Episode 243: Oops, All Aftershow
It's the holidays, and the Working Code crew has a gift for you: a peek behind the velvet rope. In the spirit of Captain Crunch's "Oops! All Berries," this week's episode ditches the usual format entirely. No triumphs, no fails, no structured topic—just pure, unfiltered aftershow energy.
Tim unpacks Cory Doctorow's concept of "reverse centaurs"—what happens when you're not assisted by AI, but reduced to its peripheral? Meanwhile, Adam drops a perspective on humanity's place in the universe that reframes everything you thought you knew about time. That, plus Carol humbling an AI chatbot, the death of the golden age of television, and whether the books you loved as a kid were actually any good.
Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Thursday.
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With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Transcript
Spot an error? Send a pull request on GitHub.
[00:00:00] Cold Open
[00:00:00] Tim: what do you think? If we just did like a, in the style of Captain crunches? Oops. All berries. What if we did like a oops. All after show?
[00:00:08] Ben: It sounds delicious.
[00:00:10] Carol: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:00:10] Tim: All after show. Yeah.
[00:00:32] Aftershow
[00:00:32] Adam: And
[00:00:33] Tim: And
[00:00:34] Adam: the after show,
[00:00:36] Ben: after show? Ew.
[00:00:38] Tim: very high budget sound effects folks. That's what you're missing. That's what you're missing unless you're a Patreon.
[00:00:43] Carol's Botox Story
[00:00:43] Carol: So, have I told you guys I get Botox? You know, like that, that, yeah. So I get Botox. like a year ago I started getting it in my upper lip and it is supposed to help with like fine lines, you know, make you look a little lip flippy. Yeah. The problem is that if you get too many, when you try to spit toothpaste out, you can't.
[00:01:02] Carol: And I realized, I realized just now that when I tried doing the, I can't make the, the, the thing, because I got, I think I got too, too many Botox on each side, so
[00:01:14] Tim: oh.
[00:01:14] Adam: is that will, like, will it come back?
[00:01:17] Carol: Oh, yeah, yeah. It wears off in like 60 ish days. 90 days. So I won't be spitting my toothpaste out for I guess a couple months. I
[00:01:25] Adam: You just got
[00:01:25] Carol: my mouth.
[00:01:26] Tim: swallow
[00:01:26] Adam: Rinse and and spit it out. Yeah. What
[00:01:29] Carol: Fun times. So, yeah.
[00:01:31] Adam: a great way to start the show. Good job. You too can get content like this by
[00:01:37] Tim: Hey. They ain't all winners. They ain't all
[00:01:38] Carol: join.
[00:01:40] Tim: but it is interesting. I'll give you that.
[00:01:42] Carol: Yeah.
[00:01:43] Life in the Universe
[00:01:43] Adam: Where do we wanna start after that? Of course, you
[00:01:45] Tim: Well, is your idea, chief President? So why
[00:01:48] Adam: okay, I'll go first. I, I've got, I've got some, you know, normal stuff, and then I have like a, a morty's mind blowers type of thing, like a, a thing that really just like I heard and I was like, well, it's one of those things where it's like, it's totally obvious when you actually sit down and think about it, but you just never get the opportunity to have that thought.
[00:02:07] Adam: So I just, it's one of those things that I love. So humans are like a tiny percent of the earth, right? in terms of mass and in terms of how much space we take up. And the earth is a tiny percent of the matter of the universe, right? And if you're looking at it in terms of the three dimensions of time or of space, and.
[00:02:26] Adam: how consequential we are. that can be for some people, a thing that makes you feel like really tiny and insignificant. But the, as I learned today, or I saw today that, on the, in the dimension of time, life on Earth, on Earth has been here, basically between a quarter and a third of the life of the, of all of time, like all the, the time of the
[00:02:50] Tim: not human life, just
[00:02:52] Adam: right?
[00:02:52] Adam: Just life on earth, right. So, you know, a chemical reaction far from equilibrium, you know, sustaining itself there, right? Life. and, and we are a part of that, and that just makes me feel like part of something special, right? Like the universe has been around for, what, 13.8 billion years, something like that.
[00:03:12] Adam: and for a quarter to a third of that, somewhere in between those. is a thing that eventually became us and other living things. That's, I like that,
[00:03:22] Ben: Yeah, I like that too. Anne Rands, the fountain head, which is about architecture and, well, it's not about architecture, but architecture plays a big part in it. There is,
[00:03:32] Adam: architecture.
[00:03:33] Ben: well the main character is an architect. And it's his life
[00:03:37] Adam: software architecture.
[00:03:38] Ben: Correct. And one of the conversations they have in the book is that a lot of people will look at the New York City skyline, which for people who don't know what it is, it's an impressive skyline and feel dwarfed by the skyscrapers.
[00:03:52] Adam: Yeah.
[00:03:53] Ben: But I said a lot of people can look at that and feel like, look at us. We are this tiny and we have conquered the sky and we have built these monuments to our own achievement. And, uh, it reminded me of that.
[00:04:06] Adam: I like that.
[00:04:08] Tim: Have you heard of the Carl Sagan's Cosmic calendar?
[00:04:11] Adam: Carl Sagan. Yeah. yeah, so if you take, all of time and you scale it down so that it's like the, the size or compare it to a year, right?
[00:04:21] Tim: Bang is January 1st.
[00:04:22] Adam: it is the first microsecond of January 1st, and, and this current moment that we're currently in is December 31st, you know, 11 59, 59 and 999 milliseconds.
[00:04:34] Adam: yeah, that's a, that's a really interesting thing. It, it features prominently in Cosmos, the TV series. There's been two seasons of it hosted by, oh, so Carl Sagan did it originally, and then, I don't know if you guys know this, a couple years back, with Sagan's Estate, like his, his wife, with her permission and participation, they brought it back and redid it with Neil deGrasse Tyson as the host.
[00:04:55] Adam: And it's really good.
[00:04:57] Carol: So good.
[00:04:57] Adam: I love that thing.
[00:04:59] Carol: Yeah.
[00:04:59] Tim: Yeah, me too. Yeah. So if, if, according to that calendar, each minute is about 30,000 years long, that humans would've made their debut around 10:30 PM on December 31st. So we, so we just showed up to the party
[00:05:13] Carol: Yeah. That's crazy.
[00:05:14] Tim: at the 11th hour, 59 minutes, 20th second, domestication of plants and animals began by humans.
[00:05:21] Tim: That's just, yeah.
[00:05:23] Adam: And, and since then, we now have TikTok.
[00:05:26] Tim: Yeah. There you go.
[00:05:28] Ben: So kind of along the lines of the microscopic aspect of humans in the grandeur of the universe. This is something that I was just thinking about recently because I've been listening to a lot of star talk radios with Neil deGrasse Tyson, who you just mentioned is one of you just mentioned. And they talk a lot about black holes and about quantum physics.
[00:05:48] Ben: And it's so far over my head. Everything that they say, about space is like really far over my head. And they try to explain it and they try to.
[00:05:57] Tim: 'cause that's where space is. It's, it's right there above your head.
[00:06:01] Ben: so,
[00:06:01] Adam: I mean, if you were in a southern hemisphere, you would've fallen off. Mm-hmm.
[00:06:05] Ben: But, so going back to the, stuff that Adam's talking about here, I, I'm gonna preface this to say I'm not a religious person in any way whatsoever. So when I hear other humans talk about the, majesty of space time continuum and the laws that govern the physical world, and it's so far over my head, and like, that's the stuff people can talk about, I am blown away by anyone who thinks that they can even begin to understand what a higher being would, would have in store for anybody.
