379. The Legacy Part of Me

This is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, use Claude. Hey buddy. Hello, how are you? Fine, how are you? I'm doing alright. I'm very excited to visit with my friend Merlin Mann. Oh, that's a relief. Oh. Because you think it oh. Do you ever dread your your microphone? Um the the answer to that I know it was no. I mean no no, but I I I'm trying to uh you know I I don't know. Um Uh uh, not really. That's not generally d do you? The no, just uh the uh anxiety I've talked about sort of. Well uh like when someone's going to work, you know. But Getting to visit with my friends the the past couple days has been kind of like g going to work when you don't want to, because they make it all worth it.

Ooh, I'm being earnest. That's mmm Who else have you visited with? Oh, my friend. Oh my fake friends. Oh uh l like Kathy Cass, one of my black friends. They don't work at Facebook, unfortunately. Not part of the YouTube. Oh, you is it YouTube? That's where the Black Friends work. What happens is a lot of people don't know this bit. Alex picks up occasional black friends and it gets obsessed with them for a while and then name checks them. No for reasons that I don't completely understand. And it's not that I don't know black people, it's just that Alex starts One time? One time. I talked about Jay Miller, who does not work. So far that's accurate. What is inaccurate is that that's the only time you've you've Done.

Anyways, um no, it's nice to talk to people. It's nice to have friends. You know, sometimes uh friends get you somewhere in life. Big big pivot, but did you watch the debate last night or were you spending time with your family like a normal person? No, I watched I watched uh I watched some of it, yeah. Oh That's an interesting tone compared to the last time. No Um I had to record a show last night, so like I wasn't watching it live and then Um honestly I could only stand to watch a little bit at a time because I was very anxious about it. But yeah, I watched some of it. Did you? I did. And there are all of the h hot takes. We've ta also we've talked about the supposed undecided voter, and that was a uh yes, a very frustrating debate to watch, but also I don't know if anyone watched it.

even even the weirdos that are, you know, my fake friends were like, eh, I don't I I mean it's it seems boring. And Yeah, yeah, I was I was happy with how boring it was. It was Honestly, I mean it was it was nice. Like I I don't personally care much for the person that JD Vance likes to put on. I don't think that's how he is in real life, but that's not the conversation. The conversation is like what he's selling. And it's I don't I don't like the person that he sells on the campaign trail. And I didn't like the pivot that he made last night. But I thought it was nice that it was civil. It was weird, but the main reason I asked is because right after words on Oh god no because they talked to undecided voters.

I I want I was hoping for that. I I I admit because over the past you know There's an Ivon, not was Evon Williams? No. Who's the handsome guy? Um was not Jacob Soborov, but on CNN they were talking to another guy who obviously did live in a church. Oh, I I wish You wore a tie and everything. I tried to find the tree dwellers. Probably couldn't decide what tie to wear. I found the tree audio. I'm very excited. Um I'll Send you that later. But I was hoping to find some of the weird tree people who are like, yeah, I I don't know. Um I'm gonna get on my telephone and talk to you. Hello, Mr. Handsome Man, I'm on MSNBC But last night the debate was on CBS and uh afterwards, immediately, the guy who I have come to think of as your mi Merlin man.

John Dickerson was hosting kind of the I don't know Is my is my Merlin man? Yeah, because I i you've often said that l he is one of your heroes and you really respect him. I like him a lot. Yeah. Yes. I I I I'm interested in learning more about the Merlin Mans. the Merlin's men in my life. The a talented person who has made a big influence in the way that you think and really respects his uh the way he writes, thinks, and talks. Anyway, he and also uses um finder clips. But he right away said, huh. That that JD Vance, what I just saw was had a real sense of unreality. I'm like, yep, that's that's the way to put it. Thank you, thank you, John. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean it's it's very yeah, yeah, it was very um very uh tidied up and uh I I don't know.

I don't really have anything much to add. It's it's boring. I just love it. I'm not trying to say what you're talking about is boring. Uh I'm just saying like I I don't I don't know. I don't I don't I just I just don't know at this point. I'm I'm a little adrift. I I haven't completely given up, but I am like real talk a little bit adrift about the w state of the race and how that state of the race is reported is maybe it's frustrating to me just because I'm dreamcasting a future I'd like to have, but like the the the bit from however many weeks ago about a guy who lives in a tree. Like it's still, it's really ultimately very troubling to me. And I'm I try to use it as an opportunity to learn and grow.

But sometimes the the part of me, the legacy part of me, is like, what is wrong with you people? I mean, and this is a bit, like Jon Stewart did a pretty funny bit about this, you know, in his over-the-top way, about, you know, like you're still in the bubble. This is still this is still really a tough one for you, huh? It's like You know, and and uh and every time you say anything, there's a response, which is a real response, which is like, well, these are people who don't follow this follow these things until if they follow it at all, it's late in the cycle, such as now. Uh, or that these are people they're low propensity voters, they're low information voters. And it's like People, it's like it's like a a a baby robin has fallen out of the nest and America is just is just But but it's really more like it it just kind of like jumped out of the nest because it's not very bright.

And that then we're all like like running to gather and like buy it a heat lamp and stuff and it's like I it's so frustrating to me to have to cater this much to people that are that have this much bad faith and are or or and or are this legitimately stupid. And and so I try to leaven that by saying, well, I do understand. I I mean I do understand that like one of the numerous things people on our side tend to miss And refuse to learn is what people like Donald Trump and JD Vance represent. Mm-hmm. And so we want to have some kind of like well, ironically enough, some kind of Oxford style debate about, you know, the stuff that Donald Trump says. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't have anything smart to say about it.

It's it's a little bit it's a little bit frustrating. I I I don't know. I I don't know. It's just I uh you know, I I I and I can't say the thing I think, which is I think I think she's gonna clean his clock. But regardless of what the polls say, that's kind of it's kind of hard to understand how She doesn't win Arizona and North Carolina. I just I don't understand how she doesn't win those. It's just weird. It's very weird. But anyway, what's what's your take? It's the same as like the past weeks where I'm already wish casting in d denial because I don't I no longer look at any polls. I no longer look at Anything other than, you know, the the weird unhinged tweets I I get sent because I just refuse to believe that there are that many quote undecided voters out there because the only time I see them is when they're on a basic cable channel, which is to say not very often.

And I There are you're not you're not following the poll, so you wouldn't know this, but there are interesting things happening with the polls, different polls, different groups of people. It's all it all starts to feel like alchemy. or, you know, reading tea leaves at a certain point. I know that, you know, that's a cliche, but it really does sometimes feel like we're we've brought in somebody from a different city in Greece to come and look at the look at the sl chicken we slaughtered and decide what that means about our future. But but there, you know, it's I don't know. I hate to get wound up in this stuff, but it is, it is a little it is a little bit it's a little bit frustrating to me. And when it comes down to it, it's it's not it's not even just merely that I quote want to be right.

It's the cognitive dissonance of not understanding why this is even Why is this not 70 30 at this point? Mm-hmm. I uh wasn't uh uh trying to uh uh g uh get you uh upset, but I when you say when you're uh adrift, I think It's it's I I don't know. It's interesting. I I have this terrible disability where I it's not that I'm resistant that resistant to change. I think people who know me and have known me over time, will will hopefully know that I actually have an an active effort in my life to try and learn new things within certain parameters. But but like I said, where did I say this? Did I say this here? I said it somewhere. I said it to Roderick, I guess. Like we're constantly expecting our children to be damaged in the same way of as us and like for our children to be scared of the same things and learn the same lessons in the same order, which is a really mental thing to expect out of somebody.

