Other people's robots

So Jerod, I hear that AI is now mainstream.

How mainstream?

Officially.

Officially. Who officiates such things?

I mean, I feel like it’s been a star for two years-ish, or more… I guess mainstream is now like everybody. It’s kind of funny, I was actually at [unintelligible 00:04:25.03] this weekend, and I was talking to them about something… I can’t recall the context now that I’m sharing this story, but I said “Oh, it’s probably because of this, this, and that, and the API.” And the whole group of guys was like “I have no idea what you’ve just said.” I was like “Y’all don’t know what an API is?” They’re like “No.” Oh my God, I can’t even tell you the –

If you don’t know what an API is, for sure you are below the API, right?

I mean, maybe not… [laughter] I don’t think you have to be aware of the API to be above or below it. But if AI is mainstream, and AI was not mainstream to them, that’s a big deal.

What kind of concerns me is that AI is becoming the API, in many cases.

It’s true.

And it’s unreliable in its response. Non-deterministic responses… Of course, our good friend Daniel Whitenack’s entire startup, which I believe is called Prediction Guard - not a sponsor, but a good friend - is all built around just trying to do that, is like get consistent output from the AI, so that you can use it programmatically in a… Not necessarily a deterministic way, but just like “Hey, when I ask for JSON back, let’s shoot for a hundred out of a hundred times I’m going to get it. And not one of those times it’s going to be malformed, simply because of your essence.” So that’s a problem.

You know, I’ve got a fun way I used the AI recently. Maybe as I’m telling the story you can share another, or think about another… I was ripping a brand new BluRay disc I just got called Fight Club.

[The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.]

Ooh…

So I hadn’t rewatched Fight Club in forever.

Oh, yeah. I haven’t seen it for a long time.

And I was like “Man, I don’t even own this film.” So I bought it on BluRay, because it’s not on 4k… And for whatever reason, whenever I go in to make MKV to rip it, it was naming all the files a dot. And so all the files it was ripping, each one of them was a dot, and it had an increment, but all the files were hidden. And I didn’t notice it until I went back after it was done… And I was like “Where the heck is all the – I see that it successfully ripped, but where’s all the files?” And I’m like “Oh yeah, these are hidden files. Let me go and fix this.” And there’s like 25 of them in this directory. I’m not going to go one by one inside a terminal and rename these things. And I’m also not going to think about a script to automate renaming these things. So what did I do? I went to my good friend, ChatGPT, and I said – I copied the directory and I said “I’ve got, on a Mac, I need to rename all these files so they’re not hidden. Ideally, they’d be in sequential order of sorts.” And it gave me a script. I put that script in, and boom, all my files were there. I mean, that is the beauty of this word calculator, Jerod. Like, I don’t have to think about any of that stuff. Sure, I could have, it would have been a fun exercise, but it would had been a – what do you call it? A squirrel, a yak to shave. I’d have been there for 20 minutes thinking about this, versus one. Not even one. Off to the races, Fight Club is renamed, and boom, it’s on Plex, and I’m watching it, and I’m happy. That’s the way life should be.

[00:08:05.05] Mm-hm. I don’t have any good ones. I just feel like all mine are boring, the way I use it. It’s pretty much the new search engine in my life. I do still go to Google. And when I say Google, I mean DuckDuckGo. I only ever go to Google when I do the #g in DuckDuckGo. And I’ve been that way for many years now. #G means “Actually Google this”, because DDG is failing me… Which I would say probably I hit that 5% of the time. But it doesn’t matter anymore, because I rarely go to DuckDuckGo at all.

And I don’t think that we are unique in that way. I mean, I’m sure you’re going to a GPT first most of the time, unless you’re – unless I’m just like “All I want to do is find the Wikipedia page.” Then I’ll go to the search bar in my browser.

Right.

But if I’m actually looking for something – and I’ve tried Perplexity of late a couple of times… In fact, my question this morning for Perplexity was to find me a minimal web browser. I wanted a web browser just for being able to share, screen-share tabs as we record these video versions of our shows, so we can put them in the video more easily… But I didn’t want all the Chrome, I didn’t want… I mean that both metaphorically and literally, I don’t want Chrome. I don’t want all of my particular customizations in Safari, for instance, or my –

Yeah, the bookmarks, the favorites, all the things that are like popping out…

The bookmarks, the favorites, the extensions that are enabled…

The reading lists…

You open a new tab and there’s your most recent things, and you’re like “Oh, I was on Amazon, buying some Odor X for my feet”, and I don’t want people to know that my feet stink. I just made that up. My feet smell spectacular.

Stinky feet… Come on now.

So I was like, all I want is just a minimal web browser. So I started there with DuckDuckGo, and I think I duck ducked something like “minimal web browsers 2025”, or something like this. Because I didn’t want old ones. And it was kind of junky, and a lot of like the listicle people, who just create lists of 27 web browsers that you’ve never heard of… I couldn’t really find much. A lot of them were for Linux, or old… Or just like “Chrome, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, Firefox.” I’m like “No, these are not minimal.” And what I really wanted - not minimal in terms of memory usage, but minimal in terms of browser Chrome. Like, I want just “Show me the webpage, and maybe some tabs at the top.”

Arc. Arc might’ve been good for this.

I considered just trying Arc, because I’ve seen a lot of people use it for that purpose… And then I thought, “Arc’s a dead dog, man. Why would I want to download Arc?”

It’s still alive. It’s not a dead dog.

I know it is, but it’s dead to me.

Well, if you watch the video, I actually think where we may be mischaracterizing its – I mean, I know it’s not feature-rich in terms of its future, but I think they’re planning to kind of keep it around and do some things. I don’t think it’s literally a dead dog. I think it still works, obviously…

Yeah, it still works. But TikTok still works…

Yeah. I think that you crossing out the list for this purpose may be, you know…

Foolish.

Yeah, I think so.

Okay.

I’d give it a second look.

Well, I wouldn’t have gotten this cool story about perplexity.ai.

Okay.

Also not a sponsor. So I went to Perplexity because I thought “Yeah, people will keep telling me about perplexity. I just haven’t really used it much.”

Yeah.

And I typed in something… The reason why I wouldn’t go to, for instance, LLaMA with this, or even ChatGPT, although it’s gotten better at recency, is because of that. It’s like, “Well, I want recent.” And so I tried Perplexity, and got great results from that sucker.

Wow.

[00:12:02.11] I said, “What’s the simplest web browser in terms of UI, something great for screenshots?” It gave me four sources, which is awesome. Like, right at the top, here’s my sources. Clickable. Click out and go. It gave me the answer based on search results… Several browsers offer simplicity. It gives me a whole bunch of browsers, links, my old friend… I didn’t want text-based; not that minimal. Screenshot-friendly. It gave me DuckDuckGo, one called Calibri, which had an account you have to create to get it, so I didn’t do that one… [unintelligible 00:12:35.01] Didn’t check that one out; scrolled past it, actually. And the first one I clicked on was like for Linux. And so then I just said “It must run on macOS as a followup.” And it just said, “Well, for a minimalist browser that runs on macOS, I recommend Min Browser.”

Sounds promising…

Yeah.

At least by name.

So I went to min browser.org, and “Meet Min, a smart web browser.” This is open source. “Browse without distractions. Find anything instantly. Stay organized.” It’s super-simple. And like no Chrome, basically. Look at this Chrome.

Is that what you’re using?

That’s what I’m using right now.

This is the reveal?

This is the big reveal. Min Browser.

My gosh. I love this.

Isn’t this cool?

It is cool. And is it like up to date, and maintained well etc.?

