WEBVTT 00:00:11.424 --> 00:00:15.973 Hello, friends, and welcome back to your weekly Linux talk show. My name is Chris. 00:00:15.973 --> 00:00:16.743 My name is Wes. 00:00:16.743 --> 00:00:17.694 And my name is Brent. 00:00:18.315 --> 00:00:21.943 Hello, gentlemen. Coming up on the show, we're back from the future this week. 00:00:21.943 --> 00:00:26.033 And like Biff with a sports almanac, we've got the cheat codes for every Linux 00:00:26.033 --> 00:00:30.912 user who ever needs to manage a Windows system without touching Windows. 00:00:31.196 --> 00:00:34.209 Then we're going to round it out with some great boosts, some picks, and a lot more. 00:00:34.604 --> 00:00:37.993 This is one of those that will change the way you look at having to run a Windows 00:00:37.993 --> 00:00:41.353 box forever. But before we get into that, we've got to say time-appropriate 00:00:41.353 --> 00:00:43.456 greetings to our virtual lug. Hello, Mumble Room. 00:00:44.349 --> 00:00:46.516 Hello, Chris. Hey, Brent. And hello. 00:00:47.496 --> 00:00:47.696 Hello. 00:00:49.036 --> 00:00:51.896 Hello out there in the quiet listening room. Nice to have you and everybody 00:00:51.896 --> 00:00:55.390 that's live over at jubilav.tv. Very nice to have you as well. 00:00:55.831 --> 00:00:59.736 And a big good morning to our friends at Defined Networking. 00:00:59.736 --> 00:01:02.320 Go check out Defined.net slash unplugged. 00:01:02.941 --> 00:01:06.406 One thing that I have learned over and over again is platforms change, 00:01:06.406 --> 00:01:08.146 business priorities change. 00:01:08.146 --> 00:01:11.085 And when it comes to something as foundational as how I network everything, 00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:15.636 I want to own that stack end to end. And that's why I love Manage Nebula from 00:01:15.636 --> 00:01:19.920 Define Networking, because it lets you start using Nebula without all of the hard parts. 00:01:20.298 --> 00:01:23.826 You get the great, fast, simple aspects that's super resilient where you can 00:01:23.826 --> 00:01:26.434 add your own lighthouses, but they'll take care of the hard part. 00:01:26.823 --> 00:01:30.036 And when you go to Define.net slash unplugged, you can get started 100 hosts 00:01:30.036 --> 00:01:31.391 for free, no credit card required. 00:01:31.734 --> 00:01:35.116 Or you roll like Wes and I and you do the whole thing, custom yourself, 00:01:35.116 --> 00:01:37.335 DIY, self-hosted, absolutely can. 00:01:37.730 --> 00:01:43.026 No big tech login, no middleman, no, like, Google sign-in, no mysterious control 00:01:43.026 --> 00:01:45.186 pane that has access to all your systems. 00:01:45.186 --> 00:01:49.006 No. Instead, it's just sort of standard YAML files and some Go binaries that 00:01:49.006 --> 00:01:51.755 run just about everywhere, and that's it. 00:01:52.080 --> 00:01:56.466 They've also made a lot of improvements earlier this year and added IPv6 overlay 00:01:56.466 --> 00:02:03.116 support, multiple Nebula IPs per host now, and a new certificate format that 00:02:03.116 --> 00:02:04.682 lets you migrate without downtime. 00:02:05.053 --> 00:02:07.816 plus they've been investing a lot in the mobile apps and you're going to hear 00:02:07.816 --> 00:02:11.270 a lot more soon about just the unbelievable performance of Nebula. 00:02:11.618 --> 00:02:14.706 It gives you control, flexibility and a network built for your future. 00:02:14.706 --> 00:02:16.199 Get started 100 hosts for free. 00:02:16.524 --> 00:02:21.906 No credit card required. Define.net slash unplugged. And thank you to Define 00:02:21.906 --> 00:02:23.223 for sponsoring the Unplugged program. 00:02:25.871 --> 00:02:26.730 Well, we did a thing. 00:02:27.038 --> 00:02:27.700 We did do a thing. 00:02:27.700 --> 00:02:30.280 We did a thing. We did. Tell them about the thing we did, Brantley. 00:02:30.280 --> 00:02:33.490 Oh, we did a thing. This was last Friday. We did a thing. We hung out with the 00:02:33.490 --> 00:02:36.430 community and did, what are we calling this thing? Oh, yeah, 00:02:36.430 --> 00:02:40.488 Clanker Therapy. We did a little live stream and tons of people showed up. 00:02:40.917 --> 00:02:43.071 I think we had generally a really good time. 00:02:43.529 --> 00:02:49.020 And we have on YouTube, you could check out the Clanker Therapy highlight segment. 00:02:49.020 --> 00:02:52.254 It's what, like 40 minutes or something? Quite a lot of highlights. 00:02:52.806 --> 00:02:57.440 And then for members, we've got the entire Clanker Therapy recording, 00:02:57.440 --> 00:03:00.400 the entire live stream, all the mistakes, all the fun stuff. 00:03:00.400 --> 00:03:02.760 You can get the entire thing. I don't know how long that one is, 00:03:02.760 --> 00:03:06.143 but it's worth checking out. Even the folks who attended said, 00:03:06.445 --> 00:03:09.720 I'm going back and re-listening to this whole thing. So very much worth it. 00:03:09.900 --> 00:03:12.010 Yeah, and that one has the extended Q&A as well. 00:03:12.010 --> 00:03:16.703 Yeah, it was tons of fun. I think it would be just as much fun not live. So check it out. 00:03:17.150 --> 00:03:20.580 We have a link to that in the show notes. And ladies and gentlemen, 00:03:20.580 --> 00:03:23.013 we have a hot tip for you. something brand new, 00:03:25.468 --> 00:03:28.748 If you've been wanting to get in on that boost action but don't have a podcasting 00:03:28.748 --> 00:03:34.141 2.0 app or haven't had time to get into the Sats game, we now have an official web boost. 00:03:35.418 --> 00:03:39.488 Boost.JupiterBroadcasting.com. You go there. You pick the show, 00:03:39.488 --> 00:03:41.432 the episode, a message, your name. 00:03:41.815 --> 00:03:43.847 You can pick USD or Sats. 00:03:44.282 --> 00:03:47.928 And I believe it's anything Stripe support. So it's denominated in USD or Sats. 00:03:49.054 --> 00:03:52.018 And then when you click through, it takes you to a ZapRite checkout process. 00:03:52.018 --> 00:03:53.325 They handle all the money stuff. 00:03:53.935 --> 00:03:57.789 and you can choose to boost with Sats. You can choose to boost with Fiat. 00:03:58.439 --> 00:04:02.648 The great thing is if you want to boost with Sats still, any QR code, 00:04:02.648 --> 00:04:06.008 lightning, wallet kind of scanning situation works now. It doesn't just have 00:04:06.008 --> 00:04:07.448 to be a podcasting 2.0 app. 00:04:07.448 --> 00:04:10.102 There's no special protocol. You just pay an invoice. 00:04:10.328 --> 00:04:14.873 Yep. So Strike, Cash App, Fountain, Phoenix, Breeze, Zeus, Aqua, all of them. 00:04:16.116 --> 00:04:21.688 It works now. Also, the podcasting 2.0 app, still 100% supported and appreciated. 00:04:21.688 --> 00:04:26.718 In fact, it's all now integrated into one system. So if you web boost or you 00:04:26.718 --> 00:04:31.428 boost from a client using either the podcasting 2.0 boosting technology or a 00:04:31.428 --> 00:04:35.168 web boost with USD or SATs, it all goes to our report. You will get credit in the show. 00:04:35.771 --> 00:04:38.320 But ladies and gentlemen, there's one thing better. 00:04:40.293 --> 00:04:44.153 If you're a Jupiter Party member or an Unplugged Core contributor, 00:04:44.153 --> 00:04:48.368 you now get one free boost per episode for free. I'm going to say it again. 00:04:48.885 --> 00:04:51.391 Finally, you've been asking for it, and we have it. 00:04:51.920 --> 00:04:57.394 You can auth with your Memberful account, and you get a free boost per episode just for being a member. 00:04:57.841 --> 00:05:01.492 It is a new perk for the members announced right here on the show. 00:05:02.577 --> 00:05:08.533 As a way to say thank you, you can sign in and get one free boost per episode if you are a member. 00:05:09.079 --> 00:05:11.423 and it's pretty easy to author your memberful account as long as you remember 00:05:11.423 --> 00:05:12.556 what email address you used. 00:05:12.928 --> 00:05:17.173 Brand new, boost.jupiterbroadcasting.com. How excited are you, 00:05:17.173 --> 00:05:18.503 Wes? Super excited, yes? 00:05:18.503 --> 00:05:20.783 You're very excited. I'm curious to know how it goes for folks, 00:05:20.783 --> 00:05:22.489 too. So do, I don't know, try it out. 00:05:22.744 --> 00:05:25.543 Let us know if it doesn't work. It is new, so there could be some rough edges. 00:05:25.543 --> 00:05:29.124 You know, no better way to see than to have folks see what they think. 00:05:29.269 --> 00:05:32.313 It's pretty neat. It still supports all the splits on the back end and all of 00:05:32.313 --> 00:05:35.788 that kind of stuff as well using some self-hosting technology. 00:05:36.542 --> 00:05:40.343 We're pretty proud of it. It's pretty great. So try it out, boost.jupiterbroadcasting.com, 00:05:40.343 --> 00:05:42.943 or just keep on boosting through the podcasting to do app. And, 00:05:42.943 --> 00:05:47.513 of course, if you are a member who has been waiting, now is your time. 00:05:47.513 --> 00:05:49.963 That's what's so exciting, really, right? We know the audience. 00:05:49.963 --> 00:05:52.623 They're so smart. They have such great feedback. And now, hopefully, 00:05:52.623 --> 00:05:54.773 this makes it easier for more folks to share those thoughts. 00:05:54.773 --> 00:05:55.135 Mm-hmm. 00:05:59.320 --> 00:06:03.138 We are back from the future this week. While we were gone over the week, 00:06:03.138 --> 00:06:08.238 we traveled to the future, and we have stolen the handbook to how to manage 00:06:08.238 --> 00:06:10.848 Windows without having to use Windows anymore. 00:06:10.848 --> 00:06:14.384 How every Linux user going forward may want to do this thing. 00:06:15.406 --> 00:06:20.728 Buckle up, because it's called Windows MCP. It's a Python daemon that runs on 00:06:20.728 --> 00:06:24.508 a Windows machine, and it exposes a set of controls like mouse clicks, 00:06:24.508 --> 00:06:28.734 keyboard input, screenshots, Windows management, PowerShell execution, which is huge. 00:06:29.111 --> 00:06:32.448 It can read and write to the registry. It can manage processes. 00:06:32.448 --> 00:06:36.286 It has basically all of the Windows control APIs exposed to it, 00:06:37.203 --> 00:06:38.148 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 00:06:38.508 --> 00:06:38.568 Wow. 00:06:38.968 --> 00:06:43.408 And you can connect to it from a remote machine and manage Windows. 00:06:43.408 --> 00:06:46.758 You know, it's sort of like a Windows rootkit, but under your control. 00:06:47.136 --> 00:06:51.638 Yeah. So, Wes, the model context protocol, I guess is it fair to call it like 00:06:51.638 --> 00:06:55.128 a JSON over a communications protocol? Is that too simple? Am I getting that wrong? 