Setting aside whether you really want somebody to have to live in the 1975 that you did, you know, that the that starts as extreme as, well, I hit my kids because my dad hit me and look, I turned out fine. But much more subtle versions of that. Um I I feel like m more subtle versions of that are this like If I were the guy giving out samples at Safeway, and and there was a guy who'd put on a necktie for the day And he kept coming up. And maybe, maybe, who knows? Maybe my maybe my work at Safeway is paid for partly by Safeway. Maybe it's slightly offset by the place who makes pizza rolls. Bob's pizza rolls or whatever. And like, but if there was a guy who did that thing that that is a source of humor in many things where he just kept coming back and wanting the free samples.

And just kept saying, I can't really make up my mind. Like, it's not really my station, but I certainly would think at a certain point. I don't think this guy really wants to buy pizza rolls. I think he wants free food. But maybe more saliently, I think he also likes talking to me and likes the attention. Mm-hmm. Oh, y yeah, and that's uh maybe huh. I'm I'm realizing that I The first time I sat i in like a polling place and saw the way that polls were conducted, that's kind of when I'm like, Oh, you're just This is groundhog day. It's the the same thing and you're just gonna look where the shadow is or which man in the tree answers the the phone and uh the uh I I have no one no one uh i is here who is not weird, but it's uh, you know, I've been the past couple of weeks, I have been at um spending a lot of time in inpatient brain school or, you know, inpatient um psych hospital just trying to be better and were you part of the focus group there?

Yeah. Oh that would be so cool. I wish. Uh well it's You don't have to be crazy to vote here, but it helps. Yeah. I just have come across so many conservatives, not just the the crazy ones who sit in the circle and talk, but um uh w upon just I don't know. It like visiting in the suburbs and I g I don't know if these people exist in the numbers uh that uh y Not you seem to think, but that uh media keeps Yeah, you hear people toss around numbers like seven percent, ten percent. Of uh and like again, this is defined in so many different ways, but I think this is what you're saying. There's a s single to low double digits number of people who are not For any I don't know how you phrase this without making it fraught, but like who are not committed to voting one way or another.

And that but the thing is that can mean a lot of things. I mean, the the one that we're focusing on is I can't decide between these two candidates for president. But another one is then there's the like the the version of that which is like I need more information or Kamala Harris needs to do more interviews or talk more about specific policy and and things like that. But like then there's just the thing I keep coming back to is like how many people are these how many of these people are actually going to vote? Are you gonna buy the pizza rolls or are you just gonna keep wasting my time? Yeah, that's that's what I'm I'm saying though. These people are j they're like like yeah, I'm just I'm voting for Kamala.

Like uh like the suburban m mom voters and be because it's, you know, like, all right, some lady I don't like or th the psycho. The same way that I am like, okay, yeah, I guess I'll I would have voted for Joe Biden in it rather than not voting at all. Um I think there I don't want to wish cast, but there's A lot more people v voting for uh Kamala Harris than are excited to talk about it and they're not the weirdos answering the phone. The problem is then that Um I I don't disagree with you, but like the problem is then like that becomes and you have to go back to first principles for me as like Somebody who's a little cynical about this, which is I I think I've shared with you before my feeling that a lot of what what some people call mainstream media, but like Shikes they look at all the time, like the New York Times, they are really in the business of keeping you feeling a little bit off balance all the time.

And I have to say the the whole Kamala Harris should do more interviews and Kamala Harris should have more specific policy statements. Those to me are are very good examples. of not just uh a kind of false equivalency, but of a kind of really deep deep cynicism. And and at this point, boy, I wish I had this quote right in front of me, another quote from the great John Dickerson. Um I forget where well he said this numerous times on the political gab fest, but something along the lines of he put it in his wonderful, gentle way. But like rather than focusing on the horse race and who's winning the horse race. w I you know, I kind of wish more people would focus on the stakes, the larger stakes of the election.

And that's the kind of stuff that gets lost in the lights when when somebody goes, I don't understand why Joe Biden doesn't push the stop inflation button. And the whole fact that we're still moving in to make it real dumb, the fact that we're still like having to say, no, that is not how a tariff works. The way a tariff works is you put a tariff, and because that's his answer to everything, right? You put a tariff on something to increase competition or to uh decrease competition for your own country or whatever, but if you put let's just say China makes a widget. A company in China makes a widget. They charge a dollar for that widget. We put a tariff on that widget. So that in the United States it's gonna cost you two dollars to get that widget.

Well, okay, that is technically money that you are extracting from those folks, but the the that that money will be passed straight, that increase will be passed straight to consumers. That is how it works. And so, but like then our are the poor folks on our side who are actually being you know credulous and decent about this are saying, like, what you're really talking about is like uh an uh a sales tax or an excise tax or something like you're trying trying to just like but the thing is i it isn't like china writes us a check for ten billion dollars a year So like if if you're mad about, you know, now again, of course, we've got the dock worker strike, which is gonna be crazy. Um, that's gonna be so bad.

But like remember when you couldn't get toilet paper or whatever, the supply chain problems during COVID. That wonderful story about how NVIDIA had gotten so many more orders. Was it NVIDIA? But chipmakers had gotten so many more orders. They gotten so fewer orders for things like automobiles. Do you remember this? Yeah. Because like you gotta order ahead of time. You gotta like get of fabs on the line or whatever. I don't know how it works. I don't fucking care. But like you get chips and chips are in everything. And importantly chips are in cars. Chips are also the like GPUs or something that you use to mine crypto, right? And so when there wasn't an adequate queue of people interested in, you know, buying them for cars, Then they changed over some of that that capacity to be for stuff like GPU cards and they can't you can't turn that ship In an afternoon.

Like, you know what I mean? And the the way these supply chains work, it's like it just comes to us seamlessly because it's, you know, it it bene efficiency benefits capitalism. But like, you know, it's it's frustrating to have to keep tr trying to talk about this thing that is much more nuanced and complicated than people want to talk about. And when you give an honest, incredulous answer about how you deal with that of like, wow, that's that's a really difficult problem. Whereas Trump can just go, I'm gonna pay for the child care of everyone in America by putting tariffs on China. Also he saved the ACA and the well is that I You keep it for now, but we'll get something better. Yeah, it's it's alright.

I came how do you how are you gonna do it? Oh at a certain point, like I don't benefit from the amount of attention attention that I give to this stuff. I don't feel like it makes me mentally and emotionally better off. But like you, as I think I I announced to you last week, last week, I don't know, I even know how many unreleased shows we have right now. But one of the previous times that we've We've talked. I said to you that I think you like to challenge yourself to see if you can survive things. And maybe that's what I'm doing too. Maybe I'm pressing the bruise as well. But, you know, w an anxious person, this is in the document, uh, you know, an anxious person tends to seek out resolution.

An anxious person's To seek out resolution, we often seek out what we regard as the greatest and most up-to-date amount of data that we can get about something that bothers us. And the your brain tells you that that's going to make you feel better. And it makes sense. It makes sense that your brain would tell you, look, just find out if this if a bad thing that you worry about is about to happen. And if you know it's not about to happen, you'll be fine. I'll constantly like you know gather all this string to make sure that like you can this is again this is the this is in some ways the load-bearing wall of inbox zero is in the the real the version the way I look at it anyway is that if you're fretting about what might be in your inbox, you're not doing other things Your your attention is split at the very least.

