In this landmark 360th episode of Data Driven, we take a full-circle journey back through the past seven seasons, exploring the highs, lows, and everything in-between. Frank and Andy, in their signature style, veer off the beaten path, offering listeners not just a trip down memory lane, but an off-road adventure filled with insights, laughter, and a few unexpected detours.
Join us as we reflect on where we’ve been and, more importantly, where we’re headed next in the ever-evolving landscape of data and technology. It’s an episode you won’t want to miss, complete with the wisdom and whimsy that only Frank and Andy can provide.
00:00 Simpsons celebrates 360 episodes, announces new shows.
06:48 Struggling with impostor syndrome, sibling dynamics, and survival.
14:37 Experiments with AI feedback, brief show intros.
20:19 Challenging start, surprised by success in audio.
25:17 Uneven distribution; learned from former Microsoft colleague.
29:47 Struggle with communication, engineer writes terse responses.
35:47 Detective describes transit system in detail.
38:25 Relieved when Amazon took over sci-fi series.
43:28 Discussing latest blog post on OpenAI's capabilities.
52:15 Obfuscation and difficulty in accessing information persist.
56:41 Equal time for Democrats and Republicans in media.
01:02:36 December is a mad time due to birthdays.
01:05:06 Originally planned as a video podcast, logistics issues.
01:09:44 360-degree journey concludes with data-driven discussions.
Welcome to Episode 360 of the Data Driven Podcast.
Speaker:I'm your host, Bailey, the semiscient master of ceremonies,
Speaker:guiding you through the vast realms of data and technology with what you might
Speaker:call a British charm. In today's special episode, we've
Speaker:come full circle, 360 degrees to be exact.
Speaker:Frank and Andy, your beloved data aficionados, embark on a
Speaker:retrospective adventure looking back at the twists, turns,
Speaker:and tremendous tales from the past 7 seasons. It's a bit
Speaker:like time travel, but with fewer paradoxes and more data
Speaker:insights. But in true Frank and Andy fashion, our
Speaker:journey doesn't follow a straight path. Expect a labyrinth of
Speaker:tangents, day tours, and, of course, the occasional
Speaker:tech related rabbit hole. It's what makes this podcast the
Speaker:treasure trove of information and entertainment it is.
Speaker:So whether you're here for the data, the wit, or just to hear if
Speaker:Frank and Andy ever managed to stay on topic, you're in the right place.
Speaker:Hello, and welcome to Data Driven. And you know what,
Speaker:Andy? What? I have said that now officially
Speaker:360 times. 360
Speaker:times. Right. That's right, ladies and gents, boys and
Speaker:girls, AIs of various levels of sentience.
Speaker:Trying to make the episode future proof. Yeah. So this is show
Speaker:number 360. Wow. And one of the
Speaker:things I liked about the Simpsons there's many things I like about the Simpsons, but
Speaker:they but they would instead of celebrating, like, episode 100 or 200, like,
Speaker:normal shows do, they'd be like, this is the 4 100 and third episode. Woo
Speaker:hoo. Special. So I thought
Speaker:360 would be a good way to kind of
Speaker:talk about the journey this far and some of the cool projects we have going
Speaker:on now, which in in our virtual green
Speaker:room before we hit the record, we were talking about.
Speaker:Right? So first off, on my
Speaker:end, the big one the
Speaker:big moment of news is not
Speaker:technology related, believe it or not. But it is super cool.
Speaker:It is super cool. So there's a couple of shows that you will
Speaker:hear, that you've already heard, and there's some that are kind
Speaker:of in stuck in development limbo. More on that later.
Speaker:But I refer to an ongoing court case.
Speaker:Sometimes I'll even refer to it as an ongoing custody case.
Speaker:That is closed now because we have finally adopted,
Speaker:my wife's cousin. And,
Speaker:Andy's clapping if you're watching the video, but I think he was on mute.
Speaker:Because he would cough and then you clap. But no. We finally adopted him. So
Speaker:we now have 3 boys, officially legal. He's my son.
Speaker:Just with, like, the other 2, and, he
Speaker:he's an awesome kid. He,
Speaker:he's a lot of fun. He's such a happy boy.
Speaker:And considering kind of all the things that had happened, it's just in the
Speaker:circumstances of his birth, which are pretty bad, and kind of the
Speaker:fighting that went around to who gets to keep him, who gets
Speaker:to adopt him, basically.
Speaker:You know, because of I wanna avoid future legal
Speaker:complications. I won't go into those. Sure. But it
Speaker:looks like it's over. So, you know, he's he's part of the family, and he's
Speaker:been part of the family, I guess, since birth because he's a relative, but he's
Speaker:part of our little cluster since he came in a little bit with us in
Speaker:July. And, it's funny I did the
Speaker:math is that when he starts kindergarten Mhmm. My
Speaker:oldest graduates from high school, like, the same time. Wow.
Speaker:So when I did the math and I was like, boy, I am a glutton
Speaker:for punishment. No. It's a
Speaker:wonderful thing. I and I say that as a
Speaker:father who had children. Let's see. My first,
Speaker:daughter was born when I was
Speaker:18. Oh, wow. That's a little young,
Speaker:and I don't recommend it. But, you know,
Speaker:god is good, and it worked out well, and, she's
Speaker:awesome. And my last child, my
Speaker:son, my second son, was born when I
Speaker:was 44. So,
Speaker:also, kind of 8 I'm I'm not hitting the median.
Speaker:Okay? But Mhmm. But I've got the range.
Speaker:So when what I learned through both
Speaker:those experiences because I had 2 daughters from my first marriage, and they
Speaker:they grew up that you know, they were basically grown. I would
Speaker:say I think I think Penny was either 18 or
Speaker:about to turn, like, within a week and a half 18 when
Speaker:I'm I married Christy, my my second wife. And
Speaker:then we started having, children, and we had 3 more
Speaker:then. And it's having done this twice gives gives a
Speaker:perspective. And have being older and having children,
Speaker:Frank, I think it's, you know, it's I I don't
Speaker:wanna say it's better because it's not, but it's different because you know what to
Speaker:expect. And that's that's a big deal.
Speaker:Because that first time, you anyone, any parent having a first
Speaker:child has is having a child for the very first time. I mean,
Speaker:that that sounds Right. Circular. I I get it,
Speaker:but, a bit of a tautology. But it's true.
Speaker:You don't know what you don't know until you actually go and have
Speaker:a child. And I always tell my my older daughter and I joke with
Speaker:her, all the time. I should say old dust because I've got
Speaker:3. I tell her I you were the beta child. You know?
Speaker:So we had to learn how to be parents with you. Her and my
Speaker:my with my second wife. Our
Speaker:older son is her first. Right. Right. Sort of
Speaker:thing. He's also a a bit of a beta child as well. So
Speaker:but congratulations. Every child is different too. Like, you know, with the first
Speaker:and kind of, like, having gone through it now three times or in the process
Speaker:of going through it. Yeah. But one thing
Speaker:I noticed with the littlest guy
Speaker:is
Speaker:I know now that this time is short.
Speaker:Yeah. And I appreciate the little things.
Speaker:Not that I didn't with the older 2, but it was when you're
Speaker:your first child, you don't know what to expect. You're like, oh my god. Oh
Speaker:my god. Oh my god. What am I doing? Right? A lot of impostor
Speaker:syndrome with the first kid.
Speaker:And then with the second one, you think that, we've done this before. It's
Speaker:no big deal, but
Speaker:you're thrown for a loop because it's a default leader for their personality.
Speaker:Mhmm. And then you have to keep if they're close enough in age, you have
Speaker:to keep them both alive, which becomes this whole
Speaker:thing, and then they interact with each other. And I'm an only child, so,
Speaker:like, this is completely, like seeing the sibling relationships
Speaker:develop is completely foreign to me. Right. Right. And
Speaker:my wife isn't. So she's like, you can't like, I remember the first time I
Speaker:came back from a conference, And I bought I
Speaker:used to bring, like, either a souvenir or, like, a swag thing from the show,
Speaker:and I only got one. That was a
Speaker:mistake. Right? Right?
Speaker:And I thought imagine Roberta addressing that. Yes.