Yeah. And I didn’t find it on any of those other lists. Like, Perplexity pointed me straight to this. It’s got a nice website. It shows off – I’m like “Oh, look at that.” Nothing. A plus, some tabs, a setting screen and a Back button.

Yeah. Very simple.

And so I went and downloaded this sucker. I checked it out first and made sure it was legit, because I’m like “Hm… It’s on GitHub.” Checked them out. Shout-out to Palmer Al.

Are you sure it’s not Palmer AI? Just kidding. That was the ongoing joke for –

Sure it’s not Palmer AF? No, it’s Palmer Al.

[laughs] Well, I didn’t say AF. I said AI.

I know you did. I was adding another one. Perhaps his name is Al. Perhaps his name is Palmer Al. Regardless of his name, he’s got this Min Browser. You can sponsor him… I saw this – how do you get to sponsors? The one thing it doesn’t have is my swipe back to go back…

Ah, bummer.

But it does have keyboard customization. So I already have gone into here… And the other thing it didn’t have – one keyboard shortcut I use all the time, which is macOS-specific, but it’s global, is Command+Shift left and right parens to switch to apps. And this didn’t work. So I’m like “Well, that’s kind of lame.” So I went in here, and look at that - customizable keyboard shortcuts. So I went into this one, and I threw it in there…

Boom.

That’s what I was doing when you hopped on. I added my Command+Shift+ right bracket, and Command+Shift+ left bracket, and boom. So pretty cool. So that made me very happy, both with Min so far - shout-out Palmer Al - and with Perplexity, which pointed me directly to this. And I was like “That’s actually a really good recommendation.”

So what you’re saying is AI truly is mainstream.

Yes.

Right? I mean, this is – it provided a better result. It found something nothing else resulted in; the Googles of the world, the DuckDuckGoes of the world…

Right.

As you were sharing your story too, I was logging into Perplexity, because I’ve had an account there, but I’ve not used it very frequently. And I was like “How do I get in here?” Because I don’t have it saved in my 1Password. And so I’m like, I know I have these Google options, I would always use email, maybe I did… So then I had to go back to my email and search Perplexity. And sure enough, I use my email to get in. Long story short, I hate that. I hate not knowing how I got in somewhere. I almost never use SSO, almost never use Google or Facebook or whatever to log in, or GitHub even… If you force me to do that, I do not like it. Email is my friend, not the enemy being my friend.

[00:16:14.15] Anyways. What I like about this is it says “What do you want to know now?” or “What do you want to know?” And it’s got this question box. And then it’s got - what? Recent scores, stocks, some news ticking… It’s like a little news ticker… And it’s got the weather for me nearby. So it’s kind of like being the Yahoo of your. It’s trying to be this potential homepage. Go here, let your day begin here, and boom. You’ve got this place to kind of go and hang out at, answer questions, get better results, and get your news and scores and stuff.

Yeah.

I’m not sure if I like that. I like the idea that they’re trying to do. It might be good for some people. Not for me. I don’t need a homepage, you know?

It reminds me of like Yahoo back in the nineties, where it’s like “This is your –” What did they call them back then? Portals?

Portals, yeah.

It was called a portal, which is a cool word, but it’s not necessarily a thing that you want where it’s like “This is your one page that takes you to all the other pages on the internet.” And Yahoo was one. Of course, AOL had a portal… Portals were a big business back in the nineties.

Yeah. And honestly, this might bring it back. I mean, AI is the new search, as you can tell based on your story…

Yes.

It’s the new search for me, too. I’ll share a shorter version of it… I do want to concur though, a big shout-out to Min Browser. That’s super-awesome. I recently used ChatGPT, and this was actually the 4.o model. It wasn’t the 0.1 model. I think I was just, you know, silly for a day… Didn’t swap out to 0.1. Anyways… I’m in the – I think I’ll be in the market soon to get new tires. And I know that when you buy truck tires, it’s always like “Well, you want to look cool, you want to have the MT, right? You want to be a cool dude.”

I don’t know what the MT is.

I don’t know what it means either. I think it means mud tire.

Oh, okay.

It’s basically an off-road tire.

But you know you want them. They’ve gotten that part across. You don’t know what it is, but you know you want it.

Well, it looks cool.

Okay.

It looks stout. It looks rough. It looks rugged.

Okay.

And so as a dude, you may be swayed to go that route, if that’s what you’re drawn to. I think they look cool.

Maybe it stands for Manly Tread. You want that Manly Tread?

Maybe so.

[laughs]

So what does AT stand for then, Jerod, if you’ve got this down?

Oh, what’s AT stand for?

Because there’s AT, and then MT.

Well, Awesome Tread.

Awesome Tread. Okay, cool. I like Awesome Tread, personally. So I prefer a tire that is designed for road travel, and a little off-road, because I do pull things here and there. I’ve got a travel trailer, right?

Sure.

It’s not so frequent where it’s a daily driver kind of thing, but I do want to have that concern accounted for when I purchase tires. And so I used ChatGPT to locate some good tires for my particular truck, my year, make, model, etc. Gave it my engine, and told it how I drive, what I’m kind of optimizing for… Went through a couple of rounds, and landed on four good tires that are really good selections. And the one that it suggested most was exactly what Discount Tire – now, also not a sponsor. Geez. So many not sponsors this time around.

I’m a fan of Discount Tire though.

Okay. You have them there?

Yeah, we have them here.

Fantastic. I love Discount Tire. They make it simple, they make it easy…

They really do.

They’re the best. You can call ahead, you can book an appointment. If you’re a military veteran or active military, they’ll give you a discount etc.

Nice.

Really good people. Usually pretty knowledgeable staff. Even if they’re new, they’re pretty knowledgeable. And so I benchmarked this advice from ChatGPT against the advice I would get from, you know, the real deal. The real deal Holyfield, as they would say. And pegged it on the Michelin Defender LX M/S, which means mostly super-awesome. I don’t know. [laughter] So I went with a road-ish tire. The road-ish tire. Anyways… Great recommendation from LLMs, honestly, in my opinion.

[00:20:20.00] Yeah. Well, that’s a win. I think that one thing that we’re both doing now, both with Perplexity, at least in the configuration that I just used it, off of the website, and with ChatGPT, in the configuration that you’re using it, is that we are running remote LLMs. These are other people’s robots. Are you down with OPR? Apparently we are. But NVIDIA wants us to perhaps have it all in our house, or in our office, with this new $3,000 personal AI supercomputer they call Digits. Did you see this news from last week, Adam?

I was very excited about this news. I have not deeply investigated it, aside from its price tag and its potential availability, and the fact that anybody who is buying a Mac Mini is now reconsidering their purchase to consider this instead… Even though it’s quite a bit more than a typical Mac Mini configuration.

I was gonna say, the price points are quite a bit different, right?

Yeah.

Entry point for a Mac Mini is $600 maybe?

Yeah, around there.

Something like that.

Plus tax, and shipping, and stuff. Well, there’s no shipping.

Of course, when you get the one you actually want…

That’s right.

…which is why I have not bought the M4 MacBook Pro yet, because I specced out the one I actually want, and I couldn’t justify that ticket. But when you max out the Mini, which we should maybe talk about Dell’s new naming, because it just made me think of that; the Dell Premium Max Pro… They’re following Apple for no good reason into a naming quagmire. However, back on NVIDIA - once you max out a Mini, you’re basically going to be in the price range of this new Digits supercomputer that they announced last week at the CES keynote.

This was a big deal. I mean, NVIDIA all of a sudden has become – they need to put another N into the FAANG, or the MAGENTA, or - I don’t know, they’re always changing this acronym. But - I mean, NVIDIA is like out of nowhere become…

Yeah, seemingly out of nowhere. It was like a slow creep.