So you kind of feel like, oh, I can't go and work on this thing unless I know that I haven't gotten yelled at today or whatever. So I mean, it's natural to want to accumulate evidence. That makes you feel secure, but the horrible truth for me anyway is that it doesn't help. And I always use that example of having security cameras in our house. were like when we were away one time for several days and our smoke alarm went off and all I could do for three days was watch our cat being sad while the smoke alarm went off. I had no way to get back to the smoke alarm. There was not really and fine. And by the way, having a cat is counter-revolutionary or whatever. But what but the the takeaway that as they say at the New York Times, but what I'd like you to get from that was all I could do was watch my poor cat be sad while our house was loud.

And I could not fly home to fix that. So all that camera did was give me insight. into deeper insight into something that was stressing me out that I couldn't do anything about. In that case, more information did not help. And I I'm I try to learn from that, but it it obviously isn't helping my viewing habits at this point. Oh man, that is interesting because I, you know, do enjoy pressing the bruise, but I don't necessarily expect to f to feel. Um better and the amount the um oh god, guys uh m masochism and because uh the dispute about it. Don't don't be an online persona. Why I mean real I'm being real with you that I watch this stuff that you you claim you seem to claim that all I do all day is watch TV.

But like the reason I uh get a little obsessed with this stuff is a variety of reasons. One is that I have ADHD. And if I'm unmedicated, I get distracted. If I'm too medicated, I get super focused. So I might just reload New York Times all day long. I need to not let that happen. A phrase I just used with somebody recently. What what gets the hook in? I don't well I gotta be careful what gets the hook in, right? So I don't have personally, I mean, I don't have a good reason for that, but why do you think you press the boots? to uh is it that you deserve it? Is that it makes you feel alive? Like it's not this I'm not trying to like put you on the spot, but like but really explore. Well if you can, interrogate why you think it is that you l seek out so much horrible stuff.

You uh put it really well when it is a way to prove to myself that I can survive and Y yeah, I do think I deserve it and all of the other typical masochist stuff, but you can Do you do you consider yourself a masochist in that sense? I don't want to, but at this point I don't mean I'm not trying to be a creep about it, but I don't mean in the in the, you know, Oh yeah, no, not in the stomp on a stamp on the street. No, no, come on. Please don't, please don't. No, what I'm trying to say is but there are people Uh here's here's a really random sexist example, something that, and like so many of my observations in life, I started out realizing it about women, and then I realized it's really about everybody.

Why is it that people we know, this is our annual topic, why is it that women we know keep going out with horrible men? And you're like, oh my god. And of course, as a lonely boy, I I was always like, Why can't you like me? I'm a nice guy. I would take a skating rink and not be mean. and call you a bitch and say you gave me hand stuff and like well let's let's set aside for a minute all the pick up you know pick up artist stuff about that and just look at well is there any chance at all that Familiarity on some sub rosa level, familiarity has a bigger role in one's life than the the calm satisfaction of you know, kind of piloting your own ship? Is there a chance that the the the way that these men act toward you generates a very strong emotional response?

Let's be honest, almost all of us tend to get confused about our emotional responses. That's again, that's a big part of the pickup artist world. You know, you throw a drink on somebody and call them a slut and then you take them home and fuck them or whatever. Like that kind of, but what what where how why does that work? How could that work? How could that kind of like somebody who tricks you into playing three-card Monty, even though you know three-card Monty is a jam-up, right? But well, it there's gotta be some reason. It's not because you're stupid, and I'm not even thoroughly convinced that it's because you're a one is a quote masochist. I think sometimes there's a familiarity, a habituation, a practice.

to the kind of stuff we deliberately bring into our world or tacitly allow into our world. And it creates this emotional slurry that ends up not making us very happy. And then we wonder why, you know, we're not where we want to be in life. I should write an essay about this called Better. The uh Thank you. That was so nice. You uh s said like again This is uh thank you, Mr. Dickerson. This is a great example of uh someone's got much a game Arian to yeah. I know, I know. He's ki he's Catholic. Um but so were you. You guys could talk about that. Yeah, I enjoyed uh Trump's tweet about just on Thomas Merton. Oh Oh, I haven't read enough of him, but that's the thing. John Dickerson would be so nice about not making me feel bad.

Really? Actually, that doesn't surprise me. Well I was I was philosophy and theology adjacent, not as a spiritual pursuit, but yeah, yeah. I mean uh he's a really interesting guy. And he's got a big connection with Aristotle. You know, there's like there's like a lineage of these things. Aristotle, you know, we canceled Aristotle. He had a lot of very problematic ideas. But did you enjoy it? Do you have fun with the debate? How about those? Weren't those uh weren't those uh weren't those uh uh moderators pretty good? All business. One thing I walked away with is that we have a lot of different things to talk about. I heard that several times. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I learned about out I ran and the You ran so far away.

I uh the uh Persian Empire? We don't use that empire anymore. I had a Persian cat, I feel like I'm already kind of slightly related. I bet their eyes are clean. Oh the late great savvy. What oh what a sweeter. Uh TVOS now has really cool I I don't leave it on because I'm all about the aerial views, but they have a screensaver that'll make take your portrait photos and and make them screensavers. And we have so many Hilarious, awful, awful photos. The kinds of things that just make John Circus so uncomfortable. Terrible photos of our disgusting cat. And it looks so hilarious. This beautiful, gorgeous, 65-inch. you know, diagonal image of this disgusting cat that looks just beautiful and the the time is subtly behind the cat's brown eyes and it's I mean does he have uh I'm sure he's a little bit more than a couple of things.

Actually I think I took a photo, I'll send you a couple. I bet his like does his uh sixty-five inch T T V that he spent seven years picking out, like have a big picture of his toe? I mean, that's kind of what the I haven't there's so many pictures of I I don't want to be able to do that. If I ask, he might tell me. Oh and I don't wanna know that about his toe. No toe for daddy. No. I'm sorry, I'm looking at my telephone to try and find you a photograph of my cat on screen. No, no, no, no. I'm not criticizing him. Uh wait, here's oh here's here's Billy Bear. Oh that's really cute. That's a good one. Um oh here you go. This one's not that good, but you'll get the gist. Um do you you you have an Apple TV, right?

I do, yes. Yes I don't know. I I like the aerials. And and you know, I'll tell you a couple things. Can I give a couple hot tips, a couple life hacks that are good to know? Oh, go on. Well, I really I really love, genuinely love the screensavers. And depending on my state of mind, like sometimes I like some more than others. Now what's neat is I believe as of now, I think. When you go, God, that wonderful experience of going through the settings. You go down to uh screenser screensaver, yeah. And you can choose between aerial Right now it's still updating my portrait photos and the other one is, but you've got options, but in Arials, what's cool is, and that's those neat drone shots that are getting more gorgeous like every month.

Um, but you can choose which kinds of those you want, sort of like on your desktop, where you could say, I only I like for me, I only want the ones that are aerial shots of like topography. Or like I don't sometimes the underwater creatures freak me out a little bit. Just a little bit. Not a lot, but a little bit. Sometimes the jellyfish is a little bit more. Oh yeah, no, I'm in a lot. I don't I wish you could say I I want all underwater except the jellyfish. Well I don't know if you can do that, but you can go in and say which kinds of variables. But here's another neat thing. So you're on your Apple TV and your mileage may vary. I've I've rewired my TV button, but I think this still works. Hit hit whatever TV, whatever gets you to the top part, and then hit, oh God, what's the button in the top left that I use thousands of times a day?

