Brandon (00:01.643)
Well, college football is among us. And again, Kote continues to sabbatical. So, Matt, we get to talk more to college football. And it was another fantastic weekend of college football. But don't worry. I'm not gonna make everyone talk about a full recap of all the games. We're not making this a full college football podcast, but something happened that was so crazy on Saturday that I thought it reminded me of a tech topic. So I'll just quickly recap it. NC State is playing Vanderbilt. There's less than six seconds left.

Matt Ray (00:18.018)
Not yet.

Brandon (00:30.559)
NZ State has the ball and the lead. All they have to do is snap the ball, and the quarterback really just needs to fall down. Fall down with the ball. He's in his own end zone now, but it's okay. He can take a safety. He can go out of bounds. He can fall down millions of ways. The only thing he cannot do, Matt, is fumble the ball. That's the only thing you cannot do. In this situation, just get the ball and don't fumble and

Matt Ray (00:51.362)
Ha ha ha.

Brandon (00:58.443)
Get tackled, fall down, run out of the end zone, anything, any other thing that you do, as long as it involves you falling down some way, you win the game. And of course, he was tackled in such a way that he fumbled the ball, allowing the other team, Vanderbilt, to literally just fall on it. They didn't even have to run. They just fell on it. They got a touchdown. Boom. Game over. NC State loses the game. And of course, because we're nothing if not a stats podcast.

Matt Ray (01:16.354)
Yes.

Matt Ray (01:24.535)
So good.

Brandon (01:27.74)
ESPN, that's obviously for our international listeners, that's our main sports channel over here. I guess they have some data nerds. They went through all the data, right?

Matt Ray (01:35.202)
They'd well they they they bought f did they buy four twenty seven or five twenty seven or whatever a while back? Yeah, yeah. They they th they they grab the data nerds and they put to work on other stuff.

Brandon (01:40.023)
Fi five five twenty three or whatever's five forty four. We'll have to look that up because we've definitely not said it right. Whatever whatever we said there was not right, but

Yeah, they got the data nerds. So somehow the data nerds they went through, and I don't know. I guess this is like all time, like since records have been been being kept. So out of out of teams in this similar situation, those teams have won 1,046 times to one. The one being NC State, right? That's the one that lost. So this was one of these things I would say that has never happened, probably should never happen.

Matt Ray (01:58.891)
So good.

Brandon (02:18.527)
It will never happen again. So we s we we've saw it.

Matt Ray (02:20.59)
n never say never. Never say never. 'Cause cause somebody wants to be the two.

Brandon (02:26.527)
Now it's got me thinking though, what is there such a thing as the equivalent moment in tech? Right, where someone has basically had victory in their hands and just given it back through some unexplainable way. And I've got some some ideas here. So I'll throw a couple out. And you tell me if like any of these like do you would we put them on the we'll call it we put them on the NC state level? Okay, one is

Docker passed on the Microsoft acquisition. So that was about four billion dollars, right? Groupon, that was another one I thought of. Groupon passed, I think, on a five billion dollar acquisition from Google. So that was pretty good. Blackberry kind of losing to the to the iPhone. I mean, just completely like, although I don't know if they had that one. That was more something that happened to them.

Matt Ray (02:59.5)
Yeah.

Matt Ray (03:05.922)
That that one's that one's big.

Matt Ray (03:15.256)
Yeah.

Matt Ray (03:19.214)
They they they they didn't have the shot though. Like I I I think this is this is you have you have victory in your hands and not only did you drop it, you like s threw it on the ground and danced on top of it. Right? So I you know, I I'm looking at your list. You know what's missing from your list is Yahoo buying Google.

Brandon (03:22.496)
Right.

Brandon (03:37.707)
What what is it?

Well that I that one okay, that's a good one 'cause there's a couple I had on there. I guess there was Excite passing on Google and they only wanted I guess Google wanted seven hundred and fifty K at the time. So that was a long time ago. And then Yahoo passed on it, right?

Matt Ray (03:49.134)
Wait, wait, wait. Can I get Google at that price?

Brandon (03:54.248)
No, no, you can't. I mean Yahoo. Now Yahoo rejected a forty four point six billion dollar takeover from Microsoft. If you remember that one, they were gonna get bought and they chose not to. Blockbuster passed on Netflix for fifty million dollars. Although, do I have to be honest with you, do we think I don't know. I feel like Blockbuster would have messed it up. Do you I I don't know. Do so because that one's it's not like

Matt Ray (04:03.117)
Yeah.

Matt Ray (04:15.084)
Yeah, yeah, totally. They they probably that was probably pre streaming.

Brandon (04:20.179)
I think it's like I think it's sort of like you have to just be getting the money. That's why I think the Yahoo one, I think the like where you just sort of had the money. Now, what about this one? This is a little bit different. SBF, our good friend, by that means someone we never we never knew. But he essentially had FTX going and he was, I think, like, I don't know, worth several billion dollars, like the fortieth richest person in the world. And if he had just kind of done nothing, if he hadn't committed any fraud.

Matt Ray (04:32.014)
Not my friend.

Brandon (04:46.049)
Like his portfolio of things that he bought, like he was an early investor in anthropic and like like he sort of turned out to be this like genius venture capitalist. Like his portfolio is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, probably even more now. And it was just like all you have to do is not commit fraud. But is that again is that too too much to ask? Like, I don't know. So I is there anything you can think of as er anything, but I I can't quite think of something where it's just like it's in your hand and you just like you just give it away. It's it's

Matt Ray (05:01.038)
No.

Matt Ray (05:13.964)
Yeah, yeah, that's there definitely there definitely opportunities that people had to, you know, cl close out close it out and and never look back. And man, yeah, hindsight's always twenty twenty though. So yeah, that North Carolina, that was something else.

Brandon (05:15.159)
There's gotta be something, right?

Brandon (05:37.452)
Well, I one correction I finally found it. Just as I don't want people to email us. It was the site was five thirty-eight. That was the site. Five thirty-eight was the site by Nate Selvar. And that's sad that neither one of us, both Americans, we didn't we didn't we didn't do well. We would not be good at electron math. Now, Matt, I do think the number one I did think of one I didn't t s mention to you, but I I think a br a pretty big miss was

Matt Ray (05:44.45)
Ha ha.

Matt Ray (05:48.856)
I knew it some numbers. And I knew it was Night Silver.

Brandon (06:03.937)
You know, Sirius XM not acquiring software defined talk for over a hundred million dollars. Like, do you think it's too early to call her own shot like that? Is that like a little self res referential?

Matt Ray (06:10.342)
y you know, I don't I don't think the door's closed on that deal though.

Brandon (06:14.935)
That's right. We haven't fumbled the bag yet, but we're maybe we will. So

Matt Ray (06:20.365)
I haven't seen this bag done.

Brandon (06:22.583)
That's right. That hasn't made it into the Slack channel where like, hey, I just got this offer. What do guys think? So I mean maybe that would be that'd be fun. So well, if you can think, if you're out there and you're listening, I want I want I would ask the audience to please email us or put in the Slack, like what is the biggest like I w should we call it like an own goal? 'Cause I I think that's more universal. Like an own goal, taking a

Matt Ray (06:30.165)
Yeah.

Brandon (06:46.239)
A sure victory and making it a defeat. What's the best example that we should think about in tech? And if if people send some good ones in the next time, we'll read them out on air because it's kind of fun to think about that. But to all our friends who are NC State fans, I don't know what to tell you. Like it's been a tough week. You just have to walk that one off. You just have have to move in. And you know, and if you had a bad week, don't worry. You didn't fumble with six seconds left and lose your whole team a game. I'm sure you didn't do that. Whatever it was you did, it wasn't that bad. Now.

