Modern Tech Cockroach

[DJ]: Justin, I know you have a certain connection to Japan.

[DJ]: So I'm curious, have you ever gotten interested in the art of bonsai?

[JM]: I am a big fan of bonsai, as it's pronounced.

[JM]: And mainly because if you say it the other way, it sounds real similar to "banzai", which has a very different meaning.

[DJ]: I was thinking that while I was saying it.

[DJ]: So thank you for the pedantic pronunciation correction.

[JM]: That is definitely my forte and curse, I suppose.

[JM]: So bonsai are indeed very cool.

[JM]: I have had them myself.

[JM]: I don't know that I'm talented or dedicated enough to cultivate them properly and thus keep them alive for the inordinate amounts of time that you can actually keep a bonsai alive.

[JM]: But I have a lot of respect and appreciation for them.

[JM]: And I have a good friend who...

[JM]: cultivates them and has literal hundreds of them and competes in international bonsai festivals.

[JM]: Very cool stuff.

[DJ]: That's cool to hear about.

[DJ]: Now, I also probably do not have the patience or skill to cultivate one of these tiny little trees that you very carefully control the growth of.

[DJ]: But I came across something the other day that filled me with delight.

[DJ]: It is a command line tool called See Bonsai.

[DJ]: Bonsai?

[JM]: It's an S, not a Z.

[JM]: So yeah, bonsai.

[DJ]: Bonsai.

[DJ]: Okay, so it's CBonsai.

[DJ]: And this little program will generate a tree in your terminal using colored ASCII characters.

[DJ]: And if that hasn't already sold you on it...

[DJ]: This is pointless, but an extremely delightful, I found, little, I don't know, screen widget.

[DJ]: Like, this was a thing I feel like used to exist more on the computers of the past, was like just kind of a little toy that would be on your screen and do a fun thing.

[DJ]: Yeah.

[DJ]: So as befits a command line tool, of course, there are all sorts of advanced options you can give it to control various aspects of the experience.

[DJ]: But I installed this tool via Homebrew the other day and just opened a terminal window and put it somewhere on my computer's desktop, just quietly growing little trees.

[DJ]: And I love it very much.

[DJ]: So CBonsai.

[DJ]: It's pretty great.

[JM]: This kind of terminal-based command line tool, there should be a name for these.

[JM]: It's not exactly a screensaver, but it kind of feels like one.

[JM]: They're these tools that create animations.

[JM]: And I think that CBonsai follows in the footsteps of tools like CMatrix and perhaps follows a similar naming pattern where...

[JM]: CMatrix was, it still is this tool where you can see these letters fall from the top of your screen in green sort of old CRT format to look like The Matrix code.

[JM]: And what I find somewhat amusing, putting the C in CBonsai, the first thing that I think of when I go to this project's repository page, my first inclination is, does this tool have an easy way for me to

[JM]: to install a pre-compiled binary.

[JM]: My instant suspicion is no, my suspicion is immediately confirmed.

[JM]: And then my next — I'm not even going to use the word suspicion — my next near-certainty is, I will not be able to compile this tool.

[JM]: Because when I go to a tool that does not have pre-compiled binaries, and it's written in C,

[JM]: and then the instructions are inevitably, here's how you compile this thing, because, you know, it's 2026.

[JM]: And I don't know, for some reason, we're still compiling C programs.

[JM]: When I follow this wall of GCC text to compile this thing, I have next to zero percent confidence that it is going to correctly compile.

[JM]: And strong expectations confirmed, definitely did not compile.

[JM]: And sadly, I was not able to run this tool.

[DJ]: Well, that's too bad.

[DJ]: I installed it through Homebrew, so apparently someone has compiled a binary that will work on your Mac.

[JM]: Wait, I'm sorry.

[JM]: What?

[JM]: Why is that not mentioned in the readme?

[DJ]: I don't know.

[DJ]: Yeah, no, `brew install cbonsai`, and you're good.

[DJ]: So I watch Justin throws his hands up in despair.

[JM]: Well, that changes a few things.

[DJ]: Yeah, now you can put that second monitor to work, generating trees.

[JM]: What you meant to say is I, Justin, am now compelled to immediately submit a pull request to the README that says this project can be installed easily via Homebrew.

[DJ]: That's true.

[DJ]: Yes.

[DJ]: But I suppose for you to start running this app on your secondary monitor, you are going to have to move your web browser with live camera feeds of adorable cats out of the way.

