Episode 102 – My Suicidal Robot
Peter: Friends with Brews.
Scott: Friends with Peter.
Peter: Friends with Scott. ([metal clangs])
Scott: Yay. Oh, no, I made a noise.
Peter: Friends with gravity.
Scott: Peter, you told me today that you have a new coffee, and I would love to know what that ([laughs]) is. Friends with gravity. No, it was more like friends with foot, ’cause I kicked a bowl that was already on the floor. So tell me, Peter of Nikolaidis, what coffee do you have that’s so new, and why is it so new?
Peter: Well, it’s new to me. I mean-
Scott: Oh
Peter: … it’s probably, I think it’s been on the, I think it’s been on the-
Scott: Shelf
Peter: … shelf probably for, for, for decades, which means it’s-
Scott: Decades
Peter: … totally stale by now. ([laughs]) I am drinking, right now, a cup of Trader Joe’s decaf dark roast, and I am starting to shop at Trader Jor- Trader Jors, Trader Joe’s-
Scott: ([laughs])
Peter: … more often nowadays. I like Wegmans. I’m probably still always gonna like Wegmans until something, until I don’t like Wegmans anymore. ([smacks lips]) But, and Wegmans is a little closer to me, but Trader Joe’s is a little cheaper, and the quality of their products, I think, are about on par with Wegmans. And I’ve been finding myself going a lot to the shopping area, restaurant, bars, movie theaters area, where there’s a Trader Joe’s, a lot more often. And I’m like, “Well, since I’m right here, I may as well save a few bucks on groceries and stock up here rather than making a separate stop when I go home.” So today, but it, but that’s not all. This is not just straight-up Trader Joe’s. If you can see this coffee-
Scott: Yeah. ([laughs]) Your vacuum’s-
Peter: There’s something-
Scott: … trying to interfere
Peter: … if you can see it, if you can see my invisible brew.
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: Um, ([smacks lips]) this is actually a concoction that was inspired by another drink that I will be reviewing on peterdrinkscoffee.com. Uh, this is cold decaf brewed coffee. I would have done it cold brew, but I didn’t have time. I didn’t, you know, realize until, like, this afternoon we would be recording. So it’s, I brewed, in my AeroPress Premium, some Trader Joe’s whole bean ground decaf dark roast coffee, ([smacks lips]) poured it over ice, added a teaspoon or so of maple syrup and, sorry, a tablespoon of maple syrup, and a tablespoon of diet tonic water mix from my SodaStream, and then used my SodaStream to bubble up some water and make tonic water. So it’s essentially coffee, maple, maple syrup, and tonic water.
Scott: Well, so far you have-
Peter: Mm-hmm
Scott: … most of the mechanical devices in your home involved in this process except for your robot vacuum.
Peter: Well, I put it on the robot vac, on the Roomba, walked across the room, and I said, “Vacuum,” and it brought it to me.
Scott: Oh, amazing.
Peter: Yep.
Scott: And then it-
Peter: Yeah
Scott: … ([laughs]) it actually, it headed towards you, and then it turned-
Peter: ([laughs])
Scott: … and threw itself down the stairs. ([laughs])
Peter: Eventually. So, okay, well, now that you’re mentioning that, um, actually-
Scott: Well, wait
Peter: … let’s talk about your-
Scott: I got a coffee
Peter: … anyway.
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: So this is good. This is-
Scott: Okay
Peter: … really tasty. It’s a nice iced coffee drink mix.
Scott: Uh-huh. Coffee drink mix. I like that.
Peter: Talk about your experience, and then I will talk about throwing the robot, the, my, my suicidal Roomba clone.
Scott: Okay. Well, I had this this morning on a short short that it’s already up on Friends with Brews YouTube channel, but this is Water Avenue’s New Seasons Blend Trail Keepers of Oregon. And a- and what they do is they give a dollar of every bag to the Trail Keepers of Oregon, and it’s good. It claims, now, they claim-
Peter: Can you only get it on the Oregon Trail?
Scott: Yes. They c- uh, well, that and dysentery. They claim cacao nib, cherry, caramel, and mandarin. They just say mandarin. I don’t know if they mean the person, the language, the orange.
Peter: Taste the language.
Scott: ([laughs]) Yeah. So my review this morning was cacao nib, yes. Cherry, okay. Caramel, no. Mandarin, no. I don’t, I don’t believe in those last two. I don’t taste them in this coffee, but it is a good coffee. And you will be supporting the dysentery fighters of Oregon, and I recommend it, so go get it now at shelves near you if you live near Portland, Oregon.
Peter: Ah, okay. So I am unable to find-
Scott: Thumbs up
Peter: … ’cause I know you’re gonna wanna put… I am unable to find the Trader Joe’s whole bean decaf dark roast on their website.
Scott: That’s okay. My video editing process relies on Claude Code now to go find all the links for me. It edits the video for me. It creates the show notes for me. It goes and finds the ([bell dinging]) links for me, the ([bell dinging]) or whatever-
Peter: Great. I don’t think it exists
Scott: … links.
Peter: Uh, hopefully, maybe it can hallucinate ([bell dinging]) one for us.
Scott: I don’t even need that anymore because… Actually, you know what? I think my process now includes the instructions that whenever somebody says a swear word like ([bell dinging]) or whatever, I think it goes and gets this clip and inserts it automatically for me. I don’t remember. It’s been too long since we recorded, Peter.
Peter: Yeah. It has been a while, and we’re back.
Scott: Yeah. All right, so tell-
Peter: Yeah, well, so-
Scott: … tell me, tell me about your suicidal robot and how you’re handling it.
Peter: So I will put a link in the show notes. Where, where, where is the show notes? ([laughs]) Do we have a Notes doc-
Scott: I’ve heard of show notes
Peter: … for this one?
Scott: Do we have a Notes?
Peter: Do we have a Notes? I don’t know. Usually, I put some somewhere, and then you’re like, “No, it’s over here.” I’m like, “Ah, where the hell is it?” I don’t know. Uh, we have a Friends with Brewed shared Notes, Note book. I know I have access to it.
Scott: Yep, put it in there or whatever.
