The Digital Odyssey - From Mission Control to Modern Gaming

Speaker 1: 0:15

Okay, okay, we are live and welcome to the non-intuitive beats podcast and it's brought to you by the Leaders Club that, by the way, you are the parts two if you're listening to us. But do consider, in awaiting your status of the membership, by joining discord channel you can find the discord channel link in the podcast show notes, on these YouTube podcast notes or wherever. And today in this virtual studio we have several folks, actually quite literally two of us, nishant Sharma. They want to say hi.

Speaker 2: 0:51

Hello everyone, I'm Nishant. I work with Slava at Cruise. Slava is literally my boss, so I will do nothing but sing praises of Slava.

Speaker 1: 1:05

Okay, I'm not sure. Now you know what to say. So then I will not know how to react, so I will say it. And yes, that's that's the second voice that you're hearing right now. That's more annoying voice, that's me Slava, yes, as usual, and Dmitri are seemingly not going to join. I don't know what have happened, but do you mind, if you're listening to us. Shame on you. Shame on you. We will know this and we will communicate this to your manager, that you, you are no show without the what's what, the current definition, without the proper reason, proper reason. Anyway, we have tons of the topics tonight to discuss and for the warm-up, I have one that was added the last minute. I honestly cannot just bypass it, because my life personally will not be again the same. My friend, have you used on the Mac OS old tool that no longer even supported, that used to be named mission control?

Speaker 2: 2:14

I have not, but I've heard the name before. I'm trying to remember where, but I'll tell you my, my Mac book history is literally three years.

Speaker 1: 2:25

Oh right.

Speaker 2: 2:25

That tool is older than three years.

Speaker 1: 2:27

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 2: 2:28

I would not know about it. I only have a Mac. And if I can divulge into a site store, Should we go for?

Speaker 2: 2:35

it. Well, when I joined cruise six years ago, I got a Linux laptop because I was a Linux fanatic and, like you know, coming out from college I wanted to be able to customize everything. So after three years, you know the machine is slow and everything. So I've been pinging. It is like hey, my refresh better be good. I need really good RAM, really good everything. But at cruise the defaults are max and Linux go through like a special approval process, or at the time they did so they had me wait like five, six months. They are like.

Speaker 2: 3:11

At the same time cruise acquired the Munich office. So it was like now we are standardizing across two offices, so wait a little bit more. So I've waited, and waited, and waited and during this time the pandemic has started and I now live quite a bit far from the office. So I make a special day out of it, me and my wife will go, stop by at the office, will return the laptop. They'll give me the new one. Will you know, go on a date. Afterwards I get there, they give me the laptop.

Speaker 2: 3:40

This is supposedly the thing I've been waiting for for the last six months. As I'm getting into the car and as we are about to drive away, I was like I just want to quickly open it and see what they gave me. It's a Windows laptop, windows booted on it. So like, give me a minute.

Speaker 2: 3:58

So I walk back, I hand them the thing and they're like well, the Linux laptop configuration that we can support actually is not the one and I don't know how it got mixed up, but it's the config you requested. I was like can I put Linux on it? No, can you put Linux on it? It's like yes. So we're like okay, we'll go on a date, we'll pick it up. Afterwards we come back and they're like they talk to people and no one can support Linux on this thing. It's not officially supported by a tell on this machine, so we cannot do it. Now. My options are to get back the same crappy laptop or get a Mac with the configuration that I had requested. So that's the day I got a Mac for the first time in my life.

Speaker 1: 4:49

Oh, man, we have to do. One day we'll have to do an episode about must have tools on the Mac OS. Looks like you might benefit of that episode I might.

Speaker 2: 5:05

But you know, mac, tell me about mission control.

Speaker 1: 5:07

Yes, mission control is no longer existed. By the way, they have a mission control on the Mac OS for window managing. That's a different thing, but what used to be mission control? It was a very nice tool that allow you to specify different actions on your machine depending on the context. So let me give you an example how I used to use this tool constantly. You can specify that unless you're on this LAN or on this Wi-Fi, switch on the proxy VPN, sorry, or unless, in that particular time of the day, change the color shift to something. So this is a small thing that you need to be changing based on the context and, to be fair, vpn is the most useful for me.

Speaker 1: 5:55

After that tool got completely got killed, I now have to memorize, memorize manually creating opening VPN and establishing VPN connection each time and I'm working from the cafe or from, not from the home Wi-Fi. It's annoying and literally five minutes before the show, someone ping me this. There is a try by it's a it's effectively a shortcut trigger that doing this based on surroundings, based on whatever you want, you specifying the rules and then based on the rules, and can trigger. So hopefully it will support my use case, at least the ability to switch VPN on when I'm not on a predefined list of Wi-Fi's or LAN connections. So yes, I haven't tried it. I just learned about it and added to show notes immediately. But yeah, I need to try it out.

Speaker 2: 6:49

This one's quite useful. I have a friend in India who is pretty fanatic about this same thing. I don't remember the name of the app. I can probably talk to him and figure it out for the next episode. Very similar thing, as you know and he adds location based stuff because it's on the phone. So it's like, as I'm walking towards my home, like do XYZ with the home and and tons more stuff and, yeah, putting alarms on and calling people and whatnot. So this seems very similar to that, but with MacBooks I like it. I may try it. Let me know how it goes.

Speaker 1: 7:30

The next time I that's on my to-do list. Next time I will will be trying that. You know, in the small news that I wanted to share with people before we'll jump to the main part bus routes and this is the place where we actually uploading the podcast. It's like a service, that intermediary between your uploading podcast and the rest of the world that uploads to iTunes, google podcasts, and we are using it quite aggressively. They recently have introduced a new feature trying to see if they they have an advertisement somewhere.

