Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Welcome to Examining, a technology focused podcast that dives deep.
And welcome to another episode of the Examining podcast. I am Eric Christensen and I am joined by Chris Hans. How is it going this afternoon, Chris?
[00:00:40] Speaker B: It's going good.
How's everything with you?
[00:00:43] Speaker A: It's terrific. It's cold. It's getting colder. Winter is approaching, though. We have very little snow for this time of the year, which is odd.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: I hear it's going to be a brown Christmas.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Brown Christmas? What does that mean exactly? It could be so many things.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Could be chocolate, I guess, but I guess it's just in my interpretation is that it's not gonna. We're not gonna have snow on the ground.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Oh, well, that's devastating. I guess I'll have lots more time to put up those Christmas lights.
I guess we can get.
You alerted me to something, which is a good idea. So I will be taking a brief.
Well, I mean, this is our December episode which is coming.
Or is it our November? No, our December episode. It's coming slightly later because of timing.
So we'll be back in the new year.
It's possible I might be taking a very slight hiatus due to a personal event, but we'll be back. I can explain more at another time if that's the case. We'll either have a rewind or maybe you and other Chris will join in and have a discussion without me, which is cool and so stay tuned. But this is going to be our holiday slash kind of AI wrap up episode. We have kind of a bunch of chunks today, so I'll give people a heads up. We're going to talk about AI and we've done AI heavy episodes, but for good reason. And there's some.
This is, I mean, not, I guess it's getting old news. But we're going to cover especially what other people have talked about.
Other podcasts have discussed this. Some of the OpenAI drama. You're going to talk about some AI panel stuff.
We might not get to the other articles. I think we will have to go to our I have a holiday organization kind of tirade because I've been all in on organizing things at my house.
And then we have some holiday tech stocking stuffers focusing on useful gifts that are not outrageously expensive. So no new laptops for family, smaller stuff. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. So. So let's maybe kick off. Chris, do you want to kick off the AI panel discussion that you were part of?
[00:02:59] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So we at Mount Royal University, we had A panel discussion on the use of AI in research. And you know, we first started just outlining what does research mean in terms of our context. And we had pretty varied panel but you know, research can mean a lot of things to different people, especially in academia. So there is that kind of peer reviewed, you know, research studies and so on. But it could also be like from my perspective, I was representing a little bit of not only being in academia but also in business and just talking about the use of artificial intelligence to do some of the research work for industry purposes for maybe it's some sort of project that you're working on. We had one representative that was, you know, kind of giving the student perspective.
And all in all, I think again it's, you know, I look at it from a context standpoint. I mean, one of the things I mentioned is that, you know, whether it's in academia or in business, it's really looking at, you know, how resourceful you are with the resources that you have. And so there is, there's going to be tools, there's going to be different, you know, access in terms of research databases or even in terms of various studies and so on. We talked about the use of AI as part of research and work and, and what type of tools are going to be helpful. And I, I kind of just brought up, it's for myself, like AI in my work and I'm in a lot of it. I'm just kind of doing experimentation just to see what is possible. But it's, I would describe it, it's a bit like a Swiss army knife. You know, it can be versatile but it's not always the best tool for the, the job.
You know, I also brought up, you know, some of the big wins with AI. I mean there could be efficiency, but then I think for AI, some of the Achilles heel for it is really the, the lack of human nuance.
And so, you know, some people may think that it's, it's a trend, but it really, I think it's probably more than just a trend. It's, it's a tool and the, the real investment and understanding and its potential and limits that the, the various technology can go and present.
So we also talked about from a collaboration and competition kind of paradigm standpoint and whether we saw AI as a collaborator that augments human capabilities in research or if it's a competitive force and might replace human roles and research.
And I mean for, from my perspective, I see AI is, I would almost describe it as like a team player. It's, it's not really a solo act. It just amplifies our strengths and compensates for our weaknesses or it has the potential to, it can't really replicate human creativity or ethical judgment. So it's a tool, it's not a replacement. You know, we can go and get some of the, the research tasks and delegate maybe, I don't know, maybe the, some of the data grunt work to AI, maybe data analysis and other aspects, and that might help us, free us for the real thinking job aspects.
You know, we also brought up the issue of the quality. And so how does the AI impact the quality or the rigor?
And the analogy that I used, it's, you know, the AI in terms of research, it's almost like if you're cooking, it's like the seasoning and cooking. If you use it right, it can enhance, if you overuse it, it can spoil the dish. So it, I think it has the potential for AI as a tool. You can probably go and use it and it probably shines in terms of data analysis, but I think it'll have struggles in terms of some of that creative interpretation. So it's a bit of a mixed bag. We touched on the ethical implications and so, you know, in terms of integrating AI, approaching the various issues, we, in our last episode, we talked about some of this in terms of some of the ethical implications from environmental impact, even how the information, the intellectual property that was used to go without anybody's permission to actually develop the large language models.
Yeah, I mean, it's, I don't know, again, it's something to kind of, even for myself, I think for the other panelists, we haven't come to a definitive sort of opinion on this and it might change as well. But if you think about it, every technology that we're using, a lot of it is cloud based. So in essence, many of the environmental considerations are there anyways. So I think some of the intellectual property aspects are probably more so. But again, I think in terms of this is probably what's going to define a lot of the work going forward is actually looking at ethics and AI as being not just a feature, but it should be a foundation.
You know, without it, without having some of that discussion, we're going to be building on sand. And so it's a matter of handling AI ethically and not just asking if we can, but if we should.
There was one other topic, topic that we were going to cover, but we didn't get to it just because of time constraints, but it was about accessibility and inclusivity and So I think overall, I mean, while we didn't touch on it, but I guess my thoughts are that the potential is vast, but so is the gap that it can create.
And bridging this gap, it isn't really optional, it's essential.
So we do have to think about inclusivity. It's. It's not just about being fair, it's smart. And so these diverse inputs are going to lead to stronger outputs.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: That's what I would think. So, I mean, like you had mentioned in the past, like algorithms, they have a bias. Right. Because if you train it on something that's western centric, it doesn't mean the western centric stuff is wrong, but it's just that perspective. Right. You're not going to get perspectives that are global south, especially if you ask it conceptual questions or political questions. So they've kind of turned some of that off, which is interesting.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: And I. And so, you know, it's kind of the solution to that, as you've alluded to, is kind of like more input is better because the system, we have more examples.
And so I can certainly see from an accessibility and, you know, diverse answers set, it could be a problem, though, from an accessibility standpoint. I don't know anything about how somebody, like, I'm talking about like a visual accessibility issue or something like that, like on a computer screen, how open AI works with those tools. It seems to me, though, that the potential for those tools to assist people, like they already, it already does voice.
You can talk to it with voice, which is not uncommon. But you know, what, what things can it do to assist people who have.
I don't know, I mean, like, what if you have, what if you're, you know, have a physical issue where you can't type very well or something? I mean, what if you have severe carpal tunnel? I mean, there, there's, you know, Microsoft research. I know I'm rambling here.
Has historically been really good for accessibility. That Mic, you know, Microsoft Devices, peripherals. I'm talking to my keyboards and we'll talk about that later. They're actually a leader in some of that ergonomic stu. Everyone's probably seen that Microsoft ergonomic keyboard that's been around forever. They still sell it. The thing is a tank. It's really nice.
One of the things, one of their mottos in their accessibility department is that everybody gets a disability eventually. Some people just get there faster. And that's a really interesting way to think about it because when they think about these things, they're not designing them just for one audience, they're designing them for a lot of people. And so I think about like, yeah, what if you have an injury on the job and then you work from home or something and it helps you write and helps you clean up because maybe you can't type for that long. I mean there's so many potential accessibility benefits, email summarization, you know, create your own GPT to template something. I mean, to me there's a lot of benefits potentially from an accessibility standpoint or language barrier or anything like that.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Well, and one of the panelists like the, especially with some of the, the recent events in the Middle East, I mean he put in some of that just to see what OpenAI or any of these AI writers, what they would put together and it was clear, like, I mean it was very biased in terms of the Western perspective. And so although it actually was interesting because there was some other information in terms of the indigenization here in, in Canada and some studies that he would then kind of went down a rabbit hole. So I mean he probably wouldn't have read that otherwise.
But again, this is where, you know, we have to kind of be critical of what is being generated. Right. And so, and then I also think even just from an economic standpoint, I mean that's why one of the reasons why I look at whether it's ChatGPT or Bing AI, the fact that it's available in, you know, 169 countries, you don't have to pay for it. I mean even just from that aspect, I mean it was interesting I, because we've been allowing our students in our business communication course that to actually use these tools. And one of the comments so far, because we're getting feedback from students, those are the main tools that I've been using in class from a AI writing standpoint. And it was just really more so because of the availability and accessibility because then nobody had to pay for them. But one student comment that noticed is maybe trying out other tools and showcasing them. So but again, I mean this is where you kind of have to.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Well, there's lots and there, there's specialized AI tools that use the same language model to help with like Semantic Scholar for doing research. I mean that could have its own bias.
