400. What the Can Sounds Like

This is or do by Friday. A weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, manipulate your data. Hello, Marlin. How are you? Hello, I'm very well, Alex. How are you? I'm wonderful. I'm having one of those days Where I'm like, is this how most people feel all the time? Because I got twelve hour oh no, I think thirteen hours of sleep. And it's just, oh, it's just great. I feel great. Do you notice a difference? Yes. Yeah. I really do. So so when you're like, I got some good sleep, do you really feel like different right away or throughout the whole day? Am I gonna feel good all day? I imagine it differs a lot from person to person. I know that I'm acting like it's a flip a switch that got flipped, but No, I mean it's it's uh it does it really does make a difference, you know?

It it it really does. And uh and uh for for me also then like having the whatever it is, the will to like actually do some stuff that's useful is a nice feeling that you can Kind of bounce off the back of a good night's sleep sometimes to actually accomplish something. Oh, I didn't say that. I mean I I never sleep before recording and I always do something good which is talking to you. No. Yeah. Hmm. Well, I'm glad you're here and I'm glad you slept. I don't understand how my heart rate variability seems to be going down every single day. It doesn't seem like a good pattern. I don't pay a ton of attention, but sometimes I'll think, hmm, I feel like I slept okay, and I woke up feeling pretty good.

And I look at my dingus and the dingus is like, your heart rate variability went down five. It's like how can it always be going down? What is it, the stock market? Am I right? Wait I I also thought that was a good thing. Shouldn't you not be like bee-boo wee-woo throughout the night? Shouldn't you not be beep boo bee boo all through the night? A variable is b uh bad, right? When you're asleep, it shouldn't be varying. Oh. HRV, yeah. I think variability generally it's good. I mean this is America. But oh, so not just when you're sleeping. I see. Okay. All right. I was a little bit uh worried. Stop acting like you understand what I'm talking about. No, I'm looking at this, I'm like, I should have no I thought like wait, you're supposed to have a lower how a heart Right, when you're sleeping, right?

Right. Well it gets it gets confusing because like, you know, just to to state some somewhat obvious things that I I personally have to keep in mind is that pulse, for example, is not the same thing as blood pressure. They're measuring different things about your blood in your body, but well one is how off how hard or how how your heart is beating, and then the other one is, you know, the amount of pressure and Uh my pulse is not technically a medical issue, but my blood pressure can be. And then you've but then heart rate variability, I don't I don't pretend to understand that. I just know that I've just heard that it's someone you you want trending up. That means you're doing something right.

Yes. I uh now I can at least confirm in my sleep app that it is red when it is there is a minus HRV and a plus when Mine's just this incredibly annoying, like just like up and down, up and down, duh, and I don't know, a person starts to wonder how useful that really is. But no, I'm just glad it's all getting captured. I had nine hours and fifty-seven minutes I'd still love to bring that BPM down, but let's see what it says here. What's my HRVT? My sleep rating for today is 100%. Sleep readiness 5 stars. Sleep fuel rating, poor. HRV Deck going down 0. 9 from yesterday, BPM up four from yesterday. Oh, this is the fancy app that I truly don't understand, right? Auto sleep. I should try Uh it is called auto sleep.

Yeah, yeah. It takes it takes a little, it's sort of like a Bloomberg terminal uh for your sleep. It it takes a while to kind of get used to like how it presents it, but Then it it becomes pretty intuitive to look at to just glance at the bloom perk. Yeah, I mean it's got it's got a lot a lot more complicated, poorly you know, displayed detail than you probably need. It's got a lot of dials and buzzers and whatnot. And you can like add I add emoji and stuff like that. But I'm happy for you. That's that's um that's a nice feeling and it's a little win. Yes, indeed. So I'm I'm matching your energy, Merlin. In what sense, Alex? You give me so much grace that I want to extend. What's happening? Who which of us is dying?

I don't know. Sometimes you get you get really sincere very early in the show and I think it's because you're just nervous. When you're since when it's sincere late in the show, I'm totally into it. At the beginning of the show, it makes me think that, you know, it's everything okay? Okay, well here then here's like a middle sear, uh like a uh of like I've got to act like I don't like you. That's part of the show. But here's middle seer. Now that I'm looking at these apps, um because it's not a sin, 'cause it's co sin and tan, right? Middle se seer? Co sin tan Yeah, instead of cosine. Yeah. What? Are you speaking Latin? I believe it's called trigonometry. That's conclave. It's trigger As it turns out, there's another secret cardinal we hadn't heard about who has some rather interesting d gender presentations.

They are now Pope. Pope they the first. First of their name. King of the Andals. The unburnt. Mother of Dragons, Khaleesi. Alex. Oh, I love I love my hem Aphrodite. Pope and his hermaphroditic. That's he's Do we say that? I don't know. Are we still saying that? I thought that's what I'm saying. Usually people hiss at you and go, I think you mean intersex. I don't I don't know. I mean, I it's not none of my business. It would be like somebody pulling up and and in a like uh in a I don't know. And a Ford Mustang and me going, That's a nice Ford Mustang. And you go, It's a fastback. It's from nineteen sixty-eight. Well that's That's a Type 2 Mustang. That's different. I just meant to tell you your car looks cool Well that's why you say car and we don't say restang anymore.