Speaker:Yes. My lovely wife would be like We can't do that. Like,
Speaker:and even now with, like, the littlest one, I'm like, but he's a baby. He
Speaker:can't she's like, it doesn't matter. I was like, okay. Right. So
Speaker:but it's interesting to kinda see that. And it's
Speaker:cool to see the my oldest kind of really grow into being
Speaker:a young man, but also growing into being a a
Speaker:big brother twice over. And
Speaker:my middle now middle child is kind of was used to being
Speaker:the the baby of the family. Yeah. Now it's not
Speaker:job. I will I think he was excited that he was no longer the
Speaker:baby. Okay. But then he realized, wait, I'm no longer the baby.
Speaker:I lose. He knew all the bad things he would lose,
Speaker:but he only he realized the good things he would lose too. So it's kind
Speaker:of interesting. He's kind of developed into it really well too. So it's it's
Speaker:Yeah. It's worked out well. And the little guy is just, you know, the missing
Speaker:puzzle. My my sister-in-law basically
Speaker:said, like, he's the missing puzzle piece you didn't know was missing. Aw.
Speaker:And he, like, really fits in really well. Like and he's just
Speaker:it's it's interesting to see see the personalities develop and, like, interact
Speaker:with each other. That is that is really cool,
Speaker:and I I didn't say it before, but congratulations. Thank
Speaker:you. Thank you very much. I think you I've told you. You know?
Speaker:Yes. But not Like, day of, I think, when we went to the courthouse. Oh,
Speaker:absolutely. Yeah. You did say congratulations, but up until the
Speaker:moment I swear if you're
Speaker:still listening, we are gonna talk about technology, but hold on. Hold on.
Speaker:Up until the moment, the judge basically put the hammer down
Speaker:literally. We
Speaker:were expecting certain parties to show up
Speaker:Yeah. And stop the process.
Speaker:So that's all I'll say. Yeah. Up to and including physical
Speaker:violence against me, the judge, or the building. So that's
Speaker:the kind of things I've been living with over the last Goodness, Frank. That's,
Speaker:like, what, year or so? Because we met him about a year, and we met
Speaker:him met him end of January last year. Okay. Because this the we didn't know
Speaker:he existed. He was he's about 18 months old now, so he's about 4 months
Speaker:Yeah. Before we even knew we existed, and we're like and he was in the
Speaker:foster care system in Pennsylvania. And we're
Speaker:like, you know, we just bought this big new house.
Speaker:We're just across the state line more or less. Right.
Speaker:And why and then one day, I
Speaker:will tell all about this, but I'm gonna wait for certain parties to
Speaker:pass away. Because
Speaker:as of yet, they haven't figured out how to sue you beyond the grave.
Speaker:Not yet. But Not yet. With AI. With AI,
Speaker:anything's possible. But now that we're back talking about
Speaker:AI, I think it's interesting because
Speaker:with my first child, I wasn't in the AI space. Right? I
Speaker:was in Right. I was still in the silver light world, which
Speaker:kinda crazy to even say that out loud.
Speaker:If my second one, I was in AI space,
Speaker:and I really got to appreciate like, fully
Speaker:appreciate, not just from, like, a parental level Yeah. But from a
Speaker:developmental psychology and kind of engineering aspect of a cognitive
Speaker:way, how language developed, how learning happens.
Speaker:And now I'm seeing the relationships build between the 3
Speaker:separate nodes, if you will, and that's
Speaker:fascinating to see. And maybe not to anyone
Speaker:who's not an only child. If you're an only child, if you're if you have
Speaker:siblings, you kind of you live through that experience. Yeah. I did
Speaker:not. So, that's needed.
Speaker:To be fair, I'm the oldest of, there were 5 of us.
Speaker:You know, mom had 5 boys, and,
Speaker:it's, I it's just as foreign to me to think about
Speaker:what it would be like to to be an only child. So I don't
Speaker:I really don't say one's better than the other, and I don't think that's what
Speaker:you're saying at all. No. No. No. Not at all. But it's the but they
Speaker:are different. Well, you know, it's funny. When I was a kid, a lot of
Speaker:people would say to me, like, oh, it must be terrible being an only child.
Speaker:I'm like, I don't know. I think it's pretty flipping awesome.
Speaker:And I didn't always say flipping if you get my drift. I do.
Speaker:But where it did stop becoming awesome is about
Speaker:the age. I was about about 25 when I realized that my parents were getting
Speaker:older. And I realized the consequence of that.
Speaker:Yeah. And I had that I call
Speaker:it an uh-oh moment around age 25. Like, uh-oh.
Speaker:Right? It's on me. Like, there's no one else.
Speaker:Yeah. Like and and and and and I
Speaker:know from experience with other family members and things like
Speaker:that, even if there is a sibling, one sibling tends to take
Speaker:the brunt of the load for for many reasons. Legit, illegitimate,
Speaker:fair and unfair. Right? Yep. Yep. So
Speaker:even then, it's not a guarantee, but
Speaker:but still, there's someone who can understand your growing
Speaker:up circumstances in a way that really no one else can.
Speaker:I don't know. So Yeah. Yeah. So as a kid, it's
Speaker:an awesome ride. The second half of it, not
Speaker:so much. Yeah. I try to think of a movie that starts off really
Speaker:good, but then turns terrible.
Speaker:Can't really think of 1, but you get the gist. I do. I mean, it's
Speaker:show 360, so we have to, like, kinda hit all the our notes of, like,
Speaker:movie reference. That's true. You know?
Speaker:We'll have to come up. We'll we'll have a movie reference. I know us. Maybe
Speaker:we'll have Bailey come up with one if we don't. We will do it.
Speaker:Speaking of Bailey, I'm doing an experiment,
Speaker:and this was an experiment inspired by some other happenings where
Speaker:the thought I had was, well, what if you had AIs
Speaker:delivering a short kinda newsy podcast
Speaker:about AI. And then you said you're like, dude, there's already YouTube
Speaker:channels that do this. I'm like, no. No. No. But they don't tell you they're
Speaker:an AI. Right? It's always that quasi so is it so we
Speaker:we now have a a a second AI entity,
Speaker:and her name is Jen, Jen
Speaker:AI. Get it. Right. So clever. And because now
Speaker:we can say everyone's talking about Jen AI.
Speaker:So I did the first couple of rounds of experiments, and I passed the round
Speaker:to people that I mean, we've gotten the feedback that Bailey is both
Speaker:an interesting aspect of the show, but also if she talks for
Speaker:too long, it becomes very obvious that it's an
Speaker:AI. Right? So, that's
Speaker:why if you notice, I kind of I try to keep her intros,
Speaker:to a minute plus or minus, like, 5 seconds. Right?
Speaker:Just because I get it. I I we we do listen to the feedback.
Speaker:I do like keeping her because it's always cool to,
Speaker:like, have a an intro of what the show is gonna be about. Right?
Speaker:And you or me could do it, true, but
Speaker:they're about to hear us for, like, 35 to 40 to to an hour. So
Speaker:they're in this store hour. So I'm pretty sure pretty sure it's nice to hear
Speaker:a different voice. So so I actually found a new,
Speaker:AI voice that sounds very human like and
Speaker:that's the voice for Gen AI. And then I was thinking the first
Speaker:iteration, the first recording and it's on YouTube. We're gonna start
Speaker:in a separate podcast channel. Because at one point, if you go back in the
Speaker:history long enough, I did do, like, a daily kind of show of
Speaker:news and AI or in Tano. Mhmm. But that was when I
Speaker:was unemployed in between jobs, and I had
Speaker:2 kids. And one of them wasn't
Speaker:a toddler. One of them actually, at the time, one
Speaker:of them was, actually. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. But the
Speaker:gist is is that I also got the feedback is that it
Speaker:starts if it starts polluting the feed, people
Speaker:people will do that. And if you look at successful podcasters, we'll use Joe Rogan.
Speaker:Right? Love him, hate him, admire him, loathe him, whatever.
Speaker:He has a the main show, and those shows are anywhere
Speaker:from 2 to 3 hours. I think I saw 1 on the feed. It was
Speaker:4 hours, which Wow. I can't imagine. But there's
Speaker:also a series of YouTube channels as well as, I think, a
Speaker:podcast RSS feed where it's called JRE clips, Joe
Speaker:Rogan experience clips, which is just like segments. Which
Speaker:is good because very few people are gonna sit through the entire
Speaker:2, 3 hours. Right. In fact, when I was driving back and forth to
Speaker:Pittsburgh for the visitations with said child,
Speaker:I would that was when I started listening to it because it was, like, this
Speaker:one kind of narrative you could listen to on the drive. It's about 3 hours.
