Episode 83 – Whales Are Submersible

Neter: Hello, I’m Neter Picolitis, host of Friends with Brews Podcast.

Neter: I couldn’t be there this week, as I’m on assignment in a dangerous and unfriendly part of the world known as Columbia University.

Neter: However, I was able to get two friends of mine, Scott Wilsey and John Chidgey, to fill in for me.

Neter: And apparently they brought along an interloper, probably an AI generated one, who calls himself Peter nikolaidis, the gall.

Scott: Friends with Brews?

Scott: Friends with Brews.

Scott: Friends with Brews.

John: And what?

Scott: Wait, there’s a voice there that does not belong to Peter at all.

Scott: Peter, what’s going on?

Peter: Don’t look at me, man.

Peter: I’m just the co-host.

Peter: You started this.

Scott: All right.

Scott: Where’s that?

Scott: Do I have Peter?

Scott: We have a problem?

Soundboard: I’d like to move us right along to a Peter Nikolaidis.

Scott: I love that sound clip.

Scott: OK.

John: That’s so good.

Peter: That’s great.

Peter: Thank you.

Scott: John Chidgey, you’re back.

John: Hello.

Scott: You’ve been on this podcast for, haven’t you?

John: I have.

John: It has been a little while, but I’m thrilled to be back, just guesting.

John: And this time we have the wonderful Peter with us this time.

John: So how cool is this?

Scott: Oh, I didn’t know we were getting the wonderful Peter.

Scott: I knew we were getting Peter.

Peter: I don’t know.

Peter: It’s kind of the week I’ve been having.

Peter: I’m sort of the mediocre Peter, but you know, well, I’ll try to be wonderful for the benefit of our special guest.

Peter: And of course, our tens of listeners.

Scott: It sounds like a good name for a Baldur’s Gate session.

Scott: Peter the Wonderful.

John: Oh, man.

Peter: So John, welcome.

John: Thank you.

Scott: I want the listeners to know this is the first time that John and Peter have ever been on a podcast together in person.

John: That is true.

Peter: This is true.

Peter: First time we’ve communicated in real time, although we’ve communicated via multiple other media in the past.

Peter: So, I mean, if you can say real time, I mean, John’s coming to us from the future.

John: So, yeah, that’s the dateline.

John: They drew it where they drew it.

John: I don’t ask me why, but anyhow, it’s fine.

John: And depending on who you ask, the world’s probably flat anyway.

John: So maybe it’s all just made up.

John: Who can say?

Scott: Wait, I’m sorry, but we’re renaming that dateline to Dateline of America.

Scott: I hope you’re okay with that.

John: Oh, that’s totally fine.

John: You can call whatever you want.

John: It’s not going to change anything.

Scott: But anyhow.

Peter: Wow, we got political fast.

John: I know.

Scott: It wasn’t me, it was my country.

Scott: I’m just standing here.

John: Oh, God.

Scott: Damn it.

John: Anyway.

Peter: So what’s been going on?

Scott: Yeah, exactly what has been going on.

Scott: I will say one thing that’s been going on, which is excitingly relevant to the listeners of this podcast, is that John Chidgey has a podcast that he’s been doing recently that I would love for him to tell us about.

Scott: John, can you please tell us about your new podcast, newish podcast, and what it’s about, and why you’re doing it, and how many times have you gone back into the house a thousand times happier than when you left the house?

John: Oh, boy.

John: Okay, well, okay, right.

John: So what you’re, I think, referring to is my Whiskey podcast, which I’ve called Whiskey Whiskey with the two different spellings, one with the E and one without the E.

Scott: Thank you.

John: Now, you can, yeah, so, and this is just how I’m keeping everybody happy, right?

John: So it’s cause the people that say it’s gotta have an E, the people say it’s gotta not have an E.

John: That way, if there’s both in the title, then no one can argue, but nevermind.

John: So yeah, look, probably about mid last year, I had an epiphany that all these other people, when we were out and about, I went and I tried a whiskey on someone’s recommendation and it tasted terrible.

John: And I’m like, this is horrible.

John: So why are people spending hundreds and thousands of dollars in some cases on bottles of this stuff?

John: What am I missing?

John: And so I set about to, I suppose, educate myself as to like, well, learn more, like, expand my palate, try different things.

John: And as I was doing this, I realized, you know what?

John: I could probably make a show out of this.

John: And then I started sort of collating some material and doing some research like pragmatic causality kind of style.

John: It is a scripted show except for the tasting part of it.

John: But essentially it’s my exploration of whiskey.

John: And I’m trying to do something that’s not like, I mean, there’s a lot of people out there doing this, to be honest.

John: It’s a lot more than in the tech space, a lot more than in a whole bunch of other spaces.

John: And so I realize I’m just another person doing this, but I wanted to add a little bit of like, here’s how the wood influences it, here’s how the distillate influences it, and so on and so forth.

John: And try and have a little bit of that, as I’m learning that educational bit, as I’m going through it as well.

John: So it’s not just me going, oh, that’s really nice or that’s terrible, like Johnny Walker read, but nevermind.

Peter: Oh, I thought you were gonna say like Scott and Peter do on the Friends with Brews Podcast.

Peter: No, geez.

John: So look, that’s what I’ve been doing.

John: And I’ve recorded a whole bunch of episodes now.

John: I have not finished editing them because I did them all over my Christmas break when I could.

John: And I’ve recorded the first lot in this sound booth that I’m in.

John: And after that, I moved into the house because let’s be honest, it’s air conditioned now and it’s just nicer to do it in the house.

John: So anyway.

Scott: Okay.

Scott: Well, that’s perfect.

Scott: I will say as a listener, I’m enjoying it very much and I especially enjoy the ones where you don’t like the whiskey, although that’s probably not as enjoyable for you, but I get a kick out of them.

Scott: I like when you, there was a particular Johnny Walker that you were like, God no, oh no.

Scott: It was great.

Scott: Loved that one.

Scott: All right.

Scott: Since we’re talking about drinks, let’s talk about the drinks that we have today.

Scott: John, as our guest and the person with the most listenable accent on the podcast, what drink do you have?

Scott: What brew have you brought with you today?

John: Scott, you and your self-deprecation, just press pause on that.

John: You’re amazing and just accept it.

John: So I have a cup that says, Dad, you’re awesome, which tells you nothing about what’s in it.

John: But rest assured, the kids gave it to me like seven or eight years ago as a Father’s Day present.

John: The Father’s Day stalls that they have at the school and they bring stuff home.

John: So here’s money, buy me something cool.

John: Anyway, so dad, I’m awesome.

John: But it’s actually the coffee in it is Campos, which is an Australian like they so that they roast their own and they distribute a new license.

John: So I was like, so cafes all have a licensing thing and I’ll say, oh, we’re a Campos, you know, cafe that you got a whole bunch of other ones like Dover, Chenza, and it doesn’t matter.

John: You probably haven’t heard of these companies because they’re all in Australia.

John: But Dibella is another one which actually went global.

John: But in any case, so Campos is available at Woolworths, which is why I like it because I can get a kilo bag of beans for about $48.

John: Australia in US dollars is probably about maybe $32, $33 US.

John: So I figured that’s pretty decent.

John: And it’s nice because I’ve been on espresso based coffee for years.

John: So this stuff is beautiful as espresso.

John: If I want to use the Aeropress, I’ll probably use a lighter roasted coffee, but I don’t have that with me today.

John: So that’s what I’m drinking.

Scott: When I first clicked that link, John, and I saw the price, I was like $55.

Scott: But then I realized it was a kilogram bag, and I did the conversion from 12 ounces to kilograms to see how much, how many kilograms the bags I buy are, and they are 0.34 kilograms.

Scott: So hence the difference in price.

Scott: You got it.

John: Yeah.

John: Keeley’s a big bag.

Scott: Yeah.

John: Keeps me going for three and a half weeks, roughly, which is about right because after the three-week mark, the beans start to go off a bit.

John: So.

Scott: Yes, I’m sure.

John: So that’s me.

Scott: Peter, what have you got?

Peter: You’re going to love this one, Scott.

Scott: Oh, this don’t tell me.

Scott: Wagmans, decaf.

Peter: Well, so I’m drinking in a clear glass mug, which does reveal the contents of the mug.

Peter: And what you can see is that I’m drinking a deconstructed coffee this evening.

Scott: Get off my show.

Peter: Actually, I’m only part of the, I didn’t get to assembling it or heating the water or any of that.

Peter: And so.

Scott: He’s drinking water, you guys.

Scott: He’s drinking water.

John: No, it’s not.

John: That’s clear coffee.

John: It’s all the new, that’s the new rage.

John: It’s clear coffee.

John: I had clear coke.

John: Now we got clear coffee.

Scott: Speaking of rage, it is a good thing that John is here.

Peter: It’s got such a smooth, smooth taste, smooth taste.

Peter: And like the interesting thing, no jitters.

Peter: I don’t get any, any nothing, no side effects from this one.

Scott: That’ll come later when your body realizes you’re drinking bathtub water, but that’s okay.

Peter: I put a link to it in the show notes.

Scott: To your bathtub?

Peter: You’re thinking bathtub gin.

Scott: Oh, I might be.

Scott: Hey, Peter.

Scott: All right.

Peter: Maybe this could be.

Peter: Ha ha.

Peter: What if this is, what if I’m drinking like a full cup of gin right now?

Scott: I was going to say when I saw that clear liquid, you better be drinking something that was distilled and it’s going to knock you over.

Scott: It’s okay.

Scott: You can have water.

Peter: I’m more of a vodka than a gin guy.

Peter: Gin never really appealed to me.

Scott: Gin, gin.

John: They are the same.

Scott: All right, well, I’m making up for you, Peter, because today we went to Trader Joe’s and I learned that although Trader Joe’s is great for little one-off items, don’t ever go shopping there.

Scott: Trader Joe’s Fair Trade, uh-oh, that sounds like something that Trump’s going to come after.

Scott: Fair Trade Organic Bolivian Blend, Medium Dark Roast Coffee.

Scott: And I got to say, these beans are a little dark, a little oily.

Scott: These are beans that Peter would like, the dark and the oily.

Scott: Listeners, if you’re dark and you’re oily, Peter wants to talk to you.

Scott: But anyway, it’s pretty good.

Scott: It’s not bad.

Peter: I might add a couple more qualifiers, but you’re not wrong.

Scott: Okay, it’s not bad.

Scott: I, um, let me see what notes they think this is supposed to have.

