Well, after a long time that I am finally officially a cable cutter, right? So after I would say it was roughly a 20 year relationship with Direct TV, I finally, you know, canceled it and I sent back what I would term the oldest Direct TV receiver ever still in use. I guess is the way to say that. And so, and I don't know if you've canceled anything lately, at least in case of Direct TV, Like shockingly, they're like, we need you to send all this back. Now they pay for it. So it's not like a big deal, but it's just sort of like, it was more like, are you sure, like you're really, this stuff is pretty whole. I remember, I remember like canceling Time Warner and they're like, you have to bring all this stuff back to, and you couldn't mail it. You had to go in person to the Time Warner office. And then when I got there, there were like 30 people in line for one person. I mean, like Time Warner, they they they had just a hatred of their customers. And then if you wanted to leave, you know, then you were like, you know, they you were dead to them. They wanted to hate your corpse. Well, now tell me where you're at. Now, what is your I don't even know in Australia, do you is does Australia have cable? I did you already cut the cable and never had cable in Australia? I never had cable. What's your situation? I've been streaming the whole time streaming with a US VPN. So like I, Netflix is in this cat and mouse with the VPN. Like right now I don't really care that I'm on Australian Netflix. Um, we're on Australian Disney plus. Uh, I was on like the bundle with ESPN and Hulu, um, and the US, but I canceled that after a while 'cause I wasn't really using Hulu. And so now I've got like, so the permanent, quote unquote, semi-permanent subscriptions are Netflix and Disney Plus, and they're both Australian, and Disney Plus Australia carries all the Hulu content. So shows that I was watching on Hulu, I mostly get there, except for the Wu-Tang saga, which means like, once a year, I have to re-up my Hulu subscription so I can watch the Wu-Tang saga. - Oh, awesome, funny. - Yeah, and then the Apple and Paramount and who else? We'll get like a three month subscription to like catch up on that one or two shows that you were watching on those channels. My wife got a new iPhone, so we got the Apple TV. - Get some stuff for free for a few months, right? - Yeah, and then you cancel them. So really, it's just Netflix and Disney Plus. Oh, and then of course Amazon Prime, right? But there's not a ton of content. - That's just like default, right? Well, I thought like the reason this was a good topic for us was that we should like put this through the lens of digital transformation, right? So, okay, so here we are. It's like, imagine we collectively all started a digital transformation project. And I'm gonna say the starting date was 25 years ago, 'cause here are the dates I looked up. So TiVo, which I don't know, for those in the uninitiated, was sort of the first DVR. Like I'm gonna call that, they made it popular. Essentially this idea that you could just basically-- - Oh yeah, I love my TiVo. - It really was a small computer under your TV. And I know it will seem crazy to people listening now. It was earth shattering. The fact that you could just record stuff, it would show up and it had this phenomenal, I think to this day, it still has one of the best, if you will, TV-based interfaces to watch shows, skip commercials. I mean, I can't explain to people that maybe weren't alive or didn't watch TV at this period, how revolutionary it was. So that came out in March 31st of 1999. So I'm calling that as the beginning of the process. - I'm sure I had, I probably had mine in March or April. - Right, and there was the kind of thing - Like you went to someone's house and you saw it and you were like, I need to go home immediately and get that, right? - Yes. - Now. - And I even belong to the camp of upgrading my T-Vos. - Like now still? - So I was cloning the hard drives onto larger hard drives, you know, hacking on them. So yes, I was all in on T-Vos. - All right, so that was 99 and then Netflix was the DVD service now that launched in 1998. But I think we can go back in history and say that Reed Hastings had the vision that like this was the precursor to streaming. So I'm gonna say, you know, that was sort of the mark of like streaming is coming and Netflix streaming officially launched in 2007, which I, which is actually not that long ago when you think about it, like I would have guessed longer when I was looking these dates up. So, - I mean, you know, 15, 16 years ago and now they're like, you know, industry powerhouse. - Absolutely. - So stock dropped half last year, but - So I think we should say to ourselves right now, It's like, okay, so we're 25 years in, in this conversion from old school cable/analog TV to what will be like somehow in the future, right? Like, you know, that it will all be, there will be no more cable TV and everything will be great. - Kids will never understand channels. - That's right. And I think we should basically score it out. Like how close are we to closing out the digital transformation of TV? So we'll do a little report card. So, and I wanna get your take. So the first is, I think if we were like writing the requirements, we'd say first thing we want is almost all scripted TV and movies should be available on demand. Like in 1999, we'd be like, hey, listen, we shouldn't have to wait and do all this crazy stuff. We should just have what we wanna see from a scripted point of view on demand available anytime. I'm gonna score that as an A. I think for this point, it's pretty much everything is there. There are a few limited windows where things get at least in a movie theater. - Because you still have like reality TV shows and stuff that come out weekly and There's a little lag doesn't always show up, right? and and and like I know I'm not watching them, but I know like You know some of my kids friends and stuff are like, you know, oh, did you watch know the bachelor? Right. Yeah, that TV is a little it's it's close But like there it's still not a hundred percent available immediately on demand Sometimes there's a little window or like you have to wait - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Or something like that. All right, so that one I think we're doing pretty good on. Now, the next one was, can we stream high quality video without having any, and with sound and surround sound and not feel like this is definitely a lot worse than like a Blu-ray player or you know, just some high quality. - Yeah, that's totally there. - And I think that's good, right? Like I think you can get 4K, you can get, when I'm watching a movie, I don't really complain about like the video quality. - Artifacts and stuff, that rarely happens anymore. - Now before we get email from like the Blu-ray enthusiasts and everyone starts to explain to us how much better Blu-ray is. - Well they're not Blu-ray enthusiasts anymore, right? - Isn't it? Isn't it still like? - Isn't Blu-ray just like 1080p? - No, no, no. I thought I believe-- - I don't know. - I thought Blu-ray was like the highest, highest 4K, you can get it, but the uncompressed versions, like huge massive ones. - So I didn't know they had 4K Blu-ray. - I don't, maybe we're wrong, but I just wanna say to all those people, I understand physical media still can give us higher being look, but I'm fine with what we're getting. I'm going to give that an A. Very, very happy with it. So, okay, so I think we're doing well there. Like if we're, it's almost like- - This is like your slow American internet speeds. - That's right. Now that's a whole nother issue. Another day we'll have a report card on internet in America. And then let me tell you, it's not going to be good. - How did this happen? - I don't know. That's just- - I mean, you know, 'cause I moved here and I had to show you internet for years. - Do you have two hours for me to explain monopolies and you know, the lack of competition. Anyway, let's move on, let's keep going. Okay, now, now we're starting to get into some, like it's almost like we're with our parents, or rather our kids, teachers, like now they're starting to get to like the more difficult subjects. It's like, can you find the stuff, new stuff to watch? Here I'm giving in a C, because it's sort of like today, stuff is still everywhere, right? You have all the apps you just mentioned. It's kind of confusing. Mostly word of mouth is still what you need to discover a new television show. And with all the talk about AI and machine learning and things like that, it's not like you can just pull up your device of choice, you know, and just say, and it kind of knows, right? Like, oh, of course, Brandon wants to see