[00:06:44] Ben: I can't understand the things a scientist says. Let alone pretend to understand the intent of a being that has existed across all time and space and is everywhere all the time, and knows everything about everything. It's even like to even say oh, there was a revelation and, being revealed itself and explain some stuff. The amount that that would have to be dumbed down for a human to understand what you were even talking about. It just blows my mind.
[00:07:13] Adam: and tune into the second half of this episode when we solve politics too.
[00:07:17] Tim: Yeah, it, it, I, I think of there was an episode of Star Trek Next Generation where no, it was Deep Space nine actually. And they, they ran into these beings that didn't, they basically experienced all of time at the same time. Right. So they were, they're outside the time continuum and to try to teach, you know, to explain, they, they played a baseball game on like the hollow deck.
[00:07:44] Tim: The, the humans did. And the aliens were, they're like, you don't know what's gonna happen, why, you know, you hit the ball, you don't know where it's gonna. And, and I, I think this almost in reverse, kinda like if you, you know, if you, there's a being that you know is outside space and time and knows everything.
[00:08:02] Tim: Like you said, if he, if he, she, it tried to explain something to you, I don't, it'd be, you would, you would have a very good chance of getting a lot of things wrong because their experience and your experience are completely different.
[00:08:15] Ben: It's a, I think, I wanna say Kurt Vonnegut, somebody wrote a book called Slaughterhouse five
[00:08:20] Adam: Yeah, that's fine. Yeah,
[00:08:21] Tim: That's funny. Yeah.
[00:08:21] Ben: Vo and I listened to it as a book on tape narrated by Ethan Hawk. It was a very good
[00:08:25] Tim: tape. Wow. That's,
[00:08:26] Carol: on tape. Oh,
[00:08:27] Ben: Well, CD maybe at the time, maybe tape, I'm
[00:08:30] Adam: would've been a lot of tapes.
[00:08:31] Ben: but I think in that book there is a alien species, I wanna say.
[00:08:35] Ben: They're like, they're the algar or something, and they experience all time at the same time. So it's like they're at the same time, they're always being born and dying and they just talk about like the state of your consciousness. I, I dunno, I, I can't explain it anymore 'cause it's been years since I listened to it, but I remember it being very interesting.
[00:08:55] Adam: Carol, get your reference, your, your pop culture reference to some alien being that, experiences all time at the same time. Ready? 'cause there was a Rick and Morty episode too, so I think it's slightly different, but anyway,
[00:09:08] Carol: well there's actually one on tree blood too, so
[00:09:10] Adam: you go. Wait, wait. I, I watched Drew Blood and I don't remember that, but
[00:09:14] Ben: Is Vampires True
[00:09:15] Adam: I might have been, I might have been distracted.
[00:09:17] Carol: Yeah, the fairy like overlord of the other world. Sooky. Sooky, yeah. Mm-hmm. Anyways,
[00:09:26] Adam: I was too busy watching Alexander Skarsgard.
[00:09:29] Carol: I don't know who that
[00:09:30] Adam: he is the the blonde vampire
[00:09:32] Carol: Eric.
[00:09:34] Adam: Yeah. Eric,
[00:09:35] Carol: You see I can get ya some vampire like pop culture. That's about it.
[00:09:40] Adam: I'm just impressed that we all had one.
[00:09:43] Tim: Let's go next.
[00:09:44] Carol: Well,
[00:09:44] Ben: Yo, can I, can I make another quick, Neil deGrasse Tyson reference though, just since we're right here.
[00:09:48] Adam: No.
[00:09:49] Ben: It seems like, it seems like it's, this is just fascinating, you know, I know I talk a lot about what words mean and they were just talking on Star Talk radio about, that. That scientists don't use the term law anymore.
[00:10:00] Ben: like Newton's laws of gravity because, you know, they still use it for him and for things that have been considered laws because of the momentum of the phrase, they just can't spate and switch. Yeah. But, they talk about things as being theories, but it's so fast. So they talk about things as being theories now, not laws, because there are contexts in which the thing holds true, but they're always open to the idea that outside of that context, it will no longer hold true.
[00:10:26] Ben: And they talk about quantum physics, like regular
[00:10:29] Tim: level
[00:10:29] Ben: Yeah.
[00:10:30] Tim: and physics doesn't work.
[00:10:31] Adam: Well, that's why it's the theory of general relativity and not the law, like it doesn't agree with quantum physics and
[00:10:37] Ben: But it's just, it's one of those things where, as a layman, I have a, a notion in my mind as to what a theory is. You know, like I have a theory that if I don't go to the store when I'm asked, my wife will be angry. that might be true. It might not be true, but scientists like theory is a very, very fundamentally different concept.
[00:10:57] Ben: But to talk to a scientist and hear someone say, oh, it's a theory of this, or a theory of that, if you are not a scientist, you be, you could very easily think, oh, well, they don't feel very strongly about that. Or there's probably a lot of cases where it isn't true or it hasn't been proven yet. But that's not at all what they mean when they say theory.
[00:11:13] Ben: And it just, it's another one of these times where we see how important words are and understanding the intent behind people's
[00:11:19] Tim: know, I tell a person who's says that you don't believe in, okay, go test e theory of gravity off a cliff.
[00:11:25] Adam: yeah.
[00:11:26] Tim: Let's, let's, let's see, let's put your money where your mouth is.
[00:11:30] Adam: Yeah. push back a little bit. You know, I'm sure that not every time that they use the word theory are they, as certain about it as they are of gravity, but,
[00:11:38] Ben: Well, they do. Did they? Did they, on the show, they did draw a distinction between hypothesis and theory. You can have a hypothesis for how something works that you can test and you test to create theories
[00:11:49] Adam: Interesting.
[00:11:50] Ben: based on the evidence anyway, but it's just one of these things, again, it's one person will say something and I spend a lot of time in the Ben needs a minute channel being like, what the heck did that mean?
[00:11:59] Ben: And, you know, ringing my hands. So I'm just, I'm my, my, my theory radar is always, is always going and trying to understand what people mean.
[00:12:07] Tim: You go, Carol.
[00:12:09] Carol's Build Optimization Win
[00:12:09] Carol: Oh yeah, I'll go. So, last week I mentioned you guys that I was totally gonna tackle my build and I was going to save a whole bunch of time. I would love to report that I shaved off 24 seconds and I'm very proud of that
[00:12:22] Ben: Oh, yes.
[00:12:24] Carol: because in the meantime, I proved AI that I am still the super, like overlord of everything we do. So I, I basically plugged in some of the problems and was like, Hey, codex and this chat GT five model, I was like, go help me solve this issue and let's talk about what we're gonna do here. And all of the solutions, almost everyone had these massive improvements. You know, we're talking like, this process is a seven minute build and it's going, we will say four to five minutes on this if we do it that way, and we will reduce another two minutes if we do it this way.
[00:13:00] Carol: To then I challenge a whole bunch and went, okay, let's implement the one change I know, which is that our cache isn't being right correctly. So we weren't caching packages properly, we were caching based off of the NPN, the package chase on, solution. But when you use NuGet, that's not how you store your packages.
[00:13:18] Carol: So we have packages in a different way. So I just fixed that and sure enough, first build, there's no cash hit. Second build, there is cash hit. So I'm like, all right, cool. We have cash now. Woo-hoo. that's saved me. It saves me six seconds per step and there's only four. So that's how we save 24 seconds.
[00:13:34] Carol: Then I went in and implemented all the other changes one by one and incrementally tested them and each run in like the, the process time, like the GitHub action for the gated check-in went from oh, it's four minutes, five minutes now to nine minutes. Oh, all of the builds failed. Oh, actually everything is timing out now.
