Summary
It’s a week of farewells with RIPs for Dolly and a surprise about Tim Curry, plus Chris causes chaos during a local theater shoot and Sam’s concert plans fall through.
There’s a possible Canada-US trade war brewing, Apple Maps testing unwelcome ads, and a bizarre startup using drone swarms on solar farms.
Kickstarter madness continues with some wild tech gadgets, and there’s a shocking police story out of the US.
Links
RIP Dolly Parton
RIP Tim Curry
Canada at War?
Apple Maps Ads
Fatal Police Shooting
Kickstart or Dropkick – BluHub
Kickstart or Dropkick – Immurok
Show Transcript
This transcript was generated by an AI and may not be100% accurate. It pays to listen to the podcast, but if you have questions about any of the information found here, please reach out to us.
Sam [00:00:21]:
Hello and welcome to episode 595 of the Chris and Sam Podcast.
Chris [00:00:26]:
I’m Chris.
Sam [00:00:27]:
And I’m Sam. This is your weekly fix of random technology and life made right here in the Waikato. What’s been happening?
Chris [00:00:33]:
I’m going to start off on a sad note, but so we can improve from here, but a couple of RIPs this week. Bit of a worry.
Sam [00:00:42]:
Well, yeah. I mean, everyone that we know, uh, that’s old is going to die.
Chris [00:00:46]:
Yeah. That’s, I think that’s what’s got me like Dolly Parton. I mean, it’s sort of sad and stuff, but I guess I wasn’t a, like I was a fan, like everyone’s a fan of Dolly, but not like a fan fan.
Sam [00:00:59]:
But you have to understand like the legacy that she set up.
Chris [00:01:03]:
Oh, huge, man.
Sam [00:01:04]:
Like the stuff she’s done, the organization, the book thing with children.
Chris [00:01:09]:
Yeah, 300 million books she’s given away. It’s crazy. And then the stories that I didn’t, I’d never heard, but that thing like, um, uh, the You Always Be There, that song that, um, The Titanic song. Was it Titanic? Well, whatever. Yeah, that song was her song. She wrote it. Oh, and Elvis tried to buy it, and Parker, the, um, Colonel— the Colonel— yeah, uh, said, um, oh yeah, we’ll, we’ll buy that, that song off you.
Sam [00:01:41]:
The rights.
Chris [00:01:41]:
The rights to it, like to do a song. Um, but we’ll say that Elvis, uh, helped with the writing credits, so he’ll take half the writing credits. Oh, and she’s like, No, he won’t. And he said something to her, because this is back freaking how long ago?
Sam [00:01:57]:
Well, I mean, yeah, a while ago, because Elvis is dead.
Chris [00:01:59]:
I don’t know how to tell you.
Sam [00:02:01]:
I don’t know if you know.
Chris [00:02:02]:
Yeah, no, okay, it’s good, good point. It was a while ago. And, um, and, and she goes, no, but I wrote it. And he goes, you’re a woman and this is country music. You’re lucky to be offered that. And she told him to go jump.
Sam [00:02:15]:
All right.
Chris [00:02:16]:
And, and you know, Elvis never got the song. And she— I would imagine she did pretty well on her royalties out of that song because that became pretty big.
Sam [00:02:25]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:02:26]:
Um, I mean, she sang it for a while, but, you know, it’s been covered by other people and stuff.
Sam [00:02:31]:
That’s right.
Chris [00:02:32]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:02:33]:
Oh yeah.
Chris [00:02:33]:
So, so there was that. But also, I, I, I found out today— I didn’t realize, um—
Sam [00:02:37]:
Everyone found out today. You didn’t miss out about Tim Curry.
Chris [00:02:40]:
Yes, about Tim Curry.
Sam [00:02:42]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:02:42]:
Um, that That hit me a little bit harder because I’m a big fan of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and it’s like, oh my God, does this mean I’m getting old too?
Sam [00:02:52]:
I will say I thought he was already dead for some reason.
Chris [00:02:55]:
We had that conversation not so long ago. Um, we were in, um, I was showing the people the, um, I was showing Carolyn and somebody else who was visiting the Rocky Horror statue. Yeah. Yeah.