I mean, they’ve been around a long time. They’ve been valuable, they’ve been producing good stuff. But man, did they just find themselves perfectly positioned for both AI, blockchain, gamers… All the things that are still burgeoning, or going up, AI of course being the main one. And this massive new need for GPUs. NVIDIA has just been killing it.

Yeah. The only sad part, I would say - this might dovetail a little bit, but let’s not go there if we don’t have to. I just want to make this statement, okay?

Okay.

It’s that the sad part is in that world of building your own machine is not macOS. Right? I love Apple hardware. I don’t love it so much that I only want to use only Apple hardware. I like other hardware, but I love macOS. I want to take macOS elsewhere. What I want to do is build my own machine, because it’s fun, but I want to run macOS.

Totally.

And I can’t. So I end up running a Windows machine, which is not the worst ever, but it’s not macOS. It’s not that it’s bad, or better, or good. It’s just my preference. It’s not about good, better, best. It’s what I’ve been aware of, known of, etc. It’s my platform of choice. So to go this route of NVIDIA GPUs - which is fun - I’ve got to now use, in my opinion, a subpar operating system comparative to what I’m used to. Not because it’s worse or better, because I like it. I like MacOS better, just to be super-clear.

[00:24:13.05] Sure.

But what it says here, though, is kind of cool. It’s that each Project Digits system comes equipped with 128 gigs of unified coherent memory. What does that mean, unified coherent memory? Is that something new?

I don’t know.

It says “By comparison, a good laptop might have 16 or 32 gigs of RAM, and up to 4 terabytes of NVMe storage.” And it says “For even more demanding applications, two Project Digits systems can be linked together to handle models with up to 405 billion parameters. Meta’s best model, LLaMA 3.1, has 405 billion parameters, as an example.” And it goes on to share more stats, and specifics, but… Wow. It’s packing a punch. I mean, you can pair them together…

So this AI mainstream that we opened up with - you know, I want to run, which I have not done yet, and it’s not because I’m not able to, I just haven’t had the time to dedicate to doing it right. So I’m a fan of do it once, do it right kind of thing. I like to iterate too, sure… But in most cases, I want to do it once, do it right, because I’ve got limited time to dedicate. I want to run my GPT locally. And I think this might be the gateway there, although the price tag is prohibitive. Even though it’s cool… I just don’t know.

Yeah, I don’t think that I would buy this, but I would certainly take one for free, NVIDIA. No. [laughs] If you guys want to send us some, we’ll definitely try them out. It’s cool… It’s small, man. It looks like the Mac Mini.

Yeah.

I would definitely make use of one if I had access to it. I would load it up with Linux or something, and have some fun with it…

Pull that image back up while you’re talking to this.

This GB10 chip seems to be like at the core of what they’re offering here.

It says it delivers up to one petaflop of AI performance. I’m sorry, what does that mean? One petaflop. Is that just like basically infinite? Big, massive, awesome?

Well, I know a petabyte is bigger than a terabyte; so a petaflop’s got to be bigger than a teraflop.

It can perform one quadrillion… One quadrillion. I had trouble saying that, it’s so big. One quadrillion AI calculations per second… At FP4 precision? Are they throwing out new acronyms here? They make up things on the fly with this new system?

Okay, I remembered what a petaflop is. I can’t believe I forgot this. It’s 1,000 trillion. I normally do this kind of math when I’m just bored. 1,000 trillion, or one quadrillion operations. Is that what you’ve just said?

Yeah.

Okay.

I had trouble doing it… [laughter] It’s so big!

I was looking it up while you were describing it, so I wasn’t listening to you.

That’s okay.

That’s extremely fast computing for a single machine. A flop, of course, is a floating point operation per second. Did you say that also?

No, I didn’t say that.

Alright. Phew.

I like your deeper explanation, though. This is great stuff.

Yeah. Well, that’s what I’m here for. So you might buy one if you could run macOS on it. I’m pretty happy where I am, but I think it’s cool that there’s a brand new entrant. Here’s the thing, is making computers isn’t the easiest thing to do. And so - has NVIDIA made computers before? I just feel like, do they have – they have the resources, of course.

They now have laptops and desktops.

They do.

They do.

That’s news to me. Tell me more.

Well, I don’t know much. I’ll just say they do.

Okay, so they have made computers. And do people like those computers?

[00:27:50.13] I think this is a newer thing, though. I think in the last year they’ve come out with a laptop and a desktop… Which to me – and I’m not deep where I know all the things, but this is like entrance knowledge. Having built several different machines, the fun part is choosing components, obviously. And I feel like if NVIDIA is an amazing player in the marketplace, you want to choose their GPUs. If they’re building laptops and desktops, maybe, potentially - I disagree to that. Just give them your stuff, man. Just let them track you…

Just accepted NVIDIA’s cookies.

This is in addition to Min. Min, block all tracking.

Right.

Right? That’d be cool. It’s open source. Make that contribution. What was I saying? It’s almost like the Apple way. And I’m hoping it doesn’t go that way, where they become – I suppose it probably wouldn’t happen. With them being a GPU seller as a component, they wouldn’t corner the market or try to corner or stranglehold the market by creating laptops and desktops that make it so that you can’t eventually buy their component, and build your own system. That’s my concern. Not fear, but concern. Like, will they get to a point where they become such a behemoth that they apple the ecosystem, and stop making the components to sell, and force you to buy their laptop, desktop, digit, et cetera, closed system?

Right.

I like open systems where I can swap things out, choose the components… Swap out the CPU, the GPU, the RAM… All the things.

For sure.

That’s the fun part of that side of it. And maybe you’re the one that’s guinea-pigging the platform, and if they’ve already solved it, maybe it’s not worth it, but… That’s the fun part.

So I’m perusing their marketplace.

Uh-oh… You’re getting an error.

So I’m perusing their marketplace [unintelligible 00:29:40.07] And they’ve got a bunch of desktops. I’m having a hard time – oh, gosh… This is either Min’s fault, or NVIDIA’s fault. Let’s blame NVIDIA, because Min’s just one guy with open source code he’s slinging; NVIDIA’s substantially more resourced than that.

The price points are good, though.

The price points are good. I can’t tell if these are actually NVIDIA making these, or if these are just OEM… These are featured brands… I think this it’s just them slapping an NVIDIA thing on top of somebody else’s hardware.

Let’s hope. Let’s hope.

I think so.

Because I’m a fan of MSI, I’m a fan of ASUS… I like the idea of multiplayers in that – I think that’s what keeps the… You know, despite my thoughts on Windows - and I’m not a Windows hater. I just have a preference, okay? Despite that, I feel like having a multiplayer world in that PC-building market enables you to thrive. Because you’ve got one year this particular motherboard is going to thrive. This brand is going to thrive. Or they have a feature set that enables ECC memory that others don’t, or whatever it might be. Or they’re enabling the latest DDR5 RAM, or they’re able to handle clock speeds and overclock. You’ve got these selections. That’s what’s cool about the PC-building world, in my opinion.

Yeah, for sure.

Break: [00:31:02.03]

This Digit though… So if you were to purchase it, what would make me think it’s valuable is if this thing can be on my network and give me local LLM to my LAN, maybe I can assign a global domain name to it, and actually access it from external, I can tap into it from the API… Maybe I can attach a client to it that fetches via the API, and it’s all local to me. Probably I don’t have to do what you said before, which is other people’s robots, OPR…

I’d like to own my own robot. And if Digit is the way to go, then it’s… Three grand to do that. Maybe the Gen 2. Always buy the Gen 2.

