Episode 589: He's the Heel

Brandon (00:01.842) All right. Well, Kote's not here this week, so we can talk sports. And to do that, I brought in another American and another American football fan. We've got Aaron Delp. Everyone knows Aaron. He's one of the hosts over at the Enterprise AI show, formerly the Cloudcast. He's also an expert in AI, at least I'm gonna call that. Works over at Mistral. So he has all all the knowledge. Aaron, welcome officially to Software Defined Talk. Although I feel like you're already part of the family, this is your official welcome.

Aaron (00:25.633) And well no, and and we were talking about before and this completes the matrix. Like all of the cross connections between all of the shows, everyone's been everywhere as of today. We check the box.

Brandon (00:36.956) That's it. Perfect. We finally done it. So everybody, if you're not already listened to it, go listen to the Enterprise AI show. I'm off on on there as well. So you know, even more reason. Hear me, here Aaron, and here Brian. Now, my question for both of you, because today is an important day in the in the United States, it is the kickoff of American football season, which of course, you know, most of the listeners don't care about. But it combines something that I think we like to talk about in software defined talk a lot travel. So for those that do not follow American football, the Rams.

Matt Ray (00:37.718) Ha ha.

Brandon (01:06.086) based in Los Angeles, are playing the 49ers, based in San Francisco. They have now flown all the way to somewhere in Sydney. I believe somewhere no Melbourne. Thank you. Mel I can't even say it. How do you say how's the official pronunciation of Melbourne? It's like Melbourne. I know it's Melbourne.

Matt Ray (01:13.048) Melbourne. Melbourne. Get it straight.

Aaron (01:14.287) Yes. Yes.

Matt Ray (01:19.916) You you just dropped the the trailing R. Melbourne.

Brandon (01:22.588) Just no R. Okay. So they have now officially flown all the way over. They're going to play the American football game there. Now, this presents an interesting travel dilemma. Okay, so there's two choices were made. The San Francisco 49ers, I would say they did the conventional thing. They flew out a week before, and they're, if you will, acclimating to play the game, which will be it's very confusing for all of us. It'll be Thursday morning, but most of the world will watch it Wednesday night.

So that's that what they're doing. And then the Rams, I don't even think they've officially released their itinerary, but they're basically going to fly in the day before. I don't even know if it's it, and this even gets complicated. Yeah, it gets even complicated because, like, is it the day before and the international dateline? So they're coming in as close to this kickoff as humanly possible, and then they're gonna leave immediately afterwards. So both of you fly internationally quite a bit, and I think both of you probably have thoughts on how do you get.

Matt Ray (01:59.266) I th I thought it was like day up 'cause it's a night game. Yeah.

Brandon (02:19.297) over you know the time zones change. So Matt, I'll start with you because you're you're a veteran of this specific trip, right? Of doing this. Now, if you were the football coach and your goal was to win the football game, which team based solely on travel arrangements, do you think has the better approach?

Matt Ray (02:26.093) Yeah.

Matt Ray (02:37.806) Well, y you gotta take the the the step back and look at the season approach. I mean the the the 49ers have have taken a week acclimate and then that's gonna mean they're gonna take a week to kind of reacclimate to back in the US. They don't have a bye week two, do they? Right? They have ten days. Okay, well that's that's that's not terrible. But you know the the

Brandon (02:56.411) Well they have ten days because they basically have a mini buy. They have a mini buy. Mm-hmm.

Matt Ray (03:04.29) The Rams are fine, you know, first class or better, you know, whatever whatever it is on their their chartered flight. I kinda like their approach. You know, get in, hopefully you sleep on the plane, you're well rested, you're a professional. You know, they're they're accommodating you to to make sure that you have every opportunity to show up and just act like nothing has changed. You know, just don't look at the sky, the sun's in the wrong place, it's up. Just just get out there and play.

Brandon (03:29.819) Mm-hmm.

All right. All right, like no Aaron, both of you I am not, but both of you I think are are runners. So so maybe Aaron, I'll put it to you this way, give you the same kind of question. But say you let's just say you're running a 4K, something five K, something maybe is kind of simple, right? But your goal was to, if you will, do a personal record, your PR, right? And you needed but your life depended on this. Do you go? Do you go with the acclamation? You go the seven days out and get there, or do you just fly in, sleep on the plane?

You know, and just go right out and you just like r and run it and be like, I like, Hey, my body's ready. I'm gonna do it.

Aaron (04:07.598) Well, so I don't think the answer is quite the same because what you did is you just put life and death stakes on it. It's the first game of the season. So so would you have to I I think a better comparison there is like if you're running a five K and it literally doesn't matter because you're gonna run twenty or thirty more five K's that season, do you need to PR the first one? The answer is no. So I think you fly in, you do the game and you get the hell out.

Matt Ray (04:14.338) Yeah, th there's a whole season.

Brandon (04:27.154) Mm-hmm.

Aaron (04:37.518) You get in you get in before the jet lag hits you too bad 'cause at the end of the day it's not the damn Super Bowl. Now if it if if if it's the Super Bowl, yeah, you probably do come right, right, exactly. So I I feel like spending a week there for that first game of the season feels a little bit like a vacation for everyone involved. Yeah, yeah.

Brandon (04:45.052) Yeah, you fly like two weeks or late and you know, you spent spend the whole time there.

Matt Ray (04:58.542) Okay.

Brandon (04:58.588) Yeah, like a little have a little extra fun to have a little little vacation. Well, I don't know, Matt, you what's the cause you've you've I mean, you live there. Have you ever what's the shortest you've done a turnaround between the US and Australia? Have you ever done it in less than I guess for them it's gonna be like seventy-two hours?

Matt Ray (05:15.278) yeah, I think I did a I did like a two three nights trip to the US once. and yeah, it it was just you I was a mess the whole time and then I came back.

Brandon (05:32.593) Well, I do like I was just thinking, you know, I've I've never been in Australia, so that's maybe some unique things. But like Europe, when you fly to Europe, I would prefer to just get to Europe, take a nap, get up and do the and then just get up and do the thing I have to do, and then leave. Right. Like, cause I think it's sort of like when you that third that second or third day is actually, I think, the hardest, right? Because you're just like your body's messed up. Now, I don't know. You know, like I said, with Australia, the different days, it's it's a whole nother thing. So well, tune in tonight. Well, I guess I guess we'll already know. Next week we'll review what happened.

Matt Ray (05:51.074) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brandon (06:01.394) We'll know which team won and lost. And I think the teams are pretty evenly matched. So with the sample size of one, we can just say, like, well, the winner clearly the winner chose the better sleeve strategy. That's that'll be the determining factor.

All right. Now I gave everyone some homework last week. Some of you did it, some of you didn't, but that's okay. I wanted everyone to watch The Story of VS Code. It's a full on documentary of the the rise of VS Code. Now I'll give us a quick overview, but I'm gonna summarize my quick take is like I'm giving this 3.5 stars out of five. Thought it was good. I learned some good stuff. Here's the key things I learned that I guess Eric Gama was the co author of Design Patterns, which is like a seminal book.

Which I had read. I did not know he was involved in the VS Code at all. Completely new to me. I did not put that together. So that was the first thing that I learned. I thought it was funny that he was at IBM working on Eclipse, and then they were like, come over here and did that. Didn't really know that part of it as well. And then also I learned that pretty much this entire thing was built in Zurich. And Zurich, like all these documentaries do, it's always funny because there's always this like work from home and everyone needs to be back in the office. But whenever they do the documentaries,

They have the most beautiful home offices and they live in the most beautiful areas. There's a lot of B-roll of like Zurich and Vineyards and stuff like that. So that that was that was fun to look at. And then generally overall, I like some of the history and stuff. Thought it was a little bit long. And also I felt like they didn't really interview, and I'll get into this a little bit more, some of like other people that I thought would have been really fun to include in the documentary. So it was very, if you will, Microsoft-centric, which is I'm sure they paid for it. So

So it's their their kind of piece there. and then of course we'll talk about a little bit about the evolution of VS Code. But Aaron, I know you you you had a a look at it. What was your initial take of the show of the documentary?

