Episode 104 – Open Your Books, You Idiot

Scott: Good morning, Friends with Brews people. Wow, that was way too much energy. Coffee drinker, huh? Yep. Today I’m a coffee drinker. I’m drinking out of my cat cup as usual, and what I’m gonna have today is another Coava coffee, but I think this is one I haven’t had before. This is Coava Araponga from Brazil. Ayrton Senna de Brazil. That’s a specific reference to a time and place that none of you kids will have any idea what it means. All right. It says varietal yellow bourbon, but then it says complex and rich. That’s all I got. They don’t tell me anything more about this coffee. Yep, not a g*** thing or whatever. So, I will try it and tell you if it tastes like yellow bourbon and if it’s complex and rich.

Scott: Let’s see. [slurping] Yellow bourbon. I don’t know. Not tasting it. I’m tasting coffee. That’s what I’m tasting. [slurping] Complex and rich, hard to say. It’s a good coffee. It’s not bitter. [clears throat] I’m not sure what I taste. I actually taste a little bit of chocolate in this, so you tell me, you bourbon drinkers, does, um, does yellow bourbon taste like chocolate? I don’t… Um, anyway, they re- they do recommend that you make a drip brew with this. I- well, technically I didn’t make a drip brew. I used AeroPress, which is drip, but it’s not the same as running it through a Kalita Wave or something like that. Anyway, it’s not a bad coffee. I would drink this. I like Coava, and I like, this coffee in particular. It’s a very non-offensive, very good, very non-bitter coffee. Peter loves himself a bitter coffee.

Scott: These Co- uh, sorry. Coava Coffee Roasters are on Main Street in Portland, Oregon. So if you’re a Portland, Oregon person, run down there. Don’t go to your grocery store. Run to Coava, bang on the door, and ask for Araponga. Araponga de Brazil. Wait. Was that in focus? I can’t tell. There you go. [clears throat] Yay. Thumbs up. I’ll give it a thumbs up. It’s a good coffee. I don’t know what yellow bourbon tastes like. This doesn’t taste like yellow bourbon to me. Tastes a little bit chocolatey, and it’s quite good. [slurping] Mm. I need that.

Scott: Now, you might be wondering, “Scott, you’re doing your morning coffee and you’re in horizontal mode instead of vertical mode.” That’s true. I’m in horizontal mode, and that’s ’cause I wanna talk about some things. So let us talk about them. I’m gonna share my computer screen with y’all, And number two is I gotta put on my computer glasses. This is what you have to look forward to when you get old, kids. You idiots. You incredible idiots. Okay.

Scott: Ooh, Scratch Itch Software. So Peter has made a new logo. I like that. I get it. It’s a back scratcher. It looks like a chicken foot, but it’s not. It’s really a back scratcher. Anyway, I just wanna advertise, uh, my friend Peter, who is, uh, usually a co-host of this podcast. I just wanna advertise his website, Scratch Itch Software. He’s got a lot of apps here. CmdTab, which I use a version of, fnMute, which I have, but I haven’t used yet for some reason. Hostbar I do use, and this is a really cool one. Why doesn’t he have screenshots? My gosh.

Scott: Basically, this will show the hostname of your computer up in the menu bar, which is useful when you’re remoting into a bunch of different computers, and if you click on it, the dropdown shows hostname, your public IP. If you have a Tailscale address, it has that. If you have a Tailscale ID number, it has that. Oh, sorry, it has Tailscale IPv4 and IPv6. That’s what it is. And then it’s got all your local connections, like if you’re on Ethernet, it’s got that. If you’ve got Wi-Fi, it’s got that. Really nice. the IP addresses in particular are handy, but the hostname is kinda nice to have just because sometimes you wanna know what system you’re logged into, uh, remotely. And the one thing I like about this better than what I was doing before, where I had a utility that would just put my public IP up in my menu bar, is because it’s showing my hostname and I have to click on it to get my IP address, I don’t have to worry about screen sharing or screen recording or anything like that. I can just, you know- Do that, and then it’s always just showing my host name, and who gives a s*** about my host name? No one, that’s who. Nobody gives a s*** about Scott Willsey’s host name. Not even Scott Willsey. Well, I do, actually.

Scott: Okay, what else? Uh, doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. Oh, I do have something to talk about. I have a recommendation for you guys. Decoder podcast. I think in light of the current freakout over AI doomerism and what the AI labs are asking for, basically they’re, they’re such f*** idiots. yeah, I don’t want that. I don’t know what’s going on there. Something’s not popping up here on The Verge. I’m blocking something. Oh, YouTube. Okay.

