0:00

Brad, I think I bought old guy shoes by accident.

0:03

Again? What do you mean again? Look,

0:06

man, I have bad news about your old guy

0:08

status. Look, I have, I have, I work, I

0:11

work cool. I wore Sombas for a long time.

0:13

Then I switched to Stan Smith. Yeah. You wore

0:15

open source file sharing on your feet. I

0:18

mean, kind of. Yeah. But also like indoor soccer

0:20

shoes, I guess, technically is what they are. Oh,

0:22

those are. Wow. I've never. Oh, oh, oh, it's

0:24

a, that's a, that isn't a DDS type of

0:26

shoe. It's a specific W

0:28

toe. Not,

0:31

not the Clyde with the round toe,

0:33

but the W toe front with

0:35

the five stripes and usually white is this.

0:37

I've been doing Stan Smith's for the last

0:39

little bit. Yeah. No, those are classic. Yeah.

0:42

It's a good shoe. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So

0:44

those are not your old guy shoes to

0:46

be clear. No, no, no. So I look,

0:49

I've started doing a thing where I have a pair of

0:51

shoes that I just wear around the house that I don't

0:53

really wear outside because I can't walk around barefoot because my

0:55

feet hurt. If I do that. Okay. I was going to

0:57

say that's the only way it's acceptable to wear

0:59

shoes in the house at this point, at least around

1:01

here. Well, we had a dog for a long time.

1:03

So the dog poops in the yard and then walks

1:06

in. We don't wash your feet. So I assume like

1:08

I'm not worried about cleanliness of the floors. Fair. I,

1:10

however, like during the pandemic, when I didn't leave the house

1:12

at all for a long time, I bought a pair of

1:14

these cloud foam shoes because they popped up on Amazon one

1:16

day and they were like 30 bucks. I

1:19

was like, these look awesome. They were slip on Adidas.

1:22

Like they had like a little elastic things over the

1:24

arch. They kind of held in place and didn't flop

1:27

around like a sandal or something or a clog and

1:29

they were great. And then I've worn out and

1:31

they don't make those anymore because they update them every year. So

1:33

I bought, I didn't buy this year's

1:35

version because those were like 90 bucks and that's more

1:38

than I'm paying for this, but I bought last year's

1:40

version, which were cheap the other day and I got

1:42

them and they're old guy shoes. Wait, aren't they the

1:44

same kind? How did that happen? The design changes every

1:46

year. I can hold it up.

1:48

But like the, the upshot is. Let's real

1:51

time gauge your flexibility. Can you, can

1:53

you get your foot into frame? I just

1:55

took it off. So here's the old one.

1:57

Okay. The old one's gray. That's like a

1:59

phone. maybe

10:00

three, if you were fancy, had a big

10:02

ball in the bottom and you rolled it on

10:04

a neoprene mat

10:06

on your desktop and

10:08

they were basically all the same. Like

10:11

there were some that were better than others. Some had click,

10:13

some of the buttons were less

10:15

likely to double click. Sometimes the

10:17

mouse wheel would be a little bit stickier, a

10:20

little bit less sticky, whatever. And

10:23

then in 1999, the

10:25

year was 1999, a scrappy

10:28

software company in Redmond,

10:30

Washington. Upstart Hardware Maker. An

10:33

upstart hardware maker released the

10:36

IntelliMouse Explorer. To be

10:38

fair, I don't know how early Microsoft was in

10:40

hardware at this point. They obviously didn't start as

10:42

a hardware company. This was around the

10:44

time that I remember hearing though, like,

10:46

hey, Microsoft hardware is actually quite good, you know, cause

10:49

this was very much in the era of the Microsoft

10:51

with a dollar sign, Microsoft shit, you know,

10:54

everybody hated Microsoft. You went to slash. There

10:56

was their, their Microsoft stories had a little icon

10:58

of Bill Gates dressed up like a Borg on

11:01

it. Right. Like, like Microsoft was

11:03

widely seen as a brand to avoid, but then like

11:05

around the time this mouse came out and some

11:07

of the keyboards at this time, people were like, oh

11:09

yeah, like Microsoft hardware is actually like surprisingly quite

11:11

good. Yeah. So they had made a

11:13

mouse for a while. They'd made mice for a while. They were

11:16

making game pads and game controllers. Like this is when we were

11:18

starting to get into the force feedback era and seeing some weird

11:20

force feedback, joysticks and wheels and stuff like that for

11:23

them. But the Intel

11:25

a mouse Explorer was the sequel to their original

11:27

Intel a mouse. It was a, the Intel a

11:29

mouse was the first mouse with a wheel with

11:31

a scroll wheel. Okay. That was going

11:33

to be one of my questions is if the, if the

11:35

scroll wheel predated the optical sensor, I could not remember, but

11:37

did that actually happen around the same time? Yeah. So

11:40

the scroll wheel happened a few years before they rolled it out

11:42

as a, Hey, you can now this

11:44

is, this is for making it easier to

11:46

go up and down in your windows, which

11:49

I am as always with Microsoft, I

11:51

assume that they had some user research. Cause even back

11:53

then they were still, they were really good at user

11:55

research and they saw that people

11:57

moving the cursor over to the, to the

11:59

side. sidebar was a

12:01

problem. It's funny in retrospect, right? Sure.

12:04

Now that I think about it, I guess the rise of the

12:06

scroll wheel mirrored the rise of the web. Yeah,

12:08

100%. Because people were doing documents, obviously,

12:10

like people were writing doc files and stuff on

12:12

their PCs, but you don't scroll those up and

12:15

down that much. And you page up and down

12:17

or you're just typing to scroll those. The very

12:20

long form document that you need to

12:22

scroll vertically rapidly was pretty much started

12:24

with the web, right? Yep. One-headed scrolling

12:26

invented with the dawn of the web.

12:29

You can snicker for a moment and then we'll move on. I'm

12:31

just going to let that one pass. But yeah,

12:33

so the mouse wheel would have been out for

12:36

a while. The Intel Mouse Explorer was a fairly

12:38

standard. Sorry, it's a fairly standard designed by modern

12:40

standards, but it was pretty revolutionary at the time.

12:42

It wasn't beige. It was this kind of silvery

12:44

metallic. It had two

12:46

main buttons, a clickable scroll wheel, just like

12:48

the original Intel Mouse. It

12:51

added two thumb buttons, which was interesting.

