69: Kleenex of Video Conferencing

[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome to Examining, a technology focused podcast that dives deep. I'm Eric Christiansen. [00:00:16] Speaker B: And I'm Chris Hans. [00:00:22] Speaker A: And welcome to another episode of the Examining podcast. Good afternoon, Chris. How are you doing today? [00:00:30] Speaker B: Good. How are you doing? [00:00:32] Speaker A: I do well, I feel a little behind. I was away on a trip in British Columbia on the west coast for a bit and as you know, you take some time off and it's kind of a double edged sword because you want to take time off because it's good, but then you come back and then you have, you're behind. So it's kind of, it's harder and easier to take time off, but it was, it was worthwhile. It was very good. I was on Vancouver island spending time. [00:00:58] Speaker B: Well, the work, the work never stops. That's the problem. [00:01:03] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, it's true. Um, I will say though, I, I do, I am grateful that I work with some really great people and there were some questions that came in while I was away and I followed up with them and they're just like, yeah, we knew you were away. I gave everyone lots of notice and they're just like, we don't worry about it, we just did it. That's just done now. Don't, don't have to do those things. Just, we'll just move forward. I was like, oh, that's great. So I mean, perhaps the lesson here is for me is that, yeah, taking time off is fine if you've done the preparation and given people lots of notice in advance and then they're just kind of mentally ready to tackle any overflow or things that you would typically handle. And the same goes when someone else I know is away and I answer those questions and anyways, so perhaps a. I can think about taking time off in a different way in the future. What's new with you? [00:01:54] Speaker B: Same old, Just busy working, grading, that kind of thing. At least the weather's good. [00:02:02] Speaker A: Yes. As opposed to when I was away. So I went at the right time. [00:02:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think so. [00:02:08] Speaker A: Plus 10 in Victoria and it was minus 40 here. So that's. That sucks for people who are in Calgary. I was like, I gotta get out of this place. [00:02:17] Speaker B: That's kind of funny because like when I went from like, let's say minus 30s, 40s or whatever down to like 20s, felt like it was like summertime. Just a bit of a difference. [00:02:30] Speaker A: So we have quite a few things to talk about today. The AI news never stops. But, but I think this will be. AI will take only a minority of the show's Time, which is good because I like that there's other things for us to talk about. AI is kind of an infinite news topic. So other than starting a whole show about AI, which could get old after a while, I think it's good that we're going to divide things up. I think AI comes up kind of midway through the program today, but perhaps we should kick this off with the breakthrough that came from Microsoft Research. So Microsoft Research has, I guess, the first, I'm assuming it's a working prototype, actual quantum computing chip that they say is powered by this topological core architecture. And I guess they're hopeful that this chip or this, this platform solves some of the, the challenges with quantum computing and then can kind of be used to build on. At least that's my understanding. [00:03:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it looks like they use some new materials and then you have this new architecture. So I don't know. I mean, I, I hear, you know, if AI is like the big thing right now, like the, the new big thing in the future will be quantum. So. And in fact, here in Calgary, apparently we're, you know, leaders in the world. There is actually a, an initiative at the University of Calgary called Quantum City, where they're looking to go and apply it to various disciplines and even take, like, an entrepreneurial innovation approach to it so that they can commercialize. [00:04:33] Speaker A: So just. I don't mean to interrupt, but for people who have no idea what quantum computing is, and I don't quite understand the nuts and bolts, I did go ahead and ask. Normally I would go to, I would say we go to the Book of Knowledge, which is a joke that I lifted from another podcast which refers to Wikipedia, but I don't use that anymore. I use, I ask AI to give me definitions of things. And know we can, we can have people critique our AI. But I, I asked the ChatGPT01 reasoning model, which is my favorite model to use, can you explain how quantum computing works in a simple way and explain why it's important? So I'm going to read some of this just to kind of frame it, and then we can go back into the, the article, if that's okay with you. Just because it might not be clear. So it says, it, um, it says Eric. I like that it addresses me by my first name. A quantum computer differs from a regular or classical computer because it uses quantum bits, commonly called qubits, instead of simple on, off bits. So your. Instead of that would be your traditional transistor that's on or off, and qubits have two special abilities. The first is a superposition. So a qubit can be in multiple states at the same time. So kind of like the, I guess the analogy would be you can have a solid and a liquid that are and a gas, and they can be all things at the same time or something like that. If you were to use like a chemistry example, rather than being just one or zero, it can be a blend of both. And they also have what's called entanglement. So qubits can become linked so that a change in one qubit instantly influences others, no matter how far apart they are. So kind of like light speed, instant communication with these properties, A quantum computer can process many possible outcomes at once. So it does kind of the marvel universe, you know, the Thanos thing, where it can multiple, multiple timelines can be affected by, you know, making one adjustment, making it incredibly powerful for specific tasks like factoring huge numbers, optimizing complex systems, or simulating molecular behaviors and chemistry. So rather than a computer which kind of has to pursue one frame of thinking, stop. Pursue the other alternative, stop. It would take, you know, a thousand years, I guess, to think through all the different scenarios one at a time. You're kind of brute forcing it, where this can kind of the ultimate multitasker. That's how I understand it. It's important because quantum computers can tackle problems that traditional computers would take ages or simply fail to solve. Opens up new possibilities in the fields like cryptography, so information security medicine, so designing drugs, material science, so developing new materials. I think the thing that I saw in the Microsoft press release was kind of like, let's say you want to figure out all the different ways to get rid of the many types of microplastics. Like, it would be a very difficult problem to brute force the chemical interactions and understand and develop solvents and stuff like that. So this could do that potentially transforming technology and research in the years to come. So that's the definition from ChatGPT. Does that seem like a reasonable definition? [00:08:12] Speaker B: It's pretty good to me. [00:08:14] Speaker A: So what do you think? How is this gonna. I don't even know where to begin with quantum. I feel like this is a news topic that I am solely behind on. So what's the important takeaways other than that definition? [00:08:30] Speaker B: Well, it seems like, you know, the big thing is lot of, especially the big tech companies. I mean, Google was the first one to create a quantum computer. And I believe they did a lot of the. The initial kind of research, white papers on it as well. And so now you Know, with Microsoft getting into it as well, I would imagine maybe others are looking at it. And I mean the, the computing side, from what I understand from the past, like once we get these up and running, it will put into question many of our current systems. For instance, like with financial systems, if you now have this computer that can go and process huge amounts of possibilities very quickly, we're going to have to rethink how we're going to go and secure this in terms of, from a password standpoint. And maybe that's