Right. Well, this one doesn’t come out until May, so there’ll still be – time will tell, and I’m sure the Jeff Geerlings of the world, and the…

The Techno Tims…

Yeah, exactly. They’ll all have reviews and breakdowns, and we’ll see if it’s any good. Right now, it’s just interesting. But have you tried OLAMA yet? This was how I have been running LLaMA locally. And I’m all but sure you can set it up to run over a network, and have a beefy computer that’s… Actually, I think last time you and I were on a Friends by ourselves, we looked at - maybe it was two of them back. We looked at OLAMA’s settings, and we saw that you could set up a network URL to run against. I haven’t done it, though…

I would buy an inexpensive Mac Mini, with as much peripherals as necessary; no storage really necessary… Maybe there’s some storage necessary. I don’t know. I would configure a Mac Mini, put it on my network, and… I don’t know if a 10-gig connection to it is necessary either. It’s just –

Probably not, but why not?

…data. A one-gig connection is probably just plenty. So you can go with potentially the base model Mac Mini, and get maybe a majority of, or a lot of what you can get from this NVIDIA Digit. Now, I think the numbers [unintelligible 00:35:48.21] is positioned at somebody who’s gone beyond the LAN. I’m looking for how can I integrate suggestions – gosh, I don’t know… Do you have Alexa in your house?

A who now?

A who? Alexa?

Oh, yes.

Do you like Alexa? What’s your relationship with Alexa? Positive or negative?

It’s similar to Siri. I guess my stance is similar to Siri, which is like, slightly annoyed, but still useful at times… My kids love it. They ask all kinds of questions.

Yeah, kids love that stuff.

Yeah.

They have patience we don’t have, you know?

Well, for a lot of my kids it’s the only thing they have, in terms of like… You know, we don’t give a lot of them smartphones or anything until they’re in their teens. They have iPad, but that’s family shared use. But just to ask a question, if you want to know what 14 times 14 is, and you haven’t memorized your times tables yet, they’ll just ask it.

Right.

They’ll ask how to spell things… It’s kind of a crutch. It’s kind of a crutch, but… That being said, they get a lot of value out of it. I don’t get very much. But it’s mostly just playing music for us. What’s your – you asked me so that I would ask you back. Here you go. What’s your stance?

It’s new. So my personal usage has always been frustrated. At friends’ houses, they’ve got it to do lights, and stuff like that… And I’m like – okay, so in that example, which I haven’t gotten there yet, I think that’s cool. This goes back to the self-hosting. I would totally set up Home Assistant, configure Alexa to do these things… I think that’s cool. That’s a great usage of voice. It’s simple. It’s a simple interface to do things in your household.

[00:37:36.04] I also like HomeKit. And so in my house, at least we have some automated blinds, or some – they’re on the network, it has a hub… How do I describe this? They’re blinds that are electronic. They have a battery in them, so you can recharge them once per year, kind of thing. And it has a remote, and you can use the remote, obviously… But you can also just tell HomeKit, “Open all blinds”, or “Close living room blinds.” Or “Open living room blinds to 80%.” It’ll take even that kind of percentage number. And so HomeKit does a lot of that for me, so I haven’t really leaned too far into Home Assistant…

That being said, I’m not a super-insane self-hosting home automation person. I’m just a dip my toe in person, because I don’t have enough time to go as deep as I want to. I really should carve out more time. But my issue with Alexa is that it’s mostly frustrating. And the reason why I’m getting to this Alexa conversation is that - how would I want to leverage an LLM that I would host myself? Like OLAMA, or whatever. I would love to have some voice version of it, so I’m speaking to it, versus just having to type everything to it. Like, can I take this LLM and expand its usage? Alexa and Siri are the two good options for voice OS, and so I’m not sure that Siri is there yet. I wonder if Apple Intelligence will prohibit Siri from being more useful in those regards… Don’t talk to me, Siri. Gosh, Siri’s listening, on my phone right in front of me…

Go away, Siri.

So I think I would love it if someone would just corner the market on a really awesome voice OS, that is agnostic, so that as NVIDIA predicts this AI going mainstream with NVIDIA Digit, I think this is true. People are going to start putting LLMs in their homes more frequently, because of OLAMA, or because of the self-hosting option. The next thing you’re going to want to do though is interface with it via voice. So how do you do that? That’s why I asked you about Alexa.

Well, I do think that we’re very much in the early days, where the pioneers are pioneering, and that’s why so much excitement in our particular industry was like “Ooh, a new gold rush.” And as tech enthusiasts and people in the software world, of course, we’ve been interested in toying with it and trying it… But it certainly hasn’t arrived yet in any packaged way where it’s mainstream.

I mean, Apple Intelligence is probably the closest thing, and it just kind of sucks at this point. I mean, are you using any of –

Is it out? Officially?

Oh, yeah.

No, I don’t have Apple Intelligence.

I mean, it’s beta, but it’s on iOS 18.2, I think… It’s on –

I’ve resisted that upgrade because of what they’ve done to the Photos app. So I’m still stuck in the past, because I’m like –

Are you? You’re in the past?

Well, I’m just scared. I’m so afraid. I’m shaking in my boots with this whole –

This is the walled garden. When Apple says “Upgrade”, you have to upgrade.

I know. And I’m resisting, Jerod. So hardcore. And the reason why is the Photos app.

I use the new Photos app all the time. It’s not very good, but… What am I going to do? I don’t have any alternatives.

I know. I was hoping that they would reverse the train and do something different.

Well, there’s always iOS 19. They’ll dial it back.

Did you see the meme? I’m going to see if we can put this in the show notes, or… I don’t even know where to reference it at to pull it up on the screen. There was a meme, like you would see on TikTok, where you have one person going back and forth, and they’re both characters. If you want to try and pull it up, you can. But it’s essentially saying, “It’s Friday. Let’s just – we have to ship this.” I’m paraphrasing this hysterical meme of making fun of how Apple released this Photos app. And it was like “Oh, it’s good enough. I’ve got to leave, and it’s got to go.” And something where it was just basically rushed. And they’re like “It looks good. It looks good to me” kind of thing. I’m doing a terrible job describing it… But it is amazing. It was funny. That being said, my wife is upgrading…

I don’t think I can find it based on that description.

Yeah, I’m sorry.

“It’s Friday, we’ve got to ship Apple Photos meme…”

Yeah, I mean, something like that.

We’re going to end up with Rebecca Black. “Hey, here’s 102 happy Friday memes to kickstart your weekend.”

Oh, gosh. Did you perplexity that, or did you just google that?

No, I’m just Googling at this point.

Oh, my gosh… Go to Perplexity. See what they’ve got.

Okay, let’s try it live. Brand new search. “What do you think would – bear fruit.” Oh, no.

Put it on the screen.

“Find the Apple Photos meme…”

[00:42:19.23] For the recent update.

Is it literally about Friday? Should I put Friday in there?

I’m pretty sure it’s Friday, but you can throw some keywords in there. Friday, recent update…

Friday, TikTok, funny… Now I’m treating it like it’s a search bar. It’s like “I’m sorry, but –”

Oh, gosh. It cannot find anything.

Specific Apple Photos memes cannot be provided. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Alright, so you actually sucked, Perplexity. I’m no longer bullish.

Maybe. Yeah, it was a miss.

I guess, to its credit, DuckDuckGo couldn’t find it either.