[JM]: I love bonsai, but I don't know if I can do that because it's just too damn cute.

[JM]: There is this amazing site called meow.camera that I just came across, and it is as amazing as it sounds.

[DJ]: If the URL alone hasn't convinced you.

[JM]: If you aren't immediately enthralled by the domain itself, then I just don't know if we're going to be friends.

[JM]: The site has a whole bunch of camera feeds, each of them mounted inside of a cat feeder.

[JM]: And it's not just cats, by the way.

[JM]: Allegedly, I haven't seen them yet, but there are also dogs and other animals, apparently.

[JM]: And if you just tap on the various cameras, most of the time you'll notice there's nothing there other than dogs.

[JM]: a feeding area with maybe a few bits of kibble lying around, but no animal.

[JM]: Because unsurprisingly, they have better things to do than just sit around and wait for food to come out.

[JM]: But towards the top, you'll notice a button that says feeders with hungry cats.

[JM]: And that's the one I recommend focusing on because that section will often have more animal activity.

[JM]: And it has just been such a joy to see these animals in a little corner of my screen while I'm doing other things.

[JM]: Apparently this started as a project, I think somewhere in Asia, perhaps in China, perhaps in Thailand, that part's not really clear.

[JM]: And I think that the product is called P-U-R-R-R-R with four R's.

[JM]: So Purrrr is a cat feeder with a camera that's internet connected.

[JM]: And as part of the system, there is a Purrrr app.

[JM]: And the concept is they have deployed these in a wide variety of places, like hundreds of places, as far as I can understand.

[JM]: And the idea is that you can use the app to be looking at a cat feeder.

[JM]: You can then pay to push a button to have food come out.

[JM]: And this is the most brilliant idea I think anyone has ever had.

[JM]: Forget fire the wheel.

[JM]: I mean, this is just brilliant.

[JM]: Like how do you feed a bunch of stray cats?

[JM]: You get the internet to be so enthralled by the live feed.

[JM]: and the ability to feed them from across the other side of the planet.

[JM]: The app has a 4.6 rating and over 3,000 votes.

[JM]: So it's clearly a popular app that people are using.

[JM]: And I don't even want to think about the potential incentives that this creates and the potential dark side of this system.

[JM]: I'm just going to pretend like that doesn't exist.

[JM]: I'm just going to stay right here in the joy.

[JM]: And what I am just choosing to believe is a lot of people around the world doing something cool and help feeding hungry animals.

[DJ]: That is pretty wonderful.

[DJ]: So we support Purrrr with four R's.

[DJ]: I'm trying to imagine how difficult it must have been when developing that product to figure out exactly the right number of R's to go in the name, because it really could have been anything like two or greater.

[JM]: I just assumed that they just kept going until it was available, right?

[JM]: So they're like, okay, two R's, not available.

[JM]: Three R's, okay, not available.

[JM]: Four, bingo.

[DJ]: You might be right about that.

[JM]: One other thing that I have to mention because I came across it at the same time I discovered meow.camera, and that's that someone in Japan decided that the world needs a solution to a very specific problem.

[JM]: Anyone who's ever owned a cat

[JM]: and has tried to get anything productive done at their desk knows that's not possible.

[JM]: You can't have a cat and be at your desk and get work done or anything else productive.

[JM]: That's just not going to happen.

[JM]: Because at some point, usually when you're trying to get the deepest of deep focus, this cat will jump in your lap, jump on your desk.

[JM]: trample over your keyboard, do anything other than be the helpful companion that you want it and need it to be in that moment.

[JM]: So someone in Japan decided they were going to solve this problem.

[JM]: And they have created a special desk that has a couple of features in it, including cutouts that allow the cat to essentially use the desk as a cat tree of sorts, where they can come in from the side and curl into like essentially where you would normally have like a filing cabinet.

[JM]: Instead, there's a little cutout where they can just pop in there and go to sleep.

[JM]: And there's another one right above it where there would usually be like a drawer.

[JM]: And that one is the money spot because that one has a hole drilled into the top of the desk where the cat can stick its head out and stare at you while you try to get important things done.

[DJ]: Just imagining a little cat's face staring at me from a hole in my desk is almost too much joy to countenance.

[DJ]: Yeah, so basically the idea here is let's use the parts of the desk that you are typically not using because they are underneath the desktop and try to encourage the cat to spend its time there instead of directly on top of your work surface.

[JM]: Precisely.

