Dull, Dirty or Dangerous  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source]] - Full Title: Dull, Dirty or Dangerous - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/3088292e-0664-450d-b659-12a49878a844 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Multiply Keystrokes with Blogging** - Write blog posts for valuable questions instead of emails to multiply the reach of your words. - Your keystrokes work harder when shared publicly with others through blogs. Transcript: Adam Stacoviak How many keystrokes you got left? Scott Hanselman Oh, gosh, I could probably check. I made a website. Let's find out how many keystrokes I got left. If you go to keysleft.com, and we'll put in my keystrokes, and then we'll find out how many. Probably a couple of hundred million, but it depends on whether I'm dictating. Left? In my hands. Life expectancy. Because you have a finite number of keys left in your hands before you die. Are you familiar with this theory? I am. Yeah. So you go to keysleft.com and you put in how old you are. And then we assume that you're typing a certain type. I type about 80 words a minute, but about 20 of that is backspace. So I have 175 million keystrokes left in my hands. But the keystrokes are going down because I'm not typing right now. Because that time's not coming back. That's right. So that's something I use to be mindful and thoughtful about. ([Time 0:03:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c5287f22-ba43-4a8f-aedf-3949b7d0c6a7)) - **Triple D Work for Robots** - Assign dull, dirty, or dangerous tasks to robots to keep creativity human. - Enjoy the creative and fun parts yourself while automating toil. Transcript: Scott Hanselman I want it to do dull, dirty, or dangerous. Okay, triple D. That's what robots are supposed to do. Dull, dirty, or dangerous work. But if anything's fun or creative, I'm not interested. I'm going to do that myself. Yeah. Yeah, spell checking is dull. Adam Stacoviak Several dirty jobs that I would prefer my agent to handle. Scott Hanselman Yeah, 100%. Jerod Santo You want to list them off? What do you got? Adam Stacoviak Spray foam, man. Spray foam? Spray foam, dude. Yeah. I never want to do spray foam in my life. That might be dangerous, too. Happily pay for that service. Scott Hanselman Spray foam, like closing up a thing on your... Adam Stacoviak Right. Like a hole in your... All that. You don't like the undercarriage or something? I like watching it go. That could be satisfying, I think. Jerod Santo Very satisfying. But that scale... Pressure washing? Pressure washing is fun. Scott Hanselman Press Pressure washing is fun for five minutes. Yeah. Somewhere around hour six, pressure washing becomes less fun. Pressure ([Time 0:09:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/66d338f8-0220-443e-b924-0dda9e2704dd)) - **Keep Humans in AI Loop** - Maintain a human in the AI loop to validate and customize results. - Use agents as assistants, not replacements, to keep control and oversight. Transcript: Scott Hanselman But that gets to human in the loop, right? Yes. If there was a human in the loop, you would have caught the birthday thing. If there was a human in the loop, you'd say, well, I want a longer layover. And that's where if you have an executive assistant that really knows who you are, they might be able to do that. But I don't have executive assistant money. Jerod Santo Right. Adam Stacoviak But you do have executive assistant agent money. Scott Hanselman Well, but then that gets into the slippery slope of trying to replace humans with agents. And I'm not interested in that. So then we have to start asking ourselves what toil is. Adam Stacoviak You don't have a human currently though. Scott Hanselman I don't have a human currently So you're not replacing a human. Fair but that would argue that if my job got fancy enough or the stuff I have to do got fancy enough that I would get a human and hopefully I would have interesting and creative work for them. Adam Stacoviak So what if the baby step to having that possible human is saying look higher ups this is how much more productive I've been with an agent. Yeah. I think a human loop is actually better. Scott Hanselman Then I want the human to control the agents, because then I'd be hiring a chief of staff. Adam Stacoviak Back to what about, why not both? Agent and human, I think. Scott Hanselman Here's the thing. There's some really interesting work that's being done by this young lady named Maggie Appleton, who talks about the UI ([Time 0:12:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ec3e5735-33f0-47aa-a426-6567af9ec64d)) - **AI Needs Mature Software Practices** - Throwing AI agents at immature software processes worsens