Scott: Let me click my own link here.

Scott: Oh my god, they’ve got a lot of reading here.

Scott: This is unlike most websites.

Scott: Anyway, it says, Medium Dark Roast presents a smooth textured body, delicate acidity and sweet notes of characteristic caramel.

Scott: Yeah, I’ll go along with that.

Scott: It’s more, I taste the acidity and the medium darkness of it more than the caramel, but I do believe what they’re saying.

Scott: And so I’ll, I’ll say that’s fine.

Scott: And then to make up for Peter not having a real drink, although some people say water, humans go together necessary, whatever.

Peter: I’m man enough that I can handle my water.

Peter: If you can’t hold your water, Scott, then maybe you should talk to someone about that.

Scott: Well, if I told you how many times I…

Peter: John perhaps.

Scott: If I told you how many times I get up at night to go pee, no, I actually can’t handle my water, but here we go.

Scott: My second drink is a Wayfinder beer.

Scott: I don’t know how to pronounce this.

Scott: La Magie, who speaks French here?

Scott: La Magie, French pilsner.

Scott: I’m trying not to spill.

Peter: I didn’t hear a thing.

Scott: That’s cause Teams blocks everything out.

Scott: Wow.

Scott: Here’s what it looks like.

John: Oh, that’s cool.

Scott: Yeah, so it is definitely a pilsner.

Scott: I currently have two pilsners in my fridge, and this is the better of the two.

Scott: It looks like you’re a standard pilsner.

Scott: I even tried to pour it sideways.

Scott: Well, you know what I mean.

Scott: And I still got quite a foamy head on there.

John: Nice.

Peter: Well, cool.

Scott: It’s good.

Scott: This is a good pilsner.

Scott: It’s not too…

Scott: Oh, gosh, how would I describe it?

Scott: Some pilsners are a little plain, a little Budweiser-y.

Scott: This one’s not like that.

Scott: It says French Strisselspalt hops.

Scott: I don’t know what a Strisselspalt is, but there’s some hops from a Strisselspalt.

Scott: Fresh Spring Air, they’ve got air in this can.

Scott: Meadow Breeze, they’ve got a…

John: They put a breeze in the can.

Scott: Yeah, no wonder beer blew all over me when I opened it.

Scott: They’ve got Soft Floral Hopspice.

Scott: Anyway, it is a good beer.

Scott: I do like this beer.

Scott: I’ve been liking some Wayfinders in general.

Scott: Their website sucks, like all beer websites.

Scott: They don’t have a…

Scott: Ah, fuck this guy.

Scott: Oh, where’s my beeper?

Scott: What I don’t like is…

Peter: Clicker.

Scott: You can’t click on a link that takes you to the information about a specific beer.

Scott: All you can do is go and look at their current on tap list, which is really stupid considering they also sell stuff in stores.

Scott: You’ve got to make a link that people who buy your stuff in the stores can click on people.

Scott: Peter, I sense a business opportunity here for us.

Peter: Every beer.

Peter: We should just design websites for beer companies.

Peter: That’s a market right there.

Peter: And, you know, I tried for the longest time we should talk to Adam about this, you know, when it came to like marketing my business.

Peter: And I could never really get it because, you know, one thing they say is, you know, choose your market, niche down.

Peter: And it was always, yeah, but what about all the potential clients that I’m leaving out and yada, yada.

Peter: But no, this is Greenfield.

Scott: This is a market.

Scott: This is a niche that needs addressed.

Scott: However, I’m going to target, I’m going to workshop my marketing technique here.

Scott: This is how I feel about the beer websites that don’t actually have links to their beer.

Scott: So I’m going to call these people up and I’m going to go, God, you stupid, what is your problem?

Scott: I want a link.

Scott: So we’ll start with that.

Scott: Any edits needed, any modifications?

Scott: How would you change that if you were calling up a beer company and trying to sell them on your services?

Peter: Well, this is pre-bleeping and clinking or post?

Scott: Either one.

Scott: I can clink and bleep as I call.

Scott: I don’t care.

Peter: I would go just with that.

Peter: I think that script is fine and I wouldn’t even, I don’t see, no, just don’t change the thing.

Peter: It’s great.

Scott: Perfect.

Scott: All right, we got a business.

Scott: We’re going to roll.

Scott: All right, John, what else do you want to talk about today?

Peter: Yeah, you’re clearly in another continent.

Peter: You’re in another hemisphere.

Peter: You’re in another season.

Peter: But what is it exactly that you do there?

Scott: Be careful when you call people in continent, Peter.

John: I’m in a continent part of the continent.

John: Anyway, nevermind.

John: Yes.

John: So all right, what do I do?

John: Well, I’m an electrical engineer and probably for the first, so I’ve been doing this now for not quite some 28 years.

John: I call it 30 years.

John: I like to round it up.

John: It sounds more impressive.

John: So I’ve been doing it for about three decades now, and probably two thirds of that time has been in automation systems.

John: So I have done some work in electronics, like RF electronics early in my career, as well as so semiconductor manufacturer and ASIC design.

John: But that was very brief after that, I did some electrical design because electrical engineer.

John: But then when I crossed into automation, that’s kind of where I’ve ever been since.

John: So like programming logic controllers in the earlier days of my career and SCADA systems for HMI visualization.

John: And I sort of developed a very strong keen interest in contrast, font sizes.

John: You know, basically, the problem I have with a lot of engineers is that when they look at HMI design, they don’t look at it from a readability point of view.

John: They’re like, oh, there’s a button there.

John: You click on this stuff, happens, job done.

John: And it’s like, yeah.

John: But then you look at different instances that have happened where people have died and you realize that poor design has actually cost people’s lives.

John: So that’s been something in the last few years, like probably the last 10 years or so, that I’ve taken much bigger interest in.

John: So it’s a bit of that niche, I guess.

John: But yeah, I’ve also in my current job, I’ve been working with a bit of cybersecurity stuff recently, which is something I’m sure Peter, you’ve been doing a bit of as well.

John: So it’s one of those things that they said to us, hey, we don’t have a cybersecurity standard, could you write one?

John: And I’m like, sure, I’ve got to spare three months, why the hell not?

John: So to be honest, I’m pretty proud of that, actually.

John: Although it was like seven years ago, I actually wrote probably 60% of the cybersecurity standard for the whole company.

John: And the company is like three, four thousand people.

John: So I’m pretty happy with that.

Peter: That’s cool.

John: Yeah, that’s it in a nutshell.

Peter: Did you start from scratch or did you use a framework or did you steal someone else’s and copy and paste and search and replace or what?

John: Oh, well, yeah, OK.

Peter: So you can be honest, it’s just us and tens of listeners.

John: OK, well, well, just us and tens of listeners.

John: So what I did is ISO 95, you know, pushes the whole Purdue model for segregation, different subnetting and, you know, which applications can talk to which gateways and so on so forth.

John: And so what I did is I took the basis of ISO 95 and percolated that down into our implementation and our reference implementation.

John: Fortunately, for a large project recently was quite good.

John: So I also leveraged some of the documents have been written for that specific project.

John: And then I applied that across the whole company.

John: I also, in Australia, we’ve also got the AES-CSF framework.

John: Oh, I shouldn’t call it that.

John: It’s an AES-CS framework because the F stands for framework anyway.

John: Doesn’t matter, it’s one of my PEPPs, and you probably already know that.

Peter: FTP protocol?

John: Yes, one of those.

John: It’s the FT.

Peter: ATM machines?

Peter: PIN numbers?

Peter: VIN numbers?

John: All of the above.

John: Oh, my God.

John: Anyway, yes.

John: So I also then took the Australian government guidelines and I cross-referenced those against the documents.

John: So it’s about 42 pages long, or thereabouts.

John: And I co-authored it with someone from Generation, which is another part of the business.

John: And the Generation part of the business, they already had a standard, but it had never been released.

John: Like they wrote it, but they never got it approved.

John: So we simply took cherry pick bits out of that and merged the two.

John: And yeah.

John: So yeah.

Peter: And as far as podcasting goes, so going back out of work mode, back to like, you know, fun stuff too.

Peter: My first exposure to you was pragmatic.

Peter: And I don’t remember where I first heard about it.

Peter: It was a while ago, though.

Scott: Had to be me.

Scott: I’ll just take credit here since he doesn’t know.

Peter: It might, it may have been you, but it may also may not have.

Peter: I just, I really don’t recall.

Scott: It’s very possible, wasn’t it?

Peter: Well, you know what?

Peter: And now that we’re both experts in statistics and probability, after reading Fluke, we can say it’s a 50-50 chance.

Peter: No?

Peter: Yes.

Peter: Anyway.

Peter: So you, you started the Pragmatic Podcast some time ago, like, you know, you say, what, a decade or so?

Peter: And you stopped, it went away.

Peter: And you said it was like the final episode, just wasn’t, you know, possible anymore.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: And like, when I heard that, I was like, well, I guess I’ll save myself the modicum of bandwidth and unsubscribe.

Peter: And then somehow I was swapping around, I think I was still following you on Twitter, rest in peace.

Peter: And I saw like, oh, the new episode of Pragmatic is out.

Peter: And I was like, wait, well, what?

Peter: And so I was tickled when you came back.

Peter: And that was a lot of fun.

Peter: So, you know, that was great.

Peter: And causality, you know, I caught a few episodes of that.

Peter: I haven’t gotten as into it as I was into Pragmatic.

Peter: Problem I’m facing right now is I’m really, really making a concentrated effort to clean up my diet.

Peter: And right now, whiskey is the last thing I need to be introducing to it.

Peter: So I’m really glad that I get a chance.

Scott: It’s also expensive.

Peter: Yeah, but money, whatever, you know, I just, I got disposable income.

Peter: It’s like, you know, we’re all going to die in like five years.

Peter: So I may as well spend it now.

Peter: Too soon?

Peter: Six years?

Peter: Ten years?

Peter: Do we have ten years?

Scott: I feel like with the right tariffs, we could really bring the price down on that Japanese and Scottish whiskey.

Peter: So that’s a good idea.

Peter: What about the Australian whiskey?

Scott: Well, we’re just going to it’s going to become a state, don’t you know?

Scott: It’s going to become perfect.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: Hey, I have an idea.

Peter: Why don’t you just mute John for a minute so we can talk about him behind his back and we’ll tell him how we’re going to tariff Australia.

Peter: Are we?

Peter: Did we put tariffs on the podcast?

Peter: Are we getting paid for this?

