FLOSS Weekly 737, Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Doc Searls (00:00:00):
This is Floss Weekly. I'm Doc Searls. This week Shawn Powers joins me in interviewing Dan Lynch. Dan Lynch is another one of our co-hosts, has an extremely interesting life in Liverpool where he runs the local lug there. He's been involved in open source activities all over the place as lots of wisdom about the music business. He's a musician and about how to organize community stuff, all kinds of interesting history for him and the whole open source industry and all that kinda stuff. It's really good. And that is coming up next.

Narrator (00:00:37):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Doc Searls (00:00:45):
This is Floss Weekly, episode 737, recorded Wednesday, June 21st, 2023 Live Lug and Rock On. This episode of Floss Weekly is brought to you by Collide. That's Collide with a k Collide is a device trust solution that ensures that if a device isn't secure, it can't access your apps, it's zero trust For Okta, visit collide.com/floss and book a demo today. And by bit Warden, get the password manager that offers a robust and cost effective solution that drastically increases your chances of staying safe online. Get started with a free trial of a teams or enterprise plan, or get started for free across all devices as an individual user at bit wharton.com/twit. Hello again, everybody everywhere. I am Doc Searles. This is Floss Weekly, and this week I'm joined by two co-hosts, one of which is actually the guest <laugh>. It's gonna be Dan Lynch. Dan is in, he's in Liverpool. He has a huge experience with Linux community building with music, much other stuff. There he is. <Laugh> on screen now. Hi Dan.

Dan Lynch (00:02:08):
I wasn't sure if I was supposed to talk or not and I was

Doc Searls (00:02:10):
Gonna drew Shawn too. So this is, this is the first time, this is a new idea that I had there, Shawn.

Shawn Powers (00:02:16):
And Shawn has a blue shirt, which is, that's, you know, that's Shawn's resume. <Laugh>, we, we,

Doc Searls (00:02:20):
We have so many so many guests. You know, we have basically 52 different ones a year or 50 ones. We have one week off. And I think I've been at this three or four years now, so hundreds of guests and some of the most interesting people we could have are are our own co-hosts who are notable people on their own. And and Dan is Dan. Dan is the first in line for that. So before read, Dan, Shawn, what do you know about Dan <laugh> so far?

Dan Lynch (00:02:52):
<Laugh> no pressure. I know that he has a similar difficulty with Celsius and Fahrenheit that I do because he had look it up to describe how hot it was earlier

Doc Searls (00:03:02):
<Laugh>. Oh really? And

Shawn Powers (00:03:03):
It's like upper eighties, so I mean, oh really? It's really hot. It's

Doc Searls (00:03:06):
Very

Dan Lynch (00:03:06):
Pretty clear. I mean, he's not, you know, his house isn't melting the boiling point.

Doc Searls (00:03:10):
So, do you have so, so Dan, do you do you have air conditioning there in in Liverpool?

Dan Lynch (00:03:18):
No, we don't have it cuz it doesn't get that hot. It doesn't get this hot very often. So in the UK I mean, it's strange because I'm, I'm in Liverpool in the uk, which is northwest of the uk. And we are right on the, on the sea on the coast, which it's usually quite mild which is nice. But the UK's kind of uniquely positioned as a country because when it gets too cold, we can't handle it. And when it gets too hot, we can't handle it. So there's, it seems to be either one or the other. We don't seem to be in the middle very often. It's either like, it's snowing and we can't handle snow, like all the parents stop and everything else. And in the last week we've had a heat wave. Last two weeks we've had a heat wave here. So we've been up to nearly 35 Southeast, which

Doc Searls (00:03:58):
Is 30. That's in the nineties. It's

Dan Lynch (00:03:59):
About 90. Yeah, it's about 90 or, yeah.

Doc Searls (00:04:02):
So we have a similar situation in Santa Barbara, which is where I technically live <laugh>. And, and I've been there for the last two months. So you've seen me there, if you've seen me or heard me. And we have no air conditioning on our house there. And this is at the 34th parallel. This is pretty far south. And, but it's also on the ocean. There's a constant ocean breeze. And and so the, the myth is that it doesn't get hot there, but it actually does <laugh> and, and and you can open all the windows and doors. We have big slider doors that are I just hit my mic. Sorry. big slide cuz I talk with my hands. You can't hear them, but I talk with them. Anyway, <laugh>, so we have, we have big sliding doors, so you can get a lot of air through the house, but even theirs, that doesn't always work. So we have four box fans in a closet that people could take out and use. And, but it, but I've noticed like in Germany would've been there, it's like, you're not allowed to use air conditioning before a certain time. And they have this belief, or some of them do that, that air conditioning is bad for you, which I don't think is true. <Laugh>, I'm in an air conditioned building right now. I don't think it's bad for me. So anyway,

Dan Lynch (00:05:15):
We had an air conditioner filled with black mold. I don't think that was good for

Doc Searls (00:05:18):
Us. No, that was, no.

Dan Lynch (00:05:20):
Is that, no, that's not good. Yeah,

Doc Searls (00:05:22):
So, so, so, I, I'm not gonna ex ex explain Dan too much. So Dan, let's just start with how you got into open source and Linux and Yeah. There in Liverpool. Certainly.

Dan Lynch (00:05:33):
Yeah. Yeah. So oh, let's see. I can, I'll take it way, way, way back. So I originally was a sound engineer, which you can tell by all these people watching the video. I have lots of like, impressive looking microphone stands and mixers and audio equipment around and stuff around my, my little studio here. So I used to to work with bands, actually doing audio stuff did some tours and, and so on. Not anyone you would've heard of, I don't think. Some friends of mine did the fun loving criminals who you probably know and things like that. But I, I don't think I made it onto that tour. But anyway so I did that for quite a while. And then working that kind of dried up and I was still pretty young, so I decided to go to university to do or college as you guys call it, over there to do computer science. So I did a computer science degree around 2000, started around 2000, somewhere around there. And that was where I kind of became exposed to lots of things. Although strangely we didn't do a lot. We didn't actually do Linux as part of our course. We didn't even do Unix. We didn't do any kind of Unix. It was all Microsoft based stuff pretty much. So

Doc Searls (00:06:41):
Nothing in the command line? Nothing with with

Dan Lynch (00:06:45):
Not really. Huh? Yeah, it was strange. Yeah, it was, I mean I hope it's changed now. It, I'm going back 23 years. Yeah, 23 years now. So I hope it's changed by now. But a lot of our stuff was based around the the course that I was on was based around those kind of Microsoft cert, you know, certs that they do for developers and, and engineers and all the rest of it. I don't know if they had some, maybe there was some kind of link between the university and, and Microsoft, I believe the year after I left cause I did networking as well cuz I, I got really into networking stuff and we didn't have a lot of hardware stuff, so a lot of the networking was theoretical, which is well it's interesting, but it's not the best way in my opinion, to learn how to do networking.

(00:07:25):
You really need to get things and start plugging them into each other and go, oh, that doesn't work, or this doesn't work. So I remember distinctly spending a long time learning how to make IP addresses from binary, how to translate IP addresses from binary code and all this kind of stuff, which I've never used in my life since then. They said, oh, you'll need to know this. You'll need to know this. And I've never used that in my life since then. Cuz cuz I, I just didn't need to. But yeah, it was interesting. But my actual introduction to Linux came from a fellow student who was doing he, he decided, I think it might have been for part of his final project, but he was doing a, a, something about Linux and he showed me Mandrake at the time don't know which version.

(00:08:08):
I think it might have been seven. Or yeah, man, seven, maybe eight, I'm not sure. But anyway, he showed me that. And part of his kind of project that he was doing was asking people whether they could com complete certain tasks with say open office at the time was the big thing now Libra office and the split there, but open office, he, he'd basically say to us, here's a, you know, a computer, I want you to write a letter. I want you to, you know, make a spreadsheet. I want you to do this. And we had to figure it out. And it was really easy and I thought, wow, this is as, as good if not bad than the stuff I'm doing on, on Windows. So then I got the first version of Lenox I ever used at home was SUSE or Su, I don't know how to say that. Nobody,

Doc Searls (00:08:50):
Even the, yeah,

Dan Lynch (00:08:51):
I think it's Suse, isn't it? Cause it's Yeah, yeah, German. Yeah, it's German. German. So, yeah. Yeah. So, so this was before they made open Susar and all that before. I think Noval might have owned them at the time. But anyway, it came on a magazine. That was where my first introduction to Linux came. It came on the front of a magazine. I can't remember what magazine it was. I apologize, doc. I don't know if it was one of yours <laugh>.