[JM]: And you really need to check out the photos on the website.

[JM]: Check the show notes because one of these photos has the bottom space filled in with a computer and then there's a cat on the upper space.

[JM]: I'm like, well, wait, that's like, why even have the cutout if you're going to fill it with a computer?

[JM]: Like, no, it's got to go somewhere else.

[JM]: You can't take a valuable cat nap space to put a computer in there.

[JM]: Come on.

[DJ]: Also, who is still keeping a tower-style computer in a compartment under their desk?

[JM]: There's literally zero ventilation except for this little area where the cutout would be.

[JM]: You would never, if you knew anything about computers, how hot they can get and how they need to be ventilated, you would never do this.

[JM]: You would never put a desktop PC into this tiny slot.

[DJ]: Yes.

[DJ]: And also the only people that still use those big desktop PC style computers in 2026 are like video game enthusiasts who generally have the computer on top of their desk because it has a cutout window with a bunch of cool neon lights in it and they want to show it off.

[DJ]: And when I say they, I am referring also to myself.

[DJ]: But like normal people use laptops now.

[DJ]: They do not have computers under their desks.

[JM]: I do feel like there's probably a pretty significant crossover in the Venn diagram of I own desktop PCs and I love cats and own them.

[JM]: So, I mean, it's not totally out of bounds.

[DJ]: That's fair.

[DJ]: Yes.

[DJ]: From an actuarial perspective, you're probably correct.

[JM]: The Neko, which means cat in Japanese, the Neko house desk is priced at a mere 160 United States dollars and is available through Amazon Japan.

[JM]: Oh, and there's a cat tower rack that can be attached to it.

[DJ]: What does that mean?

[JM]: It's like a wire frame rack that attaches to the back of the desk with a high shelf on the top and with some steps so the cat can jump up and lay on the high shelf and look down at you both figuratively and literally while you're trying to get work done.

[DJ]: If you ever wanted a cat to stare imperiously at you from on high while you're trying to do something else, here's your solution.

[JM]: All right, one more cat thing, and I promise I'll let it go.

[JM]: I came across a link to an apparently actual shipping product called a custom cat aquarium.

[JM]: Now, if you're thinking, why would you ever drown your cat in an aquarium?

[DJ]: And why would you get a custom-built one for that express purpose?

[DJ]: Why wouldn't you just use a normal aquarium?

[JM]: Fair question.

[JM]: But unlike the rather unfortunate name, a custom cat aquarium is not for drowning your cat.

[JM]: It is a aquarium with a cutout inside it that the cat can enter with the water going above it and on either side of it so that the cat can be fully immersed.

[JM]: in the aquatic environment that you've created and stare longingly at what would otherwise be its lunch as it swims all around him or her.

[JM]: These aquariums are a little pricier.

[JM]: They start at around 700 United States dollars, go up to about a thousand, and they ship from China, hopefully in one piece by the time they arrive to you.

[JM]: But if I had feline companions and an ability to keep fish alive for longer than one week, I would be all over one of these custom cat aquariums.

[DJ]: Again, the pictures on the website are pretty compelling, by which I mean adorable, because they have these cats that are in these little cutout cubbies that are surrounded by glass.

[DJ]: One of the things I love about cats is that when they're excited, they have very silly expressions on their faces, which is true of humans as well.

[DJ]: But like these cats just have these huge wide eyes and they're staring at these fish and you can't really tell if they're like

[DJ]: I'm so hungry right now.

[DJ]: Or if they're like, how did I get teleported to the bottom of the ocean?

[DJ]: What's going on?

[DJ]: It's, it's, it's great.

[DJ]: It's just a wonderful, I think maybe this is just the cat episode, Justin, we should just, just lean into it.

[JM]: All right.

[JM]: Moving on to something not cat related.

[JM]: In much less fun, but I suppose still somewhat entertaining news, it seems GitHub Copilot, which is GitHub's code generation tool, has been putting ads in pull requests for the better part of a year or more.

[JM]: But apparently someone noticed it and called it out very publicly in an article titled Copilot edited an ad into my pull request.

[JM]: And apparently it started when this person's coworker saw a typo and the pull request asked Copilot to fix it, which Copilot did, but not before adding a blurb to the description of the pull request with an ad to some Microsoft product.

[JM]: And in the span of mere hours, GitHub decided to kill the Copilot pull request ad feature after immense public backlash.