But again, you know, so there's something that's interesting to me about all of the discussions about AI. They overwhelmingly focus on the information. I'm going to call it, I'm going to, I don't know if this is a term information delivery aspect, meaning that they're like oh well, what kind of answers does it give me? How biased are the answers?
I. It's funny because I never use it for that personally. Like I never say can you please bring me back blah blah blah. Like I, I personally find that to be tedious. Like Google search is so good at this point.
Let me give, giving answers. When you type in a question, you can't do that with a typical database query where you put a question mark and it'll answer it and then give you the knowledge graph. In my opinion the Google stuff is way better at that. Like so today my wife has a battery that's called LR44. It's one of those little circular batteries she needs for a child's toy.
Well yeah, there's some differences between that and the 357 battery but they can be used interchangeably.
But I wanted to know what the differences are so I typed in 357 versus LR44 battery differences question mark and it gave me like an answer chat GPT. I did it later just to see and it was so slow and it gave me so much irrelevant information. Like it wasn't it.
It's good if it brings back here's a list of sources and like a one sentence summary and you can go read it for yourself. Sure. It's terrible in my opinion unless you really have the prompt right at actually doing the research for you. Like to me that's kind of the party trick stuff of these large language model. But to me the interesting thing is like hey, I actually did my own work, I read this stuff. Or maybe you got it to help you summarize an article by uploading a PDF and then you did your own reading and then you took your own notes and you said, and then you wrote a paragraph and you're like ah, can you, can you edit, help me edit this paragraph down. Like the copilot branding that Microsoft is using is a way more accurate description of what it does. Like when people put in like what is the bias when it gives me back these answers like give me a summary of history on X. It's like I would, I, I don't even think to use it for that because it's so awful.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Well and I, I guess maybe just to you know, clarify on that, it's not that we're, they were going in there to ask about the bias. It was just to go and see what could happen just by putting in, you know, question like what, what's happening in this conflict? Like who Are the parties involved or whatever and just to see what it would generate. Right.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Well, and I mean I totally see the bias and I guess to me it's like the bias argument is interesting and I agree with it, but it's no different to me than the bias on the Internet or the bias of given. I mean go to put it, put in Google, search for your new site of whatever choice and then do media bias and you'll usually get a hit from all sides and a hit from media bias fact check and they tell you if the source leads to the right or to the left or something like that. I mean, so everything has a bias and computers aren't any less biased. Like you said, you hit the nail on the head and whatever all it depends what it's been trained on, right. I mean if you only train it on one perspective, it's. That's the whole world according to that AI until it sees everything right? And it, and even if you did give it everything, it's not like everything is weighted. Every perspective is weighted equally.
And so to me, like those are true and people should use their mental faculties. But that's not like a new challenge for us. To me the challenge is more like how does it change?
Is, you know, is it my work or is it the robots?
[00:18:11] Speaker B: Yeah, totally.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Well, and that's to me, that's the more like holy mackerel. Like, I don't know if I. Is this really mine? Do I have to co author it with Chat GPT? I mean, that's a good question. I don't know.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: I can't remember if I told you last time but like for my students, they like throughout the semester I was going and you know, we were. They had the opportunity to practice with the various AI writers for the business communication course through workshop activities that we have. And it was kind of interesting to me. We had a, a test where they are going through the similar exercises, but now they're in a timed environment and they have to go and analyze the scenario, use some of the theory that we have and you know, come up with a strategy for addressing that scenario. And nobody asked me except for my last section. They're like, oh, is it going to be just like normal where you provide a PDF? And it never really crossed my mind. I mean we talked about it, but then I had to clarify that with people because we have multiple sections.
What, what we do is we provide them a, a hard copy of the test and we collect that test afterwards. And so that threw off Eric. It was really fascinating.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Because so he assumed that he could use AI as long as he included the PDF of the prompts. But you actually did an in class exam.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: Well, yeah. So like what, what I guess like during the, throughout the semester what we would do is just copy and paste the whole scenario and throw it into something like chat GPT. And now because I'm not providing the file, the source material, they would have to go and physically type in the information.
And so a lot of them, they had to kind of re strategize like are we going to go and use AI or not?
Because they don't have that ability to just copy and paste. And so many of them they opted not to do that because then they would have to type it in. And it was funny, I had some, I, I, I observed some of them were spending like 5, 10 minutes just typing, typing the whole thing verbatim into the AI writer. And I mean and at that time it was kind of going slow too. So now you're like typing and you're like that shouldn't be how the whole process should have been. I'm going to have to probably adjust for a next semester. But you shouldn't go and copy and you know, everything that's in there because there's a lot of red herring information. So they should have picked like you know, high level sort of bullet points and then frame that with the, the prompt that they want and it was open book and you know, again they could use prompts. They could, they had access to everything from their textbook to the Internet.
But yeah, it was just a, just because of that one shift where they would have had to type themselves.
Many of them reconsidered the use of AI.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Because then it's like isn't more so I mean there's a, I think I, I mean it makes sense. There's a calculus here. Right. Like is it more trouble to edit this AI than it is just for me to know the answer?
Yeah, that's what I think. Yeah.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: And just do use your brain. Right. So but yeah, I don't know again, I, I think it's still, I'm gonna have to probably tweak it a little bit for next semester and maybe outline it right from the get go. But the idea shouldn't be that you should need to copy and paste and upload like a huge document or whatever. It wasn't even a huge document, it was just one page. But you shouldn't have to upload it into an AI writer.
And you know, you should just go and put Together your summary of what you're trying to achieve and include it as part of that prompt.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: So I think, yeah, like, I mean, you. Again, you. You said this, and I. I appreciate that. Which is like, it's when to use it. Right? I mean, it's interesting. You talked about different perspectives, too.
So if I'm summarizing something, I'll go through and take my own notes, and then I'll. I might put that document into chat GPT and ask it to summarize it, usually around a certain thing that I'm looking at. Don't summarize everything.
And it's often quite good. Very often it. I mean, it doesn't rarely come up with irrelevant stuff. If I've uploaded a properly formatted document, like a PDF, like a journal article or something, especially if it's open access, I'm like, summarize this for me. Or even better, if it's HTML and it usually sticks exactly to what I've told it to do, and it usually provides a good. Though I wouldn't say better. It's a different focus. And I'm like, oh, interesting. I never thought about it like that. That's another way to phrase what that person said. I'll combine a little bit of this with a little bit of mine, and then that's good to go. I mean, that's. That's one of my favorite things. The summarization, the condensed. Turn this into bullet points. Our podcast notes, some of that.
Because there is a joy of writing, right? There's a joy in writing and putting things together in your own style, but it's the editing. Or give me a different way to phrase this paragraph. Maybe you just change one sentence out of all the things that change, but it's like, oh, I never thought about phrasing it that way. That. I mean, you probably could have come to the conclusion by thumbing through Addiction Thesaurus. This is a different way to do it. And, you know, it's kind of. To me, it's the next step. I remember when we had the. When I got my first Mac, I had one years and years ago. But, you know, then I kind of stepped away for a bit. And when I got a Mac and I had Spotlight and I could just Spotlight and bring up the dictionary app and thesaurus things, that was like a game changer for me, just because, like, it was like, right there.
And so this is almost like an automated version of that in a way, except for a lot of pros.
Yeah. I don't know really where I'm going with this. It's just kind of an interesting, it gives just a different perspective.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Right, yeah, well, and it's, it's funny like again, you know, just some insights from my class because I had another meeting afterwards because we received some grant funding from the provost office just to integrate artificial intelligence into the business communication course. And one thing that we found, again, it's knowing the limitations of these tools.
So within the class, we're, we're showing them different frameworks and how you should approach different situations. So one thing that I found, and actually, you know, my colleagues have found this as well. Well, that teach that same course, we give them a specific framework for handling bad news or negative messages.
And so for that, you know, the, it's almost like a bit of an equation because some of the things that could, you know, be fatal errors is going and mentioning the news, the bad, you know, negative situation more than once within the message. It's kind of like if I use the old adage, it's, it's like going and pouring salt on a wound. Right. And so the, you know, the best practice is to go and say that message once, rip off that band, band aid once. You usually should position it in the middle so, you know, it's, it's good.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: News, bad news, good news.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So positive, negative, positive, and you, you kind of sandwich it in the middle. And I'll tell you this, the large language models right now, like ChatGPT, Bing, they don't do a very good job of going and using that model unless maybe if you go and specify that this is how you want to do.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: It, if you made your own GPT and said, and said, you know, I'm going to have good news, bad news, good news and PR and organize it this way. I'm sure you could do it. But again, it takes quite a bit of work to make your own GPT. I know I did it for qualitative data coding to do exactly what I wanted to do. And it took me probably an hour and a half to make the GPT because I have this data and I wanted to see if I could get it to add a qualitative code to it and then organize it into themes just as a test.