I’ve resisted this latest update for the reasons of the Photos – and I love the Photos app. So I… Dad’s out there listening up, okay? Quick class. I’ve got a five-year-old. And rather than doing lookups… Sometimes we’ll do stories, obviously. We still do stories. But one thing I’ve learned about young children is the reason why they love photos is they love to know where they came from, they love to relive recent memories. And it’s a part of bonding… It’s obviously part of a dad bonding thing. But it’s also like this thankfulness and appreciation for the life they have, and the blessings they have in their life. And so we go back as part of a nighttime routine. We’ll look through recent photos, recent events, especially if we just did something really cool and really fun, like that day kind of thing… We’ll go back through and look through the adventure we had that weekend, or that day.

And so I’m near and dear to the way Photos app delivers these memories to me… And so I’m resistant to this change. I have not. That being said, I have not even looked at any recent update for it. I just know it’s just generally bad.

I was gonna say, the new Apple Photos still does all that stuff. I mean…

I know…

It’s not like it’s not gonna show you your – some sort of infinite scroll.

It’s like changed the UI.

It’s the UI that’s changed, yeah.

It’s probably me, Jerod. It’s a me problem, okay?

Okay.

It’s probably a me problem.

Fair. Have you tried – are you on Sequoia?

Let’s see…

15.2. Because there’s Apple Intelligence in the new macOS, and it’s silliness. It doesn’t do anything good.

I am on Sonoma 14.1… Sorry, 14.6.1.

Okay, so you are a Luddite. [laughs]

I’m resistant to change.

Okay…

I mean, you should know this about me. I’m resistant to change.

I know.

I pause. I think. I calculate. I hem. I haw. I delay. I reconsider. I hem, I haw, I delay… Then I’m like “Okay, let’s do it.” [laughter] That’s my way.

Yeah, that does sound familiar.

That’s just what I’m comfortable with. It does.

Well, my point is that both of these new operating systems, which you haven’t even tried, have Apple Intelligence in them, and it’s a nothingburger. There’s no there there. It doesn’t do anything. It’s like, do you want me to auto – there’s like better autocomplete suggestions on your messages app… But it’s like, I would never say any of those three things. I don’t talk like that. So no, I’m not going to click on it.

Yeah. Here’s what I would want, okay? Tell me if this is what it does, or what you think it will do.

Okay.

I use Apple Maps when I drive. I will often need to recalibrate my direction.

All the time.

I do not want to pick up my phone and do it by hand, because why? It’s dangerous.

You’re driving, man.

I’m driving, yes. I would love an Apple Intelligence, or any intelligence, to let me remap my directions. Or hey, I’m going here… What restaurants are nearby there?

No, even better is like “We want to stop at the next Chipotle between us and where we’re going.”

Preach. For me, it’s Buc-ee’s.

Just throw it on the map for me.

[00:45:59.29] I was on a trip recently for this [unintelligible 00:46:00.10] weekend, and I’m in like nowhereland in Texas, which - Texas is big, and sometimes you get out there and you’re like “Where is the nearest gas station?” I didn’t plan well enough. I’m in run out of gas situations in Texas. That is the truth; between Houston and Amarillo, you can run out of gas if you don’t plan properly. Where’s the next Buc-ee’s? I’m heading this direction… Just ease my anxiety. “There’s a Buc-ee’s in 20 miles.” Okay, great. I feel better. You know? Like, whatever it is. That’s good intelligence.

So this Chipotle example - your case is Buc-ee’s - was exactly what happened to us on the way home from Florida… And we have CarPlay in our car, and so I have the maps through my phone, Apple Maps, showing us how to get home… And there’s the UI where you can say Add Stop. And then you can pick from a list of pre-configured categories. You want to stop at gas stations, restaurants, breakfast, parks… Whatever. Or ask Siri. And so I’ll say “Okay, ask Siri.” “Where would you like to go?” And I said “Chipotle.” And she said “There are nine Chipotles on your route. The first one is 17 minutes away. Do you want me to add it?” And do you know which direction the 17 minutes were?

The opposite direction.

Straight backwards. Straight behind us. [laughter] And I would say “No”, and she’d say “The second one is here.” And then you have to step one by one through this list of results in order to get to one that you actually want to go… I mean, it’s just a complete mess. And it’s so close to being an amazing feature… If it just had a little bit of intelligence, you know? Not much.

So AI is mainstream, but it has some warts.

Here’s the sad part, is I think as – I don’t know if it’s mainstream yet, but as it goes more and more mainstream, I don’t actually think the warts are going to go away. I think we’re just going to live with these things. I mean, think how bad Siri has been for so long, as it is. We’ve just lived with it. You can only put so much lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.

True. Yeah.

And there’s value there, but there’s a lot of warts, man.

Yeah. My usage of Siri is very cursory. I do math with it, I set timers, I cancel alarms… I close blinds, I open blinds…

Yeah.

I’m getting a front door lock from, I believe, Yale.

Yale University?

Yale, the door lock company.

Okay, so that’s a different thing.

And it can connect to your network. And so I think I can say “Lock front door, unlock front door.” I can open my garages, both. I have a carriage garage and a main garage, and I can say “Open main garage. Open carriage.” And I can actually say – I could make it say “Open carriage garage.” It’s just long. And I’ve been too lazy to go back and say “Open main.” I think “Open main garage” is actually pretty good.

I should actually get mine wired up to my garage door openers, because they’re smart enough…

Yeah.

However, I just like buttons, as we’ve invited Rachel Plotnick to come and talk buttons… I confess, I just like to hit the button. However, at this point one of my garage door openers - the button is not always working. It’s finicky, so I have to launch the app sometimes to open it… And I’m like “I should get that wired up so I can just say open south garage.” Haven’t done it.

So we have Apple CarPlay in our car as well. And so I’ll push the Talk button, because that’s how you talk to Siri.

Right.

And what I will say as we’re driving into the driveway - “Open main garage.” And so as I’m driving into the driveway, rather than push the button or find where the thing is at… We actually keep it hidden, because we don’t want anybody to come and steal our stuff, and come into our house through our garage opener and they’ve got access. And so I’d say 98% of the time it works just fine. Every once in a while Siri’s like “What’d you say?”

[00:49:57.03] Especially when you have a kid talking while you’re talking, or something; that’s usually what happens.

Yeah. And what I’ve found though too, to go one second deeper on this, is that I didn’t think that my inexpensive came-with-my-home garage door openers were connected. My neighbor who has the same one’s like “Hey Adam, did you know that these things are already Wi-Fi enabled and they already connect?” I’m like “No, I had no idea.” He’s like “This is how you do it.” This is like last – literally last year at the same time. And sure enough, they’re connected. They’re genie models. Like, they’re not – they just came with the home; there’s nothing special about them.

Sure.

But they connect to the network, they’re really easy to use… And the iOS app that you install on the phone allows you to configure Siri, and HomeKit, and shortcuts to interface with it. So I think garage doors are a great place, blinds, if you have them… We use Apple TVs a lot in our home, so I can say “Turn off a family room TV.” It turns it off; it can turn it on. All of our TVs have Apple TVs there, so I can speak to each room, essentially. Turn off living room TV. Turn off master bedroom TV etc. So those are the things I like. And that’s nothing special. That’s not HomeKit – or that’s just all HomeKit.

It’s not even AI. It’s just like – well, I mean, there’s some voice to text going on back there, but that’s longstanding technology. One last point on this and then we should move on… You gave some dad advice earlier. Here’s some kid advice on the topic of talking to Siri in the car. So if you’re riding in the back of your car and there’s a CarPlay enabled, or your parents just happen to be talking to their phone, maybe directly, and they are texting their significant other via voice… A good kid move, if you want to have a little bit of fun with your parents, is right when your mom or dad stops their message, just throw some non sequiturs in, you know? Just like, add a random word. Something that won’t make any sense. And that sucker will send off right alongside the rest of it.

