313: PHP (Pretty Hot Party)

It’s a new year! The gang talks chatGPT and what happens when we use AI to police AI. And Jeff presents a mystery involving his old Stack Overflow questions and a YouTuber who is clearly in the pocket of Big Mango Juice.

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Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to rocketmoney.com/overtired.

Promo Swap: The Staying In Podcast
Most weeks we do a podcast swap where we tell you about a podcast and they tell their listeners about ours. For this episode, we’re swapping with the four lads at the Staying In Podcast. Listen to these four lifelong friends talk video games, board games, movies, TV, and comics.

If this sounds like your thing, we thoroughly recommend you give them a listen, and you can do so for free by subscribing to The Staying In Podcast wherever you’re listening to this, or heading to
StayingInPodcast.com.

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Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jeffreyguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter.

Transcript

PHP (Pretty Hot Party)

[00:00:00] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired.

[00:00:04] Christina: You are listening to Overtired. It’s 2023 and we are still here. We are still Overtired. I’m Christina Warren, joined as always by my friends, Jeff Severns Guntzel and Brett Terpstra. Boys. How are you? Happy New Year!

[00:00:17] Jeffrey: Hello.

[00:00:19] Brett: Happy Year. We are covered under, it’s been, there’s been freezing rain all day. There’s ice and slush everywhere it is. I tried to walk my dog and it was a slip and slide. It was awful.

[00:00:30] Christina: Oh no.

[00:00:31] Jeffrey: All of America is always having a storm

[00:00:34] Brett: It’s true, it’s true.

[00:00:36] Jeffrey: That’s crazy.

Mental Health Corner

[00:00:37] Brett: So, uh, how do you guys feel about, uh, a quick mental health corner?

[00:00:42] Christina: I think that sounds good.

[00:00:44] Brett: I can, uh, I can kick it off. I have, I have weird news

[00:00:47] Christina: Okay. Tell.

[00:00:49] Brett: after months of being stable. Um, or depressed. Still have never figured out exactly what that means for me, but I had one night of like crazy, couldn’t sleep, had to code, made a bunch of shit, wrote blog posts, got it all done.

[00:01:08] Then a day where I immediately fell into like a depression, and then I’ve been sleeping fine ever since. It was like a one and one. One day of manic mania, one day of depression, and then it was over. It was the shortest cycle I’ve ever had as a bipolar person.

[00:01:27] Jeffrey: Wow.

[00:01:28] Brett: I don’t know what to make of it, and I don’t know why.

[00:01:30] Um, I have learned, like, as soon as I realize I’m manic, like I don’t take, uh, stimulants, I don’t drink coffee. I, I go for walks, take showers, like do things to kind of combat man. Uh, and I did all of that, but it’s never worked that quickly. , it was weird. Like I’m usually, if I’m, if I sense I’m manic, it’s gonna be three days minimum of, of not sleeping and, and extreme productivity and, uh, weird, weird, uh, behaviors in general.

[00:02:09] But this just, it. It just happened like in a blank of an eye. I was manic and then I was depressed and holy shit when I got depressed, like I lost all self-confidence. And I don’t know if you’ve experienced that. I’m not you, you may have, but like this idea that everything I say is wrong, um, this like, it makes you scared to tweet because you are convinced that who would ever want to hear what I have to.

[00:02:40] Nobody cares. And like the fact that I, you know, thousands of Twitter followers didn’t matter in my head. Like everyone hated me and I was just a fuck up. And I wasn’t funny, I wasn’t smart, I wasn’t talented. And it, it got ugly for about 24 hours and that’s like the worst it’s ever been. And then it was over, and now I’m back to just being, uh,

[00:03:08] Jeffrey: So it was like brief but super potent.

[00:03:10] Brett: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:13] Christina: Yeah. So, so, so you’ve had like the, the, the mania. And then do you usually ever have like the self-doubt thing, follow that or is that a,

[00:03:19] Brett: Oh, always. Yeah. Yeah. Mania. Mania is always followed by depression for me. Uh, but usually I’ll be manic for three to five days, and then I’ll have like, Three days where I just get to kind of recover and sleep a little bit. And then the depression will set in for a couple weeks and, you know, couple four weeks and, and this just, it was just over a 48 hour period, rapid cycling.

[00:03:48] Christina: How does L deal with that? Like when that happens?

[00:03:50] Brett: This happens so fast that Elle didn’t really have time to react to it. Normally I’ll let her know that I’m manic or she’ll pick up on the signs that I’m manic and she will encourage me to take care of myself in the various ways we’ve determined, um, help. Control my mania and she will give me the leeway I need.

[00:04:11] Uh, she’ll understand that maybe I’m not gonna be able to walk the dog today because I am, uh, I haven’t slept in two days and all I can, all I can do like reasonably is just sit in my office and code. And we have kind of, we’ve developed a language around that and she understands depression and she, she gives me, Accommodations for that.

[00:04:35] But this happened so fast. Like by the time I realized I was manic, it was over, and she , she didn’t, she didn’t have to do anything. Um, I didn’t realize that I would still immediately go into depression. So I think I, I think my attitude towards life may have shocked her a little bit that evening because she didn’t have three days of mania to prepare for it.

[00:04:58] Um, all of a sudden I was just like a fucking. But we’re both neurodivergent and, and she is. She is a great partner in that kind of thing.

[00:05:08] Christina: That’s.

[00:05:09] Jeffrey: Christine, you been traveling around.

[00:05:11] Christina: It was really nice. It was really, really nice to spend the holidays with my parents. Um, and, uh, and, and that does a lot for, for my mental health, even when there’s other stuff going on. It’s so, it’s so weird because, um, I would never move back to Atlanta. I just wouldn’t. But, um, I, I really am glad that I’m, I’ve been able to spend so much time with, with my parents, um, over the last, um, you know, Almost two years.

[00:05:35] So I don’t know. I think that, uh, I, I’ve mentioned this a number of times on the pod before and another mental health updates, but I think that the only positive in any way thing that I’ve, I’ve taken from the pandemic has been not taking for granted anymore. The fact that I thought I could always get on a plane and go see people.