already happening. I mean, you look at, it seems like we're kind of going away from the passwords. It's more about, you know, creating these complex ones and then adding in layers of like two factor authentication and face ID and other things. [00:09:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And it also has to, if you, if you have something that doesn't allow you to put in so many inputs at a time, it's very difficult to brute force because it'll just lock you out. Right. So I mean. [00:09:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. [00:09:55] Speaker A: It was interesting in this article, like, so I unders. I understand at a very basic level this, this idea of this quantum bits that can be more than one thing at the same time. Because I guess quantum mechanics is the foundation of this, of this computer. And I guess what was interesting, it said, I don't know. So Google, I understand that they had invented a quantum computer, but is it on paper or did they actually come up with a chip? Because this, as I understand it, seemed like the first plausibly launchable chip like that could actually be used. Right. Because a lot of these quantum computers are kind of, as I understood it, it's almost like going back to the early days of computing where they take up the size of a warehouse. So it's like how do you. A reasonably sized chip that can be deployed in a realistic fashion. And what I thought was interesting is that this majorana one, this is the processor that Microsoft developed. So it's like applied engineering. They've taken the principles and they've actually built something that I guess works with it. It's the first processor to offer that can fit or offers a clear path to fit a million qubits. So my feeling is that it doesn't do anything yet, but the platform technically maybe allows for it. Like this isn't plugged into a server somewhere actually working. It sounds like, it sounds like it's like a platform where you could put in qubits. I don't understand. Is a qubit even a thing? Like, I don't get it. Like Is it like. Yeah, transistor is very clear to me because I understand how transistor works, but I don't understand how a qubit quantum bit works. Is it like an actual transistor? Is it a thing? It seems like smoke and mirrors. I don't understand but it sounds like their platform is more practical. [00:11:42] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and like your question or your point about Google, I mean they did create a prototype in 2023. So like, you know, they started working on it in 2019 and then they created a prototype. They're still, I mean, trying to figure out how you would scale it up and you know, so, and it feels like even with Microsoft, we're not there yet that it's going to, just going to be implemented. But again this, this seems to be kind of like the, the new Porsche now. It's, if we look at like with let's say vehicles, I mean we had, there's like people looking at electric, there's hydrogen, there's all sorts of things. So I guess this is just another option. And I mean, who knows, in some, some respects, as we were kind of chatting right before we started, should we be creating this? Is this something that, I mean, maybe there will be some good practical applications. I mean imagine, you know, I, I just heard, I don't know if it's true or not, but apparently Russia has created a vaccine to cure cancer. So if you could go and run some sort of, you know, a bunch of different scenarios through this computer that can do it really fast. I mean, maybe that's a good application where you can go and, you know, personalize vaccines or something. [00:13:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I feel, I'm really interested in it, but I have a hard time. I want to, I want to discuss it more, but I just, I can't visualize it. I'm a very visual person. So I'm trying to figure out, I wish someone, I want to, I want an ifixit tear down of this processor. Like I want someone to pull it apart and tell me how it works. That's kind of what I, I asked ChatGPT, I said, you know, is a quantum bit a thing? Is it a physical part? What is inside? It says qubit isn't a single uniform chip component like a transistor in the classical sense. Instead you can think of a qubit as a physical system that can store and manipulate quantum information. And then it says there's different technologies that can realize qubits in different ways. So superconducting circuits, I think that's what this is. Many quantum Computers use tiny superconducting loops, maintain quantum states at very low temperatures. It's not quantum dot, nano scale semiconductors or things like that. So it sounds like they're using the superconducting circuits. So it sounds like it's a super delicate thing. It doesn't seem like something that's very. That would take a lot of punishment. You couldn't put it in a computer case and carry it around or something. It sounds like it has to be a super stable environment, kind of like a nuclear reactor, but not as dangerous as. It's just, it just a lot can go wrong and so I think this might be something so worth investigating more. I want to try to understand how these actually work. Maybe I'll need to take a physics course. Yeah. [00:14:51] Speaker B: Oh for sure. Well that's the thing, like you do have to have expertise in physics for something like this. Right. [00:14:58] Speaker A: And I, I do not. [00:15:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't either. So but anyways, for anybody who is interested, apparently it's the future. So if you, if you want to think about the next 20 years, maybe go quantum. [00:15:13] Speaker A: It was interesting too that there was also this public. There was a news article on Nature. So like their blog and it says Microsoft claims quantum computing breakthrough but it said some physicists are skeptical and so about I guess the superconducting wire and how this actually works. I guess there's not enough details to. I mean again, critics, it's easy to be a critic. So which is fine but. So we will provide a few sources to this. [00:15:42] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:15:43] Speaker A: I'm just gonna bring up my notes. Okay. Chat GPT never ends. So right now we had 4. Then we had 4O. I don't really know the huge difference between 4 and 4.0. I don't remember. But now they're going to come out soon with 4.5. So an editor of model and it's going to launch for the pro users. That's like the 200amonth people. There's a few sources, there's one from TechRadar, another from Reuters. And so this is. Yeah, just a, just a better version of this. What I found interesting was is that the, the news articles, particularly the one from TechRadar talked about how it's smarter but they really talked about it being more emotionally intuitive. So I guess in terms of the way it converses with a person back and forth. So we're getting closer and closer to the movie her, I suppose. Interesting way to sell it. That's a very controversial aspect of AI that it acts like a person and pretends to be a person. I'm surprised that they're really leaning into the emotional intelligence of this particular model. Supposed to be better at understanding context, understanding social cues. So I guess maybe just better trained on some of the more colloquial language or kind of the implied things. I wonder too, if this works better when you're using the voice chat, if you're trying to talk through something kind of off the cuff rather than, you know, craft a very precise prompt. Maybe it would be interesting for me to know why they're focusing on this. Is it a reaction to so many people using the voice? I've been using the voice aspect a lot more. [00:17:32] Speaker B: Oh, really? [00:17:33] Speaker A: Because it just, it, it's so much better than all these voice assistants that we've had since Siri and after. I mean, it's just, it blows them all out of the water. So it, it really functions like what you want it to be. So fewer hallucinations, more empathy. I don't know what else to say about this other than that. The fact that we're, you know, on 4.40-4.5 tells me like, this is starting to slow down perhaps. [00:18:04] Speaker B: Yeah, well. And I don't know. I mean, even I sometimes wonder too, like with. Because there's all these different models and, you know, each one has its own kind of pros and cons. I don't even know if necessarily having, like, I, I still sometimes use the, the original four because I find that it's, in some respects it's. It keeps things simple. All right. And you know, like how you say it, like certain things, like probably my other. Go to one Is that 4O? Yeah, the O version because of the, the reasoning and stuff. [00:18:42] Speaker A: Does 4O use reasoning? Or is it. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Wait, let me just. Or is it 01? Let me just. [00:18:49] Speaker A: Oh, 1 is my favorite. [00:18:50] Speaker B: Oh no, 440 is for questions 01. So 01 is the advanced read. [00:18:57] Speaker A: Why is one at the end of a number and one at the beginning? This is my curious. What is the naming conventions? I don't understand. [00:19:04] Speaker B: I mean, even I'm just. I have it pulled up right in front of me. So there's O1, which is advanced reasoning. O3 mini, which is fast at advanced reasoning. O3 mini high, which is great at coding and logic. So they just have so many. And then, yeah, they have the, the four zero for mini and then they have the legacy four. But yeah, I mean, I, it just gets kind of very complicated in their naming convention and probably need to go and figure that out and I, I, I don't know does a higher number so does the 4.5 mean it's going to be better? So just because I guess supposedly. But do I really for certain things, do I need emotion in there? [00:19:51] Speaker A: Well, well, what I find is interesting, it says in this tech radar. It said so. It doesn't mean it can handle coding and problem solving as well as OpenAI's O1 or O3 models or rival options like Deep Seq. So the reasoning models are better at I guess, non. So my understanding the way that the reasoning works is that the longer the reasoning model thinks about it. So basically it comes up with an answer, it checks its answer, it comes up with another answer, it checks its answer, it basically it gets better and better as it checks. But then that starts to slow down. After a while there's diminishing returns and then after a certain amount of diminishing returns, then it retrieves you, it gives you back an answer that's, you know, if it spent longer, it's not going to get that much better. Where the regular models tend to, you know, are, I guess, are more traditional in the sense that they don't. They just, they're faster, they give an answer. So there's a different thing, right? If you need something to double check, triple check a piece of code, build an application, refine it through the conversation string. I guess that's why you use the reasoning model. But what's interesting is that it says instead 4.5 specializes in empathy with high emotional quotient. Okay, AI can't feel things. Thanks TechRadar. But GPT 4.5 is supposed to be better at picking up on nuance. If you're venting about a bad day, it it won't just reply I'm sorry you feel that way. Instead, it's designed to offer more thoughtful responses. So I gu it'll try to give me responses that it thinks I can handle based on how crappy or great my day has been. So maybe it'll withhold information. Maybe you're feeling better today. I've decided to give you the rest of the answer that you asked me yesterday that I didn't think you could handle at the time. I think that would be super annoying, personally. Whether it makes it feel more like a conversation partner or just a particularly well trained customer service bot remains to be seen. That last part is what I'm wondering about. I'm wondering if they're trying to put in more empathy and stuff so they can. If they're trying to Attract business customers and like launch the stuff to replace call center chat, that kind of stuff. If it's stupid but is nicer, maybe that's more tolerable. [00:22:16] Speaker B: Who knows? It's. It's definitely interesting. I mean, and I guess maybe the, the next thing that if we want to dig into is these research agents that have come out. [00:22:28] Speaker A: This is the agentic addition to these. [00:22:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, the. So, you know, now we have. [00:22:35] Speaker A: This is the substack article. [00:22:36] Speaker B: It was first. Yeah, there was that substack from Ethan Mollick. But you know, the, the first one came out from Deep Seq and then, you know, afterwards they came out with the, the deep research on OpenAI as kind of a counter thing. It seems like all of them are now creating it. Perplexity has created one as well. Apparently it's really good at, especially for those that are in the education sector and doing certain types of research projects. But yeah, this is the, the new part. So we've gone beyond search and now it's about research. And apparently you, you have something that Chad is working on for you right now. [00:23:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I had to actually delete it because I think, I think it broke. But so. Okay, so. Well, I'll tie in with Ethan Mollick said. So this article was the end of search, the beginning of research. So it talks about reasoners, the reasoning models, and then he talks about AI agents. We talked about that last time, where these agents go off in the background and do stuff for you. And you ask the great question, you know, do you really, do you really trust this AI agent to go and, you know, order your Amazon toilet paper and all this stuff? I don't. I think I might get like a million dollars worth of merchandise delivered to my house or something by accident. And so that's what it's doing. Then there's the deep research, which we've chatted about, which is the. This AI that will work longer and try to find better and better sources. And so he argues that this is all coming now with the agent plus the deep research. I suppose you could think of the deep research as an agent because it's going out and searching all these databases that you've asked on your behalf. And so, yeah, it's less about searching and trying to pick the best results from the first page or two pages. It's now about combining, gathering everything, evaluating everything. It's kind of like a digital librarian in a way. It's like gathering everything from multiple sources. Maybe you're refining that list, bringing it back to you Doing these higher level, what we would hope is More like a PhD student level analysis, things like that. What I did is that I asked Open education is an interesting or is a research topic or historically has been for me. I've published a couple of papers on it and I've done lots of presentations. I had asked it to find me all of the relevant research academic articles specifically that had DOIs from peer reviewed journals on OpenCourseWare because that's my interest. Less so open textbooks and stuff like that. So it, it, it was weird though because it was stuck on 18 sources on a computer and then on my iPad and other devices it had gone further ahead so it got frozen somewhere and it had, it had worked for like a day or two loading this and I had found like 200 sources before I decided to delete this chat. And then I'm going to try this deep research again. But it's interesting because you can go into. There's kind of like a progress bar but you can click on it. It's like a button and you can see this big list of it telling you a log of everywhere it's looking and what it's doing or I stopped doing that and I'm doing this instead and bringing things back. And it's really interesting because it's a super thorough search. But I've been able to stump not so much the deep research but I've been able to stump the process a couple of times. So I'm wondering. Yeah, what's going on here? [00:26:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no for sure. [00:26:33] Speaker A: How do you feel about. [00:26:34] Speaker B: So actually I don't know if you saw. There was this one, there was this one video where there was two agents and I don't know if it's real or not, but there was two agents talking to one another and then all of a sudden it went from. Once they've determined whether they were agents, they actually went and started communicating. Not in, you know, English, but it actually went to like this kind of almost like back when, remember when we had dial up Internet and you had like a bunch of beeps and stuff and that was more efficient for them and, and I believe it was for something like booking a hotel or something. But anyways, whether that's real or not, I mean I again that's probably what would