XYZ. - You don't want it to know though. I mean, the recommendations are generally terrible. - Well, that's what I mean. That's why I think this whole area is awful. Like one, they tend to hide things. - I say give up, yeah. - Well, I was gonna say like, one, I think they, things that they know you wanna watch, they almost actively hide it 'cause they want you to be showing you other stuff. And then two, they're showing you stuff that in theory, especially the Netflix recommendations, there's nothing more inaccurate than a Netflix recommendation, where it's like 95% chance you'll like it. It's like, no, no, no way. It's like almost nothing is recommended to me. Do I like it at a high level? So at the best I can say here is that's basically a C. You can kind of find some stuff, a couple laps trying to figure it out, but this idea of universal search, long, long way to go on that one. Now the cable bundle itself, is the cable bundle actually dead? At this point, I'm gonna break that as a C because still, and we'll get into this in a minute. - I've got a, yeah, I mean-- - Live sports, like the only way to like see live sports is still having to navigate some weird cable bundle. - But did you read the new Stratecory about NBA versus Formula One? Well, I've not read it today, but I know of it. Go ahead, explain it. - That one is exactly what you're talking about. I went when you told me that you got rid of DirecTV, I was like, did Brandon just read that article? Because it talks about the fact that sports viewing is dropping like a rock for like the NBA. And the problem for them is they're losing people because all their contents aren't cable. And everything's locked up there. And then like they put the finals on ABC, which not many people have land TV or terrestrial TV or whatever. And so you're like losing a whole generation of potential fans. And the only people who are like left or are your super fans like you, who are like price insensitive. And then, you know, and he talks about all the things that Formula One's doing to overcome this, shows like the Netflix show. drive to survive. - And they're making their drivers much more accessible to the media. - 100%, right. - They're pushing all these people and stories out there while the NBA is just like chasing dollars from cable and losing the audience. And I feel the same thing's happening with college football. - Yeah, and so this is why I'm giving the cable bundle only a C and not an F because-- - Well, I'm gonna give it like a D. - Well, here's the reason. - It's failing, it's on its way to failure. - 100% it's on its way to failing. And that's what we want in the digital transformation grading system. When it's gone, we'll know that we've achieved digital transformation here. Now the reason I'm getting to see here is that YouTube TV is what I've recently embraced. 'Cause that basically, they have slimmed down the cable bundle, right? So it really only has the sports. And they have freed us from the tyranny of spectrum, Direct TV, just the archaic cable TV interfaces, right? So I like it where it's going, but like we still have a long way to go there. But YouTube TV so far, my initial about a month or so of using it has been, I'm pretty happy with it. So you can still get there. - Do they do just like a pass through to Fox and-- - Pretty much, yeah. They license the channels just like a cable company will. And you can go on YouTube TV and it has like a live tab so you can just watch it like old school TV. And then they've got like, you know, what they show as a DVR, but it really is just like, you know, everything that you could possibly want a TiVo or record is just sitting there. So it's like, so it's good. It's solid, but like, it's clearly a stopgap, right? It's like, we really should just get rid of that and have like, you know, the sports channels or the subscriptions to like F1 you're referring to, but we're not there yet. So I'm gonna give that a C. Live sports, we already hit on, I'm basically giving that a D. And when I do that, it's like, Formula One is exactly what you want. It's like, you can subscribe just to Formula One, You can watch it wherever you want. For all the other sports, like especially NFL, college football, I think cricket in India is really big. They have the same problem there around getting that kind of, a simple package, right? It's like we are held hostage to this point. The cable companies, I would almost say this way, the last thing that they're preventing from us actually getting rid of them is live sports. And they've locked the rights up to most of the major sports league, including, you know, even like Premier League and stuff like that for probably another 10 years. Go ahead. My son has the NBA league pass and it seems pretty great because because it thinks we're in Australia. It doesn't know that we're like in the US or things were in the US, but you know, we're in Australia. He gets blackouts for the National Games, basically Wednesdays and Saturdays for us. Right. So it's like so again, like League pass an NFL ticket like it's close right and this is this was a big sticking point with Apple recently it's like Apple just bought MLS rights right and they got everything there are no blackouts but with the NBA the NFL college football even if you get the quote unquote digital package like your son right he's gonna get blacked out on certain days right or you're gonna and to get around the blackout you're gonna have to subscribe to like YouTube TV or ABC or something else right So, so there's still like, I mean, it's just the last gasp, right? It's like literally these sports rights are the only thing propping up. I would say CBS, Fox, and some of these other companies, because it's just like, if they gave that up, we would be perfect. So, so to me, this is the last moment, right? And it's like, but it's probably unfortunately going to take about 10 years for all the other sports rights to rotate throughout. So it's kind of depressing. Yeah. Ah, for us. But you're, you're now, you're now, uh, you've abandoned the ship. That's right. I'm trying to. Okay, so now I would say, let's kind of think about, we're selling the business, and we're doing our digital transformation QBR, and we'd say, okay, what is the main benefit we've actually realized from this? I would say two things. One is that cable and satellite companies, for the most part, they're going away, and there is no need to, if you will, quote unquote, "roll a truck" anymore for someone to actually get access to programming. Once you have an internet connection, It's now pretty much self-service. You pick your streaming box of choice, you sign up for your services, you don't have to call anyone to come out to your house, put a hole in your outside wall, drag a cable around the house to get it in the bedroom. So I'd say that is pretty good, right? That has actually reduced a ton of cost. And I think on the consumer side, I think we can say we've got more choices, we're free from the stupid cable boxes, and we can watch for the most part outside our houses. Whereas before, like you only had cable at home, Now you can take your iPad or your mobile device and you can pretty much watch wherever you are. So if we're kind of selling this digital transformation project 25 years in, I would say those are the benefits. What do you think, Matt? Have I missed anything or have I oversold any of the benefits? - I mean, I think as the, if I'm the NBA or NFL or whoever, I should be able to maximize my dollars with these sorts of a la carte packages. I do think that's a little short-sighted. I think that, I mean, growing up, I think we probably both subscribed to like TBS and WGN or WGH, whatever. So we get like all of the Atlanta Hawks games or all of the Chicago Bulls games, right? And you would like watch these basketball games in markets that you didn't really care that much about, but it was on. And I feel like, and this goes back to what you were saying about machine learning and AI trying to make recommendations for you. I believe that sports are losing out on casual fans completely, because if you have to pay to watch something, unless it's part of a bundle that you're getting, you're less likely to just kind of casually start watching things. - Yeah. Which is what Formula One, I absolutely never accidentally watched Formula One, but I could see how if people got into the human interest show on Netflix, that's part of the story there is they're having this resurgence, at least in the US, of interest because they're able to attract more users. And I feel like the NFL, NBA, college football are extracting maximum dollars at their long Yeah, it's expensive. Yeah. So yeah, so I think that would be one downside. You know what, you