00:00.34 James Welcome back everyone to Merge Conflict, your weekly developer podcast about all things in the world of software development-ish. We'll see. I am James Montemagno, live from Tokyo, Japan. And with me, the one and only Frank Kruger. How's it going, buddy? 00:12.63 Frank Oh, it's going wonderful, James. And I am so excited because if you're traveling, we all know what that means. New app, new business idea. What have you vibe coded on this trip? 00:24.32 Frank I cannot wait. It's going to be a Visual Studio competitor, something crazy. i am and so excited to hear what's the new app, James. 00:32.31 James Okay, okay, okay. So we got done recording. Okay, this is funny, actually, this is that thing that's really gonna happen. So we, we talked last week, I think after the pod, where i was kind of, we Zencast, which we've used forever to record podcasts. 00:46.39 James And there's many things that I like about it, but there's a few things that I don't. And I'm like, what if I could just Vibecode something else? So I own Vibecasterstudio.com. has a beautiful website. 00:57.56 James i am starting all of the specifications, investigation in the background. I'm not sure if I really want to do it because you definitely need services. You need to deploy things to things, Azure and Cloudflare and AWS and all those things. 01:07.37 Frank Hello? 01:11.99 James So I'm specking out all that right now. But regardless, I'm really intrigued of creating something really unique that we can make for us, right? You and me in this podcast, I can streamline the work. 01:26.74 James And I've done a few of those bits and pieces separately in some different apps and command line applications, but there's still quite a process. So I'm wondering what a new modern aged, you know, podcast production studio would really look like from my vision to here. So, but we love Zencaster, great software, but like anything, I'm like, what if we had our own, right? And there's many of them out there. So it's not a huge deal. So and that's just starting. I didn't vibe anything on the planet. It worked a lot on beautiful Starlink internet live the entire 10 hour flight from Seattle to Japan. 02:03.42 James So that happened. 02:05.37 Frank ah That's fantastic. I was actually just trying to make a joke. I love that you actually did Vibecode something and are trying to disrupt an entire app that we've been using for 10, feels like 10 years. 02:16.98 Frank um I'm actually kind of excited because they're there hasn't been too much new in that space. And maybe if I could just put a feature request in there, could you make it work with Safari? Just because like... We've been using Zencaster for like 10 years and they still don't support Safari. So that would that would be disruptive, man, if like you were actually compatible with a mobile browser. 02:39.86 Frank That'd be kind of nice. 02:40.15 James Safari native. 02:41.10 Frank um 02:41.60 James Safari native. I can see what I can do. yeah I can. 02:44.31 Frank I love that you are actually working on something about this this modern era of always be writing in code or always be agentically writing code is kind of hilarious. 02:45.18 James I think that's... that's 02:54.81 Frank Yeah. 02:55.43 James It's been, know, I created Feedback Flow a year and a half ago with Straight Vibes. And it was a really first great prototype of what a full end-to-end, full production application at scale would look like. And I learned a lot from that process. It's still used by quite a few people, but I haven't really, I've i've fixed a few things here and there, and I've tweaked things around. and And what I mean, like I have a lot of apps, but a lot of them are static apps or they're little desktop apps. They're not, 03:24.46 James you know, iCircuit, right? You know what I mean? Or they're not even feedback flow where they have deployed backend services, user accounts, storage data, all these things. And something like a production podcast studio is much more involved. So gonna be really a deeping dive into that. But I think that only building little demos, which is normally what I do in advocacy anyways, is a lot of fun, but actually building something at scale to show the truth gives me a lot more demo material. 03:49.31 James And I use Feedbackflow forever to talk about here's how I built this thing that's real. So I think that it's, you know, there's tons of businesses being built today with agentic development at different scales. 04:00.21 James So I want to see like what I can do, right. And some of the new models are just bananas. Like I've been using tons of five, six, soul and Tara nonstop. 04:07.22 Frank OK. Ah, 04:08.60 James And and Uh, it's, it's really good. It's really fast. I really, really like it. And, uh, five, five, is so a really great. A whole bunch of things. I still use five, three codecs on occasions. It's a great, right model, right time, right thing for everything, uh, which is good, but I'm going to put this thing to work and let it go. 04:18.72 Frank OK. Ooh. 04:23.70 James But it's not actually the main topic today. I am here in, um, because I have a conference upcoming where I'm going to be talking about tons of stuff. 04:25.91 Frank okay 04:31.80 James um But I figured what we would talk about a little bit first is we have three topics we wanted to talk about. Oh, the first one is IMAX. um And Frank, is your birthday already by the time people listen this? So first, happy birthday. 