That’s right. [laughs]

And you know, you get a good laugh going. And if your parents aren’t too angry with you, they won’t mind.

I would concur with that. My kids do that to me. They they know that trick. They play it frequently.

You’ve got to think of a random word to throw in there at the end.

Yeah, it’s good stuff.

Break: [00:52:20.02]

Alright, while we’re talking warts, I thought this was a fun story, as I like to pick on…

Oh, yes.

…autonomous vehicles. I’m actually – I’m pretty intrigued and impressed by what Waymo has been able to do. However, warts and all, man. Warts and all. So this is a story from TechCrunch. “We talked to the guy who was stuck in a Waymo RoboTaxi on a dizzying loop.” Now, I may have mentioned this to you offhand, as we were talking at some point… Of course, I told you the story about them honking at each other in the parking lot all night long. This is a new one. A month ago - this story comes from January 8th of ‘25. “A month ago, a video circulated around social media of a Waymo RoboTaxi stuck in a roundabout loop. An isolated incident with no passengers in the vehicle. According to Waymo, apparently, it wasn’t a one-time thing. Around the same time, in another Waymo RoboTaxi headed for the Phoenix airport, Mike Johns, founder and CEO of AI consultancy Digital Mindstate also found himself circling a parking lot, unable to stop the car or get out. The videos were posted within a couple of days of each other. Waymo has not confirmed whether the incidents happened at the same time, or if there were other similar loopy incidents, but says it issued software updates to fix the issue”, blah, blah, blah. “Johns was stuck in the Waymo going through a loop for under seven minutes, but he says it felt like forever”, which we all know that feeling of elongation when something’s going wrong, and you just feel like it’s never going to end… And it ends up being seven minutes. “Particularly as he feared he would miss his flight, and questioned whether the car had been hacked. It was his second time in a Waymo.”

How did he get out? Well, a Waymo customer support specialist called into the car with Johns’ prompting. The agent said she had received a notification that his car might be experiencing some routing issue, and she asked Johns to open his Waymo app and tap My Trip in the lower left corner of the app. And to which Johns responded, “Can’t you just do it? You should be able to handle it. Take over the car. You don’t need my phone.” And then she confessed she didn’t have an option to control the car. Anyways, he had to do it, and she walked him through it and got it unstuck. There’s many more details, which we won’t read.

My gosh, man.

Wow. So warts and all, man. I mean…

Scary. I mean, life could have been lost.

Oh, for sure.

I mean, you could have puked your guts out in this situation.

It depends on how tight that loop is, you know?

Yeah. I mean, eventually you’re going to get maybe one and a half G, two G’s… I mean, at some point you get over that, going into the centrifugal force.

Right. So here’s a pro tip for Waymo riders, which I just learned from TechCrunch… All Waymo vehicles have a Pull Over button available to riders at all times. It’s located in the app, and on the passenger screen. So if you’re stuck, or scared, or something, there is a chicken exit. Apparently, this fella didn’t know about it. I didn’t know about it. I’ve never ridden a Waymo, so I have a better excuse than he has… But maybe it’s not obvious where that button is. They probably don’t want you pushing it accidentally, or even very often, as it defeats the purpose. But there it is. There is a Waymo chicken exit if you need it.

Yeah. I think the ending there was kind of cool, and he’s like “Look, pull up the left corner of that map on the floor and you’ll see a red button. Hit that button.” It reminds me of the recent button conversation we obviously had with Rachel Plotnick, and the importance of literal buttons that can be pressed. And it was red.

[00:58:07.10] You’ve got to have a red button somewhere.

Something is going to happen with that. Yeah, we need escape hatches, that’s for sure. I had no idea there was this button, or the app button to pull over… I have not been in a Waymo, so I think that’s just fine, not having that knowledge just yet… But now that I do, I will be more confident going into a Waymo, because I know how to get out should I get stuck in a perpetual loop.

Has Waymo come to Austin yet?

Uh, you know what? I’m not in downtown Austin enough to know… Maybe. I would say maybe. I think – I kind of imagine it might be the birthplace of whatever Elon Musk might launch, because the headquarters is here now. It’s in a city called Bastrop. We call it Basdrop, like the word drop, though. That’s an Eastern suburb of Austin, literally East of Austin, considered Austin technically… But it is the city of Bastrop, just so you know… If that’s not confusing enough for you.

Good to know.

That is where his – there’s a Tesla headquarters in North Austin, there’s a Tesla something or other about 20 minutes from me here, that’s like just massive… And then in Bastrop they have their – what is it called? It’s like a city; like a little mini city he’s building. It’s crazy what he’s doing here. I imagine that whatever he may launch will probably launch here first, because so many folks are migrating to Texas.

So I’ve found Waymo’s official list of cities. They are in Metro Phoenix, San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles. The Metro Phoenix territory includes downtown Scottsdale, Tempe… So it’s not merely Phoenix proper. It says they’re ramping up in Austin and Atlanta. In partnership with Uber, which I didn’t know. “Miami we’ll head your way next on the Waymo one app. Sign up so we can reach out.” So it’s looking like not yet, but eventually.

I was in Phoenix. That’s the closest I got to riding a Waymo. But I didn’t really care to have the experience enough, and it cost more than the Uber did… And so I’m just like, same place… Let a human make some money. Less money for me, less costs for me. Let’s just skip it.

I want to mention this show… Like this being trapped thing. If anybody is a fan of ‘80s British television, then I want to mention a show that I like a lot. I haven’t watched all the episodes. It’s called Connections. Episode one is called “The Trigger Effect”, and we’re gonna link to it in the show notes. Jerod has it pulled up right now for you to check this out. It’s on the internet archive to watch, which is super-cool.

Interesting.

Yeah, very cool. And so what’s cool about this is this was – like, this is an ’80s TV show. And James Burke, the fellow that I believe is hosting this, is talking you through the way that technology traps us. And this is in the ‘80s. His example was New York city, Manhattan Island basically is a big trap, a big technology trap. You’ve got elevators, you’ve got taxis, you’ve got subways, subway stops, you’re stuck in this tunnel kind of thing… This is not a new invention of being trapped by technology. And I think as we have AI, and Waymos and stuff like that, it only is going to make it even more of a possibility to have this trigger effect, as he calls it, which is this technology failing, and then everybody being stuck in some way, shape or form. A Waymo is the most modern example, potentially. Back in the day it was an elevator. And I think everybody’s – if you ask people what one of their biggest fears is, someone in a group of ten is going to say “Stuck in an elevator.”

[01:02:11.25] For sure. Is that one of your biggest fears?

No.

Yeah, I don’t really have that one either.

I’ll admit right now what my biggest fear is. One of my biggest fears is.

Okay. Let’s hear it.

Being stuck in a cave.

Oh, a cave.

Let me just tell you, I do not spelunk, okay? I do not spelunk.

[laughs] Really? So is that a claustrophobia thing, or it’s specific to caves?

Oh, it’s just like I would just never want to do it. I’ve seen enough movies… For whatever reason, YouTube has got me trapped in this algorithm that’s just sharing terrible stories of cave divers dying…

Oh, my gosh.

And I’d never want to be in that position. I would never want to be – could you imagine…? Picture this in your brain.

Okay. I’m gonna close my eyes.

You are on your belly, and directly above you is rock for as far as you can think of. Below you is rock for as far as you can think of. To the right and left of you is rock as far as you can think of. And you have a helmet on, with a light that may have a battery that dies, eventually. You’ve got limited supplies and you’re crawling for fun through this tunnel that other people may have died in.

Yeah.