be. [00:27:23] Speaker A: We talked about that before, right. Like the researchers got like the two AIs are talking to each other and then they kind of locked everybody out. [00:27:31] Speaker B: Well, this one isn't. I don't know if it's like actually locking it out, but it, it's just like somebody has like a computer with their phone next to it and it's like, you know, they're running two agents at the same time. So actually I should maybe find that and we might. Maybe we should include it as part. [00:27:49] Speaker A: Of our I can give an. I can give an example of this deep reasoning and I don't know if this deep reasoning works in all the models. I'm doing this in O1 and then I clicked Deep Research, so I don't know. Can you also do it in 4.0? Is there a. I don't know if there's a deep research output, but I'm in 01. I said I wasn't going to subscribe to plus anymore, but I'm addicted now. I have to keep it. So I use it for everything. It's just really useful. I use it for getting lots of sources, doing web searches, finding articles related to stuff I've already found on the web on very current topics. It's. It's much faster I go and read it and do my own writing. But anyways, I'll give you an example here, so I'll restart the question I had. So I said bring me back the best peer reviewed scholarly articles on OpenCourseWare OER from the last three years and says I'll gather the best peer reviewed scholarly articles on OpenCourseWare and Open Educational Resources OER from the last three years. Now I have to clarify this because OpenCourseWare is a type of OER, so it would be open textbooks. So it's asked me, are you interested in any specific aspects of OpenCourseWare OER? I'm interested only in research on open courseware. I'll say not so much textbooks or other types of oer. And it's asked me also, do you prefer articles from specific journals or databases? Oops, let me just adjust this here. So I gave it the first answer. I'm interested in only open courser, not so much textbooks and other types of oer. I didn't tell it, you know, particular journals or databases because I'm not It had also followed up and asked me do you like to mix theoretical and empirical studies? Do you have a preference? I don't. I just want to see everything on open course where I published in the last three years because I really don't think that's going to be an overwhelming amount so reasoning and so it's identifying key sources, crafting citations, adjusting my approach, identifying perspective sources, piecing together from journals like education and Information technology, Open Praxis. Those are journals I'm familiar with. That's great. And now it's doing some sort of analysis and you can watch it during the analysis, just like any O1. And it's thinking, so maybe we'll come back to this later and see what happened with it. [00:30:38] Speaker B: Anything else on AI for now or should we move on to the next part? [00:30:44] Speaker A: I think we can continue. So let me just bring up my notes again. [00:30:51] Speaker B: So I think the next part would be the iPhone. New iPhone. [00:30:56] Speaker A: So what do you think about the new iPhone? This is the 16E, you know, or the 16 economy as I put it. [00:31:04] Speaker B: Is that what the, the E, that's. [00:31:05] Speaker A: What I decided stands for? [00:31:09] Speaker B: Well, it doesn't. Maybe the SE was better than. It was like super economical. So I mean, one thing right off the bat is that they've increased the price significantly. So they went from, you know, 600 bucks to a thousand here in Canada. So yeah, it's interesting. They got rid of the home button. So now that one feature, it's gone, it's out. I mean, and that was one thing that they created a long time ago. And so now everybody has to go and use their facial face id, facial recognition and so on. I don't know, it's. It's interesting. Like, even if I had the choice and I think I might have came across there was that one YouTuber, what's his name, Marcus, but showcasing the guy. [00:32:01] Speaker A: Who was selling the $50 background app or whatever. [00:32:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But he was showcasing. He's like, if you were like an honest person, honest salesperson and you know, what would you go and explain to somebody in terms of like the most cost effective, cheapest phone and with all the different features and things that you would want. And ultimately it was, it was interesting. It's actually probably better to get an older Pro, like let's say a 15 Pro as opposed to getting this phone. And so it was, it was interesting. Like, so I, I don't know. And it kind of makes sense. Like you get less for megapixels for the camera. Sure. Like Apple Intelligence, everything From, you know, 15 Pro onwards, you should be able to go and use it on the, the various phones. [00:32:53] Speaker A: So 15 Pro would be better than getting this. Would it be a similar price? [00:32:59] Speaker B: I, I believe it's about the same price because it's now it's older. Right. [00:33:04] Speaker A: Okay. [00:33:05] Speaker B: So at least that's, I mean, keep in mind he's in the US so. But let's actually, I should probably check what is the Pro 15 Pro price right now. So yeah, I mean here's like a refurbished one is like 97915 Pro. Here's one at, I don't know, Best Buy has one for 1080. So it's comparable to this 16e. And you know, apparently functionality wise, I mean even just the camera alone would. [00:33:36] Speaker A: Be better because it has the dual lenses. [00:33:38] Speaker B: Right? This has. Yeah, it has the three as opposed to the two that you would get on the 16E. So yeah, I don't know. I mean it's. It is interesting that they are, they went this route. I mean I think, I feel like that there's still a. There was an opportunity where some people, they just don't need, you know, all the kind of wells and, or the bells and whistles and everything and just have something very basic, small, they can fit, you know, nice in your hand and doesn't have to cost a huge amount of money. I think that's 5, 600 bucks is probably a good price. [00:34:20] Speaker A: So basically it's missing. No, has no MagSafe which to me sucks. I mean they've had wireless charging the iPhones for a long time. But the magsafe, the magnetic is very nice. Just I'm a big fan of the magnetic connector. Just from a practicality standpoint I'm surprised. So it's not going to work with any of those accessories. It's going to have a whole different accessories stream which seems like that's a problem that's going to create. Yeah, it's just you're going to have. Case makers are going to have to make special stuff or it's just not going to. That the stuff that you buy is not going to work. It has no ultra wideband chip for precise airtag tracking 60 Hz screen. I don't really care about that. I don't. I don't have a phone with 120 hertz and I don't. I don't notice much of a difference on a phone. One rear camera I guess it has the newest chip though inside so it's future proofed in that way. Is it the same chip as the regular 16 or with one less graphics core or something like that? [00:35:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not sure what the difference between the chip is. [00:35:28] Speaker A: So the A18 chipset inside is nearly identical to the iPhone 16 since I'm reading from Wired, except there's one less graphics core totaling four instead of five. So firing up Assassin's Creed Mirage. As a gamer I don't know why you would play A AAA game on a phone. But that being said and Genshin Impact noticed a slight increase in stutters particularly in later game the experience didn't feel wide so it's almost identical. And then. So what kind of chip does my phone have then? I have the 15. [00:36:06] Speaker B: You have the regular. I'm not sure what your chip. [00:36:11] Speaker A: A 16. [00:36:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:12] Speaker A: Okay, I see. Interesting. See, it's interesting to me. I don't have the Apple intelligence stuff and a lot of folks have been like, are you super disappointed? And I'm like, I don't really feel like it because I don't. I don't find it that useful, I think. [00:36:34] Speaker B: I mean, you know, it's funny because I remember I think in the last episode I actually turned it off and now like I have turned it off. [00:36:41] Speaker A: What are you using it? [00:36:42] Speaker B: And. And I haven't