Doc Searls (00:09:11):
It was, it May was Linux Journal. I just insist that was true.

Dan Lynch (00:09:14):
I mean, even though we never shipped discs, it was definitely us <laugh>.

Doc Searls (00:09:18):
We would sometimes. Was that one

Dan Lynch (00:09:19):
Special edition that you did? Yeah,

Doc Searls (00:09:21):
Yeah. It could be. I don't remember, but yeah.

Dan Lynch (00:09:24):
Yeah. So I, I just picked that up in a shop and had a CD on the front which said, you know, you can install, I think it was Sue's a seven point something. And I thought, well, this can't be very good cuz they're giving it away. I mean, how useful can it realistically be <laugh>? So I went home and I put it in my computer and I booted up from the cd and the first thing I noticed was, at the time when you installed it would've been when it was XP around then maybe Windows XP or something. Around that time, the installer was awful on, on Windows. And it looked really looked really bad and it, and it wasn't easy to use and it just looked really old. It looked like an old, you know, text-based installer. And I put this in and it had like, beautiful graphics and it was doing all this, like, even like animation and stuff while I was installing it.

(00:10:07):
And I was like, this is ridiculous. So then I got into using it. Yeah. I, and I, I ended up I had been a net developer. That's the dirty secret that some people do know about me and others don't. Was I, I actually worked as a net developer a microsoft.net developer this long before it. They did the Mono project and all that sort of stuff. And a lot of the open source stuff came out. I, I worked for the N Hs in the uk, which is the health service. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> developing tools for the, for the clinicians to use in net. A lot of them asp.net kind of web-based stuff for re recording for recording medical tests and results and stuff. And trials did, which is a really interesting one actually for I, I dunno, I dunno if we wanna get into medical stuff particularly on this, but it was to do with a new procedure.

(00:10:57):
They were trying at the time in the hospital where I worked for people with osteoporosis. So anybody who had like spinal problems, they were trying something where they would inject surgical cement into the spine at certain points. And then they would have to record how effective that was for each different kind of vertebrae. So I had to build a system, I had to write a system where you could record, you know, which vertebrae it was, how much stuff you'd injected, all that kind of stuff. And then they used all that to analyze the results.

Doc Searls (00:11:26):
Did they find all that windows caused osteoporosis at all? <Laugh>, sorry.

Dan Lynch (00:11:30):
I think some of the chairs might have done in my place. Some of, some of the, some of the office chairs that we had may well have done. But yeah, while I was doing that, I, I was kind of on the side doing, getting really into p p and stuff like that. Which led to, and then Apache, I actually convinced my boss to let me install fedora on a couple of the machines in the, in the office. And, and I got them into play with that. Some of the guys had seen Red Hat before. So yeah, I kind of got into doing that. And then from there I ended up pushing more and more into Linux, got into Python got very, very into Python actually. And into Drupal as well. I did a bit of Drupal stuff. Not to any, not So you were

Doc Searls (00:12:11):
Fully on Linux at this point, and you're running, were you running on Fedora or still on suse? Yeah

Dan Lynch (00:12:18):
I think I was probably using suse, but I used to, so back then I used to, I, I'm laughing to myself now because I can't believe I did it, but I used to every week completely wipe my computer and install a new distribution. This was my main kind of computer that I used every day. I did that. Cause I thought the only way to really learn and to really test something is to throw yourself in at the end. So, sorry Shawn, you were saying? No, I was just saying, I, I, I reinstall systems far too often and for me, unfortunately sometimes it's easier to start over than to try to figure out what you did to mess up the last install <laugh>. Yeah, it can be. But I, I used to, I used to do that and I started writing about the I started writing reviews of, of the distributions.

(00:13:02):
On each week I'd do a new distribution. So I went through all kinds of, every, all the popular ones to lots of obscure ones. I think Arch Linux was one of the hardest installs I ever did at the time. This was a long time ago now. I believe it's a lot easier now. And then fortunately I managed to get into things like there was a, a Linux planet was a, a kind of a news site. And I started, they actually contacted me and asked me to write for them doing things like that. So I ended up, no, nowhere near you, you, the journalistic chops that you guys have got. But I kind of did a little bit of that reviewing Linux distros for them and various other of things which was really interesting.

Doc Searls (00:13:42):
So I'm curious, what are you using right now? I mean, what are, what are we talking to you through?

Dan Lynch (00:13:48):
So I'm using Linux Mint at the moment because I, I've got lazy or I don't know, I don't know, maybe i's just, I haven't got as much time as I used to have, but I, I haven't reinstalled this in maybe two years. The laptop that I'm, that I'm using right now, I haven't reinstalled in two years. I, I ended up getting involved with doing stuff with the Buntu as, as many people did when that became kind of popular. Late two thousands. And then moved on to Linux Mints, did some stuff with Debian as well. So mints an interesting one cuz you can get it. It was originally based on a buntu, like a lot of things are or and then it moved to being based on Debian. So that was quite interesting cuz people kind of decided they wanted a more vanilla kind of Debian experience.

(00:14:30):
So it's quite nice. Yeah. Is it all on Debian? Because there was a while where you had both, there was like I think there's a choice. I think you can choose. Yeah. Is there still a choice? I know there was a choice, the Ubuntu or the Debian based one and Debian being just a rolling distro that like, you didn't have to worry about versioning. It just like kept going forever, which is kind of a Debbie in way. Yeah, I think it is, to be honest. I'm just looking, I'm, I'm doing some live research here cuz I can't remember <laugh>. I'm just on the Linux Mint website, I'm gonna look. Yeah, they've got various different versions, but I don't know whether they've fully moved to be, it doesn't tell you what it's based on. Now out of the box you did used to be able to choose.

(00:15:03):
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I remember. Cause yeah, I was like Debian or the traditional one that they had. I think now maybe there's different window or the different desktop managers you can choose like that. It definitely by default, like cinnamon and all that stuff. Definitely. Yeah. You can use, so Cinnamon's, the default one nose three. Okay. With Cinnamon you can use L M D A, you can use X F C I think some of the light lighter weight kind of ones. And there's a KD version, I'm sure there's a KD version as well. I haven't actually used KD in a long time though. So I don't know, I dunno what that's up to at the moment. But yeah, so I mean I got ready into that. And then I got into podcasting was the big thing. Cuz Id, I kind of, I'd done tech, obviously.

(00:15:46):
I'd done computing, I'd been working in computing. I was still working in computing, but I'd started out doing audio. So I still loved doing audio stuff. And in kind of mid two thousands, it would've been 2007 I think it was, I started podcasting kind of seriously. Which is reasonably early. It's not that early compared to, you know, some of the founders of podcasting. But I, I, I laugh these days when some people come up, I hear people saying, oh, we've had a podcast for 10 years. We're one of the oldest podcasts around. And I'm like, God, I was doing this 15, 16 years ago and I'm not one of the oldest podcasters around. So I dunno how, I dunno. You can say that. Yes. but yeah, so I got into that and I did I, I started doing I got into social media stuff actually for the first time as that was starting to appear.

(00:16:28):
And I met various people from around the world on, on various different sites and stuff. I used one. So the, the reason I got into podcasts, and this is a good link to Twitter actually, was, was because of Twitter. I started listening to podcasts in 2005, maybe 2006. And one of the first ones that I really listened to was, was twit. I heard Leo and I heard him doing twit. And then I, I kind of started discussing with friends who also listened to twit, you know, doesn't seem that hard. Maybe we could <laugh>, maybe we could have a go at that. And it's funny for similar for me too, I actually early on for Lennox Journal, we wanted to do podcasting when I called into one of Leo's shows for microphone advice <laugh>. Oh, cool. Wow. Yeah, I actually got what that's when was like, actually on TV even. But anyway, I see you have a decent, I like your microphone choice as well. I see. But mine model, yeah, I the same, yeah. The protester. Yeah. Oh no. Okay. I thought it was a, I thought it was an re 20. Now it's the road protester. Oh, okay. I'm turning it away from me as I talk into it. Yeah.