The, you know, up. escape up a level one, whatever that is. Hit that twice and the screensaver starts playing. So you can watch your screensaver whenever you want. And then you know what's kind of neat? You can right arrow left arrow and it'll take you through different ones. And then if you touch slightly on the little button, it'll tell you where that place is. I didn't know a b I oh I discovered the where the place is accidentally just by brushing up against the box. button, but I didn't know that it was so easy to skip. Now I can get rid of the jellyfish. Thank you. You know, it's uh it's you know it's like uh it's like fighting vermin, you know? Bird by bird. It's an oh that's another one.

Uh fish by jelly by jelly. I uh the the way the The well, the way that you um not necessarily consume uh media, but the way that you've been feeling about the election is sort of how I I I think I felt for a while about like tech m media be because at this point I still And a million different things about the election and it kind of I don't want to say it doesn't bother me or I I don't care, but it is I am at least able to block it out and not get very emotional and looking at news sites or social media or like what where do you where do you encounter political stuff? So like Instagram kind of stuff? TikTok? Well, inst Instagram and uh TikTok, there's always also the one that you're absolutely still on a lot, like so many of my friends who will not admit it.

Yeah. Oh during the d oh uh during the debate, yeah. I was sort of kind of looking at the. No, I'm actually not on Twitter. Like I've host I've blocked blocked it at the host files level. That's very impressive. I've uh will it at least admit I've done if it's impressive. Just Eero lets you do that. And my and also Next DNS. Next DNS, you can do that in there too. It's pretty great. In what uh DNS? In Oh, my power combo is uh Next DNS and Tailscale work really well together. So go to just go to next DNS. com. I think that's what it's called. And uh you'll see that you can have your own like open DNS back in the day. It's a little bit like Google's 1111 or whatever. uh next DNS but you can go in and uh set your DNS stuff to work the way you want and then because it integrates with Tailscale you can say on all of my devices use you can have profiles.

I have a profile for house. I have a profile for office. Here's all the rules as far as what gets blocked. You know, this is blocking at the DNS level, so it really speeds things up. And it I don't get ads in Apple News Plus anymore. Uh ho ho ho wow well wow. It's an experiment, but I would suggest ch checking out next DNS. io It works very nicely with Tail Scale. And Matt, in front of the show, Matt Howie, uh I I'm I'm not putting together the notes, but Matt had a nice post today about uh how he uses Tail Scale to get his whole family, including his parents. like in the same uh ecosystem with especially Apple TV entertainment viewing. Like I've I've got Tailscale running on my Apple TV. It was very easy to do.

What does that I'm I'm still not familiar with tailscale as uh other than the fact that it has DNS c capabilities, but I know it's not a good thing. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Well, but but there's a lot to it. What's neat is you've got you've got a Like in my case, let's just look at a simple example of this, which is I've got an office with a bunch of tech stuff that has IP addresses. At my house, I've got, I think arguably even more and more disparate things. that you know and in the so like I've got my Comcast cable at my house. I got my Comcast cable. I got I got all that stuff. I've got VPNs you can turn on and off. What Tailscale does is lets you continue running whatever stuff is already working great.

So like in my case, like you know, like with you, like you've got your, this is probably not as super valuable for you for a variety of reasons, but like Everything will just keep running the way it's running. What TailScale does though is you know to just call it a VPN, it's ironic because it doesn't do all the bullshit the quote VPNs do. It's not so you can watch Italian Doctor Who. It's so you've got a tunnel between things. Okay, but so like all of my stuff, let me send you a screen grab just to give you a feel for this. What you do is you you register at Tell Scale that they have a free account that is extremely generous. And I'm signing in with Apple, I'm clicking. And what you do is uh the most basic one is like you can run this as an app on a device, but the easiest way to run it is through God, you can use your Apple TV, you can use Synologies, you can use all these different things.

But when you're done, what you get is all these different devices that have whatever name. You want to give it and it's like they're all on the same network. It's almost like they're all in the same room. So my my Synologies, my Synology is in two different locations. I mean, my Apple TV is called Apple TV. And so, for example, one of my Synologies, for the sake of argument, let's say my Synology is called Synology. If I go into Safari and type Synology, 5100. Anywhere when I have tail scale turned on, it logs me into my Synology. Now I'm gonna go over that again because I just want to be very clear. All I typed in Safari is Synology. 5001, the port. Or whatever, right? So all your stuff is just stuffed now.

It also integrates with screens. So there's now an like a an inbuilt way with screens to automatically capture all the stuff that you have in your tail scale. And so I promise to give you a screen grab. I will give you this screen grab. If this has sensitive stuff, don't fuck me over, but Um, so when you're logged in, you have this page called machines, and then you have all these crazy numbers of uh uh options for going in and saying, like, well now you've got So like I have an IP address for every single one of these. There's the IP address that gets assigned by my Eero, for example, but now there's a whole different set of IP addresses, 100. something addresses, that are all just my tail scale device.

So if I do like 100, 100, I don't know how to do this without screwing myself up. 100. 75. 110. 101. That's always, always, always gonna go to this. device. So that's not the IP address that the Eero gave it, it's the IP address that the Tailscale sees. And all that stuff is just transparent now. Another example, go to your finder. I don't know if you have a computer. Go to your finder and hit Command K. and you know bring up the networks interface. You just just type in, in my case, type Synology and hit enter. And I'll be browsing that Like if I want to browse. Yeah. network is pretty cool. The other thing that really, really this is really obscure, but another nice thing with Synology, one of the dangers or the risks of a Synology is, you know, you as much as you try to keep it updated and harden your stuff, there's still like you still want to look at like okay, are people trying to like constantly trying to log in from Russia?

And you can go in, you can manually you can say anybody that unsuccessfully tries to log in three times gets banned or whatever and blah da blah da blah. But that's kind of a boil the ocean model. With this, you just exclude, totally exclude access to anything outside of your Tail Scale network. And they They can't log in. Well, uh the what Matt Howie s says uh uh puts it s similarly, but just that's the Yeah, tell me what Matt Howey says. He's better at this stuff. Um the problem with VPNs is twofold. One, they can be expensive, blah blah blah blah blah blah. Second problem. Yeah, yeah. So slow The second problem is that it's hard to trust any VPN company or service you don't own. A VPN owner is a good thing.

You cannot fucking get this into people's heads. Yes, yes. You basically created a personal honeypot with your face on it. Mm-hmm. Oh, by the way, everything I want to hide, I've just turned on the hiding stuff switch. Oh great. So now this company is gonna get all the stuff I want to hide specifically. Yeah. Well, you better super trust who those people are. And he he notes that uh it may be internet lore, but a lot of people think most popular VPN companies are fronts for intelligence agencies and law enforcement. Just very simple. There's a lot of reviews. You can go out, I think Max talked about this on Torrent Freak maybe. But you can go out and see is this here's the most basic one. Will these people spill the goods to a five eyes country?

Yep. And oh not not just that. I want to know if And again, uh to me, I'm not trying to say that I'm leet. I'm not an edgelord. I'm just trying to latch the screen door and be able to get to my Synology. But um you should check it out. It's pretty neat. And like I say, it's it's not very expensive. I popped for a slightly upgraded next DNS because I got a lot more, you know, monthly requests. But Um it's very economical for what you get. And this looks like I almost understand what is. Let me give you another example. Um and I I would uh I would prefer you didn't share Never mind, it's hard to explain. But I'm looking at my Synology right now and you see all of this information on the detail page about this.