[00:05:54] So now when I’m with people, whether it’s it’s my family or my friends or other things, I try to. Really utilize and appreciate that time in a way that I, I, I honestly just didn’t before.

[00:06:05] Jeffrey: Yeah, utilizing the time being present, right? Like someone said to me once, uh, I want to be here before I go. It was, you know,

[00:06:13] and that was, I think that’s a great, extremely succinct statement about presence,

[00:06:19] Christina: No, I, I think, I think you’re right. It’s weird though cuz like I don’t tweet a lot. Like people are like, oh, are you okay? You haven’t been tweeting? And I’m like, you’re right. I haven’t been, this is this weird thing where you get out of your own head and, and just. You know that I wanna be here sort of thing.

[00:06:32] You know, I’ve been very present for, um, other people that I’ve been around, which is, um, important and, and good. Um, my husband is still, um, in, uh, Florida. He came, uh, we went, we saw his mom who’s not doing well, um, last week. And then, um, he came to Atlanta for a few days and then drove back to Jacksonville yesterday.

[00:06:53] Uh, and he’s gonna be there until Sunday. So, um, I will be by myself this week, um, which, uh, um, after being around so many different people for the last two weeks, um, I’m not necessarily upset about, but, uh, but it’ll be weird. So, final mental health thing, my mom and I are finally going to Las Vegas to see Adele, uh, uh, January 21st.

[00:07:18] And, uh, so we were, you know, booking our flights in our hotel and all that stuff. And, um, I’m, I’m excited about that cuz that’s, that’s something she’s never been to Vegas before and a lot of my friends are in Vegas this week. For c e s I would have historically been in Vegas, you

[00:07:31] Brett: this week’s ces.

[00:07:33] Christina: week is c e

[00:07:33] Brett: I didn’t even realize it.

[00:07:35] Christina: Totally because it’s, you know, it’s faded because of the pandemic and stuff. And I think also just in general, um, companies have largely kind of abandon.

[00:07:44] Brett: And I don’t, I don’t work for anyone that has to be there to block about it anymore, so

[00:07:49] Christina: Right, exactly.

[00:07:50] Brett: my radar.

[00:07:51] Christina: was gonna say mine too, but I still keep up with this stuff. But a lot of these things have just sort of like changed, I think, in like how much we care about them over the years. But, uh, but it’s gonna be really nice slash weird to be in Vegas, not for c e s, not for n a b, not for some work thing, but just to like take a person who’s never been to Vegas before, to Vegas.

[00:08:10] Brett: To actually be there on leisure time. It’ll be different.

[00:08:13] Christina: I don’t know if I’ve ever actually, I mean, I think I have once been to Vegas, like for leisure,

[00:08:18] Brett: when, when I was 16 I went to Vegas. Uh, for fun. Every other time I’ve ever been to Vegas has been for work in some capacity or others. Same with Miami. I haven’t been to Miami for fun since I was like maybe.

[00:08:34] Jeffrey: Um, well, I actually can close a, a saga. I hope it’s the close of a saga, uh, that’s played out over, um, the last few. Uh, episodes, um, when I was told by my insurance company that I could no longer have Vivance, and if I wanted to have it literally in their language, I would’ve to fail at, uh, a number of other options.

[00:08:56] Brett: Such as like, I’m curious.

[00:08:58] Jeffrey: Adderall, Focalin, uh, Dexedrine. Is it Dexedrine or is

[00:09:01] Brett: That’s so weird. Like most insurance companies would prefer you take buy bands. That is weird.

[00:09:07] Jeffrey: Vivance for me. I’ve figured out how to roll with it. You know, I tried somebody’s Adderall and I was like, this is not what I want. That was like some, your buddy’s uncle picked you up, you got to drive really fast in his car, and then he couldn’t remember where he lived and just dropped you on the side of the highway. That’s Adderall for me, Anyway, um, I, so what happened was I had to appeal that. Um, but in, in the course of waiting for the appeal to come back, we ended up switching health insurance anyhow. And so I got to get my Vivance yesterday for $14 a pill, uh, and

[00:09:47] Brett: What

[00:09:48] Christina: 14 times thir. So, so what is that? That’s, uh, it, it’s four 20, which is actually a great number.

[00:09:53] Jeffrey: ooh,

[00:09:54] Christina: I have a friend who used to text me every single day at four 20, and that was the best. And, uh, yeah.

[00:10:01] Jeffrey: 14 year old and I have this bit where, you know, cuz sometimes you’ll just hear four 20 or C four 20. But anytime we hear it, whether we’re in an airport or the radio zone, we just quietly fist bump

[00:10:13] Christina: I love it.

[00:10:15] Jeffrey: That’s it. Um, so anyway, you know, I think, I think I’m back to having my like, regular cocktail of meds, which is, which is.

[00:10:26] Christina: So going forward, even if you have to pay 3 75 a month, like will that eventually go down? Like my insurance resets every year, so I’m about to start paying my like deductible even though

[00:10:35] Jeffrey: It’s all about the deductible. Yeah.

[00:10:38] Christina: Got it. Okay. Okay, so, so that’s good at least.

[00:10:41] Jeffrey: yes.

[00:10:41] Brett: I’ll have like, I’ll have like two months where they’ll charge me a thousand dollars.

[00:10:45] Christina: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:46] Brett: For like some of the, some of the bipolar meds I take. Um, and then after that, everything will be free for the rest of the year.

[00:10:54] Christina: Yep.

Sponsor: Rockey Money

[00:10:55] Jeffrey: So we’ve had Rocket money as a sponsor for a little bit. Now, Brett has really revealed quite a bit about himself as he talks about the various services, uh, streaming mostly that he gets caught into, and then ultimately probably spends too much on. I think you had a robot Hallmark channel

[00:11:14] Brett: Robot

[00:11:15] Jeffrey: also something about robot dominatrixes.

[00:11:19] Oh, matrixes. Or Matrixes,

[00:11:20] Brett: Matric sees its see,

[00:11:23] Christina: Matrices

[00:11:24] Jeffrey: which turned out to be

[00:11:25] Christina: a real thing.

[00:11:25] Jeffrey: Yeah, yeah. He’s got, he has a way. Of making things manifest. Um, so I was like, I actually was like, oh, okay. I kind of like what Brett keeps saying about this thing through all the like , cat dominat and whatever else. Like, I’m gonna try rocket Money, cuz I’ve heard of it forever. It used to be called True Bill.