12:54

I think by default, they bound to

12:56

forward and back. Yes. Your

12:58

browser controls. Yeah, I mean, even more

13:00

than the scroll wheel, those side buttons

13:02

were a thousand percent just browser forward

13:04

and back buttons. Yeah, they were. I

13:07

think that's why it had Explorer in the name, because it was

13:09

designed to work with Internet Explorer, the

13:11

hot new browser from those scrappy kids

13:13

up in Redmond. The

13:16

mouse wheel had been was super

13:19

useful. This was the I think the Intel

13:21

Mouse is where the scroll three lines default

13:23

started. Okay. Because Logitech mice

13:25

would scroll single line and tell them

13:27

ice would scroll multiple lines and

13:30

that stayed the way it was until like track pads

13:32

took over 10, 15 years later. What's

13:35

your what's your what's your scroll style these

13:37

days? So clicky. I like a I use

13:39

a G Pro, a logic G Pro super

13:41

light. Is that one of the

13:43

ones that can kind of release the tension on the

13:46

wheel and just let it glide? No, it's the ultimate

13:48

light. So they get rid of that mechanism. So

13:50

mine is mine's clicky. I'm a clicky wheel.

13:53

Yes. No, I also may be

13:55

surprised to hear. I like the old style clicky, but mine

13:57

is one of the ones that will just scroll infinitely if

13:59

you let it. I like a

14:01

weighted spinner, but not for, not for

14:03

games. Anyway. Um, the

14:06

mouse had a red tail light. It was pretty exciting.

14:08

Yeah. I remember that being kind of a big selling

14:10

point. It's like, look at it. It's glowing. Yeah. The

14:12

whole bottom was this translucent plastic and it had a

14:15

red tail light because it was the first mouse that

14:17

had an optical sensor. Well, asterisk.

14:21

It was the first mouse that had an optical

14:23

sensor that didn't require some special track, uh, mouse

14:25

pad. Uh, there were a bunch of, uh, mice

14:28

that predated it, uh, that shipped from

14:31

like sun, sun microsystems shipped with their

14:33

spark stations, an optical mouse pad that

14:35

had a special reflective mouse, mouse surface

14:38

that would reflect a signal down

14:40

into the mouse and then back up into the, into

14:42

the sensor on the mouse on the mouse. Uh,

14:45

but those mouse pads sucked. You couldn't use them

14:47

for games. Really. They, the, the thing slid around

14:50

on the desk like crazy. It was a, it

14:53

was nice cause you didn't have to clean it. But

14:55

other than that, not, uh, not a mainstream product, not

14:57

something normal people were going to buy. Yeah. I went

14:59

and checked. I mean, you're probably unsurprised to hear that

15:01

optical mice concept of the optical mouse had been demonstrated

15:04

as early as like 1980 that I think MIT and

15:06

Xerox, like

15:08

independently both were working on it at the time,

15:10

but obviously took, you know, as usual,

15:13

took a couple of decades for all the parts

15:15

and stuff that was required

15:17

to reach consumer grade pricing. So,

15:20

so why does an

15:22

optical mouse, why does the first, oh, it costs $80,

15:25

which was kind of a lot for a mouse back then. Yes.

15:28

But also when you think about how I'm

15:30

thinking back to the mice I owned before one of these, oh

15:33

yeah, extremely worth it. Like

15:36

I remember, I think I remember at the time when I got

15:38

one of that, although I did not get this one. I got

15:40

the, the Intel mouse optical, I believe, which we'll get to cause

15:42

there were a bunch of variants that we'll talk about, but

15:45

I remember by the time I got it, I

15:47

was like, whatever, I'll just take whatever Monday, take

15:49

whatever you want. Give me one of these things.

15:52

Like ball mice are so awful. Yeah. So, so,

15:54

um, why does this rate product

15:56

that changed an entire market? Yeah,

15:58

I'm going to argue that this. house spawned

16:02

pretty much the entire gaming specialty hardware

16:04

market in indirectly. So

16:07

pretty broad claim, but I'll hear you out. Yeah.

16:10

There was, there was before this, the razor had

16:13

released their first gaming mouse, which was the, they

16:15

called the boom slang. It was a big wide

16:17

flat guy with a ball. It

16:20

was a ball mouse, mechanical mouse, two buttons. I think it

16:22

had a wheel. Wow. I don't

16:25

think I realized razor had been around that long. Yeah.

16:27

Razor razor had been around for a minute. It may

16:29

have been the same summer, but it was like the

16:31

razor, the boom slang had been out before this. Okay.

16:34

This was a PS2 and USB

16:36

mouse also worth mentioning. The reason

16:38

this was a big deal is because it moved

16:40

the fidelity of mouse tracking from

16:43

a mechanical sensor to a digital sensor. And

16:46

we should talk about how mice worked. I

16:48

think before we go any further, it

16:51

makes it's important. A mechanical

16:53

mouse had a ball in the bottom. It was in a little

16:55

well. There was a cap on the

16:57

bottom of the well that kind of held the ball

16:59

in place and it floated in this, in this space.

17:02

But when you push the mouse on a surface, the

17:04

ball would roll and that would roll two rollers

17:07

that were placed on an X and Y

17:09

axis facing each other, like a 90 degrees

17:12

off of each other inside the mouse. Those

17:15

little rollers, when the ball rolled would turn these

17:17

big wheels and the wheels were usually attached to

17:20

a photo diode. Um,

17:22

so the wheels had holes in them. And then there

17:24

was a photo diode that straddled the wheel and

17:27

one side would produce a little bit of light and the

17:29

other side had a light sensor. And the, the

17:31

wheel would have a great like a screen, almost

17:34

like a series of dark and light of holes

17:36

and, and I guess not

17:38

holes. I don't know, spokes, basically. Um,

17:41

so when you, when the wheel spun, when

17:44

the rotor spun, the wheel would turn

17:46

and the light would pass through the holes and,

17:48

and the pattern, the speed of the light and

17:50

the dark would tell the mouse

17:53

logic, how fast it was moving in the X or

17:55

Y direction. Now, the

17:58

upshot of this, and there were, there were. other ways that people

18:00

did this, like it wasn't all wheels shining through lights.

18:03

I think actually the boom slang used a slightly different

18:05

mechanism, but it was still a

18:07

roller turns wheel, wheel triggers an electric

18:09

sensor that sends a signal that can

18:12

be interpreted as acceleration and velocity. Um,

18:16

the upshot of this is

18:18

that the size of the holes and the size of

18:20

the wheel and thus the physical space inside the mouse

18:23

determined, imparted a

18:25

hard upper limit to the mechanical

18:27

mouse precision. Okay. That was, that was going

18:29

to be exactly my question is that the,

18:31

the, the, the DPI, the fidelity of these

18:34

things, I think had to be pretty limited.