Speaker 1: 8:06

Magic mastering close, but not so. The feature is a factually about using a guy to fully transcribe your podcast, create the show notes, create, suggest you a title, creates a timing of different parts of your podcast. The only downside it costs ten dollars per month. I actually going to try it this month and then I will just do it myself. We have enough knowledge in the eye to just bootstrap that that's a pipeline somewhere in our garage and replicate everything. But yes, it's looks to be a quite useful feature. We're going to try it with this very, very episode. So, if you're you listening in the recording and you like what you see from the perspective of show notes, that was done through the AI and 10 dollars? Yeah, what do you think about the eyes, my friends? I don't know. I don't have any any particular questions about this, but have you used something like that in the past?

Speaker 2: 9:07

well, fatum comes to mind. I've been using it pretty, pretty aggressively right now, and of course, yes, yes, yes. I think, it's FATHOM.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Tell, tell me more. I obviously also know that's the tool now, but yes, tell us why. Tell us, what is this, what is it?

Speaker 2: 9:33

yeah, it seems like everyone right now is, you know, trying to get some help with transcribing and and summarizing what you have been talking about. One interesting thing about this show which is not necessarily the highlight of what they are selling you, but I find really, really interesting as a manager it gives you every X minutes or so in the meeting. It tells you how much your talk time has been. So it tells me that if I'm speaking more than I personally want to, I have a KPI of not being speaking too much in every meeting and I have been every time surprised how much I speak. The other thing it tells me is if I've been doing monologues. So you, you may be talking a lot, because maybe it's a meeting you're hosting, maybe you're presenting, but then have you been doing monologues? Have you been basically not giving other people chances to speak? So far, zero monologues. So I am treating that KPI as a win.

Speaker 2: 10:36

Okay, but going back to the tools, highlighted features are that you can take notes. It does a pretty good job of transcribing. We went through some tongue twisters at it and it did a pretty good job recognizing those and clearly transcribing those and, as the person who is taking note, it gives. It frees you off from typing as you are thinking and participating in the meeting, which is a pretty powerful win if you are in a lot of meetings on a daily basis. You don't have to worry about note taking. I'm still trying to get out of the habit of also taking notes live while having a meeting, the things that it does for you.

Speaker 2: 11:18

Afterwards it gives you a transcript and it the AI summarizes it, but at the same time, it gives you option to tell it what kind of meeting it is. So then if you tell it that it's a stand up, then it will automatically summarizes everyone's update, as in what they did yesterday, what are they doing today, do they have any blockers? Or if you say this was a demo, then it will summarize it differently. If it was, you know a different kind of meeting or sales, which then it summarizes back differently. So it has like 10 20 options for you to select after the fact, and then the AI goes back and re-summarizes.

Speaker 2: 11:57

The video should be in an output format that you would expect typically off a meeting like that, which is a pretty powerful feature, and during the meter you can also tell the AI that this is a highlight. Remember this specially and then it like, just takes a note of that timestamp. You have to be careful, though. If you mark a highlight as soon as the conversation starts, you're doing it wrong, because the AI is trained to look at the previous conversations. Because, technically, you the way it's supposed to work is a discussion is happening and you just go oh, this was a highlight, click on it. So it goes back and creates the highlight.

Speaker 2: 12:39

It goes back and creates an action item. You're not supposed to hit highlight as soon as the discussion starts, because, who knows, maybe that's not actually going to be a highlight, and I think at this point Fathom would be telling me that I'm speaking too much, so I'm going to shut up.

Speaker 1: 12:54

But, to be fair, I wanted to address one particular thing. So the way how it works, it's, fathom creates an AI agent that can be added to almost any meeting. Obviously, your secure group need to approve this and your company decided you're doing that, but that's a matter I think. They support Zoom, they support Google Meet, maybe something else, I don't remember, but you're actually adding this virtual agent to your call that will be actively listening, provide you some controls. It's pretty nice tool, it's. You know, I think maybe you and I are safe, but in five or six generation of the managers from us, probably this will be a manager as a service that you're subscribing a company to and you don't need any managers at all. They, you know like, they will be literally providing the feedback tasks to everyone, and I can clearly see this is happening. It's eventually, eventually.

Speaker 2: 13:52

Yeah, the AI can automatically approve or reject your vacation request, just like you know you're taking too many vacations. What's going on? Rejected Yep, but anyways, I found out one very interesting thing In the settings of Fathom, it actually has an option to not have the AI bot join the meeting.

Speaker 2: 14:16

I have not tried it, but I believe, if you check that option, then, AI bot will not join and they say that now you are responsible for asking for consent. The reason they have this AI bot thing is not to do the recording. It's to get around consent laws on recording.

Speaker 1: 14:35

Ah, I see, so it's in fact the bot is Got it.

Speaker 2: 14:41

I didn't know that the bot is participating in the meeting, then it can record. But if it's not participating in the meeting, then you are responsible for letting everyone know that this is a recorded line, and you do that. But by the bot being present in the meeting it goes around some consent. Oh, that's the loophole, I guess.

Speaker 1: 14:59

Yeah, so you can actually be recording and making this transcript without the knowledge of other participants if you are a malicious person, and you know, the fun part is that in this bright future, if you have manager as a service that actually an AI bot, not the real human you finally will get to the point where you can tell your manager anything you want without afraid of being fired, and the virtual managers will just listen to you and patiently and will not be abused or will not think anything bad, and this will have zero influence on your future. Yes, it's an interesting future that we might soon will find ourselves in Every company that has a psychological safety.

Speaker 2: 15:51

Kpi will go to the roof.

Speaker 1: 15:53

Yes, yes, yes, you know we have several internal chatbots and today I told one of our internal chatbots that I hated and it responded by saying hello, vicious. Laugh in response, and it was a really weird behavior. But anyway, okay, okay. So this was another small thing before we joined, going to the main one. I actually wanted in the beginning to speak about games. Games because I recently, on one of the weekends, have installed a new game from from software, which is Armored Core 6. I don't know how many people played it, heard about it, know about it. Do you know anything about Armored Core overall, the franchise?