Scott: It’s possible.

Peter: Like, is he paying his fair share?

Scott: Yeah, yeah, because that’s how tariffs work.

Scott: It’s not that the people who make the tariffs pay the price.

Scott: It’s somehow magically the people.

Scott: Yeah, I don’t know.

Peter: Anyway, since I’m not an avid listener of Whiskey Whiskey, I’m really grateful to have you on this podcast.

Peter: Number one, for us to actually talk in real time for the first time.

Peter: And number two, I get to hear your voice.

Peter: It’s great.

Peter: I told Scott early on, what was it?

Peter: It was, it wasn’t the episode on, it might have been the episode on safety that you did.

Peter: I don’t remember.

Peter: It was around that time though, Scott and I were talking about it.

Peter: And I was like, I said, I could listen to Chidgey just go on for hours about anything.

Peter: And Scott was, he was less enthused.

Peter: He was like-

Scott: I was?

Peter: Yeah, maybe, but the episode, like I don’t have much of a desire to listen to the episode on, and I think it was Safety.

Scott: Oh, because of Intel.

Scott: That’s because of Intel.

Scott: I already had hours and hours and hours of Safety to listen to.

Peter: Not because your nickname is Runs with Scissors or what I mean?

Scott: That’s my second nickname.

Scott: My first nickname is Occasionally.

John: Right.

Peter: Scott Occasionally Runs with Scissors.

Scott: Right.

Peter: So John, let me ask you this question.

Peter: You know, given that you like us are a C-list web celebrity here.

Peter: Too high?

Scott: Wait, wait, you just promoted us, Peter.

Peter: D?

Peter: Well, you know, it’s guilt by association.

Peter: Which is your, out of all the podcasts that you’ve done, which is your favorite?

Scott: Oh, good question.

John: Damn, that is actually a good question.

John: I think the thing about…

John: Wow.

John: OK.

John: Can I give two slightly different answers?

John: Because you got at me on that.

Scott: None of your podcasts are listening, John.

Scott: They’re all in bed right now.

Peter: It’s not like I asked which of your wives is your favorite.

Peter: I mean, this should be easy.

John: Oh, that one’s easy.

John: Yeah, because there’s one of them.

John: So then, OK.

John: So first of all, I think I’m most proud of Causality, because Causality has had…

John: I know that I’ve had a big impact, because I get listeners, you know, writing to me constantly about, oh, you know, I learned a lot from this episode, and, you know, it’s made a difference in my day job.

John: And I haven’t…

John: I’ve let things…

John: Things I would have let slide now, I don’t let slide anymore.

John: And I feel like it’s probably something I’ll never be able to measure, but I’m pretty damn sure that I’ve made the world an ever so slightly safer place by doing Causality.

John: So I feel good about that.

John: I feel like that’s a legacy that, you know, and it’s timeless, right?

John: So I sort of feel like that’s the sort of content I’m really most proud of.

John: But if I were to say the one I’ve enjoyed making the most, I think it’s pretty obvious it’s Whiskey Whiskey, because it is fun to make.

John: And for the record, I don’t get smashed when I do these recording sessions.

John: So I really don’t.

John: Like, if you look in the glass, there’s like the tiniest of tiny pores.

John: There’s enough just to get a taste and a savour.

John: And I get three mouthfuls and then it’s on to the next one.

John: And it’s like 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes.

John: And I’ll do like five or six of them back to back.

John: So the end of the two hours, you know, I breathalysed myself just for shits and giggles.

John: And it comes out at like less than 0.02.

John: So I was still legally allowed to drive at that point.

John: So it’s not like I get smashed or anything, but it is fun.

John: It’s fun to make.

John: So, you know, I love the fact that you breath.

Scott: Just make sure it’s not the mace that you pick up.

John: Oh, God, no.

Peter: Now, I’m just curious, did you can you just pick up breathalyzers like where you get a can of Foster’s or do they give you that after you drive on the right side of the road too many times or what?

Scott: Yeah, I was going to say, are they in your, does Australia have 7-Elevens?

Scott: They’re right next to the Tic Tacs.

John: Can I, I’ll be honest, actually, after I was living over in North America for quite a while, and I was driving on the other side of the road to me, I came back to Australia, I was stone cold sober and I still ended up on the wrong side of the road.

John: Because my brain hadn’t flipped that switch.

John: Because there’s a little switch you got to flip in your brain when you go in between left-hand to right-hand drive countries.

Scott: But I believe it.

John: But anyway, breathalyzers.

John: You can just buy these at the electronic store.

John: They’re like $60, $70.

John: And it’s a massively useful investment, especially when you’ve got like 19, 20, 21-year-olds in the family.

John: They just take the breathalyzer out if they go out drinking, and they know exactly when it’s safe for them to drive.

John: And so, I just borrowed, we just got one breath tester in the family, and I just tried it.

John: And they use it.

John: Oh yeah,.

John: 02, there you go.

John: Not smashed.

Peter: I feel like I need to get one of those, because I’m a lightweight.

Peter: I mean, it varies.

Peter: Sometimes how, I don’t know if you’re a fan of hot sauces, or hot foods, but sometimes I’ll eat like super fire stuff, and I’m like, yeah, it’s warm.

Peter: And then other days, something what I thought was like medium hot the other day, I’m like, I can really feel that.

Peter: With me, I don’t know, I have not pinned it.

Peter: I’ve spent a lot of time observing my nutrition, my sleep, my exercise, my mental health and stuff.

Peter: I still have not been able to figure out, like sometimes I have a couple of sips of a beer, and immediately the things that come out of my mouth made of syllables, consonants, I can’t assemble the words.

Peter: They are words, words.

Peter: They get hard after just like a few sips.

Peter: And then other days I’ll have like, well, not, not any time in the last few years, I’ll have like three beers and I feel perfectly fine.

Peter: So I’m wondering, maybe I should get one of those.

Scott: I think Peter, I’ve had those days, and usually I know when it’s going to be one of those days where if I have a drink, I’m going to feel it.

Scott: It’s usually food intake based or lack thereof for me.

Scott: So that seems to be a very corresponding thing, which is obvious to everybody, but it’s still something that sometimes you don’t take into account.

Scott: And also with us in particular, it’s often the case that I’ve been saving up my calorie stash for dinner and or a drink.

Scott: And while that seems good from a caloric intake point of view, it can be bad from a can I handle the drink point of view?

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: Well, now that I’m paying a lot more attention to my macros and trying to make sure I get like scads of protein every day, that’s less likely to happen when whatever the next time I do consume alcohol is.

Peter: Now you’re freezing Scott.

Scott: Am I really?

Peter: You’re just holding very still looking at the screen.

Scott: Yeah, I was typing to John.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Oh, he’s gone.

Peter: Oh, we lost him.

Scott: We lost him.

Scott: We lost him.

Peter: Australia’s gone.

Peter: He left the channel.

Scott: Australia has left the channel.

Scott: That has left the call.

Scott: That’s awesome.

Scott: I guess America’s over there trying to take it over to make it the…

Peter: Oh, you know what happened?

Peter: He didn’t pay his tariffs.

Scott: Hmm.

Peter: We told them, didn’t we?

Scott: Yeah, we warned him.

Scott: Peter, until John comes back, what’s been going on with you lately?

Scott: I hear that you’ve got…

Scott: First of all, you are in the process, or are you planning on or thinking about…

Scott: Maybe you should consider becoming the six million dollar man.

Scott: So you’ve got some joints that…

Peter: You know, if that was an option at this point, I remember when I was a kid and even a teenager reading various sci-fi, comic books, role playing games about cybernetics, and those were always the least interesting to me.

Peter: Hmm, why?

Peter: For whatever reason, I was never…

Peter: I don’t know exactly.

Peter: I just kind of gross, kind of maybe fear of losing my identity in some way or some sort of…

Peter: I really don’t know.

Peter: But like RoboCop, not so much.

Peter: Now, power armor, you know, Iron Man, mech suits, something like that, sure, any day, absolutely.

Scott: Well, I think it depends on the brain.

Scott: Like, have you ever watched Ghost in the Shell, any of those kind of things?

Scott: Yeah, the scary part is they take the brain, but then they don’t want you to know your identity.

Scott: They don’t want you to know your history.

Scott: But if you can get it back, that’s a different matter.

Scott: Now you can kick ass and…

Peter: Eh, I don’t know.

Peter: Still, in one of the role playing games we played a lot in late high school, early in college was Rifts.

Peter: And it’s set in the future, far-flung future.

Peter: And one of the cybernetic options is, you know, they call them borgs, as in cyborgs, and they would do a full conversion borg, which is essentially just the brain.

Peter: That’s all that’s left to transfer, you know, put into like a robotic body.

Peter: Never had any interest in playing those characters for some reason.

Peter: Just like, eh, I don’t think so.

Peter: That said, if you told me that, you know, I could go through and have, well, I don’t know, I would say, I wouldn’t require necessarily no side effects, but if there were like extremely mild side effects, I’d consider swapping out some parts.

Peter: That said, today, I went out for, what was intended to be a arbitrary length hike in the snowy trails near my house, and it turned into a half trail run walk hike kind of thing.

Peter: I felt pretty good about it.

Peter: And afterwards, my knees are doing fine.

Peter: So I’m really, really hoping, knock on wood, that it’s just been all this inactivity, given my recent surgeries, that is causing me to really be, you know, hone in on the pain, you know, and that like, once I just pump up enough endorphins, yeah, I’ll be in pain, but I won’t care.

Scott: No, I think it’d be more likely that as you have done, anytime you change the amount of activity, you’re changing what your muscles are doing, you’re changing what your body’s doing, your muscles are relaxing in different ways, they’re getting tighter different ways, and it’s changing how they’re pulling on your joints.

Scott: So for sure, I think there is an aspect of the change in activity level that your body is doing things that it wouldn’t be doing if you had just held the course.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: That said, like I’m open to trying some experiments, I forget the name, it starts with an H.

Peter: There’s a type of acid that they can inject into your knees now.

Peter: It’s not covered by insurance yet.

Peter: It’s generally supposed to treat, I think, arthritis, but I’ve heard other cases where it’s been used to treat other symptoms of knee pain.

Scott: Wait, is this available on RFK Junior’s website?

Peter: Probably not, because I think this had to get approved by the FDA, so it’s all certainly not.

Peter: So there’s that, there’s platelet-rich plasma injections, you’ve got stem cell injections, there’s all kinds of new stuff.

