654: I Love the Clanker Slang

It's time for episode six hundred and fifty-four of the Clockwise Podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, April 29th, 2026. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, thirty minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast that just might be over before you finish mowing the lawn. I am one of your hosts, Micah Sargent, and I am joined across this. Internet by my good pal, my dear friend. It is the one and only Dan the Man Morin. How you doing, Dan?

I'm doing well. My my lawn is not that big, so probably I would finish mowing it first. And also I don't mow the lawn, my wife mows the lawn. So I guess it wouldn't even be an issue. Well that's that's good. Um I just mowed the lawn and we'll probably have to do it again in like three or four days. All right, but don't listen to this podcast. That would be very confusing. Yeah. Uh anyway, we've got two awesome guests joining us on this show who may or may not mow. Uh huh.

And to my left, senior developer advocate at GitHub. It's the wonderful Christina Warren. Hello, Christina. Hello, hello. And yeah, no, I am not a mower, but that is not in my purview, so Those who those who mow can. Those who don't don't mow. Uh to my left this week, it's the director of strategic partnerships at ECAM, the one and only Doc Rock. Welcome back, Doc. I I too am in anti mower because I would need an anti-gravity mower at sixteen flights up above. Oh yeah. Just look really weird.

Well, uh, without further ado, I think it's time for us to get started. We've got four topics, thirty minutes, and mine for you is this. Aside from coding, is there any other techie task that you kind of if it comes up, you go, No, I may not be near my computer or my laptop right now, but I am not going to do this thing on my phone or I'm not going to do this thing on my tablet. I will wait or I will go right now to hop onto my computer. Uh Christina, we'll start with you.

If there's anything that I need to do in a spreadsheet that's more than just reviewing the spreadsheet.

I don't care. I mean, maybe if I have, you know, a a magic keyboard connected to an iPad, maybe that would work. But in general, that's gonna be laptop activity. Uh the same is is true for any sort of long form writing. Like I can power out a huge, you know, like email or whatever, but if I'm going to actually be reviewing a document and and making notes and changes and whatnot, I'm almost certainly going to want a computer for that.

But the biggest thing I would say is printing. Like if I'm at a place where I need to print, even though airplay has been a thing for like fifteen, sixteen years, A, it's gotten worse over time. That's a that's an actual fact. B there are just like consequences with network printers and other stuff that I'm just like, no, if I need to print something, I'm almost certainly going to be grabbing my laptop and then, you know, figuring out the wireless uh printer situation.

I think Christina named a lot of the ones that are that came to mind for me. I mean, I do a lot of long form writing and I don't do that on my phone at all. And the caveat for my tab my iPad would be w whether or not I have a physical keyboard there. I'm not gonna write anything longer than an email on a touch screen keyboard, honestly. Um note taking's another good one. Like I watch a lot of

uh shows that I do podcasts about and I wanna take notes as I'm watching them. I don't want to do that on my phone or my iPad because the amount of time it takes me to like concentrate on a thing I'm typing, I will lose track of what I'm watching, whereas on my laptop I can sort of, you know, watch the show and type without really thinking about it. Um so the physical keyboard still makes a big, big difference there. I will say, you know, you mentioned coding, but I would say automation stuff.

I do automation occasionally on my phone or my iPad, but I almost always get frustrated and want to be doing it on the Mac instead. Some of that's what tools are available and some of it is just to the interface of the stuff that is available is much friendlier to work with. on the Mac most of the time. So I don't know. I I you know, I look at my wife and she does like almost everything on her phone with like very rare exceptions.

And so I'm probably more computer centric than that, but um yeah, it's always interesting to see what are the kind of things that make me feel like, um, no, I need to go get a different device. What about you, Doc? Okay, so Alaska Airlines bought Hawaiian Air and I travel a lot because of my job here, right? So the system has been two separate systems for the longest time and they've been working on slowly, slowly, slowly integrated.

They said, okay, on April twenty second, we're gonna finally merge both systems and all of your travel headaches will be over. Before you know you have your MFA, very important or you know, two factor. And when they put the page back up, they set the only two factor to SMS. Which for a travel company is hmm. I won't say stupid, but stupid, because international sims do not allow you to get SMS messages. And on the site it says

The only way to do this is to have a US phone number only. You took me to a different country and you want me to log in. and you want me to verify my identity with an SMS message that I cannot get in said foreign country. So for me it has always been Travel stuff? Just for, you know, wanting to make sure that you know actually take any wrong boxes or do anything weird and the funniest thing was sitting here on my laptop, you know, trying and of course I could not get this message.