Speaker 2: 16:37

No idea, tell me.

Speaker 1: 16:40

Okay, do you know about Elden Ring or Souls games?

Speaker 2: 16:45

I have heard of them, I have not played them.

Speaker 1: 16:47

Okay, okay, so this is kind of Elden Ring and the Souls games. There is a big deal in the gaming industry, the whole idea there that the company went back to the driving board, so to speak, and trying to reinvent games and make them fun in the way that used to be fun when the first Mario went out. And what they effectively did is even though it's, if you look on the Elden Ring, for example what they did. They created a game that has normal graphics. It's beautiful, it's amazing, it's huge. But the mechanics of the game actually bringing back that nostalgia from that days, because it's really complex.

Speaker 1: 17:31

You can be spending hours and hours of trying to bypass one of the bosses and you cannot do it modern game style when you're just increasing your stats, going, leveling up and then killing everyone with one shot. That just does not work. You have to figure out the boss, you have to analyze how the boss moves, figuring out the strategy and 10 hours later maybe you will kill that boss. And the way how they are trying to make it close to that reality of this old days. They effectively introducing points where you can save yourself and if you killed, you're resurrected from the nearest safe point and all the enemies are resurrected as well. So, while this is an open world game, it creates your feeling like you have a level and you have to survive up to the checkpoint. If you fail, you will have to go all the way back on the previous checkpoint. Try to go to that part of the map again and maybe this time you will go a little bit further. So it's everything from the open world, with that feeling of nostalgia of those games where we used to play.

Speaker 1: 18:42

Everything that I said was from From Software. So Armored Core is not like that completely, and when you expect something from From Software, you expect everything that just described. Armored Core is a really weird game. It's a game where you have a classical level and you need to build a huge robot, and the whole mechanics is all about how you build that robot, because each level you can tune it a little bit to make it suitable for that specific level, and I found it boring. I played maybe half an hour and then asked for a fund, and that was all my experience with Armored Core 6. So I would not recommend you unless you know what you're getting into, if you are the gamer, because it's an old series, so there is plenty of people who played Armored Core 5 and 4, though they might be Hemingull's gamer at this age, because it's a really old game. So, yes, okay, so that's a warm-up with this. By the way, my friend, are you playing games? If yes, what's your favorite?

Speaker 2: 19:45

Oh God, I Hands down, I installed. I installed 3 years ago Steam again when I built my desktop.

Speaker 1: 19:59

Okay.

Speaker 2: 20:00

I have over 3,000 hours in CSGO since then.

Speaker 1: 20:05

In what, in what, in what?

Speaker 2: 20:08

Counter-Strike Go.

Speaker 1: 20:09

Oh, csgo, of course, of course, of course, okay.

Speaker 2: 20:14

So, and they are coming out with CS2, which is Steam's. What is that engine called? I forgot? Valve has a Source 2. Yeah, so Source 2 is their new engine, which is not 20 years old. So they rebuilt Dota on it a few years back and that was really successful. So they are now doing Counter-Strike on it. So Counter-Strike it's about to get a rework done. It's in beta right now. A lot of people have access to it. Seems like going well, so anyway. So yeah, I have 3,000 something hours on this game. That's the only game I've been playing, and for the same reasons that you said. It never gets old. Like I'm playing with new people. If I'm getting better, the people I'm playing with are getting better. That's how their matchmaking works. So it's always challenging, it's always fun and I'm better singly. So, if some people may think, I've spent more than 80% of those 3,000 hours on one map. So oh my God.

Speaker 1: 21:26

So, like.

Speaker 2: 21:27

I know that map like anything in my life and that's the only map I'm really good at, so any other map you'll be like what a noob, but that map I can give you a challenge. But right now I have not been playing because I'm only carrying a measly thing pad around with me on my trip and gaming is pretty much on pause right now.

Speaker 1: 21:53

Got it. You know, I only from this type of the games. I only play the Little Bit and Rainbow. This is like a game where you're playing for a police squad the versus terrorists usually and I'm that piece of shit that you know would come to the door, would look in a small, small, how you say, the hole in that door where you can see only one pixel. Take a shotgun and then wait for five minutes until that one pixel will go from white to black, because this means someone on the other side of the door click on the left button of the mouse and that's about it, and everyone would hate me for that. So that was fun for the first several rounds and then I got bored and, yes, I haven't played again. But you know, since we keep talking about the game Starfield, starfield is one that finally got out.

Speaker 1: 22:47

Starfield is a game from Bethesda that built Fallout, that built Eldon no, no, no, what they built. I forgot what Bethesda built Skyrim, skyrim, fallout 4, and they finally have released Starfield, which is also only available on PC and Xbox so far. They have released a special Constellation Edition that effectively allows you to buy game five days before the full release, so not everyone can play it in just yet. But what I found amusing, and why I'm saying so, this Constellation Edition that you can buy upfront and start playing five or so days before the full final release costs $300, has tons of interesting stuff inside, but this is $300 only for playing on the Xbox. If you're playing on the PC and you want to order PC version, it costs $600.

Speaker 1: 23:45

I don't know why. It's exactly the same game. Yes, exactly. Can I open Amazon without logging it? Because I can show it live. I'm not bullshitting anyone. So let's go to Starfield Constellation and when you're going on that on Amazon or you don't, where is the Constellation Edition? Constellation Edition when you need it. So when, yes, when you have it, it gives you options. So Xbox costs roughly 396 and PC costs 589, which exactly same things, just for the different platform. So here we go, here we go. I don't know, maybe it's Microsoft pushing their Xbox platform so much and that's the whole reason, or why they didn't. So obviously, no PlayStation, no PlayStation. That's the moment why I bought Xbox. I was waiting this moment to tell everyone with a PlayStation that I have it and you don't.