04:45.72 Frank Oh, I'm very old. Hi. 04:49.27 James How old now? 45. No. 40 now, so. 04:51.21 Frank I'm not going to... Oh, you said a number. That's illegal. Once you're past 40, you stop counting. 04:56.54 James Yeah. 04:57.07 Frank It's just, you know, I'm over 40. 04:57.04 James i'm forty nowa 04:59.48 Frank We'll just leave it there. For the next 50 years, I'll just be over 40. 05:03.88 James I'm officially over 40 because I turn 40, so every day after 40 is officially over 40. 05:06.52 Frank Yeah. Yeah. ah 05:09.11 James ah But I believe that you went to celebrate um in style in in IMAX, is that correct? 05:16.73 Frank Yeah, it's true, James. i ah And this is definitely an over 40-year-old birthday present to oneself. um our Our friend of the show, Christopher Nolan, released another movie. 05:31.26 Frank I don't know. 05:31.41 James Ding, ding, ding. 05:32.63 Frank Yeah, ding. I don't know. His movies are a little hit or miss for me, but he he made Interstellar, and therefore I'm just a kind of on board for all his movies now. 05:43.74 Frank And as I give to myself, I wanted to go see the true IMAX experience because like IMAX, it's hard. They're big, heavy cameras. They're so loud. You can't even record dialogue while they're recording. It's the most obnoxious auteur way to create film these days. And it's actually film. It's actually like expensive money per per second because you actually have to pay to have it developed. You have to Go find old Kodak engineers that remember how to develop film. Hire them. 06:12.70 Frank Give them lots of coffee. and Then you got to hire someone to like cut the film into little film pieces and glue it all together. i don't know how film is actually made, but I heard it's something like that. And I wanted to get that ah film experience. So i took a boat, left my island, took a motorcycle, 06:30.58 Frank Got on the highway because I needed to go fast, which I hate. Rode into a giant city because that's the only place you can find real IMAX these days. You got to go to actual Seattle to find a real IMAX theater. 06:45.69 Frank Stood in the hotline. Got many emails about the air conditioner being broken. And then, James, would you believe it or not? When I got into the theater and I looked up to see the obnoxious projector that they were using, a relic from the past, what did I see? 07:02.97 Frank Can you guess? 07:03.30 James not not that 07:05.34 Frank Something from the future, laser. i was ready for 1970s technology and I got, well, it's actually 1970s technology, but a laser, a digital laser. 07:18.26 Frank And i was so disappointed, James, so disappointed. 07:20.82 James Okay, do do you want to just describe what you were expecting to see for people maybe don't know about IMAX? 07:25.34 Frank Right. 07:26.98 James Because I know what you are looking to see. 07:28.57 Frank Yeah. 07:30.30 James But when you you turn, so you look at this big screen, and we all know screen size isn't important. 07:31.16 Frank ah 07:35.34 James It's the the projector that's projecting things. That is the one of the most important aspects of it. ah So you turn around, and like what are you expecting to see there? 07:46.10 James up there Cause no one ever turns around by the way, but only Frank Ruger does. 07:49.27 Frank They don't? 07:49.57 James I turn around. 07:49.75 Frank Oh, I always turn around. 07:50.94 James I always turn around. 07:51.58 Frank Okay, good. Yeah. 07:52.76 James I can't not. I'm like, what's up there? 07:53.94 Frank Yeah. My friend used to be a projectionist, so I can't help but to always look at the camera because I find projectors fascinating. they're They're big, monstrous machines because, especially with IMAX film, they take in these huge rolls of film, like 70 millimeters. That doesn't sound like a lot, but multiplied by a bazillion frames that you have to put in front of people to create an animation, also known as a movie, but it's really just an animation. um I'm expecting to see a giant machine with like six employees yelling at each other, trying to like move monstrous amounts of film onto a rack so that it can be projected. The film actually doesn't go like... The old way, you would have like a vertical mount reel in the old style film. Not even, it's its current style film. But ah they they figured out in order to put the widescreen picture on the 70 millimeter film, you've got to put it horizontal. So it like takes up a massive amount of room. 08:54.70 Frank There's a very pretty particular lens you'll see on that camera, especially because such a large screen and such a relatively low throw the distance of the camera to the screen. 09:08.82 Frank There's a particular lens I expect to see when I look up. But when I look up, all I see is like an iPhone attached to like little tiny little lens or something. 09:20.30 Frank I don't know. You know, like um before a movie, they would often use digital projectors to put like a bunch of advertisements off or like movie trivia and junk like that. 09:30.78 Frank um You would see like a tiny little consumer projector up in the projection booth. 