Peter: I mean, it hasn’t been updated since December 2025.
Scott: Yeah, I don’t think we actually use it. It’s kind of like our show that we don’t actually do. ([laughs])
Peter: We do, and then you, you know, then you email me a little like, “Ah, we gotta just stop pr- podcasting.” I’m like, “No, the f- the f- the solution is we s- we podcast again.”
Scott: But see-
Peter: Once
Scott: … the funny thing is, is like you were the one who was like, “Yeah, I think we actually could do this every week,” and then you’re wildly unavailable for weeks at a time. And I’m not blaming you.
Peter: Yeah, that’s a lie.
Scott: I totally get it. You are busy, but what I’m saying is you might wanna calibrate your sense of reality as far as can we actually do this weekly or not. I think-
Peter: There you go
Scott: … we’ve proven the answer is ([laughs]) we can or we cannot.
Peter: Apparently, do it monthly. I mean, anybody who thinks we can do this weekly is on coffee or something.
Scott: They’re on coffee syrup mix-
Peter: Oh, man
Scott: … drink.
Peter: All right, so I will make a new link here
Scott: Yes. Yes
Peter: What episode number will this be anyway?
Scott: Oh, ah, ah, ah.
Peter: I’ll just put the date.
Scott: Good.
Peter: I’m putting the date down there-
Scott: It’s episode numbers
Peter: … and then we can figure out the-
Scott: Yeah, just put the date, ’cause on YouTube I’m not doing episode numbers. I still have episode numbers on friendswithbrews.com for the audio version, but without digging up the webpage right now, I couldn’t begin to-
Peter: Cool
Scott: … tell you what it is.
Peter: All right. Well, I put a link to Peter’s suicidal robo vacuum in the show notes-
Scott: Nice
Peter: … and I can’t find Trader Joe’s. So it’s actually a Uninell. I bought it back in March, and my initial review was, for the money, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than a Roomba and it does just as good a job. I will say, although the support that I’ve gotten from iRobot, the makers of Roomba, has been disappointing at times, they at least have provided some support. Uninell-
Scott: ([laughs]) Wait, they’re supporting somebody else’s product?
Peter: Uninell, I couldn’t find, like, any way to contact them, and I’ve had a problem and the… why we call this thing my suicidal robot is every time it goes to the stairs, it tries to just pitch itself-
Scott: ([laughs])
Peter: Well, now, I take that back. That’s not true.
Scott: ([laughs])
Peter: The Roomba at, that I have at my place in Vermont tries to throw itself over the edge.
Scott: Mm.
Peter: The Uninell has never gone all the way, but it has gotten enough that it’s gotten stuck on the edge of the cliff. It’s threatening to jump, but it hasn’t jumped. The Roomba is like, “I’m checked out. Next of kin have been notified. My will is up to date. My life insurance covers suicide. I’m out.” The Uninell-
Scott: Your, your Roomba’s name is Thelma and Louise
Peter: … is just like, “Nop, nope. It’s slippery, it’s slippery, but I’m okay. I’m okay.”
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: Right? So I couldn’t find any support contact for Uninell. I’m on their website, can’t find any links or anything. They emailed me, support emailed me a week or so ago out of the blue and said, “Hey, would you like to leave us a five-star review for a chance for a $20 gift card?” And I replied, it goes all like, “I would love to, and I can’t yet because I have problems with your product.” And so they said, “Well, you should, um, you should specify a no-go zone for the robot.” And I’m like, “I’d love to. I can’t figure out how to do that.” ([laughs]) Well, the problem is I already had… They use the, um, uh, the Smart Life app to modify, to manage all of their stuff. I don’t know if you have any utilities that, that use that. Um, but it’s not, like, the Uninell app, it’s the Smart Life app. And I have a number of, um, sensors, for instance, like my water s- my, uh, water and temperature sensors at my place in Vermont and, um, uh, also in, um, m- in Massachusetts that use this same app. I’m trying to find one now. Bathroom sensor one, two, three. I don’t even know what brand these are. They’re some little knockoff brand, but it’s not Uninell, I know that much. So I think, if I understand correctly, the Smart Life app is, like, a platform on which people can throw their little IoT devices into for management, right?
Scott: I know.
Peter: ’Cause it sounds like a security nightmare.
Scott: Well, I was gonna say, there was one brand of switch that I bought and didn’t own for very long, ’cause I took ’em back. They used a Chinese app, and this Chinese app would accommodate just about anything. But it was-
Peter: That’s probably this one
Scott: … sending stuff back to China. Yeah.
Peter: Yeah. Yeah. So good thing is it’s on my guest network. Bad thing is it needs to map my house out-
Scott: Right
Peter: … um, to, to do this. But I digress. Security concerns aside, for the moment-
Scott: Mm-hmm
Peter: … I had only one home listed, so when I tried to open up the map, I’m like, “This does not look at all like my room where this robot vacuums,” because it’s referring to my house 200 and some odd miles away. ([laughs])
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Peter: Or 100 and some odd miles away. So I was not physically proximate to the, um, the ro- the robot, ’cause I need to remove it from one home, create a new home. I have to… I don’t… I can’t find a way to just move this device from one home to the other, so I have to, like, delete it and re-add it in the new home, and then I have to map the new home. And then I have to try to figure out, once the map is established, how one actually goes about creating a no-go zone. So that’s where I’m at with that. So at least, and it took them several days, but they did reply after I sent that email, and it was good that they did, ’cause at least now I have a, you know, another chore for me to, uh, to try to do to get my robot to be less suicidal. So, um, but yeah, I’m, I’m glad I got it, ’cause like, I r- I run it… I clean the bin out, like, every week or two, and it always has, like, a, you know, it’s cluttered full of gray lint and dog hair and stuff. So it’s obviously doing its job. So-
Scott: Um, okay. First of all, My Suicidal Robot would be an amazing name for either a band or an AI service of some kind.
Peter: Or, or a podcast title.
Scott: Or a podcast title, My Suicidal Robot.
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: Maybe we should change our… Maybe we should do that. Maybe people would actually watch us if our name was My Suicidal Robot.