Speaker 2: 24:52

Yeah, I would not surprise me if that was very intentional. To get people to buy Xbox. Just price is to say like, hey, you can spend $600 on this or you can take those $400 and put it towards an Xbox and then buy the game for cheaper.

Speaker 1: 25:09

Yep, yep, yep, yep. Exactly, exactly, yes. What else on the gaming side, actually? Yeah, let's do more games today. Why the hell not?

Speaker 1: 25:21

There is a big things in the console world around me, especially in the Xbox world. So the last big console update, especially from the Xbox, has two consoles available for the customers Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. So they look roughly like that. X and S is a smaller, smaller edition, so to speak. Why smaller is the S and S has a lower CPU, lower GPUs, everything is smaller. And the idea was that. The whole idea was that if you're buying Xbox S, what you're getting you're getting exactly same games that Xbox S Xbox, sorry, but with a smaller resolution, not 4K, but maybe like full HD or HD, and instead of 60 frames per second you will be getting sort of, so to speak, that was the idea. No one actually believed in it.

Speaker 1: 26:19

Everyone understood that, because the hardware is so, so slower and not as powerful as X, that eventually the games will be published only to one of those. But unfortunately, microsoft was constantly pushing, saying that if you even want to publish a game to the Xbox, you have to have a feature parity on your game. You cannot just release a game that will work on Xbox Series X but will not on Series S or will have a feature, limited edition, so to speak. And it was working until Baldur's Gate 3. So the Baldur's Gate 3, the first game that finally they pushed Microsoft, saying that they either going to bypass Xbox completely they will not release there or the Microsoft will allow them to start cutting out features from the cheaper version, which is Xbox Series S, and the Microsoft effectively agreed to that. So the Baldur's Gate going to be released on the Xbox, exactly because they completely removed split screen from S.

Speaker 1: 27:21

So on the Xbox Series S, you cannot do split screen, you cannot play on the couch split screen, but you will be able to do it on X. This is the thing. And if the PlayStation and Nintendo Switch will do the same, they can, because they are number one and number two respectively in the console edition. But when you are Microsoft with Xbox and your main customer is Slava and probably this is it, maybe two more people who actually bought Xbox instead of the PlayStation, that's really weird. That's really weird move, but nevertheless, things are changing. With that, my friends, I see that you have added several topics. Do you want to chat about it?

Speaker 2: 28:05

Well, I'm sure this audience may be a little bit more in tune to the bigger games, but I wanted to share a couple more that I have played. One of them is Polybridge 2. This is a game where you basically get a lot of challenges and you have to figure out the physics of building a bridge. And if you play this so you basically like build bridges using different materials and then they drive cars and buses across us and they're like you can even switch to a mode that shows you the stress levels of every beam as things drive and, as you can see, ships will be passing. So you need a bridge that opens and closes. Sometimes you have to do trick shots and people get really creative with these bridges, as you can see.

Speaker 1: 28:55

Oh yes.

Speaker 2: 28:57

So it's a really stupid but very fun game. Yeah, you have these kind of levels where you have to get different people to different levels, so it's fun.

Speaker 1: 29:09

Man, I have played in Polybridge 1. I remember it. It was amazing.

Speaker 2: 29:17

Yes, it is a lot of fun for how simple the concept is.

Speaker 1: 29:25

When was it released? Oh my god, the Polybridge was released 2023 years ago. I have missed that. Shame on me. Maybe there is already a Polybridge 3. Oh, yes, there is a Polybridge 3.

Speaker 2: 29:40

Oh wow, she's came out this year.

Speaker 1: 29:42

I did not even know that oh my god, here we go, here we go, anyway, ok, ok, anything else about this game.

Speaker 2: 29:56

And not necessarily about this game. I think everyone should explore one, two or three. Either version is pretty insane. There is another gaming company I want to touch on. We are at Daffin.

Speaker 2: 30:09

King's. It's SCS Soft and this is a really tiny company based in Europe, and I know about them because I used to play Euro Truck Simulator too. All my masters was this was my past time Get in the truck, drive around and do that until my laptop got too overheated. I don't know why. It's a stupidly simple game. You just drive around in the truck. The thing that's really interesting is how they simulated tiredness, Like as a driver in the truck they will start shutting down your eyes, You'll be yawning and stuff. But the things.

Speaker 2: 30:52

I started looking more into the company back then. They only make truck simulation games and they actually rent out the trucks Every truck model that's in the game. They actually rent it out. They drive it around and record the sound with different gears, with different things. Like it's a pretty good. They are very invested in this. And then they launched American Truck Simulator, which the nice thing is you get to see the whole map of the country. You basically drive around and you get to see how these different countries are connected. You can take ferries. You can take your truck on a ferry if you're in the UK and go to Europe In a ferry, and now you have to drive on the other side of the street. You have to remember that you get speeding tickets and everything. Yeah, I wonder if they ended up cutting UK to Europe access after Brexit. I don't know.

Speaker 1: 31:53

Oh, you have to pay extra money to have that expansion.

Speaker 2: 32:03

The toll went up.

Speaker 1: 32:03

Yes, yes, go ahead, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 32:05

Go ahead. This was my first experience to DLCs, because they started with Europe, but they didn't have East Europe yet, so then they started releasing DLCs and then you can keep expanding your map that you had access to. So this was the game when I first found out about DLCs.

Speaker 1: 32:26

This remind me two things. First of all, I probably will not be able to find it quickly right now because I was not ready, but there is a hilarious video where the guy in American Truck a real American Truck, the guy who is doing real, real duties, a truck driver with American trucks that usually have compartments behind where he can sleep Like recording the video in the TikTok saying, oh, I had a hard day, I need to relax. I have my gaming setup here, so he moves there. He has a gaming setup with a proper steering wheel. Where he opened the Euro Truck and started driving truck over there through the whole day. I could just tell that it was yes, yes.

Speaker 2: 33:07

That is pretty hilarious. I've seen those setups at home. I've never seen one in a truck itself. That is next level commitment.