[00:11:44] And, uh, so it’s a personal finance app, fines and cancels your unwanted subscriptions and kind of like can monitor your spending and helps to lower your bills. All that stuff, you get it. It’s that kind of service. I already have something that does some of that for me. I use yab. You need a budget. I’ve used it forever.

[00:11:59] Um, I love it. Um, but it doesn’t give me feedback. On how I’m spending. It just kind of helps me to be smart about how I’m spending. And so I just like threw in my credit cards in my bank account. It’s a secure, you know, secure connection. And they just started telling me rocket money, rocket money just started telling me what was what.

[00:12:19] And initially I had to do a lot of like data cleaning. Like there, there’s dirty data, right? Like they try to guess what is restaurants and what is. But they got that wrong a lot. But that’s not their fault that that happens. So I was able to kind of like clean all that up and once I did, it just like showed me so much that I hadn’t really realized about how I spent money over the last year.

[00:12:43] Cause I’m just kind of like doing the old New Years. You know, but then I have this super, super bad habit of trying everything. Like if you throw a trial at me, it’s like, here, this is the free trial for service that hits you in the head with a hammer three times a day. I’d be like, well, that’s cool, as long as I don’t forget to cancel it before they charge me.

[00:13:04] Um, and, and so like, I’m terrible at that. And so that was the thing I most wanted to see. And it was so cool. Like I could see, you could look at it like a calendar and it shows you what’s coming up next and it it shows you which things are recurring and all that stuff. Or I could just look at it as a list.

[00:13:20] Um, and I could like go in and see how long I’ve been paying for something that I didn’t mean to be paying for ancestry.com. You know what I did with that? I did the family tree of Derek Chauvin, the cop who killed. George Floyd because I wanted to see how far back law and order and violence went. And let me tell you, it goes way the fuck back.

[00:13:39] And there is not a publication in the world that would want me to write about that, but it was fascinating. And so I paid $50 a month for months on end , and

[00:13:49] now that’s done. Thank you. Rocket Money . So stop throwing your money away. Like. Cancel unwanted subscriptions and maybe you do want them, but you don’t need 'em.

[00:13:59] So cancel the unneeded subscriptions as well and manage your expenses the easy way by going to rocket money.com/ Overtired. That’s rocket money.com/ Overtired. And just because you’re supposed to say it three times, rocket money.com/ Overtired. Um, should we also do our podcast swap? Should we just do a

[00:14:20] Brett: Let’s make it a block. Let’s make it a.

Podcast Swap: Staying In

[00:14:23] Jeffrey: Okay, so most weeks we do a podcast swap where we tell you about a podcast and then they tell their listeners about ours. It’s a little bit, you know, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. But we don’t really know these people. And sometimes I haven’t even heard the podcast, but for this episode, I’m like, I’m gonna listen to the podcast.

[00:14:40] And so we’re swapping with the four lads. It’s staying in the Staying in podcast. I say lads because they’re British. And that’s really relaxing. Turns out, as long as the talk is slow and easy. So I just, I finished not long before, uh, we started taping here. I finished listening to their latest episode where these like four, they’re like four lifelong friends.

[00:15:03] They talked about video games, board games, movies, TV and comics, and I was not sure that I was in the mood for all. But I was immediately smitten with the calm, thoughtful conversation. I mean, it was really chill, uh, . It was, it was like a, it was like as much about like meaning making as it was about like sorting the nerd cannon because they definitely sorted the nerd cannon, but it was still relaxing and still I hung on.

[00:15:28] And here’s the thing that kind of like vexed me, is like, these guys are four lifelong friends. Can you imagine having a podcast with three of your lifelong friends and having it be described as relax? Like that would not be how mine went. Um, and like, listen, I’m gonna play a clip. Okay. Just listen to.

[00:15:45] Staying In: It’s like someone giving you a hint to a puzzle rather than someone telling you how to do it. Yeah. It’s like just helping you connect the dots rather than just, and like you still have an element of that satisfaction. you don’t feel robbed of the experience. You get that in, um, things like, uh, the room where they’ll say, oh, right, there’s three levels of, and the first one is like, wouldn’t it be like, what do you think the, the, the vicar would say about the matchbox maker?

[00:16:15] And it’s just like some weird cryptic thing.

[00:16:18] Jeffrey: So if it sounds like your thing, we thoroughly recommend you. Give them a listen and you can do so for free by subscribing to the Staying in Podcast, wherever you’re listening to this HEAR podcast. Or by heading to staying in podcast.com. That’s staying in podcast.com. Just twice.

[00:16:37] Brett: I’m, I’m sold.

[00:16:40] Christina: I love

[00:16:40] Brett: just my ocd. Staying in podcast.com. It’s gotta be three times.

[00:16:48] Jeffrey: That’s staying in podcast.com. Candyman candyman candyman.

Enter the Arrowverse!

[00:16:54] Brett: Speaking of, speaking of nerd Cannon, um, this is a brief aside. I don’t want to get lost in it, but did you guys ever get into the arrowverse, meaning flash the arrow, uh, Von Supergirl Justice League.

[00:17:12] Christina: Vaguely. I like Greg Brite because he comes from Dawson’s Creek and he made Brothers and Sisters, which was a good show, but mostly because he came from Dawson’s Creek, but uh, also Everwood f fucking amazing TV show, which was way too good for the, for the wb. Anyway, I digress. But no, I, I didn’t that much except I liked the kid who was on flash because he was, I remember when he was on Glee.

[00:17:33] He was really, really good singer. Well, he was a really good singer, and and I, I did watch the musical episode of The Flash and I was like, this guy has,

[00:17:40] Brett: There’s a musical episode of The

[00:17:42] Christina: there is, and,

[00:17:43] Brett: haven’t gotten

[00:17:44] Christina: and they don’t utilize him enough, which is kind of funny because he’s got like one of the best voices. Like, he’s incredible. Anyway, go on.