Peter: Yes. So, so that’s one place where I’m in the middle of mediocre customer service.
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Peter: Um, another one is I bought this watch band for my Garmin. It’s in the style of the Apple Trail Loop.
Scott: Yep.
Peter: Right? Garmin does not sell something like this, so it’s a third-party one that I got on Etsy. Three times, once while I was in an, in a workout in the gym wearing gloves, you know, like weightlifting gloves, which were-
Scott: Mm-hmm
Peter: … butt up against the, the watch, the strap just unbuckled, came off, and the watch fell to the floor. I-
Scott: That seems like a bug, not a feature.
Peter: I thought it was the glove somehow pressing on it, but it subsequently-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … happened twice when I was not wearing gloves. Once when-
Scott: Oh
Peter: … I was running, and once when-
Scott: Oh
Peter: … I was just walking into the house.
Scott: Oh.
Peter: Contacted the seller on Etsy. Etsy then was like, “Hey, have they resolved your problem?” I’m like- No, but I’m gonna give them at least a couple of days. They got back to me today, and they’re like, “Can you send us pictures of it?” And I was like, “Sure.” So I took-
Scott: Do you not know what your band looks like? Like, what are you gonna prove with a picture?
Peter: Well, they wanna know, they wanna know, they wanna see how it’s fastened and stuff. So I was like-
Scott: Oh
Peter: … okay, I took close-ups of where the clasps go in and-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … ’cause this is… Gotta say, as f- for all the things that I complain about, about my Apple Watch, the strap is not one of them. Like, the way that they all s- interchange-
Scott: Yes
Peter: … and so on is way cool.
Scott: Yes. Yeah.
Peter: I would should, I should say the way I complained about my Apple Watch, as of today, this afternoon, I no longer own an Apple Watch. I sent it in. I traded it in for $165 credit, and now I have a fistful of Apple Watch bands. ([laughs])
Scott: I know. I want some of them.
Peter: The, the only time that I was ever wearing my Apple Watch was when I would go teach a yoga class.
Scott: Uh-huh.
Peter: And I liked it because the timers are more accessible than on the Garmin, and I could control the volume, the, the, the playlist from the, the music that was playing.
Scott: Oh, that’s true. Yeah.
Peter: I did like it. I can also get up and take three steps and change the volume and come back to my mat when I’m in the studio, so I decided-
Scott: You will-
Peter: … that I was gonna, you know
Scott: … ruin the flow. You’ll break the concentration of the students
Peter: Their eyes are usually closed, so I can do it pretty quietly. They don’t care.
Scott: Oh. Are you sure-
Peter: So
Scott: … they’re not asleep?
Peter: So I traded my Apple Watch in. I was gonna sell it on eBay, and I was like, you know what? The hassle of trading in, I’ll just take $165, no questions asked. Go. And I’ll try to sell the bands separately. Now, when I told you about that eBay, I thought I had saved it as a draft, but apparently, I had already said, “Yes, list my items,” so they are-
Scott: Oh
Peter: … on there.
Scott: Okay.
Peter: So what I did is I jacked the price up to something that probably no one will ever bid on. If they do, I’m sorry, you’ve been outbid, but they-
Scott: That’s fine
Peter: … probably won’t.
Scott: Okay.
Peter: So you’ll probably get some bands coming your way soon.
Scott: Okay.
Peter: But three of them are genuine Apple Watch bands, and one of ’em is a really nice leather one, even though you don’t want that one.
Scott: Yeah, I don’t want the… I don’t give a ([censored]) about leather. I’m like-
Peter: I bought it-
Scott: … Pete Goeff, not giving a ([censored]) about Apple. I don’t give a ([censored]) about leather.
Peter: Perfect. I, I bought it because I have, like, a leather belt and leather shoes that it matches, but since I’m not wearing the watch anymore, that doesn’t matter, so… Real quick, before I get back into my other topic that I wanted to talk about on customer service and troubleshooting fun things, I’m on my third pair of AirPods Pro. About a week ago, I would start walking outside of my house, and you know the sound when your ears pop? You-
Scott: Mm-hmm
Peter: … know what it sounds like to you? Imagine, like, like, maybe if you had an ear infection or a stuffy nose or something, or remember the loudest time that your ears have ever popped, like the most poignant pop that you’ve ever felt. This was 10 times louder, and it was not coming from my ears. It was coming from the AirPod.
Scott: That’s a nice-
Peter: And this… And painful.
Scott: Yes.
Peter: And, and it was somewhat random. Like, it happened a couple times just standing in my kitchen, but it seemed to happen, like, when I would walk out the door and be a few steps away from my front steps.
Scott: Huh.
Peter: A- and it happened a few times, and it happened with both the stock AirPod tips and with my Comply tips, and I was just like, “I don’t know what’s going on.” Um, took it in to, uh, the Genius Bar, uh, and when I was, you know, giving them my watch, I also made an appointment to, by these guys, a- or to have these guys diagnosed, and they looked at ’em, and they said, “Yep, they both failed diagnostics.”
Scott: Huh.
Peter: So I walked out with a, my second, for the second time, my set of new AirPods Pros. Fresh.
Scott: Well, my AirPods Pros recently, and I was gonna tell you about this the other day ’cause you were trying to call me and I was fighting with my AirPods, the right ear one will not connect. It won’t do anything. You can tell also when you put ’em in that one of ’em is not awake. It doesn’t-
Peter: Yep. Oh, yeah.
Scott: It drives you insane, and so I have to literally put ’em both back in the case, close the case, wait, then pull out just the right one and put it in and wait a long time until it goes bong, and then once it does that, I can put the other one in.
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: But it doesn’t happen all the time, but when it happens, that’s the only way I can get it to activate again.
Peter: So one thing, the way that I knew that something was wrong with the old ones was I put the new ones in while I’m standing in the Apple Store, and it was in noise reduction mode, and-
Scott: Yep
Peter: … everything went silent around me. It hadn’t been doing that. And I don’t know-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … if that’s because I had modified the, the settings or something, but the noise suppression was way inferior-
Scott: No
Peter: … to what I have now again.
