Episode 269: 2025 Double Retro

0:00Conor:That brings us to our 2025 retro of what are we talking about? Favorite episodes, favorite moments. You said you came across your favorite.

0:08Bryce:So I I wanna know, yeah, I wanna know what episode from 2025 did best.

0:12Conor:I'm gonna put it close to the camera. Read for the listener what we have here.

0:16Bryce:It says, it says Iota hazy IPA. That can't be how they want you to pronounce it. Non-alcoholic. Oh, you're gonna have to send me one. You're gonna have to send me one.

0:36Conor:Welcome to ADSP the podcast, episode 269, recorded on January 13th, 2026. My name is Connor, and today with my co-host Bryce, we conduct our 2025 annual retro. Austin, Texas. What has what does Austin, Texas mean? Your shirt. Oh, yeah, yeah. My bad. I'm wearing one of my many race t-shirts. And I have raced I think twice the no longer, but formerly 3M Austin Half Marathon. I think now it's called the International Half Marathon sponsored by some other company.

1:22Conor:It's a great marathon, mostly downhill. No, not marathon, half marathon. Downhill mostly. I love Austin.

1:27Bryce:Down downhill is is uh is my type of running. Ramona and I have started running recently, and uh it it's miserable. It's just miserable. And like she she doesn't exercise really at all right now because her arm's injured, so she hasn't been able to play tennis. And I exercise a lot, but we go out and she's just like way faster than me, has way more energy and endurance. It's uh it's unfair.

1:52Conor:It takes time to get into, it takes time to get into.

1:55Bryce:But but she hasn't but see, I don't buy that because she hasn't been running for years. She started again, and then she's just instantly like ten times more athletic than me.

2:05Conor:I mean, if you used to do it, I imagine it's kind of like working out. If if folks ever worked out in like university or at any point in their life and then they stop for like a decade, you still have like the muscle memory of it, so it's way easier to get back into it if you've done it at one point in your life.

2:21Bryce:I think she just has a higher tolerance for suffering than than me. But now we take the dog when we're running too, so we go for we our route is like four point five kilometers. Um uh she would say it's four kilometers, but uh her Garmin watch is just not recording correctly. Um But uh the three of us go and the the dog doesn't much like the dog just sort of trots. The dog doesn't really run, the dog just sort of trots and uh and it's cold, but we've been going out most days.

2:53Conor:It's just it's good. How is the weather in? Not that we need to bore though, maybe I'll pen X this. How is the weather in New York?

3:00Bryce:Are your your running metals behind you, are they sorted by color? Because I'm noticing that all the ones on the right are like I see like dark red, then like slightly lighter red, and then some green and then blue, they are organized by color. But the ones on the ones on the right side are not like organized by you can imagine why.

3:18Conor:You can imagine why, right? You start off with it rainbow color sorted, and then when you uh gain new ones, it's not like you're gonna do a a one rotate and shift everything. You just kind of I mean, I would. Not every time. You gotta wait till you get like uh what do you call it, a critical mass, so it's worth it.

3:38Bryce:But they they wait, wait, hang on. But all of the the these are all primarily red, white, or blue. Do they not make other colors?

3:47Conor:Uh well, I mean, yeah, that is true. That is true. I gotta spin around. There is a ton of blue. That is definitely the most common. I don't actually I s I mean a lot of the American ones, you can kind of tell by this shirt, it's got red, white, and blue.

4:01Bryce:Marco. Yeah.

4:04Conor:And I guess the Toronto waterfront ones are red. There's a lot of holiday, like there's the San Diego holiday half that I've run twice. And there's the Mesa Marathon that's red. I don't know. I guess red is kind of like a celebratory, you know, jubilant, you cross the line. I don't I don't really know.

4:27Bryce:There's a it's uh I I just got back from Southeast Asia and it's like uh everything's red there.

4:32Conor:It's like literally the lucky the color of opulence, wealth, and luck, yes.

4:39Bryce:Yeah.

4:39Conor:But wait, here. Look what I came across, Bryce. This is I'm gonna put it close to the camera. Read for the listener what we have here.