Sam [00:03:08]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris [00:03:09]:
And, uh, And I, and the new, we were on the outside of the new, um, house, the theater, whatever it’s called.
Sam [00:03:15]:
Yeah. Hamilton Hotel.
Chris [00:03:16]:
Hamilton Hotel. And, um, the re— yeah, the regional theater. And, uh, I was like, oh, you know, Tim Curry. And somebody said, isn’t he dead? And I’m like, oh, I hope not. And then we did the whole Google thing. It’s like, oh, he’s in a wheelchair. Oh, that’s terrible.
Sam [00:03:32]:
Maybe that’s what I heard. Maybe.
Chris [00:03:33]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Sam [00:03:34]:
Anyway. So, uh, but will there be a third one? Someone at work says, I’m really hoping he goes.
Chris [00:03:42]:
And then— And everybody knew exactly who they meant.
Sam [00:03:44]:
No, no, not everyone. I had to spell it out for some people.
Chris [00:03:47]:
Oh, really?
Sam [00:03:47]:
But, uh, I saw online—
Chris [00:03:49]:
I hadn’t thought that. I was like, oh yeah.
Sam [00:03:51]:
I saw online though, they were like, oh no, only the good people go, like die young.
Chris [00:03:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s just sad.
Sam [00:03:58]:
So that’s no good.
Chris [00:03:59]:
Anyway, onto more amusing things. We have—
Sam [00:04:02]:
What else? What have you been doing this week though? Because I’ve got a story.
Chris [00:04:04]:
So I went, I went to the region and we shot, um, I I don’t want to say a trailer because it’s not a trailer. It’s the intermission scenes and the things you see at a theater that says, you know, don’t bring food into the theater.
Sam [00:04:16]:
But this is custom made for the theater by locals.
Chris [00:04:21]:
We had costumes made and all this sort of thing. It was a lot of fun. And I was there being Chris, basically. First AD. And so one of the things—
Sam [00:04:32]:
How many times did you yell?
Chris [00:04:34]:
Not that much, but That was one of my fails. I was going to share the fail. So we are shooting towards the screen. There’s a movie on the screen and it’s Adam’s Misty Flicks from the other year. So he doesn’t have to pay rights or anything to do it. And it’s got Mac on it.
Sam [00:04:54]:
Is that just so they’re looking at the screen?
Chris [00:04:56]:
Well, the film is looking at the back of heads and the—
Sam [00:05:00]:
Oh yeah. Sorry. Sorry.
Chris [00:05:01]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:05:01]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:05:01]:
So we’re looking that way and then they have to turn around like somebody’s talking and they’re turning around, giving them the evils.
Sam [00:05:08]:
Okay.
Chris [00:05:09]:
So Adam’s like, Chris, this is your moment to shine.
Sam [00:05:12]:
Oh no, don’t.
Chris [00:05:13]:
You’re obnoxious. Just say obnoxious stuff so they turn around and give you daggers.
Sam [00:05:18]:
So you’re, okay, so you’re at the back.
Chris [00:05:19]:
And I’m at the back of the theater and I’m like, who’s this actor? And it’s, um, uh, Alex, who’s in the audience too. Useless. She’s useless. She’s a useless actor. Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah.
Sam [00:05:33]:
And they come in, turn around, give me evils.
Chris [00:05:34]:
And then I was like, can I turn it up a notch? Can I be more obnoxious? Can I be more aggressive? And I was like, that poor dog had its eye taken out because of the cancer or whatever it was. And that dog, look at that budget dog. It’s definitely budget. It’s only got one eye. And they all cracked up laughing and I ruined the take.
Sam [00:05:58]:
And I was like, oh, I thought it was funny. I thought you were going to upset everyone a bit more, but—
Chris [00:06:02]:
No, no. I thought, I thought it would upset them, but even Adam was laughing at that budget dog thing. And I was like, I’m sorry, I ruined the take. We’ll do it again.
Sam [00:06:12]:
Excellent. Had a half day at work on Monday.
Chris [00:06:15]:
Oh yeah.