Looking back in history, there's a and doing a little retrospection this week. There was a great post that you actually found from our our good friend Brian Cantrell. Again, someone we never actually talked talk to, but you know, he's a formerly of of Sun fame, right? I I think of him as the the creator of G Trace, but now he's really like an oxide what CTO founder. That's probably what he wants to be known as, but whatever. You know, he's a smart technical guy. And he wrote

Matt Ray (07:26.445)
I've met him.

Brandon (07:44.128)
And he wrote a long time ago, he wrote kind of his retrospective of like, here's why son you ultimately failed. And then this week he took some time to kind of revisit it. I guess like almost fifteen years later. So I know do you wanna quit you wanna give us a quick summary? Like what was his the gist of what he was trying to say?

Matt Ray (08:00.582)
I I mean the the gist of what he was trying to say is is you can be very smart at technology and and be bad at business. And the key to a successful technology companies is you know they they have a good balance. You know, they're able to to bring, you know, good technology ideas to market, but actually still have the follow-through and the interest and seeing those things succeed in the world. And I mean the my my TLDR for for what

his take of of Sun's failure was was like they just weren't interested in the business side of being a technology business.

Brandon (08:41.035)
Well he kind of says it here. Here's this quote. It says, Sun had become bored with mechanics of running a business. End quote. And I and that's a really kind of I I guess I I really thought about that. Cause I spent some time at Sun, but certainly not at Brian's level or certainly not doing anything of importance. But I but I kind of thought to myself, like, I don't know. I don't really think and of course, like thousands of people worked at Sun, so like there'll be thousands of opinions, but I don't know. I kind of felt like this is one of these things where it was like

You know, all the developers and engineers are doing everything right, but these business people just got bored. And I was like, I don't really feel like that was the case, at least of the people I interacted with at Sun. And that's kind of what I ultimately I kind of wanted to talk about. Was you know, and there was all of these reasons that people listed. And I don't know, I never go to this site. Do you go? Is this lobster site, lobster RS? I don't know. I never go there, but it was linked. It was linked in there. And there was a ton of comments, right?

Matt Ray (09:28.459)
No, I and I I don't have time. Yeah.

Brandon (09:37.514)
And of the of course there was no shortage of reasons. So a couple of people said was there was the hardware software silos. So Spark and Slayer teams co-designed and they they weren't really working together. And they they basically said that the instruction set kind of got frozen. And that was the reason Sunfield. And I'm like, I don't know. That one felt like pretty in the weeds. Then there was another one where the Java strategy was misdirected, right? So they had all this energy in the Java double E and you know all the the things that went on there and that.

Matt Ray (09:57.964)
Yeah.

Brandon (10:07.265)
People weren't really working on Slayers. And I was like, I don't know, man. I think there were a lot of people working on Slayers. There are lot of people working on Java. and then there was the idea that like there was some commoditizing of its own hardware, right? That like, well, Sun kind of was out there trying to make it work for Java, and that was kind of undercut what Sun really needed to build. But do any of these technical explanations like resonate with you? You're you're you have a good, you're a good

a barometer for this or or or maybe your own, or you're just like, Man, sun just this one thing in the technology world is really what cost sun the problem.

Matt Ray (10:43.285)
I don't think it's one thing. I think Sun's problem was they were very good, high quality, yet also expensive hardware, software stacks that, yeah, people love them, but you know, as as some of the articles point out, like the business side of things, if you read some of the other articles, they're like they weren't very good at the business, and there were plenty of low-cost competitors

that were aggressive in this market, like Dell on the hardware side. Linux just totally kneecapped Solaris, where, you know, there there is this alternate history where if Sun had done a better job of embracing like the open Solaris movement earlier and more aggressively, like we'd all be running Solaris on everything instead of Linux, but that didn't happen. And by the time, you know, they kind of made that move, it was too

Brandon (11:38.017)
They could have bought Apple famously. There was a time that the Apple was was you know, needed cash and they could have bought Apple. I think they would have messed it up, but that was an idea. Mm-hmm.

Matt Ray (11:46.251)
Yeah, well and and and and that actually like fits in with that like the technology and the business aren't good together. Yeah, Apple wasn't really well known for that for a long time. They like, they've got cool tech that like it's kind of off on its own thing and people who use this stuff are like, Yeah, it's expensive, but it's great. Like that used to be the Apple story, right? It kinda still is. But you know, it's like now they've yeah, I I would say that you know th they they they figured that thing out.

Brandon (12:09.397)
Although Apple seems good at business. They seem good. They they they they seem like they figured that out part out. Tim Tim Cook straightened that out.

Matt Ray (12:16.692)
Yeah. But but I think I think you know, Sun was they just ran into the open source and commodity hardware wave, you know, full tilt and it just wrecked them. You know, the and and the things that might have saved them like you know, well integrated stacks, it's like people could do it cheaper. And and weren't willing to pay the premium.

Brandon (12:37.301)
Right. Well, this is the thing, you know. Well, one of the things, and this is another part that kind of caught my mind in this whole write up, is basically he tells the story, and it's kind of a good story for his new company, Oxide. He basically tells the story that somebody called into Sun and was like, I wanna they wanted to buy like two hundred thousand dollars of hardware, right? Something like that. And they wanted it like soon, relatively soon. So they called in the sun and then sun rep or when they finally got someone on the phone, they basically said, like, listen.

Can you just could you just buy this with a credit card over like five like five different transactions or something? Like there's no way don't and that what's what's going on there is basically they're just saying, like, we don't have a way to like kind of buy to interact with you because you're too small is kind of what goes on. And then he goes on to say that that that same person basically contacted Dell, got a Dell rep on the phone and you know, the Dell hardware got there, whatever, within a short period of time and they were more than happy yeah, they were more than happy to work with them and it, you know.

Matt Ray (13:27.946)
Yeah. F like six hours later. Yeah.

Brandon (13:33.834)
Off goes the world. And of course, the the kicker to the story is that person that was the salesperson is now, I believe, his co-founder at Oxide. Basically, they sort of like you know worked together and did that. And so, but and this is the part where I guess I I take issue with it in a fun way, in a good way, in a friendly way. It's like I kind of feel like it's a little unfair because what Brian Brian is saying is it's like what he's kind of pointing out, and I think we see this a lot is like if you are a small customer and you want to buy from a very large company that

really doesn't service, you know, small customers, it's going to be very difficult, maybe impossible. Right. And and I think that's the case everywhere. Like even today, like I think if you wanted to go buy a mainframe from IBM, and you it's not going to be easy. Like you're not going to like you as a person or maybe a 10 person company, it's going to be hard for you to buy from that. Or and I'm not picking on IBM. I think you could pick on you could mention this with like almost any really large

Corporation, Salesforce, like to get like one or two sales licenses of Salesforce, like it's it's not gonna be easy. So I feel like what he's doing here is just saying it's like, well, this company, and I've always said this is like when you when you want to take something down, just take the strengths and turn it against something, right? It's just like Sun was really good at selling millions dollar deals or you know, hundreds of millions of dollar deals to like really large enterprises like financial services. And

That's really where they made most of their money. So to come back and be like to expect that corporation and that company to then be able to work with small customers is like, I just think it's a little unrealistic. And I don't think it's I don't think there's anything about being bored with business. I think it's more about this is how you've set up your business model. And I would finally, at least on this one little part here, I would say it's like, as I've heard on his podcast say it's like Oxide's very clear. Like,

You cannot buy an Oxide computer from them. Like you can't just buy there is no developer machine. There is no, there's no home lab version. He says it's like the number one request they always get. And this he's been very clear. He's like, we're not going to do it, which I listen totally get. I completely understand. That would distract them. They couldn't service it, right? But I think to be fair about that, that's kind of where Sun is coming from, too. It's like we built up this incredible enterprise sales machine. And this is how we were going to sell to customers. And it's it was, and this is the thing.

