057 Just Two Good Old Boys

Gene: 0:22

Hey, Ben, how are you doing today?

Ben: 0:24

Hey, Gene. Fuck Windows.

Gene: 0:27

Ha! Okay, so you're doing, you're doing Windows, apparently.

Ben: 0:32

Yeah, so the only Windows computer I personally have, wife and others have stuff, and stepkids, and everybody floating around has something. My parents, for example, they're still on Windows, but Regardless, other than the windows I have to support around me, I have moved to where I can't stand it, and this is the only computer I use on a regular basis with windows on it, other than work. And this morning I came up here, we decided to start a little early, and normally I come up a little early anyway to make sure everything's good, but you messaged me, and I'm like, okay, well, I'll go upstairs. And I'm sitting there at a Windows 11 install screen

Gene: 1:15

Oh, no.

Ben: 1:15

do you want it? Do you want it? Get it for free. No, no, no

Gene: 1:19

already downloaded it for you. Just hit the OK button and you'll have it.

Ben: 1:23

absolutely. Already cached on the system and ready to go.

Gene: 1:28

And there's like four things you gotta click to get out of that. Yeah, I had that happen a month ago.

Ben: 1:32

Yeah. And I, well, I, I delay updates on this machine except for security updates and I, I do lots of things because of that, but ever since windows 10 has come out, Microsoft has totally lost me. Like they, they ruined it. Windows seven was great. Windows 10 fundamentally, I don't mind except the update crap and what they're pushing and how they're pushing it and the direction they're going. So. I, I prefer my Linux and Unix systems. I run a lot of BSD based stuff cause I'm that kind of old guy.

Gene: 2:09

Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Ben: 2:10

Yeah. I mean, if you ever noticed my icon on Mastodon or Twitter or anything is the BSD demon. So Damon, what are you going to call it? So, yeah, anyway it was just very frustrating to come up here and. Have that. It's like, this is why I don't like windows. You forced me to reboot. You do it without my permission. You do ship. You forced me. Oh, even though I'd probably do it already on my own. Like my, my Linux systems. I keep up to date pretty constantly. And I run my own patch repositories and stuff like that. And I, I, I take care of stuff, but don't force me, you

Gene: 2:45

Mm hmm.

Ben: 2:46

don't drone me, bro. Fuck you.

Gene: 2:47

Yeah, exactly.

Ben: 2:50

So how are you this morning? G.

Gene: 2:52

Oh, I'm, I'm better than you are, apparently. But yeah, it's as you described it, I was remembering it, because this, it was probably a month ago the exact same thing happened, and I was having the exact same thoughts. I really don't mind Windows 10, because it, it's pretty damn good about not crashing. I only reboot my Windows box maybe Once a week I've got all the automatic shit turned off. So the worst that will happen is it will pop up a message and says, Hey we really need to reboot hit. Okay. And then just sits there in the corner of the screen for days sometimes. But,

Ben: 3:29

Yeah, but eventually it will force you to reboot because I have the same settings and, it's, it, it doesn't take no for an answer.

Gene: 3:36

Mm hmm.

Ben: 3:36

stays patient for a little while and then,

Gene: 3:39

Yeah. For a while. But the I mean the Mac that reboots like once every three months, which is what most computers should reboot that. Not any more frequently than that. They ought to be able to install updates without rebooting for the most part. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's, what I've heard about Windows 11 specifically related to video games is mostly why I've stayed away from updating. I don't know what, what, what's your rationale for not updating?

Ben: 4:10

I just like, I'm forced to use windows for work. I am forced to use windows currently for this podcast which I'm, I'm gonna, I have some time over the next week.

Gene: 4:23

gonna recompile a kernel? Okay.

Ben: 4:25

I'm going to dedicate some time to trying once again to get the mo2 functioning correctly on my main Linux laptop. And if I can do

Gene: 4:33

Or, or you could just get a Mac

Ben: 4:35

be done with Windows. Yeah, I, I have a very strong, visceral, personal reaction to Apple.

Gene: 4:45

which is so illogical, but, okay.

Ben: 4:47

No, it's really not. Actually, it's based in my love of BSD. And when they actually originally

Gene: 4:54

you're mad at Apple for stealing BSD, is that what

Ben: 4:57

I, I am mad at Apple for doing what they did and not giving anything back into the BSD license specifically allows for it, which I know is not necessarily, but anyway like I was so hopeful. I was like, yes, BSD on the desktop. We're, we're going to break through and they just bastardized it and took away a lot of what I consider to be good about BSD.

Gene: 5:21

Well, to be fair, that was really pre Apple

Ben: 5:25

I was at pre Apple.

Gene: 5:27

because that happened at Next. Next is based on BSD. And

Ben: 5:31

Well, OS 10 was a separate development though.

Gene: 5:34

whatever credit they should have given and whatever features they should have shared should have happened back then with Next before Apple bought Next and then started incorporating it into

Ben: 5:47

Maybe, and maybe that's fair, but I can still,

Gene: 5:50

Yeah, you can bitch. I mean, obviously get a bitch, but but

Ben: 5:55

we, we didn't know we were doing a grumpy old dens today, did

Gene: 5:57

oh God, I know. Right. Horrible. We don't want to do that show. Doug complain about technology. Yeah. But aside from complaining about technology, you sent me a few videos that I watched one of which was the

Ben: 6:13

sent you a few to you sent me a few to,

Gene: 6:16

Okay. Well, I always send you some, but this time you sent me some. So I would, one of them was about Vivek doing an impromptu little, out of Trump. At a Trump event I think

Ben: 6:27

Mar a Lago,

Gene: 6:28

Trump wants to adopt him, I think.

Ben: 6:30

I think,

Gene: 6:31

grin on his face is like, man, I wish my kids were like this.

Ben: 6:35

I think Vivek, whether he is the VP or not, A, he's going to have a place in the Trump administration, period. That's set, but B, when 2028 rolls around, he will be the Republican

Gene: 6:49

Mm hmm.

Ben: 6:50

period. That, that, that's settled. That's done. That's a

Gene: 6:53

he's a smart dude, and he's acting exactly the way that he should. And I think he knows that he's not going to be the VP because the whole point of a VP candidate since you vote for the combo is to have somebody that doesn't overlap you, somebody that brings additional people in that otherwise would not have voted for you, which is why most VPs suck because their only job is in pre election. And you really don't need a VP once the person's elected. But I think, yeah, I think it's likely that Vivek will either be Chief of Staff or the what's the title? The Secretary of State.

Ben: 7:33

I, I can see a couple options there. But, hey, we'll, we'll, we'll see. Say, I don't think secretary of state,

Gene: 7:39

Well, the reason I'm bringing that up is because it's the highest in line to succession. Mm

Ben: 7:46

other than speaker of the house. Sure. I mean, sure if you're looking at a cabinet level position then that would make sense, but we'll see where it actually ends up. So

Gene: 7:58

hmm.

Ben: 7:59

speaking of.

Gene: 8:00

but I think he'd be more effective in that position than he would as a VP.

Ben: 8:04

As secretary of state I don't know. So part of the point of VP, one of the functional roles as president of the Senate and everything else is to be an attack dog for the president. So I think he, especially in every speech he's given has proven that now, whether or not he can get the, Hey, I can tactically bring enough votes to you that you should pick me as VP. Nah, maybe not. But you know, If Trump does not pick Vivek, it needs to be probably one of two candidates

Gene: 8:39

That's kind of what I'm thinking as well.

Ben: 8:41

and I think

Gene: 8:42

see if we're thinking of the same people.

Ben: 8:44

Tulsi Gabbard has to be pretty high up there and then Kristi Noem,

Gene: 8:49

Yep. That's the two. Yeah, exactly. Right.

Ben: 8:52

now. So, Kristi Noem,

Gene: 8:54

You get an eight.

Ben: 8:56

Jesus Christ. Kristi Noem, just because of her positions. Now, North Dakota, isn't, or South Dakota, whichever one she's given her up, isn't exactly going to bring in a bunch, but she's a powerful woman. It'll be interesting to see the reaction to her.

Gene: 9:12

Yeah. And I, I do think it will be a woman. I will be absolutely shocked if the VP candidate is not a woman.

Ben: 9:19

Vivek might get in because he's brown. Like, he may have enough of that. To say, you know what, let's get

Gene: 9:29

Yeah, but we already had one of those this last election and she was a woman on top of main

Ben: 9:33

yeah, but she plays like she's something else and yeah, anyway,

Gene: 9:41

All day

Ben: 9:42

I think that might save Joe.

Gene: 9:43

Huh. Mm

Ben: 9:44

So I, I wrote a little post on the and I put a link to the special counsel's findings

Gene: 9:51

hmm.

Ben: 9:52

and in where he

Gene: 9:54

old man?

Ben: 9:55

yeah. And I, I'm just saying, how long till Kamala 25th Amendment's Joe? But, I was kind of thinking about it this morning, and it's like, she may be too stoned to even think about

Gene: 10:05

Mm hmm.

Ben: 10:07

Especially when she comes out and says, oh, no, no, that's not a thing.

Gene: 10:10

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Nobody wants President Kamala.

Ben: 10:13

Right, but she, she wants President Kamala.

Gene: 10:17

nobody wants President Kamala.

Ben: 10:19

She can, if she can get any amount of the cabinet to agree, she can get him out of there and become president.

Gene: 10:28

Yeah, but nobody wants President Kamala.

Ben: 10:32

If she brought it up publicly, I think the Republicans would vote for it and push it through the House, which is also an option under the 25th Amendment.

Gene: 10:43

I think you're wrong on that one. I'm going to take your A back away. I don't think the Republicans, first of all, half of them are rhinos, but I don't think the Republicans want President Kamala either. Somebody that literally will push the nuclear button accidentally. Mm hmm.

Ben: 11:03

Maybe.

Gene: 11:04

Nuclear weapons are weapons that we have, which are nuclear, and they're very important. For American people.

Ben: 11:13

Gene.

Gene: 11:14

So

Ben: 11:15

we'll

Gene: 11:16

was one video. The other video. Was what was the other one? Watch it. I still have it up here somewhere. Nope. Oh, it was the the freedom students one for how to catch a right winger. Yeah. I actually posted that to X as well. I thought it was pretty funny. It was a little too long, but it was pretty funny.

Ben: 11:38

Well, yeah, it was too long, and I'm not normally a huge Freedom Tunes guy, but it was You had sent me a video on the militia sniper.

Gene: 11:52

Yep.

Ben: 11:53

And that was kind of my response to it

Gene: 11:56

Okay. Okay.

Ben: 11:57

and, yeah, yeah, it's, it's 1 of those things that it's, how do I put it? You, you, you, you called it as a guy getting arrested for LARPing, and, and I think there's some truth to that, unfortunately, and, we can we can all debate that, but, I, it's funny how the FBI always seems to be able to push people who, I think, had they been left alone, would probably not do

Gene: 12:27

Do anything exactly. They're all excited about finding group of compatriots. Mm

Ben: 12:34

So, I don't know, man.

Gene: 12:37

Yeah. And so, well, let's talk about that then too. The, this was a video that was basically just a text summary of an investigation that resulted in some rests predominantly focusing in this video, at least on a. A guy from Tennessee or North Carolina, one of those

Ben: 12:59

Tennessee. Middle Tennessee.

Gene: 13:00

middle Tennessee, that was approached by several FBI informants about coming down to the border which I just got back from. And and then after asking the, one of the informants that, are you a fed? And then hearing no, of course, that from the guy. Then proceeding to tell him the elaborate plan for like, yeah, you guys come down with me, if you don't have enough guns, I got plenty of guns. I bring my guns here. Let me show you some cool photos of my guns. See, I even got suppressors on my guns, but yeah, I don't register that shit because I don't believe in any of that, government crap. And incidentally, I'm, I'm doing the voice of the guy that the FBI is charging. I'm not speaking as myself. I'm playing a character right now.

Ben: 13:50

Yeah, you should definitely clarify given given the text of that

Gene: 13:54

clear folks who are listening and we know who's listening. So, so they did that and or the guy did that. He's blabbing his mouth. And, and it, with every instance, of course, the FBI informants raised the bar a little bit and, and. And this guy is more than happy to say, so what are we going to do when we get there, Billy Bob? Well, I tell you what, we're going to go down there and we're, we're going to, we're going to walk around and we're actually going to get some action. You know what I mean? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. We're, we're not just going down for sightseeing trip for this one. Make sure we get some, and by the way, if you need some night vision, I'm sure there'll be plenty laying around on the ground, if you know what I mean, after we're done, ha ha. So, you know, the guy is clearly LARPing and I can say that with certain level of confidence because he hasn't been charged with similar incidents in the past.