[00:13:55] Carol: So I went back and challenged AI and was like, yo, like why did you think this was actually going to work? And then I had it write a summary for me to provide the leadership showing why it was wrong and why I'm still accurate.
[00:14:09] Adam: It's usually punished ai.
[00:14:11] Tim: Yeah, go stand in the
[00:14:12] Adam: you've done.
[00:14:14] Carol: I was like, show me how you got it wrong and I need to show my leadership that I'm still needed.
[00:14:19] Adam: That's
[00:14:20] Carol: yeah, I was happy about that.
[00:14:22] Adam: And I mean, timely thing. I saw an email from GitHub today that they're changing their pricing around GitHub actions starting in March of next year.
[00:14:29] Tim: Lemme guess it's going up.
[00:14:31] Adam: well, yes and no. So, actually I believe, you know, they're trying to frame it extremely positively. and to some extent I think it is gonna end up being positive for the average person.
[00:14:42] Adam: they're actually reducing the cost of runners by 2 cents or something per minute. whatever for, for, you know, once you're up there and you start, have to start paying for it. I think what they kind of try to sweep under the rug though is that, the control plane, not the runner itself, but like the, the view where you can sit there and watch what's happening and control it.
[00:15:05] Adam: And even if you're using self-hosted runners or you're using a third party service to, to do the execution of your GitHub actions, you have to pay for the control plane itself. which is up until now been free. So like, if you're using self-hosted runners and you're, as far as GitHub is concerned, your actions are free.
[00:15:23] Adam: and starting March of next year, they won't be. Although, you know, it, the press release was not very forthcoming about it. But I do think that, there will still be like a free number of minutes included in your team plan or whatever. As far as I could tell so far, but they're basically, the way that they frame it is like
[00:15:43] Adam: the vast majority of people are actually gonna see their bill go down and it's like the 1% of people are using the 80% of resources type situation. So the, the other 99% of people are gonna see their cost go down 'cause they're lowering costs for average Joe type runs. But then these people that are running huge, self-hosted builds or using services and that sort of thing, they might see their cost go up marginally.
[00:16:07] Adam: So
[00:16:09] Carol: Just in time to go make more changes.
[00:16:11] Adam: Yep. Make 'em run faster so that you can stay within your free allowance.
[00:16:15] Carol: Yeah.
[00:16:16] Ben: I know very little about GitHub actions, which is to say I know nothing about GitHub actions.
[00:16:21] Adam: that qualifies as very little.
[00:16:22] Tim: They're a thing, you
[00:16:23] Ben: but I've heard on, on a number of different podcasts lately, people kind of hating on GitHub actions, mostly from a, the people who have stewarded that project have all left GitHub
[00:16:35] Adam: Hmm.
[00:16:35] Ben: it seems to be like, it's sort of a.
[00:16:38] Ben: Kind of flapping in the wind a little bit. I don't know if I mean, but this sounds like they're making forward progress on it, so that's nice to hear.
[00:16:45] Adam: Yeah, I, when I was investigating the pricing stuff, I stopped by their blog, like just the regular GitHub blog, and I searched for GitHub action stuff. And I did find a recent post, I think it was like December 9th or something, where they laid out a whole bunch of, improvements that are coming. I didn't actually read it in depth, I just kind of scanned the, the headings.
[00:17:02] Adam: and I passed it off to my infrastructure guy, like, here, you're probably gonna wanna read this. but it does sound like they're making a whole bunch of like configuration improvements and, all kinds of interesting features. So I don't think it's completely abandoned, but, and maybe it's changed hands. Yeah, go for it.
[00:17:18] Cory Doctorow on AI and Reverse Centaurs
[00:17:18] Tim: So I, someone in our channel, I don't remember who it was, posted, a link to, Corey Dora's speech that he gave. It was a graduation speech, I think.yeah, university of Washington's. It was a graduation, it was at University of Washington's Neuroscience and AI Society. And he talked about, I think the title of this lecture was The Reverse Centara Guide to Criticizing ai.
[00:17:42] Adam: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:44] Tim: Did he, did anybody else read this?
[00:17:45] Ben: No, that just sounds funny.
[00:17:47] Tim: So, yeah. It, it was super, super interesting. I'll, I'll post a link so that people can see it, but, first off, so like a Centar, he says, In auto, in automation theory, a centar is a person who's assisted by a machine. So your human head being carried around on a tireless robot body.
[00:18:03] Tim: So like driving a a a driving a car makes you a centar, right? You can't, a human couldn't run as fast as a car,
[00:18:09] Adam: Or being a forklift driver. Yeah.
[00:18:11] Tim: yeah. You have a machine that assists you to do things you can't do. So that, that's a positive and usually auto complete, right? So you auto complete makes you type faster.
[00:18:20] Tim: You don't have to put all the words in the reverse. Centar is where you have a machine head on a human body, which is a bad thing for the human. gives an example, and I don't think it's a real example, but it talks about an Amazon delivery driver who sits in a cabin with AI cameras and monitors, his eyes and takes off points if they, you know, aren't looking at the road properly or if they start singing, it monitors its mouth.
[00:18:43] Tim: So the deduct points. So 'cause a, you know, Amazon doesn't want you singing while you're working. The van. And the only reason you have the human, the whole loop is because as of right now, the van can't drive itself. It can't pick up the parcel and put it on the porch. So the driver is actually a peripheral of the van.
[00:19:01] Ben: Oh
[00:19:01] Tim: Right? So that's the reverse, re reverse, centar. and just talking about how that, that, that's really what big companies want to do. They wanna make people reverse s particularly extremely expensive programmers. They wanna replace all those with these, these systems that can do their work for them.
[00:19:20] Tim: And that's really what they're selling to Wall Street. And then it has a very good section there. What amazes me about Corey, he like really understands the problem from soup to nuts, right? He, he talks about the stock market, he talks about how, 'cause I've always wondered recently why so many of these companies are pivoting.
[00:19:41] Tim: To become a AI company. It doesn't matter what they do, they can make socks, I don't care. They're like, oh, we're not a sock company, we're an AI company. Well, why would you wanna do that? Reason he explains that they wanna do that is because the price to earning ratios. So if you're a growth company and you know, they like have this huge possible horizon in the future for growing, then you can basically print money.
[00:20:06] Tim: You, you, you, you're gonna grow. Your stock's gonna grow. People assume you're gonna grow. So rather than giving a person a raise, you give 'em stock options.
[00:20:14] Adam: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:14] Tim: So it's a, it's a, it's a, a virtual money printing thing. They don't want to go down to a, a normal company that's just, you know, not growing tremendously.
[00:20:23] Tim: 'cause then you don't get this huge multiplications on your, on your, price to earnings ratio.and that's why all these companies are, are, are switching to ai. 'cause everyone's sold this idea that it's gonna replace everything.Really what struck me, the biggest thing is it talks about the bubble, right?
[00:20:40] Tim: So everyone is concerned, is AI a bubble? Is it not a bubble? If it is, when it's gonna pop and what's gonna happen? And he talked about,so like if Bitcoin, if Bitcoin is a bubble, if crypto's a bubble, which it possibly is, what do you have left over when that pops? Nothing. You just got these ledgers that are sitting out there. But if, if
[00:21:03] Adam: have your bored ape, NFTs.
[00:21:05] Tim: Yeah. Had a bunch of dumb NFTs, right? but if you are an AI company, now all of a sudden you have, he's oh, you have all these huge GPUs and now people can buy super cheap. And you have all these really cool tools that you can now use. If the AI bubble pops, yeah, there's gonna be trillions of dollars worth of money that disappears out of the, out of the system and people are gonna lose.