And I was able to get it to do it very, very well. But it took me a long time to make a custom GPT.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and keep in mind, I mean, this is probably the worst it's ever going to be.
It's pretty darn good for where it's at, right? Now, So I would imagine it'll get better. But again, it's. Right now there are limitations. It might not be the best tool, you know, and you got to go. There still needs to be some domain knowledge and understanding, some of that nuance. And so I, again, I think it's just different kind of approaches and skill set that you're going to develop. Like, I.
It's like, let's say in. So I allowed my students, they had the option. It was. It wasn't forced upon them. You could either use your brain or you could use, you know, your brain, plus augmented with one of these AI writers. But in that kind of scenario, if they. Oh, and by the way, I had a process where they had to go and reflect and explain to me how they used it, what was effective, ineffective, and tie it back to our course content, which many of the students, they actually find that that whole process, you know, too much is kind of the general comment. I mean, I can't imagine that we're asking somebody to go and reflect and, you know, explain how. How they use it. But my analogy was like, okay, well, it's like, let's say you're in a math test.
One person is just using their brain, the other person is using their brain in a calculator. What you're explaining to me is, how did you use that calculator?
And I want to make sure that you can understand how the calculations took place.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree.
So I think. I think that's a. I think it's a very practical way to go about it. I wish that more of the discussion was like that versus the kind of polarizing discussion that's happening.
But I suppose that happens every time a new technology is introduced.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: I mean, it makes me think of.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: Sorry, yeah, I'm sure this. This same discussion happened when Excel came in for like, you know, accounting or finance or what have you. Right.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: The history of Excel and what it did to the accounting profession is really interesting. And there was a podcast interview about it that I think I had recommended on this at one point.
This podcast, I don't know which episode, but you can Google it and find it. And he talked to an accountant who said that, like, they used to have paper spreadsheets, they write everything out and was ridiculous.
And they had so many erasers that they went through and they made, like, one mistake.
And it's just really fascinating to hear the difference.
It also reminds me, too, of the moral panic that happens when new technologies are introduced and people just kind of misunderstand how they work. So I remember when Apple had itunes.
I think it was even before.
Was it before the itunes store launched? It might have been.
And there you could put CDs into the Mac and then put them into itunes and put them on your ipod. Right. Thousand songs in your pocket. And I think one of the marketing terms that they had was like, is it like rip play and joy or something?
[00:29:44] Speaker B: Sounds about right.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: I don't know what, I don't remember what the marketing was called, but it was something like that.
And they, People get all mad because they assumed it was like, rip off like steel. Right.
And they're like, no, it's like to rip you. So it, the language also makes a.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Big difference is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Because you're basically saying just rip the. The file so that you can put them as part of your.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Your collection. Your music collection.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: So just. I think about that sometimes. But on another related AI note, there was a bunch of drama at OpenAI.
What date? What was the range of dates? It was mid November, so it was the 17th. They have OpenAI announces the leadership transition. Yeah.
Is that the firing notice?
[00:30:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that was the firing notice. Then I think it was within days.
Like just after that. Yeah. Nadella hired both of them and created a research department at Microsoft Research for AI.
And then somehow they, they were returned back to OpenAI.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: Yeah. So I mean, I've been listening to this Week in Tech. I would strongly encourage people to go listen to that. It was also discussed on Windows Weekly, which are part of the this Week in Tech or the Twit podcast network, which I am a premium subscriber to. I do recommend it. It's very good Club Twit. It's a good podcast network for tech where they do things. It's more about like a variety panel style talk show podcast. But they talked about this saga. So OpenAI.
And I mean, I have a. We have a couple of articles. We have the notice of Sam Altman's temporary firing from the OpenAI board notice. And then there's also a blog post from the Verge which kind of summarizes his return.
I have now failed to put in that link, so I will grab it as I'm talking.
But basically what happened is on the 15th of November, there was a public post that went out, a notice that said that Sam Altman had been basically removed from OpenAI.
So the board of Open AI had let him go.
Like you said. Microsoft then offered to hire Sam Altman along. I guess there was also A protest. A bunch of people that work OpenAI said that they would go if Sam goes and then Microsoft said they'd hire him and as well as all the other people.
And then so it looked like he was going to go to Microsoft. There was a bunch of people who said that they would leave OpenAI if he was fired.
And then suddenly he returned to OpenAI as CEO.
Satya Nadella was interviewed and said that they'd want to see. I put the link in the notes for you, Chris. Sorry, I put the wrong one in. They'd also want to see some like leadership, like the board structure changes. I think Satya Nadella's line when he was being interviewed on some broadcast radio was that or broadcast television was that surprises are bad. And then he wanted to see governance changes.
So I, I've been going back and forth about this and my take based on what I. I mean not just my take, but the best argument from what I've been listening to is that OpenAI is a really weird company. Right. Because it has, it's like a not for profit but it has a for profit arm.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: So and the reason that was created and I think that the, its creation was one of the reasons why Elon Musk then pulled out as an investor because he didn't want it to have a for profit arm. But the reason was, is because it turns out it's like really expensive to run this AI stuff. So they needed to make money, otherwise they'd run out, they'd be fundraising indefinitely. So Sam Altman did that because he had that VC kind of experience and so he was the fundraiser basically and he has all these like wacky ideas for, you know, phones and Johnny I've and all this weird stuff to raise money.
But the board is largely, I think the majority of them at the time, before the change it were on from the non profit side. And those people are like academics, so they're researchers. Right.
And some of them that the take. I've heard Leo laporte talked about this, this was his theory and this week in Tech is that there's always been this rift between the not for profit side and the for profit side and the not for profit people, he thinks, and I think this is an interesting argument, really believe that they're going to get to AGI, which is artificial general intelligence. So right now we have AIs that are specific or artificial narrow intelligence. So like Siri is narrow even though it claims not to be. Even chat GPT is narrow. There's AIs that do specific things. And then, you know, artificial general intelligence is like HAL 9000 from 2001 Space Odyssey or her, the movie. The, you know, Scarlett Johanneson's character, the AI can do anything. It's like a person's general.
And so they really felt the not for profit side, that this is Leo Laporte's argument, that they were going to get to artificial general intelligence. But that opens up a door for a lot of problems, can be abused, could be devastating.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: Skynet, the Terminator, whatever you want to see, whatever doomsday scenario.
And so they have this guy who's the CEO who's on basically tied to the for profit arm and they could not rein him in.
And so they just said this is a suicide mission probably, but we're going to. This is our only chance to reign this guy in because we don't want this company to be absorbed by some big tech. These people are trying to be altruistic and they basically let him go. And then they got basically removed from the board or resigned later on. I think the head scientist, I forget his name later, tweeted that it was. The way they handled it was kind of a mistake. But basically there's this tension in this very oddly structured company. And Jason Snell, who's on MacBreak weekly and also does the upgrade podcast, noted that a lot of people on the tech have been like, this is terrible. How can a board do this? And he's like, this is a not for profit. They. A board on a not for profit is not thinking about profits. And shareholders, they are not thinking about that. That is not what they do. So they don't care, in a sense, if this is a bad business decision.
Right. And spooks investors, which it will, because that's not how their company is set up. It's like a public library. Doesn't work like that. A public library board. They're not thinking in terms of profits. Right. So he's like, that's why it comes off as so strange even. It is strange, the. The scenario. But it's really weird for the tech press because they cover for profit almost exclusively. They don't understand how a not for profit works. That. That didn't really occur to me personally. I never thought of it like that, but it makes sense.
[00:37:25] Speaker B: Yeah, but you know, I think at the same time, Eric, like when. I mean, I've worked in not for profit before, and I mean, I don't know whether it's for profit or not for profit. One thing that I can say, it really the board is there to go and offer its expertise from a governance standpoint. And I mean, I look at the original announcement, if you look at that one line where it's like, which concluded, and this was the board which concluded that he, Sam Altman, was not consistently candid in his communications with the board hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.
The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.
So those were like their words. And from, again, I mean, who knows, who knows about like, I don't want to be speculating or gossiping or what have you. Right. But some of the, if you think about it, the, the conference took place, the demo, you know, the developer day where they announced this.
The ability to go and create your own GPTs and a GPT Store and so on. Right. Like the, the App Store equivalent and the amount of demand, as you probably have noticed during that time, like there was times where it went down. And in fact, from my understanding right now, you cannot get a chat GPT plus subscription right now.
[00:38:59] Speaker A: So no, I know people who are trying to sign up and they're on a waitlist.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So they're on a wait list. And so I, I think some of, like, if I was a board member, whether I'm for profit or not for profit, like some of the things that I read online in terms of the news coverage was that apparently he was already Talking about Chat GPT5, looking to raise money and so on and so forth.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: Putting the cart before the horse.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and, and by going and making some of these announcements like now, you've brought it to a standstill.