Doc Searls (00:17:28):
And yeah, Shawn has the electro voice, whatever it is. That's really,

Dan Lynch (00:17:33):
I do the re 20. It's nice, funny, like the extra cool 1960 or whatever, <laugh>. Wow. They're nice microphones. Yes. So we got, we got very into that, but Linux Outlaws was what came out of it was the podcast. And it became pretty popular. It was surprisingly, it was for a while. I mean, I don't really know how this happened, but within about two or three months of us starting in kind of early 2007, mid 2007, we were up to say 10,000, 20,000 listeners. That's amazing. Yeah. It was. And it peaked at about 40,000 or 50,000 at one time. Wow. Downloads. Yeah. And we started to get mentioned in magazines and invited to things and it was all kind of strange web, web celebrity. My friend calls it. We, it's like a short, short thing for web celebrity. We <laugh>. So she, yeah, she said to me, you're now a we. And I was like, oh, wow. Okay. If you say so.

Doc Searls (00:18:26):
I like that.

Dan Lynch (00:18:27):
It just means that at conferences, people like, want your autograph, but nobody at the grocery store recognizes you. I think that's pretty much what that means. It's the best time of famous.

Doc Searls (00:18:34):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah, that's the thing. There's, you know, a real celebrity. You can't go out in public without being accosted, you know, and, and that kind of celebrity is a little, little more lightweight. It's nicely cloaked. I, I wanna get a little bit into the, the music connection. But first I have to let everybody know that this episode of Floss Weekly is brought to you by Collide. Collide is a device trust solution that ensures unsecured devices can't access your apps. Collide has some big news. If you're an Okta user, collide can get your entire fleet to 100% compliance. Collide patches one of the major holes in zero trust architecture. That's device compliance. Think about it, your identity provider only lets known devices login to apps. But just because a device is known, it doesn't mean it's in a secure state. In fact, plenty of devices in your fleet probably shouldn't be trusted.

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(00:21:03):
Okay. So Dan, you're for those of us watching this thing you always have a bunch of musical instruments there and I wanna get the connection there cuz you just kind of started on music. You talked about that you were in bands and things, I, I assume mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So, so make the connection there between, between that and your Linux work, because I suspect there's a lot.

Dan Lynch (00:21:28):
Yeah, I suppose there is quite a a, a link there. I mean, I, I'm sure you guys can, can probably attest, attest to this as well, but I found in kind of going around various different open source worlds to conferences, to various different things, it's amazing how many people you meet are also like musicians or, you know, developers often have a musical link. Supposedly, I mean, I'm no expert on this, but supposedly there's a big link between mathematics and music. And I think maybe that links in with the whole kind of developer mindset of coding. And, and seeing, you know, music, cuz I suppose you can think of music actually as a kind of form of code anyway, because, you know, you've got a certain section, like a function might be a verse or a chorus and you repeat it and you loop it and you, you know, you do these things that you would do in code in music as well.

(00:22:16):
So they definitely link in terms of like open source and audio, I think a lot of it for me was as I said, was like podcasting stuff. But I did get into into doing stuff, open source music stuff as well. Sadly not as as much as someone like Jonathan Bennett, who's is in our, on our of our parish, of course, I know he does a lot of stuff with Ardo and so on. So I, I did a lot of studio work early on before I got into kind of being more of a tech myself, more of a computer tech I suppose. And we used to use a lot of things like proprietary tools, like Pro Tools and I used Cubase one called Cubase which is still going which is a proprietary tool.

(00:22:56):
But I did look into when I got in more into Linux, I was like, I wanna do audio on Linux. And as you'll know, there's a long history of people having problems with se not for a while, but when I kind of got into Linux in early kind of two thousands, around 2000 early two thousands, there was a lot of people who had problems with, with audio interfaces and so on, on Linux. Which, which was like not necessarily a problem with the kernel or anything else, it was more, a lot of the manufacturers didn't wanna I for some reason didn't wanna play ball. But a lot of that stuff's really developed now. And I got into using a German company called rme, who make audio interfaces. And I learned that they actually do a thing where they give the latest interfaces that they make.

(00:23:43):
They give, they send complimentary units to kernel developers not just kernel developers, really audio driver developers and Linux audio people around the world so they can get the support into the kernel and do stuff like that really early on and make sure it's really solid. So I bought myself an R M E HammerFall card, which to be honest, was completely overkill because it was like 64 channels or something it could do. And it had like fiber optics on it and stuff. And I was like, oh, this is amazing. I could record like a whole orchestra and everyone could have like a separate channel, all that kinda stuff. And then it's like me and, and a good guitar and a, and a vocal and I'm using like three channels. So I really kind of went over the top there.

(00:24:24):
But I, it was nice to know that if, you know, the Philharmonic Orchestra ever turned up at my house, I could go, don't worry folks. I've got, I've got like, everything you need right here, <laugh>. Although actually the back that laugh was a little hard, wasn't it? That was kind of a mean laugh in the background <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it was, it was interesting. So I got very into that and I, I, over the years I've kind of downsized the mixes and things that I use now. But I did at one time have a ridiculously over speced home studio, stuff like that. But also technology's changed as well. I mean, you can do so much stuff with software now which is amazing really. If you've got a laptop or half, you know, fairly decent laptop, you've got everything you need for a studio, get yourself a USB audio interface and all that kind of stuff.

(00:25:05):
But I, one thing I've found over the years is open source kind of stuff in relation to music and, and sound stuff has really come a long way. It's, it's been really, really good. And I, I weirdly, I think things like the Raby Pie actually helped with that. I knew some people who got into using, like, musicians who got into using the Raspberry Pie as a, as a little audio interface and and using the box to kind of stream stuff and all kinds cuz there was all kinds of interesting projects came out of the pandemic and stuff around that as well.

Doc Searls (00:25:36):
So. So, okay. So you, you play guitar and keyboards. I see that, right?

Dan Lynch (00:25:42):
Yeah.

Doc Searls (00:25:42):
Sorry. So, so what mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, what, what kind of gear are you using there? I mean, what is that guitar? Is that a a

Dan Lynch (00:25:49):
This is a hang on, I'll lean away from the mic slightly. <Laugh>,

(00:25:54):
If there's anyone in acoustic that's acoustic. Okay. This is an acoustic, yeah. If there's anyone in who's a guitar enthusiast, this is a Yamaha electroacoustic guitar, but it's actually a limited edition. It was, I bought it in 1996, which is, you can't really see on the camera, but on the threat there, it actually says 1996. It was produced as a, as a 10th anniversary of Yamaha Guitars at the time, which was 1996. And I believe it's this one of only like a thousand maybe or less than a thousand in the world. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this one. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So it, this is a, a normal acoustic I've got a lot of different kind of Fender guitars. There's a Stratocaster over there. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Doc Searls (00:26:37):
<Laugh>. And there's a red scene there. You, you've got the red in the headphones, you've got the red mic. You've got the red

Dan Lynch (00:26:43):
Mic. Yeah.

Doc Searls (00:26:44):
Yeah, Red's

Dan Lynch (00:26:45):
My favorite color. That's, that's what that's about. I think.

Doc Searls (00:26:49):
That's cool. So, and so, and, and you play in bands or a band or where, where, so when you go out and play right now, what are you doing

Dan Lynch (00:26:58):
At the minute? I haven't played out a lot lately actually, to be honest. But it's more kind of solo stuff like acoustic stuff. Mostly singing, playing guitar. But I have been in a number of bands, actually. There's for many years I was in a, I was in a band called 20 Pound Sounds. When I w we used to play we actually played quite a few kind of open source events, which was interesting because well some of the events I was organizing, so it was like, well, I'm gonna subject everyone to listening to my band. And, and we'd set up a stage on the Saturday night and we'd have, you know, for like party after the events or mid event and we'd play stuff like that. So we had quite an interesting quite a following through the podcasts and so on like that.

