What A Lot Of Things

Ian Smith & Ash Winter

Ash and Ian talk about interesting Things from the tech industry that are on their minds. read less

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Episode Twelve – AI Haters and The Game That Was Too Good

Episode Twelve – AI Haters and The Game That Was Too Good

This episode of the podcast features Ian and Ash in a humour-filled comeback, diving into the fascinating world of generative AI and the impact of Baldur's Gate 3 on the gaming industry. They explore the nuances and controversies surrounding AI, from its potential to enhance creativity to the ethical concerns and the skepticism it faces. The discussion also highlights the importance of corporate culture in producing quality work, as exemplified by Larian Studios' success with Baldur's Gate 3. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, gaming, and creativity, offering insightful and engaging perspectives on contemporary digital phenomena.LinksA Wizard is never lateGartner Hype Cycle Research MethodologyAnthropic, their product,Claude, and their Constitutional AI research.The Turing testReinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)Other AI platforms mentioned: ChatGPT, Gemini, CopilotAI image generation: Midjourney, DALL·ENew York Times: Bing’s AI Chat: I Want To Be AliveIBM watsonxIA WriterHemingwayDungeons and DragonsStardew ValleySkull and BonesLarian Studios and Baldur’s Gate 3Cyberpunk 2077SendmailLoot boxesWhat A Lot Of Things – LinkedIn

Episodes

Episode Twelve – AI Haters and The Game That Was Too Good

Episode Twelve – AI Haters and The Game That Was Too Good

This episode of the podcast features Ian and Ash in a humour-filled comeback, diving into the fascinating world of generative AI and the impact of Baldur's Gate 3 on the gaming industry. They explore the nuances and controversies surrounding AI, from its potential to enhance creativity to the ethical concerns and the skepticism it faces. The discussion also highlights the importance of corporate culture in producing quality work, as exemplified by Larian Studios' success with Baldur's Gate 3. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, gaming, and creativity, offering insightful and engaging perspectives on contemporary digital phenomena.LinksA Wizard is never lateGartner Hype Cycle Research MethodologyAnthropic, their product,Claude, and their Constitutional AI research.The Turing testReinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)Other AI platforms mentioned: ChatGPT, Gemini, CopilotAI image generation: Midjourney, DALL·ENew York Times: Bing’s AI Chat: I Want To Be AliveIBM watsonxIA WriterHemingwayDungeons and DragonsStardew ValleySkull and BonesLarian Studios and Baldur’s Gate 3Cyberpunk 2077SendmailLoot boxesWhat A Lot Of Things – LinkedIn

Episode Eleven – Testers vs Toxic Culture and Personal Knowledge Management

Episode Eleven – Testers vs Toxic Culture and Personal Knowledge Management

Ian and Ash talk about those pesky testers forming communities and taking on toxic cultures, plus forming a dilapidated mind shack using personal knowledge management tools like Obsidian.LinksZettelkasten - Slip Box not SlipKnot More Zettelkasten Obsidian Home Page Ian's Thoughts on Obsidian Testers walkout after layoffs in the QA Team Raven testers form a union NFT grifters have terrible culture - not causation yet, but the correlation is hard to ignore.

Episode Ten – Metrics and Scrum Bashing

Episode Ten – Metrics and Scrum Bashing

Ian and Ash talk about the (mis)use of metrics, including the big four and happiness indices plus how proud Ash was of his Certified Scrum Master qualification but now bashes Scrum with everyone else.LinksHere I Belong by Matt HartleyDouglas Adams: How to stop worrying and learn to love the InternetRFC 821 - Simple Mail Transport Protocol (not RFC 822, as Ian thought, which is closely related being about the format of the files containing the messages that get transmitted over SMTP). Still, not the perfect accompaniment to a discussion about Ian’s rightness.Myth: If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage It DORA (Google DevOps Research & Assessment (Team)) MetricsHow to measure developer productivity - and how not to by Isaac SacolickScrums Allegiance WebsiteI've sold agile to to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North HaverbrookOwl asking Winnie the Pooh to leave his house for saying Agile Scrum

Episode Nine – The Great Post Office Scandal and Moxie Marlinspike's Web3 Article

Episode Nine – The Great Post Office Scandal and Moxie Marlinspike's Web3 Article

LinksTeam Guide to Testability Publishers PageThe Great Post Office Scandal Publishers Page Scandal at the Post Office Panorama BBC TV EpisodeThe Great Post Office Trial BBC Radio 4 SerialThe Great Post Office Scandal Author Nick Wallis39 Post Office convictions quashed after Fujitsu evidence about Horizon IT platform called into questionMy first impressions of web3 by Moxie MarlinspikeWeb3 is going just greatAn extremely casual code review of MetaMask's crypto by Matthew Green

Episode Eight – The Metaverse and You Build It You Run It

Episode Eight – The Metaverse and You Build It You Run It

LinksBugs in our Pockets: The risks of client-side scanningWhat A Lot of Things on Amazon AlexaSnow Crash by Neal StephensonThe Metaverse and How We'll Build It Together, at Facebook Connect 2021An Interview with Mark Zuckerberg about the Metaverse, by StratecheryA $10 Million Investment In SecondLife from IBM is the Latest Push to Build V-Business from November 2006IBM CEO Sam Palmisano in Second Life, by Ian in November 2016Ready Player One, movie trailerThe Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find It, and Who Will Build It, by Matthew BallWho Runs It, on the different options for production support by Steve SmithWhat is You Build You Run It, from Equal ExpertsEnterprise DevOps: Why You Should Run What You Build, by Stephen Orban of AWS(Paid content) Influencing empowered teams to the things that matter to you, by Sarah Wells of Financial Times