18:36

It was very low, um, especially by modern

18:38

standards. And the other thing is the slippage

18:40

of the ball against the rollers also caused,

18:43

um, like problems with acceleration. So if you move

18:45

the mouse too quickly, the ball would just slide

18:47

in that slide on the surface. If your mouse

18:49

pad, what didn't have enough friction, if the ball

18:51

in the mouse pad didn't have a friction, if

18:53

you've got enough hand gunk into the ball of

18:55

the mouse, then it would slide on the rollers

18:57

and, and you would lose, lose precision for people who

18:59

were not alive at the time. Like every one of

19:01

these had like a little kind of turn, like a

19:03

dial turn release mechanism where you could

19:05

kind of pop a door off and take it out,

19:07

take the ball out because you had to clean that

19:10

thing quite regularly. You had to clean the ball and

19:12

you had to scrape goo off of the rollers, which

19:14

is the bad part, dust and gunk. It was like

19:16

belly button gunk. Yeah. Ugh. Um,

19:18

what, what, what was the, what was the composition

19:20

of the average mouse ball? Like they were the

19:22

kind of like silicone, hardcover. Yeah. Something like that.

19:25

They were usually pretty heavy, pretty, pretty weighty, pretty

19:27

dense. I remember. Well, cause they had to be a certain amount

19:29

of, they had to be a certain amount of mass to like,

19:32

to the, they needed to ride and make them

19:34

make the rollers move even when

19:37

they were being pushed up by the surface underneath

19:39

them. You also like, it's hard. It's, it's funny

19:41

thinking about it now. You needed a pretty even

19:44

surface. Like if your desk was uneven, the ball

19:46

would lose, would skip and, and like you would

19:48

lose traction. It was, it was, anyway,

19:52

fast movements, sudden movements, sudden stops. All

19:54

of that were bad for these mice.

19:56

And as a result, like we.

20:00

This is why a lot of the early shooters didn't have

20:02

a head shots, I think, is because you couldn't actually land

20:04

them with those with any kind of precision. You get a

20:06

fair amount of jitter also when you picked it up, you

20:08

know, because that jostled the ball and that would move,

20:11

move the mechanics a little bit as you were lifting

20:13

and setting it down. Yeah. And you had to

20:15

clean the ball too. Nope. Most people didn't clean their balls. Make

20:19

sure you always clean your balls. Always keep your mouse balls

20:21

clean. So,

20:23

okay. Upper limit. The rotary encoders

20:25

had an upper limit that was caused by the

20:28

sensors. And, and, and just to be clear,

20:30

if we hadn't, if somebody hadn't

20:32

developed these optical sensors, there probably

20:34

would have been another advancement that gave us

20:36

better DPI on a more

20:38

mechanical process. Right. Like it's, I'm not saying that this

20:40

is the only way this could have been solved. We

20:43

could have used different kinds of sensors for the rotary

20:45

encoder is all sorts. There's a million different ways you

20:47

could solve this problem, but this is

20:49

the one we did and it worked out really well because

20:52

the way optical mice work

20:55

is you had a light source, you

20:58

had a CMOS sensor and it's

21:00

basically a little camera. And then you

21:02

had a, uh, that the signal from that

21:04

CMOS sensor got captured hundreds

21:07

or thousands of times a second. And

21:09

it got piped into a DSP, a

21:11

digital signal processor that detected differences in

21:13

those images. And by measuring

21:16

the number of pixels, the, the, the markings

21:18

on the, you know, the, the image shifted

21:20

one direction or the other, it

21:22

could infer motion of the mouse and, and was less,

21:25

there was no physical moving parts. There was no slippage

21:27

between the ball and the rollers. There was no, no

21:29

place for gunk to get. Although if you did get

21:32

like a, I had used

21:34

to get dog hair in mine and it would, that

21:36

would jack it up at all at

21:38

a horrific level. Um, but

21:41

it was a much better solution. And the

21:43

benefit is that it went from being

21:45

something that required mechanical advancements

21:48

and sensor advancements there to

21:50

just being Hey,

21:52

this is all made of Silicon and Brad, you know,

21:54

we're really good at optimizing. What's that Silicon? Yeah. That

21:56

does make sense. I mean, when I think about this

21:58

though, like it's not, 1999 was not

22:01

exactly the dark ages, but when I think about the kind of

22:03

like image processing that needs to take place to track, because

22:06

you're not just tracking change over

22:08

time, it's directional change. Like you need

22:10

very precise detection

22:12

of which direction the image is changing from frame to

22:14

frame. And I wonder like, I don't know what the

22:16

algorithms were like at the time. Is it just like

22:18

one frame compared to the previous frame or are they

22:20

doing it across multiple frames? You know what I mean?

22:23

Like thinking about the hardware that was available at the

22:25

time to do this kind of processing. My

22:27

guess is that it's gotten much more complicated in the last 20

22:29

years. Yes. And the

22:31

speed with which you need to do it to

22:34

make it feel real time and feel responsive and

22:36

accurate, feels like a lot for a

22:38

consumer device at this time, but obviously

22:40

they solved it. Yeah. So,

22:42

I mean, the upshot of this though, is that in

22:45

the 20 years since this mouse came out, 25 years since

22:47

this mouse came out, we've

22:49

gone from, hey, every

22:51

mouse has a ball with these plastics circles

22:54

on it that have holes cutting the, that

22:57

we shine light through to a $30 mouse, has

23:01

like an 8K DPI sensor. And you can

23:03

get a $70 mouse that pulls at a

23:05

thousand Hertz with a high resolution sensor wirelessly,

23:08

right? That's a lot of fidelity. That's probably

23:10

more than all, but

23:12

the highest level eSportist, eAthlete

23:16

probably is looking for. Well, I mean, yeah, we've reached a point

23:18

where on a $150 mouse, you, you've, most

23:22

people can't physically move their arm faster than

23:24

the mouse can track. Yeah. Which

23:26

is kind of crazy. And it cracks at a high

23:29

degree of accuracy. There's no slippage. There's no lag. There's

23:31

no, all of that stuff is good. I

23:35

think this might, I haven't been

23:37

able to confirm this, but my recollection is that this is

23:40

the first mouse I ever saw with more than, with the

23:42

thumb buttons too. I

23:44

think the optical sensor is the, is

23:46

the big C change here, but

23:48

I think the, the thumb buttons, the

23:51

like, we saw a massive

23:53

explosion in mice shortly after this, right? Like

23:56

both mice for work, like

23:58

the rise of the, Logitech, Logitech

24:00

started doing, they did

24:02

haptic mice. They did, uh, you

24:05

know, my mice with like, like haptics

24:07

that bumped when you moved over UI

24:09

interface stuff, or when you shot in

24:11

half-life, stuff like that. You, you

24:13

saw mice that had the free spinning wheel

24:15

that you mentioned before. You saw mice that

24:17

had, that were designed to play wow and

24:19

had like nine thumb buttons on them. I

24:21

think, wasn't there a mouse that had like

24:23

something like 20 programmable buttons at one point?