Speaker:Right? So the problem is is that because of language reasons, I realized I
Speaker:couldn't do it if there were kids in the car, which I think
Speaker:solidifies our statement of we try not to have profanity.
Speaker:And I think for the first time, we actually bleeped it out a couple of
Speaker:shows ago with Luke. I forget his last name, but
Speaker:Luke Diaz? Yeah. The venture capital
Speaker:guy. So Yeah. And there's another show by a very brilliant man named
Speaker:Benjamin. His first name's Ben.
Speaker:That there's a lot of profanity in that. So the
Speaker:Yeah. The effort to edit that out Yeah. That would be
Speaker:that would be hard. And this this may be a good
Speaker:segue. This is an excellent segue. I was teeing it up. Thank you,
Speaker:Frank. Just not consciously. That thank you.
Speaker:We started another thing. We're always starting things. And
Speaker:we started recording on Teams, and we'll
Speaker:say things in the shows like if you're watching this video. And we said it
Speaker:for the longest time, but we didn't have the videos
Speaker:posted anyway for, people to see them.
Speaker:So a couple of 3 months ago, we
Speaker:found a a platform that would, work, I think, work
Speaker:well, and it managed a lot of the, stuff behind the
Speaker:scenes for managing subscriptions. So people wanna
Speaker:sign up and, you know, and watch shows
Speaker:indefinitely. That that's available. And
Speaker:then if you get you know, you watch what's available out there and go, alright.
Speaker:I've I've done you know, it's a long weekend and you binge watch all of
Speaker:the data driven, media TV parts.
Speaker:And and that's what it's called. It's, it's a data driven media dot
Speaker:TV. It the the link right now
Speaker:does not have an SSL on it. So if you go to HTTP
Speaker:colon wackawackawackaw datadrivenmedia.tv,
Speaker:it will redirect you to the official site that's kinda
Speaker:managed by the platform. And it has it does have an SSL on
Speaker:it. So when you sign up, you're not your stuff's not at risk.
Speaker:Right now, it's 4.99 a month is what we've got
Speaker:it set at, and we'll probably experiment with price because I
Speaker:know us. We do that. There's a 1st month for 3.99.
Speaker:You sign up, try it out. Again, if you don't like it, you
Speaker:can cancel it at any time. And in addition to that, there's the your
Speaker:first 7 days are free. So, like, almost
Speaker:every other subscription service, you sign up and you put in your credit
Speaker:card information. But then you if you
Speaker:cancel before the free part's done, then it doesn't cost
Speaker:you anything. So, again, HTTP, not an
Speaker:s, colon /data driven
Speaker:media dot tv. And to be fair, when Frank
Speaker:and Frank got the original domain, datadriven.tv for
Speaker:the podcast, this was the thought back in 20 was it
Speaker:2016? 2017? 2017. Yeah. Yeah. And that
Speaker:that we the idea was to do video,
Speaker:and it just it turned out to be,
Speaker:hard. It's probably the best way to say it. It's difficult
Speaker:and challenging. So we just launched with the audio part of
Speaker:it, and I'm still shocked that the
Speaker:audio has done as well as it does. The podcast has done as well, and
Speaker:that's really because of all of you. So if you're listening
Speaker:to the audio, if you wanted to go over and watch the video,
Speaker:see see me and Frank, and, you know, and kind
Speaker:of follow along the show. I was gonna say the unedited
Speaker:version, but we do so little editing these
Speaker:days. Right. It's only it's only, like, there's a couple of green
Speaker:room conversations you could kick out, you know, catch up on. The security one is
Speaker:awesome. This week in security, is that what it is? Or the
Speaker:security guys? Yeah. The the the green room presentation, I would say and
Speaker:that was a good show. Was almost as good as the show. Like Yeah.
Speaker:And see that that's so well. We'll edit out the stuff before
Speaker:Frank begins, the intro. Right. You know? We'll
Speaker:edit that out in the audio. That's included in the video.
Speaker:Right. And so they and the reason it was a good segue when we were
Speaker:talking about, you know, potential profanity, which we've and we and
Speaker:all of our guests have done a great job at at limiting. Right. There was
Speaker:one show, It's very intelligent guy. I listened to the
Speaker:show, and I've been around enough people
Speaker:who use profanity, and they're not angry when they do
Speaker:it. It's their way of speaking that I can separate those
Speaker:2. Not everybody's like that, and I'm not judging. I'm just
Speaker:saying. And and and if you knew me outside of a professional
Speaker:context dude, I grew up in New York City and North
Speaker:Jersey. What Come on. What do I call it, Frank, when you start?
Speaker:Go Jersey on you. That's right. Frank goes Jersey every now and then.
Speaker:So so so, like, so, like and that was kind of that and and this
Speaker:is a good example of, like, we're doing a retrospective. That was
Speaker:my NPR voice. But,
Speaker:you and I had a big debate about this. It was like I'm like,
Speaker:look. I get it. Like, I I wanna
Speaker:leave it in because we had a big debate. Like, I wanna leave it in.
Speaker:Right? Our podcasting platform and, apparently, a lot of them now have a flag of
Speaker:this episode is explicit. Right. Right? But
Speaker:then we kinda went back and forth on that and basically what you said, and
Speaker:I was just like and plus, I know that
Speaker:a lot of us listen to podcast with little ears
Speaker:in the car. Right? Yeah. And a big I wouldn't say
Speaker:problem. Like, his problems go as pretty good. Like, I would love to listen to,
Speaker:you know, the latest Joe Rogan when I was driving up to Pittsburgh. But
Speaker:Right. You know, how do I explain, like, you know, to my,
Speaker:you know, 9 year old, like, yeah. You shouldn't use bad words. He goes, but
Speaker:Joe Rogan has you know, made a $1,000,000,000 deal, and he uses bad words. I
Speaker:was like, okay. You know, like, it it so rather than have
Speaker:those awkward conversations, we decided
Speaker:to not publish it yet until I can get the
Speaker:time to bleep it through. And what's interesting
Speaker:is, I actually used AI to
Speaker:find the profanity. Right? So we have interesting.
Speaker:Yeah. Because yeah. I mean, I I do listen to the whole show, but, like,
Speaker:if I'm editing about I have my editing, like, mindset on.
Speaker:I need to do it quick. Right? And I tend to do it quick. So
Speaker:what I'll do is so what I did was I just ran it through. We
Speaker:use something called cast magic. And you know what? I'm gonna go
Speaker:out there on a limb and say, I will provide a affiliate link. You should
Speaker:totally check out Cast Magic. It's freaking awesome. Because, basically,
Speaker:what it does, all the show notes
Speaker:since, what, maybe, like, 6 months to a year now have been done with Cast
Speaker:Magic. So Cast Magic will let you
Speaker:upload an audio and or
Speaker:video now apparently. So, and
Speaker:then it'll create a a transcript. You identify the
Speaker:speakers. Right? Because you're basically marking up. It'll it'll identify when you're talking, when I'm
Speaker:talking. Yep. Right? But
Speaker:it'll also run a series of AI prompts against it.
Speaker:Like, here's the title for the show. There's here's the key moments. So if you
Speaker:look at last maybe 15, 20 episodes, those
Speaker:key moments have been selected by AI. And if I don't like it, I can
Speaker:regenerate it, but it works out really well. Yeah.
Speaker:Because that is it's not labor intensive. That's not the right word. It's time
Speaker:intensive. Yeah. And I think if there's anything I've learned over the past, let's
Speaker:say, 5, 6 years is that time is the true currency.
Speaker:It's true. Time is the true measure of wealth, and it's
Speaker:the only thing that's ever really fairly distributed across life.
Speaker:Talent's not, looks are not, money is not.
Speaker:Yeah. You name it. It's probably not evenly distributed. However,
Speaker:I've learned this from a guy I used to work with at Microsoft because he
Speaker:he was he had this whole rant, and we were
Speaker:stuck in a car ride from, like I say stuck like
Speaker:it's a bad thing, but we were stuck in a
Speaker:in a in an Uber ride from Sea Tac to Redmond. And, you
Speaker:know, hit the traffic the wrong way, that
Speaker:could not that's not a trivial drive. So
Speaker:for for my for my peeps in the in the
Speaker:DC Beltway area, it's like going from from
Speaker:Silver Spring to Tysons Corner,
Speaker:rush hour, or any time of day. Like, could be
Speaker:15 minutes, could be 3 hours. And if you hit the
Speaker:jackpot, could be 6 hours. Ask me how I know that one.
