to have to go out and mow my lawn. Just this week, they, so I haven’t gotten a firmware update on my robot in three years. I mean, they did one year of updates and then they changed to a new one and I have not gotten updates and it’s been fine. They took away a feature this week that actually has me very, very, very annoyed. So it has two ways to turn. It can either do basically a zero point turn where it, you know, tank turns and literally all the wheels spin in different directions and it just rotates exactly where it is in the spot. And as you can imagine, that’s going to damage your lawn pretty badly. And so what I’ve had it doing is it has a multipoint turn where it kind of K turns itself around, goes forward and turns a little bit, backs up, then goes back the other way. And they took that away this week. So the only option was the tank turns. 09:35
Stephen: The feature just little checkbox just went away? 10:44
Geoff: They it is no like I even I use Home Assistant to do to actually launch my robot and I hadn’t changed nothing. And I noticed that it was starting to the tank turns and I went on the subreddits and everyone was like they took away multipoint turn. What the heck? Supposedly, this is all conjecture. There was some 18 month old in Sweden who got run or got run over by one of these robots when it was backing up and got horribly injured. I don’t know if that’s the reason, and I have thoughts on if that actually is the reason. Well, it’s a 10:47
Alex: similar reason as to why Tesla won’t call their cars fully self-driving. Because if they do, the liability is with them. If they say they are supervised, the liability is with the driver. And it’s the same reason why Tesla’s on autopilot or full self-drive, whatever it’s called. it’s the same reason why they now won’t roll a stop sign they’ll go up to one slowly and then they’ll creep past it and then they’ll go and do their thing it’s because the uh American North American Transport Safety Division was like well the uh driver didn’t override that input therefore you must obey the laws of the road otherwise you as a company are accepting liability for breaking that law every time Whereas if the user selects a certain profile that tells the car to speed, that was the user’s choice. And therefore the liability is different. And I wonder if the same things at play here with, with the robot. 11:21
Geoff: It absolutely is a liability thing. I mean, If that is in fact why they did it, it is absolutely a liability thing. As a lawyer, I can pretty much guarantee you that’s why. Doesn’t mean I’m not frustrated by the fact that I had a feature and they took it away. And I’d really love to have this robot because, again, it’s four years old now. I don’t know how much longer they’re going to keep the servers running or allow me to run this thing. And it wasn’t exactly cheap. So I would love to be able to have some open source software on that. There is a way of hacking an ESP into the board, which I am actually going to explore looking into. 12:20
Adam: I had never thought of something like that with the, you know, it running over a child. That is probably the worst image I could possibly think of is a lawnmower backing over a child. So I kind of get why they would do that quickly. 12:53
Geoff: I have, I have thoughts about watching your child when you know your robot vacuum is out mowing and also it has lift sensors. So it should have stopped when it got, when it got, I mean, my thing is honestly run up like a rate, like, you know, it’s run up like my kid’s swing set. Like it actually has like made itself vertical and just stop. And so it has stuff to like stop itself from causing injuries. I don’t know. It’s just I’m frustrated and I really wish I had another option. But all of the robot option, all the robot lawnmowers out there are kind of in the same boat of all of them are Chinese. All of them, you know, use proprietary firmware. There is one open mow that I’m, you know, from years ago and it’s still apparently kicking, but. Not something that I looked into it. It wouldn’t really work for me. So if you know of any other open source robotic vacuums or robotic lawnmowers, I would love to hear about it. 13:09
Alex: What are they coming for next? It’s going to be our 3D printers, isn’t it? 14:06
Geoff: Oh, without doubt. 14:10
Geoff: That’s the first thing I said to my wife when I started this. I’m like, they’re coming for 3D printers because they are Chinese. Chinese are in the lead. And if we want America first, 3D printers. 14:12
Alex: Yeah, the way to make America first is to just ban everything. Got it. 14:22
Adaam: Totally. 14:27
Stephen: That’s fair. 14:27
Adam: Yeah. 14:27
Stephen: That’s the way to win. Yeah. Come on. 14:28
Geoff: Stephen, you’re up there in Canada-land. You’re not really affected by this. I’m sure you must be, you know, kind of. Do you even have robotic lawnmowers and vacuums and stuff like that up there? 14:31