[JM]: an altogether too frequent occurrence of a corporation trying to figure out just how far they can push something and then immediately backing down when users complain loudly.

[JM]: And this person, when they publicly called out GitHub for this misfeature, quoted Cory Doctorow in a

[JM]: his description of in scatification and what it means, because like we hear that term and we think of it as things just getting bad or getting worse.

[JM]: And that's a lot of times how people use it.

[JM]: But that's not really what Cory Doctorow meant when he defined this term.

[JM]: He defined it in the context of platform collapse.

[JM]: And he described it this way.

[JM]: Here is how platforms die.

[JM]: First, they're good to their users.

[JM]: Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers.

[JM]: Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.

[JM]: Then they die.

[JM]: And I think that's a really useful description of what's happening here.

[JM]: GitHub creates something useful.

[JM]: Everyone flocks to it.

[JM]: Then they abuse their users to make things better for business customers.

[JM]: And then eventually Microsoft decides, you know what we need as in we Microsoft ads.

[JM]: We need ads.

[JM]: Do our users want this?

[JM]: No.

[JM]: Do our business customers want this?

[JM]: Definitely no.

[JM]: But here it is anyway.

[DJ]: I mean, I would love to believe that then they die part, but as someone who has worked for many companies over the years who has used Microsoft technologies, they have been abusing their business customers for a long, long time, and they remain a very successful company.

[DJ]: So I'm not convinced that GitHub is going to be gloriously replaced by something better anytime soon.

[JM]: Yeah, they are a bit of a modern tech cockroach.

[JM]: They just seem like they're going to be here long after most other platforms have died.

[JM]: So my suggestion is take this as an opportunity to opt out of GitHub co-pilot training, which I did not even know that was a thing that we needed to do.

[JM]: But when I looked this up today, I realized, oh, not only is this a thing that one needs to do, but is a thing that I...

[JM]: apparently have not done because I did not know that I needed to.

[JM]: I will put a link in the show notes to the direct URL that you can go to to opt out of GitHub Copilot training.

[DJ]: To be clear, this is unrelated to the ads and pull requests thing.

[DJ]: This is GitHub has said, as of some date, we're going to use your interactions with Copilot to train Copilot.

[DJ]: And if you don't want us to do that, you have to go to these thus and such settings in your GitHub account to opt out, right?

Yeah.

[JM]: That is indeed my understanding.

[JM]: Yes.

[JM]: And speaking of opting out, another thing that I just learned is that if you spend any time on LinkedIn and I don't, but if you do, you will be well aware or maybe you won't be aware, but you will have been exposed to their algorithmic timeline, which is

[JM]: not a reverse chronological list of posts that people you are connected to and or follow have posted, but you're looking at whatever LinkedIn has decided to put in front of you.

[JM]: And today I learned there's a way of opting out of this.

[JM]: If you tap on your me avatar,

[JM]: and then go to account, and then settings and privacy, and then go to account preferences, and then look for preferred feed view, you will see that the default, if you haven't changed it, is most relevant posts, in parentheses, recommended.

[DJ]: They're posts about AI, basically.

[JM]: Of course they are.

[DJ]: They're exactly what you expect them to be.

[DJ]: It's just you see a bunch of random crap about people talking about large language models.

[DJ]: This is probably not what LinkedIn would prefer.

[DJ]: Basically, the way I opted out of their algorithmic timeline a while ago was I stopped using LinkedIn ever because it's intolerable.

[DJ]: So sorry, LinkedIn.

[JM]: Yeah, and I don't really go there either unless someone I know has posted something and asks me to go like it or comment on it, which I'm happy to do.

[JM]: I want to boost the people that I care about.

[JM]: But that's essentially the only reason I ever go there.

[JM]: But nonetheless, I always like sending a signal to our corporate overlords.

[JM]: So I changed that.

[JM]: the default from most relevant posts recommended to most recent posts.

[JM]: And while you're there, if you're so inclined, there's also an account preference called show political content.

[JM]: Do you want to see political content in your feed?

[JM]: That is something you can say no to if you are so inclined.

[DJ]: That's interesting, and I hate to give them credit.

[DJ]: Speaking of corporate overlords, GitHub and LinkedIn are both owned by the same corporate overlord, in case anyone was unaware.

[JM]: And that is Microsoft, in case, like you said, folks are not aware.

[DJ]: Yeah, absolutely.