00:06:55.448 --> 00:06:59.768 Yeah, that's the basic idea, right? So you expose tools over this protocol. 00:07:00.208 --> 00:07:07.028 And then MCP framework, which uses JSON RCP, which is like remote procedure call under the hood. 00:07:07.028 --> 00:07:10.108 Basically, the idea is it exposes functions over the network that you can call. 00:07:10.108 --> 00:07:13.558 So they have names and they take arguments and they return stuff to you. 00:07:13.558 --> 00:07:16.246 And so as you're talking about, right, there's ways to, say, 00:07:16.449 --> 00:07:19.278 snapshot the screen. There's ways to make registry notifications. 00:07:19.278 --> 00:07:21.633 There's ways to inspect or run processes. 00:07:21.905 --> 00:07:26.648 and all of those get exposed either over standard IO or in this case, 00:07:26.648 --> 00:07:31.681 it uses fast MCP under the hood, which is a Python library, but also over HTTP, 00:07:31.785 --> 00:07:35.048 which is great because then you can use it anywhere over the network. 00:07:35.193 --> 00:07:37.300 So perhaps you have an open code session. 00:07:38.014 --> 00:07:42.151 And you have it connect to this MCP. What's brilliant about this is it means 00:07:42.151 --> 00:07:45.501 the LLM or the AI doesn't directly touch the Windows machine. 00:07:45.501 --> 00:07:50.381 It sends structured tool calls to the MCP server. And then the MCP server is 00:07:50.381 --> 00:07:53.651 actually the thing that's executing them and then returning the results to the 00:07:53.651 --> 00:07:57.309 agent. So it's not like the agent is just running rampant on the Windows machine. 00:07:57.680 --> 00:08:02.571 The MCP is this focused context of what they're actually allowed to mess with. 00:08:02.571 --> 00:08:06.541 And this does support, as a lot of systems do, you can do it both on the client 00:08:06.541 --> 00:08:07.775 or on the server side sometimes. 00:08:08.112 --> 00:08:12.511 You can do tool filtering so that you can allow, if you only want certain capabilities 00:08:12.511 --> 00:08:15.741 to even be exposed from a system, you can do that, too. All right. 00:08:15.741 --> 00:08:18.041 And then there is some nice security here, as you mentioned, right? 00:08:18.041 --> 00:08:18.911 You can do auth. 00:08:18.911 --> 00:08:22.691 Yeah, you can do bear token auth. You can do OAuth 2.0. You can do an IP allow 00:08:22.691 --> 00:08:26.801 list. And I think even it'll sort of refuse to bind globally unless you set 00:08:26.801 --> 00:08:30.600 up some kind of auth. So it is trying to, like, do decent, you know, 00:08:31.204 --> 00:08:33.581 at least make it harder to shoot yourself in the foot. 00:08:33.581 --> 00:08:37.764 Yeah. And the operating systems that you can control, Windows 7, 00:08:38.066 --> 00:08:43.141 the Windows 8 series, 10 and 11. So pretty much all the more recent Windows. Very nice. 00:08:43.141 --> 00:08:44.026 That is very nice. 00:08:44.473 --> 00:08:48.757 And picture this. I'll bring it home. Here's maybe a use case scenario for you. 00:08:49.245 --> 00:08:53.558 You got family members that just are on Windows and sometimes they need your help. 00:08:54.381 --> 00:08:57.840 This could run on, say, like a Nebula or a Tailscale mesh network, 00:08:57.840 --> 00:09:00.900 and you could connect in and manage their Windows updates. 00:09:01.080 --> 00:09:03.321 We'll show more. I'll have a demonstration in a bit. 00:09:03.762 --> 00:09:06.980 But you could manage a lot about their Windows box, check their running processes, 00:09:06.980 --> 00:09:11.111 disk space, memory available, pull recent event logs, all these types of things, 00:09:11.697 --> 00:09:14.710 without ever having to remote into their Windows machine, do any kind of remote 00:09:14.710 --> 00:09:16.660 desktop protocol or anything like that. 00:09:16.660 --> 00:09:20.780 Or, so that's one scenario I think would be very useful, this Windows MCP on 00:09:20.780 --> 00:09:21.961 a mesh network with your family. 00:09:22.384 --> 00:09:27.075 Scenario two, where I could find this to be very, very useful for Linux users, is VMs. 00:09:27.371 --> 00:09:31.520 A headless, low-resources Windows VM, either running on a server or running 00:09:31.520 --> 00:09:33.983 on your machine, that you never have to bring up the GUI. 00:09:34.325 --> 00:09:37.440 You manage everything you need that VM for. Whatever that one Windows app is 00:09:37.440 --> 00:09:40.502 you need, you can manage and run all of it through this MCP. 00:09:41.402 --> 00:09:44.110 So those are a couple scenarios. Not to mention, like, you just got a Windows 00:09:44.110 --> 00:09:46.580 machine on your network that you need for a few things or something like that, 00:09:46.580 --> 00:09:47.681 and this could manage that too. 00:09:48.523 --> 00:09:53.600 I was impressed. like part of the value here I think is it really hooks into 00:09:53.600 --> 00:09:56.133 windows in some interesting ways yeah it does, 00:09:57.191 --> 00:09:59.477 So they have like 17 different tools, which is pretty great, 00:09:59.477 --> 00:10:05.067 but they have this service traversal. It walks, I guess, like this giant accessibility 00:10:05.067 --> 00:10:07.817 tree that Windows already has and applications use. 00:10:08.357 --> 00:10:13.073 And so it can basically produce for each element in those trees and in all of 00:10:13.213 --> 00:10:15.117 like every application, it can produce an object. 00:10:15.268 --> 00:10:18.466 They have bounding boxes, has like snapshot tools hooked into that. 00:10:18.739 --> 00:10:20.677 It basically gives it like a, 00:10:20.677 --> 00:10:24.077 it's not just take a snapshot and have OCR that the bot has to work with. 00:10:24.397 --> 00:10:29.767 It gives the bot like a shared, structured sort of coordinate system for the whole Windows desktop. 00:10:29.767 --> 00:10:34.547 And I will add more modern Windows applications read anything in the last probably 00:10:34.547 --> 00:10:38.437 seven to eight years, really since Windows 10. So however long that's been. 00:10:39.190 --> 00:10:44.057 They also provide an extensive amount of what I would call metadata to the operating 00:10:44.057 --> 00:10:48.187 system that says where controls are at, what the Windows size is, 00:10:48.187 --> 00:10:49.777 like all of like the menu stuff. 00:10:49.777 --> 00:10:54.027 There is this rich level of metadata that the Windows applications probably 00:10:54.027 --> 00:10:55.704 provide for accessibility reasons, 00:10:56.215 --> 00:10:58.967 that you don't actually need to read the screen to see and operate. 00:10:58.967 --> 00:11:03.557 And the agents can hook into that and use those controls to operate the application 00:11:03.557 --> 00:11:07.887 without actually having to drive the mouse and go down a menu and go to the new thing, right? 00:11:07.887 --> 00:11:12.317 Like they can just call these plug-ins, these API calls, whatever they are, 00:11:12.317 --> 00:11:14.588 that Windows has built in over the years for applications. 00:11:15.255 --> 00:11:19.367 Now, when we get to my demonstration, we'll discover when you're dealing with 00:11:19.367 --> 00:11:22.349 older Windows applications, that's not necessarily the case. 00:11:22.575 --> 00:11:25.407 I was also impressed that, like, I guess they're using, like, 00:11:25.407 --> 00:11:29.315 an undocumented COM interface for dealing with the virtual desktop stuff. 00:11:29.535 --> 00:11:32.717 It's just surprising, like, the amount of work that has gone into all of the 00:11:32.717 --> 00:11:36.327 little features. Like, there's binding to the Win32 side of the API. 00:11:36.327 --> 00:11:40.597 There's, like, direct access to that. There's all of this UI automation explicit framework. 00:11:41.445 --> 00:11:45.217 There's various, it's like, three or four different screenshot backends so that 00:11:45.217 --> 00:11:47.453 you can always make sure you get a successful screenshot. 00:11:47.697 --> 00:11:50.827 They have a watchdog service that runs in the background and can monitor system 00:11:50.827 --> 00:11:53.777 events from Windows like EventLog and respond to that. 00:11:54.884 --> 00:11:57.664 Think about that for a moment. That is very useful. 00:11:58.999 --> 00:12:00.747 I think one way to think about it, you kind of touched on it, 00:12:00.747 --> 00:12:03.997 right, is like you could ask, like you can do a lot of stuff over just PowerShell 00:12:03.997 --> 00:12:07.121 scripts or SSH or existing Windows automation. 00:12:07.550 --> 00:12:12.827 And I think what this really adds is it's like the bridge so that LLMs are like 00:12:12.827 --> 00:12:18.047 first class on Windows. And then that means the abstraction of the LLM being 00:12:18.047 --> 00:12:20.246 the interface for you can actually work. 00:12:20.640 --> 00:12:24.427 Yeah, it means Windows is now a tool call away. And the other thing that struck 00:12:24.427 --> 00:12:32.419 me about this is really how easy it is to get a pretty large Python application running on Windows –, 00:12:33.869 --> 00:12:37.977 was a basic Windows 11 blank install. It's not like I've had this install around 00:12:37.977 --> 00:12:39.324 where I've set up a Python environment. 00:12:40.157 --> 00:12:44.758 UVX was, I think, one command to install, and then once I had UVX, I could just run this. 00:12:44.886 --> 00:12:47.257 Yeah, UV and UVX are great. That helps a lot. 00:12:47.757 --> 00:12:50.477 It made running Python stuff on Windows as easy as it is to run on Linux. 00:12:51.117 --> 00:12:53.987 I just wanted to give it credit for that. It was extremely easy to get this 00:12:53.987 --> 00:12:56.227 running, and you can run it temporarily 00:12:56.227 --> 00:12:58.939 as just a process that runs in the terminal like I'm doing today. 00:12:59.235 --> 00:13:02.217 You can install it as a service that starts at boot, but then you're going to 00:13:02.217 --> 00:13:03.630 need to use some authentication if you do that. 00:13:04.344 --> 00:13:10.747 I mean, just that aspect of it for you could, in theory, send an end user a 00:13:10.747 --> 00:13:14.369 one liner that they would run and it would start the MCP for you. 00:13:14.694 --> 00:13:16.906 It's not it's you could do it in one liner. It's not that bad. 00:13:17.742 --> 00:13:23.088 So that to me was pretty neat. So I thought we do maybe a quick little demo. 00:13:24.117 --> 00:13:27.813 I have what I've done over the weekend is I set up my Hermes agent, 00:13:28.388 --> 00:13:33.682 a skill and connected to the MCP that's running on a Windows laptop that we have here in the studio. 