RobbieTheWagner 
Adam Argyle In today's modern technological world, developers face many difficult questions. Artificial intelligence, autonomous agents, JavaScript frameworks, even CSS. With so much happening so quickly, how can a developer possibly keep up? Simple. Just listen to the world's most important AI podcast. Two experts, countless opinions, zero hesitation. The Internet is complicated. These men are not. Each week, they review the latest developments in artificial intelligence and modern web development. This is Whiskey, Web, and Whatnot, the world's most important AI podcast. Hey, what's up, everybody? This is Whiskey, Web, and Whatnot with your host, Robbie the Wagner, and a sometimes host, sometimes guest, old familiar face, Carlo Trey.
Buona serata. Yes, I've had to change my name officially. Carlo William Carpenter 3. Nice, nice. Yeah, we thought we would catch up and have some really, really high shelf whiskey today. Yeah. For those of you at home without video access or listening later on, this is the Jim Beam White Label Bourbon. James B. Beam says this is not genuine without my signature. Yes, and it has his signature, so it is genuine. It is genuinely... Genuinely 75% corn, 13% rye, and 12% malted barley. And that's what they use for standard Jim Beam, Knob Creek, Bookers, and Bakers, apparently. So how are they all different and so differently priced?
I'm not sure. Well, this one's going to be quite young. That's part of it. Mashed. Four years old. It's in preschool. Right. Exactly. It's aged in American charred oak. New barrels. Sour mashed for quality. Consistency more than quality. In this particular instance, I'm going to say, and even though they kind of start from the same beginnings or maybe have the same mixture, they might put lower quality grains like when they sort through things, they obviously are going to make it easier. younger and uh you know things of that nature to make it less expensive although it costs more here probably than it did there yeah i mean it's very cheap here yeah
This tastes like college for me. If I was to splash some Coca-Cola with high fructose corn syrup in it, that would definitely put me into my second year of college. 100%. Yeah, no Mexican Coke. Got to have the high fructose corn syrup. No, that stuff's way too nice. uh you know you take an old slurpee cup or whatever um and uh yeah just whatever is sturdy enough big plastic and just no measurements just pour them in until it's at the top yeah yeah i mean you can drink it straight without it tasting too harsh so it's like there's no limit to how much you can put in there Yeah, exactly. But yeah, you know, why not?
Why not throw it back, keep it simple? If you're going to mix something with Coke, sure, this is a good choice. Don't spend too much money on something you're just going to mix with Coke. Yeah, I think I told you the story about this one, but this was one that we went on a beach trip before we were of drinking age. And so we had the little Kool-Aid, I don't know what they call them, but in the plastic bottles where the top is really tiny, has a really tiny hole. Yes. And we somehow poured this into, like we drank half the Kool-Aid and then poured this in that little tiny hole. Yeah. Do not recommend.
Not yummy. Not a blend that works well together. You know, Kool-Aid begs for something that stays out of the way, you know? Yeah. Maybe has a little burn. Maybe some like Gordon's vodka, but definitely nothing with any other flavor profile. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, there's not a whole lot of notes to this. It is very sweet. It's, I don't know. I smell almost nothing when I smell it. Yeah, it kind of smells like, do you remember how they had those smelly erasers? You know, like middle school. Like scented? Like a blueberry eraser? Yeah, like a scented eraser. It kind of smells like that to me. It doesn't taste like that, but it kind of smelled, I don't know if I would pick it.
It was probably like bubble gum or something else that. doesn't taste at all like it smells, but that's, so it's not disgusting. It is drinkable, preferably mixed, probably, preferably 20 to 25 years ago in my life. And very, it's been. Yeah. That's good nostalgia notes for sure. Yeah. Yeah. If you're like making a punch, you know, a big bowl of something like this is probably a good choice. I used to get a handle of this in college. It's disgusting. um yeah 1.75 go through that in four days you know it's like wow yeah all right so yeah we've uh i know we usually are supposed to talk about this at the end now but we do whatever we want let's rate it now we got our same scale as always zero to eight tentacles what do you think
Is that by squid, jellyfish, or like what do you mean? I think it's an ostrich. They have eight tentacles. Okay, so it's a scale of eight, zero to eight potentially. Ooh, one new message. Is somebody chatting us? Oh my gosh. We're actually with an IE. Okay, should you go first and show me how this works? Sure. Um, yeah, so this, it honestly, for being so young is not terrible. I feel like you could do a lot worse than this. Um, for the price point, you can't beat it in the realm of cheap, you know, uh, not the best whiskeys. I feel like this is not bad. Um, so rating it in that category, um, I'm going to say five and a half, not terrible.