Matt Ray (15:31.072)
Yeah, there's no home lab version. Yeah.

Brandon (15:55.594)
And it has been extremely profitable, profitable. In fact, Sun was at one point the most valuable company on the New York stock exchange for like a very brief period. Either that or Cisco. They like one and two there for a little bit, right? so I think he's a little unfair, right? I think he's a little and it's just sort of like you kind of have to acknowledge the the situation. You can't just be like, people were bored because I don't think anyone was bored. I think people wanted to make money, the sales team and the business people there. Go ahead.

Matt Ray (16:20.978)
It my my having having been around both high functioning and low functioning sales organizations, I think it's it's a lack of of structure. Like they you know, from the the the article that was linked about you know trying to buy two hundred thousand dollars worth of hardware from you know from from Sun, they

Sun wasn't equipped for a a 15 person startup to buy hardware at that level. They were just like, that doesn't fit our business model. And it's like, well, you know, that's that just seems like a an inefficient sales organization. Like, okay, you know what, we're gonna have, you know.

two tiers, three tiers, four tiers of of businesses and you know, we're not gonna let these things just fall from the cracks and get ignored. You know, I mean, yes, probably, you know, Sun's sales organization was, well, we've got named accounts and enterprise. And then that was it. They were like, what about S and B? Yeah, yeah, well what about S and B? What about, you know, startups? It's like, no, we we don't need to do that. And meanwhile over at Dell Yeah. Meanwhile over at Dell, you know, they've got

Brandon (17:29.109)
Yeah, I'm sure, right? Yeah.

Brandon (17:35.307)
Like call the channel. Call some other group to do that, right? Mm-hmm.

Matt Ray (17:40.32)
They've easily got, you know, at least four tiers of sales organizations and you've got, you know, some probably a junior sales guy who's who's working, you know, the the SM you know, the the small end of the market who's working in volume. You know, he's scrappy, he's like, you you need, you know, you need thirty K of stuff. I can make that happen. You know, you need two hundred K, we can do that. And occasionally to him, this is a whale that lands in his his pond and he's like, you know, dude, I just made my number. Right. So

You have to have attention in those because there are going to be anomalies. Like, yeah, maybe maybe, you know, day in, day out you're working on 10, 20, 30 K deals and you're making small margins on them, but occasionally things like this fall in. Your sales organization needs to be accommodating to that. I mean, that's that to me, it's just like they they they just weren't even ready to like answer the phone. It just yeah. and and you know, you see that.

Brandon (18:37.815)
So let's just try to okay, well let's just take a case say, like maybe we should do this live one day. And it's like like if we called Oxide right now and we said we had two hundred thousand dollars and we want a machine, like do you think they'd do it? Do you think they they they'd prepare to sell it tell us?

Matt Ray (18:49.503)
Yeah. I I I think I I mean I haven't looked at their price sheet, but I believe they probably have something that starts around there. Like I don't know what their bottom end model is, but

Brandon (18:59.317)
Okay, you think they'd return our phone call? And they would do it and they would give it to us in a really fast and a f and just the way that they they said, just like Delwood, they'd give it to us super fast and they treat us with like they treat us really good and they'd come out and they'd, you know, and be on the phone with us and like I mean, 'cause I mean, I just started out it's like I feel like there's plenty of companies today that we can name that like like I said, I don't think like I always went back, I'll just use my IBM examples. Like I like IBM wouldn't do that. IBM's not gonna sell you a mainframe.

Matt Ray (19:08.319)
I don't know about that. Like I think

Matt Ray (19:15.593)
I'm sure they would

Brandon (19:26.411)
Like you if you're one person they call and you're like, I got money for a mainframe, like I I doubt you could do it. Like, I mean, I don't think you'd even sign the contract with them, right? Like they'd send you a really long contract, you know, and like T's and C's, and you'd have to sign it. You'd have to either review it yourself or sign it yourself. Like and I I I think many other companies. That's why I think it feels like it's like a little bit, this feels like a little simplistic, unfair, right?

Matt Ray (19:46.195)
I I think if you're but but to Oxide's defense, they're being transparent about where their bottom is. You know, they're like this is this you you know, you must be this tall to to ride the Oxide

Brandon (19:55.97)
But isn't sun wasn't Sun kind of doing the same thing? They're like, listen, we don't really they've kind of if anything, they could have just said no, but they were like, listen, we don't we can't really do this. Here's the way to do it.

Matt Ray (20:03.626)
No, no, no, no, no, no. The article he he tried to call them and tell them exactly what he wanted from their site. And he's like, you know, I want this, this and this and you know, the

Brandon (20:09.579)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Matt Ray (20:14.483)
you know, send me a a price sheet on that. And he just got like crickets. So they weren't even answering the phone. I mean, it's it's it's one thing to just qualify it. You know, you call up and say, I've got, you know, I I call up and I'm like, I got $2,000 oxide. What can I buy? And they're like, you know, well, we can get you 10 t-shirts, right? but they're not gonna sell me, you know you know, they're not gonna sell me that. I, you know, and and I get that. But

Brandon (20:18.913)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brandon (20:24.427)
Right.

Brandon (20:29.769)
Right.

Nice t shirts, really, really well designed T shirts.

Matt Ray (20:41.791)
They need to have, you know, somebody needs to be qualifying these things. So so when when some startup you've never heard of who's got funding shows up and they wanna spend, you know, they're like, We wanna buy two hundred thousand worth

you know, two hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff today, you're like, all right, let's get you in the pipeline and and you know, because I know they're having their own supply chain problems and everything, but you know, you at least get them in the door so you can have that conversation. That's where it fell apart for for Sun is they were just leaving money on the table. And Dell was scooping it all up as fast as they could.

Brandon (21:16.855)
All right. Well, I don't know. I think he's too hard on Sun there. And I guess I'm gonna put th forth my my belief of like what went on here. And I think it's pretty simple. Is like ultimately any business, when your main cash cow is attacked, right? When someone comes out with a better, faster, cheaper way of doing this exact thing that you offer, you're you're there's really nothing you can do. Like it's game over. And I think it's very simple that.

What happened here was Linux became you know the dominant developer operating system and running it on x86 became the cheapest way and very accessible. Of course, Dell, and that was led by to some to to some extent, you know, your your your friends over Google kind of figured that out. They're just like, hey, listen, it's just better to run all these like small, cheap servers and we'll just make them all replaceable, right? And if that happens to your business, I feel like it's just game over. Like no one, like you can have like

The greatest management people ever. And it's like, there's no way it's going to change. And I, you know, it was kind of interesting because we were talking about earlier, like some of the own goals. But like I kind of feel like the same thing happened to Blackberry, right? It's like, it's not like the BlackBerry was suddenly like that different. It was just the fact that the iPhone happened. Right. And it's like, so it's like almost like an external force happens to you. And like, sure, there's a way you can potentially get through it, but most of the time your business is fundamentally done. Right. It's like stack overflow, right? Like,

Matt Ray (22:33.3)
Yeah.