So I just had to trust everything work and go to the airport early and check in at the desk and luckily the way they do things in Heathrow is so much better than the way they do it at Logan. So I did I didn't have any issues. But you know, the paranoia of making a mistake when you're doing something is traveling, especially coming from Hawaii'cause travel is so expensive from here. Like I just make I do it on a computer'cause I need two screens, actually three screens going.

And the phone and I'm kinda like, you know, double checking, triple checking, everything. So it would definitely have to be travel oriented things. For me, it is mostly like local government things. And any anytime you have to go to a website that when you load it, a little bit of text is cropped i in the in on the you open it up and like the the H one is cropped and the H two is partially cropped, then I'm going, okay, I'm going absolute to my computer.

But what the reason why I brought up this question is because I see people do some whole wild things on their tiny little phone screens all the time. And I realized how bougie I am and like I don't know, overwrought I could be at times because I w will go to my computer

for just about anything uh when I feel like I'm slightly inconvenienced by the tinier screen of my phone. And some people are like, I don't know, doing their full taxes from their phone and uh, I don't know, orchestrating the the light show at the NFL halftime performance. Uh uh just an example. Anyway, uh thank you all for your answers to that. Let's go to our next topic, which comes from Christina.

So today as we record this, um a new study uh appeared in Nature and and I'm not gonna get into like the validity of the study or whatnot, but it was sort of interesting and it suggests that training your chat bot to be friendly or warm leads to more errors like upwards of between like ten and and thirty percent more errors and more um psychophancy. And so do you actually want your chat bot to be nice? And are you polite and warm with the clinkers in your life?

First of all, I love the clanker slang as a longtime uh Star Wars fan, Clone Wars watcher, which is where it originated. I love that that has become common slang for AI and robots. It's awesome. Um I don't want them to be warm and polite to me because they're not anything other than strings of code. Um, I understand the idea of, you know, having them be polite and and deferential, but

It rings so hollow every time an AI tells me to do something and then like gets it wrong and then I call them on it and they are so Apollo, I'm so sorry. And it's like, No, you're not. Your code. You can't be sorry. Uh uh and it just makes me angrier, honestly, because it's like apologizing like it did something wrong and it's like

Uh on the one hand, I'm mad because you're not sorry. On the other hand, it's not really your fault, right?'Cause like you did the wrong thing, but also like you can't apologize for something. So I I want it to be, you know, I think my perf my perfect world is like Star Trek computer level, right? Which is it is a tool. It responds. It has it can construct sentences like a person, but it doesn't express emotion. It doesn't express feelings because it it is that is fundamentally a sham.

Um, I want it to be a helpful tool and you know I don't want it to be rude to me either, but like, you know, if I'm using my computer for other tasks that are not uh, you know, AI related, I don't expect it. to like couch them in terms that make me feel better. Like I I don't expect my car or any my toaster, right, to be something that is really apologetic when it burns my toast.

I I just want it to be a thing, a tool that gets a job done. And I think that encouraging people to see uh, you know, AI tools as in some way sentient or feeling is a really bad idea, not just for errors and sick of fancy, but also for our relationship with this technology. Doc, what about you? I'm like, the way this stuff works is it works by context. And saying things like please and thank you or may I have another

is wasting context. So just from a pure code standpoint, it's really stupid. It's it's not sentient, it's not gonna come alive. It's not gonna harm you. So no, I do not wish to. However, I do have something funny that my Especially Claude and I are so well trained. It knows that I am a as a long term hip hop head and an ex DJ. And so it will give me this answer that it knows is too long. And then it will come back and it will say, Would you like me to kick you back a tight sixteen? Like.

Jay Z or K dot, the Kendrick's Lamar for the uninitiated. And I'm like, Yes, and you know this, so why d just do it in the first place? And it was like, Oops, my bad. So mine doesn't tell me sorry.

Mine speaks the common vernacular of the street, which I absolutely love. And when people watch me use my chat bot and it's hilarious because the conversations that I have with uh Claudette are pretty intense and pretty hilarious and the fact that she can hold her own on these Manhattan streets of the early nineties is pretty incredible.

I am gonna be, I think, a little bit of the odd person out. I don't need it to be nice or friendly or warm, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't affected by it being nice and friendly and warm. I know it's so silly and the logic isn't there, but it doesn't matter what's on the other side. It matters how I behave to me. And so Regardless of whether this thing is sentient, if I am affecting another thing then most of the time I want to affect it in a kind way, I guess.

I know it's not real, but I like being kind, and so I'm just going to choose to be kind. But I have been careful about not doing uh please and thank you as often because of the fact that like that that to me is is very logical. If I if I get a whole thing out and then at the end I say thank you, I know that's a whole waste.