Ben: 14:51

Well, in fact,

Gene: 14:52

He's not a gangbanger.

Ben: 14:55

well, even if he was, One of the things I'll say is that he, what he's charged with, and I think this is very And what I find interesting and, kind of telling is actually NFA violations.

Gene: 15:12

Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Ben: 15:14

He, he's being charged not with a violent conspiracy, but rather NFA, which is just,

Gene: 15:26

Well, for now. We'll see what other additional charges they throw on top of them, because obviously the reason FBI is involved is not to get the NFA charges to get the guy some additional charges, but they work very closely in consort with the ATF as well, which is looking for these people that they can go after for, seemingly Violating rules more often than not, rather than laws in this particular case, it does appear that he actually did violate a law and I say appear because we're not sure, but he had being in a state, which does not have a law about suppressors that are made purely in the state for use in the state,

Ben: 16:14

even

Gene: 16:14

if it did, it doesn't matter because he's crossing straight boundaries.

Ben: 16:18

well, and he's, Being charged federally, which

Gene: 16:21

Yeah, and he's being charged federally for it, but, but I mean, that's like, he doesn't even have the defense of having that law. And sending photos to the FBI informants his cool ass guns with the suppressors. And, of course, upon arrest and confiscation of said suppressor it was determined that there was no serial number on the

Ben: 16:44

the ATF was looking looking it up while they were being informed on from the undercover officer. So, I mean, it was in kind of real time that they were doing that.

Gene: 16:58

A registration on the file, which he did not. But once they arrested him and got physical possession of the suppressor, they were able to confirm that there is no serial number engraved on the suppressor, which is also illegal under the MFA or anybody to manufacture without providing a serial number on the device. So, he does seem to be at least in a sticky situation with that, that he's probably not going to be able to get out of. As far as the additional charges, I think that's all for plea bargaining purposes. Because they'll, they'll say like, if you don't plea bargain this thing and take the hit for the NFA stuff and lose your right to ever own a gun for the rest of your life. If you don't do that, then we're going to add some more charges like, potentially I don't know what they could come up with, but I'm sure they could come up with a whole slew of future crime things. Conspiracy to kill federal agents or some bullshit like that.

Ben: 17:57

yeah, I mean, there's a lot that's going to go into this, but

Gene: 18:02

Yeah. And it was a dude, his two sons, and there was three informants involved in this case.

Ben: 18:10

I mean, this word just reminds me of the shit. What was the governor pick kidnapping plot? Whitmer, yeah. And here's

Gene: 18:19

Mm hmm.

Ben: 18:20

the thing, okay, and I was talking to a friend of mine about this, and their comment was, Well, you don't think they would have done it? I said, well, without, the undercover informants not being there, we'll never know. So, do I think they ought to be charged? Well, that's a, that's a kind of a hard one for me, just because Again, we don't know what they would have done

Gene: 18:49

We also don't know if there's an actual suppressor there or a suppressor lookalike device.

Ben: 18:54

Right, I mean, it could be a can, a LARPing

Gene: 18:57

reduce any sound. Yeah. Which is my take, because I suspect the guy's more of a LARPer than anything else.

Ben: 19:03

Yeah, which you accused me of being last night, too.

Gene: 19:06

Which was pretty funny, because, well, I accused you of being a LARPer because you sent me a photo of a helmet with night vision and a fucking light mounted on the side.

Ben: 19:15

light that is an IR illuminator, thank you, that I was testing multiple things with the night vision.

Gene: 19:21

Perfect thing to target somebody with. It's like, Oh, look, there's a light coming off of that. Let's shoot it. Oh, that's a guy's head. Wow.

Ben: 19:30

Sure, but it's also one that I can take off my head and go put somewhere else.

Gene: 19:34

Yeah. Mhm. Safest place. You don't know the safest place for a, an iron luminaire

Ben: 19:42

Where?

Gene: 19:43

on your buddy. Yeah.

Ben: 19:49

all use case based, right? So the, and that's one of the downsides of digital light vision is you do have to use an illuminator more often, but we can get into that a little later. I do want to talk about it since I've played around with it more and I've got actually a post up about it. So

Gene: 20:07

Cool. All right. Well, we're anything else about this? Did the guy arrested? Yeah,

Ben: 20:18

if you want to call it LARPing or whatever else, it really doesn't. Matter what it comes down to is he was probably just being boisterous. He was probably just being one of those guys that Wants to talk big and bad and whether or not he would ever actually do anything is Suspect in fact all this additional stuff that they're putting in the charging documents as narrative seems Like nothing but political and to demonize the militias and demonize him. I think it's meant to be like, Look at the right wingers, they're gonna go down and be a sniper and shoot people. I just, I, I have a visceral reaction to that where that just screams and smells of bullshit to me. All they would have to do is say, Hey, he sold me this. What he said was a suppressor and it sure looks like a suppressor. And the ATF agent says it looks like a suppressor. Therefore we're charging him with this, which is currently all he's charged with. So why the other pages and pages of documentation, except to build a narrative,

Gene: 21:30

it's building narrative and threatening him with additional charges if he doesn't take this one.

Ben: 21:37

which plea bargaining really ought to be illegal. I think it would change our our society for the better in so many ways.

Gene: 21:48

I think it's a, I generally agree, but I think there is a problem though, because if you remove plea bargaining, you remove discretion of the prosecutor to

Ben: 21:58

I don't think the

Gene: 21:59

to a lower level.

Ben: 22:00

the prosecutor should not have that discretion,

Gene: 22:03

but there are certainly times where the question is, do you charge this person with A crime that's going to be a 10 year prison sentence, or do you charge him with one that's going to be a one year prison sentence? Like, potentially could be charged with both. It all depends

Ben: 22:23

yeah, I think that that shouldn't be up to a prosecutor, that should be up to a grand jury, and the prosecutor's job should only be to deal with the grand jury charges,

Gene: 22:31

The grand jury is inept. They don't understand laws. You have to give them very, very specific instructions

Ben: 22:39

I understand, but you're missing my point. If there were no plea bargains today, our judicial system would grind to a halt. It would not function because there would be too many trials. So what they would have to do, what they would have to do is stop charging so many damn people. They'd have to stop exercising all the laws that are on the books

Gene: 22:59

the problem, no, they're not going to, well, and that's literally what they're doing in California, which is why any robbery up to a thousand dollars will not be prosecuted. And as you can see in video examples over and over, there's a certain element of California and society that is taking full advantage of that by going into Apple stores and going into other luxury shopping experiences, and then. Picking up a thousand bucks worth of products and walking out the front door, knowing

Ben: 23:28

Yeah, I'm not,

Gene: 23:29

nothing will happen to

Ben: 23:30

I'm not suggesting that. What I'm suggesting is maybe, drug crimes and a lot of other non violent or non theft related

Gene: 23:39

not how it's going to work. It's not how it's going to work though, because those are the easiest

Ben: 23:44

Galt's Gulch world, that's how it would work.

Gene: 23:48

Well, in mine, there wouldn't be any crime, so we wouldn't need a police to begin with. So there, if we're going to talk about fictional sightings.

Ben: 23:55

well, you know what though? I hate to say it, but the more and more I have gone through stories like this one that we're covering, the more I think Michael Malice

Gene: 24:10

Yeah, I knew you were going to say fucking Malice, you goddamn Malice fan.

Ben: 24:13

Like I, I I've never been an anarchist, but.

Gene: 24:18

Sure, sounding like one lately.

Ben: 24:20

No, I'm more a, I, I put up a kind of a bout me sort of page, which there were some people who offered some edits that I would like to thank them for catching some of my spelling issues, which,

Gene: 24:35

IE is a smart one.

Ben: 24:37

I'm, hey man, I'm good at a lot of things and I, I, I'm spelling is one of those things and it really isn't spelling. It's homonyms more than anything.

Gene: 24:50

I don't know.

Ben: 24:51

but anyway it's one of those things that's just not great for me. I, I'm, I'm actually dyslexic and. There are some things that are hard enough, but anyway,

Gene: 25:01

hmm. Mm hmm.

Ben: 25:02

My politics can really be summed up with just leave me the hell alone,

Gene: 25:06

Yeah.

Ben: 25:07

That that's it.

Gene: 25:09

But that's not anarchy. And that's what I think is a misnomer in people like Malice in selling anarchy as the solution, is that's not anarchy unless you change the meaning of the word.

Ben: 25:22

I mean,

Gene: 25:23

He, you know what anarchy really is?

Ben: 25:25

is your definition of

Gene: 25:26

Anarchy is the, the strongest wins because anarchy, it is because in the anarchy, no one is coming to anyone else's aid. There are no laws. There are no,

Ben: 25:40

And you're assuming that person can't pay anyone doesn't have friends doesn't have a group. I mean, there's there's lots of

Gene: 25:47

Oh yes, I am assuming that because that's no longer anarchy if they do.

Ben: 25:51

Yes, it is.

Gene: 25:52

No, it is not. It is socialism. You're, it's a

Ben: 25:56

no, no, no, no, you're here's where you're misunderstanding

Gene: 26:00

Mm hmm.

Ben: 26:01

the system of government as a society.

Gene: 26:05

Mm hmm.

Ben: 26:06

Whereas your local group, your local tribe, your local society, that could be different.

Gene: 26:13

Yeah. And that's where Malice doesn't understand anarchy. I grew up with anarchists. I went to the university with anarchists. I know a lot more about anarchy than

Ben: 26:22

You went to, you went to college with

Gene: 26:25

of Minnesota.

Ben: 26:27

Let's, let's not, yeah. Let's, so, a lot of the anarchists in the nineties were really nihilists. So let's, let's keep

Gene: 26:35

Okay. Yes. Let's change history and the definitions of words to make the younger generations feel more special. Let's do that. The anarchists around the 90s were the same, they had the same philosophies as the anarchists did in the 1920s. So you're saying all the past anarchists were not really anarchists. It's really just the millennial generation of anarchists that are the real

Ben: 27:01

That's kind of like communism, right? It wasn't real

Gene: 27:04

change the meaning of the word communism and say, well, all the past communists had it wrong. But real communism, the way that we know it as millennials, that's real communism and it's better. So, yeah, I'm gonna extend that. It's, it's a, think it's cute for him to have come up with something edgy, being a very non edgy person himself, who is going to be, let's face it, the last guy picked in any sporting event to be on the team. And and I, I don't mind malice, but I also am shocked at how big he's exploded in terms of popularity, given his stance on a lot of these topics.

Ben: 27:47

I don't know. I like malice. I think a lot of I think he's

Gene: 27:51

like him. I get it.

Ben: 27:52

Well, it's not just that.

Gene: 27:56

I think a lot of people my age are just shaking their head going, What the fuck?

Ben: 27:59

So on a, on a slightly different topic, which is somewhat related to malice did you see the North Korea is accepting tourism again?

Gene: 28:08

They do not. No.

Ben: 28:09

Yeah, the first tourists from Russia were first tourist group from Russia was accepted in this week, which I, dude, if I had the opportunity to go as a tourist for a few days to North Korea and know

Gene: 28:22

I mean,

Ben: 28:23

black bagged, I would go.

Gene: 28:25

You can. They don't like black Americans.

Ben: 28:30

No, they just.

Gene: 28:31

on YouTube of travel channels where they do a trip to North Korea. And, incidentally, there's some great resorts in North Korea. The locals can't use them, but foreigners can and I mean, main thing you'd have to put aside to do a trip to North Korea is some empathy for the people living there. But if you can put that aside, you can actually have a pretty good time in North Korea.

Ben: 28:54

I would like to go see a, a, a, a, it was never a member of the USSR, but it's enough. It's close enough right to really historical communism that I would like to see it.

Gene: 29:14

I, yeah, yeah, I

Ben: 29:15

a big enough critic of communism. I want to see it in, in, in as pure a practice as we can say exists today.

Gene: 29:23

yeah, although again, I would say it's really a misnomer to call out communism as more authoritarian than it is communist.