24:25

Like that, that was like deep into the

24:27

MMO heyday, I think. Yeah. You saw mice

24:29

that were modular that you could take a

24:31

chunk. There was one, there was one that I

24:33

think razor made that had three side panels.

24:36

One was like a circle. One was like that big

24:38

20, 20 button grid. And

24:40

one was just normal two buttons. You

24:42

saw ambidextrous. You saw right-handed mice. You never

24:45

saw left-handed mice cause sorry, lefties.

24:47

Uh, not my choice, but you saw, um, you

24:50

saw mice that were modular. You saw mice that you

24:52

could add weight to. Yes. So I might see could

24:54

remove weight to you. So like at one point I

24:56

reviewed a mouse that had a grate on the back

24:58

and had a little fan inside of the blue air

25:00

on your hand to keep your hand dry when

25:03

you were playing games. That seems maybe less

25:05

than practical. It sucked. It was a bad

25:07

mouse, but the upshot is,

25:09

and I realize this is like the sixth time I've said

25:11

upshot in this episode, but it

25:14

was, it was, there was in the

25:16

same way that like the game controllers and

25:18

the late nineties were out of

25:20

control and everybody was trying to develop a first

25:22

person shooter controller. Cause they thought they would then

25:25

be the flight stick for this

25:27

burgeoning market. The same thing

25:29

was happening in the mouse space. Like every crazy idea

25:32

was getting made and a lot of really interesting stuff

25:34

happened as a result of it. And I

25:36

think it all started because of this Intel

25:38

mouse Explorer one point. Oh, yeah, I think

25:40

so. Um, so should we, should we go

25:42

through the, like the product line because they're

25:44

actually like what, at least half a dozen

25:46

different Intel mouse products until a mouse branded

25:49

products, but they're fairly different. Well,

25:51

there's one really important thing to say about

25:53

this mouse before we go on. It's

25:56

that this optical sensor kind of sucked. Oh,

25:59

okay. It wasn't great. It was, it was,

26:01

it was, you didn't have to

26:03

clean it, which was really nice. It was fine

26:05

for games. If you move, if you were like

26:07

a low sensitivity, uh, lots

26:10

of big movements player, right? If you had a big

26:12

mouse pad and you were moving your

26:14

whole arm constantly across your thing, if you were like

26:16

a little just flick of the wrist person, probably

26:19

not a great mouse for you. And there was a lot of talk

26:21

on in the community at the time

26:24

when I reviewed, I can't, I think

26:26

I reviewed this, the followup to this, the second gen

26:28

of this, not the first gen, cause I wasn't a

26:30

maximum PC yet at this time. I, uh, I

26:33

did not realize how many

26:35

people were quick flick people at the time.

26:38

And a lot of that was because I was

26:41

using, I was used to using balls, right? So

26:43

I was using slow mouse movements and all that.

26:45

And a lot of people had learned to kind

26:47

of counteract the acceleration of the ball and work

26:49

within that so they could do quick, quick, quick,

26:52

quick turns at really high sensitivity. Anyway, doesn't

26:55

matter. But it was

26:57

like the sensors improved dramatically in a really short period

26:59

of time because like I said, they're silicon and we're

27:01

good at making C we got much better at making

27:03

CMOS sensors over the 10 years following. Cause we started

27:06

putting them in like we started

27:08

making phone camera, not phone cameras, uh, point

27:10

shoot cameras out of CMOS sensors and DSLRs

27:12

eventually got made out of CMOS sensors. So

27:14

now we're really, really good. It turns out

27:16

at making CMOS sensors. Same thing for DSPs

27:19

anyway. Uh, they, they,

27:21

they spawned a whole bunch of other Intel amounts

27:24

out of this. Uh, the first

27:26

one, uh, was the 2000 telemouse optical

27:28

with Intel. Intel.

27:32

I that's the ambidextrous one. Yeah. So that's the one I

27:34

had. And it was kind of a lighter, it was a

27:36

beige. It was beige with red highlights. I think it still

27:38

had the tail light though. I don't know if I'd call,

27:40

I think it was more of a, um, all

27:43

right. Maybe maybe cream

27:45

or maybe more of a grayish

27:47

white. It was, it didn't look

27:49

like corny beige white. Like you expected

27:51

from your shitty beige box, no name,

27:53

our case or whatever. It felt like

27:55

a cool kind of white gray kind

27:57

of thing. Yeah. It felt futuristic.

28:00

I don't know how I ended up with that one

28:02

because it seems like the, the until a mouse Explorer

28:04

with the, the Ridge, the hump is

28:07

the one everybody looks back on fondly, but I

28:09

liked the optical quite well. Well, the Explorer was

28:11

also, it was an, it was one of the

28:13

early ergonomic designs, right? Cause a lot of the

28:15

others were flat and small and you weren't, you

28:17

weren't supposed to be using them for eight hours

28:20

a day, right? Yeah. They released a version of

28:22

the original Intel amounts, the beige one with

28:24

an optical sensor and sort of a ball almost immediately.

28:27

Couldn't find a date on that actually. Um,

28:30

uh, but I did find the original press

28:32

release for the Intel a mouse. Yeah.

28:35

I, the deeper I get into like kind of data

28:37

preservation, data archiving, you know, going back and looking for

28:39

not just my old data, but also just across the

28:41

internet, you know, stuff like this that

28:44

is rapidly disappearing. I can't believe Microsoft still has

28:46

like all of their old press releases in the

28:48

same, the same modern interface.