really been using it much, but I noticed couple of features that were kind of nice and this is where maybe, who knows, Apple might be going and just their application of this AI might be better than the other companies so far. So the two where I saw it is in the mail, the native mail app. And so one thing that was kind of really nice is that it basically is combing through my emails and automatically on its own. You know, let's say if I get a couple. I've been averaging a couple of hundred emails a day. It's figuring out what are the most pressing ones and moving it up to the top in a priority box. And so for instance, like just two weeks ago, I got a. An email and there was a pressing email in there where I needed to go through and look at some expenses and get back to somebody. And so it just brought that to the top. You know, if there is, let's say for instance, like a. There was a student that was having some sort of issues. It just automatically brought that to the top. The other thing that I found that's really kind of interesting is it's going through as part of the preview of the email message in a kind of smaller, like grayish kind of font. It's actually summarizing in one line what that email is about. Okay, so which is kind of cool, right? Like you can just. At a quick glance on my little small, you know, I have, I still have the 15 Pro screen. I can quickly just skim through the emails. And then the other thing that you told me about is that you can go in there into an email and press the, the summarize button and then it'll summarize. And so like Those little features, I, I find they are probably a good application of AI where it's sitting right now because. And in fact, actually, I mean, I was chatting with my business communic just these last couple of weeks. I look at that. I mean, imagine like one of the things I've been teaching them about is that based on what you put together for your subject line is going to determine whether somebody reads your email or not. But now you have to even be that much more careful beyond the subject line. You got to go and think about the content and hopefully it picks up the right kind of words so it can summarize so you know, it drives action for whatever you need done. [00:39:10] Speaker A: I do like that idea of like the summarizing. I could see how it could be useful, like notes. I don't know if it does this or if it had something like here are the most recent edits or the biggest changes. If you're working on collaborative things. Yeah, there's lots of cool stuff I can see. I think part of the reason I don't use that is because I use ProtonMail, so I can't integrate it with. I have to use their app on mobile. I can use the Apple Mail app on the Mac and integrate it, but I can't use. I can't do it on mobile, so I can't make use of that. I do have the summary of the. I get a similar summary for messages. So I got a. I got some family members that texted me back and it kind of gave a breakdown of what they talked about and that was kind of interesting. Yeah, so I like that stuff. I mean, and of course you could pretty much highlight any text, I guess. And if you have a device with Apple Intelligence and it'll. And rewrite it or adjust the writing and you can do really simple AI edits, I think. But I think it's like global, like anywhere. Yeah, I think it's useful. I'm not saying it's bad. I have it turned on, on the iPad, but, you know, part of it is that even though it's turned on there, I still haven't used it. I think because I'm so used to going to these other AI tools and they're so much more comprehensive. So I can. Again, I think Apple's focusing on, you know, someone has never opened chat GPT and then this thing just works, which is. That's fine. [00:40:42] Speaker B: Which is good. [00:40:42] Speaker A: They're not going to be able to make another chat GPT. So they're like, how do we make this for everyday People, they kind of set the standard for day to day interaction and little things. [00:40:51] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and that's, that's where I think maybe you know, the core strength of Apple is to go and take those complex, you know, technical things that most people don't. I mean that I look at it here. I'll give you an example. This I've just been working on. I think I, I can't remember if we mentioned this in my, in an episode or what have you, but you know, as we discussed like I, I moved into a new place back in September and one of the things like I, I don't know anything about audio whatsoever but in my house I had in ceiling built in speakers with all the wiring leading into my furnace room. And so I figured out on my own just using ChatGPT and taking pictures and figuring out how am I going to go and run these, these various speakers and emit and output audio to it. And so I got an amp, even that amp. I took a picture, I don't know anything about amps or anything. Took pictures of it, showed it to chat, figured out what needed to be done. And then one of the things that I actually, I don't know if this is genius or not, but I wanted to keep my cost down. So what I decided to do was take old Apple TVs and use them to go and output the audio using some audio converters. And so it's basically taking that and now I can control it. Like, you know, we have iPhones, both my wife and I, so we can go and emit. And I've basically renamed the Apple TVs based on the room and I can go and push it out the audio to all these various aspects. [00:42:36] Speaker A: So is it like the Apple TV's not normally you hook it up to a display so you're kind of using it like a server where you would have no operating system, it would be headless and then so your airplane to whatever the Apple TV that you've named is for that room. Is that correct? [00:42:50] Speaker B: Exactly, yeah. So like that, that was my kind of workaround because otherwise you would have to go and buy some, some typ, you know, audio output device. And some of them can get really expensive. And so I mean I did use even because I had like an old, you know, Gen 2 Apple TV and it works, everything's fine. But the AirPlay 2 allows you to go and emit sounds in multiple places without having to go in there. So then I got a couple of like, you know, 4k ones and again I Just got them off like Facebook Marketplace or Kijiji and kept my costs down. But the, the one cool thing, and this is why I was saying that I think it's just really like I just did, I just picked up another one, it was the A1625 Apple TV and so I got it for 35 bucks and so I, I hooked it up to this one tv, configured it, it updated to the latest OS and then to go to add it to my home kit which Apple has, it's to go and control automations and stuff. Instead of me entering in my passwords and everything, all I had to do was just take my iPhone, put it next to like or close to the Apple TV and then it transmitted the passwords and all the login information right to the Apple tv. It's configured and it's done and now I don't have to ever worry about it. And so somehow again like just their ecosystem, it just makes things very easy and simple. Right. And I don't think, I mean I'm probably a little bit more tech, you know, savvy than maybe the average person. [00:44:35] Speaker A: But we do do it. [00:44:36] Speaker B: The nice thing is you don't need. [00:44:37] Speaker A: To be, I think that. [00:44:38] Speaker B: Well that's true too but, but you know, you get what I mean. Like it's just like I don't think when I look at the mainstream customer base of Apple they probably don't care about like all the technical aspects. It's like even imagine if this quantum computing does come become mainstream, Apple will probably go and find some way of where they don't need to know about qubits or anything like that. Right. Like you just want here's something that needs to be done, it can do it for you. [00:45:07] Speaker A: Well and I doubt that unless quantum computers are replace classical computers for doing day to day tasks that they're going to see them in our laptops and desktops anytime soon. I suspect that they'll probably sit in a server farm somewhere where people will query them. [00:45:26] Speaker B: Yeah, well and I think right now that's kind of like the, where things are going is it's, and this is where it kind of goes in cycles. We've maybe chatted about this in the past but you know, everything went from the main frame type of