Matt Ray (22:43.083)
Ha ha ha.

Brandon (22:45.451)
I think Stack Overflow is done in the world of chatbots. I don't know what Stack Overflow could have done to prevent this. I'm not saying they can't like somehow the brand can't live on. I mean, that can obviously happen. Nokia is the other one I was thinking about. You know, Nokia used to make cell phones. Like, I know Nokia, the company, still like does something. I think it makes some type of like.

Matt Ray (22:55.978)
Yeah.

Matt Ray (23:05.941)
Hardware routers and networking gear? Yeah.

Brandon (23:07.883)
Something along those lines. So it's like, and I think also the the I just forgot the name of it, the company that owned Blackberry, we'll think of it in a second. Anyway, they RIM, right? They I think they make like I think they make an operating system for like cars to like do you know like audio and visual stuff. So it's it's not that they can't live on, but it's they're fundamentally changed. So like so tell me why I'm wrong. It's like if these things happen to you, it's just like, I don't know, it's like a tornado hitting your house. It's like

Matt Ray (23:14.953)
Rem. Research in motion. Yeah.

Matt Ray (23:23.327)
Maybe. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon (23:35.445)
I should have planned for it. And like I don't think you were gonna plan for that tornado. It's just like this is what happens in business.

Matt Ray (23:39.315)
Yeah, I I mean there there's definitely a very strong argument that Sun they they they decided not to make any moves. You know, everything they did was

after the fact that you it was after the fact. Everyone was telling them like, hey, you guys should do something about Linux with Solaris. You know, hey, you should do something about your expensive hardware. And by the time they shipped like Solaris on X86, it's like that ship had sailed. Right? By the time that you know they did open Solaris, it's like Linux had won. You know, you you you didn't understand it, but you know, and and by the time you know people were like, well, you know, s Oracle on on on Solar

hilarious is is unbeatable. It's like, you know, Oracle had already had their own Linux distro and and you know and decided like they'd hold on to you for for the the the accounts you had, but you know they had moved on too, right? And so all of Sun's

Brandon (24:31.851)
Right. They they've moved on, right? But I think this is the whole thing. It's like there are things that possibly could have been done. Maybe like the brand of Sun could have lived on. Maybe it could have been like the Red Hat, like the and a much smaller thing. Because again, like even though remember Red Hat at its height, I think it was required for like thirty-four billion, something like that, which is great. I'm not listening no shade on that. But like, you know, that was a fraction of what Sun was worth, right? You know, certainly at its height. So I just think when you have this whole apparatus built up around

Matt Ray (24:50.59)
Yeah, something like that.

Brandon (25:00.777)
servicing one very, you know, high-end computing needs. And then there's a better, cheaper solution to that. I don't think you're gonna like, I really for the most part, don't think you're gonna do anything. And then of course there's a bunch of funny things. Now I don't think Sun's attempts were all that good. Cause now that I did get a first hand look at there's the whole Jonathan Schwartz and there's this red shift and there's blue shift. It's a story for another day. But it's a very complicated, ultimately awkward strategy that I was I remember seeing it and and on all hands, I was like,

This definitely isn't like I there may be no solution, but this this thing we're about to do is definitely not gonna work. So that's I think you could some critiques there, but I think I think it's a little he's a little tough. Now I did look it up here with my good friend Claude. As it stands, at least what Claude says, it it says that it's looks like it's gonna take about 500k for us to get anything from Oxide. That looks like the minimum price. So I mean, to be fair, I just wanna be fair about this. Like, I don't I don't think oxide is quote.

Matt Ray (25:36.499)
Yeah.

Matt Ray (25:53.395)
Okay.

Brandon (25:59.202)
bored with doing business. I think Oxfide is segmented in the market that like we can only service these customers and we don't have any other way to do it. May maybe there's a secondhand Oxide server rack out there we could buy on eBay. I doubt it. But but if it was it's so I think we I think we should just be kind of fair. And I did and I and I just wanted to stand up for like like it's not so much anyone's like quote bored with business. It's just like the business is fundamentally changed. And there are times we're like, hey man, it's just going to be over. So I don't know.

Matt Ray (26:16.154)
That's fine. Right?

Brandon (26:29.099)
Give you the final word. Am I right or am I wrong?

Matt Ray (26:31.594)
I think for Sun there was a a small window, but yes, hey man, the business is over.

Brandon (26:38.945)
Sun. But it was a good time. Sun was I will say this though. Sun was a good time to work at and it was a fun place to work at. And there probably was less like meetings. The the one thing I think you I think you could say is like there were less people that were worried about budgets at Sun than other places, which was cool at the time. Now that I look back on it, I'm like, we had it pretty good, you know? Cause like every time in every time I'm in like one of those budget meetings, I'm always like, Man, at sun. We didn't do this that we didn't have that many meetings like this. And we and then it was fun. It was good. So

So you know what? Everyone should do. Maybe there should be a holiday. Like on like a on the day that Sun got acquired by Oracle, there should be no budget meetings that day. And that's how we should all remember Sun. It's like, hey, we're just we're all having a good time. Everyone take Friday of Sun's demise, the Friday after Sun got bought by Oracle. Everyone, no judge judging, no budget meetings, everyone take the day off. That's that's what I propose. Now.

Matt Ray (27:28.114)
January twenty seventh, twenty ten.

Brandon (27:30.859)
Perfect. That's like yeah, good and yeah, it's like a good like a ski vacation on North America. It's like everyone gets January twenty seventh off in memory of sun. And we and you know, we could have like posters made with like Jonathan For Schwartz and Scott McNeely and Yeah, let's let's get behind that. We're trying you know what? Our our push to get In Thanksgiving adopted by the world's not going so well. Maybe this will be the one that this is unifying one.

Matt Ray (27:35.402)
Just hey it Yeah.

Matt Ray (27:44.516)
We can we can pair it with Australia Day. It Australia's Australia Sunday. There you go.

Brandon (27:57.888)
Everyone remember sun. And then the people that don't have know anything about tech, just be like, well, it has to do with the sun. We'll just we'll just make it up. We'll be like, Yeah, it's something to do. It's it's just a sun day. It's a day for you to enjoy out being outside.

Matt Ray (28:04.2)
Sunday. Yes.

But Br Brandon, this is Sundays are already a day off.

Brandon (28:12.981)
Well, listen, I can't solve all the problems. Now, another thing that popped up this week, this little bit blast from the past, is Stephen O'Grady over at Red Monk. He wrote, I think of this as a pretty famous piece, but you tell me he wrote the the new kingmakers, like way back in 2013, I guess. And I remember kind of reading this and thinking, like, this was sort of like one of the the big, you know, ideas and then I don't know, good thought pieces, if you will, around that time. And I it sort of, I guess, is like a

Matt Ray (28:26.995)
Yeah, yeah, that's

Brandon (28:41.087)
An enterprise version of software eats the world. His point was in 2014 was just like, hey, all this technology stuff is happening, right? And the people that are ultimately making the decision about like how technology gets built, and more importantly, what infrastructure and what software we're going to use are the developers, right? And if you're not talking to the developers and you're out there trying to build and sell software, then you're missing out on. And you could even say maybe this is sort of like deep.

Deep inside of this was the beginning of developer relations. I don't know if that how big it was before that, but I feel like this was like one of these ideas that sort of came out of it was like developers are the key to winning over, you know, infrastructure deals going in the future. So I don't know, did I do a good job summarizing that? Is that how you think of this piece? Like what do you think of it when you think back on it?