You know, doesn't does the software need to be updated? Like where is it located? Tell me every port that's open on this thing. Um like it's just it's really, really smart. The iPhone, like all these, the iPhone iOS app is like okay, but using it on the web is is is really terrific. But I mean there are times I wish I could get Italian Doctor Who. I mean there are times where there there have been times and I maybe there's a way because Matt kind of talks about that. Right. Where he's talking about when you've got a tail scale network, now his folks appear to be on a network in Oregon, right? I uh I I mean there are easier um ways to get Italian Doctor Who thanks to downscale. If you want to test this stuff out, I mean my go-to is usually IP leak.

Um, IP L E A K, which is a pretty good site for testing this stuff. There's a whole bunch of different ones, but you can find a bunch of those to just kind of like see how good it's doing. So if I go to IP leak, it's gonna say, hey. This is totally you're totally where you are. Like it it it can figure out from IP address stuff. Just because it's a different IP address doesn't mean it's not my IP address. If I wanted to do more of that stuff, I would do WireGuard, straight up WireGuard. My problem is that my upload speeds are so shit that I can't, it is really pointless to try and run that on a Synology. Now another thing Tailscale does is has what's called exit nodes, which is you can say from now on, my Apple TV is now my VPN.

My Apple T route all of my traffic through my Apple TV. Yeah. Wow and it will, and so that It it all passes. Now, if you've got really good upload speeds, that'll work swell. I I mean I've tested it fairly extensively, and I max out around 17 megs up. I've got almost a thousand down and 17 up. And that really, sorry to all my friends who try to watch stuff on my plex. It's it's a fool's errand. Or people who try to download Duck Soup, for example. I finally got it. Oh, just watch it's really good. No, I will. I will. I'm not bothered Alex, I'm I'm here as a friend No, but I know that it is a good use of um my time. I sh I shouldn't be looking at Twitter during a d debate. Mm mm because yeah, it doesn't bother me or cause me any sort of e emotional distress, but it's better than what?

It it really does. Uh yeah, it's it's it's pretty important. Yeah, yeah, but like It's one thing to be varying into the pneumatic tube system and it's another thing to write something worth sending. Yeah, and I mean I And like no matter how much you learn about pneumatic tubes, it's not going to amount to a lot. unless you start sending and receiving messages that make your life better. Mm-hmm. I I keep thinking that the w w the way that you feel about the uh l the legacy m media stuff is how I keep doing deep dives on why someone doesn't like, say, OpenAI or the challenge that m I probably didn't do but just to try out Claude for which is not Google, Claude by Anthropic. Um I did, I did, I play with it.

Oh, interesting. Okay. I really want to do that. One of our lost episodes, I did. Yes. Um the I just keep being like, okay, why exactly don't you like it? Why like what can I do to tell you that it is not as you say a Coke machine and it's not doing the let me let me tell help. Let me please please. This isn't a a thing you need to uh I mean like a I think a I feel like a at least for me for me I'm not speaking for you but for me a plain way to put it is Setting aside all the emotional valence about these things. I mean, is it really that difficult? Even John Syracuse uses it for programming questions. Like is it really is it are are you so emotionally round wound up in how much this is bad for for reasons that you cannot see any elements the short term thing of like what this thing could do for you now, but like maybe it's time to start updating your idea of what computers are, because I'm not sure they're gonna pause future developments based on what you're comfortable with.

Despite the open letters that academics release, there hasn't been a pause on all AI development. Well, m what I just keep telling people now, which it doesn't work so much with people who do know how the tubes and wires work, and I only mm barely do to some extent is all right you were fine with other companies scraping your data when it was beneficial. to you and sure it was it wasn't creating something out of thin air, but Google is kind of Fucked at this point. Like Google doesn't really work at this point. Google the search yes, the alphabet search engine Google is i it's pretty pretty shitty, but you were really okay with that when it made you a bunch of money and it directed two traffic.

Like every everybody likes it when their company's getting contracts to make enamel pots. But then other stuff happens and you're like, oh gosh, I guess we should have vetted this guy a little bit more. I mean, it's it's not I I don't know. It's it's just it's it's weird. And I mean like I think another way to look at it that's really boring but useful is to go like, well, maybe this people don't have a place in their life for this. Maybe there are people who want to use this to cheat on an essay. Maybe there are people who want, you know, in my case, I looked up, I looked up this morning, God, I use it constantly. Uh, what's a good recipe for a fly trap, for the liquid in a fly trap? Like maybe you can do all of that with Google.

It's just that in my case, like I can't pitch people on this. And why would they want to be pitched on this? But like the way that I can have an ongoing thread. about megalopolis and say like, okay, so what are other movies they've the people in this have been in and like oh yeah well you know Dustin Hoffman and John Voigt were also in Midnight Cowboy together It's kind of a better movie. But like uh that ability to reintegrate all that information, have it remember what I said, and like I don't know, I that I I I will cop to the fact that that really just works with how my brain works. I am Prejudice is the wrong word. I would say I am much more tolerant of a lot of the things folks don't like about this stuff just because it really does very valuable things and magical things for me right now.

You better open minded the I towards oak l okay. uh there are a lot of uh folks who just are mad because this time capitalism left them behind and are like oh wait some tech companies that thought like but you're you're really into S SEO, like your regular Danny O. Sullivan, when SEO is working for you. But when when the algorithm changes, you're all pissed off and talk about how unfair it is. And it's like which is totally understandable because you have self-interest. You I mean, I think uh g you know. Setting aside all the million other things that could happen in the world, we prefer the things happen in the world that benefit us in the short and long term. And when that doesn't happen, we get a little fretful about it.

And but then sometimes also that plays into a narrative. that lands well with us, which is the same problem that we have in politics right now, which is like, well, that just fits into the narrative that I like. So it doesn't matter. Like, you know, if I have to create these stories to make people understand the plight of the American people, I'll do it. investigating why folks are so closed-minded uh about this, because it's I I talked with our friend Kathy Campbell on r Roboism, it's just that capitalism didn't swing their way this time. And uh suddenly what did you call Mr. S. I like I like that character. And uh Really, once you dig uh just right past the surface, there aren't any uh uh maybe there's some emotional qualms, but there aren't any real ethical or moral dilemmas.

for uh folks about whether or not work was quotes stolen or whether s z it is be energy is being used inefficiently and like their arguments aren't real and uh They also ignore folks who have been into this. Once you like uh just dig a little bit deeper and you point them to people who have been in the AI field for uh decades who aren't on the like weird AGI trend who aren't l little pawns of Sam Altman, but are people who are l j just as critical, if not more, of uh certain aspects of LLMs and uh actually understand what's going on under the hood. Way more than Yeah. I don't think it's like sixty sixty different little m monopoly men trying to fuck you over. I mean I I think they like anybody at Apple or a company you like one likes more.

I I think they probably want to make the best thing that they can. But And I I don't I don't uh I don't know, man. It's just it's so easy to get really wound up in this stuff. And I certainly am guilty of that for sure. But Um, what was the thing I was just thinking of? One time late in the 43 Folders days, uh I want to stipulate for the record that I really like Gina Trapani. Um, I was pretty close to Gina Trapani for a while. Um uh you know, uh uh us and our wives have been out to dinner. Like it's I really like Gina and I think she's really good at what she does. And like she had a job at LifeHacker. LifeHacker for a variety of reasons was a very frustrating site for me. Um, rarely more so than one Sunday morning.