09:30.85 James Yeah. And they change it over. 09:36.66 Frank That's not the real projector, ideally. But I'm looking, the harder I'm looking, i'm like, that's all I see is the tiny little junky consumer projector. I'm like, what is going on? So that's what I saw. 09:46.73 Frank And then I had to ask someone, I'm like, am I going crazy? Like, there is no way that projector is actually an IMAX projector. 09:54.51 James It's disappointing because in this day and age when, you know, I don't really know how well the movie theaters are doing necessarily. And also once a movie comes out, it's like already available on Netflix like two weeks later. 10:07.42 James but you know, I like movie theaters a lot. 10:08.12 Frank Yeah. 10:09.54 James I like the movie theater experience. it's very expensive to go to the movies. 10:12.18 Frank Yeah. 10:13.08 James So you are almost it's it's almost as if it's a premium experience at this point. 10:17.41 Frank Right. 10:18.36 James If you're going to an IMAX, you're expecting even more of a premium experience. And now if people don't know the Picar, um paccar imax in the pacific science center was the one i've seen many official 30 or 70 millimeter film um in 1.43 to 1 aspect ratio um is a true it was a true imax gt with a 70 millimeter capability on a beautiful 60 by 37 foot screen um however when you told me this news and information i was shooken back because 10:55.00 James of when I know when I go to an AMC or I didn't go to a Regal or I go to a Cinemark and it says IMAX, we all know that's not a real IMAX. 11:01.58 Frank Right. Right. 11:03.59 James It's a fake IMAX with a bigger screen and a different projector and different sound that meets some IMAX quality standard. 11:10.34 Frank Sure. 11:10.26 James And what I want, if I'm paying for IMAX, is... the hugest, it's literally you're recording on IMAX film, like the film should be filmed on IMAX film, which I think costs like $10,000 a second to produce. 11:25.34 Frank Something ridiculous, yeah. 11:25.78 James And I want the optimal viewing experience of said IMAX experience. And I didn't realize that the PACCAR changed to a digital IMAX. 11:35.72 Frank Yeah. 11:38.50 James So it's still an IMAX, right? But it no longer has a 70 millimeter capability. And No longer, it's not a true IMAX GT. And they changed aspect ratio. What the heck's up with that? 11:47.22 Frank Yeah. 11:49.08 James 1.9 90 to one. That make any sense. Like you change you and kept the same screen size. So it's like, it's, it's actually smaller than because the aspect ratio is different. 11:56.33 Frank Yeah. 11:59.45 James I guess it's like, you know, I don't, it's weird. 12:00.31 Frank yeah and And I hate to sound like, i honestly, i don't like record people who who say they're audiophiles and they like the sound of records because they've got that old analog-y, scratchy feel. 12:12.19 Frank And I don't want to sound like one of those people. But like you're saying, this was just kind of a special event. I look at digital all day. 12:18.07 James Yeah. 12:19.55 Frank i deal in RGB digital pixels all day. So I just wanted an analog experience, you know, like in the old days, like, I think like in the sixties or something like Cinerama was like three projectors, like showing this like ultra wide 2.7 to one ratio, crazy film. 12:39.98 Frank Like they learned in the, in the mid century that like TV is out there and people have like, well, they weren't good TVs then, but we have great TVs. Now I have this gorgeous OLED TV that I've built a good sound system around my movie viewing experience at home. 12:49.89 James Yeah. 12:56.86 Frank It's fantastic. And so like if I want to go through the theater, deal with Seattle parking, deal with the bite of Seattle setting up and trying to get to ah a theater, then I want like a unique experience. 13:10.78 Frank I'm going for that unique analog experience. I want to see that. I want the heat of the projector. I should feel the pulsing heat of like way too many, too much power being used to project the screen. 13:22.90 James thats that's why That's why I have a plasma screen. you can go You can go up to and if it's warm in the winter, you get heated on up, so... 13:26.30 Frank Right. Right. 13:29.53 Frank Yeah. So I fear to even telling this story, I'm going to sound like such a weird nerd or something like that. And I guess I am to some level, but it was just a little bit of that disappointment that you just can't get. 13:43.07 Frank Even though friend of the show, Chris Nolan, is still recording on these old analog ancient devices and rehiring old engineers to cut this stuff, physically cut this stuff. 13:54.92 Frank uh we can't experience it and i find that a little bit sad um it'd be nice if there was at least one analog theater left 14:02.97 James Yeah, if anyone knows exactly, like, I'm sure we could look it up. But it is pretty disappointing because of all the theaters, there was only two theaters in Seattle I really went to. One was the PACCAR IMAX for IMAX specific movies. 14:15.41 James And usually, like, the documentary ones, like the nature ones. 14:18.73 Frank yeah 14:19.01 James I saw Madagascar, not Madagascar, at the animated film, but there's one on lemurs in Madagascar that Heather and I went to see was 14:21.88 Frank the 14:25.94 James stunning just like it is you can't describe seeing true imax on a true imax it's crazy and then the other theater is the cinerama which is now the sif whatever theater and um that theater ah you know has a huge curved screen it's 97 feet and it was one of the last like 14:26.94 Frank Yeah. 14:46.10 James three panel Cinerama capable theaters, which is like not anymore, which is why it's not called the Cinerama. 