Speaker:So, long story short,
Speaker:the topic of gaming came up because there's a bunch of nerds in the car.
Speaker:And this one guy had basically purchased a,
Speaker:might have been Star Wars Galaxy, one of the big massively
Speaker:online things, right, which I don't play because I know it's a massive
Speaker:time sink and that will become my life. So it's just easier to avoid it.
Speaker:And so he's he was really into it. He he
Speaker:people were giving him the business,
Speaker:on he bought a premade character at, like, level 60 or level
Speaker:100. Right? And people were like, yeah. I shouldn't have done
Speaker:that. You cheated. Blah blah blah blah blah. And then he had this excellent
Speaker:stump speech on the value of time. And he's like,
Speaker:look, I have a life. I have kids. I think his twins were born. I
Speaker:I I don't know. I have a job. I have this. I have a career.
Speaker:I just wanna play a game, and, you
Speaker:know, I don't mind trading money for time because and then he went on
Speaker:this whole thing, like, you know, you know, I have the same number of hours
Speaker:in a day that Bill Gates has.
Speaker:Remember, all Microsoft nerds. Right? So we're and this is before Elon was in the
Speaker:top billionaire list. Right? I have the same number of hours a day that
Speaker:he does versus the beggar on the street versus anyone in the world. It's
Speaker:how I spend that money. And if you look at how Bill Gates spends his
Speaker:time or spends his money, it's really more of optimized his time. So what does
Speaker:that tell you? And I was like, woah.
Speaker:Because when they were talking about the online game, it's a great point. And Yeah.
Speaker:I love to get him on the show. I don't think he does AI though,
Speaker:but he'd be an interesting character.
Speaker:But the interesting point because, like, during part of the conversation, again, it was a
Speaker:long drive. I can't when I start talking about this particular online game,
Speaker:I kinda tuned it out because, well, I don't wanna know how good it is.
Speaker:Right? The less I know, the better. The further I
Speaker:am away from the event horizon, the better. So when he started talking about,
Speaker:you know, the the time focusing and goes, like, wow, that's really good.
Speaker:I think that's a really good idea, and that that kinda stuck with me. It's
Speaker:one of those things that kind of just lodges itself in the corner of your
Speaker:brain, and you start thinking about it. The short of it is is that by
Speaker:using these AI tools, we can produce more content. And if you notice, we've been
Speaker:really good with that over the last, you know, few months of
Speaker:putting out a show weekly or if not twice weekly. Because we did a
Speaker:bonus show on leap day. Because I figured, bonus day, bonus,
Speaker:whatever. There we go. It's a great idea, but you're absolutely right.
Speaker:The the the impact that I'm seeing
Speaker:LLMs have these days Right. Is
Speaker:more in, force multipliers,
Speaker:in time savings, and that sort of stuff. And I had a
Speaker:my my recent anecdote about that happened in the past couple of
Speaker:weeks where I was responding to a request for a
Speaker:proposal. And I don't know if you've ever had an opportunity
Speaker:to to look at RFPs. They vary. This one was
Speaker:relatively short for a a project that was probably
Speaker:gonna last, more than a year. And,
Speaker:you know, and they were doing this very,
Speaker:rigid process where you
Speaker:got the RFP. You had a couple of weeks to
Speaker:collect and send in the questions. And then the week after
Speaker:that, the proposal was due. You were gonna send in your proposal.
Speaker:You got one shot at the questions. And I was like, what?
Speaker:I'd like to I'm sure I'm gonna have more questions after I get these answers.
Speaker:Right. I can't do that. I'd like to sit down and talk to the people.
Speaker:Can't do that. It's like, I've gotta
Speaker:communicate using this writing. So at the end of
Speaker:it, when I got all of my questions back,
Speaker:we're running out of time, and I needed to, you know, to
Speaker:respond to the proposal. And I sat down with 1 of the
Speaker:engineers who would end up working with me for over a year,
Speaker:drafted a really quick, you know, like, 4 sentences,
Speaker:copied and pasted that, and then I used chatgptchatgpt4,
Speaker:and said, restate this,
Speaker:you know, so that it's not as terse. I didn't use this this
Speaker:prompt. But in my mind, I I the first prompt I thought of
Speaker:was, you know, make it not seem like an engineer wrote
Speaker:it, which to be fair,
Speaker:I struggle with communicating with my wife whom I love
Speaker:dearly, not like an engineer would
Speaker:respond to it. One of my mentors told me years ago,
Speaker:and it like you were mentioning the conversation, it stuck.
Speaker:His boss had told him to go do some sales stuff.
Speaker:And he bring an engineer, and he said, I
Speaker:want you to talk to them like you're talking to your wife. And
Speaker:that was good advice, but that wouldn't work for me as well as it would
Speaker:for him because he was better at communicating with his wife than I am.
Speaker:But did the GPT did it. 1st pass,
Speaker:Frank. Me and the engineer looked at that, and we said
Speaker:copy and paste and send, And we ended up sending that. So 2
Speaker:things came to mind when you said that. 1, I married an
Speaker:engineer. So fun
Speaker:fact, 1st engineer I dated, I end up marrying. I don't know. Maybe
Speaker:there's causation correlation, but it would be unwise
Speaker:for me to do any more experimentation. Right? I would have to agree
Speaker:with this. That's that's my attempt at rim
Speaker:shot. The other thing is I sent you this joke last night on,
Speaker:YouTube shorts. Right? I saw it. An engineer goes to hell.
Speaker:This is the joke. It's really funny. That's so funny. Engineer
Speaker:goes to hell, and the devil sees him and was
Speaker:like, what are you doing here? And he goes, I don't know. So he he
Speaker:he's like, it's too hot here. I'm gonna I'm gonna build an air conditioning system.
Speaker:So he builds an air conditioning. Hell becomes cool again and livable. Right?
Speaker:And he makes a bunch of other improvements because every time he sees something wrong.
Speaker:And god's talking to the devil and he goes, how's things
Speaker:down there? I bet it's hot. He goes, actually, no.
Speaker:And he's like, what do you mean? Oh, yeah. This guy came here. He's an
Speaker:engineer. He made all these improvements. And he was like, well, that's a mistake. He
Speaker:clearly shouldn't be there. He has to come to heaven. And he goes, no. You
Speaker:know, he goes, no. I'm keeping him. I'm keeping him. He goes,
Speaker:yeah. Well, I'll sue you. And then the devil just looks at them and laughs
Speaker:at him. Where are you gonna get a lawyer?
Speaker:That's so mean. I know. I've somewhat
Speaker:as someone who spent the last a a good part of the last, 15 months
Speaker:with lawyers. I understand why you sent
Speaker:it to me. I got it I thought it was funny. I thought laughed, and
Speaker:then I was like, I know why Frank sent us. Law lawyers are
Speaker:good when they're on your side. Right? True. And you had a great lawyer. But
Speaker:Our our lawyer was awesome. She was the best. She
Speaker:when family law is a different animal, and I
Speaker:never had to encounter. But Yeah. Somebody once said it's the best way to
Speaker:be to get financially and emotionally drained in 1
Speaker:in 1 fell swoop. And I could totally see it. Like, it because there's, like,
Speaker:this is part of the I don't know, man. It's just if you can avoid
Speaker:it Yeah. Highly recommend you do. I I I I would I would
Speaker:give it a Yelp review of do not recommend, you know, 0 stars.
Speaker:But people don't go there typically by choice, I guess. But it's just a
Speaker:it's just a as particularly when you're dealing with, like, the social
Speaker:welfare system, it's just dismal. You know, we were we would
Speaker:be there in waiting rooms, and there would be, other kids there waiting to see,
Speaker:you know, their pet it's it's just god awful. It's the only
Speaker:way I can the only way I can say it, and meet our
Speaker:language requirements. There there we go. Yes.