Speaker 2: 33:15

Yes, the funny thing about this game was that your real goal was to build an empire of trucking logistic companies. So eventually you make enough money, you buy some trucks, you get some drivers and eventually there's enough positive stream coming in that you don't need to yourself take job anymore, so you can just sit in a truck and keep driving with that out empty, and at that point the game becomes pretty meaningless. Now you have the I don't know, unless you want to get very capitalistic about it. The game loses its meaning once there's enough trucks that you have bought and now you can just keep buying more every week.

Speaker 1: 34:01

You know, on that specific note, a similar game with similar experience, but in different angles, so to speak, and honestly, the reason why I bought Xbox in the first place and not PlayStation, which is Microsoft Flight Simulator Microsoft Flight Simulator I love it and when they announced the new one, obviously I jumped into it and obviously they mentioned that it only will be available on the PC Xbox. That was the reason why I bought Xbox. But this is a closer game to that experience Because in reality, when you look at it, fun is beautiful, no question. There, it's amazing. But you can either actually learn how to fly through it or you can fly there, and neither of them is boring. It's extremely boring if you are not into flying.

Speaker 1: 34:46

There is nothing there, in fact, a truck simulator, probably even more interesting, because you have quests, you're driving for money, you have a goods, you have money, you can upgrade trucks. Here is nothing they give you. Here's all the airplanes. Take any from the beginning. You don't have to work on them, just pick whatever you want at the beginning.

Speaker 1: 35:05

And now it's a meaningless mode. That exactly you mentioned. You can fly, but unless only if you want to learn how to fly. Otherwise, there is no need to add anything but the fun part add-ons as passengers. So they actually release an add-on that allows you to effectively be a passenger, allows you to play as passenger Because, again, this is a flight simulator you literally can simulate the 10-hour flight from point B and at some point they release DC that allow you to actually be a passenger and sit 10 hours on your own flight from the passenger seat. Where is this? I wanted to show at least one picture of that mode. It's obviously completely useless. There's no one going to play Flight Simulator like that but nevertheless they release it so you can if you want to spend 10 hours of your life.

Speaker 2: 36:12

Man. This is pretty impressive because I know Microsoft Flight Simulator is a successful product. That means there's enough people who well, there might be enough people who use it to train themselves, but there might also be a reasonable-sized fool that is just doing it to do it. There's no quest, there's no feeling of a game, and it would be pretty nice if Microsoft then allowed you to start as a passenger, pretend there is an emergency and then go into the cockpit and start flying. You know that word there. Oh, yes, it's pretty interesting.

Speaker 1: 36:49

Yep, to be fair, they do plan to allow you not to allow, but they do plan to introduce some missions, so to speak, small missions here and there. It will be new for Microsoft because they recently have announced Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. And honestly, that should have been just DLC, just an upgrade on the previous one. I honestly didn't know why they proceed that route. Because the thing about Flight Simulators it's a platform on top of which you're building, like the closest competitor, x-plane, x-plane 12 or 11, for example and again, this is the closest competitor.

Speaker 1: 37:31

Just to give perspective how big that platform is, many of the flying school actually have a fully licensed cockpit that's using X-Plane under the hood as a software and they just train you on the. Yeah, my school have exactly explained, so nothing prevent them to certify Flight Simulator. Microsoft Flight Simulator do the same. But the key here if you're building platform, you have to keep supporting it, so you cannot do this shit where, oh, each year, you have a brand new thing that drops into it. No, you have to have a Counter-Strike, go more like a model when once in the blue moon, once in a thousand years you may be, will upgrade it.

Speaker 2: 38:13

Oh, and even then they are making it backward compatible. So if you bought any skins, if you bought any like special things, the knives and stuff, they're all moving on to CS2 because they invested so much in the community building the game that they are respecting that. So I 100% agree that Microsoft needs to do the same. What Microsoft thing reminds me more of the money crab that EA does with FIFA. Same game year over year and they just slap a new title and a new photo and then there you go.

Speaker 1: 38:45

Yep, because fuck you, that's. That's, that's why it's a real reason. Yes, we all know you will pay for that, for that thing.

Speaker 2: 38:53

Yes, Exactly someone online on Reddit I was reading, was complaining that chips have gotten too expensive. Does anyone know why? And the top response was because we fools keep buying it at expensive prices, so they just keep raising it.

Speaker 1: 39:11

Yeah, yeah, you want to brand new experience. What you get is the same experience with more money that you have to pay. Yes, it is what it is. Anyway, that was so. We just concluded our warm up. That was supposedly should have took 10 minutes max, but we now, at our 40 minutes, we actually should slowly, slowly, go to second part. You know I will. I will actually move to the main part.

Speaker 1: 39:41

I will not cover everything, but I want at least at least to show one thing how to spell assistant AI. I think this is a correct one. Nope, let's see. So for everyone who listening to us, I'm trying to spell assistant AI. Jesus, give me up Assistant AI and let it all to correct for me yes, assistant goes like that.

Speaker 1: 40:05

So several weekends ago, I finally wrote one of the two based on another tool. So I have this tool that called jazz, which is full short name from Jessica, which is my personal CLI tool that I'm using for different, different needs when I interacting with GPT. It's effectively GPT client on steroids, and what I mean by that is it supports ability to. Since it's CLI tool, it's local in network, so you effectively can say to judge GPT. Here is my URL that I want you to read and here is my local file and go in that URL that have documentation of the how API works that I'm using in this local file and tell me why it doesn't work. So, because it has all the things from your local network, your file, it can do that shit and it's actually give you a result. So for me it's a quite, quite, quite useful thing. I implemented support of GPT for three palm, which is barred from Google Slowly more working on introducing llama from Facebook, slowly, but will introduce eventually it has some community.

