General Discussion

Retreat to attack

Do you like director's commentaries and extended cuts? This episode is like that, but for this week's News. We go deep on the alive internet theory, Meshtastic mesh networks, Zstandard compression, the FDE job explosion, React's seemingly perpetual dominance, and more.

The Changelog · Nov 14, 2025

Featuring

Notes & Links

📝 Edit Notes

Chapters

1	00:00	Let's talk!	00:38
2	00:38	Sponsor: Tiger Data	01:43
3	02:21	Shutdown & Friends	02:16
4	04:36	Undead internet reality	02:41
5	07:18	Alive internet theory	02:23
6	09:40	Written By AI	07:07
7	16:47	Sponsor: Depot	02:49
8	19:36	Meshtastic	07:06
9	26:42	Retreat to attack	03:40
10	30:21	Return to analog	04:10
11	34:32	Meshtastic use cases	01:59
12	36:31	Spec nerdery	05:50
13	42:21	Benchmark Z-STD!	09:18
14	51:39	Let AI be your guide	02:09
15	53:48	Give it the Neuralyzer	04:49
16	58:38	Sponsor: Augment Code	01:30
17	1:00:08	Sponsor: NordLayer	01:39
18	1:01:47	Forward-Deployed Engineer (FDE)	11:38
19	1:13:25	dead framework theory	13:28
20	1:26:53	Who needs libraries?	07:16
21	1:34:09	Hypothesize a step change	03:17
22	1:37:26	Pulling legs	00:53
23	1:38:19	Go write an agent	01:01
24	1:39:21	Bye, friends	01:57
25	1:41:17	Next week on the pod	01:30
26	1:42:47	(your favorite ever show)	01:27

Transcript

📝 Edit Transcript

So we were supposed to be in San Francisco, but we’re not in San Francisco.

No, we’re not. What a sadness, you know? Well, happy I’m not stuck in an airport or trying to get to someplace, but… For those who don’t know, our government is shut down, and therefore the FAA, and TSA, and all the acronyms A are not showing up A… And so we would have a bad flight A.

Those TLAs, man… A! Show up A, you know?

Yeah, you know what I’m trying to say? Let’s get to San Francisco, A.

Therefore, we canceled our friends, you know? We told them “Hey, don’t come record with us this week. We’re going to be in San Francisco.” However, we are not in San Francisco. So we are here, in our home studios, ready to Friends… And we’re going to do kind of a, you know…

A director’s cut. Changelog News director’s cut.

Deep behind the scene… I would say extended cut.

You know, extended director’s cut, you know?

Take the 10 minutes, make it 90.

Steelbook edition. You get the leaflet –

Do you watch those director’s cuts when you’re going to go deep, and he’s whispering “Here’s where I should have done this”, or “I was trying to capture why…”

I would say on certain movies. Certain movies I do want to go deep… But generally no. It’s just not my thing.

I used to do it back when I had odious free time, and was much more of a movie fan than I am now… And I liked them, although they do get pretty boring.

Yeah. I mean, it’s not as good as the movie, right?

Right. It’s like “Well, I’m looking at the movie, but I’m listening to a guy talk about the movie, so…”

Yeah. Sometimes you get nice extras, I would say, about the plot, or the twist, or the storyline, that you don’t get in the movie… So in those cases, I do enjoy it. But that’s not always the case.

Okay. So after this show, let us know - do you like the director’s cut of Changelog News, or would you prefer just the 10-minute “Give me the quotes and get out of here, man. Get out of here”?

So there’s some good stuff in this week’s news, I thought… I looked at the list and I was like “Dang, dude.” Not that I did well, but like there’s lots of good stuff out there… My favorite of which I put right in the top, which is the Alive Internet Theory.” As you know I’ve had – I don’t know if you’d call it an obsession, or… I’ve had frequent references to the dead internet theory. I feel like I’ve been experiencing the dead internet of late… Do you feel it, Adam? Do you feel the dead internet, or is it just a theory to you?

You know, dead internet is essentially like bots commenting, and like bot content everywhere…

Bots commenting, bots creating, bot blog posts… AI slop, just everywhere.

I think I would experience that more, sadly, in the TikTok world. I feel like it’s on repeat, I feel like it’s all about product placement, I feel it’s all about like selling stuff in the TikTok shop… I feel like there’s creators who just literally go into the shop and get incentivized to shill things in there… They may like them, but I feel like it’s just like the only reason you’re making content is because you can get some version of that product sent to you for free, and then you can schlep it and make some money. There’s not a real relationship there, so… That’s not a bot, really.

It’s more like zombie internet. It’s like a person, but they’re driven so much by the algorithm that they’re like the undead.

That’s right. Yeah, that’s true. I would say not really… Not really.