I think it was a Sunday morning, I don't remember exactly, but I do remember like I think getting a note, getting a uh email or something from somebody going like, Have you seen Gawker? Or have you seen um LifeHacker? And I was like, No. And they started this new thing where to like pad out their, well, sorry, let me not say why I think they did this. What I can say factually was that Interleaved, by the way, the weekends are when you would get the really good content at Life Hacker. That's when you got the thing about how to clean your debit card or soak your dishes. That's when the really good content would flow to the top. But they were interleaving headlines um from other websites on their site and basically like like wrapping other people's My impression was that they basically entered in like 15 RSS feeds and now stuff from 43 folders was going to show up.

on the Life Hacker homepage. Mm-hmm. But that's not stealing. Well, I'm I'm I wanna I'm gonna speak slowly because I wanna make a very subtle point here that shows you what a fucking weirdo I am. And I I wrote a meme post about this, like I used to do. But like it's it's if you want to like, what is what is stealing other people's stuff? when it comes to like articles or whatever. Well yeah, but I worked really hard on that. My predictions about what'll be in iOS 35 and what Ming Chi Kuo said. I worked really hard to like transcribe his comments about that. Or whatever. Like, okay, but like my feeling always was like, God, it's free for a reason. I wouldn't be where I am or have been where I've been if I didn't give it all away.

It's death. It's death to put a but at least it used to be death to put like a you know um put a a turnstile on your work. I was very happy to see the stuff distributed and put out there. The the thing that I was really frustrated about that particular day, and I I used, you know, point of personal privilege. I contacted Gina by email immediately and I was like, can you Can you tell them to stop doing this, please? Mm-hmm. And, you know, of course, or not, of course, but People like Gawker, they think they're doing you a big favor. You know, man? Like, oh gosh, all of these, finally somebody's done a decent site about life hacks. Now, you know what? Let's spread the wealth a little bit. Let's start sucking down your content.

Put it on our site and increase the number of ad views we've got on here. And I think what I said at the time was something like. I mean, I can always make more stuff. And God willing, I will always have more ideas and a way and a forum for articulating them. But but I can't do anything about it if you've scratch my name off of it. Cause so like on the the the first big beef is like it's like dude I don't want to be associated With your website. Like, I don't like your website. And like, you didn't ask me if you could do that. You just assumed that like you could go. And I here's where it gets really, really almost insufferably subtle. is like you can steal anything of mine you want, but please don't scratch my name on it and put yours on it and and then act like you're doing me a favor.

That's the kind of stuff that I think From a the perspective of somebody who wants to have a a life of creative work, that's where I think capitalism can be so frustrating in some ways. It's like, oh, this no bless oblige that we have here at Gaker because you know we're a really big deal. And like it we're so nice, and wow, why are you being such a dick about it? Yeah, sure, we'll take it off. But like it's like you're not allowed to make it look like we have an arrangement. You're not allowed to make it look like we're pals. You're not allowed to take a hit off of my Wuffie to enhance your own shitty website. Like I care about everything I post. You don't have to like it. You don't even have to agree.

But I I do care quite a lot about where it gets to live. And I'm really picky about who I will work with. So to me, the ultimate sin was not that they quote, stole my work. Hey, here's an idea. Get some index cards and Find a way to stick them together. It's more I was a little bit frustrated and if I'm being honest, a little bit galled. By the way, like that was supposed to be a big favor to me. So I don't know if that, I don't think that adds anything too useful to our conversation right now, because at the same time, I also absolutely understand. I I made a um I had a prompt a couple weeks ago where I asked it uh I was making fun of Syracuse and I asked it to make me a character from D D. And it it was the I'll send you a link if you want.

It's the most wild unintentional fuck up I've seen yet. Because it was a picture of it was weird. It looked like me. Like if I were cast as like God in um who's supposed to be a like a 10th level cleric. But at the bottom, you know, sometimes you'll see blah-bada blah blah getty images, blah-bdah blah blah, you know, stock photo. This in very clear and unmistakable type was the actual watermark from Dungeons and Dragons in like a the bottom quarter of the image was act it said Dungeons and Dragons And you know how it is. Like they'll usually obviously. I thought you had put that part, I thought you had prompted it. That's what it created for me. Yeah. And like, man, if I were Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro or whoever, I'd be real frustrated about that.

that. I would I would find that real frustrating. If even if if I was out there like doing like s fan art slash fiction on uh whatever it's called, uh the Divine Article. What's that place called? Beast Beast Art? What's it called? DVNT art? DVNT art. I think about that too. If you made my if you take my pr pregnant Pokemon and figure out how to make it into an iPod. Like I'd be mad about that. Like I I absolutely get that. It's it's really frustrating. I mean even before we get into the whole like you're putting illustrators out of business, which you are, but like, I mean, you know, the world changes. Journalism was People were being laid off before uh open AI came for routed. Uh uh what I what I'm trying not to say is like, oh, you guys are such snowflakes about your precious art.

I'm not trying to say that at all. I mean, there's any variety of ways that's frustrating. Go back to when Who was it? Anthropology? No. Who was who was it might have been a hot topic, but where there's been those instances in the past where like a very distinctive visual design for like a t-shirt or whatever, not just a generic like, you know, well, I got a blowjob in Ohio type shirts, but like actual like really good, like beautiful stuff that you would see maybe on Cotton Bureau. Like those get those get yoinked. by these companies. Like, that's horrible. What a shitty thing to do. Yeah. It used to be that r Redbubble, you could even go Yeah. You would go in and uh put any even uh the name of a very small uh a podcast or a weird uh one that has the week name in it and there would be suddenly oh look at Dubai Friday shirt with the logo and all of that.

Any any sort of thing. I don't know about that, but I know the McElroy brothers like a lot. Please don't tell me about it. Please don't tell me about it. This is why I'm so healthy. I don't need to know information about how people are shitty. Like I have so much, I have such an accumulation of information about how people are shitty. And the more of that that I get, the more I harden. unintentionally into this idea that that's how the world is. And it's like, well, no wonder, man, if you you you keep eat drinking out of the toilet and saying this is bad soup. Well, get a different restaurant, you know. God damn it. Red bubble. Red bubble. Well, that's still happening with uh like every trap shipping company stealing.

Who's being a snowflake and who who has a point? Oh, I b I am a snowflake a as well, but at least I can recognize that it's a self-interest that's a real thing, Alex. Don't think that you think has a point to make about capitalism taking their shit and and is that relevant to our concern to people's concerns about LLMs and how they're trained. That's two uh s separate th things because there is a box, yeah. Oh, there I Um I remember. It is no there's nothing this is you started you you you began the show by wanting to talk about politics And now here we are. Okay, we'll uh open uh ChatGBT. It's okay if it's if it's okay it's served through the internet, but I want you to tell me something you're excited about that's not merely just a tool, a platform, a service, or a hot topic.

The ability the the ab ability uh for Claude to uh create What? You said it doesn't need to be it doesn't hold on. No, it's being served to this. The puzzle the the the puzzles and the puzzles, the puzzles. You can create really cool puzzles and uh s like an obvious one people do is a sort of a choose your own adventure thing. I'm gonna do a lot of things. Your your what on the strands? I bet you're on my own strands. The uh I've I've kind of enjoyed that. Wouldn't it be fun if like an episode of a podcast came out and you had a had a strands for it? Yes. Yes. Mine'll make more sense than theirs. There's uh yeah, and uh I for egg example, uh I was putting in transcripts into Claude and trying actually to make connection the game a connections puzzle based on the So that's been delighting me.