chaos. - Mature development processes amplify the benefit of AI agents. Transcript: Jerod Santo So I just, I think we have to ease into these things. Scott Hanselman The way I've been looking at it is it's the year of our Lord 2025. And there are companies that don't have good source control practices. They don't have DevOps. They don't have a build server. I was making build servers in the late 90s. And it's 30 years later. And you can show up at the IT department of little Debbie Snapcakes or the chief architect in the Nebraska Department of Forestry. Just regular Joes and Janes just doing their job at the kind of fundamental bread and, you know, meat and potatoes, bread and butter kind of companies. Right. And they may not have, maybe Little Debbie's very sophisticated. I don't know them. But I'm just pointing out, like, just the regular places that aren't Microsoft, Google, Netflix, or whatever. Right. And they're just trying to have a clean build, good tests. If you throw Agentic at that and they don't have good software development practices, it's just going to be messy. But in their workflow of, all right, we're going to start doing unit tests. We're going to start doing build servers. We're going to start doing branches. We're going to have really sophisticated branching systems. And we know how to do a release. If you're releasing your software off of Jeff's laptop, there's a software maturity problem there. I think Agentic makes mature processes even better. Fair. But if you just throw this wombat into the pile, it's just going to mess everything up. You know what I'm saying? Jerod Santo Yeah. Well, there's a whole spectrum of adoption. Yes. And a lot ([Time 0:15:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f8a17c80-ce72-4a34-b63c-0c4ad4eafbe7)) - **Advance Data Tools As Needed** - Gradually advance from simple solutions like paper or Airtable to robust databases as needed. - Design early systems to grow with increasing data complexity for scalability. Transcript: Scott Hanselman And then should you architect it that way to start with or should you just make sure that you can grow with such things? Jerod Santo I'm an advocate of as late as possible. Scott Hanselman Exactly. Good problem to have, they always say. Right Will it scale? I don't know. If it doesn't, that'll be a good problem to have. Right. Yeah. But I've got my podcast that we mentioned before, and I've got my Hansel1.com, like Hansel1 International. It's like just me. Right. And in the old days, it was a physical server in a closet, and then it was a physical server on a shelf in a data center. And then it was a VM. And then I started to realize that it was slow for people in Australia. So then I got a CDN. And then I realized that the website was slow for people in Japan. So then I geo-distributed it. And back in the day, to do something like geo-load balanced websites would have required me to hire a consultant and fly them in. And they would configure like ([Time 0:17:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7684d8bd-2bed-4dce-8c6b-cda2b58900ed)) - **Scaling from Servers to Cloud** - Scott evolved his personal website hosting from physical servers to geo-distributed cloud for speed. - Modern cloud services have simplified scaling that once required manual and costly efforts. Transcript: Scott Hanselman Know, back when we used to do it manually. But now I'm like, okay, we figured that part out. We figured out how to scale websites. And now it's a checkbox. And I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. So now Hanselman International is me. And Azure Cloud and Kubernetes and all these kind cool things. So then it's like, well, you know, it's 2025. Should I really be Googling for how to center a div? I would probably, that's dirty, dangerous, and dull. That's dull. Yeah, it's all three. All three of those. That's potentially, centering a div, people can die. So I would assign that to an agent. Hopefully that would not be something that would be considered creative work. But I'm certainly not going to say to the agent, make this prettier. That's the part I want to do. That's the fun part. But it's going to make my little side hustle more helpful if I don't have to do the show notes, or at least they give me draft show notes that I can then zhuzh up a little bit. We'll see when you run the transcript if it spells zhuzh right. ([Time 0:19:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1bb6f935-69f2-4d7d-94de-42574fe2d7a4)) - **Delegate Repetitive Work to Agents** - Delegate repetitive tasks like CSS tweaks to agents to save time. - Keep creative inputs like design tweaks human to maintain fun and quality. Transcript: Scott Hanselman That's potentially, centering