computers down to you know, personal computers. So you have it local and now with the cloud and having all these data centers it feels like it's going back into, to like the, the main. [00:45:50] Speaker A: And now it's coming back down again because of course a lot of these AI models are going to work locally. [00:45:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it goes in these like waves and phases. [00:45:59] Speaker A: We're going to clusters versus single computers. Well, we're going to move on from Apple, which is very simple and set up to the opposite of that, which is Framework. So you've talked about Framework before because they. So just for folks who don't know, they are, they are a computer hardware company so you can get, you know, their computers will run Windows or Linux, but they are modular and they were famous for their Framework laptops which were, you know, like modern day laptops have a bunch of non upgradable parts. And I should preface by, by saying not necessarily as an anti consumer play, but for good reason. So if you buy a Mac or a new Windows Ultrabook like one of those copilot plus PCs or the Surface computers, RAM is not user upgradable and hasn't been on any platform for a long time. So you just have to buy it with as much RAM as you can afford and then you kind of have to recycle the computer when you're done. It's a trade off because it doesn't last as long. It's less replaceable. But you also get much better performance with integrated RAM into the chip and stuff like this. I mean, so there is advantages to it being soldered onto the motherboard and just from like a speed perspective. And so Framework made it so you could upgrade. They made a bunch of modules where you could take apart their computer. You could replace. So you imagine the ports on the side, you could pull out little slots and you could replace all your USB A with USB C down the road you could take out the motherboard. I don't know if you could just replace the processor or if you have to replace the whole central unit, but they've made it modular to a point. And so Framework came out with a desktop which kind of puzzled people because desktop computers are inherently modular. You can put a new motherboard in it, you can put new RAM in it. So ironically, it's Framework's little desktop is actually less upgradable than a traditional computer because they've gone ahead with a motherboard and kind of central computer unit from AMD that integrates the cpu, the RAM and the gpu. So if you want to upgrade the core bit, you have to kind of take it all out and put in a whole new innard. Of course your case and your fans and your other modules would still be fine, but you're kind of replacing the heart of the computer all at once. So in some ways it's actually less modular, but I think it's probably a lot easier for the average person to change. So it's essentially a. It's very similar to those small desktops, not the smallest ones, but it's a 4.5 liter kind of mini ATX. So standard size mini ATX case. And it's built around some of AMD's more powerful APUs. So an APU integrates the processor and the graphics card into one thing. That's how video game consoles are developed. They don't have a separate graphics card sitting in there with a separate fan. That's all in one chip and there's a big fan. And so what's interesting about this is that they kind of made this as a workstation, but also a mini gaming PC. Newer computers that have come out, especially around AMD, where they're using these kind of integrated APU APUs to integrate CPUs and graphics, play basically AAA games at 1440p at like MA settings. So it used to be that it was really expensive to build a gaming PC. And of course you can still spend thousands of dollars, many thousands of dollars. But these like 500, $800 laptops can now play all the AAA titles, or the majority of them, maybe not the most advanced features or graphic options. So they've made this really interesting. Modular to an extent, but also easy for the average person to upgrade. Everything is either one. You can basically take apart this entire computer with one screwdriver or the parts are magnetic. And so they've made it much, much easier because I've built desktop computers in the past and it requires a lot of skill and kind of fiddling about to get it right. So they've made it so, you know, five years from now you can upgrade the whole thing, but keep your case and all the associated parts. And I think they can recycle the old stuff. I think framework is their goal is to kind of reduce the waste in the world. It's really interesting. You can kind of customize it. You can buy these like middle magnetic tiles and you can customize the. You can go in to their website and pick like which APU you want. Do you want the base level or the top one? You can decide which ports you want in the front. So I think default is, there's one usb, there's a bunch of USB A and C on the back by default. But you can replace like the front ports. And it's just like these little cards that you can Pull out, you can buy multiple extra ports and you can, you know, if that week you're going to be using an SD card, you can pull out the ports on the front of your computer, put in an SD card reader and then swap it back later. There's all this really cool stuff. It's very much like a Lego experience for developing a, a desktop computer. So really, really interesting. Not cheap. I didn't look. I think they start at like 1100 US so it is not cheap. It is not a price competitor to the Mac mini at all. But it is a very powerful computer. A desktop class kind of takes the thinking out of it. If you did want a gaming computer or just a really powerful workstation that could handle AI workloads, AMD is killing it. And they're really the only ones who make these kind of integrated cpu, gpu, these APU based computers. And so this fits on a motherboard that framework has developed. And so, yeah, pretty cool. [00:52:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know, maybe it's just me, like I do have, I feel especially given all of the waste and everything, like this modular idea would be awesome if it could be sustainable. But like you say like even like memory RAM and so on, like it's, it's just things have not been that way for a long time. [00:52:27] Speaker A: Well, I think that's the reason that they've, they made this hybrid. I think they said look like if you get a computer with 64 gigabytes or 32 gigabytes gigs of RAM, you're not going to need to upgrade it for a long time. I think one of the problems with traditional computers is that okay, you go to put in more RAM, but because it's separate from the CPU, do the CPUs and RAMs 5 years, 7 years from now support that motherboard? You know what I mean? So like it's, there's computers are very modular desktops if you upgraded them on a regular basis, but then eventually you're going to need a new CPU and it's not going to fit the socket, it's not going to work for that motherboard, you're going to need to upgrade it, or maybe you can upgrade the CPU, but you're going to be limited to, you know, DDR3 doesn't support DDR4 RAM or something like that. And so I think their argument is that look, you get much better performance by integrating the CPU and RAM together and the GPU into one chip. I'm assuming that the chip can be replaced and it can go on the same motherboard because all of those components that I just described would now be one thing. I'm not suggesting that the motherboard has to go, I could be wrong. But because you would likely upgrade all of those things at the same time. I think it's their argument. And, and so, but you know, you don't need to update your case or your USB ports or the fan or the HDMI port or things like that. And so if you, you know, it's like, let's, you could spend. I, I went to their store and I was able to load up a computer for 3,800 bucks. It's pretty expensive. It was the top of the line at 128 gigabytes of RAM and like some ridiculous specs on it. But you know, that's a big investment. But then, you know, five years from now, presumably you could go and go to Framework and say, okay, I want, I want the best innards and then pay, you know, I don't know, maybe 18, 800 bucks and get the whole new chip and RAM and everything and you just keep the rest of it and plug it in. And I think to me this is really compelling. I do like the idea. I do like miniaturized