Speaker:But, I forget how we got off topic. Oh, yes. So it
Speaker:was Jack CPT. Yeah. No. I mean, it's totally
Speaker:great for, like, some live music. Minutes. You know? Yeah. I mean
Speaker:and this is like you were able to respond. I'm assuming you were able to
Speaker:respond to that. I was. Yeah. But I've also found that it's
Speaker:helpful to build out so I I signed
Speaker:up for Gemini when I first came out. Mhmm. Right? And one of
Speaker:the example prompts to give you on the screen is, you
Speaker:know, act like you're, you
Speaker:know, a fictional character. I think it might have been somebody from, like, a Dickens
Speaker:novel or whatever. You know, start to comp be conversational and start
Speaker:talking about the weather. And I'm like, what if I made this a
Speaker:character from The Expanse? So Christine Avasarala,
Speaker:who I I can't describe her,
Speaker:but she would not pass the language test. Let's put that one. She wouldn't, but
Speaker:she is an awesome character. Such a well written character. Her and
Speaker:Amos Burton. Streamy. All of them, really. They kept
Speaker:that whole series. I I said this, back
Speaker:when I read the first book, and it there were maybe 4 out when I
Speaker:read the first one. I said, this is the best writing. Hands
Speaker:down, not sci fi. Just the best writing
Speaker:I've read in about a decade. Right. No. It's just
Speaker:really well written. Like It is. And it I mean, read the books. The series
Speaker:is good. Don't get me wrong. I mean, this I don't know how you understand
Speaker:the series without having read the books. So I saw the series,
Speaker:then I read the books. Oh, so how did that go? That's great. So good
Speaker:usage. Tell you that you can appreciate the fine
Speaker:details. Like, there's one scene and this is not spoiler. Right? So so the
Speaker:asteroid series, it's the first season in the first
Speaker:book starts off there. And there's this whole segment where
Speaker:Miller, who's like a detective, is
Speaker:is basically complaining about the transit system, on
Speaker:and how it works. He's talking about the trans system, how it works, and or
Speaker:doesn't work as the case may be. And and he was describing the various
Speaker:lines and the various stops and things like that. And if you
Speaker:when I rewatch season 1, there's they actually have in in the
Speaker:subway car well, not subway, but you get the idea. The trains, they actually
Speaker:have maps that match exactly his description, like,
Speaker:from the book. So there's a whole lot of, like, set design and
Speaker:stuff that I after reading the books because there's always that one
Speaker:guy or gal that's like, the book's better. Like, oh, shut up.
Speaker:Right? That's it. That's actually my my my my my internal voice.
Speaker:I liked them both, Frank, and I read the books first. But I
Speaker:when after reading so I saw the series first, and I didn't watch it till
Speaker:season 3 because it was in the sci fi channel Mhmm. Or
Speaker:season 2 because I just had no faith in the sci fi channel,
Speaker:keeping good shows on the air for more than, like, 3 years. And I'm
Speaker:referring to Defiance. Defiance was a really good show that got canceled
Speaker:before its time. Yeah. But,
Speaker:I was like, oh, you tell me I had to watch it. And I was
Speaker:like, well, I'll I'll watch it. You know, 2 seasons have been out, and
Speaker:if sci fi when sci fi, you know,
Speaker:cancels it, at least have the books to kinda finish the story.
Speaker:Right. And I was just
Speaker:enthralled. So then I read, I saw, you know, the first season, then I
Speaker:read season 1, and I'm like, this is
Speaker:really good. Like and and then I rewatched season 1, and I was like, it
Speaker:just adds more depth to it. So it's, like Yeah. It it that's very rare
Speaker:that you have you know, people
Speaker:say the book is better than the movie or the movie is better than the
Speaker:book or TV show, whatever. But it's
Speaker:very rare that they both make each other better. Yeah.
Speaker:Like and when they make decisions where they they merge characters,
Speaker:it makes a lot more sense. Yeah. Like, even if you don't
Speaker:go, oh, Alex, for instance. Right? The character of Alex is
Speaker:removed from the show because of outside reasons, outside
Speaker:shenanigans he got himself into. But
Speaker:he's still in the book, which is interesting.
Speaker:So so I was a bit salty when I was relieved when Amazon
Speaker:took it over. Mhmm. Yeah. Which is funny because the first
Speaker:thing they did was with, Christian Alvaro's
Speaker:character. She curses like a sailor in
Speaker:the in in the first Amazon season, like, from, like, the first 5 minutes,
Speaker:which is kinda like, oh, they don't have to worry about that anymore.
Speaker:And, the other,
Speaker:thing was, apparently, Jeff Bezos himself is a big fan of those
Speaker:books. So when sci fi got the rights
Speaker:I don't know if this is true, but the scuttlebutt on the interwebs because everything
Speaker:on the Internet is true. Was he,
Speaker:like, he had a conniption? He, like, he had a fit. Like, how did they
Speaker:lose? How did they lose? So so when sci fi canceled it, they basically swooped
Speaker:in, like, almost right away. Yeah. Now I am
Speaker:supremely disappointed that they chose not to continue the rest of
Speaker:the series. Yeah. But I remain hopeful because,
Speaker:in the stories themselves, there's a time gap between
Speaker:series of books. So maybe There there is. And where they stopped
Speaker:was a good spot to stop. It's It was a good spot. It's the end
Speaker:of it's the end of the first set. The first part? Yes.
Speaker:It jumps. What is it? I it jumps at least 20
Speaker:years. I was, like, 18, 20 years. Something. Yeah. A long
Speaker:time. It was a big jump.
Speaker:But and the thing about it is if you read the books, I'm not trying
Speaker:to and then no spoilers. But if you read the books, you could almost
Speaker:start at that point because of the backfill that they
Speaker:wrote. It's oh, yeah. Again, it's the best reading I I've read.
Speaker:It it's in the top I'd say it's in the top ten
Speaker:easy and maybe in the top 5. And I'm putting series in there
Speaker:because I'm a I love series, first off. But I'm putting series in
Speaker:there like the Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia.
Speaker:And Right. You know, I'm I'm a fan of the Longmire
Speaker:novels as well, so completely different genre.
Speaker:But, you know, they're very well written. And I
Speaker:like I like when I say multidimensional, that's what I the word I
Speaker:was gonna use. I like multidimensional. I'm not talking about,
Speaker:necessarily space because the Longmire novels, which are set
Speaker:in, you know, out in the west, the US West. Oh, Longmire. I think you
Speaker:said Longmire. Sorry about that. It's okay. Yeah. But that was a
Speaker:and it was a series about that as well. Same. They they managed to do
Speaker:the same sort of thing. They're different story based on the same
Speaker:characters and also also well written. I watched this I did
Speaker:what you did with Expanse. I watched the series first and
Speaker:and then started reading the novels. And I think the 20th novel in that
Speaker:series is coming out next month or the month after.
Speaker:It's a but, again, multidimensional in this way that
Speaker:it's not it's definitely more than just
Speaker:one topic, I guess, is the right way to say it.
Speaker:The the plot involves
Speaker:more than just people. I don't I don't know how to say that without expect
Speaker:you know? But it it's definitely, an
Speaker:a view into other cultures and stuff like that.
Speaker:So Interesting. I think what they wrote,
Speaker:what, Ty and I I can't remember
Speaker:the other guy's name. Ty Franks and,
Speaker:SA Curry is Corey. Right? James SA Corey. Yeah. It's
Speaker:really a name together. Right. So and but it's 2
Speaker:and I think they worked they wrote with Lucas. They
Speaker:did. That shows. I, yeah, I believe that's where they they came out
Speaker:of the starboard again. They were, I guess, lit
Speaker:for somebody is gonna shoot me hate mail for this, but I'll I'll say
Speaker:it anyway. They were, like, gophers for, George
Speaker:r r Martin.
Speaker:Right? That may be what I was thinking of, but I thought they've I thought
Speaker:I read that they were involved in that, but the whole They might have been.
Speaker:So opera, we'll just say it that way, but then definitely a space opera
Speaker:where you have to create essentially a universe of characters
Speaker:and politics and history. So I
Speaker:was doing some research on this. So so one of they were interviewed in one
Speaker:of the, origins was it where they were contracted to
Speaker:we're back on MMOs again. They were contracted to write
Speaker:a backdrop and plot kind of structure for a MMO
Speaker:that was set, like, in the future and etcetera,
Speaker:etcetera. Yeah. So that might have been the motivation, plus the fact that
Speaker:they had worked for George r Martin. I don't know what
Speaker:to say. I'm sure one of our listeners will will dig in and correct us
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah. If we've if we've misspoken. And we love it when that happens.
Speaker:Absolutely. That's why what somebody's listening.
Speaker:Well, when we started, I would joke like, well, at least my mom will listen.
Speaker:That's true. I know. But the, the re I
Speaker:think one of the reasons we were going there is I I was gonna plug
Speaker:my, as of today, it's my latest post on,
Speaker:andylenard.blog, and it talks about how to,
Speaker:how to use, OpenAI's ability to create
Speaker:custom GPTs. And I just walk you through. I do that a lot. I do
Speaker:tutorials or screenshots and stuff. Granted, I wrote
Speaker:the post, I think, about 3 weeks ago, posted it a
Speaker:week, week and a half, 2 weeks ago. And, probably, it's out of
Speaker:date already. That happens all the time. Oh, especially here.