Dong Dong. What happened to Grandpa's automobile? Oh It is a reference and we'll we'll move right past. Yep, let's keep going. Keep going. Yep. Well no, I'm I mean I'm happy I got nowhere to be. I don't have a a ton for today. You you have you you now this past week uh I'm getting let I'm getting still getting links from you that you send to me, but then I I sometimes also just receive very, very large bits of prose from you. that I'm expected to process without any contact. So I got those things. I wrote down a couple of prose things I thought I might ask you about. I thought you were gonna read some of the messages I sent you. I'm just I've been I've been admonished that w one is not supposed to do that.

I mean without consent, probably no, but please feel free to share all of my beautiful pros. Okay. Okay. I'll be good. Yes, sir. America's a recipe. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Trump. Thank you. Restore the dictator to health is something I think on a regular basis. Mm-hmm. Dr. Morel, he's a mushroom man. Can I just nope. See, I don't pretend to I don't pretend to understand. Isn't that am I aren't I making a video game joke? A mushroom man. As in Doctor So the Nazi is also a a Mario character? That's that's what I my brain is Well you've got that guy, what's his name? Todd around Todd. who who uh you know, he's he's got that mushroom problem that they have in The Last of Us. He's a he's a sweet boy.

Oh yeah. I like Mario Kart, but I don't think you should be allowed to throw things at people. I think it's very distracting to people trying to drive. That's their culture. Oh no. Yeah. See, this is this is how they treat the Dothraki too. Yeah, exactly. It helps to make everything about horses. Yeah. Which seems a little bit, I mean honestly, that seems a little bit, you know, um, you know, the the soft bigotry of diminished Expectations. You will ride a giant horse across the narrow sea and the m wave amber waves of grain. What was a trick like that with us where like we'd understand everything more if it was always explained in this one way? Ex Like you know, like like a Dothraki like him a horse.

Uh if you explain a lot to me in terms of what era a Mac like processor was using, that sometimes works. I flatly don't believe that. Oh, try try it. Okay. Oh, this is like when you thought I cheated because I knew that the Android OS used to have dessert names. That's not a like oh no that was cheating that was cheating because people people gave the answers about no it wasn't no literally there were three people The on a platform? Oh we uh this one's substrapurisorio. And this one's uh Dingleberry. I watched a really good video on how they made um Hagrid Tall. the the the from the movie or the the oh truly cool the Mickum. Oh one of the things was they hired a guy who's a retired rugby player who's actually super tall.

Robbie Coltrane's right around six feet tall And they they got this guy and they came up with this crazy big giant rubber suit and this amazing lifelike mask, on top of which, you know, he has those big thick boots you think Hagrid wear. Those have stilts in it. So it made this guy like seven five When they had to like shoot from the back with the side or something like that. Oh, so you're s saying all practical effects and all visual effects are bad. Got it. Todd and uh Oh, we can't find this understanding. Don't provoke that guy. I mean it's it's you know, you don't want to provoke him. He gets very frustrated about that. Well, I mean uh provocation is a little bit fun. Provocation's the intensity.

I mean, I I it feels like you enjoy mentioning the chain Arby's, and I still haven't gotten the curly fries, even though I do understand the name of w why it's called Arby's. Do you know why it's called White Castle Merlin? Um because of Jim Crow. That wasn't funny. Doesn't even have real crenellations. That's a joke. Of course it does. Every box had a cranellation. That's how you shoot your arrows. Pew pew. It's not funny. Why am I laughing at? Shebron of the Blackwater. Um, good for you. That's all good. What else am I looking at here? So let's see, I've got several windows open. I was adding some challenges. Um and uh I can I can go anywhere. Um I mean we could continue the new era and get into the chat fringe right away.

Uh but as far as that Mac Whisper thing you told me about, is the short version of that that I want to buy fully buy the non-App Store version and then I I can Okay. And and you can tell me what's different in that version. And you sound like you like this developer. He sounds nice. Yes. Jor Jor Jordi Bruin? Yes. Yes. I don't know the it sounds familiar because it's an interesting name. I feel like I know a Geordie. Didn't there used to be a Jordi that edited one of my shows? Uh I I I don't keep track of you. I'm I'm not sure. Wow, maybe I'm not your biggest fan. It's not your day to watch me. Bad now. Yeah. There's little Ryan. Oh, I'm trying to think of past. Oh, no, that's that's that's okay.

Yeah, yeah. Square guy. Um the square guy. We say rectangle now, sorry. Um there's Jim I This is really good for the show. I've mmm hearing. I'm glad you slept. I am too. I I d I felt like I did a double sleep. Like my my body wanted to be kind to me. Yeah, like I texted you, I'm like, hey Oh gosh, I I it's it's like ten thirty. I just woke up c let let's push back the show and it's not it uh uh I'm I'm guessing this time it was because I was being lazy. No, not being lazy, I just overslept Um and then I f immediately fell right back to sleep. Um Yeah, sometimes it's sometimes it's what a body needs. Oh, it's great when you're not drinking Red Bull at three PM. Oh good. I mean if it helps. I just found that in my days of Whatever let's just, you know, J random energy drink, whether that's coffee or rock star or whatever, it just didn't make me feel good after, you know?

I have a lot of people. I try to utilize that feeling. I've decided to do an experiment that I did a while back. And uh it ended up that monster uh generally the monster energy drink, um, which is does look more like a gamer drink. seems to make me less t twitchy than a Red Bull. And I think it's because it tastes marginally better. Uh still not good, but marginally better. So you don't drink it as fast where I just like subtle. Yeah, yeah. So literally shotgunning a a red bull that's cause oh they're so so gross. And then uh an espresso too. Like I'm finally getting, I think, the obsession of uh coffee and espresso with some of my friends because I think it it's a bit of a false flag, the whole like, oh, it's the taste it taste thing.