And you may discover a body 20 yards up or whatever. And you’re not even sure if at some point you have an opening enough to turn back around.

Right. It’s like point of no return.

Emphatically no, for me. It’s a hard no. So my fear is not even plausible, because I would never do that… But if someone held me at gunpoint and was like “Adam, you’ve got to go through this cave to live”, I would say “Shoot me now, okay? Because I’m not going to do it.”

Well, nobody wants to end up like Chester Copperpot…

That’s right.

There’s a Goonies deep cut…

Ooh, I liked it.

Alright, let’s –

Cut that into the video, man. Let’s get a little clip in there. Will we get demonetized for that? We’re not even trying to monetize.

No, man. We’re not making any money. Okay, let’s get back to tech and out of that cave that you put us in. Last story of the show is Julia Evans. Our friend, Julia Evans, popular nerdy blogger. She writes “What’s involved in getting a “modern” terminal setup?” Julia writes, “Hello. Recently I ran a terminal survey and I asked people what frustrated them.

One person commented, “There are so many pieces to having a modern terminal experience. I wish it all came out of the box.” And so Julia thought “It’s not so hard to have a modern terminal experience.” And then she thought a little harder and realized there’s a lot to it.

It’s pretty hard.

And she goes through a list of things that make for a modern experience, and then how she achieves that modern experience. I thought I was living the modern terminal life with terminal.app, and then Mitchell Hashimoto came in and was like “You’ve got 256 colors, man.” And I was like “No…! I didn’t even know.”

Yes…

Like, for people who are colorblind, they don’t know they’re colorblind until somebody else can see more colors than them, and be like “That’s not brown, dude. That’s blue.” They’re like “What?!”

Oh, yes…

So I no longer have that problem. I have fully converted to Ghostty… But that’s not all the things she lists here.

Does she mention Ghostty?

She mentioned Ghostty, very briefly.

Towards the end.

Right here. Oh, is she using Ghostty?

Uh, it was in her list.

Yeah. I saw it at the end. She put Kitty, Alacrity, WezTerm or Ghosty. I saw that. I didn’t get to the end of the post, because we started recording. So maybe she confesses Ghostty at the end? But I don’t think so.

Truth be told, this is on our reading list, not our read list… So it’s to be read.

Oh, for you?

It’s on my to read list.Yeah. It’s not my have read list.

Oh, okay. So you wanted to read it together.

I wanted to mention it. I think in light of Ghostty, I think in light of – I’m still a Warp for life kind of person. I think until –

[01:06:03.14] Well, that’s the thing, is I think Warp does provide a lot of the stuff, right?

Yeah. I think so, too.

Specifically, she mentioned key bindings. And I know that was one of your issues with Ghostty, was that she wants specific things to work, and you have specific keyboard shortcuts that you use macOS style. Similar to my desire with Min to have macOS-supported keyboard bindings. And you asked Mitchell about Ghostty with regards to that, and his answer was “Unfortunately, it’s way more complicated than you think it’d be”, because of the way inputs work between terminals and shells.

What’s so funny though is that – kudos to Warp. It is so smooth and so fast. And so the way Mitchell described it in that podcast, which we’ll link up in the show notes, and probably throw a YouTube link in there or whatever, if that’s a possibility… Is that – he was talking about the… If I understood it correctly, he was saying that it was fraught with possible error. Unpredictable, I think is the word he used.

Right.

Well, Warp has got it locked in, because there’s never a time I want to do anything… It’s as if the prompt is like a text editor. What I mean by that is like if you’re in Sublime, or in VS Code, or if you’re in any modern text editor, you can just dump around with the arrow key, and Alt, and Command, and Shift, and stuff, and do things. That’s how it works. It’s very much like you’re in a prose editor. And I love that. I think that they nailed that well. And no matter where you’re at too, as long as you’ve got a Space in there, and you can do a Tab… And it will try and complete something in that directory you’re in, like a readme, or a TOML file or whatever it might be, to sort of link to it. I think Warp has done really, really a great job. And so until and if, I suppose, if Ghostty solves that problem or desires to solve that problem, I’m a Warp for life kind of guy.

So here’s Julia’s list of things that she considers required to be modern. And you can tell me if Warp has all these or not, if you care or not. The first one is multi-line support for copy and paste. I think this is similar to what you’re talking about now, with it being a lot like a text editor.

Yeah.

She says “If you paste three commands in your shell, it should not immediately run them all.” That’s scary. I kind of disagree with that. I have no problem pasting three commands and they all three execute one after the other. That’s just how I would think about it. But I could see where maybe you want to just have a look first… So I don’t really – I might end up just being too old. I’ve been using an old terminal for 20 years, and I don’t care, because I have used it in the old configuration for so long. But that’s not necessarily something – I do want multi-line support for copy, more than paste, I would say. You want to easily be able to copy and paste in and out.

Okay. Check. You can do multi-paste commands.

What happens when you do a multi-paste commands?

Nothing. It waits for you to do more things. It waits for you to push return.

Okay. So you just look at it, and then you can hit Enter to run all three of them then?

Well, as an example to test, I just did brew list and brew update. Because I’m like “Those are safe commands I can run without any concerns.”

Right.

I pasted those into the prompt, and nothing happened. It’s blinking cursor waiting for me to say “Go.”

Let me try it here. Alright, so I put brew list and brew update on separate lines, and now I’m going to copy-paste them into Ghostty. And it doesn’t execute. It just pastes them in. One here and then one there, and then I can hit Enter to go.

I don’t understand why this is a modern feature she desires, but what happened though when I did push return was it brew listed, and then it brew updated.

Yeah. It does them both.

Yeah. But it doesn’t do it automatically on paste. I think that is a modern feature. I think that’s smart, because you may have fat-fingered the copy, and you paste a missing –

Oh, you copied, but you didn’t get the whole thing?

Maybe you missing-fingered the copy.

Okay, missing fingers. Yeah, those happen.

[01:10:12.19] You got a character that didn’t come with you, and it’s like “Well, this is a malformed command.”

Right. But wouldn’t that just error?

I mean, I guess it probably would, but you know.

Alright, let’s move on. This one - we’re split on this one. It works in Ghostty the same way it works in Warp.

Okay.

Infinite shell history. Yes, please. If I run a command in my shell, it should be save forever, not deleted after 500 histories, or whatever. So I agree with that one. There’s no reason in modern times to delete my shell history, ever, unless I want to.

Let’s see. I don’t know if this is a Warp feature.

It’s a shell thing.

Yeah, it’s like a configuration thing.

But she’s talking about overall experience, so I understand why she lists it. One more shout-out to Atuin, if you want synchronized and awesome shell history stuff. Okay.

Atuin.sh.

Yes. “A useful prompt. I can’t live without having my current directory and current git branch in my prompt shell.” Oh, she puts – sorry, I said prompt shell. She puts shell in parentheses, because she realizes this is a shell concern.

Gotcha.

And so yes. So your terminal is not going to support that, your shell would. I think we can all agree that that’s useful.

I mean, praise Robbie for OhMyZsh, beause - I mean, that makes it easy if you’re using ZSH. But I think later on she talks about using fish. So I’m not sure if –

Well, she uses fish or Zsh with OhMyZsh. So she’s either doing one or the other. I don’t know why you’d do both, but… Different strokes for different folks. How about 24-bit color? This is the one I didn’t realize I needed… And I wonder if there’s a way to put terminal.app into 24-bit mode… Because I remember doing something out of 256, and maybe I’ve done that… But anyways, it should be like that by default, and that’s why Mitchell doesn’t like terminal.app.

Yeah.