28:51

This thing is literally dated April 19th, 1999. Microsoft

28:54

sleek, new Intel mouse Explorer and

28:56

Intel AI technology tossed out the

28:58

mouse ball today at comdex. It's

29:01

kind of amazing. This is when we saw two comdexes,

29:03

this was a spring comdex, not fall comdex. Um,

29:07

but they talk, they talk about gone are

29:09

the mouse ball and other moving parts inside

29:11

the mouse Microsoft Intel. I equips the Intel

29:13

amounts Explorer with an optical sensor and digital

29:15

signal processor, helping it avoid its traditional enemies,

29:17

such as crumbs, dust, and grime. It'll

29:20

check movement on virtually any service as long as it, well,

29:22

they don't say this, but it was as long as it

29:24

wasn't shiny. If it was glass or metal, it

29:26

was a hard no go. Yes. And can

29:28

you imagine using a computer designed in 1968

29:30

said Tim McDonough, mice

29:33

mouse line product manager at Microsoft. Yet we

29:35

think nothing of using 30 year old

29:37

mouse technology. This

29:40

is, this is some real Hank Hill salesmanship

29:42

here. Yeah. Uh, the fact that they marketed

29:45

it, they tried to brand the optical sensor

29:47

as they don't say, I guess they do

29:49

say optical sensor in here, but they don't

29:51

say Intel I, they don't, they don't say,

29:53

uh, they're trying to make it

29:55

a thing in the header. Yes. And tell a new

29:57

approach and a smarter mouse and tell a mouse. just

30:00

rolls off the tongue. IntelliEye,

30:03

like two vowels up against each other like that. It's hard.

30:06

It's a hard day. That was an

30:08

off day in the marketing department, I'm

30:11

afraid. In addition to IntelliEye optical tracking

30:13

technology and radical design, IntelliMouse Explorer features

30:15

two customizable function buttons that add an

30:17

unprecedented level of convenience and flexibility. The

30:20

buttons located on the left

30:22

side of the mouse provide effortless internet

30:24

navigation with forward and back default settings.

30:26

But they can be remapped easily to other useful

30:28

program commands, such as print, copy, paste, or save.

30:31

Can you imagine putting print on your thumb button? That

30:33

would be annoying. You

30:35

know, I guess I could see use for it. You're working

30:37

in an office maybe, and have a gaming mouse. And I

30:40

guess I have to print a lot. Looking

30:42

at this thing now, like it's kind of crazy

30:44

to me that I somehow ended up with that

30:46

ambidextrous optical with the back and forward buttons on

30:48

either side of the mouse, because these

30:50

days I feel like it's like buttons around your

30:53

thumb is where back and forward go now, right? So

30:55

like, I think I was like, I was like thumb

30:57

and pinky finger to go forward and back at that

30:59

time. And that's just kind of weird. I don't know.

31:01

Look, it's nice that they make the ambidextrous

31:04

mouse for the left-handers, but I'm not interested. I

31:06

guess I'm using one right now, but don't tell

31:08

anybody. Yeah, it

31:10

was, so they made the, let's see, they

31:13

made the Intellivus, the ambidextrous one, they updated it in 2001,

31:17

upgrading the sensor from a 1500 frames per second

31:20

sensor, which gave you a maximum flick speed of

31:22

1.5 meters per second to

31:24

a 6,000 frames per second sensor. I don't

31:26

know how fast the flick speed was on

31:28

that because they didn't care about that by

31:31

that point. They updated it again in 2006. This

31:34

is the famed Intellivus Explorer 3.0. This

31:37

is, I think maybe the most

31:40

controversial sensor because by that time other people

31:42

were doing better stuff for games. It

31:44

had a little bit of a stair steppy where

31:46

it would move you, where you could move

31:49

vertically and horizontally, but it was on different ticks.

31:51

So there was weird stuff happening there. It

31:54

was at 9,000 frames per second sensor in 2006. And

31:57

I think 3,000 DPS. but

32:00

I'm not a hundred percent on that. Okay. 2006

32:02

thinking back is I think, I feel like other,

32:04

other mice, other brands had caught up pretty dramatically

32:06

by that point. Cause I think that's right around

32:08

the time I got my Logitech MX 518, which

32:11

is like probably my favorite mouse of all

32:13

time. If I really had to put it

32:15

down on a list. I think if this

32:17

was, um, if we were talking, just, if we

32:20

were talking about the game, the

32:22

thing that made gaming, nice, a real thing,

32:24

it's the 518 probably. Yeah. Right.

32:26

That was the first one that I looked at. I

32:28

was like, Oh, this is actually a really good mouse.

32:31

Yeah. Like it felt really great in the hand with

32:33

the thumb grooves and everything, like for action games. Uh,

32:35

obviously like, you know, they owe a pretty significant debt

32:37

to Microsoft for, for kicking the stuff off. The

32:39

518 came out in, I

32:43

think it was 2006 also or 2005. Sorry.

32:46

Right before the 3.0 Intel mouse

32:48

Explorer. Yeah. And the 518 was

32:51

the first mouse that I saw with a

32:53

variable DPI where you could

32:55

adjust the DPI on the, on the unit. So you

32:57

could, there were two buttons that could make the DPI

32:59

up or go up or down, which it's

33:02

funny in the modern era. I don't ever do it all at

33:05

the time playing like battlefield and stuff like that.

33:07

I remember turning the DPI down to snipe. Really?

33:10

I always thought it was a cool feature in

33:12

concept that I never felt like I could actually

33:14

use practically on the fly. Like I don't know

33:16

what the cognitive effect is of being used to

33:18

a certain like input sort of tick rate or

33:20

smoothness, you know, like, like your, your

33:22

brain gets thrown off very quickly. Right. Like

33:24

there's a muscle memory thing, right? Yeah. Or

33:26

like a, like a perception memory sort of

33:29

something, the perception muscle there. Like I've

33:31

been playing fallout one on stream recently.

33:34

And because it's such an old game, the mouse sampling,

33:36

the control is extremely different. Oh yeah. And I don't,

33:38

I don't bother to change my windows settings cause I

33:40

don't want to have to redo everything afterwards. But when

33:42

I come out of that game, after two or three

33:44

hours of playing it, the, the, the

33:46

mouse and windows feels like it's

33:48

broken. Like it's insanely fast. No, no sluggish

33:51

because it's so much faster. It's so much

33:53

more sensitive. Wow. I think it might

33:55

be that there's no mouse acceleration and fallout

33:58

and like actually mouse acceleration. be its

34:00

own topic to talk about here because I think that was

34:02

also probably getting a lot better or becoming a lot more

34:04

widespread at this time. But yeah, like when I, when I

34:06

go back into windows from fallout, like the, the mouse, the

34:09

input feels completely wrong because

34:11

I've just for two or three hours, I've been doing something

34:13

different. So like the idea of changing

34:15

DPI mid shooter match always

34:17

just felt like it would throw me off too

34:19

much. Do you leave acceleration on? I do.