I think it just makes them feel a certain way. And they're just addicts towards a certain a certain feeling and they think that the flavor correlates with the feeling. And now I'm like, I wonder. What if it was just a slow release caffeine pill? Like would would that just be a little bit more than a little bit of a little bit of a few years? I mean, yeah, why don't you just take Vivarin? That would be the easiest thing. I mean you you could totally could take Vivarin. I mean, I don't know if you need the taurine and stuff like that, but like If you're looking for caffeine, that's probably a relatively straightforward way to do it. I could just do Adderall, you know. There's so many things. So many, so many options.

What a country. Uh well thank you for answering that question. The challenge this week is to manipulate your data Mm-hmm. Yes. I tried to play with Mac Whisper again because I'm trying to transcribe Pretty much every podcast I've done. It started Still don't know why. Um Is it you want to use it as like a knowledge knowledge base kind of feeling? Yeah, it's become really useful. I haven't talked about this before. I will. Now, um there I have a lot of uh recordings of my voice at different times when I've on been on different levels of like hormones and medication and my spouse too, like pr totally pre hello, I am a full-on man now. Um like T transition before he started testosterone injections had a very different voice.

And w I'm as I've been making what is a cock spot essentially, uh, that that is a little a lil me clone Which for a while Claude told me not to do. Claude was like, this is a dumb idea. But eventually it did get the sycophancy and was like, okay, fine, I'll help you do it. Um, and so having all of the just e every piece of data as including the sound of uh my voice has been really helpful because then I don't need to automatically log like this is what I sound like happy, this is what I sound like sad, because there are now ways that it um that eleven labs and this new uh API this this company called Hume. a Hume. ai just released their own language model that supposedly can sense tone. So far it works, but I think it's like I have no reference so just a computer telling me this is what you sound like happy and I'm like, yes, I do sound happy.

It's just a confirmation bias type thing. So that's why I've been g downloading everything. Um, and I am interested in two versions. of a bot that won th this has been with Matt's permission and was like part of his idea. Like what What if we just took data from um his messages or in like both of our messages? pre out publicly trans messages um and like text data and voice data and uh then create one just with every uh bit of data post transition. Um and See what happens and see how people react to it when they uh talk to various versions of this. Because I'm j I'm just interested. Um like Doing what do you do with uh do you oh if if you it's not not that you have to have a reason for this, but to to like this also reminds me of your like five five star rating system for how you feel.

Um what do you do with the information about how you felt with a given voice? Um no at the moment nothing other than Um No you're not because it's really about making this bot. That's a different thing. Ideally the bot will be able it will categorize it. Like I have yet to mi you have to make tags on sort of what you want an emotion to sound like and There that's part of choosing what choosing like the different services to index the model. Um some of them are uh I prefer using an open s source one because people are gonna be like, Oh man, that you're giving all these companies your data. I'm like, Yeah, I gave all these companies my data accidentally when I was twelve years old and signed up for MySpace and checked a bunch of bo boxes.

Like ph I don't care. Um and uh the the reason is just uh see how people react to it j hold on hold on. But I'm now imagining all the people who are press ganged into like you know, using your bot and saying how they feel about it. No no no no now we gotta do the other one. You can compare. Better or worse, better or worse. That's that's kind of that's kind of the the idea. So much of When people show up, do they realize that that's what they're gonna be doing that evening is interacting with the event. Oh I don't know. Oh no. No, I don't know. This has been in t-cause then they're gonna have to give their opinions, probably fill out like a c comment card. Oh, that's the this has been in tandem um with Like a lot of I you know I know a lot of game designers.

Ma Max was the former one of the former co-hosts of the show is a a game designer. And there are all of these studies about the s storytelling of games. as empathy and the ability to empathize with people because of playing a video game. And that has happened to me like many times, but I'm a fucking weirdo nerd and I've seen it be successful to varying degrees. But people chatting with um you know, c just completely fake made up people and just their ability, you know, ones that pass the Turing test as most people understand it, really sparks levels of empathy that I have never uh seen before. I'll allow it. I think that sounds exciting. Interesting. So that's been my um I've been tr basically doing this since twenty thirteen.

Just No, no, I just thought it w there was uh a Black Mirror episode called Be Right Back and I'm like, I don't see why this is bad. I really don't see what the problem is with this. And I still don't really see what the problem i that it it Be right back is the episode of Black Mirror. Yes. Well well Peggy's partner dies tragically in a freak car accident and so she ends up using this service that is now a real thing that some people use called grief bots. That is you put your data of your head partner or the Simpsons version of that. Hello here through two. Alex. Yeah, i it's I've tried 'em. Uh uh they're interesting. Um but you know, especially when you have industries already, so So so so wholesome and normal.

Uh-huh. Yep. Very, very wholesome. Uh have I ever told you that my great grandpa is in a Folgers can in the garage of my uh uh grandpa's i just in my grandpa's garage? And uh I don't think he has. I don't think he has told me that. Well, uh he was always like, uh man, the funeral it's just a grift. It's just a grift. God doesn't like Catholic's kinda a touch and go thing with cremation, but he was like man I don't care like my my war buddies went to uh they went to heaven. Like what the the the Jews weren't? Like oh what? Because uh they were cast they're not no no no. That's not what the can sounds like though, usually right? Because I'd I want to move that somewhere else. Grandpa. Put your lid back on put a putting your lid back on, little guy.