00:13:34.437 --> 00:13:40.177 So the Windows laptops got this Python Windows MCP running and through my agent, 00:13:40.177 --> 00:13:43.265 which is actually in my RV. It's not even here in the studio. 00:13:43.631 --> 00:13:46.817 I could do something like, you know, all kinds of things. Change the, 00:13:46.817 --> 00:13:52.716 I mean, this is just a quick example. Change the wallpaper on Big Dell to anything. Big Dell. 00:13:52.890 --> 00:13:56.727 Yeah, that's the laptop name is Big Dell. So I tell my agent, 00:13:56.727 --> 00:13:59.857 change the wallpaper on Big Dell. Now it does take a second because the agent's 00:13:59.857 --> 00:14:03.861 got to read the skill. Then it's got to load the MCP. but I don't care. 00:14:04.482 --> 00:14:08.277 I don't care because I don't have to touch Windows. So if you're watching the 00:14:08.277 --> 00:14:10.727 video version, which you can switch to in a podcasting 2.0 app, 00:14:10.727 --> 00:14:13.468 you can actually see we have the MCP server up on the screen. 00:14:13.828 --> 00:14:17.497 And you can see it's accepting a connection from my agent right now. 00:14:17.921 --> 00:14:21.457 And so the agent is going to do a smoke test. This is what I've set up to do. 00:14:21.457 --> 00:14:24.411 All my things do a smoke test first. And then if the smoke test passes, 00:14:25.165 --> 00:14:26.414 it'll then rotate the wallpaper. 00:14:27.104 --> 00:14:30.217 And it's just small stuff. The other thing I did, because this was just a new 00:14:30.217 --> 00:14:34.551 install, is I used my agent to process and install all the Windows updates? 00:14:35.823 --> 00:14:37.102 Yeah, I like that a lot. 00:14:37.102 --> 00:14:39.552 Oh, it says it changed the wallpaper, but I actually didn't see the wallpaper 00:14:39.552 --> 00:14:45.030 change. And I used my agent to install SSH on Windows. 00:14:45.668 --> 00:14:48.962 So that was really nice. I didn't have to sit there and manage. 00:14:48.962 --> 00:14:54.352 And it also used the Windows MCP to detect when Windows Update had done enough 00:14:54.352 --> 00:14:57.782 that it has to reboot before it could continue to install more Windows Updates. 00:14:57.782 --> 00:15:00.361 So it's like, okay, I've gotten to a point where we can no longer proceed. 00:15:00.756 --> 00:15:02.932 We need to reboot the host now. Would you like to reboot the host? 00:15:02.932 --> 00:15:03.492 That's great. 00:15:03.492 --> 00:15:06.982 And then when it came back up, it waited for a bit because then it was rebooting, 00:15:06.982 --> 00:15:10.512 and then it connected back in to monitor the continuation of the updates. 00:15:10.512 --> 00:15:13.662 That's where it feels like it's less sort of like awkward, you know, 00:15:13.662 --> 00:15:16.582 running commands on top of Windows, and it feels a little more like it really 00:15:16.582 --> 00:15:18.012 does understand the system, which is nice. 00:15:18.012 --> 00:15:21.942 Yeah. And to just sort of have that follow-up. So you imagine, 00:15:21.942 --> 00:15:24.052 like, you're helping a family member, you can step away for a second, 00:15:24.052 --> 00:15:26.054 or you're doing it on Telegram when you're out doing something. 00:15:26.861 --> 00:15:32.802 That is going to be huge when you could, like, do tech support from Telegram while you're, you know. 00:15:32.802 --> 00:15:35.462 You could go get like an honest rate of what's happening with the system without 00:15:35.462 --> 00:15:38.259 having to walk someone else through how to go get all of that data. 00:15:39.113 --> 00:15:43.032 So I did a – I'll try to do one more example. We'll see if this works. 00:15:43.032 --> 00:15:43.932 Yeah, we need a new background. 00:15:44.392 --> 00:15:46.956 Well, I know. That's funny because the background thing has worked every time. 00:15:47.912 --> 00:15:51.382 I wonder if it's just Windows hasn't rotated it. But, Wes, if you listen over 00:15:51.382 --> 00:15:55.122 there in a moment, the thing should play some music. So you can actually trigger 00:15:55.122 --> 00:15:56.458 things to come out of the speakers. 00:15:57.190 --> 00:16:00.256 Anything you can really do in Windows, you can get this thing to do. 00:16:01.724 --> 00:16:04.512 oh is it running hot that's funny a little hot over here it's funny because 00:16:04.512 --> 00:16:09.177 it's not doing anything it's just a big old machine is what it is it's it's just a big machine, 00:16:10.750 --> 00:16:17.343 uh alright I don't know maybe it'll work maybe there we go there you go see that's. 00:16:19.826 --> 00:16:22.156 You know, it's a Genelia laptop, but they still didn't put any subs in here. 00:16:22.536 --> 00:16:25.346 No, it's funny. The speakers are not that great. So that was triggered by the 00:16:25.346 --> 00:16:30.566 MCP from my agent that's running in my RV, connected over Starlink, 00:16:30.961 --> 00:16:35.941 using Nebula to manage and communicate the MCP on that Windows box. 00:16:36.408 --> 00:16:39.456 So that means, like, if you were doing a remote management, it could be playing 00:16:39.456 --> 00:16:41.966 a don't touch me and doing a remote management jingle. 00:16:41.966 --> 00:16:43.836 Yeah, you could. Or just stand by. 00:16:43.836 --> 00:16:47.916 We're going to be doing some stuff and rebooting. And I actually do that. 00:16:48.936 --> 00:16:51.646 I use speakers in the RV now when I'll be like, hey, don't message your machine 00:16:51.646 --> 00:16:53.416 for a little bit. It's doing some updates in the background. 00:16:55.516 --> 00:16:58.536 I do that. I don't know. So the other things I've had it do, 00:16:58.536 --> 00:17:00.516 obviously, is launch applications. 00:17:02.276 --> 00:17:06.956 I had it remove some software, clean up a directory. But the real story is I 00:17:06.956 --> 00:17:13.456 accomplished a project that needed to get done that was a little bit of uncovering 00:17:13.456 --> 00:17:17.206 proprietary data that's only available via a Windows application. 00:17:17.206 --> 00:17:22.329 and sucking it into my Linux box. And so that's what we're going to get into next. 00:17:25.627 --> 00:17:29.713 Webroot.com slash unplugged. Are you sick of dealing with a slow computer? 00:17:30.119 --> 00:17:33.956 Most people, they blame their device, but the real slowdown often comes from 00:17:33.956 --> 00:17:38.513 heavy traditional antivirus programs that hog up storage and just drag everything down. 00:17:38.856 --> 00:17:42.739 Webroot is a cloud-based antivirus engineered to stay out of your way. 00:17:43.018 --> 00:17:48.811 It takes up to 33 times less space than bulky competitors, and it scans six times faster. 00:17:49.078 --> 00:17:53.438 So instead of waiting around, you're getting instant powerful protection without leg. 00:17:53.769 --> 00:17:58.046 And because the intelligence lives in the cloud, Webroot keeps your computer 00:17:58.046 --> 00:18:02.836 running light, fast and smooth, while defending you in real time against malware, 00:18:03.167 --> 00:18:05.007 phishing, ransomware, and other threats. 00:18:05.350 --> 00:18:09.376 So if you're working, you're browsing, or you're streaming, Webroot is the antivirus 00:18:09.376 --> 00:18:11.961 that works for you, not against you. 00:18:12.310 --> 00:18:16.222 Make the switch and feel the difference of truly fast modern antivirus protection. 00:18:16.501 --> 00:18:21.026 And unlike traditional security programs, Webroot is built to counter modern 00:18:21.026 --> 00:18:25.922 AI-driven attacks, including phishing attempts that just look shockingly real. 00:18:26.936 --> 00:18:29.927 That is a little peace of mind when you think about your friends and your family. 00:18:30.275 --> 00:18:34.658 And the thing I love is it just runs quietly in the background without slowing things down. 00:18:34.873 --> 00:18:39.691 It uses five times less RAM than something like Norton, and that really matters. 00:18:39.888 --> 00:18:46.012 So for a limited time, you can save 60% on Webroot when you go to webroot.com slash unplugged. 00:18:46.424 --> 00:18:52.067 That's 60% off today, but only when you go to webroot.com slash unplugged. 00:18:54.935 --> 00:18:58.143 There is this project we've collectively been trying to solve for, 00:18:58.143 --> 00:19:01.443 it feels like, months now. When I was there for LinuxFest Northwest, 00:19:01.443 --> 00:19:03.781 we were trying to get your focus working again. 00:19:04.118 --> 00:19:07.410 It had exploded with coolant going everywhere. 00:19:07.984 --> 00:19:13.412 And we fixed that part. That part was pretty easy. But then the car just wouldn't start properly. 00:19:13.969 --> 00:19:18.203 And we troubleshooted and we troubleshooted and we used ODB ports to try to 00:19:18.203 --> 00:19:21.045 figure things out. And we never could solve it before I left. 00:19:22.183 --> 00:19:27.883 but you have been trying to poke at this but you are under a new timeline because 00:19:27.883 --> 00:19:33.793 there's not much room in the space where we were working so you had to get to doing that. 00:19:33.793 --> 00:19:37.823 So here's an overview of the problem we have a shop on the farm an old shop 00:19:37.823 --> 00:19:42.273 here which is nice to have but it's uh you know busy season and so space in 00:19:42.273 --> 00:19:46.911 the shop is very tight and the wife's ford has been sitting here for a while, 00:19:47.567 --> 00:19:51.015 with what seems to be electrical issues in the main wiring harness here. 00:19:51.677 --> 00:19:55.044 I don't know for sure, so that's what I want to test. So what I have set up, 00:19:55.746 --> 00:19:59.827 is maybe a little stupid, but I'm going to give it a shot. 00:20:00.367 --> 00:20:05.793 I have got a connection to my agent on my Dell laptop, and then on another Dell 00:20:05.793 --> 00:20:11.292 laptop, I'm running Windows 11, and that has an app called Forescan. 00:20:12.860 --> 00:20:19.048 Forescan is communicating with the car's computer with a ODB2 to USB adapter, 00:20:20.081 --> 00:20:23.051 that has an actual physical toggle switch on it. 00:20:24.189 --> 00:20:31.387 So you can toggle between, I guess, regular industry standard codes and the custom Ford PIDs. 00:20:32.049 --> 00:20:35.893 And that's what I'm after. I'm after the custom ford pins, PIDs, 00:20:35.893 --> 00:20:41.613 P-I-Ds, because in there, I believe, are the voltages that I need to monitor 00:20:41.613 --> 00:20:42.910 what's going on with this harness. 00:20:44.233 --> 00:20:47.786 So the laptop is my front end to the agent. 