a div, people can die. So I would assign that to an agent. Hopefully that would not be something that would be considered creative work. But I'm certainly not going to say to the agent, make this prettier. ([Time 0:20:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/03ab8684-be8a-4c36-8aac-c1ef6bb18a7f)) - **Windows Is Like Evolving Language** - Scott compares Windows and English as imperfect but evolving, borrowing ideas from many sources. - Windows users have generational pains but OS growth is natural and ongoing. Transcript: Scott Hanselman It like this. How much do you like JavaScript? Adam Stacoviak Listen, I want to tell you before we even answer this, it's not an attack at all. Don't attack. But please, understand my perspective. I have been a non-Windows user for 20 years. Recently went back to Windows and loved it. Except. Oh, yeah? What did you not like? I think that there's some semi-user hostile things where you just inject it with certain things. Oh, this is good. No, dude, let's fight. Scott Hanselman This is great. I love this. Okay, first, let's talk about this. First, you said how much do you love Windows? Yes. You said you probably won't be able to answer this. Okay, can you answer it? Okay, let's answer it. All right. Do you like JavaScript? Adam Stacoviak I mean, sure. All right. Scott Hanselman Do you like English? Sure. All right. You're, like, cool with it? I'm cool with English. Do you feel that English and JavaScript are really doing the jobs that they need to be doing? All right. Do you feel that those are the languages that we deserve? I don't know. Are there any better languages? They're like better at like poetry or love or haikus. Are there other cooler languages? Like Finnish. Finnish is a pretty cool language. Why didn't that one win? I don't know. Right. So like English is just this language. It's the one that we have, right? It's the one that's language of the internet. It's malleable. But it also steals from ideas from here and ideas from here, right? Which is kind of malleability. Foyer and burrito. These are all words from borrowed words. JavaScript. Like someone makes it in a way. Bidet, another good one. Fillet. I heard someone's, yeah, my wife calls it fillet. She says it's a fillet. Oh, okay. Everyone pronounces it differently. These are all different things. Target. Target. Target. Jacqueline Pinay. There you go. And you go to JCPenney, but it's fancy. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jacques Limpine. Yeah, it's true. Never heard that one. Yeah, that's because we're very fancy. I like that. So the point I'm making is that languages grow, operating systems grow. They beg, borrow, and they steal from Xerox PARC or from here or from there and all these different kinds of places. But people will go and say, like, you know, I don't like Windows. Like, they have, like, some kind of generational pain because maybe they tried Windows years ago. They don't like ([Time 0:31:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2e270a73-2be9-4c20-9be8-fe7d761be72b)) - **Automate Windows Configuration** - Use Winget to configure and streamline Windows setups just like dotfiles for Unix. - Automate removing unwanted apps to keep Windows clean and fast. Transcript: Adam Stacoviak Always... Which one did you use them? What's that? Titus, the Titus one? Scott Hanselman I use one that Clint Rutgers wrote. I use Winget. So Winget is like apt-get or homebrew. So you can say Winget configure, and then you can set all of your settings in Windows. ([Time 0:34:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fb8fba29-1f50-417e-af43-562be912d1f4)) - **Windows ARM Power with Custom CLI** - Scott demonstrates using Windows ARM with Linux apps and custom colorful CLI tools. - He integrates blood sugar real-time data into his command prompt for personal health awareness. Transcript: Scott Hanselman So for example, right now, again, we're doing a little bit of color commentary for those who are on the audio aspect of this here. I just am at the command line and I type in Z and I'm using some tools here like Oh My Posh. And you can see that I've got a very colorful command prompt. That's my blood sugar. I'm type one diabetic. So that's actual real time readout of my blood sugar. That's the fact that I'm on a dev drive, so that's a ReFS or an REFS, reliable file system. I've moved from the C drive to the D drive. That is a different file system that's faster. I've got a bunch of modifications that I've made to make Windows delightful. You can see now I'm going to jump into a folder and see my Git repository mentioned right there. I've got icons and color in my directory. We just released an editor. If you're familiar with things