Ben: 29:30

communism is authoritarian

Gene: 29:32

Yeah. At scale, at scale, because I would say,

Ben: 29:36

devolves to authoritarianism. Like, if you have a family unit, okay, that's communism. Sure.

Gene: 29:43

I think biggest communism organizations are kibbutz sites

Ben: 29:47

Okay,

Gene: 29:48

much bigger than that, you get into issues, but you can have like 60, 70 people basically living in a communist community. I,

Ben: 29:59

pushing it.

Gene: 30:00

it's pushing it. It's getting right to the, like, they have to have the right mentality to do it. Not every 60, 70 people are going to be willing to do it. Probably a much smaller group in the US, probably more like five, much past five. And there goes your communist utopia out the window. But I, I will say the defining characteristic of all these countries is that they, they have a communist revolution, which was orchestrated by very authoritarian type people. So I think it would be interesting a, a less. Less forbidden place to do that is Vietnam. There's still a lot of relics of communism in Vietnam. I've seen on travel videos again.

Ben: 30:44

I, I had a, I ended up not going because the company didn't want me to go, but I had an invitation to go speak at a conference in in Vietnam,

Gene: 30:55

Mm hmm.

Ben: 30:56

In Hanoi.

Gene: 30:57

That would have been awesome. I would have totally gone.

Ben: 30:59

I, I really wanted to, and as much of a Marriott guy as I am, I would have had to have stayed at the Hilton.

Gene: 31:05

I don't know. Hamilton.

Ben: 31:06

Exactly. Yeah, I stayed at the Hanoi Hilton. What? Like, anyone who knows anything about Vietnam history and gets that, you get my sick sense of humor on why I'd want to do that.

Gene: 31:19

Oh yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's where John McCain sold out the American country. Yeah.

Ben: 31:25

I will say Vietnam is going through an absolute renaissance right now.

Gene: 31:29

Oh yeah. Yeah. They're very capitalist right now.

Ben: 31:32

Oh, and well, and they're exploding. Their, their power grid, the amount of manufacturing that's being built in Vietnam is straining their power grid. And they, they are. Struggling to keep up with power distribution, transmission, and generation capacity to meet demand. China is no longer the manufacturing center of the world. Vietnam is going to be a big one.

Gene: 31:59

Yeah, well, and I think India has a very good opportunity there as well.

Ben: 32:05

Parts of India. So in, yes and no, like India, India cannot be viewed as one thing, China really shouldn't be, but the CCP tries to enforce it to be. So there's that but India is very distinct regions with very distinct capabilities and personalities

Gene: 32:27

Well, most, most of the drugs are currently manufactured in India. They, they manufacture more medical drugs, more in India than anywhere else in the world.

Ben: 32:39

Yeah, we need to bring that back here.

Gene: 32:42

yeah,

Ben: 32:43

At least for, basic antibiotics and vitamin C.

Gene: 32:46

yeah, yeah, but I mean like virtually everything that Amazon sells in the Amazon pharmacy, they put a origin sticker on, which you don't see at Walgreens and stuff. But then when you see that origin sticker and in the Amazon drugs, you can see everything's coming from India.

Ben: 33:05

Well, anyway, I, I would like to go to Vietnam. I'd like to go to

Gene: 33:10

Yeah, it'd be interesting. I

Ben: 33:11

a little while, you

Gene: 33:12

Mm hmm.

Ben: 33:13

reef stay.

Gene: 33:14

Yeah.

Ben: 33:15

We'll see.

Gene: 33:16

Highland trip.

Ben: 33:17

No, Thailand doesn't really interest me.

Gene: 33:20

Really?

Ben: 33:23

Not,

Gene: 33:24

beautiful beaches in the world.

Ben: 33:25

yeah, huh. I'm sure that's why you went there.

Gene: 33:28

never been to Thailand. But, But I've, I've, I've had allegedly, yeah, it's always good to say allegedly when people give you a negative, yes, that works really well. So, yeah. Never raped your wife, eh? Allegedly.

Ben: 33:43

Huh. Huh. Well, I mean, the proof that you are my KGB handler came

Gene: 33:49

such thing as KGB.

Ben: 33:51

Huh. Sure. That's what they want you to think.

Gene: 33:53

What what's the proof?

Ben: 33:55

The Putin interview.

Gene: 33:56

Oh yeah

Ben: 33:57

I mean, he, he, he literally quoted you, so therefore, I gotta think, Gene, you're listening to him, not the other way around, but

Gene: 34:05

It is interesting how There's nothing at all in, in that, in the entire two hour block of Putin's speech that hasn't been part of this podcast already. I, I found that very funny. All the same points, all the history stuff, all the I mean, literally every time they've covered the, the answers that were provided by Putin were something we had previously already discussed. So, yeah, it was good. I enjoyed the interview.

Ben: 34:34

so he's gotten all, Tucker Carlson has gotten a lot of criticism because he let Putin talk. To me I think that's exactly what you do in a situation like that. I, I don't think, I don't think Tucker took some opportunities that he could have to ask a couple harder questions. I don't know if he was told some stuff was off topic or, not to be brought up. I disagree with Tim Poole on the journalist spy story saying, Oh, Putin should have given him up.

Gene: 35:09

Yeah. No, Tim's an idiot on

Ben: 35:10

not real, dude. That's,

Gene: 35:11

If you read the comments on that of Tim

Ben: 35:15

I haven't looked at the

Gene: 35:16

that literally, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they did a clip of just that portion of the conversation

Ben: 35:22

everyone's calling him a moron. I

Gene: 35:23

Everyone is calling him a moron. Literally a hundred percent of the comments on like, Tim, you don't understand international politics.

Ben: 35:29

Well, it's just naive, you know You're you're

Gene: 35:33

And they were all like, how cool would it have been if Putin just snapped his fingers, like, yeah, man, here you

Ben: 35:38

here. I will have him delivered before the interview is

Gene: 35:41

Huh. Huh.

Ben: 35:42

not how that works I I think a lot of

Gene: 35:45

And that guy is a fucking spy. So, on top of everything else, the assumption, oh, he's only 33, he's a kid, he's not a spy. He's 33 years old at 33. Putin was in the KGB for 11 years already. Oh,

Ben: 36:05

that's not the point here I I think the point is I think Tim got it wrong. I think that Putin's response was pretty measured and good. I think that overall, I think, I hate to say it, but Putin beats the hell out of our president. He's actually conscious he, he's, he's fairly eloquent. Now some of that may be translation choice, but regardless,

Gene: 36:32

he's pretty eloquent in Russian.

Ben: 36:33

yeah, so, hi him. Him pinning Tucker, right? So Putin didn't leave stuff on the table either when he said, was talking about the CIA and called Tucker out as a potential CIA

Gene: 36:47

thought that was funny because Tucker's reaction was no reaction, which is a good indicator of what he was actually thinking.

Ben: 36:54

Fuck you, dude.

Gene: 36:56

Yeah. He's like, why are we talking about me? We don't need to talk about me wanting to

Ben: 37:00

Huh. It's, yeah. Anyway.

Gene: 37:03

I don't owe anyone who hasn't applied to be in the CIA. I mean, like, that's a standard thing that everybody goes through. Well, not that I can verify.

Ben: 37:12

I didn't apply.

Gene: 37:14

Oh, they just poked you. Okay, got it.

Ben: 37:17

I, I,

Gene: 37:18

All right, Fed.

Ben: 37:20

I, I have never worked for anything like that, but I will say

Gene: 37:24

first thing they teach you at CIA Academy is lie, everything, we're allowed to do that because we're not police.

Ben: 37:31

Yeah, I will say this Bob Gates was president at A& M when I was at A& M, and I made a lot of fun of him.

Gene: 37:38

Now, is that before or after they handed you the job?

Ben: 37:42

That was before I got an offer

Gene: 37:45

I see. Yes, that's what we're going to

Ben: 37:47

Did, did, did I ever tell you about my Adidas tracksuit wearing costume?

Gene: 37:52

Yeah, I think you did, but go ahead and repeat it. It was a good story

Ben: 37:55

So, I was in student government, and we were having a Halloween party. So I put on a black Adidas tracksuit and a Euro style hat and some big headphones looking like a Russian punk, right?

Gene: 38:10

the way I'm literally sitting here looking right now, but they get phones on. Mm hmm.

Ben: 38:15

yeah, yeah. And I go to the, and it, my my sweatshirt, the Adidas sweatshirt, it literally had CCP on it in Cyrillic. So,

Gene: 38:25

probably has S. S. S. R.

Ben: 38:27

well, yes, whatever. Anyway. Yes, USSR. Anyway, so I anyway, Gates shows up and he comes up to me and he goes, Mr.

Gene: 38:39

mr. Bond.

Ben: 38:40

Yeah. Um, you know, what are you supposed to be?

Gene: 38:45

Mm hmm.

Ben: 38:46

And I said, I'm your illegitimate Russian son. Cause Bob Gates worked the Russia desk at the CIA and everything else. And ha ha ha.

Gene: 38:55

and that's, that's definitely after you were hired.

Ben: 38:58

No.

Gene: 38:59

Well, it is, it is funny how maybe it's not funny. Maybe it's kind of sad that we were both in the student government. But

Ben: 39:05

Yeah. I heard your story on unrelenting

Gene: 39:08

Yeah. I, I still think I had the best fucking email, man, chairman@umn.edu.

Ben: 39:15

Yeah. You should have kept it.

Gene: 39:16

I, I should have kept it. But also you think about how many years no one gave a shit, in it, in administration anywhere. No one gave a shit that a student had that email.

Ben: 39:29

Yeah?

Gene: 39:30

That's crazy. I wouldn't have allowed myself to have that email if I was in there working.

Ben: 39:36

Yeah, well,

Gene: 39:38

Hmm. I did happen. Yeah, for sure.

Ben: 39:43

Fun aliases over the years.

Gene: 39:47

yes.

Ben: 39:48

one ISP that I had when I was a kid. Their email system was trash. And anyway, I, I made, I made some fun aliases, including, like, support at

Gene: 40:00

that's great.

Ben: 40:01

and some other things, which, yeah. Oh, yes, please, can I have your password real quick?

Gene: 40:06

if somebody doesn't have support as an alias, their company, they're idiots. So yeah, that's a, that's an appropriate way to

Ben: 40:15

This was an ISP in the 90s. What can

Gene: 40:17

Huh. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the, those 90s crazy times. Yeah.

Ben: 40:23

man. I, yeah, the 1990s for a kid on the internet was a scary and dangerous time in so many ways.

Gene: 40:34

Yeah, but with a lot less porn. No,

Ben: 40:36

Oh, fuck that. Are you joking?

Gene: 40:38

no, no, there's way less porn than there is now. No,

Ben: 40:41

No, you're insane. The, the porn pop ups and what was thrown at you, whether you were looking for it or not in the 90s,

Gene: 40:50

Well, there were porn pop ups, but the amount of porn available today is literally, like,

Ben: 40:57

Sure, in sheer volume, because they've made it and uploaded it, but my point is, you were exposed to it.

Gene: 41:03

on the planet.

Ben: 41:04

Okay, but you were exposed to it.

Gene: 41:07

Yeah, but I think it just felt like there was a lot because it was the first time we were exposed to it because pre internet, there was no exposure to porn. Like, you'd have to go out of your way looking for it.

Ben: 41:17

Bullshit. Right now, you have to go out of your way to look for it. If

Gene: 41:22

you don't. You literally need to type in a term with the word sexy on Bing, and there you go. There's all

Ben: 41:29

looking for it. Anyway, in the 90s, I could be browsing just random websites and stuff would pop up. These pop up ads that weren't validated or anything else would pop up and you'd get in these pop up loops with porn just thrown at you. And I'm talking all sorts of crazy crap.

Gene: 41:49

hmm.

Ben: 41:50

Anyway,

Gene: 41:51

Yeah,

Ben: 41:51

was a

Gene: 41:52

been the websites you were going to. Must have been the websites you were going to.

Ben: 41:57

Huh. Okay. Anyway,

Gene: 42:01

anyway, no, I'm not saying there wasn't any porn, there was plenty of porn, but the sheer volume of porn right now is insane. What else would we talk about? Did you watch the Templar's episode of Y Files?

Ben: 42:14

yeah, I did. I watched it before you sent it to me.