14:48.02 Frank Yeah. 14:51.32 Frank but 14:51.22 James And they could play 70 millimeter film, Adobe Atmos and all this stuff. 14:55.29 Frank yeah 14:55.42 James And um they got rid of like that old system. Now they have a Christie 4K RGB laser projector. i haven't seen any movies there. It's the same screen. But I'm like, it's never been IMAX. It never was IMAX, but they can no longer do 70 millimeter film projection at all on it. 15:12.46 James or Dolby Cinema. It's only Dolby's Atmos, which is like fine, which is great. It was before. um yeah I'm still interested to go because I do love that theater their chocolate popcorn. 15:21.12 Frank yeah. 15:22.34 James But like that is one of those things where I'm looking for oomph, therambling for that extra, um it's a reason for me to go or else I would just wait to see it you know somewhere else or just go on AMC, right? 15:28.84 Frank yeah. 15:33.91 Frank Right. 15:34.94 James Well, there's it needs to be such a differential for in general. So i agree. it's it's And I don't think it's that it maybe is a little bit of that vinyl little bit like you're saying, but it's not quite the same because like Nolan, which by the way, I read an entire article, which is so funny. 15:52.31 James We were talking about this when we just got on here. I read entire article on the plane, which is how about Christopher Nolan wants you to see his movie on an IMAX. It was like, he was this whole thing. 16:02.81 Frank right 16:04.31 James He did a whole rant on it, I guess. But There's, i don't know how many true IMAXs there are left and in the in the world that can actually play the movie how he intended. 16:13.82 Frank Yeah, yeah, and it's it's sad. And I should say, like, those those laser projectors are fine. They're fine. 16:19.24 James they're great. 16:20.18 Frank they're Yeah, i' I'm sure it's a beautiful image that they put up there. It's just, I wanted to support an artist who created this new artistic expression in a weird way, as artists do. 16:31.77 Frank And it's sad I couldn't find one, even in the big city. Yeah. 16:36.27 James Yeah. 16:37.18 Frank That's it. I mean, I don't want to belabor it. It's just, it's a little bit, pour one out for analog in 2026. figure. 16:45.30 James Well, I want to switch topics here. We've got three topics. The next topic i want to talk about, interestingly enough, talking about a blast from the past, being able to play it on something recent is the Xbox Wire just put out a story today, I guess, July 22nd, July 23rd where I'm at. Um, but that they're bringing Xbox backward compatibility to the PC. 17:08.98 James ah 17:09.98 Frank Yeah. 17:11.00 James So they're starting with four. 17:11.45 Frank but 17:13.00 James So these are games that were on the original Xbox made for the original Xbox. And when I say why this fascinating is because unlike Christopher Nolan's movie that was filmed on IMAX film that can be ported to a bunch of things, like when you're making a video game for a movie, for specifically a very specific console, then being able to take that and put it onto any single Windows 11 machine that can play it in different variations is wild. 17:34.39 Frank Yeah. yeah 17:43.76 James have no idea what magic of backward compatibility, but basically they're rolling out this Xbox backward compatibility layer. You know, my game, Shred Nebula, my game, the game that I got to work on a studio 17:53.72 Frank Yes, your game. 17:55.64 James my game, stretch now shre Shred Navio, the game that I worked out on at Crenshendate Games with a bunch of very impressive individuals. 17:55.96 Frank Designed, wrote the whole thing. Yep. 18:03.48 James They brought to the the back from Xbox Live Arcade over. They ported and I think they put it in a VM or something. I don't think this is what is happening here. I have no idea the the magic of it, but they're starting with um Blinks, which is kind of like a platformer. 18:16.77 James Fusion Frenzy, which is hilarious. Crimson Sky is pretty good game. And Conker Live and Reloaded, which is hilarious. 18:19.84 Frank Mm-hmm. 18:23.80 James um ah And basically what they're saying is you can purchase these games, ah you can purchase them, install them, play them on your PC or handheld. 18:34.20 James um Or you can use Xbox Play anywhere if you already own them and have a digital license to them, it'll just now allow you to play on the PC and It'll also use Xbox Cloud Gaming, so you can just play these on anywhere, on console, on PC, on handheld. 18:41.90 Frank Yeah. 18:49.59 James And um the minimum requirements are an i three which is fascinating, 8 gigs of RAM, and an NVIDIA GTX 950. So, mm-hmm. so 19:00.25 Frank Whoa. OK. It has to be NVIDIA? Or is it? 19:03.32 James ah or an AMD Radeon RX 550 or an Intel Arc A310. 19:04.97 Frank OK. Right. OK. 19:08.51 Frank Right. 19:08.36 James Those are minimum, and they have you know recommended, obviously. um But yeah, it's like crazy. like I have no idea how or how, how like I wish they went into technical details in the blog post, but kind of magic. 