Speaker:Especially in the space. Yeah. But but the character I created, I
Speaker:started with one of their suggestions like you did with Gemini. And I
Speaker:said, create a code formatting,
Speaker:you know, a chat l LLM, and,
Speaker:they call them GPTs, custom GPTs. And have the I am
Speaker:gonna share my screen and look at the blog post because we are on video,
Speaker:and some people will choose to watch this video. That's true. So
Speaker:here it is. And you can under the blog. And I had it used like
Speaker:a character from The Expanse, Bobby Draper, one of my
Speaker:favorite characters. She's a Martian marine,
Speaker:Basically yeah. Martian marine gunnery sergeant. She's awesome.
Speaker:She is. She's very, very tough and
Speaker:a great character. But and and I
Speaker:put a couple of quotes in there. She, she she makes
Speaker:good suggestions as I go through this, but, yeah, I named her code formatted
Speaker:Draper. Had GPT generate the image for me there of the kids. The
Speaker:Martian motif too. Ain't that interesting? Yeah. That is cool.
Speaker:And I think it generated more than 1, and that was why I just got
Speaker:to pick that one out of there. And, yeah, threw some code in and
Speaker:had it had it do the formatting. So
Speaker:neat neat way to do that. Frank and I both have blogs. Mine's Andy Leonard
Speaker:dot blog. Frank is is way, way beyond. I cannot
Speaker:snatch the pebble from Frank's hand in blogging. Franksworld.com.
Speaker:25 years old, Frank? Well, the domain is,
Speaker:started in 95, but the blog part of it, the tech blog
Speaker:part of it started in 2004. So that was that's 20
Speaker:years. Although when I lived in Germany, I used the service called Blogger, which I
Speaker:don't even know if they're still around. But I all and I had written
Speaker:a pipe Perl script
Speaker:to scrape the RSS feed and then post it on the actual
Speaker:domain because I didn't wanna give up my own domain owners. Now see now
Speaker:see that brings us to another thing we wanted to talk about. Oh, is this
Speaker:Dingo? Frank's been automating blog posts,
Speaker:and he automated a whole lot of this, activity that goes on
Speaker:behind putting a show, data driven dot TV show episode,
Speaker:out. And it made it so much easier. It was so easy
Speaker:I could do it. But he had to write a lot of this
Speaker:from, you know, from scratch when he started writing it. But what
Speaker:grew out of that was this project you called Dingo, and that's that's
Speaker:serving that up, Frank. There you go. Tell us about Dingo,
Speaker:Frank. So we did talk about Dingo before because I was talking about open sourcing
Speaker:it. And I'm still I'm still I haven't done it yet, and it's not because
Speaker:I've changed my mind. It's just because I you open source
Speaker:something. You kinda have to do things the right way. And for me, now that
Speaker:I have 3 kids, I have to think about how can I
Speaker:best optimize the, the
Speaker:career and monetary potential? Speaking about time.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah. We're at, like, 45 minutes ish, I think. So,
Speaker:but good good call on that. Because we we we we tried the Joe Rogan
Speaker:multi hour thing. A couple episodes back, we did an
Speaker:experiment. The the views on that the listens on that was pretty
Speaker:not Joe Rogan level. Let's put it that way. They were off putting, I think,
Speaker:when people clicked on it and saw the time bar. Right. It really, like
Speaker:Yeah. And it was, like, you know what? That works out better too because for
Speaker:to find contiguous 3 hour blocks or 2 hour blocks of time for the
Speaker:both of us, plus a guest, is nigh
Speaker:impossible. So you know what? It's hard enough to do an hour.
Speaker:I'm okay with the hour thing, the 45 minutes to I I I
Speaker:I think if the conversation's right, I I I could justify going
Speaker:to 90 minutes. But beyond that, I don't think there's any serious
Speaker:value. That's right. And and and calm down. The 90 minutes is gonna be an
Speaker:outlier. Right. Right. Just because it's just
Speaker:because I don't know. Like, I just think that we have a sweet spot. We
Speaker:have it works. Yeah. So
Speaker:So you were working on this post here, the Glaze post? Yes.
Speaker:So this is actually so I gave a a talk, I gave a couple of
Speaker:talks on, Tech Days Pakistan.
Speaker:I didn't go to Pakistan. I did it remotely. Then I did
Speaker:a live stream, and then I did, actually, I think I still
Speaker:have it up on the the thing.
Speaker:And then, inter an
Speaker:internal lunch and learn brown bag session at Red Hat
Speaker:for a certain group. And then based on that,
Speaker:somebody said, have you heard about Glaze? And I had heard about
Speaker:something that, basically this is not the project I heard
Speaker:about. This is a second one. But Glaze is the idea is that it will
Speaker:interfere with the scraping and learning of an name of a of a
Speaker:of an AI can't talk.
Speaker:Of bots that sweep the Internet
Speaker:looking for content to train Gen AI models on.
Speaker:Gotcha. And that is the as of now, the latest post on
Speaker:frankswell.com. Yeah. But you could just look it up on Glaze. So
Speaker:somebody there sent me, this is interesting
Speaker:because this is the the slide I gave the talk on
Speaker:because we're talking about this. Right? And I'm not, you know,
Speaker:I also did a live stream on this on LinkedIn. But did I mention that
Speaker:already? It's time for a coffee reload. That's the other thing too with these
Speaker:multi hour shows is that there's biology becomes a
Speaker:problem. Right. Coffee and intake becomes a problem.
Speaker:So the this the topic of this talk was basically the importance of open source
Speaker:in AI. Right? And and basically, like, we don't know what data was used
Speaker:to train it. And if you're watching this, you see the cute images I
Speaker:have that we don't know how it was trained. We don't know what the model
Speaker:does. And then I said, surely, a foundation model
Speaker:owner will share this information openly and freely. Mhmm.
Speaker:And this is a the the pained look of expression,
Speaker:from Mira Murati, which I think is how you say it, or Myra. I've heard
Speaker:you call you call Myra too. Basically, was
Speaker:asked by a Wall Street Journal reporter, hey. Where'd you train your data for
Speaker:this? And she
Speaker:kinda that's the face she made. Yeah.
Speaker:And she claims to not know, and I
Speaker:call shenanigans on that because Yeah. Obvious depending on
Speaker:because if you look at her resume on LinkedIn, she's
Speaker:been part of the Elon Musk Cinematic Universe.
Speaker:I like that. That's to e the EMCU.
Speaker:She's been part of that world and, like, that level, and her education
Speaker:is is appears to be top notch. Mhmm.
Speaker:She knows. Like, she's been part of, like, Tesla when they were doing, like, the
Speaker:the putting AI in Tesla's, like, in the early 20 tens, which is way before
Speaker:it was cool. Right? So she she has a long history of this. For her
Speaker:not to know, I find highly unlikely.
Speaker:Right? I just find that suspect. I find that unlikely.
Speaker:I think that was I think it was a, uh-oh, speaking of
Speaker:lawyers. Right.
Speaker:But that was basically the gist. You showed the earlier slide with a quote
Speaker:where Elon is suing OpenAI. Yeah. Yeah. And,
Speaker:you know, part of it I I think before
Speaker:that suit, this is about something different. He's trying to get OpenAI to be
Speaker:open again. Right. And and he had a hand in founding it,
Speaker:so I definitely get his point on that. But before
Speaker:that, there was, he he was tweeting
Speaker:about and this is November 2022,
Speaker:December, about how all of these people trying
Speaker:to compete with chat GPT when it was released back then by
Speaker:scraping tweets. And he was they were trying to
Speaker:prevent that from happening, which sounds like what Glace does
Speaker:now Right. Is ways of obfuscating it or at least
Speaker:increasing the difficulty. That's but it's a perpetual
Speaker:cycle with anybody who is going after
Speaker:information, and that now includes people trying to scrape the web to get data
Speaker:to train AIs. But before
Speaker:that, it was hackers. You know? And I don't think this is going away.
Speaker:I think there's just gonna be yet another, you know,
Speaker:another instance where people are trying to get to information,
Speaker:for whatever reason. I mean, this happened to me in
Speaker:2008 or 2009. There was a a a
Speaker:company, and they aggregated
Speaker:technical blog posts and charged for the
Speaker:aggregation so people could subscribe, you know, to the I remember
Speaker:this. I remember this now. It was a bit of an exchange.
