It's time for episode 603 of the Clockwise Podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, April 30th, 2025. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast where time has no meaning with some meaning. Okay, it's kind of the point of the show. Never mind. My name is Dan Moore and I'm joined across the internet by my good friend, my pal, the one and only Micah Sargent. How are you doing today, Micah?
I'm doing well, Dan. Welcome back. We missed you. We're so happy you're here. Jason did a great job while you were away. But, you know, it feels like you're reading a prepared statement at gunpoint. Should I blink twice? You can't tell. Well, moving right along. This is, of course, the show where we invite on two fantastic guests to talk about Vortech Topic. To my left this week, it is the CEO slash lackey at Rogue Amoeba. It's Paul Cavasis. Welcome back, Paul.
Thank you, Dan. It is a thrill to be here. Smile and nod. You don't have to read that part. Sorry. To my left. It is journalist, Sailor Moon enthusiast, and everybody's favorite Tamagotchi winner. It's Florentine. Hello, Flo. Hi, that is me. That is me. I have some new ones. Nice. I knew it. All right. We got four tech topics, 30 minutes. Let's kick things off with this question.
I'm just curious if you have been using AI chatbots of various varieties. How sycophantic do you like your chatbots to be? This is in regards to OpenAI rolling back an update in which it felt like perhaps... Their chatbots were maybe too nice. to people? Is that weird? Or do you prefer them to be like really obsequious? Paul, what is your relationship with chatbots like and how would you like it? We don't have enough time for that, but...
No, in discussing this, I looked at the article that you linked and Sam Altman said that the updated model they had, quote, glazes too much. And a slew of the commentary about that was people asking what the heck that means. And I had to look it up myself. It seems to be slang for being overly complimentary. But it leads me to a related question for all of us.
How hip do you want your CEOs to try to be? And my answer is basically the same to both these questions. Not very. Don't be that sycophantic. Don't try to be that hip. Stop trying so hard, Sam Altman. Stop trying so hard, ChatGPT. Both of you should just be more sincere. But I want brevity. I want to get in and out when I'm using one of these things.
I definitely do not want. I think I saw this last week when when the model rolled out and it was very verbose and very complimentary and it seemed a little ridiculous. And I think it is definitely not. I don't know. The chatbot is not my friend and I don't want it to pretend to be. So I have custom instructions set. to try to mitigate this at all times. So I've not experienced this obsequiousness, this glaze, as it were. I've seen some of the examples of how that has played out.
While I am of the belief that I don't know why I am, but I am of the belief that human beings are intelligent enough to know better than to just take these boss. at their word, fully and completely and wholly in every case, some of the. examples are still rather frightening just in case. we have that rare human who decides to take something at its word. So an example was somebody talking about going off of their medicine.
And the bot being like, yeah, so true, bestie. Let's do that. Let's not take our medicine anymore. You're beautiful. You're wonderful. You're perfect, et cetera, et cetera. And yeah. Let's drive off that cliff, Thelma. What could go wrong? Flo, what about you?
So you guys are talking about ChatGPT. I have not been using ChatGPT. I've been more in the realm of the Google side of things as per usual. Andy and I over on Material Podcast, we talk a lot about the interactions that we have with Gemini. And the nice thing about Gemini is that you can talk to it and tell it what you want and don't want. And so you can tell it not to be so verbose. You can tell it to just cut to the chase. You know, overall, I found it to be the most fluid.
And I love the fact that I can type to Gemini in my vernacular, like in the way I would type in a Slack or Discord message, right? And that I will get the result that I'm looking for. So I think having that. organic interaction has been actually quite pleasurable for me and has made me want to use the product even more. When I see the examples comparing it to like what ChatGPT does, I think to myself,
How interesting it is to also see like the different flavors of AI that are out there. And I can definitely see like Google, for instance, this one big thing with Gemini is. You know, we've talked a lot about how AI is hallucinating. We've talked a lot about how it's not 100% correct. And I go into it using it with all of those caveats. And sometimes it does get things wrong. And I'll tell it, I say, hey, that was factually wrong, actually, what you just said.
and it will apologize to me better than any person in my life has ever apologized to me own up to it and actually yeah they're just and but they're so and they're just like i'm so sorry you're right like i don't know it's just so It's just nice and harmonic a little bit, you know, and I wish... Makes me wish people could be like that all the time. Yeah, I didn't notice this part of it, but I did notice recently I was using ChachiPT to do some research on something for a book I was writing.
like some science-related, like astronomy-related stuff. It wasn't like overly hyping, but it was like a little too enthusiastic. Like, oh, great question. Yeah, let's get into it. And I was like... What? It felt like the teacher who tries too hard turns around the chair backwards. Like, let's rap, kids. It's vaguely uncomfortable. Like Paul said, I don't need it to pretend to be my friend. I don't want... I have no desire for me to believe that it's human.
