David Egts: So, Gunnar, it's been a while. Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: It's been more than a while. Gunnar Hellekson: It's been weeks and weeks and weeks, hasn't it? David Egts: It feels like we haven't done one since 2024. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. Been it was last time we spoke with last year. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. I think between my travel, it's just like finally the planets have aligned. So, I'm excited to go through this. Gunnar Hellekson: Yes, that's right. David Egts: David Egts: We got awesome show lined up. David Egts: But what's new with you? Gunnar Hellekson: Let's see. Gunnar Hellekson: So I came to realize that I don't read as many books as I once did. And part of that is the travel. David Egts: Mhm. Uh-huh. Gunnar Hellekson: It's hard to travel with a book. you're carrying enough stuff around. You don't need the book with you. And so I was like of course I'm going to read on my iPad. David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: I told myself several years ago. And then I have now come to realize that no I never read on my iPad. And I thought it was Willpower, but it turns out it was the screen. I think I'm the last person to figure this out. so the new setup is I bought myself a Coobo made by the good people at Rocketin. connects to my library through Libby. And with a almost painless reconfiguration,… David Egts: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Gunnar Hellekson: I can go slurp up whatever PDFs I want from a Google Drive that I set up. Gunnar Hellekson: And now I can do all my reading on my Coobo. Gunnar Hellekson: The battery lasts 10 days or whatever. it is extremely light. and yeah, like I say, I think this ebook thing is really going to take off. That's my point. David Egts: Mhm. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. It might have potential. Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: I think it's got some potential here. so that was exciting. And then I rewarded myself. I said, "Okay, great. So now I'm not using my iPad for reading. I'm actually using it for writing." That is taking notes. David Egts: Uh-huh. Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: So we recently had the sales kickoff here at Red Hat. And I'm going to be spending a ton of time in the hallway track, pressing the flesh, kissing babies, making and receiving requests, and I figured I need a notebook with me. so I got myself which I'm not a screen protector guy. You might know this about me. David Egts: Mhm. Okay. Gunnar Hellekson: But I got one from the good people at Paperlike. And they give you this Gunnar Hellekson: imperceptibly textured screen protector that gives it kind of a paper- feel when you're writing on it with the pen. Gunnar Hellekson: And I really enjoy it. I think it's great. it makes writing on the iPad a much more pleasant experience rather than the thicky tacky plastic on plastic feel. and they also make a very smart cover for my iPad. David Egts: Nice. Gunnar Hellekson: So I'm here to endorse the Coobo, which has got me reading again, and then the Paperlike, which has got me taking notes in always again. So, nope,… David Egts: Mhm. David Egts: So when you travel now, you're taking your Coobo, your iPad, and your laptop with you and your phone. Gunnar Hellekson: no laptop. No, I don't take my laptop. it is hard. Gunnar Hellekson: It is more difficult to edit Google documents than I would like on the iPad, but it is not impossible. but I found that, I spend all of maybe, let's say, 20 minutes actually editing or creating documents. and most of my time taking notes, checking email, things like that. And, for that, I just bring my iPad. So, for the last, I would say almost year, unless it's an extraordinary circumstance, I don't bring my laptop at all. I just bring my iPad. David Egts: Mhm. Okay. David Egts: ID of the keyboard with the iPad. Gunnar Hellekson: I do, but I don't ever use it because it's kind of clunky. David Egts: Okay. Wow. Gunnar Hellekson: And so I'm now thinking about not even bringing that. the handwriting recognition on the iPad is actually much better than you think it is. and… David Egts: Mhm. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: I think Steve Jobs vision of the Newton has finally come to pass. because I'm able to just write out the things that I want to write out and for the most part it comes out pretty clean. and yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: So, Apple Pencil, iPad, and Coobo. That's my kit. Yeah. Mhm. David Egts: Interesting. Yeah. David Egts: So, for me it's like I'll have my laptop and phone and I have a Kindle Scribe which is sort of my combo of taking device and e-reader allin one. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Mhm. David Egts: It does have that paper- feel when you write on it, which I really like. and then it's a nice big screen. which I like. but it can be a little bit big and unwieldy compared to the smaller Kindles and… David Egts: smaller paperback size, to just like you're reading in bed or… 00:05:00 Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. Yeah. David Egts: whatever. They can get a little bit heavy, but it's not bad. Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. I like this. Coobo reader it's the size of a trade paperback and weighs almost nothing. which makes it really easy. I mean, it fits in the back pocket of my jeans, it's great. David Egts: Yep. No,… David Egts: absolutely. That's when I had my Oasis, I could put it in a breast pocket of my jacket, right? But… Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: but not the scribe anymore. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: David Egts: But it's fine. and the other thing you mentioned too is Libby which is great. it's owned by Racin or Racuten. and they started off in Brexville,… David Egts: Ohio, which is a half hour from my house. and… Gunnar Hellekson: Okay. Mhm. David Egts: I think they still have a presence there and all that but huge fan of Libby and the public library system and it's nice it integrates with the Kindle as Not as seamlessly I'm sure but it is possible to check out library books and have it synced to your Kindle and whatnot. So it's glad to see you getting back into reading. That's was what have you been looking at lately? Okay. Gunnar Hellekson: So, I just finished a Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Pilitzer winning, she doesn't like calling it this, but I'll call it a series of essays. 1972, I think, which I enjoy very much. Very meditative. Gunnar Hellekson: And then, … Gunnar Hellekson: right now about halfway through Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves, so I can scratch my World War I itch. Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: Okay. Yeah. David Egts: Nice. Gunnar Hellekson: How about you? What are you working on? David Egts: Yeah, I've been reading a lot of I had what do they Kindle Unlimited subscription where you could sign out all these books that you want and it was three months for 99 cents. So, sure, why not? David Egts: And so the quality of the reading isn't it's like drinking a Coors Light in terms of literature. Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. … David Egts: It goes down real easy, and you can go through them pretty quickly. and then the editorial quality is questionable, but it's enjoyable. doing a lot of near speculation about future war events. what if sort of scenarios, maybe some alternative history stuff. always enjoy stuff like that. Gunnar Hellekson: yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That a Ghost Fleet, right? I think we've talked about that on the show before. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: David Egts: Yeah. Ghost Fleet. yeah, there's a zillion of those sort of things it's a lot of fun. it's like anybody that retired from the military probably is writing some Kindle unlimited book,… Gunnar Hellekson: Everybody right? David Egts: and I guess the way the payout works for them is that I guess you get paid by the page red, for the authors and… Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. Yes. David Egts: and then it's also whoever spent money on Kindle Unlimited, it sort of goes into a pool and so there's a pot of money every month or whatever the period is. And then okay, okay, how many pages were read? And then you get a slice of the pool of that money that was brought in for that month based on your percentage of how many pages were read relative to everybody else that is doing it. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. David Egts: So good for them. and still it's like the stuff on Libby is always great too. So, yeah. David Egts: But we got an awesome show lined up. it's fake everything this week. So, we're going to be talking about fake faces, fake video calls, fake parking lots, fake bag pipes, fake lollipops, and fake gas leaks. Gunnar Hellekson: All right. Gunnar Hellekson: That's excellent. That's excellent. David Egts: Yes. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: This is red meat. Yeah, they need to go to dgshow.org. David Egts: Yeah. catching everybody up on what's happened. But for people to get links to get a paper like screen cover and case and all that, where should people go? Gunnar Hellekson: That's D as in Dave. G is in gunnershow.org. David Egts: All let's talk about fake faces and mask technology. So, you were checking out or I saw this and you just looked at it a little bit ago. so, if people go to the show notes, they can click on this LinkedIn post to some mask technology. But how would you describe that 00:10:00 Gunnar Hellekson: If I gave a child a pair of panty hose and a laser printer, this is what they would come up with. Gunnar Hellekson: The premise is extremely simple and… David Egts: Yes. Color. David Egts: Yeah. Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: works way better than you think it's going to. so you can take your face. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. what did you see? Gunnar Hellekson: So somebody take a could be somebody else's face, could be a fictional character's face, and it's printed on a pair of pantyos, and you put it on your face. Gunnar Hellekson: And now, for all intents and purposes, you have that person's face. it seems very dependent on you wearing a hoodie, though. Gunnar Hellekson: And I have to wear a hoodie to kind of inseal the mechanism. David Egts: Yes. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: But really just bog simple. and I'm surprised it took people this long to figure it out. but it seems uniquely designed to foil surveillance cameras, right? that seems to be the only practical application,… David Egts: It's Yep. Gunnar Hellekson: right? Yeah,… David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. there's no little hole to drink your coffee or anything. it's like if you're holding up a bank or something, instead of pulling stock panty hose over your head, you pull this thing over your head and it's a silk screen print out of Tupac or whoever, right? And to me it's like when I first started watching the movie I'm like yeah this is going to look like junk right and… Gunnar Hellekson: that's right. Mhm. David Egts: then the person puts it on and… David Egts: then they're playing the scary gangster music in the background too which added to it I guess but it's like whoa the person pulled it over their head they pulled up their hoodie and it really like any sort of video surveillance anything like that I don't know how you could, it look like anybody else than Tupac or whoever. So,… Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, that's right. David Egts: yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. really. That's cheap. David Egts: And what's funny is that I was buying something on AliExpress a little while ago and I saw that they were selling them and they're three bucks a piece. So, yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: That's very cheap. David Egts: David Egts: And it's all over AliExpress and it's not like it's made in a lab and they're 50 bucks or something like that. It's prodduced overseas and can be at your door and you could go incognito as soon as you want there. So it was amazing. David Egts: Yeah. Yep. Gunnar Hellekson: It's great. David Egts: And then yeah and so we saw that and then the other thing is there's talking about fake video calls. So there's a technology called pickle that it's when you do video calls do you sometimes get up pace around and all that or need to get out of your seat. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, I do. I'll have to turn the camera off because I don't want people to think that I'm not paying attention. even if I'm just kind of wandering around in your shot, right? … David Egts: But what if you didn't have to turn your camera off? Gunnar Hellekson: yes. I'm listening. Gunnar Hellekson: Sounds nice. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: So, with a Pickle subscription, you could basically I guess do a 5 minutee long video of yourself. You send it off to the fine people at Pickle and then 24 hours later you have an avatar aka Deep Fake of yourself so you have a virtual camera of yourself that could be used in video calls. So, there's videos that you could check it out inside the link in the show notes. David Egts: you'll see a person talking on a video call and they're wearing a suit jacket and they're sitting behind a desk and they're doing hand gestures and everything but the person is like driving in their car or they could be sitting on the beach or totally somewhere else and they're deep faking themselves but in an office sort of setting. right,… Gunnar Hellekson: And so presumably as long as you've got the deep fake will then mimic your audio. Is that It's not fully autonomous. In other words,… David Egts: right, right. it's so as if you're sitting there not saying anything, the deep fake of you would just be sitting there not saying anything. Right. But the moment you start talking,… 00:15:00 Gunnar Hellekson: right? Yeah. David Egts: your real voice will come through. But the deep fake of you would be talking in wearing your suit behind a desk. Gunnar Hellekson: That's Great. That's great. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: I don't think I could get away with that. Do you feel like you could get away with that? David Egts: I would think, it's like all a sudden there's some artifacts or something and the other part too is that Google Meet kind of has some avatar capability where you could show up as a breakfast avatar of bacon and eggs and a face and everything I can't imagine it being that much more difficult to have the actual person's face and… Gunnar Hellekson: Right. David Egts: like an AI representation and being able to do that. And in some cases it's like would you say that's better than turning your camera off is from a signaling standpoint is you're turning your camera off. Are you signaling to somebody that you're not paying attention, but having this would make it okay? and I'll also think about for people that it's like,… David Egts: they may not be feeling well for women that don't they feel like I got to do my hair and the makeup and all the setup that they got to do. Here's a great way for them to be able to be c quote unquote camera ready without having to do all kind of setup. No Gunnar Hellekson: right? Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: It's interesting. So, I feel Did you ever read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace? So he kind of predicted some of this which was you would get on video calls but the norm became like you wouldn't dare show up to a video call with your actual face. Gunnar Hellekson: You need to bring an actual mask to the video call, And then unlike us that became the norm and… David Egts: Okay. David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: it was just expected that you would wear a mask cuz who would go naked onto a video call, right? Gunnar Hellekson: And he was making some commentary about the alienation of society, blah blah blah blah blah, but I was sitting here thinking about the hypothetical and I'm thinking I mean it's like layers of alienation,… Gunnar Hellekson: It's already a little weird that we're talking on video. and it's already a representation of us. it's a little bit smoothed and there's a little bouquet on the camera and the colors are adjusted and gentle nudges, right, to make it a more pleasing experience. And this just kind of takes it, I guess, to its logical conclusion. let's just make it a