4:47Bryce:It says it says iota hazy IPA. That can't be how they want you to pronounce it. Non-alcoholic. Oh, you're gonna have to send me one. You're gonna have to send me one.

4:57Conor:It is, I couldn't believe it, folks. I've started drinking more non-alcoholic beverages because, you know, they're better for your health. And I was in a Metro, which is a Canadian grocery store, and to my surprise, right there in between Athletic Brewing and a couple other brands is the Philips Brewing and Maltin Co. IOTA. Hazy IPA. I've been waiting, I have not had one of these yet, folks. It's been sitting in my little mini fridge behind me. Here we go.

5:27Conor:Just like old times, we used to crack the bubblies, now we're cracking non-alcoholic hazy IPAs. And here's the live review.

5:38Bryce:I that did not register, that did not register on my uh uh earpods. Maybe it registers on yours, but it's definitely registered.

5:45Conor:I can see the little cracks in the uh audacity. So I hope this is amazing and it's gonna be my favorite thing ever because I really would love to love the IOTA Hazy IPA. It's everybody honestly, I'm not even gonna explain it. If you don't know what IOTA is, go back in the backlog. You got 268 episodes to listen to.

6:02Bryce:Jeez, we're coming up on 300. It's pretty good.

6:04Conor:Yeah, we're getting close, man. We're getting close. We're getting there. And oh yeah, we got so much to talk about. So I think we're it's it's good, folks.

6:11Bryce:Um we haven't talked in like a while because the holidays like have we recorded since your wedding?

6:17Conor:No. I mean, the last time we recorded was October 10th or 11th or something like that.

6:23Bryce:That was like a long, that was a long time ago.

6:25Conor:Yes, we're gonna call this episode the double retro because we're gonna do like a retro of our whatever, favorite episodes or highlights, ADSP, whatever. But also, too, I have had a list of growing things, corrections, references to comments that we've got in the GitHub discussion. And so it's gonna be one retro is addressing these things that are outstanding, and the other one is gonna be like our top stuff. But yes, and also Happy New Year. So it's been what?

6:50Conor:This is almost three months since we have recorded. It's uh only been a couple days since we chatted, because we chat outside, believe it or not, we chat outside of these recordings. What should we start with? Should we start with addressing the outstanding feedback items? What do you want?

7:06Bryce:I would say, yeah.

7:08Conor:Alright, let's see if we can burn through these because there's like five or six.

7:12Bryce:The reason that we have to do that is because I had a favorite episode of 2025, but I cannot remember what it is. So if we get the feedback first, I'll have enough time to remember.

7:23Conor:Alright, so here is my list of stuff. The first one, and I think this is in chronological order. When we were talking to what episode was this? Vittorio and JF in episode 259. I did not at the time go to Vittorio's talk, and I said I was gonna go to JF's talk. I did not end up going to JF's talk either. I did, I think, watch most of it.

7:46Bryce:Oh, I'm gonna get I'm gonna get text messages from JF about this. JF apparently does not know how to communicate with Connor, so anytime he needs to communicate with Connor, he sends me a text message, and then I have to text Connor.

7:59Conor:And and well, well, the last thing that you uh relayed on his behalf was to add the YouTube link to the show notes or um of the podcast. But I had already done it. I had seen the NDC talks link in the show notes to the playlist. I don't think all of them are online because you gave a talk at NDC, correct? On top of the two trainings that we did.

8:19Bryce:Yeah.

8:19Conor:I did. So that is not online yet. JF's talk is, and I think most or half of the NDC Tech Town talks are online. Anyways, Vittorio gave me a hard time say, Why are you going to JF's talk? And I didn't end up going to either. So I just, I'm not sure if Vittorio's listening. Don't feel bad. I didn't make it to either. I had to run during both of them. And Vittorio's talk isn't online either. I'm not sure if that's because he didn't want recorded, which doesn't sound like Vittorio.