00:20:49.353 --> 00:20:54.224 The agent is connecting into Windows 11 using Windows MCP. 00:20:56.005 --> 00:20:58.675 The agent will then drive, this is the part I haven't done yet, 00:20:59.052 --> 00:21:03.029 the agent will then drive Forescan to diagnose and detect the PIDs. 00:21:04.445 --> 00:21:07.458 It'll then record the PIDs itself for the ones that we need. 00:21:09.136 --> 00:21:12.893 And then the agent should be able to start talking directly to the car using 00:21:12.893 --> 00:21:15.713 those and reading those PIDs without the need of Forescan. 00:21:16.131 --> 00:21:19.956 So essentially, my agent is going to manipulate Windows to operate Forescan, 00:21:20.605 --> 00:21:22.672 figure out and detect the PIDs that it needs, 00:21:23.798 --> 00:21:28.013 memorize those and then we can drop four scan altogether and i can do diagnostic 00:21:28.013 --> 00:21:34.593 testing just with the agent using this usb adapter hooked up to my linux box with just, 00:21:36.638 --> 00:21:42.043 standard open source python libraries that talk to this and understand odb2, 00:21:43.216 --> 00:21:47.543 that's the plan so basically just trying to avoid using windows myself let the 00:21:47.543 --> 00:21:51.343 agent extract what we need and then go back to linux and do the actual problem 00:21:51.343 --> 00:21:54.837 solving and then i won't have to use windows 11. 00:21:55.934 --> 00:21:59.193 The thing is is like to make this work you got to do all the human work so i'm 00:21:59.193 --> 00:22:03.163 going around i'm connecting all of the connectors i'm doing the plugs. 00:22:03.163 --> 00:22:08.023 It's just sort of a uh you don't do json rpc but you're basically a tool for the lm to do. 00:22:08.023 --> 00:22:12.303 Yeah uh so i got the usb to odb2 adapter connected which i don't know if i got 00:22:12.303 --> 00:22:14.733 the right one so i'm not going to link in the show notes because i've read there's 00:22:14.733 --> 00:22:18.773 better ones and then i fired up this forescan application i'm going to put a 00:22:18.773 --> 00:22:20.151 link to this in the show notes, 00:22:20.767 --> 00:22:27.283 This Forescan application looks like it was last updated just after Windows 3.11 came out. 00:22:27.283 --> 00:22:32.324 And then their website was updated just after Mosaic retired and Netscape became popular. 00:22:33.555 --> 00:22:34.773 So, it's old. 00:22:34.773 --> 00:22:38.683 Well, you know, when you're the only game in town, I mean, do you need to update? 00:22:38.683 --> 00:22:40.028 There's also this whole... 00:22:41.897 --> 00:22:45.325 Song and dance you have to go through to license it once you actually get it 00:22:45.325 --> 00:22:48.165 installed. You got to use it in like this trial mode and then go through the 00:22:48.165 --> 00:22:49.426 song and dance to license it. 00:22:50.378 --> 00:22:55.736 But what it does is it knows the proprietary Ford OEM PIDs. 00:22:56.189 --> 00:23:00.015 And in a car built after 1996, at least here in the States, but I think this 00:23:00.015 --> 00:23:04.895 is true for a lot of places. After 96, they have the ODB2 diagnostic port with 00:23:04.895 --> 00:23:10.864 industry standard codes that you can get like a $30, $40, $50 code reader and you can read them. 00:23:11.729 --> 00:23:16.305 But then these OEMs sometimes have thousands of their own proprietary codes. 00:23:16.305 --> 00:23:17.865 I mean, you've got to have your own codes, right? 00:23:17.865 --> 00:23:22.335 And four definitely is one of them. And the sensors I really needed are behind 00:23:22.335 --> 00:23:23.552 these proprietary codes. 00:23:23.854 --> 00:23:26.965 You can detect them, but you just don't know what they mean. 00:23:26.965 --> 00:23:29.425 So you just need something that maps the thing I've detected. 00:23:29.985 --> 00:23:31.385 You just get some right value, but how do you interpret that? 00:23:31.385 --> 00:23:33.955 What kind of data type is this? What system is it connected to? 00:23:33.955 --> 00:23:35.565 What a great thing for a machine to do. 00:23:35.885 --> 00:23:36.345 Yes. 00:23:36.881 --> 00:23:40.335 So I did the human bits, and I connected everything. And once I had that working, 00:23:40.335 --> 00:23:43.103 I kicked the agent off, and I told it to figure out Forescan, 00:23:43.411 --> 00:23:46.534 and then I wanted it to monitor my PCM system. 00:23:47.295 --> 00:23:53.145 Okay, it's trying. However, the Forescan app, pretty, pretty old UI. 00:23:53.145 --> 00:23:57.805 And the MCP is exporting screenshots, so it's going to have to do some image 00:23:57.805 --> 00:24:02.637 recognition in order to remotely control Forescan, which I was worried about. 00:24:03.136 --> 00:24:08.555 I think newer Windows applications actually submit UI details and some sort 00:24:08.555 --> 00:24:13.713 of metadata that the MCP can process, but an older application like Forescan apparently does not. 00:24:14.195 --> 00:24:17.455 So it is trying the screenshot path right now, so it's going to have to take 00:24:17.455 --> 00:24:20.753 screenshot after screenshot to get through this. 00:24:20.997 --> 00:24:23.579 I don't know about that. I may have to operate the app. 00:24:24.795 --> 00:24:27.929 And you could just do that. Of course. You could have it take a screenshot, 00:24:27.929 --> 00:24:30.839 actually, and then walk you through what to do, which I consider. 00:24:30.839 --> 00:24:34.659 That is handy to have or double-check you're doing the right thing or am I reading 00:24:34.659 --> 00:24:35.709 this configuration right? 00:24:35.709 --> 00:24:40.319 And you can prompt it to do it efficiently, and what it can do is it can actually 00:24:40.319 --> 00:24:42.545 work with a surprisingly low-res JPEG. 00:24:42.894 --> 00:24:47.219 And so it can take a low-res JPEG and run that through the model and save you on some processing. 00:24:47.845 --> 00:24:50.209 And this is where probably, yeah, depending on the model and how good its image 00:24:50.209 --> 00:24:52.899 handling recognition is and that kind of stuff might matter. 00:24:53.439 --> 00:24:57.159 And you had to go through this somewhat tedious screenshotting process because 00:24:57.159 --> 00:25:02.399 this app is so old and doesn't implement like the new descriptive metadata you 00:25:02.399 --> 00:25:03.165 were talking about earlier. 00:25:04.081 --> 00:25:07.379 Yeah. And I think perhaps this is this is something people need to know is a 00:25:07.379 --> 00:25:11.439 real limitation of Windows MCP because maybe a lot of us are are using Windows 00:25:11.439 --> 00:25:12.650 for legacy applications. 00:25:13.311 --> 00:25:18.634 It's it is solvable. It was slow. It was awkward, but it did work. 00:25:19.190 --> 00:25:23.609 And of course, it started working just as I was about to throw the towel and 00:25:23.609 --> 00:25:25.819 I was going to interrupt and I'll be like, no, no, I'll just do it. 00:25:25.819 --> 00:25:27.741 Just tell me what to click. It's fine. 00:25:28.218 --> 00:25:31.131 And just as I was like, screw it, it actually started to get it. 00:25:32.206 --> 00:25:37.339 Oh, I spoke too soon. Just as I thought it was giving up, it's opening up the 00:25:37.339 --> 00:25:40.466 dialogue and it is adding the PIDs right now that we need to monitor. 00:25:41.145 --> 00:25:43.959 And it figured out a way to add them all at once. It even said, 00:25:43.959 --> 00:25:46.909 I'm going to add them via some sort of text injection so I don't have to go 00:25:46.909 --> 00:25:49.479 through and select 100 PIDs. or something like that. 00:25:50.759 --> 00:25:52.877 It found a way to do it lazy, which I really appreciate. 00:25:54.259 --> 00:25:57.574 I mean, it got to the spot that I was having trouble finding. 00:25:57.712 --> 00:26:01.810 That is the menu right there. It's somewhere in this UI and it found it. 00:26:02.636 --> 00:26:07.454 And now it's just a matter of figuring out the pits. Oh, I think it's got them. It does. 00:26:09.706 --> 00:26:12.195 I can't believe this. I never have to use Windows again. 00:26:13.931 --> 00:26:17.541 That was the moment it really did click. I'm like, wow, if it can use this crazy 00:26:17.541 --> 00:26:21.651 esoteric, doesn't follow any kind of Windows convention, even from back in the day. 00:26:22.551 --> 00:26:27.221 Like somebody who's, you know, supported Windows that was in the game during 00:26:27.221 --> 00:26:29.627 this era of applications, nothing I've ever seen before. 00:26:30.278 --> 00:26:34.161 And it managed to figure it out. And then it was able to start mapping the unknown 00:26:34.161 --> 00:26:36.019 PIDs to the forward OEM PIDs. 00:26:36.553 --> 00:26:41.401 That was really where, like, it got powerful because it could do all of that 00:26:41.401 --> 00:26:45.101 messy stuff for me and start probing for exactly what I needed for the specific 00:26:45.101 --> 00:26:47.292 task because the agent understood the specific task. 00:26:47.640 --> 00:26:51.396 So once I had that data coming in and I understood what some of these PIDs meant, 00:26:52.296 --> 00:26:53.759 well, it was on to phase two. 00:26:54.821 --> 00:26:58.577 Phase two of my Galaxy Brain plan is now underway. 00:26:59.076 --> 00:27:04.181 I'm having the agent document everything we've discovered, the PIDs we now understand, 00:27:04.181 --> 00:27:10.094 all of that because the goal will be to just remove 4Scan from the picture. 00:27:10.807 --> 00:27:14.702 Have the agent essentially figure out the proprietary PIDs that we need, 00:27:15.346 --> 00:27:20.699 take 4Scan out and plug that ODB2 scanner directly into the laptop. 00:27:21.204 --> 00:27:23.891 And then the agent will talk directly to the car pooter. 00:27:24.855 --> 00:27:27.427 Then I can begin the real troubleshooting process. 00:27:29.422 --> 00:27:33.172 So this was great because with the documents written, the skills created, 00:27:33.817 --> 00:27:35.402 I could actually do some real work. 00:27:35.607 --> 00:27:38.317 And you have some nice artifacts sort of hopefully regardless, 00:27:38.317 --> 00:27:41.877 right? Like you'll make this attempt, but you have all this stuff forever. 00:27:41.877 --> 00:27:42.847 And it's documented, yeah. 00:27:43.732 --> 00:27:47.487 I feel like you're slowly replacing me in the diagnostic process of this vehicle. 00:27:47.847 --> 00:27:49.107 I'm strangely okay with it. 00:27:49.787 --> 00:27:52.337 When I got to this phase, I was like, oh, Brent, you would really. 00:27:52.337 --> 00:27:57.547 When we got to the diagnostic, what I did, which I think you would appreciate, is I went back to zero. 00:27:57.547 --> 00:28:01.807 And I'm like, okay, now that I have all of this, let's revalidate the hypothesis. 