Matt Ray (29:27.402)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I ha I haven't re reread it recently, but it definitely planted the seeds that, you know

developers the choices they're making at the low level percolate to the top and they affect what your stack looks like, which affects you know what you're shipping. And you know, by keeping by by getting developers engaged and on your side, you can you can steer the business. And so this is yeah, it it's developer relations kind of falls out of this idea that we need to get the people making the lower level decisions on on our side and

And that's going to steer, you know, the the business conversations later on. And I think even better than all the like you know VMware or than like developer relations stuff is if you look at like VMware's VMUGs and and and operations like that, it's like if you just get the people who are making the operations decisions well aligned, well engaged,

You know, they're they're going to become your champions. And you know, Microsoft knew this, right? You know, they they they knew this, Apple knew this, you know. You've got your Gai Kawasaki's and and you know, things that came out of the the antitrust hearings with the the Halloween papers. It's like everybody knew the game was to get the lower level people to become your champions, to become your advocates, to to be pulling for you, to you know, tie up their you know, their their self

you know, their their own self image with your commercial products. And so, you know, the the new Kingmakers was a good just, you know, hey, cards out on the table. This is the state of the world. You need to pay attention to developers, 'cause they're gonna be making decisions on your behalf.

Brandon (31:20.927)
And maybe, you know, kind of like you know, kind of going back to our previous topics, like maybe Linux is the the de facto best example of it all, right? Ultimately the developers said they we want Linux, we're gonna build Linux ourselves. Linux is like truly like the the most successful open source project of all time, never will be dethroned, right? And so that's probably the best example of it. So I don't I was kind of thinking, you know, one of the questions I can have in my mind is like, well, like we should just like re re reevaluate the whole thesis. Do we think this became true over the last 10 years? I think

Matt Ray (31:27.637)
yeah.

Brandon (31:50.498)
I think kind of like I don't I guess as I kind of even asked that question, I'm like, I think is resoundingly true. It's like the people that won over developers and ultimately found a way to, if you will, get their trust are the frameworks and the software applications and the services that got used. I mean, I guess GitHub would be another one. It's like, although funny enough, built by I guess the creator of Linux, right? So it's like I'm it's kind of maybe two for two there, right? So

so it's kind of interesting to kind of think of that. So I don't know, is there any reason we would say this was not true? That I was trying to think of, I trying to try to pose the the alternative view, you know, if you will. Like, is there is there anything? I guess maybe the only thing I can think about is like we wouldn't necessarily the best technology didn't always win during this period of last 10 years. I don't think anyone would argue that. So that maybe kind of says like something else was going on there. Developers, it wasn't just a technical merit. There was something else to it.

Matt Ray (32:28.009)
I mean

Matt Ray (32:44.329)
I mean, th there are always, you know, counterexamples, the the grit in the in the machinery of like ELA's and and you know, salespeople taking the executives out for golf and and Formula One. I mean developers don't always win.

Brandon (32:51.607)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon (32:57.109)
Maybe we should just say Oracle here. Right. Maybe or maybe we should say everyone should turn on an F1 race and you see the cars going around with the giant tech sponsorships on it. You're like, well, it wasn't all these developers who actually won. And I I think Oracle's maybe the best example. It feels like everyone took a shot at displacing Oracle in one of many different ways. And Oracle's, I don't know. It's it's chugging along. Seems like they're doing they're they're doing pretty well. So so I guess there's a different side of it. Now the

Matt Ray (33:20.273)
Minus the layoffs.

Brandon (33:22.773)
The thing that I thought that was interesting, he wrote a new piece this week. He said, Agents, the new kingmaker. So this is basically him kind of reevaluating it, looking back and saying, like, well, where do we stand now? And I think his his point is basically, you know, kind of just a quick like history of like we went from like kind of auto complete, you know, all the way to like, you know, IDE generated code to like where we are now, where you just, you know, you just go into cloud code and just tell it what what you want and out pops a ton of new applications. So in this world, he kind of feels like, you know, it's it's gonna change, right? That

ultimately, I guess the question is if developers aren't the new kingmakers, now, like who is? So maybe we'll start with like what do you think of the the qu open question? Do you think developers going forward would be considered kingmakers like they were like this past 10 years, or will it radically shift?

Matt Ray (34:08.948)
I I think it's it's shifting. I think developers are substantially losing a lot of power right now. you know, they're they're still

They're still building the software, but now it's like they're hurting the the agents. You know, they're they're overseeing development rather than doing the development. And so they're becoming pro project managers and and product managers and you know, code reviewers and and r wrangling these agents. And as part of that, they're they're deferring some of the the taste

of software off back to the agents. You know, they're they're saying like, you know, go do this. And if you don't specify, you know, the agents are going to use the things that they're given. And and so in some enterprises it may be like, go do this. And the agent looks around and says, we have an ELA for this. These are the things that are open to me. You know, or these are, you know, these are my options. They've been they've been passed down from on high because of, you know,

something that came out of the FinOps group, you know, that that they've decided that this is how the these are the tools available to you. So I I I definitely think that AI agents are making decisions, but I I think those decisions are are constrained outside of developers. Yeah, I I I think developers have lost a lot of power.

for for steering the ship. And I don't know where the the steering has gone. I'm not saying like, you know, the the CFO is the new kingmaker. It's like I think we're in a really turbulent era right now where there's lots of people trying to steer the ship at the same time. And you know, you're seeing all sorts of fallout where, you know

Matt Ray (35:55.837)
People are like, well we'll you know, we'll just have AI do everything and then we saw in the the Shopify C C AO is like all it is is slap grenades going back and forth. It's like, Well what did you expect?

Brandon (36:08.501)
Now remember though, the Shopify, twelve months previous to that, or roughly twelve months pre he was the one that said like everyone has to use AI. So so that was like an interesting pairing of like his tweets, which were fun.

Matt Ray (36:15.227)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So so so who's who's the kingmaker there? It was him? Yeah?

Brandon (36:22.271)
Yeah, I mean, no, it's a good that's a it's a good question. But I guess, you know, on the technology evaluation part, I think it kind of implicit in his article there. I think he says something like I think he implies, I guess, that like, well, it's not so good if the agents just decide on the architecture and stuff like that. But then I was, you know, I I had an opportunity this week to ride in one of Google's self driving vehicles. It was very exciting. The Waymo. We did the Waymo thing. And you know everyone else, you know, had the same experience. You get in there, you're like, at first it's cool, then you're like,

This is how it is. And and it kind of got me thinking a little bit around this. It's sort of like, you know, is it's like I've kind of just deferred all the driving decisions to the way mow. Right. And I'm like, but I think it's makes I think it generally makes pretty good decisions. Although we were all critiquing it because when it was like driving us to where we went to go, we're like, it took this weird route. And we're like, I don't know. I don't know. We would not have gone this way. But we're like, I don't know. Like it, you know, it seemingly has information that

Matt Ray (37:01.981)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ray (37:16.989)
You know, i i it it it's probably fine and now Vercel has a new customer.

Brandon (37:21.397)
Right. I was like, I don't know, but it's like but it's one of these things where you're like, I it has all this information I don't have because I just know I know the map of the city, but I don't know the real time traffic, right? I don't really know what's going on. So I have to defer to it a little bit. so I guess it kind of brings me back to the question. It's like, you know, and for you, Matt, maybe this is your world a little bit. It's like if if you had to come up with an architecture, like we're gonna build some web app or something like that, like.