Sam [00:06:15]:
Uh, the plan was Alex Warren was in the country. Exactly. So I don’t know. I just go along for these things. Alex Warren is somebody that Sarah likes to listen to. He’s a guy, his backstory is he was homeless, living in his car. His girlfriend’s been with him the whole time. He got discovered.
Sam [00:06:34]:
I don’t know if he was on a competition or not, but he sings some pretty epic songs.
Chris [00:06:38]:
Oh, okay.
Sam [00:06:39]:
And that’s all good. And one of the songs, uh, is Ordinary. So if you hear that, you’ll know the song. You won’t know the guy. No one does, but everyone knows the song, right? And, uh, he comes to New Zealand. They sell out 2. They put on an extra show in Christchurch. So Friday night, Saturday night.
Sam [00:06:58]:
And ’cause down there he must, for some reason, he’s got a lot of fans.
Chris [00:07:03]:
Yeah. Anyway, a bit weird in Christchurch.
Sam [00:07:04]:
Yeah, probably. And, um, Auckland Monday night, there’s, ’cause you know, it’s a good time to go to a concert. Anyway, shot up early, had to go check out some stuff at the Manukau Mall of all places for some, um, got to go into a wedding soon.
Chris [00:07:21]:
All right.
Sam [00:07:21]:
So we’re dress shopping. It’s a loose we.
Chris [00:07:25]:
And, uh, Yeah, you look good in a tree.
Sam [00:07:27]:
Yeah, that went well though. And that was all good. So wandering around and we had some time to kill and there’s a movie, movies upstairs, but no movies were playing, but they’ve got this really large arcade up there and it’s got really cool games. And there’s this really cool shooting gallery thing. Really liked it. Like it was digital, but you were looking through a scope and you were shooting like a assault rifle, basically.
Chris [00:07:53]:
And if you’re shooting things on a screen or—
Sam [00:07:55]:
No, they’re physical. So they would fall over, explode, or whatever. I’ll show you a photo later, but it was pretty cool. And it was, it was giving you recoil, but it wasn’t firing anything, but you could, it would, it was like 100% accurate. Like it would only fall over if you hit the little target that lit up. Very cool. Anyway, came downstairs. Sarah randomly looks at her phone at the email.
Sam [00:08:17]:
Concert’s been canceled. He got sick, like bedridden. He couldn’t even, couldn’t talk, couldn’t really sing. So probably got a disease on a plane somewhere here. But that was okay because we just went home. We got home at 7 o’clock from Auckland. There was people that got told why they were lining up outside or had flown in from other parts of the country and had accommodation. So that was—
Chris [00:08:41]:
I did that once. We went up for the Thompson Twins concert.
Sam [00:08:45]:
Okay.
Chris [00:08:45]:
Uh, from Wellington with the, um, ZMFM was the, um, the, the, the radio station. They’d just changed their names to ZMFM because FM was the new thing. It’d just come out.
Sam [00:08:59]:
Hang on, you’d gone up with them or you won a comp?
Chris [00:09:02]:
I, I, I think I paid to go, but yeah, it was a bus of ZMFM fans going up to see—
Sam [00:09:07]:
Oh, okay. Okay.
Chris [00:09:08]:
To see the Thompson Twins. Um, and it was Herb Gardner who was Nicholas Tansley. Do you know who that is?
Sam [00:09:16]:
All these names sound familiar.
Chris [00:09:17]:
Yeah. So he would, he, he had the, um, name Herb Gardner on the radio and that’s all I ever knew him as.
Sam [00:09:25]:
I used to work with someone with that name.
Chris [00:09:28]:
But yeah, we, we got, we went up on this bus. Oh, hell, I must’ve been like 18 or something. We get up on the bus. We finally got up there and the concert was canceled. So, um, Nick, I remember we’re all staying at this cheap motel and he drags some piano out of, don’t know where he found it. And he just starts playing in the middle of the, like the car park. And we’re all just singing and drinking and stuff. It was great.
Chris [00:09:52]:
It was good fun.
Sam [00:09:53]:
Is there any more stories from that trip? It sounds like there must be.
Chris [00:09:57]:
No, no, I was, I was pretty lame. I, cause I only went by myself. Like I didn’t go with anybody I knew.