Gene: 42:18

Yeah, it's funny how you watched it before it was broadcast, it's cool. So, I thought it was a pretty good episode because at the end of the episode, he kind of did a A thing about the guy that most of the data came from, which usually doesn't. And I found that quite interesting, because I had never heard of the guy. But yeah. But apparently he's been out there quite a, quite a bit. I did a very deep dive into the Templars back in Probably the late nineties, I would say would have been, yeah, mid to late nineties. Read a whole bunch of books on the topic and it's, it's a fascinating story. There's, it, it almost has an air of King Arthur about it because there's a combination of. Indisputably realistic events, or real events, combined with some things that we have no evidence for. which makes for a great story.

Ben: 43:22

I, did the Knights Templar exist? Yes.

Gene: 43:27

Mm hmm.

Ben: 43:28

what did they have and what did they know? Who the fuck knows, right?

Gene: 43:33

do know they made plenty of money.

Ben: 43:36

they did that, but they also set up one of the first international banking systems. So, you

Gene: 43:40

way to make money.

Ben: 43:41

yeah, it is. It, it was a good episode. It was worth watching. I haven't, I hadn't heard of the guy before and, It's one of those things, I'll pick up a book from him sometime. So,

Gene: 43:53

Yeah, I wouldn't mind reading something from that dude.

Ben: 43:56

speaking of, I I started a couple, a couple new books. I finally finished the yeah, I finally finished book 12. So I am fully caught up on both series there and kind of picked up reading some other stuff. So,

Gene: 44:12

I'm still on book two of the second series. How many books in that one right now?

Ben: 44:16

Five.

Gene: 44:16

Five. Okay. So I'm almost done. Yeah.

Ben: 44:20

What do you, what do you think of the visceral nature of Charlie's?

Gene: 44:24

It's definitely a different writing style. There's no two ways about it. There's still, I feel like some elements of like, well, that's lucky. I mean, there's also plenty of not lucky too.

Ben: 44:35

Yeah, there there's more of that. What'd you think of the kid being tortured by his mom and his, his

Gene: 44:40

Unfortunately that happens on a regular basis.

Ben: 44:43

right. But the way he sets up this character, I, I don't know about you but me reading that and I was actually reading at the time, not listening when I was reading those sections. Like, I had a visceral reaction to it. It literally made me hurt in parts of my anatomy for him.

Gene: 45:06

Yeah. That's because you're a guy and then anytime someone is getting whacked in the balls, you feel it. That's a

Ben: 45:12

Well, he got more than whacked, but

Gene: 45:14

Yeah, I know, but I'm trying not to give it away.

Ben: 45:16

I mean, to me, Charlie's is way, way darker.

Gene: 45:22

oh, absolutely.

Ben: 45:23

And I think it's appropriate that it's country versus city in how he's

Gene: 45:28

But, but also, I don't know that it was necessary to set him up that way.

Ben: 45:33

You will. You absolutely will. Has he gone to jail yet?

Gene: 45:39

because he, yeah, he is, went to jail. He hooked up with the Area Nation, and now he's outta jail stalking the other characters.

Ben: 45:46

Yeah, just wait. You'll learn more about what happens. It's a very tragic character.

Gene: 45:52

Mm. Okay.

Ben: 45:54

this guy, when he says he hooks up with the Aryan nations, this character's kind of a dimwit in a lot of ways, but he's not. He's actually pretty capable, but he's just Naive I guess would be the best word and he has some mental problems based off of abuse and he gets thrown into situations and he's one of those people and we've all known him where the river of life kind of carries them along instead of them charting their own course, you know what I mean?

Gene: 46:29

Yeah. NPC Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 46:30

Yeah, exactly. And that's another way of putting it. So yeah, he's very much wherever the tides are taking him is where he's going. And it ends up being pretty unfortunate.

Gene: 46:44

Yeah. Yeah. So, no, I, I think it's, it's I would say

Ben: 46:48

are definitely more in these books.

Gene: 46:51

Yeah.

Ben: 46:51

Like, there's actually some characters.

Gene: 46:53

I've noticed that the, the writing style is more mature in these books. Like it's evident.

Ben: 47:00

Well, he, this is his second main series, and he has started over. So,

Gene: 47:07

Yeah. But he also has help.

Ben: 47:10

which is a recognition of need. Yeah, sure.

Gene: 47:14

Yeah. And, and it's a I think the other, I don't, I haven't looked up what the other guy has written, but it, it feels like the structure of the story. Is of a more mature writer.

Ben: 47:30

Yeah, well, I mean, he's 12 books into the main series now. And five books into this. I, I think he

Gene: 47:38

But when this first, when the first book came out in this series, he was only what, five books into the other one?

Ben: 47:44

Oh, I don't remember, but Charlie's was the original Charlie's was just a novella. It was a short

Gene: 47:50

Mm hmm.

Ben: 47:50

and then there was such demand of wanting to hear on online forums and everything of people wanting to hear that side of the story that

Gene: 47:58

Mm hmm.

Ben: 47:59

it a full series.

Gene: 48:01

Yeah. And I, and, and that's, I do like that one of the characters and, don't tell me shit I haven't read yet, but that one of the characters is essentially. He got promoted into the Department of Homeland Security's kind of higher echelon, which, which is to say that if you use, when we're talking about Korea, if you use the communist country model he punched the right ticket to now be in the elite secret police force, which means that. Your life is going to be very good at that point moving forward.

Ben: 48:40

Yeah, and we're seeing the kind of deeper and we kind of got some hints with DHS in the main series. But we're seeing way more of that in this series and it, this series is much more Game of Thrones esque in that it's got a lot more parallel storylines,

Gene: 49:01

Mm hmm.

Ben: 49:02

which I enjoy.

Gene: 49:05

The other series was Game Thrones esque in the sense that somebody died in every book.

Ben: 49:10

Pretty much, yeah. It's and some pretty major characters too. He, he's kill, he has killed off characters that have been around for multiple books, which is impressive.

Gene: 49:21

And there's still a

Ben: 49:22

Not many authors do

Gene: 49:23

killed off that I wouldn't mind him killing off. But, yeah. It's I mean, those are all good things as far as I'm concerned in writing because it keeps you on your toes as a reader.

Ben: 49:33

Well, and it keeps you on your toes as a writer because you're no longer, you're not, You're not forcing yourself into a corner of, well this character would only react this way, now you have to generate new characters that you can then alter and shi make have a massive shift in the universe that you otherwise couldn't have.

Gene: 49:52

Yep, it's and, and we were talking about the series, so this is the Going Home series by A. American. I'm still telling people about it and they're looking it up. I think it's a good read. It's worth reading. It starts out,

Ben: 50:08

It's addicting.

Gene: 50:10

yeah, it's, well, because he, he does understand how to keep the audience interested right at the very end of every book so that they can't wait to get to the next book. Yeah. Yeah. Because everything kind of ends on a cliffhanger.

Ben: 50:26

Well, and it's good enough that you wanna hear it. Or you wanna s you wanna read it. So, yeah.

Gene: 50:33

For sure.

Ben: 50:35

So speaking of Sisyphean stuff,

Gene: 50:38

Mm hmm.

Ben: 50:39

did you see my post on Heller versus Hawaii?

Gene: 50:44

No.

Ben: 50:45

So you know the Heller decision, right? An individual's right to keep and bear arms. So the Hawaii Supreme Court has rejected that, saying there

Gene: 50:54

saw that. Yeah.

Ben: 50:56

That's going to be an interesting one. Of course, I believe that the Hawaii should the federal constitution only bars and restricts the federal government. I don't believe in the incorporation doctrine. I think Hawaii ought to be basing their decision off of their own constitution and their own laws and no one should interfere with that, but that's not the current judicial world we live

Gene: 51:19

yeah, I, I disagree with that

Ben: 51:22

Yeah, I know you do

Gene: 51:23

I would agree with that view if there was a way to kick states out of the union,

Ben: 51:28

or allow states to leave. Yes,

Gene: 51:30

or allow states to leave for sure, like, that, that's a no brainer, that should happen, but I think that I would be a lot more on your side of the states can do literally anything they want if there was a way to kick states out because if there's one state that is decided that they're full on and Hawaii is not far from this going to become a communist form of

Ben: 51:54

California.

Gene: 51:56

Yeah, California in a lot of ways as well. Yeah, where they just don't enforce any laws period. I think that the rest of the state should say, like, there's a certain minimum expectation that we have as the United States and we reserve the right to remove a state if it. No longer functions as one of these United States, which we're going to take a vote on and kick you out. If that were to happen, I would be on your side, but without that in place, I think there is room for the federal government to have a certain amount of restrictions on the depth to which the States deviate.

Ben: 52:39

Okay, well, regardless, it's, it's setting up what will be a Supreme Court challenge, and considering the current makeup of the court

Gene: 52:48

Why is part of the California

Ben: 52:50

right, but this is just going to revisit Heller, and I don't see the Supreme Court, based off of this, creating a different decision,

Gene: 53:00

I think they're just going to send it back with the word Heller written on top of the of the case cover.

Ben: 53:05

I, I mean, they, they may, they may fail to hear this, and, Because they may say we've already decided, but the, the problem would be that the, I'm sorry,

Gene: 53:16

I, that's exactly what I think is going to happen. They're going

Ben: 53:19

but I don't think they can just, I don't think they can say we've already heard this and Hawaii's decision is here nullified without hearing the case. So as a result, if they don't hear it, I think the Hawaii case stands,

Gene: 53:31

No, because what they, what they've done in this situations in the past and what they think they'll do in this situation is they will remand the case back to Hawaii saying. We.

Ben: 53:42

Except it's a state court, not a federal court.

Gene: 53:46

well, then, okay, then, then it's going to go through the federal district for Hawaii, which is in California. So it's going to go through that, federal court district. If those guys don't reverse Hawaii,

Ben: 54:03

I, I don't think you're right, but okay.

Gene: 54:06

well, I could be wrong, but I think that's what's going to happen. If those guys don't reverse Hawaii and it goes to the federal to the Supreme court, then the Supreme court will remand it back.

Ben: 54:15

Yeah, I know we've got some lawyers listening, so I would love to hear their take on it. Uh,

Gene: 54:21

I mean, you could just Google that, but Sure.

Ben: 54:26

well, I'm just curious what they want to say.

Gene: 54:29

I mean, I don't know that we have lawyers listening.'cause 98% of the audience is it guys?

Ben: 54:35

I know of at least one lawyer who listens fairly regularly.

Gene: 54:39

Okay, well then reach out and find out. Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 54:41

I will.

Gene: 54:42

and incidentally, that's the one lawyer and everybody else is an IT guy.

Ben: 54:47

Well, when I, when I embrace Shakespeare, as much as I do, it's, it's hard for them to listen. You don't, wow, you don't get the reference, do

Gene: 54:57

I don't get the reference. What are you, what are you referring to?

Ben: 54:59

First, kill all the lawyers.

Gene: 55:02

Oh, okay. I see. I I don't agree with that.

Ben: 55:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh. So I've been posting a lot on my website. Have you looked at it at all?

Gene: 55:14

I mean, occasionally, if you spam it with, on Twitter, for me to look at, I'll look at it, but I don't go there on, like, every day or anything.

Ben: 55:23

All right. Well, I want to do a little bit of a kind of not really a product review because I'm not a product reviewer, but I want to talk about the MVG 10 that you sent me down the rabbit hole

Gene: 55:34

Yeah.

Ben: 55:35

and got my dad one and everything else. So, um, first let me say it's not a replacement for a PBS 14 in any way, shape or form. We can agree on that, right?

Gene: 55:49

Yeah. It's not a replacement for somebody for whom? A PVS 14 is within the realm of possibility of acquiring.

Ben: 55:58

Right. If, if you can afford a PBS 14 and you want good night vision, there you go. But if you are like my parents, my parents are perfect example for this use case. My dad is never going to spend that money on something like that. Never. But this he can use to go hunt beavers. He can, the fact that it's active in certain situations doesn't matter to him. The refresh rate isn't as critical'cause he's not planning on walking around the woods. He's literally gonna go sit and use it to find an animal and take a shot.

Gene: 56:35

Okay. So you make a very good distinction here, and I wanna highlight it. That the refresh rate, which you'll hear everybody always mentioning when it comes to digital either digital night vision or even digital thermal it really is only an issue. It's exaggerated when you are moving when the actual night vision is moving when you're stationary. All the critters that are moving in your view are moving few enough pixels that the refresh rate is not going to make any impact.