[00:21:28] Tim: But there'll be some cool stuff left over. so yeah, it was just an interesting look. I, I just,
[00:21:33] Adam: Yeah. If you want more of the same, actually, not more of the same, same. But continue building on this whole
[00:21:39] Tim: Yeah.
[00:21:39] Adam: I don't know the theory that he's getting into here. his
[00:21:42] Carol: a theory or is it a hypothesis?
[00:21:45] Tim: It's a
[00:21:45] Adam: Good callback. Good callback. the, so he has a book out, his latest book, it's called Ification, is really good.
[00:21:52] Adam: I'm like 60 ish percent through reading it. And it's really good. He gets into, you know, he talks about, reverse centaurs, he talks about ization, is that one you're familiar with? So that's like,basically his term for the types of labor where like workers are trapped in exploitative conditions.
[00:22:11] Adam: so, and it's based off of like chicken farmers, right? So the, the big chicken processing companies, your Purdue and your Tysons, these companies all basically have the company or have the country broken up into regions. And it's like, this is our region. You stay out of ours, we'll stay outta yours, sort of thing.
[00:22:27] Adam: Anti-competitive type stuff.and so wherever your farm happens to be, there's pretty much only one option for you to,sell your chickens that you raise too. And that company then gets to dictate basically every aspect of your, of your life, right? Like they, you have to buy your baby chicks from us.
[00:22:48] Adam: You can only sell to us. We require these things. You bear all of the risk, right? If the, if the bird flu comes through and kills your flock, we're not gonna buy them from you and you're screwed. But, if it's a really good year or whatever, you know, chicken sales are up. Like we're the ones that get most of the profit.
[00:23:03] Adam: You're paying us the, the predetermined rate sort of thing. and so he calls these like, people in these types of work arrangements ized. So yeah. So then in the book he's like calling people like, so if you were a ized reverse centar, then I'm
[00:23:18] Tim: Yeah, he talks about responsibility in this, the speech that he gave, and it, it, it's one I don't think I actually specifically thought about, but now that he said it, I can't get it outta my head that, it, it's called the accountability sink.
[00:23:32] Adam: hmm.
[00:23:32] Tim: so it gives us examples. So let's say, you know, the AI executives that come to a hospital and they say, Hey, AI can be used to look at, radiology.
[00:23:41] Tim: So you get, you know, you go in and get an x-ray or whatever, and they're looking for tumors and we can use, and, and, you know, certain percentage of tumors are missed by human beings. So we can use AI to catch those. And you're like, cool, that's great. 'cause if all you really care about is, you know, catching tumors, that's a great thing.
[00:23:57] Tim: But hospitals are businesses, they don't really, I mean, they say they care about it. What they really care about is profit. So, and no one's gonna say, well, we're gonna make radiology more expensive, but more accurate. That's a terrible sell to, to a company. So instead they'll say, what you can do is, you can, fire nine out of 10 of your radiologists saving $20 million a year.
[00:24:16] Tim: You give us $10 million and you net $10 million. And the remaining radio job will be to oversee the diagnosis that AI makes it superhuman speed.
[00:24:25] Adam: Right.
[00:24:26] Tim: Right. But if the AI misses a tumor, it's still gonna be the radiologist's fault.
[00:24:32] Adam: Yep.
[00:24:33] Tim: So they become the human. That's a reverse centar, right? They, they, they get, you know, and, and humans are really bad at spotting things.
[00:24:42] Tim: like that's why TSA agents miss guns all the time. They, they, they find your water bottles a hundred percent of the time they find your, 'cause that's what they mostly find is water bottles. So they're like, well, there's a water bottle, get that out. But if a gun or a grenade goes by, they totally miss it.
[00:24:55] Tim: 'cause they're, they're, they're not used to seeing that. Right. And, and there's these red teams of, of agents that come in and do this constantly to TSA and they fail at a huge rate. So, yeah. And I start thinking, okay. About my job. It's like, all right, so if programmers are programming and they're using AI to do most of the work, whose fault's gonna be when it breaks or there's technical debt or the system goes, gonna be my fault, right.
[00:25:18] Adam: Yeah.
[00:25:19] Tim: So, yeah, I don't like that.
[00:25:23] Adam: Why wouldn't you?
[00:25:24] Carol: that.
[00:25:25] Tim: I don't like that.
[00:25:26] Ben: I, I, I have not read, in acidification, but I have listened to a couple of interviews
[00:25:30] Cory Doctorow's Enquackification
[00:25:30] Ben: Corey Docto just seems like a brilliant person. And in all of the context that I've heard him speak, which is granted a, a limited number, he strikes me as someone who is always answering the question that you ask. And he is pulling from some massively deep knowledge base that he just has in his head.
[00:25:48] Ben: And I compare that to hearing other people talk where it feels like the moment they pattern match on the type of question you're asking, it's like they just fall back into the, here's the canned response for this type of question. Or like, if I've heard the same person in several different interviews, it's like I hear the same interview three different times on different, in different contexts.
[00:26:08] Ben: But when I listen to Corey Docto, it really just sounds He knows his stuff and is, and is just having a conversation and it's, it's super refreshing.
[00:26:17] Tim: and I think that's probably, 'cause he's a science fiction writer, right? So he is not necess strictly a researcher. He is a science fiction writer. And so to be write science fiction, you have to make your fiction sound plausible. he has to do a, a, probably a, you know, a researcher just looks for an answer. A science fiction writer is looking for possibilities.
[00:26:35] Adam: His last several books have been nonfiction though. or I guess I don't allow in a row, but like he put out several nonfiction books in the last few years, and, and contributed to others.and I think you're right, Ben. I think, you know, he, so he's been working, if not for then with the EFF since 2000.
[00:26:52] Adam: So he's got 25 years of
[00:26:55] Ben: Foundation, frontier Foundation.
[00:26:57] Adam: Yeah. Electronic Frontier Foundation. so, you know, protecting digital rights, advocating for, you know, workers' rights and that sort of thing.and so he has a lot of experience, to draw on. I'm sure it's one of those things where there's a flywheel, right?
[00:27:10] Adam: Like you, you start doing it and you get a little bit of experience and you just keep building and building and building. And before you know it, you've got 25 years of being on podcasts. And he was just on the Daily Show talking about his most recent book. and it was funny, like I, I watched that interview before I started reading the book.
[00:27:25] Adam: I was already gonna read the book. and then when I started reading the book, it's oh yeah, like the first half of that interview is not verbatim, but you can tell, you know, he has the, in the introduction to the book, like Memorized
[00:27:36] Ben: He just, he just sell. He sells it really well, though, at least.
[00:27:39] Adam: Yeah, it was really good.
[00:27:41] Tim: I did like his final takeaway on that. 'cause I watched that same interview on
[00:27:45] Adam: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:45] Tim: Show and it was like, what do we do? Tech workers need to unionize.
[00:27:50] Adam: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:51] Tim: Dunno how that's gonna happen, but
[00:27:53] Adam: yeah. I dunno.
[00:27:55] Ben: Can I go?
[00:27:56] Tim: Yep.
[00:27:56] Adam: Do it.
[00:27:57] Ben: so it's the holidays and during the holidays, me and the misses always try to watch a couple of holiday specific movies, just to get into the spirit of things. And we were
[00:28:06] Adam: and, mm-hmm.
[00:28:07] Ben: your classics.and so we just, we just the other day watched one called The Holiday, I think, Jack Black and Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet and Jude Law.
[00:28:17] Ben: It's, I think it's probably from the early two thousands
[00:28:20] Carol: yeah.