Alex: No, they don’t need them. They just have snowblowers just a year round. 14:39
Geoff: That’s right. 14:43
Alex: Oh, boy. 14:44
Stephen: Yeah, I mean, I have a person and that person walks around and cuts my lawn and then I give him money. And then my lawn is cut and has yet to run over a child. So I guess there’s that. I haven’t had to worry about firmware updates to the man that cuts my lawn. But hey, I’m just saying, you know. Yeah, but that’s all depressing. Yeah, that’s all depressing. But what is not depressing is this segue to speaking about our Patreon subscribers. Geoff? 14:47
Alex: Yes, you are borrowing heavily with the segue thing there. We need to come up with a better transition of our own. But anyway, big thank you to those of you who subscribed via Patreon. You help make the show possible, help us pay our editor. Not out of our own pockets, I should add. And without you, honestly, the show wouldn’t be a thing. So huge thank you to the patrons. If you would like to subscribe, we do sort of slightly irregular behind the scenes content and you can get early access to some of that stuff by joining our Patreon. 15:22
Geoff: And we’ll say thank you to our Terabyte members who I think is still Mauricio and Alex Taylor. So thank you guys very much. We do appreciate you. Yeah. 15:57
Alex: Is that what you appreciate about me? That’s what I 16:09
Geoff: appreciate. 16:12
Geoff: I appreciate their pocketbooks. I mean, I also appreciate, you know, Mauricio in the Discord being awesome. So, you know, there’s that too. 16:13
Alex: He is. 16:19
Alex: Yeah, he recommended me a Brazilian market near our house. And I picked up a picanha and smoked that over the weekend. 16:20
Adam: Damn. 16:29
Alex: So good. 16:31
Adam: That is funny that I had the exact same thing to eat this weekend. I went to a Brazilian steakhouse in Chattanooga, and that is my favorite thing at one of those churrascarias, and it was awesome. Mm-hmm. 16:31
Alex: All right, let’s talk about the next topic in the doc, which is the Windows 11 GDID tracker. Stephen, you’re up, my friend. 16:46
Stephen: I am up. 16:52
Stephen: So I was away last pod recording when this was far more fresh and out in the news and everyone spoke about it. So we’re like two weeks behind on YouTube land. But how would you guys feel? If you guys had been, I don’t know, fiddling with computers for a long time and have been using this thing called Windows and thought, yeah, I’m going to try out all this, this, you know, these, these beta versions of this and, you know, hacked versions of that and whatnot. And then, I don’t know, somewhere along your career, you find out, oh, Microsoft’s actually been keeping track of my IP addresses and the individual GDIDs or an identifier of all of the OS’s that I’ve installed. Now that’s my first knee jerk reaction when I heard this some time ago, but it’s come out that basically sends windows 10 forward. I’m sure there’s a Star Trek pun in there, 10 forward. But anyway, ever since Windows 10 forward, this has really been a thing. And so it doesn’t really matter if you’re on a VPN or on your home network. Microsoft associates your current IP address to this GDID of your Windows install. And then… and this is not fully out because they don’t really comment about this, some things also get associated with that, like some websites you might be going to. But where this really sucks is that they just give all this information out to three-letter companies like FBI, and they can then cross-reference that with other information from other companies like Facebook or what have you. to just track exactly where you are. And so I don’t know about you guys, but I would really like the company that makes the OS to tell me that I’m going to be tracked somewhere along the way and maybe allow me to opt out of that. I don’t know, but I’m sure someone has some input on this. 16:54
Geoff: I do, because I want to give a little bit of background as to how this all came to light. So a 19-year-old got arrested in Scandinavia as he was trying to fly to Tokyo for allegedly being part of a hacking organization known as Scattered Spider. And they were alleged to do all sorts of fun, you know, hacking into companies, stealing money, doing ransom and all of that. And so the way they were able to find this individual, again, allegedly, these are allegations, Is he used so they used VPN stuff to, you know, mask where they were coming from. And law enforcement obviously hit a brick wall when they got to the VPN because they couldn’t figure out how to get, you know, to track the identity of the individual. And so Microsoft apparently came to the FBI and they were have been tracking Scattered Spider. And they said, hey, well, we have this, you know, there’s a way of associating this