I don't care. I want it to be a robot because it's a robot. I don't need it to pretend to be anything that it's not. So I just... you know, kind of get to the point and get out of there. So I think had I noticed this particular update, I would have been extremely uncomfortable and been like, what is happening? And I'm glad they are dialing it back. But I mean...
You know, that's just one minor problem with everything else with AI. And like Paul said, we don't have time to get into all of it. But thank you all for your thoughts on that topic. Let's go to our second topic, which comes from Paul. All right. So Flo mentioned Google and Google is on my list this week because they are killing my Nest thermostat. They are ending support for it.
My question for all of you is, what are your general thoughts on the lifespan of smart devices, such as a thermostat or anything else? It's very simple. I think that the lifespan should be longer done. But but sincerely, I mean, I've used.
smart home products for a very long time at this point. And I love smart home devices, but I have over time become more careful about what smart home devices I'm buying and from which companies I'm buying based on the fact that Depending on the features and functionality that the smart device offers, it could result in a future where it doesn't work as is expected. So if we're talking about a company that is going to continue.
can continue existing right and we're talking about a product that can continue working Why are we ending... any sort of support for that device. I think that that's silly. It's a different story if you've got a company that goes out of business, totally understand how that means. OK, well, the servers are being turned off. You can't use it anymore. This is particularly frustrating because particularly for installed devices in the home.
You keep them for a really long time and that should be okay. That should be encouraged. That should be kept. And that's how I feel. Flo, how do you feel? So first of all, I had the original Nest.
thermostat for 12 years. It moved houses with me. Recently, I updated to the Nest Learning thermostat, the brand new one that they just came out with. It's all modern looking or whatever. And I thought to myself, Yes, I agree with Micah and everyone else that things that are meant for the home should have a longevity that spans quite a while because of the way houses are.
But it also made me think about how Google's entire business is shifting to AI and that the reason that this is getting sunsetted is because of this move toward AI and like the learning thermostat. The whole point of it is that it uses... AI in a way the original ones did not. And so in order for them to keep pushing this very big narrative of what they are doing, they have to have every product aligned with it. And I think that was...
That's becoming the more frustrating part for me as a person in the Google ecosystem. Because it's not just affecting the thermostat, it's affecting the other Google smart home stuff that I have. You know, my smart speakers are all like... Only half of them have converted over to Gemini. And so it's like this weird new fragmentation that I'm experiencing. And then, you know, and then it upsets me because it reminds us about how.
We kind of allowed the private companies to come in and own all of this. We did nothing about it, etc. etc. I'm going to stop there before I keep going. No, I, you know, I agree. I think one of the things that's kept me from noticing this as much is that because the state of the smart home has been in flux. over the past decade as it's been so early in the devices that get rolled out. A lot of times I've ended up replacing things before they are discontinued.
So I'll swap stuff in and out. And therefore, I'm kind of always a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of companies being like, Oh, this device is too old. It's like, I got rid of that smart plug like three years ago or whatever. But I do think it is incumbent on these companies, especially companies as large as Google, to have some sort of off-ramp... where you can maintain utility for these things. I don't think it's acceptable to say, well, you had a good run. It's dead now.
I think the answer is being like, well, we're going to disable maybe the cloud services, but here is our solution for how you can continue using this. And maybe you can run something on your local network, for example, that will let you get most of the functionality out of it. There needs to be a really good solid off ramp for these things if people are still using them. I mean, it's one thing if a company goes out of business.
Ideally, yes, you want them to open up the code or provide the ability for community to make a workaround or something like that. But I do think if you're, especially when you're Google, you're one of the biggest companies in the world. it's kind of a jerk move to just be like, well, sorry, bye. And Google has done this stuff before, as have plenty of the other big tech companies. And it is very frustrating when the tech that you rely on...
Like the only answer is you got to throw it out and buy a new piece of tech. I don't want to buy it. It worked perfectly fine. It's not my fault. It's broken. It's yours. So, you know, I do think it would be good if there were some sort of path forward for these things. And I do think there is, in many cases, there are sort of vibrant communities online devoted to keeping these things running, which is great. I think in that case.
you know, like I said, the companies should do more to help out those communities and provide that as a path for people who want to continue using those products. Personally, I haven't ended up with too many situations where I found like, okay, this thing I have is dead now and I got to toss it. A lot of those cases, it's just something I've stopped using because its utility was never that great in the first place.