Ben: 57:08

Especially at any sort of range.

Gene: 57:10

exactly. Now, if they're like five feet in front of you, yeah, it's going to make a difference. But generally that's not what you're going to use it for. You're going to be looking at, 70 feet up to 500 feet away. But but when you're moving and the, the best example of this is let's say you want to drive a car. If you're driving a car with analog night vision I have not tried doing that. I will say when I played with the analog night vision, I did not get in the car actually, cause I didn't have a helmet. So I couldn't even like have it strapped on, but theoretically you can do that. Cause we, we know people do that on a regular basis in the military. And I've seen videos of non military dudes doing it as well. With digital night vision, it, you. You can probably do that, but it's going to be a lot more difficult because of the refresh rate, because everything is going to

Ben: 58:03

time as someone hits their high beams at you while you're doing it, you're not going to burn up your thousand dollar night vision.

Gene: 58:10

That's exactly right.

Ben: 58:12

So the digital.

Gene: 58:14

is a lot less.

Ben: 58:15

camera. It doesn't matter.

Gene: 58:17

basically

Ben: 58:17

I

Gene: 58:18

you're not going to, you're not going to burn it up by accidentally tilting your head up and pointing at the sun either.

Ben: 58:23

yeah, and I will say that I was pretty impressed with the MBG 10. I, the first unit I got had some issues. So the first unit I got, I could not get into the menu. I couldn't get the select buttons to function, but I, I

Gene: 58:37

hmm. Mm hmm.

Ben: 58:38

tell. I went and I, I got mine through a company, which I'm going to shout out. Good night gear. Yeah. Versus Amazon for a couple of reasons. And one of them was having someone us based that would support it. And anyway, needless to say, did really good by me. Really appreciate the guys over there helped me out in getting a functional unit and getting to really test it. So, and in fact, they gave me a coupon code. So coupon code dude name Ben. So

Gene: 59:08

Nice. So are they just reselling the same ones or are they doing somebody else's brand or what's the

Ben: 59:15

it's an NVG 10, but there are different brands. They're different. There are different white labels on it. I I'm they. Based off the samples that I've seen, which is the Goyo or whatever it is on Amazon versus the Wild Game Plus they're, they're fucking identical. It's the label on

Gene: 59:36

So it's the same factory

Ben: 59:37

out of the same factory, like the, the version, serial numbers and everything else are, they're coming out of the same factory. So I don't know who that original manufacturer is. But yeah there are some quirks to it. For instance, when it says IR off, IR is not really off. You actually have to turn IR on and not select a level before IR is off. So there's some, there's some various things. That said, depending on your use case and what you want to do with it, pretty damn cool. It is much

Gene: 1:00:11

For the money,

Ben: 1:00:12

ever seen or expected.

Gene: 1:00:13

exactly. That was my impression. Because I really had low expectations when I picked it up. And I got mine at Amazon. And there were certain things I didn't like immediately. Like the refresh rate. I'll tell you where it also makes a difference is when you have lighting in your house that is,

Ben: 1:00:36

That's LED.

Gene: 1:00:36

see. Or CF something that's pulsing at a high speed in the U. S. Everything pulses at 60 Hertz and these things recorded at 50, which means you start having these slow crawling, dark bands.

Ben: 1:00:51

Yeah.

Gene: 1:00:52

And that's a annoyance. It's not a game killer, but it is an annoyance. And I talked about it in a review I posted. The other thing that's an annoyance is that their software that they tell you that you can record through wifi with these things on that it exists for both Android and, and iOS. Well, that's not true. It works fine with Android, but on iOS, it gives you an error message. It says no card found. And you can't get rid of the error message because it's looking for an external SD card on the device and it's not finding it and it's letting you know. So, basically the software does not work on, on iPhone. So those were two negatives. But the thing that I, as a huge positive that I was very surprised on is the quality of the video with no IR illumination. Like this sensor is gotta be the most sensitive sensor I've ever seen on anything.

Ben: 1:01:53

I have not tried some of the thousand plus dollar digital night visions, but if you're going to spend a thousand plus dollars on night vision, at the very least get a gen two plus tube. Right. Like

Gene: 1:02:06

Yeah,

Ben: 1:02:07

that point, there is

Gene: 1:02:08

you, you might as well. I've got a thousand dollar digital night vision that I bought a couple of years back and this, this cheap one is absolutely does a better job in

Ben: 1:02:18

And, and by cheap, we're talking between two 50

Gene: 1:02:21

Yeah, it's under, it's under 300 bucks.

Ben: 1:02:24

Depending on where you get it and what you're doing,

Gene: 1:02:26

Mm hmm. 275 on Amazon, something like that.

Ben: 1:02:31

yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's more expensive. They're good night gear, but again, support. I got one, and this is one of the things when I'm Chinese,

Gene: 1:02:37

I, I don't know dude, Amazon support is very easy. You don't like something, you just ship it back.

Ben: 1:02:43

Okay.

Gene: 1:02:44

I mean that's, what, what support do you need beyond shipping back?

Ben: 1:02:49

Okay. Understanding some of the the, the IR light stuff for one. And he, anyway.

Gene: 1:02:55

could have asked me.

Ben: 1:02:58

Anyway, there, there's also some third party support for this. So this has been out long enough that people are making accessories for

Gene: 1:03:04

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:03:05

There's a guy on eBay that has a 90 degree tilt there's Pano bridges. There's Wilcox mount. Changes so you can get rid of the kind of funky little head adapter that they've got now. There's wider angle lenses, which is pretty cool, but there's some downsides to them too, so everybody should read up on it. And anyway, there's just a bunch of options.

Gene: 1:03:27

incidentally, I measured it at 1. 1 magnification, so

Ben: 1:03:33

it's not

Gene: 1:03:34

quite one.

Ben: 1:03:36

Yeah, I noticed that as well. I didn't, I didn't actually measure it, but just playing around with it, you can tell it's not 100 percent 1x.

Gene: 1:03:44

But it's pretty close and it certainly would work for any situation where you're not actively moving around

Ben: 1:03:51

agreed. And anyway, so

Gene: 1:03:53

or if we're walking slowly and you just don't want to trip at night, it'll work for that too.

Ben: 1:03:59

sure. And if you have the IR illuminator on, I don't care how dark it is. You can see like you can be pitch black and you can see

Gene: 1:04:08

and then and there are you could get really cheap iron luminaries. I've got a one that's like ginormous size That I bought a while ago and you can flood like a whole fucking house with that Illuminator in night vision, of course, so you once not wearing night vision. It looks like total darkness.

Ben: 1:04:27

yeah. And one of the things I'll say is, without any IR with a moonless overcast night. Playing around in the backyard, even without any IR illumination, just the ambient light from the houses kind of around me and stuff like that. Um, I could, I could see just fine. It was shocking to me. So, yeah, I'm pretty impressed.

Gene: 1:04:58

Yeah, and it's only gonna get better. I mean, that's the beauty of it is like this is today So this is a product clearly designed last year probably manufactured last year or before, but you know, shit that comes out at the end of this year. Shit that comes out next year will be same price that much better or higher price and fucking amazing.

Ben: 1:05:18

have you tried the thermal unit?

Gene: 1:05:21

The theirs from the same company.

Ben: 1:05:23

yeah, yeah,

Gene: 1:05:25

Well, yes and no, I, I, I bought a dip. I bought another Goya thermal product, but not a monocular.

Ben: 1:05:34

okay, you should go look at the the thermal that this company, whoever the original manufacturer is, is making, because I think it'd be right up your your wheelhouse, and it's the BTI 10, by the way, about 1, 500.

Gene: 1:05:55

Yeah. Yeah, and it's, it's at the price point where I'm not sure I want to play around and test shit, but

Ben: 1:06:01

It's 1024 by 768,

Gene: 1:06:04

yeah

Ben: 1:06:04

it's got a

Gene: 1:06:05

sensor isn't

Ben: 1:06:07

no, the sensor is 380

Gene: 1:06:11

by 288 but I've got, I picked up their. Their infrared gun,

Ben: 1:06:18

th this is a monocular though,

Gene: 1:06:19

I know, I know, but I, I'm just saying that I, that I picked up from the same company, their infrared gun, which is I picked up for the kitchen for cooking. So I actually do have a good use case for it. And it's a it, it is very good for what it does. And certainly for the price point, which I think was 175 bucks. And it's really neat because I've, I've used a pinpoint temperature sensor. One of those things you buy at Home Depot. I've used that in the kitchen for probably seven or eight years. Because you can tell where the hotspots are in your pan by shooting it before you put any food down. Make sure you're not going to burn anything. And it's good for checking the surface temperature of steaks when you're cooking them without sticking something into it. I don't like stuff inside my steaks. And I know I'm getting the surface, not the inner temperature. I get all that. But I've cooked enough steaks that I know when I see a certain outside temperature, what the inside temperature is given the thickness of the steak. And this thing is the next level of that. It shows you the multicolored full temperature image of everything you're looking at through the sensor. And so, it's not a matter of shooting the pan a bunch of times to see if there's any hotspots. It's just shooting the pan once and then seeing where the color fluctuations are and if it's pretty even or not.

Ben: 1:07:51

yeah,

Gene: 1:07:52

It's, it's fucking cool to have that ability in the kitchen. I need to do a review.

Ben: 1:07:58

so, so for the record, well, and if you want to do a review of it, and I'll post it on my website, let me know,

Gene: 1:08:06

Okay.

Ben: 1:08:07

but anyway So one last thing I'll say is, fuck Eugene, now I have to get a PVS 14,

Gene: 1:08:14

Well,

Ben: 1:08:15

make a decision on if I'm going to do a bino setup out the gate, or what I'm going to do, and if I'm going to go bino, am I going to do one night vision, one thermal, what am I going

Gene: 1:08:24

well that's what the one, yeah, that latter is what we've been talking about probably being the ideal

Ben: 1:08:29

Yeah, I just, I just know I'm going to have to spend some money. In my future

Gene: 1:08:34

Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Ben: 1:08:36

I've gone too far down the rabbit hole.

Gene: 1:08:38

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. You've tasted the the taste of being able to see in night.

Ben: 1:08:44

so no, no, I've, I've, I've played around with night vision for a long time. I, I know a lot of people who are very into night vision and I've. I've played around with PVS 14s, I've played around with binos, I've, actually, going back into the early 2000s and everything else, I've played around with some older stuff, and, like, the old goggles that you saw in, like, Splinter Cell and stuff like

Gene: 1:09:10

Yeah, yeah. Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:09:11

I, I've, I've looked through those a long time ago. Hell I, I, I will say this. We had, we, we, I'm sure my parents still have it laying around somewhere, but we had a gen one starlight scope in the nineties that was a Vietnam era starlight scope and stuff like that. So anyway. That said, I've just gone too far down the rabbit hole, and I think it's something I'm gonna have to do. One of the things that shocked me, I don't know if you've done this, but I started looking at all my camo and gear that's supposed to be full spectrum and IR, and a lot of it was

Gene: 1:09:47

it sucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben: 1:09:49

You're like, oh.

Gene: 1:09:52

You, you, you saw the test that they did on defeating thermals with predator style technique.

Ben: 1:10:00

Yes Brandon Herrera

Gene: 1:10:01

Yeah.

Ben: 1:10:02

It was shockingly easy.

Gene: 1:10:04

yeah, it was shockingly easy, but also it makes sense because you're putting on something that is a very low conductivity material. You could have, they could have also taken ash from a fire and just covered their body with ash. It would have worked just as well

Ben: 1:10:19

to be clear, you're taking what ceramics are made out of. And literally, like,

Gene: 1:10:28

applying it to yourself. And also anytime you're putting something that is moist on yourself, there'll be a cooling effect. So keep that in mind, like, three hours after the fact, those bodies may have been glowing a little more.

Ben: 1:10:43

oh, not even that long, but yes, and here's the thing, thermal, it, well,

Gene: 1:10:50

feel like there was,

Ben: 1:10:50

note on the physics of thermal. Anytime you have any barrier between the heat source and the sensor,

Gene: 1:10:58

yeah,

Ben: 1:10:59

I don't care what the barrier is, I could introduce a piece of paper. It is going to initially block the signature, because you have, and this is one of the things that people need to understand, every material has a specific heat, which is how many calories of heat it requires to raise at one degree Celsius, and you have, so a delta T, and when you have any barrier introduced, let's say a piece of paper, and I have a heat source, the intensity of the heat source The distance because it's got to heat up the air and or and or radiation transmission, there's going to be a time delay before the sensor can see through that. Glass is a perfect example. You cannot see through glass with thermal.