Sam [00:10:02]:
I thought there was going to be more to that.
Chris [00:10:04]:
I think there was somebody I was shining onto, but. I can’t remember. It’s so long ago.
Sam [00:10:09]:
Chris eyes activated in the corner.
Chris [00:10:10]:
Chris eyes definitely activated there.
Sam [00:10:12]:
Oh no.
Chris [00:10:13]:
Sad. I did get an X-ray too this week.
Sam [00:10:17]:
Excellent.
Chris [00:10:17]:
Good. I went and got an X-ray to check how much worse my leg came. And the woman’s like, she recognized me. She goes, oh, oh, you’re back. Because— How do you reckon?
Sam [00:10:27]:
Okay.
Chris [00:10:28]:
I’m just that guy, I guess. It’s like she recognized me anyway. So she goes, oh yeah. She said, I’ve done this for you before, eh? And I said, yeah, a while back, almost a year ago, but my mobility’s worse. She goes, okay, come over here, because I’ve got a walking stick, a cane now, and didn’t then. And she goes, oh, sit down here and then lie down here. And she goes, can you straighten your leg up? And I’m like—
Sam [00:10:53]:
Nope.
Chris [00:10:53]:
Not really. She goes, I’ll just push it a little bit. And she pushes it and goes, crack, crack, crack, crack, really loud. And she gets really worried about it. She goes, does that hurt? Yeah, just a bit. Like, I mean, it hurts all the freaking time. Like, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. And so, yeah, anyway, that was funny.
Chris [00:11:13]:
I thought that was funny. It was the look on her face when it, my, my hip just went crack, crack, crack.
Sam [00:11:17]:
Well, it’s because the human body should not be making those sounds.
Chris [00:11:20]:
No, no, it shouldn’t.
Sam [00:11:21]:
So you got a doctor’s appointment at some point and then figure out, okay, figure out what’s going on from there.
Chris [00:11:27]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hopefully, you know, lop it off soon. Hurry up.
Sam [00:11:31]:
Uh, okay. This isn’t fun at all, but there’s a serious incident unfolding across South Auckland right now. They just—
Chris [00:11:37]:
Oh, really?
Sam [00:11:38]:
Yeah, they got called somewhere and on the street are 2 dead bodies. So they’re just trying to shut the whole place down. That’s no good. Um, sorry. I, I got called out for all my depressing stories at work the other day.
Chris [00:11:49]:
Oh, really?
Sam [00:11:49]:
I can’t help it if they’re all involving dead people. Yeah.
Chris [00:11:55]:
Uh, well, um, so do you— I will say I watched something this week which you would absolutely not have enjoyed, but it was Mark Carney’s— I don’t know why it came up on my YouTube feed and I just watched it, but I actually watched the whole thing. Mark Carney’s declaration of war, his speech. So basically—
Sam [00:12:20]:
Who’s Mark Carney again?
Chris [00:12:21]:
He’s the Prime Minister, Is it Prime Minister? I think it’s Prime Minister of Canada.
Sam [00:12:26]:
Oh yeah. Okay, good.
Chris [00:12:27]:
So they’re going to trade war with America. So they’ve been working for 6 months on these trade talks, right?
Sam [00:12:35]:
Okay.
Chris [00:12:36]:
So in 2016, ’17, ’18, 2018, I think, Donald Trump, 2016 when he got in the first time, he scrapped NAFTA. which was the North American Free Trade Agreement. And he started, he signed in what the Americans call USMCA, which is the United States, Mexico, and Canada Agreement, which is basically the same thing.
Sam [00:13:11]:
Okay, good.
Chris [00:13:12]:
But Canada calls it CUSMA, which is Canada, United States, and Mexico. Agreement, which is—
Sam [00:13:17]:
Good.
Chris [00:13:18]:
They just want to have their own name first, right? I don’t know what the Mexicans, before you ask, I don’t know what they call it.
Sam [00:13:23]:
They don’t care.