Well, so this one's interesting because this device is not going to die. And, you know, I said die originally, but it's ending support. It's going to effectively degrade into a standard thermostat. So you'll be able to use it on the wall. to adjust the temperature the way you know you use a thermostat for for 100 years uh so
This one, I think it's pretty lame. And multiple people here just said Google is huge. Google does not need to do this. Google could devote the resources to keeping these things going longer. they're choosing not to and the business incentives are not there for them to do that. But it's definitely lame, but at least the device will continue working locally. There was a there was a post a few years ago by someone.
The poll quote was like, Tony Fidel sold me a $300 tub of hummus. And it's basically some home hub that Google bought the company, Nest bought the company, and then killed the product. And it was with like... maybe a couple of months worth of notice. And the product was just dead afterwards. And it was a $300 piece of plastic that was now worthless.
So I think I don't think Google is getting better at this, but at least in this one instance, they're doing something that's not quite as bad where this will still work. But yeah, I mean, Micah said it. The short, obvious answer is these things should last longer and continue working longer. The thing that I'm concerned about is that people will get burned by this enough.
that it actually will be negative for these businesses without them really realizing it until it's too late. So I don't know. We'll certainly see what happens over time as far as... products continuing to do this sort of thing and the blowback that they get from it. I'm not super optimistic that anything will get better, but there's at least the possibility.
All right. That's two topics down, two topics left to go, which of course means it's halftime here at Clockwise. And this week's episode is brought to you by Clockwise. Yes, our fantastic Clockwise swag. If you would like to grab some Clockwise t-shirts, mugs, hats.
tote bags, phone cases, all of the above, you can go to clockwise.social. You'll see links to all of our various merchandise. And by buying that, you help support the show, which we really appreciate. So yeah, once again, go to clockwise.social to check out all of our great merchandise. All right. Halftime is over. It was quick. The marching band has left the field. Micah, what do you got for us? All right, my topic for you is this.
Are you a regular Reddit user? And whether you are or you aren't, what is the last helpful bit of information you found on the platform? Flo, we'll start with you. I have a little chronic illness thing going on without going into too much detail. And the thing that has been so helpful for me is actually the subreddit.
of these places. And it's not necessarily because I'm getting any medical help from there or really discovering anything new. It just really helps to be in a forum with other people who are complaining about the same thing that hurt. because it makes you feel super validated it's like oh okay this is the illness that is causing me to feel this very specific way this is not a personal failure
Because, you know, that's how society makes us think. So in that way, Reddit still makes it easy for me to sort of anonymously, in a way, access a community. that I think Facebook, for instance, would never give me or Instagram because you really have to have like a face on there. Whereas Reddit, it's like, I want to know what's going on. I can go pop in and just quickly get a read of the room and then pop back out. So I'm still using it for that.
Yeah, I also am not a big, I'm not a big Reddit user, but I do. I mean, it comes up in a lot of searches when I'm trying to do research on things. The two things that I most recently used before I was looking at my... browsing history was, I mentioned I was doing some research for a book.
I was Googling, again, a science question, this time about black holes. And I found an answer on Reddit that had an interesting discussion of stuff and let me refer to certain things. I was like, okay, all right, that's an interesting way of thinking about this. And then the other thing was, the other day, my kid loves this one pop-up book that we have that's from when I was a kid that I had.
We have tried to be real gentle with it. But of course, the other night, he pulled something too hard and it ripped. And I was like, oh God, how am I going to fix this? So I went to look like... okay, I can probably glue this, but like what type of glue do I use to glue these things back together? And I started like looking around and read it.
came to the rescue there. They had like a whole bookbinding community that talked about like what you want to use in bookbinding and book repair and stuff like that. And it turned out good news. I was like, wow, that's easy to get. But like, I mean, great. I'm glad that I didn't spend forever trying to like...
searching around or looking on Amazon being like, oh, you got to buy this really expensive special glue for repairing books. Nope. Just something I can buy at the drugstore, which was great. So I appreciate that save. Reddit does come in useful every once in a while. But as Flo said, there's also a lot of garbage.