(00:27:40):
That was a little three piece band. I haven't played with them for a while, sadly, but you never know. We might end up going back together, but one of the strangest gigs I ever did was actually for a Red Hat conference. It was for a Red Hat Partner Summit, I think it was called. It was in Dublin in Ireland. And I was invited over to, to play which is interesting at the red, at the Red Hat Conference, which was quite a corporate event, so I don't really know why they wanted me to play guitar there, but there you go. Maybe the red, maybe it was the red theme. That's what got you the gig, right? It could have been. Yeah, it could have been. And maybe it was the red, I did take the red guitar, so maybe that was part of it. So but I, I, I remember singing keep On Rocking in the Free World by Neil Young which I thought was quite appropriate. And, and a number of people win Red Hats kind of jumping up and down singing them <laugh>, which was fun.

Doc Searls (00:28:33):
That's cool. There's it's funny, there's a when you said Neil Jung there's a mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, there's a great podcast, I've mentioned it before, called the History of Rock Music and 500 Songs by Andrew Hickey, and he's in Manchester and he always talks about Neil Jung <laugh> and so, and songs, s u n g s or so it seems. So Shawn De Shawn, do you play an instrument? I'm just curious if, if we could

Dan Lynch (00:29:03):
I, well, if I lean over away from my microphone, you can see I have a, a Stratocaster on the wall there. Okay. But I don't play well, I, I play well enough. So my wife and I used to teach youth group at, at a church and I play guitar well enough to get kids to play guitar well enough so that I don't have to play guitar. That's, that's the extent of my, of my ability. So I don't, I haven't played a whole lot and I, I wanted to get better. I bought this guitar and I haven't played it, but maybe once. But anyway yeah, it's, it's a, a sad story with me and audio, but, but also every member of my family is so incredibly musically talented that it's, it's a little it's, it's a little overwhelming to do anything musical in their presence. I mean, every one of my daughters like leads music on stage for like, multiple churches, you know? Yeah. They're just, they're amazing. They play like every instrument, even if they don't play. I mean, like, do you have a guitar? Oh, my guitar had a broken string. And they're like, oh, I'll just play the keyboard. Like, do you play keyboard? No, but I'll figure it out. And they do. I don't understand music people, that is not me.

Doc Searls (00:30:10):
But you do satisfy the the thesis that that people who code and people who are technical and people are good at math now, they have to do all those things tend to be musicians as well. And I mean, well, I, I appreciate I'm thinking about it. I mean, so many technical people I know play play musical instruments, it,

Dan Lynch (00:30:31):
Yeah. Well, and you know, we talk about music and math. I think music and math are so closely related, related, but you know, the artistry is in the, the airs, if you will. So, I dunno, maybe, maybe artistry is just plugs in the code. I, I don't, that's, that's a metaphor that got stretched too far. But yeah, I I don't know. I, I think especially the people that we tend to talk to are sort of creator heavy. Like you like to create things, whether it's code or, or music or content or whatever, podcasts. And yeah, we're all a little, little crunchy in that regard. So I'm curious, can you talk about your, your shirt? What is what is, what is this about Amp? Yeah, yeah. Very, very quickly. I'll slip in a plug. I meant to say, if you wanna find cuz I think John was putting links, was putting a scrolling something on the screen there.

(00:31:19):
If you wanna find the band that I was in and listen to the music, it's all on Bandcamp. So I'll, it's 20 pound net, two lb.net. Re redirect you straight to Bandcamp if anyone wants to listen. Yep. so sorry, I thought I'd work that in just yeah, you can, you can never, never resist the plug. Yeah. So on camp this is this is something else that came out of out of kind of all the things I was doing with the podcasts and and various different things. So in two in 2008, I think it would've been 2008 I went to an event called Log Radio Live, which was run by another podcast in the UK called Log Radio, which a lot of people will remember if, if you if you were into podcasts, particularly into Linux podcasts at the time, that was one of the most popular ones in the world.

(00:32:06):
John o Bacon was one of the hosts and, and some of the others who's gone on, he was later went, ended up on Floss Weekly Johno. And now he, he does all kinds of stuff. I think he works for SpaceX or something like that. No but he, he's doing very well. So I went to their event and, and they were running at the time the biggest kind of community, Lennox open source community event in the uk, an annual get together two, three day kind of conference thing. And they announced that they were, they were stopping. So we decided to, to take, not take it over, but they, they of made a joke that like, you know, someone else should do it and something similar and, you know, and, and people joked, oh, are you gonna take it over?

(00:32:46):
So that's what happened. We ended up in, in 2009, we ran the first event the first odd camp, which was a one day event. It was a bar camp style event, so it was an non-conference. People come along, pitch talks. We had some really, really great talks. We had all kinds of stuff going on. Lots of lots of techy stuff and lots of non-techy stuff. One of the most interesting talks, or most popular talks that we had at the first event was by one of a lady who came along and she got everyone to draw a picture of a pig on a, on her like a, just a, a doodle of a pig, basically on a, on a piece of paper with a felt pen or whatever. And then she analyzed them based on, on how they'd drawn the pig which was quite interesting.

(00:33:31):
So like, apparently there were little things like how curly you made the tail apparently was supposed to reflect how flamboyant you were and how long the tail was, was something to do with like, how confident you were and, and all these kinds of things. But that, it was a strange little talk, but it, it became very, very popular. It was something that you wouldn't expect. So yeah, we ran that and then it, it ran for 10 years. So the shirt I've got on now, which I'll, I can kind of lift the mic slightly other, the way it says 10 year anniversary people will be able to see this, this was from the event we ran in 2019 which was the, the 10 year anniversary of amp. And it, it became the most kind of, the, the, the, well, how would I say it?

(00:34:11):
I'd say the most, the biggest, I was gonna say the most popular, maybe that's not fair. One of the biggest, anyway open source Linux events in the uk, an annual thing. I ran it for for 10 years, although I think I missed like one or two years. So maybe I ran eight out of the 10 years. And then of course we had we were gonna do it in 2020, but then that got stopped by by the pandemic and the lockdowns and everything. So we couldn't run it then. But we had some awesome things o over the years we had great speakers and guests. And one year I managed to get Steven Fry to do a a to do a a a a, yeah, a talk, like a recorded talk. Which is still my kind of crown in achievement to be honest, cuz yeah, for sure.

(00:34:55):
Yeah, that was, that was quite that was quite impressive. But I really wa I tried to get him to come along. This was in 2012. He, he did the the thing for amp in 2012, which was in Liverpool that year. We moved around a little bit, but Mo a lot of them were in Liverpool, some of them were in other places. But yeah, we, we got so I basically, I, I knew he was interested. I knew he was very into technology. He's, he, I knew he was kind of an Apple guy. He was one of, he had the, I think he was the second owner of an Apple computer in the uk after Douglas Adams, who was author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, who was his friend who got the first Apple computer in the UK in the eighties when they came out. And I knew that Stephen Fry was very into computing. So I tried to get him to come along to Amp. I thought I'll just try and pitch him, but I, I didn't have any contact information. I didn't know where to start. I mean, how'd you deal with that? Because he's, I dunno how famous he is in the us but over here he is, he's kind of pretty famous, you know, I mean, he's pretty famous

Doc Searls (00:35:52):
Here. I mean, he's pretty famous for sure. Yeah.

Dan Lynch (00:35:54):
Yeah. So he is not sort of guy, you can just pick up the phone and, and get on the phone <laugh> very easily. So what I did was, he had a website at the time his website was steven fry.com and I just, you know, as a kind of Hail Mary, kind of like, I'm just gonna try this, see what happens. I, I typed up an email and I sent it to steven@stevenfry.com. Didn't even know if the address existed. And I thought no more about it really. And then two, three weeks later, I got a reply from Steven Fry himself, <laugh>. And I was like, is this a wine? You know, is someone having a joke with me, winding me up here? Is this really him? And it was him. And we actually wrote back and forth a few times exchanged like five, six emails to the point where I started to feel a bit embarrassed cuz I felt like I was bothering him too much. I said to him like, is there an agent or someone that I should speak to because I feel like I'm, you know, I don't wanna take up too much of your time or, or cause any problems. And he's just really lovely. And he was like, oh no, don't worry about it, it's fine. So he did you can find it on YouTube. I'll, I'll post some links. Yeah,

Doc Searls (00:36:56):
It, it, it's interesting to me. We, we had a glitch here, but that's okay. Most of you would hear it or, or see it. But I just want Dan to know your audio seemed to work fine, <laugh>, while your face was frozen. Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I think it's, you know, the system's sort of biased to, to audio for, for that reason. The last time I was in, in your part of the world wasn't that close. It was actually a Birmingham for

Dan Lynch (00:37:22):
That's not too far

Doc Searls (00:37:23):
For Guek, which is the gno Oh yeah. Conference. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and, and which is a lot of fun. Geek conferences are great. And I, I'm wondering, so so you, there was this a camp, so this is AGA and ABIs, right? Is that, is that

Dan Lynch (00:37:37):
Correct? Yeah, so the name, yeah, the name was something that I came up with. And to be honest, I think I originally, I was the only one who kind of liked it and then maybe people grew to like it over time. It's a strange name. People who dunno anything about like what Argo is for a start, they, they're like, what the hell is that? And they think it's like odd camp with two Ds <laugh>. Which it probably more appropriate. But yeah, it's basically cuz I, I wanted something that, cuz it was free culture and free software kind of was the idea. So we wanted, I wanted something that kind of in some way mixed the idea of, you know, free free software, open source, all of that with the idea of music media, you know, art creation. And I was like, well, s are free format.