individual, you know, this. Windows box basically in this account to all these different services and they’re able to basically piece together. Well, this IP address was used to log into a known Snapchat account for this individual and then also log into Facebook. And then, you know, then this, you know, then that account also logged into the website that was being breached. And so I don’t have as much of an issue with the law enforcement part of it because, again, they went and I read the affidavit. They got subpoenas. They got warrants. They did everything they were supposed to from a legal perspective. I agree with you, though. I think my biggest issue is Microsoft never disclosed this. Like the only disclosure was on a single like random Azure website that they even had this GDID. that could associate you. Oh, and by the way, if you reinstall Windows, they can still follow you along because if you log into other services, it’ll reconnect your GDID. So there’s really no way of getting around this one. 19:10
Stephen: New GDID, same person, same tracking. Yes. Yeah, so that’s my problem with it, right? Is that no one was told that they were really doing this. And when I think about it, over the last two weeks, I guess I’m not surprised. And it makes sense because I’m getting windows updates. I’m being forced to sign into OneDrive that I don’t want, uh, and all these other services, but they also have terms of use. Right. And so I guess when it comes down to, I just didn’t expect that my OS was being tracked in that way. Uh, Yeah, I feel silly thinking that way now because it seems so obvious, but there’s usually a disclaimer that this is happening, right? And so, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t run Windows anymore. That was kind of my end of it. Well, actually, there was another thing, but we’ll talk about that in a bit. 21:02
Adam: I mean, to me, I guess this just wasn’t that surprising because like you said, I’ve distrusted Microsoft in these sorts of activities for quite a while now. I feel honestly when you ask how I feel about it, I’m like satisfied that I move off Windows a long time ago. And yeah, I mean, I did keep one little Windows jump box around here, but even that is gone these days. So I literally have no Windows in this house, which feels pretty good. um 21:59
Stephen: I guess I guess in my mind yeah sorry I didn’t mean to cut you off but I guess in my mind if I wasn’t signing or I wasn’t I was getting around that online account thing I wasn’t signing on to be tracked right so I know that they’ve been pushing this on on all the fresh installs you basically have to use a microsoft online account to sign into windows for the first time unless you do some trickery in in the console or what have you um but they by design want you to sign into a microsoft online account if I was doing that this wouldn’t surprise me at all right like i’m signing into an online thing I know Geoff’s going to tell me that there’s some sort 22:27
Geoff: of no that’s that’s exactly how it becomes associated is you when you log into your Windows account that’s what creates the GDID 23:08
Stephen: Yeah. 23:14
Stephen: Right. 23:15
Stephen: And so, but that’s not completely true. And Alex is going to say something too, but if you do a local account, you’re still have a GDID. And then eventually you’re going to sign into those things and then it gets recorded. 23:15
Alex: So even if you do the OOBE skip local account only thing, how do they tie this to you? Is it just if you log into any Microsoft service? I don’t genuinely think I’ve logged into any Microsoft services on a Windows box for a very long time. I always skip the thing. Honestly, I switched to Linux on the desktop and Mac a long time ago, but that’s neither here nor there. 23:28
Geoff: I think you can get – I mean you can definitely – they’ve made it a lot harder, but you can get around the logging in. My reading of – and maybe I’m wrong, Stephen. You can correct me. But my reading at least of the affidavit was the way it works was the way – yes, you may create a GDID, but the way Microsoft is able to keep updating it and keep connecting you is when you log into a Microsoft account. That’s what they kind of use as the – focal point for all these GDIDs and all the associations so if you did use a local account not saying it’s not possible not saying there’s not a GDID but they wouldn’t have been able to do this fancy figuring out of everything *23:59