Paul, what about you? I definitely don't use it regularly. I have a custom RSS feed for my subreddits and I read the links, but I don't dip into Reddit itself that often. But what Flo said is spot on that some of the subreddits... are phenomenally useful. I look at the Boston and Cambridge subreddits, which often have hyper-local information that
Maybe 20 or 30 years ago, you would have gotten from a local newspaper that doesn't exist anymore. Maybe maybe from a BBS around that same time, but also doesn't really exist anymore. So I think Reddit is. I like it way better than anything like Facebook, again, as Flo said. And it's not something I use heavily, but it's something that I use regularly, I think. I did look to see what the last thing I looked on it.
And it was looking up the difference between Nest thermostats and Ecobee thermostats. Because last week I learned that I was going to have to replace my thermostats if I wanted them to continue to be smart. And so then there was plenty of discussion on Reddit from...
a little from the past couple of years as these companies have been competing. And then more recently, as people have seen, oh, crap, I got to do this. I can rely on somebody else having done a bunch of the research and then a little bit of discussion on it. So that's that was very useful. And I have.
I've used it for all sorts of things along those lines where I don't necessarily want to do a whole bunch of research myself and I don't necessarily trust a chatbot to tell me something useful on this. I want people who've actually used the thermostats to tell me something. So again, the subreddit. that you can find can be really powerful and really useful. Yeah, that's been my experience as well. I'm not a big Reddit user like regularly. I don't comment a lot or anything like that, but.
Recently, I was I have a vinyl cutting machine and I was running into an issue with needing to mirror some stuff and also cut along a different. origin than what the machine would normally allow. And I was able to find some advice on Reddit where I couldn't find that anywhere else. that gave me some clarity on what I needed to do. And I love that Reddit is kind of like an experience juicer because anytime I need to, I can sort of take.
many, many people's experience and throw it into the juicer and come out with a nice, delicious glass of carrot juice that tells me exactly what I need to know for the issue that I'm experiencing. It's quite... Delicious. So thank you all for your answer on that. Let us go to our next topic, which comes from Flo. Google I.O. is coming up next month. That's a big part of what I cover. And then following that, we're going to have WWDC for the Apple ecosystem.
With Google in particular, they announced this week that they are splitting up the keynotes so that they're going to have this one big like Gemini keynote that's happening on the actual day of Google I.O. And then they're doing a small Android base. sort of keynote situation, I think like a week and a half, two weeks before the actual developer conference. And so the idea is to
kind of separate out the AI from the bare bones coding of it all. But from what I've been talking to developers about, because I am kind of, you know, I'm sniffing around right now, kind of like wondering what's going on. developers don't seem too happy about this it feels like the again as we were talking about with the nest for instance it feels like this big move this big push toward ai it is shifting so much of what the culture has been
I think about this with WWDC as well, because Apple is moving very much to Apple intelligence and having that be a really big part of everything they do. So I'm curious from y'all, do you see developer conferences? kind of becoming less about the actual developers and just more about what all this stuff is. It's tricky. I do think developer conferences have...
shifted in some ways, and that's in part because these companies use them as press platforms. They're using them as opportunities to show off all the stuff they're doing. especially the keynotes, right? Apple's keynote in particular is not a developer keynote. It is for the press. It is for fans. That said, there's a bunch of other stuff.
ancillary to that that is still more developer focused. And I say that because I'm someone who dips into all those developer sessions that Apple puts out during WWDC week. And those are certainly not things that are aimed at the press. They are more technical and they are definitely things for developers. But you can get all those without going to the conference, right? I mean, in some ways, it's just a week they've picked to release a bunch of videos.
So it's always been a little bit hybrid in that way because the keynotes, especially for Apple, and that's where I'm primarily speaking out because that's where my expertise is. The keynotes have always been, or at least for the last two decades, have been more public-facing, especially once Apple went away from using Macworld Expo to announce products.
wwc and the iphone launch became like the two big times a year where everybody pays attention and wwc is still west less prominent in many ways in the mainstream press than the iPhone event is. So yeah, it's a little of both. But I agree with you that the keynote event especially is still very press-focused. And I think...
Certainly, with the advent of Apple intelligence stuff last year, it does feel in some ways like there is more of a marketing push there. I will be interested to see this year if it ends up building on that and being a continuation of that. like delivering the features that they promised last year, whether they will back away from that.
So it's complicated, but that's kind of where I feel. Paul, what about you? Well, so you touched on a whole bunch of what I was thinking, but again, my expertise is similar in that I've been to DubDub a whole bunch and I have not been to IO or any of the other ones. But DubDub's keynote hasn't been about developers for 15 plus years since the iPhone became a thing. But the same day in the afternoon, there's the platform State of the Union.