19:19.61 Frank Yeah. 19:22.94 Frank Well, especially Xbox. I can't call it Xbox One. 19:25.30 James One. 19:26.63 Frank x Xbox negative one. Zero. First Xbox. 19:29.02 James maximu g Xbox Xbox. 19:29.91 Frank Yeah, OG. um That was not a PC. I mean, Xbox eventually turned into kind of a PC, like a customized PC. But this was a pretty custom piece of hardware back then. They were very proud of their unified memory and all that stuff. um It was an impressive, of its time, kind of build out of all that. yeah I'm sorry, i'm I'm also distracted because i'm i'm I'm sad in my head because I owned at least two of these games. 19:59.42 James I own all three of them. 20:00.44 Frank right But my Xbox account got hacked. 20:01.26 James All four of them. 20:03.42 Frank I got hacked, James. 20:04.47 James Wow. 20:05.18 Frank And I lost access to that account. Really what they did is they they spent all my monies, put some monies on my credit card, and then I burned the account down. Or I begged Microsoft to burn the account down. 20:15.46 James Wow. 20:16.89 Frank So I can't access these two games. And that's what I'm actually sad about. But anyway, Xbox, that was a pretty original piece of hardware. So yeah, I'm curious. I mean, nowadays emulators have gotten so sophisticated. 20:28.49 Frank I'm curious if it's just an emulator for all that stuff, what the deal is there. But, and I'm also wondering, like, is this a response to that whole, like, Sony PlayStation, we're not doing CDs anymore? 20:41.77 Frank Is this like... a weird delayed response to that but i'm like no this must have been in development for years before the whole playstation fiasco um so this is this is kind of cool this is definitely cool 20:48.22 James Oh, yeah. 20:53.30 James Yeah, I'll be super fascinated because yeah, is it running inside of some sort of emulator inside of sort of some sort of VM? Is it running just, I don't know, some magical, there's got to be, stick they couldn't just lift and shift, right? 21:06.12 James Obviously, there's got to be some and I want. 21:06.49 Frank No. You're not recompiling these games. That is not happening. That is so much work to dig up the old builds. Yeah, that's not happening. 21:13.27 James Yeah. 21:15.16 Frank It's got to be a binary. 21:15.09 James So it, 21:16.50 Frank They got to be running the binary. 21:16.78 James It's really, it's gotta to be the binary. It's really fascinating. So I think really cool. I want to try it and see how it is. I play these games, especially Crimson Skies and Conker, just to see how they play on it. 21:28.88 James But this ah these are 25 year old games and these aren't like remasters, right? So this this is a little bit fascinating here because often you hear, oh, we're doing this. 21:33.87 Frank Mm-hmm. 21:36.15 James It's a remaster. or It's whatever. And normally there's work, there's recompilations, there's other steps and pieces going into but this is just the original game, just doing it. 21:43.90 Frank Yeah. 21:44.42 James But something must be happening because it's 21:45.40 Frank Remind me. 21:46.33 James relatively beefy 21:46.87 Frank I mean, it must have been the original Xbox must have been standard death, right? Did we have 720p when that came out? I don't even remember. i can't remember 25 years ago. 21:59.03 Frank What was the world like? Did we have color? 22:02.55 James ah The original Xbox has a custom 733 megahertz Pentium It's Nvidia megs of RAM, 22:14.39 James um 22:14.86 Frank What's it outputting video signal-wise? 22:19.90 Frank ah feel like it must have been standard def. 22:21.45 James I think it was, think it was doing comp RCA composite as video component. Yeah, so must have been, oh, it could do up to, it could do, it could do up to 1080i because comp but composite cables can do. 22:31.22 Frank Standard def? 22:35.60 Frank 1080i. Oh, okay. They could actually push it to do that. That's kind of cool, actually. 22:39.10 James But that's not what it was probably actually pushing, by the way. 22:42.74 Frank yeah 22:44.06 James like Sure, you're getting a 1080i signal, but we it's like you go to an IMAX, but you're not really. 22:49.11 Frank Yeah. Oh, boom. Oh, straight to the heart. 22:53.88 James i mean, it says connectivity can do up to 1080i, but yeah, I'm imagining most games are not 1080i. 22:57.30 Frank Yeah. 23:00.08 James It's like they were using some AI upscaler rendering on the original Xbox. 23:04.46 Frank Upscaling. They're just doubling the scan lines. They're just like, we'll just repeat that scan line. Double the res. Yeah. 23:10.81 James And even if you were playing in 1080i, you're like, okay, well, why am i doing interlace instead of, you know, a progressive? 23:16.57 Frank Yeah. 23:16.85 James just I'd rather play at 720p, you know, so. yeah It was just hilarious. 23:22.52 Frank That's fun, though. 23:22.53 James But yeah. 23:23.32 Frank Yeah, I kind of want to see one of these games running then. i think I played the Crimson Skies the most out of that list. 23:28.73 James Yeah. Well, you brought up the, I don't want to talk about Sony in in general, but because, you know, I'm i'm i'm fascinated um your thoughts on physical media in general. 