Aaron (07:50.522) So a little bit like you, very one-sided, but I I just kind of figured it got funded by Microsoft. But but here's the I mean the larger take on this. I actually really dig these like television broadcast quality documentaries that get put up on on YouTube now. And I actually have a a YouTube subscription, you know, so I don't have to do ads and I can do downloads and all the kinds of stuff like that.

I wanna say my watch later list right now is like a hundred videos deep. So obviously I have issues, but but I love these kinds of things. I will I I've I watched about half of it. I will watch the other half of it probably when I'm on the plane you know, next week. completely dig them. But it the biggest thing for me was I was like, yeah, what happened to Eclipse? And

Brandon (08:24.603) Wow.

Aaron (08:46.607) That's what happened to Eclipse. Like it kind of answered that that question for me pretty, pretty quickly of like, yeah, okay. I remember Eclipse and I remember when Eclipse was in its heyday.

Brandon (08:55.207) Well, it's funny because they they show him basically they they say that they interviewed Eric and they're trying to get him to go over and they they sound like they did a pretty good job recruiting him. And they show him like with pictures of like Bill Gates and several other people, like you need to come over here and do it. But I thought the initial goal, I had kind of even forgotten about this. Their goal was to basically build a web based editor IDE, which like I like I didn't even really think of that as because I think that was back to like everyone was trying to do it. And I never even think that was like that great a goal. I don't know, Matt, like do you even remember this?

Matt Ray (09:15.886) Mm-hmm.

Brandon (09:24.637) coming up when it first got started. Cause it was known as was it Morocco? Yeah, Monaco. It was Monaco was the first thing that got created.

Matt Ray (09:25.006) Yeah, I mean i i it yeah, the

Monica. Yeah, not to be confused with the font. Yeah, I mean there there was or you know maybe there still is that that idea that you would have developer IDEs on the web and their sandboxes would be fully configured. And you know, just like you know, just like Citrix has has always been the dream for everyone, yeah, we we still there's

Aaron (09:30.737) Mon ago.

Brandon (09:35.069) Yeah.

Aaron (09:35.419) Ha ha.

Matt Ray (09:59.958) You know, it's still not there. I mean it the technology's there. It's just it's never been widely adopted. And you know, I I'm sure you know we've all seen a lot of enterprises and everybody has a slightly different version of it. You know, how how they try to keep developers on the same path, you know, like, well, we'll all use the same IDE and you know, here are here are the configurations centrally controlled, or in this case, a web-based IDE.

And you know, it it's it's never been like something that's gonna just break through and one one tool takes everything, but V S Code has kind of come closest to taking everything, but not in that aspect.

Brandon (10:42.769) Yeah, and so this is what I thought was kind of like there's almost like little arcs in the documentary. So the first arc is like Monaco, and they're basically off in the wilderness. No one's using it. And they they talk about like they and they put it, they embed it like Microsoft, Azure Web, something, right? Like some product none of us have like and they're like, well, no one's really using it. And then what they kind of like, I don't know if they quote figure it out, but they basically hook up with the TypeScript team, right? And the someone's building TypeScript. And I guess that was part of the thing too. And they're like,

Matt Ray (10:46.541) Yeah.

Brandon (11:11.165) We've got this editor, and he's like, Why don't I just take that editor from you? And you keep working on TypeScript. So that was kind of interesting. But then I guess what they kind of figured out was like, well, why don't we like build, you know, essentially an app an application? Right. And this is the part that you know they portrayed as like a good thing. And I think it's been very successful. But like, well, I guess it's what is your opinion of Electron? Because that's what they basically say. They like, we figured out that we could use Electron.

to basically build, you know, to take a web app and basically make it a desktop app. So and they got a in the a documentary, it's like, this is perfect. And I'm like, I'm I don't know. I don't here, I'll I'll give my opinion in a minute. What do you think, Aaron? Was that like a good thing? Were you like, is that an exciting thing?

Aaron (11:54.724) I don't think it was an exciting thing and they certainly played it up and acted like it was the best thing that ever happened. I I feel like it was just the natural evolution of what it had to do. Like it's just they had no other choice. Like at but they made it like, this was amazing and it was our plan all along. And it's like, Like you just you no one downloaded your stuff, so you did something else. Like

Matt Ray (12:16.319) Ha ha.

Brandon (12:19.527) Well, I felt like I don't know and this is man, I thought of you because the big thing they show is like they move it to Electron and then they they show at like one of the build conferences, it running on Linux, Ubuntu specifically. And there's like, you know, huge applause. And so I get it. I understand what it is, but it's like, well, I guess Microsoft only had so many choices. It's not like they were gonna go build a native Unix or Linux app or a native Mac app. So and I know you I remember back, I'll have to go listen to it again. I know you interviewed Amanda because she's in the documentary. She's like the

Matt Ray (12:30.413) Mm-hmm.

Matt Ray (12:47.331) Mm-hmm.

Brandon (12:49.735) VP of I don't know, development tools or something along those lines. Like, but but you specifically, of course, because I'm thinking of Matt, it's like, what would Matt be saying about Emacs? That's when I was watching this, that's what I was thinking. but like

Matt Ray (12:52.204) Yeah. Still there.

Matt Ray (12:58.062) I I I'm gonna say I did not bring it up with her.

Brandon (13:03.547) Mm-hmm. I know, but like I want to know like what is your opinion when someone's like, we moved to Electron, are you like, that's good? Or is that just is it just like, well, you had no other choice, right?

Matt Ray (13:11.97) I I I mean, yeah, I think Electron is a better solution than a web interface. but you know, because it's just taking your web thing and and and ensuring that you lose the vagaries of different browsers and any other potentially distractions like you know, plugins and and and the like. I mean I think as a whole, I th yeah, this is gonna be a controversial take.

kinda like electron apps because of the cross platform. You know, even though they're they're not they're not like performant. you know, they're not great performance, but they're good enough. Spicy.

Brandon (13:44.284) Really?

Brandon (13:49.627) Mm. Okay. So like the Slack app, the Slack app is good enough. I whenever I look think of Electron, I look at the Slack app and I think to myself, We could do better, Slack. We could do better.

Matt Ray (13:58.146) Good God.

Aaron (14:00.213) Ha ha ha.

Brandon (14:02.12) Well, and then this is I guess my thing going forward. It's like I get why they did this and the s history is interesting enough. But now I kind of feel with a AI, it's like kind of no excuses. Like, why can't we have a native solution on all of them? Just letting you know. And no, to be fair though, Claude Code, which of course everybody knows I love, also, to my knowledge is an electron app. So they're just like, I don't know. There's something about it. So that part was interesting. now the next thing that's some stuff that caught my attention, I thought was really interesting.

One, I didn't know the language server protocol, the LSPs, right? I had no idea that this came from basically, if you will, from VS Code. They're just like, hey, we want more people to support our languages and we want all the code completion and all the things there. And so they again probably had to do it, but it's been, I think, an industry success, right? It's sort of like everyone can just build one LSP and all the IDs can use it.

Matt Ray (14:51.872) Even Emacs. Yeah.

Brandon (14:51.922) And so I thought that was actually a pretty good thing. So I I don't did you already know that, Matt? Did you know that this came from the VS Code project? Is that where it started?