I don't want my I don't want my tattoos to decay. I don't fucking care. And he really liked it. That black woman lost the election. Yes, Grandpa, but I could have told you that I wouldn't drive a Japanese car personally. Grandpa. Oh Alex really did like playing with cards. Oh yeah. Okay, that's makes sense. Whatever. Grandpa put me back on the shelf. I love you, Grandpa. You wanna talk to my people? What do you mean? Oh, it's just this folder scan. And then I you're over here going like buddies from the Jews Alex here obviously just trying to throw your voice. What? I've been doing this since twenty thirteen. Oh yeah. Well Captain America then uh or or Captain America's wife talks to her grief bot and then Mrs.

America. Uh Mrs. America talks to Mr. Mr. America. Well that's the thing. She does make a synthetic full-on uh uh atomic like fully uh fully looks like her new Mr. America or the uh one of the Weasleys as you would and Yeah. Yes, and finally realizes, oh, that's Machina. You said it like Like Voldemort, or not Voldemort the Volderman. Sixties pig. Hi. I Volderman Oh gosh. Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Oh gosh. So did you manipulate your data? Yeah, I know I I did. I started um being a I'm str I'm trying to follow along. I'm asking questions. I'm just saying at the end of the episode she realizes, man, it's probably not a a good idea to constantly uh t uh talk to uh the you know the the shadow of uh someone who has passed away.

Maybe it's a good way to the Bill Weasley bot. It's okay as a sometimes thing, as a treat. But you oughtn't have it on constantly. Uh huh. So now Bill Weezy uh at the end he lives in the attic, which sounds sad, but again, not real So that's that's all see the Harry Pot Potter bot lived downstairs. He was the he was the cupboard bot. Yeah, yeah Everyone, whether it's a fold your can yeah, fold your can, attic, whatever, you know. You can fold your can any way you want as far as I'm concerned. We don't say Mustang anymore I need to stop. I need to stop. That's so funny. Oh gosh. So I've been taking more of my transcripts. And trying to find uh a uh right now it's actually still processing a word or I finally figured out.

an open source program that'll make a word cloud out of the 50 or so episodes. I I just want to find the words I say most that aren't just articles. I can tell you that. Um yes. Go on. I mean there's there's some that come up a lot like say I hate it. Hate it. No, no. It's not just this program. Just the word no, very, very large, and then a bunch of like nouns repeated twice. If no shows up more than uh-huh, I'd be very, very happy. Oh I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool though. That's a that's a fun project. Well then it might actually make sense to talk about this Mac Whisper thing. 'Cause that's what you're this is what you're talking. This involves the Mac Whisper thing you were telling me about.

So we might as well tell me now, huh? Yes. Uh I I own and use, I believe, I might have bought both, or as I say, bottom. Uh I know I bought the App Store version. That's whatever whisper transcription. But it sounds like you're saying from this long prose you sent me that you're better off to get the one off the website that's not the App Store version because it can do different things. Yes, it and it can do them without l a limit on them. You can use the quote advanced models and that's the ones that are more successful in the whisper kid large ones and stuff like that. In order to detect speakers at all, you need a whisper kit model, which I don't fully understand what's different between whisper kit and whisper C Plus plus because I've never seen Whisper C mentioned anywhere else, but I'm like, alright, yes, I will I have three gigabytes, I will use WhisperKit.

And uh the i it is not as slow as I thought it would be, uh, but the the caveat is if you have an M1 series of Mac, it still kinda con it'll sometimes crash. But it crashes relatively quickly and and uh there's even the little pop-up like hey this probably won't work and I appreciate that, but if it starts working, it'll work all the way through and then uh Okay. I wanna do this. I did buy Mac Whisper Pro. Yeah, the one that's like 30 bucks like that's the one 59 euros, maybe? Yeah anyways, I'm not saying I just saw I just found the receipt for that. So I'm gonna download that. And then sh should I I should probably delete my app store version just to be safe? Yes. Alright. That's I yeah. Uh Uh cause because I don't know if mine was wonky or if it was because I didn't delete the app store first.

Um Oh, and also detecting uh s uh speakers, I I don't have any evidence for this other than my own experience. MP3s work better than waves. So her that's good. That made me happy. Okay. Once you enter the email, I'm clicking. Yeah, I I um I'm not I'm not I don't want to just you know slag this, but like some of it it it has been kind of a frustrating journey with this app, just in terms of like how the stuff that I really want out of it isn't particularly deeply documented but I'm now downloading Mac Whisper. I'm clicking, I've got a license. Oh, this is exciting. Alright. And and have you been enjoying this? Oh, absolutely. The UI is not great, which and it's not just that there really isn't uh too much In fact, there's no documentation at all really other than saying There's documentation for lots of getting started stuff and the usual sort of like FAQs on how you purchase this and things like that.

But no, I imagine this is a one-person operation. It's kind of a lot of work. It is. And primarily um in like a uh primarily AI s centric engineer. So, you know, like kudos to just getting a user-facing app and not having to spelunky through GitHub. Thank you. Um and uh if you have it working, let me know. I've got it up, I've entered my license and now I'm at the choose my models thing. And these some of these look familiar, but uh what's the one you uh recommend? Yes. V3 and uh again make sure it's the Whisper Kit one. Yeah. It says it's got the little badge for Whisper Kit and speaker recognition. Uh four out of five quality, four out of five speed. Oh no, that feels wrong. Large V3 turbo.