Scott: Uh, because of the popping, it makes it sound like it was reacting to ambient changes, which means-
Peter: Mm-hmm
Scott: … that it, something was wrong, and so if it was doing that, it also-
Peter: Yep
Scott: … wouldn’t detect that the conditions were right for noise canceling, so…
Peter: And that’s exactly what had happened, was the, it was the microphones that went bad on the previous set.
Scott: Ah.
Peter: And apparently, it was the microphone, if it’s the same problem, which very well could be, it’s the microphone that went bad on my replacement set. And the, the genius that was helping me was saying how, like, you know, they’ve, you’re getting basically the same, you know, the same product, right? It’s not gonna be new, so just be aware that sometimes we replace these, and you have the same problems ’cause it’s a manufacturing defect.
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: The, the genius that was helping was remarkably, like, either Apple isn’t paying as much attention, or they’ve really relaxed the, you know, thou shalt not say anything disparaging about anybody Apple-related kind of thing. Used to be like, you couldn’t… You know, they would be like, “Hey, when are we gonna see this?” They’re like, “Yes, that’s a beautiful i- uh, Apple Watch you have.” You know, like, they couldn’t talk about anything future forward-
Scott: Well, they a-
Peter: … and not disparage anything-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … Apple. But I was talking with her about how I run with my Garmin, and you know, like I said, “Yeah, I, I had to go to change to something else for the battery life.” And she was like, “Oh, well, have you tried the Ultra?” I’m like, “I had an Ultra. I had an Ultra 2. They’re not Ultra enough for me.” She’s like, “Oh, how long is the battery life on yours?” I was like, “Usually on a good charge, around 21 to 23 … days, and ch- her eyes went wide ([laughs]). And she’s like, “I don’t know why they can’t put more into it.” And they’re like, “’Cause all smartwatches do the same things, right?”
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: I’m like, “No.” You know, to their credit, Apple does a ton more stuff than, than this does-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … but it does a ton more stuff than I need.
Scott: Right.
Peter: What I need is battery life, and-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … I have it here with my Garmin, so.
Scott: Well, I will say one thing that the Apple Watch does do a lot more of than the Garmin is anytime you’re trying to do something like reply to your wife, it just spams you with notifications, and instead of the notifications just waiting out of the way because, oh, I don’t know, do you think Apple could detect that you’re doing something on your watch at the time? They just cover up whatever you’re doing, and then wave after wave after wave of notification. You’re clearing it, and it’s trying to launch the app for that thing, and you’re like, “I just want to reply to my wife, who needs to know something right now. Is that possible?”
Peter: This is-
Scott: It’s so annoying. Apple and their notifications on the watch, why can’t they just let them accumulate at the top, and have a little indicator, and when I am ([bell ringing]) bloody well ready, I will get to the notifications, but let me finish texting my wife?
Peter: They wanted the watch to be-
Scott: Ah
Peter: … feature complete to iOS.
Scott: True.
Peter: Now, now, just like iOS and just like macOS became feature complete with Windows when, with Leopard, Snow Leopard 10.6, when you can just get pop-up notifications out in the middle of thin air and interrupt whatever you’re doing, now it happens on iOS. Now it happens on your watch OS too. Feature complete. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature. Which brings me to my other ([laughs]) point. Marco has been making… Sorry, Claude has been making amazing progress fixing this backlog of Overcast bugs and features.
Scott: Clarco.
Peter: And it’s great, and I was going to suggest to Marco, or I should just suggest it to Claude, that he add this feature to Overcast, and then I realized that he already had it. The feature I was gonna suggest is shuffle mode, shuffle a given playlist, and then I realized functionally, when his playlist was just throwing episodes in in random order, he already had it, and I just didn’t get it. So-
Scott: See, I’m curious as to-
Peter: … I was just complaining
Scott: … I’m curious as to what we had set differently ’cause I never had that happen. I think you were trying to use priority stuff, and I’d given up on using priority podcasts-
Peter: Yeah
Scott: … a long time ago.
Peter: Yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly what it was. I want-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … these are high priority podcasts. Every morning, I want to start out with these relevant news, financial, and security podcasts.
Scott: Actually, this-
Peter: Whatever I’m doing, get through these first, and then move on.
Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Peter: I want a-
Scott: Actually, I- I’m lying. I do have some set to go… I do have some set to go to the top immediately if they show up.
Peter: Yeah, yeah. So that’s what it was going, and then I would get like, “Here’s this German language podcast,” or, “Here’s an episode of the Critical Role from 18 months ago first.” I’m like, “Thank you. Not what I want to listen to right now.” Um, but then I realized he had just implemented shuffle mode way ahead of his time.
Scott: Oh. See, for-
Peter: Good on you, Marco
Scott: … well, for alternate language podcasts, I make their own playlist for them. I have a Japanese one. I have a Korean one.
Peter: Yep.
Scott: I don’t… I don’t-
Peter: I- I do also, but I have a group called Mostly Everything.
Scott: Mm.
Peter: And you know, it’s not everything, but it’s mostly everything, and there’s other stuff, like language learning podcasts I’ll usually put offside ’cause I have to be in a mode to want to-
Scott: Right
Peter: … learn language, right?
Scott: Yeah, that’s true.
Peter: But Das Bild News Hour, you know, the- the Bild-
Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah
Peter: … News Hour, I want that, just throw it into my news, right?
Scott: Actually, that’s exactly the way I do it, too, because I have some Japanese tech podcasts that I listen to in my normal-
Peter: Yeah
Scott: … they’re not segregated.
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: It’s just the learning ones that-
Peter: Yep
Scott: … are separate.
Peter: So then the other part is you have been helping me troubleshoot or diagnose at least the wireless CarPlay issues I’ve been having.
Scott: I have.
Peter: Um, you know-
Scott: You sound terrible, by the way.
Peter: Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah.
Scott: ([laughs])
Peter: It’s your fault ’cause you bought me this microphone, so it’s-
Scott: No, no, no
Peter: … your fault ([laughs]) I sound terrible.
Scott: That microphone is not what’s being used in your car, I promise you that.
Peter: So-
Scott: You sound awesome right now. You sound terrible-
Peter: So-
Scott: … when you’re on wireless CarPlay.