34:22

I just, whatever windows is, the default is what I

34:24

can, you even change that at this point, the can

34:26

anymore. I don't, I don't know if they still expose

34:29

that winner options, enhance pointer

34:31

precision. That's off. I, it also depends on which

34:33

control panel you're in. Cause I assumed they're still

34:35

both in here. Yeah. They're, oh, they're both in

34:37

here. I don't know which one overrides, which yeah.

34:40

I don't see acceleration in here anymore, which I

34:42

think is gone means it's gone. Yeah. I think

34:44

you're right. Actually, you shouldn't need it on a

34:46

modern mouse. Cause the DPI is such that you

34:48

can move, you know, move from side

34:51

to side across your screen without her. Yeah.

34:53

So actually that's something I wanted to take the opportunity

34:55

of this episode to ask you about. Cause you probably know,

34:57

is there a sweet spot to be

35:00

found or is, or could you help explain the

35:02

relationship between DPI on the mouse and sensitivity in

35:04

your operating system and like any other variables you

35:06

can tweak there and like what the, what's the

35:08

best, like, is it like high

35:10

DPI, low sensitivity in software, the best way

35:13

to go or vice versa? Like what, what

35:15

are the best practices there? So there's probably

35:17

a whole episode here and I'm, I don't,

35:20

I said it, uh, five,

35:22

six, seven years ago when I started getting into pubg

35:24

pretty hard, uh, I do

35:26

high DPI and very, very low sensitivity. Okay. That's

35:29

kind of, that's what I've moved to recently. My,

35:31

my mouse, uh, I don't know what the high

35:33

DPI is on this. I've got a G five

35:35

Oh two X logic tech now. Yeah. I'm not

35:38

sure. It's like 20,000 probably at

35:40

least. Okay. I've, I, I am now defaulting to like

35:42

3,600 DPI. Yeah. I, I, I'll

35:47

be honest. I haven't put the logic tech software

35:49

back on this new computer in the nine

35:52

months. Um, I think

35:54

that it, uh, I think that I

35:56

usually do four, five thousand six thousand, something

35:59

like that. much more than that.

36:01

And it moves too fast, even at the

36:03

lowest possible setting in windows. But the idea,

36:05

the idea is you want

36:07

there to be no judder on like you

36:11

want, you want every pixel

36:13

on windows on your screen to have

36:15

a, have multiple samples on the mouse.

36:18

So you get really, it's like, it's kind of like, it's

36:21

kind of like AA for mouse movements.

36:23

Sure. Anti-aliasing. Yeah. Yes.

36:25

That took me a second, but I got

36:27

it. I just got the spec 25,600 DPI.

36:30

Is that right? Yeah.

36:33

My super light will do 30,000. I

36:35

think I can't remember. It's 28,000. What

36:38

have I been doing all the time? Well, so it's,

36:40

there's two things. There's two, okay. This is, I actually,

36:42

I think there is probably a whole episode here cause

36:44

there's also the sample rate, which is usually

36:46

limited by what your USB bus can handle, which is

36:48

usually like a thousand samples a second. The

36:51

thing is that mouse is going to sample inside that

36:53

more often than that a thousand times a second on

36:56

most high end mice, I believe. Um,

37:00

I think, I think if people are interested in

37:02

this, please leave comments and we'll, we'll do a

37:04

full episode. I like, I kind of want to

37:07

get somebody, maybe we see if Wes comes on

37:09

and talks about how to set up the mouse the

37:11

right way. Brad's making a really good face over

37:13

there. I'm making a fair, I just changed the mouse DPI to

37:16

20,000. Yeah. Can you, can

37:18

you see the mouse as it goes across the

37:20

screen? This cursor is out of control. Yeah. Yep.

37:22

You're not going to be able to play fallout

37:25

anymore. I'm sorry. I might have to tweak some

37:27

sensitivity stuff. Okay. But, but, but by and large,

37:29

though, you do recommend like super high DPI and

37:31

then just turn the, set the sensitivity slider way

37:33

down. I do super high DPI and really low

37:35

sensitivity. Okay. And then I, I basically bring the

37:37

sensitivity as high as I can keep it and

37:39

get the sensitivity in the games to be where

37:42

I want. Usually when I have a

37:44

game, the sensitivity is like 0.1. If it's a

37:46

zero to one scale, like

37:48

1% to 5% is where my sweet spot is. Anyway,

37:51

I have set a 225 six now. It

37:53

is unusable until I tweak it. Yeah.

37:55

You're going to have to turn it down.

37:58

Um, so yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah,

38:00

it knocked loose all of this, right? Yes.

38:02

Like this optical sensor and the fact

38:04

that we went from literally

38:07

a ball that spins a wheel

38:10

through a photo diode to

38:14

light illuminating a sensor and the sensor sending

38:16

data to a DSP and the DSP doing

38:18

some pretty simple diffs, right? It's like, hey,

38:20

this part of the image is the same,

38:22

this part's different, so it's moved this many

38:24

pixels and that translates to an X

38:26

and Y movement is

38:29

pretty straightforward. Now there was a bunch of stuff that came

38:31

out that's kind of interesting. Like you asked

38:33

about laser mice for a

38:35

brief moment in what, like 2000, mid 2000s,

38:37

I think laser mice got popular. Yeah. I remember

38:39

there being, maybe this was very marketing driven. I

38:42

know there was actual technology under the hood, but

38:44

I feel like, I feel like a

38:46

laser mouse quote unquote was a big, was a big

38:48

like front of box bullet

38:50

point. Yeah. So at some point. So

38:52

obviously once the sensors got to a certain point, you

38:55

were probably good. Like, for most

38:57

people, you know, your G

38:59

five or G nine from like 15 years

39:02

ago at this point, it's probably, probably fine.

39:04

However, the red illuminated, or

39:07

I guess now we use mostly infrared lights for

39:10

optical mice. Eventually they work

39:14

really well on opaque and, and, uh,

39:17

opaque and translucent surfaces. They don't work

39:19

on anything with that's reflective at all.