fully artificial experience. and I think every step in this direction is a step away from being able to interact with the genuine person, right? David Egts: Yes. Mhm. Yeah. David Egts: Yes. Yes. David Egts: How much would you pay for this feature? Gunnar Hellekson: I don't know,… Gunnar Hellekson: 24 bucks a month. David Egts: You're spot on. Yeah. So, that's If you want to go up to the pro version,… Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. That's right. David Egts: it's like you got to really step up. But, it ranges from 300 bucks a year to 1150 a year. so depending upon if you're and also think about it too, it's like your avatar would be wearing the same outfit and being at the same desk every single day. which would be that could tip people off too. So this is a good way to have multiple outfits,… Gunnar Hellekson: So, yeah,… David Egts: that's why you want to mix it up a little bit. Gunnar Hellekson: that's Yeah, I see her. For 100 bucks a month, I get a unlimited customized backgrounds. So, that's nice. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: But only up to 100 hours a month of real-time generation usage. David Egts: And to me that's like that my guess is all that is happening I would think it'd be happening client side,… David Egts: wouldn't it? Gunnar Hellekson: I mean maybe I don't know at 100 bucks a month for 100 hours of I mean that seems like … David Egts: Or do you think it actually has to happen with a GPU on a cloud somewhere? Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: what that would I don't know how they do it. Yeah, that's right. David Egts: But yeah, probably 100 hours that's one day for you in terms of all the video calls you do. Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, that's the other thing I was thinking that would get me through the week. David Egts: Maybe part of the week. Yeah. but I guess,… David Egts: you don't want to do it all the time, but if you have to get out or whatever, and imagine all the return to work people, that, it's dang, they got to leave their mouse jiggler at home and they got to go into the office. here's a way to, stick it to the man, I guess. So, … 00:20:00 Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. David Egts: yeah, ckle. Yeah, people could check that out. and… Gunnar Hellekson: right. Yeah. David Egts: and we've talked before about fluorescent vests wearing and the signaling with authority, that and the clipboard. It's like you can get into anything, right? If and… Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Right. David Egts: this happened in December. so here's where we're transitioning into fake parking lots where there's for the Pittsburgh Steelers game back on December 12th. there's a guy he charged 23 drivers near Acure Stadium to see the Steelers Charge them 50 bucks a piece to park in a parking lot that is close by where they are to the stadium. David Egts: So he made $1,150 I guess enough to buy the pro version of Pickle. so he had an orange fluorescent vest on. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, you got to admire that. David Egts: He had the terrible towel, which you have to have at Steelers games in your back pocket. He had a nice professionally printed sign saying, "Hey, park here." But he didn't own the parking So little bit of you got to hustle, so it winds up that he Yeah. David Egts: He got busted and they wound up tracking down the company that owns the parking lot, the safety sling company, they talked to the branch manager there and he said that it's like this has happened before and so where in the past the manager had a gate and then he put a chain around the gate and then it was this guy, maybe it was somebody else. They cut the gate and then they used the parking lot for the football game. and then afterwards the guy comes back to work and it's like dang, they cut the chain, right? David Egts: So then he puts on the super duper heavy chain on it. And then whenever that guy came back into work the next day, he saw that there was a 4 foot long pole that the chain was connected to. Somebody pulled it out of the ground and it was laying on the ground in order to get in to park there. So, you would think with that sort of energy, it's like they could partner together, maybe split the money or something, but yeah, the guy got charged with let's see,… David Egts: theft by deception, falsely impersonating a privately employed person, and defiant trespassing. Gunnar Hellekson: I'm wondering… Gunnar Hellekson: this guy's clearly being told by the market that he has something valuable and I'm wondering why he's not taking advantage of it. Right. I mean,… David Egts: Yes. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: the whole reason why people are breaking into the place is because he's got a sweet parking deal and he's not letting people use it. David Egts: And then it winds up and that guy too, he got busted in 2023 for doing the same thing that suspect. So yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Amazing. I think listen to the market, Just start charging people and… David Egts: Yep. Yeah,… Gunnar Hellekson: you won't have this problem, Get your own guy with the floors and David Egts: you could let that guy work there and take half the money, And then everybody's happy. But I don't know if it was a liability thing or they're not allowed to do that or there's taxes involved or something, but Yeah, that's parking for you. And then speaking of the fluorescent vests, remember when we talked about the photo booth for all the surveillance cameras? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Sorry, I'm waiting for the dog to stop barking. Hold on a second. Yeah, of course. This guy was encouraging people to take selfies with the traffic cameras in New York, right? David Egts: So, in u typical strace and effect fashion, he got a cease and desist letter from New York City's Office of Legal Affairs saying that you can't do this. You're not allowed to do this. It's violating traffic rules and encourages and dangerous behavior. And so the guy, if you go to what do you see on the website there, Gunnar? Yes,… 00:25:00 Gunnar Hellekson: So this looks like a traffic camera, but the traffic camera is taking a picture of the cease and desist letter. David Egts: Yeah. and specifically he has it on the end of a very long umbrella or not an umbrella, a window washer pole and a 25 ft pole and then he has it attached to the end of it holding it up to a camera and he has a photo of him doing the photo and then he has an art exhibition you could actually go to I guess an art exhibit and see some of the guy's work of his photo camera photo booth work. Gunnar Hellekson: That's great. I especially like the touch of hoisting a mirror up to the traffic camera so that the traffic camera is taking a picture of itself. David Egts: Yes. Yes. And so does a New York office legal affairs people need to send a cease and desist letter to itself? Gunnar Hellekson: And clearly this guy is obstructing something or… Gunnar Hellekson: mumble, creating a public hazard. that's a ridiculous lawsuit, by the way. that's senseless. Gunnar Hellekson: I don't know why they were stopping this guy. Just seems like he was just having good fun. although I seen the article 400,000 photos have been taken selfies with these video cameras. 400,000 visitors. So I guess quantity is a quality all its own I suppose. David Egts: Yeah. Yep. David Egts: Yeah, they should put some of those cameras in Pittsburgh to watch the parking lots. Gunnar Hellekson: Yes. Yeah. David Egts: Okay. So, we got that. And Yeah. And I'm sure like the New York City people, it's like they had to do it because it was probably getting some notoriety and they're like, to some, we can't condone it or we can't be silent about it because what if somebody gets hurt? some kid gets run over getting a selfie taken, right?" And the city never said anything about it. So maybe now they did their cease and desist and it's like, "Okay, they did their job and okay, whatever." So, I don't know. Gunnar Hellekson: Sorry, I got garbled on the audio there. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: right. … Gunnar Hellekson: We're trying to figure out how to pick up the Yeah. David Egts: I think that covers that segment. David Egts: We could jump to the next one if you want. Gunnar Hellekson: Okay, let's do that. Yeah. David Egts: Moving right along. so there is an Italian startup called Ardanoise and they have a Kickstarter for a product that they're developing called the Zaphiro and it's a portable device shaped like the mouthpiece of a recorder the little flute thing you play in elementary school and… Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. Sure. David Egts: you could take that device, you plug it into the USB port of your smartphone or computer and then you could blow into it and so you basically turn it into an electronic wind instrument. Gunnar Hellekson: So, what do they call this? They call it a Zapiro. David Egts: Yeah. Yep. Gunnar Hellekson: Remember Zanfir? The master of the pan flute. Yeah. David Egts: The master fluid. Yeah, Of course. Yeah. maybe they couldn't get the licensing deal out of that, so they had to go with the Zephero. just tweak it a little bit. So yeah, so the companion app, it could do 32 different sound options from flutes to trumpets to saxophones and even bag pipes. And then the other part is it could do MIDI as well. So you could plug it into Garage Band and use it as an instrument for Garage Band and the other thing that I guess you could do breathing exercises with it as So maybe if you have lung problems or you're trying to do a meditative sort of breathing exercise,… 00:30:00 David Egts: you could use it for that. but there's some videos in there where bag pipes you could check it out. But what was your take of the video? Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. it was surprisingly good. Gunnar Hellekson: I was impressed. I mean it seemed like my first impression was that it was going to be this kind of chintzy gimmicky thing. Gunnar Hellekson: But the guy gets up there and he goes and plays along duos with somebody who's got an actual recorder and it sounds He sounds really good. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. imagine you could and it looks like they're basic the guy's holding the phone in front of him he's ping into it but he's just blowing into it and then touching the screen to change the notes and… David Egts: so it was pretty wild. And so how much would you pay for something like this? Gunnar Hellekson: I would pay $30 for this. Gunnar Hellekson: $35 for this maybe. Yeah. Hey. David Egts: 30 if you get in on the Kickstarter. David Egts: 23 bucks USD for backers. Gunnar Hellekson: Hey. That's pretty good. David Egts: David Egts: Yeah. and then expected to retail for $44 so to I think that's actually low in terms of compared to what a musical instrument would cost if you're comparing it is it like a saxophone or trumpet or something like that? I would think it would be more than, … David Egts: 23 or $44. So to me, that's kind of a bargain for somebody to try out. Gunnar Hellekson: Gotta be,… Gunnar Hellekson: right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,… David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: basically, you're buying a whatever a 30 20 $40 breath powered MIDI device, so you could make it whatever you want. You can invent a whole new instrument that doesn't even exist yet. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. and you could sit and outside of metro stops and do a gig thing and put the hat there and it's very portable, so it's pretty great. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, that's great. David Egts: Yeah. And… Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, I like it. David Egts: And then let's see what else. and we've been, talking about, virtual reality for a while and, the challenges with, being able to taste things in virtual environments, right? You remember that? Gunnar Hellekson: Yes, of course. Yes. Yeah. David Egts: David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. So there are some researchers they've made some breakthroughs where they talk about it's basically think of it as a virtual lollipop that you lick and then hydro gels come out and then you could tune the hydro gels to be any of the nine flavors of salt, citric acid, cherry, passion fruit, green tea, milk, durian, and grapefruit. so you could do that in a virtual environment and… Gunnar Hellekson: All right. David Egts: and so yeah. Yeah. and so the thing here is that in previous research people have had tried to do taste in virtual environments with chemicals using thermal mechanisms, electrical stimulation and ionaresis iontopheresis I guess and so in this case the chemical approach. according to the article, it's usually involves applying flavoring chemicals directly onto the tongue, but then you have to have storage for all those chemicals that you want to have flavoring, right? And then there's also a latency time from, the virtual environment until you actually taste it. David Egts: And then there's the thermal variations which are applied directly to the tongue to stimulate the parts of the tongue for salty different all that right but the problem there is that it requires a cooling subsystem and temperature sensors and things like that. So that's painful, So that's no good. And then for let's see electrical stimulation they could do the five basic flavors right but it requires electrode patches to be on or near the tongue and that's awkward right as opposed to having a virtual lollipop with hydrogels coming out of it coming into your mouth. Gunnar Hellekson: Right. Of course. David Egts: But it's prone to taste biases. But then with these folks here, these students are using ion topheresis which uses hydrogels to transport the flavor chemicals, lower power consumption, precise taste feedback, more natural human machine interface, and it's all in the form of a lolly shot lollipop shaped user interface to improve flavor quality and… 00:35:00 David Egts: consistency. Yep. Gunnar Hellekson: something Willy Wonka could only have dreamed of Right. David Egts: And then I guess you could add smell to it. so they could do seven specific odor chemicals to enhance the perception and then they said that currently the lollipop will only last for about an hour. You can only lick it for about an hour because the hydrogels will shrink and then run out of flavor. Gunnar Hellekson: Just like a real lollipop, Right. David Egts: And I can't imagine using it for more than an hour myself. So, Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. David Egts: And as I'm reading this, I'm like, okay, what problem are they trying to solve? Right. and so some of them are for they call it gustatory disorders and so let's see I don't know and then they're also talking about I guess for people that have challenges with trying to taste things I guess and trying to diagnose that and then they also talk about hey we could use it in immersive online shopping experiences in virtual grocery stores where people could taste test foods by licking their hydrogel infused lollipop. David Egts: … Gunnar Hellekson: Hey Dave, would you lick a public lollipop at a grocery store? David Egts: or if it's a virtual environment and you had your own lollipop that, you got your Oculus,… Gunnar Hellekson: Right. Yeah. Okay. David Egts: you got your lollipop,… Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Right. David Egts: you have it at home. and then you can go grocery shopping and lick things that would taste exactly like it would be in the grocery store. Gunnar Hellekson: Right. Yeah. David Egts: Makes sense. and it's also with parenting to help children explore flavors of different foods. Gunnar Hellekson: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. this is what a vegetable tastes like. Yeah. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. And as opposed to giving them the vegetable and saying, "Here, try this vegetable," you could have a nice virtual reality environment with a lollipop hydrogel of and a flavored vegetable. So yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: All right. David Egts: What's your take on that? Gunnar Hellekson: Can't imagine ever needing it. That's how I feel about this. glad somebody's figuring it out. But yeah, I don't know if this doesn't feel strictly necessary and… David Egts: So you'd rather go with this Gunnar Hellekson: it would have to work extremely well and be able to deliver arbitrary tastes, right? In order for it to be even a little interesting. David Egts: Yes. Yes. Yeah. I can imagine would it taste exactly like a carrot or a Dorito or whatever, It's like and to me there's also the mouth texture of what something when you're eating something and… Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, that's right. David Egts: is it squishy? Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. David Egts: Is it slimy? Is it and all that? So all right. So, you'd rather go with the Zapiro? Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, it's superior for me. That's right. That's right. David Egts: All I'll mark you down for that. All right. So, last up, scratch and… David Egts: sniff stickers. when was the last time you sniffed a scratch and sniff sticker? Gunnar Hellekson: It's funny you mentioned this… Gunnar Hellekson: so I recently received a sheath of grape job stickers. Do you remember from when you were a kid the teacher would hand the grape job stickers and… Gunnar Hellekson: you scratch them and they smell like grape? David Egts: Never got one. David Egts: Never got a great grape job sticker. Gunnar Hellekson: What? David Egts: So yeah, I was Yeah,… Gunnar Hellekson: I feel sorry for you. Gunnar Hellekson: The grape chopst sticker was a coveted item. David Egts: I obviously did not do a great job. Gunnar Hellekson: The grape job sticker was a coveted item when I was in school, when I was a kid. And I started handing out virtual grape job stickers to people on my staff and… Gunnar Hellekson: I would deliver them in the form of an emoji in Slack. So somebody would do XYZ and I grape job. And then that graduated into becoming a ritual at the QBR now when people do exceptional work for the quarter, I hand out a great job sticker in public to all these people. and this has now become a culture thing inside the group. And while I was at this sales kickoff last week, I was presented with a sheath of actual real inlife grape job stickers which I thought were not manufactured any longer. David Egts: Nice. 00:40:00 Gunnar Hellekson: But now I still have them in there. David Egts: Yeah. Nice. Gunnar Hellekson: They're hidden in my iPad case. And so now at any moment, somebody could do a great job. And now I can go reach in, grab a grape job sticker, and slap it on their badge. Grape job. David Egts: David Egts: And then smell it. Gunnar Hellekson: And smell it. Gunnar Hellekson: To smell You have to scratch it and smell it when you receive it. It's Part of the deal. David Egts: Nice. Yeah. David Egts: Part of the ritual. Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Okay. yeah,… David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. do you know how they work? Gunnar Hellekson: you take grapes and you put them in a hydraulic press and mix them in with the ink and mumble put them on a sticker, right? I don't know. Yeah. David Egts: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. through it. I got let me tell you how it works. so I guess there are microscopic amounts of aromatic material that are trapped inside of gelatin or plastic capsules and then those are stuck onto the paper. And so when you scratch the surface of the paper, the capsules will rupture releasing the aromatic cargo into the air. Gunnar Hellekson: All Okay. That's a much better plan than the one I had. David Egts: Yeah. and… Gunnar Hellekson: Yes. Yes. David Egts: so they were invented believe it or not 3M of all places in the 1960s. and the original intention was to create a new kind of carbonless copy paper. but this guy Gail Matson gal created it so the scratch and sniff sticker but you would think that it's all fun and games with scratch and sniff stickers. I remember the books growing up, the scratch and sniff books that you get them from the Scholastic David Egts: whatever and… Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. No. David Egts: scratch it and smell the different things and that was all fun and everything. but did you hear about the gas panic of 87? Gunnar Hellekson: Tell me about the gas panic of 87. David Egts: So in 1987, the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company wanted to educate customers about natural gas safety. with natural gas natural gas that you have in your home there's a sulfur compound that's added to natural gas to make the gas leak more detectable. David Egts: And so to educate people about Right. Gunnar Hellekson: Right. Right. Gunnar Hellekson: Because the natural gas has no natural smell. Right. David Egts: Yeah. And so it's like that rotten egg sort of smell is actually an added sulfur compound that's added. And so the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company figured that, hey, we need to educate people about the dangers of natural gas and how to do things safely. So what they did was that they mailed out 300,000 brochures of scratch and sniff brochures with panels of what the rotten egg smell of mercaptain smells So it smells like natural gas as we smell it like if there's a gas leak. David Egts: So, they mailed it out to 300,000 people and it winds up that the envelopes that they mailed out in were not air sealed. And so, people were receiving these brochures and it caused a rash of people calling the fire department about gas leaks. and so there's false alarms all over the place that people they said that one call was attended by 27 firefighters with eight pieces of equipment. Gunnar Hellekson: Oops. David Egts: Yep. And yeah, and so yeah, they did it. but the thing is though is you would think that that's a bad idea. We're never going to do scratch and sniff stickers for natural gas anymore. But you can actually order them online. Three bucks a piece. Gunnar Hellekson: Nice, man. David Egts: Three bucks for a set of 30, Yeah. 00:45:00 Gunnar Hellekson: That's probably the cheapest way to a felony that I can imagine. low effort. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: And yeah, it's better than mail and anthrax around. little, three bucks for 30 stickers. and I can imagine kind too. this is what about the antithesis of the grape job award ceremony? You could have the natural gas sticker for people that do something wrong in the quarter. Gunnar Hellekson: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: Yes, that's right. Sorry, you've underperformed this quarter. You get the Mer Captain sticker. You get the rotten egg sticker. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: I like this. I like this. David Egts: Little carrot, little stick. Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: That's and when you receive that sticker, it's not that you want to wear it on your badge,… Gunnar Hellekson: it's that you must wear it on your badge. David Egts: Right. and… David Egts: and imagine it's like you're walking through the building, people are calling the fire department, because they smell a gas leak you're going through the airport and, they have to evacuate the airport because of you. it's a really good way to encourage the behavior that you want. Gunnar Hellekson: It's fantastic. I love this idea. I'm ordering them right now. David Egts: All Three bucks for 30 stickers. can't go wrong. And I'm sure you could get more with volume, too. So, you don't have to limit yourself to 30. Gunnar Hellekson: That's great. It's great. David Egts: So, that's all I got. yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: right. … David Egts: And, we didn't do the cutting room floor. Yeah. Say,… Gunnar Hellekson: that's right. Gunnar Hellekson: Do you want to just do it cold and I'll edit it in? David Egts: say what's on the cutting room floor and then I'll take it. Gunnar Hellekson: Okay. hey Dave. what's on the cutting room floor? David Egts: So, I haven't received a Radio Shack catalog in a very long time. David Egts: I don't know about you, but what you can do there's a website you could go through 64 years worth of Radio Shack cataloges. cover to cover if you like, which was big part of my childhood. I always enjoyed that. yeah,… Gunnar Hellekson: for sure. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, I remember pouring through that thing. Frank David Egts: the little 101 kits and why have a 101 kit when you could have the 501 kit, right? That's awesome. All that good stuff. And then we might have talked about this before. There's the com accordion where somebody took a Commodore 64 and turned it into an accordion. and so here's version of it. So you could actually see this person playing a Commodore 64 in the form factor of an accordion. so we got that and then PDFs. so it's like your choice. David Egts: You could play Tetris inside of a PDF. You could play Doom inside of a PDF. you could run Linux inside of a PDF. And speaking of Doom 2, you could play Doom inside of a capture if you want to do that as well. David Egts: So you have to instead of in order to prove that you're human, you could play Doom inside this capture and kill some monsters to move on into the page to prove that you're human. Yes. Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: So good. Gunnar Hellekson: So good. This is what we get, Dave, for having current complete document formats. You get to do whatever you want inside. David Egts: Yeah, for sure. Gunnar Hellekson: Amazing. I especially like the fact that this Linux embedded in the PDF is based on a risk 5 emulator which presumably also runs inside the PDF ported over. David Egts: Yeah. Right. Somebody has to get Sento a stream running on that. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, it actually shouldn't be that hard. we're already doing the work. All we got to do is Jim,… David Egts: Yeah. … Gunnar Hellekson: I don't know how you fit the whole thing on one page, though. So, I don't know. Gunnar Hellekson: I guess we'll f*** figure that out. David Egts: I booted it up earlier today and I was in there. It just shows up as a screen that just changes. and so it loads up pretty quickly. so it's not bad at all. Gunnar Hellekson: Incredible. That's incredible. David Egts: So with all that we got to close out. Gunnar Hellekson: All right. Clip that. Yeah. David Egts: So Gunnar, if people need to boy, there's a whole lot of fake stuff. if they need to get the face fake mask, sign up for pickle, they want to park somewhere, they want to learn… David Egts: how to play the bag pipes, try new flavors in virtual reality or create some gas leaks that are fake. where should we send them? 00:50:00 Gunnar Hellekson: All this and… Gunnar Hellekson: more is available at gshow.org. That's d and Dave githandgunnershow.org. David Egts: Yeah, we need to do a scratch and sniff PDF. I bet it's possible. Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. That's right. David Egts: It's I don't doubt it. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, There's got to be a way to do it. I wonder what a native smell of a PDF is. Something to think about. David Egts: Probably smells like toner. Gunnar Hellekson: It's got to be All right. David Egts: All right, nor. So, if yeah, I'm excited about this and I guess we'll catch everybody next time. Gunnar Hellekson: Thanks, Dave. Thanks, everyone. David Egts: Yep. Bye.