You haven't allocated the, the, the resources effectively. I mean, you've now, I mean again, to put a whole bunch of people on wait list now and it's got gone kind of slow. Right. And so, I don't know, I mean, just from an operational standpoint, I mean there was other speculation, some news coverage where it has achieved what that AGI side of things that you're talking about, where it's been able to go and calculate and do math calculations and stuff.
[00:40:00] Speaker A: And so, but even that's not AGI, right? Like, that's like. So, I mean, I guess my point was like, and I agree with you, like, I think he has kind of put the cart before the horse. It seems like he's kind of rushed a lot of stuff. He's made promises, it's slowing down, like you said, he hasn't taken a beat to make sure that it's going to work.
The implementation I think you told me this is everything, right. Like you can have all these ideas and you can say stuff, but if you don't implement it properly, it doesn't really matter. And so I think that that's a valid concern.
It's interesting to me though that I think that they're extra concerned.
I think what adds to that is that these academics, the research side, the open, the altruistic, not for profit arm, the major part really of OpenAI, those people, those researchers are really concerned about the dangers of AI, which is why they joined it. Right.
I think that the linkage with Microsoft really upset a lot of them. That made it worse.
And so the fact that they have a CEO who's kind of on the for profit focus really spooks them. And so they kind of panicked, it seems like. I'm not saying that they, they weren't right in their assessment, but it seems like the, the way they handled it because like those arguments make sense to me. But then, you know, the 15th was a Friday, wasn't it?
[00:41:19] Speaker B: I think this. Yeah.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: I mean, or was it a Wednesday?
[00:41:21] Speaker B: It was like 15th was, let's see.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: No, it's a Wednesday. It was a Wednesday, but they did it end of day.
[00:41:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And then the, the firing like the official announcement was on the 17th, right?
[00:41:33] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: Which was the Friday. And like, I honestly, like Eric, I, I don't know if I've ever seen anything happen this fast ever.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Well, exactly. So my, it's like the weirdest thing and like you said in a big tech history for a while, but.
[00:41:51] Speaker B: You.
[00:41:51] Speaker A: Know, I see both sides of it. Okay, so on one hand, here's this guy, he's kind of gone rogue. He's promising things. I think Sam Altman's a smart guy.
He's done some really interesting work. He does have a vision, but he's, you know, he's a VC kind of fundraiser kind of a person. Right. So I mean, that's where he made money. Y Combinator. That's his whole background. So of course he's going to be like that. They hired someone like that. That's what you should expect. That doesn't mean that he's shouldn't be punished for not informing them if that's the case. But then the board fires him on a Friday at the end of the day, just before the market closes.
So that shaved off billions of dollars in Microsoft valuation.
That was not good. And then over the weekend, and I think Monday morning came and it was like not good. And so you don't do that again, they may be right, but timing is everything. And they really botch the timing because, you know, whether they like it or not, they are being supported basically because of Microsoft Azure and their Azure credit. So it's like you just wiped off a bunch of valuation of the hand that feeds you. Stupid. I mean, there's a different way to handle this. If they had issues, they could have raised it with Microsoft. They could have done a bunch of stuff, right? And it's like, so they did it really dumb. And to me, it's like, you know, a lot of people actually at OpenAI seem to really like him.
And so they're like, no, we're gone if this is the case. And so the board didn't even have confidence or, you know, labor behind them.
And so they're gonna. I mean, how. It's not easy to hire these people, these AI researchers. There's only so many. And they have a lot of really top people at OpenAI. So they've done it in a way where it's almost like a suicide mission.
And then Microsoft is like, oh, we'll hire everybody now. To me, that was also their response, was a bit of a bluff because. And this is something I have heard again from Leo Laporte on this Week in Tech. Again, he's a hero of mine, a podcaster. He has some really great insights. And one of the things he said is that These academics at OpenAI are researchers. They don't want to work for Microsoft Research to find out how to make AI spreadsheets. They don't care about that at all. He's like, this is. They're like hardcore academics, right? So they may have said they'll take off and Microsoft may have said that they're going to hire him, but he's. But that's not what they were want to do. You know, they don't want to be working on Office Co Pilot. Like, that's not interesting to somebody who's an academic. And that's a fair point. So they, they have a bluff. The board has a buff bluff. Microsoft has a bluff. The people say they're going to leave to follow Sam Altman. They have a bluff. You have like, it's like the Good, the Bad and the Ugly where they. In the movie where they all have a. There's three of them and they all have a gun pointed at each other. It's just like, what's going to go on here? And now the board is gone and he has returned. And I'm like, so what happened to Microsoft's deal. Are they okay with this? Did he just accept and then turn down. I have so many questions.
[00:44:50] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and I mean even like Satya Nadella, like, I mean he, he tweeted about this that he just wants to whatever is good for open AI. And I mean a lot of their strategy, like you say, like their market value tanked quite a bit just because of this whole announcement. I mean, although, you know, I saw memes, even I shared one with you. Like it almost seemed like, you know, Satya was like playing like 40 chess. Like, you know. Yeah, it seemed like a brilliant like sniper move where it's like, okay, you're taking out Sam Altman and that other gentleman there was his. Greg Brockman I believe and, and now hired them and you're taking all the open AI staff. So now you basically have made your 49 into like 100 effectively. And in fact actually their stock started going up when with all announcement. Right.
[00:45:45] Speaker A: So it's bananas. It's really weird.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know, it's is interesting like what's been happening. I mean even I, I saw this, I shared this one comedy video with you where there was Ronnie Chang and you know, he's like, I can't believe these employees that are going and you know, signing a petition that they're going to quit. He's like, I never did that for Trevor. No, just let him go and he did everything for me.
And so again like to get hundreds, I think, what was it, like 700 people signed that petition at the end?
[00:46:20] Speaker A: It was ridiculous. Yeah, it's incredible. Really.
[00:46:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
I mean, in fact, it's maybe, who knows, like the, they're possibly stronger than ever and who knows what's going to happen?
[00:46:34] Speaker A: Well, like I mean if the, if a lot of people are standing behind the CEO and they like him, I mean it gives.
I. It's hard to argue that.
I mean he may have over promised but that doesn't mean that he's a bad CEO. I mean they could reign him in and not fire him too well.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: And again like Eric, like who knows what's actually happened. I mean when I read some of the coverage, I looked at this one line. You, you know, one thing like again, from a governance standpoint, if you're thinking, you know, you're starting Talking about chat GPT5 and you're trying to go and hit up VCS and raise money and stuff and so on, well, you can't do that unless you have board approval. Whether it's for profit or not for Profit.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: Right.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: You can't start doing, having those kind of conversations until you get the, you know, the green light from the board.
And so, and I, I wouldn't be surprised if that's what was happening again. Who knows? I mean, they'll watch probably like 10 years from now. There'll be like a movie on this.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: It would be a really boring movie.
Takes a man. Yeah. So I don't, I don't know what to say. It's bananas. I think Microsoft, I think, I mean, I've heard from multiple people that it doesn't really matter what way you look at it. Microsoft is the winner.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yeah. For sure.
[00:47:56] Speaker A: So.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I think that's enough for this.
The drama. We can continue pushing forward then.
[00:48:06] Speaker A: And then we have some.
[00:48:08] Speaker B: Do you want to just.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: I mean, we have some other articles, but should we just move on to our organization and our tech stuff?
[00:48:15] Speaker B: Sure, yeah.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: I think that's probably best. I have one here on Firefox, but it's from February, so it's old news already. I think that's better for a different day. All right, so I, I, so I, I had an agenda item that sounds like I have an agenda. I guess in a way I do. I rerun a podcast. Right. So I can have all sorts of agendas. But really, really what I wanted to talk about is kind of holiday organization or just organization in general. So, you know, we rebranded this podcast to kind of do deep dives. We've been doing these deep dives on technology, but you and I are more interested in technology and how it, like, is useful day to day. We're not like every news article kind of a thing. Right. We go in and talk about it. We always kind of bring it back to productivity. That's kind of our shtick.
[00:49:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:02] Speaker A: So outside of technology, moving away, productivity and organization. You and I have talked about the productivity books when we were helping out educators. We've talked a lot about Cal Newport.
And so I've actually, a couple of times this year, fairly recently, I've kind of gone on these big. I just had this urge to organize things. I don't know if you've had that where you're, you know. Yeah. I mean, my house is always clean, it's always orderly. But sometimes after a while, you're like, I need to disassemble my system and put it back together better.
[00:49:36] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:49:38] Speaker A: So I do this usually when it starts to colder, it's a real workout. So I do not have to work do strength training because I'm squatting I'm doing cable management.
You know, my glutes are on fire now. They really hurt because I've just been like in prone positions doing all sorts of cleaning and cable management.
So I wanted to talk about what I did. So essentially earlier in the year, I tackled most of the kitchen in the living room.