[00:28:21] Ben: and.
[00:28:21] Tim: they don't make rom-coms anymore.
[00:28:23] Ben: Yeah, exactly. it's a fun movie. It's goofy, it's not like amazing, but I enjoyed it. But there's a, a scene where they're giving this old guy kind of a lifetime achievement award, and he was the Hollywood movie writer. And, he gives a little speech.
[00:28:38] Ben: You don't hear the whole speech, I don't think. But he talks about how when he moved to Hollywood 70 odd years ago and started working on one of the sets, like he just immediately fell in love with Hollywood and the movie making experience and just everything about it. And it made me very sad and nostalgic.
[00:28:55] Ben: And I, you know, we talk about the Golden Age of television as a more recent example with things like Breaking Bad and Mad Men and sort of these, like when the TV drama really became this, like, oh, you could actually have movie quality TV shows and people were just falling in love with television and how great it was.
[00:29:16] Ben: And I just wonder. It just, it, it strikes me as so sad and strange that I feel like people have forgotten how to fall in love with mediums. and, and I, I mean, maybe people do fall in love with TikTok and Instagram. you know, I don't experience those maybe the way other people do, but I just wonder how much of the current pop culture experience isn't about falling in love with a shared experience, but it's really just like killing time.
[00:29:47] Tim: I I, I think you almost hit on it when you used the word falling in love. 'cause falling in love is a commitment. Right? So I, I think with people that are just on TikTok and those, those, you know, reels and very short form media, it's just like kind of hooking up, right? It's not very, it's exciting for a minute and then it's not satisfying.
[00:30:06] Tim: That's why you constantly, that's why they're constantly on it. It's like they're just doom scrolling all day long on, on, that's like.
[00:30:12] Ben: I was gonna say with my boys though, it was kind of different. So they watched more YouTube, they were like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna watch these short videos. But where we differed were they went back to music. So they fell in love with music more than I think my generation has. Where we did the YouTube, we did some like mix of YouTube and like video, like movies, right?
[00:30:36] Falling in Love with Music
[00:30:36] Carol: But not so much music. And now my sons, they would much rather listen to an album for a couple hours than watch a movie for a couple hours.
[00:30:46] Tim: I that makes me feel good. 'cause I just don't, this generation, you know, the young, they, they don't know the pleasure of, of crafting your own mix tape to give to someone.
[00:30:56] Ben: Yo
[00:30:56] Tim: was like an art form. Like, if, if you could make a really good mix tape, I mean you were your golden.
[00:31:04] Ben: but okay, so, so one other follow on thought that I was having too was talking about things like the golden age of movies and the golden age of television, and what saddens me even more. Is that it's not like there was a technological change that suddenly the golden age of television's no longer relevant like we just did, that we could choose to continue to build or to, to make beautiful movies and beautiful TV shows.
[00:31:29] Ben: But like as a society, we've just decided that's not worth our time anymore.
[00:31:34] Adam: I disagree.
[00:31:35] Ben: You okay?
[00:31:35] Tim: Or talent just went to a different place.
[00:31:38] Adam: I disagree with that as well. I think that what really happened, yeah, that's right. I've been watching, you know, the, the, it's all, it is a short form video thing that comes up for me all the time. The subway takes the guy, like they're, they're writing the subway and the guy goes, okay, so what's your take?
[00:31:51] Adam: Right? And then somebody says something maybe contrary, oh, you gotta
[00:31:54] Tim: they're, they're like holding the subway card with
[00:31:56] Adam: yeah, yeah. They're, they're like metro card or whatever, and then microphones pinned to the back of it. Um,I think that funding is the thing that moved. it's less, what's the word? Less profitable to make rom-coms.
[00:32:08] Adam: It's less profitable to make, you know, those big
[00:32:11] Ben: No. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. But it's but like we made that problem, that wasn't like an act, you know? We, we, I feel like as a society, we were just like, we just don't wanna pay for this anymore.
[00:32:23] Adam: I blame everything on the tech bros and the, and the CEOs, the overpaid CEOs. I think honestly, if you look at it hard enough, most of the problem, most of the big problems with society right now can be traced back to overpaid CEOs and tech bros.
[00:32:38] Tim: Well, and also when, so when you went from non-physical media, which you could do a nice markup on, right?
[00:32:43] Adam: Yeah.
[00:32:44] Tim: I mean,
[00:32:45] Adam: Charging $15 for an audio book that, yeah.
[00:32:48] Tim: yeah. Matt Damon, you know, did an interview. I some reason pops up on my feed all the time. He. He's explained it to me many times and I'm very impressed every time. But, but he, he's like, you can't make those movies today.
[00:32:59] Tim: These, these kind of low budget kind of, you know, thoughtful or corny love movie. He's you know, you could maybe not make up your, your full cost at the box office, but there was a very long tail on the DVD sales or the, or the VCR sales back in the day, or the laser disc sales if you're as old as me.
[00:33:18] Tim: he says, so you don't get that anymore. You get streaming. And streaming Is they, they're very stingy. They don't pay out
[00:33:23] Adam: Yeah.
[00:33:23] Tim: compared to that. He's so you can't really do those anymore?
[00:33:27] Adam: And that's the, that's not that they couldn't pay out. It's that Reid, what's his name? The, the owner of Netflix. He needs a, a third helicopter.
[00:33:35] Tim: yep, yep.
[00:33:38] Carol: Did you guys hear the, I think it was Ezra Klein. Don't quote me on that. Did you hear the, the episode where he talks about. Out how digital media like Netflix and the streaming services stopped Piring, like video piring, but then they also brought it right back by dividing and then hiking prices.
[00:33:57] Adam: Yes.
[00:33:58] Carol: So now we're back to where we were with things being pirated.
[00:34:01] Carol: Yeah. Yep.
[00:34:03] Tim: yep.
[00:34:03] Adam: I mean, no, I don't know anything about that at all,
[00:34:06] Tim: I've never, what, what is piracy? How do you do that?
[00:34:09] Carol: I Are you captain,
[00:34:11] Cron Jobs for Local Development
[00:34:11] Adam: So do any of you guys have, kron tasks that you run? Like, do you run Kron on your local machine or if you're on Windows, whatever the Windows equivalent of. That is like scheduled tasks
[00:34:21] Ben: I use
[00:34:21] Carol: I don't
[00:34:22] Ben: scheduled
[00:34:23] Adam: on your, on your, like on your machine that you use for development,
[00:34:27] Carol: Oh, heck no. Heck no. But if I,
[00:34:29] Adam: yeah.
[00:34:30] Carol: if, if I'm running Aron task locally, it's because I'm running our job scheduler locally to find a problem with it, and then I have to relearn courts all over again.
[00:34:40] Adam: So, we used like a, we, we use Docker compose to spin up our local development environment, right? and we, for a bunch of reasons, including compliance. we have our databases live in AWS early on we had local database copies and we would try to sanitize it and pull it down, for local development, which was nice 'cause you could work offline.
[00:35:00] Adam: But then it just became, a, liability for compliance. We switched to you. You can have all the code and everything local, but you have to use a database connection over the VPN even for local development, which was annoying at first, but I'm used to it now. It's not a big deal. But I say all that because, you know, we have you know, whatever, 10 containers that are spun up locally and talking to each other as you're working, and then you forget that they're all running at the end of the day and you walk away from your computer and then you know, your VPN connection time's out and all of a sudden, stuff starts like breaking and throwing errors and filling up your error log, which is not, you know, like behind the VPN.
[00:35:41] Adam: And so you're like, just constantly, like every minute or five minutes for 12 hours sending, error logs to the, the, the team shared error log. and, and I like nobody, this happened to me a couple of nights ago and nobody was able to get my attention on it. Like they had sent me a message on discord.