Um, Five and a quarter stars. Yeah, I think that's a good way to slot it. It's sort of like bottom shelf, but not complete garbage. I think it would be unfair to pit it against things like Maker's Mark, which is probably almost double price. So then you're thinking maybe basic Jack Daniels, definitely some other mixers like Black Label, Ezra Brooks, or something of that nature. um and yeah i think it punches well at its current weight class um it does have the nostalgia note pretty simple so um i'm gonna go a five yeah i'm like right a little above average it's probably i think it was like 15 bucks or or less in the states so given that like you could do worse why not yeah
For sure. It seems like Ken Wheeler wouldn't throw it away. Is there anything you'd give Ken Wheeler that he would not drink though? I think if it's in a plastic container, I think he's above that. He's like, no, I'm not even going to try here. Not his preference. Got to keep up appearances at least. If, if you gave it, I wonder though, there will be almost like a social challenge. If you gave him mad dog 2020, which is like kerosene with like fake kiwi flavor on top and cost about $2 and 50 cents, he should throw it away, but I'm not sure he would. depends on how many drinks you had beforehand i think yeah yeah there's also that right yeah is it his first drink or his 16th yeah um kiwi scene i love that might have to you know jason's still throwing out the hits apparently uh yeah you know i'm upset that jason did not come to cascadia because i was ready to troll him as the mc and introduce him incredibly poorly but uh missed that opportunity
Was there a presence? Were one of the torkers? Tweakers? Yeah, Roxy was there. Oh, he's not at, well, okay. But he's not at Twerk anymore, yeah. He's not at Twerk anymore, yeah. So that's part of it. There's no jet brains with JavaScript. You know, they don't align well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, I didn't have anything fancy, Jason. I was just going to either like, we had really nice intros for everyone else. Like Adam does a really good job introing people. And I was just going to be like, and this is Jason Torres. And that's like no other intro. Or completely intro you as like a completely different person.
Like all wrong facts. Like something like that. Those were my ideas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So should we address the elephant in the room? I think that's a good starting point. What do you think about that? I don't see an elephant. But I mean, aside from the game you've gained over the winter. Um, and when we're halfway through summer, so there's no excuse now, but, uh, listen, I, I don't know if you guys talked about it any, or just Adam was a very obvious upgrade in all respects. I, I just don't have the energy. Um, to come up with clever poems and limericks every episode that all right, that, that right there was already, you know, uh, a, it was time.
It was time for me to step down. So, yeah. Anyway, I moved away. I like doing this for fun sometimes, but the time differences are practically impossible. Yeah, like so many other things. So happy to jump on from time to time, but Adam's your guy. In case you didn't know. It's been like a year. Yeah, we did not push Chuck out. We discussed it many times, decided this is the best setup for now. You're possibly thinking of doing some of your own stuff at some point? I don't know how the planning on that is going. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did a little bit of planning and everything else, but I'm not sure what kind of podcast would work with me just speaking out or a time zone difference.
Everyone I know is in the States, so time zone differences are quite difficult. And I don't know anyone over here in Europe yet, but maybe if you are European-based and you want to hang out and talk with me, Maybe drink, maybe not. I don't know. I'm kind of floating through a number of ideas. I do think I need to make it conversational. And so we'll see. Yeah. I mean, I think something with a not strict format is way more interesting to listen to than something super technical. But other than that, yeah, sky's the limit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do like the element of like the humans who make nerdy things because I don't want to hear the nerdy person come on and talk about the same nerdy thing they did for other podcasts or their own podcast.
You know, really, ultimately, if it could end up with like a quasi sponsorship and end up with some cool gear, that's a win. I don't even need money. I just want some cool swag. Yeah, I mean, swag is half the game. We do not have enough cool swag. We need to work on our suppliers because the quality is not up to my standards. Yeah, well, you got to get into where, like, you know, syntax is able to now... get all kinds of stuff with the century money, like the mocha pots and all that stuff. But post hog is killing it. I don't know if you've seen what are they making? They had like a lawnmower or some weird shit.
They had some cool sneakers. They've got these soccer jerseys out right now that are really cool and I'm envious of. I wanted to do jerseys like two years ago when you worked out that Ryan Reynolds fan club thing. um yeah so i don't know if you know postdoc always had some cool design and swag even better jason i think you should check it out like uh today are they the ones that did like the whole operating system as their web design kind of look like totally different yeah okay yeah they do cool stuff then Yeah, yeah. So it's like an interesting take. But they're working with these things lately too.
It's called artificial intelligence. And it's not just a movie by Steven Spielberg. It's, you know, computers giving you some – I mean, it's like being able to Google and Stack Overflow and Wiki, but like it talks to you. Do you talk to it? Yeah, yeah. It's conversational. It's insane. Yes, it did have... I can't remember his name, Jason. I'm calling you out. Yeah, the IC Dead People kid. He was in artificial intelligence. Joel? Haley Joel Osmond. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew there was a Joel in there. That sounds right, yeah. There you go. So you just needed to, you know, shake the old cobwebs off of you.