00:28:01.807 --> 00:28:04.967 And I got the multimeter out and all, and I went around and as it was prompting 00:28:04.967 --> 00:28:06.667 me and I revalidated the hypothesis. 00:28:08.042 --> 00:28:12.457 I wasn't sure. Cause like, does it work? Am I complete? Am I completely crazy? 00:28:12.457 --> 00:28:13.806 Is this thing going to hallucinate? 00:28:14.514 --> 00:28:18.837 It's actually working. I now have the ODB two adapter hooked up directly to 00:28:18.837 --> 00:28:22.792 my laptop and we just did a pedal test. 00:28:23.222 --> 00:28:29.057 so it ran monitoring and I feathered the throttle and it observed the voltages 00:28:29.057 --> 00:28:31.395 it saw that the pedal was being feathered, 00:28:31.854 --> 00:28:35.957 it captured it it's updating the Python library so it communicates correctly 00:28:35.957 --> 00:28:39.687 with the adapter because by default it was using the wrong baud rate so once 00:28:39.687 --> 00:28:43.313 we figured out the baud rate I am now live capturing data from this thing, 00:28:43.830 --> 00:28:48.237 it's actually working and I no longer need forescan so that was great so Windows 00:28:48.237 --> 00:28:52.577 MCP came in really useful because it got the core information we needed out 00:28:52.577 --> 00:28:54.458 of 4Scan without me having to deal with it. 00:28:54.917 --> 00:28:57.267 And now we're able to just take Windows completely out of the picture. 00:28:57.267 --> 00:28:59.230 That laptop is just no longer even being used. 00:28:59.584 --> 00:29:03.491 And I'm just directly agent to the hardware talking to the car pooter now. 00:29:03.903 --> 00:29:06.492 And we actually have valid data. 00:29:07.826 --> 00:29:12.102 The other thing that I did that was very useful, more so than I thought it would 00:29:12.102 --> 00:29:14.920 be, I thought it would just be, well, I'll try and see how it goes, is, 00:29:15.413 --> 00:29:22.212 Ford makes specific comprehensive diagnostic manuals available for ODB2 diagnostics 00:29:22.212 --> 00:29:23.672 for particular models of cars. 00:29:23.672 --> 00:29:24.372 Oh, yeah, okay. 00:29:24.672 --> 00:29:28.952 It's just in this crazy site that doesn't, like, sit on a regular Ford domain. Of course. 00:29:28.952 --> 00:29:31.912 And you'll find and then traverse and then get the right file or whatever. 00:29:32.252 --> 00:29:35.092 Surprisingly, just like Forescan, like, their branding is from, 00:29:35.092 --> 00:29:38.692 like, a decade ago and stuff like that. But when you do drill down, 00:29:38.692 --> 00:29:42.862 you find for your particular make and model, all the information you need to 00:29:42.862 --> 00:29:45.872 know about that ODB2 port and the type information diagnostics. 00:29:45.872 --> 00:29:46.392 Nice. 00:29:46.586 --> 00:29:50.692 And I was like, all right, agent, read this. See if there's anything helpful. 00:29:52.432 --> 00:29:56.122 And sure enough, Brent, I mean, they found several things. But the one thing 00:29:56.122 --> 00:29:59.312 that is going to stick in my mind that I really should have known and we should 00:29:59.312 --> 00:30:00.239 have known this whole time. 00:30:01.220 --> 00:30:05.362 And it doesn't really infect us usually. But it turns out when the focus gets 00:30:05.362 --> 00:30:09.050 to 11 volts, it shuts off all the diagnostic data to the port. 00:30:09.218 --> 00:30:11.012 Oh, come on. Really? 00:30:11.632 --> 00:30:15.092 Which explains some of the abnormalities I have seen in the past because at 00:30:15.092 --> 00:30:17.444 one point we had this really, really large draw. 00:30:17.874 --> 00:30:21.978 And it was pulling the battery down very fast. And we went to 10 volts. 00:30:22.291 --> 00:30:25.153 And all my data went bonkers. And it was all zeroed out. 00:30:25.548 --> 00:30:28.702 And I couldn't understand. And so because the agent had read the manual, 00:30:28.702 --> 00:30:32.492 unlike me, it was like, it flagged it for me. It's like, just so you know, 00:30:32.492 --> 00:30:35.592 once we hit 11 volts, like, we're not, we don't have good data anymore. 00:30:35.592 --> 00:30:38.621 Yeah. And so it knew that data was invalid and incorporated. It just... 00:30:40.246 --> 00:30:43.388 And then I had it summarized it all to an Obsidian note so that I can recap 00:30:43.388 --> 00:30:47.688 and resume the session when I need. Then all of this is saved durably as skills. 00:30:48.187 --> 00:30:51.798 So the agent now, just like I can just say to communicate with Big Dell, 00:30:51.798 --> 00:30:52.998 it just knows that's Big Dell. 00:30:53.812 --> 00:30:57.648 And I can say whatever I want it to do on Big Dell. If it's run Forescan or 00:30:57.648 --> 00:31:00.598 run MS Paint and write Hello World, I can have it do that now. 00:31:00.890 --> 00:31:03.298 Right. And then the harness knows how to hook that up. So it can just say, 00:31:03.298 --> 00:31:06.278 oh, you said Big Dell. Here's my Big Dell skill. Here's all that info I need 00:31:06.278 --> 00:31:08.518 to know about how to call the MCP tools running on it. 00:31:08.518 --> 00:31:11.008 So now like the two times a year when I need something on Windows, 00:31:11.008 --> 00:31:12.875 I don't even have to touch Windows. 00:31:13.208 --> 00:31:13.945 That's so great. 00:31:14.320 --> 00:31:15.464 Truly living in the future. 00:31:15.582 --> 00:31:18.248 And when you do have to sit through the updates because you only need it once 00:31:18.248 --> 00:31:20.458 or twice a year, you don't have to sit through the updates. 00:31:20.458 --> 00:31:21.849 I don't have to be the one that does it. 00:31:22.093 --> 00:31:25.388 I think I have two questions for you. One, what did you discover about the car? 00:31:25.388 --> 00:31:28.948 I know that might be not totally on topic, but I want to know. 00:31:28.948 --> 00:31:30.661 This car we've been working on so long. 00:31:31.201 --> 00:31:35.718 So the agent noticed a large discrepancy between the voltage level of the battery 00:31:35.718 --> 00:31:38.888 and the voltage level that the PCM was reporting. Like at one point, 00:31:38.888 --> 00:31:43.358 the battery was at like 12.8 volts and the PCM was reporting 9.8 volts. 00:31:44.898 --> 00:31:49.783 PCM is responsible for managing the valve that we are trying to get to operate properly. 00:31:50.224 --> 00:31:53.908 And by hanging out there and just working and coming and going from the car 00:31:53.908 --> 00:31:56.633 all the time, I learned that these cars, just a little aside, 00:31:57.149 --> 00:31:59.848 they have this neat little trick for it invented. when you open the driver's 00:31:59.848 --> 00:32:03.328 door after it's been sitting for a while, it actuates the valve that Brent and 00:32:03.328 --> 00:32:04.528 I have been trying to test. 00:32:04.528 --> 00:32:04.998 Oh. 00:32:05.358 --> 00:32:08.218 Just by opening the driver's door when it sat there. And you can hear it do 00:32:08.218 --> 00:32:09.448 it. I've never known what it was. 00:32:09.448 --> 00:32:09.788 Yeah. 00:32:09.788 --> 00:32:11.618 It turns out it's the very part we've been working on. 00:32:11.618 --> 00:32:12.398 That is wild. 00:32:13.675 --> 00:32:16.258 And one time, it did not sound very good. Anyways, that's a whole other story. 00:32:16.258 --> 00:32:17.547 But it's actually moving? 00:32:18.731 --> 00:32:19.610 I mean, I hear it. 00:32:19.610 --> 00:32:20.720 Okay. All right. 00:32:21.060 --> 00:32:23.570 Okay. I don't think there's any computer control that's watching voltage. 00:32:23.570 --> 00:32:26.050 But anyways, yeah, it has been getting, yeah, we're getting closer. 00:32:26.050 --> 00:32:26.350 Okay. 00:32:26.650 --> 00:32:29.192 And then narrowing down on a hypothesis, which is good. 00:32:29.842 --> 00:32:33.290 Have you dreamt about what else you can do now that you understand these PIDs? 00:32:33.290 --> 00:32:39.220 Because I imagine you parking the Focus near Lady Joops, near your RV, 00:32:39.580 --> 00:32:42.790 and having this ODB port be able to just chat with your network. 00:32:42.790 --> 00:32:46.010 And then you can just get diagnostics into Home Assistant constantly about the 00:32:46.010 --> 00:32:49.590 car and how it's doing when your next oil changes, et cetera. 00:32:49.869 --> 00:32:50.769 Have you considered that? 00:32:50.984 --> 00:32:54.290 Absolutely. I've been thinking, too, about just then have the agent automatically 00:32:54.290 --> 00:32:56.100 feed what is relevant into LubeLogger. 00:32:56.920 --> 00:33:01.350 And then, you know, also the RV engine is a Ford. So I could use a lot of these 00:33:01.350 --> 00:33:05.385 same PIDs to figure out what's going on with the RV engine, pull it into Home Assistant again. 00:33:05.878 --> 00:33:09.850 Because you could imagine a really small little ESP device that's using MQTT 00:33:09.850 --> 00:33:13.668 to just relay the information it's receiving from the adapter to Home Assistant. 00:33:14.667 --> 00:33:18.736 just a little dedicated device that's like 20 20 for entire setup adapter included, 00:33:19.502 --> 00:33:24.460 so i think that's a serious potential and it with this process it could have been any manufacturer, 00:33:25.640 --> 00:33:31.820 uh and there are a lot of databases for other cars where these pids are online so um, 00:33:32.813 --> 00:33:36.720 maybe other manufacturers this process would have been even a little bit easier 00:33:36.720 --> 00:33:38.730 if i didn't you know if you didn't have to do something like forescan there's 00:33:38.730 --> 00:33:42.220 some github repos for different car maker's Toyota and others out there where 00:33:42.220 --> 00:33:45.680 you can find the community has figured out and reverse engineered these and 00:33:45.680 --> 00:33:47.400 then posted them up on GitHub and whatnot. 00:33:47.400 --> 00:33:48.380 That's great. Yeah. 00:33:48.380 --> 00:33:51.340 So there are some ways to make it a little easier that could be a bit of a head 00:33:51.340 --> 00:33:55.130 start, but pretty happy because I did build something I think I can continue 00:33:55.130 --> 00:33:57.124 to use and troubleshoot the problem and narrow it down. 00:33:57.343 --> 00:34:00.580 And then the next thing I want to get, and I would really, really, 00:34:00.580 --> 00:34:02.846 really appreciate anybody that has suggestions. 