[00:17:52] Brett: so, so El made a spreadsheet, like we started watching Arrow and, and like, it, I, I had watched the, maybe the first three seasons of Arrow previously. But then it’d just kind of fallen off. And I had watched a couple episodes of the Flash and didn’t like the, I I didn’t get into it, but we went back and we’re like, finally, all right, we’re gonna get into the DC comic universe here and we’re gonna try this out.

[00:18:20] And she made a spreadsheet and we, we’ve mapped out all of the, uh, chronological dates. Arrow Flash, Constantine Von Supergirl, et cetera, like it continues growing and there’s, when you watch the arrow in the flash in the right order, the, the plots intertwine between the two shows. And, and there are, there are references and there’s plot development in one show that affects the other show.

[00:18:53] And it’s really, it’s crazy and you kind of have to take it all. As like a whole, a whole universe. Uh, the averse, it’s called, uh, it’s been, it’s been, it’s been intriguing. I’ve, I’ve been enjoying it. It’s my current, it’s our current comfort show is basically all of the averse.

[00:19:12] Christina: I like it.

[00:19:14] Brett: I had to torrent, I had to deterrent Constantine and Vixen because they don’t stream anywhere.

[00:19:19] And Constantine was like a one season one and done kind of thing. But he shows up later. In other Arrowverse shows, if you’ve never seen Constantine, great show. Loved it.

[00:19:31] Jeffrey: I didn’t see it. I didn’t see any of that stuff. None of. Verse.

[00:19:35] Brett: I’ll add you to my plex. I have it

[00:19:36] Jeffrey: All right, sounds.

[00:19:38] Christina: I love.

Chatting up the GPT

[00:19:39] Brett: all right. We have, we have multiple topics. I would like to, if it’s alright with you guys, talk about chat.

[00:19:44] G P T I I didn’t immediately jump on the bandwagon. Uh, it took me a while to try it. Um, I found a, a menu bar app for Mac that is, I believe it’s just called chat, g p t. Um, I’ll find the link to it, but you can just punch in your, your prompt in your menu bar and get a response. And like, the first two things I asked it is, why should I use plain text and why should I use Mark?

[00:20:17] And it wrote an article that was as good or better than anything that I could have written. Uh, like I asked it for three bullet points, like gimme three reasons why I should use plain text. And it, it exactly nailed what I would say and then elaborated on it in a way that I was like, I, I couldn’t write this better.

[00:20:41] So I was, I was very impressed with its ability to. Content. And then Christina through her, uh, GitHub stars linked to a chat G B T or a browser extension, and it’s available for alro and chromium browsers as well as Firefox. And it interfaces with all the major search engines from Yahoo to Bing to duck dot, go to Google, and in the sidebar, Of your search, it will give you chat GT’s response to your search query, uh, and kind of puts it all up at once, which is, it’s amazing because like people are talking about how chat G p t Open AI could be the new Google, where you ask it a question and it carefully explains the, the concept to you and you can have it write code.

[00:21:41] The other thing that I just found out about it right before we sat down to record, uh, Tyler Hall added OpenAI slash jet G p t extensions to text buddy. So from within text Buddy, you can ask it. You can ask it either to write prose or you can ask it for. You can say and, and his, his example video, he’s like, how do I write a JavaScript function that finds the, uh, highest element and array, I think?

[00:22:14] Um, and, and it basically like writes out the code in JavaScript to do that. And I have tested its code generation capabilities, uh, with Ruby and Python and JavaScript, and it has not led me. I’ve not asked it to do anything like, like, uh, stack Overflow Band Chat, G p t responses because they sound right but often

[00:22:43] Christina: Right. Exactly. That, that, that’s the freakiest thing to me about it. I, I, I’ve mentioned this, um, when I’ve talked about it before and I’ve used, um, you know, uh, G P T three, um, implementations a lot. But, uh, Chad, g p t especially, I think even more than Codex and some of the other ones, like, it’s so conversational, but it sounds so authoritative. It’s like you, even if it’s something you know intimately, you’re kind of like, huh, well maybe this is true. It, it’s, it’s funny just how

[00:23:13] Jeffrey: like white men learned this trick a long time ago.

[00:23:17] Christina: totally.

[00:23:18] Brett: There’s a, there’s an open AI in, in the a p i, there’s a setting, I think it’s called temperature, where you can set it to zero and it will only tell you factual things, but you add any, anything between zero and one point 0.4, for example. Could give you mostly factual, like mostly guaranteed to be true.

[00:23:42] But we’re gonna, we’re gonna take some creative liberty. Uh, we’re going to, we’re gonna give you creative responses that may or may not be factual, but we’re gonna say them in an authoritative tone.

[00:23:55] Jeffrey: Right, right.

[00:23:56] Brett: could be very detrimental, like I think immediately Stack overflow saw how detrimental this could.

[00:24:05] Like Stack Overflow has built a huge compendium of authoritative answers to coding

[00:24:12] Jeffrey: Yep.

[00:24:13] Brett: Uh, and to have that flooded with something that sounds real, but hasn’t been tested. Uh, I, there’s, there’s huge harm in

[00:24:22] Christina: Oh yeah. No, I think they absolutely made the right decision, right? Like I am of the opinion that a lot of the people who freak out over AI stuff are doing so at their own peril because it is inevitable.

[00:24:33] Jeffrey: it’s here.

[00:24:34] Christina: And I think that chat, g p t is, uh, a great example of that because even though there’s, it’s, it’s a novelty, it’s kind of a toy, and it was.

[00:24:42] You know, not really doing anything necessarily new than what already existed, the user interface. I think, uh, I’m stealing this from someone and I wish that I could properly credit them for this. Um, I, I think kind of, uh, distillation because I’ve been trying to think in my own head like, why did this one take off so much more than some of the previous?

[00:25:03] Use cases of of G P T three. And, and I think that just the, the user interface of just, you know, simple, you know, kind of prompt to kind of do it and to get the results. The fact that there wasn’t a signup, that that flow I thing really can’t be, uh, undermined. But, um, and, and I, and this stuff is inevitable.

[00:25:18] So for whatever qualms people will have, and I’m not saying that they aren’t valid because of course they, and we should have discussions, but people wanting to pretend like, like, I’m not really down for the whole, like, this is all evil and we shouldn’t use any of this stuff cuz. Look, this ship has sailed.