I... No, I mean, I'm using this AI thing a ton all the time, every day. Multitudes. I think the job is changing rapidly. I'm actually working to write myself out of a job. This is what I tell my team. Because I don't think this is the job anymore. So it's like, I'm not hanging on to stragglers here. Yeah. My problem though is I need to make money for at least like 30 more years. So you can still make money. I'm not going to say the thing that people are getting pissed off about, like, you know, the whole like bringing taste. Somebody sort of started that trigger word and people on teapot are getting mad about it, but I think there's, I think it's an easy way to describe.
You have your own taste to things. And we used to argue about nuance and like artistry of, of code. And now we have to sort of guide, like I still, I think I said this a while ago, I still think it's like we are tech leads and we are controlling the inputs and we're still making things, but we're making systems. And what that system looks like is like super interesting. Like right now, a lot of the stuff, like so essentially my team for current day job, We have been getting super fast, obviously using bots and agents and all kinds of stuff lately. It's great, but it's sort of like we moved where some of the bottlenecks are.
Like, oh, it's a team of four, and reviews. We're SOC 2 compliant, so our reviews are, now if you open 20 PRs in a couple of days, well, shit, instead of working on the thing, now I have to take all this extra time to deep dive into pull request reviews. Which is the not fun part. I like building stuff. I don't like reviewing stuff. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, and you can bring your CodeRabbit into it. You can... I mean, I have oppositional... I like to have, like... you know, Codex and Claude argue about things a little bit. That's kind of fun, too. That's the new hotness, apparently. Like using two through the, what did they call it?
Some kind of API. I think I have it in my notes, but my notes aren't up. Let's see. Fusion API. Well, the fusion thing. Yeah, I just read about that, which is pretty cool. But I'm not doing a fusion through the work process. So essentially, you have like your inputs, your planning, and then you feel good. And then you're just like auto go have at it. Opens a PR, CodeRabbit does its thing, and then I bring like GPT 5.5 in, and I have it do another round of, and then I deem to give it my human eyes. But, I mean, it's still another big thing. it's still another massive bottleneck. So what I've done is I'm adding, like I created a GitHub bot and now my GitHub bot can like be the committer or be the opener of PRs that go through my routines or my automation so that now I am a valid reviewer.
So... That seems like you're getting around the system a little bit. You got it? Well, I mean, is it me? I mean, I just gave it the implementation and I approved the plan and then it did the work. That's a hot take, I think, is if you basically wrote none of the code, you just kind of informed it a little bit about what to do. Yep. then should you be a valid reviewer and it shouldn't need another one? Maybe. I say that I am. This is maybe the hot take here. Because I think that I am because I've essentially become a tech lead that has basically groomed the Jira ticket to the degree that is highly explicit.
And then I've said, great, this is ready to work on. And then now my team, which just happens to be agents, works on it. And there is the work loop. There's a review loop. There's another counter review loop that comes into play. And then why can't I just because I created, you know, or I logged in for the tokens or whatever else, like I didn't actually write the code. I didn't get deep. So why can't I come in as the reviewer? And that was like a massive block for me. It took me a little while to get there, probably longer than I should admit to. But I was like, gosh, maybe we create these tiers and we write new policy.
And so SOC 2 is happy because a tier one bug can just be auto merged or something else to get around this problem. And then I was like, no, it's just a bot. It's just a bot who opens the PRs and now makes us all eligible for it. to be reviewers, whether you started, you know, kicked off the process. I do think that like we are, we're the stopper in the loop to a degree. And so it's like creating these systems that take us out of that, make us more efficient. As long as we understand where are the go points. Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't considered that, but I, I, I'm seeing the point you're making for sure.
Um, I don't know if that's something we can do at IBM or not, probably not. Um, yeah, we might be in different situations. It's a team of four where I basically approve all the things to this level. So I can go into GitHub and create a new GitHub app. on the fly. Yeah. Right. I can do things like when we were, it's a fun thing because it has like changed the game across SAS a bunch too, because this was like a few months or so ago where we were like, Oh, well we want to change this thing and fix something else in our fishing simulation stuff. We need a URL shortener. Like, okay. And you go and you're like, start looking at services for this.
And you're like, these people, these people, charge you like 20 bucks a month to give the short URL under the guise of additional metrics and yada, yada, yada. And I'm like, that's crazy town. I spent a couple of hours between like V zero and Claude and deployed in three hours. I mean, it's a key value store. That seems pretty easy. I didn't write one line of code. I just guided it through exactly what I wanted. And it was in production in those three hours, right? SAS killed, done, whatever else. And fortunately or not, I've been able to do that with a few different things. Like, yeah, we don't need this.