Matt Ray (14:58.402) Yeah, yeah, I I I I vaguely knew that because at one point I I got Emacs wired up to use it and you know, I don't do enough development anymore to maintain it, so it you know, eventually stopped working. But at one point I knew that. Yes.

Brandon (15:15.954) You had it working at one point. Okay. I didn't know this. So I thought that was a good thing. I was like, because they make it they made it open source and that was they got it done. And then the other thing, I don't know, Aaron, if you saw this, it's like I thought this was an interesting wraparound in the documentary. It's like the other thing that they did is they basically are the ones that came up with or popularized development containers. So this whole ru and they go through the idea of like, remote development's a good idea, which almost like circles back to where they started, right? And but it was really interesting because they had Facebook come in and say,

We wanna use this, but all Facebook development's done remotely. I guess everyone uses like a a dev computer. So I don't know. Did you did you already know about that? Did you know about development containers and it came from this world?

Aaron (15:53.434) I didn't know it came from this world, but but it's actually funny that Matt mentioned Citrix earlier. Like that gave me so I worked at Citrix for a couple of years and that gave me nightmares and flashbacks and all the things all at once of no, no, all good. Like, but but it it was funny though, because I was, I was like, yeah,

Matt Ray (16:11.384) Sorry.

Aaron (16:18.277) That's yeah, that's one way to to go do this. And by the way, still waiting for that to take over and it, you know, it just hasn't. but yeah, I thought it was a super circular moment, but I had a different set of flashbacks based off of my past than maybe Matt did.

Brandon (16:34.6) Makes sense. Well, I was gonna say though, but like I would do you think that's universally a I you guys are around a lot of like enterprise large companies. Like, are most people doing like are developers basically now locked down to use like use a development, you know, virtual machine in the cloud and then connect to it using your favorite, you know, VS Code or something along that those lines? Is that what you're seeing, Matt? You work with a lot of customers. What are people doing in the quote real world?

Matt Ray (16:57.39) I mean I I I you know, I'm not on the developers' laptops, but I'd say it feels like it's about seventy five percent, eighty percent of of the shops have something locked down where they're like, you know, hey, you know, you just connect in, you do your work, you clock out, it's disconnected. you know, there there's definitely

Brandon (17:01.364) Mm-hmm.

Brandon (17:09.096) Mm-hmm.

Matt Ray (17:18.394) still some hand hand managed, you know, IDEs, bring your own, you know, configure it the way you like, as long as, you know, you can work well with everyone else. but there's definitely, you know, the the mandate at a lot of the the larger shops, like this is everyone will use the same same playpen. Sandbox.

Brandon (17:37.104) Mm-hmm. Yeah, it makes sense. Now the other thing, the place where I thought go ahead, go ahead, Aaron.

Aaron (17:40.602) It goes back to the go Go ahead. I was gonna say it goes back to the like the the whole you know, opinionated kind of thing. And I think at the end of the day, at least in the in the developer space, the folks I've seen and I've talked to, yeah. I mean, that opinionated setup has won the majority, for sure.

Brandon (17:59.241) Makes sense too. And it's it's what the security people want, right? And it's like, you know, obviously intellectual properties, you know, if you're easier to to track and stuff like that. Now, the place where I thought there could have been some controversy and I wish they had done was like they went over the many forks of VS Code, and there are a lot of them. But the obvious ones to me as I was watching this, right, was Cursor. That's what I kept thinking to myself. Well, you know, Cursor, and then to a less extent, Windsurf. And then Google has their new product.

Aaron (18:02.203) Course.

Brandon (18:24.862) Well, I think it's Astra. I can't remember what it's called. But anyway, but I'm gonna put Google to the side because they're just kind of using it as a you know, another thing in in their universe. But it was real funny because they interviewed one of the, I guess, the core leaders about like the forks. And he's like, Well, I would he he was so diplomatic, he was sort of like, Well, I can say it's really great that the forks are really popular and that's great that they're being successful, but they don't have to worry about like all the problems. They don't have to worry about making it work for everyone.

But like the part I wanted to ask them is like there has to be some tremendous bitterness that like Cursor was acquired for sixty billion dollars. Windsurf, I think was acquired for like two to three billion dollars. Can't remember exactly what. And so I gotta think this team over in in in the in the Swiss Alps or whatever, wherever they are, right, are like, wow, that was a lot of money that like maybe we could have been a part of. And and the and there's just no mention. I mean, there's like a brief mention that they exist, but there's no mention of those outcomes. So

So I don't know Aaron, do you do you think they sh there should be some bitterness that the essentially they they took this code and they made, I don't know, eight million times more percent money than I'm sure this team made.

Aaron (19:30.287) I i if there was ever justification for rug pull, that would be the bitterness rug pull right there. which yeah, I I mean it it's so interesting to me to see how that kind of turned out in the end. And yeah, like, I mean, I don't know. Because again, if I'm in Zurich and I've already done my thing.

Brandon (19:36.892) Yeah.

Aaron (19:59.494) Like maybe I'm happy and and I'm just not bitter. I don't know though. I I the the Americans the American side of me says I'm pretty bitter. So I don't know. What do you think, Matt?

Brandon (20:06.933) It's lot of money.

Matt Ray (20:15.562) the key there is the American side of me is pretty bitter. Yeah. yeah, I I think when when you you know when you build up an open source project, you like to think that you know it's gonna go well and you're gonna be you know, you're gonna you're gonna grow this giant pie and you're gonna get a reasonable slice. And reasonable is in the eye of the beholder. So

Aaron (20:19.505) Yeah.

Brandon (20:39.893) Yeah, yes. All right. Now, so the show kind of ends and at the end, there's sort of like, I don't I feel like there was sort of like, well, we got to put AI in there. And they just basically say everything's changing. And they talk about Copilot and all the changes there, which, you know, who knows? Just too much is going on. But my thought was the end of this is sort of like, is this a capstone? It's sort of like, I think it's unintentionally a capstone on like, this is the way code used to be written. And they talked a lot about like

Aaron (20:41.519) Yeah, true. Very true.

Brandon (21:08.253) Why editors are so important to developers and anyone that's developer probably already knows that. But like getting in the flow state, you know, having it be like somebody talked about it, like it's like your home. It's like your nest, right? That's why developers care so much about their IDEs. But I thought to myself at the end, it's like, yeah, this is just gonna be something people watch like 10 years from now and be like, people actually typed in and like wrote code. Like we look at somebody that used to do punch cards. So I don't know, what do you think? Is this sort of the end of actually typing code into an editor mat?

Matt Ray (21:38.966) Yeah, I I actually, you know, I was kind of thinking through that as as I was, you know, looking through the the documentary. I I posted into social media as like, remember how excited we used to get when you could rename a variable across multiple files and the IDE just magically did it? Right? Or, you know, the the the how you're like, I'm not sure I can trust Eclipse to refactor this Java class. You know, it's like and and things would magically move around and today it's like

you know, I check in thirty minutes later and everything's done and I don't even look at the code. You know, peace out

Brandon (22:11.209) Yeah, well that's what I thought. I mean, I know, Aaron, I I don't know what you're you're doing, but we've talked about it. I mean, I think everyone's fine is like, I don't I it is at a point. Like I was I was building another, of course, always building another app. And this one, it's a little Mac app, but I don't even have an X code project for it. Like I can just I the you know, the AI can do everything. So I don't even like never even logged into the or never even opened the ID for this project. And I'm like, yeah, and this is exactly how the future is. What do you think?

Aaron (22:11.29) Yeah.

Aaron (22:34.981) Maybe. And the reason why I say that is I can absolutely see a scenario in which, yes, absolutely most of the code is AI generated in some way, shape, or form. But the other problem I see is I feel like unless there isn't the whole trust but verify thing going on of somebody's verifying the code, kind of related, but kind of not related. I I was doing a podcast with somebody and we're talking a whole bunch about agents.