It's been delighting like this is th that is why I'm not sure. No, oh no. I think um all an equal amount. because part of what delights me is how different these models are trained and how as Syracusa would say it's it's a Planko machine you can use the same Uh the you can use uh open AI's model and uh anthropic's model, and uh the balls just go it's almost like you can't Wait, no, this is a bet wait, this is better metaphor. It's like it's a completely different machine that uh every model is because yeah the ball's going to go in a different place every time even if you're s using the same LLM But uh uh Claude is a completely different m gambling machine and the ball is moving in ways that I hadn't expected before because I had used uh OpenAI's Uh well now ChatGPT is 4.

0 almost exclusively just because it's I've had so much s success with it. And uh the way that Claude is m machine, if you will, is built in a different way is really interesting and delightful to me. And why I don't think I've I I think I'm less hardened by the political conversations around uh uh any sort of AI because experiencing the actual delight and sharing the things that I've been able to make or the different ways I have uh started to think or explore. Yeah, I think I know what you mean though th that's so we've talked about this before though, the that idea is kind of following your nose. And the way I I put it, which probably is a little frustrating for some people, is that how how I how I'm trying to learn how to collaborate in more interesting ways with the model.

Yeah, and we like you kind of surprise each other a little bit, right? Yeah. And I want to hear from you about how using Claude was, because I find it l collaborating with a completely different kind of person almost. And I think that's very cool. That is that is that is super cool. I'm trying to see if there's any interesting ones I've had lately. Uh I mean a lot of really pedestrian stuff. Oh yeah, I had it make posters. I had it make goth posters of classical music. That turned out kind of cool. Um But yeah, yeah. Um I um I played with it a little bit and I thought it was this is a previous challenge from a lost episode was that um was to play with uh uh Claude, which is by Google. And um Google is Claude.

Mm-hmm Google and I uh I play with it a little bit. It seems seems very cool. I kinda like the way it looks Uh I'm still currently I said this to somebody the other day. I said this to my new friend Jeff the other day. I was on a really good podcast episode where I talked about myself. Um, but like I was talking to Jeff about this and like the Um doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I I I just um I find this s so Absorbing. I find it so useful. I find it so like just like silly fun sometimes. But like then I I am sometimes pretty amazed by what we can get up to together. And did you get the voice thing yet? Yes. You got it right? You need to be on a really fast connection, but it's It's and it's not it's not perfect, but it is absolutely as good as I had hoped, and it's fucking crazy.

just been using it over uh a cell connection and it's been fine for maybe of course because it it this is known that I have literally the worst demos in the world. So we're in our we're in our driverless car on the way to uh see a movie yesterday. You've been in one of those. Sorry. Oh, if you ever want to talk about Waymo's, oh my god. This is what this these are the things that delight me, uh Merlin. These are the things that uh not just delight but excite me and I'm not sure. Oh, I I said this to Christina Warren la a couple weeks ago. It uh I w the only way I would ever consider owning a car at this point was if it were the Waymo's that I take. I would like a timeshare. What about it can't go around a corner?

It's all it hits a blue. You're doing the thing. I'm not sure if you're doing the thing where you amplify the voices of the silly. Uh well I think there's a difference between amplifying the voices of the silly and pointing out the uh s how tiny the silliness actually is compared to the usefulness. It's amazing. Anyways, uh, and what was my point? Is that we were way mowing there listening to Conan O'Brien. Uh, because it has like a little system in the car. Oh, listen, also the MCR. They have an MCR station, so we're uh listening to that. An MC Oh, my chemical ruin okay, I'm not cool. It played it it played a really shitty Jimmy World song and I said, I think this is that band Alex likes. No, they're not all bad.

But wait, no, dude, who's who's the one that's like the guy with the hat? What was that? Is that you mean world? Who is that? Who's gonna have the hat? I think you're talking about Fallout Boy. Do you have the time to listen to me whine? And so, uh, what was my point? We were in the car. Oh, and I was like, dude, you gotta f you gotta see this. Well, and of course I I I'm I'm walking around the house with my phone. talking to it and it's you know it's pretty neat and so I'm like um I was like hey can I introduce you to my wife Madeline And uh and Vale says, sure, hello Madeline, how are you? And she's like, don't. I was like, okay, fine. So then Billy's about to head out to go to a meeting. And I go, um, hey, can I introduce you to my my kid Billy?

Like, hi Billy, it's nice to meet you. And Billy goes, uh Just just shakes his head some way. Can I give you a suggestion though? Hey, I'm gonna what I I told Matt I don't I'm trying to pull it up, but hey, this is my spouse you know uh this is my spouse Matt that you know about. Can you uh give him a quick intro? I totally creeped out. But did you specify did you specify that? Hello, Vale. Vale's a good voice, by the way. I believe I l uh is it Breeze? I I forget. But I specifically said Don't. And you can ask it to speak with a southern accent. You can speed it up. I ask it to give me different accents from different areas. And it was terrible at all of them, but they were different and it was very funny.

I asked it to to talk like I asked it to say a famous quote from Gambit uh as though she were from New Orleans. And she did. It was really funny. Oh Monsieur. Um I well the mainly I'd I said to Matt, I said, uh hey, this is this is Madeline. Hey, nice to meet you, Madeline. And I said, um, hey, where was Madeline born? No, I'm flexing, but it's not impressive. It's creepy. Because Madeline was born in Providence, Rhode Island. And like, ah, how many days old is Madeline? She's like, you know, I should really get back to work. I my my I I kind of do I know it's hard uh m to not anthropomorphize certain aspects, but I do wish I could name sort of the different um profile I I I had because eventually to get to where thread you can have a thread.

Like I've got a megalopolis thread. This used to be more useful. There's some stuff that never mind. You know what, let's do let's let's let's let's do this. Let's let's get this one episode out today. Okay. And Daddy can do that if necessary. But maybe we can really skip the after show. I just really we need to get an episode out. Straight to tape. Let's just put this out. Node jazz breaks. Oh, and who's gonna who's gonna drop the ads in? Uh Squarespace. Indeed. Just the right sink, just the right bounce. Um, but I tried to do a demo on the car, and of course, because it was on cellular. It was like not as exciting. But no, I tried a thing where I just had my headphones on and uh I think I might have posted a little of this, but let me see if I can find it, 'cause this was actually a pretty interesting thread.

And I said, hey, is this veil? Uh she says, hey there, what's up? I said uh I said I want to try an experiment tonight that could use your help. Um ask the questions about what the fastest model is. I said, would it be rude to ask you to talk a little bit faster? And uh she talked faster. And but then I got into like I I was doing stuff where I was adding things to a task paper file where I was just saying, hey, I want a bunch of stuff. to be on my I'm gonna be talking and when I ask you to add things to my to-do list, I want you to, you know, remember these as separate tasks. And it worked amazing. Where I could say like um create a task to buy seltzer and it did that no problem. And I said, well let's try a few of these.