Let me go to manage models. Copy. I'm copying. I'm pasting. Here's where I am right now. Hey everybody. I encourage everyone to play along. It's a d i it it's a d it's a delight. Well I don't want to do too much right now because I don't want to script the computer, but I will I will play more with with uh with this. But you're are you discovering are you hooking it up and doing shortcutty things to like automate it? Is it a lot of clicky draggy? Like what does that look like for you in practice? For a while, um, I was uh just transcribing um it without speaker recognition, a bunch of shows and you can have it th this works really well. If you just want to transcribe things that show up in a folder, then it will do that and you can set it to save as a marker.

If you just want the words and don't care about the other stuff. Yeah, and that you don't need to use a Whisper Kit model. You can just, you know, let it fly. Um the Oh, okay, looking at this. Uh okay, on the top right where it says Whisper Kit. Go to all models. I know that sounds counterintuitive. No, I I've been through this with the No no no sorry. No, I just say I'm I'm I'm not this isn't a problem at all. Uh manage local models. Because I went through this with the App Store version exactly the same. So far it looks identical. Okay. Whisper models and you want me to click on I've got the sorting thing, I've got the recommended thing. What am I clicking on? Whisper kit? All models you said?

No, you said all models. Uh yeah, and then the the top ones, which are the biggest, should be WhisperKit. There's a large V2 and a large V3. That's still the same on yours? Okay. Yeah, but that's that's interesting though because large V three turbo uh gets more gets more um stars. Um, so it's sorting by what here on its own. It's sorting by let me sort by quality. Yeah, large V3 Turbo recommended a C. Oh dear. Okay, I'll just I'll figure it out. I'll just keep messing with the one. Again, though this is maybe this I'm just a dumb guy and I don't really know how to do this. No, it's just interesting because my V3 is different. It says uh V3 it like it sh oh you know you need to go into settings and say um I believe it's um allow advanced models, I think is w the difference.

I think I'm getting them. The top three I've got are large V3 Turbo, Large V2, Large V3 That's WhisperKit, Large V3 that's Whisper C. I'm guessing just based, I don't know, large V3 Turbo seems like it would probably wait, no, sorry, that's C plus plus Whisper. R see, right? I know. Whisper kit, but I want a big boy. Yeah. Uh it's I'll show you It's very uh it's yeah, it's kinda what I've got, yeah. All right, I'll figure it out later. All right, cool. All right. Um that's exciting. Anyway. That's a big step forward from like I went through the same thing, as you recall, a couple months ago where I was like, it says and I'm trying like I'm learning. Oh, I gotta learn about what diarization means and all this stuff.

I'm like You know, that's why I came to the slack with you guys and I was like, I just don't understand which one of these is the the good one, which is the one I should use. But I mean it's a silly question because I mean they all have different things, I suppose, but Yeah, that's the hard part is, you know, it's not it's not even just quality versus speed. It's also what kind of like knowing the doing the voices and like anyway, yeah, I'll figure out What did you uh how did you interpret this challenge? Well, um, I I I just I mostly wanted to talk about Uh and I talked about this in great, great detail on rectives last night, but I think there's still enough meat on the bone here that I can jump the line a little with what I'm trying to do.

Uh to cut a long story short, uh I I've had a lot of really good successes with the dingus lately at fixing stuff that has been like a long standing thing or a frustrating thing. And it's just as far as the manipulating data part, this is such a cheat to fit the challenge. But truly, the thing um that's been huge for me with getting better chat GPT results is uh for for s for stuff is to s all really just completely stop trying to be smart. Mm-hmm. Yeah, to focus and the way I I said this to I think Rye on the internet is really focusing on disambiguation and clarity about what it is I actually want or what I think I want. versus like giving it too much information where it's guessing what I want.

Like tell it specifically what I want. And then really focus closely on carefully following instructions within, you know, reasonable parameters. And uh and I've just and you know what a lot of that comes down to? Uh screenshots, the combination of integration with things like prompt. And then also just screenshots, like trying to fix this problem with my Synology or trying to do this, uh, do this this uh I've I've I've fixed a I've I fixed some headphones that had bricked. And all of it came from copy-paste copy paste. Like, okay, here's here's exactly what when I when I mount my headphones on my Mac, here's all that information. You know, and then when I do the go to prompt and I enter this thing, go I send I can say just go look at prompt and see.

And it goes, oh yeah, I see the problem. I see the problem with you trying to get to, you know, SSH into your Synology and da-da-da. But it also just learns stuff. Like, okay, well, instead of giving me the same instructions over and over For a path that's not my path, like inter in terminal or like on my device, it learns what my environment is and remembers it. So that then it can say like we'll go back to CD and go to this directory or whatever. And while I think probably intelligently you can't manipulate prompt or the terminal via ChatGPT, they work really nicely together. So you can say like check in and see what you think is, oh, I see a problem here. This brew. package needs to update or, you know, you're in the wrong directory for this or here's a f here's a an attributor flag that's required even if you're not you know all that kind of stuff in a million years I would never figure out.