know what, like when we're doing our digital, like, you know, kickoff or whatever, like nobody wants to hear that story. They just want to hear like, can you fix my problem? I think that would be, we put that on the slide. You know, the next three quarters of problems. I think we put it on our roadmap. We'd be like, Hey, I think you're right. One, we'd have to say we need to help sports leagues out. We need to make sure that we're giving them a way to transition over. Right. So that's gotta be on our roadmap. I think the other thing we could say is that if we're sitting in the room, we could say something like, hey, wasn't all this supposed to be cheaper for the end customer? And it's like, it's definitely not cheaper. By the time you add up all the services, it's about neutral at best. So we didn't really get that yet, right? So we'd have to say our roadmap benefits of those. And then, and I think kind of on the roadmap there, I also would say, to me, one of the unusual or surprising things out of this is that I think the Apple TV, now I'm talking about the device now, not the service. I actually think the Apple TV device is silently a huge hit. It's sort of a, if you will, souped up over provision cable box that's I think by far and away the best streamer out there. When you're watching stuff, everything else is so slow and I think it's weird that the iPhone and the ARM chips, all the things we talk about, have sort of led to this incredible cable box that's super responsive that I don't think anyone really intended it to come out. It's almost like the benefits of the iPhone and M1 chips like fall all the way down to the stream box because like, I don't know if you've turned on, like I've got several TVs that have like the quote unquote smart TV and like-- - My TV tastes like 20 seconds to boot up. - Yeah and you're like, you can like literally, you can clock it. You're like, you can feel the disc like, you know, booting up and it's like, wow, Apple TVs like has really figured it out. And I don't even think Apple even cares, right? That's what I also think is funny about it is like, They just seem, because these are the old chips, these are like the throwaway chips they throw in these things I said. So it's like, good job Apple, good job Apple for not trying and winning, if you will. I believe they have won the streaming box game. - And what's crazy is, you know, like somewhere there's a debug console on your TV where there's just like Linux booting up and it's doing like, you know, a disc check or something. And then you're sitting there like, what the hell? You know, and so it's, you know, they're hiding it behind their big, you know, whatever TV brand logo you have, but in the background, it's just like Linux booting up. Yeah, they bought like a rock, you know, a rock bottom, you know, SSD or USB drive that's, you know, slowest and and, you know, it's just like, it's just painful to know that that's what's happening with with with what should just be a display. Absolutely. It should just be like powered on instead of they're like, no, no, no, we need to spy on you. So yeah, - So I think we would put that on the roadmap, be like hey, if these TVs are gonna try to be the connected TVs, they need to up their games. They need better processors, better disks, and if not, everyone's just gonna use the Apple TV. The other thing I think we gotta put on the roadmap here, and I think you kind of alluded to it before, it's like too many services, right? So I think before we're really gonna complete this, we need, I'm gonna say Netflix and Disney, they're in there. They're gonna, if you will, be around for a while. They'll have some longevity. I think this whole peacock HBO discovery, Paramount, I don't know, I think you mentioned some other ones. They're gonna all have to fight it out and just essentially have to join up and become the third service in my opinion. Because once they do that, and this could take, again, we're talking years here. It'll take a while. Everyone first has to launch a new service, then everyone has to say they're gonna change the world, and then everyone has to fail at the new service, and then eventually some private equity or somebody comes in and be like, let me start buying up your catalogs and let me put you in a one more service to Tubi or Tubi. Yeah, whatever. Right. And Broku who who'll slap commercials in every 30 minutes. Somehow we have to we got too many services. Like it just is I don't think it's going to live. Right. So we can probably have like to your point, we probably need one more paid service when those commercials and we probably need like a Tubi, right? To be like, okay, everything else is just an Apple TV. We're sending it. Well, that's the other one. It It could be Apple TV, it could be YouTube TV, it could be Amazon, but somebody has to figure this out. Somebody has to take all these other four companies and put them out of their misery. And also too, this would help all of us in families where someone will eventually discover a show. They're like, oh, it's on Peacock. And then you have to be like, we don't have that one. We're gonna sign up and then we're gonna shut it down three months later. So I think that's on our roadmap is we gotta basically get rid of, let's say combined. Let's not say get rid of. Let's say strategically combined four of these streaming services into one. - All those other services, they need to form themselves a good bundle. (laughing) - That's right. Ideally, you just take one out. - You're bringing back the cable bundle, man. - That's fine, let's just get there. That's what I'm saying, that's what's gonna happen, right? - And they can charge you 90 bucks a month, and you'll only really care about two pieces of the bundle. - Yeah, and then your original thing about sports, I think at this point we're gonna say it's Amazon, Apple TV, or Google through YouTube. Somebody has to decide, 'cause those companies have so much money, they are the ones I basically can, if you will, quote unquote, "rent the sports rights," throw them in their bundle of choice, whether it be Apple TV Plus or Amazon Prime or whatever, because they are the only ones that have enough money, I think, to eventually basically pay the leagues what they want, and they can basically just slam it in with their other stuff, right? Another reason to watch. And Amazon seems to be the lead there with the NFL. Apple has MLS and YouTube is gonna have NFL Sunday tickets. So hopefully, at the end, all the sports, I think, will then end up with like the big, if you will, giants of the space. So what do you think? Is that like a reasonable roadmap putting together? - Sure, and I'll just keep downloading here in Australia the next day. - All right, and then I think on our final slide here, we'd be like, well, what's the potential disruption, right? Like what could like mess all this up? It's like, I don't know. Like I read something about, you know, 4K basically coming to over the air and it's like, I don't know. Like does the antenna come back at some point? Well, we basically figure out that like, Oh, actually digital cables, digital signals rather, broadcast over the air, actually are really, really good. We can get really high quality pictures. Like does somebody like figure that out? - But there's no content on the terrestrial stuff. - That's what I mean. I guess that's what I just wondered. Is somebody like figured that and be like, actually here's a way that we can do it real cheap. And they somehow come up with some new content and it's just really easy to get. - Well, I had like an over the air DVR, like a homemade one back in the US. And here in Australia, it doesn't work 'cause it's different, all different equipment. I don't really care, but you can, that stuff is there. I mean, it's accessible. It's just, spousal acceptance will be low. And maybe you can cram it onto your Plex somehow, but yeah, I don't think that's coming back. - All right, well, we'll check in. So, okay, 25 years in, I'm gonna say we're about 50% of the way there. So Matt, you and I will reconvene here in 10 years to see if the project was finally completed. Software Defined Talk is brought to you by Matt Geek Gabb. Today, I've got something for you Apple users, the Matt Geek Gabb Podcast. The show is in its 17th year providing tips, cool stuff found and answers to your questions about anything and everything Apple. Yes, that's right. Hosts Dave Hamilton and John F. Braum take time each week to actually provide text support to as many listeners as possible. while learning at least five new things weekly themselves. The great part is that they always make sure each answer has actionable tips with easy instruction for listeners too. For example, dictating smiley