I need to I need to uh flush my toilet. and uh and and drain my toothbrush and and eat my boogers. And it successfully put those onto separate lines with a dash in front of it. And then I said underneath the existing items, create a new project called Project Two. And it did that. And then I was able to add things under that. And I said, well, give that to me as a task paper file. I mean, again, proof of concept, but uh I'm not gonna put it in a negative way, but like that is I can see very useful things in that to me personally It's that I don't know why you say that you can see it when you're literally already doing it. Yeah, but it's but that's just it's just a proof of concept. Like I would not want to sail in that particular boat.

Like I don't think that's ready. I mean I'm it's not gonna replace typing on my computer by a long shot. But it is and also let's get let's get into like what this portends for the future, which is like whatever we're calling it, whenever it comes out, whatever Minchi Kuo's case leaks tell us about the future, fascinating stuff. Um there is a world coming where we're gonna I'm gonna be able to get my arms around this stuff in a more effective way. Like as okay good as SIRI is right now, it's really not that good. It's definitely not getting better. If anything, I'm experiencing progressions. with every voice service for sure across the board. Like tech, did it hear me? Did it get it? Did it do the thing?

It just can't connect to the internet for weeks at a time. I just get these things all the time. Sometimes all of my home kit devices just disappear. And I don't know what I have to do to get that to work again. Like all that stuff. It's all still young. That's why I say it the future because for m I'm I always think of something and I probably don't understand this right and frankly I don't care but I've heard people like my friend Nelson talk about Emacs And how in Emacs you have these like . el lists, which are like if you like anything, for example, if you like anything that Omni Group has ever made, um you will understand that all of those folks are Emacs folks. the list-centric, list-based idea of life.

In some ways, I'm saying it traces back to Emacs. But there are. el files that are absolutely incredible. It's it would be, and I've I've thought about this. This is the big project. The big project for me is one I don't know if it's a text file. I don't know if it's JSON. I don't frankly, I don't care. I want one place where everything goes. Yeah. So so I can talk and talk and talk and talk and whatever. And I I played with this with uh what's the shitty one? Um the the one I canceled, uh the one that tried to do this and have it work where you talk and it does the thing. But I wanted to I want to be able to just talk in whatever and like I don't even want to have to say summarize this. I don't even want to have to say find this link.

I don't have to say any of that stuff. I want to learn enough about me that from context clues, it does all the stuff I would ordinarily want to do. A similar thing. And again, my friend Jeff did this with this podcast I was on the other day. You upload the transcript to something, or you do this in D script, and you say, like, just do my stuff on this. Well, what's my stuff? Well, I wanted to learn what my stuff is. And my stuff is find everything in here that's a link, a video, a reference. Find and then do go in, and D script actually did this pretty well the other day. Go in and find, here's 25 titles from reconcilable differences in the past. Generate 10 titles. that are in a similar style to this.

And it did a pretty good job. But but the the w numerous missing links between where we are and where we might end up is You're lucky if the if the ping-pong ball fits down the pipe and makes it to the bottom, let alone that it makes it through your entire pneumatic tube system. Like I would not count on this as the way that I do to-do lists and reminders, but the hooks and the bones are there for this being really powerful. And I don't personally want to get into when Siri will do what. I don't care. I'm trying to look at a much broader picture here of like we're not that far off from this stuff actually being pretty useful. And you can see from there's a point of view where you can see how this will get powerful.

I It's just that it's not powerful yet. You have to play with it It's a toy. It's like it's not, this is not meant to run your business. So don't act like that's what it's for. But also don't deny yourself the opportunity to see what a little bit of the future looks like and start at least warming up your mind a little bit to what the future can mean and what your role in it can be. Don't be a we don't be a weirdo. What was different about Claude, which is which is not Google? Let me go log in because I was on the web, C-L-A-U-D-E dotai, and I think I go there and I think I log in. There were elements of it I just I found a little confusing. I like the way it looks. Signage the first and most obvious thing about it is how much it wants to tell you I'm not a person.

I'm not a person. I'm an LLM. I'm a I'm a person. And that uh it emphasizing safety so much. I don't even know if it actually emphasizes uh safety on the back end, but it loves to say how much it wants to be safe to the point where it hampers the the actual workflow sometimes. And sometimes you can ask it to tone that down. You really don't need to keep warning me about what muriatic acid does. I I understand. And I understand I should seek medical advice for everything and I understand all that. But like Yeah, yeah. And and I did it in like such a gentle way, trying to be a dickerson of like, hey, lit I know the risks of AI and I know that this is let me find the transcript. Um, I know this is really important for me to remember, and I know that there are a lot of risks that come with AI, but I'm excited to explore what possibilities you have in a cautious way.

And then after that, it chilled out, sort of, and was. . But again, for me, I think of it as a collaboration, which I know it's not because I'm just talking to math title. I know I'm just talking to math. I understand. But like There's something to this and I've got there is a shape to this project that makes sense to me. And it's it's difficult to describe to people because it makes you seem like a very simple person. But In the same way that, like if you're trying to like troubleshoot a problem, I mean, there's the kind of troubleshooting of a problem that one does in life where you throw everything at it and you're just happy if it fixes it. It. You don't need to understand what worked. You don't need to understand what didn't.

And then there's another kind of problem solving that I think is a little more sophisticated. And again, from the document, I think it's useful to not say you've solved a problem until you understand. what the problem was and how your specific solution fixed it. If you can't do that, you just got lucky, which is okay, but that's not the same thing. So when I go in with this thing, I'm I do also try to then minimize because I've stepped on my own dick a bunch, especially when memory first came in. I filled up my memory so fast. Like so fast. I wanted this to be, I went into this very ambitious project with my garden and with several other things where I was telling it all of my information for all my Synologies.

All my information. I w I thought this was gonna be like my. el file where I could just put of all this inform and I within a week or so I got the thing about how it's filled up. I gotta delete some stuff, which is understandable, but To me, that's a big part of the power. Remember when when uh ALEXA first added the thing where you could just tell it things to remember? Yeah. Like I don't know if folks know this, but I always thought this was was kind of neat and should be included and expanded in more voice things where you could say, hey Dingus, remember my my keys are in the blue cabinet. Or remember I bought cat litter today. Right. So, and it's neat, because then one one model of that is somebody who lives in your house, presumably could say, where are the keys?

And it would say in the blue cabinet, right? Um But but also like having that be my log, having it be my and again, this kind of leads into the bike log idea, but like I just want a little buddy Who figures out, who can hear what I said and then figure out what to do about it. And it's my belief, being a relatively simple person, there's not that many things that I do. And by that I mean you could look at the context that I have. My contexts are house, office, errands, iOS. draft this thing. There's not that many. That'll tell you a lot about my life. If you can learn the nouns and verbs of my life, I just want you to be. fast pipes for getting things from one place to another. And in the same way that reminders is not over difficult to understand or is reminders does a great job.

I say, hey Dingus, remind me to grab ice when I leave the office in 20 minutes. And it does it. It works great. Mm-hmm. But if I'm gonna bitch a little bit, I mean how do I capture new stuff on the fly with my voice? Almost nothing works. You can't really do stuff with notes with your voice. You can do stuff with reminders, but then that starts piling up. I just want there to be a concierge, a host. Not in the computer sense, but I just want somebody who knows enough about me to know where stuff should go. I don't want a super intelligent assistant. I I want a reliable assistant who understands the rules that I've given it. That has learned what to index and optimize for and has learned what not to worry about and doesn't get too cute about it.

I mean, I don't want my brakes in the car to sing a song. I want it to stop the automobile. Ah, you just died in a collision. Ain't that a bumper fee? Yes sir. raw transcript