Speaker:I'll I'll admit. And I ended up kinda going through 2
Speaker:or 3 of them, and they were like they said, you're making your information
Speaker:available publicly for free. And I said, I
Speaker:am. And they said, so why can't we
Speaker:create, you know, summaries? They weren't copying it, but that that also
Speaker:happened, copying and pasting the post and putting them elsewhere.
Speaker:That was a different thing than this. They're like, why can't why can't we
Speaker:do this? And I said, for the same reason that others can't copy and
Speaker:paste their post to put their name. I own this, and I get
Speaker:to say. And if I wanted to create a newsletter and
Speaker:aggregate it and charge people, I don't know, $10 a month or
Speaker:something, then that would be different. But you
Speaker:don't have you didn't even ask. Right. And like and and you do not
Speaker:have my permission to do that, and I don't want people to have to
Speaker:pay you for my content. That's that was my
Speaker:argument. Now is it wrong or bad? That I don't know.
Speaker:It's how I felt. Right. It's,
Speaker:you know, and it's gonna get real
Speaker:interesting. Mhmm. You know?
Speaker:I mean, you know, so what what is interesting is we're recording
Speaker:this on the 21st March
Speaker:2024. And either today or
Speaker:tomorrow, there's a there's a case before the Supreme
Speaker:Court about the interaction between the federal
Speaker:government and the TLAs, the 3 letter agencies,
Speaker:and and social media. Oh,
Speaker:yeah. Circling around. And, you know, I I think it started it's been
Speaker:renamed, but it was Missouri versus Biden or Biden
Speaker:versus Missouri. It's been renamed into a different thing. And how
Speaker:do you feel about that? You know, I'm not telling you, you know, feel one
Speaker:way or another, but it's definitely No. There are other places to
Speaker:do that. It's it's well, it's crossing into the I'll say this about it. It's
Speaker:crossing into this kind of into the same thing about the AI
Speaker:and and social media. You've got, of course, a common common
Speaker:thing here with social media. But more than that,
Speaker:the impact of technology on
Speaker:culture. Yes. And a popular story that I've
Speaker:seen over the last 10 days or so has been
Speaker:accusations of suppressing certain
Speaker:information and search from a popular search engine.
Speaker:If that's the accusation, I'll I'll use the, you know, the official word
Speaker:allegedly. I don't know. I really don't
Speaker:know. But I will say that it
Speaker:tends to go one way.
Speaker:There's definitely a cultural mindset that seems to be
Speaker:the victim and another cultural mindset
Speaker:that seems to get a great big free pass.
Speaker:And that while I don't expect I don't
Speaker:expect equal coverage, I know the FCC did that for years.
Speaker:Fun fact, in the eighties, I worked at a television station.
Speaker:Really? I was, I was an I was an engineer, but it meant something different.
Speaker:But, yeah, like, when you watch the local news Yeah. And,
Speaker:and the stories were running and all of that, I was the guy putting the
Speaker:tapes in the machines and queuing them up and get the director would push a
Speaker:button and it would take off. So yeah. It was a fun gig,
Speaker:But the FCC had this rule about equal time for politics
Speaker:specifically. Right. Right. Right. So and it essentially
Speaker:meant that if you gave, let's just use
Speaker:democrats, and republicans. I'm not trying to say that
Speaker:there's not more there are, and it's getting really interesting. Seems like
Speaker:every presidential election cycle in the US, the
Speaker:independence, they'd put up somebody more and more interesting and
Speaker:likely to garner more votes. But if if you gave a democrat
Speaker:10 minutes to say, you know, their piece, you'd have to give a Republican
Speaker:10 minutes to say their piece. That was the whole thing about equal time. And
Speaker:I think they're striving for that same sort of
Speaker:balance, in in you know, with with
Speaker:popular search engines, with social media Right. Sites.
Speaker:And it's been interesting to watch that,
Speaker:kinda watch that argument. And it's because it's
Speaker:interesting to me because I end, I enjoy and
Speaker:I'm involved and engaged in the culture. You know?
Speaker:I'm I'm would say so are you. Even if
Speaker:and not you, Frank, but you are a listener. You are also engaged in our
Speaker:culture. People are engaged by the culture by
Speaker:default. Like, there's no opt there's no opt out for that mailing list. And and
Speaker:that that great. That's funny. The great philosopher,
Speaker:Geddy Lee, may have said it best. If you just if you choose not to
Speaker:decide, you still have made a choice. That's true.
Speaker:Yeah. So It was Geddy Lee. I thought it was Snoopy. Did
Speaker:Snoopy say that? Well, Geddy Lee wrote it's in part of free will from the
Speaker:spirit of the radio in, that Rush album back in the that would have been
Speaker:in the eighties, I think. I don't know. Maybe then. Yeah. It would
Speaker:have been the eighties. So quick time check because we we
Speaker:we got off road a bit, which is good. This is what we did. That's
Speaker:crazy talk. We never do that. Never do
Speaker:that. Who was it? Was it Stu Miniman that said we should
Speaker:sponsor, like, an off road racing team because we always go off track?
Speaker:Somebody said that. That'd be kinda cool, actually. Wait. How do you do
Speaker:that? The, since this is supposed to be a retrospective Yes. Which I think we
Speaker:did. We've had a
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah. I don't wanna pick a favorite show because that's hard to do. Yeah.
Speaker:I can do that one. But I will say I don't cringe
Speaker:every time I hear, digital transformation.
Speaker:Mhmm. And I have, our previous guest,
Speaker:Jennifer Swanson, to thank for that. Yeah.
Speaker:It was, I think
Speaker:about customer success differently after talking to Luke, Luke
Speaker:Diaz. That was a oh, yeah. Also, I
Speaker:just keep nodding my head, but all of them have
Speaker:been really good. All of them are really good. I mean, look, I would. Yeah.
Speaker:Nike, I don't wanna, like, take one down or whatever, but we've had some great
Speaker:shows. Even when it's just you and me like this. Like, those are actually among
Speaker:the most popular ones. And the security guys, you mentioned that one
Speaker:earlier. My god. That show was bad. That was just fun because we were just
Speaker:firing off of each other. Right. Right. Right. Right. So much. Get on we gotta
Speaker:get them back and see if we will let us on their show. And Wayne
Speaker:and Patrick. Yeah. But,
Speaker:no. I I mean, 360 shows, 7
Speaker:seasons. Wow. We mentioned George RR Martin, and
Speaker:I know it's not necessarily his fault that season 8 of Game of Thrones is
Speaker:awful. But, you know, we we promise we will do a
Speaker:better job on season 8 than they did.
Speaker:That's funny. See, I never watched the Game of Thrones nor have
Speaker:I read the books. Okay. I didn't get into it right
Speaker:away. Yeah. But I started watching around
Speaker:season 4. And then I caught
Speaker:up, and there definitely is, like, a a quality shift.
Speaker:Season 8, especially, because everybody was you could tell everybody was done.
Speaker:Mhmm. The 2 guys, the showrunners,
Speaker:had just signed a deal with Lucasfilm to do a Star Wars Oh.
Speaker:Thing. And I don't wanna speak for
Speaker:them, but it looks like they were just phoning in the last season.
Speaker:And I don't know. It was just creative work.
Speaker:I Yeah. You you gotta be all in. You gotta love it. Especially
Speaker:Yeah. Something like that where they go to these weird locations.
Speaker:They write they have to and if you're a showrunner, it's kind of it's a
Speaker:bit of a thankless job because you're not you're responsible
Speaker:for getting the show done. You're not really the director, so you're not directing actors.
Speaker:At least that's my understanding for the most part.
Speaker:You have to manage all the personalities and stuff like I
Speaker:don't know. It's like Yeah. But you could tell. Like, if you're not all in,
Speaker:it shows. I think that's a very good way to put it.
Speaker:Yeah. Well, I I
Speaker:think, I've said this before. I'll repeat
Speaker:it. We've got,
Speaker:a a lot we've had a lot of views. We
Speaker:recently learned when people started coming to us with
Speaker:guests, we learned that there's a market out there where if you're
Speaker:interested in publicizing stuff, you can hire an agency,
Speaker:and they will line you up with shows. They started
Speaker:calling us. This has probably been the last 3 seasons maybe. We've
Speaker:had mostly that, if not more. That's true. And
Speaker:the, you had a conversation with one of the people from one
Speaker:of those agencies, like Yeah. I don't know, last year or so. And you
Speaker:you were kinda asking like It was December because I remember because it was Yeah.