8:44Conor:It might just be in the bucket of tops that talks that are not uploaded yet. Point number two. I mentioned in one of the episodes where we were in Breda, Netherlands, I believe it was either episode 260 or 261, that the author of Prefix Sums and Their Applications was Mark Harris. That is incorrect. Mark Harris has published papers on prefix scans, but it was not that one. That is authored by Guy Blelik. So I think I discovered that when I was trying to add it to the show notes and discovered, uh-oh, I misaccredited a paper.

9:22Conor:So I will link both Guy Blelik's paper and one of Mark Harris's papers because I think that's what I did back then as well. And there's three left. So we're gonna skip this one and come back to it because it will potentially require the most discussion, or we might also just kick it to a whole other episode. Maybe we'll, it'll be a bonus episode. Number four, so we'll come back to number three, is that I mentioned in episode 255 that Pagaccia was from Denmark.

9:49Conor:And I was saying I learned all this stuff about Denmark. Uh I think one of them was that Carlsberg was the official beer of Denmark. Pagaca is not from Denmark, folks. He is famously from Poland. And what's the individual's name?

10:02Bryce:Oh, you're gonna get in trouble with Romana.

10:04Conor:Yeah, yeah. Well, I got in trouble with uh, we don't have this individual's name, but their username on GitHub is oh, I'm gonna butcher this pronunciation, Vik S.L. Gartner. And uh they commented, Pagaccha's from Poland. Oh boy, hashtag confidently incorrect. Uh, what did you learn on your last trip to Slovenia? Anyways, we do apologize not only to the country of Slovenia, but also to the country of Denmark, although misattributing one of the top cyclists in the world, if not the top cyclist in the world, I guess is not really a bad thing.

10:38Conor:Number five, in the conversation with Sean Parent, which was spread across episodes 261 to 263, I think, or maybe it was just 262 and 263, I mentioned the word abscond and then asked Sean if I used that word correctly, and he said I did. And I looked it up afterward, because I was wanting to add the definition of abscond to the show notes. I did not use the word correctly. The definition of abscond is to leave hurriedly and secretly, typically to avoid detection of or arrest for an unlawful action such as theft.

11:17Conor:And and the way that I used it was a couple of attendees of the conference were absconding uh Sean, so we weren't able to talk to him right away. And that is definitely they stole Sean.

11:30Bryce:What? No, no, no, no. That's fine. Like th they took Sean and they stole him away from you.

11:37Conor:No, no, but that's that's not so to abscond is means to like to exit without detection. They did not exit.

11:42Bryce:So, anyways, but but it's to exit, it's it's to exit without detection. Like to you you could say to abscond with an item. Like he absconded with the gold or something.

11:52Conor:I guess maybe. I mean, maybe there's some we've got like uh several thousand listeners. If if someone's a wordsmith out there, we didn't get any comments, but it seemed incorrect when I got the definition. And so I asked a couple LLMs if there was a word that I was trying to reach for, but couldn't. But it didn't really give me um the top one they suggested was a cost, which is definitely incorrect, because that's when you kind of like aggressively, you know, go up to someone, talk to them or whatever, which isn't incorrect, but it's definitely not accosted.

12:23Conor:And then that couple other options were detained, waylaid. Anyways, maybe EBSCON was correct. Go to the the GitHub discussion if you are a wordsmith, let us know. And if you know the word that I was reaching for, anyways, uh enough on Abscond. And then number three, so this is last uh but not least of the five things I had written down, we got multiple comments. And I think I had mentioned to you this to you at some point uh while we were traveling or uh or whatever.

12:50Conor:Uh, we talked about the Tesla situation and the fact that I don't have a Tesla when we were road tripping from Aarhus to Copenhagen in the Polestar. And at one point in that episode, I said, separate the art from the artist. I regret having gotten a Prius. I wish I got a Tesla. And folks, this is a little sidebar, I regret it even more. Tesla a Prius in the winter? My goodness, don't don't get me started. Don't get me started, folks. And anyways, we had multiple individuals comment, and we'll read in the entirety uh uh from maybe we won't uh we'll just we'll we'll name them Robert if you you can go find their their username if you really want to, because it's it's publicly posted next to a GitHub account.