We can just kind of make our own. Basically, our needs are very simple. Yeah, I've been doing a lot more. I've been on a new team part-time at work, and it's very like, don't really care about looking at the code. So it's like, the only way I'm able to know if what I did totally broke everything or not is I just snapshot everything in Playwright and look at those and see if they're flagged as super different than like, Oh, yeah, we're totally missing, like, a bunch of CSS right here. Whoops. You know, kind of thing. I feel like that's, like, the next way of working. Because, like, you know, one, you can ask your LLM to write you tests.
And then if you're looking at the tests it writes and you think they're validating what you thought, then that gives you some extra, like you should have some sort of baseline test, but then looking at it, there's no substitute for looking at it. And the time it takes to look at every page takes you a long time. So why not snapshot them all and like, or not all of them, but the critical ones for sure. Yeah. I think that's an excellent idea to add an additional layer to the critical path because Really, your integration end-to-end tests are meant to protect those, like, this is how the business and the software must operate.
A lot of it is sort of nuance on top, but if these things work, we know we're good to go. Smoke testing or whatever else is happening in real time via machines slash your eyes at those points. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I've been... Did you get to use Fable at all before it was gone? I think I ran like one task, and I was like teeing it up for a weekend trial, and then it went away. So I was like, but wait, hold on. This is a U.S. government thing? Can I still use it, though? I'm not there. Can I... They don't... I think they're thinking, yeah, people from like wherever could use Workaround, so they have to shut it off for everyone, or there's no way they can like...
Which sucks. Is it all just a PR stunt, though? Like, to increase, wow, we're so powerful. If we're going to IPO, like, our valuation should be way higher. You know, a lot of their moves are very aggressive to developers, I feel like. And this one wouldn't really feel that way if there wasn't like five other times they pulled bullshit on us. And then if we keep having to kind of do workarounds, like technically you're not supposed to use open code and anthropic models, but there's a way. You can use the API. You just can't use the... Well, yeah, yeah. Or do they lock it all down? You can't. No, you can't.
You're right. You can't. There's definitely no workaround. Yeah. Did you see Ken Wheeler's posts about the Antropic stuff? He's like, oh no, my dick is too big. You better lock me up before I hurt someone with this giant dong. No, but that tracks. Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh man, this is such a, yeah. I've lost so much respect for Antropic. Are you going to respond for 4th of July? No, I'm not. No, I'm always at the lake with my friends for July 4th week, so I'm never going to not be there. Yeah, that's fair. He's the best and the worst. I mean, she's not wrong. But yeah, so Fable, I am. But he's also hurt me a number of times physically, so it's like.
That is the risk you take, yes. Yeah, it is. The more drink you give him, the more monkey punch you. Yeah. But yeah, I got to use Fable for a day or two. And I took that app I made for EmberConf 2020, I guess, like where you can talk to your dog. And I was like, what if this didn't suck and worked? And it was like, here you go. And I was like, sick. And then I was like, all right, also make Swatch good. And like also convert my personal website from Next.js to Astro. And it was like, would you like that done in one shot? Here you go. I was like, sick. Yeah. It was so good at everything I gave it to do.
And so I was also one of the people that was sad when they were like, this doesn't exist anymore. Oh, that's rough. Yeah, I actually, on weekend things, I've done a couple of things. I put out a personal site that's like mostly a joke, but I love it. It looks like GeoCities. Enjoy. ChuckCarpenter.com. Yeah. And a problem that I had is, so we have that Thermomix that I told you about, where it's like a one device does everything amazing cooking. A problem? Is it not doing well? No, it's amazing and has bunches of great recipes. But what I want is something that takes Normie recipes and turns them into Thermomix TM7 recipes for me.
And I did this through Claude before. Like, yeah, I want to make this. Oh, I think there's a thing in Teapot where there's like the best butter chicken recipe. And it's this YouTube thing and has all the instructions. And I just like took the transcript and was like, please make this for TM7. And it did. And it turns it into a mini React site. And it worked amazing. And I was like. how do I do this all the time? And honestly, you can just upload recipes into CookieDoo, which is their app. So, like, make this for me. So, yeah, I had it one-shot an app, and we deployed it and did all this stuff, and it does exactly that.
You can either give it a URL, you can give it a, I think you can, like, do a screenshot, yeah. And it does that too. And then there's something else. Not Easy Bake Oven Roxy. It is better. That's all I can say. Just look up the Thermomix. It's amazing. It's a robot. Yeah. I came into the kitchen the other day and Caitlin was like, hey have you heard of the thermomix and i was like oh shit we're gonna own one of these soon aren't we they're not cheap but i will say they're worth it like it's a one-stop shop for a lot of things it's let me down a couple of times but mostly it's great So my newest thing that I'm going to wade into is robotic lawnmowers.
So I'm getting a Limo, and we'll see how it goes. It's the only one that has real mower blades versus all the other ones have tiny little razor blades, which seem like they would hit anything and just shatter. Die. So I'm going to try that. And then... As it gets better, there's another one called Yarbo that has everything. It does leaf blowing. So I could just let it do all the things. But right now, it's super squeaky. It rides around. It's like... And Caitlin's like, no, we're not going to have that riding around our yard. Well, you know, that's how you scare the squirrels away and stuff or something.