[00:25:32] This is gonna be here. Like, regardless of how

[00:25:34] Jeffrey: has sailed.

[00:25:35] Christina: gonna be

[00:25:35] a

[00:25:35] Brett: is the

[00:25:36] Christina: This is absolutely the future And, and if, and you, you ignore it at your own peril, in my opinion, especially for people who are afraid about like what it might do to their jobs or other things. You ignore this at your own peril.

[00:25:46] You need to embrace it. Like, and, and, and I would say that that’s the case for anybody who sees themselves about to get disrupted. You need to embrace the disruption and lean into it instead of fighting against it. Because fighting against it has never, ever worked in human history and it won’t work here.

[00:25:59] That. Stack overflow, I think absolutely did the right thing by banning it because I don’t, I think that there, those are different issues, right? Like you can still appreciate, um, where this is going. And also say, right now we are not in a position to accept these sorts of generated results because it is, you know, an anthem and an actually harmful to our overall experience.

[00:26:21] Even though in many cases people could probably, you know, craft maybe even an accurate response.

[00:26:29] Brett: Yeah. What scares me is so out of curiosity, after seeing the kind of content it could write, because basically when I gave it, you know, some plain text markdown prompts, it literally wrote an article I would publish on my blog. So, The first thing I did was go check out those scammy swarmy SEO channels on YouTube to see what they were saying about chat G p D.

[00:26:55] And they were all

[00:26:56] Christina: Of

[00:26:56] Brett: They’re like, you can produce, you can produce authoritative content in mass for your blog. And you could have, you could have a new article every hour that is original, uh, intelligent funding content, and you can dominate search. Results,

[00:27:14] Jeffrey: just like that, we’re right back to 2006. Yeah.

[00:27:19] Brett: exactly like it is. It’s terrifying to think that, that the web, the web of knowledge that we have built could be overrun by artificial intelligence.

[00:27:31] Like that’s not, to me, that’s not a bright future. Um, like, I’m really impressed, like this thing could pass the touring test. Like the touring test is like in the rear view me mirror at this point because this can absolutely, this can absolutely convince any human that it is another human, um, writing these responses.

[00:27:52] And I just like, it’s, it’s so, there’s gonna come a point right now. Chat, g p t is freely available for testing.

[00:28:02] Christina: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:03] Brett: There will absolutely come a point where it becomes a paid service, but you know, you know who’s gonna gladly pay for it is SEO

[00:28:11] Christina: 100%. But a and you’re not wrong. And, and this is where I think that it’ll actually be interesting. I kind of am interested to see AI obviously be different models, but I’m actually looking forward to seeing AI be used to weed out these ai. Generated responses and things that aren’t good because you know that, that Google or, or, or other search engine people are going to have to do that.

[00:28:31] And look, your people are right absolutely. That you are right. You can make the authoritative sounding crap and, and we’re gonna be back to click farms. But that whole model didn’t really die the way that that we thought it did. What happened is, is that people who are paid since a post did it, or even worse, there were oftentimes.

[00:28:51] And it’s been AI driven. It’s had to be because the, the, the stuff has been wrong in ways that just wouldn’t happen naturally, even with somebody who’s speaking a foreign language. Um, where I know that stuff has been scraped and then has been rewritten using some more primitive AI things like this has been a thing for years.

[00:29:07] Like, and, and, and, and it’s already dominated a lot of search results stuff. So I don’t know. It’s interesting. It, it’ll also, it would be, to me, it would actually be interesting if this had to then lead to us rethinking how we do search. Because I think that the, the, um, page rank model worked really well for a long time.

[00:29:24] And, and Google has obviously relied less on that, uh, over the years. And um, you know, it has been more than 20 years since that model I think started. And it probably is time for that to be kind of reevaluated in terms of. You know, showcasing what is actually relevant responses to what you’re looking for.

[00:29:43] Like, this is not common to me. A lot of people have done this, but I, I add Reddit to almost all of my Google results. At this point, because I find that, that Reddit is actually a better search engine than Google for a lot of things. But going to reddit.com and searching is not a great experience. So it’s, it’s weird that you have to search Reddit to get, like, you have to add Reddit to Google, to search Reddit.

[00:30:06] Uh, but that is how I can often find like the best and most helpful results for things. Anyway, that’s an aside.

[00:30:12] Brett: One of the things and, and, and I have another article I’ll drop in the, uh, show notes about how studies have shown that people buy a slim margin, but people find. AI generated faces more trustworthy than, than real human faces. Um, and this goes into deep fakes, but the way that these, uh, these AI generated faces were created was using AI to train ai.

[00:30:45] So you have one AI that is producing responses or faces or, or deep fakes, and then another ai. Judging, you know, and saying This is believable, or this isn’t. And the two can go back and forth to generate something that is more, believe, more human than human, uh, to put it in Blade Runner terms and like AI’s training ai, like this is the future.

[00:31:16] This is already like, everything’s scary about. It is within years of happening and everything beneficial about AI is already happening.

[00:31:27] Jeffrey: Mm, mm-hmm. . Uh, when I, I think the, the first deep dive I did into chat g p t was by listening just to the daily podcast and it had a great episode on it. And I remember thinking, cause I hadn’t played with it yet, I was like, That’s it. Fuck it. I’m done. I, I have a workshop. I have a workshop out back with a bunch of old tools. I, I can make all kinds of things with 'em. I’m like, I’m just gonna go live in my fucking garage until this blows over. Uh, which obviously it won’t. But then I was like, wait, you can write sequel statements for me.

[00:31:59] Christina: Yeah, exactly.

[00:32:01] Jeffrey: like, hi.

[00:32:02] Brett: Well, and for simple. For simple, like what’s the algorithm to. Find the longest, uh, longest element in an array of strings. Like it will nail that. It’ll give you an answer faster than you would find it on Stack

[00:32:18] Christina: 100%. Like this is not a plug, I promise, but the GitHub co-pilot, which obviously I work at GitHub and, and, uh, GitHub co-pilot is done in conjunction with, um, uh, open AI and, uh, is powered by, uh, chat or by, um, uh, uh, G P T three and has some similar responses to things you would see. Does some similar things as what chat G P T has.