[DJ]: have been doing the algorithmic thing where we all started using all of these apps as like social networking where we would connect with people we knew and then see the stuff that they said and at some point in the last 15 years they have all turned from social networking into social media where they just show you a bunch of random stuff that is carefully calibrated to keep you looking at the website long enough for you to see some ads so that they can make advertising revenue and

[DJ]: which has made basically all of these products extremely unpleasant to use.

[DJ]: So it's actually kind of a surprise, and it's sort of terrible that it is a surprise, but it's kind of a surprise that LinkedIn even has features like that.

[JM]: Yeah, you're right.

[JM]: It is a surprise.

[JM]: What's not surprising is the fact that the default of most relevant posts has a big recommended label next to it.

[JM]: Because, of course, Microsoft recommends it.

[JM]: They're one of the companies that have invested billions of dollars into advertising.

[JM]: generative software.

[JM]: And the moment that you change it from most relevant posts to most recent posts, from what I understand from other people and what they've experienced, you'll find that suddenly, people aren't endlessly talking about generative software agents and large language models anywhere near as much as they actually are talking about that.

[JM]: Because their feeds went from 90% generative software hype to only an occasional post on the topic once they turned off the most relevant posts thing.

[JM]: So it's pretty clear why they recommended it.

[JM]: And if you want to see a lot less of that stuff in your timeline, well, now you know how.

[DJ]: Or stop looking at LinkedIn is the other option.

[JM]: Always an option for sure.

[JM]: All right, moving on to other news.

[JM]: It's time to pour one out for the Mac Pro officially.

[JM]: I mean, we've been pouring one out for the Mac Pro for years at this point, but it's now official.

[JM]: And I suppose there is a sense of closure, right?

[JM]: Like that was part of the problem was this dead person walking or dead computer walking.

[JM]: I don't know this, this

[JM]: The recognition that we all collectively had that this product is dead and that Apple is not going to do anything with it.

[JM]: And this desire to just like just kill it already.

[JM]: And it sounds like they finally have done that.

[JM]: And I'm both saddened by it because it is a thick black underline product.

[JM]: highlighting Apple's movement away from, I think, the company that we grew up with and came to love in terms of expandability, openness, the ability to tinker and modify.

[JM]: And I miss the form factor.

[JM]: I don't know that I would necessarily be a Mac Pro customer today, but it's

[JM]: It's impossible to even know the answer to that.

[JM]: I think if they made an expandable computer, I would at least be tempted to buy one.

[JM]: I bought the original G5 Power Mac.

[JM]: To this day, I still have the sense memory of what that aluminum felt like, how heavy it was to move from one part of the room to another.

[JM]: And the very cool way that drives were removed and inserted and affixed once they were in place.

[JM]: Just such a great design.

[JM]: And it just feels like a lost opportunity for them to build on top of this rich history of innovative desktop computer design.

[JM]: And we will never know what happens.

[JM]: future we will never know what a potential future could have looked like where they continue to iterate on it and make it into the product that it could have been particularly with all of their other advancements in ARM based processors like imagine the beast of a machine that Apple in theory could have made but in any case they didn't and at least now we know where we stand

[DJ]: alongside previous topics about current economic conditions that are making the purchase of computer components very expensive or inaccessible to hobbyists.

[DJ]: While this is mostly symbolic, because as you said, it feels like the Mac Pro has been essentially a dead product for over a decade at this point.

[DJ]: It is sad, as you say, like pour one out if you're a hobbyist computer builder, because Apple really has led the way on building incredibly high quality computers that you are not permitted to modify after purchase.

[DJ]: And as much as I love a lot of things about Apple's hardware and their hardware design, I don't really love the world where

[DJ]: Yeah, absolutely.

[DJ]: I don't really like the idea that the only way to get a computer is to purchase this essentially immutable thing from a small handful of the same $5 trillion companies that are the only people who sell anything anymore.

[DJ]: It just reminds me of the worst dystopian anime I used to watch in the 90s where there was always like this one corporation in a place called Mega Tokyo or something that essentially controlled the entire universe.

[DJ]: That's painting with a bit of a broad brush when what we're talking about is Apple is just going to stop selling this one particular extremely high end computer.

[DJ]: But I just I really want to support the continuance of a world where computers are a thing you can tinker with.

[DJ]: They're not just a thing that you buy so that you can, so that you have a user interface onto chat GPT, you know?

[DJ]: So yeah, even though it is a little bit of a symbolic ending, I think all of us who are computer fans and computer hobbyists are going to pour one out.