I'm sure that maybe there's a reason, you know, because it's a robot. You would sneak. I think it doesn't see too. So that's another reason not to get it. The limo has cameras and like, if it's going to hit something, it'll stop. But I think the yarbo is just, um, GPS. So like it just takes its path. I don't think it'll just mow over it, whatever. I think, so I know Elon hates the LiDAR, but LiDAR is what Waymo uses. LiDAR is in, I think, just one mower right now. I forget which one, but it didn't have good mower blades, so I ruled that one out. Yeah. Should we file this under things that Robbie shouldn't buy until he clears his debt?
Or no? Definitely not. No. No, we've talked about this before. You can't take your money with you. So you might as well get as much debt as you possibly can and then die. Fucking kids can start from zero. Who gives a shit about them? Yeah. As long as you structure everything correctly, they inherit no debt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. Exactly. And I was going to say, like, that's not even a joke. I believe in that. Like, you know, you do it right. You've stashed all your money away. You have tons of debt when you die and your kids get all the money and none of the debt. Look up somebody that will tell you how to do this.
Get a financial person. They know how to do it. Yeah. Maybe once his babies are older. I don't know. My babies are getting older. They're nine and seven. I still think. It's funny. We're all getting older. No one's getting younger. It's weird. I have been taking peptides left and right and I'm still not. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not. I don't even know if I can get those here, but probably. I'm sure you can. I mean, you just have really good wine. That's how it keeps everyone young over there, right? Yes, yes. Yeah, I avoid the gym beam and I go with wine. That is inexpensive, too. It's amazing.
Yes. It's like all of a sudden a seven euro bottle of wine is as good as something. I mean, I have looked up these prices before, too, so it's pretty hilarious. You get a whatever, 10 euro bottle of wine and you look it up and you're like, $45 in the States. Enjoy. Yeah. I mean, that's just the shipping and tariffs on top of it. Like they're not even making extra profit. No, it's freedom. That's the price of freedom. Yeah. Natural food, simple stuff. Listen, the UFC on the lawn in the White House is not going to pay for itself. It's true. Except it does. Cost folks like you and me. Freedom isn't free.
Yeah. Yes, I'm familiar with the song. I am still a U.S. taxpayer, too. So I am a U.S. resident, and it is one of two countries in the world that taxes you without residency. So, sorry, I'm a U.S. citizen, not resident, still have to pay the taxes. Okay. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So you have to pay in Italy too, I assume? I do. There's some reciprocity and other games you have to play. We don't need to bore the listener, listeners, plural, with that quite again. But, you know. Everything bureaucracy is insane here. But the good part is you have so much time in between each step. You can just enjoy, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. Cause you don't want to work too hard. So you can't, you have to have really loose timelines. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they said there's a couple of like certainties you have. So, You can have expectations. You have poor expectations. If you're like thinking, I go to Questora, I have the appointment at 1230. You know, maybe this time it'll be 10 minutes. Maybe it'll be two hours, but I'll get my thing done. Already wrong. Already wrong. 1230 sounds iffy to me. Yeah. The only thing I know is that I walk in the Questora at 12 for a 1230 appointment. I know that's true. I'm probably coming back.
I don't know how long I'm going to be here, and I'm probably coming back. That's all. It might be a week. It might be two months. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, when you go to stores and they, like, literally don't post hours, it's just kind of like, this is a different place. This is not the same as it works in America. Right, right. Well, you should assume, like, my pharmacy, our neighborhood pharmacy, closes for three hours every day for lunch. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you have to be able to finish the whole bottle of wine per person at lunch. Like it's a hard thing. I actually wish that were true.
Italians don't drink that much, to be honest. They don't. Most Italians don't drink that much. Yeah. They might have like a bottle of wine every two weeks, which is insane, unless they're like in the industry. I live in a city full of international people. So, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous, we got it. Yeah, we're good. We anonymously kill a bottle of wine per day. It's totally fine. I mean, once you've opened it, it's only good for a couple of days. Yeah, exactly. Don't waste. This is high quality. I think they love the olive oil more than they love the wine, but the wine is here. The wine is here.
I just can't taste the difference in the olive oils all that much. I mean, it is nuanced. I will say it's like such a nuance, but it's like a bunch of things, you know, how like they really care about regional products and whatever their region does well. They just think it's like the best thing ever, you know? And you're like, yeah, but I could have, I don't know, ragu is like very interpretive and it's like a northern ragu and a southern ragu is like all completely different. And you're like, they're both delicious. And you're like, no, it's not. Yeah. How could you say that? Yeah. I'm guessing the one that is the American sauce is not similar to either of them.