[00:32:38] Um, one of the things we, we showed off at, uh, like. I don’t even think beta is a, a appropriate kind of a preview, kind of an experiment that we’re working on to add to copilot is this thing called hey GitHub, where you can actually use copilot with your voice. But one of the ways I use copilot in addition to kind of like an auto-complete on steroids, is to do exactly that sort of thing.

[00:32:59] Like, wait, how do I write this statement in, in this? Or, or what is boiler plate code for this? You know, like, like how can I write boiler flick code to like use Twitter’s API in Python, right? And. It’ll give it to me and, and it’s gonna be, in most cases, I can run it. And it’s, it’s, it’s gonna work, you know, and, and a lot of cases.

[00:33:18] And it’s, it’s in it’s re and that’s remarkably, like, that’s all, that’s all I’ve ever really wanted in life, you know?

[00:33:25] Jeffrey: Yeah, totally.

[00:33:28] Brett: that actually works for computers.

[00:33:30] Jeffrey: exactly. Now we, we gave a lot of Stack Overflow examples, so I discovered something super crazy when I was searching for I, so this is the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War. It will be in March. Uh, and I was very involved both in as a, as a, um, organizer trying to stop the war. Um, I went back and forth to Iraq a lot for previous Steven that, um, and I was on M S N B C.

[00:34:04] And I’m like, I’m just this little kid who can’t sit still in his seat, but is talking about, you know, what’s going on on Capitol Hill vis-a-vis the Iraq War, the Looming Iraq war. And I was looking for that on YouTube, couldn’t find it, but I did find something super fucking weird. And that was, there’s some dude out there.

[00:34:25] I said, I, I get all of these results and there are five videos made where the thumbnail is one of my questions on Stack overflow old questions. I mean, like, I’m talking a decade ago, right? I mean, what the fuck’s going on here? And I’m credited inside and I, I open it up and I play the video and there’s a man talking about drinking juice.

[00:34:47] He’s outside, he’s holding his phone and, and he’s saying like, I, I would love it if you would subscribe. It would be great for me and my family. And, and then he, and then he says something about drinking juice. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll raw some tape.

[00:34:59] Roel Van de Paar: Drink more apple juice and eat more mango. Hmm. This video will quickly show you a technical question as well as possible answers. I hope you subscribe and like that will really help me and my family. And why should we drink more apple juice and eat more mangoes? Well, because I noticed they’re good for your brain.

[00:35:15] God bless. Bye.

[00:35:17] Jeffrey: He says something about drinking juice, and then up comes my question. With an answer. It’s a minute and 17 seconds long. It’s been waiting for me. The only people that have looked at these are the other two hosts on this show. And let me

[00:35:32] just tell you

[00:35:33] Brett: views. Four views

[00:35:35] Jeffrey: four views and, and this is a year ago. Okay, so, and you know these are good questions.

[00:35:39] So you guys, what is this?

[00:35:41] Brett: This is a weird. Like it can’t be working for him. He does not have the views or the

[00:35:47] Jeffrey: He has 109,000 subscribers.

[00:35:49] Doesn’t.

[00:35:50] Christina: wait.

[00:35:51] Brett: my God. He does.

[00:35:52] Christina: Wow. So, so.

[00:35:54] Brett: Who’s falling for this?

[00:35:56] Jeffrey: so let’s see what else we got here.

[00:35:58] Brett: Yeah. What, what else does he have on his channel that would justify?

[00:36:02] Christina: Did he buy these followers like, or these subscribers

[00:36:05] Jeffrey: Right?

[00:36:06] He’s got a

[00:36:07] Brett: his whole channel is, his whole channel is just stack exchange headlines, and then he literally posts a screenshot of the answer, holds it there for 30 seconds, and then moves on

[00:36:20] Jeffrey: Wait, I’m gonna

[00:36:21] Brett: and asks you to subscribe to his channel.

[00:36:23] Jeffrey: Okay? I’m gonna search you guys in there. Roll Van. Christina Warren. Huh? Sorry guys.

[00:36:33] Christina: Yeah, I don’t

[00:36:34] think, well, I I don’t

[00:36:35] Brett: never ask a question on Sac

[00:36:37] Christina: I

[00:36:37] Jeffrey: I get it. I get

[00:36:38] Christina: was gonna

[00:36:39] Jeffrey: You guys don’t have to ask Stack

[00:36:41] Christina: no, I just, I just haven’t wanted to, to open myself to these things. But I, I did like look for his popular videos and it looks like he has a few that are like, remove enterprise enrollment from Chrome OS three solutions.

[00:36:54] This has 138,000 views and he has, you know, apple problem creating new Apple ID account cannot be created at the time. That’s 57 k.

[00:37:03] Brett: So he’s just, he’s siphoning Stack Exchange search results,

[00:37:08] Jeffrey: Which in another era would’ve been genius. Right. But, and also I wanna say this one speaks to everybody. Stop tic-tac-toe from overriding moves in sea. Mm. I’ve been there. I have been down that dark hole.

[00:37:21] Brett: Oh, what the fuck?

[00:37:23] Jeffrey: So anyway,

[00:37:24] Christina: has a Patreon, which, okay.

[00:37:26] Brett: He’s also very Christian like. There’s always references to blessing you and praise to God, and

[00:37:34] Christina: He has

[00:37:35] Brett: it’s a weirdly religious take on Stack Overflow.

[00:37:39] Christina: he has 28,938,108 views, so, which is decent. I’m still thinking these have to be mostly bought subscribers because,

[00:37:51] Brett: Yeah, they have to be cuz nobody would watch one of these and go, oh man, I wanna, I wanna see what else this guy has to

[00:37:59] Jeffrey: Get your hand outta my pocket. Raul Van Depar.

[00:38:03] Brett: you should sue, you should sue for his one Patreon subscriber.

[00:38:07] Jeffrey: maybe I will see if I can, I bet I can write up a legal finding in chat. G P

[00:38:12] Christina: Oh,

[00:38:12] Jeffrey: or a legal I could

[00:38:13] Christina: See, that would be fantastic.

[00:38:18] Brett: Right about cease desist

Grapptitude

[00:38:20] Jeffrey: Right . All right, let’s, should we grab the tune?