Episode Seven – Other Development Team Roles and Apple's Child Safety Measures

Episode Seven – Other Development Team Roles and Apple's Child Safety Measures

WARNING: We talk about Apple's proposed measures to limit the spread of child sexual abuse material on its platform.Episode LinksAre 64% of Features Really Rarely or Never Used?What's in a name: Experimenting with Testing Job TitlesWhat A Lot Of Things Episode Three – Four day work week and Design ThinkingGoogle Ventures Paper Prototyping videoBe More PirateJoy Inc. by Richard Sheridan founder of Menlo ConsultingThe NFR Rap video (and audio only version).All of Ian's Notes for the Apple's Child Safety measures ThingBreaking news: Matthew Green Twitter thread: "I’ve had independent confirmation from multiple people that Apple is releasing a client-side tool for CSAM scanning tomorrow. This is a really bad idea"Apple's info: Apple's Child Safety pageA moderate view: Daring Fireball: Apple’s New ‘Child Safety’ Initiatives, and the Slippery SlopeA more heated view: Edward Snowden: The All-Seeing "i": Apple Just Declared War on Your Privacy

Episode Six - The Hard Thing About Hard Things and the State of DevOps Report, 2021

Episode Six - The Hard Thing About Hard Things and the State of DevOps Report, 2021

LinksThe Mists Of Time clip from Episode 5Ian’s Other PodcastAsh’s Twitter Nemesis - @ashwinterBen Horowitz, Partner at Andreessen HorowitzBen's book: The Hard Thing About Hard ThingsIan’s book highlights from The Hard Thing About Hard ThingsThe Guardian: Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, who took a $1m salary cut to pay his workers a minimum wave of $70kManager Tools podcastState of DevOps Report 2021 (requires a biznass email)Martin Fowler* describes what he means by a platform, which has a very strong alignment with what the State of DevOps Report means by a platformExcellent talk by Matthew Skelton and Jamie Dobson on treating your platform as a product.Team Topologies on what is a thinnest viable platformQuote from Bill Gates about what is and isn't a platform (search within the page for "Neither of them are platforms")How to scale Brent from the Phoenix Project* – Actually, although it's on Martin Fowler's blog, it was a post from Evan Bottcher. Ian's mistake - sorry Evan!

Episode Five – digital legacies and The Unicorn Project

Episode Five – digital legacies and The Unicorn Project

Links:Some actual beard ASMR.“I’ve sold Agile to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook” on slide 15 of Jon McNestrie’s talk at Lean Agile Brighton 2019.Ian’s Agile Octopus Timing Alexa Skill.git rebase.Twitter to clear out inactive accounts and free up usernames.The Other Ash Winter’s Twitter Account.Ian’s three-letter Twitter handle.The Digital Legacy Association.The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data, a sequel to...The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win.The five keys to a successful Google team.Marie Kondo explains Spark Joy.Gene Kim’s talk at DevOps Days Portland 2019, on The Unicorn Project and the Five Ideals.A Brief History of Scaling LinkedIn.Bill Gates Trustworthy Computing Memo.The Goal.

Episode Four - Building Alexa Skills and popping city tech bubbles

Episode Four - Building Alexa Skills and popping city tech bubbles

Links:* Amazon Developer Services* Alexa Skills Kit* Agile Octopus* AWS Lambda Layers* Ian's Alexa Skill Source Code* Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time* Leeds Tech Bubble Divisions* Even Techies are Sick of Inequality in San Francisco* Code Club* Empowering Women with Tech* Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds Full Theme

Episode Three - Four day work week and design thinking

Episode Three - Four day work week and design thinking

Links:Steamed Hams Trial of Four Day Work Week at Microsoft Japan Utopia for Realists by Rutger BregmanOn the Phenomenon of BS Jobs Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great ThingDon Norman: Rethinking Design ThinkingNatasha Jen: Design Thinking is BSIBM Design Thinking Intro Coursed School Design Thinking ProcessIBM Design Thinking LoopAgile inception deck

Episode Two - Getting into machine learning, and Team Topologies

Episode Two - Getting into machine learning, and Team Topologies

Links:Scottish Voice Recognition ElevatorIan’s Machine Learning/Data Science linksDeep Learning Specialization | CourseraApplied Data Science with Python | CourseraKaggle: Your Home for Data ScienceTitanic: Machine Learning from DisasterTeam TopologiesConway’s LawDevOps Topologies

Episode One - collective bargaining and cargo cults.

Episode One - collective bargaining and cargo cults.

Ash and Ian talk about collective bargaining in tech, and “cargo culting”.LinksCollective bargaining:Business Insider - Here's the memo Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent to employees on the changes to Google's sexual-harassment policy after the walkout. Whole Foods employees demand Amazon break all ties with ICE and PalantirAll workers need unions – including those in Silicon ValleyMaslow's Hierarchy Of Needs - WikipediaCargo Culting:Cargo Culting - WiktionaryCargo Cult - Wikipedia"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” - Quote Investigator