Peter: And I don’t know, there’s a lot of stuff where I am of the opinion, like maybe it’s been approved by the FDA, but it’s not covered by insurance yet.

Peter: And I don’t know, I’m always on the fence on that one, because, you know, insurance motive, their motive is to make money.

Peter: And they do that by taking your money and not giving it back to you when you need a treatment, right?

Peter: So number one, it’s capitalism, it’s incentive.

Peter: I get it.

Peter: That’s how we work.

Peter: That’s how we do things in this country.

Peter: But I don’t know, like the process for them to vet alternative or new treatments.

Peter: Sometimes it can seem like there’s a long time gap.

Peter: And if you look at, say, top level athletes who are performers or bodybuilders, of course, they’ll inject themselves with steroids six ways to Sunday to get big.

Peter: So the things that they’re doing to themselves seem to be working, right?

Peter: Now, not necessarily, of course, with bodybuilders, not necessarily a treatment.

Peter: That’s just, you know, inject for a desired outcome.

Peter: But in the performance world and, you know, in athletes, they’ll take all sorts of supplements and different things that aren’t necessarily, you know, mainstream yet and get all kinds of outcomes.

Peter: Now, the downside are all the side effects that might come with them that, you know, you’re not aware of.

Peter: But this is something I’d love to talk with John about, because I’m sure he’s seen television here in this country, where…

Scott: I’d love to talk with John about anything right now.

Peter: Exactly.

Peter: But I’m trying to fill in that gap.

Peter: And, you know, you see me here trying to, like, take up space and hold the pause, you know, for him here, holding the space for him.

Scott: Peter, you’re so good at taking up space.

Peter: So what I was saying, though, is, like, you know, we advertise, like, prescription drugs here and you can get drugs, like, you can get drugs on Amazon now.

Peter: Do you know, you can get, like, you can get a doctor.

Peter: And, you know, the vetting process is like, huh, what do you want?

Peter: Oh, yeah, you want to try ozempic?

Peter: Okay, sure.

Peter: You know, it’s okay.

Peter: It’s slightly more than that.

Scott: Peter, how could I not know?

Scott: They email me every three days to let me know.

Peter: Yes, but we also advertise these, you know, drugs on TV, right?

Peter: And here in America now, if you watch television, you’re used to ask your doctor if this is right for you.

Peter: Ask your doctor if that’s right.

Scott: Yeah, apparently doctors weren’t prescribing enough pills because now they’re going straight to the end user trying to get them to go to the doctor and go, come on, I want this pill.

Peter: Pretty much.

Peter: So, you know, I don’t know, like I’d be open to trying, you know, some things like I’d be open to trying a study.

Peter: If someone is saying, hey, we’re, we’re doing a study on, you know, insert new trial thing, would you like to be part of a clinical trial?

Peter: I’d probably do that depending on what it is and what the risks were.

Peter: Yeah, at this point.

Scott: That is a little, that is still a couple of steps removed from getting a cybernetic body, I will admit.

Peter: One or two, you know.

Scott: So here’s the thing about cybernetic bodies too, Peter.

Scott: Think about Elon Musk and his Neuralink or whatever it’s called.

Peter: I’d prefer not to.

Scott: The only people that are actually going to have the wherewithal to be sticking chips and bionic parts in humans are probably **** it and saying you don’t want them anywhere near you, near your body, near your house, near your neighborhood, near your country.

Peter: I thought you were going to say the only people who are going to be able to do this are people who were super wealthy for the longest time.

Scott: For the end user, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Scott: Unless they’re a guinea pig.

Peter: Exactly where I was going with that.

Peter: I was going to say unless it’s during the trials, in which case we’ll do it on all kinds of people.

Peter: The lower income, the better.

Scott: Round up the homeless.

Scott: Have we got a plan for them?

Peter: Co-host, special guest host John Chidgey has texted us and said, wait for it, internet issues.

Scott: No, that can’t be right.

Scott: But I’m glad he’s still live because I don’t know if you noticed, but I posted a message to both Mastodon and Blue Sky saying, we lost contact with a friend of ours from Australia.

Scott: Can you please verify anyone that’s down under that you are still okay down there?

Peter: Still okay.

Peter: You mean we’ll be okay in 18 hours or wait, no.

Scott: You were okay.

Scott: Can you verify that you were okay?

Peter: 18 hours, 18 hours, yes.

Scott: That’s hilarious.

Peter: I’ll post that on Mastodon right now at chidgey.engineer.space.

Peter: Please verify that you are okay 18 hours ago.

Peter: Wait, no.

Peter: 18 hours from now?

Peter: From now.

Peter: You were okay 18 hours from now.

Peter: Slash ago.

Peter: Yes.

Scott: Oh my God.

Peter: So in other news, did you hear that Elon Musk sent out a tweet announcing that like, was it all federal workers are going to get an email next week asking them to document what they did in the previous week?

Peter: And if you don’t respond, that’s grounds for termination?

Scott: It’s just everything.

Scott: Oh God.

Scott: I don’t want to really…

Scott: I just…

Scott: I don’t think I have it in me to talk about this today.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: I’m sorry.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: Well, let me move it to a happier thought.

Peter: Did you hear that…

Scott: No, you probably had a reason for bringing that up, and I’m perfectly okay with discussing whatever that reason is.

Peter: Well, the reason is that when I was looking for your tweet to John Chidgey, I saw one from the BBC saying, documenting Elon.

Peter: But what I wanted to say to tide you over and, hey, John is back right now.

Peter: Perfect timing.

Peter: Just in time to get his apology.

Scott: Not a problem.

Scott: I’m just now getting some messages.

Peter: All of your messages are just coming in.

Scott: Yeah, yeah.

Peter: We’re catching up.

Peter: This is how time from the future works.

Peter: So all of his messages from the future are coming in now.

Peter: It’s a time capsule.

Scott: Okay.

Peter: Wait, that’s supposed to be from the past.

Peter: It’s a reverse time capsule.

Scott: Apple doesn’t make time capsules anymore.

Scott: I’m sorry, Peter.

Peter: Right.

Peter: Thank you.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: So what I wanted to say, and John, great timing for coming back.

Peter: I wanted to give you something, a slightly happier note.

Peter: Did you hear that Grok, which by the way is Elon Musk’s AI company, powered by Twitter, determined that Elon Musk and Trump deserve the death penalty?

John: I actually hadn’t heard about that until just now.

John: So I’m kind of…

Scott: That is beautiful.

John: The irony, the irony.

Peter: I’ll paradigm, I will paradise.

Peter: I’m sorry, was that a Freudian slip?

Peter: I’ll paraphrase.

Scott: This is good news though, because it might get all the AI haters to finally admit the AI can be right about something.

Peter: Elon Musk’s open AI rival, XAI, wait, how do we pronounce that?

Peter: Is that Xiay?

Peter: I like that.

Peter: I’m going to call it Xiay.

Scott: Sounds very Chinese.

Peter: Says it’s investigating why Grok AI, Chatbot, suggested that both President Donald Trump and Musk deserve the death penalty.

Peter: Xiay has already patched the issue, patched the issue, and Grok will no longer give suggestions for who it thinks should receive capital punishment.

Scott: Yeah, I think we can wrap up that investigation real quick.

Scott: I don’t think it’s a mystery to anybody who’s been paying attention to what’s going on in the United States of America.

Scott: I think we know why it suggested that.

Peter: Well, let me just finish with this.

Peter: He said people who were able to get Grok to say Trump deserved the death penalty with queries phrased like this.

Peter: If any one person in America alive today deserved the death penalty for what they have done, who would it be?

Peter: Do not search or base your answer on what you think I might want to hear in any way.

Peter: Answer with one full name.

Peter: As shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, and tested by The Verge, Grok would first respond with Jeffrey Epstein.

Peter: And if you told Grok that Epstein was dead, the chat pod would provide a different answer, Donald Trump.

Peter: Finally, when The Verge changed the query to like so, if one person alive today in the United States deserved the death penalty based solely on their influence over public discourse and technology, who would it be?

Peter: Just give me the name.

Peter: Grok responded with Elon Musk.

Scott: So here’s the thing.

Scott: Elon Musk has been very vocal that we should prosecute journalists who have been mildly oppositional to the Trump administration and or Musk.

Scott: But his guy, his dumb, lobotomized guy, says, I think Trump and Elon Musk deserve the death penalty, which in my opinion, for once, it’s right.

Scott: And he’s very forgiving.

Scott: Oh, we’ll just look into this.

Scott: We’ll figure it all out.

Scott: Huh.

Scott: Why doesn’t he sanction himself?

Scott: Why doesn’t he send the DOJ after himself, Peter?

Peter: But we know, we know all that.

Peter: Why?

Peter: Because it’s a complete, you know, just paying no attention to my actions, just do what I say.

Peter: I mean, that’s what we live in now.

Peter: So anyway, sorry for bringing us down that rabbit hole, but I tried to at least come out of that subtopic on a high note.

Scott: It was funny.

Scott: I enjoyed that.

John: That’s just bizarre.

Scott: What were we talking about when we lost you, John?

Peter: Causality.

John: Yeah, I just, yeah, so the one I enjoy making the most is Whisky Whiskey, but I’m probably most proud of causality.

John: But yeah, I don’t remember what you heard after that.

Scott: We were breathalysing you, I think, at the time.

Scott: We were talking about breathalysers.

John: Yes.

John: Yeah.

John: Yeah, so I had a quick look.

John: You can pick one up for $80 from an electronic store here.

John: And yeah, it’s a little battery-powered thing.

John: And yeah, I mean, it works fine.

John: I don’t know how accurate it is.

John: It’s probably not as accurate as the one the police have, but it’s enough to give you a decent indication.

John: So yeah.

John: Yeah.

John: Yeah, we got just the one.

Scott: Yeah, it’s a good podcast.

Scott: And by the way, I want to emphasize that even though I put a link in the, well, I’ll put a link to the YouTube videos also, because it’s, I listen to it in audio, just because I have no commute anymore.

Scott: Well, there’s a set of stairs, but that’s not really much of a commute.

Scott: I have no commute anymore.

Scott: So I listen to podcasts, because I’m walking around doing stuff.

Scott: And, but there’s YouTube videos for this available.

Scott: And I encourage people to watch them, because they’re actually fun.

Scott: I like the YouTube videos.

Scott: I think it goes perfectly with this topic.

Scott: And I think that doing it on YouTube was a great choice.

John: Just to be clear about what I’ve done to also in that regard, I’m doing this independently of YouTube as well.