[00:38:24] Brett: Yeah,

[00:38:24] Christina: Yeah, let’s go for it.

[00:38:25] Brett: Who first?

[00:38:26] Jeffrey: I don’t mind going first.

[00:38:27] Brett: Go for it.

[00:38:28] Jeffrey: So my kids bought a, uh, Oculus a while back and the only thing, as I’ve reported, I think in the past, the only thing I’ve done in it is watched Richard Pryor on Netflix. Um, and. I felt like I should start using it cuz oh my God, there’s this really cool thing in the house.

[00:38:44] So I got the app Wander and . In typical me fashion, I still barely did anything with it, but it blew my mind this time. What I did, uh, wander allows you to, to basically wander through the world via Google Street View. But here’s the crazy thing. I was able to stand in the middle of the street in front of my house.

[00:39:05] I. I was in the basement, but you know, I was wandering. Um, and look at my house and then you can actually say, show me. 2007, show me 2009, show me 2015. And this house prior to us owning it had been a rental for like 20 years. And it was, it was inhabited exclusively by rock bands. And so you can imagine that it, it was in a certain state, uh, after 20 years of, of rock band inhabitants, and we could watch it become our house and it was amazing.

[00:39:41] Christina: That’s awesome.

[00:39:42] Brett: called, it’s called Wander.

[00:39:44] Jeffrey: called Wonder. It’s super cool. I mean,

[00:39:47] of

[00:39:47] Brett: an

[00:39:48] Christina: I do

[00:39:48] Brett: and I do, I feel like I do not. I do not use it.

[00:39:51] Christina: I definitely don’t.

[00:39:53] Jeffrey: can we, can we meet for an episode in our Oculus, in our oculi?

[00:39:58] Christina: I’m, you

[00:39:58] Jeffrey: I would love that.

[00:40:00] Christina: know what I’ve like, I’ve, I’ve made fun of the entire metaverse like thing and I will continue to do that. Having said that, I genuinely really want us to do an episode of Overtired in our Oculus.

[00:40:12] Brett: Let’s figure that out.

[00:40:13] Christina: Yeah, we’ll figure that out. Okay. It listeners, if you have ideas of how to do that, let us know.

[00:40:19] We will research it, but, but if anybody else knows, like that’s obviously.

[00:40:23] Brett: Yeah.

[00:40:24] Jeffrey: I was, I was playing the game super hot, which is like a gun, it’s a shooter game, but nothing happens unless you’re moving, like time stops when you stop moving, which is super cool. But I got so lost in it that I was trying to avoid being shot and there was like a bench and I, I tried to lean my hand on the bench and I fell over.

[00:40:45] Brett: I know

[00:40:45] Jeffrey: And then in the very next game I tried to, I tried to go under the bench and I actually ended up like under a shelf and I was like, this is not okay for me. This is not okay.

[00:40:56] Brett: The, the one Oculus app that I think everyone needs to know about is skybox. You can serve up any video from your Mac, I, I assume it works for PC as well. Um, and sure you, I mean, you can do with this what you will, you can do all kinds of crazy expert stuff with it. But, uh, if you have movie files that you wanna, like as if you’re watching on a huge.

[00:41:23] Like movie

[00:41:24] Jeffrey: Oh cool.

[00:41:25] Brett: your Oculus? It is, it is. It’s fantastic. My rabbi created a chat group, like I have this chat group on my phone of all friends of my rabbi who own Oculi

[00:41:39] Jeffrey: Oh, get me on that list.

[00:41:41] Brett: and

[00:41:41] Jeffrey: of your Rabbi

[00:41:42] Brett: there’s always somebody who wants to play ping pong or golf

[00:41:45] Jeffrey: so, uh,

[00:41:47] Christina: That’s awesome.

[00:41:48] Brett: Christina, what do you wanna.

[00:41:50] Christina: Okay, so since we’re talking about chat, G P T, I think that it is time to talk about stable diffusion again, because I think that that is awesome. And I found, um, this app, it’s available for iOS. So there are a couple of different stable diffusion apps for Mac. Now there is, um, diffusion B, which works on both intel and in one.

[00:42:12] Apple did actually release their own stable diffusion. Um, like fork or whatever. Uh, uh, you know, I think for people to use with against their GPUs, I don’t know if apples is in, is apple, silicon, or, um, Intel. Um, uh, as well. I, I think it’s only apple, silicon, but I don’t know. Uh, ciran, uh, cis, I can’t say his name.

[00:42:33] The guy who makes a million things on, um, GitHub, um, he’s created a, an app, um, uh, for, for, um, Stale diffusion for Mac, that is native, built in Swift, but his is, um, uh, apple silicone only. But the one I wanna actually talk about is free. It’s called Draw Things. And it is an iOS app that, um, does, um, AI generation, um, for you in your pocket.

[00:43:00] And it’s, uh, it’s free and it runs locally on your phone or on your iPad. So it’s actually really, really, Um, and, and it’s surprisingly, um, like, like the model sizes are big. Like some of them are like, you know, a couple gigs in size or whatever, but, um, and, and it, you know, but it’s, it’s actually surprisingly powerful and, and works really well.

[00:43:22] So this was one that, um, that I, I found, um, last week. I think it’s been out for about a month. But, uh, this is an iOS app. Um, I’m assuming you can also run it on like, like your.

[00:43:34] Brett: It has a Mac app store.

[00:43:36] Christina: Anyway, if you’re somebody who’s been wanting to maybe get into some of the, the art stuff or wanting to look at it, um, the fact that you can even do this on iOS is unreal to me.

[00:43:44] And, um, I think that this is really cool. So draw things is, is my pick.

[00:43:49] Jeffrey: And to emphasize, to emphasize what you already said, that it runs locally and that it does not collect your data.

[00:43:55] Christina: 100%, which I think is actually really important because like Lin, uh, and there have been some other ones that people have been using to, like, they’ve been uploading their photos and then thinking, oh, we delete them and whatnot. And I’m sure they do. I’m also equally sure that they use all the, the information and the results that they generate for you in their own models and their own stuff.

[00:44:12] And there’s nothing wrong with that inherently, but, You know, you should, you should be aware of those things. So if you don’t want, you know, um, your prompts and your data and that stuff, you know, generated or stored elsewhere, doing it locally I think is really cool. So, big fan.