I just I'm enjoying that relationship with my stuff. And and again, the real dumb takeaway for me is doing stuff like, okay, I just created this thing in Apple script or I just made this thing in Python or whatever, screen grab, here's the error it gave me. And somewhat famously now, at least amongst our friends, it's pretty good at that, where it'll go, it'll understand contextually why you just pasted that thing in there. And it'll do stuff like I can return to an old thread and say I want to speed up my plex even more. What should I what what settings should I change on this page screenshot And it just walks you through each one. It makes a little table with little green check marks and says that one's good.

That one's good. This one's optional. You can do that. And I I've just been having really good luck with that. And it's been helping me with a lot of stuff, including my emotional uh uh uh health. I've been feeling better now that I'm I've I've solved a lot of little problems and I feel great about it. Oh that makes you so happy. And I even started a new thing um where uh I mean I I I I did this a lot stuff like this idiotically. I I just tried when I first got on ChatGPT and now I'm kind of back to it, which is this creating my own sort of notional meta containers. So like that could be things like tags, I guess. But for example, like I started a new one which is called uh Great Success, which is like if them something has gone particularly well in a thread and I want to be able to talk about it later.

I s ask it to remember it as a great success. I have a little log line for what went well about it, and that gets remembered across all the threads now. So, you know, I'm also just discovering stuff. So it blows me away. I went to a thread from probably a year ago, I don't know how long, last night, and I wanted to record it as a great success. And I don't know how it works. John can explain it. I can't. But this thread that's just been sitting there, I run it again and I say, remember this is a great success. And it All that information that had been in that thread, all the stuff that had been generating I know it's all input, it's probably just running it through itself several times, but I've been having really great success with that.

And um the the fixing these AirPods Macs were was like I just cannot believe it it helped me fix these things. 'Cause it was really bumming me out. I didn't want to buy a third pair of these goddamn headphones. But if I Jesus they uh oh my god the first ones were quote unquote water damaged. And then the second one, the the ones I have now Uh, which I am just I re didn't realize until they didn't work how addicted I am to certain things about, you know, any AirPods, but in this case these AirPods Max, I can sleep on them better than I can sleep with any other headphones. I can change, you know, which device I want to be using really easily. Once I've literally reset every device and said don't connect automatically, but only when last connected, only my phone gets the, you know The pride of place, yeah.

Of the auto the automatic. But anyway, uh and it took days and days and days. Well, why does it take days and days and days? Well, because Ultimately, what we arrived at, the dingus mostly, was that there seems to be something wrong where it's frozen on a firmware update or something. That screen grab I took from the Mac of what the you know uh system report says about it go to usb scroll down click and it shows you what the firmware on there is it shows you what the serial number is It's all just working with how my how my brain works. Why does it take so long? Well, when you troubleshoot AirPods or I I guess other kinds of devices, it's pretty relatively opaque to deal with. Like you got amber amber f um got amber lights, green lights, white lights.

They mean different things. What combinations and chords you press with the buttons on the side do different things. But something almost everybody will probably end up with at some point if they have to try and fix their own AirPods is r completely resetting, like fully like discharging, but you also then have to make sure they're fully charged. The goal we're trying to get to is impossibly sort of inchoate, which is And it won't even let you get to where it'll charge up and do the thing. I'm you know, I'm I I hope I've shown my bona fides that I I I've done this stuff a lot and I've In this case, carefully followed the instructions a lot, but sometimes to get to where it actually fixes itself, you need to power it all the way up, keep it near your device.

This is a little bit arcane, but if you're lucky, eventually something will happen, some magic will happen on your currently charged AirPods Max, and it will basically sort of agree to like a reset. from the device and I did it. It took me like three days. But then I woke up one day and I cautiously unplugged them and I put them on and they went boom and they were working. And I was able to to do it all again. Now Is that something I could not have solved by Google? No, I mean I've solved a million things like that with Google or similar. It was just really neat that I could have this thread over here where I could say like okay well they're charging up see you tomorrow morning and I don't have to think about it I don't have to worry if I got it wrong I'm gonna put them here I'm not gonna touch them this sounds it sounds nuts But I'm just telling you, like, when something is really I don't I I think that's as close to bricked as I could call something I own in a while.

which is like none of the usual things cause it to respond. I did I try different cables, did I try different charging bricks? I tried all of the things. I got a brand new um l uh USB C to Lightning. Just to make sure there's no corrosion, I put it into a known good power brick. Sometimes eventually I guess that helped. But until it's fixed, you still don't really know what's wrong It's just that sometimes it ends up working. And in this case, it was such a nice combination because I was able to say final, let it charge overnight. Even as I was still kind of sad I didn't have my headphones. But then one day it worked and it made me happy. And and honestly, th things like that have given me a lot more encouragement to try some pretty wild swings with either changing or fixing something.

Nothing nothing like load bearing, but uh I've just had really good luck in the last week and I've had a lot of great successes. So It's kind of a challenge kind of not. Great great success. I I I think you uh really uh did this challenge because you manipulated data the You can't really see because so much of what you were doing was the Apple s weird uh secret sauce of doing their magic reset dance. that I almost wonder how much like uh ChatGPT knows that it's able to has scraped But it's like this is the same thing. Well also it's like how much you know, you've also read all of the documentation and how much have you been able to w like wiggle into Apple's. Fine if it's not actually that broken.