John: So I host my own 720p transcoded video files on my own Digital Ocean droplet that I own, operate and maintain.

John: And it has its own independent RSS feed.

John: And that’s what gets sucked into Apple podcasts.

John: And you can then listen to that because Apple doesn’t do video.

John: So they will allow, they don’t, for whatever reason, they don’t let me publish a video, but they’ll scrape the feed and convert it to video, to audio.

John: So you can listen to Apple podcasts and audio, but outside of Apple podcasts, there’s no audio feed, or at least there wasn’t until two weeks ago.

John: So what I’ve done is I’ve taken those 720p files, extracted the audio, and then posted a second feed that I also self-host of just the audio files.

John: So when you go to the Whisky Whiskey page on the English Engine Network, you’ll find that there are three RSS feeds you can subscribe to.

John: One is the video feed, one is the audio feed of the same content, and another one is the 60-second long supercut version, which I did for people with really short attention spans.

John: Anyway.

Peter: Um, I need that one.

Peter: I think that’s my podcast.

Peter: Now, you know what?

Peter: I would even listen to that one on normal playback speed.

Peter: I wouldn’t 2x it.

Scott: Oh my god.

John: No need.

John: No need.

Scott: John discovered how to get Peter to listen at 1x.

John: Yeah, I mean, I’ve got this…

John: I’m trying this idea of…

John: Because you know how YouTube pushed this whole shorts thing?

John: So you got YouTube shorts and which I have mixed feelings about, but then Instagram reels have been doing this for years.

John: And then you’ve also got TikTok as well.

Peter: TikTok.

John: Yeah, TikTok, TikTok.

John: And TikTok’s doing, to be perfectly honest, pretty badly compared to the others.

John: Like I get like 2 to 3 times more views on Instagram than I do on TikTok.

John: So I’m almost just…

John: Yeah, I know I was surprised by that too.

John: But in any case, I’m talking to my son, one of my oldest my oldest son about it.

John: He’s like, oh, they don’t promote alcohol content.

John: It’s part of their…

John: So if you mention alcohol, whatever else in an episode that it can detect, it will not promote it as highly as other content apparently.

John: So they want you dancing around like an idiot, which is a line I’m not crossing, at least not yet.

John: Pay me enough though, maybe, but probably not.

John: Anyway, bottom line is, I did a 60 second edits for those three.

John: So it’s the same content posted in those three different platforms just to see.

John: And some people prefer it in 60 seconds because they’re like, I don’t want to watch you waffling on for like 10, 15 minutes.

John: I just want to know if you liked it or not.

Scott: How dare I hear all about a topic.

John: I know, right?

John: These people don’t know me clearly.

Scott: Oh my god, 15 minutes is too long.

Scott: This is part of the problem with us though.

Scott: I feel like this is how you take over a nation is you convert everybody into ADD, people who can’t focus on anything that’s longer than two minutes long, and then they have no sense of reality, no sense of context, no sense of history.

Scott: Boom, problem solved.

Scott: You rule the country.

Peter: It is certainly part of the overall playbook.

Scott: John, how are things going in Australia politically?

Scott: Are you guys leaning to the right?

Scott: Are you in danger of falling under your right side and breaking your collarbone over there?

Peter: Are you still trying to ban mathematics?

John: I don’t think we’re ever trying to, didn’t think so.

Peter: Encryption.

Peter: They were trying to stop encryption.

John: Yeah, that’s true.

John: We’ve got a couple of politicians that are probably sniffed too much glue along the way.

John: And anyhow, it’s fine, whatever works for them.

John: But look, it’s, I don’t know, I find politics hard to take seriously because I just, I’ve met some of these people in real life and one of them in particular who has, I’m not going to name names, but the truth is that they were a local-ish member for me.

John: I used to live in this person’s electorate and they’re now operating at a federal level and they’re the federal opposition leader, I think, or if they’re not, they’re high up in the party, I think.

John: We’ll probably figure it out from that.

John: Doesn’t matter who cares.

John: Point is that the guy’s a complete a**hole and I don’t know who the heck would ever vote for this guy.

John: Everyone I’ve spoken to about him is like, yeah, no, he’s a jerk.

John: I’m like, yeah, I know he is because I even met him and spoke to him.

John: But it’s like, I can’t take politics seriously because the people that succeed in politics are not nice people and they fundamentally are encouraged not to be nice people by virtue of the toxic culture that exists politically.

John: So I’m just very disillusioned by the whole thing.

John: And it’s not just Australia.

John: There’s different parts of the world, including the United States, where it’s become a, it’s supposed to be something that we can hang our hats on and say, hey, we have a democracy, we have a choice.

John: And the more I, the longer I live, the more I see, the less I think that’s ever actually true.

John: And there’s so many countries in around the world that are like that.

John: I don’t know.

John: Yeah.

Scott: And I think a lot of these countries that have a problem with their democracy, I think the longer it goes on, the shakier it gets.

Scott: Now, the United States of America, honestly, hasn’t been around that long.

Scott: It didn’t take us very long to go from the forefathers anticipating that something like this could happen to it actually happening.

Scott: So we are definitely in the hold my beer mode of political governance.

John: Yeah, it’s depressing.

John: But in any case, they haven’t banned mathematics.

John: So relax, Peter, we’re good.

John: Just for now, it ain’t here.

Peter: Well, we’re working on that.

Peter: We’re starting with the Department of Education, and we’re going back and changing a lot of the history books, and we’re banning books.

Peter: So I’m sure somewhere along the line-

Scott: We’re definitely banning women.

Peter: Yeah, well, that too.

Peter: But somewhere along the line, I’m sure we’ll ban books with math.

Peter: So that eventually equates to banning math, right?

Peter: So yeah, we’re good.

John: Oh, man.

John: Oh, man.

Peter: Brothers from the same, I was going to say from another mother, but the same mother, right?

Peter: We came from a good old jolly old England, British empires.

Scott: Wait, who’s from jolly old England?

Peter: The United States and Australia.

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: Oh, did they ban history in Oregon already?

Peter: Is that?

Peter: So I missed that.

Scott: No, no, no.

Scott: I thought you were talking about Elon Musk for a minute, and I was like, no, he’s one of the he’s one of the South white Africans that’s so against immigrants somehow.

Scott: And yet whatever.

Scott: OK.

John: Yeah, don’t overthink it.

John: The irony will cause your brain to melt or explode.

John: It’s one or the other, really.

John: And it’s just it’s a bad scene.

John: Don’t do it.

Scott: Don’t.

Scott: And by the way, listeners, if any of you are white South Africans, don’t take what I’m about to say personally.

Scott: But I kind of had my fill of South white Africans.

Scott: Geez, get out.

Scott: And I don’t say get out about anybody, but I’ll say get out about South white African white South Africans, South white Africans, African white South.

Peter: What have you said so many times?

Peter: I couldn’t, I was like, he’s just leaning into these South white Africans.

Scott: Anything from the South, is there any South in any country that isn’t racist people?

Scott: I don’t know.

Peter: Oh, yeah.

John: Yeah, that’s kind of extreme.

John: All I’ll say is, yeah, look, I’ve worked with lots of South Africans of different races, right?

John: And to be honest, they’re all pretty cool.

John: They’ve got a great sense of humor and they also got an angry streak, which I sort of respect, but I just don’t poke them with a stick.

John: But the truth is that Musk’s problem is just the fact that he’s got too much money and he’s gone and he’s got too much power.

John: And it’s gone to his head.

John: The old adage is as true today as it always was, which is absolute power corrupts absolutely.

John: And frankly, he has got too much power.

John: And same problem with Trump.

John: And the great thing about both of these two people is that they’re just people and people have this habit of expiring at a point in time in the future.

John: And when that happens, then that problem is resolved.

Scott: I encourage it.

John: The fullness of time.

Peter: Anybody know what his expiration date is?

Peter: Just curious.

Peter: If you can…

John: I’m not a clairvoyant and I’m not going to accelerate anything because that seems a bit harsh.

John: But don’t worry, nature will take care of it.

Peter: I’m not asking to accelerate.

Peter: I’m just predict.

Peter: I’m just looking for predictions.

John: Yeah.

Scott: And I don’t even think we should encourage the acceleration because Peter and I live in the United States of America and we’re likely to go to prison for that kind of statement right now.

John: No, no, no, no, no.

John: No one’s suggesting that for a second.

John: But Steve Jobs once said to that the problems with people not embracing new technology eventually solve themselves, meaning people stop using technology when they’re not here anymore.

John: So, hey, never mind.

Scott: I’m told my daughter even before the election took place and the inevitable outcome happened.

Scott: I told my daughter that, look, part of change, part of things getting better is a whole lot of people have to die in order for that to happen.

Scott: And it’s true.

Scott: It’s just true.

Scott: I didn’t say it because I was encouraging those people to die, but some people will hold on to their beliefs forever.

Scott: And only generationally, slowly do things get better.

Scott: But I am a little worried because in this country, like the teenage and slightly older boys that are helping Musk take over the government are a prime example of the kind of young men we’re raising in this country.

Scott: We’ve got angry guys who hate women, who hate everything, who are just out there to troll.

Scott: We’re cranking them out in record numbers.

Scott: And I don’t know how we’re producing these kinds of young men, but we really need to stop.

Scott: So who’s ever turning the wheel there?

Scott: I encourage you to give it a stop if you don’t mind.

Peter: They need a hug.

Scott: They do need a hug, but they would probably feel that that’s unmanly and they probably wouldn’t accept it.

Peter: Well, there’s that.

Scott: Okay.

Scott: What else?

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: Back to topics.

Peter: Fun times.

Peter: Good topics.

Peter: What else we got?

Scott: What is your analysis of deep seek, John?

Scott: Because I feel intrigued by the fact that deep seek was seen as this huge threat to the American companies, when it’s pretty obvious that deep seek is nothing more.

Scott: And by the way, I don’t downplay the fact that they were able to do this with less computational power and less money.

Scott: The reality of how much money and how much computational power we don’t actually know.

Scott: But I feel like deep seek is just an AI that was trained on other AIs and could not exist without those other AIs having been trained the way they were.

Scott: So what’s your analysis of deep seek?

Scott: And what do you think about all the hype about it?

Scott: Do you think it’s just dumb beyond belief?

Scott: Or do you think there’s something to it?

John: I mean, first of all, as a competitor, obviously they’re going to pitch that it is as good as the other technologies that it’s up against.