face to Surrey will put the little text-based smiley emoji in your message. Saying reply with audio to Surrey will let you record an audio message, which is super handy if you're in the car and don't want to just dictate to text. If you use an iPhone, a Mac, an iPad, an Apple Watch, and Apple TV are simply a technology enthusiast. You're going to love learning more about your technology with your two new favorite geeks over at Mac Geek GAB. Get your questions answered and have some fun along the way. Visit macgeekgab.com or search for Mac Geek GAB on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't get caught without having Mac Geek GAB in your rotation. And we thank them for sponsoring our show. (clicking) All right, Matt. Well, you know, we just talked about a long running digital transformation project, But there's even one that I'm gonna say that's been running longer. It's basically, here in the US, the Internal Revenue Service, also known as IRS, they are in a bad state, right? I guess their technology was essentially somewhere between 25 to 64 years old. And some of the software is up to 15 versions behind. So this basically comes down to the method to collect taxes in the United States is, For the most part, I think we can say the systems are not being updated at all, right? And as we move forward, I think this is potentially, I'll be interested, I'll be interested in your take here. Is this basically the potentially the largest digital transformation project out there, maybe the most complex? Is there a nuclear power system somewhere that would be more complicated or is this it? Can you think of something more complicated than this? - I definitely can't think of anything in the US that touches as many people, right? I mean, India had their digital ID program. That was a massive program, right? The scale of that was an order of magnitude more people. But as far as like the US goes, I can't think of anything that is as beastly, right? I mean, it touches so many Americans and it's so bad. (laughing) - And as you kind of drill into it, what's interesting here is like, There's essentially, and other people are gonna know more about it, but there's essentially an individual master file, IMF, which I guess is like an essential key component to the entire system runs. And it is 60 years old. It is described as the authoritative data source. And it is, they've been trying to essentially, if you will, upgrade it or re-architect it for at least a decade now. Now, the last time, the target completion date that they've announced now is 2030, right? So they've basically tried a bunch of times, given up, now they're saying it's 2030. And so this kind of like makes me think of like, I don't know, you never want to be like too pessimistic, but I was thinking to myself, like, is this even possible to do? Because the other thing that's here, we won't make this a political podcast. We'll just say that, you know, not all parties are on board with like, getting the system up to date, right? So basically you have different policies, you have different political views. So there's certain, you know, parts of the government that don't even want the IRS to be, I don't wanna say they're doing anything, but they're not interested in working more effectively. So I think to myself, it's like, and as far as numbers, this was also kind of startling to see, is that taxpayers paid 4.1 trillion, that's T, T, trillion dollars of taxes, and I guess taxpayers were refunded 1.1 trillion dollars. So it's not like money is the issue here. It's like you have tons of money coming in, you've got a bunch of refunds going out, and you've got a rather large budget is actually applied to this. So it's not like, you know, there's not enough, but like, I think this comes down to like, can you even install a leadership to figure out what's going on? How does it even actually work? So I guess kind of back to my original question is like, do you think ultimately it's a lost cause or is there somebody out there that can come in and make the system work? - Well, it can't be a lost cause. I mean, I mean this is the sort of project like you you can't actually give up on this because you know, this is a major source of funding for the United States government and I Mean this article is just it's full of chef's kiss quotes, right? I mean a private company with tens of millions of customers would go belly up if their IT was older than the CEOs parents I mean Wow, but I mean, part of me thinks back to like, well, you had the digital agencies that were formed under like Obama and stuff that wanted to come in and reform some of the, they didn't do the IRS, they went over to like some of the other agencies and updated their IT. And those were fairly successful. And you've seen that emulated in other countries. Australia has similar success stories. And some of the folks behind like DevOps days in Australia were like movers and shakers in that circle. And then over, and in the US, like Jez Humble was part of that for a while. And so maybe you could try to like do something like that. - Well, and they do mention this in the article. - Well, they mention it, but you know, reading through the lines, I'm like, all I smell is Accenture. Right? I'm like, you know, this is just probably wrapped up and like huge consulting shops that are gonna like just suck the government, you know, dry year after year and have nothing to show for it. I mean, you know, that, you know, IBM, Deloitte, Accenture, they're all just in there making money hand over fist and selling them, you know, COBOL 14 versions behind because they upgraded it, you know from 15 behind. And it's like, that's probably not the right tack. I think I think the right tack is probably, you know, as my very uninformed outsider viewpoint of this is like, look, you throw some API's on this, you you know, replicate the data, you start the strangler pattern, and you start killing off things like this, you know, IMS or whatever. And you know, I don't care what database you put on the back end, But it's like you can tackle these sorts of projects. It's just, I think the sorts of people who are, the sorts of shops that are doing the work are there to get a contract, staff it with some good quality architects, and then those people walk away and they replace it with the year one employees who don't have the skills to be here. I mean, this is a massive, massive project. You need a large skilled team who are in it for the long haul. When you, you know, there was an interview with the product manager for Amazon's billing team. And you know, AWS billing is probably one of the largest private, you know, private compute projects on the planet. That is not an exaggeration. I mean, they're dealing with billions of data points a second. And one of the points he made in the interview was the fact that most of the team has been there for seven or eight years. People show up and they're like, this is the most godawful problem, and I love it. And Amazon pays those people well. They are getting experts in their field. They're making sure that these people are incented to stay. And you know that's not happening at the IRS. the government isn't paying well, or they're farming it out to consulting shops who the consulting shops make a lot of money and then they don't bring in high quality staff. And so like, you're not gonna solve this problem with the current approach. - Yeah, and I think to that end, I mean, couple of facts here from the article kind of stick out from things you said there. So one, it says the IRS had 21 IT modernization initiatives as of August, 2022. And they said the GIA reported that more than a quarter of them did not have timeframes for addressing antiquated systems. And they go on to say, you know, IRS lacks accountability for completing these key elements. And I think that's the part where I think you're kind of hitting on. I think maybe the Amazon billing team is instructive here. It's like, I think you have to basically completely rethink it, at least how the government wants to do things. Like in this case, I think if someone said, "Hey, you know, I'm in charge." I'd be like, "We need to view this as like a 20 year project and we need to start recruiting people in training people that really want to spend a good chunk of their career working on this, right? And I think that would have to be a combination of obviously financial incentives, maybe something along with job security, and also just, I don't know if you will, flexibility in where they work or opening different places. You've gotta basically look at it and be like, it's almost the opposite of hiring the quote unquote Stanford graduate that wants to start a new company and change the world. It's like you're