[00:36:00] Adam: Which is what our team chat uses. But I, you know, this was at like 10 something o'clock at night and I was already asleep by the time anybody had sent me that message. Otherwise I might've seen it. and then, so I woke up the next morning and there's just thousands upon thousands of these errors. I'm like, sorry.
[00:36:13] Adam: And this happens from time to time. And I just finally realized today, like I can just schedule a chron task on my local machine that just, you know, like an hour after I should be done for the day. Just shut everything down, shut the, all my, my Docker environment down. So today, I, I still need to check on it, but today at six o'clock it should have turned itself off and I need to go make sure that it did.
[00:36:32] Adam: But I'm excited about that.
[00:36:34] Carol: So what we will be hearing in a few weeks is a failure when there was an emergency and he's like working past six and everything just shuts down on his local and now he's pissed off because in the middle it just stopped.
[00:36:46] Ben: That's funny.
[00:36:47] Adam: takes literally a couple of seconds to spin it all back up, so I'm not,
[00:36:51] Ben: I thought you were gonna say that he accidentally ran Theron job against production or something and
[00:36:55] Carol: Yeah. Six feet of the day prods down.
[00:36:57] Ben: oh no, the VPN was connected.
[00:37:00] Adam: don't use, fortunately we don't use Dr. Compose for our production environment. This is just local dev,
[00:37:05] Ben: Gotcha, gotcha.
[00:37:06] Adam: like CD into this directory and make down. So
[00:37:09] Ben: This is kind of along these lines. I'm, there's always a tension to me between doing stuff that is in app versus an external piece of technology that does the same thing and like could possibly do it in a cleaner way, I tend to wanna just try to build as many things into the app layer as possible.
[00:37:30] Ben: If for no other reason that it, it, it keeps it in source control more easily. Like, is your Kron job something that's in source control or is it, is it just something you have running on your own machine kind of a thing?
[00:37:42] Adam: it's just, I have, it's something I have. I mean, literally we have, in the root of our main mono repo repo, we have a make file. That we use to control the local development environment, right? When I sign in for the day, one of the first things I do is make up and it spins up my local development environment.
[00:37:57] Adam: make sure I'm connected to the VPN first make up, and I'm ready to go. and so all it has to do the run task is literally like CD into this folder and make down, and that's it.
[00:38:08] Ben: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
[00:38:09] Adam: So it's, it's pretty low risk and, and it no new code beyond that one line in Theron tab, so
[00:38:15] Ben: and the make is just turning around and calling a docker compose.
[00:38:19] Adam: Yep. It's like Docker composed down basically. I think. I think it's just that, and it has to be in that folder. So
[00:38:25] Ben: Gotcha.
[00:38:26] Tim: the moment I wake up, before I put on my makeup, I
[00:38:33] Carol: And then you,
[00:38:34] Tim: for you.
[00:38:36] Carol: It's probably copy written. We probably can't play it.
[00:38:41] Adam: Yeah. It, Tim was, Tim was so close to the original there that they're gonna think that that was
[00:38:44] Tim: Uh, Hey, we're gonna go, go get flagged. We're gonna get it flagged. That was sort of my best Friend's wedding. That was like, you do, you know, do you know that movie Carol?
[00:38:53] Carol: No. maybe. Is that what Julia Roberts.
[00:38:56] Ben: Roberts.
[00:38:57] Tim: Roberts? Yeah. My best friend's wedding and, Rupert Everett, who is like the it guy from two years
[00:39:03] Ben: Yeah, and then he just disappeared.
[00:39:04] Tim: he just totally disappeared.
[00:39:05] Tim: But yeah, he, he's telling, you know, he's showing up as he's gay, but he's showing up as her, her plus one to the wedding for her ex-boyfriend. And he's telling them this story and then he sings that song and then the whole family starts singing and they're in a restaurant. I just, that's, I love that scene. It's a great movie. We do talk a lot about movies in the after show movies and books by the galore.
[00:39:29] Carol: What's the movie where she's like a prostitute and gets hired? That's what I'm thinking of.
[00:39:34] Tim: Pretty woman. Richard Gere. Yeah.
[00:39:36] Carol: Yeah.
[00:39:36] Adam: mistake. Huge.
[00:39:38] Tim: Huge. Yep. Yep. I peed my pants. What'd she say? She loves the Pirates of Penance.
[00:39:50] Adam: Tim, why don't you go again, because I wanna talk about the, the next thing on your list.
[00:39:53] Adam: Yeah. So what list? so Brandon, I just got a new, I was waiting for this. I, I used my credit on Audible a month ago to get this and it came out and I've listened to the whole thing. is it good?
[00:40:04] Tim: well,
[00:40:05] Adam: tell you what it is first,
[00:40:06] Tim: it's, yeah, lemme say, so it's called Tailored Realities. So it's not a, a single story, it's a collection.
[00:40:12] Tim: So it's an anthology of some of his, and I've read probably 80% of these already that
[00:40:18] Adam: Okay.
[00:40:19] Tim: so I didn't realize that. But it doesn't matter. I re-listen to 'em. There's new, new narrators, and none of them are cosme stories, so if you don't know, he has this universe called the Cosme, which is huge, spanning multiple, multiple books.
[00:40:32] Tim: But these are
[00:40:32] Carol: Did you, did you say who he was?
[00:40:34] Adam: The author Brandon Sanderson.
[00:40:36] Tim: He
[00:40:37] Adam: say it. Yeah.
[00:40:37] Carol: Okay.
[00:40:38] Tim: Sorry. but yeah, it's, it's, it's really good 'cause a lot of 'em are more science fictiony. He, he does a lot of fantasy stuff and these are some very, there's some time travel ones in there. That was one of the new ones. so definitely if you, if you look at it and say, oh, I've probably read most of these stories.
[00:40:56] Tim: What I also find interesting is after each story, he has like a, an author's note
[00:41:01] Adam: Oh, nice.
[00:41:02] Tim: kind of explaining his ideas when he is coming up with these, and it's like 25. So some of these stories are actually extremely old that he's never published before. So 25 years of his writing, pretty much like from high school, college to today.
[00:41:17] Tim: and really good. He's just such a good writer and I, I'm amazed by his process. He, he, he almost approaches writing like. A project manager, which it sounds like a knock because, but he like, you know, he'll tell you how far along he is. He knows exactly what his, his burndown rate is,
[00:41:35] Adam: That's funny.
[00:41:37] Tim: you know, how, how long it's gonna take to get done.
[00:41:39] Tim: And the estimates, you know, how much, you know, time it goes through, editing, all that. But yeah, some, some really good stories.
[00:41:44] Adam: I mean this in a, in a loving way. I think that he's probably on the spectrum and like writing is his special
[00:41:51] Tim: Oh, he admits that. I don't know about being on the spectrum, but he, he says he has a problem. He has a writing addic, he has a writing addiction.
[00:41:58] Adam: yeah,
[00:41:58] Tim: He has to, has to, he cannot not write.
[00:42:01] Adam: yeah.
[00:42:02] Tim: hopefully his life is fulfilled. But I've enjoying the fruits of his labor.
[00:42:06] Adam: yeah, no, I, I mean, I was excited when you put this on the list. I just bought that book today. I have, I've had a couple of credits kicking around that I was like, oh, I don't know what I wanna use these for. and so that was one of the things I got. I bought four books today. so Tailored Realities by Brandon Sanderson, the newest book from John Scalzi, the Shattering Piece.