technology. I love the desktop. I always go back and forth into do I want a desktop. And if I had unlimited funds I would buy this and max it out and this would be my main desk computer. I love upgrading computers, I love what they can do. But figuring out motherboards and RAM and graphics card compatibility and drivers is a really awful experience. And so this is much more fun for me to go pick and choose. And you know, there's like some little things that you can, like those magnetic tiles, you can change the color, you know, you can put in, you know, you can, they've actually open sourced some of the customized, I think these tiles and maybe other parts. So you can go and 3D print your own that clip in. And yeah, I, I like that. You can buy what you need and then upgrade it later. And like, let's say you spend all your money on RAM and processor and you're just like, you know, and then the rest you'll just do the default. Well, later you can put a translucent side on it or you can upgrade the fan or maybe later, like I said, you need different ports. You got rid of all your USB A. You can take those bits out and then you can replace the modules. I don't know if they take. The question I would have for Framework is that do they take these parts back? Can you trade them in. At the very least, will they recycle them ethically? That would be a question I would have. But a. Pretty cool. [00:55:48] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I, I like them. I, I think even like those tiles and everything. Like, it's a cool design. Yeah. [00:55:56] Speaker A: So that's, that was my nerd out for the day. I'm just super excited about this. I would love a patron who listens to this podcast just to donate. You know, I just need 3,000 bucks. [00:56:10] Speaker B: That's all we need. Or, you know, Framework, you know, they, they can go and reach out to us, sponsor us. [00:56:18] Speaker A: We'll be, we'll gladly say we're the framework sponsored computer at the beginning of every podcast if it's our main editing device. So really, really cool. And I love, I really like amd. I think amd, you know, they built the chips for the latest game consoles. I think they've really done great work hitting a certain price point. They're not the leader in terms of graphics compared to Nvidia. They're competitive, but they're not at the same level. But they've always come at a much lower price point for most of that performance and just really innovative in terms of, yeah, this APU architecture, the AI architecture, the rise in chip architecture. I think they're in many ways they're way ahead or they were way ahead of Intel. I think TSMC makes their chips. I think that's the reason they don't actually have a foundry where they do this. They do it in Apple does. But I love amd. They just, they do, they make just terrific stuff at a good value. And I'm just glad that Framework has kind of an AMD based desktop because you just don't see it that often. We have one more story. This is more of just like something to discuss because, you know, it's, it's almost part of the lexicon, which is Skype. So Skype is actually going away, which is really too bad. And so yeah, Skype is going away. It's going to become Microsoft Teams. There's instructions. We will include this in the show notes. But there's a page from Microsoft talking about Skype and it's being deprecated and what's next for Skype users. How to move your stuff, your data to Microsoft Teams, the free version of Microsoft Teams. So how do you. I thought we might want to just talk about it because we often tell, oh, I'll Skype them, you know, now maybe people say I'll zoom them, but I still say Skype call Occasionally, like it was the first really. Right. And it was. I think Microsoft has on them for a long time. [00:58:22] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been a while. And yeah, it's. I don't know even. I kind of like the name. It's almost like a. Creating like a. From a branding standpoint, like the Kleenex of video conferencing. And so for whatever reason, Microsoft just. [00:58:40] Speaker A: That's a show title. [00:58:44] Speaker B: But you know, like that's, that's what we used to call it. Like, it's just like with Twitter. I. I still don't call it X. You still, you call it. I don't. Yeah. But yeah, it's unfortunate like the. I personally, you know, having especially being at various institutions and even just for work. Like I've, I've tried teams, I've tried Zoom, Google Meets. I've used Skype in the past, but now it's not. Hasn't been as mainstream in terms of accessibility. But yeah, I personally, I don't really like teams as much. I'm sure for those that are in the Microsoft kind of office platform, it probably is really nice for them to have all the integrations with the calendar and all that kind of stuff. All right. But. And maybe even it's all. In some respects it's kind of like a hybrid because it also allows people the ability to kind of use like slack functionality right in to this like teams platform. And I'm sure Microsoft has used Skype to go and develop that. That was probably the foundation. Right. But I would say by far out of all the video conferencing platforms right now, it would be. Zoom is the. The strongest and in fact the people who founded Zoom were former Skypers and they were probably alienated from the Microsoft acquisition and so on. So yeah, it's. Again, I guess we'll see what happens. But it's just the next chapter for Microsoft. [01:00:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it's kind of sad. I liked that Skype was still around. I still use it occasionally to talk to certain people and it's just disappointing to see it kind of go away. [01:00:41] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [01:00:42] Speaker A: So. Well, it's the end of an era. I don't have a particular tip or at least a detail on a tip today, but I did promise I would go back to this question that I asked of Deep Research. So there's a couple of things here. I have a notification from ChatGPT saying that it's finished its question. You can also, by the way, do use the Sora AI generated video now in ChatGPT Plus. Oh, you can But I have, I, I did one test. I asked it to make a video of Marcus Aurelius deleting its social media and it was kind of a weird video. So I may, I. I don't know how to prompt it yet. I haven't figured that out but we can go back to this deep research as an example. And so OpenAI has or sorry ChatGPT has said recent scholarly research on OpenCourseWare. Below are some of the most notable peer reviewed journal articles. So it's given me 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 kind of at the top OpenCourseWare articles and it's on the right hand side. It has a long list of activity and it totaled. It brought back 25 peer reviewed sources on my topic. Most of them are links to eric, which is the Education Research Information center. But there's a lot of research gate posts as well. So you know I can get these probably for the most part from, they have DOIs from my institution. But it's interesting that I asked it for stuff in the last three years and it did not stick to that 2012, that's the thing. And so this is where I'm wondering what's going on here. [01:02:43] Speaker B: Well, maybe you have to wait for 4.5 to get better and maybe with some emotionally intelligent prompts you'll do, you'll get some better results maybe. [01:02:51] Speaker A: And it'll, maybe it'll take the criticism I'm about to tell it better. I understand how you feel that way. Before we go forward on this research, let's get in touch with our feelings. I hope that's how it talks. Like a therapy session. [01:03:07] Speaker B: Well, well, you know the other. I guess funny thing is too, I don't know why they like you mentioned this about the emotional intelligence but like why are we even. Or why is OpenAI even going that route and making it want to be like this isn't, isn't a human being. It's not, it's. It's an algorithm. It doesn't think, you know, like it's, it's just running like calculations and stuff. I, I don't know, it's just interesting like the, their kind of approach just from maybe like a philosophical, you know. [01:03:41] Speaker A: I think it's a business tactic. I sent you one of the, the video of Marcus Aurelius deleting his social media so you can see just a short video on a loop. It's like a gif. I think it's a business tactic. I think