39:22

Um, so, uh,

39:24

a couple of companies built a sensor

39:27

that basically instead of using a red

39:29

led to illuminate, used an infrared laser

39:31

that shot out the bottom and it, it

39:34

basically gave a finer control

39:36

over the reflectance so that it

39:38

would work on reflective surfaces and

39:41

even would illuminate into the reflective surfaces. So

39:43

like you'll, the sensor would pick up light

39:45

inside the glass theoretically, if you

39:47

were on like a glass desktop. Now, was

39:50

it good for games no, absolutely not. But

39:53

could you sit on a glass top table in your

39:55

hotel room when you were traveling with your laptop and

39:57

use the mouse 100% A

44:00

couple of just random questions and other little things to

44:02

touch on before we go. You may

44:04

have mentioned this. What is the exact

44:06

method of illumination that's being used now? Because if

44:08

you pick up your fancy modern gaming

44:11

mouse, there

44:13

is no light. There is nothing there. So

44:16

is it entirely some spectrum that

44:18

is invisible to the eye? It is indeed. Yeah,

44:20

it's infrared generally. If you aim your phone camera

44:22

at it, you'll see it glow

44:24

a little bit red when you look down the hole.

44:26

It's also a lot less light because the modern CMOS

44:28

sensors are a lot more light sensitive than they were

44:31

in 1999. Sure, which helps

44:33

with battery life, I'm sure, for the wireless ones. It

44:35

does indeed. And the bummer though is we don't have

44:37

the cool underlighting that we

44:39

had. I know. Because that little glowing

44:41

red tail was effective

44:44

marketing at the time. The other

44:46

thing is the radio has changed too. Because this

44:48

is one of those things that we originally thought

44:50

Bluetooth was going to be really good for. And

44:52

it turns out Bluetooth radios are fine

44:54

for normal desktop mouse use, but probably

44:57

a little bit slow for high

44:59

end. This is why

45:02

Logitech has the charging pad for gaming

45:04

mice. Because a normal desktop

45:06

mouse that updates a few hundred times

45:08

a second will run on a

45:10

AA battery for a month. A gaming

45:12

mouse will run for four days, for five days, or

45:15

eight days, or something on that same period. So

45:18

you do want, if you're

45:20

going to play games with a mouse, it's

45:22

worth getting something that uses a different, if

45:24

it's going to be wireless, you want something

45:26

that's going to run at a higher frequency

45:29

radio, or higher frequency update than your typical

45:31

Bluetooth radio will. Yeah, which is, if I'm

45:33

reading this correctly, roughly like 125 to 500

45:35

hertz is about the best you're

45:38

going to do on a Bluetooth mouse from the looks

45:40

of things. Versus

45:43

easily over 1,000. The

45:45

other thing that happens on non-gaming mice is that

45:47

they're really aggressive about when they go to sleep

45:50

and power profiles. So if you're sitting there and you're

45:52

like, say you're playing Counter-Strike

45:54

and you're covering a corner, and you're

45:56

guarding your corner, you're just holding it.

46:00

holding that corner, holding that corner, you don't move your mouse at

46:02

all because you don't want to bloom out your cursor. Your

46:04

mouse goes to sleep and dude pops out and

46:06

you press the button and the mouse wakes up and it doesn't register

46:08

that for his shot and you're dead. Fun. Yeah.

46:12

Mouse never let the mouse sleep. Yeah.

46:15

The only other thing I was going to touch on real quick, going

46:17

back to the like straight up back to 99, the

46:20

switch from PS2 to USB. I know you touched

46:22

on that, like the Nutella mouse. Is

46:25

it shipping an adapter or is that what it was? I

46:27

think so. I

46:29

don't actually have mine anymore. It's in the garage someplace. I couldn't

46:32

find it when I went on the look, but

46:34

I believe it had a USB to PS2

46:36

adapter. That's what I remember. It might've gone

46:38

the other way because sometimes they shipped the

46:40

other way where you had a PS2 that

46:43

dongle that plugged into USB. But I think Microsoft was

46:45

usually the, I

46:47

think Logitech shipped, don't quote

46:50

me on this, but I think Logitech shipped

46:52

PS2 to USB and

46:54

Microsoft shipped USB to PS2 because they

46:56

were usually pretty pro USB at Microsoft.

46:59

Yes, that would make a lot of

47:01

sense. But the thing

47:03

to remember is USB in that era

47:06

didn't update. The polling rate was pretty low.

47:09

It wasn't until later that we figured out how to overclock

47:11

the polling rate and get up to 1000 Hertz. That's

47:14

the thing I was going to bring up. I feel like

47:16

I remember that being done for the PS2 port as well.

47:18

Do you remember around this time? I think there were tweaks

47:20

you could do for both because I feel like I also

47:22

remember you could up the polling rate on the PS2 port

47:24

in Windows for smoother mouse. It

47:26

was just adjustable in the BIOS I thought. Maybe that's

47:29

what it was. There was a North grid. There

47:31

was a setting that you could do. It may have just, it

47:33

also just ran faster than USB did. Yeah, so I

47:35

feel like to this day, maybe this is

47:38

just people being set in their ways. I

47:40

feel like I still see some pro gamers

47:42

who cling to PS2 ports from ice because

47:44

they're like, they're basically wired more

47:46

directly to the CPU than having to go through the

47:48

whole USB stack. I think that most of the modern,

47:51

my guess is that your modern hardware is

47:55

going to be better than that in every, this

47:57

is like the LCD situation where for a long

47:59

time, monitors were worse and

48:01

then, then, then CRTs and

48:03

then suddenly like 10 years after

48:05

LCDs kind of took off, you

48:08

looked up and you're like, Oh, these monitors are actually

48:10

better and pretty much every way except for maybe phosphor

48:12

glow. Yeah. Um, I think

48:14

you're in a similar situation there, but I could be

48:16

wrong. I'd be if, if there are any pros in

48:18

the audience that are hanging onto their BS2 mice, I

48:21

would love to hear from you. Definitely. Um,

48:24

but yeah, so it's, I, I thought this was, I

48:26

was kind of surprised by this. I hadn't, I hadn't

48:30

like, we, we had this on the list for this feature

48:33

years ago and I, I kind of, we

48:36

started talking about it and I was like, this is

48:38

a really interesting, this is, this is like

48:40

what a, who would have thought when

48:42

this weird mouse with a red tail

48:44

light and that was silver, like nobody

48:46

made silver hardware back then. Yeah. When

48:49

this, it looked, it looked almost metallic when it came

48:51

out, it was like weirdly humped. You,

48:53

you picked it up and you're like, Oh, this looks weird. But then you

48:55

used it and you're like, Oh, this is very comfortable. I like this. It

48:57

was, it was, it worked for people who

48:59

claw gripped and worked for people who palm gripped, had

49:02

okay buttons. As I

49:04

recall, the wheel was pretty squishy, but, uh,

49:07

you didn't have to clean the finger gunk out

49:10

of the wib, the ball every day. And that

49:12

made all the difference. Like just to be

49:14

clear, cleaning your mouse, cleaning

49:16

your rollers was like every day, every other day. If

49:18

you use the computer all day, it was awful. Yeah.