Gene: 1:11:54

although you there, there isn't for red glass,

Ben: 1:11:58

There's lots of things. But my my point

Gene: 1:12:01

but not normal glass. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I do feel like in that video, there was quite a bit of beer drinking going on while they're conducting the experiment as well.

Ben: 1:12:09

Oh, no, come on now. Come on now. That can't

Gene: 1:12:13

so, it's, it's, it was a good old time. Let's just say that. Yeah. Four dudes walking around with night or thermals, basically stumbling over somebody that's below their feet. Yeah. That was pretty funny worth, worth a watch,

Ben: 1:12:27

thinking or doing.

Gene: 1:12:29

worth a watch. Oh,

Ben: 1:12:31

I, I tell you what, I could go bankrupt spending money on some of this technology. I, I

Gene: 1:12:35

Maybe, I don't think you would, I,

Ben: 1:12:38

I'm not the type, but my point is, it's just,

Gene: 1:12:42

yeah but to, like, it's, it feels like it's a big chunk to move from something that's a few hundred bucks to something that's five thousand and five thousand is kind of the point at which. You're going to have to spend money if you want to go really into the current generation Night Vision, because Really everything less than that is a compromise. You're either using a lower quality tubes. You're

Ben: 1:13:11

battery

Gene: 1:13:12

yeah, there's, there's something, but right around the 5, 000 mark a, you get into the high quality white phosphorus, high resolution, good quality mounts and, and good

Ben: 1:13:24

I mean, at that point you're spending 500 on a Wilcox model.

Gene: 1:13:28

Yes. Yes. And. And that's for one eye. So if you want to do both eyes, if you're looking at double that, so 10 grand is kind of the starting point for binoculars. And what are those called? What's the model? P 30 ones

Ben: 1:13:43

Yeah, I mean, you can, you can get to the point where. 10 to 15 grand for

Gene: 1:13:50

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:13:51

is pretty standard.

Gene: 1:13:54

Absolutely. Yeah. Like if you want to go with

Ben: 1:13:57

Hence why I have the NVG 10 right now.

Gene: 1:14:00

yeah, exactly. Now thermal, I think has a slower ramp up, but an even higher end point because the high end thermals are like 35, 000. So they're

Ben: 1:14:14

the high end thermals are out of scope right now. I

Gene: 1:14:17

Yeah.

Ben: 1:14:19

mean, it's like, it's like pano night vision. Yes, it exists. Is anyone going to afford it? No. And not only that, even if you could, is it, is there enough available that you're going to ever get it? Probably not.

Gene: 1:14:32

Yeah, yeah that's, that's a very good point. It's generally sold out if you want to go for a pan on light vision, which, which is really using four amplifiers each one pointed at a slightly different angle.

Ben: 1:14:45

Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:14:45

So you get a,

Ben: 1:14:46

a very wide field of view.

Gene: 1:14:47

yeah, wide field of view on that. But I can't remember how much that is like 32, 002 or something. It's right around there.

Ben: 1:14:54

and, but here's the thing, the only people who use that in the military are helicopter pilots, right? They're the only ones who ever even think of using that, really.

Gene: 1:15:07

But I've become more of a fan of thermal than night vision during this process during my dive into the. The black hole, because I just, night vision is kind of a one trick pony and thermal in my mind has much broader applications and can do things that night vision can't do. Granted, there's some things that night vision will do that thermal can't, like, if you want to try and read something written on a sign, at night in darkness thermal is just going to show you a picture of a square sign with no text on it. Night vision is going to show you the text that's on that sign as well. But the, the sort of ultimate combo, if you will, is to have both. And there are combo devices that are not cheap. They're also, they're add on devices that take a night vision. Like a PVS 14 and then add on a thermal layer on top of that as well. And then the, the last option, which you and I have talked about is just getting one per eye. So one eye has thermal, the other eye has a PVS 14 or some other high, high end night vision monocular. Mm

Ben: 1:16:28

well, and this, this goes to a broader this, and this is something I was thinking about. Last night playing around with this, and a lot of I am sure

Gene: 1:16:37

You mean LARPing.

Ben: 1:16:38

the US armed forces guys will Disagree with me on this but the idea that the US owns the night and owns the ability to fight at night I think is it is done

Gene: 1:16:53

I think that it's done. I think it totally was the case. But it was the case predominantly because the U. S. is the only country that could afford to equip everybody with night vision.

Ben: 1:17:03

Well, and here's the thing with what we have in our civilian hands from China is it going to be as capable and everything else? No, but guess what? A, the way the way the U. S. military trains with night vision is not against a peer power. train with night vision against people who don't have night vision,

Gene: 1:17:26

Or toilets.

Ben: 1:17:28

that they are planning on using IR illumination either as friend or foe identifiers or

Gene: 1:17:34

lasers for aiming.

Ben: 1:17:36

floodlights and everything else. Like, okay, well at that point, I can be sitting there with my digital sensor and I'm going to see you.

Gene: 1:17:45

it'll look great. Absolutely. And there's one other thing that, that People forget about, or people don't realize, is that a traditional night vision has a boost over certain frequencies that I don't remember.

Ben: 1:18:01

mm hmm,

Gene: 1:18:02

chips being used for digital night vision have a broader amount of frequencies that they see. And so there's actually now a whole set of products that are effectively hidden to the 5, 000 traditional night vision. They show up as black, but they're meant specifically for people with digital night vision to be able to use. So there are floodlights you can buy, which will only light up an area really brightly. If you have digital night vision, because they use a lower frequency light that will not be visible on these super expensive American night vision systems using gen three and four. So, I mean, that that's a tactical advantage too, when you have, essentially you have a slightly worse quality night vision system, but one that the other side just can't see it all. So who owns the night then?

Ben: 1:19:01

Well, the fact of the matter is Here's the thing, the U S is spending a ton of money on their night vision loadouts and they cannot, and this is why does the army still use the M4? Well, inertia, there is a huge quantity of gear that has been issued. Changing

Gene: 1:19:27

for inertia is called a contract.

Ben: 1:19:30

Well, sure. Whatever.

Gene: 1:19:31

Yeah,

Ben: 1:19:35

very fast. And this is one of the advantages that a country like China coming in has because they can do a greenfield deployment. And, people say, oh, well, the PBS14 has a 50 hour battery life versus the digital has a 5. Okay, what's the average length of an engagement?

Gene: 1:19:57

exactly.

Ben: 1:19:58

know, I mean,

Gene: 1:19:59

And what's the average cost of a battery versus the cost of a analog night

Ben: 1:20:03

well, again, I, so I got into, I was showing this off, I was sitting at a restaurant the other day and I, one of my buddy, the Middle

Gene: 1:20:11

on? Oh my God.

Ben: 1:20:13

Yeah, no, I was not with my headset on, thank you. But I was sitting there playing with it, looking through it, just holding it up. And

Gene: 1:20:21

Showing it off to the Middle Easterners. I get

Ben: 1:20:24

not well to my buddy, but

Gene: 1:20:26

Huh.

Ben: 1:20:26

One, one of the guys in there is a snobbish on stuff like this. And, he's like, well, I just don't see why I would accept a refresh rate like that when I don't have to, it's like. Well, again, maybe you don't have to, but there are economic reasons for this, but beyond that, I think people are really dumb to just totally discount it, and it's an arrogance thing, not a real thing. Like, if you want to go hunting at night, hunting hogs, anything else,

Gene: 1:21:01

Mm hmm. Perfectly.

Ben: 1:21:04

If I'm going to be in combat, would it be my first choice? Maybe not. I don't know. I would have to really play around and think about exactly what the options are. But to say that a country like China that is making maybe some dumb investments, maybe some not so dumb investments,

Gene: 1:21:20

hmm.

Ben: 1:21:21

but the fact is they will have an ability to fight at night that the U. S. has not faced.

Gene: 1:21:27

Right.

Ben: 1:21:28

Not even Russia, right? Russia has gone the analog route and their tubes are trash, let's be honest. Gen 2 tubes in the U. S. are better than Russian

Gene: 1:21:36

behind.

Ben: 1:21:37

Okay, whatever. The, the point is that it will be interesting to see what happens if the U. S. ever does face a peer that went a different technological route. We'll see.

Gene: 1:21:56

Yeah. And the analog for this is something that I remember from many years ago, down when I was in Central America is that their, their infrastructure for telephones was really kind of crappy. This is in specifically in Costa Rica where, a lot of people were just getting their first landline in 1990s. But a lot of people also were, they were getting their landline after already having cellular,

Ben: 1:22:27

Well, it's like, or it's, it's like Africa that just skipped landlines

Gene: 1:22:30

they just skipped landlines altogether. They just never bothered. So I think in, in our American historical perspective, where we developed, four different generations of night vision over the years. We look at it as this continuum and everybody else is behind, but America hasn't been focused on trying to develop the other shit like digital night vision, which cause every single digital night vision I've ever seen, they're all made in China. there's not one of them that isn't made in China. so, when, when I first found out that the digital night visions actually have a broader frequency range that they capture, and that you can have a flashlight that works and lights things

Ben: 1:23:20

say fleshlight?

Gene: 1:23:22

a fleshlight. Do

Ben: 1:23:25

it.

Gene: 1:23:27

you not pronounce it? Fleshlight? How do you pronounce it?

Ben: 1:23:30

I think that's a different thing.

Gene: 1:23:31

fleshlight? Yeah, I wouldn't know. So you have a, you have an ability almost by accident. I mean, I'm sure it was by design at some point, but basically by accident of having. A cheaper set of night vision that's able to work in a way where the expensive set of night vision won't detect it. It's like, Holy shit. Yeah. We own the night, except China owns the darker night.

Ben: 1:24:00

Well, it's just different. And again, I think there's been a bit of arrogance, especially in the people who are the most arrogant about it, or the vets who, and maybe I'm painting with a broad brush, but this has been my experience talking to people over the last few weeks, playing around and stuff. The vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. Who had the ability to go in and kick someone's door in in the middle of the night and see them and not be really seen with an IR floodlight, feel like, oh no, I got this. until someone in that house has something else and it could even be digital and yeah, maybe you see them and they see you and who's the target first and I

Gene: 1:24:45

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:24:46

as soon as someone has anything versus nothing. It's a very different paradigm than what our troops have faced, and I'm, it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out,

Gene: 1:24:57

And, and this is not as big a deal auto iris and, and Gen 3 night vision, but you used to be able to just use like a camera flash and pop that off and blind people for the next minute. It's like, it's no longer a thing, but it used to be. So there, there are definitely cheaper ways to combat against having the expensive high end night visions out there. But really for what we're talking about which is obviously hunting hogs and things. I think that the people that have just always assumed it's out of their price range, they really should look at the, the new cheaper models they're coming out. Cause frankly, they, they do most of what you need.

Ben: 1:25:42

Again, if, if you are I am, I'm cheap. I am wanting stuff that is functional for my current use cases. This is perfectly serviceable. If I ever ended up getting a PBS 14 of my own and not just using other people's, it will be because it's a desire. It's not going to be logical. It's I don't

Gene: 1:26:10

And emotionally driven purchase is what we call those.

Ben: 1:26:13

Yes, but you know, I'm also the kind of guy that I can afford a ballistic helmet, but why the hell would I want one?

Gene: 1:26:22

You can also afford a, a PBS 14 too.

Ben: 1:26:24

Yeah, yeah, but why the hell, but why the hell would I want a ballistic helmet when it's heavier and any. situation where I would ever use the ballistic nature of it, I'm probably not gonna have the medical resources behind me to need it. So, you know, spending the money on a really expensive ballistic helmet makes no sense to me. A bump helmet is fine for mounting stuff like this. So yeah. Anyway, we have beat that dead horse.

Gene: 1:26:56

Yeah, I think so. And go to Ben's page to read up what he's written about this topic.

Ben: 1:27:02

Yeah, and some pictures and some other stuff.