00:34:04.261 --> 00:34:08.421 is I want to get voltmeters that will work with the voltage range of a car, 00:34:08.421 --> 00:34:11.901 so it can't really be an ESP, but voltmeters that work with the voltage range 00:34:11.901 --> 00:34:13.439 that hook up to Linux over USB. 00:34:13.892 --> 00:34:16.721 And there are some that are from Europe that are like $40 to $60, 00:34:16.721 --> 00:34:21.055 but after taxes and shipping, they're like $280 to get shipped here. 00:34:21.340 --> 00:34:23.541 There's got to be a way to do this, though, because what I want, 00:34:23.541 --> 00:34:28.791 my goal here is, is to be able to have the agent manage all of the multimeter 00:34:28.791 --> 00:34:33.311 testing, so that way it can, in real time, measure the voltage with external 00:34:33.311 --> 00:34:36.311 sensors I would like to have a clamp meter on one of them. 00:34:36.631 --> 00:34:37.501 That'd be great. 00:34:37.501 --> 00:34:41.971 You build this network of sensors that the agent can sit there and operate to 00:34:41.971 --> 00:34:44.741 completely build a picture of what's going on with the vehicle. 00:34:44.741 --> 00:34:48.484 But to get there, I got to have something I can use to do that voltage meter. 00:34:49.238 --> 00:34:53.031 And I think there's even some multimeters out there that have USB ports that just work with Linux. 00:34:53.031 --> 00:34:53.711 That would be great. 00:34:53.711 --> 00:34:58.804 Not sure which ones. And that could get expensive. But a boy, a boy can dream. 00:35:01.329 --> 00:35:05.161 just want to take a moment and thank our members you can become a member at 00:35:05.161 --> 00:35:08.051 linuxunplugged.com slash membership or support all the shows and get all the 00:35:08.051 --> 00:35:13.563 bonus features at jupiter.party like the bootleg clocking in an hour 22 worth of content right now, 00:35:14.727 --> 00:35:19.711 and now you also get that uh free web boost per episode another fantastic perk 00:35:19.711 --> 00:35:22.131 and a way to say thank you for being a member and keeping us going. 00:35:25.838 --> 00:35:29.733 We got a nice piece of feedback from Tom's dad. It says, Tom's dad here, 00:35:30.046 --> 00:35:34.904 party member and person with no time to get self-hosted AlbiHub set up. 00:35:36.284 --> 00:35:37.024 Understandable. 00:35:37.024 --> 00:35:39.334 Well, there's the new web interface you could try. 00:35:39.334 --> 00:35:40.518 Webboos! 00:35:41.163 --> 00:35:45.684 A couple of things worth mentioning. The combination of Forge Joe and Hermes 00:35:45.684 --> 00:35:48.645 with inbound webhooks is chef's kiss. 00:35:51.176 --> 00:35:57.184 Larry is my bot. And with his own Forgeo account, I assign issues from my Nix 00:35:57.184 --> 00:36:03.551 config with at mentions and failing builds also trigger him into action resulting in a PR. 00:36:04.236 --> 00:36:09.054 You need to whip up a webhook adapter script. Oh, add a Prometheus alert manager 00:36:09.054 --> 00:36:11.760 webhook to trigger Hermes and you have it all. 00:36:12.276 --> 00:36:13.333 Holy crap. 00:36:14.256 --> 00:36:18.528 All interactions with Larry and my Nix config now happen through Forgeo. 00:36:20.119 --> 00:36:22.284 I also have a candidate pick here, ArgueNix. 00:36:23.924 --> 00:36:27.520 a Nix native CI runner that connects to any Forge. 00:36:28.156 --> 00:36:33.130 Yeah, this looks kind of interesting. It's GPL3 declarative Nix native. 00:36:33.339 --> 00:36:37.734 It watches your repos on GitHub, GitLab, and Forgeo, or Gitia, Codeberg. 00:36:38.076 --> 00:36:41.635 Evaluates each push and PR as a Nix flake, builds every package, 00:36:42.384 --> 00:36:44.397 checks, dev shells, all those kinds of things. 00:36:44.646 --> 00:36:48.739 It's kind of built for indie developers or a small team who wants a single operator, 00:36:49.344 --> 00:36:52.239 easy to configure, you know, low overhead CI box. 00:36:52.544 --> 00:36:55.563 Okay, no kidding. 00:36:57.275 --> 00:37:01.624 I think maybe for the last two months, we've had a quick version of a conversation 00:37:01.624 --> 00:37:04.534 after every show of Wes saying something to the effective. You know, 00:37:04.534 --> 00:37:08.604 I really think there could be something with Hermes Asians tied to 4GO and webhooks. 00:37:08.604 --> 00:37:09.984 We could really do something around that. 00:37:10.564 --> 00:37:12.564 You could see why I thought this feedback was very interesting. 00:37:12.564 --> 00:37:13.974 Yeah, Wes, surprise. 00:37:13.974 --> 00:37:15.154 Thank you for sharing your setup. 00:37:15.154 --> 00:37:18.604 Tom. Tom's dad, can you guess who picked the feedback this week? 00:37:18.604 --> 00:37:18.924 Yeah, right. 00:37:21.144 --> 00:37:23.258 No, very good. We'll put links to that in the show notes too. 00:37:24.205 --> 00:37:27.914 That is very cool. Thank you very much. and love to hear that. 00:37:28.059 --> 00:37:30.491 Sounds like some good adventures over there. And thank you for being a member, too. 00:37:32.094 --> 00:37:36.314 And we do have some boosts to get to. Musical Coder kicks us off with a row 00:37:36.314 --> 00:37:39.332 of McDucks, 22,222 sats. 00:37:42.624 --> 00:37:46.894 And Musical Coder says, thank you for the Clanker Therapy Stream, 00:37:46.894 --> 00:37:48.744 plus one for doing more of these. 00:37:48.744 --> 00:37:49.044 It was so fun. 00:37:49.344 --> 00:37:49.957 Thank you for checking it out. 00:37:50.644 --> 00:37:51.184 It was great. 00:37:51.542 --> 00:37:57.544 Bite Bitten boosts in with 2,000 sats. i'm field testing a password, 00:37:58.164 --> 00:38:02.664 pw manager pair pass password manager pair pass okay to eliminate the online 00:38:02.664 --> 00:38:08.364 sync dependency but so far not going entirely smooth on the p2p sync, 00:38:09.724 --> 00:38:12.161 i appreciate the report you'll have to let us know if you figure that out. 00:38:13.093 --> 00:38:15.444 I kind of like to know more about that p2p sync stuff too. 00:38:15.444 --> 00:38:17.944 Yeah how does how is it supposed to work even if it isn't working Yeah. 00:38:17.944 --> 00:38:19.605 Right, right. That's the thing. 00:38:21.264 --> 00:38:24.514 I think that's why sometimes it's nice to just have your own sync, 00:38:24.514 --> 00:38:26.624 whatever you're using that you've been using forever. 00:38:26.809 --> 00:38:31.215 That's what I lean on. But Gene Bean here leans on a row of ducks. 00:38:33.323 --> 00:38:37.300 Weird. Been sending as anonymous for a bit. I fixed that now. 00:38:38.927 --> 00:38:46.889 Anyway, I just wanted to say Zooz, Z-O-O-Z, is great, and their tech support is also really helpful. 00:38:47.307 --> 00:38:50.887 When we moved a few years ago, I swapped every light switch in the house to 00:38:50.887 --> 00:38:53.473 theirs and have been super happy with them. 00:38:53.644 --> 00:38:58.647 But even more so since adding the Home Assistant Connect ZWA2. 00:38:58.647 --> 00:39:00.233 That thing is a game changer. 00:39:00.703 --> 00:39:04.547 I am really glad that it's not just me that feels this way, because I felt like 00:39:04.547 --> 00:39:08.927 I was really fanboying over Zeus and the HA Connect ZWA 2. It's nice to hear you. 00:39:08.927 --> 00:39:10.747 A pleased smile on your face right now. 00:39:10.747 --> 00:39:14.862 Thank you, Gene. Nice to hear the plus one and all of that. Appreciate the boost. 00:39:15.285 --> 00:39:21.567 Anonymous is here with a row of duckies. It's 2,222 sets. Just says testing. Was that one of us? No. 00:39:24.635 --> 00:39:29.067 A dude trying stuff comes in with a row of ducks. I feel like there's more puns 00:39:29.067 --> 00:39:33.067 to be made here. configuring chicks os installing negula. 00:39:33.067 --> 00:39:33.967 Negula's good. 00:39:33.967 --> 00:39:37.037 Either way congratulations on your chicken infrastructure. 00:39:37.037 --> 00:39:40.984 I sure do like those chickens i sure do way more than i expected. 00:39:42.325 --> 00:39:46.029 All meg boosted in 16 482 sats, 00:39:49.059 --> 00:39:52.756 Well, you asked for it, so here is my NixOS router config. 00:39:53.070 --> 00:39:56.466 I am so proud of it. It has been running smoothly for months, 00:39:56.466 --> 00:39:58.765 and I barely touch it anymore except for updates. 00:39:59.351 --> 00:40:05.452 It is running on a secondhand x86 netgate SG5100. 00:40:05.823 --> 00:40:10.467 The whole config is basically one file. I tried to keep the boilerplate to a minimum. 00:40:10.958 --> 00:40:14.316 You'll be pleased to see that he's flaking it up, Wes. He's flaking it up for you. 00:40:14.316 --> 00:40:17.026 Well, you've got to flake it up. No, that's not true. You don't have to. 00:40:17.026 --> 00:40:19.926 Okay, I see how he's doing it here. He's got some interfaces, 00:40:20.226 --> 00:40:23.163 WireGuard interfaces. A couple of WireGuard interfaces. 00:40:23.598 --> 00:40:26.466 You WireGuard maniac. He's got some VLAN set up, too. 00:40:26.466 --> 00:40:27.466 Wes, how do you pronounce that? 00:40:27.786 --> 00:40:29.286 IPv6, systemdnetworkd. 00:40:29.846 --> 00:40:33.406 How do you say that, Wes? It's Wire... 00:40:33.786 --> 00:40:34.216 What is it? 00:40:34.216 --> 00:40:35.476 WireGuard. 00:40:35.476 --> 00:40:38.587 Oh, that's what it was. That's what it was. All right, I'm going to keep looking at that. 00:40:38.732 --> 00:40:40.730 Oh, BGP. This is fancy. 00:40:41.275 --> 00:40:46.566 Well, thank you for sending that in. Appreciate that. Night62 comes in with a row of ducks. 00:40:48.158 --> 00:40:52.586 web boost test well this is a game changer well done this really shows the barrier 00:40:52.586 --> 00:40:55.556 to entry for sending a boost sometimes I don't get around to it because it just 00:40:55.556 --> 00:40:59.766 takes time to send a boost this makes it so much quicker and easier look at 00:40:59.766 --> 00:41:02.346 night 62 finding the web boost that's awesome 00:41:02.746 --> 00:41:06.078 we need to get that linked on the main page we really do yes we do well done 00:41:06.223 --> 00:41:07.316 well done I like that thanks. 00:41:07.316 --> 00:41:08.006 For trying it out. 00:41:08.006 --> 00:41:12.266 It looks like Zooter the Penguin also gave a try I'll pull this one up oh no 00:41:12.266 --> 00:41:14.008 this is 5,000 sets oh let's see. 00:41:14.237 --> 00:41:15.606 We need to reorder them. 00:41:15.606 --> 00:41:19.786 We have new sections now. Uh-huh. Right. We have, this was a fiat boost, 00:41:19.786 --> 00:41:23.905 a $5 fiat boost from Zooter the Penguin. 00:41:27.741 --> 00:41:29.976 Already a member, and Bitcoin has been a barrier to boosting, 00:41:29.976 --> 00:41:35.195 so now I'm happy to sling some additional support your way. Well, thank you. 00:41:35.688 --> 00:41:41.306 You want to take our very, very, very first free member boost, Wes? 00:41:41.306 --> 00:41:41.826 Yes, I do. 00:41:42.586 --> 00:41:43.156 So exciting. 00:41:43.156 --> 00:41:48.403 From Jimmy. For Friday, I'd be keen to hear why an agent is the answer. 