*Stephen: Unless you sign into any of those apps with your local account. But that to me was, and I guess this is in my own head, but that to me was always the differentiator. If I don’t do an online account, my OS isn’t just getting recorded and telling Microsoft exactly where I am all the time. And I understand that they get that information through a log when I’m updating and whatnot, but there’s no need to keep it. If I sign onto an online account, I just assume that everything is getting sent to them because literally it has to sync your profile. It has to do a whole bunch of things. It brings down your background. It does a whole bunch of things. So there’s a lot more interaction with a server right from the get-go when you have an online account, right? I guess in my head, that was always just a differentiator. If I’m not using your online service account, then my OS probably isn’t being super tracked. Like it’s talking about the IP and the servers know it, but you guys aren’t really recording it because why would you? I guess, but that’s just me, right? But evidently not. 24:38
Adam: Interesting angle on this whole thing is I’m really interested to hear where you heard about this the first time. Because I remember when you messaged me about it and I’m like, what? I’ve not even heard of this. And I feel like even if this was in the tech sphere and it’s on YouTube and it’s broadcast more, I feel like people have become so numb to the idea of Microsoft taking your information and their kind of nasty habits of not caring about your privacy and changing your system settings, et cetera, et cetera. Just like you could go down the laundry list of the bad habits that they have. So people are probably like, uh, yeah, of course. Like it’s Microsoft. This is what they do and not like catch the fact that the details, like the majority are not going to catch the fact that this is just something that is not, um, opt out. That is not kind of documented anywhere, et cetera. So that’s, that’s the, the really nasty part about this. But I feel like just the general populace is just like, and they’re just like, They don’t care. They don’t care. 25:44
Alex: That said, there is, I saw this week in the news, the Linux desktop has broken the 10% market share. I can’t believe it was 4% when I got into Linux 15 years ago. It’s like 10% now. And it’s all down to you. Thanks to you, Adam, because you got a steam machine in the mail this week, right? 26:48
Adam: I did. You’re all welcome. I did this for all of you. 27:13
Alex: 50% of the hosts of this show both have Steam Machines, and neither of them is me, and I’m very sad about that. *27:15
Geoff: If I didn’t order one, if I had, I would have sent it to you, Adam, or Alex. 27:22
Adam: I’m also not going to use it as a Steam Machine for the most part, to be fair. But I’m supporting the cause, and I think it’s going to be a pretty awesome little… workstation box, and I plan to put Bazzite on it and game off it and do all of the things on it. I got 64 gigs of very beautiful, expensive DDR5 RAM that I had chilling in the closet and a two terabyte NVMe drive on there. So it should be a fun little project 27:27
Alex: That generational wealth in the closet. Nice. Very nice. 27:54
Adam: Purchased prior to any price hikes. Okay. 27:57
Geoff: So Steven, what did you switch to for instead of Windows? 28:03
Stephen: uh I’m I’m now an Arch guy of course is there any other option by the way I run arch by the way I mean yeah well 28:08
Alex: now there’s uh there’s Cachy OS there’s arch proper 28:17
Stephen: I’m using I’m using Cachy OS if I’m if I’m being honest because uh it it took all of the make your install and everything else out of the situation and apparently streamlines my actual hardware and there’s a bunch of effort that goes forth to make sure that things run very nicely on it. And truth be told, everything I’ve put it on has, has run very nicely. Um, and I don’t have to worry about randomly being tracked every time I turn on a computer 28:22
Adam: and you’re on, GNOME, 28:47
Stephen: just gotta 28:49
Geoff: watch out. 28:49
Geoff: Just gotta watch for the, uh, clean break. Go ahead, Adam. 28:49
Adam: And you’re on GNOME on that box, right? If I remember correctly, you were toying with KDE and then you switched back to the, the comfy bosom of GNOME. Huh? 28:55
Stephen: Yeah, I have used GNOME for a long, long time. And so I thought I would try the KDE one at first, and then I’ve flip-flopped back over to GNOME. On the new machine that I have showing up tomorrow, X1 Carbon Gen 14, I’ll probably do the KDE one and I’m going to try a couple of things on there, but it’s always just a reinstall away, right? 29:05
Geoff: And just got to be mindful of the AUR and don’t install any malicious packages. 29:27
Stephen: Right now, do not install things on the AUR because there’s malware on there. Don’t do it. Just don’t. It’s not good. 29:30
Alex: Great. 29:38