[DJ]: And then we're going to spend some time thinking about like, what are the, you know, what are the alternatives?

[DJ]: What are the companies that we're still, that are still giving us the opportunity to do something we love doing, which is building and tinkering with computers.

[JM]: Well, if you find yourself, instead of tinkering with computers, putting in a prompt into some frontier large language model, now might be a good time to think about the companies that make and operate those models and which of them you want to give your time, attention, and perhaps money to.

[JM]: Because a topic that has come up recently is that a particular government told one of its primary suppliers of large language models, Anthropic,

[JM]: that they had to provide their service without any restrictions.

[JM]: And Anthropic decided that that didn't seem in line with their values and that they needed, as I recall, two primary services.

[JM]: conditions.

[JM]: And one was that their software not be used for domestic mass surveillance.

[JM]: And the other is that their service not be used to power autonomous military weapons.

[JM]: And the government decided that those were restrictions they were not willing to live with.

[JM]: and gave them an ultimatum.

[JM]: Anthropic decided that they were going to hold fast and stand by their values.

[JM]: OpenAI expressed public support for Anthropic in their stance as it relates to this government, while apparently simultaneously making a deal with that government to take Anthropic's business away from Anthropic.

[DJ]: That's a weird move for the same company that quietly like bought up most of the supply of RAM in the world from its two suppliers without telling either supplier that they were making that deal.

[DJ]: It's weird because I generally I think of open AI as a sort of exemplar of like fair and open dealing.

[DJ]: But we anyway, sorry, that just wanted to come out.

[DJ]: So

[JM]: No, you're right.

[JM]: It's so out of character.

[JM]: Yeah, I don't think anyone was surprised that that's what Sam Altman decided to pull.

[JM]: But the main reason I wanted to talk about this is I have seen some people respond to this story in ways that call out anthropic for what they consider to be unreasonable behavior.

[JM]: One of the quotes that I read is,

[JM]: I see it as the case against corporatocracy.

[JM]: Who sets our defense policies?

[JM]: Our democratically elected leaders or the CEOs of corporate defense contractors?

[JM]: And I'm not going to name who said this, mainly from a place of empathy.

[JM]: And by empathy, I mean that if I were ever to say something that I personally feel is this misguided, I would hope someone wouldn't attach my name to it in the hope that I would eventually come to my senses and recant such a morally misguided position.

[JM]: And I say that because I was floored when I took in this stance.

[JM]: So why do I think it's morally misguided?

[JM]: Because implicit in this statement is that anthropic should have kowtowed to government demands that anthropic act in ways that don't align with their values.

[JM]: And asking whether governments or corporations should be the ones to set military policy, to me is the wrong rhetorical question.

[JM]: Both governments and corporations are composed of people.

[JM]: To me, the question should instead be, where are the humans that are going to do the right thing?

[JM]: It's not about should the government be making these decisions?

[JM]: Should corporations be making these decisions?

[JM]: When someone stands up and says, yeah, this feels wrong and I'm not comfortable with it.

[JM]: We need people that will do that.

[JM]: Anyway, those are just my thoughts about it.

[JM]: Dan, what do you think?

[DJ]: I like the way you articulated the nuance there because I don't think I was as floored necessarily as you were when I encountered this opinion because I can see the merit in the notion that, again, if you just take this in general terms, yeah, I don't want private companies declining to follow the edicts of democratically elected governments either because one of those things I have some control over and one of those things – some control over if not that much –

[DJ]: And the other of those things I don't have any control over.

[DJ]: Like we don't actually want to, as we say, like a corporatocracy either.

[DJ]: However, it's not as simple as therefore all corporations should always do everything any government tells them, period.

[DJ]: Right.

[DJ]: Because there are lots of situations in humankind's history where corporations.

[DJ]: governments, for one reason or another, have behaved in absolutely terrible ways.

[DJ]: Like any group of no group of people is free of the potential to do evil.

[DJ]: Right.

[DJ]: And so to your point, you're right.

[DJ]: Like what really matters is in a given situation, where are the people who will do the right thing?

[DJ]: And of course, we can and will all argue about what the right thing is.

[DJ]: But, yes, I think that is what's at the heart of this particular conflict is like what is the right thing to do and who's willing to do it.

[DJ]: And, you know, that's the beginning of the debate that everyone is going to have a different position on.

[DJ]: But that is fundamentally the debate.

[JM]: Absolutely.