So we have some new furniture and new stuff, you know, gaming controllers, video games. I have tons of video games and music and books and so magazines. We have a few hard copy magazine subscriptions. So I'm just organizing all that, the kitchen stuff, batteries, where we put, you know, the big thing for me when I'm organizing, really the takeaway is that everything should be together.
Like things that belong together should stay together.
And so you have a consistent place. It's part of my overall theme, which is consolidating your life. So here's some examples of what I did.
I have a bunch of cables as tech people accumulate cables and so, and, and you know, I like to keep cables from getting tangled with each other, but I also like to label them because if I go to resell something, I like to include the original cable, if possible. So one of the tips that I have, where we have tips for stocking stuffers, useful tech or useful holiday stocking stuffers later. But I'll give one of them away now, which is these Velcro brand cable and loop ties. Now, there's other brands you use. You said you use a different brand, like an off brand.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: Well, you know, now that I think about it, I, I, I believe I have like 3m ties. But like the ones which are good, which are basically, that's Velcro ones as well, right?
[00:51:34] Speaker A: I believe three 3M Velcro.
[00:51:36] Speaker B: I think 3M owns Velcro. They're the ones who created it, I believe. But I mean, I guess we could Google it. But in any event, the ones that you showed me, like the official, like Velcro ones, they're way wider than what the ones that I have.
[00:51:52] Speaker A: Velcro is not owned by 3M.
[00:51:54] Speaker B: Oh, it isn't?
[00:51:55] Speaker A: No. Velcro is different. Velcro is trade name Velcro companies, formerly Velcro sa, whatever that is. Privately held company, hook and loop fasteners and other products. They only have 2, 500 employees. I think it's Swiss. Electrical engineer George de Mestral started the company.
I believe it's European, I think. Yeah, Swiss.
And so they're their own, they're their own, their own thing. So I mean, I use time, I've used anchor we have some tips that we're going to include. Anchor. I've used lots of Velcro ties and I'm sure there's other brands that are just as good. I'm sure 3M is actually really good as well. Velcro invented Velcro.
So maybe they have some special sauce.
I have noted that these Velcro ties, I'll put them on the screen. Even though our viewers are audio only. They're very thick. They come with a loop. So you kind of loop it together on one end of the cable and so it's always anchored and then you kind of fold the cable in half, make like a loop with it and then you tie the whole thing together. So like I pinch them, I don't like make a circle out of them and that way you can hang them up on hooks, do all sorts of stuff. So these cables, these are, these cable ties are thicker, like width, not thicker in terms of thickness but the, the width is bigger. And I. You can actually combine, multiple them together. I've used them to hold up like a little switch I have on my banister where I have like lights coming down like Christmas lights. I have a hoses things in my shop where I've had like 12 gauge a wire extension cords which are really tough to fold. They have never expanded.
They hold it together amazingly well. So I mean I'm sure there's other ones that are just as good. I just continue to buy these because they work for me. Canadian. They're about 15, 16 bucks for a loop of 25. They come in a loop and you just tear them off, which I love because you don't have to have the package. I hate packaging and I'll get to this later.
And so I've been using these and what I did is that I tie all my cables up. I have a box that I put them in. The cables are grouped together.
This is a tip. When you're organizing cables, don't just organize cables. Label them and put them all loose. All the USB cables are in a mini freezer bag. All the Apple related cables are in a different freezer bag. All of the miscellaneous weird cables are in one. I have audio related ones and another. So they're in a box in multiple bags. So it's like I need usb, open the box, go to the bag and then all the usb. So A to B, A to C, C to C, A to A, you name it, right? So yeah, I have them all together and I also label them. Now I don't use a label Gun.
Because I find label maker guns. I mean, maybe somebody out there knows of a label gun that works well. They always fall off for me and they don't really tie the way I like. So what I do is I get 3M. I believe it's 3M label tape. It's basically paper tape. And I just fold it around like a little wing and then I just write on it. And it's just faster than having to like print out. I don't find label makers.
[00:55:08] Speaker B: That's a good point.
[00:55:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just not, it's just not worth it. I do, I think label makers, like if you have a hardcore one or you have a business or something, it makes sense. But for me, I'm too lazy. So I, I tie the cables, I label them. Took me two hours. It was totally worth it. And I can now find all of the cables I have. So that was my first tirade. Now I don't want to go on and on. You've done cable management, so you know what I'm talking about.
[00:55:32] Speaker B: No, no, totally. I mean it's, it's funny even how you mentioned like this, the whole thing about, you know, doing squats and engaging your body. Like it's, it's tough. I don't know, like, you know, you're, you're in like a squat position underneath your desk and doing all sorts of stuff. I don't know how that happens, but yeah, your, your, your legs are burning afterwards for sure.
[00:55:58] Speaker A: You do a better, you do a better job of the cable management under the desk. In fairness, I have not tackled that where it's seamless. I, I'm in a basement. They kind of hang down. There's not that many, but they're all kind of hanging around.
[00:56:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Out of curiosity, like your box. Like one thing that I've done is I've gotten like there something that I picked up a while ago, but I got, got clear, you know, see through plastic boxes, just. Yeah. Yeah. So similar. And actually the ones that I got, they're smaller than the one that you just put up on the screen. I got the ones that were made for shoes.
[00:56:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:35] Speaker B: So they were like two bucks each. And so, you know, even another thing that I've done beyond like, you know how you said using like Ziploc bags and so on. So I have a box for my Apple stuff. So everything Apple related is in that one clear box. And I can see it if there's some other kind of, you know, things even like in my, If I showed you some of the stuff like let's say pens, highlighters. So I, I have all that in one clear box and then I put them all in a Ziploc bag so that they're all grouped together and they don't dry out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:57:12] Speaker A: I mean I, I have done a little bit of that.
That's a good system. I don't have enough cables. Like they all fit into a roughly a shoe slightly bigger than a shoebox sized clear sterilite plastic container. So like everything cable I have is in there. I've gotten rid of a lot of cables over the years. I would put them into separate boxes if I had enough. I would do what you did. I don't have enough of them. And I do have a blue plastic bin, a Rubbermaid, but not a, like more of a squat one, but bigger than that. Not like those huge ones, like a half size of the biggest one that has a bunch of miscellaneous office stuff mementos. And I'm not really sure how to organize it or if I want to keep it yet. So for now, like it's not perfect, but it's in a box and it's not out. That being said, I do have, and you know, I could maybe wheel it around. I have a Ikea cart. Yep, like a blue metal cart. And I have like at the bottom I have a bunch of electronics. I have some keyboards, you know, a bunch of stuff like that. So I mean. And I like. My office supplies are in like a desk organizer. I have all unused ready to go notebooks, solid state storage, cue cards. A bunch of stuff is kind of on this card. I have some like little hand tools for working on electronics, like a mini screwdriver set, you know, multi tool batteries, highlighters, my sketch materials and stuff like that. So I kind of keep it in a cart because when I do a project I like to wheel it around and it doesn't leave the basement.
Now another thing for labeling, I do label the cables. Another thing that I will say is critical for me, especially when you're working under a desk. And like I say, I don't have perfect cable management under my desk.
I have, I could do a bit better than I'm doing now, but some of them hang down. And partly that's because this is a motorized standing desk. It is really tough unless you mount the power bar onto the desk somehow, which I could do and have it underneath and have one thing plugged into the.
That's a lot of effort. So for now the cable's kind of loose and they hang I could do better, but for now it's good enough.
And also cables underneath sometimes can fall out when they're on one of those bricks, like the apple bricks, they will fall out if they're working against gravity.
So there's, it's tricky to do. So I don't have the best cable management here. But I'm in a basement. There's no like window behind my desk. It's not open, it's against the wall so it doesn't matter. But the brick at the end of the cable.
So the apple ones are self explanatory. Everything apple is obvious. But you know those big bricks at the end, what are they for? And you have 10 of them plugged in somewhere. And what do they belong to?
So do I label them with the label paper?
I do not. And the reason is, is because they get hot and then these peel off.
[01:00:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:09] Speaker A: So the glue melts on those paper tape labels. So what I got is a tip from one of my favorite other podcasters, Andy Anatko, who's a Mac enthusiast, is that you get one of these pentel correction liquid basically highlighter or whiteout, but it's a white out pen. Okay. And so it's an enameled pen.
Prints with enamel plastic. And so what I do is that I label the bricks with this on the black. I just write on it Xbox, Nintendo Switch.
You don't have a lot of room. It's really rough to write on those things. So I usually keep it simple. And then so the bricks themselves I write right on them and people might be horrified. But this stuff actually can scrape off pretty easy if you wanted to remove it.
So that's my other labeling. I put labels and ties for the cables but on the bricks themselves so I don't have to take it all apart to trace it back. I write on the, with this.
And so that's, that's the cable labeling.