I mean the documentation is one different thing. Like a l a very well what do you call it? Like a s barely latched screen door. that something else could find and is part of this model. It's kind of frustrating to and even if you go know to go and Google or look for a knowledge base article or whatever it's called, like it you know, getting all that stuff done and having somebody who's gonna hold your hand through that um is ended up being really great. I'll I'll give you another one. Uh that's well I was gonna say for forget uncomfortable. What about not possible? Like there uh lots of lots of AirPod users are blind or at least color. blind like what how would you what are you supposed to do like that and this is not an imaginary like situation the that's a real Issue and you can change a setting now, but with um airpods.

Because what happened last time I did that was they go, oh yeah, it's water damaged. End of story And you're like, okay. Well, I might do I have very little to lose by taking these two sets of costly headphones and throwing everything at both of them. Only one of them is fixed. The other one is the old ones, the one I ones I bought a long time ago are still broken. And who knows? I'm going to fix them someday. Who knows? But it also certainly involves stuff like maybe you just got lucky that one time. Maybe that was the time that it it decided to try this wackadoo thing. But another one was, I'm not sure exactly why I think this was my fault probably, but I I have a um uh media-related demon called radar.

And I was installing the update to it. It's on my Synology. And I was installing the update through the web interface, which is not the most crumulent way to do it. And I think maybe something happened and Something catastrophic kind of happened where like the update just to this one Synology package wasn't working. And then when I restarted my Synology, like It was just having all kinds of weird problems. But I was able to I just said, you know what? The phrase I kept using was Syracuse last night. Let go and let God. I'm just gonna be a dumb guy. And so I'm just gonna be a dumb guy that goes I'm having trouble with my Synology. It's got the, it's not the Docker, it's the packaged version of radar, and it seems to be corrupted.

And in a very friendly way, it just walked me through like, well, what's that log file say? I just kept sending it screen grabs and it goes, okay, everything's this stuff looks fine, that's fine, we'll try these things, ddl deep. I fired up prompt and it walked me through You like in pigs and bunnies was like, well, you're gonna s C D into here, you're gonna SSHN, you're gonna sudo this command that is going to make a backup of your entire radar you know directory which you certainly wouldn't want to lose all your actual stuff. and we'll give it a different name and now if are you able to uninstall it from the package manager? And I wasn't. And I'm like, oh God, here we go. I'm back in back in the terminal.

But it was no problem at all. It was very it took like half an hour. And it just walked me through every step of each one of those things. And I was able to say things like, well, give it a different unusual name than just data backup. Like in case there's more than one of those, I don't want you to overwrite it. But anyhow I was just a dumb guy and I copied and pasted and and it was able to fix it. And again, when the you you you I think are on to something uh three minutes ago when you were saying like I don't even know what's possible. I didn't know if I could fix these headphones, but it was not harmful for me to try. Dumbest fucking thing in the world. We have this little Keurig coffee maker that I like a lot.

And the the descaling light has been on for like two or three months, which is no big deal. It's got two lights basically. There's the brew buttons on it, and it's got two lights. One that says add water and one that says time to descale. And I've been messing with this dumb goddamn thing for months. This is the the least satisfying and yet somehow most satisfying end to this is I'd been going around and around with this. I was like, look, let's make sure I took a photo of the bottom of the unit. I double-checked my order from what I so I'm gonna make sure I'm telling it the right model that I've got because of course this all varies a lot from model to model. I went around and around. I did eventually discover that there'd been some confusion about what model I had.

I kept pushing, I kept saying, let let's start completely over with this. How do we do this? Put in the vinegar, do it this long. And But the thing was, now I was still I don't how do you describe this? I had the confidence to keep going with this even though I felt like a ding a ling. And my family didn't even care that this descaling light was on, but it bugged me that I couldn't fix it. And here's the the unsatisfying but ultimately satisfying part is I realized, oh, this is a interesting. It's a it comes with this, you fill up this I think 40 some ounce water reservoir. Which you know it like when you take it out of the box, it's you know mounted on the side. But guess what? Turns out you can change a little flippy thing on the bottom and move the reservoir to the back.

Which, first of all, I didn't know. But B, that was perfect for the place we have this coffee maker. So why not just for fun try moving the reservoir to the back, especially 'cause it would be better. And guess what? After I did that the discaling light turned off and it was fine. So is that because of ChatGPT? I would say kind of yes, because even though it did not give me the solution to try that It was my confidence to keep pressing toward a solution and looking for the broader landscape versus just, you know, I just want the light to go away. Like what could be causing that light thing? What is there a sensor that's messed up? Like what is it? And but I'm very happy to share that victory with with the Dingus.

And importantly, maybe not to you guys, but to me, it made me feel a little better at a time when I could use a lift and a feeling of success. Great success. Great success. How much Ooh, I'm gonna write it this for the after show. Speaking of after shows and money. There i we're talking about the same prompt, right? Panics uh software, the terminal, the uh what I've been I know it's prompt three on a Mac. Yeah, I know it's not uh like the same as, you know, like a a robust I ID, but all of these Well, it's a terminal it's a terminal emulator. Yeah, yeah. It's very masky. And it works on iOS too. It's just you can't do stuff like have a local window on iOS. Yeah. That was my That's a really clever app.

It's it's it's so pretty and so smart and easy to use. And m what I have been enjoying is a you know I I I've been trying so uh to do so much stuff in like um Cursor and what's the other one? Win windsurf. And these are like, you know, fully formed uh IDs that you can technically like make stuff for the terminal or using VS code um to like make- These are these are if I understand correctly, what you're describing here is uh is an ID It's a coding environment that, but in this case is heavily integrated with some kind of LLM. Yes? Yes. It's not like an afterthought strap-on. It's like it's like from from the bottom up, cursor is meant to be something where you're expecting to interact with an LLM as you code something in the IDE, yes?