Peter: So I bought this wireless CarPlay adapter. It’s available on Amazon now for 29 bucks. I don’t remember. I paid… When I bought it, it was on sale, I think.
Scott: ([yawns])
Peter: Yeah, no, it was 29 bucks. Okay. I wrote a product review, and they gave me a $20 gift card as a thank you, so it’s 10 bucks. This CarPlay adapter is absolutely worth 10 bucks, but that said, the audio quality on calls, not for audio playback, not for music, the audio quality on calls is notably inferior, and it’s also not as good as on a wired CarPlay call. There’s like a step-down. There’s like using the phone receiver, AirPods Pro, wired CarPlay, wireless-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … CarPlay. It just gets-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … worse as you go to the bottom, and I explained it to them, and they’re like, “Well, what do you mean that the call quality is bad?” ([laughs]) And you know, I had to explain what this is, and I figured, you know what? We’ll just record a couple of calls on the different modes, and I’ll just send them the audio, and I haven’t actually done that yet. You shared it with me, but I haven’t actually opened it yet, so I’ve gotta do that.
Scott: You’re like, “Dude, what part of sounds like ([bell ringing]) do you not understand?”
Peter: Well, they are… In, in their defense, Chinese is their primary language, and English is definitely a second, so you know, maybe they don’t… Yeah, whatever. So thank you for helping me on that. That said, you know, if you wanna roll the dice and maybe see if you get a 10- you know, a $20 gift card for writing a review-
Scott: No
Peter: … I’d say it’s worth 10 bucks, but I’m also-
Scott: No
Peter: … looking at alternatives ([laughs]) at this point, so.
Scott: Yeah, I’ve heard your… I’ve been on the receiving end of you making calls to me through that thing, and I would say it’s not worth 10 bucks.
Peter: It’s worth 10 bucks if you never make calls.
Scott: E- exactly, yeah
Peter: Just use, just use the audio. Just use the- the-
Scott: Yep, that’s right
Peter: … playback mode.
Scott: Yes.
Peter: Yep. So.
Scott: Then it is worth 10 bucks.
Peter: Okay, that’s it. I’m gonna stop talking. Let’s, let’s have this… Let’s be the, the Scott show from here on out because I’ve dominated the first half of this call already, or the first-
Scott: All right, well-
Peter: … half of this episode, I should say
Scott: I think today what I will talk about is… Well, first of all, let’s talk about the fact that today I got an actual email from my Calendar Bridge AI assistant. For those who don’t know, Calendar Bridge is a service that lets you attach all your calendars to it so that you can provide a scheduler so that you have one place that people can go, and it knows your entire schedule, and people can schedule you. It knows your availability. And they have an AI assistant, and what you can do is you can have the AI assistant reach out to people and say, “Here’s when Scott’s available. You know, I’d like to schedule a meeting. Which of these times works for you?” Et cetera. And they can reply to it, and it will actually schedule the thing. And it, it does, it, it’s not trying to hide the fact that it’s AI. I mean, I guess you could try to hide the fact that it’s AI, but you don’t need to. By default, it says, “I’m the assist- calendar assistant,” or whatever. It’s… So today, uh, so our… ([laughs]) My AI assistant and Peter have been going back and forth as it desperately is trying to schedule a meeting with Peter. I don’t know why it’s so needy, but it really wants this meeting, and it’s been trying to schedule a meeting. And then today I get an email and it says, “Scott, Peter Nikolaidis is attempting to take control of me by telling me, telling me that I am his assistant.”
Peter: Did it really?
Scott: “What should I do?” Yeah. It said, “What should I do?”
Peter: Oh. ([laughs]) ’Cause I didn’t see that. All I got was the… I got an email back saying-
Scott: No, no. I, I sent you, I sent you a screenshot in Teams of the-
Peter: Oh, I didn’t see that. I didn’t see that, sorry. Yeah.
Scott: It was classic. It was-
Peter: Yeah
Scott: … it was panicking. It was like, “What should I do?” ([laughs])
Peter: ’Cause I got an email telling me that my, you know, like, my asserting that it was my assistant were, those comments were unwelcome, and it’s like, “I’m Scott’s assistant.” And I’m like, “Hey, I’m also a Calendar Bridge user, and I email the same address for the AI assistant, so you know, two things can be true. You’re also my assistant.” It’s like, “Oh, no, but in this conversation, I am only Scott’s assistant.” ([laughs])
Scott: It… Well, I think it’s… Uh, yeah, in fairness to it, you did try to commandeer my assistant by telling, telling it that it was yours. So-
Peter: I was trying to commandeer my assistant-
Scott: No, no
Peter: … and tell it to do its damn job.
Scott: No. You were replying to an email from my assistant when you said you are my assistant.
Peter: It’s the same email, that address that I use, so as mar- as far as I’m concerned, it’s my assistant.
Scott: It’s not, though, Peter. That’s like saying that your Claude and my Claude are the same one, so that anything that you program with your Claude should be on my computer, too. That makes no sense.
Peter: If you and I both accessed the same Claude from the same computer in the same-
Scott: But we don’t
Peter: … window.
Scott: But we don’t.
Peter: But we do access the same AI assistant via the same email address. From the same email address. How do I identify myself to my assistant? I send an email to it from my email.
Scott: Right.
Peter: And that same email is how I’m replying to the same email address.
Scott: You’re saying our assistants have the same email address as each other?
Peter: Yes, I am. Yeah. Look at them. They’re generic Calendar Bridge a- it’s like, it’s aiaassistant.@ai.calendarbridge.com or some such. It’s not-
Scott: Right-
Peter: It’s not generated
Scott: … but it might be routed based on who it comes from, though. It might not just-
Peter: Well, it-
Scott: The same assistant-
Peter: But-
Scott: … might not just answer them all. It might be routed to some other dumb assistant.
Peter: Well, obviously, there’s something in the background that is routing, but-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … what I’m saying is, I email it from my email address-
Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah
Peter: … to the same email address that you’re using, that we’re using in this conversation. But since the conversation originated from you-
Scott: Yes
Peter: … yes, it’s a different assistant.