23:42.41 James When we say physical media, right, we had CDs, those are things that existed. We had movies and Blu-rays and DVDs, those existed. um we had books, those still exist, I just bought one. 23:49.98 Frank Mm-hmm. 23:53.66 James and And, you know, video games. And, you know, all of these have lived in forms of physical and digital for long time and um and even games on the pc right like you can't go to the store and buy a pc game anymore it doesn't exist remember those big boxes you just get a game and get them um and it felt like over it is that it you know i still have my original like starcraft you know box it's a big box a big wide box because it's got brood wars in it well 24:04.18 Frank Yeah. 24:12.31 Frank Right. 24:15.48 Frank Sad. 24:20.97 Frank Yeah. 24:24.66 Frank have my dark forces box. Yeah. 24:28.05 James They're huge, beautiful boxes. um Monopoly. ah You know, yeah. your What's your take on just the state of physical digital media, I guess, in your 40s? 24:40.25 Frank Yeah. 24:43.96 Frank I think, thanks. Thanks, James. as As you're getting old, let's ask this old man his opinion. 24:48.82 James What? 24:50.08 Frank um i have mixed feelings. I think like a lot of people, um I think we are seeing that Renaissance in physical media because everyone's getting so tired of shows appearing and disappearing off of like streaming services. So I think, 25:05.94 Frank Even I found myself like shopping Amazon. i'm like, what does a Blu-ray player cost in 2026? Like, could could I get, I'd actually, I had a small Blu-ray collection and then I gave it away when I was moving and I've been regretting that a little bit just because I've been working on my cool sound system and my nice TV. 25:23.15 James Yeah. 25:23.46 Frank And I'm like, wouldn't it be nice to have like high quality renditions of these things? Because when you're streaming 4K, especially me, I'm pulling 4K off of a satellite. I am not getting real 4K. 25:35.14 Frank I'm not getting the full resolution, or least I'm getting a highway compressed version of it. And I start to wonder like, oh, what would the good quality signal actually look like? And so I've been tempted to actually switch, like all hipsters out there, switch back to the physical media. 25:48.72 Frank And I love physical media. I'm building out an old RCA video disc collection and player. Like, this is definitely the vinyl part. That's vinyl. I mean, that is literally vinyl that I'm like putting all this stuff through. 26:00.59 James you 26:02.97 Frank So that's, that's um and I think in the game world, people make an argument about like trading games and reselling games and things like that. I feel like we are being, the future is the internet and downloading. 26:19.03 Frank But as someone with a slow internet connection, i totally get the idea of physical media. I don't particularly love Blu-ray because I know like these games, like what's what's the current big game? 26:32.25 Frank ah Crimson Dawn or something like that. um 26:35.47 James disk. 26:37.74 Frank Loading streaming game data off of a CD is horrendous because like a CD is a very linear format. So insert Blu-ray where I keep saying CD. um you You're kind of stuck. 26:50.04 James dis 26:51.34 Frank Like a physical... servo has to move a laser beam to a particular part of the disk, the disk has to be spinning. It's an incredibly slow, high latency experience when you're not reading in order. 27:02.95 Frank And so you cannot beat the speed of like a good SSD hard drive or something like that. and so But the problem is games are stupidly sized now. 27:15.23 Frank 20 gigabyte game. have to download 20 gigabytes and then somehow store those somewhere. like I kind of want to get Grand Theft Auto 6. And I'm like, how do I even do that? 27:27.02 Frank Like, they're not putting anything in a box anymore. 27:27.65 James sure. Yeah. five hundred gigs i'm sure yeah 27:31.22 Frank Yeah, like yeah I'm going to have to buy $700 PlayStation and then $100 game. And even then I'm like, am I downloading 500 gigabytes? Like what's going to happen after I spend all that money? Am I going to have to sit there with a progress bar for a week, given my internet connection in order to play the game? 27:51.32 Frank So, okay. You asked a simple question. I gave a long answer. The simple answer is Physical media is still here, at least right now. I feel like there are still a lot of good arguments for physical media. 28:04.41 Frank um But I think in 10, 20, 30 years, i it it should be gone. like Everyone should have faster and internet connections and all that because disks are not a good storage format. 28:20.37 Frank and And I guess we could just sell everyone an SSD card, but that seems pretty wasteful. 28:21.40 James No. 28:25.86 James I think the thing about games and about movies that are unique, because I also did diss to digital with my Blu-rays. So I have them all in like my Fandango is a movie everywhere. so I can boot them all up, which is really nice. 28:36.07 James But I'm not even really, like you said, getting the true 4K. 28:37.06 Frank Yeah. 28:39.22 James And we've built up a little bit of a Blu-ray collection. I have some Blu-rays now as we seem fit so we can watch those movies. But usually with a movie, you're like, it's it's a progression in time, it's hours, right? You pick out something, you put it in and a game's the same way. 28:50.66 James You pick it, you put it in. With music, we're kind of rotating, right? 28:54.36 Frank No. 28:55.51 James We're rotating around even like from distance. 