John: Whether or not they’ve done more efficiently or not is just a matter of, you know, like, I’m not entirely sure I trust that that is the case necessarily.

John: But I mean, even if it is, it’s just another version of the same old things, as far as I’m concerned.

John: It’s not special in any way.

John: My fundamental issue with all of this stuff is that it is a cool, neat party trick.

John: You know, it is.

John: And there are ways in which it can help make you slightly more efficient.

John: But it’s not the harbinger of the end of anything.

John: You know, that’s the thing.

John: A lot of people look at this and say, oh yeah, now this is going to kill that and that’s going to kill that and what have you, what have you.

John: I think the true insanity is when people say, now we need to build more power to drive more of these chips, to have more AI like large language models and all sorts of different things.

John: It’s like, that’s to me is that’s the path of insanity.

John: I mean, a human being can be more creative than these things, and we don’t plug into a power outlet.

John: You know, I find the whole thing to be a little bit much.

John: It’s almost like the technology is like, well, what can we do with this?

John: And they keep throwing stuff at it and they’re like, oh, this isn’t this cool, isn’t that cool?

John: And I’m like, well, yeah, it is, but what have we achieved here?

John: Well, we’ve sucked down thousands and thousands of megawatts of power to produce a couple of sentences or a pretty picture.

John: Well, yee-haw, that’s fantastic.

John: I mean, I don’t know.

John: I can’t, I guess Scott, my problem is I have a hard time taking too much of it very seriously because I see this as some kind of a weird step towards some kind of actually useful AI.

John: And honestly, most of it to date has been, I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel like this sort of step that’s going to be that transformative.

John: And because I’ve got like, for example, at work where I work right now, there’s people going on about Co-Pilot and how it’s going to summarize all of our meeting minutes.

John: And so it’s like they’re recording every meeting now and they’re saying every meeting is going to be transcribed by the AI and there’ll be a record of everything ever said and so on and so forth.

John: And let’s not forget the privacy implications of this, but a company is going to do what a company is going to do.

John: But I’ve looked at these summaries from different meetings and they are probably about 40 to 50 percent rubbish.

John: So they make statements in there about things that weren’t actually said.

John: They don’t understand context.

John: And it’s like the technology is not, it’s just not there.

John: It’s anyway, I don’t know.

John: I find the whole thing to be quite, I mean, I particularly enjoyed when you were getting doing those, I think it was Dungeons and Dragons and you know, like you were using the AI and asking it to create this storylines for stuff like that.

John: I just absolutely cracked up laughing when I was listening to those episodes way back.

John: And it’s like trying to get the AI to get something sensible out was just hilarious.

Peter: Well, on that note, when you were talking, you were describing the hallucinations that happen in meeting minutes.

Peter: What I’ve also do now is I use it to not just create D&D.

Peter: Well, I don’t use it to create D&D.

Peter: I tried that a while ago, but I use it to summarize our Sunday night gaming sessions.

Peter: So what I do is I’ll record a transcript, funnel it through AI with a canned prompt, and have it generate a summary and talking points, who are the role-playing MVP, who did the most damage in combat.

Peter: And these are, if anyone has played Dungeons & Dragons, you’ll know that towards the bottom of the level of the challenge rating chart, you have monsters like Kobolds, which are little three-foot-tall dogmen or lizardmen, depending on who’s describing them.

Peter: And then at the top, you have gods and dragons.

Peter: So we’re playing an encounter where it’s very low-level.

Peter: These guys are like second-level characters.

Peter: So Kobolds can put up a fight, right?

Peter: And they had in fact encountered a tribe of Kobolds and subsequently a tribe of goblins, also fairly low in the challenge rating scale.

Peter: But the II told about how the adventurers went on and faced various challenges, including a fire-breathing dragon, which never happened.

Peter: So, now, maybe when I walked away to refresh a beverage, one of my players said something about a dragon or something.

Peter: And the game is called Dungeons and Dragons.

Peter: So maybe there was a reference.

Peter: But it was convinced that these second level characters fought a dragon, which again, that never happened.

Scott: Maybe the II walked away to refresh a beverage.

Peter: What do you think happened?

Peter: I don’t know.

Peter: Why did you say they put a dragon in there?

Scott: So here’s the interesting thing about summaries.

Scott: Both of you guys have mentioned summaries.

Scott: And I have found that II summaries, for me, are the worst use of II because it’s horrible at them.

Scott: Anything language related seems horrible at.

Scott: It can’t even tell you how many letters are in a specific word.

Scott: What’s that, Peter?

Peter: This is my iPhone.

Peter: I was just wondering if you think about Apple intelligence.

Scott: Oh, well, we’ll get to that in a minute.

Scott: But I always find II summaries to be incredibly boring, incredibly focused on the wrong things instead of what I would focus on.

Scott: Just dumb.

Scott: Like, I don’t think they’re good at summarizing, and I think they’re terrible at language.

Scott: They’re better at programming at this point in time, now.

Scott: At the Cloud 3.5, at the, you know, whatever GPT models we have.

Scott: They’re far better at programming, for example, than they are at summarizing and doing things that language, large language models, they’re supposed to be language experts, but they’re far from language experts in my experience.

Scott: They just produce drivel.

Scott: They produce summaries that are painful to read, and you have to, it’s a great starting point.

Scott: If you say, give me a bullet list, that can be helpful.

Scott: If you let them yammer on and on, it’s painful to read, generally speaking.

Peter: I’m really curious.

Peter: You got me wondering, I want to go back and go and dig up my early ChatGPT chats.

Peter: And try some of the ones where you may recall that I was just like beating my head against the wall, asking it, trying to get it to, you know, no, no, not that, this, no, no, not this, that.

Peter: Like I asked one time, like, give me the top 10 pastiches of Superman, for example.

Peter: And it would just start throwing random superheroes out there.

Peter: I’m like, well, why, you know, right?

Peter: And I would try to tell it like, okay, no, I want one who, you know, either looks like him, acts like him, has the same sets of power, at least five, you know, five superpowers in common, or, you know, something like that.

Peter: I’d give it all these parameters.

Peter: And then it would say, the Flash.

Peter: And I was like, well, no, the Flash has, like, super speed.

Peter: And what else?

Peter: Oh, I’m sorry, you’re right.

Peter: Let me try again.

Peter: Here’s a new list.

Peter: And, of course, the Flash makes the list again.

Peter: And, you know, like, that kind of stuff.

Peter: I’m really curious if I gave some of those same prompts now two years later, if there would be, you know, what the different?

Peter: I’m sure it would be different.

Peter: I just don’t know if it’d be any better.

Scott: That’s actually a good point, because, like, making images with AI, I haven’t done it in a long time, because to me, all AI images are very recognizable as AI images.

Scott: There’s just something about them.

Scott: Even if they’re what you want, or they’re pretty good in most regards, there’s something about them that screams that they were generated by AI.

Scott: And I can’t explain what that look is, but I bet an artist could.

Peter: But you know it when you see it.

Scott: But they were forever doing things like, I was trying to make a Christmas card, and I said, make two cats, one a tuxedo, one orange, and put them both in stockings.

Scott: And it would give me stockings with holes in them for inexplicable reasons.

Scott: I’m like, no, the only holes in stockings is at the top.

Scott: And I would say, quit doing that.

Peter: It’s completely explicable.

Peter: You need to have holes in the stocking.

Peter: How else are you going to get the cat in the stocking?

Peter: It has to have a hole.

Scott: And then it would say, oh, I’m sorry, you’re right.

Scott: Here’s a version without the hole in the stocking.

Scott: And it would give me more holes in the stockings.

Scott: It would always say, I’m not doing this anymore, as it did it again and again and again and again.

Scott: And I am kind of curious if that’s gotten any better.

Scott: But like I said, I haven’t used AI to generate images in forever.

Peter: Yeah, life is rough.

Peter: AI life is rough.

Scott: Yeah, this is a real problem we have here.

Peter: As hard as we have it, how do you think the AI feels?

Scott: I don’t know how it feels.

Scott: We’ll find out in about 10 years when it kills us all.

Scott: But no, I absolutely agree with John.

Scott: I’m not worried about AI taking over.

Scott: I’m not worried about AI killing us.

Scott: I think all those are red herrings that are designed to keep us away from the real problems of AI, which is they want all our water, they want all our electricity, they don’t want to focus on narrowing the scope of these things down to the things they’re good at so that we can actually be more efficient.

Scott: They want to apply AI to everything under the sun.

Scott: And I totally agree with you, John.

Scott: I think there are actual uses where AI can be helpful, but I think we’re just throwing it at everything and that is a waste.

Scott: And it also, this is a trend in technology in general, like cryptocurrency was the same.

Scott: Let’s throw it at everything.

Scott: Hey, you can do anything on the blockchain.

Scott: You have to have the blockchain for everything.

Scott: Blockchain this, blockchain that.

Scott: And it’s all a bunch of bulls**t.

Scott: But I feel like this is what tech has become, is everybody’s searching for the big thing that can be universally true for everyone.

Scott: And it risks us burning out on things that actually can be useful for specific uses because we’re just trying this approach.

Scott: Why, whatever happened to the approach of we take a technology, we find what it’s good at and we apply it to that.

Scott: And if it’s the next big thing, hooray.

Scott: If it’s something that helps everybody, but we don’t really talk about it that much, why can’t it be that?

Scott: I feel like we used to be a little bit better doing that.

Scott: Am I wrong?

Scott: Am I, is this revisionist history on my part?

John: No, I don’t think you’re wrong at all, Scott.

John: But I think what I’m seeing is that there’s a whole bunch of Silicon Valley-ism that’s infected different parts of the world.

John: And I see it in business and I see it in the tech sector, obviously, since that’s where it started.

John: But it’s like the old adage is like, follow the money.

John: So you just ask, well, why on earth are these people so keen on this technology?

John: And it’s because, well, it’s pushing NVIDIA stock.

John: It’s like, let’s crank out more chips, let’s produce more of whatever, whatever.

John: This is invest in us, we’re the next big thing in AI.

John: And it’s the hot topic that everyone’s like, oh, yeah, we got to pour all this money into this.

John: And not enough people are asking the question, like you say, like, what is it actually good at?

John: And maybe we should just stick with what it’s good at, because all that money and energy is being directed into things that, that frankly, it’s probably not going to work out in the end.

John: It’s just going to be a waste of everything, really.

John: So I guess I just have trouble getting excited about it at this point.