Yeah, no. That is full of sugar. Oh, yeah. I think the first ingredient is sugar. I like that there's a sauce also called Prego, and they're like, you're welcome. Yes. Prego. Yeah. They just make a random word. You're welcome. Thank you for your money. Yeah. All right. So, yeah. Sorry, I was just going to circle back for a second and talk about... I don't think we explicitly talked about like typing versus dictating. Um, that's something I wanted to touch on a bit. Sure. Um, yeah. Cause I feel like this is, um, something we've discussed a couple of times and I still haven't embraced it or really tried it.
Um, but, Because I like, I don't know, I'm used to typing and I feel like my brain is slow. Like my talking speed would be too fast. Like my brain can't keep up with the words I'm trying to say, but it can keep up with my slow typing speed. Um, but I can also see the, like the benefits of, Hey, I don't need to do, I can just like lay back and, you know, I've got a microphone or even just my phone or whatever. And I'm like, Hey, um, do some stuff. And then it's like, cool, I'm doing it. Um, but yeah, I, um, wanted to hear about your, your experiences with that and how that's been working for you.
So I think this is actually like very aligned with the heavy concern with like the specificity of quality, right? It's like how we cared about the nuance of CSS and how we cared about... like the correct HTML. And I actually don't think either of those things are necessarily bad by any means, but it was a deep care. And then you go into react, your favorite framework, just kidding. Library. Right. And you start to care about like, okay, how often am I using hooks? Am I using for the right reasons? If I have 45 use states, why am I use reducer and blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a bunch of things where you start to like human care about the specificity.
And I start to think that like speech to text is kind of the same way as long as like, 90% is right and you're getting the intended output, like it's probably fine. So I use this open source app called Handy. And I forget the model is like Parakeet or something like that. And it works on every input. And it's, I don't know, it's fun. It's like a little keystroke. I talk and it just blobs it all out. So it kind of like just takes my thoughts and, Direct to the input. And most of the time it works out. So it's kind of, I don't know, that's been my thinking with it. And I just started like, I had fun with it a few places.
And I just started saying, why not everywhere? I don't know. Why not? Why not just be able to like, bleh, word vomit, get an outcome. And, you know, a pretty decent output. So... Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do think for the cases when I'm frustrated, it is fun to like, you know, I haven't tried it, but like, I'm always, you know, like, fuck you. You're so fucking dumb. Like do what I said, whatever. It's like, oh my God, you're absolutely right. It would be nice to just articulate that verbally. Like, exactly. Like literally just say it. Like I even have a Sometimes when you're on iMessage and I'm just like used to it and I will just like speech to text and then it'll be garbage and it fucks it up and I get annoyed and I go back and back.
Well, Handy doesn't really fuck it up so much. It's always my fuck ups. So then I'm like, ah, it's me. Let's just go with it. Yeah, I mean, if it's getting it close enough, then that's probably fine. Because you can also, like, if you're typing, you can get some words wrong. You can spell stuff wrong. It still gets the gist. It's fine. Yeah, but I'm apt to go back and fix it. I'm one of those where I'll be, like, typing, typing, like, kind of fast. And then, like, I get to a place. Well, I don't read it until I've hit enter. And then I go back and read it and go, oh, I fucked that up. I fucked that up.
Because when it's a message to a person, I can just edit it if it was bad enough. So... Maybe a bad habit. Should probably read before you hit enter. But get a little YOLO. I don't know. Like especially in this world where I think it feels like this a little bit to me. Like think about those times where you were in a big planning session with a team. You all get in a room and you're posting notes and you're just like, I think about it like that with my agents. I'm like, all right, you know, we're huddled down. We're like figuring out what we want to do. And I'm just talking to you. And then we go a little back and forth, back and forth and back and forth.
And maybe that's why I'm embracing it. Because I feel like I'm just having this conversation instead of just like, And I'm less lazy with my words. Like, if I'm typing, I'm probably going to do like a 10-word sentence. Just like, get to it. You know, one, like, that's the thing in the middle. And... Have you tried the one where it gives you a person that you're talking to? Like a video chat with the... I mean, I just saw it when it was first possible. Somebody dropped it and said, hey, you can just Zoom with your AI and it'll show you a person. Because it's pretty good at making people that are fake and having them talk.
So you can just talk to... I'm sure they say, hey, you're absolutely right a lot. I don't know. I don't know if that would be helpful. I think if it had the timing down right to where it felt like what you're describing of like a room of a bunch of people sitting around just planning something that could make it feel more natural and like a useful exercise, but I don't know. Yeah, that would, I mean, I would totally try it. It would be very interesting, but like I have yet to see like an avatar. Like you can record your own avatar and then like it can, you can give it a script and then it'll send that out to people as you.