[00:44:27] Jeffrey: Yeah.

[00:44:28] Brett: Awesome. All right, so I used to use MailChimp for managing email lists, but my email list got up to over 10,000. Subscribers. And once you hit a certain point with MailChimp, it gets very expensive to send out emails to everybody, like a hundred bucks to send something to my mailing list. And so I discovered Cindy, I think I discovered, I think the guy who creates agenda turned me onto it.

[00:45:01] I can’t remember exactly how I found it. Um, maybe it was, yeah, I, I don’t remember A lot of indie developers used. And you pay like $60 I think, for a license. And, uh, you install it on your own server. It’s p h p and it uses Amazon a e s to, uh, to send your emails. And I have, I just sent out 17,000 emails and paid, I think maybe $5 in service fees to Amazon.

[00:45:37] Uh, and that would’ve cost me over a hundred dollars to do with MailChimp. And it has all of your basic mail, email list management, and it shows you, uh, bounce rates and sub unsubscribes and open rates. And it is. For 60 bucks, uh, you, it pays for itself the first time you send out an email to out, to a list of any decent size.

[00:46:04] And I think everybody, uh, software developers, people running any kind of independent email list should absolutely know about Sunday.

[00:46:14] Christina: awesome. I, I’m, I’m really glad you mentioned this because we talked about this you and I, uh, a couple years ago, I think, when you first started using it, because we were both looking at maybe some newsletter alternative things, and I’m really glad to hear that this has continued to work well for you.

[00:46:27] I did have a question for you, which is, and I don’t know how Cindy helps with this, or, or if it does, but how do you, I guess, make sure that your mails aren’t going to people’s spam, uh, folders Or, or, or do you.

[00:46:40] Brett: I don’t do anything special. Um, I don’t know what, like, I, I, honestly, it’s black magic to me. What, uh, what gets spammed by Google, uh, by Gmail and what doesn’t? Um, I do know that my open rate tends to be about 60%. When I send to a list of about 10,000 or more, I get an open rate of 60% and an unsubscribed rate, usually of like one.

[00:47:10] So the emails are, for the most part, getting through and, uh, and, and having in the click rate is generally very good. Uh, if 5,000 emails are open, I’ll usually get, you know, 3000 clicks, which is kind of insane. Uh, click through for, for the kind of emails I send out. I don’t know, I don’t know if Cindy does anything in particular.

[00:47:39] But like I said, it’s, it’s black magic to me, so I don’t even know what the process would be to make sure you don’t get spammed

[00:47:45] Christina: Yeah, that, that makes sense. Um, but uh, yeah, I just wanted to ask about that, but no, Cindy, I think this is great and honestly it reminds me of that era of app when like you had the self-hosted sort of things. Like, um, who is the guy who made, uh, mint? Sean Inman. Yeah. Because, because all of his stuff, he had a URL shortener, uh, a Fever, which was his RSS client, which was amazing.

[00:48:08] Um, like I love that kind of era of self-hosting stuff, so, uh, kudos to, to the Cindy guy. I can’t remember if I’ve bought it or not, but I, I think I definitely am going to, uh, do this cuz I would like to do the newsletter thing, but I, I have hesitancy about using sub even though I know that they would be the best platform to use.

[00:48:26] I have hesitancy. I don’t, I don’t care about any of the, the ideological stuff. I, I don’t, but, um, But, but for me it’s more like, I don’t know if this is gonna be around in the future or do I want anybody else owning my platform?

[00:48:40] Brett: Yeah, I’ve gotten really into subs lately. I follow like a bunch of people on subs now and, and I do Patreon for several of them. Um, like, it’s, it’s, it’s a great source and I’m tempted to write there myself, but I really, I love, I love ODing, my stuff.

[00:48:58] Christina: was gonna say, I’m, I’m in the same thing cuz I, I actually, like, I was having to do expenses at the end of the year. For, um, um, like stuff that I count as learning and development, which meant that I got to write off a lot of my cks and um, and actually subscribe to a couple of more. And because, hey, honestly, at this point, I think like newsletters are a really great learning and development tool to

[00:49:19] be completely honest with you.

[00:49:20] Um, and, um, and, and, and I, I really like paying people for their work, but, and I, and I think sub is a great platform, but yeah, I had that like Catch 22 where I’m. I kind of wanna own my own thing because this doesn’t feel right to, like, even though I have the list, I don’t love that all the, if I were to charge for something that all of that is going through.

[00:49:41] So there’s just, I have, there are questions that I have. Let’s, let’s, let’s put it that way.

[00:49:46] Brett: So I have bought Cindy three times now because you can buy it for one domain and then add as many brands to it as you want. But then the signup and the, the, uh, web versions of all your newsletters are on the primary domain. And for the purpose, like if I wanna, brett Terpstra dot com email list, I don’t want them to have to go to envy ultra.com.

[00:50:14] And, and wonder why, but for 60 bucks, I mean, compared to the cost of doing the same thing with MailChimp, like I’ll just, I, I bought it for marked, I bought it for brett Terpstra dot com and I bought it for NB Ultra, and I just run it independently on each of those domains. So everyone has an SSL encrypted signup form from the right domain.

[00:50:39] That makes sense. And it leads to no. Questions of hanky, hanky

[00:50:44] Jeffrey: Oh, oh.

[00:50:49] php. Pretty hot party.

[00:50:51] Brett: right?

[00:50:52] Jeffrey: All right, you guys. It’s good to have the band together,

[00:50:54] Christina: I love it. I I, I missed you too.

[00:50:56] Jeffrey: you too.

[00:50:56] Christina: fun. Glad to be back. Feels like the, feels like the, the new year is, is starting off right. Hope it, hope it’s good for everyone.

[00:51:03] Brett: Don’t jinx it,

[00:51:04] Christina: I’m trying not to.

[00:51:08] Jeffrey: Why do we always fight at the end?

[00:51:10] Christina: I love you guys

[00:51:11] Brett: Get some sleep you guys.

[00:51:12] Jeffrey: Get some

[00:51:13] Christina: and get some sleep.

[00:51:14] Outro: The.