Speaker 1: 41:13

But recently we have released a just P, and just P is a simple tool that allow you in Unix to pipe. So in other words, it allow you to do stuff. Let me go on my Twitter and have a screenshot there. Jesus, you have to be logged in on the Twitter. Oh my God, okay, don't have a read me. You know it's a proper open source problem product. No, read me nothing.

Speaker 1: 41:40

But if actually, what you can do, you can say something like cat, the name of the file, some, blah, blah, blah, jason. Then you can pipe and I'm trying to type it in my browser browser pages to show, show theoretically, how it might look like they can say Jason P and have a prompt for for the tool that saying remove all item that has some property, something you can tell, whatever it won't you want to do with with the results, and obviously pipe everything back to the result, jason. This saves me tons of the time. I mean I start forgetting. Now grab syntaxes everywhere where I used to grab or other shitty tool like that. This is just so much better. We can tell in a normal human language find me something that looks like blah, or this is a reg X or, and that just works.

Speaker 1: 42:30

I don't know. I am not selling it because it's just tool that I wrote. I'm selling it because it's improved my life drastically and I would suggest anyone to try it. It's really, really nice. That was a minute of self promotion. What do you think, my friend?

Speaker 2: 42:52

I'm very impressed with this Great productivity booster for tons of engineers. I can easily tell like. I can even think like not going to call it out here, but I can see how even crews can benefit from from this so much. Certain teams definitely more than others, but for sure. I was just imagining some use cases myself. If you know, I don't always keep up with networking and whatnot, and I was wondering if you know, if I am setting up a new next cloud instance and I want to change some configuration, I can just tell it to do that, rather than parse through tons and tons of next cloud config. I can be like here's the folder Well, maybe not directly the pipe today, but like an eventual to it. That's the folder where next cloud is. I want you to go find the config file that has this change. Change the configuration to that and I'm done so. I think the future is here.

Speaker 1: 43:53

Oh, on that part. So this is just just P, this is a mod, but probably next episode because we don't have enough time. The full Jessica actually support what is known as automode and the most frequent and common use case that they're showing through automode. So what is auto? Since this is a tool that have access to your local files, these two can have a chain of thoughts. So it knows that you can call special, different set of comments, specifically a last cat, edit, delete, create on your file system so you can give it a task and what it does it in cycle have a short term memory and it's effectively ask here is a given, the con comments. Here is a task from user. Here is a short term memory. What do you want me to do so you can show me a less of files and I'll show me cat of that file. So in each step it updates a short time memory and it meets the action and, as a result, you actually can do the stuff like that, because one of the use cases that I showing constantly when I showing how the tool works is exactly that I am asking on one of my project. I'm asking you to add a step that creates build of Jessica for Windows. So it goes.

Speaker 1: 45:09

It has to figure out here this is a goal project find the cloud, build YAML, figure out what language it's implemented at the step, and all these you cannot do in a normal charge. You can't put everything in one context. It has to go file by file, be the short term memory with everything it needs it's. I wish I would tell you that this works all the time. It's a work in progress, still specifically after. But yes, that's exactly exactly what it capable already for the stuff like write me a read me MD for my GitHub, where it has to go file by file Learn what you're doing, created read me MD or add me a build step and my CI system. Again, it needs to figure out what language you're using, where is a CI and how it works. It already more or less works, but unfortunately for now it works like eight sorry, two out of 10 times when it works is like wow, you're realizing features here, but then you try it again, even without changing anything, just trying again exactly same setup, and it might go infinity loop of chain of thoughts Like oh, I see that, file that and, and then just cycle, cycle around. But nevertheless this is a full, so full version. So that specific just piece, my attempts to start cutting out a very predictable use cases that you can use 100% of the time it will work exactly as expected Because in that specific use case with just P, I actually designed the prompt that has to tell open, open AI do not include any explanations.

Speaker 1: 46:43

You are the part of the pipe. You have to produce the results that will be part in the output file. It's actually not trivial. It took me quite a while to figure out that prompt that works all the time predictably and you actually now can use. So with under the hood it will combine your prompt with that pre prompt and that's why it's work, because if you will just give input of the file and then this command, chat GPT will try start to explain you oh, here is how I derived this answer and this stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 47:13

So, yes, yes, next time, probably when we have more time, will tell way more about the jessica, because it's already have a decent community with like five people contributing to it and actually actively using. Under the hood is using open AI API, which means that you have a term of service that tells that they are not starting anything that you're going through the API, they not training their own model. So it's enterprise friendly and the only downside to make it meaningful you have to use GPT for, and if you're using out doing tons of the call to GPT for, so I should you not? I have a days when I would be spending $30 per day on just open API calls, just for debugging these things and yes so it's not cheap, let's put it this way.

Speaker 1: 48:03

So I'm waiting llama, impatiently waiting llama to arrive. Tell me, my friend, what is your favorite? I do.

Speaker 2: 48:17

What is my favorite, to have one. Is that a legit answer?

Speaker 1: 48:21

No, that's not acceptable. On answer Copilot copilot using it lead that.

Speaker 2: 48:29

So my team's using it and I'm hearing some really good stuff about about it right now. One of the engineers basically started by writing a talk string of their function and then copilot basically completed the function for them as soon as they write that and it was largely correct. So I was pretty impressed by it. Yeah, so it's something I'm looking to try out next. I as one of one of the like fun things, but I haven't really tried anything While I'm on this trip. I'm basically, you know, everything is on pause. I'm just enjoying the life outside of work and not dealing with the tech, so it's kind of working out.

Speaker 1: 49:19

You know on that specific note, I just realized that I never ask you that question what the trip you are on right now because I know about it, but it's actually so fascinating that maybe it's nice you know. Wind down topic for the last 10 minutes or so that we have left. Do you want to share?

Speaker 2: 49:41

Yeah, I don't want sharing. Let me find you a link. If you want to pull up a link.

Speaker 1: 49:46

Of course, of course. Yes, yeah so for for the listeners. You found this one on a quite a long trip, so he's working remotely and that trip and with that, while opening the link microphone back to you, my friend, I'm going to open the link.