This is, of course, your terminal emulator that does this. And I think that pretty much all of them nowadays can give you that.

Well, thankfully a Google search landed me on terminal features on the Warp documentation… And I will tell you, they have an entire grid of features that are “modern terminals.” Warp is on the list, obviously, because it’s their documentation. Terminal.app is in there, iTerm, Alacrity, and WezTerm is in there. So Ghostty has not made the list yet. So for 24-bit true color, it’s a yes for Warp, it is a no for terminal.app, it is a yes for iTerm, it is a yes for Alacrity… I can’t say that.

Alacrity.

Alacrity. Thank you. Alacrity. Alacrity. WezTerm is a yes as well. So the one that’s missing is terminal.app. So if you’re using terminal.app, Jerod, then, you know…

Which I’m not. I haven’t used it for a long time.

Not anymore. But you were recently.

I haven’t used it this year at all.

His criticism was on point, though. Okay, there you go. That’s a good thing to say. 13, 14 days into the year… Good job.

I haven’t used it all year. Clipboard integration, she lists…

Sure.

Of course, you want to have that.

I don’t know. How does that work? Clipboard integration.

I feel like that’s copy paste, right?

I don’t know.

She says between Vim and my OS, so that when I copy in Firefox, I can just P in Vim.

Oh, yeah.

So that’s more of a text editor thing. Like, that’s a Vim thing. And I don’t know if the terminal can help you with that or not, but I’m going to go ahead and –

Conflating the modern terminal with the modern terminal experience, I believe. So she’s describing the experience.

Yeah, she’s conflated them all together. Shells, editors and terminal emulators into one thing.

Yeah. Sorry for the criticism, but that’s what she’s describing. And I’m cool with that.

And she does specify each one, for each bullet point. It’s just messing up our comparisons here…

[01:13:49.10] It sure is.

Having colors in ls… Again, that’s a shell config thing. A terminal theme that she likes. So that’s obviously going to be a feature of your terminal emulator.

Dracula Pro…

They’re all themable, aren’t they?

They are all themable.

Automatic terminal fixing. “If a program prints out some weird escape codes that mess up my terminal, I want that to automatically get reset…” Not git reset, but get reset… “So that my terminal doesn’t get messed up.” Cool. That’s a feature of your shell, not your terminal. Key bindings… That’s the one that we talked about already. And then being able to use the scroll wheel in programs. Who uses a scroll wheel, honestly?

Well…

This is, of course, just Julia’s list. This is not a comprehensive list. And she’s completely free to have her own opinions on the matter. She uses the fish shell, mostly unconfigured, as well as any terminal emulator with 24-bit color support. She’s used Gnome, iTerm… Not picky. And then NeoVim. Plus the base16 framework for theming.

Nice.

Which I hadn’t heard of.

Yeah, this is new.

Base16 - not a theme, but a framework for building tomorrow style themes using a base of 16 colors.

Hm.

This thing’s been around for - geez, 13 years. Cool. Learned something new there.

That sounds cool.

And that’s that.

Well, I would say that Warp checks most of those boxes, because they’re not all terminal-specific things, and it can do all those things without any regard. So boom.

Yeah. And so does Ghostty. So we’re both modern baby.

Warp for the win.

Ghostty for the win. [laughter]

Oh, too easy.

Alright… Now that we’ve both won, unlike our game of two trues and a lie that I clearly won…

Somebody said that – what was the chatter in Zulip? I didn’t get to read it in – it was over my weekend, so I was just checking it… Did you see that mention?

No.

Of - let me go back to it real quick and see if I can get to it.

While we wait, if you are not in our Zulip, let’s fix that bug. It’s totally free. Go to changelog.com/community. You can actually view the Zulip without even creating an account. Click the button there that says “View our Zulip”, and you can see some of the conversations going on. Was this in the episode 75 with Matt Ryer?

So one thing we have to do - and to be clear, if you’re listening this to this in audio, we have transitioned, and in the process of transitioning, to be video-first. And that means full-length episodes, chaptered, the full kit and the caboodle…

That’s right.

…in YouTube. And so what I’m noticing we’re missing on our episode page, Jerod, is a link or some sort of awareness of YouTube. So we’re iterating; obviously, we haven’t gotten there yet.

Totally.

So I think the comment may have been on YouTube, on this episode. And I think it was somebody commenting about how many points you may have gotten… Or I’m misremembering. One of the two.

I thought this was the conversation about our potentially unbleeped F-word, which I did not go listen back to. I’m sure we didn’t have an unbleeped F-word in there. Did we, Adam?

I don’t think so. Somebody confirmed that it was just a sound.

Oh, yeah. I just stumbled a word. I was going to say “figure out”…

There was a D-word that got bleeped, thankfully. Disk…

Yes, a big D-word that got bleeped. [laughter]

Yes, a big D-word.

It was. That was a slip of the tongue, if I’ve ever had one.

So maybe I’m missing this… I thought somebody said something about how many points you had gotten… And I guess I’m wrong, because I can’t find it. So I dreamt it. I think I dreamt this, about you losing, officially… But I guess you didn’t lose oficially.

[01:17:55.12] Okay. Well, I can see where maybe in your dreams I would lose…

Somebody did concur… SchalkNeethling on a YouTube in comments… “Yup, people believe that he (Mandela) passed away in jail during the 1980s.”

That’s right.

See, that’s a big deal there. That’s a big deal. Anyways, we are on YouTube, full-length episodes, chaptered and all…

We are in your podcast app; if you’re listening to us in your podcast app, just stay right where you are. It’s nice and cozy. We’re not going to change.

Yeah, it’s cozy. Nothing changes. You can hang here if you want to. But if you want to see us, I would say maybe slightly more high-fidelity, especially as we’re talking through things and stuff like that, we’re going to have the screen up in the video on YouTube. So if you get to a point in the show and you’re like “Man, I really wish I could see that” - well, you can. Just remember the time mark and roughly around the same timeframe on YouTube you will find the same section that you’re listening to… Because they’re not the exact same timeline. So the YouTube version and the audio version may be of different links, they may be of different spots, so your mileage may vary. That being said, you can have higher fidelity, slightly more context if you desire it, via full-length video podcasts on YouTube. Boom-shaka. That’s coming to you.

I do have a bonus, Jerod. Can we do a bonus for our Plus Plus folks? Can we end the show and then do one bonus? Are you cool with that?

I absolutely am cool with a bonus. I think before we tail out, let’s tease a few of our upcoming interviews.

Oh, yeah.

We have some interviews booked that we’d like to let people know about, because we have some really cool stuff coming down the pipeline. So you probably already heard our conversation with Elicia White, from Embedded.fm. That’s in your feed, if you haven’t heard it yet… But definitely check that one out; it was a good one. Next week we have Ash from Benthos. Benthos was acquired by Redpanda, and we’ve been working with Ash – we’ve had Ash on Go Time before. Really cool guy. Coming on the show to talk about that, the sale of his open source project, and all that jazz. The week following it’s Glauber - I’m not sure if you say his name Glober, or Glauber; we will learn that - from Turso

Glober.

Is it Glober?

I believe so. I’ve talked to him once.

Of course, Turso has a really cool new open source project called Limbo. Limbo is a complete rewrite of SQLite in Rust. They’re working on that… And I’m excited to learn all about it.

I’m really excited about that one.

That’s it for now. I thought that I had one more in the can, but… There we go. So stay tuned for Benthos, data streaming, open source acquisitioning, as well as going deep on Limbo, the new rewrite of SQLite in Rust, coming to a Changelog near you. Okay. Should we say goodbye, friends? And then we can bonus it up.

Bye, friends.

Bye, friends.