Yeah. It has always looked like bullshit. So like, uh, we've looked at that a little bit around like, Oh, could we create content with real people? Give them a script. They have an avatar. Cool. We can actually do dynamic content. Like you can just say, I want to learn about this thing and cybersecurity. Um, Now Chuck will teach you because you told him what you want and we'll put the curriculum together and boom, 10 minutes later you have it. Well, it hasn't been very good. It's pretty unnatural. But in that instance, it might be interesting. I think because I have experienced like my original outside of like Atari 2600, I'm going to date myself, but everybody knows I'm old.
Okay, you have your Atari 2600, you're doing Pong, you're doing Pitfall or whatever else. And then you had these word games at the time that were really big, like Zork. And it was almost like Dungeons and Dragons, but through the computer game. And I can kind of see that being interesting. like very descriptive word vomit back and forth. And that's kind of how I think of it now. And that's probably why I think it's successful for me. Because I'm used to like taking the big descriptions, giving some sort of feedback and like having a conversation in that way. Just don't know how far that could go otherwise.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I feel like the newer generation isn't learning to type, probably, or, like, to do anything. So they're... More immersive. Yeah. So, like, maybe that is the next logical interface, is it's just a person that you chat with, and it does, like, you... have a vid. It's like FaceTiming and you're like, Hey, um, random, not real person. I want a pizza delivered. Like, can you do that? And it's like, yep. What do you want on the pizza? Like, you know, I feel like you could get to that point. Um, but I don't know. I'm going to make the Max Hedrum version, maybe. And that's okay.
Because it could have quirks. It could be like... Do you remember that character? Nope. Max Hedrum. It was in the 80s. I want to say it ended up being like a Pepsi commercial thing over time. That's not the inception. Anyway. Well, if it looks like it's supposed to be flawed, then it's technically able to be flawed. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. Yeah, don't make it too perfect. Perfect is the enemy of good enough, so they say. Indeed. Indeed. All right. So, uh, we don't have a ton of time left. What, uh, what are you playing or watching these days? Um, well, similarly to what you mentioned, I'm also watching your friends and neighbors.
Um, I am on episode two of season two. Season one was super good. Um, um, Yeah, it took us a long time because I was like, Caitlin, you're going to like this show. You should watch it. She's like, eh. And so we went months of her being like, I don't want to watch it. And then we watched the preview of it or whatever. And she was like, that looks good. And I was like, yeah, I told you it looks good. So then we started watching it. And yeah, it's been super, super good. So no, I don't read because that would require knowing how to read. So yeah. So, Dungeon Crawler Carl. I do read, and I got this super tiny e-ink reader to do more of it.
I'm rereading Necronomicon. So, I have a lot of questions. You got this, that's like what, a phone size almost? Yeah, it's phone size. And it magnets to the back of my phone. And you need to have like 72-point font to read it, right? So, can you fit like three words on there? Yeah, yeah. One at a time. And then you just click through and whatever else. I do like it. I mean, I can pretty much fit my entire caliber library on here. And so there's like tons of cool old things. I haven't tried anything with like graphics on there. I don't think it's for that. But yeah. So this is like on the fly. As I've mentioned, I...
I have to sit and wait often in my life. And this is, this is useful in that. So, um, that's all we're doing in all, all forms of life. Now you give AI a prompt and you wait. Yeah. Um, some people watch tick tock. other people read on their tiny reader. Yeah. I don't have TikTok. For now, I have Twitter. Who knows if that will last? It's hard to say. But right now, still there. Reading books, real books, fake books. I don't know. Rolling with it. One at a time. I still have an iPhone 13, and I'm going to hang on as long as I can. What is it up to now? 16? I can't remember. 17. Okay, so your battery life should be pretty bad, I would think.
It's still working. I don't know. I miss the Mini. I wish they would make a Mini Pro. Exactly. Like, give it a really good battery, but I want it to be way smaller. I don't need a big phone. Yeah, that's it. I want a simple phone, and they're not interested. So, I don't know. It's a weird time where I feel like there's certain things in my life that are Apple that could be upgraded, changed, whatever else. And I don't want the Apple upgrade. I'm like... Yeah, I've been on this. They made the Apple Silicon 2 good. Like, I'm like, oh, cool. Like M5, whatever. Well, my M1 is like, I've never been like, wow, I wish this were faster.
It's always just perfect. So I'm like, I don't ever need to give you more money until it stops working. I'm currently on my M1 Mini. That's my personal computer. Use it for tons of things all the time. uh i have a couple of b links in my home lab that i've been working with so i have a b link with uh uh promox and i'm running some vms for some stuff i've got a naz what is a b link you Talked about it for a second, and I've totally forgot what they were. B-Link makes, I mean, they make computers, and they have, like, little Mac Mini-like computers and some other stuff, some other hardware. It's kind of like...