[01:01:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll tell you on my side. So like, I mean I don't have a, a desk that moves up and down, but it is, I've put it to the highest like you know, height wise and then unfortunately IKEA doesn't have this thing anymore. But I bought this.
It, it was a made out of steel or metal or some type of metal. It was basically a, a, a tray that you could go and have and where you put it underneath, then you can put it underneath. And unfortunately I couldn't because I have a glass desktop. So what I did was I took that. If it was wooden it would have been fine. I could have just screwed it right into the wood, which I might do in the future if I ever decide to get rid of this desk. But I took industrial strength Velcro and velcroed it.
[01:01:59] Speaker A: Very smart.
[01:02:00] Speaker B: And then that wasn't enough though, Eric, like how you say the gravity's working against you. So in addition to that, what I did was I took those 3M ties and I took each one of the corners and basically strapped it to the, the top as well. And so I did that and then the, my surge protector that I have so within it and maybe you know, you can take a look. Like I have one that's like a monster one. And so for that monster one, it actually on the, you know, the various outlets you can put in various devices. So if it's a monitor, it labels it as a monitor and so on. And so that's how I have them kind of grouped together. And then all of the cables I basically have tied it right into that, you know, that tray. And then along the way, if it's leading up to my monitors, I've strapped them all together so they're all contained.
The only one that I have somewhat loose right now is just my podcasting one because in case the, you know, the, the microphone and stuff moves around so I have a little bit of slack because I, I just don't want to have any issues that way. But yeah, I mean it's, that's. That was my solution. But yeah, it's too. It's unfortunate because that metal tray is probably one of the best things that you could have just to, you know, conceal everything and put it all in, in place.
[01:03:28] Speaker A: So mine does have a wood top and underneath it's like a, it goes across. The whole desk with things that it's tied to is actually a big net.
[01:03:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:03:36] Speaker A: With straps. So that works pretty well. It's never come off.
I should, I could probably put things through the monitor hole and like tie it together a bit better. But again, because it goes up and down, I have to have some of those cables slack. There's no way because otherwise it'll pull the whole thing apart. So.
And also I find that I have to disassemble it sometimes. So like I have to take my Mac charger somewhere. I have to take it out of the system. So I don't want to strap it in. And so it's never perfect unless like if you have a sit down desk, I could do a much better job of it.
And Jen has this, my wife has a sit down desk. Version of this. This is the Ikea Idasan motorized desk, which is all European and Canadian made. Amazingly European motor and everything.
That's crazy steel from the Czech Republic. It's kind of a banana setup. When I was looking at it, what was my other one that I was gonna say? Yeah, everything related to should go together. Oh, command hooks. I'm really good with a stud finder. I know what to do. I just put up new blinds in one of the bedrooms. So, yeah, I'm used to screwing, drilling holes into wood. And I'm relatively handy. And I have lots of tools, but I try to avoid it if I can.
And so hanging things up. People have heard of these three M command hooks. There's post it ultra post it notes. And because they're vertical on the wall, they don't pull off so easy. You have to be careful. You can take the tape off if you're not careful or take the paint off the wall. But in cabinets, this is wasted space. So I have some cabinets in the kitchen. So not all my cables are in my box. Some of them are in the kitchen. Like the cables to charge the motion sensor lights, an anchor USB port. I have a charger. I put all the chargers I used to have in my bedroom and put them in the kitchen just so I discourage myself from taking devices to bed. And so I have them all here. And so what I did is I had this spare cupboard where we just put random stuff. It's very organized. And I have extra keys to things hanging up in there. And so I hung the cables. So hanging is a good way to make use of space without having to put things into a box, especially if you're going to grab them a lot. So I use tons of those hooks. They are kind of expensive, but they're just fantastic. And I use 3M hooks everywhere. I hang my backpack up with it. The big thick ones I have metal ones. I have ones for broom handles. So I have them everywhere. And I've never really had them break or come off.
So pretty good.
I went through all the receipts and manuals. Here's another thing. I did manuals for things I don't even own anymore. I had.
So I went through all the hundreds of manuals and I just recycled the ones I don't own. My manuals are organized in an accordion folder. So are all my receipts, financial information, health receipts, anything you need to claim.
Accordion folder for manuals, accordion folder for all that stuff. Accordion folders are key for me. You know, sections for three sections, you know, per year. For the receipts and stuff, depending on category.
And then, you know, the manuals are divided into, like, electronics, kitchen tools, miscellaneous, all sorts of stuff like that. So those were organized. So all the paper we accumulate is the point I'm getting to.
I shredded a ton of stuff, old papers, shredded it.
Another tip I have for people is just to. And this is kind of repetitive, but it should be restated, which is consolidating all aspects of your life when possible and just like getting rid of the sunk cost fallacy. So what do I mean about that? I'm terrible for having, like multiple notebooks going at the same time or having multiple note apps going at the same time. When I talked about the Zettelkasta note method, I was struggling with that because.
So if you use multiple things, that's fine, but you have to have a way to put it back together. And so shredding stuff. Yeah, work, personal notes, bunch of ideas all goes in my notebook. I have a journal that's paper and I use an app.
Regardless if I write it down or type it out, it all goes into that app. I may not keep the journals later. They make it digitized and shredded. There's just too much paper accumulating. I never go back and read this stuff. And so consolidating the things you have, consolidating the types of apps that you used. I've gone through and deleted a bunch of accounts to apps I don't use anymore. And just working with simple stuff and making it work for me. One of the problems with productivity gurus is that they tend to be tool collectors. They always have a new tool that they want to talk about, a new app. And it's like, well, just use what works for you and make it work the way you need it to. And so I've deleted a bunch of apps, I've digitized papers, all this stuff. So I shredded probably like, it feels like a hundred pounds worth of paper. It was unbelievable.
And then using stuff. So once you've organized it all and you can access it, then you can use it. And if it's still not being used, once you've organized it and made access better. Because sometimes we don't get to what we want just because it's buried or forgot about. If it's still not getting used, then it gets turfed, then for sure you don't need it. I don't have the time to do a packing party where I pack up my whole house and only keep the things that I unboxed. The minimalists prescribe That I think that's too much for me. I can't handle that though. It is a good idea.
And the last thing is that when do you organize? So I typically kind of do a rough organization once a week. That's nothing like what I've described here. This is just tidying up, keeping on top of stuff, you know, things that I may want to donate. I just kind of keep a running catch all bin that I'll donate to the Salvation army or something because I don't like to throw things out if somebody else can use it.
But I do a big organization like what I described twice a year. Year.
And it's extremely disruptive, which is why I only do it twice a year.
So that's what I did the last. I did this yesterday and so everything is organized.
I think there was one thing I was going to mention that I did that I didn't.
Oh, I took apart.
I have a, a record player downstairs like an LP and I have an amplifier for it. And I actually did all the rewiring to the amps, organized all the cables and I had this old really high. Remember when Apple made good cables, like high quality cables that didn't break. I have an old Apple auxiliary audio cable so like the three colors so you could do video as well. But I just use the audio and it goes out to an audio jack. I plug that into the amplifier and now I have my ipod docked in this old doc that I found and I can actually play that through the record player with all my music.
[01:10:08] Speaker B: Oh, nice.
[01:10:09] Speaker A: Because that, that ipod is, has a very high quality dac.
So it's very good sound quality at a high bit rate, better than Spotify. And so now all the stuff I want to use is out. It's all organized. Yeah, that's what I did.
[01:10:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:24] Speaker A: So there's some organizational tips.
I know that's a bit of a tirade, but I, I felt compelled to tell everybody. Should we do our holiday stocking stuff? Are you still okay for time?
[01:10:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
[01:10:38] Speaker A: So holiday stocking stuffers. I did mention the Velcro brand ties already. Did you want to do one?
We have a few. We can kind of tag team, whatever.
[01:10:47] Speaker B: Yeah, we have a few here.
I mean one, I was kind of like thinking about, you know, what is something that I use on a daily day to day basis. And I mean we've talked about this in the past but. But one thing that I, I don't think I could do without is my Logitech MX vertical mouse. And so you Know, especially I'm spending a lot of time on a computer. I mean, I. In fact, I take my. My mouse with me, I put it in my backpack, and one of my students commented, I. I don't know how they never noticed before, but I. I usually pull out my laptop and then I have my mouse there as well, and I just find it. It. You know, it's not a huge amount of weight, but it certainly saves a lot of, you know, tension on my wrist. And the reason why this happened is at one point I was almost. I felt like I was getting, like, carpal tunnel just from spending so much time.
[01:11:41] Speaker A: Did you get it down in the wrist or in the fingers?
[01:11:44] Speaker B: I get it in my, like, the wrist area. So, like right around here.
[01:11:47] Speaker A: So I got it in, like, the inside in here.
[01:11:50] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[01:11:51] Speaker A: Interesting.
Yeah.
[01:11:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So we'll include that in the show notes. So if somebody. And they've unfortunately, Logitech, they've increased the prices. I guess this is just with inflation, but it is. I. In my opinion, it's one of the best mouth mice out there.