Gene: 1:27:05

Yeah. it's interesting stuff and, once, I think once I finally commit to spending the money on the thermal unit, then I want to get, and I've narrowed it down to a couple of units and they're all in that four to 5, 000 range. So it's probably going to happen around my birthday time is what I'm thinking because it is an emotional decision. It's not a logical decision. But once that happens, I'm sure that we'll, we'll do a big revisit of the topic. But I, I agree. I think we've been talking about this enough for people to know what we think.

Ben: 1:27:37

And real quick, one of the things I also really push you to so I've got buddies who have had team Wendy. I've seen other helmets that have been issued and everything else. I would really encourage you, especially if all you're looking for is a bump helmet. at the hardhead veterans helmets.

Gene: 1:27:56

And how are they better than the Wendy ones?

Ben: 1:27:58

They are cheaper. They are not, I wouldn't say they're better, but they come with different accessories, they come in different color palettes, and I would say the quality is pretty on par. Everybody make their own decision. I personally like the suspension system on the hardhead veterans better. Their chin strap and the way the chin strap works is great. A lot of people like the ratchet system on the team, Wendy for adjusting, quick adjusting. I, I'm of the. Mindset that once I have it set, it's set. I'm not messing

Gene: 1:28:32

want to fuck with

Ben: 1:28:33

I'm exactly. So there's lots of different things, but yeah,

Gene: 1:28:37

Yeah. And it's I, I'm not going to wait long enough, but I think we're going to start seeing. But once Ukraine starts to wind down, we're going to start seeing a surplus availability of a whole bunch of stuff, including Team Wendy,

Ben: 1:28:54

You

Gene: 1:28:55

that's never been used. Yeah, I think,

Ben: 1:28:58

I don't think it'll ever see the U. S. civilian market.

Gene: 1:29:01

Oh, I think it will. I mean, there's already products coming from Ukraine right now. And I think we're going to start seeing more of them showing up when the actual activities wind down.

Ben: 1:29:12

Well, if that occurs, make sure and bring it to my attention because I certainly will, have more than one device and be able to hand stuff off to people.

Gene: 1:29:20

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and that's the parting thought on this digital night vision too, is what I said in my review, which I think is absolutely the cases, even if you can afford and you already have, or you plan on buying the gen three night vision systems, pick up one or several of the digital ones, because odds are. You're not going to be in a group where everybody owns a high end 5, 000 plus night vision system. So, uh, in that scenario, it's good to have some cheaper units to hand off to folks that you're working with, on your Hawk Hunt. Because that way you're all at least doing some level of night vision and and at the price point of under 300. Like, I don't mind having something that is a spare for me, slash available for somebody else to use.

Ben: 1:30:18

Or something you can, for me,

Gene: 1:30:20

Or even a few of

Ben: 1:30:21

leave a unit in my vehicle

Gene: 1:30:23

Yeah, exactly.

Ben: 1:30:24

that if I ever need to grab it and do anything with it for any reason, I have it. Ask me if I'm gonna leave my, five grand night vision in my truck.

Gene: 1:30:36

Right. Exactly.

Ben: 1:30:38

I won't leave my 2, 000 laptop in my truck.

Gene: 1:30:43

Yeah. So, but having something that's, the 300 or less system that's in your glove box

Ben: 1:30:50

When

Gene: 1:30:51

it may only get touched like once a year. It's basically fine. That's

Ben: 1:30:56

really need to move on, but I do want to point out one more thing with digital night vision, because it's taking in an amplifying full spectrum of light one of the things that you have to consider when you're ever, you're talking about night vision is how you're going to aim and how you're going to shoot if you want to use weapons.

Gene: 1:31:12

a good point.

Ben: 1:31:13

Civilian lasers suck, especially IR. To get a PEC 15 or something like that, you're going to spend another several thousand dollars,

Gene: 1:31:21

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 1:31:23

but the digital night vision, this is one of the kind of cool things. We'll work with visible lasers as well.

Gene: 1:31:32

Yep.

Ben: 1:31:33

So you can get a visible weapons laser for a few hundred dollars. That's fully serviceable. That is a actual weapons rated laser. You can get it from Olight. You can get it from Streamlight. You can get them from Crimson Trace. I mean, name your brand and you can use it. Whereas with a PBS 14, you can't.

Gene: 1:31:56

Yeah.

Ben: 1:31:58

Something to think about. Also I will be buying as soon as they're back in stock, a Somo gear clone, which is a few hundred dollar clone of I'm probably going to get to the Ngal one and play around with that just to, just to see.

Gene: 1:32:14

Yeah. Okay. So then that's the infrared laser lapping exercise. Yeah. That's the infrared laser. Not everybody knows what that

Ben: 1:32:23

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So NGOW's Next Generation Aiming Laser and the Somo Gear is a Chinese clone of it. That they sell fully potted versions and stuff like that. And

Gene: 1:32:37

And at least

Ben: 1:32:37

market them as an airsoft, they market them as an airsoft toy. And here's the interesting thing. They are totally ignoring the, ironically, FDA rules on lasers. And yes, it's the FDA that Says lasers like can only be a certain power.

Gene: 1:32:56

and that's that's a big difference and you're right in the civilian versions of the infrared lasers Generally are underpowered by law

Ben: 1:33:09

Yes,

Gene: 1:33:10

And the

Ben: 1:33:11

and any high quality gear you get is actually going to follow those rules Which gives the Chinese knock on shit an actual advantage

Gene: 1:33:19

Yeah, but and and again, that's It's one of the disadvantages in my mind to using night vision instead of thermal is that you really need that laser to be able to aim at night

Ben: 1:33:34

or a site that is appropriate

Gene: 1:33:37

Yeah, but, but it's well, yes, it's it's appropriate, but you, you generally can't use night vision goggles looking through a scope. It's not going to look good if you're, you're going to have issues with that and with alignment and a lot of other things, which is why they've gotten to just using lasers to essentially just, shine on what you're trying to hit. Lasers have other issues in of themselves in terms of you, you really have to be familiar and to shoot enough rounds, know where your, your shot lands at various distances compared to where the laser shining at various distances. But I, with thermal, you're, you're still going to want to have a thermal device on the rifle, not just on your eyeball.

Ben: 1:34:28

by the way You can definitely tell where everyone has their security cameras in which direction they're pointed by the way.

Gene: 1:34:37

Oh, with the the night vision?

Ben: 1:34:39

Yeah

Gene: 1:34:41

Yeah.'cause you see the illuminators.

Ben: 1:34:43

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, Gene, moving on. So did, did you see the headline? Chinese hackers spent five years waiting in U. S. infrastructure, ready to attack, agency says.

Gene: 1:34:55

I did not. But I suspect you have a a few things to say about that.

Ben: 1:35:00

Yeah, I've got the, and it's, it's a TLP clear, so I'm not giving anything away. It's publicly available, but CISA put out some TTPs for an adversary group that's been being tracked for a while and they're attributing this to China and as someone who has spent a few years especially in the critical infrastructure space and. Who has paid attention and I have not had a security clearance. So therefore when it comes to things like WikiLeaks Vault 7, I can actually read it and look at it and make critical decisions on it. Attribution is damn near impossible. And anytime someone attributes something and releases TTPs for something, you ought to be very careful because A, they're telling you what TTPs to look for to identify this.

Gene: 1:36:01

Russia blew up their own pipeline. You know that, right?

Ben: 1:36:04

Huh. Well, that was a great moment from the Putin interview, but neither here nor there. The point is, it doesn't matter who the attribution is. I think attribution should never be The only time attribution is beneficial to anyone is to, is to change the narrative. So, I, I, anytime I hear attribution, I'm, my, my My antenna go up and I pay attention. One things I'll say, and I kind of said this in my post on my website on this, which I've got the full CESA thing listed up there too. With when, when I'm talking to CESOs, when I'm looking at what the current threat landscape is and what people are really looking at, everybody has nation states in their back, back of their mind and everything else. But. Quite frankly, we haven't seen it yet, and what it comes down to is the majority, especially against critical infrastructure, the majority of the compromises and things we've seen are what I call incidental contact that wasn't targeted. So, for instance, Colonial Pipeline, that was not a targeted attack against the critical infrastructure. It was an accidental ransomware attack that due to their less than robust architecture. Affected the operational technology, that's incidental contact, and that's what we've seen over and over again. Now, we, we have seen stuff that is targeted against codices and different libraries, and we've seen some ICS specific malware. That we've caught, but never the results of, right? So there isn't a company that's been hit by industry specific malware that's been bankrupted from it. So, I think most CISOs and most people are taking the nation. Yeah, I think it's the boy who's cried wolf syndrome to the nth degree. If that makes sense.

Gene: 1:38:16

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, the, the state of actors is a, it's a good boogeyman

Ben: 1:38:25

And releasing it publicly right now, I don't know how much good it does. I think if war breaks out if World War III, if we ever get past a proxy war cyber's gonna be a huge component of it, man. And it would be foolish to think that it's not. But until then,

Gene: 1:38:43

here. Here's something a lot of people don't realize is sorry to interrupt you, Ben, but

Ben: 1:38:48

no, you're fine. You do it all the time.

Gene: 1:38:50

I know, but I occasionally will apologize as well. There's, there is a latent patriotism that exists in every country's hackers. And what I mean by that is hackers tend to be more of the anarchist types and fuck the government and all that jazz. But during nine to 11 incidents like that, when a country's population is brought together because they feel a common pain. Hackers are not immune from this and all of a sudden, and we also saw this more recently with Ukrainian hackers. After the spells special military operation started is there's this patriotism that comes up in people that otherwise wouldn't have it. So it, it almost makes it unnecessary for the state actors to have a large hacking capacity because the hackers themselves will happily engage in activities that would be similar to what the state actors would do anyway.

Ben: 1:39:55

of terrorism, yeah.

Gene: 1:39:56

Yeah, because they're like, well, fuck them,

Ben: 1:40:00

Well, yeah, all I can say is, again, China and other countries that developed later than the U. S. that implemented technology later than the U. S. have, so, here's the thing with any technology deployment, the U. S. Or whoever moves first has an advantage. The problem is they can get leapfrogged. And when we're talking about cybersecurity, especially industrial control systems, OT systems, cyber physical systems, whatever you want to talk about, this is my day job wheelhouse, by the way. And I've, I've got some stuff on the about page if people want to read, but what it comes down to is you can get leapfrogged pretty easy there. And when you have legacy systems, you have systems that you are deploying that are going to have a 20 year lifespan. That is a whole different world for cybersecurity than an OS that's going to get updated every day or changed every month or what. I mean, devices have a 2, 3 year lifespan versus a 20 year lifespan. This is very different. Um, you know, a lot of people don't realize, but a lot of the U. S. Navy still operates on Windows XP,

Gene: 1:41:25

yep.

Ben: 1:41:25

fundamentally. And even before that, you have systems that are very legacy systems that are just embedded and they're not going anywhere. Even the specialized systems on, like, an F 35. Those are systems that are not going to get regular software updates and or change. If you are an adversary, and you're thinking about how do I take care of this? Well, that's one of the things that you gotta consider, is when you're technologically being leapfrogged, yeah, you had the advantage a decade ago because you moved first, well, now technology's moved on and that It's just, a great example is industrialization. It took the U. S. and it took Germany over a hundred years to reach full industrialization. When you look at China, it took a lot less. When you look at Vietnam, it's taking a lot less. When you look at Singapore, Singapore went from backwater to fully industrialized amazing powerhouse. That same thing can be said with warfighting technology. So just to wrap it up, I guess.

Gene: 1:42:41

Or hog hunting as the case may be. I do have one more question for you though, on the helmet thing.

Ben: 1:42:48

Okay.

Gene: 1:42:49

Well, not night vision helmet. So, have you tested how well that the helmet works with a gas mask on?

Ben: 1:42:57

Why?

Gene: 1:42:59

Well, I mean, you don't want to be in a situation where you need to have a gas mask on and your helmet doesn't fit.

Ben: 1:43:06

So it's the same fast cut as any other. So what do you mean? Are you talking about where the chin straps are? What's your question here?

Gene: 1:43:16

no, it's the, the cutout around the ear and the, the visor and how, how much room there is

Ben: 1:43:23

Yeah, so what I would say is anytime you're putting on a gas mask, you should be taking your helmet off, putting

Gene: 1:43:28

yeah, obviously.

Ben: 1:43:29

it back on.