looking for someone like, I want you to come in and apply good sound software engineering practices that are well known against legacy systems. I want you to learn some of the legacy systems and at least help us convert it. And I want you to do it over a decade. And during that, and if we can do that, right, I'm not gonna ask you to work 80 hours a week or like, you know, push for some giant launch. I wanna just make consistent progress so that this IMF file, you know, we finally, if you will, unlock it, right? You know what I mean? I think you've got to build a whole organization around it, and it can't be, to your point. It can't be consultants who are coming in and out, getting their two or three years of post-grad training from Accenture, then moving on. It's kind of what happens. We need people that are really committed to it, and I also don't think you can, if you will, expect people to do it on this kind of, well, I've made all my money, and now I'm coming back to give back. It's like, no, we need to look at this like a really important job that is got has to make appeal to maybe a different type of person, but has to appeal to someone that's going to stay with it for a while. And I think until you do that, it does feel like something that will just cycle through and just repeat over and over again. Well, and, and, you know, we, we don't want to make this a political thing, but you have, you have a lot of people who demonize the government, period. And like, you know, having now not living in the US and seeing a government that isn't hated by half the population and works surprisingly amazingly. I mean like all the things that I don't dread going to the DMV because when I get there it's like this place has run very well and everyone's polite and the tech is great and things move along quickly and when it doesn't you kind of understand why and comparison, like my wife went to the DMV in Austin while we were there over Christmas and it took three hours. Right. Right. And that was just nuts. You know, here it was like we made an appointment online showed up and we're out in 15 minutes. And it just, you know, magically things happen. And I think so, you know, you do have things like the US digital service where people are, you know, signing up to help their country and they're trying to like be more tech forward on some of the stuff. But the problem, the problem for this story though is it's the IRS, which, you know, people have been like brought up to hate on. And like, you can't have it both ways. You can't be patriotic and hate your government. Yeah. And I think what you're getting to, and I think the only way, you know, to maybe come at it from the most neutral perspective would be trying to separate the policy discussions from the implementation. Like, like, just fundamentally having the conversation like, "Listen, this government needs to collect taxes and we're all part of the citizens of it and we want that to be efficient and we want it to be accurate and we want it to be relatively painless because we're all consumers of paying taxes at some point." -And you should want it to be efficient because as a person paying taxes because it's so bad, you have to pay more. -Right, because you're basically overpaying for it. And so the point is, I think that's, I guess, maybe the hardest part and I guess some kind kind of leader sort of like trying to separate these. It's almost idea of the civil servants versus the policy kind of side of it. It's like, hey, we want this to run well and we need this to run well. We can still have like what the exact policies are. That conversation probably will never end and it will always be a policy discussion. But until someone says like, hey, I really do want this system to run well, you know, you really are gonna be in a difficult position to ever making it better in any way. And it's like, you know, when you see these numbers, right? like 60 years, 70 years, it does make me feel like our children will be doing a podcast about this, Matt. And they will be, maybe it would be software defined talk episode 2,500 and they'll be like, can you believe the IMF file is 150 years old or whatever it will be by then and it's like, yeah, it's like, the only other thing I could think of would be, 'cause if this was a large corporation, we'd almost say something like, well, the way large corporation systems eventually get changed the companies literally go away, right? The companies go away or get acquired. It's like-- - But it can't go away. - Yeah, the only thing I can think of is like, unless someone like radically rewrote the tax code and was like, hey, we're starting out with a completely different version, it's super simple and it's this, like you're always gonna be stuck with this legacy system. So I don't know, this is just one that, as I said before, and I love for the listeners, if anyone knows of like a more complicated project, like, oh, this IRS problem's nothing, you gotta see this one, because I really do like think It's a fascinating one to watch, right? Like, where's it gonna go? What's gonna happen? And really, this is maybe one of the few programs I've ever seen where I'm like, I'm even questioning like, can it be done, right? Like I think literally, can it be done is an interesting question. 'Cause maybe the most pessimistic is like, nothing's ever gonna change. All you can do is just kinda patch together this crazy system and just do your best to keep it up. Which is, I don't know, it's just someone that works in technology and serves information technology. It's like, it's kinda sad. If we can't make this simple, you know, what are we doing? I say go after the AWS billing guy. I like it. You know, I mean, I mean, that's sort of thing. It's probably not a bad place to start, right? You know, like. I mean, you appeal to, and I don't even know, you appeal to their patriotism and you have to pay them better because, you know, the IRS doesn't pay well. And maybe you let them work in, you know, the digital service agency instead of for the IRS, so they don't have people giving them a hard time. See, that's the problem, is people demonizing the civil servants when it's the politicians that deserve your hate. And so there's a stigma to just even working with the IRS, or even working for the government, which is just, it shouldn't be that way, right? We need smart people to be motivated to want to work for the government to fix these sorts of things. We want to have a functional government rather than just this hemorrhaging system that-- I mean, literally, the Australian tax office is the same size as the IRS. Yeah, that's it. And that's just wrong. That's crazy. But-- or my taxes are two pages. And everything is just so much simpler here. And they take a big chunk. But you feel like you're getting a lot more value for your dollars when your government is not perpetually broke. And the way the government does not go away, so you have to fix this. I mean, you can't just say, well, private equity will take this over and fix it. And just sunset. No, the government does not go away. you know, the government goes away and you're Somalia, right? Well, listen, please fix this. Yeah, I agree. Now, um, a person unlikely to get involved in this and fixing this, I think, I'm going to go out so far as to make this prediction is I think a DHH, I don't think DHH has taken over the IRS. I don't think he has any interest in that, but DHH is back. Um, cause we talked a lot about them that last week and I, you know, I hesitated to even put this in the show notes, but then there's just too many comments in the Slack. So he's back. 37 Singles is back and they have now introduced, what is the official pronunciation? Is it MERSC? Am I saying that correctly? - It's gotta be MERSC, like the company. - Okay, M-R-S-K. And Matt, maybe I'll just, like I'll just put my cards on the table. This entire project just makes me angry. Like I just like, I have like a bad reaction to it. So I wanna like, you know, you're gonna maybe be some therapy for me. I wanna like come at it with an open mind And I want you to have a ton of experience in the whole world of configuration management before I just, before I reflexively just start, the ranting on about like, this is the wrong direction, let's go in with an open mind. So maybe you can give us a quick overview is what exactly does MERSC do? - So MERSC is essentially a job scheduler built on top of SSH and Docker, which probably sounds slightly familiar. You have a centralized location where you push out your jobs to a waiting machine, hosts that are running Docker and they will run your machines for you. This is like circa the year Kubernetes came out, level technology. - Now let's pause here, like 'cause the