[01:12:08] Speaker A: I think I would go with that next time. I have a.
An Evoluent. It's a wired mouse because I don't take it with me.
And Evoluent does have wireless, but I don't think that they last very long, the battery life.
So I think the MX vertical is probably better. But yeah, I have the same way, like the. I don't know which is that I find the Evolu is a little bit more vertical. The Logitech is a little bit more on an angle.
I had the Logitech vertical and it was fine, but I think I didn't have enough padding under it because my wrist was a bit of an angle. Anchor also makes a very inexpensive vertical mouse. I don't know how good it is, so I would be willing to try a different brand. But just a vertical mouse that works for you makes a world of difference. Like, I've had. I've had the evolving mouse at this desk. I've had this. I bought this mouse in 2013, so I've had it for 10 years, and it's never had a problem. I don't game, but, I mean, a vertical mouse is just. Is just better, in my opinion. It takes a while to get used to because you kind of feel you have to raise the mouse and you're going to handshake it. So you're kind of moving your whole arm instead of the wrist, which is kind of the idea. But I do I do love it. So I am 100% agreement. I mean it was one of the. I would say it was like Google Docs. Life changing.
[01:13:26] Speaker B: Exactly.
[01:13:27] Speaker A: Google Docs is my standard for. My colleague has always mentioned this. Like Google Doc. She mentioned once that Google Docs changed the way she worked. And it's like. I would agree and I would say for. From a hardware standpoint, I'm in agreement with you. Vertical mouse is like a game changer.
You and I both recommend or use USB C to A adapters. So as a people who don't know USB A is the old style we're used to, there's actually many USBs. There's USB A which is the square USBs that we had for decades. There is the USB type C which is the newer reversible one. Those are the most common now. But there was also a micro usb.
The USB B was like the, the side that would go into your printer. Like the printer cables are USB B.
There's mini USB in addition to micro, which is thicker. So there's been many iterations of usb but USB A and C are the most common, especially if you have a thumb drive. So yeah, you and I both use adapters.
I had a couple on my bag. So I can plug in something that's USB A and it plugs into the USB C on my Mac because Mac's don't or. And many Ultrabooks don't have USBA anymore.
[01:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean the one that you got, I probably would have gotten the Anker one, but I got some other one. It was just the price right now. I mean, who knows, maybe it's on sale for a while. But it's.
I like the fact that it has that LED indicator on there to show that it's actually been engaged. So.
[01:15:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:15:02] Speaker B: And so that's. Sometimes Anchor has like these few little things, but they usually charge for it.
[01:15:07] Speaker A: So they're expensive. I usually recommend that people do. I usually do recommend Anchor products, but I do recommend people wait to go on sale for them. And so right now on Amazon Canada, they're 13.99 for a two pack of USB 3.0.
Female to male adapter.
[01:15:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:15:26] Speaker A: So they're really good. If you do want a different kind and you need a bit more length, I have another one. I have one of the Amazon basics.
It's actually a really gookum cable. It's actually really quite good. And it's the same idea except it has the square port that goes in and then it has a long cable and that goes to USB C if you need a bit more length or maybe you need something a bit narrower to fit in between other devices in your computer. There's a lack of space that's also a good one. So I have both. Yeah.
And I highly recommend them.
[01:15:58] Speaker B: And I think that's a good point. I mean, I personally don't have that issue right now. But if you try to go and plug in two of those, you know, USB C to A adapters, the. The smaller ones like these anchor together on, let's say, a MacBook. I don't. I don't think it's possible. It might not be because they're so close together.
[01:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think if you have two anchors together, it works. But I have another USB C cable. So going into my Mac, kind of as a part of the cable management, I have a us, I have an anchor usb, A hub, by the way, which has like doubled in price since I bought it, even before the inflation. So I don't know what happened or what price I got it at, but it basically has as a. Hang on, let me count. So it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 data USB 3.1 ports and 3 charge only ports. So it's 10.
Yeah, it's massive. And it's this brick that plugs into the power bar and it has one cable coming out. So it's A and it's a USB B if you can believe it. So it's USB B because that provides more power. USB B to C. I had to buy a special cable. So I plug one cable into my Mac and it connects to all the things in that power bank.
So that thick, that thing though that goes into my Mac is so thick that it's tough to get the adapter beside it. I think if I just had the adapter it would probably be okay.
[01:17:24] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:17:25] Speaker A: Also, it's harder where the magnetic charging cable goes in the mag safe. That seems to be tighter. So it's not exactly perfect.
So you have to fiddle with this stuff, unfortunately. But conversion cables are useful.
What else do we have?
I recommend some analog stuff. So for notebooks, I recommend field notes as a stocking stuffer because they are very, very high quality paper. They're. They're staple bound, meaning that they lie totally flat. They have all sorts of additions. They're kind of expensive. They come in three packs. They're like pocket notebooks. But they're really, really good.
And with that I also recommend pens. For years and years, I recommended the Uniball Jetstream Ballpoint pens, which I have many. They're excellent. But I have a new pen that I love that's the best pen ever. It is called the Pentel Energel.
So it's a gel pen.
And I have a bunch of the plastic ones, but I found that they make a metal aluminum one. And this one's like a gray kind of a gunmetal color, and so they're refillable. And if you don't have a plastic pen, it's likely to last longer. So the refills are very inexpensive. And the pen is about 12 or $13. And it is just a beautiful, smooth, bolder ink, and it doesn't bleed through on those nice notebooks I recommend.
So I do that. If you really want to be fancy, you can use micron pens. I use them for web design when I'm sketching out wireframes and stuff. But micron pens are like a felt marker. They're for artists. And I do a lot of sketching because I like to draw as well. So those are also recommended for the, for those. It's kind of like a fine liner.
They have a bunch of different thicknesses and colors and stuff. I just use black and red.
But I recommend those as pens. I've tried all the pens. I've tried all the notebooks. I'm a bit of a, like I said, consolidate your life. I've tried. I have unconsolidated my life, so I can tell you what to stay away from.
So I have basically stuck to those.
I feel like I'm taking up all the air here.
[01:19:32] Speaker B: I think that's, that's good. I like that. I mean, I, I, I didn't know about these pentell.
[01:19:39] Speaker A: Do you want some? Please let me give some to you. Please. I bought so many. I don't need them all.
[01:19:44] Speaker B: I.
[01:19:45] Speaker A: Next time I see you at work, I'm gonna give you a handful because there's no way I'm going to use them in my lifetime.
[01:19:50] Speaker B: Sounds good.
[01:19:51] Speaker A: So I'm going to give you a bunch. It would be my pleasure. And do you want some uniball as well?
[01:19:56] Speaker B: If you, if you have. Sure.
[01:19:58] Speaker A: I'll give you some and then you can report back because it would be, it would be.
Nothing would make me happier than to give away some of these pens because I have a bit of a pen anxiety where I'm never. They're going to dry out by the time I use them, so I' rather give them to somebody who uses them.
Tech.
You might find this funny, Chris. I Purchased a DVD burner drive, an external.
[01:20:20] Speaker B: Oh wow.
[01:20:21] Speaker A: So in the days of physical media going out the door, I went and purchased an optical drive. And there's a couple of reasons why I did this. I do have a CD player in my car.
So I, I do, I have purchased. I don't purchase that many CDs anymore, but often I can get CDs used at a store record land near us or I get them on sale and they're still much cheaper than a digital version. Or if I've bought the song on itunes, I like to be able to burn a copy for the car. I do have Bluetooth in the car so I can connect my phone and play it. But Bluetooth audio is sketchy and it's not always very high quality. Sometimes I just want to put in a discount disk and I just want to play it.
So I wanted to rip some CDs to my computer.
I've done it enough and made enough data disk backups that I didn't want to borrow this from my work anymore. So I went and bought one Interesting saga. I actually bought the really overpriced Apple Super Drive.
I would say in my experience there's nothing super about would not rip any of the CDs that I had if they had a minor scratch. And perhaps that's just the unit that I had. So I returned it it and I bought this one which is my recommendation, which is called the ASUS UM9 optical drive. So it's Windows and Mac compatible.
So if you or somebody you know needs a optical drive to burn discs to record things, put them on your computer, I highly recommend it. One of the cool features about this is it's not a Blu Ray drive. But one of the cool features about it is that it actually does M disk support.
So M disks are archival quality disks and they say that they're good for like a thousand years versus like a decade for normal disks. So you, if you want to archive really important information, this, this device, this optical drive will burn M disks. The only gripe I have about it is that the, it does come with two cords in the box and the cord is detachable. The Apple superdrive cord is attached, so if it dies, it's toast.
It has a USB C and USB a cable. It comes with both.