Scott: What I don’t understand about the AI companies, I know they’re up to no good, but they’re simultaneously saying, “AI is gonna kill us. We need to be regulated,” but they’re also asking for antitrust exemptions so that they can collaborate with each other. And this episode of Decoder has Jonathan Kanter, who was a antitrust chief for the US Department of Justice back in the Biden administration, and is now a professor of law at Washington University and a professor of technology at Carnegie Mellon, and he talks about why that’s absurd. And then Nilay and … Nilay? Nilay? Nilay Patel, that guy and that guy, these two guys on the edges, but not the guy in the middle, talk about… God, look at Sam Altman’s face. He probably had this picture taken on purpose, too. This is a guy… J*** what a f*** whatever. Anyway, yeah, this is, this is a good conversation about what the f*** are these guys up to, and that their proposed remedies aren’t the answer.

Scott: And by the way, by the way, I just wanna throw it out there, that it’s just kind of obvious to me that none of these AI companies have given a, even a remote bit of a s*** about security and keeping their stuff contained. They ha- they don’t talk to any security experts. They seem to think that computer security experts have no idea what they’re going through. Like, “You can’t possibly understand all the weird things happening on our computers.” Guy, their entire job is to figure out weird s*** happening on computers and what could possibly go wrong. That’s all they do. but anyway, they’ve made no attempt at all to contain these things or create a system where they can control their agents that they’re testing, and then they’re amazed when things go wrong, and then they say stupid things like, “Well, even if we air-gapped it, it probably wouldn’t work ’cause there’s this theoretical paper that says, you know, you can detect changes in CPU heat from the computer next to you,” blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, yes, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do the basics to begin with, you idiot. These are complete idiots, unlike the young people that I was mocking a little while ago, because I’m old and I need multiple glasses. Yeah, I don’t get it. It’s dumb. I don’t, I reject it. I reject everything these guys say.

Scott: And here’s the thing is, like, I also listened to another podcast today on 404 Media. Well, let’s just go there and find it. Yeah, here’s the episode that I listened to. It was in Overcast. This is my Overcast web history. I listened to it on the app on the phone, not the web. But anyway, it’s an episode called “We Are Getting Way Too Comfortable Talking To Machines,” and my guess is because this is the premium feed, this will come out for other people in a couple days. Anyway, Sherry Turkle, which by the way, what is, what is Sherry Turkle? Oh my God, that’s bad. Sherry Turkle. Sherry Turkle is… Sherry Turkle is the professor of the social studies of science and technology.

Scott: Anyway, this episode is pretty good. It talks about, uh, ah. It talks about how, um, it talks about the using LLMs as companion/advisor/replacements for interpersonal human communications aspect of LLMs, not the let’s use it for technology like, programming or routing your email. And in fact, Sherry talks about that, and she says she’s totally okay with those. What she’s worried about is the, the deconstruction of people’s ability– Deconstruction, that’s the wrong word. The, destruction of people’s ability to learn how to relate to each other socially and to also be able to process their own faults and figure out who they are so that they can actually have correct relationships with other people. good episode, interesting episode. I liked it quite a bit. I would recommend finding 404 Media. First of all, pay for them, ’cause then on the premium feed you’ll get the, uh, you’ll get this episode. But then, uh, if you don’t wanna pay for them for some stupid reason, um, just wait. This will come out to you, the un-payer, the non-payer, the cheapskate. All right, I’m gonna stop sharing.

Scott: And what else do I wanna say? Oh, I just wanna talk for… Hmm, this is interesting. [sighs] Speaking of AI, so you know that if you watch YouTube and you watch a lot of people talking about AI on YouTube, you’re probably fully aware that a lot of these people make videos and talk about courses that they teach, teaching people how to build AI automations and sell them to other people, or how to use it in your own business. So they’re supposedly running businesses where they’re doing this, but it looks to me like either a lot of them are saying, and I have had this said to me, “You do have to have an online presence. You do have to have, video. You have to have something out there.” [sighs] And it’s weird because to me, that almost means you kinda have to be an influencer or a pseudo-influencer, or at least be in the very fringes of that space in order to be successful at business now, which I don’t like that idea. First of all, I hate influencers. I hate the whole influencer economy. I hate the word influencer. I also hate the fact that when you do that, you’re always playing by the algorithm’s rules. And don’t get me wrong, these kids are savvy. They are understanding the algorithms. They’re understanding what looks good. They’re understanding what people watch. But it just bothers me because I don’t know how many of these people can be themselves.