Is it better to give that decision to like, let's just say you're average software architect? I don't want to like pick out like, you know, like the greatest percent, but just somebody like average, someone or slightly above average. Or is it better just to punch that into cloud code and be like, what do you recommend? Like, like, do we think it's gonna be that different? Or is cloud code gonna be that much more wrong than the software architect?

Matt Ray (38:09.479)
No. That that's the thing. It's like it's it's trained on like, you know, the average of everything that's already out there. And so if you're taking your average architect and you're asking them, you know, to produce something, they're probably gonna look around and, you know, s stick to you know, quote unquote best practices. Well, that's generally what a lot of the AI things are doing. I the the pattern I've kind of

started to see that I I like is is is don't say, you know, build me a new software architecture. It's like build me five and tell me, you know, and and let me like review them and and give me, you know, maybe have another agent critique them and tell me like w the pros and cons of each. But you know, give me give me present me with a couple of choices rather than try to say like this is the one true answer. Cause there's rarely one true answer.

Brandon (38:57.804)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon (39:03.991)
Yeah, and why I like that. I mean, I think a lot of people are doing the same thing. It's like it's really is pretty good to like switch between codex and Claude and just have them kind of like sanity check either. No, I think there's a weird loop. Sometimes you can get in there and be like, they sort of like I don't want to say they argue, but like start giving different opinions. But it's sort of like one blind spot gets, you know, if you will, exposed by one of them and then the other one can kind of like fill in the details. So I like that. So I don't know. I guess to it's like I don't it's kind of like the self driving thing. It's like I think it's fine. I think most of the time it's it's fine if something else makes the decisions. I don't think it's

It's necessarily wrong. I do think, in my opinion, though, it's just still comes back to somebody has to have an idea of a problem they want to solve. And then they have to be willing to, if you will, solve it in some software way. And it doesn't really matter anymore to me. It's like if you were a developer or if you're someone that just got really good at using the agent tools, I don't feel like there's a huge difference anymore, but I still feel like there's a very

There's still a very finite group of people that still want to do that. And I've had a couple of experiences over in the last couple of weeks where people that I think would embrace kind of coding agents generally don't want to do it. It's just like thinking and kind of work that they don't want to do. So I feel like there's going to be, I don't know, I guess we'll just call them developers going forward. I don't know what everyone call it, agent driver or agent, you know,

Whatever whatever word is in the future. And it feels like that's still going to exist because I just think a lot of people still don't want to do all this kind of stuff. Like, what your thoughts on that? Do you think like your wife or people in your life, you know, like the quote normal people? I still feel like there's like a barrier between that group and actually using agents. Now it could close, but I still think that's a huge jump between people. What are your thoughts?

Matt Ray (40:47.648)
I mean I think like professionally you kinda have to. because the number of places not doing it is increasingly diminishing because people who are well versed in using agents can

ostensibly outperform or at least produce more volume. And and and obviously volume is sometimes confused with quality, but in a lot of business cases that's all you need is volume. And so that's on like you the professional side. On the the personal side, I think

I i I think the agents are gonna take a little bit of work. and and so seeing things like Muse and and you know, New Siri and and whatever happens with Chat GPT and and the kind of consumer facing things, they're going to they're they're gonna have to like keep you know running up against the wall of indifference and

apathy of of most consumers. You know, not not not most. I mean, lots of people are trying Chat GPT and and you know using it, but I think trying to get someone switched over to an agentic lifestyle, that's a bigger step. And so I think what you're gonna end up with is a lot more like, do this one little task for me. you're okay at that. You know, maybe I'll let you do another task. But I I I mean you know prove me wrong but I I don't see like too many too many of our parents like

jumping on board at anything other than you know, asking for directions and setting timers.

Brandon (42:32.033)
Yeah, I think that's true. But I think it's even like I'll even say like the Gen, you know, whatever, Gen Z, Gen Y, whoever you want say, you know, that group is people as well. Like I I kind of look at going forward, it's like, I don't think that group of people is necessarily like everyone in that group's gonna like quickly start building software and being comfortable with it. Like, I think a lot of the people just like they just don't want to do it. They're just like, I've wanna do other things. And so I guess there's really kind of two outcomes I see. There's one that the the agents just get so good that like you can just tell it like

You know, you can just give it one simple statement, like, I don't know, like whatever, like build me an app that inventories my the Ben Thompson, build me an app that inventories the house and tells me where everything is. And like based on that one question or prompt, it just does everything. Like there's like literally nothing you have to do with it. So you can kind of get to that level of agentic ability where it's like any request that's made, the agent can fulfill. But like the world we're in right now, it's like, no, you really still need to.

be someone that's familiar with software design to build something that's like good with it, right? And I don't know, doesn't mean you necessarily have to have a computer science degree, but you kind of have to have your way around a little bit, like know what a database is, know what, you know, the domain is, know what, know something, right? And so I don't know, what do you think? Do you think that collapses or will that like, will that need for that basic, I'm calling it like, let's just call it like one or two semesters of computer science.

Or like or kind of like you've read some basic architecture book, like, is that even going to be your prerequisite or is that prerequisite completely go away?

Matt Ray (44:03.58)
No, no. I I I I think I don't remember who it was who was calling for the the no code future, but you know, maybe they were ten years too early, but I think we're getting there. I think we're we're getting to the point where rather than expect people to understand, you know, the fundamentals of computing, the computing's gonna come to them and meet them where they are. I I think that's a much more realistic

Brandon (44:14.071)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ray (44:26.437)
vision of you know people are gonna say you know hey Siri put this on my calendar and nobody's ever gonna think well is you know is it an ICS is there is there an RSS feed somewhere you know are they following this? Like no then I mean it's the same way like our kids consume via phones and iPads they don't understand like you know the fundamentals of overclocking

Brandon (44:50.187)
Or more simple, they don't understand like other there's a whole group of kids that just don't understand the file system. They're like, Where is it? They're like, It's in Google. They're like, Where's the file? They're like, What do you mean? They're like, We have no idea. So that's that that part is true.

Matt Ray (44:58.147)
Exactly. Yeah. The the the there's no concept of like why Ram.

Brandon (45:03.827)
Yeah. Like what what does that even mean? Well, it's interesting because I mean his closing line in his piece here, he basically says, quote, if you want to know who the next king queens or kings will be, your best bet may be to talk to an agent, which is sort of like kind of like, yeah. I mean, that's kind of where you're going with it. Like the agents are gonna be so smart that they're gonna figure it all out. So it's a good piece. I really enjoyed it. I thought like it's provocative thinking, doing our best. We're gonna maybe have Stephen O'Grady on one of the the the podcasts in the family here, maybe on the Enterprise AI show.

Maybe on this one, but I want to get more of his thoughts. I really like this this thinking and it'll be interesting for all of us to see where it goes. Now, finally, Matt, you know, didn't want to talk too much about AI this week, but you posted something in here that I thought was quite fun, right? And picking up on, you know, exactly what's gonna go on the agents, the ringer, which is a famous relatively famous pop culture sports site here in the United States. Well, they do what the ringer does. They just sort of like they see the a topic being discussed and they build a a little bracket.

A little bracket of ways to to think about either how AI is going to kill us all. So they're calling that that's the it's over region, or how we're going to save ourselves from the agents. And they're calling that the quote they're the we're so back region. So we won't go through all of them. We won't we won't do a full bracket here, but I'm gonna read through it's a great read. It's a fun read. So I'm gonna read you the eight options for the reasons that.

Matt Ray (46:23.341)
Such a good article. Yeah.