And he's talking about, yeah, I have this agent and it kind of does this thing through, you know, it does the like Gmail authentication, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, it does it really, really good, like 10 times. And that 11th time, it just decides Gmail authentication isn't that awesome and rewrites its own authenticator and and just wastes all the tokens. And it's like, how do you know? Like at the end day, it works, but it took like 10 times as many tokens. Like, how do you know unless somebody actually does like

w the way in which it's achieving success. So

Matt Ray (23:38.346) Yeah. I well and and and back to the like the reason I started using VS Code was for the code readability. Like you could being able to jump through code quickly and see where it's called and and how it it's interacting. So I didn't actually find myself a a more

a faster like typer developer, you know, if if I knew what I was doing, but if I was reading through code, I found the IDE really helpful because it it provided more context. And to me, that's that's the value of keeping it in the loop is like you might not be reviewing every pull request, but reviewing it in the context of an IDE is usually better than even, you know, the GitHub's or whoever's, you know, w w web UI.

Aaron (24:29.819) So, Matt, I'm gonna, man, I'm gonna age myself. I can't believe I'm gonna embarrass myself like this. I remember when, so my degree's in computer science. I don't code for a living, to be clear. My when when I did my degree, it was you know, C and a little C on Solaris systems with GCC and in VI was my environment. And so when I got a

An IDE that color code it, I was like, this is amazing. More or less, all of the features and enhancements that have happened since then. I'm like, man, this is this'll save me so much time. Things just being color-coded. So anyway.

Matt Ray (25:07.15) Exactly.

Matt Ray (25:16.91) Same. Same, same.

Brandon (25:17.544) No, and I think I think that's that's maybe the the funniest place to leave it is like, you know, because this whole team has been doing this for like, I don't know, tw a while, let's say fifteen, twenty years. And it's sort of but in some ways I felt good because it's sort of like they're almost this they're almost handing it off. And it's like what Matt said, it's like it's not so much it's that these things will go away, it's just there'll be more like code browsers. And people like I don't think people going forward will have the same Ness feeling. It's just like,

If anything, it's more like being on the in the clawed code, is giving you the flow state. And you just occasionally you open up the browser to be or the editor to be like, let me just double check this or let me edit some file that the clawed code told me I have to edit for some reason. So so I don't know. So I thought it was fun. You know, like all these documentaries, they're fun to watch. I thought this one that was a little bit long. Maybe not as good. What's the last one we watched, Matt? Java the Java one. Of course, I like the Java one a lot. there's been

Matt Ray (25:49.251) Yeah.

Matt Ray (26:03.593) Yeah. Yeah, the Java one is good.

Brandon (26:05.545) Several others. I think there was a node one. So anyway, you know, go go find Aaron's watch list and he can like, you know, there's like, you know, 50 of these to watch. They're all fun. So congratulations to the people at Microsoft, you know. while it wasn't perfect, I thought it was a good watch. Let me say, let me say it that way. Now, of course, we can't go a week without talking about AI. And we really can't go a week talking about Ed Zitron. And he is, of course, the number one hater of all AI. But my question now isn't so much about what he's writing.

As it is about, he has now achieved a level of fame for the hater. It's like almost like I was thinking of calling him of like the Stephen A. Smith. I guess that's an ESPN sports reference, or like a a wrestling heel. Like he's so popular by playing the heel, like that's really become his job. Like he could never get away from it. And I thought that was signified by he had a full write-up in Vanity Fair. So this is not like a tech news. I mean, like Vanity Fair is like a whole nother level of normal people watching this. So

Aaron (26:45.787) Heel. He's the heel.

Brandon (27:03.497) My question for you, Aaron, is like when you have the number one heel of AI achieving this level of fame, is it almost by definition it can't he can't be a contrarian anymore? Like it's like like everyone knows about him and everyone knows that he's saying it's gonna not go well. So therefore, like his almost like this whole position is like not contrarian anymore.

Aaron (27:26.277) Well, I'm gonna actually say this. What I learned in reading about this, he actually owned a owned or worked at a PR agency. And so like he knows how to be a heel. You know what I mean? Like he knows how to he and so I was a little bit at first I was like, you know, why him? Because there's lots of AI haters out there, but like why him in particular?

Brandon (27:36.735) PR firm. Mm-hmm.

Matt Ray (27:38.028) Yeah.

Matt Ray (27:43.202) Mm-hmm.

Brandon (27:43.902) Mm-hmm.

Aaron (27:55.449) And then I when I I read that I was like

Matt Ray (27:59.81) Yeah. So how about the polish?

Aaron (28:00.422) Yeah. He's yeah, he's he's got the he's got the heel skills down that a lot of other folks don't. And and so for me, you know what? There's always gonna be one. Like we always know I mean like the why him. Well, I mean, there there's a vacuum there, there wasn't anybody else. There's always gonna be a face of every major movement and then you know, against that movement. I mean, he's

Matt Ray (28:06.446) Yeah.

Aaron (28:29.229) He's embraced it and he's cashed in, good for him. Like I don't know. I I literally don't know what else to say, but hey, good for him. Like he

Brandon (28:37.024) Well, it's also interesting because there was another article someone published as well where they went through pretty, you know, rigorously and like looked at all of his predictions. And for the most part, I'll just save you some time on the reading the article. It's like basically they were all wrong. Like he predicted this gonna this is gonna happen, this is gonna happen, this is gonna happen. And, you know, and to be fair, like I don't really think anyone's predicted anything, you know, unless it was by accident. But it's just I just think it's interesting because I always feel like it's almost like order of operations. It's like we have a new trend.

Somebody like, you know, it's the Michael Bear Burry thing from what the big short, right? It's like this other person is like trying to raise the flag, but no one's listening. And then they go on to do successful. And then in retrospect, we're like, see, somebody did know, and they tried to warn us and we didn't listen. Whereas this, I feel like everyone's like, he's in Vanity Fair, he's on CNBC. He's like the number one quoted person about this. So it's like,

Matt Ray (29:22.679) Yeah.

Brandon (29:32.254) Like none of us should be like no one's gonna be able to say no one warned us. Like it was definitely here. So that's the part, Matt, that I think is it's and of course too, like I I also think to myself, it's like, could he even change his mind if he wanted to? Like, cause at this point he's embraced like he he

Matt Ray (29:36.238) Mm-hmm.

Matt Ray (29:45.166) I think we're seeing it slowly happen though. Yeah, yeah. So I d I do, I do. I mean, first off, he's already won because he's got you pronouncing his name right, right?

Brandon (29:50.264) you think so? What like how so? Say more.

Brandon (29:58.263) Well played, Matt Fray. Well played.

Aaron (29:58.77) Yes. Yes.

Matt Ray (30:02.73) It it it took maybe a dozen episodes, but it's no longer Zephyron. But first off, he kinda had two main theses. One, AI is is not is just a bunch of junk and it's not good for anything. And two, the finances are just gonna bankrupt everybody and you know, big because it's built on it's built on junk, you know, and nobody's gonna be willing to prop up that end of the financial market. And if you've been watching him

Brandon (30:05.618) At least. At least.

Matt Ray (30:33.246) and and s other AI haters. a lot of them have started to kind of soft pedal how much junk it is because there are clearly real-world use cases, especially in development, where things are productively happening. you know, there are productivity gains, and a lot of it is is centered over here in tech, where you know it's not well distributed. You know, the

But the financial part is like it just keeps getting worse. And and then you you overlay like the crazy financing of how these data centers are getting paid for, with you know, paying yourself to buy yourself more GPUs and you know, it's that's just crazy. And then you layer on the top of, by the way, maybe it's gonna kill everybody and or you know, send appointment you know, through you know get everybody unemployed.