13:38Conor:This is the response. And we and there was a second one as well that asked a couple different things, but we'll just read this one. Quote, I'm sorry I tried. I can't separate the art from the artist when some of his art is about supporting the rise of the far right where I live. I don't have that privilege. I thought I'd check again, seeing as this post mentioned Eevee's. I wouldn't even care about any of you owning a Tesla, but I can't support proposing and or rationalizing giving Elon even more money to attack the freedom, liberties, and well-being of other people.

14:07Conor:I've gotten lots of great information from your podcast throughout the years, and I'm still very thankful for that. But for me, it's the end of the road here. I sadly won't be checking in again, but still wish you guys all the best. End quote. Modulo a couple of my speakos. And um, I mean, we don't want to make this whole episode about Tessa, but do you have uh an instant response? Bryce, how do we feel about having lost a listener?

14:30Bryce:I I'm sorry to see somebody go. Uh, and maybe we should maybe maybe this is a lane we should stay out of. The thing is Because I don't want I don't want people to feel bad when listening to the podcast, and I don't want to bring up stuff that's got lots of baggage for folks. So I I'm sorry. Perhaps we should not have gone there.

14:55Conor:Yeah, I mean, i I think in general we have I mean, at times we've brought up political stuff slash adjacent to political stuff, and it never goes well. So I think over time we have just tried to either stay on technical topics or non-technical fun topics or just nonsense that people care or do not care about. I mean, one of the comments on uh one of our Demark episodes was, you know, I'm 15 minutes in and they haven't mentioned anything about algorithms, I'm out.

15:24Conor:Um so I was like, okay. But people should know by now. Chaos with sprinkles of information. Sometimes more chaos, sometimes more information.

15:32Bryce:And I mean, but but we also we had some that Road Trip produced what what I have now found my favorite episode of the year. That that that Road Trip produced some really gold content, I think. I mean, uh I don't know. Do you have do you have the numbers from from uh of what episodes from 2025 did best?

15:51Conor:I can bring them up. Um I might need to eyeball it a bit, uh, or I could quickly feed it to um an LLM. But I mean I I whenever I see those comments of like, oh, they're not talking about anything, uh I completely disagree because a lot of times we're talking about nothing, but then we instantly drop down into you know some discussion about algorithms on the CPU or GPU. So anyways, uh, you know, if you don't like the fluff, that's fine. Maybe this podcast ain't for you.

16:16Conor:Uh but you know, it's part of our brand at this point that uh, you know, sometimes we're talking about uh random talk. It's that's that being said, the the Tesla slash Prius stuff, it doesn't, it's not intended. I guess when we're talking about can I buy it, it is a political thing. But you know, it is uh it's also like a a technology product, if you will. And I guess that's why we veered, veered into it. I do feel bad about platforming, you know, talking about it, and then potentially encouraging folks.

16:43Conor:That being said, you know, I just uh you know, I I keep on hearing about these Nvidia, Mercedes, Alpameo, whatever, full self-driving. Uh, where can I buy a full self-driving Mercedes? I keep be I keep hearing about them in in the keynotes that Jensen gives. But can we buy a self-driving Mercedes? Anyways, are there other options? You know, I'm happy to support a different company. But yeah, maybe going forward we're we won't touch that stuff. I don't I don't know.

17:11Conor:Maybe maybe it's the people that are upset that leaves comments. Maybe other people enjoy the discussion. Do people not care? We need your feedback, folks, on the GitHub discussion. Uh let us know if you want to veer away from this stuff. Because uh, you know, I do feel bad talking about this content. Uh if it's like, you know, uh the point is to have fun and talk about algorithms, and if we're discouraging people from listening because they don't want to hear about this stuff and they're suffering through.

17:36Conor:And that reminds me, there was another running podcast that I stopped listening to because I loved the technical stuff, but whenever they would talk about personal stuff, it drew it drove me up the wall. And I knew like a few people on my in my run club that it was the same thing. The technical content was amazing, but they could care less for all the other stuff they talked about. I wonder what percentage of our listeners are like that, where whenever we start talking about couches, people get irritated.