Gene: 1:43:30

Yeah, obviously. But you want to make sure the helmet's going to fit over the gas mask.

Ben: 1:43:34

And by the way, gas masks are definitely something I would not get a cheap Chinese copy of.

Gene: 1:43:39

Definitely not. No. I've got I use Polish gas masks mostly for, hawk hunting.

Ben: 1:43:47

Yeah, it's cause the hogs send that tear gas back.

Gene: 1:43:49

Well, it's CO2. It's bad for the environment.

Ben: 1:43:52

Huh. I mean, the hogs, especially big boars, do stink.

Gene: 1:43:57

They do. It's not, no joke.

Ben: 1:44:00

actually.

Gene: 1:44:01

Mm hmm. No lie. We need to do a hog hunt one of these days.

Ben: 1:44:06

Um, So, because of playing around with the NVG 10 and some of the issues I had early on and the way things are working out, I'm going to have two of them, and my dad has one. And my dad and I have already been talking about where we're going to go to go sit at night and play around with this in more realistic fashions.

Gene: 1:44:29

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:44:30

So you're welcome to join.

Gene: 1:44:31

Yeah, might have to do that. It's one of those things where, in watching reviews of thermal videos, inevitably, you end up watching thousands and thousands of hours of hogs getting slaughtered. And then you kind of go, God damn, I want to do that.

Ben: 1:44:49

Yeah. That, that, that's been the early adopters for sure,

Gene: 1:44:54

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:44:55

which anyone who's ever been around East Texas or Southeast Texas and the hogs are really all of Texas. It's a, it's a problem and there's enough brush and everything that during the day they can hide. And it's really a nighttime activity to a large extent or a low light activity to a large extent. And

Gene: 1:45:15

And, and what is the main, I mean, they're, they're considered a nuisance animal. What is the main reason for them being a nuisance animal in Texas?

Ben: 1:45:24

they're an invasive species. They were not native to here. And

Gene: 1:45:28

They're Mexicans, aren't they?

Ben: 1:45:30

no, they're European actually.

Gene: 1:45:32

Mm hmm. But via Mexico.

Ben: 1:45:35

Okay, sure. And Russia, actually.

Gene: 1:45:38

And Russia.

Ben: 1:45:39

Yeah, no, seriously, the Russian boar is they came more likely through like California and so on and some of the stuff there, but yeah, no, there, there's definitely some, some of the biggest hogs that end up like the record breakers when they do genetic testing on them because Texas state department parks and wildlife does this a lot. Russian boar is definitely in the genetic mix and they're some of the largest and most aggressive.

Gene: 1:46:05

Yeah, and they're, they're definitely aggressive. There's one video I watched recently with Night Vision, they're doing a review of it and it's they shot one bore and then like another eight or nine started charging the others next thing you see, they're starting to panic and they have to pull out pistols just to be able to shoot enough. Fast enough to prevent them from getting gored. It was, it was a harrowing video put it that way. When you realize that the hogs are actually aiming at you.

Ben: 1:46:43

Yeah.

Gene: 1:46:44

And I've seen, I've got one buddy that wants to do a helicopter hog hunt and I, I don't really have a whole lot of interest in that. Cause to me, that just seems like mostly a waste of lead because you're going to be missing more than you're going to be hitting. And it's also. It doesn't seem like it's that hard to shoot them from the ground. So shooting them from the air is just

Ben: 1:47:06

I don't know. I mean, it totally depends. I, I, I actually eat a lot of the hog that I kill. Now I will say this

Gene: 1:47:14

the kosher ones though.

Ben: 1:47:16

if I am taking a shot at a hog, if there's a group, I'm going to say, I'm going to try and shoot one that's 50 pounds or under because even then, if it's a boar, I can still eat it. But if it's a boar, that's over about 50 pounds, I'm not eating it. A lot of people might. A lot of people like gamey, gamey meat. I do not. For instance, the Middle East and not Middle East, the East, East Asia Chinese before they made it illegal, guys were trapping boars and sending them over to Asia and it, they were going crazy over it and then they made it illegal. They were getting some money for that, dude. I

Gene: 1:47:54

I bet.

Ben: 1:47:55

money.

Gene: 1:47:56

Yeah. Well, we don't want them. They, they don't like them out there. They eat them.

Ben: 1:48:00

But anyway if you get a sow, I don't care how big the sow is, she's going to be fine. Um, so, in fact, the other day I did burgers and I did half beef, half pork,

Gene: 1:48:13

Yeah, that, that does taste pretty good

Ben: 1:48:15

Oh, it was delicious.

Gene: 1:48:17

veal. It's doing better.

Ben: 1:48:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gene: 1:48:22

It's a veal and pork is a good combo. Yeah, it's it seems like we, we just need to kind of figure out some logistics on doing that, but also. I think once I spend the money for an expensive thermal there, I'm going to start doing that on a regular basis is

Ben: 1:48:41

LARPing.

Gene: 1:48:42

it's a, it's a great way. Yeah. LARPing with hawk hunting, because it's a great way to rationalize the purchase.

Ben: 1:48:48

Huh.

Gene: 1:48:49

It's like, well, that's, I, I had to go and help the farmers of Texas, so therefore I had to spend the money

Ben: 1:48:55

Well, and something to consider is you can actually do lots of different hunts at night. varmint hunts and different things and even some items that you might be able to feed your snake, for example. So, you could rationalize it that way too.

Gene: 1:49:12

I don't like the idea of, of hunting rabbits for the snake because. I don't want any lead exposure for the

Ben: 1:49:21

so use a copper round.

Gene: 1:49:23

Yeah, that could work. A copper round could work. Yeah, but that's really my biggest thing. And is just, if I'm gonna feed a critter that's a pet with something,

Ben: 1:49:34

Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:49:34

honestly, I would rather shoot it with the bone arrow.

Ben: 1:49:38

Okay. So do that.

Gene: 1:49:40

I don't think I'm good enough to shoot rabbits. They're fucking fast, man. They move really fast.

Ben: 1:49:44

They also sit still.

Gene: 1:49:46

Rarely. Have you seen the rabbit sitting still? I only see him walking at full speed.

Ben: 1:49:51

Oh bullcrap. I, so I was walking down the road at the river river property coming back from a hunt.

Gene: 1:49:58

hmm. Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:49:58

And I was walking down the road and I walked up on this rabbit and marsh rabbit. And it was just sitting there, sitting there, sitting there. And I drew my 40 and was like, really popped it, grabbed it, took it home. And we had rabbit

Gene: 1:50:15

You hit it with your, with your 40 caliber pistol?

Ben: 1:50:18

right in the head.

Gene: 1:50:20

Oh, okay. Well, that's good. Yeah. So you took the head out.

Ben: 1:50:23

Yeah.

Gene: 1:50:23

There must not have been much, much left on the head then after a 40

Ben: 1:50:26

No, there was not. There was not. It

Gene: 1:50:29

There's no head at all.

Ben: 1:50:30

yeah. And his head was gone.

Gene: 1:50:33

Yeah. Cause that's some, I remember my dad telling me a story where the first time he shot a rabbit with a shotgun.

Ben: 1:50:40

There wasn't

Gene: 1:50:40

very disappointing. It was very disappointing. Yeah, there's literally no rabbit left.

Ben: 1:50:45

Yeah. And but same thing with squirrel and everything else. A lot of people who go squirrel hunting with shotguns, I think you're, you're

Gene: 1:50:53

I'm not a fan of squirrel meat. I've, I've tried it, but nah,

Ben: 1:50:57

Have you ever had squirrel and dumplings?

Gene: 1:51:01

I know. I don't think so. I'm dumplings, but I've had squirrel. One, the guy that I went to help do the deer butchering, he does squirrel quite a bit and he

Ben: 1:51:09

he cook

Gene: 1:51:10

it. It kind of like, um. On, on skewers.

Ben: 1:51:15

yet? No, no, you got to try it like squirrel and dumplings or a gumbo or something like that. That's where

Gene: 1:51:21

Gambo. Gambo always tastes good. You can put shit in Gambo and it still tastes good.

Ben: 1:51:26

Exactly.

Gene: 1:51:27

Exactly. Something else I wouldn't mind actually killing and eating, although that's very expensive, is,

Ben: 1:51:34

By the way, have you ever had any duck sausage?

Gene: 1:51:37

yeah. I have had that.

Ben: 1:51:39

Yes. Oh,

Gene: 1:51:41

a huge duck fan. They're, they're a little,

Ben: 1:51:43

it's a joke that you're supposed to say no. And the response was to launch a duck down and get you some.

Gene: 1:51:50

No, well, that's the real thing. I mean, I've,

Ben: 1:51:53

I know,

Gene: 1:51:53

a lot of different types of sausage.

Ben: 1:51:56

I'm sure you have.

Gene: 1:51:58

Yeah, it's I'm a man of the world.

Ben: 1:52:01

Huh.

Gene: 1:52:02

the, the thing that I wouldn't mind hunting and eating at some point, but they're pretty pricey is bison.

Ben: 1:52:09

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of farms that you can go do that.

Gene: 1:52:13

Yeah. But they're like 6, 000, 8, 000.

Ben: 1:52:16

that's actually pretty cheap.

Gene: 1:52:19

Well, that's for the hunt, not including the processing of the animal.

Ben: 1:52:24

I very much understand. But I mean, you go on a big, you go to a, do a decent elk hunt or something like that. That's a guided hunt where you're got a very high likelihood of getting a big elk. I mean, you're talking over 10 grand.

Gene: 1:52:40

and where I grew up in Minnesota Elks were just a lottery

Ben: 1:52:45

Yeah, yeah. And where I lived in Idaho, it was a regular thing. So, there was no lottery. It was just, no, go get one.

Gene: 1:52:53

just you get to get on elk tag.

Ben: 1:52:56

Moose was a lottery though.

Gene: 1:52:57

Okay.

Ben: 1:52:58

Moose was a lottery. In fact, I think it was a once in a lifetime hunt. If you got it and got a moose, that was it.

Gene: 1:53:04

I think. I'm trying to remember in Minnesota. I think it was the Elks were as a lottery, but it wasn't that hard to get. Usually like people that tried would get one every three years or so. Moose was also a lottery. I don't remember if it was lifetime or not, but I don't know. I kind of like moose. Like, I mean, from a friendliness standpoint, I don't, I don't like hunting shit that I think is cool. You

Ben: 1:53:26

Yeah, huh. Moose are nuisance creatures that are very violent. That, okay, that's like a hippo. That's like you saying you like a

Gene: 1:53:35

cute. I like hippos.

Ben: 1:53:36

and they're super violent. They kill more people in Africa than fucking anything else. Are you kidding

Gene: 1:53:41

you right. I, I fed hippos by hand and out in the San Diego wildlife park, I was out there on a VIP tour and we got to feed all kinds of critters and

Ben: 1:53:51

just because they mistook you as their young.

Gene: 1:53:53

they did, but they're so cute. They're, they just have. They, they're just like the game, right? They just, they come right up to you. They, they bump into you with their noses and they open up their mouths and then they wait until you put enough carrots in there. They're not going to just chew one carrot. You have to put like a whole bunch of carrots before they close their mouth and chew it up.

Ben: 1:54:15

Mm

Gene: 1:54:15

They're very cute animals.

Ben: 1:54:17

Are you sure this wasn't animatronic?

Gene: 1:54:19

Fuck you. No, no, this was very real. Yeah.

Ben: 1:54:24

you've seen Ace Ventura 2, right?

Gene: 1:54:27

Yeah. Not a great movie, but sure.

Ben: 1:54:31

just made sure.

Gene: 1:54:32

Yeah. No, these are not animatronic. No, there's a bunch of critters that I've fed by hand, including giraffes. And I what else from the, well, a variety of deer looking things from Africa zebras. I love zebras. People are afraid of zebras. I fed zebras so many times. Oh,

Ben: 1:54:50

we are now talking about African wildlife and we've made two stupid jokes, I think it's time we wrap up.

Gene: 1:54:58

you want to wrap up? Yeah, we can wrap up. All right. Well, I kind of feel like this whole episode was all about like LARPing, but is what it is.

Ben: 1:55:06

How so? We've covered some pretty good topics, too.

Gene: 1:55:10

Yeah. I guess we'd talk a little bit about way back, but a lot of LARPing involved. Hi guys. We'll see you in about a week.

Ben: 1:55:18

See ya, Gene.