That one's not super technical, but it's definitely not aimed at the press, and it definitely is aimed at developers. And then there are all the sessions that... since COVID have been videos, but previously, you know, what, five plus years ago, were in-person talking to real people.
I think you've nailed it, that there's the marketing part, which is what gets all the attention. And then there's the developer part. And that is still, at least with DubDub, that is still a big portion of what they're doing. But I think it's interesting to note as a developer myself that even the marketing push is... for developers, just not directly.
The next version of iOS, the next version of macOS gets a whole bunch of publicity. That's good for us as developers because people, you know, update their devices, move to this platform, and then we can take advantage of the features that are there.
So it's not directly talking to developers, but it is still beneficial to developers. But yeah, it's definitely, you're absolutely correct that there's a marketing portion of it and there's a developer portion of it. And they are two separate things that I think. 20 years ago or 25 years ago, it was only the developer things and the press didn't really pay much attention to it at all.
I mean, to answer your question specifically, no. I think that, yeah, for some time now, we've seen that these are press events. Primarily, it is the opportunity to get everybody gathered together. But I do like it when developer conferences are given the space to be both press conferences and developer conferences. And I think that when that is done, that's done when it's done well, it's done very well and it is a good thing because it kind of gets everybody together in the same space.
And it also gives an opportunity for the press side of things. to talk with the people who are responsible for some of the most important aspects of these platforms. And I have seen some great work. Christopher Lawley is a good example of talking to the people. there on the ground who are going to these conferences who are not just the press people, but also developers who are making stuff for, in this case, it was WWDC, so for Apple's platforms.
And I think that that can be pretty magical and important. So no, I don't think that they are for developers anymore. But as long as they maintain a developer focus to some extent, I think that's OK. What do you think, Flo? I think it'll obviously still be about developers in some capacity, but I am going to be very curious this year to really talk to developers at both IO and WWDC, just kind of see like...
how are you guys feeling about all of this stuff that's changing? And so that is what I'm really interested because last year it was kind of just like, hey, we've decided that all the companies now are going to do this AI thing. And then... And then Apple kind of surprised a couple of people, too, with the Apple intelligence. And so I see Google and Apple in this very parallel journey.
It's interesting. And oh, my God, I'm so thankful that I've been around for such a long time that I get to see these changes and I get to see these changes. So, yeah. All right, that's four topics down. We got just enough time for a bonus topic. I want to know, are you an allergy sufferer, Paul? Dan, it's hard enough just existing in the world. So I am thankful to be able to say that I do not also suffer from allergies, seasonal allergies or anything like that.
Sorry, Micah. I do. I've suffered. I remember the day that I learned about having allergies. I was just a kid and my eyes were itching and I didn't realize it was because of allergies. And I went to the bathroom. so young and looked in the mirror and my eyes were bright red and like swollen. And then I remember my grandma saying, oh, honey, I think you have allergies. And I was like, what's allergies? That's how I feel every time. What about you, Flo?
I don't have seasonal allergies except for the one time I went to New Zealand. That was the only time I've ever experienced hay fever, so I understand now what the feelings are. I am allergic to sulfur. so if you if you put sulfur it's on my medical chart it could kill me so please don't how do you how do you learn that They gave it to me for acne when I was really young and my whole face like...
blew up. I was going to say something about a cold day in hell, but no. The brimstone, that's the one that gets you. Yeah, like my guy, I'm an allergy sufferer going back to when I was a kid. I remember I used to... As a somewhat introverted kid, it was kind of great because in the spring, when I was in elementary school, all the other kids would go outside for recess, and I had special dispensation to go down into basically...
the basement and with like where our art rooms were and just sit and read for an hour. And that was kind of the best. i know that sounds depressing uh all right no it's adorable uh we have got a brand new feature for our members clockwise unwound
It's a short weekly segment after the main show wraps up where Mike and I chat about a tech topic. If you'd like to get that plus ad-free episodes, just go to relay.fm slash clockwise and sign up for just $7 per month or $7 a year, and you'll help support the show.
And with that, we have reached the end of this week's episode. And all that remains is for us to thank our fantastic guest, Paul Kafasis. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. And Florence Ion, thank you so much for joining us. Dan and Micah, thanks for always inviting me. It was a pleasure to have you both. We'll be back next week. But until then, we remind everyone out there listening, watch what you say. And keep watching the clock. Bye, everybody.