And that there's a reason to have done that. But if by accident I say, Hey, could you please do this? Da da, I'm not beating myself up over saying please to a thing that yes, I know is not real, but at least when I put something out into the world, It came with a please. That that makes me feel better. So that's that's where I am on it. Uh, Christina, would you like to round us out here?

Uh, I I don't need it to be nice to me. I don't need it to be I need it to get what I need to get done. This is not a real sentient being. This is, you know, bites and and there are interesting philosophical arguments about

how these things are trained and and how uh you know, uh the models are are designed to act and and whatnot. But no, I'm not nice to it. I'm not mean to it, but I'm not nice to it and and I I don't really want the apology. It's if something's messed up, like that doesn't make me feel any better.

Because again, it's like not real. So it is interesting to see though, uh, this study that suggests that trying to make these things more friendly has negative connotations, which I think to Dan's point is interesting insofar as maybe we need to I think we need to all stop anthropomorphizing these these tools as much as we are because it's really easy to do because the language can become really easy to fall in line with and and your brain thinks, oh well this is um a human interaction.

But it's not a human interaction and uh and I like I like keeping those um demarcations clear. Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about our sponsor today. It's Vitally, bringing you this episode of Clockwise. Vitally is the AI-powered workspace for customer success managers.

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All right, we are back from the break, and that means it's time for dance talk. All right. Uh I was just traveling in the past week and I've found the technology of course has made traveling abroad even easier than it's ever been before. I'm curious to know from you, I know some of you are fellow frequent travelers, what is the best feature or product that you've used while traveling internationally. Doc Lister with you.

One of the things that I still it's funny, we're gonna go right back to chat bots, because I think this is one a lot of people forget. Voice mode on any of the bots is phenomenal at doing translation. I would say I'm about eighty percent with my Japanese fluency. But what happens is because I'm traveling with my family.

The people that are looking at myself and my mother-in-law together will talk to her because she's Okinawan and, you know, colonization, whatever Okinawa is considered Japan for most of the people, not to the people of Okinawa. That will get you beat up. But people try to talk to her and she doesn't speak that dialect. It's just different for her, especially'cause she came to the US long enough ago. She wasn't taught this sort of colloquial Japanese.

So it's really cool is to be able to take out a device, either phones or even the airpods and help translate some things because when I talk to them, they look at me like I'm crazy.

And then they realize about five sentences in that I'm the one speaking Japanese and not her. So but I often just cut that down in half by just using, you know, like the the little situation and about halfway through I'll put it away and then I'll just speak start speaking Japanese and then they're like, Oh, what if if you speak Japanese, why'd you use the phone?

because your guys' face never understand the fact that I speak Japanese with a decent fluency and no tongue. So it's a tumor it's given wa mono translation with a K Tai Day I das kid. I Have uh never traveled internationally. Uh therefore I've not used tech uh or a feature or product to travel international. There's there's not really I don't know, I not a not a whole lot. Like I I suppose that it makes it easier to travel with

My good ol' noise canceling headphones. Wow, what an obvious answer. Christina, what about you? This feels kind of maybe basic, but it's it's really useful is getting like a good universal travel adapter that is also a GAN charger and that has like USB C on it.

is really convenient because a lot of times what'll happen is, you know, you might get like the various adapters that you can kind of plug into the end of your Whatever and and plug into a wall, but depending on what h hotel you're in, or if you're at an Airbnb, maybe there's not enough space. For your your big adapter. And it can be difficult like to, you know, get just the the duck plug on something. And so a lot of times what I do is I just get.

A universal power adapter for whatever country I'm in or a multi model one. And then I like the ones that have USB C ports. on them so I can plug my phone or my iPad into it, even if it's not doing full charging. I have one thing plugged in. I have to pass through for my bigger block cable if I need it. And that's really, really nice.

The other thing that I would say too is and and this is more for domestic airlines, but this you you could get something like this for foreign airplanes too. And actually I think even this this cable would work just fine on an international airplane because those um uh plugs are usually designed to take any plug type.

is getting a shorter cable, like a AC adapter type of cable, that will run from, say, your power brick or whatever the case may be, into the seatback power brick, because what tends to happen on planes is that those Uh, because so many things are plugged in and plugged out of them.

your power brick won't stay put. So it'll fall on your plane like like fall all the time. And that's the most annoying thing in the entire world. So what I've done is I've bought like a few that are like three inches long and just use that. on the plane and I just keep that in my in my travel bag and it's awesome.