[00:42:24] Adam: It's a, another book, another book in the Old Man's War series. wakers by Orson Scott Card. yeah, I, I think that's a somewhat older book. but I saw it, I wasn't aware of it, but I saw that, I think that more recently it was published as a, there's a, a sequel that was more recently published.
[00:42:43] Adam: And I was like, okay, well, the sequel caught my eye, and it's read by Stephen Rodnick, who's the guy, who's a super low, like Malory. yeah. In Enders Game and, in the, the for war series of books, the First for War and the Second for War. and honestly, I, I almost, part of me was like, I want to, boycott anything else for Moron Scott Card, just because I want him to finish the, for war series.
[00:43:08] Adam: Like I've read there, it's two series of three books each and of the six books he's published, five of them. And I'm like, and it's been years. I'm like, come on. And he's published so much other stuff since then. come on, just finish this series, write one more book. I wanna find out how this story ends.
[00:43:24] Adam: And they're all read by, Steven Rodnick, and he's just like, if you haven't heard him, he's a, a, a really good narrator, super low voice, and, uh, really good.
[00:43:34] Tim: So sometimes like, so I listen to audiobooks when I sleep,
[00:43:38] Adam: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:38] Tim: just 'cause it, the voice kind of stops me from having conversations in my head that wake
[00:43:43] Adam: Yeah.
[00:43:44] Tim: and so a lot of times I like right before I go to bed, I'm like, all right, I'm about to fall asleep. I'm gonna stop listening to whatever book I was listening to. Who do I want to talk to? Me? And so, and sometimes I don't even care about the story. I just want Steven Ornick to, to lull me to sleep with his like very smooth, deep voice. It it,
[00:44:02] Adam: Yep. And then I think I said I bought four. the last one that I bought today was, is called Slow Gods by Claire North. I don't know that much about it, but, I, I listened to the, preview on Audible and I was like, okay, I'll, I'll give that a shot.
[00:44:13] Tim: It's like slow gen.
[00:44:16] Adam: no, it's, it's kind, it's another science fiction, like Von Neuman type, uh, uh, no, I don't think it's Von Neuman, but it's, like a, a guy that can die and come back to life.
[00:44:25] Adam: and it's like kind of a mystery sort of thing. so that's about all I know about it so far. But it, I listened to the. That's the thing I like about the Audible. You can listen to the first five minutes and then you'll at least know, okay, I do or don't like this narrator. And so the story. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:44:42] Adam: So took a chance.now the, the problem is I'm, I probably have enough time to read maybe two books before the end of the year. I'm in the middle, like after I finish in ification. I have maybe enough time to read two more books and I just bought four. So which two do I prioritize?
[00:44:58] Tim: Well, if you want something, like you could stop and start Tailored realities is nice. 'cause you're like, you can like, because sometimes I get stuck into a book and I'm like, and I'm doing other stuff like around the house and I like, I really don't want to stop this right now. I'm really, really, really into it.
[00:45:11] Tim: But it's you know, some of the stories are like, you know, two hours long, three hours long, so you can get a couple hours and then stop and go do something else.
[00:45:20] Adam: Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, I'm interested. I'm, I'm really looking forward to that Sanderson book 'cause I, I like the way that he writes. I really like the Miss Born series, but I really am kind of loathed to dive into such a large and complicated series. Right.
[00:45:37] Tim: You mean the co the
[00:45:38] Adam: the Cosier stuff. Yeah. So,
[00:45:40] Tim: Yeah. I get it.
[00:45:42] Tim: If it were anybody else, I wouldn't trust him. But Brandon's gonna finish that
[00:45:45] Adam: Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, he finished his other people series
[00:45:48] Tim: Yeah, exactly.
[00:45:50] Adam: you know, I say that I'm not, I'm not into those giant series, but I'm in the middle of the Dungeon Carl Carl series. I'm in the middle of the He Who fights with Monster series. Yeah. So,
[00:45:59] Ben: let, let, lemme ask Tim a question here, because this tailored realities you're saying includes writings that goes back decades. It sounded like,
[00:46:07] Adam: mm.
[00:46:08] Do Books Age Well?
[00:46:08] Ben: uh, I don't know if anyone else has had this experience where you have the memory of a movie that you loved as, as like a young person and then you go to show it to someone and the whole time you're thinking to yourself, oh my God, this movie is terrible.
[00:46:20] Adam: Yeah.
[00:46:21] Carol: It's not as good as I remember.
[00:46:23] Ben: and I, and I wonder if, that is true for other mediums. Like when you read stories or books that you read 20 years ago, do they hold up or, or is there, is there something special about writing that makes it more durable or does it feel like it's of a time the way movies are.
[00:46:40] Adam: I was in a book club when I worked at the University of Pennsylvania, and this was not something we usually did, but I was, I volunteered. I was like, this is, this is a book that I really enjoyed. I think you guys would really like it. I will. And, and everybody's like, well, but you don't have to read it then.
[00:46:53] Adam: And I was like, well, I'll read it again just to keep it fresh. Right. And I read it again, and as I'm reading it, I'm like, oh my God, these guys are gonna be so mad at me. it was, I, I forget what it's called, but it was written by this woman who's a brain surgeon. And I, I remember being enthralled with it, you know, I guess I was just a little younger, a little more naive, and it was a little more mind blowing.
[00:47:14] Adam: 'cause, you know, I was, growing into an adult and, and now on the second reading, I'm more of an adult and it just didn't hit the same way. it didn't feel as mind blowing and I was like, oh, I'm so embarrassed, but
[00:47:27] Tim: I mean, he asked me that question, so I'll answer too if you, if, if you don't, if you don't mind. Adam
[00:47:32] Adam: fine.
[00:47:34] Tim: So you're absolutely right about movies. 'cause like when I first got married, like my wife, you know, she's from Sweden and there's a whole bunch of American movies she had never seen and I'm like, oh, you never saw this.
[00:47:45] Tim: And you know, we're chatting, chatting about stuff. And I show her this movie that was like when, when I was a kid and I'm almost 10 years older than her. So there's an age gap there as well. And then we watch it and she looks at me and goes. This is crap. This is the dumbest, most sexist movie I've ever seen.
[00:48:03] Tim: This is terrible. Like she never saw the Bad News bearer series. And I, I'm watching this and going, you're right. This is terrible.
[00:48:10] Adam: hold up. Yeah.
[00:48:11] Tim: does not hold up. But, but, but Books, books is a lot more personal experience, right? So I, I, I agree with Adam. So they're not bad books. They just don't age well. So I remember being a teen, I think, and I think a lot of it is like the age, like if you're in the formative years and you're trans, you know, moving from young man, young boy to to young man, it's like everything is new.
[00:48:34] Tim: Everything's exciting and novel. And I read all the Isaac Isaac OV Foundation series, which is a nice TV show, but if you actually read the Foundation series books, they're terribly boring. Oh my God. They're, they're terribly boring. It's a whole lot of just conversations.
[00:48:52] Adam: yeah,
[00:48:53] Tim: They changed characters, like every five chapters.
[00:48:56] Tim: And you're, because he wrote it in the serialize, he wrote it for a magazine, so it's like a monthly magazine. It's it, it blew my mind at 13
[00:49:05] Adam: yeah,
[00:49:05] Tim: and then I reread it, I think seven years ago. I'm like, how in the world did I even get through this crap?
[00:49:11] Ben: so interesting.
[00:49:11] Tim: not crap. It's not bad. It's just, it's dull.
[00:49:14] Tim: It's really, really dull.
[00:49:16] Adam: It was, you know, mind blowing for its time. Right. You know, he basically invented science fiction and, and so yeah.