Speaker:And you were like, why us? 2 well,
Speaker:I'd like to say I said it a little more. I'm sure you said it
Speaker:better. But the
Speaker:so for those that don't know, 2 of my 3 boys have birthdays in December.
Speaker:So December is basically the the time of madness.
Speaker:And so she contacts me, like, literally on the eve of
Speaker:the time of madness. And, you know,
Speaker:because I had not been responding because, like, the way it goes to my old
Speaker:email address, which I don't check. I've I've since changed.
Speaker:And, which reminds me I have a lot of follow-up to do in
Speaker:my spare time. But you said
Speaker:I mean, that's part of the reason why, like, you know, we really need a
Speaker:virtual assistant. Right? I mean, that's kind of like, Yeah. We're getting there.
Speaker:That's for sure. To that point, which is why we're we love what
Speaker:we do. We love serving the community, which is why we wanna find ways to
Speaker:monetize this. Right? And, you know, I spend more at Starbucks every time I
Speaker:walk in the door, than we would for what we're asking for
Speaker:the subscription thing. Yeah. But
Speaker:the point I was going, she was telling us that
Speaker:apparently, on some rating sites, a couple of rating sites, we're, like, in
Speaker:the top 2 a half percent, which
Speaker:I'm like, what? We both had the same reaction. What? I
Speaker:was like, where did you see that? She goes, oh, on the on this rating
Speaker:service, you know, the industry uses. I'm like, can you send me a link
Speaker:to that? Because I have to see it to
Speaker:but turns out 2 a half percent. Yeah. And then when I kinda went through
Speaker:the numbers and I kinda went through, like, this, it's like, it's not
Speaker:it's not impossible. Right? Because, you know, you I mean, 1, I'm
Speaker:very flattered, but 2, I Yeah. I'm I'm I try to be
Speaker:humble. But, what's that song? It's hard to be
Speaker:humble when you're perfect in every way. That's Matt Davis
Speaker:from 19 seventies. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good
Speaker:The, no. But when I when I when
Speaker:I kind of ran the numbers, like, you know, it's plausible.
Speaker:It's believable. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they say it. They have their metrics. I
Speaker:was reading through their whole, they have a whole,
Speaker:justification, how they rank stuff. And I was like, that is cool.
Speaker:That is cool. So we're looking at ways to kind of expand on on on
Speaker:that. Right? And grow, like, you know, I wanna be in the top
Speaker:1%. Like, why not? Right? I mean Heck yeah. Heck. We shouldn't have made
Speaker:it this far. Let's let's see how far this thing can
Speaker:go. But,
Speaker:and and also too, I think something you said early on in this recording
Speaker:was this originally was gonna be a video.
Speaker:Right? Yeah. This originally was going to be
Speaker:a video podcast, but the logistics at the time were a lot harder. The
Speaker:technology the ability to live do a live stream for your browser was not
Speaker:a thing in 2016, 2017. And we were
Speaker:really struggling with logistics. And then finally, you said, let's just launch,
Speaker:which I think is 1, this one of the smartest things you ever
Speaker:said or did. And 2, I think a lesson for life.
Speaker:Right? I was being a perfectionist waiting for things to be
Speaker:perfect before we did something. Well, I you it
Speaker:wasn't without, without merit. It was a good idea. Right. Right. Right.
Speaker:And it still is a good idea. I mean, we still chase after. We're still
Speaker:doing it now. Sure. And then when we finally,
Speaker:you know, I think that I'm glad we
Speaker:launched because that's created a certain amount of momentum Sure.
Speaker:That if we not done that, we wouldn't I don't know if we ever would've
Speaker:launched because we still be working on tweaking up the video. Well and, you know,
Speaker:Frank, you had this happen. I've had this happen. If whenever I go
Speaker:to an in person event now, inevitably, someone comes up
Speaker:and says you know, it shares an opinion about the podcast.
Speaker:Almost always, it's positive. But a few times that few times when it
Speaker:hasn't been positive, it's been why don't you think about doing this and why don't
Speaker:you do it that way? And it gives an opportunity to exchange.
Speaker:Most of the time, I I'm able to explain to the person, like,
Speaker:yeah, we tried that or we can't or, you know, here's the
Speaker:obstacles to that. But I'd say probably slightly
Speaker:less than half that time, I come back with an idea and say, hey. This
Speaker:person brought this up. It's like, I've been thinking about it. It was like, not
Speaker:a bad thought. You know, maybe it's just that bad. We love feedback. We love
Speaker:feedback. It's it's never like, somebody said we weren't doing
Speaker:things right. And I'm so that's never our
Speaker:our reaction is like, yeah. Okay. Cool.
Speaker:Anyway, thank you all for, yeah, for hanging in here
Speaker:with us. Yes. We're way over time. We just talked about how long shows don't
Speaker:do well. Not bad. I am honored,
Speaker:to work with you, Frank, on this. And I I think Ditto,
Speaker:man. That's all part of the projects that are in
Speaker:various states of conceptualization. They're floating around here, but
Speaker:I can't think of anybody that I'd rather do this kind of work with.
Speaker:And we're very complimentary. Well, thank you, brother. And we
Speaker:think differently about stuff,
Speaker:and it shows. And it's
Speaker:it's like, I'm trying to remember the old flywheel
Speaker:thing. I think it was from a Collins book about the the flywheel
Speaker:concept. Good to great, maybe? Yeah. It was from good to great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:And it's that that just keeps going. And we've now we've got
Speaker:we've really got people don't know this. We've got almost 20 years. We're
Speaker:coming out it'll be 19 years this fall since we met.
Speaker:And we got about 20 years of that. And the the podcast is just one
Speaker:of the things. It was November. It was, like, mid November, 1st
Speaker:week of November 2005. We met at the
Speaker:richmond.netusersgroup.
Speaker:I think I think, the amount of coffee and water I drink is really
Speaker:gonna be the the limiting factor for how long these shows can be.
Speaker:Excellent, Frank. Alright, man. Have a good one. Andy,
Speaker:everyone out there, thank you very much, and we look forward to
Speaker:serving you with entertaining guests and knowledgeable
Speaker:stuff. I need to work on that. That'll
Speaker:work. Maybe Chad should be taken. Maybe Bobby Draper can help me with that.
Speaker:She could. Could not use. So so creating these
Speaker:personas and of fictional characters is actually pretty cool because you could interact with them.
Speaker:Like, again, I don't wanna extend the show any longer, but,
Speaker:I might I might do a live stream later today. I'm, like, triple booked
Speaker:half the day. So Yeah. You've got some really cool
Speaker:ones. Your customs Yes. Fees. I've got like, about a half a
Speaker:dozen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool, man. We should do a show about
Speaker:them. That'd be awesome. That'd be awesome. Cool, man. We,
Speaker:speaking of Bailey, before I hand it off to Bailey. Bailey is one of them.
Speaker:I created a a a custom GPT, so chances are the stuff
Speaker:that Bailey is about to say was generated by AI, which is fitting
Speaker:because she's AI. So There you go. Think it
Speaker:goes full circle. Alright. Thanks, everyone. And, Bailey,
Speaker:take us home. And there we have it. Dear listeners, the end
Speaker:of our 360 degree expedition. You've been
Speaker:riding shotgun with Frank and Andy as they navigated the highways and
Speaker:byways of data driven discussions with a generous sprinkle of
Speaker:delightful digressions along the way. It's been quite the journey
Speaker:a full circle, returning us right back to where we started but
Speaker:richer for the experience. We hope you've enjoyed this retrospective
Speaker:romp through the past 7 seasons as much as we've enjoyed presenting it
Speaker:to you. Perhaps you've laughed, learned something new, or
Speaker:maybe even both. That's always the goal here at Data
Speaker:Driven. Before we sign off, remember to like, subscribe
Speaker:and ring that bell or do whatever it is you do to keep this digital
Speaker:dialogue alive and kicking. Your engagement keeps the gears
Speaker:turning and the data flowing. From the depths of our digital
Speaker:hearts, Frank, Andy, and I, your humble,
Speaker:semiscient host Bailey. Thank you for joining us. Until
Speaker:next time. Keep questioning, keep exploring, and
Speaker:above all, stay data driven.