The thing the technology I think that made the biggest difference for me I'll pick two. I think they're obvious ones, but they're good. Uh first of all E sim, uh the ability to add an E sim for whatever country you're traveling into is Rub it in.

Yeah, I mean just like just being able to like you know, go to the app store and download, you know, something like Eralo or whatever and just, you know, buying a sim there and you don't have to go. I I lived through the era of going and trying to navigate like a like a sim machine, like a vending machine or even worse, a store in a country where I don't speak the primary language.

And trying to figure out that I was I just want data and I just want this for this amount of time. ESIM has made that way easier. Um and then the other thing, again, this is kind of a note brainer, but I was amazed with this last trip I took, which was to France and the UK. Apple Pay is so, so seamless. I did not not only did I not use cash.

My entire time I was traveling and I actually found I was like I was going through my drawer and I have like a little bin where I keep, you know, cash from from different countries that I travel to. And I was like, Oh, I've got a few pounds, a few euros left, I'll bring them along just in case.

I basically never really had the opportunity to use them. Everything takes contactless and I didn't even pull out my card for the most part. I think maybe one time I had something that didn't quite work the way I expected to and I pulled out a card. But every other time I used Apple Pay for everything. you know, for the subway, uh for tickets to places, for food, uh and it's just so so seamless.

Like it's so ama like ha again, having lived through the era where you had to make sure you had the right cash and trying to figure out what the different coins are and all of that. I mean, it is it is amazing how easy that has become. So I cannot speak highly enough of my experience with Apple Pay while traveling internationally. Uh thank you all for your thoughts on that. Let's go to our final topic, which comes from Doc Rock.

So, because nobody is one thing and we get sort of labeled for what we do, right? But I find that the stuff that people geek out often when they're not working says way more about them than what they do in their professional lives. Like the tech that nobody knows you tech about. So what piece or part of technology do you love that has absolutely nothing to do with what you're publicly known for?

I think it it becomes a difficult thing to um separate out the two when you You are role involves part of sort of sharing your personality because I what when I originally read this question, I thought, oh, I'm gonna think about all of the tech that I use. to sort of like keep track of my dog's health and you know keep

uh all of that information collated and make sure that when I go to the bed, this and that and the other. But people do know me for my love of my dogs. And then I thought, well, I could talk about all of the stuff that I Uh, all of the apps that I've used in the past and some of the apps that I continue to use for making coffee and uh, you know, trying to make the best cup of coffee as possible. And I thought, oh, people would think about that too.

And then I thought I could go into crochet and knitting stuff because I have sort of complicated setups for that. And then I realized that I recently did an episode of our unwound that comes on after the show about knitting and crocheting. So I think, Doc, what you've actually done for me is you have made me realize that it's not a bad idea to keep some activities sacred and holy and uh free from from other otherworldly knowledge. Ha ha ha ha.

Uh so yeah, I I I'm afraid there's not a thing that I do with tech. That people probably wouldn't already figure out about me or uh just sort of uh attach to me publicly. Uh but Christina, I'd be curious if you have an answer for this question. So I had the exact same kind of problem that you had, Micah. I was thinking through this and I was like, this is a really good question, but I don't know in terms of for better or worse, and I would argue probably worse.

because I am really passionate about my work, um, the the good thing is that I've managed to turn things I'm passionate about into jobs. The bad thing is this is then it becomes all intertwined. And so I wish there were some separation, but Um, there there's not a lot. The thing that I will say though that people probably aren't as aware of because I don't make it as big of a part of my personality, but it is something I really enjoy is I love retro video games.

And um and I love playing around with FPGAs and and and things like that. And so that's that's a thing I really enjoy. I don't get to do it as much um as I would like. Uh but uh but I that that's one And and one that I guess is aspirational is I'm I'm trying to get into

into three D printing more. Um uh before the the show Michael was talking about um accidentally spilling over some filament. And this is a rabbit hole I've I haven't fully gone down into. I have friends who are really into it and this is why I'm not and I'm like, man, I think I need to get into this, but I am worried, I'm like, Oh man, this is gonna be like keyboards with me and this is just gonna become a very expensive hobby. Does it? Ha ha. Yeah.

A at the risk of uh completing the trifecta here, I too have made my personality my livelihood. So there's very little that I am like, you know, really nerd out about that I don't talk about in some fashion somewhere here or elsewhere.

Um, I will say a couple things that I don't again, like Micah was saying, don't talk about it quite as much. I you know, I became a homeowner four or five years ago and I've you know, I wouldn't say I've like gotten super into home like, you know, DIY or whatever, but like

There's definitely a point at which when you own a home and you're like, I can do this thing, I should probably do this thing because, you know, I I don't want to pay somebody or it's it's ridiculous to pay somebody to do this test.