they're probably trying to still figure out how to make Money and so one of the low hanging fruit ways to do that is probably to have some sort of better chatbot for customer service. That's my guess. So then if they make a more. [01:04:14] Speaker B: The video is pretty decent. [01:04:15] Speaker A: It is decent. It's just, it's. He's not actually doing anything except he's just on his phone. But it's pretty funny. Yeah. So I think they're, I think the 4.5, the emotional con, the emotional play is, is more to make it seem more human for AI tools that, that have replaced a human worker. That's my guess. [01:04:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:42] Speaker A: I mean I could be wrong. Maybe people just want to use it the friendlier version to chat to. It'd be interesting to see what kind of feedback they get from their customers. [01:04:50] Speaker B: But oh, one thing I forgot we were chatting about this prior too but there was that one research paper that came out of Microsoft Research in collaboration with Cambridge and what was it? I think Carnegie Mellon but how they studied some knowledge workers and apparently their critical analysis critical thinking skills went down or what have you by the, the overuse of AI for certain tasks. But you know, one thing, it was funny because you know, we were chatting about this but how do we know if they had critical analysis thinking skills to be fair and, and you know, that's where to have a true study. We probably would need to go and maybe have some certain baseline kind of tasks for them to do prior to using the AI and then afterwards to see what would have changed. But I again I, I think even like how you just mentioned Eric. Like you know, you go and tell it to go and do one thing and it doesn't even follow the instructions of, you know, in terms of the like I'm actually while we were doing this I, I decided I'll go and experiment with the, the deep research as well. And it, it specifically asked me hey, when do you want the articles from? I gave it that. I don't know why it's right now working on it and it's pulling articles from like 23. When I asked, I said specifically I want for this last year. So 24, 25, that's it with a cutoff and it's for whatever reason is pulling stuff prior to that. So but that's where again I mean it certainly helps. I mean here we are, we're recording a podcast is doing stuff in the background and then I can go and figure out for myself if the sources are useful. [01:06:41] Speaker A: So I think that yeah, my guess when it comes to the critical thinking skills would be not so much. Well, there's two aspects to this, I suppose, so I even find myself summarizing things. I'm so used to it, doing some things that now when I go to do it by myself, it is sometimes tedious, and I think that could be a risk. I do like to read and write my own content, and sometimes I just have to. But I do use it for. I try to stick to it for kind of repetitive tasks, summaries. Can you reframe this in a different way? But then again, am I using those muscles? Is that problem? And that's why I typically don't use it for writing or to remove my blog. I don't use it to create that. I might use it to help me what's wrong with this paragraph? And it'll give me an idea. And I might go in and take an example of how to fix it up, like Grammarly. But I really like to do my own writing because I think that's what's going to make my stuff stick out. It's not going to be perfect. It's going to be Eric. Right? So if it's. If it's a. If it looks like everybody else's AI generated stuff, it's no good. And so that's one thing. On the other hand, though, I can see how if you rely on it to choose the best sources, what are the best sources of the ones that you found? You don't have to then go, so for instance, I knew the topics we want to talk about today, and I used AI. I had a bunch of articles. But I said, you know, I wonder if there's other sources for this. Right? So like the Reuters source versus, you know, the Verge and all these other things versus Microsoft's actual internal blog. I said, I have sources on these topics. What are the other better web. The other web sources? And it gave me tons of stuff. It gave me stuff from newspapers I've never heard of. So I went in and had to, nah, that. It doesn't look very good, or I'll take this one instead. But you're right, like, if I never had to do that, this is gonna be a problem. It could be a problem for people who grew up with AI, just like the people who grow up with phones have their own issues. [01:08:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. [01:08:43] Speaker A: So, I mean, I think that's a fair point. We can include that in the, in our show notes, perhaps, and maybe we'll come back to that in the next episode and just think about it. Cause I need to think of, like, reflect on Perhaps where my skills are getting softer versus better as a result of using these tools. [01:09:00] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and it's like, even I. I sometimes wonder, like, here I am, I'm able to go and perform calculations right in my head, and my students aren't able to. They're relying on their smartphones. And sometimes I wonder is the. I. I still think it's a good thing that I can, you know, compute things in my head. Although, you know, what's funny is like, Eric, like now, like back in the day, even still, I have the ability to go and recall phone numbers and just memorize them and stuff. But more and more, because everything's being stored in my contacts, on my phone. There's some people that I don't. I literally, I don't know what I would do if I didn't have my phone. Like, I wouldn't know their numbers and. But I don't know, maybe on one aspect, maybe it's a good thing that I can use that, you know, brain memory aspects for other applications, as opposed to just storing a bunch of phone numbers and, you know, useless information. So who knows? I mean, there's always pros and cons to everything, right? But I do believe that there are. And again, I'm not a neuroscientist. I don't know anything about science. But there are neural pathways that get created by going and doing certain types of activities. And in fact, actually just recently, I don't know how the topic came up. I think it was probably because my students were writing an exam. But, you know, one thing that I learned many, many years ago, I was actually here at Mount Royal as a student just in terms of understanding how our memory retention works. And, you know, I came across this one article recently about. It comes down to 2730. And so basically what the 2730 is is that if you, you know, let's say today, if we're going through our. Our notes here or what have you, if you reviewed it on day two, it would stay in your head for seven days. If you reviewed in seven days from now, it would stay in your head for 30. And for, you know, from a education standpoint, that's probably more than sufficient for the course of a semester to get you through. But yeah, I mean, that. That would be the ideal. So that was kind of how I approached it is the same day I would try to just review my notes that would keep it into my head until tomorrow. Then I would go in and do it again tomorrow and then for a. From then. And it just helped overall. And I. I performed better that way, so. But that's just to have an understanding of how our brain works. And so these are things that, again, you know, we gotta be kind of cognizant about. [01:11:38] Speaker A: I agree. I think reviewing content and practicing those things are useful. I fear that that'll become less common as time goes on. But we shall see. And there's nothing we can do about it anyways, so. [01:11:53] Speaker B: Exactly. We. We just gotta, you know, adapt to the change that's coming. [01:11:57] Speaker A: Well, that sounds like a good place to close for today. How can people get in touch with you? [01:12:03] Speaker B: Yeah, so if anybody wants to get a hold of me, my website is. It's Chris Hans K R I S H a N S CA and my details are there. [01:12:14] Speaker A: And my name is Eric Christiansen. So Eric with a K. And then C H R I s T I a N S e N and you can reach [email protected]. both of our websites show up on Google searches. We'll also link to our information in the show notes. Well, that's great, Chris. We'll chat again soon. [01:12:35] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Take care.