My only gripe is that the cable that plugs into the unit is mini usb. Not micro, not type C, it's mini usb. And the only other thing I have that's mini USB is my Sony Audio Recorder that I had bought 10 years ago that I still use. And so I don't know why they use that. Maybe it's for power management.
It is a more robust plug. I. Usb. Usb. A mini USB is very good. But anyways, that's my only gripe.
Yeah. On audio, it's. It's an excellent drive and so I have it here on my desk plugged into my, my hub. Also, the Apple Super Drive will not work even from a powered USB hub. It has to be plugged into the Mac directly. And that's a security reason. And that also pissed me off, so I returned it.
[01:23:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:23:35] Speaker A: I think.
Yeah. What's your experience with yours? What do you use?
[01:23:39] Speaker B: I don't know. I haven't used mine in a long time. So that's why it's. I still have it. I. In the event that I ever need to. I mean I have my spindle of CDs and DVDs that I. If I ever need to burn and stuff. But I. It's been so long now. Everything's just kind of usb, you know, kind of even. Or you have those little flash, little discards or whatever. Right.
[01:24:07] Speaker A: Oh, SD cards.
[01:24:08] Speaker B: SD cards, yeah.
[01:24:09] Speaker A: SD cards are terrific. Yeah.
[01:24:11] Speaker B: So I agree.
[01:24:11] Speaker A: I mean like it is a bit niche, but you know, it's a good niche.
I feel like I have more. I'll. I'll do one tech thing and then I have a non tech. Well, I'll do a non tech thing first. So. I do have a book recommendation. You and I have talked about books over the years and I would recommend this to you. I think you would like it. So Ryan Holiday, who is a kind of a modern day philosopher, he kind of talks about the Stoics. I'm a big fan of the Stoics and the classics. I like to read that. I always have him and Stephen Hanselman wrote a book called the Daily stoics. So it's 366 entries on wisdom and perseverance and the art of living. And it basically takes philosophy from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, which is a terrific book that everybody should read. Read Epictetus, Senica and then Sen. Every day you can read a new entry.
[01:25:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:25:08] Speaker A: Which is pretty cool.
[01:25:10] Speaker B: I just read. I think I told you about this. I just read a, a book recently just on Marcus Aurelius. And, and it's interesting because really the Meditations, that's one of the only living books that's still around. Right. Because a lot of them, you know, these, these philosophers never made it throughout all these years. So that's one that for sure that we can at least refer to. But I think the more, the older I get, I think the more I, I feel like I am a stoic.
[01:25:46] Speaker A: I love the stoics. I mean, I'm not always perfect. Sometimes I fly off the handle or I get irritated. We all do do, but. And the stoics are not about being perfect.
It's just about constant, you know, evaluation. So it's, it's a really great book. I really like Brian Holiday's books in general.
He's written many books that are about really obstacles the way courage. He writes a book about courage.
It really worthwhile. I do recommend Marcus Aurelius. I think I actually have recommended Meditations, maybe on this podcast. The Gregory Hayes translation is the best one. It's shorter and it's a little bit easier to read.
The funny thing about some of these old books is that the, the original translations are from like the 19th century, so that they themselves are old. They don't really make sense anymore.
So newer translations are a little bit easier.
Now. The last, the last thing. I don't know if you use an E reader.
[01:26:47] Speaker B: No, I don't.
[01:26:49] Speaker A: I had one years and years ago. I had a Kobo touch when the first touch screens came out and it was pretty good.
But over the years I've noticed that as much as I like print, and sometimes I bought print books that I had, I already own on audio or ebook just because I want to have that.
Whatever reason, I'm a bit of a collector or if it's a signed copy or something.
I have really enjoyed E reading just for use of the library. So because we're in Canada, you can't use Kindle with the library. We have to use Kobo. And the Kobo will take any epub, not just Amazon formatted books though if you know what you're doing, you can put Amazon books on it.
So I use the. I have for the last few months I've been using the Kobo Clara 2e, which is the Clara 2 recycled version. It's a very high def screen.
It has, I think it has 16 gigs of storage built in.
So for audiobooks, that's just like a monster amount. I mean, I know some people say that they want to be able to put in, you know, an SD card and expand it. I don't know how many books you need to keep on your device at the same time. I mean, that'll hold like a ton of stuff. It's waterproof.
I did buy a sleep cover for it.
I bought books through LeanPub. I've bought books that are DRM free and I just didn't like reading them especially if they're text heavy. So if it's not like a graphic novel or something which I might would probably opt for print.
I kind of cycle between audio and print and ebooks. But over the years a lot of times, you know there's an ebook I was telling you about the company of one which I've always wanted to read but someone something Jarvis, you know it went on sale on the Kobo store for like a dollar 99.
The print book is 25 bucks right. So it's like. Well and especially if it's something I want to highlight, it ties into that service I talked about a while ago called Readwise where it pulls all the highlights from all the services. Kindle, Kobo, whatever, Twitter that bookmarks and so a pocket.
So I've been using this E reader pretty consistently because I take transit to work. I can read it on the bus, it's very light. It's a bunch better for a one handed use on a bus holding the railing and stuff like that. So I just transit taker. I don't drive my car to work, I don't want to pay for the parking.
So just putting in my backpack downtime between classes. I just like you know I would read more if I read in all those spare moments and it totally is true. I read all the time. I'm not on my phone as much. I'm just like I'd rather get through this book. And I like the Progress bar because it kind of gamifies it and makes me want to read more and more.
And so I've been getting more into E reading and I really like it. There are better models that are faster that have physical page turn buttons. That matters to some people and I get it, it doesn't matter to me.
So I have. It's all touch screen.
[01:29:48] Speaker B: That is an interesting point though Eric. Like I mean I. I have some students that have been complaining this semester about taking transit and having to spend like three hours just to attend my class and blah blah blah.
And I mean I don't know when I was younger, before I mean I, I did get a car as well but I decided similar to you like just to cut down on you know, parking and stuff like that I would do a lot of my work while being in the on transit and I think maybe that might be something for people to consider like if they are having to go like maybe you can read. Maybe there's other things. Maybe you shouldn't be on the phone as much much.
[01:30:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I mean, I love taking transit because I don't have to drive, I don't have to concentrate. I. I have a great respect for people who do transit driving and, and drive trains and buses. I mean, like, wow, talk about essential workers, right? And most of those people are super friendly generally. And so the fact that someone's taking me now, I can see if you're on a bus, people might get car sick. It doesn't seem to bother me too much. If I was in the passenger side of my car, my wife was driving, I. I would get car sick.
So I can't do it in a little car like that. It's better if I'm in a bus or like a larger vehicle for whatever reason.
But I also listen to Audible. So before I got the E reader, I have Audible books, ebooks. It's kind of interesting. Someone asked me, they said, well, you're. You're jumping between formats. And I was like, yeah, that's true.
It really comes down to who I want to listen to and then for audio and then what the price is or what the book is for. So, like, I'm reading a book called User Friendly, which is the history of UX design. And it's like, I highlight a lot because it's like a professional interest. I may use it in some work. So highlighting an ebook and then having access to all the highlights in one place is a great research tool. Like, it's way, way better for me than putting little plastic flags and having to flip through paper and carry all these books with me. It's just, I can't.
Audiobooks.
Yeah. If Arnold Schwarzenegger is narrating the book, it's pretty good.
So it's just better.
And so it kind of depends on what you want from the format. I've heard Audible's a terrible company for, for authors. So I feel kind of bad. Cory Doctorow alerted me to that. So I do feel a little bit bad.
But I don't have my subscription. I have a backlog.
[01:32:14] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I, I find, like, especially like we've talked about in the past, like, the audiobooks, the. The nice thing that I like about it is I can go and optimize my time when I'm doing, like, various chores and so on. Right. So at least something's being absorbed. But yeah, I mean, I think you bring up a good point where if you want to make notes, it's not like I'm just going to go and stop like, you know, doing my laundry listening to this thing and then I'm going to start taking.
[01:32:41] Speaker A: You can put bookmarked chapters in audible. You can. There's a one press button where it's like flag this, flag this, flag this. And I think it backs it up a few seconds from when you push it.
[01:32:51] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:32:53] Speaker A: That's not quite the same because you still have to go listen to it again.
[01:32:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[01:33:01] Speaker A: But that's it. That's the holiday breakdown. I feel like I took up a lot of air.
[01:33:05] Speaker B: No, that's good. I mean, I think hopefully listeners, if they're thinking about stuff, you still have some time, you can grab some things that are hopefully useful.
[01:33:16] Speaker A: Thank you to our listeners, first and foremost, for all the years listening to us. We hope you have a terrific winter holiday, Christmas, whatever it is that you celebrate.
And hopefully these gift guides and this episode will be useful to you.
[01:33:33] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[01:33:34] Speaker A: And so pleasure talking to you, as always. And I will talk to you in the new year.
[01:33:39] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[01:33:40] Speaker A: Thanks. Take care.
[01:33:47] Speaker B: Sam.