And everybody hates it and it's stealing all our water, it's easy to be the heel, you know. just it there are some positive aspects, but you got all these negative ones that you can kind of shift everyone's focus to like, well, I said it was never gonna work. It kind of works. Let's just talk about how there's this gaping pit of of despair when it comes to the finance side.

Brandon (31:51.095) I think that's right. I think that's where he's gonna have to go to. If we were counseling and be it's almost like we were writing the plot for wrestling. It's like, listen, you need to move and just say valuations don't support the the ultimate, you know, investment. Because that part I think is like, I get it. Like, I mean, these numbers are huge. It's hard to get that. But I think his whole thing about like, you know, and this is some of the predictions like it won't do anything, it's not useful. And like that, that's you gotta like you gotta act like you never say that. Like Stephen A. Smith, you just act like you never said that. You're like, I never said that. I didn't like and you just ignore it and you just move on.

Matt Ray (32:18.03) Ha ha.

Aaron (32:19.189) Yeah.

Brandon (32:20.213) Now, but Matt, now you were interested in the other thing. On the other end of the spectrum, I do not I've not heard of this person, but I think they're, you know, very famous in the AI world. I think it's I I'm probably gonna mis mispronounce the name Jacob Coxon. Anyway, he was he he was someone anthropic that was you know working, I guess, on safety, among other things, and you know, very well established. So he came out, I would say guns blazing and said he's leaving anthropic and essentially believes that

We're we're doomed, you know, that it's in ten years, Anthropic will essentially there's a I think even someone else, not him, but else someone else, I think, from also from Anthropic said there's a 10% chance in the next decade that AI wipes out humanity. So I was like, that's a pleasant thought to just be scrolling away and seeing on Twitter. And so I I don't know. I don't know what to make of these like proclamations either, Aaron. I don't you're you're obviously Aaron, you're in this world all the time. Like, like

And you deal probably more with more scientists like type people than any of us. Like, like, how do you process these things when people say this? Like, I don't even know what to do with it.

Aaron (33:25.507) Yeah. Well, okay, many different angles to this. But I before because I don't know him, but I I will say this just data scientists in general. it's interesting to me because, you know, as you can tell, I've been in the the a lot of tech circles for a long time now. But this is my first time dealing with data scientists, you know, as a as a pool of of people. I've never worked with teams that are so into like the research angle.

Of all of this and being known for research and being known for like it's a little bit more of like, you know, we kind of grew up in the like vendor sales and enterprise and you know, what do the customers think and this and this and this. But for there's a lot of data scientists out there that don't care if they ever sell a single thing to anyone. And all they care about is, I mean, they're in it for the research and the academic.

Matt Ray (34:21.208) They graduated from open source.

Aaron (34:23.713) And and the academics behind it, right? And it's interesting to me that what's going on is you have a bunch of data scientists who are very well known in Silicon Valley. And to go back to the sports analogy, they might as well all be professional athletes. And then they just kind of throw up their hands and they make a big proclamation and then they go disappear for a little while. And I'm not saying this is what he's doing, but I'm saying we've seen this many times now.

Somebody does something, goes viral, goes away for a little while, and then pops back up somewhere else. Like, is is he going to leave the industry? Don't know. Right. but longer term, what's going on with all of this? Yeah, I worry at times that those two companies in particular, in building their models and the resources that they have.

I know it's shocking that, you know, it's the first time Silicon Valley has ever done anything irresponsible with a bunch of VC money, but like it's the nature of Silicon Valley companies. Like, I don't think anyone actually finds this surprising. Like at the end of the day, I just feel like this is Silicon Valley being Silicon Valley.

Brandon (35:25.215) Right.

Brandon (35:40.822) Yeah, so do you think it's just one of the things it's kind of echo chamber? Like everyone lives in Silicon Valley, they're so, you know, ingrained in talking about AI and living AI that they can they just can project it to be, you know, this c catastrophe. Cause it's like if it I mean, it's one of these things. I I mean, I guess if you really bel I mean, if you run the odds here, 10% chance that humanity ends in 10 years, you're like, I mean, this would be I don't even know how to like quantify that, right? I that's gotta

Matt Ray (36:01.966) How how do you keep showing up for work?

Brandon (36:05.163) That's like catastrophic. Like, yeah, it's like, what do you like? I mean, I don't I don't know what that leads you to nihilism. I know where I don't know where you go for that, right? But and it's also but it's it's one of these things so too. It's like, you know, and this is the thing that I that's hard, right? Because they're always seeing a couple models ahead, like wherever we're seeing now, they're seeing, you know, like something that's more impressive.

Aaron (36:05.883) Yeah.

Brandon (36:25.003) But you I as I've joked about on this podcast a million times, is like, you obviously AI is tremendously useful. And there was a whole article this week about like it solved like another math problem, one of like the millennial math problems. And it was like, and there's some controversy. But like, so it's really good at some of that. But then I'm also like, well, still can't do my taxes, right? Still can't it still can't do any type of like long process kind of thing and just like take it over. Right. It's just it's very hard for it to kind of do that stuff. I'm still signing.

paper forms, right? For my son's permission slips, right? There's a lot of like boring stuff we see. So so when I read this, I don't it doesn't resonate with me like, this is gonna take over the world and it's gonna mobilize everything against humanity. And you know, someone's gonna tell the paper clip story for the millionth time. I'm just like, I I don't see this happening. In fact, I see it getting confused sometimes when I'm just in Claude Cook's not that it's not impressive, but it gets confused easily. So so I don't know,

Matt, you you seem to always have a good take here. Well, like wha what what are you doing? Are you building a shelter in in down there in Sydney? You have like a big prepping setup where you're you're gonna ride out the end of humanity with AI?

Matt Ray (37:29.646) Well, I I I do s take some comfort that you know, when they talk about the the dystopian future it's always takes place in Australia. It's the only place with the future.

Aaron (37:40.945) I was gonna say, please, please tell me that like you're building a Mad Max car and you know, you're setting up for the end of the world like like the movies.

Brandon (37:50.815) You mean that that big you're gonna be in the middle of Australia, right in the middle of the continent where that desert is, where there's just like nothing? You know, this is just Matt Ray.

Matt Ray (37:57.322) Yeah, no, that's I mean it's a documentary. but but I mean unless unl unless the guy is is totally leaning in on the judgment day scenario, I think the end of humanity maybe overstating it a bit. but I do think we are you know, there there's just so much happening so fast that

nobody wants to stop and say, like, you know, are we doing the right thing? Because if you're the one who says, let's stop and and look around, you're like, but but open AI's not stopping, you know, but but SpaceX isn't stopping, but you know, the Chinese aren't stopping. What do we do? And so everyone's just like, Well, we gotta drive as fast as we can into this wall and see if we get through it.

Brandon (38:48.056) I do think though in the end, and maybe this is just where I come down, is like it's like if you're just observed hum history and human beings, it's like it doesn't really matter what you say. Like someone's figured out that we can invent this, someone's going to build this, and we're just gonna see what happens. Like that's a very I don't I don't know. There's no stopping it. Whether it's built by anthropic or built by somebody else, like it's gonna happen. So, you know, but I will I do think Aaron, you you you said I can't remember who was the latest person. I think was it

Carpathi, right? Like, you he sort of like went away and then he re-emerged at anthropic after his time in the woods. So, so it will be maybe that's the bet the better measurement. Is like we should almost put like a little marker, be like, okay, in one year, what what is this person actually doing? Have they like rejoined another lab? And if so, like, what does that mean? I don't know. Maybe it does it, just maybe it just means nothing, but it's sort of like that seems to be, I like your idea though. That does seem the loop that they all follow. They all come back eventually.