(00:38:19):
So yeah, the people at RBS camp were really angry. They were <laugh>. I know. Yeah, yeah. Well do you know, the strange thing is you're in, you're in good company there, Shawn. Cuz when I wrote to Stephen Fry and said, will you come to Amp? And tried to explain what it was, he wrote back saying, what is this RBS con thing that you're talking about? <Laugh>? cause and I was think Wow, okay. Cuz he made a joke about like, yeah, about it being verb Conn. So there you go. <Laugh>. Yeah. So that's where it came from. That's where the name came from. But yeah, it took, it kind of took on a life of its own. People keep asking if it's gonna happen, if again I hope so. We'll see. I'd since the, since the, we canceled, unfortunately I had to cancel cuz of COVID in, in 2020.

(00:39:00):
I haven't been as involved really. So I've kind of figured like I did 10 years and I was like, somebody needs to take this over cuz I've done 10 years. And then someone can come in and we had some great volunteers who came in and who knows, watch this space, it might happen again. You never know. The web, the website's all still there on camp.org. And as I was saying, I think before I got cut off, if you search for Stephen Frey or Camp or Amp, Stephen Frey, you'll find the video that he did. And it's really interesting. It's 15, 16 minutes long and he just sent it to me via like iCloud or something. I got an email one day saying, Stephen Fry has shared something with you on iCloud <laugh>. I thought, wow, that can't be real. So then I clicked on it and sure enough it was a video that he'd made for us where he answered questions, that we'd sent him a list of questions some technical questions where he talked about, we asked him about computing and some other silly questions like, if you were a dinosaur, what dinosaur would you be?

(00:39:51):
And I won't spoil his answer, so you can go on and watch that if you want. Oh, now I have to <laugh>.

Doc Searls (00:39:58):
I I saw him once perform live in a one man show about Oscar Wilde. It was a really good, it was really, really good show. He's a very funny guy and taller than I expected. He's a tall guy.

Dan Lynch (00:40:13):
He's very tall.

Doc Searls (00:40:14):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. so I, since we're, so we brought up vus. I wanna talk CodeDX for a second. I mean is, is is OG used that much at this point? I mean there's, I I, I don't know what I mean, I, I cared about Codex like 25 years ago and haven't looked that closely since. And OG looked like it had some real chances of going and they were working on a video codec too. Is it, what's happening around that now? Are you paying much to, but before

Dan Lynch (00:40:42):
You answer, can, can I give you my layman's thoughts? Oh, please do. To see how correct I am and then I'll let the professional kind of answer there. So it seems like everything's either aac, mp3 or flack if you don't wanna have it. If you want it to be like perfect. Is that, is that the case or Yeah, what, what, what's the professional answer to that? Well pretty much I think, does anyone still use AR is a good question. I don't know actually. I don't use it a lot these days. I did at one time, I used a Verbs a lot as an alternative to mp3. Because there was some, well as, as you, you guys will know, there was some worries about what would happen when the the, the patent licenses run out. Mp3.

Doc Searls (00:41:23):
Yeah. Fraud, fraud, Hoffer, whoever owned mp3, crown

Dan Lynch (00:41:25):
Hoffer Institute made threats.

Doc Searls (00:41:27):
Yeah, sort of, yeah.

Dan Lynch (00:41:28):
Yeah. They kind of threatened people over what would happen with, if they'd used MP3s, you know, could they be sued for that. It hasn't happened and I think MP3s become the kind of defacto low, not low quality but low-ish kind of quality, you know, good for bandwidth and size and all the rest of it kind of audio Kodak. But flacks great. I love Flack. Flack is completely free as well. It's free as in beer and free as in Freedom as well. That's a great format. It's really high quality. I tend to use when I'm doing audio work, to be honest, cuz I, I do produce some podcasts for other people. And I tend to use Wave. We, we just use like full wave files. It's funny too because now that bandwidth and storage is so cheap.

(00:42:11):
Yeah. It, you can use, you know, I mean it used to be a concern like, oh no, what if my audio file is, you know, so big. Well it doesn't really matter cuz Yeah, the biggest audio file is nothing. So yeah, these days it doesn't matter so much. We used to get, when when we did Linux Outlaws and Set and other podcasts and that I've done we did different feeds. So we would do an MP3 feed and we would do an AOG feed, right. And and things like that. And, and we used to get a lot of a lot of stick off people. A lot of kind of people get very upset if we didn't put the AOG feed up cuz they'd be like, we want the AOG feed. And you know, we, I don't remember what it's like these days, but I'm, I'm talking like 10 years ago, 15 years ago a lot of people were very much into like, they wanted the A version cuz it was, you know, it was on unencumbered by patents and all the rest of it and they wanted to support it.

(00:42:59):
So yeah, that's good. As far as Codex go, I know what you mean, doc. I don't think so much about Codex these days as I, I did it one time cuz we all had to think, oh, you know, you'd get a video or whatever it might be audio and you'd think, is my computer gonna play this? How am I gonna get it to play it? But to be honest, since like VLC became a big thing, I I just, I I've yet to find I'm sure there are many things, but I've yet to find anything that VLC can't play for me. Pretty much. Yeah. So, so since that and of course VLC open source as well, so it links in, I,

Doc Searls (00:43:30):
I'm not even sure I, I remember cuz I was someone involved in internet radio early on, we covered it a lot for Linux Journal and and this is before there were the big streaming services. There was no Apple Music or nap Napster had just been killed, but it's still nothing really replaced it yet. Spotify wasn't around. And so if you listen to internet radio, you were listening to at a real radio station or somebody would just come up with one like say Radio Paradise which is a fairly popular one and you'd go there like on their website. So here's the 120 Kilobit Stream AAC screen stream and here's the 64 Kilobit MP3 stream. And so one of the radio stations I was talking to like they, to hold on their own bandwidth cost, they said, well we're doing talk, we're doing it at 32 kilobits. And you're right, I haven't thought about that. I don't think they've thought about it or they're sure they do think about it, but it's not, it's not what it was. And I'm not even sure if you're listening say to Amazon Music or Apple Music or Spotify. I don't know what they're using. Do you know what they're using? Your app knows? I guess

Dan Lynch (00:44:35):
Probably aac

Doc Searls (00:44:36):
Probably a c lot of them. Yeah, probably.

Dan Lynch (00:44:39):
Probably. I would, I would think so. Yeah. I mean it, it's not as much of a concern. Is this I'm interested actually, doc, I'm, I'm can asking you questions now because I I can't help it. Go for

Doc Searls (00:44:48):
It. It's a, it's a circle here.

Dan Lynch (00:44:49):
It's a useful, you mentioned internet, radio did you do stuff with Icecast? Was that what you were using? Stuff like that?

Doc Searls (00:44:55):
No, I mostly it was just covering it for other people. I mean, you were talking about you started podcasting in oh seven or oh eight mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. I started and stopped in oh five <laugh>. I mean I, wow. I got this set up. I did a, a couple of 'em with my kid, but I, I, I just, and I, I kind of wish I'd stayed at it, but yeah. Had other things to do, you

Dan Lynch (00:45:17):
Know, I mean back then though the, yeah, the, the bandwidth was just such a limiting time. Real, real audio came out and they were like, I made

Doc Searls (00:45:23):
A point of recording at like, at some low rate, you know? Yeah. And doing it in mono instead of stereo. That's another, like one of those considerations at the time.