28:55.96 Frank Yeah. 28:58.19 James So I think that that medium of of music made a lot of sense. um Books you know for carrying around also could be said there, though physical books are a little bit smaller. But um yeah, I think like for my games, like I basically have always just held on to them and been happy with them. 29:13.39 James The fascinating part is that even on the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, their cartridges, not all of them are. 29:18.25 Frank Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 29:18.55 James Some of them are cartridges that are key cards and you download the game and it unlocks it so you can resell it. But there's a lot of comparisons, which is what if you play the game, let's say Mario Kart m um World, you play it on either option one, the internal SSD, a micro SD or the game cartridge. Which ones do you think is the fastest and which ones do you think is the slowest? 29:45.38 Frank MicroSDs can be pretty fast these days, so it's really hard to guess for me. I have to think, Nintendo being Nintendo, the cartridge is probably the slowest of all the formats. So I don't know. It's either the SSD or the micro. 29:59.16 Frank I want to say the SSD, but it's Nintendo. They love putting slow hardware in machines. 30:06.73 James I think it is the SSD and then just barely though over the microSD. 30:09.98 Frank Just barely. Okay. 30:11.26 James And then that is the cartridge, which adds several seconds on to it in general. So, you know, you get an interesting experience and obviously disks are even slower for what they're doing and accessing those mediums. So, Yeah, I think it's it's sad, but it is something that will change over over time. 30:28.92 James ah But ah yeah, you know, I like at least if we're going to move in a direction. What's the state of play? What's the backwards compatibility? How do I get these? I carry around my Nintendo 3DS with me here on the flight over Japan. 30:41.99 James I got all my games just right there. I can boot up all them. However, like I can't get into the eShop anymore, right? I can't buy new ones. 30:48.25 Frank funny. 30:48.39 James I think I can re-download my games still, but that's not guaranteed for me, right? 30:48.65 Frank Yeah. 30:53.51 James Forever. So that's the the rub, the trade-off there. All right, we're 30 minutes in. Let's get into our last topic. I'm going to get out of this phone booth because I'm at one hour here in seven minutes. 31:00.70 Frank Yeah. 31:02.52 James So, and then they'll kick me out. 31:03.15 Frank Oh. 31:03.76 James And i want to be conscious here is you had a pretty big update to an app, Brian Kruger. 31:10.65 Frank Yeah, thanks. i'm I'm going to do a little bit of a commercial, but there's a fun technology side here. So I just want to talk about the technology. But yeah, I'm working on version 1.16 iCircuit, and it's got some cool new features. And one of the cool, cool features, and this it still kind of blows my mind how this works, and that's why i wanted to talk about it, is the app is now supporting Python programming in the app. 31:37.53 Frank So you probably heard me talking about iCircuit a million times. It's a circuit simulator. You can put things in it, resistors, LEDs, all the normal stuff. But you can also put microcontrollers. And in this case, the Raspberry Pi Pico and the Pico 2. 31:53.27 Frank And you can program those using this fun little language called Python. Have you heard of this Python language? 31:58.55 James heard of it. Just a little bit. Yeah. 32:00.86 Frank A little bit. um 32:02.16 James Starts at web server for me pretty often. 32:04.44 Frank Does it? Yeah. ah so and And you wouldn't believe, but actually in the embedded world, it's usually so performance and optimization obsessed. Well, it turns out this nice little language called Python is actually kind of wonderful to write embedded systems stuff in. So forever, for the longest time, I've wanted to support this programming system called MicroPython. It's ah just a different implementation of Python, but it's the same language. 32:30.42 Frank And we now supported an iCircuit with the craziest hard set stack of software you've ever heard in your life. Okay, let me try to break this down. Ready, set, 32:43.12 Frank I-Circuit is a circuit simulator. It is taking a bunch of electrical nodes with known voltages and conductances. It's this big linear matrix. Now, most circuits aren't linear, so it actually has to do this. 33:00.89 Frank thousands and thousands and thousands of times per second. So, you know, games run at 60 Hertz. My engine runs at a hundred kilohertz in order to solve these kinds of circuits. So that's a circuit simulator in that circuit simulator. 33:15.61 Frank This is a big innovation, a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 emulator has been written. So this is a basically cycle for cycle re-implementation of the chip that's on the little Pico 2 board. 33:24.27 James Hmm. 33:35.22 James clean room 33:35.54 Frank And it's, yeah, clean room implementation. It's in, I'm going to get this wrong. So everyone don't hold me to this because I actually didn't work on this. ah My um ah partner in crime, Yvonne, wrote all this code. I've just been doing the code reviews like a good gentleman. 33:54.81 Frank um I believe it's like an ARM Cortex M0-ish chip. 34:01.30 James anything. 