Matt Ray (39:43.34) Well, yeah, we're we're already having to keep track of like which time AGI actually started. So, yeah, w we've got a couple of loops to circle back on in the next year or two.

Brandon (39:53.133) I just feel like it starts every time Jensen gives a keynote and he wants to fire everybody up. He's like, And today, today was the beginning of AGI. Like I think he's announced it like three different times. So

Matt Ray (39:55.458) Yeah.

Aaron (39:56.795) Ha ha ha.

Matt Ray (40:00.842) And to to his defense, all of his charts go up and to the right.

Brandon (40:04.608) I listen, I if only, if only we had all bought NVIDIA a long time ago, we we know what we probably wouldn't be podcasting. We'd probably be on the beach. But you know, that is what it is. All right. Well, listen, the most important news as we kind of ride to the end of this decade is something none of us have really actually seen other than a picture. But I wanted to get everyone's opinion on the iPhone duo. So for some reason, if you're living under a rock, that's the new foldable iPhone.

Aaron (40:05.339) True.

Matt Ray (40:11.82) Yeah, we would.

Brandon (40:29.75) Matt Ray, we know you as the early adopter of Apple, all things Apple. I know you love it. I know you can't wait. What did you see when the new CEO of of Apple he opened it up and he flipped open the Apple duo? Were you like, I'm getting one? What are your thoughts?

Matt Ray (40:50.606) I mean, you know, y I I I know you're trolling me, but I mean, at this point I'm six generations behind on my iPhone. it's still supported, it still works fine, bad I'm on a twelve, a twelve mini.

Brandon (41:00.28) Six? So what what are we doing? You're in twelve? my God. It's still work it's still working? It's still supported? Wow. That's impressive itself you got that rolling. Okay, go on. Sorry to interrupt you, Jay. So so you're six generations behind. You're not gonna move. This isn't the one that moves you up?

Matt Ray (41:05.974) It works great.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, no, no, no. And and this is not the one. what's gonna move me up is being out of support or the phone dies. I mean because I've seen I've I haven't seen the iPhone Duo, but I've seen other foldable Android phones and I'm like, why the hell would I want a big screen like that? It's like I don't need a tablet.

I I mean I'm I'm already not the right person for this. I'm running the smallest phone I could. Remember I went from like the s

Brandon (41:43.577) But when it's collapsed, I don't know. You know what? It's a good question. We'll have to we'll have to get the specs out. Like when it's folded, maybe it's smaller. I don't think it maybe it's smaller than your s than your twelve. I don't know. We'll have to go back and look. What's that? No, no, no. You can just it's got like the front you can just use it in its mini mode and then you open it up when you want the big mode. So I

Matt Ray (41:48.14) Yeah. What it

Matt Ray (41:54.318) Do you have to open it up to take a phone call? Do you have to open it to take a phone call?

Okay. The mini mode is intriguing, but the price is like no.

Brandon (42:06.604) Price. Well, Aaron, let's price. You actually said in the in the Slack, Aaron, you had a funny comment about the price. So give us your take. What's your thoughts on the price?

Aaron (42:07.825) Yeah. So

Aaron (42:13.849) Well, okay. Well, first of all, let me just say this. Two days ago, I replaced my mom's iPhone ten.

with an iPhone Air. So yeah. So she she wanted, she likes the which by the way, I have the air. So I went with the light phone. But I'm I cannot and have never bought a you know Pro Line or the Max line or whatever. Like obviously I have the air. So I like mine. I like light. I like thin. It does everything I need to do. I'm good. I'm super curious on the foldable because I just think it's the neatest thing ever and I would

Brandon (42:25.847) Okay.

Matt Ray (42:26.545) Air. Ooh.

Matt Ray (42:44.963) Mm-hmm.

Aaron (42:52.891) But here's the thing, like on that, it's gotta be heavy. I would never carry it around. I it would never be my daily driver. I thought the prices were gonna be, I think I think the intro price was 2,000 and then it went up to like over 3,000 for like the two terabyte model. Yeah. And and I was I actually thought I was gonna start at like 2,500 and go to like four grand. Like I seriously

Matt Ray (43:07.726) Does it have a GPU in there?

Brandon (43:14.712) Yeah, I think it was like nineteen ninety five or something, or nineteen fifty. So it's just under two grand.

Aaron (43:17.039) Yeah. So my comment my comment was I was like, that thing's cheaper than I thought it was gonna be. That was my comment in the Slack channel today, because I actually thought the thing was gonna be more expensive. But I I I'm not I'm not target audience either. And I guess it's for me it's slightly different. It's like I travel so much and you like to take my phone with me when I'm running and there's so many things I do. I could never have a big bulky phone.

I already I already don't go with a pro or a or a max phone. There's no way I would do a duo phone.

Brandon (43:49.43) No, do either one of you have an iPad that you use regularly?

Aaron (43:53.97) I had a iPad Pro, I want to say it was it was one of the chips, maybe the two. Had it for a long time, hardly ever used it, and I actually gave that to my mom as well. So so my mom's running an iPad Pro and an i iPhone Air. So yeah, she's she's living large in the tech world right now. So

Matt Ray (44:08.782) She's she's she's pretty tech savvy.

Brandon (44:15.264) Well, I'm doing well there. So 'cause I mean that's the obvious question there. It's like, well, I I do have an iPad. I do kind of use it around the house a little bit. But I guess, you know, if you're f if travel and I will when I'm traveling, sometimes I'll I'll take it 'cause it's nice to watch movies on the plane stuff with. so I but you know, obviously you don't have to you can get an iPad for s I think as low as three hundred bucks, even if and especially if you're willing to go back a few versions, you can get one. And so that's kind of the question too. It's like, well, do I really need this all the time? But I'm really curious. I think we, you know, all everyone has kids.

teenagers or above. So I was talking to my son and I was like, you know, just I just see the way that they use the phones. Like I don't see them going. That whole demographic doesn't feel like they're going to go to the flip phone. So kind of to your question or no flips, not flip phones. Sorry. The f the fold. I don't know, Aaron, kind of back to your your your kind of point there it was like, you know, I don't like do you see like your your child I think your children are a little older, right? And they're college age and beyond. Do you do you see them actually wanting something like this? And if not, who is the target market?

Matt Ray (44:57.005) Yeah.

Aaron (44:57.211) Fold firm.

Aaron (45:04.879) Yeah. Well

Aaron (45:11.483) So wanting it maybe, but here's a quick story. And my youngest in particular, love her to pieces, but she is just the world's worst electronics person. So she lost her phone in a snowstorm. It got frozen to the middle of the street, run over by multiple cars, and we actually took it in, and they said it's the worst iPhone they've ever seen, damage-wise. Then

Matt Ray (45:37.784) Ha ha.

Aaron (45:40.766) A couple years ago she had a she had a a Mac Air and again, whatever with kids. Apparently she was watching TV while she was in the tub and knocked it over and or fell in the tub and we took it back to the store and it was the most water damage they'd ever seen in a laptop. Right. and so so like I

Matt Ray (46:02.603) Do they have her picture by the cash register?

Aaron (46:09.145) I don't think my youngest is the target audience. I don't know about my oldest. we have it on everything. Everything.

Brandon (46:14.361) I think your youngest is the target for for Apple Care. I think Apple Care Max Insurance I think I think that's what what it really is there. So well I don't know. I mean I guess I'm ex I I will do unlike what's the what was the headset called? The Vision Pro. Unlike the Vision Pro, I've still never tried the Vision Pro, I just never had the time or I would like to, but it's it's more effort. I am gonna make the trek to the Apple store at some point to when they have a mod in the stands and check it out. 'Cause it does seem like until you touch it, and I wanna reserve my final judgment to actually see it.