way, let's be very generous here. Like the reason DHH gave for launching it was that essentially like Kubernetes is too complicated, and they had some experience trying to run it. And for those that are looking for a more simplified way of, if you will, managing and deploying their containers, MERSC is the solution. Like, did I, again, I just try to like, I just want to state the premise as clearly as possible. Is that, did I, is that inaccurate in any way, at least from the DHH's position on the blog he wrote? - Sure. I mean, yes, it's accurate because it solves his problem. But this is the problem. Like when Kubernetes came out, there were dozens of these, probably hundreds. Everyone had written some sort of scheduler on top of containers to spray a bunch of stuff onto a bunch of machines. And AWS had one. Docker Swarm of course, that was brought many times. Docker Swarm of course, and people got excited about Docker. They were like, "Oh, if I put a schedule on this and spray it to a bunch of machines." And so that was happening. And Google kind of showed up with Kubernetes and said, "Look, we've been doing this for 10 plus years. You're going to need something that looks like this. looks like this. Here's the thing that we started called Kubernetes. And Kubernetes killed a lot of those projects because, and of course mezzos. Kubernetes killed a lot of those projects because it had the groundswell of open source behind it. It had all the licensing, right in the CNCF and fun things like that. But it also had the approach of being, of having a lot of the foresight for, these are the issues you're going to run into. We're gonna make everything, have nice APIs and make it composable. So when you need to face those problems, we might not have it ready, but we have like the composable infrastructure so you can plug that stuff in. And so when some people look at Kubernetes, they're like, this thing's a monster, right? It does too many things. And then you have other people, like Kote, who are like, I thought Kubernetes did that. And the answer is like, yes, Kubernetes does that. No, Kubernetes doesn't do that because you have to build up these structures to solve these problems for everyone. And so when DHA shows up, he's like, look, I wrote something better than Kubernetes 'cause it solved my problem. - Right, and that's the part that does-- - As opposed to a general purpose platform. - But I think that's the distinction, I guess, that's sort of like, I don't know, I guess I do just sort of have a visceral reaction to, there's a difference between, I've written some tools that I think are good for what I do, right? And we can talk about it, and maybe we'll end in a minute. Yeah, homegrown tools, and I'm stealing, I think, from Justin Garrison or someone else that it's like, Basically, the biggest lock-in is always your homegrown tools, right? And people always worry about vendor lock-in, but it's like, hey, if you start writing a lot of your own tools and you can't get away from them, that's almost the worst kind of lock-in, right? So you gotta think about that. But again, it's fine. We all write some of our own scripts. We all have some things that make our lives a little bit easier. But I think it's a whole nother thing. When you kind of launch it out as like, this is the better way, right? And this is like, everyone that's not doing it this way for this kind of use case, it doesn't get it. I don't know, that's the part that I guess, like just, I don't know, it just irritates me. And I know they've had, you know, a ton of success with Ruby on Rails. Like, you know, there's nothing I can sit here and it's like, I didn't write Ruby on Rails. I think most people, I don't know, Matt, you're in a better position to say, it certainly has its place. It was very popular for a long period of time. - I'm a fan, because it glues a bunch of things together. - Still used today, a lot of people like it, right? But it's sort of like, I just feel like maybe we're getting a little bit of halo effect. It's like, oh, I did this for Ruby on Rails, and now I'm gonna go do this for, you know, whatever. Let's just call it container scheduling. And it's like, I don't know, part of me is like, hey, you know, a lot of people have been working on this for a long time, and there's lots of different ways to do it. And you know, and this coupled with the whole like anti-cloud stance, it's like, well, one way to get around, you know, dealing with Kubernetes is to use a managed version of it, right? Well, we already know, and we've already heard, you know, the long rant from DHH about like why that's not right, and why you should do everything yourself, right? But now, you know, and we've heard a lot about cost savings and we talked about that extensively on the last episode, but now it's like, to me, it's like, well, you said you were gonna save $7 million, but now you're starting to build a lot of your own tools, which are gonna require a lot of maintenance, right? And probably what usually happens, and you know, we see this over and over, is that like eventually your requirements change and you start to grow to the quote unquote more complicated thing, right? Your app gets bigger, you wanna do more things. - But maybe, I mean, to Play Devil's Advocate, Like he doesn't have to, right? He knows what his business looks like. He doesn't have to like add features to this. That's what makes me mad is he thinks that his little subset of features is the same thing. He's like, you know, oh, I don't need Kubernetes 'cause I have this. It's like, well, shit, I didn't need Kubernetes either 'cause I have SSH, but you know, that's not the same thing. It's like, you know, I don't need containers and virtualization 'cause I have a big server that will run my app. It's like, but no, you're gaslighting what you're solving here. It's like, yes, you neatly solved your little problem. You open sourced it. It's got a cute project name. But this has no longevity in the face of Nomad and Kubernetes and things like that. It's like, I wouldn't touch this. - Yeah, and maybe you should take a few minutes I think you, I think, again, I'm referencing Justin Garrison's Twitter thread. You know, I think Justin, especially like really, you know, I think he's very, very smart in this area, maybe smart in general, of course, but AWS and just containers in general. And I think many people immediately came out and were like, Hey, this, this is really, you should be using nomad. So maybe forever for all the rest of us, like give us the quick, like who's behind nomad and what does nomad do? So Nomad is a container scheduler from the folks at HashiCorp. And it's open source. It has a much smaller footprint than Kubernetes because it does a lot less than Kubernetes. And for a lot of use cases, people are like, this is fine. I don't need all that extra functionality. I just need something that is lightweight, schedules my containers, puts them on machines, and reports back. And so you see, I think like maybe it was a cosmetic, you know, some of the, the, um, I've seen a couple of SAS providers recently say like, you know, Oh, we didn't actually need Kubernetes. We needed something more lightweight. We went with Nomad. There are people who are happy not to run the full Kubernetes stack. Um, and, you know, Nomad has existed in that space for quite a while. Yeah. And so I just want to pause here because I think not only that, but like it's well documented. It has a pretty active community. It has, I think, a lot of smart people looking at it. And everything that you just said, like to me, all the requirements are immersed, and like are basically fulfilled with Nomad. I mean, I guess, you know, someone's gonna tell me there's something that isn't right, but like, this just seems like the place to start. - Go ahead. - It's like, why not K3S, right? You know, that's what I use. And it's like, it's fine. It does, you know, half the stuff that Kubernetes does, It's still Kubernetes though. And so what you're gonna end up with is like this bespoke custom app that nobody uses. You can't hire anybody to understand and they'll probably start rejecting PRs when people show up with like, "Oh, can you support this and this and this? 