18:01Bryce:Anyways, if you have feedback, there there is there is a suggestion. I'm talking to the to the LM. It does suggest that there is a a pilot program for Mercedes self-drive in the US. Uh but uh only in California and Nevada and only like in certain conditions, like when there's like if you're in a traffic jam and it's less than you're going less than 40 miles an hour.

18:36Conor:But uh Yeah, that ain't gonna cut it for me.

18:40Bryce:The other two listed is uh is uh GM's self-driving product and uh and and Ford's self-driving product, but I I I suspect that those are also not gonna do it. But let's see, let's let's ask about Canada. Let's ask about Canada.

18:56Conor:I mean I don't think it's gonna be different. We did some research into alternatives. I think we mentioned BYD, and we even looked into importing it from Mexico because it's like one of the top um electric vehicles and self-driving options, but it is illegal to import a car from a different country that's not on the sanction list. It would have still been cheaper. Importing it through.

19:15Bryce:Also, even even if you could import the car, you probably couldn't use the self-driving feature unless it's approved by the local authorities.

19:23Conor:Oh, yeah, yeah, potentially. Um anyways, folks, we don't mean to talk about this more. Uh will I switch cars in the future? Maybe nobody will know in the future because it's we're we're putting our viewership on the line, and we don't want to do that. Anyways, those are that's the first part of our retro was going back, thanks to everybody that left comments, and we apologize for the mistakes that were made. That brings us to our 2025 retro of what are we talking about?

19:54Conor:Favorite episodes, favorite moments. You said you came across your favorite.

19:58Bryce:So I I want to know, yeah, I want to know what episode from 2025 did best.

20:03Conor:I mean, I did uh they did actually send me in an email this little uh what do you call it, if I bring it up. It's you know how Spotify does the unwrapped and then everyone has started copying them? BuzzSprout, which is the platform that I use for the podcast, sent me the same kind of thing. And if I try and go find it, it was three Buzz. Yeah, here it is. And I I remember that the number one most viewed episode was still episode zero, overwhelmingly.

20:33Conor:And at this point, the the stats on the episodes are like I think we have 84,000 listens on episode zero, like in aggregate, which accounts for almost like 10%. Like we we have like 1.1 or 1.2 million downloads in total. And that is a lesson for future podcasters. Make sure episode zero is a banger and your audio is on point because I'm sure our viewership would be like some single digit percentage higher if we had higher quality audio. And if I go to check this playback here, I can share my screen for a second.

21:08Bryce:I'm just asking an LLM while you're doing while you're doing this manual work. I'm just asking an LLM what episode of ADSP the Bot Task in 2025 had the most views, slash listens, slash downloads.

21:20Conor:We published we published 25 episodes, unsurprising. Podcast location. So you're you're looking at this, right? Maybe maybe I'll post this.

21:27Bryce:I thought it was kind of silly, so I didn't uh uh I I am attempting I am attempting to look at it, but my bandwidth seems to be very bad. So right now it is just showing me a big C for Connor. But I imagine if we wait another five seconds or so it would be a good one.

21:41Conor:Well, the thing is it's like an animated video. So it's saying the United States was our most popular country for listenership. And we were listened to in twenty three thousand four hundred twenty nine different cities. The most city most popular city was New York. And

22:00Bryce:Hey! My people!

22:03Conor:And top countries, so that is United States, Germany, and United Kingdom. Top cities is New York, Sydney, and Stockholm. Although the animation has gone by. We got a quar over over a quarter million downloads in 2025. One episode really stood out. And that was Episode Zero, our favorite algorithms with 8,460 downloads. Didn't even come out this year. Or the last year. And we're in the top 5% of podcasts. Woo! And it's gonna show us our other top episodes, I believe, which were episode 247, The Philosophy of Good Software Design, and then episode 244, High on AI, part one.

22:54Conor:Uh the first one 247.

22:57Bryce:Uh 2025 started with uh okay, so that was a 2025 episode.