But I do think it is kind of funny for Apple. It's like my thought was just sort of like, I don't know, man. The the form and function of the phone may just be perfect as it is. Like, you know, whatever, a six-inch device that's, you know, just solid, that's just, you know, thin. It's just like, you know, they every year they make it slightly different. But it's like I that just may be what the best it can be. Like, you know, it's like there's not much more to improve it. So that's maybe a dilemma for Apple if you're trying to make billions of dollars. You have to keep coming up with new devices. But definitely wasn't the Vision Pro. And no one's

You never see that in the world. So I was going to be interested to see how many of these of the duos that we actually see in the world. Maybe that'll be the measurement of success.

Aaron (47:18.577) Yeah. So Brandon, what would be your use case for it? I mean, here's the thing. If I got one, the only reason I would ever use it would be to watch movies or my, you know, hundred deep YouTube watch list because my eyes are getting old enough that I, you know, phone screen is sometimes hard. Like

Brandon (47:44.9) Well, you you hit on it. This is funny. You should say that I well, you know, it's funny you say this though, because I was yesterday I was at the eye doctor doing my annual eye exam. Cause when you get old, you have to do that. You gotta get your prescriptions updated, right? And I was telling my son, like I really at times, you know, and obviously I know iPhone has great accessibilities, but I as you know, people get much older, like your parents' age and beyond, right? You know, they'll have the screen like cranked way up, kind of to the point where like this is like it looks weird. So my thought process was kind of like, I could see having this.

Aaron (47:45.614) That would be that would be literally the only reason I could think to use it.

Brandon (48:14.725) just to make it I mean this is the ultimate old old man kind of thing. It's just like just so I could have a a screen that I open up and I can see everything big and it still be on like a a real aspect ratio. So I thought like that's like a legitimate use case. So because that's something it makes it easy to carry. And then when you actually do want to read and need to sign something you can make it big and see it. So I'm sure that's not a very exciting like Apple's not pitching that like

Look at this phone you can use when you're getting old and you can still see the aspect ratio. Like they weren't making that pitch. No, they weren't making that pitch, but I was like, I did think to myself, like, as I'm getting older and every year, it's like harder and harder to like see closer. Maybe, maybe this is the reason I get it.

Matt Ray (48:43.342) That's what the Vision Pro is for. You you just strap it to your head and nobody can see that you have size eighteen fonts.

Aaron (48:46.138) Ha ha

Aaron (48:55.138) So

Aaron (48:58.897) Two two two bits to that. A, I could see them coming out with a version in the future that, yeah, like the outside of it is regular and you open it up and it's like this super big font or whatever. So you don't need your readers or something like that. So they'll you know, the old the the old person accessi accessibility mode. But then too, like w I mean, they're missing a marketing opportunity if they don't bundle that thing with a consumer cellular plan on top of it as well. So

Duo with a consumer cellular.

Brandon (49:31.753) Be they're they're ready to go. So all right. Well, you're up to date on everything. Everyone, go someone go buy the iPhone duo for the software defined talk audience and then post in the Slack. Tell us if it was good or bad. that's what that's what I want to see. Now, we did have a few things, pieces of listener feedback. So wanted to say I sent some stickers to Divesh in I don't even know how to say this as well. it's Ritus.

Aaron (49:31.835) I don't know. There you go.

Brandon (49:56.376) Which is a small island nation in the Indian Ocean, about 500 miles east of Madagascar. So Devesh, you are the you are the lead software defined talk promotion person. I think you're the that's the first time I've ever gotten an email. I actually didn't even know where this was. I had to look at it on a map. So happy to send him a sticker. Also sent some stickers to Simon in Northern Ireland. He tells us in 1771, Benjamin Franklin traveled to Hillsborough Castle to meet Willis Hills.

Matt Ray (49:56.632) Mauritius?

Matt Ray (50:02.061) Nice.

Aaron (50:03.397) Love it.

Brandon (50:24.109) The Earl of Hillsboro and Britain's Secretary of State for the colonies. By the end, the two men were bitter rivals. Their tense meeting there is sometimes why the reason Hillsboro Castle is called the birthplace of America. So one bad meeting in Ireland, you get an entire revolution and a new nation. So appreciate Simon writing in. if you would like a sticker, all you have to do is send your postal address to stickers at software defined talk.com. Happy to send you a sticker anywhere in the world. A couple other things, Kote was looking last week for.

How do I get my Audible files, if you will, non-DRM'd? Is that a thing we can say? And I can listen to on any device. So I think Gabrielle recommended open audible dot org. And there's a couple of other things that do that as well. I think Aaron, you've done that, not not not in an illegal sense. You haven't done anything illegal.

Aaron (51:07.191) yeah, I'm no no no. I I I've i open audible, I have an annual license to it. I've been using it for years. Highly recommend it. Love it. I have and by the way, to give you an idea, I have like three hundred and something Audible books. So yeah, I've got quite a library.

Brandon (51:16.727) There you go. So if you want to listen to your audible

Brandon (51:24.515) There go. Perfect. Conferences. Got tons of conferences coming up. But the most important conference, at least this week, is we want to make sure we tell our friend you to go to see our friends that we are developers North America. September 23rd, 2025. It's coming up. Now's the time. Use code dev pod50, which surprisingly gives you 50% off. There could be some free tickets left if you use it right here. If you go to the show, make sure to find other software to find talk listeners. Make sure you have your software to talk.

Software defined talks sticker, and you're wearing that, and you're telling everyone the reason you went to the conference is because you heard about it on our show. Of course, Kote is going to be speaking at many places. I'm not going to go through them all, but they're mostly in Europe. So there you go. That's your homework. Your homework is to go check that out. but in April, our friends at scale 24 out there in Pasadena, Matt's been there. They're always a fun show. That's another one to check it out. So tons of conferences, tons of DevOps today. Check all of those out. Now, on to recommendations.

Matt, we will start with you. What are your recommendations this week?

Matt Ray (52:25.346) Well, Brandon, I'm sure you're very happy. I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my my home router to the Ubiquiti Unify Express seven. So dropped it in, replaced my my aging Synology and it's it's pretty great. You know, I I can see all the traffic flows, I could see all my devices, you know, just really just dropped in and and

And switched out the wireless networks and everything mostly just worked. And and, you know, as you'll be happy to to find out, I can now see my packet loss. So more more upgrades are coming, but so far so good.

Brandon (53:04.206) You know, the more you say that, I feel like we need to get a monitoring company to sponsor you personally. Matt Ray's we're gonna sponsor you. You're monitoring your internet connection specifically. We've had so many people come on here about monitoring. Like, what I want somebody to send Matt Ray, what is the recommendation Matt Ray needs to to be using? What software does he need to be using that supports Unify so he can see exactly what's going on in his network? Someone give Matt Ray a free code for that. And don't and for God's sakes, let him not be Nagios. I want some good stuff. I want some of the good stuff that all of you people have. So

Aaron (53:08.965) Ha ha ha.

Matt Ray (53:09.016) Ha ha ha.

Matt Ray (53:30.264) Ha ha

Matt Ray (53:34.41) I I I will be I will be like I said, more upgrades are coming and I will I I will be sure to share my availability times with my my provider and see what they have to say.

Brandon (53:44.058) That's right. Datadog, Grafana. This is I mean, it's your opportunity. Get it on here. This is, you know, you're gonna be an official sponsor. One of you needs to step up, make it happen. What's your other recommendation, Matt?

Matt Ray (53:51.382) There go. my other recommendation is a electronica artist called Pole. they've been around for 20 some plus years. I mean it it's really just a kind of a minimal I'm I'm sure Kote would love it. it's good ambient background music. it's I've just been listening to a lot lately as I've been you know po you know grinding through some some work stuff.