34:01.53 Frank So kind of like a 32-bit chip sitting in there. And it's a reimplementation of that whole hardware. So implementing all those op codes, emulating all the internal registers of it, and more importantly, implementing all the peripheral devices like the digital to analog converter, the GPIO, the general purpose IOPINs. 34:26.81 Frank all that crazy stuff, the UART system, all that extra stuff that goes on the outside of a microprocessor, making it a microcontroller, and then a little bit more stuff that you put a microcontroller to create a board. So, yeah. 34:43.26 Frank So all that craziness, that's an emulator. That emulator... is running the actual firmware that you can just get from the MicroPython website. You can just go click a download button, they'll give you a file, the firmware for MicroPython. And that emulator is running the MicroPython firmware. 35:04.50 Frank Now, in the app, you can double click the element and start typing in Python code. And what's happening is That firmware, which is running on an emulator, which is running on a simulator, starts interpreting the Python code so that it is actually executing and talking to all the hardware. It is the hardware stack, a magical, magical hardware stack all running on an iPad of all places and an iPhone, whatever, mobile. you know um i just 35:38.55 Frank it brings such a giant smile to my face that the hardware stack that we have created so that you can just type in some Python code and you can see it running in an app on your phone. It's ridiculous, James. 35:51.54 Frank That's it. I hope I made clear just how ridiculous this is and why I'm so excited for this fun feature. 35:56.98 James That's running inside of a.NET app? 35:59.47 Frank That's all written in C-sharp. All of that was written in C-sharp, except for the firmware, obviously, because the firmware is just from the MicroPython site. The emulator and the simulator are all written in just C-sharp. 36:10.88 Frank Nothing's fancy. 36:10.98 James Wow. 36:11.52 Frank No assembly. None of that. All cross-platform. So it's going to all the platforms. um Yeah, it's all just written in C-sharp. 36:19.81 James Well, sounds like that'll be a good.NET Conf 2026 community session for you to talk about and talk to you off. 36:25.30 Frank ah Okay. I should probably, it's probably a little late to submit talks or maybe it's not. um Oh, okay. 36:32.28 James has It hasn't started It starts in August like every year. So you got plenty of time to put it together. 36:36.31 Frank Right, right. Yeah. I always get the calendars mixed up. 36:37.56 James Yep. You're good to go. 36:39.43 Frank Sounds good. Yeah, we should definitely talk about it. So I put out ah um a call for betas. If you're listening to this in the podcast, dig through my X account, Preclerum, and you'll find a post somewhere. if If you want to beta test this, I don't want to call it a monstrosity, but it's a monstrosity. That's amazing software hack. And I hope ah you you'll help me give it a little testaroonie. 37:06.46 James Now the question is, can I then use Apple intelligence to describe the code that I want it to run? and then it writes the Python code for me? 37:15.83 Frank Yes and no. So yes on my machine it can. No, I'm not sure I'm going to ship that in the current version. Apple Intelligence can write Python code, but it's not great at writing MicroPython code. 37:30.42 James you need your own model. 37:30.81 Frank So I need to do some tuning and other models can do it obviously, right? If I if i just shell out to Codex or something, or what, you know what i mean, GPT. 37:37.30 James Yeah. 37:39.77 Frank um So I haven't refined that part, which is annoying because like it is, who wants to code anymore? You just want to tell it what code to write. But ah to answer you, yes, but it's probably going to be in 1.16.1 because I still need to refine the the vibe the vibe side of it all. 37:47.99 James Exactly. 37:53.47 James Gotcha. 37:57.40 James The vibes. Very cool. Yeah, that'd be a premium feature. well I like it. Well, it's very cool. 38:01.56 Frank Yeah. 38:01.83 James i'm excited to hear more about it. But I got to get out of this phone booth and I got to go practice for my user group talk tonight, talking about all those vibes where I'm not going to be writing. 38:05.34 Frank Yeah. 38:08.90 James don't even look at the code anymore. So we'll see what happens. But yeah, I'm excited to give it a try. Well, the nice thing is You could, for example, just open up an app on your phone, ask it to write some code, and then copy and paste it in. 38:21.95 Frank Yeah, absolutely. 38:22.46 James So i'm also easy enough. 38:23.73 Frank Yeah. 38:24.63 James But all right. well that's very cool. We'll put links to everything in the show notes. So give it a go. And then also give Frank them happy birthdays. And if you do know an IMAX theater in which Frank would like and still could go see Odyssey, is probably too late. But you can still write into the show. Go to YouTube.com forward slash at Merge Conflict FM. where we see all the comments, or you can go to the website, MerchConflict.fm. But that's good it for this week's MerchConflict. So until next time, I'm James Watson-Magno. 38:47.77 Frank And I'm Frank Kruger. Thanks for watching and listening. 38:51.19 James Peace.