[00:49:24] Tim: Yeah. It's so, I read it and I'm like, yeah, this isn't good. So I, I think there is a little bit to that with, with that.
[00:49:30] Ben: This is how I,when I was a kid, we read some of the classic Greek literature. I, I want, I hope it's Greek. I'm probably gonna make a fool of myself, but like the Iliad and the Odyssey. But like, we read very dumbed down versions of it, I'm sure.
[00:49:47] Adam: It was a board book.
[00:49:49] Ben: I said, what
[00:49:51] Adam: I said it was a board book. Ben probably doesn't know 'cause he doesn't have kids, but
[00:49:54] Ben: like one of those hard, hard
[00:49:56] Adam: yeah, it's got like six pages and they're made out of cardboard.
[00:49:59] Ben: It's got some scratch and sniff kind of, uh, illustrations.
[00:50:02] Tim: so when, so when they vomit on it, you just wipe it off.
[00:50:05] Adam: Yeah.
[00:50:06] Ben: And I, I remember being just so fascinated with the, the imagery in the story. And I don't know, a couple years ago I was like, oh, it'd be fun to listen to one of these on Audible. And I went and I listened to the preview and you know, granted the preview's only four and a half minutes long or something, but I was like, oh, this sounds just really boring. I'm like, this is not how I remember it being described when I was a kid.
[00:50:32] Tim: It's a reason they make you read it in school. 'cause you're not gonna do it as an adult.
[00:50:37] Adam: seriously, nobody volunteers to read Chaucer.
[00:50:39] Tim: No, li my daughter Lily, she, she loves getting, so they have like a, like a friends of the library book sale here, like every, I think once a year or
[00:50:48] Carol: amazing.
[00:50:49] Tim: It is amazing. So it's this huge, like the Georgia fairgrounds where they have the huge national fairgrounds here and they have this huge building and it's like they have all these books from libraries from all around and they sell them 'cause they're getting rid of them anyway.
[00:51:02] Tim: And you can buy these books. She bought, she bought some books. Sometimes she just buys a book 'cause it's really old looking. 'cause she thinks, it's almost for her, it's like time travel. She can just, and she's reading this short story anthology about, about, extraordinary women. And you could, and it's really old.
[00:51:20] Ben: It's printed at 1895 and she's reading it and I'm like, so how is it? She goes, it's okay. It's sexist. She says, but, but not in a today bad way. Just really kind of sexist of its time, right? oh, look at these amazing, and women, they can actually go outta the house and do stuff. You know? It's likeThat's, that reminds me of this, this woman I get on my Facebook reels. She's a, I think she's a designer and she's always pointing out terrible designs.
[00:51:50] Tim: I've seen her.
[00:51:52] Ben: And she just had this one little,kind of side quest on, like looking at old scientific articles over the last, 200 years about women.
[00:52:01] Ben: And it's all like, women shouldn't do this because their uterus will fall out.
[00:52:05] Carol: Yes.
[00:52:07] Ben: Women shouldn't go to school because thinking draws blood away from the uterus.
[00:52:12] Tim: Because the only thing they're good for is making bbs.
[00:52:15] Ben: Yeah. She's pretty funny. All right.
[00:52:17] Adam: Carol, you got anything else you wanna talk about?
[00:52:19] Carol's Security Award
[00:52:19] Carol: Oh, I got one more I can throw in. I think I mentioned this maybe two weeks ago. It may have been on the last show about the PowerShell script and like process. I'd written the clone all of our repos and pull 'em down locally and then run scans against everything to find out if we had any exposures to the ude, supply chain attack.
[00:52:39] Carol: So I found out that my boss and our OCIO put me in for an award for that, so yay.
[00:52:46] Ben: yeah.
[00:52:47] Carol: I don't know what I'll get, but I'll get either time off or some dollars, so that'll be nice.
[00:52:53] Adam: I guarantee you it'll be better than what my wife got when she had a 10 year anniversary with her agency. She's a therapist and she had her 10 year anniversary and they gave her a $10 gift card.
[00:53:03] Carol: A dollar for every year.
[00:53:05] Adam: Yeah. And
[00:53:06] Carol: Yeah. That's terrible.
[00:53:08] Adam: it's insulting.
[00:53:09] Tim: Be careful doing too much security work. 'cause your uterus could fall out.
[00:53:12] Carol: I don't, you know, I gotta be careful there.
[00:53:18] Tim: Yeah.
[00:53:18] Tim: and ins sexism. Okay, there we go.
[00:53:21] Adam: Yeah.
[00:53:21] Carol: Cut that out, Tim.
[00:53:23] Adam: so before we, wrap it up here, I do actually have a little thing I'm gonna just gonna throw out, sort of as an appeal to the listeners also, you guys, if you, have advice for me. So I'm, I had mentioned recently on the show, you know, I, for the first time in my career have a, a true direct report.
[00:53:38] Adam: and I'm trying to build up like, you know, real engineering management practices, not, I'm not trying to build something huge and complex, but, you know, like, let's do the bare minimum here. you know, I don't think in my
[00:53:48] Tim: That's a, that's a, that's a manager's mindset right there.
[00:53:52] Adam: how do you think I got the job? Um,no. Uh, you know, I don't think in my entire engineering career I've ever actually had a true, like, one-on-one meeting, like where the, it's kinda focused more on, my career development rather than, you know, project management type stuff. How, how's the project going?
[00:54:10] Adam: so I wanna do those and, and, you know, other things, career laddering and, and all that sort of thing. But, really what I wanted to say is if you have any engineering management resources that you're like, oh, I really wish I had this right? If it's a book, if it's a blog post, if it's, you know, a website for whatever, and, and it makes you think I really wish I had this when I first started, then please send it my way.
[00:54:30] Adam: 'cause, I, I, I'm getting ready to go on my Christmas vacation, taking a couple weeks off of work, and I intend to do a good bit of reading during that time. fiction and nonfiction and of the nonfiction variety, you know, trying to make this, better, right? So make my company better. So yeah, please if you got resources, share 'em with me. Last call for anything you wanna talk about peoples.
[00:54:53] Tim: Any more berries.
[00:54:54] Adam: It took me a second. None of the dingle variety please.
[00:55:00] Tim: So are we gonna do another after show? After this, after show?
[00:55:03] Adam: The after after show.
[00:55:04] Ben: no, no, no, no. That's crazy.
[00:55:07] Adam: No.
[00:55:08] Tim: Well, we've had one. We've had one after show. What about second after show? Carol got that one.
[00:55:16] Carol: Well, I didn't get it. I just liked your accent.
[00:55:18] Tim: You like my ex? It's from Lord of the Rings
[00:55:21] Carol: Oh, no, I definitely didn't get that.
[00:55:23] Tim: Second. We've had one breakfast. What about second breakfast?
[00:55:27] Adam: The Nunes
[00:55:28] Tim: 11.
[00:55:30] Adam: 11 Cs, that's what it was.okay.
[00:55:33] Patreon
[00:55:33] Adam: I'm not gonna do my whole usual outro. Just,as usual. need to send out a special thanks to our top patrons, Monte and Jean Carlo.
[00:55:38] Thanks For Listening!
[00:55:43] Adam: You guys rock patrons, of course, make this type of content at the end of the show, possible and we really appreciate their support.
[00:55:47] Adam: And if you wanna become one of them, you can go to patreon.com/working code Pod and become one of them and get a little bit of this, not a full hour, after every episode. and you would have our undying gratitude. So,we're not gonna do the whole spiel, so just, you know, thanks for listening and, we'll catch you next week.
[00:56:04] Adam: See you, everybody.
[00:56:05] Ben: Excuse Happy holidays.