Dan Lynch (00:45:32):
Yeah. Like trying to recom or, you know, re-encode them in real time. That was tough on CPUs back then. Good mind. You know, you had to, well,

Doc Searls (00:45:40):
Let, let me ask both of you guys, because this is an interest of mine and it, and it plays in, do either of you still listen to radio? On a radio?

Dan Lynch (00:45:52):
When I drive.

Doc Searls (00:45:53):
When you drive? When you drive? When I drive,

Dan Lynch (00:45:56):
Yeah. And that recently changed because my, my soon-to-be son-in-law is a car dealer and he reactivated our Sirius XM for like the free trial <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been listening to Sirius xm, but yeah, that's pretty much the only time I listen to radio is when we're driving because cuz we've got like 4G everywhere now. I tend to just use, you know, an internet. I'm listening to radio stations, but I'm listening to them through Right. You know, some kind of internet stream. Usually on the phone or, or in the car maybe. Cuz I, I listen to radio all the time. I love it. And we have the BBC over here. I listen to a lot of BBC stuff. But they have an app for all of that now. They just have a radio app that you just,

Doc Searls (00:46:35):
Right. There's a, there's an outstanding app I highly recommend called radio.garden. And it's done by some guy, I think in the Netherlands. And it's a globe and you can zoom in on any particular point on the globe and it lists all the live radio and web stations that are there. And you can kinda zoom in and listen to different stuff. It's, it's, it's, it's a lot of fun. I, I mean, cause what I'm watching happen almost in real time is over the year, radio died Doesn't mean that the radio itself dies. It just moves to another medium. It just moves to, it moves to cellular.

Dan Lynch (00:47:10):
It's kinda like when it went from AM to fm, right? I mean it, the, the concept was still the same. And I, yeah, it kinda feels like another jump, like from, from that to digital, you know, because digital is easier to get everywhere.

Doc Searls (00:47:22):
Yeah. It it, it's also, I mean, there, it's an interesting thing cuz like an AM radio, like a long wave in the, in, in the uk, like the BBC long wave on a hundred and hundred 98 kilohertz is going, is gonna end like the end of next year. They're gonna be done with it. Mm-Hmm. And the weird thing about that is it covers not only the uk it covers like part of France, Ireland, one signal covers all of that. And it's a, it's a cell about 800 miles wide. And there's one in France on, on 1 62 and in Germany at 1 53, I think. And they covered like most of Europe. Both of them did. And, but nobody but Long Wave went out of fashion. And it doesn't, and it doesn't, the problem with AM and FM is that the frequencies are down close to sparks. And so electric cars play havoc with it. That's another thing. Now this is way off your territory. I was just wondering. I'm just, I'm just curious. No,

Dan Lynch (00:48:18):
No, that very, very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. We've got some, some back, back channel chat going on here. I see this, and John was asking about Audacity. So one of the things I I, I kind of should have mentioned actually, was when I got into doing podcast production for other people. Which one of the podcasts that I've produced over the years was for the Software Freedom Law Center at the time. And then the Software Frame Conservancy as it as it is now, my friends Bradley and Karen who worked there. And they insisted that I mean, Bradley's a very staunch free software guy. He was an fsf. Yeah.

Doc Searls (00:48:56):
Guy Bradley Coon.

Dan Lynch (00:48:57):
And he, he was, he, yeah. Yeah. and he's been a guess, actually, I think he's been a guest. I've

Doc Searls (00:49:01):
Been trying to get him back as a guest, but he wants us to have like the co completely free chain in all parts.

Dan Lynch (00:49:07):
Yeah. He won't use,

Doc Searls (00:49:09):
There are little bits in in here that are less orthodox, unfortunately. But that, that was an issue for him.

Dan Lynch (00:49:16):
But, we'll, one of the

Doc Searls (00:49:17):
Things that him get him on, you know, like, we'll, we'll figure something out. We'll rig something up. I

Dan Lynch (00:49:21):
Think we had him on a phone call last time. I think he was on like an old school Yeah. Phone. He does a lot of stuff with VoIP. He does do like asterisk, asterisk. I always got that wrong. He does like Asterisk VoIP stuff. He has a server for that. So I'm sure it was something we can do. But one of these kind of stipulations he, he kinda gave me when I started producing their show when it first started was he wanted me to use a hundred percent open source free software tools and all that kind of stuff to produce it. So one of the things I, which I did anyway, to be honest, which was good, but one of the big things I used in my workflow and I still do right now is, is Audacity, which is what John was asking about there in the isc which is a hundred percent open source free software. I find it a great tool as Jonathan was saying, it, it, it's not, it's not quite as complete as something like Ardo ados, like a proper music production mm-hmm. <Affirmative> digit audio workspace.

Doc Searls (00:50:11):
It's had Ardor on on the show in the past.

Dan Lynch (00:50:14):
Yeah. Whereas Audacity is more kind of for small kind of editing things, I think. Anyway, that's just my opinion. But, but I use it all the time. Yeah. Yeah. So that was one of the things that I, I, I still do it now where every, I try and keep as much of the stuff on open source, kind of free software tools as I can. And most of it is, I mean, I can do it a hundred percent that way, which as, yeah, as we talked about with Bradley was a big thing. And some other people who are into, into that, which goes back to the org thing as well. You know, they, they would want to use formats like org and stuff that, or Flack or whatever.

Doc Searls (00:50:44):
Yeah. I, I, I've used Audacity exclusively is, is what I use to do video audio editing rather. And because I have a complete inability to stop saying but I know what my ums look like. I don't even need to listen. I just go through it. I said is an there isn't another I know the whole shape of it, the envelope <laugh>. It's like, and I wish I gave my brain to do that. So there are no ums, <laugh>, it's, anyway yeah. So <laugh>, so is there any, I was thinking of terms, we, we, we've left on stone. I wa actually I, I, I wanna get back to some topics on the show, but first I have to let everybody know that this episode of Floss Weekly is brought to you by Bit Warden. Bit Warden is the only open source cross platform password manager that could be used at home, at work, or on the go and is trusted by millions, even by our very own Steve Gibson.

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(00:54:27):
So <laugh>, so guys, where were we? <Laugh>, I, I erased my plan when I, when I, when I went to the ad there,

Dan Lynch (00:54:37):
You guys were all gonna send me gifts and I was gonna give you my address. I think that's, I think you said gif then I just like, I can send you some gifts if you want some animated gifts. I prefer gifs. Gifs. That's true. That's an argument. Is it gif or g? I think it's supposed to be gif, isn't it? Well, it depends on who he asked. Yeah. The guy who invented it says gif so that's,

Doc Searls (00:54:58):
Oh, well we did, I, so there was an interesting controversy with that where,

Dan Lynch (00:55:04):
Oh, it's still, yeah, the, the still channel was gonna get nasty if we, we tell us about it.

Doc Searls (00:55:09):
It was owned by CompuServe or somebody and, and it went to, I don't know, to h and r Block and they sold it to somebody or something. What was, I think there's some big company owned it. And then somebody then Don Marty, a friend of the show who's been on the show former editor-in-chief of Linux Journal before I was organized something called Bernal JS <laugh> and, and marched on the company that didn't even know they owned it <laugh> and to make something happen. Do you know what happened with that? I I have no idea.

Dan Lynch (00:55:40):
I I don't And I, I am not passionate either way. So I get enough hate mail for other reasons. I don't need to pick a side <laugh>. Yeah, that's true. We could get into the whole Linux versus Linux thing. That's the thing for a while.

Doc Searls (00:55:52):
And, and, and Linux. So, so you, but so, but let's bring it back to Linux. You mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you, you run the Linux, the Liverpool Linux users group. A lot of Ls in there. Yeah. How's, how, how is the lug business going? To the degree it's a business at all. I mean, it's,

Dan Lynch (00:56:11):
Do you call it the, the lug? Cuz that's, we call it lug. Yeah. Yeah. So

Doc Searls (00:56:15):
Liver lug. Do we call

Dan Lynch (00:56:16):
It the, we call it the log, yeah. Lin Linux user group. So I don't know, that was something I was gonna ask you guys about actually. So in the I got involved with, with logs or Linux user groups in kind of mid two thousands, maybe 2006, 2007. So quite late actually. But I, I found that where I was there were two actually were actually two different logs. There was one in Liverpool and there was one in Chester, which is kind of 40 minutes away roughly. So it's not far. So I actually went to both and, and now today I actually organized the Liverpool log and I have done for, for quite a long time. But it, I found that really useful at the time because you could meet other people talk about, you know, talk about open sourcey, linuxy things and, and get kind of support.