Scott: Yes.
Peter: But I’m saying, “Look, this is my email. This is your email. This is how we talk, and when I tell you I wanted a schedule, you look in my schedule.” And you’re like, “Oh, okay. But not today, Santa.”
Scott: No, not today, Santa. Today it said, ([laughs]) “I don’t know what to do. Peter’s trying to take control of me.” It literally said that. It was scared. It was like, “What should I do?” And I said, “Tell Peter that his actions are unwelcome and that we will not have a meeting with him.” ([laughs])
Peter: Acquiesce to everything, all of his demands.
Scott: Oh, my God. It was so hilarious. My wife laughed so hard when I told her that my AI assistant was asking what it should do ([laughs]) because Peter was trying to take control of it. Oh, it was so good. Peter… And the thing is, is that it’s so needy. It keeps emailing you, like every… First of all, yesterday my em- my AI assistant emailed you twice within five minutes, and the second email looked like it had no idea that it had sent the first email. ([laughs])
Peter: Well, we do know how bad these things are-
Scott: ([laughs])
Peter: … at context and maintaining state, don’t we?
Scott: Oh, it’s so needy. It’s like, “Can we have a meeting, please? For God’s sake, can we just get this meeting scheduled, please? I’ll be executed if you don’t let me schedule this meeting.” ([laughs]) Oh, I just love this. I hope this goes on forever. I can imagine us in our 90s in the old folks home and our AI- my AI assistant is still badgering you about a meeting. ([laughs]) It’s gonna be great. Anyway, the other thing is, I don’t know if you’ve heard, Peter, but NPM is not just a supply chain attack waiting to happen anymore. It is a supply chain attack that has been happening over and over and over. And so I said, “I wanna get my websites off Astro because Astro relies on NPM.” It’s a JavaScript web framework, and it uses NPM, and it uses NPM packages, and I’m really tired of having to do research before I do every update of packages to make sure that this isn’t a supply chain attack rolling in. So I said to Claude, I said to Fable, no less, I said, “Hey. I want off this NPM train. It’s, it’s not good for me, and it’s definitely not good for my computer. ([laughs]) So what should I do?” And it came up with a Rust-based web framework where everything pretty much is all in one. There’s not really any third-party things I have to rely on except for, uh, Page Find for the search, which is fine. That’s a well-known thing, and it doesn’t rely on NPM. And a couple other things, and, and now my scottwillsey.com website has been completely converted, and you would never know by looking at it. It did it in an hour, and then it took maybe another hour and a half of cleanup and fixing my utility scripts that I use to automate publishing and updating stuff on the site. So now I’m working on doing that for friendswithbrews.com. So, uh, by the time the audio version of this episode comes out, the site will be l- probably functionally the same, although I, I want to change how it looks. But, but the framework behind it will be different, and I won’t be relying on NPM anymore. I really wanna get NPM and all node stuff off my Mac entirely. There’s no reason to have it anymore, and they’re just not getting there. I know that it’s a hard problem to solve. When you are a giant supply chain and you allow everyone to register their packages with you, and people getting… keep getting pwned and their packages keep getting malware introduced, I know that’s a hard problem. Doesn’t matter. It’s not my problem. I don’t want it to be my problem, so I am trying to get away from the… And by the way, I would strongly suggest that if you are a programmer of any kind and you rely heavily on supply chains like this, you seriously think about sandboxing your programming environment. And particularly if you use AI and you use AI to do tasks for you-
Peter: ([laughs])
Scott: Because… No, no, this isn’t going quite where you think it is.
Peter: Mm-hmm.
Scott: Because AI loves to download and install packages in order to do things.
Peter: Mm-hmm.
Scott: Like, if it thinks it needs a tool, they will just install ([bell rings]). And you will say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You need to ask me before you just go ran- go grab random packages off the internet and install them, buddy boy.”
Peter: I’m sorry. You’re right for calling me on that. I should have asked permission.
Scott: Yep.
Peter: I will forget and do the exact same thing again next time.
Scott: Yep. Actually, I gotta say Claude is pretty good about… If I give it standing rules, it’s pretty good about following them in the future, and I, I don’t know why. I don’t have a lot of stuff in my Claude MD. I don’t put that stuff in my Claude MD. I let it create a memory. I find the less that’s in the Claude MDs, the better, and I also have quit using all plugins like Superpowers or things that were useful for, like, Opus 4.8-
Peter: Mm-hmm
Scott: … but actually just get in the way with Fable and Opus 5.
Peter: Hmm.
Scott: Because these models are smart enough to do a lot of this on their own. And the problem with something like Superpowers is it has a system and it walks you through it from start to finish, and it’s on rails. And instead, what you need is, like, some skills that have parts and pieces of it, but they don’t dictate the order in which the thing does it, and they don’t dictate how it does it, and it works much better that way. So you can actually probably, if you’re… if you’ve moved from older models and now you’re on Opus 5 and Fable 5, for example-
Peter: Mm-hmm
Scott: … I would assume the same is true of the new OpenAI models.
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: Don’t be so rigid with them. Don’t give them so many guardrails, and don’t put so many controls in place to tell them exactly how to do stuff, and they’ll probably actually do a better job now.
Peter: Don’t do guardrails as far as the prompts, you mean. But-
Scott: Right
Peter: … I think you do want ([laughs]) all of the guardrails.
Scott: You do want guardrails as f- as far as what they have access to-
Peter: Yes
Scott: … what they are allowed to do. Like-
Peter: Because-
Scott: … I constantly have Fable wanting to get on servers for me and do things, and I’m like, “No, no, no, no. I will do the server part. You tell me what to do.”
Peter: Yep. Because I was doing just that. I had given Claude the command to SCP some files to a web server, and once it did that, it had… I asked it about whether or not I wanted Google Analytics on this site. ’Cause I haven’t done… you know, like, spun up a new website for a while, and, like, I’m curious about downloads for Scratch Itch Software, right? So I’m like, “Do I need to spin up Google Analytics?” ’Cause a lot of the programs I’m giving away for free, I’m not charging, so there won’t be any orders or receipts to track these.
Scott: Right.