Chris [00:13:24]:
Anyway, they probably don’t care. But anyway, so he created this agreement in his first term and then Biden came in and then Trump came back and Trump went, who? What sort of idiot wrote this agreement? And then has basically broken all the rules of the agreement that he wrote and he signed. And so anyway, he’s he’s been threatening to tariff Canada. Like, I’m going to put 50% tariff. 50% tariff on all these things, like $20 billion worth of trade. Which $20 billion’s actually not that big a number in terms of the amount of trade they do with Canada.
Sam [00:14:04]:
Probably a lot of maple syrup.
Chris [00:14:05]:
Yeah. Well, hockey sticks?
Sam [00:14:06]:
Oh yeah.
Chris [00:14:07]:
He’s going to put 50%.
Sam [00:14:08]:
Why?
Chris [00:14:10]:
Why would you do that? Honestly, you’re just trying to piss people off. Anyway, So he had said all this. So they’ve been working for 6 months on this trade agreement and they had a thing last weekend. They said the meeting of all the premiers, all the governors of all the different states in Canada, yep, this agreement’s just about signed. It’s going through this week. It’s all ready. On Friday, it was due to be signed.
Sam [00:14:39]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:14:39]:
I think this Friday. And last few hours, Howard Lucknick, the backstory seems to be Howard Lucknick was not very happy because they said something about him.
Sam [00:14:52]:
Okay.
Chris [00:14:52]:
Because he’s a real estate developer, so he knows all about international trade. So then he got Trump involved in the last minute. They changed all these things and the Canadians went, no. And walked away. And there was, there were things like, no, we don’t want to be able, we don’t want to have to put, um, labels in French for stuff that we sell there. Because Canada is bilingual and they have to have it in French. And like, so, uh, we want you to change your language basically so we don’t have to do that. And, oh, and if you sign this agreement with us, you can’t sign agreements with other people.
Sam [00:15:31]:
Oh.
Chris [00:15:31]:
It was really dumb. So anyway, that’s, that’s, it’s going to be a big trade war, which is not good.
Sam [00:15:38]:
Not good for anyone. No. A startup wants to use autonomous drone swarms to clear clouds so they can boost solar farm output. What do you reckon?
Chris [00:15:48]:
Is that going to help or diminish global warming? Increase or diminish?
Sam [00:15:55]:
Yeah, I don’t know. Like, uh, this is a startup backed by Y Combinator. Uh, they want to manufacture the drones and then fly, they’ll fly inside the clouds to disperse them. Is this even a, is this even a need? Um, yeah, hundreds and hundreds of these drones flying in low and mid-altitude clouds above solar farms and, um, altering the water droplets that form from them, but without using chemicals. So I guess that’s good.
Chris [00:16:26]:
I don’t know. I, I’m, I’m, yeah, I’m, uh, yeah, I’m not, I’m not certain about that one.
Sam [00:16:32]:
They reckon it can Don’t know what that was.
Chris [00:16:34]:
I was just going to say that wasn’t me because I put my phone on silent because you moan at me all the time.
Sam [00:16:39]:
That was somehow a weird ad for Samsung playing because I touched near it. Uh, they reckon, uh, it can increase annual generation across existing assets, but between 10 and 30% without doing any other infrastructure. Nah, I think it’s too much of a random idea.
Chris [00:16:59]:
I, I, I, I think so. I, I don’t like that one very much. Did you, um, Oh, and that Canada at War thing that I was talking about just before. He also, Trump’s now doubled down and said, oh, well, anyway, that’s okay. Because Lake Ontario, we’re going to rename it to Lake America.
Sam [00:17:16]:
I don’t think it works that way.
Chris [00:17:17]:
I’m not even joking. That’s what he’s—
Sam [00:17:19]:
Oh, okay. That makes sense. Because I just saw a picture of them showing the map of where Lake America is going to be. And they put Washington, DC on the wrong spot.
Chris [00:17:32]:
Yeah, they put Washington, DC in North Carolina. I’m like, hmm, okay, dumbass. Sorry. So you’ve got an Apple?
Sam [00:17:40]:
I do.
Chris [00:17:41]:
So what’s the ads thing like on Apple at the moment? Because it’s about to get a lot worse supposedly, but the article I said is for North America and Canada, so USA and Canada, They’re going to add ads into Apple Maps, right?
Sam [00:18:01]:
Okay.