'Cause I do that in Kubernetes." And they're like, "No." It was like, "Of course the answer is no, right?" I mean, SSH and a for loop is great, but it's not config management. And Marisk is not, Yes, it's a container scheduler, but it's still based off a lot of stuff that isn't particularly great at everything. And that's kind of the point of Kubernetes, like, well, they're doing their best to solve everything. And there are lightweight alternatives, whether it's a subset of Kubernetes like K3S, or alternatives that are still trying to be generally useful with a long open source history like nomad. But to just show up and like, Oh, look, I solved a problem. It's like, yeah, you did and 100 other companies. And everyone stopped working on that, you know, when they saw the writing on the wall. And that's what's annoying. Yeah. And I guess the other part, I guess, to me, I guess the thing that kind of annoys me too, is the sort of like, I guess it's not so much him personally, but it's just around, this is why, at times, I feel like we don't ever make progress. It's just like, every, you know, it's like, we're fragmenting ourselves again. It's like, okay, people going back. You know, this is like one of the themes of Kotay's newsletter a lot, at least more recently, it's just been like, hey, like we kind of keep reinventing the thing and that's fine. New is good, but like at some point we want to make progress forward. And like this kind of project and also because he has a big megaphone, you know, it'd be one thing if you are just launched it, no one would care, no one would look at it, just be some other random scripts and GitHub, you know, no big deal. But it's gonna like, you know, a lot of people are gonna talk about it. We're talking about it, you know, unfortunately, unfortunately, depending on what you think of it. And it's sort of just gonna become a distraction to me. And it seems like plenty of other ways to solve this problem. And I guess I just wanted to mention, I guess what is the other thing that came up a lot? Was it Capistrano? Am I getting that name right? - Yeah, Capistrano. - Yeah, I don't know. Go ahead. - I mean, Capistrano is just a way to send stuff across a bunch of machines. I mean, it's SSH and a for loop. That's what a lot of early Chef deployments were done with Capistrano, because you needed to like run a command on a bunch of machines, or, you know, spray some packages across a bunch of machines. And, you know, I think in the blog post, he was like, yeah, this isn't much different than Capitrano and you know, okay. You've, you know, why did she use Capitrano? Whatever. You know, why didn't she use one of the other SSH tools? Why didn't she just use Ansible? Right? Cause that's essentially what this is. Yeah. There was a funny comment. I was just, I will not name these. It was like, so is this one answerable script or two answerable scripts? That was one of the many comments in the software defined talk slack, uh, this week. So I, you know, I guess maybe the takeaway here is like, I don't know. I just think everything about this is wrong, right? There are other solutions to this problem. I mean, I don't know how else to say it. Like I just feel like there are other solutions. It is. It just feels that way is like there are other solutions to this problem. There are other ways to get involved in it. I think it's as a distraction. And then just for the 37 singles business, like I'm always just like, Brandon, Brandon, those weren't invented here. I know that's the whole thing, but you know what's funny is that they've done so much writing at 37 signals about like focus and focus on the customer and making money and running a lifestyle business. And it's like, I just like none of this seems like, like we never, what's, what's funny about all of this is like, we never see anything from DHH around like, here's some new features of Hey, like, you know, we've, we've made this better. We've made that better. Like, you know, focus on the specific capabilities. That's because there are the private equity cost cutting business. That's what I think of it. I'm just like, why isn't there anything about like, Hey, we implemented some other great things in email and if you haven't tried Hey, now, you know, you should go, go get it, right? And it's like, it's all this internal cost cutting, internal tools, built a new Dell service and this from the same group of people that I think they wrote rework, right, which is like a super short book. And it's got like all these really short chapters. And a lot of it's like focus on making money and things like that. And it's all of this seems like a distraction. So I don't know. I mean, I feel like I need to make a personal pledge. We will not talk about DHH for at least, you know, at least a month or something. This is gold because this accompanies like the entire software industry. That's true. So maybe in the end, it's just good podcast content. Like I guess maybe, maybe that's what I should be happy about is this every week I can come on and just like to be something I am unhappy about. So, uh, so yeah, so we're going to add some links to MERSC in the thing and I recommend you don't click on them. Don't click on them. Don't try it. Just, just go whatever you're doing. - And think about it as like, if you saw this and you know, in 2015, you'd be like, oh yeah, I see what you were doing there. That's why we switched. - And I did. I watched the 20 minute demo. It's 20 minutes of my life. I will knock it back. - Oh, you watched the demo? Wow. - I did. - I read the read me. And I was like, I see what you're doing here. No, thank you. - That's great. So all right. Well, Matt, there was some other news what we'll touch on just very briefly here. One, you know, there's all this craziness going on at Twitter. We're not going to get into it. But I think I thought was funny is that Twitter essentially is declaring a Slack bankruptcy. They basically are going to reset it. So they had 88,188 channels in their Slack and I guess they're just resetting out there, deleting all of those or archiving them and starting over, which this may be the only thing I've seen recently from Twitter that I agree with sometimes it's just like, yeah, let's just start over. Like the Slack's out of control. But the thing that I think is funny is like they may have eighty eight thousand one hundred eighty eight slack channels But my question is do they have a thread in slack? That's over 9,000 messages Long so congratulations to everyone that's in the software defined talk a slack and those that are actually in the thread So this is a thread we've had going that you started Matt once you're on the thread. You can't leave Yeah, once you're that's the beauty of it is starting to you posted to it. You get notified several years ago - Yes. - You unintentionally started this, I should say, too. This wasn't something we started. - Oh, yeah. - It took on a life of its own. So it just went over 9,000 messages. Of course, you can only read back through several hundred because it eventually gets archived in the free plan. So every once in a while Slack gives us the enterprise plan. You can go back and read from the very beginning. You can get all 9,000. It's like once a year, you can go back and get all 9,000 messages. But if you haven't already joined the software to find Talk Slack, you should do is go to softwaredefiantalk.com. There you should just click on Slack and you can sign up. And if you are so interested, you can reply to the thread. I don't even know what the subject is right now. I think it was a little bit about interviewing this week. You can get in there and you can be part of the 9,000 messages. And we believe we have headroom to 20,000. That's what we've been told. So I think we think we've had about 10,000 more messages before the thread will probably just die or the Slack instance will no longer take it. So take that, Elon Musk. You know, you have 88,000 channels, but we have 9,000 messages in the thread. Now, a few other things here. So a few shout outs to listeners. A bunch of people wanted stickers this week, which has been fantastic. So I sent stickers to Frank in the Netherlands, over there by Cote. Also sent some stickers to both Chris in Allen, Texas, and Simon in the UK. They both wrote in saying they got new laptops. So I love that, the fact that people, not only getting new laptops, maybe it's like, I don't know, new physical year, a lot of places. people getting some new laptops. But I love that people will think like, yeah, I gotta replace my stickers. So happy to send them some stickers. And I also sent stickers to William in Florida and he said he needed one for his thermos and his bike. So yeah, the laptop stickers, but you can use them for whatever you want. A thermos, a bike, you know, a baby stroller, I don't know, you know, just, I say get 10 stickers, put them on 10 different things. That's what we do. So if you would like a sticker, all you have to do is email your postal address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com and I'll be happy to send you a sticker anywhere in the world. And I also wanted to thank David. He emailed from Hawaii, of all places, to give us a little bit more information about eggs. So he was sort of reiterating what we did learn about the refrigerated versus unrefrigerated. It's all about what's your approach to containing disease. No updates on what's going on in New Zealand. Matt, you haven't had-- - I wanna know what's happening in Hawaii. 