[JM]: There are corporations that committed actual war crimes in Germany during World War II, doing precisely what the government that paid them asked them to do, at least one of which was an American company.

[JM]: by the way.

[JM]: So the idea that companies shouldn't be allowed to take a stance when they're asked to do something terrible, that they should just either perform what's being asked of them or step aside and let someone else who will.

[JM]: I don't think that's a great take.

[JM]: And I don't think it's a take that holds up well historically or one that will hold up well in the future.

[DJ]: You're right, because when it comes down to it, companies don't exist.

[DJ]: Governments don't exist, really.

[DJ]: What exists is people.

[DJ]: And so you can make the exact same argument about, well, should a company do whatever the government wants it to?

[DJ]: Well, you can replace the word company with the word person, and we certainly can and do hold individual people accountable for what they did because they were, let's say, just following orders.

[DJ]: There's no real moral ground to be had by making some blanket statement about, oh, companies definitely always need to do X, Y, Zed.

[JM]: Well said.

[JM]: All right, moving on.

[JM]: It seems that wired headphone sales are on the rise, bucking a trend where pretty much nobody I know uses headphones with a wire attached to them.

[JM]: Besides myself, that is.

[JM]: It seems like there is a somewhat recent trend of people rediscovering the benefits of wired headphones, including but not limited to not having to deal with

[JM]: flaky Bluetooth connections, or in some cases, subpar Bluetooth-based audio compression and audio fidelity.

[JM]: And I think it's kind of funny that this news came out around the same time as the release of the AirPods Max 2, which is most definitely wireless.

[JM]: And I know I've mentioned in the past that my main wired headphone use is when I'm traveling on a plane or

[JM]: I like knowing that all I need is a spare AAA battery and I never have to worry about dead battery or needing to charge.

[JM]: There is something about the old school nature and reliability of wired headphones that I love.

[DJ]: It's also appropriate to bring up this topic, Justin, because I'm afraid that I have begun to fall into a rabbit hole that I believe you are already pretty far down, which is audiophile stereo equipment.

[DJ]: So I would like to briefly summarize for you what I spent all of last Sunday doing, and I would like to get your take on it.

[JM]: Fabulous — do tell.

[DJ]: So I have currently and like recently started living in a place where there's like enough distance between my living room and my office those used to be the same room they are now separate rooms, and so well I basically had one pair of speakers that I would just use for everything whether that was sound coming out of

[DJ]: movies or video games on my television, or like air playing a podcast to those speakers from my phone, I'm now finding that I would like to have like an audio system in my office and a different audio system in my living room.

[DJ]: And there are lots of different ways that I could achieve this that include just using the perfectly cromulent built-in speakers on my television set.

[DJ]: But because I am a nerd and I'm fortunate enough to have some disposable income, I started looking at things like dedicated speakers.

[DJ]: And you and I have talked in the past about my mixed feelings about this pair of speakers in my office, which are these...

[DJ]: have all this built-in like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and in particular the fact that like they sort of insist on being on your network so you can set them up with a phone.

[DJ]: You know, to our recurring theme about do we really need to put the internet and software into everything?

[DJ]: It sort of annoys me about the fact that this is just

[DJ]: This could just be a speaker, like this could just be a thing that takes an electrical signal and produces sound waves.

[DJ]: And so now that I'm thinking about putting more speakers in my living room, I'm thinking about passive speakers, which do just that.

[DJ]: But of course, if you want to use passive speakers, now the rabbit hole opens wide because you start looking into what you connect them to.

[DJ]: So this weekend, I was using Claude, speaking of Anthropic, and these large language model chat programs are actually quite good at this sort of thing where I say, all right, look, I'm thinking about setting up a speaker system.

[DJ]: What are the bits and pieces I need to know about?

[DJ]: Like, what are some brands?

[DJ]: Where do I find information about this?

[DJ]: And I got a pretty good lowdown on, okay, you need speakers, you need some kind of integrated amplifier, and then you might need various solutions for, you know, do you also want streaming of various kinds?

[DJ]: And so I think I've come up with some options that are within my budget.

[DJ]: But as usual, the most interesting part of this is software related, not hardware related.

[DJ]: Feel free to replace the word interesting with obnoxious, because probably also appropriate.

[DJ]: Because now I started thinking, okay, I have this wired up system.

[DJ]: But what if I want to airplay to these speakers in my living room, which don't have that feature built in?