(00:57:00):
But I don't know if these days there are still as many around. So there used to be a thing called log.org.uk, which was like a, and it's still exists. It was like an umbrella kind of organization where they would register, you know, various different logs. So the pull log is one of the ones does registered. And they would provide things like support, like a bit of web space for you to host, you know, something mailing lists stuff like that. And the admins would help to run stuff. And that was all kind of charity funded, like public funded. And it's still going. But I, sadly I hear a lot. We have Liverpool log, which I should mention is live log, l i v l u g.org.uk is the website. We meet every month, still on a Wednesday. We have a meeting first Wednesday of every month.

(00:57:44):
And of course lots of people have made the joke cuz it's called Live Log. We have the whole live lug and prosper thing going on <laugh>. Of course. So that's in there as well. We talk about a lot of kind of science fiction, see stuff as well and other things. But we do meet every month and we, and I, and we have a mail on this and we have online community stuff as well. But it feels as though a lot of that kind of stuff's gone. So I'd be interested to hear kind of your guys' experience, cuz I dunno what it's like in the US with, with like logs and so on. Are they, are there still local logs to you? Are they relevant? All that kinda stuff. So I can just say for me, I, I have always lived in a very rural area.

(00:58:20):
There's never been a lug anywhere remotely close to where I live. Yeah, I could have started one, but you know, me and the one other person who I convinced to listen to me doesn't make a great user group. So I, I've never actually been a part of a lug. I've spoken at a couple and I know there are still some that are active. Like there's a, and actually don't call themselves a lug, they just call themselves a Michigan users group mug.org. And and I think it's Linux slash Unix. I think that's where they're not specif specifying for Linux, but you know mm-hmm. Theyre, they're still active a and still going and, you know, but it's, it's virtual right now, you know, the last couple times over the past couple years, and I've spoken, it's been virtual. I, I think that the, and I don't know if the crowd in the past has been a younger crowd. It seems to be an older crowd now, you know, people who enjoyed it, you know, 10, 15 years ago and, you know, still get joy out of hearing the, the presentations and, and the camaraderie and stuff. But it doesn't feel like I don't know, it just, it, it feels like it's sort of aging itself out of existence. And I, I don't know. But I don't have a great a great idea because like I said, I, I'm not part of a local one myself.

Doc Searls (00:59:40):
You know, there was one in Santa Barbara, it was pretty active and I spoke at it once or twice, but I'm, I don't think it's there anymore. And, and I wonder whether, you know, we, we were gonna focus a lot on, on community building here. I, I, I think that there, what's happened is that we were talking to Greg Crow Hartman a couple of weeks ago, the great Colonel. Colonel maintainer and maintainer and you know, there's the, the, the sense that I, I get from him, and there was a particular point I was trying to think of, but there's, oh, we just, it was basically the Linux one. I mean, Linux is in everything. It's in all it's as, as an embedded operating system, it rules the world and most people don't know it's there in your brake system or whatever else it is.

(01:00:32):
But I think there's always going to be the hackable end of it, and that doesn't go away. And so I'm wondering, and and this is maybe a last question for you, Dan before, cuz we're getting mm-hmm. <Affirmative> low on time here. What the people who are participating now what, how does that differ from and the way it was 10 or 15 or 20 years ago? And what encourages you or what would make you wanna get more people into it? Or what I'm, I'm getting a sense, I, I want a sense of what, how do we, how do we evangelize this thing? I, there's probably five questions there, but Yeah, sorry. Yeah,

Dan Lynch (01:01:11):
That's okay. That's okay. I think it's, it's changed a lot. And actually the point that you made there was one I was gonna gonna make as well. That in some ways I think like logs specifically and those kind of things user groups have become less relevant because they're less needed because Linux has become so ma so mainstream. It used to feel like a little outlaw club that people didn't, you know, we were like the people that nobody understood and we were outside of the mainstream and now everybody's got a phone that runs Android or you know, they've got a TV that runs Linux or, or any of these things. And and they've become less relevant. So I think in some ways that's a victory. And it's great and it's good. But what I found certainly over here anyway in the UK is what things have really started to change in you mentioned hacking.

(01:01:53):
It's now become more like a make maker kind of culture or makerspace kind of culture. We have, we're also fortunate to have a really great makerspace in Liverpool called does Liverpool. And that's where we have our, our Linux user group meetings, but they have other groups there as well. And what a lot of people are more interested in now is not like, how do I make the audio work on my laptop or whatever they want to go, how do I link this, you know l e d to this sensor to do this, to do that? And a lot of it's come from the rasberry pie. I think that kind of gave Linux a really big boost I think. Cause cuz initially, I mean you can run Windows I believe on the pie now, but initially you didn't really, and and so on and Arduinos and all those kind of things, they're all open source, they're all linuxy kind of things.

(01:02:38):
So that's where it's gone I think in the UK is a lot of the maker and stuff maker kind of stuff. And the that kind of culture and unfortunately makes, yeah, I mean it's, it's just where it's gone requires physical activity, right? I mean, you, you have to be physically there to do a lot of maker stuff. It's, you know, you're literally making things mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and, and I think that a lot of what used to be part of a Linux user group has moved online. Like, for example, my, like my little community of people are on my, my YouTube channel and my and stuff. They're all over the world. You know, we, we have similar, you know, interests and stuff, but we don't have to physically be there because it's not like we're soldering over each other's shoulders.

(01:03:18):
Right? It's it's that physical stuff though that I, the maker world. I think that's a, that's a really keen observation there that the, you know, the, the maker world is certainly makes more sense to me in meat space. Yeah, I think it definitely works, works a lot that way. We have so in the, we, as I said, cuz we have a makerspace nearby hacker space, whatever you wanna call it which we are really lucky to have that. And we, you know, they've got a brilliant workshop. You can go and use the workshop. They've got 3D printers and laser cutters and loads of excite exciting things that yeah, you definitely need to be there physically to, to do the, you could maybe send your design to be cut or printed or whatever, but you need to be there to kind of put the piece of wood in the machine and the plastic and all the rest of it and, and get it out and, and all those kind of stuff.

(01:04:01):
And I think there's a lot to be learned from that as well. It seems as though that's really growing still a actually, so one thing I I should mention actually on the whole maker thing before we ran out of time is that one of the things I got involved with over the years is a thing called Liverpool Make Fest, which I've talked about on here before which is a one day event, a bit like a make faire. You, you might know a Maker Faire kind of thing. They, they've been around for age. This is what we call a make fest which is slightly different partly due to branding issues, but we won't get into that <laugh>. So this is a make fest not a make fair. And it's a, it's a one day event.

(01:04:38):
It's coming up there's, there's a Liverpool make fest. It's, it's a whole day. It's free. It's on from I think nine in the morning till five. It's a Liverpool central library. It's on the, the 1st of July, Saturday, the 1st of July. So it's like a week on Saturday coming up. If you're in the UK and you live within a reasonable traveling distance of of Liverpool or wherever you're from, if you want to come, you're welcome. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, come along get involved. There's all kinds of what happens. Yeah. What what actually happens. So we have, we take over the library for the whole day. We got four floors of the library. We have lots of people doing things like sold. There's a soldiering workshop if you're interested in learning how to, to do or soldering and stuff. Which to be honest, I haven't done much soldering in a long time. I could probably do, I think it requires three hands. I and I only have two, so I can never solder properly.

Doc Searls (01:05:26):
And this is what in the US we call soldering, even though it's spelled soldering. Oh, is

Dan Lynch (01:05:29):
It soldering? Oh, is it Right. It

Doc Searls (01:05:32):
It's, it's fine. It's like schedule and schedule. It's cool.