like TurboVision, we've got an editor that's like nano but prettier so you don't get stuck in Vim and have to reboot your computer because you don't know How to exit. And then being able to go like ([Time 0:37:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4cfbc811-1d2e-416d-98f2-d24ac99a3b97)) - **Neural Processing Units Explained** - NPUs provide efficient, low-power AI computation distinct from CPUs and GPUs. - They enable performing AI tasks locally without heavy power or heat consumption. Transcript: Scott Hanselman So if you look in here, I'm zooming in. I got my 32 gigs of RAM, a CPU. This right here is where AI can happen. So I can run small language models on the neural processing unit, which means I could do airplane mode work. I'm on an airplane, and I'm doing AI work. That's cool. All those things are going to get better. Now, it's not perfect, but it's getting there. ([Time 0:39:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2f997fd5-494f-4d7d-9c4c-baac5240105b)) - **Local AI Models on Airplane Mode** - Scott runs a local AI model on his NPU in airplane mode. - This allows private and efficient AI inference without needing an internet connection. Transcript: Scott Hanselman Ai let's say i'm going to i have some hand issues so i'm going to dictate Hey, tell me a long story. No, stop talking. I'm dictating. There we go. So I just said, hey, tell me a long story. I'm going to hit enter. I'm in airplane mode. All that work is happening there in the NPU. Look at my CPU. It's at 12%. CPU is chillaxing, right? You've got more than one processor in your machine to do the stuff that you want to do. Adam Stacoviak Why is this better, this inference? They're called inference, right? Is this inference? You're running the model. You're asking a question. It's inference. Scott Hanselman In this case, it is doing generative, pre-trained, transforming, and inference is a piece of that pipeline of work that is being done. You're not training the model. I'm not training. In this case, oh, that's a great point. ([Time 0:45:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2eaaf80a-7088-4b03-9d41-4b03177b89be)) - **Accessible Controllers Via Local AI** - Cephable builds accessible game controllers controlled by facial expressions using local AI on Snapdragon processors. - This technology allows instant, private, low-latency input for those with mobility challenges. Transcript: Scott Hanselman So another great example, there's a company called Cephable, C-E They're a partner. And he makes an application for people who are disabled or differently able to be able to play video games and control their computers. Let's say that you have mobility issues and you can only move your face, and you want to make it so moving your eyebrows up hits the space bar. So you have a camera going at 30 frames a second, 50 frames a second, 60 frames a second. Who does that work? CPU, GPU, or NPU? Well, I want that to be instantaneous. Like if I'm playing Mario and I'm going to move my eyebrows and I'm going to jump each time the Mario guy goes, I want that to be 20 milliseconds, 10 milliseconds. But if I'm not, if I send it to the cloud, that's got a privacy concern. There's issues there. If I'm going to do it on the GPU, well, I should be doing graphics in the GPU. If I do it on the CPU, then other background work can't happen. So he has a custom model that runs on this Snapdragon processor that is going to do that work there. So all the work happens entirely, privately, locally, in minimal time, using no other resources, and it's showing an orchestration of this work. So then he can have custom accessible controllers. He could smile, like moving your eyes and smiling. These could all control the computer entirely local on the machine. ([Time 0:45:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7878e90d-1ae0-4166-81b6-893dc150677a)) - **Configure Windows for Developers** - Install WSL, PowerToys, and the Windows command palette for an enhanced developer experience. - Learn shortcut keys and tools to navigate Windows efficiently without a mouse. Transcript: Adam Stacoviak Is this. Is that like I just saw a bunch of very cool developer-y stuff on your Windows machine. It does not come like that. Scott Hanselman Yeah, neither did your Mac when you installed the things you installed. No, it didn't. Adam Stacoviak But I don't know how to get there. Sure. Speaker 4 Okay, I'll do a YouTube for you. Where is the best? Adam Stacoviak Yeah, I want to go from zero Windows, brand new, fresh, Windows Pro. Right, right. Because who would not go Pro? Because you have a reason to go Pro. You need these extra features. So what would you want on your Windows machine? I want a command line. Cool