Chris [00:18:02]:
And I’m like, well, I need to ask Sam if there’s already ads in Apple Maps for us here.
Sam [00:18:07]:
No.
Chris [00:18:07]:
Okay. Because there’s ads in Google Maps, which I use all the time.
Sam [00:18:13]:
Is there?
Chris [00:18:14]:
Well, sort of. It like, if you’re looking for a cafe, it’ll come up with 3 sponsored cafes first.
Sam [00:18:20]:
Oh yeah. Okay.
Chris [00:18:20]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, which isn’t a problem.
Sam [00:18:22]:
Like, I don’t care about that.
Chris [00:18:24]:
But the way Apple wants to do it is when you do a search before it gives you the search, it’ll run an ad.
Sam [00:18:31]:
Nah, nah.
Chris [00:18:31]:
And then it’ll do another one after you do the search.
Sam [00:18:33]:
Nah, nah, not using that anymore.
Chris [00:18:35]:
Yeah, I was like, that is the worst way, the worst UI.
Sam [00:18:40]:
It’s not like they’re short on money.
Chris [00:18:42]:
I know, this is, they are, they’ve, they’ve said they have to, um, do a whole bunch of, um, ads. It’s got to be increased.
Sam [00:18:50]:
On all these, uh, no, it’s just, it’s greedy, greedy people that are trying to, uh, keep their shareholders happy. But, um, no, that just seems silly. You just use something else. Use Google.
Chris [00:19:01]:
Before and after search just seems really dumb.
Sam [00:19:04]:
I’m surprised they haven’t rolled that out here because they like testing stuff in New Zealand.
Chris [00:19:07]:
Well, that’s why I was going to ask you, because I was like, oh, I wonder if it’s— because do you use Apple Maps?
Sam [00:19:12]:
Uh, yeah, I used it on Monday to get around.
Chris [00:19:14]:
Yeah, because yeah, I I think I have used it at some point in my life, but I don’t have an Apple phone. I’ve never had an Apple phone.
Sam [00:19:22]:
I’m sure they change Google Maps one day, but because Sarah always uses Apple Maps and I usually don’t like it, I will use Google Maps. But Apple Maps is really good at explaining what the lanes are and where you need to be well ahead of where you need to be.
Chris [00:19:41]:
Right.
Sam [00:19:42]:
So it’ll go, there’s 4 lanes coming up. You’ve got to be in this lane in this amount of time. This is the picture. And for some reason, Google Maps on iPhone now doesn’t seem to do it as nice. I don’t know. It’s a better—
Chris [00:19:56]:
I don’t think, uh, honestly, I don’t think Google ever got that very well.
Sam [00:20:01]:
No. Okay. Oh, okay. That’s right. I was just making—
Chris [00:20:03]:
Because I mean, the only other thing, because I used to use, uh, other Satellite ones, the old school, before you could get it on a phone. You can do that on your phone? Oh my God, that’s amazing. I want to— God, I’m just sounding so old in this podcast. Goddamn.
Sam [00:20:20]:
You are old.
Chris [00:20:21]:
I do want to talk about this thing for a minute just because it really got to me. So this is in the States. It’s a fatal police shooting, right? But basically what it was was This young guy, 22-year-old, out drinking with his mates, then left one bunch of mates and was going to catch up with another mate or something like that. And he went around to his other mate’s place, but he was a bit pissed. And he starts tapping on the back, knocking on the back door going, hey, hey, it’s me. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in.
Chris [00:20:56]:
And he was at the wrong house. He was drunk. He went to the wrong house. So the people in the house, and it didn’t say anything about them, but I’m picturing in my head an old couple.
Sam [00:21:04]:
Yeah. They freak out.
Chris [00:21:05]:
Yeah, they, um, they rang the police. They’re like, some stranger on the back door, which is a fair thing to do. Yeah. Like, yeah, that’s a responsible thing to do.
Sam [00:21:14]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:21:15]:
Um, particularly if you’re older and whatever, like me. So, you know, and, and the police came around and killed him.
Sam [00:21:21]:
What, like what, straight away?