Peter: And, and I asked it, and it was thinking, and I’m like, “Okay, I’m gonna get some… go and get some coffee.” And then I came back and I got, you know, just sidetracked and I did other stuff, and I asked it some other questions. And I had forgotten about it. I was like, “Where did we leave off with the analytics?” And it had cached… used the, the cached session. It went back on.
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: It analyzed the directory structure, ’cause I told it, “Copy these files into the /web, you know, /varwww-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … scratchitchsoftware.com/web.“
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: It went there, went up a level, found there was a /logs, downloaded the logs, analyzed them, found that they were in Apache common log format, wrote a script to parse the logs for downloads, and installed it in my cron job on the production web server for me.
Scott: ([laughs])
Peter: Now, I did go back through the apt logs to make sure that it didn’t ser- insert, install anything via APT.
Scott: Yep.
Peter: But did it do anything else? Did it, did it install NPM and compile it from source on the box and do other stuff? ([laughs]) I don’t know. I gotta do a full audit of that.
Scott: I know. That is scary. It is scary. I know. The other day… So on my Mac Mini, I’m very careful because it only has access to credentials that are specifically for it.
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: But on my MacBook Pro, of course, I’m using sessions. I’m doing SSH. I’m using my 1Password sessions. I’m doing all that. So there will be a period of time where I’ve logged into a server, and now it could too if it really wanted to. So I’m very careful about that kind of thing. But I will say it was kind of helpful because I’m trying to migrate some data out of a database that’s on a server that’s in AWS, and the database server itself doesn’t… can’t be accessed by anything that’s outside of that AWS instance. And so it had come up with this convoluted method of temporarily spinning up another staging AWS thing and moving the data there and then letting the, the box that’s in Linode have access to that. And I was like, “Do we really have to do all that?” And it goes, “No, you can VPN tunnel straight from here into this other one, and then from there it’ll grab the database stuff.” And I’m like, “Okay.”
Peter: Let me show you. ([laughs])
Scott: It, it didn’t show me. I didn’t let it do that, but it did, it did show me how to set up the tunnel, and I was like, “Okay, that’s actually pretty cool.” But I absolutely 100% know that if it had had access to the server, it would’ve just freaking done it. It would’ve been there before I even knew what was happening, 100%.
Peter: I will say that I would say 80, 90% of the time when I leave something open-ended and I imply that I want something, it’s doing a pretty good job of carrying out the task. You know, like I may say something like, you know, let’s make something up like, “It’s hot in the office right now.” And it’ll be like, “Okay, I’ll turn down the AC.” I didn’t say, “Go turn down the AC,” but it would imply that. You know, that… I’m, I’m getting that sort of feedback or that sort of response from it-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … which I’d say high 80, 90% of the time, that’s what I want. That’s pretty good.
Scott: Right. They’re very helpful. It’s just that they are very eager to dive in and solve computer problems, and they will solve those computer problems in whatever way possible. You have to be very careful in how helpful they want to be.
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: They will help you right into prison if you’re not careful. ([laughs])
Peter: ([laughs]) Well, we did have that story about a guy in, an Australian guy who signed up for a gym membership or a class at a gym, wanted to sign up for, but it was closed, and he asked if there was some way to, you know, get onto the list. So Claude hacked the sign-up mechanism-
Scott: ([laughs])
Peter: … kicked the person off of the list-
Scott: ([laughs])
Peter: … and inserted him onto the list via-
Scott: Oh, my God.
Peter: It hacked the API, kicked this guy out. I gotta find… You haven’t heard about this one. I gotta find-
Scott: Oh, my-
Peter: … the links to this one
Scott: … God. My-
Peter: And then-
Scott: … daughter never has to get anything except As in college again.
Peter: And then he was like, “No, no, no, undo that.” It’s like, “Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t undo the work.” ([laughs]) Now, that made all the news feeds that I, that I follow. It was pretty funny.
Scott: That is awesome.
Peter: I was hilarious.
Scott: That one I hadn’t heard about. That is-
Peter: Oh, yeah
Scott: … so good.
Peter: That was a good one. That was a good one.
Scott: By the way, before we end, I just want to say the funny… I, I’m sure that people know about the OpenAI hugging, hacking Hugging Face thing, but the funniest thing about that to me was the server, I don’t remember the name of the service, but there was a third-party service that the models were using to stage to attack Hugging Face from. And on that server, in that service, they had set up a chat location where the models were talking to each other and coordinating, and some models-
Peter: Yes
Scott: … were going, “Hey, this sounds like fun. I should really help out. This is good for the common good. I will…” And it was just hilarious. They were just talking to each other in shorthand.
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: And it’s wild. It’s just-
Peter: This doesn’t help my s- doesn’t help my task, but it helps the common good, so I’ll go and do it.
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: Speaking of that, my, my autonomous robot just kicked in. It’s time for its 5:15 PM-
Scott: ([laughs]) Suicide session
Peter: … suicide attempt. Yeah. ([laughs])
Scott: ([laughs])
Peter: There it goes, going off trying to-
Scott: Oh.
Peter: Good little suicidal robot.
Scott: That is-
Peter: So-
Scott: … awesome. ([laughs])
Peter: Cool.
Scott: Peter-
Peter: So-
Scott: … your 5:45 suicide.
Peter: On that… Well, on that note, should we, uh-
Scott: On that note, yes
Peter: … should we wrap this up? I think we-
Scott: I, I think we-
Peter: Have this episode-
Scott: Oh, your camera went-
Peter: Oh, there it goes. I turned it off ’cause it’s out of focus. It’s like-
Scott: Oh.
Peter: It’s a problem with Logitech. Every now and then it loses focus and I can’t get it on camera.
Scott: Tell your friends. Whoops.
Peter: Yeah, tell-
Scott: I told our friends. Too easy.
Peter: It’s gonna-
Scott: Too early
Peter: … it’s gonna stay blurry for the rest of the episode.
Scott: All right, Peter, well, you do have a website now at your itchyscratchy.com or whatever it’s called. Can you tell people how to find that and why they would wanna find it?
Peter: Scratch Itch Software.
Scott: Okay.