command line. I want to be able to SSH into and from. Okay. I want SSH out and in to that machine. Scott Hanselman So you want WSL, you want Power Toys, you want the command palette. Adam Stacoviak I want to know how to use those things, too. That zoom in stuff you did. You like that? All those things you were doing. I want those things on the command line when you're in Power Toys. I will do a video for you. I don't need the blood sugar. Blood sugar could work for me, too, I suppose. ([Time 0:53:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/baf963cc-b363-4f32-a27d-a899ffd8b120)) - **Open-Source Diabetes Management Setup** - Scott uses an open-source artificial pancreas system to manage his diabetes in real time. - His family can monitor his blood sugar remotely across time zones for safety. Transcript: Scott Hanselman Part work? So I'm type 1 diabetic, and I have an open-source artificial pancreas built on top of a hacked Dexcom glucose sensor in my arm right here. Okay. And a hacked Omnipod, which is here in my right arm. Okay. And I'm using a piece of open-source software called loop that is managing my blood sugar and that's my blood sugar right there in real time and then that hops over to here with bluetooth Then it goes up into cosmos db in azure and sits on an open source tool called night scout night scout is an open source database that makes my blood sugar available to myself and then gives Me a rest api so then oh my posh is the command line tool that is showing all of my Git repo and all of my details and stuff like that. And OhMyPosh calls that API every five minutes. So then as I'm typing and hitting enter and typing, I'm hitting enter, it's refreshing my blood sugar every five minutes. Now, I'm in Seattle now, but I live in Portland. There's a thing called a DAC board, D-A board, that I have, which is effectively a 17-inch 1080p monitor with a Raspberry Pi inside that has Chrome running in kiosk mode that shows a Google Calendar, all the kids' homework, the temperature downstairs, family pictures, and my blood sugar. And my blood sugar. So then I'll get a text from my family that say, hey, dad's having a low blood sugar. Yeah, you're all right. Check on dad, is he okay? That's cool. So I've got those. And that'll happen when I'm overseas as well. ([Time 0:54:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ba1737b6-339a-42c7-b310-c22f60fca3af)) - **Positivity Inspired by Role Models** - Scott maintains positivity inspired by figures like Mr. Rogers and Ted Lasso despite industry challenges. - He sees empathy and kindness as leadership essentials in a complicated world. Transcript: Scott Hanselman Kicked in Brooklyn and he hasn't gotten to be big Captain America yet? And they kick his ass and he's sitting in the back of the... And he's like, I can do this all day. I just try to think about those kind of men who inspire me. So like Tiny Captain America, Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, Ted Lasso. Like even at his lowest, Ted Lasso was still trying to say and be positive. I think it is beholden upon me, given the luck that I have experienced in my life to be the first out of college and my family to be able to get to this position in a company, to be of some minor Renown online, to lend my privilege and lend my level privilege to people, and to be excited genuinely about things that are worth being excited about, and to be critical of things that Are worth criticism. And in the current state, I'm on the inside of a big company. So it's my right, it's my responsibility to be positive, tell them what's BS, tell them what's not BS until someday I'm on the outside of the company and then I will continue to do the same Thing. So I'm nothing if not consistent, and I do that because I think about what would Mr. Rogers do? What would Ted Lasso do? How do you be a kind, empathetic leader in a time when it's challenging? ([Time 0:57:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4cb7465d-0458-461c-abb6-a0d11f4ae21d)) - **Building Custom Arcade Cabinets** - Scott builds custom arcade cabinets, including modifying classic arcade one-ups with Raspberry Pis. - He documents his projects in an extensive blog series to teach others. Transcript: Jerod Santo Only that, but back to the AI conversation, they're staying creative. Like he wants to keep creating, I assume. Scott Hanselman Yeah, making stuff yeah yeah like at my house right now i made a i was working on this cool apple one kit from smarty kit.io so i built an apple one uh like a 1970 something 77 wasniac apple One and i mounted it on a board yeah i've got i'm building arcades at home you know 3d printing like you gotta stay frosty keep the brain cells going Building arcades