[DJ]: And on the other hand, what if I get a turntable and start also, you know, wanting to play vinyl records?

[DJ]: Because as long as wired headphones are becoming the popular thing again, let's go all the way back in time.

[DJ]: Just go full retro hipster.

[DJ]: I kind of already am a retro hipster in several other important ways.

[DJ]: So this does feel like a natural progression.

[DJ]: But then what if I'm playing a record in my living room, but I want the sound to come out of my office speakers?

[DJ]: How do we do that?

[DJ]: So that's where we get into using a Raspberry Pi as both an airplay receiver and transmitter potentially.

[DJ]: But at this point, I'm going to pause and see if you will either encourage me or tell me that I've gone crazy.

[JM]: Fair question.

[JM]: As we talked about before, I am a big fan of passive speakers.

[JM]: I'm not opposed to powered speakers.

[JM]: I have a pair of JBLs right here on my desk that by and large are excellent and I quite like.

[JM]: And there are times where that is a good solution for what you're trying to do.

[JM]: In my office, the idea of having passive speakers and an amplifier, it could be kind of cumbersome, mainly and unfortunately because the industry's moved away

[JM]: from that more and more.

[JM]: It's getting harder and harder to find a variety of options for amplifying passive speakers.

[JM]: Even when there are a plethora of choices of getting passive speakers, it's the amplification of it that generally is the problem in terms of finding good options for that.

[JM]: But you're talking about doing something in a living room environment.

[JM]: And to me, that's where passive speakers really shine.

[JM]: I wish that there were more options for amplification, but there are still decent options out there, even if they're all essentially owned by Samsung.

[DJ]: I did notice that, that there was this well-recommended UK amplifier brand.

[DJ]: And when you go to their website, they're actually part of a different company, which is owned by Samsung.

[JM]: That is unfortunate, as we've discussed, but a perhaps necessary compromise in order to get what I think is a better, longer lasting system.

[JM]: Because I like these JBLs and thankfully they weren't an arm and a leg.

[JM]: But if the power supply portion of it fails, well, then the speaker is worthless to me.

[JM]: And the isolation of the amplification from the speaker also has its advantages.

[JM]: These JBLs are nice, but they do have a little bit of a hiss when they're on, even when no sound is coming out.

[JM]: And it's probably the only thing about them that I don't care for, aside from the fact that if I have the volume down relatively low...

[JM]: Sometimes it's automatic detection of, oh, is there sound playing fails?

[JM]: And it essentially turns itself off thinking that it's time to go to sleep.

[JM]: So I just like the world in which that kind of magic doesn't exist in the speaker itself.

[JM]: And speakers can last for decades and decades, passive ones anyway.

[JM]: I don't expect these JBLs to last that long.

[JM]: And you can replace the thing that's connected to them, whether that's amplification or streamer functionality.

[JM]: You mentioned AirPlay.

[JM]: A feature you may be aware of is that if you have speakers in your house, say the ones you have in your office, and say you were to get an AirPlay-enabled stereo amplifier of some kind to attach to some passive speakers,

[JM]: From your phone or Mac or any other AirPlay source, you can play music and then select multiple targets.

[JM]: You can select your office ones and the stereo, say, in your living room and have whole home audio that's perfectly in sync.

[JM]: And I've encountered people who have no idea that this feature is built into their existing audio setup.

[JM]: And when I show it to them, it just blows their minds.

[JM]: So yeah, unsurprisingly, I'm a fan of passive speakers and am fully in support of you lighting your wallet on fire and going and buying new high fidelity audio equipment.

[DJ]: That is a little bit of the problem with this sector, to your point about there aren't that many options.

[DJ]: It's like there's a lot of options, but they're basically all upmarket.

[DJ]: There aren't that many options if you only have a couple hundred bucks to put into this.

[DJ]: This is really the kind of thing that you're going to put a couple thousand bucks into.

[DJ]: And then, of course, if you are wealthy enough, this is also one of those segments where if you want to spend $50,000 on a pair of speakers, someone will happily sell them to you, which is crazy.

[DJ]: But that's not as bananas as the cabling.

[DJ]: But unfortunately, we don't have time in today's episode to get into the horrifying things I'm learning about audio cable.

[DJ]: We will have to leave that for another show.

[JM]: All right.

[JM]: On that note, that's all for this episode.

[JM]: You can find me on the web at justinmayer.com and you can find Dan at danj.ca.

[JM]: Reach out with your thoughts about this episode via the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.