Brandon (46:31.987)
Agents may kill us all. And I want you to pick one of those and then we'll talk about it. And then I'm gonna read the eight reasons that we're going to prevail. We humanity will win over the the agents, and you can pick one of those and we'll talk about it. So here it is, starting off with like the reasons we may all die. Okay, one is killer robots, right? sorry, no, one is targeted misinformation, two is killer robots, terrorist attacks, or a terrorist hack rather was on there, a gas attack.

Matt Ray (46:50.033)
Yeah.

Brandon (47:00.833)
Three, just unknown. We don't know. We'll call that a wild card. systemic takeover. That's another one. Some type of bioweapon strike or mass psychosis. So those are the eight different reasons that we could potentially be defeated by ages. Which one do you think is most likely of this?

Matt Ray (47:03.505)
Can't c can't conceive.

Matt Ray (47:19.015)
I'm going with systemic takeover. it it's not sexy, but I think as as we continue to offload more and more to compute, I think you know it it it just means that less people understand what's going on and you know it it it's all it's all just being handled by AI. They they're doing a great job. So that's that's my pick.

Brandon (47:24.671)
Okay. Mm-hmm.

Brandon (47:46.104)
Okay, so you're basically saying there like the agents all take over all the computer systems and they like they're kind of doing everything. And then it's some form of like we're all happy like idiocracy kind of takes over. And then before we know it, we're just like it's like the matrix. We're all in the we're locked into the matrix and we're in that, like those beehives and they're harvesting us for energy. Systemic takeover. All right, I like it. That's that's a good one. I mean

Matt Ray (47:50.277)
Yeah. And and and we're all happy with it. Yeah.

Sure. Or Star Trek, right?

Yep. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Ray (48:08.718)
And and and the the thing about systemic takeover is like it doesn't have to be bad. I mean, you know, what what how how do we feel about Wally?

Brandon (48:14.423)
Could be good, could be bad. Okay, so that that was I like huh.

Brandon (48:20.961)
True. There there's there's some some some some interesting takes on it. All right. Well listen, I was gonna go with targeted misinformation because I still think you need human beings. It takes human beings to basically destroy other human beings, right? And the way that you do that is you just get everyone incredibly confused and like fighting against each other, and that leads to some type of like mass annihilation that that ultimately the quote unquote agents don't actually do it. We

Where we just all get so confused and worked up. And we've been doing this for thousands of years without AI. Like it feels like we we, you know, there's many examples of humanity just getting itself like yeah, get into lots of situations. And so so that's why I feel like ultimately that would be like the like if we were writing a book, it's no, it's the humans. It was never the the agents actually never acted or did anything bad to us. They just confused us all and we did the bad things to each other.

Matt Ray (48:53.962)
yeah.

sure.

Misinformation and and yeah, no.

Matt Ray (49:16.539)
I totally buy that. Yeah.

Brandon (49:18.871)
All right. Well, I think it's interesting, neither one of us picked any of the like the true like, you know, like gas attack or like nuclear or bioweapons. Cause I thought those I thought those would pop up more. But it feels it feels more complicated in those cases, right?

Matt Ray (49:26.833)
I

I I I I feel like that implies some sort of causality. I think it's more likely to be like you said, like accidental misinformation or in my case, like we've just ceded too much responsibility to someone else and and they dropped the ball and took us down.

Brandon (49:46.348)
Well, now let's end on the positive note. Okay, now here are the reasons that we're going to win. And we're gonna, it's gonna be okay, Matt. So here it is. One, the industry likes talking about this too much for it to be real. So I think that's a funny one. next one is the entire arc of human history from ancient times until now. So basically, we made it this far. We'll keep going. We'll see. Next one is like, this is all cult leader shit. next one is incre it's incredibly hard to exterminate all of humanity.

True. Seems like it would be that. humans would have time to respond. AI is not a single entity. That's another one. And then self-selecting prophets of doom, right? That's another one as well. So and then of course the other one too is like superintelligence hasn't arrived. So it's just like we keep saying it, and we keep everyone's like, superintelligence is here and it's never really here. It's like it's always just a few years away. So, out of all of those reasons why humanity is gonna survive, which one did do you like?

Matt Ray (50:44.006)
I I'm gonna go with it's incredibly hard to exterminate all of humanity.

Brandon (50:48.939)
Okay, so just a raw like hu humans find a way to endure no matter what.

Matt Ray (50:53.804)
Which really is kind of the same as the entire arc of human history. It's like, you know, there have been some some bumps. We yeah, we had we had the Black Death, yeah, we had some some world wars, you know, but we're we're we got through it. Yeah, it's it's kind of the same story.

Brandon (51:06.679)
Mm-hmm. But we got through it. Well, like there is like this is kind of the premise of Dune, right? Isn't like Dune, they the humans did ultimately defeat AI and then like they banned it.

Matt Ray (51:14.532)
yeah, exactly. A and and and and and Mad Max and and I guess to some extent Terminator.

Brandon (51:21.771)
Yeah, we have a lot of movies that say this that we just we just find a way. Even if it's a small group of humans left, w they won't get us all. I

Matt Ray (51:25.413)
Yes.

Matt Ray (51:28.826)
Th that's that's that's a sunny sunny view, yeah. Can't get us all.

Brandon (51:32.12)
All right. Well, like that one. That's a that's an optimist one. I mean, to me, I feel like this is just a given. I feel like every if you know me, you know which one I'm gonna pick. It's like I think it's number one here. The AI industry likes talking about this too much for it to be real. I just think that's the bottom line. It's just like when everyone's talking about something's gonna happen, it's almost for sure not going to happen. And the all the conventional wisdom of like everyone like talking about and making some proclamation about here's how it's gonna be. I just think it rarely that ever happens that way.

I'm not saying it can't happen. I'm not saying, you know, I can't be wrong, but I'm just saying history has shown everyone's like, you know, like the internet is is a great example of it. Like for what we thought the internet would do and what the internet has done has been fundamentally two different things. Or the car, right? The cars, like we w go ahead. Sorry to interrupt you.

Matt Ray (52:15.172)
I I mean, you know, the the doomsday clock has been, you know, five till midnight forever, right?

Brandon (52:21.995)
Yeah. So it's just like, yeah, I I feel like to me, it's the stuff no one's talking about. Like you're having more more on like some like weird pandemic that comes out of nowhere that no one knows anything about. And then like, you know, that's kind of when I think back to the pandemic. It's just like no one was talking about that like a month before. And then it's like, some people are sick. And then before we know it, like, at least here in the US, we spend a whole year at home. Yeah, it's just like and you're like, Did that really happen? And it's like no one was talking about now and now it's gone. And we don't even we're just like it's almost like it didn't happen, right? And we've kind of just all forgotten.

Matt Ray (52:41.582)
And now everyone's memory hold it, yeah.

Brandon (52:51.881)
So well, listen, this is a great article. I think it's super fun. I mean, it's a little bit I guess it's a little dark, but I mean I guess depends on which side you want to get onto. But it's fun, it's a fun read. And I think it's like, hey, man, all we can do is kind of enjoy our time one way or the other. So it's a it's a fun read. You should definitely check it out. also, you know, we didn't have a ton of feedback this week, but if after reading that article, you're like, Man, you know, I need to remember that I read such a great article and where it came from, what you can do is you can send your postal address.

Matt Ray (52:58.586)
Dark humor, yeah.

Brandon (53:20.983)
To stickers at software defined talk.com. And I will be happy to send you a sticker anywhere in the world. Put it on your laptop, on your water bottles, you know, wherever you need your bikes. Definitely do it. Definitely send us an email. I'd love to send some stickers. I just got reloaded on the international stickers. So we had plenty of budget, Matt, for international stickers this year. We didn't even have to have a budget meeting. You know, in the in the spirit of sun, I just went over there. I didn't even ask anyone. Didn't even ask you guys. I just bought them. That's that's how we run here at Software Defined Talk.