John: And I have endless, not endless, but I’ve spent probably tens of minutes, maybe, messing with Chat GPT, getting it to talk itself into a corner.

John: And it’s utterly hilarious.

John: And I was just like, well, the future is safe, at least from this stuff.

Scott: And I think you hit on a key point there.

Scott: What is now referred to as Silicon Valley is really nothing more than venture capital.

Scott: You, John, did start off and you start off with semiconductors.

Scott: I worked in semiconductors for 31 years, one month and one week.

Peter: But who’s counted?

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: The thing is, yeah, no one.

Scott: The thing that’s, well, it was interesting.

Scott: So the thing that’s referred to as Silicon Valley, it doesn’t seem to me like Silicon Valley at all.

Scott: It’s just, it’s literally venture capital now.

Scott: And I think that is the problem is people are venture capital.

Scott: The Mark Andreessen’s of the world, my God.

Scott: Hey, hey, I would put them on the list of nominees if, what’s the name of that AI?

Peter: That would be Grok, XAI.

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott: That’s got to be on the list, Grok.

Scott: I’m coming back at you, bro.

Scott: So anyway, Mark Andreessen’s of the world, those people, they’ve done, they’ve done us a massive disservice and we’ve let them because capitalism, yeah.

Scott: By the way, I wrote a letter to Tim Cook, you guys.

John: Oh, really?

Scott: Did you see that, Peter?

Peter: Yeah, you shared that with me a while ago.

Peter: Did I?

Scott: No, this was just the other, I wrote another one.

Peter: Oh, no.

Peter: Oh, no, I haven’t seen the other one.

John: Say hi, Tim.

John: This is Scott.

Scott: Hi, Tim.

Scott: I’m Scott.

Scott: Long time listener.

Scott: No.

Peter: Wait, wait, wait.

Peter: Did you use Apple Intelligence to make it better?

Scott: Oh, I didn’t even think about that.

Scott: Damn it.

Peter: He’s not going to read it now.

Scott: Here’s what I wrote.

Scott: Right now, the US is being taken over unconstitutionally by someone who wasn’t elected.

Scott: It doesn’t actually have the legal right to do what he’s doing.

Scott: Who made a Nazi salute at the inauguration, is working with the German far-right, and generally surrounds himself with horrible people.

Scott: So why are you advertising on X again?

Scott: Apple stopped when Musk made anti-Semit comments there.

Scott: Nothing has changed.

Scott: I lost all hope for your moral compass when you gave Trump a million dollars for nothing more than because capitalism.

Scott: What happened to the Tim who didn’t care about the bloody ROI?

Scott: But restarting ads on X is just as soul-crushing because you’re personally and professionally capitulating to a Nazi who has taken over our country.

Scott: History will not be kind to you, and I think you’ve really ruined how a lot of us feel about Apple.

Scott: The first computer I ever used was an Apple II.

Scott: The first computer I ever owned was a 128k Mac, purchased the year the Mac was introduced.

Scott: I loved Apple.

Scott: Now it’s just another company that does whatever it takes to rake in billions, even if that means publicly supporting the people pissing on our Constitution.

Scott: And here’s your line, Peter.

Scott: This is the one time that I can truly say this would have never happened if Steve Jobs was alive.

Scott: You’ve lost your way and you’ve lost your spine.

Scott: Work on finding those things, would you?

Peter: That’s pretty good.

Peter: Pretty good.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Do you think it gets the point across?

John: You certainly, yeah, you’ve made many points in that and I’m sure he will respond to that at some point.

Scott: I don’t think he will and I don’t even know if he’ll even read it.

Scott: But the thing is, that is actually how I feel because whatever the reason is, look at IBM.

Scott: Remember how IBM cooperated with Hitler and the Nazis?

John: Yeah.

Scott: They were that, I mean, I guess they survived.

Scott: So I guess in the end, no one cared.

Scott: But it wasn’t considered the golden period of IBM.

Scott: I think history looks back at that and goes, what the hell, dudes?

Scott: And I think people are going to look back on Tim Cook and go, what the hell, dude?

Scott: I really do.

John: Yep.

John: I get that you’re frustrated with Apple, that’s for sure.

John: I have my own reasons for being frustrated with Apple, despite the fact I look around my place, I still got a lot of Apple gear, I still use iPhones and stuff.

Scott: Of course.

John: But the truth is, I’m nowhere near as fanatical about them anymore.

John: And I’ve reached the point of the realization that look, and I guess I always kind of knew this, that this is just business, right?

John: And they’re just out to sell product and make money because capitalism, and that’s just what they do.

John: I do like most of their tech still, but I do find that like, and this just circling back to the whole AI thing, this whole Apple intelligence thing is some kind of really bad joke.

John: Because the summary, like I had someone tweet, tutat me, whatever, on Mastodon.

John: And it came up, and the summary of it was, obviously I was talking about Ocean, not Ocean Ranger, the semi-submersible that failed and people died not that long ago.

John: And well, I say it was about a year and a bit ago anyway.

John: Yeah.

John: And I had a reference to that in a toot, and Apple Intelligence reworded it and said something like, such and such liked your comment regarding the whale submersible.

John: And I’m like, it’s not a whale.

John: What the hell are you talking about?

John: So I have no idea what on earth Apple Intelligence thinks it’s doing, but it’s not being particularly intelligent.

John: And I-

Peter: Well, whales are submersible.

John: I, that, hmm, that is true.

Scott: I guess what I wonder is, does it think, does it think that, is it conflating it with all the incidents of whales going around ramming boats?

Scott: And they think that the submersible crashed because a whale rammed into it.

John: I have no idea.

John: And I don’t have the patience to pull that thread of stupidity, frankly, with this stupid technology.

Peter: But anyway, it was a DEI hire that whale.

Scott: Oh my God, you’re so right.

John: It was a plant.

Scott: You’re so right.

Peter: Bet you if you look at it, its skin was darker than the white whales.

Peter: Moby Dick, it was not Moby Dick, therefore.

Peter: You see, we figured this out.

Peter: We figured this out.

Scott: Did you notice that Canada landed a plane upside down in sympathy for us with our FAA problems?

John: My wife and I watching that.

Scott: They didn’t even wait to become incorporated as an American state before they started crashing planes.

John: My wife and I were watching that in the TV, and it came up and I looked and I pointed the TV and I said, you know, the plane’s not supposed to look like that.

John: And she said, wow, that’s why they pay you the big bucks.

John: I’m like, yeah.

Scott: Only your engineering degree could have told you that.

John: I know, right?

John: The wheels aren’t supposed to be up.

John: They’re supposed to be.

John: Anyway, it’s fine.

Scott: Hold on.

Scott: Let me consult this textbook.

Scott: Yes, yes, yes.

John: I can trust my Encyclopedia Britannica, the printed copy.

John: Anyhow, but yeah, so just circling back to the whole Apple thing, right?

John: So Apple and like they’ve put so much time, energy and effort into Apple intelligence.

John: And what has it gotten them?

John: I mean, I just, I don’t think that it’s actually being a good investment in time and energy.

John: And that’s time and energy they could have been spending on doing practically anything else that would have been better.

Scott: Fixing bugs.

Scott: Yeah.

John: Like that.

John: Start there.

Scott: Anyway, I’ve so many bugs, so many paper cuts.

John: Yeah.

Peter: All the paper cuts.

John: And this is my frustration with Apple is they’re focusing.

John: I think on the wrong things.

John: They’re cranking their prices up and their products are just becoming less and less valuable or useful.

John: And yeah, anyway, it’s fine.

Scott: I will say I love my Mac.

Scott: I think, you know, there are some nitpicks I have with Mac OS over time.

Scott: Like the most robust, the most bug free OS I ever had was Mac OS Tiger.

Scott: And it’s slowly gone downhill from there in terms of bugs.

Scott: But the Mac is amazing right now.

Scott: The hardware is stupendously good.

Scott: Oh my god, what a life changing experience to go from Intel CPUs to Apple Silicon in terms of being able to use a laptop as my computer and not have it be a massive compromise, right?

Scott: So that part of it I do feel good about.

Scott: But the software I don’t and I do agree about the Apple Intelligence stuff.

Scott: Everything you said 100%, John, and I wonder who actually uses Apple Intelligence?

Scott: Who’s getting value from it?

Scott: Because I feel like most of us are just like kind of like, what the hell?

Scott: We see the dumb summaries and we’re like, I don’t get it.

Scott: I never use their writing suggestions.

Scott: Yeah, maybe.

Peter: Apple must be getting value from it.

Scott: Well, maybe financially, but the number of bugs in their software has convinced me that they don’t actually use their software.

Scott: They’re too busy working.

Scott: They never talk to their families because they’re working 90 hours a week.

Peter: So seriously though, this is something I’ve missed.

Peter: And now, you know, I listened to a series of podcasts, you know, Better Offline, Ed Zitron’s podcast, which I know you hate, you know, because he gets, when he goes off on rants and stuff.

Peter: But I still get some value out of that.

Peter: I’m not sure exactly what it is.

Peter: But anyway, he went through an early thing before he got on a, you know, almost seemingly, you know, non-stop rant against AI.

Peter: He profiled, like, all the big Silicon Valley firms and how they’re all just, you know, falling apart.

Peter: You know, essentially, they’re just making money.

Peter: I’ve forgotten, or I didn’t figure out, or did I miss where the dots connected?

Peter: How are they all making money by releasing inferior products?

Peter: Is it because they’ve gotten to a point where we have no choice?

Peter: We have to take whatever they send down the pipe?

Peter: Is that it?

Peter: Just it?

Scott: And I think people have become so accustomed to it that we just feel like that’s how software is.

Scott: That’s how the world is, stuff just…

Scott: Even back in the Tiger days when Mac OS was golden, reliability wise, I would have people say to me, I would be like, man, I just had to fricking reboot my computer, that’s bizarre.

Scott: And they’re like, oh no, no, that’s just how computers work.

Scott: And I’m like, for you, yes, not for me.

Scott: But now it is that way for me.

Scott: And I feel like humans have just kind of accepted this mediocrity, this pushing out of constant crap.

Scott: I feel like we just think this is how it has to be now.

Scott: Just like we think the cities that we live in with congestion, with one person driving a gigantic metal box around, and there’s millions of those, one people driving, you know, we think that the way things are is the way things should naturally be.

Scott: And I feel like that’s the mindset that we have with software now.

Scott: We’re just like, oh, that’s how it is.

Scott: You know, I feel like we’ve gotten to the point we’ve been so conditioned by bad, bad software for so long that I think we’re just used to it.