Speaker 2: 50:05

Yeah. So last year my wife and I had some plans to moving near Sacramento and, like, kick off a thing, my wife was interested in building a business there that fell through and we had spent the last two years renovating the house we lived in. So we were just kind of like looking to do something different than being in a place and she always wanted to travel. So I have not seen most of the US, despite being here for for almost a decade now. So the idea grew up that, hey, what if we just travel for a while? She recently had gotten a full remote job cruise a lot of us to be remote. So she has another one of the maps that you're presenting where it's the full trip as planned, and this is where we have been. So if you zoom in you can see like all the places, all the large places we have hit along the way.

Speaker 2: 51:00

So in March we so we kicked it off in December sold my motorcycles on January 1st, mine and hers and then we took January to March to basically sell off anything that wasn't of value to us to keep, because we didn't want to pay for storage, because we were just like we will restart when we finish this trip. So by March we basically got down to a size that can fit in an SUV. Anything else of value we we basically put at her parents place, so they have a little bit of our stuff, and we kicked off this two year trip. So the trip is expected to end in December of next year. We are basically jumping around Airbnb to Airbnb in a state.

Speaker 2: 51:49

The primary goal of the trip is to hit as many national parks as we can reasonably hit. The secondary goal is to every city that we go to, we want to explore the city reasonably. We don't want to be in the city for a week where you are rushing through experiencing the culture and not really seeing the downsides of things. So this way, for example, chicago, wait, wait, wait, wait wait, wait.

Speaker 1: 52:14

Are you saying there is a downside in San Francisco? No, the best city. Sorry, please continue yeah.

Speaker 2: 52:28

So, just as an example, there were a couple of cities that looked really good on week one, but then we kind of realized you know, this is not a place for us for long term example example.

Speaker 1: 52:39

You have now now to tell an example.

Speaker 2: 52:42

Well, the example would be Chicago, and Chicago was a roller coaster because we went into Chicago with the idea that it's really unsafe, so we had pretty low expectations. We got there for record when we exploded for week one, awesome. But as we explored more it kind of just felt very superficial, like I would have thought like nothing can be as superficial as San Francisco. But Chicago definitely beat it. Most of the restaurants have a default 20 percent tip on top of the food and then you have to pay taxes on it Wait.

Speaker 1: 53:21

but but the service definitely aren't that better. I would. I would. I would really prefer to have a predictable tips included so I don't have to bother.

Speaker 2: 53:33

I agree, I would rather just have a note policy and the menu prices higher.

Speaker 1: 53:39

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 2: 53:42

If that's what you're trying to do, that's how I would do it. But because you're trying to do it the tip route, then I expect a certain level of service, because now you have made it that I'm paying for the service, not for the food, and the service almost in every restaurant that had this policy was bad.

Speaker 1: 54:00

I mean because it's socialism, everyone a week. Well right, they will get 20 percent, irrespectively of how they treating you. Yeah, so I don't like that.

Speaker 2: 54:09

I'm glad other cities are not following it. At first we thought maybe you know inflation is hitting hard and, like every city will go to, will like be adopting something. It turned out it's a very Chicago thing, I would say. Food was pretty reasonable in a few places. Rick Bailey's frontera grill would recommend to everyone. But best cities so far, I would say, is Boston. Boston very expensive. Really. Open Boston and open the map view and open the transit view. Okay.

Speaker 1: 54:46

I'm going to map you and actually I need to go from maps to go to come. Then let's go to Boston and let's go to transit you. If I would have, would remember how to do it yes at the bottom.

Speaker 2: 55:01

Oh, transit transit at the bottom there's a.

Speaker 1: 55:04

Oh, ok, ok, ok, click the bottom at the layers. Yes, yes, I see yes, yeah, and then there's a transit guy and then there's a transit guy. And let's go back all the way.

Speaker 2: 55:17

Put it back on the map layer, so it's, it's not the satellite view. So you can really appreciate. Look at that.

Speaker 1: 55:26

There is nothing.

Speaker 2: 55:27

Look at those transit lines. Look at these transit lines.

Speaker 1: 55:32

Wait. But are you saying there is a lot of them or there is nothing there?

Speaker 2: 55:36

There's a lot of them, look at the green, the purple, like it's somewhere in between San Francisco and New York.

Speaker 1: 55:47

I still would not say that it's as good as in New York, from my subjective view on that.

Speaker 2: 55:52

but yes, more than SF, more than SF and better than New York in terms of how it's maintained. I see the experience you get.

Speaker 1: 56:01

Miles above, so it's a lot of traffic Miles above.

Speaker 2: 56:06

so it's kind of like, you know, it's not as dense as New York and it's not as far as, but it's like the overall experience hands down the best I've had.

Speaker 1: 56:15

OK, so let's go on the red field. How much, how much it property costs there in Boston.

Speaker 2: 56:20

Oh, you don't want to look at it.

Speaker 1: 56:22

Come on, I'm from Bay Area. Nothing can scare me. Nothing can scare me All right.

Speaker 2: 56:31

Seven parking spots in downtown Boston are half a million parking spots. You can buy a parking spot for half a million.

Speaker 1: 56:37

OK, let's go and see is anything less than 300,000. You know, like man, you can buy a 300,000 in the downtown.

Speaker 2: 56:51

Go to downtown and open any of these. Those are not houses, those are parking spots.

Speaker 1: 57:00

That is hilarious. What I think you're absolutely right, that is a parking spaces. Oh my God, jesus, oh my God. But to be fair, in San Francisco is a parking space that they hit a new record there is a half million parking space in the downtown San Francisco. Ok, what about suburb? So tell me where is the most desired suburb in Boston to live in? So you know, maybe, maybe something that affordable.

Speaker 2: 57:34

I mean, I'm not as good as well. Boston Geographics, yes, but how about let's look at Cambridge? Cambridge is like Cambridge.