That's my recommendation is go listen to poll. Start with one, two, three. I I can't listen to stuff with words while I'm working. Yeah. And and and No, no, no words and and and light on the beats. Like it has to be kinda kinda just well, no, but but you know, you just kinda switch artists as you find the things that do and don't work.

Brandon (54:22.114) You've been on like a lot of electronic music lately. You've like you're you're digging in, man. Nothing? No stella lefty? You're not listening to the modern country? What's going on? We need to get you, you know, some some crazy. No.

Aaron (54:28.859) Same.

Brandon (54:37.601) you have like a B PM setting? It needs to be b below a certain level or

Brandon (54:45.486) All right, well there you go. A good network and something to listen to while you're in the flow state. Aaron, you've got some good recommendations. What are they?

Aaron (54:45.958) Nice.

Aaron (54:51.481) Yeah, absolutely. So, first of all, bit of breaking news I'm gonna do on this the podcast. I'm actually gonna be at the World AI Summit in October in Amsterdam. I just found out today. So there you go. so I'm gonna be speaking at that. There you go. Absolutely. so I'm gonna be doing that, but recommendations. I've actually got two. the first one we we mentioned Audible.

Brandon (55:06.658) Okay, nice. All right, well Aaron will give us a link, we'll put it in the show notes so everyone can go find him.

Aaron (55:20.291) I'm obviously a huge fan, but there is a book series out there, Dungeon Crawler Carl. pretty popular series and a you know, software-defined Slack favorite is Murderbot. It's kind of got the humor of Murderbot. I'm not gonna spoil the plot. You just need to kind of go look it up. It's there's a series of books, it's up to like eight books now. and I've read and listened to almost all of them, but

Brandon (55:40.751) wow, okay, nice.

Aaron (55:49.062) My recommendation is specifically the audible version. The reason why is the narrator that does it is just absolutely amazing. and actually, a lot of people, the preferred way to consume these is the audible version. So if that is appealing to you, definitely go check that one out. my second one, and this is more slightly travel travel related, but I guess you could be audible related.

Matt Ray (55:52.076) Okay.

Aaron (56:17.813) I have gotten into in-ear monitors. So, you know, not just like the Bluetooth headphones and all those, especially for traveling for planes, because they're basically the same things, you know, DJs would use or are, you know, use on stage with bands and stuff. Really fantastic sound quality and really awesome noise cancellation, but it's all passive. Like it's basically earplugs. and there's one pair, it's 19 bucks US on Amazon. The

Yin Yo K-Bear Storm Professionals. I the link will be in the show notes. But for a $20 pair of in-ear monitors, the sound quality is unbelievable. And when you're traveling on planes, you can just plug it into the entertainment system. And you so if you want to so so the bonus is so I I literally travel with in-ear monitors now, pretty much wherever I go. I've got those and then I've got a better pair as well. But honestly, the better pair, this pair sounds just as good.

Matt Ray (56:50.55) Ha.

Brandon (57:04.193) there you go. The bonus. Yeah.

Matt Ray (57:05.89) Yep. Chi Fi wins again. Yeah.

Aaron (57:17.167) So recommend those.

Brandon (57:19.802) All right, fantastic. All right, my recommendation this week I'm trying to prepare for the Austin winter, which means like, what am I gonna do when the power goes out? I've discovered this new place called Base Power. Base Power comes out to your your your home. They install a battery for free, and you have like this if you will, monthly charge like nine, nine dollars or twenty dollars a month. And what they do is they, if you will, sell the electricity back to the power company when it's high priced, but you get a whole home battery.

if you will, so that when you lose power, it'll kick over and you've got some some if you will extra battery. So I don't know, I don't have it yet, but I'm going through the process. I took the pictures, I sent it off. They send now my applications with Austin Power. So if you want to try it, click on the link there, base power in on the show notes. And I guess we both get $150. So I think it's gonna be good. And I would love to hear from someone that actually has it. If they have it and they like it, that would be great to know.

Or if they have it and it's a disaster, that would also be good for me to know before I actually get get this installed. So base power, tentatively recommend recommending it. But I'm really, if anything, I'm looking for specific you know feedback on if it's good or if it's bad. And

Aaron (58:28.591) What's the what's the estimated runtime?

Brandon (58:31.594) It's up to thirty six hours, depending on obviously your home load. And then they also have this thing where you can actually if you go beyond that, you that has a generator port where you can actually plug it in and charge it up. But again, having like it sounds good. All of it sounds good, but I'm a little you know, maybe it's a little too good to be true. But we we shall see. We'll see what happens there. All right. Well, you've made it through an exciting episode of software defined talk. We appreciate Aaron.

Aaron (58:33.947) Nice.

Brandon (58:57.86) Jumping in for Kote, who funny enough, Kote's not here because his internet's out. So there you have it. You know, even even the Dutch have problems with internet, you know. For once, the Dutch internet was the worst internet of all of us. Even Matt Ray's internet was better than Kote's, which is saying something. But if you'd like to see all the things we talk about in the show and some things we didn't go to software defined talk.com/slash five eighty nine and you'll see the full show notes. Of course, there you can sign up for the

Slack, you can sign up for our newsletter and if you click around you can go see Aaron and check out the the Enterprise AI show. That's another one. Go go check that out as well. So with that, we will talk to you next time.

Matt Ray (59:38.552) Bye.

Brandon (59:41.154) All right, we've done it. so before we officially cut down the stream, Matt, I wanna your prediction. So for well everyone behind the scenes, Matt's going to we're gonna end this this call. Matt, how long is it going to take for you to upload the rest of your video on your fancy new unify router? But I wanna I wanna put this out there in the video on the YouTube so everyone sees it.

Aaron (59:56.88) Yeah.

Matt Ray (01:00:03.15) So wait, wait, wait, what do you want to see?

Brandon (01:00:05.176) I wanna I wanna know how long when we if we conclude, we're gonna we're gonna shut down the stream here and then it's gonna upload your file and you've got the unify. Will it be better? What's your prediction? Will it be fifteen minutes or less to upload this entire river stream file?

Aaron (01:00:06.927) How long will it take?

Matt Ray (01:00:11.147) god.

Aaron (01:00:12.347) What

Matt Ray (01:00:19.512) why it would be better, but I'm gonna say yes. You like we'll we'll I'll I'll take the under fifteen minutes. Exactly. Ever the optimist.

Brandon (01:00:25.262) Why not be hopeful? I love it. I love it. Fantastic.

Aaron (01:00:27.941) Well, isn't your what's your percentage uploaded right now? okay. Yeah, I'm gonna say for if it's eighty five, I'm gonna say I'm gonna say less than I'm gonna say less than fifteen. I'm gonna take the under. Yeah, I'm you're taking the over. I have confidence.

Matt Ray (01:00:32.087) Eighty five.

Brandon (01:00:34.038) Nah, that's that's a lie.

Brandon (01:00:41.912) Really? Okay, I'm I'm taking w way over. I'm taking the over plus. I'm I'm like I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm not gonna fall for this, so

Matt Ray (01:00:45.812) Okay. Aga again, you don't have to hang out and wait for it. I will just leave the browser open.

Brandon (01:00:51.342) That's right. No, no. But but this point, you know, I feel compelled to to to monitor it. So all right. Well, listen, thanks for everyone that hung out on the stream. I see Michael there. It's great to have him on the show. He did notice that Kote looks different this week. That was a hundred percent correct, Michael. and of course, thanks for everyone that watches this on the YouTube stream later on. And with that, we will talk to you later.

Aaron (01:00:53.21) Yeah.

I love it.