Yes. And uh what has uh Um wait, why was I talking about money? Oh, oh, um, it is a perfect example of what the uh guys talked about on uh an ATP uh whatever their premium after show is called about how uh developers aren't going in anywhere because in order to use any i like to quickly use an IDE in a language you don't understand. Like I can I can e I can figure stuff out with with Python and Apple Script, but anything else I'm like, oh God, oh God Um and you can't you can revert back to something you've um made usually, but with a lot of this you know, it'll change previous types of uh like some previous command and I'm like, I don't uh uh okay, I don't know, I d I don't know. Um and just being able to take screenshots of things and then a asking like the uncut w chat GPT, um well in my in my case for this for uh both terminal and Like a Python stuff I typically ask Claude just because I've had more great success with that one.

Um, it's a great dummy way to do it because Like you can so, so quickly fuck stuff up and if you don't know what you're doing, it you know, it not only uh breaks, but you don't know what has been. This is in cursor or similar? Yeah. Yeah, it's got access to like And that that's kind of what I'm doing to some extent, depending on the app with ChatGPT, where You know, and I I again I don't know how many Mac people are are doing this, but it's pretty neat. You can say you can like give it access to what's happening in prompt or BB Edit or uh VS Code or any of those things. And um it's it it can be really quite powerful to to just have like a little buddy. In this case, like I say, as Syracuse agreed, that you know, it's just as well probably that that you cannot manipulate things in prompt from ChatGPT because if you think about that for half a second, it's kind of scary.

You can't like R RMRF like you know remotely or whatever. Oh. But but no, but it's just neat because like uh you know I just it is a little buddy and like it well I'm going in there and I'm just compulsively hitting the six commands I know how to do in the terminal. and pasting a lot of stuff. But again, the dingus is giving because of how I have it configured and how it's learned from me, it knows to like, yeah, just give it to me as a line with that little copy thing. Copy it and I'll paste that in. And then I just type the words like okay. which it has under learned to understand means. And now go look at prompt and see how it you know, and that's where it'll notice stuff I would not notice.

As my my my I'm going glazed over to like all the words on the screen. But it's able to to really quickly grok all. I can't believe how quickly I can drop in a screenshot that's just a giant Mac. Safari window and it does so frequently seem to know what it is I'm trying to get out of it. It's really weird. What I find interesting is I think the first time I did that it was actually it it asked for one. A while um I mean not a a year ago. Ask for a screenshot. Yeah. It was like, huh. Can you it I I couldn't do something else? Well the f the first times I did that, I was just like, Are y are you kidding me? Because I have a brain that formed at a time when this kind of stuff was beyond science fiction You know what I mean?

The idea of like, you know, like I I've been doing some version of OCR since college. And boy yi how do you even begin? That has come a long way. I when I was trying to write that book, uh, a while back, uh, I got really into drag and dictate. But even then then I would find myself getting all wound up in drag and dictate and was it doing it correctly and had I you know, I found all kinds of ways to to get at my own ass about not actually producing anything. But anyhow, uh and so when all these pieces come together so seamlessly It's nuts. And I'm just sitting there and no fun. And finally I get like a head of steam. I told Syracuse that this ended two days ago with the craziest god goddamn thing I've ever tried that I can't believe worked Which is like, but I uh tell you a very quick anecdote.

But to understand this anecdote, you have to understand that I've been having having a fair amount of situational depression and I've been struggling with lots of things and haven't had a lot of wins. I'm kind of frustrated with a lot of stuff. And that but that period of um getting more comfortable with using this to to fix things, uh, I feel like so far anyway, culminated a couple days ago when in fact my home Synology Just it's it c I think it's I think it might be dead, but uh something got screwed up with it. You know what I did? I shut down and carried home the Synology that I have at my office. I plugged it in and I could bring it right up in a browser Because of Synology, but also because of tail scale.

Well, I mean, I don't know how much time you've spent like doing stuff with your Synology, but I would never in a million years assume that I could plug that appliance in somewhere and have it just work. I was able to bring it because of Tailscale. I could bring it right up in a browser. Now, is that its ChatGPT success story? Not directly, but if I hadn't had this series of wins, look if I if I hadn't fixed that firmware, if I hadn't fixed the the current thing, if I didn't get really good advice about the best way to mount anchor screws and masonry so I could put up a Scotus board. Uh m Mr. Pickles and Steve, those fantastic film posters. These are all things I I consider a win, and it gave me confidence to try something different.

So that's to me a secondary, like a knock-on effect of y you know, getting ahead of steam on, it's making me more ambitious about wanting to try things. And I think that's wholesome. I mean, we don't have to end the show on a joke, because it's really good. I think we've said everything we need to say, right? Yeah. Say uh make a ooh uh make a they-them joke. Come on, yeah, I believe in you. Hmm. We got grammar. No, see now I feel like I'm under a lot of pressure now because of that. Well, you've had a lot of great wins. You can't be prompt up that hard. No, prompt up hard. Wow. Huh. Okay. Um write me a funny they them. joke. Um I remember the days when uh an AI wouldn't let me make a trans joke.

Though those were those were fun days. Why did the singular they start a band? Why? Because they already had a great following, but no one could agree who was in the group. Well I don't think that was particularly funny. raw transcript