Alex: Well, talking of tracking, I built a plane tracker this week using an ESP32 device. My daughter is five years old and she is obsessed with planes. Like whenever one flies over the house, she’ll be like, where’s that one going, daddy? And we’re driving past the airport. She’ll just shout from the back of the car, plane! Like she is obsessed. I love it because I’m kind of obsessed with planes too. I mean, it’s not an accident. She’s obsessed. Let’s be honest. Now, this little project is an ESP32 and a 1.28 inch circular display in a 3D printed housing. And this thing pulls in ADSB traffic so it can tell what planes are in the neighborhood. It needs a Wi-Fi connection. It needs to always be on. It only pulls about one watt, so it’s not a lot of power. But it can plot each aircraft by distance and bearing and figure out where it’s going. But what I thought was interesting to talk about here was how I took the upstream project and forked it and then added five or six features that I wanted using COdex. 29:39
Geoff: Tell us more. 30:47
Geoff: Tell us more. 30:48
Alex: Well, am I a dirty AI slot merchant for doing that? Or is this just the world we live in now? 30:50
Adam: Do you even know who you’re talking to? 30:57
Alex: Well, we listened to an episode of Late Night Linux the other night where they were talking about AI and stuff like that. And it all got a little bit heated. So, you know, I think there are people listening probably at all ends of the spectrum. Where I fall is that there was this open source project that I saw that had the ability to do almost everything I wanted, but it didn’t show the plane’s origin and destination. It didn’t show the date and time either or the weather conditions and a couple of other things. So literally, I forked the repo, threw it into Codex, did a five or six line prompt, and half an hour later, I have my own firmware that does exactly what I want. It’s also open source, so anybody else can come along and fork it and add their own things. And we’re just in this amazing age of bespoke custom software. It’s just so cool. 31:00
Adam: It’s awesome. I i don’t know how you can have like another angle on it from when you’re looking at it from the perspective of I created this for myself it’s open source you can take it you can do with it as you will or don’t do anything with it as you will I mean I do very much grant the fact that what’s happening to the environment and those those sorts of aspects are real and a real concern but as far as the just kind of is this software development and is, you know, is this a dirty word using AI from that perspective? I don’t buy it. I feel like this is, it’s so kind of like the next extension of what people have been doing with like 3D printers. Suddenly we can build what we want. We don’t have to go to a fab for that sort of thing. And now you can do the software layer on top of that as well. So it’s so, I guess, liberating in that way. 31:50
Alex: I’ll put a link in the description to, or the show notes, I should say, to my blog post about the write-up I’ve done for this, where you can find the 3D prints on Makerworld. And I talk a little bit more about some of the details of how I customized the firmware. Things like being able to change the text size through the web interface to be able to do over-the-air updates, which the firmware couldn’t do before you had to plug it in and flash the firmware. Well, now I can do it over the air, you know, like ESPHome does. Just stuff like that. It’s just way beyond my skills, honestly, as a hobbyist hacker to do some of this stuff. Maybe I’ll phrase it like this. It’s not beyond my skills to do it. I could sit down with a book and figure it out and take six weeks and I’ve got ADHD like I’m not gonna I’m not I’m just not gonna do that so for me this allows me to pick up a project in an afternoon with kid juggling kid laptop in one hand kid in the other and then I end up printing her a little plane tracker to go in her bedroom and now every time a plane goes goes over she’s like look runs over to the screen has a look and it’s just it’s just magic 32:44
Geoff: no it really I mean 33:56
Geoff: I don’t think there’s any surprise that I am very much a fan of the AI stuff because I was not a developer. I don’t know code, but I’m able to deal things like we talked about on behind the scenes. This very app we’re using to record is completely AI coded. Some of the other stuff I’ve done is AI coded. And just this weekend, I’m getting kind of tired of Nextcloud. And, you know, it’s kind of a hog and all I really 33:58
Alex: slow. 34:21
Geoff: All I use it for is files and calendar because I have never been able to find a very good self-hosted CalDAV web based front end. So I went to my buddy Claude and I was like, Hey, could we take the Nextcloud, you know, code like, you know, ideas behind it and build something that is not reliant upon Nextcloud. And I’ve done it. 34:22
Alex: Yeah. 34:47
Alex: In a weekend, probably. 34:47
Geoff: Yep, in a day. 34:49
Alex: He didn’t tell us this, guys. 34:51
Alex: This is the first I’ve heard of this. This is 34:52
Geoff: a new surprise. 34:54
Geoff: I’m dropping this one on to you guys for the first time. 34:56