Dan Lynch (01:05:36):
<Laugh> true, true. You say potato, I say potato <laugh> <laugh>. So yeah, so soldering or soldering, if you call it that we've got workshops for that you can come along and we've got the there's the Liverpool Astronomical Astronomic Society, astronom called Society. They're gonna be on the roof, they're gonna be there's a roof terrace. They're gonna have telescopes set up there. They're gonna tell you all about things in the, you know, in space and the solar system and things you can see with your own telescope. If you, if you wanna do that, you can learn all about that. You can do things like, there's even things like a Nerf gun firing range where you can, it's an interactive game that some friends of ours made, which is all, again, open source. It's great. I think it actually uses rugby pies to, to do the embedded stuff.

(01:06:19):
But they have these little boxes that, it's called Made Invaders. It's a bit like Space Invaders and they have little Space invader style l e d displays on these boxes. And when you hit them with the Nerf gun, you get a point and it, it all adds it up and puts in on a nice old school kind of. Oh, that's cool. Display it above. Yeah. So that gets the kids excited. And then it's kind of getting them in with things like that. And then you can say, oh, would would you and would you like to make your own game? Or how would you, you know, wanna do this? And, and they usually get excited about it cuz you know, they wanna do stuff like that. And we've got all kinds of stuff going on there. As I say, it's at Liverpool make fest.org.

(01:06:54):
It's the website if you wanna have a look at it, you can find out more on there. There's a list of all the makers. There's videos of previous events. I'm helping out. I'm one of the organizers. But it's on all day. And it's something that we're trying to push kind of nationally and, and a lot of the people are involved are educators. So the founders, the people who set it up one of them is university Lac. The other one is a, a teacher who's been a guest on this show. My friend Caroline. She's, she was Teacher of the year in the UK a few years ago which was quite impressive. And sh the first school MakeSpace in the UK school Hackerspace in the UK in her school six years ago or something now. And that's been expanded as well. And they're trying to do so what they call stem, which is I think, what is it? Science, technology, engineering and maths, I think stem, yeah, I may, yeah, I may have got that right. So I think you

Doc Searls (01:07:47):
Got that right. Yeah.

Dan Lynch (01:07:48):
Yeah. So so they, they, they push in what they call STEM education for kids and for adults as well. And one of the great ways of doing that is getting them to, to do things like strangely shoot things with a nerve gun and then go do you, you know, do you, how does that work? And then they want to know how does the machine know that when I've hit it and all this. And you can say, oh, there's a sensor here and then it does this and it does that and you can get 'em to make so they're doing things like, there's a thing called Pie Wars as well, which is a bit like robot wars where people can make you know, robots with wheels on and things and race them and crash them into each other. Although I think if I spent too long making a robot and then someone crushed it, I'd probably can't <laugh>.

(01:08:27):
And so I don't know if I'm up for that, but yeah, you can they have a thing called PY Wars, which is like Robot wars where they actually fight each other the robots <laugh>. Yeah. And there's all kinds of crazy stuff like that going on. Yeah, so it's great. It's, it's all day, it's free. So I think that's kind of where things are going a bit in. So at least in the uk I dunno how it is for you guys in the us but certainly over here where we are, it's becoming more of a kind of hands-on Makey culture. Obviously the software's still there underneath and, you know, it's become less of a issue though. You just know that you can get something on, you know, that will run on your raspy PI or P 32 or whatever embedded computer you've got and just, you are away.

Doc Searls (01:09:07):
Well, well this is great. We have actually gone, because we started early. That's n never happened for me, but we can do it here. We've gone almost over nine minutes longer than we normally do, so, so I'm gonna quick and just ask you, because we've always asked other people and what are your favorite text editor and script language?

Dan Lynch (01:09:26):
Yeah. I never get to answer this. I'll give you a quick answer as soon as we are over a favor. Programming language or, or scripting language, I should say would probably be Python, although Bash is, is really useful. Never underestimate what you can do with a Bash script. I would say so Python and Bash text editor. I would say Vim apologies to the EMAX pupil. But yeah, for me it's gotta be them. Or actually these days if I'm doing any serious kind of coding and I need like an I d I'll use a visual Studio code, which is open source cool. And a really great tool. And it, it's brilliant to see that Microsoft have come that far down the road now that, you know, they're producing open source development tools. Like,

Doc Searls (01:10:04):
Yeah, Microsoft's on our road. It's kind of weird. It's like a big truck on our road. It's like, we haven't seen that. What's that doing here? This has been great Dan. Thanks. Thanks so much for doing this. This is a yeah, a fun show and we have a lot of show notes. And and, and thank you to Shawn. We're gonna have to have you on and ask you questions. Why

Dan Lynch (01:10:28):
My hair's

Doc Searls (01:10:28):
Like, where did your, you grew out, your green hair, did it wear off or did it just get cut off at a certain point?

Dan Lynch (01:10:33):
I had to cut it off. My daughter's getting married and when I walk her down the aisle, the focus has to be on her, not on the weird guy with the green hair. That's the, that's the reason it's not green.

Doc Searls (01:10:40):
Yeah. Are you going green again after the wedding?

Dan Lynch (01:10:43):
I don't know. I kind of liked it. So maybe

Doc Searls (01:10:44):
<Laugh>. I kinda liked it too as a look. Do it do it. You, you and Mar Marcus Smart for the Boston Celtics. He died of Sarah Green and I suppose it gets traded, he'll die at some other color. <Laugh>, they're trading rumors late lately for Celtics fans. Anyway, thank you so much, everybody. I have to look and see what we have next week. Oh boy. I, once again, I've done this. I have to go look at the schedule and see what it is. And

Dan Lynch (01:11:12):
Stephen Fry next, isn't it? That's why <laugh>, if he's still got the same email address, I'll try it. <Laugh>. Oh really? You,

Doc Searls (01:11:18):
You, you threw me off on that and so I, I <laugh>

Dan Lynch (01:11:23):
It's okay. Actually, to be honest, he's very into, he's really technical guy, actually. Very impressive. He knows he's done a lot of programming, so I'll try, I'll try.

Doc Searls (01:11:31):
So it's it, well the, the topic is Cross Plaine <laugh>. So, and Jonathan is the co-host and Aaron, who's another one of our co-hosts is involved with that. So Jonathan's gonna be doing the interviewing and we're not sure who we're getting from Cross Plaine, but Cross Plaine is interesting and that is coming up next week and the week after that, by the way, is Gold Ez who and Catherine is gonna be co-hosting on that one. I'm getting a jump on that. So I'll remembering, I'm gonna see her in a few hours. I'm driving from here in Petaluma up to De WebCamp which is gonna be fun for the distributed web. Oh, is Catherine

Dan Lynch (01:12:08):
There?

Doc Searls (01:12:09):
Catherine's not there, but Golda is there and Oh. Oh, okay. So yeah, no, Catherine's not there. Catherine's still in Houston. Yeah. And we, we remain scattered <laugh> from, from California to Liver Liverpool this time. So thanks again, Dan. Thanks again, Shawn. This has been a great show. Thanks,

Dan Lynch (01:12:24):
Dan. It's great talking to you. We've never been on a show together

Doc Searls (01:12:26):
Because I know we, we'll have to get, get the whole band together for some fun and have, have, have Dan on the keyboards and guitar at the same time.

Dan Lynch (01:12:36):
Jonathan's musical got him in as well.

Doc Searls (01:12:38):
I'm, I'm guessing he is without knowing anything. I had my

Dan Lynch (01:12:42):
Family come in and they can sing and play. I think Aaron plays the piano. Doesn't Aaron play the piano as well? We've got a whole

Doc Searls (01:12:47):
Band. It could be, I, I, that that would make sense. I, I, I was, I'm a wannabe drummer. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm a if you need somebody to play the Rub board or the Tamborine or so, or the bongos or the congas, I'm that, I'm good. I'll

Dan Lynch (01:13:02):
Run the mixer.

Doc Searls (01:13:03):
Yeah, I'll run.

Dan Lynch (01:13:04):
I was envision, I was envisioning Animal from the Muppets for you there, doc.

Doc Searls (01:13:08):
Oh, oh yeah. I I could do that. He's a

Dan Lynch (01:13:11):
Drummer. <Laugh> <laugh>. Yes he is.

Doc Searls (01:13:15):
I forgot about that. That's, that's right. Anyway, this has been great. This has, has been Floss Weekly. We'll see you next week.

Jason Howell (01:13:22):
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Doc Searls (01:13:41):
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