Scott: And so I had a jarring experience recently where I realized that someone that I was interacting with is very different from… [sighs] And it’s not even a bad thing. It’s just a jarring thing. It’s not like they were trying to be deceptive. It’s not like they were trying to be bad. But it’s just weird when you realize, “Oh, that’s a persona. That is not who that person is.” And I don’t know, it kind of rubs me the wrong way, but we all do it to some extent. Even I am maybe doing it now, but that’s because I’m only talking about certain things. You’re only seeing a certain aspect of me. You don’t see me when I’m raging in traffic, or you don’t see me when I’m, you know, hanging out with my kid and that relationship and say, “Oh, maybe Scott’s not a bad dad,” or whatever. You, [chuckles] you know what I mean? It– You inevitably accidentally have a persona just by doing this kind of stuff. But I feel like these people ramp it up to the nth degree.

Scott: And then the other question is, okay, so not only is it actually necessary to do that to have your business succeed, but then the second question is, are they making their money from the videos, or are they making their money from their business? It makes me a little suspicious. So, like, if you are selling a course or you are promoting videos that purport to teach other people how to do a specific type of business, is the majority of your income actually coming from that type of business, or is it coming from being an influencer? Which is it? Because if it’s coming from being an influencer, then I don’t want any part of that business you’re trying to sell me. Unless you can prove, and I can believe that, okay, that business makes, $300,000 a year, let’s just say, and you wanna make $500,000 a year, and the only way for you to do that is to be an influencer on top of it, or Maybe the influencing part makes more money even though the business makes a little bit of money, but some people would be happy with what the business makes and then that’s okay to sell that. Do, do you understand? Do you understand? Yeah, do you understand?

Scott: The question is, [sighs] what is the reality of what these people are doing? Are they online because it’s the only way now to get their businesses to be successful or are they online because that’s actually the successful business if you can get to a certain scale? And by the way, most people can’t. look at my channel as an example of a property that can’t. [laughs] And also, see that’s the other thing is like for me to be successful on YouTube, first of all I would have to probably look better, but also I would have to not be me because I would have to be willing to be something that the algorithm likes, et cetera, et cetera, and I don’t wanna do that. I can’t do that. I can’t… I don’t like what the algorithm promotes, let’s put it that way. I do have– I do follow and watch a lot of YouTubers that I like that are successful, but still there are times where some of their videos are rubbish because they’re just putting it up there to– because it will do well, but I don’t learn one g*** thing from it, you know? Or it’s not– If it’s just sheer entertainment, that’s one thing, but watching people talk about AI is not sheer entertainment. Either you’re learning something or it’s there for the views, right? And I don’t give a s*** about it’s here for the views, but I’m not actually learning anything interesting from it.

Scott: So ramble, ramble, ramble. Scott, tell us how you feel and, uh, I don’t know, I’d like to hear your thoughts about… [sighs] I don’t know. I’d like to hear your thoughts. If you are a person working in specific types of technology, do you ever feel like you have to engage in a certain way? Like if you’re working for yourself, I’m not talking about somebody that’s working for Intel Corporation or something like that, which I did and, you know, probably working in the corporate world for so long, that’s part of why my view is different. But if you’re working for yourself, you’re an entrepreneur, do you feel this hur- this huge urgency to have an online presence to promote yourself in that way? And then if you do, and you are doing it, is it actually helping or do you have to go to incredible lengths? Like do you have to always every day be producing something and every day be doing something with the algorithm, which I find is kind of an onerous task if that’s what’s required.

Scott: So blah, blah, blah. Coava, Araponga do Brazil. thumbs up, multiple thumbs up, and I’d like to hear your thoughts both about the AI companies telling everybody that they’re gonna kill us all and yet they still want us to use their products and also tell us what you think about what are these people selling AI on YouTube actually doing? Where, where are they making their money? What is actually necessary in order to be successful? I, I don’t know. I wanna h- I would love to have conversations with some of these people. I would like to have them on the show so I can directly say, “Hey, what the hell? What are you doing and how are you making your actual money? Show me. Show me your books. Open your accounts, you g*** idiot.” That’s what I’ll say. I’ll be harsh like that. That’ll get views. Open your books, you g*** idiot. That’ll be the title and, uh, I’ll have myself raging at these people with YouTube face.

Scott: All right. So with that, open your books you g*** idiot, and don’t forget- Tell your friends. Tell your friends. Tell your friends. I’ll tell your friends. I’ll tell your friends where to go.