00:41:48.728 --> 00:41:51.196 Most of the stuff I'd vibe-coded could be run through an agent, 00:41:51.196 --> 00:41:55.226 or it could be a cron or an A to N job to get the data and push to my obsidian 00:41:55.226 --> 00:41:57.006 vault, or called from home assistant. 00:41:57.486 --> 00:42:00.106 Interested in your thoughts. Member Boost! 00:42:00.486 --> 00:42:00.986 Yes. 00:42:01.960 --> 00:42:05.506 So, Jimmy, thank you for sending that in. That is the question we kicked off 00:42:05.866 --> 00:42:07.156 the Clanker Therapy stream with. 00:42:07.359 --> 00:42:09.946 That was what we started with. And I thought we gave it a good answer. 00:42:09.946 --> 00:42:13.006 So if you'd like to hear our answer for that, go check out the Clanker Therapy link. 00:42:13.006 --> 00:42:15.396 Let us know what you think. Thank you for trying out the Member Boost. 00:42:15.396 --> 00:42:18.702 Okay, so I've got to figure out a new way to do all of this. 00:42:19.045 --> 00:42:20.076 Right? I've got to figure out. 00:42:20.076 --> 00:42:22.786 Uh-huh. As a spiel, we could move the thanks, maybe. 00:42:23.062 --> 00:42:25.807 Wait, does that also mean we have new awards at the end of the year? 00:42:26.632 --> 00:42:27.096 Well, I mean. 00:42:27.096 --> 00:42:27.876 We certainly could. 00:42:27.876 --> 00:42:30.156 We could think about that. Yeah, we could. That could be fun. 00:42:30.156 --> 00:42:30.626 A boost to you. 00:42:30.646 --> 00:42:33.376 All right. Well, first, I'll say thank you to everybody who streams some sats. 00:42:33.376 --> 00:42:37.336 18 of you streamed 21,829 sats into this here episode. 00:42:37.841 --> 00:42:44.206 When you total it up, we got 79,771 sats. Does that include the fiat, 00:42:44.206 --> 00:42:49.547 Wes? It does. So that's all. Okay. There you go. So it's just one master number. So 79,771. 00:42:50.766 --> 00:42:54.721 A little low. A little low. It's okay. Okay. 00:42:58.894 --> 00:43:02.804 Perhaps this is a sign that we are implementing the web boost at just the right time. 00:43:02.804 --> 00:43:03.494 I think that's right. 00:43:03.494 --> 00:43:08.327 That's how I'm going to take that right there. So we had one free member boost. We had one Fiat boost. 00:43:08.774 --> 00:43:13.744 And we had 27 total unique senders altogether. Not too shabby. 00:43:13.744 --> 00:43:15.827 Thank you, everybody, who supported this here show. 00:43:16.227 --> 00:43:20.482 We really do support it. This show has really survived because of the community support. 00:43:20.767 --> 00:43:24.284 You know, we're trying to avoid the Linux magazine thing happening here where 00:43:24.284 --> 00:43:28.087 you go crazy with the ads and then you go crazy with the whole, like, drop off. 00:43:28.348 --> 00:43:30.874 like we're trying to find a middle ground here and the audience support has 00:43:30.874 --> 00:43:34.624 been what's kept the lights on so thank you very much for everybody who's supported 00:43:34.624 --> 00:43:40.055 with a membership or a boost it really does mean a lot okay gentlemen, 00:43:41.732 --> 00:43:46.037 I got another IRL pick for you this week. I got to be honest. 00:43:46.037 --> 00:43:48.977 I could have made a segment out of this. You guys are getting a little extra, 00:43:49.457 --> 00:43:53.137 right now for the pick segment. This deserves its own dedicated segment. 00:43:53.137 --> 00:43:53.507 Wow. 00:43:53.721 --> 00:43:56.171 So anybody that's sticking around, you're getting a good one here. 00:43:56.688 --> 00:44:02.697 This is what I call the U-Clock TC001, the Ulanzi T001 Smart Pixel Clock. 00:44:02.697 --> 00:44:03.977 You call it that? Or does everybody call it that? 00:44:03.977 --> 00:44:05.817 I don't know. That's what I call it. I call it my U-Clock. That's what I have 00:44:05.817 --> 00:44:10.797 it set up as. This is not brand new. In fact, because of that, the price is $45. 00:44:10.797 --> 00:44:10.937 Oh. 00:44:12.088 --> 00:44:16.057 It is a full-color LED screen that supports custom icons, time, 00:44:16.057 --> 00:44:18.828 weather, in a pixelated LED display. 00:44:19.194 --> 00:44:22.447 My wife described it as it looks like a light bright, if you're old enough to 00:44:22.447 --> 00:44:23.467 remember what one of those are. 00:44:23.467 --> 00:44:24.328 It's really pretty cute. 00:44:26.297 --> 00:44:30.769 It is a great-looking device. Very simple, white, elegant. 00:44:30.921 --> 00:44:31.547 I want one. 00:44:31.547 --> 00:44:35.647 USB-C power with a five-hour battery, so it can also operate for a while without 00:44:35.647 --> 00:44:38.262 a power source, if need be, which could be great in a power outage. 00:44:39.197 --> 00:44:45.698 256 individual LED beads in there with different colors. It has a bunch of nice built-in features. 00:44:47.173 --> 00:44:52.136 That's not why I wanted it. The real magic in this sucker is you can use it with ESP Home. 00:44:53.285 --> 00:44:55.337 You can custom flash this thing. 00:44:55.337 --> 00:44:55.817 Oh, nice. 00:44:56.577 --> 00:44:59.926 And there are multiple, quick, easy-to-flash... 00:45:00.048 --> 00:45:03.087 I was about to ask, how are you going to control it? How do you interface with it? 00:45:03.087 --> 00:45:07.237 So I've plugged it directly into my Home Assistant. So for $48, 00:45:07.237 --> 00:45:10.242 if you want to buy it from Amazon, $45 if you want to buy it from them directly. 00:45:10.660 --> 00:45:16.412 You can load something like AWT Rix, Atrix, a custom firmware for this clock. 00:45:16.958 --> 00:45:17.834 There's other ones as well. 00:45:18.409 --> 00:45:22.351 And gentlemen, it is, it is so great. If you would allow me, 00:45:24.492 --> 00:45:29.033 Home Assistant is now driving this thing entirely. It doesn't use any of the original stuff on it. 00:45:29.455 --> 00:45:33.658 Home Assistant is drawing the time and day, weather from my local station. 00:45:34.093 --> 00:45:36.368 The first thing, though, that I wanted to do, and of course I can drive this 00:45:36.368 --> 00:45:39.248 with Home Assistant as well, is I wanted a day mode and a night mode. 00:45:39.248 --> 00:45:39.698 Oh, sure. 00:45:39.698 --> 00:45:42.962 You know, day mode's brighter. It has more animations, more information. 00:45:43.309 --> 00:45:45.918 Night mode is dim. It's dark red. 00:45:45.918 --> 00:45:46.538 Gotta be chill, right? 00:45:46.738 --> 00:45:49.318 Clean. Doesn't move much unless there's something really important. 00:45:49.318 --> 00:45:51.953 And that, that's the thing. 00:45:52.255 --> 00:45:54.238 So not only do I have the time, the date, the weather, of course, 00:45:54.238 --> 00:45:57.788 the Bitcoin price and block height, but I have set up Home Assistant. 00:45:57.788 --> 00:46:01.317 So anything it considers critical, which it has to be a certain threshold, 00:46:01.613 --> 00:46:07.262 like an important external camera battery is at 5%. I'll tell you another thing that came up. 00:46:07.709 --> 00:46:10.508 But I have – so I have another page on here because there's like different pages 00:46:10.508 --> 00:46:12.428 you can set up on this thing that Home Assistant can drive. 00:46:13.955 --> 00:46:16.214 And one of them is urgent alerts from home assistance. 00:46:16.214 --> 00:46:17.336 Oh, that's nice. 00:46:17.455 --> 00:46:20.854 And so this weekend, the wife was cleaning out the fridge, doing the full thing, 00:46:20.854 --> 00:46:23.864 like taking all the shelves out and scrubbing them down. So she figures, 00:46:23.864 --> 00:46:26.164 I'm going to turn the fridge off while I'm cleaning it so it's not just sitting 00:46:26.164 --> 00:46:28.131 here running it while I have the door open for a half hour. 00:46:29.200 --> 00:46:33.303 But as one does, pretty understandable. She forgot to turn it back on. 00:46:33.732 --> 00:46:37.400 And so I'm sitting there at the table where I can see the clock out of the corner of my eye. 00:46:38.073 --> 00:46:41.574 And I've set it up with this idea of just ambient notification. 00:46:41.574 --> 00:46:46.044 something that's important it's not a five alarm fire but probably something 00:46:46.044 --> 00:46:49.734 someone in the family should know about not just chris but someone in the family 00:46:49.734 --> 00:46:52.764 should know about this you know it could be we're about to have a major wind 00:46:52.764 --> 00:46:54.193 gust we need to go tidy things up, 00:46:55.001 --> 00:46:58.164 bring the awning in make sure all the animals are okay you know don't do whatever 00:46:58.164 --> 00:47:01.364 it is make sure the levi's inside whatever it might be we just want to have 00:47:01.364 --> 00:47:05.614 some alerts about maybe something and this weekend even though i didn't specifically 00:47:05.614 --> 00:47:08.816 say this alert it was all home assistant figured it out, 00:47:09.978 --> 00:47:16.414 it popped up on there that the fridge temperature was like 43 degrees 43 degrees fahrenheit. 00:47:16.414 --> 00:47:17.404 Kept warm in there. 00:47:17.404 --> 00:47:20.908 And then and the next time i looked at it it said 45 degrees and i was like, 00:47:22.124 --> 00:47:25.704 whoa it's pretty warm out but it's not that warm what's going on i open up the 00:47:25.704 --> 00:47:26.544 fridge sure enough it's off, 00:47:27.328 --> 00:47:32.224 it might have taken me all day before i noticed that for sure and home system 00:47:32.224 --> 00:47:35.724 was like this is not proper for i didn't even like i didn't even specify like 00:47:35.724 --> 00:47:40.864 a threshold of what like what What Laura might have. Now that I think about it, Laura probably did. 00:47:44.323 --> 00:47:49.490 Yeah, that's the thing. And it was so great. And I was like, look at this. 00:47:49.594 --> 00:47:51.844 I was pointing to him out, look at this. How great is this? Look what it's doing 00:47:51.844 --> 00:47:54.447 right now. She's like, why is it so warm? And he forgot to turn it on. 00:47:55.624 --> 00:48:00.764 And so this little clock, the other thing I'm going to set it up is at the nighttime, 00:48:01.064 --> 00:48:02.680 there's certain things I would just want to know. 00:48:02.952 --> 00:48:08.147 like if frigate knows who's at the front door at nighttime put their name on the clock, 00:48:09.465 --> 00:48:10.241 Dylan's at the front door. 00:48:10.241 --> 00:48:11.023 That's great. 00:48:11.450 --> 00:48:14.695 If it's somebody that's unknown at the front door, unknown person at the front door. 00:48:14.959 --> 00:48:15.521 Super clear. 00:48:15.521 --> 00:48:18.081 You know, just simple. Anything like that that you can think of, 00:48:18.081 --> 00:48:21.052 you can put on this clock. Little messages to family members. 