23:04Conor:Yeah, both of those were in the summertime. One had 3900 views and the other one had 3700 views. Um I'm not surprised the high and high on AI one is uh is up there. And then there's a summary of ADSP, which shows five years of podcasting, 52 episodes published, top five percent, quarter million down. I guess it's just all the same stats. And then the total number of minutes we published were 1711, which divided by 52 is probably gonna be what, 32, 33 minutes or something like that?

23:39Bryce:So I'm gonna I'm gonna give people a pass because my favorite episode of the year was was posted in December, and uh, you know, nothing happens in tech in in December. Um well I guess aside from NVIDIA uh signing deals. But other than that, other than that, Jensen's very busy on Christmas. Other than that, uh nothing happens in December. So we'll we'll check back in a in a few weeks and see whether whether my favorite one is really picked up steam.

24:09Bryce:But uh do you know do you know which episode I'm thinking of?

24:11Conor:If it was in December, I'm gonna guess it was the Sean Parent origin story, correct?

24:16Bryce:Yes, of course it has to be. And I was so sad that I had to leave the uh leave the hotel because was I flying out? I think I had to go catch my flight.

24:27Conor:Your flight was the next morning, but it was early in the next morning, and you had to catch the last train to Amsterdam, I believe.

24:34Bryce:Yes, I think I had to leave that night. I had to get on a train. Like if it was just like I had to I if it was just a question of I would not get any sleep, I would have stayed. Um but it was like I needed to be on a train and this was the last train, and so I had to depart because I stayed at a hotel that was actually like inside the airport past security, which was an interesting experience. But yes, I uh I uh I was sad that I had to leave. How much longer did you guys uh talk after I left?

25:02Conor:I well, so I don't even think people noticed in the edit because I cut out when you were leaving, and then I think we recorded for another maybe I can't remember if if it was 10 or 20 minutes, and so I think everybody thought you were there for the whole uh time. Yeah, and then I I only think it was 10 to 20 minutes. We finished that, and then we ended up joining a bunch of folks that were at some restaurant, and we had way too many people at a table, but it was a lot of fun, and then so we we hung out for a few more hours, but we only recorded for 10 or 20 more minutes.

25:36Conor:Um and what's interesting is that so here are the stats, and if you do a reverse max scan on the episodes, you can kind of see the ones that on like per week have more. So actually, those two Sean Parent episodes do have more than the previous two weeks. Um, but that is only for those two weeks, and then the NDC Tech Town with JF Bastion and and Vittorio. That one has 45 views more.

26:08Bryce:And algorithm taxonomy did pretty well.

26:10Conor:Yeah, but so then that's the ones that kind of stand out, right? But then the algorithm taxonomy that skips up to 3.3200. And then if we keep scrolling back, so when's the next time we have one that's higher? It was the last time we had Sean Parent on before that. So that probably does indicate that the Sean Parent ones will generate more views over time. And then, yeah, this 4001 philosophy of software design.

26:35Bryce:Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Which which recording of that that's those Sean Parent ones, those were September.

26:42Conor:That was when we we did it on the Zoom call. So that was that was late August when we recorded. Okay, that's right. And we I think recorded for, I don't know, a couple hours and then yeah, we diced it up.

26:53Bryce:This this podcast really is a discussion with Sean Parent. There's really a lot of discussions.

26:56Conor:There was a couple different. It's ADSP, a discussion with Sean Parent. Algorithms plus data structures equals programs. There was another one. Do you remember what it was? I can't remember. Anyway, so I will say my favorite. Well, yeah, I I think I I didn't spend a ton of time thinking about it, but it was the one in Mar. And I'm actually sad because we didn't I didn't update it because I'm pretty sure I added a f did I add? Oh no, I didn't. I guess I only add emoji flags when we're at conferences.

27:26Conor:That looks like the pattern because we have recorded live from different countries, but and I guess you're based in the States, so that's probably why I didn't do it. But we recorded, if you recall, after that comedy show, and we went back to the hotel. To do. And I th I I just had a ton of fun. I whenever we're walking and talking. Yeah, that was a good one. Um that was a good one. And and also, too, in hindsight, we we commented on or you commented on the the Jewish comedian was your favorite.