49:21

Brody, grody, really gross.

49:23

And again, not

49:25

to harp on it, but like the idea that it was

49:27

Microsoft that ushered in this change and brought out, brought about

49:29

this massive advancement in mice

49:31

technology still, still to this day, kind

49:33

of crazy. Well, they say

49:36

what you will about Microsoft. I mean, they

49:39

had their problems in that, in that time period, especially, but

49:42

they were pretty good about doing about swinging

49:44

their weight to drive things forward. And

49:47

I think like you, a bad example

49:49

of that is how they handled internet

49:51

Explorer, right? This is a good example of, of how

49:53

they did it. Cause like, who knows

49:55

what would have happened? We would have had somebody would have

49:57

invented some sort of crazy rotary encoder that was. four

50:00

times the precision. We would have ended up with 3000 DPI

50:02

mice. And that would be where

50:04

we capped out. Still

50:06

be you'd have a little, you'd have a little

50:09

dedicated mouse ball washer sitting on your desk. You

50:11

just drop it in and ultrasonically cleans your balls.

50:14

He'd be wearing a proverbial mouse ball around our

50:16

necks. Yeah. Eternally

50:19

pushing a giant mouse ball at the Hill. You

50:21

could buy aftermarket balls to make your mouse perform

50:23

a little bit better. This is a dark future.

50:25

I don't want to think about

50:28

it. I don't want to entertain this anymore. You'd have

50:30

like a speed ball. You'd have a game ball. You'd

50:32

have an RTS ball for all those close tight clicks.

50:35

The bad, bad timeline. Uh, but

50:38

I think that's a good, it's good places to wrap

50:40

it up unless you have anything else. No, I think

50:42

that covers it for me. It was a fun time

50:45

in computers. Yeah. I'd be curious, uh, other products and

50:47

things and technologies that other folks think would be good

50:49

for this, uh, feature. We have a pretty good list

50:51

for this. Yeah. Uh, I think, I

50:53

think it's like, it's a neat, it's neat to look

50:56

at these inflection points, especially with the benefit of hindsight

50:58

and kind of back into what happened and

51:00

see where it started. And, um, I

51:03

would love to hear suggestions and feedback on this.

51:06

It would be really helpful to us. Yeah. I

51:08

guess I shouldn't rattle off any of our other

51:10

ideas for this. Oh, absolutely. Just yet save those

51:12

for, for, um, yeah. When we get around to

51:14

those episodes, but, but yeah, especially people just have

51:17

like categories of things, you

51:19

know, not, you don't even have to necessarily

51:21

nominate a product. Yeah. If you would want

51:23

to just say, Hey, um, I don't know,

51:25

GPUs or maybe the, you know, the obvious ones

51:27

are like GPUs, mobile phones, et cetera, et cetera,

51:29

stuff like that. But like, maybe if there are

51:32

like less obvious categories of products where one thing

51:34

came along and just blew the doors off. Well,

51:36

and some of them are really obvious. Some of

51:38

the categories, some, some things just don't like, it

51:41

was just a series of incremental changes over time

51:43

and there wasn't one like watershed moment. Um,

51:46

but yeah, like obviously like at some point, we'll probably

51:48

do an iPhone episode. I don't know if we need

51:50

to do an iPhone episode, but there's an interesting, like

51:52

maybe there's an iPod nano episode, right? Cause iPod nano

51:55

is interesting for a whole bunch of reasons. And we'll,

51:57

we'll get into that at some point in the future.

52:00

But I think that's as good a place as any to

52:02

wrap it up and remind everybody that

52:04

this is a listener supported podcast. It is.

52:07

Without you all, we wouldn't be here. True.

52:09

So as always, we want to thank all

52:12

of our listeners. Thank

52:14

you, listeners. Thank you, listeners. But

52:16

we also want to give a very

52:18

special thank you to our executive producer,

52:20

to your patrons, including Andrew

52:23

Slosky, Jordan Lippitt, Bunny Fiend, Joel

52:25

Krauska, Twinkle Twinkie, David Allen, James

52:27

Kamek, Paddle Creek Games makers

52:30

Fractured Veil and Pantheon makers of the HS3

52:32

high speed 3D printer. Thank

52:34

you all for your support. We do really appreciate you.

52:37

And if you would like to find out how to support

52:39

the show, you can go to patreon.com/tech pod. Again,

52:41

it's patreon.com/tech pod. You can get access to

52:43

the discord. You can leave us a message

52:45

in there. You talk about the episode. We've

52:47

people people are popping off in the episode

52:50

discords right now having lovely conversations about things

52:52

we've talked about in the last couple of

52:54

weeks. And

52:57

a whole variety of other things. There was some

52:59

really heartwarming stuff broke out in some of the

53:01

places. I don't expect to see heartwarming stuff yesterday.

53:03

So that's always nice. Yeah, it's good. But

53:06

yeah, you can go to patreon.com/tech pod for five bucks

53:09

a month to get access to the discord. You get

53:11

the patron exclusive episode every month. You get access to,

53:13

I think, the best community on the Internet. And

53:16

that's that's that's what I got. If you

53:18

hang out with like minded people, it's a

53:21

good place for it. It sure is. And

53:24

that'll do it for us this week. If you

53:26

don't have five bucks a month, don't want to spend five, can't

53:28

spend five bucks a month, that's fine. Leave

53:30

a review. We love reviews. Reviews help us

53:32

a lot, too. Yeah. And you can

53:34

send email if you have feedback on this episode to tech pod

53:36

at content. And we're doing questions next week. That's right. So

53:39

get them in. Get those cues in and we

53:41

will turn them into A's. That email again is

53:43

tech pod at content. Down. And

53:45

that will do it for us this week. Brad, it's

53:48

always a pleasure. Yes, I do. Talk

53:50

to you next week and see you all next week. Bye,

53:52

everybody. Bye.