'Cause like, like, uh, Kauai, there's like chickens everywhere. Are they just, you know, even eggs? - Well, it's so funny, right, 'cause he emailed over the weekend, And I was just like, I was in a, basically in a cemetery said Hawaii and I was like, Oh my gosh, you're in Hawaii. That sounds awesome. And he was like, yeah, I basically lived there for a long time. Basically moved away, came back. He said he really likes it, but there's not a lot of tech jobs, but I guess, you know, I guess if you're working remote, yeah. Yeah. But I think of this now, you know, this is funny. Like you're so far in Australia and like, anytime I tell someone you live in Australia and I'm sure you hear this on people like, Oh, that's awesome. Sydney's awesome. But I was like, what is better living in Hawaii or living in Sydney, Australia? I was like, I don't know. in Hawaii sounds pretty cool, but it seems like it would also maybe like you get Island fever pretty quick. So I don't know. I should ask you, Matt, if I, if I could move the family, all expenses paid right now to Hawaii, would the family be in, or are you all settled in Sydney and Sydney's where you want to be? I don't know. Cause cause cause probably I'm thinking, uh, haven't been to Hawaii quite a few times, I would, I would opt for the big Island, but then I, you know, Island fever could be like a real thing because you know, there's limited stuff you could do and like, or you can choose Honolulu, you know, to go or, you know, wahoo for all the benefits of the big Island, but are of a big city, not on the big Island, but I don't know. I'm let me ask you this. Like you have, I feel like Hawaii, you've made more stops to why, because like, how far is the flight from Sydney to Hawaii for you? It's, it's still 10 and a half. Okay. Still pretty far. I was going to say, because I feel like you've met some family there, whatever. That's been like a meeting at different times, right? where it's like, cause obviously even from Austin, I think it's eight hours, so it's a long way. So I don't know, I guess it's not really that close. I was like, well, maybe like, you know, it's sort of like, you know, closer than certainly the US. So, well, you know, I guess we'll just say, David, we're, you know, we appreciate the information about eggs, but at this point, we just want to know about how we can all live in Hawaii with you. So call us, call us, let us know if there's a place to stay. Now upcoming, and in fact, next week, there's going to be some conferences. So Matt, you and Kote, you're going to be at the Southern California Linux Expo, which is also known as scale. So Matt and CodeTape will be there. Unknown, there'll probably be some live recording. I've green-lighted with the Software Defined Talk CFO. Like we've got plenty of happy hour budget, Matt. So go out there, buy some drinks for people. If you would like to still register for the conference, probably, I gotta do it fast. I don't know when they're closing registration, but I imagine it's soon. You can use the-- - I'm sure they have like day of registration. - Day of? Well, you should use the code-- - Day of scale is a relaxed event. - Okay, you should use the code DevOps. So it's just DEVOP and I was told that you can get a really good discount for that. So, you know, so check that one out. Also some conferences coming up here. You got Pi Texas, that's April 1st and 2nd. KubeCon EU, also Software Defined Talk is gonna have a presence there. I think we are a media sponsor. I think Matt and Kote will be there. I'm sure we'll talk about that when this gets closer. We've got DevOps, Dave Birmingham, that's Alabama. Roll Tide, Roll Eagle, that's April 20 and 21st. And then DevOps, Dave Austin, actually fast approaching. That'll be May 4th and 5th. And also Matt wanted to give you a few moments. Matt is a star, he's a podcast star. He's been making the rounds on all the major podcasts. Matt, why don't you tell us a few of the podcasts you've recently appeared on. - Well, it's been a busy two months of the year so far. I was on, well, obviously I did that. Our friends over at the Cloudcast. I did that. I did open observability talks, which I'm sure you really just wanted me to say observability because it's so hard for me to say, but I'm not going to call it monitoring. I did that podcast, which was a lot of fun. And some of the ones that got recorded last year showed up recently in the feed. So yeah, in fact, the one was software engineering - Yeah, but he's a, well, it just recently came out, Matt. Don't, you know, we gotta like keep the listeners, you know, in the dark, just quietly. - It's timeless content. - It's timeless content. So you should listen if you wanna hear Jordy, who's been a long time listener of the show, interview Matt in a wide ranging conversation, you should check that out. So all the links for those shows probably will be in the show notes. It's up to Matt if he puts them in or not, we'll see. And if not, you should email Matt directly. - I will go track them down and put them in the notes. - You should update Matt, and we'll see if he can get them in the notes. - Yeah, I'll be right back. You should update Matt directly or ask him directly and he'll send you all the links. Now a few other things. So I'll go ahead. So the recommendation Matt already gave away my recommendation since we were talking about some media stuff. I did the new Formula One season starting this week. I'm all in. I love Formula One, been watching it a ton. So if you're new to the sport or you just like scripted television or I guess reality TV, if you will, watch Drive to Survive season five so you can get up to date on all everything that's happening, learn all the the drivers, learn all the teams, you can pick all the teams, uh, who you want to cheer for, pick a driver you want to cheer for. Uh, tech is sponsoring ton of them. So if you're an AWS, you can cheer for Ferrari. I think VMware is McLaren. Uh, Oracle is Red Bull. I think those two have like a persona that kind of like match up. They're kind of like, you know, the, the evil doers that are real successful. So anyway, there's tons of, uh, drama in there in the first races this weekend. So, uh, you can watch the series and then you can watch the race And you can, you know, if you are so inclined, you can go subscribe to Formula One and watch it wherever you are in the world. So having said all that, Matt, what's your recommendation? My recommendation this week is something I've recommended before. If you play the video game Factorio, which is highly addictive, I recommend, maybe you don't? I don't know. I come in and out of being addicted to it. There's an expansion thing called Story Mode that I had, or the story missions, and I just felt like replaying it and recently replayed it. And I found out my name's in the credits because I opened a lot of bug reports. Oh, really? Which just cracks me up. Anytime I see my name anywhere, I'm always just like, "That's hilarious." So that's my pick is throw that guy a couple bucks on Patreon because it's a labor of love. That's awesome. Well, Matt, you have to get us a screenshot of your name or something. We'll have to somehow find some way to put it on. I did a double take because I was just like clicking through the credits. I was like, wait, did I see my name? And then I had to like rerun it. That's awesome. Well, good for you, man. I didn't know. I mean, not only are you on a podcast guest, a famous person, you're a famous person for Factorio as well. That's fantastic. - Fantastic. - I blame JJ. - All right, well, if this was the first time you've heard Software Defined Talk, welcome. You can probably subscribe right now in the podcast player you're listening to. If you want to follow us on any of the social channels, you should go to softwaredefinedtalk.com and then we've got Twitter, Twitch, Instagram, Mastodon, LinkedIn, YouTube, you name it. We've got it. You can watch us record this live, usually pretty much on Wednesdays, afternoons, for the most part, or you can go back and, you know, if you will, see behind the scenes of this highly produced, well-organized podcast. No one would believe there's just chaos behind the scenes. And with that, we will talk to you next time. - Bye-bye. You know, as long as a human can kind of wrap their minds around it, (laughs) I don't wanna call it AI. Stuff just shows up and you're like, "Oh, well, you know, I'm locked into this for six weeks." - Are you ready? - I'm ready. Let's do this.