There are a ton of conferences. Matt, any of these conferences jump out of geo? There's a lot of DevOps days. I don't I don't see anything down in Australia. What's going on? Is there no DevOps day, Sydney? Are we not like hooked in with those people?

Matt Ray (54:00.687)
not hooked in right now. I it's been a while since they've had one, so I I haven't seen it.

Brandon (54:04.823)
All right. Well, we're overrepresented in the US and in Europe. There's like a ton of them. Kote's gonna be speaking at a bunch of them. There's some VMware conferences coming up. and then of course, you know, at the end of the year, our good friends over at Scale. I guess it's their twenty fourth conference, so twenty-four, out in Pasadena. So that's a good place to be. You know, if you in April, you everyone should just go out there in April. I don't I I hate to say this place like maybe just spend spend a little time in the conference and then just go. Just and enjoy the great weather. I mean, just just go walk around. It's gonna be

Matt Ray (54:30.266)
Go enjoy the scenery. Yeah. Yeah. Hollywood's down the road. Yeah.

Brandon (54:34.039)
That's right. Don't don't don't you don't have to see all the sessions. Go the sessions that are good and then just go walk around. Go see what's going on. and then finally here, Matt, we must have some good recommendations this week. You know, this is a recommendation I feel like you've personally got for me. But go ahead, tell the world what recommendation do you have this week?

Matt Ray (54:50.47)
Huh.

We're we're we're in the ongoing saga of Matt Gets a New Internet. And so for for those of you following at home, I've I've upgraded my my router, I've upgraded my modem, and I've now upgraded my ISP. So if you you know, if you didn't learn the business lessons from Sun, maybe you can learn them from my ISP. If somebody opens the support ticket, respond. It you know, you don't have to say like, we've got fixed it. You just need to acknowledge it. So I gave them five days

And then I changed service providers. So new service provider, slightly better. No. No. No. No. Fully automated. Yeah.

Brandon (55:23.969)
Did they call you when you change when they ch when you when you changed, were they like, Matt, where are you going? No. Got it, got it. Brian Cantrell would not be happy about that. He'd be like, they just let someone walk away. They didn't even call Matt Ray.

Matt Ray (55:35.334)
And and and yeah, the new service provider, I engaged with their support. It it had a bunch of AI that did a bunch of tests and and ran stuff for me and then eventually handed me over to human and you know, they did I that's all I wanted. I wanted somebody to acknowledge that I was having issues. And you know, it's it's it's better. Yeah.

Brandon (55:56.448)
Little therapy. That's right. Well, for the moment, I we're going to designate Superloop as the official internet partner of software defined talk until you change again. Until you're like until you tell me it's not that good. Although you showed me some graphs, they have some work to do. I they they were they did not get all one hundreds on their on their things.

Matt Ray (56:04.624)
Wow. For Australia.

Matt Ray (56:13.338)
We we've we've gone from ninety nine point four to ninety nine point eight seven. So we're getting there.

Brandon (56:17.643)
Let's go. Let's go, super loop. Let's get it up. Because I I showed him I showed Matt my my report card and it was very good. I had I had hundreds. So let's let's get it done. All right. My recommendation this week is something I recommended before, but I feel like I a new feature came out that I like. It's YouTube TV. So YouTube TV, it's great for watching sports. They had the multi view, the quad box for last year. It was great, but this year they finally let you pick exactly what you want in your quad box. So

Matt Ray (56:23.403)
Jealous.

Brandon (56:46.025)
Now you can pick exactly the four football games that you want to watch. Or if you're like me, you put some games on your real TV, then you can get your iPad out and you pick four more games. So you can get, you know, really right there. An iPad and a TV, you got eight games. There's like eight games to watch simultaneously. You can watch the crazy NC state play and see it in real time and then talk about it with all your friends and have your group chats blow up. And of course, to do that, YouTube finally delivered on a sports plan. So you just have to pay a little less money.

And all you get is sports. And frankly, that's all I want. Like, no news and politics channels anymore. None of the arts and entertainment channels. Got rid of them all. All of those are available, some other streaming service. I finally convinced my family we don't really need it. No one, my son has never used YouTube TV. He reuses TV TV as like a foreign thing to him. My wife has finally gotten used to using the streaming services for all those other shows. So that's my recommendation if you're a sports fan. And I think everyone complains about like, it was so much better when we had cable. No, it wasn't.

We didn't have the quad box, the cable. We only had like very limited things we could watch. So stop complaining. This is good. This is a good thing. Every and YouTube TV solved it and the the multi view solved and they've given us a package that's little less expensive. So everyone take your YouTube TV and like it. That's my that's my message.

All right. Well, if you made it to the end of the show, congratulations. This has been Software Defined Talk episode 591. To see all of these topics that we discussed and many we didn't go to Software Defined Talk.com slash five nine one. And with that, we will talk to you next time.

Matt Ray (58:22.127)
Bye.

Brandon (58:27.608)
All right, Matt, we've done it. How did your internet hold up throughout? Look like you know, can you can we get a real time reading? Seemed like it it seemed like it was pretty good.

Matt Ray (58:31.749)
Seem fine. real-time reading. Logging into Ubiquiti says last hour, all green.

Brandon (58:41.72)
All right, we can't we we can't lose in that situation. I still wanna know, although some people were talking about in the Slack, it's like what actually ha changed? Because I know in your situation, the at least from the curb, the wire from the curb to the house is the same. No one came out and dug like a new trench, right? So

Matt Ray (58:56.557)
Yeah. No no, it literally took like it was thirty minutes to switch. And my internet dropped out for five and then it popped up and Ubiquiti's like, new provider, who dis, right? And then it was like super loop logo r in the UI immediately popped up. It was like that's it.

Brandon (59:17.282)
So that's what I want to know. How many I guess we should have had you do like a trace route before and after. Be like how many hops before it went to like a new piece of equipment? Like did it is it like from here to like your central office? What's that?

Matt Ray (59:21.913)
Yeah.

Matt Ray (59:28.271)
I don't know if it hit new equipment. Yeah. I don't know if it even hits new equipment. You know, they they did some sort of, you know, when I was talking with their tech support, they did some sort of reset on the far side. you know, where they were like resetting ports with the provider, but you know, that's all they they told me they

Brandon (59:47.224)
But somewhere there must be a super loop like switcher router that eventually gets the thing.

Matt Ray (59:51.415)
See, that's the thing. I don't know if they there's any of their own hardware in the mix. Which makes it kind of like I think so. I think so. And it's twenty bucks less a month, so yeah.

Brandon (59:55.234)
So is it just it's just a support entity? Like you just got a new phone number. That's all you got. All right. Well, if you know how internet works in inner in Australia, call us. Because in US, it's pretty much every every it's a new cable, everything to your house, as far as I know. I mean, maybe maybe in apartment buildings is different. So all right, well, we'll continue on in the quest to understand how internet's delivered in Australia. You know, we've only been doing this 15 years, so we'll see. We'll see if we can get to it. So so with that, I want to thank everyone that made it to the end of the show.

Matt Ray (01:00:09.966)
Right, right.

Brandon (01:00:25.25)
Thanks for those who watched us live. That's always fantastic to have people in the chat. And of course, we thank everyone who watched us after the fact on YouTube. And with that, we will talk to you next time.