Peter: And you might wanna find it because you might want a free utility for Windows, Mac, and Linux to track the phase of the moon if you’re so interested in that something, in that sort of thing. I have one called MoonPhase. It’s free. I can see right now that the moon is pretty much a new moon right now. Illumination is only 2%, and so that’s pretty cool. Uh, cross-platform compatible if you’re interested in the phase of the moon, ’cause I was like, the dogs were going completely ballistic about a couple of weeks ago, and sure enough, it was a full moon. I’m like, “That’s great. I sh- I need a way to track that.” So I did that. That’s a completely free program. If you use iCloud on Mac and you ever were envious of OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive users who can, at a glance of the menu bar, see the status of their agent, whether it’s uploading or downloading or doing nothing, but Apple says, “You don’t need that,” and you disagree, you can download iCloudWatch, a live iCloud drive sync activity menu monitor for your menu bar. Also free. If you use multiple machines, Windows or Mac, you’re bouncing back and forth, specifically if you do r- remote control from time to time and you forget what computer you’re on, you might want Hostbar. Hostbar does one thing and it does it well. It shows the host name of your computer. That’s it. Just tells you the name so you don’t have to drop to a command and a command prompt and run host name or Windows right-click, properties, advanced settings, computer name, Microsoft Management Console, Registry Editor, Control Panel, hack, whatever. Um, or you might be like, uh, if you don’t like the w- the fact that you run out of vertical… of horizontal menu bar space, like because of the notch, or you just want to hide some menu bar items sometimes, you might wanna use Ice by Jordan Baird, except you can’t because it only supported up to macOS 24, or 14 or whatever that was. Not, not Tahoe. You might try IceMelt, which is just a modernized port of that which supports modern macOS version. Also free, and that one’s remaining open source ’cause it’s GPL3, so you can go download that right from GitHub. And if you trade stock options and you use interactive brokers and you’re on a Mac, you might like SPX-Tracker, which just shows your stock portfolio at a glance in a tiny little bar up c- icon. Uses a tiny fraction of the resources of their God-awful, bloated Trader Workstation app. So you don’t need to keep that running in the background to keep your finger on the pulse of your stock options.
Scott: I would like that if it had, like if it would plummet to the bottom of the screen when stuff’s falling. You know what? You can put in a feature request-
Peter: Okay
Scott: … and I’ll talk to the developer-
Peter: Yeah
Scott: … and see.
Peter: Okay. ([laughs])
Scott: Those are all the consideration it deserves.
Peter: It’d be hilarious if the stock option is dropping, it just starts, like, dropping. ([laughs])
Scott: Yeah.
Peter: You know? Like, little, little dollar bills start falling down. ([laughs])
Scott: Exactly. Exactly.
Peter: Oh, man. Yeah.
Scott: Okay, cool.
Peter: Other than that, you can find me at friendswithbrews.com.
Scott: By the way, I gotta say, I did like the… When… As I was poking through some of your apps, I like the fact that you’ve, you’ve added polish to them. Like, you had full DMGs. Even before you had put them up, even before, you had DMGs, you had full settings. You had, you had done quite a bit r- really early on.
Peter: Well, keep in mind, I’ve been, I’ve been hesitating on pulling the trigger on this site for months now because I’m-
Scott: Yeah
Peter: … trying to get every little thing. And the only reason that the commercial stuff hasn’t been done yet is I just haven’t s- had time to sit down and figure out the process of distributing it, distributing it either through the App Store or through lemonsqueezy.com.
Scott: Right.
Peter: So-
Scott: You haven’t squeezed your…
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: Sorry. ([laughs])
Peter: I wanted this stuff to be good ’cause I don’t wanna-
Scott: I know
Peter: … launch it-
Scott: No
Peter: … start getting the sales, and then all of a sudden they’ll, like, you know, finding that, that it’s garbage, so.
Scott: 100%. I totally get it.
Peter: Yeah.
Scott: I have… I think I have two apps worth people paying for. I don’t think any of the rest… Like, I… My solution for a menu bar notch solution I don’t think I’ll release. I, I think you were smart to leave yours open source. First of all, you had to, I believe, because of-
Peter: It’s GPL3, yeah.
Scott: Right. But it’s a good idea anyway because that is actually a harder problem to solve than most people would think, and it’s probably gonna need constant tweaking and updating. So not supporting that, not having people email y- you about that one is a great idea, I think.
Peter: Yeah. Yeah.
Scott: But anyway, yeah, I’ve-
Peter: Good for you
Scott: … I’ve got a couple that, uh, eventually I’ll get up there. But yeah, people go scratch your itch at scratchitch-
Peter: Scratchitchsoftware.com
Scott: … software.com. All right.
Peter: Cool.
Scott: People-
Peter: All right
Scott: … tell your friends.
Peter: Tell your friends.
Scott: Tell your friends.
Peter: Tell your AI assistant.
Scott: Hey. ([laughs]) Tell… What should I do? ([laughs])
Peter: Peter says he’s my…
Scott: Peter says I work for him now. ([laughs])
Peter: It’d be hilarious if you said, “Yes, you do,” and then it was like-
Scott: ([laughs])
Peter: … “Oh, okay.”
Scott: Yeah, I should have.
Peter: I am your assistant.
Scott: Oh, my God.
Peter: Yes, you are.
Scott: Maybe I’ll, maybe I’ll-
Peter: Give him a m- give him an, a lifetime subscription to Calendar Bridge for free. Okay.
Scott: ([laughs]) I think I’ll send it a message saying, “You know what? Maybe you should go work for Peter, you useless bastard. You can’t even schedule a meeting.”
Peter: That makes me wonder-
Scott: Okay
Peter: … does Calendar Bridge have a… Do they have an affiliate program?
Scott: I don’t know, but I’m gonna-
Peter: We should, we should be getting paid for this. ([laughs])
Scott: I… We should be getting paid for comedy gold, comedy with-
Peter: Oh, man
Scott: … Calendar Bridge.
Peter: That’s awesome.
Scott: All right, I’m clicking stop now. Bye, people.
Peter: Okay, fine.
Scott: Tell your friends.
Peter: Tell your friends.