00:48:21.871 --> 00:48:25.071 It also has a temperature sensor built into it, which will report to Home Assistant 00:48:25.071 --> 00:48:26.481 as a sensor, whatever you want to use. 00:48:26.481 --> 00:48:26.831 Nice. 00:48:27.331 --> 00:48:30.462 I think it has a microphone and maybe a speaker as well. I have not used those. 00:48:31.859 --> 00:48:33.991 But now that I think about it, I do believe that's in there. 00:48:33.991 --> 00:48:37.502 I don't know what I would use that for. Maybe to yell at the kids. That could be useful. 00:48:38.134 --> 00:48:41.901 But I really like it for $45, $48. I just think it's an absolute win. 00:48:41.901 --> 00:48:45.911 I love this ambient notification. I think that's, you know, just extract more 00:48:45.911 --> 00:48:47.051 info from your environment. 00:48:47.051 --> 00:48:48.371 And I don't need anything buzzing at me. 00:48:48.371 --> 00:48:48.702 No. 00:48:49.025 --> 00:48:52.451 And if it got to a certain level, I do have a threshold where like a water leak 00:48:52.451 --> 00:48:54.351 or something, then my phone does buzz. 00:48:54.351 --> 00:48:55.140 Please do. Yeah, totally. 00:48:55.573 --> 00:48:57.341 Yeah, it's great. So we'll have a link to that in the show notes. 00:48:57.341 --> 00:49:02.237 Go check it out. Now, Wes, you found something that I thought only AI could do. 00:49:02.405 --> 00:49:06.271 You're telling me we don't need an LLM running on our machines to reorganize 00:49:06.271 --> 00:49:07.271 our files and folders for. 00:49:07.271 --> 00:49:12.512 Us no but maybe you want it uh to use it to help set it up yeah check out check out muzy. 00:49:12.628 --> 00:49:15.565 Muzy like move it but you're muzing. 00:49:16.084 --> 00:49:17.768 Your downloads tamed. 00:49:18.131 --> 00:49:23.441 And uh they stress a privacy first a privacy first automatic file organizer 00:49:23.441 --> 00:49:25.271 that quietly sorts your downloads folder. 00:49:25.795 --> 00:49:30.221 Yeah silent elegant lives in your system tray keeps your downloads folder or 00:49:30.221 --> 00:49:34.101 any other folder automatically tidy runs quietly in the background monitors 00:49:34.101 --> 00:49:38.415 selected folders moves renames or sorts files based on customizable rules. 00:49:38.586 --> 00:49:39.581 UI looks fantastic. 00:49:39.581 --> 00:49:43.982 Yeah, Rust, some TypeScript in there, MIT Licensed, 00:49:46.049 --> 00:49:48.745 And yeah, it's got a clean little UI, kind of runs in the background mostly 00:49:48.745 --> 00:49:51.045 when you're not interfacing with it or configuring it. 00:49:51.045 --> 00:49:54.394 Has a rules engine for like images, documents, archives, installers. 00:49:54.522 --> 00:49:55.933 You can ignore certain files. 00:49:56.415 --> 00:50:00.285 Also has an undo history because it uses a little local SQLite database. 00:50:00.285 --> 00:50:02.025 So if it screws something up, you can undo it. 00:50:02.025 --> 00:50:02.620 Nice. 00:50:02.823 --> 00:50:04.065 Multilingual support. 00:50:04.065 --> 00:50:04.725 That's nice. 00:50:04.725 --> 00:50:09.487 100% offline, zero clouds. Dark mode. Uploads, no telemetry, dark mode support. 00:50:10.085 --> 00:50:13.435 And I guess there's other operating systems out there besides Linux. 00:50:13.611 --> 00:50:16.293 Right. You could use Windows MCP to set it up on Windows. 00:50:16.575 --> 00:50:16.995 You could. 00:50:16.995 --> 00:50:17.995 There's an MSI right there. 00:50:17.995 --> 00:50:22.032 And I think there's even a DMG or something. No, maybe there's no DMG. 00:50:22.363 --> 00:50:26.299 But they have a dev, RPM, and app image available directly from the project. 00:50:26.433 --> 00:50:30.325 Yeah, and the rules, like you can do stuff based on extension or a regex pattern, 00:50:30.325 --> 00:50:31.670 so you can kind of get flexible with it too. 00:50:32.157 --> 00:50:34.855 And that might be where you could have some, you know, have an LLM if you wanted 00:50:34.855 --> 00:50:36.625 to have it help you or just do it all by hand. 00:50:36.625 --> 00:50:40.397 Would anybody be willing to boost in the number of files in their download directory? 00:50:41.843 --> 00:50:42.925 Could you do it? Could you do it? 00:50:42.925 --> 00:50:46.838 Yeah, are we just doing like top-level LS? Or are we doing like a, yeah. 00:50:47.043 --> 00:50:50.335 Oh, oh, subfolders? Uh-huh. Oh. 00:50:50.335 --> 00:50:52.325 Or just like things at the top level probably makes the most sense. 00:50:52.325 --> 00:50:55.725 I think top level, because if you, if a sub, oh, no, no, no. 00:50:55.725 --> 00:50:58.525 No, no, you just hit properties on the folder. It'll tell you every single file. 00:50:58.525 --> 00:51:01.415 No, I know, but that just makes it exponentially worse for me. 00:51:01.455 --> 00:51:03.368 That's fair. That's only fair. 00:51:05.240 --> 00:51:07.787 LSPipeWC-L. How about that? 00:51:07.787 --> 00:51:11.447 Okay. I remember once I was having a conversation with our buddy Noah, 00:51:11.447 --> 00:51:15.697 and he says, one of the ways I can tell if a user is really using the new computer 00:51:15.697 --> 00:51:20.497 I gave them is after they've had it for a month or two, I check their downloads directory. 00:51:20.837 --> 00:51:23.081 And if it's empty, I know they're not using the computer. 00:51:23.557 --> 00:51:25.362 And if it's full of stuff, I know they're using the computer. 00:51:25.872 --> 00:51:27.047 And that's true for me, too. 00:51:27.047 --> 00:51:29.107 I'll give you my number. You got a number? 00:51:29.107 --> 00:51:30.977 Are we doing it right now? Yeah, okay. 00:51:30.977 --> 00:51:33.637 Oh, well, yeah. Should we wait? No, wait. Let's wait. All right. 00:51:33.657 --> 00:51:36.097 If people boost in their numbers, we'll reveal our numbers. Because I don't 00:51:36.097 --> 00:51:37.677 have mine yet. So we'll get all our numbers. 00:51:37.677 --> 00:51:39.159 He's going to clean up his folder. 00:51:39.984 --> 00:51:42.857 Try out the new web boost. Let us know. I should. 00:51:42.857 --> 00:51:43.617 Oh, my God. 00:51:44.337 --> 00:51:47.677 Actually, on this machine, it wouldn't be that bad because it's got such a small 00:51:47.677 --> 00:51:51.565 disk. I clean it all the time. But my machine upstairs, it's like from 2017. 00:51:52.453 --> 00:51:56.967 Or this soundboard machine that I never do any kind of maintenance on at all 00:51:56.967 --> 00:51:59.779 that's been around forever. God, it could be horrible. 00:52:00.594 --> 00:52:01.921 It would be interesting to total it all up. 00:52:02.844 --> 00:52:06.687 All right. All right, so Wes, that pick there is MIT license. 00:52:06.687 --> 00:52:07.327 Yes, it is. 00:52:07.327 --> 00:52:10.257 Something worth mentioning. There you have it. That is the show, 00:52:10.257 --> 00:52:14.257 everybody. So I'd love to know what you think the most Linux user way is to 00:52:14.257 --> 00:52:16.195 use Windows. I think I've found it. 00:52:17.396 --> 00:52:21.975 This, I believe, is peak. Imagine a headless VM, a family member on a Mesh VPN, 00:52:21.975 --> 00:52:24.448 or that Windows machine you have in your house. 00:52:25.104 --> 00:52:26.825 You could use this just to start Steam on that thing. 00:52:26.825 --> 00:52:28.479 It does seem a lot less painful. 00:52:28.621 --> 00:52:32.565 Way better. Way makes headless Windows way more feasible, in my opinion, too. 00:52:32.565 --> 00:52:36.435 There's something, too, also just, like when I was doing some dabbling for this 00:52:36.435 --> 00:52:40.845 with Windows, it's not that you need it, but having the LLM sort of translate, 00:52:40.845 --> 00:52:43.145 because I'm no longer using Windows all of the time. 00:52:43.505 --> 00:52:46.945 And so having to sort of be able to phrase like the underlying thing that's 00:52:46.945 --> 00:52:49.525 happening, but in a way that my Linux brain can understand without me having 00:52:49.525 --> 00:52:52.825 to translate from Microsoft documentation directly is helpful. 00:52:53.513 --> 00:52:57.705 It's also stacking on a lot of work Microsoft has done to make almost everything 00:52:57.705 --> 00:52:58.953 doable via the command line now. 00:52:59.089 --> 00:52:59.485 Yes. 00:52:59.485 --> 00:53:00.195 You can do so much. 00:53:00.195 --> 00:53:00.535 For sure. 00:53:00.535 --> 00:53:03.631 So there's really credit to them for making, and that's just sitting on top of that too. 00:53:03.805 --> 00:53:07.255 So if you want to tell us the most Linux user way to run Windows, 00:53:07.255 --> 00:53:10.215 let us know. You can try out the new Web Boost and tell us your download counts 00:53:10.215 --> 00:53:12.797 as well. But you know, you can always take it up a notch. 00:53:13.268 --> 00:53:17.569 Make it a Linux patch Tuesday on a Sunday. Join us Sundays, 10 a.m., 00:53:18.010 --> 00:53:20.611 1 p.m. Eastern over at jblive.tv. 00:53:24.517 --> 00:53:27.580 And we do have the metadatas around the show from time to time, 00:53:27.580 --> 00:53:30.080 as it were. We've got JSONs. We've got chapters. 00:53:30.080 --> 00:53:30.430 Oh, yeah. 00:53:30.430 --> 00:53:32.220 We've got SRTs, VTTs. 00:53:32.560 --> 00:53:32.850 JSON. 00:53:32.850 --> 00:53:33.470 ABCs. 00:53:33.480 --> 00:53:35.468 That's right. XMLs, RSS. 00:53:35.617 --> 00:53:36.560 Check out the RSS. 00:53:37.460 --> 00:53:37.810 MP4s. 00:53:37.820 --> 00:53:40.643 There's even an MP4 in there. Wouldn't you know it? Wouldn't you know it? 00:53:40.985 --> 00:53:44.060 So check it out. And also, don't forget all the links for this week's episode 00:53:44.060 --> 00:53:47.060 over at linuxunplugged.com slash 671. 00:53:47.574 --> 00:53:51.610 There's some good stuff in there. You can find the full back catalog at linuxunplugged.com 00:53:51.610 --> 00:53:57.190 or all the great shows over at jupyterbroadcasting.com, including we have a 00:53:57.190 --> 00:53:59.690 link to the Clanker Therapy session. 00:53:59.916 --> 00:54:02.050 Even if you check out the highlight on YouTube, I think it's worth your time 00:54:02.050 --> 00:54:05.340 if you're interested at all, because we covered some ways to make these things 00:54:05.340 --> 00:54:08.083 actually safe to manage your important systems. 00:54:08.321 --> 00:54:10.213 And I mean my most important systems. 00:54:10.625 --> 00:54:13.000 I think we have a pretty good solution, so check that stream out. 00:54:13.279 --> 00:54:16.042 And we answered that question, why agents at all? 00:54:16.181 --> 00:54:18.700 If you're a member, we have a transcript you can point your agent in. 00:54:18.720 --> 00:54:19.680 Yeah, there you go. 00:54:21.940 --> 00:54:24.600 All right. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We'll see you right 00:54:24.600 --> 00:54:27.680 back here next Tuesday, as in Sunday.