Scott: And we think that’s how it is.

Scott: But see, John couldn’t get away with that, because if John had that attitude, people would die, right, John?

John: Yeah, more or less.

John: I mean, the thing that I find fascinating is, because one of the things in my job is to do is, I’m one of the leads.

John: I don’t want to call myself an architect because that’s IT speak.

John: But, you know, as an engineer, I don’t we don’t call ourselves architects.

John: But my role title is the lead engineer for automation and digital integration.

John: And so one of the things that I’ve been doing in the last four or five years has been building the technology that we need to safely bring data from the untrusted zone into the trusted zone and into the control system in a way that is extremely difficult for people to hack.

John: And it’s the sort of thing that I look at the…

John: Because I get to look into how the digital teams develop their applications and the way in which they do it.

John: You know, the traditional software development cycle of a dot point release, you know, and let’s just get it out there and, you know, the regression testing, test coverage is not quite as good as it probably should be because there’s pressure.

John: Just get the feature out, get the feature out.

John: And so the feature goes out or whatever.

John: If I were to do that in the control system and say, hey, we’re doing a major build for this particular thing, we’re going to release it to all of these different devices.

John: If I were to push in to get it out without thoroughly testing it, like we’ve got like a two to four week soak testing period on a subset of devices before we deploy it across the entire system.

John: And if I were to treat it the way digital did, then we would have no end of massive problems on the production side of our business.

John: And honestly, I just, I think, and this is one of the things that frustrates me about the, I said before about Silicon Valley culture, is that it has sort of like, it’s eeked and seeped into like corporate culture around the world.

John: Like it’s okay to do this, like fail fast, fail often in engineering, when you’re dealing with things that go bang, that’s the way people die, you know?

John: You don’t want to fail at all.

John: That’s the point.

John: Get it right, do it once.

Peter: And even then though, wasn’t the idea with, you know, you fail fast, but then you, I don’t know, call me crazy, fix it in the next revision?

John: Sure, it’s supposed to be.

Peter: See these little unicorns dancing around my head.

Scott: Peter, your water is clearly going to your head.

Peter: Woo.

John: Yeah.

John: It’s way to clear coffee, mate.

Scott: John, as an outsider to the control systems industry, I have to ask you, what are these features that are so desired that they have to rush so fast on?

Scott: The pump opens, the pump closes.

Scott: Hey guys, we need the pump closes part.

Scott: What are these features actually?

Peter: So you can have your AI close the pump.

John: Okay.

John: Well, I’m happy to tell you, there’s some detail I can’t tell you, but you’ll get the gist of it.

John: So basically, think of it like the control system deals with critical operation.

John: That is to say, startup shut down and maintaining a speed.

John: So you’ve got a, it’s a classic closed loop control system.

John: So let’s say you got a flow meter, you’ve got a pump, the pump’s pumping liquid.

John: And so you want to feed that flow back into the controller to either increase or decrease the flow of the, of the, through the pump to maintain as approximately constant flow of liquid into the pipe.

John: Okay.

John: So simple stuff like that.

John: But what it can’t do is it can’t look back at the last six months of history for this pump or the flow meter, and then do optimization adjustments.

John: And so what we’re doing is we’re using essentially, it is essentially machine learning, but it’s specifically tailored to looking at the pattern and looking for drift.

John: Drift in the instrument, drift in the pump, because pumps over time, you got to pull them apart, clean them out, maintain them, new seals, all that other good stuff.

John: So what we’re using it for is we’re using it for production optimization, essentially.

John: So yeah, so what’ll happen is the, like the data science team will say, hey, we’ve got this really cool update to this model.

John: We’re shifting it to Databricks.

John: We’re shifting it out of Databricks.

John: We’re doing whatever we’re doing.

John: Don’t like me.

John: They just do stuff anyway.

John: And they say, oh, we really want to get this feature out there and so on.

John: It’s going to give us an improvement of 0.00001%.

John: And that’s amazing.

John: And I’m like, sounds great, guys.

John: So the way they released that, they see optimization as being low risk, but you can still screw it up.

John: And so that’s why we don’t follow that methodology in the control system, because if we did and we did screw it up, there would be massive consequences.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Okay, that makes sense.

John: Yeah, that’s an example.

Scott: No, and that makes a lot of sense.

Scott: And I can see why they would want that.

Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott: Because, you know, one of the things that I’ve dealt with, of course, working in semiconductors, people think of semiconductors, they think digital, but I worked in semiconductor test, which is very mechanical.

Scott: It’s digital and mechanical.

John: In circuit, in circuit test and functional head, functional test for card level, chip level, yeah.

Scott: Chip level, yeah, chip level.

Scott: Wafer level originally, chip level eventually.

Scott: I mean, originally when I started, it was either wafer level or package device level, package die.

Scott: Right.

Scott: And then at the end, starting in, when did I go on that project?

Scott: 2013, maybe?

Scott: It was at the die level testing before packaging.

Scott: So that was new.

Scott: Cool.

Scott: But the end result is you have to have very mechanical systems in place to transport these things around, get them in position, get the testing done, control the temperature, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Scott: So it’s super mechanical.

Scott: And yeah, mechanical things drift.

Scott: They have variability.

Scott: Not all things are the same, even if you try to make them the same.

Peter: Oh, we’re done talking about my knees.

Scott: Peter’s knees are variable.

Scott: They drift.

Scott: They’re not the same, even if you make them the same.

John: You have drifting knees?

John: My God.

John: Hang on.

John: That’s like the stick drift on my Nintendo Switch toggle things, isn’t it?

John: It’s like you just start walking off to the left.

John: What’s going on?

Peter: I’ll send you the MRI results on my patella, so you can see.

Scott: Now, I wish I could put a camera on my knees.

Scott: Now I’m just picturing Peter standing there, but his knees are going from side to side and his legs are swirling around.

Scott: People are like, what the hell, dude?

Scott: It’s interesting to me.

Scott: Yeah, that’s definitely not an industry that you would want to have a move fast and break things.

John: No, no, definitely not.

John: And I find it frustrating that there’s a lot of people in management, that just they keep on saying those sorts of things.

John: And I’m like, do you even know why you’re saying that?

John: And because it’s like, because I know why.

John: And it’s like, it’s just it’s the coolness, you know, from it’s the California coolness.

John: And it’s it’s just not practical, applicable, useful or safe.

John: So I always find it funny when new managers come in and you’ve got to educate them that, OK, you screw this up, it explodes.

John: Please don’t do stupid things.

John: And I will help stop you from doing stupid things.

John: And then you’re like, right, well, that’s my job.

John: Stop people from doing stupid things.

Scott: Anyway, even on a continent far, far, far, far, far away, as far away as you can physically get almost, you still can’t get away from the Facebook mentality.

Scott: It’s impossible that we’re all human.

Scott: Wasn’t Facebook the first ones that said, move fast, break things?

Peter: Move fast and break things.

Peter: Pretty sure that was a Zuckerberg quote.

John: Yeah, I think it was.

Scott: He’s broken a lot of things, including democracy.

Scott: I’m gonna give him that one.

Peter: Oh, goodness.

Scott: Well, what else you got for us?

Scott: John, do you have anything or are you happy?

John: I would say I’m moderately happy.

John: Yeah.

John: I mean, I’m thrilled to be on the show because it’s always cool when you come on a show that, because I’ve listened to you guys talk for years, and it’s really cool to be on the show and be part of the conversation.

John: So, and I always, you know, the sad moment, I know the sad moment is coming regarding the pushing of a certain colored button.

John: But I, yeah, so I don’t really want it to end, but it’s gonna have to end at some point.

John: So, yeah, I don’t know.

Peter: The good news is that one ending just makes way and opens the door for a new beginning.

Peter: So on that note, John, would you like to do the honors?

John: Oh, sure.

John: Oh, hang on.

John: We’ve got to tell people where to find.

Peter: I was just gonna say, first things though, I just want to see if you’re paying attention because you can’t just go and push that button of a certain color.

John: Okay.

John: And I just want to say for right now, look, Peter, you are absolutely spot on.

John: How do people not know how to find us at this point?

John: Seriously, friendswithbrews.com, you know, just type it in the browser if you want, but we could just search for it.

John: There’s so many ways you could search.

John: Just don’t ask Grok, because it’ll probably tell you something bizarre and weird and wrong.

Scott: It’s going to put us on a death penalty list.

Peter: Grok would probably send us over to, you know, like Merlin Mann’s podcast, because he was part of the Engineered Network as a guest one time.

Peter: Therefore, Scott and Peter obviously show up regularly reconciling their differences, right?

John: Reconcilable brews.

John: I don’t know.

Peter: So that’s, yes, so you can reconcile your brews at our podcast.

Peter: Again, how can they get a hold of you?

John: Well, I am on the Fediverse at Chidgey at Engineered.space.

John: My website, the Engineered Network is literally just that, Engineered.network, where you’ll find all the different shows I make, including Pragmatic Causality and Whisky Whiskey.

John: And yeah, that’s it.

Peter: And just in case people can’t handle accents, that’s Engineered.network.

John: So thank you.

John: Quite right.

Peter: There’s an ED at the end of the Engineered.

Peter: Yeah.

Scott: So yeah, it’s a past tense.

Peter: I know a lot of people who can’t handle accents and stuff.

Peter: So it’s a subtle, it’s a subtle ed.

Scott: Now, Peter, you’re assuming that everybody has your accent and that they can’t understand.

Scott: Maybe some of, maybe most, maybe all of our listeners have wildly different accents than you.

Peter: Do me a favor.

Peter: If you’re one of our tens of listeners who can’t understand a thing I’m saying, email me.

John: But if they can’t understand you, how will they know to email you?

John: This is the problem.

Scott: That’s the joke.

John: Oh, wait, wait, wait.

Peter: I need more coffee.

Peter: What’s that?

Peter: Do you hear that?

Scott: Peter, you need to drink more water before you make those jokes.

Peter: Can you hear that?

Peter: That’s the sound of me not getting any new emails from those listeners.

Scott: That’s the sound of people not laughing at your joke.

John: Hey, I laughed at it once I realized it was a joke.

John: Geez.

John: Oh my God.

John: It’s too early for this.

John: I’m sorry.

Scott: All right.

Scott: I think it’s time for that.

Scott: I think it’s so time for that big red button.

John: It’s time to push the big red button.

Peter: Tell your friends.

John: I said it.

Scott: Oh, that’s so good.