Stephen: Laying it on thick. Okay, so I don’t have any problem with what you’re doing so long as we tell people that you also have the understanding of how to secure things fundamentally. 34:59
Geoff: yes 35:12
Stephen: I’m gonna say he’s not just putting this on an open port on his firewall sitting on his server it’s behind something and so I think my only issue with this whole like I can code things with AI and it’s magical and whatnot is that you have to have some fundamental understanding of what you’re doing to yourself if you build out things that sit on the internet If you understand that you can put things behind VPNs and whatnot, fill your boots because I’m also not a programmer and I also dabble in this. So yes, please continue. Make your wonderful Nextcloud thing. 35:13
Geoff: No, I mean, yeah, exactly. The plan for this is it’s not going to be publicly accessible. It’s only going to be available, you know, again, when I’m out, I have my Tailscale. I have DNS. That way I can go to, you know, my own, you know, calendar.example.com and everything’s internal. But again, that does 98% of what I need. So I’m now going to go look and see if I can find something that will do file syncing because if I can get that figured ouut. 35:50
Adam: When do I get to play with this? That’s my main question. And then secondly, when are you going to incorporate Outline into it? And then… 36:19
Geoff: Gotten no no this is just a front end for calendar I will have a I’ll put a link to it in the show notes if you’re really that interested um it’s on it’s on github it has a 36:26
Alex: philosophy do one thing do it well and yes and honestly the agents appreciate that too like if you try and build a house of cards they just get confused but uh small focused programs they are very good at did you see as well that File Browser has gone into maintenance mode this week 36:37
Geoff: I did and a little sad because we use it for some of our stuff. 36:57
Alex: Yeah, we’ve used it on a few occasions. I don’t know what it is. Is it OpenCloud? That’s like a European competitor to Nextcloud, but apparently it’s a pig to set up. 37:00
Geoff: So OwnCloud is the granddad of all of them. And then Nextcloud forked OwnCloud. And then OwnCloud came back and did a OwnCloud OCIS, which was like their Go implementation. And then apparently someone bought that and all the developers left and they went and created OpenCloud. 37:13
Alex: Wow. 37:35
Alex: Well, apparently it’s a pig to set up. I haven’t tried it yet. Maybe we should just in the interest of science, but… I feel like these apps like Nextcloud, they’re trying to boil the ocean. And really, I think a lot of us just need, maybe they need to release two versions. They need the enterprise version that does all of the complicated stuff. And then they just need a light version that does contacts, calendars, files. That’s it. That’s all I needed. Yeah. You heard it here first, folks. Geoff is going to start Nextcloud competitor and call it FCloud. 37:36
Geoff: No, no, I have three. I was really hesitant to create a third. I’m like, I don’t want to have to keep a third one up and all the dependencies and all of that. It’s a lot. But for me, I will do it. 38:13
Alex: How hard can it be? 38:24
Geoff: Yeah. 38:28
Geoff: You know, AI is definitely… I’ve had a couple… Hermes has had a few bugs for me this week where it’s just gone down, and I’m not sure why. 38:29
Alex: Have you tried cheering it up? I have tried cheering it 38:36
Geoff: up. 38:40
Geoff: I have tried asking what happened, and it doesn’t know what happened. And then the other fun thing that hit me was DeepSeek V4 can only be hosted in China now. And that was a bit of a… I woke up to that one, and I’m like, why is everything not working? Oh, because… had to turn a toggle on and I’m like i’m not comfortable with my data going to China so 38:41
Alex: we talked about the robot vacuums being banned open weight models my goodness that’s another battleground that’s coming our way isn’t it probably i 38:59
Stephen: I run it with um ChatGPT in the back end and I think that’s what you’re doing as well Alex yeah yeah I haven’t had the the ups and downs that you’ve spoken about 39:07
Geoff: yeah it might just be OpenCode being a little bit finicky 39:16
Alex: users like to play on hard mode it’s just a fact 39:20
Geoff: I enjoy the challenge what can I say 39:23
Alex: yeah it’s not your day job okay got it all right you can find out more about the show at bitflip.show you can get in touch with us on mastodon at bitflip.show we’ll put links to all this stuff in the description of course if you’d like to write in we do get emails from you all uh on occasion and we read them and reply to as many of them as we can contact at bitflip.show if you’d like to sign up and support the show financially through patreon bitflip.show slash support 39:27