27:56Conor:There is he's famous. Ari Shafir. Oh, really? Yeah, he's a famous comedian. Like he's been on Joe Rogan. He's in like the Joe Rogan sphere.

28:06Bryce:And we're not going there on it.

28:11Conor:Anyways, uh, so yeah, no, I guess our listeners, uh maybe we lost a couple listeners there because you liked a comedian that's been on the Joe Rogan podcast. Uh anyways, um, after the fact I realized that, like, oh yeah, I've seen that guy before. And I've in and most I most famously know him from Shane Gillis roasting him. Um anyways, we're at the 30-minute mark.

28:34Bryce:Are there other things we want to retro about uh Well, okay, so so so I had asked you about this in December, and uh maybe the listeners can can provide some input. I would love to do some sort of poll to find out what you, the listener, what your favorite episode was from 2025. And I kind of had in mind, like I sometimes see on uh Twitter those uh where where people do like multiple rounds of polls, like March Madness. Like, you know, you make a bracket, you do, you bake off a bunch of different, you know, you take four and you say which of these four is the best, and then you go to the next round and and you do a bunch of those polls where you do, you know, sets of four, and then you move on to the next round, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, until eventually you you advance to a final single poll that determines the winner.

29:19Bryce:But uh, that's like a lot of polls, and uh I don't think I don't think I'll be able to retain everyone's attention for that long. So then what is the best option? Do we just go and pick like the 12 episodes that had the highest downloads or the 12 episodes that like we liked the best and put them into a poll? Or like what's what's the best mechanism? There were how there must be uh uh 52 episodes from the year. So ha what's the best mechanism for us to let people vote on their 52 favorite episodes?

29:50Bryce:On on their favorite episode of those 52.

29:53Conor:And also, too, I mean, we s already solicited feedback uh earlier about uh the Tesla topic. But if you have feedback in general, we've been doing this for over five years now. And if there is I mean, we've heard different things from different people, you know. Some people like the 10xing. Well, that's that's what I was literally just thinking of. Zach Lane. He that he said that's his like favorite thing about the show. It was whenever I 10X your voice.

30:18Conor:I've heard other people, they said their favorite story was the back and forth during COVID about you sending me, like me getting COVID, not being able to get a vaccine, or or what was it, a test, and then you like sending me the test. And then other people they say that their favorite stuff is the algorithm talk. Anyways, if you let us know not just like what your favorite episode is or how you want us to do that kind of vote, but like if what's your favorite part?

30:43Conor:Uh or is it all of the above? Anyways, we're we're open to feedback, you know. Uh we want to keep our uh our listeners happy, and uh yeah, maybe we'll do maybe Bryce will do something if if we get uh a good enough suggestion on some kind of poll or something like that.

30:57Bryce:And uh that I guess we could we we could uh I know how we could encourage uh we could encourage uh participation is we could give out some prize, right? If you if you participate in the poll. I don't know what sort of prize we could give out, but uh do you have a prize to give out?

31:15Conor:An NVIDIA ruler or something like that?

31:17Bryce:I could make ADSP sh t-shirts or something.

31:22Conor:That was a quick upgrade. We finally got stickers, and then uh a couple months later we got t-shirts.

31:26Bryce:Um Well, I had to have t-shirts made for another purpose that uh I cannot disclose on the podcast. Uh but uh it was pretty straightforward.

31:38Conor:Alright. Well, there you go, folks. Maybe we g the the potential to have a t-shirt. We're not there's no promises here, because I'd be very surprised if these t-shirts materialize, but if they do, uh you might be the proud. And how do they how do they win it?

31:55Bryce:Is there anybody like you know, we'll randomly choose five people who uh who comment on some platform the poll. Yeah, no, no, no, who vote on the poll of the what was their favorite episode in 2025?

32:09Conor:Okay. Well, have we decided we're doing a poll yet?

32:11Bryce:Uh if I can find a way to construct the poll, then yeah. Like if I I I I want to research. There's gotta be some clever way of doing this.

32:21Conor:Right?