Speaker 1: 57:45

Is the spell with killer or Charlie.

Speaker 2: 57:48

It's with the sea. Yeah, it's with the Charlie. It's right there on the map, if you want to just assume, and it's a little left off downtown.

Speaker 1: 57:56

There is nothing there for 300. Save my, oh my God. Yes, you know there is something. This one studio studio for half a million Jesus.

Speaker 2: 58:15

Oh my God, it's super insane, like I would say like this Boston so far, like you can see where I've been on the map, boston by far is the best city. Like it's very walkable, like insanely walkable. If you go to downtown the blocks are smaller because these are blocks before cars were invented, so the blocks are super small. So that means the surface area of shops and everything is almost double, so you can walk quite a bit in a very small time and you have tons to see.

Speaker 2: 58:50

everything good like quality is really better compared to a lot of streets, but it's just insanely priced.

Speaker 1: 58:59

Got it In the sink, okay, okay.

Speaker 2: 59:04

One thing I learned is back in 1700s could have been as as soon as 1920s Boston. But Boston map if you open like a Boston 1700 map, the map is very different. This is something I learned while walking the freedom trail here is that Bostonians were leaving and moving to suburbs to build big, beautiful houses. So Boston realized that it didn't want to lose its rich people. So they literally extended the Boston by moving soil and expanding Boston so people can can stay here and build their houses here and not somewhere else. There was decades and decades the bird, block by block into the sea. So it was. It was. That's how they they changed pretty much the the map of the area Because if you have heard that Paul River had to flag where the Britishers were coming by sea or coming by water, that story does not make sense because it's a river.

Speaker 2: 1:00:15

It's not a sea, but it used to be a sea. So much soil in that it's pretty much a river in that area where it was a sea back then.

Speaker 1: 1:00:25

Got it. Got it Amazing, amazing story, okay, okay, so you told about the past and and it's not politically correct to say the worst, but suboptimal there, there you talk about the city with infinite potential to be improved, and who is Boston? And about Boston, what else? What else is strikes you on your trip? So far, so far.

Speaker 2: 1:00:51

You know, nothing is as bad as the media tells you.

Speaker 1: 1:00:54

Media is what, what, what?

Speaker 2: 1:00:57

I mean, I'm saying nothing is as bad as the media tells you. Right, like that's a medium, yeah, yeah, it's it. Like I would recommend everyone gets out and, like you know, see others for the change. What else stuck out? Montana is expensive than what I've thought. I would have thought. It would be like look at Bozeman Montana, if you're, if you're looking for prices, oh, of course, let's go. It's a Bozeman, how to spell it? B-o-z-e, and then I mean Bozeman Montana.

Speaker 1: 1:01:31

Got it, okay, I'm going, so you know okay.

Speaker 2: 1:01:37

It's very a prices for Montana. It's insane. Okay, let's do my usual test 300,000. Can you?

Speaker 1: 1:01:46

Oh, you have a, you have a. You have a tent. You have a, you have a tent. I'm not joking for everyone who are listening, as in recording, you have a tent. They pictured a tent for three hundred thousand dollars, el tent. Oh my God, jesus and Lord for three, for three hundred K. Yeah, that's, that's. That's makes sense. Tons of the Lord for three hundred K, but nothing else, nothing else.

Speaker 2: 1:02:14

Okay, okay, beautiful area. But I was like we, we just looked at prices and was like this is insane.

Speaker 1: 1:02:24

I mean, you know, usually areas like that's there for the sake of after you have retired, you go there, you go there you buying your house, and sure you can say you can sell one and a half million house in Bay Area, you can buy a million house there and you have half a million your nest, so to speak, and cash, and then you can do whatever you want and that's pretty much it.

Speaker 2: 1:02:51

Yeah, this could be one of those cities. Some things that the locals told us was that two things happened. A couple of rich really rich people moved in, bought a couple of ranches and then started advertising the place, so that brought in more people. And the second thing that happened it was the show Yellowstone.

Speaker 1: 1:03:11

The.

Speaker 2: 1:03:11

Yellowstone show is based around that area that, during pandemic, gave everyone the idea that they want to live in nature and all of that, and since then it has been pretty crazy and now that the show has ended it's yeah, Yellowstone is pretty close. The National Park is like a three hour drive from Boston.

Speaker 1: 1:03:35

What is Yellowstone show? Because it showed me the series, TV series on IMDb.

Speaker 2: 1:03:42

Yellowstone is also a show that came out on, I believe, HBO.

Speaker 1: 1:03:48

It's a really famous show. Is it?

Speaker 2: 1:03:50

really good. The first episode of this. I was pretty intrigued. I just haven't had the time to get back to it because I'm watching other things, so I would recommend it.

Speaker 1: 1:04:01

Got it. Anyway, it's obviously one of the questions what else do you show me? Are you watching right now? We will discuss in next episode. I think we're hitting one hour mark, so I think, if you don't mind, my friend, let's stop here. We have a nice segue to the future. Do you have anything you want to say to the listeners? We just restarted the show. We now have 300, 400 people listening per episode. Do you want to say anything to 300, 400 people?

Speaker 2: 1:04:35

I just want to say thank you for listening to me. This is my first podcast. I have not seen anyone screaming in chat, so thank you, yeah, and send your invites to or questions to Slava If you have anything that you would want to know about the trip, any logistical stuff on how to plan one yourself. I'm not doing a blog. I'm not doing a video blog. A lot of people ask me I have enough of a job. I don't want the second one, but I would answer any questions if anyone has anything. Yeah, thanks.

Speaker 2: 1:05:15

Thank you for having Slava.

Speaker 1: 1:05:17

Absolutely, and you came first time. You're the guest. You will come second time, you will be a permanent co-host. So you just need to come second time to be officially permanent co-host. With that, everyone, thank you and I will see you next time. Same place, same time, See ya.