Oh, gosh. What is that? I have a Linux laptop, too, that is upgradable and all that other stuff. So it's another one of those companies that are just, like, doing independent little things. Does it run Linux? It will. I mean, anything runs Linux, right? Well, I mean, like, are you running Linux on them, or is it, like, a bespoke OS? Yeah, Momox will basically manages VMs for you. And so that's where I will have, I have a Hermes agent, I have OpenClaws on there, and I can spin up a bunch of those, like, very siloed VMs. I have another one that does Trumanaz, so I can back up a bunch of my stuff to there.
Yeah, I mean, that's basically it. Nice. Yeah, I haven't really done much of that. I'm very interested in the new, what did they call it? Well, like NVIDIA announced the new chips, right? The RTX, Spark, whatever. And NVIDIA also announced supercomputer chips, which are interesting because they're undercutting the price. Yeah. But Microsoft has like a, they call it DevBox maybe is what it's called. That thing looks sick. I don't even know much about the specs other than it looks cool and has the NVIDIA chip in it. Well, so let's say this and maybe tee up another episode because I do think that like we're going to get rug pulled at some point.
So if you're not working on routines to have local models do similar things that you're doing with frontier cloud models, it could be problematic at some point. Because the way we're working is changing. There's no going back. If they rug pull everything that you rely on, what the fuck are you going to do? Well, also, I feel like it's just not economical. Like, I think Anthropic and OpenAI are going to have a hard time because I would look at it like this. Like, you're a contractor and you're going to build a house, right? So you're like, I need a drill. I need hammer, whatever. Okay, I'm going to need those all the time.
So should I go to Home Depot every day and rent them? Or should I just buy a set of nice stuff? I feel like we're in that camp where you should just buy nice stuff and run it yourself. They're subsidizing compute right now. And when they can't, I mean, they're building value for a purpose. Not for fun. Not because they, oh, I just want to help you do your job better. No, they're building value. Not at all. So I think local compute becomes highly valuable. Yeah. And I think they know that we're like on the precipice of it. When they turn on the switch of it costs a lot of money now, everyone is not going to pay for it and they are going to essentially go out of business.
That's why they both want to IPO like now, get a max valuation, then just get the fuck out with all that money, which... Yeah. You know, good for them. Yeah, good for them. Because enterprise might subsidize it, but normies won't. And we need local compute. And the Chinese are providing models scaled down to run for us. So, yeah. Yep. I am using them for claws. quen or deep seek or uh kimmy is it kimmy kimmy yeah yeah kimmy m2 at yeah that's a good one yeah well i only get subsidized through open code right now but you know whatever well i'm not using it i'm not using my open code subscription for it i'm paying them directly because it's so cheap i don't use it that much so it doesn't matter yeah that's fair
But I was using my OpenCode subscription there, and then I kept using my entire limit, so I stopped doing that. Yeah. Context is everything. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, in terms of games, not playing anything. I'm actually, I have like no time at all. So I bought the new Metroid game, and I have not unwrapped it at all. It's just in the plastic. I learned today there's a new Metroid game. It came out a few months ago. I was waiting for it for like five years after they announced it. And then I finally got it, and I haven't opened it because I have too many children. I was going to say, life is a bad. I played the Indiana Jones game through Amazon Luna, and it was amazing, super fun.
Was that like streaming? Yeah. Or is it, um, okay. So you don't have like a machine you control. It's just like streamed, like whatever they dictate. And you say, I want to play this game. Like you don't have specs or like anything like that. No, no, it's pretty easy. Um, and, uh, I mean, I'm sure it takes something, but you know, I have like a, uh, GPU hardware, GPU and all that fun stuff. But yeah. Yeah, it's a great story. It's pretty simple. You just kind of make your way through it. It's a lot of fun. If you like Indiana Jones things, as I do. Yeah, it was a fun one. I started Cyberpunk, and then it was like, I have no time.
So that's a pretty big game, I think. It's a big game. I haven't played it either. I want to. It feels like it could be a lot of fun. I, like you, have children and a job and all this stuff. You know, there's two things in life I want. I want to delete my LinkedIn. And I just don't play games whenever I want. Yeah. Taylor's not listening. But, you know, I understand the game that you got to play there. But deleting my LinkedIn is pretty much a... Yeah, it's a life goal. Being able to delete it is better than anything. Buy a Ferrari? Nah, fuck that. Delete LinkedIn. Comfortable enough with your position that you don't ever have to have LinkedIn again.
Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. I don't know what I'm going to do for money because I know that there's no way that IBM is going to employ all of us for 30 more years. I could be wrong. They're an old company. Maybe they'll be one of the last holdouts of still having real software engineers do stuff, but who knows? 30 more years. 30 years? 30 years yeah i should retire now or yeah i could sell everything i own and just get a really small house like one bedroom the choice put those kids in military school and live in the one bedroom you all right yeah i mean we'll be fine we'll we'll figure something out um worst case we'll move into my parents lake house and live there it's not a bad life
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