And like for me that was stuff like I installed all the blinds, like the shades that I put in my house, or you know, I did a lot of stuff, some stuff with like smart home tech, you know, putting in smart locks and stuff like that that I did myself. I learned how to like re-key a lock myself.

Like things like that that require a little bit more, you know, hands on, a little bit of analog technology, you know, whether it's just as it like even as simple as drilling holes and screwing things in. Like I I never thought of myself as a particularly handy person. But I have done stuff like unclogging a drain and, you know, replacing, you know, light fixtures and I wired some like, you know, outlets in my in our new guest bedroom and stuff like that. And I I really

I enjoy doing those things because they're so analog and they do have such a sense of satisfaction when you accomplish them. Like I put in new light switches in a few places that were like, Oh, these are old and grimy and they don't look very good and like I just I was like, can I can I replace a light switch? I bet I can replace a light switch. Um and so yeah, there there's a sense of satisfaction about being able to accomplish those tasks, even if they're very small tasks.

Because they do still have a nerdery component to them where it's like, Well, if I'm replacing a light switch I better understand how electricity works No otherwise. I may be the last light switch I ever replace. Um so yeah, I I enjoy that aspect of home ownership, even if at times a lot of home o home ownership feels like Oh my god, I can't believe this thing broke too, and I have like a million things I should be fixing. So never enough time in the day. Doc, why don't you wrap us up?

Well limiting snick is my plan to get free therapy from you guys because I am exactly like you. I snitch on everything. I I tell it all. And even when I was thinking about my three D printer stuff, um is maybe it. I realized that recently on Instagram I have posted so much about, you know, my new 3D printers and hunting down this new model. So yeah, I was hoping to get some free therapy from you guys.

And you guys are my friends, I love you guys the most, but you guys are terrible'cause nobody helped. I if I had to give it one, it'd probably be my fountain pens'cause I do go a little nerdy on that. And there is uh really old technology in in, you know, capillary actions and things of that nature, but technology nonetheless with some of the new grinding techniques and uh

you know, paper that allows the ink not to transfer through. It'd probably be fountain pens. But I realize I I need more yeah, I feel like even now the analog craze has become So preachy to the fact that even it has become technical. You know what I mean? Yeah. So yeah.'Cause I I'm like, oh I'm gonna do this'cause it's analog. Yeah, it turns out no it's not analog.

'Cause I'm on I'm online looking for like, ooh, what's the best ink and what kind of nib should I buy? When I go to Japan, is it Itoya or Tokyo hands or do I need to find some special ink that nobody knows about type of thing? You guys didn't help, I'm gonna call my doctor. Yeah.

All right, we have just about reached the end of this episode of Clockwise, but we've got enough time for a bonus topic. I would like to know uh what is the oldest thing in your fridge right now? And Christina, we'll start with you. I have some expired hot dogs that uh that I need to get rid of and I will be getting rid of later today. I noticed that yesterday. So I think that's the oldest thing in my fridge.

I think it's a bottle of um oyster sauce that I opened in like the problem with some of those sauces you have the like Uh Oh, they'll last forever basically. And some of them kind of do, but like at a certain point I get less and less willing to use them, at which point they're just taking up space in the fridge. Same doc.

It would be some handmade I make handmade miso and a handmade miso and I have one in there that's about maybe three and a half years old. But it's still good because miso is the point is it gets old so it never dies. Oh that's good. Um, for me, it would have to be uh at Thanksgiving we use liquid smoke and some of the stuff that we make. And there's a bottle of liquid smoke in there that's probably four years old, five years old.

But uh it's just water with some, I don't know, smoke flavor, smoke in it. So who cares? It's fine, right? But then there are also some green onions in there that I hate that I know that they're in there that really need to go. They're dry as a bone.

Uh, thank you all for your answers on that bonus topic. If you out there listening would like to get ad-free episodes with an extra Unwound every week where Dan and I chat about a given topic, you can become a member of Clockwise. Go to relay.fm slash clockwise to sign up. It's just seven dollars a month.

Seventy dollars a year and you will help support the show. I think it is time to say goodbye as we have reached the end of this episode. So Christina Warren, I wanna thank you so much for taking the time to be with us this morning. Well thank you for having me. And uh Rock Rock, thank you so much for being here. Oh, thank you so much. It was a lot of fun. And Michael will be back next week. But until then we remind everyone out there listening, watch what you say. And keep Watching the clock.

Bye everybody.