like you're building Jerod Santo Out the actual. Scott Hanselman Yeah, so I bought an arcade at a bar that was an old trivia game. I've got a whole 11-part series on my blog about it. Pulled out the CRT, put in a new screen, went to a metallurgist and, like, you know, drilled new holes, got new joystick and everything. A two-player or four-player? It's a two-player. And then I've got my arcade 25-cent slot here on my keychain. I'm showing them my insert coin to play. Jerod Santo So do you throw an emulator on there? Scott Hanselman So I've built about 12 of these. I'll take one and gut them. I've got pie arcades, small ones. I've got one from Monster Joysticks that I made. I've got one called a Pi Girl. It's a Game Boy, but a Pi Girl. I got from Adafruit and I 3D printed a Game Boy case. Rad. Like all that kind of stuff teaches you something every time you make it. I'm building a Raspberry Pi tank right now. And then as the closing keynote at Build, we borrowed a robot from Hello Robot, and we're going to take a Windows arm, put an arm on arm, and it's going to get me a Diet Coke. We're going to use everything that we learned at Build to teach a robot that I need a soda. Love it. That's our closing keynote. And why? Because it's awesome. Because it's awesome. There's no reason why. They're like, what business problem are you solving here? Dull, dangerous, or dirty, right? I'm not going to get a Diet Coke myself, like a savage. Are you serious? Like a savage. Robot, fetch me that Diet Coke. You know what I want. Get me a Diet Coke. I'm not going to tell you what I want. You already know. I've taught you. Is a Diet Pepsi okay? No. No, it is not, robot. Adam Stacoviak An eyebrow waggle. You know me better than that. No, it is not. Jerod Santo Yeah. That's awesome. So if I were to build a singular arcade, like you've done 12, so you've got variety of experience. Do one from scratch? I want to build one from scratch. I do, too. I want to build the best one, though. So which one's the best? ([Time 1:02:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cb3f1263-edca-43df-9f93-91cfe38adf27)) - **Host Arcade Build Hackathons** - Consider hackathons or group builds for learning and community engagement. - Partner with companies like Adafruit for resources and collaborative projects. Transcript: Scott Hanselman Oh, man. Jerod Santo If I was just going to have one, now I can't really. Adam Stacoviak I got an idea. Hold on. Scott Hanselman Well, depending on how much you want to build, there's a company called Polycade. Okay. The Polycade Sente, S-E that has a lovely system that you can mount on your wall. It literally hangs on your wall with what's called the Z-bar. That is posh. And it has a NUC, a network unit of computing from Intel underneath it. And then it comes with a modular joystick. And you can get a Tron joystick or you get things like that. It's glorious. A little spendy though. The cheapest way to do it is to find a broken arcade machine. Preferably Street Fighter or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But if you have a small space, depending on how much space you want to use, get an arcade one-up machine. You get either the NBA Jam or the Street Fighter versions. Then you swap the guts out of the arcade one-up, and there's a whole Reddit dedicated to putting Raspberry Pis inside of modified arcade one-up machines. Yeah, I was going to say, it's probably way less hardware than they used to have. Way less hardware, and it's basically a 60% sized arcade. Yeah. Yeah. So lots of choices. What is your suggestion, sir? Yeah, what were you thinking? Adam Stacoviak Well, I figured you'd done it a couple times. I was going to say, what if we had a gathering where we all built one together? Like in a day. A hackathon. Can you do that? Like videotape it, make a YouTube series out of it. Yeah, yeah. We'll do a Pi Arcade. Have some fun doing it, you know. Source them, get a co-located space. Scott Hanselman We could partner with Adafruit because they have like pre-cut you could make like a Pi Arcade about this big, like a desktop size. Like, you know, the bar size. Yeah, we could call Lamor and PT over at Adafruit and figure something out. Adam Stacoviak See? And then when we're done with it, it just sits there and we're like, okay, somebody crated it up and sent it to Nebraska or to Texas where I'm from. Like, send it back home. Give it to the children. But do it to get together. Like, take a giveaway or build it for yourself. Yeah, man. Just for the views, for the people, for the education. Because it's cool. Yeah, because it's awesome. Jerod Santo Cool ([Time 1:04:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2ec36f95-c8fc-4603-a2f5-c0fb48c0c7c2))