32:21Bryce:Without giving like giving giving people just fifty-two options it cannot be the best way. Like I don't uh uh doing the bracket is like, you know, a good way, but then that requires you to do multiple rounds, right? So people have to be engaged multiple times. Um uh I guess asking people to like just pick from a list of 52, I feel like that's that can't be the best way. There has to be theory on this and what's the best way to poll.

32:47Conor:Um uh Well, I mean, technically, on this episode, we could just say if you have a favorite episode, go leave a comment within the GitHub discussion. Or maybe I could even create like a separate GitHub discussion for favorite episode, go leave the number, and then if people see it in the future, they just upvote it and then uh you're missing such an uh a wonderful opportunity to talk about like ballot design and like algorithms for determining consensus.

33:17Conor:You're making it too complicated.

33:19Bryce:Jeffrey Jeffrey, and I'll say this, Jeffrey Yaskin, uh, who was the library evolution chair when I started on the C committee, um, best library evolution chair I think we've ever had, um he did like all this research on uh polling methods and like like uh uh you know techniques for determining consensus and he had all this theory crafting on on uh on it. He would know, he would know what the right uh uh mechanism is. He he came up with this like this uh these strategies for how we would prioritize stuff.

33:58Bryce:Like you're given a list of like a hundred things. How do you ask a group of people to prioritize those hundred things? And uh one of the w things we used to do was we would you would take an item and you'd ask everybody to raise their hands and you would start at the top of the list and you would ask people to put their hands down as you moved the item further and further down the list, you'd ask them to lower their hands when the item reached the place in the list that they thought it belonged.

34:27Bryce:And then when roughly half the people in the room had lowered their hands, that's where the item would live. And it was like a pretty fast way to go through and prioritize a bunch of items because uh like you just you just go through and then just like once you know some enough hands had gone down, you'd be like, all right. And you didn't have to like ask people to uh like say like, oh, I think it should be 24th or 25th or something. There was no like discussion about it.

34:54Bryce:It was just like each person individually would put their hand down, and I think it was a really a really good strategy.

34:59Conor:Alright, well we're not doing that because we don't have people sitting in a room, but what what if you I think we're putting way too much thought into it because in honesty, I can't even recall half of the episodes that we recorded by like number or title or what we talked about. I have already in my head just like a handful that were the favorites and most memorable for me. And I think it would be generous. Like we're the people recording it and producing it.

35:30Conor:I think it would be very unlikely that our listeners have more of a memory for our episodes than we do. So they probably only have one or two. So you just go ask them to leave a comment and then they upvote it, and then we're done. And if we get some overwhelming, you know, 20 different episodes and people disagreeing, then we just look at the upvotes and then we have a final poll or something, and that's it. But uh, you know, it's way too complicated.

35:57Bryce:But your your your method produces unclean data. It's just like a series of textual comments and maybe upvotes on a GitHub discussion. Uh my method's more fun. I'm gonna do research on this. I'm gonna ask but by research, I mean I'm gonna ask ChatGPT.

36:15Conor:I tell you what, you build some kind of voting mechanism. People can also just go leave comments on this GitHub discussion and or maybe I'll set up a separate one. Just link in the show notes for a link to somewhere where you can leave a comment. And then if Bryce actually puts this together before uh Friday when this episode drops, then I will link to his as well and we will see which is better. Uh all right, anyways, we're we're almost at the 40-minute mark now.

36:40Conor:Is there any in the last 30 seconds here, anything else retro of 2025 things we want to mention before we go forward to our 2026 look ahead predictions future episode?

36:52Bryce:No, I think I think this this has gone on as long as it should go on.

36:58Conor:Alright, folks, that's episode. What episode is that? That is episode 269. We are now on to 270, 2025. It's in the rear view mirror. 2026 is here. It is January 13th as we record this. Be sure to check these show notes either in your podcast app or at adspthepodcast.com for links to anything we mentioned in today's episode, as well as a link to a GitHub discussion where you can leave thoughts, comments, and questions. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed and have a great day.

37:27Bryce:Low quality, high quality. That is the tagline of our podcast.

37:33Conor:That's not the tagline. Our tagline is chaos with sprinkles of information.