Chris [00:21:22]:
Well, he was unarmed. There was nothing. He, he thought he was in his mate’s place. They shot him and killed him.
Sam [00:21:29]:
Ah, I just.
Chris [00:21:31]:
And I saw the interview with his mum and she was pretty blasé about it. I don’t want to say blasé, like she was obviously—
Sam [00:21:38]:
She was probably still in shock.
Chris [00:21:39]:
She was still in shock, I would imagine. But I’m like, it’s almost become normal over there. Yeah. No, it is. Like, oh no, my husband, my son was drunk. So what do you expect? Of course the cops are going to kill him.
Sam [00:21:51]:
I know, but they don’t, I don’t know. I think some of these people know no different.
Chris [00:21:55]:
I know. It just, But the reason I mentioned it was I was like, how would you feel if you were the couple in the house? Because you thought you did everything right, right?
Sam [00:22:05]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:22:05]:
Called the cops. They’re supposed to come, in my mind, they come around to de-escalate problems.
Sam [00:22:11]:
Yes.
Chris [00:22:11]:
They don’t, you know, you’d feel like crap. Like, oh, I could have just talked to the boy because he, he was 22. He looked like the photos of him and all that looked like he was like 17, 16, 17.
Sam [00:22:24]:
Oh, right. Nah, crazy. I’ve got Dropkick. No, Kickstart or Dropkick for you this week. I’ve expertly taken a lot of time to find the best ones for you. Curated them, in fact.
Chris [00:22:37]:
Yes.
Sam [00:22:38]:
How about a 9-in-1 multifunction Blu-ray docking station called BlueHub? It’s a 9-in-1 Blu-ray hub for memories, ports, and storage. You get the Blu-ray, DVD, CD, Read and write, plug and play, data transfer, card readers, USB-C, A, and it’s got a little grand piano design. Yeah. What more do you need to know?
Chris [00:23:03]:
Uh, so it’s a player, basically.
Sam [00:23:06]:
It’s a player and a 9-in-1 multi-port hub. It just happens to have this DVD drive thing on top.
Chris [00:23:12]:
Yeah. Okay. I’d actually find that useful. What, how, how, uh, how much does that cost?
Sam [00:23:18]:
Well, let me tell you, they, uh, super early bird. Oh, this is pretty good actually. Like, okay. I might even just, okay, just even the early bird price I’d pay. It’s about $116 New Zealand dollars.
Chris [00:23:36]:
Yeah, that’s reasonable, I think, because I, oh yeah.
Sam [00:23:39]:
Because when you think about it, a hub isn’t that much and they’ve just bolted like a DVD player thing on a read writer on top. It looks pretty cool. Yeah, that’s pretty cheap. That’s way cheaper than what I thought. Okay. So for $116, I mean, if you want 8 of them, it’s $671. Like it’s getting cheaper.
Chris [00:23:59]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:24:00]:
Yeah. That’s good. Uh, yeah, sorry. That just threw me at how cheap that was. I didn’t really think—
Chris [00:24:04]:
So how far through are they?
Sam [00:24:05]:
8 days to go at time of recording.
Chris [00:24:08]:
Oh, so almost done.
Sam [00:24:08]:
You have to jump on this.
Chris [00:24:09]:
And what, what, what were they looking for?
Sam [00:24:12]:
$1,176.
Chris [00:24:13]:
Well, I’m pretty sure they got that because I think—
Sam [00:24:16]:
Sorry, that’s, that’s $700 US. That’s what it’s only. $1,176 New Zealand dollars. Do you think they’ve made that?
Chris [00:24:25]:
Oh, they’ve, they’ve 100% made that.
Sam [00:24:27]:
I’m beginning to wonder if this is a scam now. I don’t know.
Chris [00:24:31]:
I’m going to say $50 grand.
Sam [00:24:33]:
Like $700 to bring this to market and that only cost $100. I don’t know. But anyway, what do you reckon they’ve raised?
Chris [00:24:43]:
$50 grand.
Sam [00:24:44]:
They’ve raised $648,000.
Chris [00:24:47]:
Good on them. Good on them.
Sam [00:24:51]:
That’s, that’s a very good profit margin, potentially. Okay. Okay. Food for thought.
Chris [00:24:57]:
I wonder what the per unit cost is for that.
Sam [00:25:01]:
Because it’s just a nice looking USB port with a DVD thing on top.
Chris [00:25:06]:
Yeah, but it’s the DVD thing that’s the, that takes all the mechanics, right? Because you’ve got to have the spin and the— yeah, yeah, yeah, I think, and all the rest of it. Like, that’s not cheap. I, I mean, like, how are they—
Sam [00:25:21]:
Yeah, there’s a lot of questions now, isn’t there?
Chris [00:25:22]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like, it’s gonna cost you $40, $50 just to make that. That’s not a lot of, um, margin there, I would have thought. But anyway.
Sam [00:25:32]:
Okay, I’ve got that. And now I’ve got another computer thing.
Chris [00:25:35]:
All right.
Sam [00:25:35]:
It’s called ImmuRock.
Chris [00:25:39]:
ImmuRock.
Sam [00:25:40]:
I-M-M-U-R-O-K. It’s a wireless fingerprint authentication key for every desktop.
Chris [00:25:50]:
Okay.
Sam [00:25:50]:
So, yeah, so it’s like a little dongle thing, like a little square with a circle in the middle and you touch it and then that allows you to obviously unlock your computer. It’s a premium fingerprint. So, so some laptops come with this ability built in. You can touch it and unlock.
Chris [00:26:11]:
And phones come with it. Can it, is it just for your desktop or can you use it with a phone?
Sam [00:26:16]:
It looks like it’s just computers. So Mac, Linux, and Windows. This will be an alternative to those YubiKey things, whatever they call them, where you plug them in.
Chris [00:26:25]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:26:25]:
So it’s apparently just smaller than an Oreo cookie. good to know they told me that. Ultra low power, so you have to keep this thing charged up. So you get about 2 months of standby. So that might be a downfall because if it’s flat, you can unlock a screen, authorize different things, autofill passwords, confirm system prompts, approve AI agents, and much more. Anything where you’ve got to do approvals and sign off, you could go, yes, I am the person.
Chris [00:26:55]:
I almost guarantee you can get around that thing. It’s just dumb.
Sam [00:26:59]:
Yeah, probably. It’s probably just more of a convenience thing, is it?
Chris [00:27:02]:
If you, if you turn the computer on, it doesn’t have Bluetooth up and running straight away. So you just go straight into the command prompt from the beginning, you know, do a full boot of the computer and then you just do it manually. Like, I don’t get how that’s going to work.
Sam [00:27:22]:
Hacker Chris is giving you top tips here. Now, 26 days to go. So they’ve got quite a bit to go into this campaign. They want to raise $300, sorry, $3,965 for a button to make this thing. Yeah.
Chris [00:27:36]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, they, they, they, I’m going to say they got $5,000.
Sam [00:27:43]:
Okay. $3,965, 26 days to go. They’ve raised $335,000.
Chris [00:27:51]:
That’s crazy.
Sam [00:27:52]:
Who is backing all these Kickstarters? There’s a lot of money out there for Kickstarters.
Chris [00:27:56]:
Yeah, there’s got to be a lot of money out there. Maybe that’s what I should be doing instead of looking for a job.
Sam [00:28:01]:
Well, you could do it at the same time because you don’t have a job. You’ve got heaps of free time.
Chris [00:28:04]:
Yeah, yeah, true, true.
Sam [00:28:05]:
That brings us to the end of this podcast. We are 5 away from episode 600. I’m led to— oh, we’re laughing at each other. I’m led to believe we’re doing something. Do I have the time or mental bandwidth to deal with this? Time will tell. Come join us where I—
Chris [00:28:25]:
It might be a bit lame.
Sam [00:28:27]:
Maybe I’ll have a mental breakdown on the 600th episode. Ah, that’d be an experience. Oh gosh. Anyway, until next time, I’m Sam.
Chris [00:28:37]:
I’m Chris.
Sam [00:28:38]:
See ya.
Chris [00:28:38]:
Bye
Where you can find us
Get Patreon Perks
Our Facebook Page
Visit us on Instagram
Chris’s Website
Sam’s Website