Okay. Now, I do think that the AI slop is coming to the world of video and audio. I think it’s behind where it is in prose, because of course, the text models were the first ones to get good enough to trick us a little bit… But with Sora 2, and that whole deal - I’m not sure if you were… I didn’t join the social network for Sora, but I saw all of the cross posts elsewhere of what people are making with it… And that one’s actually okay. I’m not the hugest fan of Open AI as an org, but that was at least an attempt to be transparent about like “This is a social network for AI slop”, and that’s what it is. And so you want to get sloppy? Let’s go get sloppy together. But let’s not act as if we are real. Let’s just go ahead and embrace the fact…

And there’s some – I mean, there’s funny, interesting, cool stuff that you can do, and so I’m not against the content necessarily… Especially because you know what you’re getting. You’re like “Oh, here it is.” But when they’re on the YouTubes and on the TikToks and the Instagrams trying to act as if they’re humans, that’s where I get a little bit offended.

So I definitely have been feeling it of late, but I was uplifted by Spencer Chang. And I did reach out to Spencer, asked him to come on the show. I haven’t heard back yet; this was just yesterday. So hopefully he’ll come on and talk to us, because he’s doing all kinds of cool stuff… And he created the Alive Internet Theory; of course, an answer, a counter narrative, and a very cool website to the Dead Internet Theory, which basically states his premise - which I did quote in News - that the Internet will always be filled with real people looking for each other, answering calls for help, and sharing laughs, even in the midst of the arguing. Now, there’s lots of arguing, for sure.

[00:07:52.27] And the cool thing about this website is it basically went down through the ages, it scrolls the timeline from 2004, and updates kind of the style of websites based on where you are in that timeline, all the way up through present. And you can click a time period and then start the experience, and it’s going to now load up with audio, which probably doesn’t translate, but it’s gonna little load up – oh, it’s too loud, actually… I’m blasting myself. I had to close it. [laughs]

I did that. I had to close it, too. I tried to hit Refresh, but it wouldn’t work, so…

Unfortunately, it loads audio very loud, of like a digital scrapbook of randomness about humans, and all of our analog, jagged, weird ways have put onto the internet during that time frame. And they’re all pulled from Internet Archive, and of course, the Wayback Machine… And it’s just super-rad, and it made me happy. I was like “You know what…?” It kind of reminded me of the nostalgic feeling we had going back to the Winamp skins…

Remember that show we did last year?

So thanks, Spencer, for restoring a little bit of my hope in the internet, and the fact that - yes, over 50% of new articles, according to a recent study, or maybe it’s right at 50 percent, of all blog posts and articles are now written by AI… And that’s always going to increase from here. But the humans are there, man. We’re there, and we can find each other, and we can talk to each other, and we can care.

Yeah, I don’t know what to make of this, because “Written by AI” is somewhat potentially a misnomer, in the fact that… Sure, written by AI, but thought up and desired by a human. Orchestrated, directed by. And I’m not really sure where I sit with that still yet, because it’s really a conundrum, that I use a lot of AI to do things, and it writes a lot of documentation for like little things I’m doing… And if it wasn’t for that - geez, I would never even show up and do it because it’s just too much time. I don’t have the time for that. So I’m a little torn with that. Where do you sit with that? And the fact that just the blanket statement of “written by AI”, but maybe not the subcontext of “directed by and influenced by and ideated by a human”? The only reason it’s there is because a human was like “Hey, this is cool. AI, write it.” Boom. There it is.

I am totally okay with what I could just call perhaps utilitarian uses of AI generated words such as documentation, such as explanation. And especially when directed by humans who desire that content in order to better understand something. I’m also okay with it in the context of information, such as Wikipedia, and now the competing Grokopedia, which seems to be so far not as good as Wikipedia, but I don’t disagree with the premise of Grokopedia, which is like “Let’s remove as much as we can human bias.” Now, also the models are biased, so that’s why I say “As much as we can.” But let’s let information be written by an unbiased, as much as we can, source… Because we want just the information sometimes, and that’s fine. And so I have no problem with it in the context of those things. I don’t even necessarily call that slop, unless it’s actually sloppy. Similar to the way that I instruct a coding agent to write code for me, and I direct it to write code. As long as I’m involved in that process, and I approve of the code, it provides a use and a value.

Where it really feels sloppy to me and bad is when it’s creative to entertain, to persuade, these things, and it’s – or to SEO… I mean, I try to think of the reasons why they do that; when it’s just content farms powered by AI…

[00:12:18.13] I see that actually a lot on YouTube, where you’ll search for something, in particular around a product… I do some product exploration, like an appliance or something like that… An example is if we’re buying a new air fryer, let’s say for Christmas… If you’re doing this - whatever, listen up. You go on YouTube, you find maybe the Ninja version of it, and you’ve got this other version of it, maybe from Cuisinart, or whomever, and you start versus-ing them… Cuisinart versus Ninja. Well, you’re going to find some good people out there. And I have no idea how they make this their living, to compare air fryers. And then you will eventually find – well, probably pretty quickly find some AI-generated, or certainly not a human. It doesn’t even sound very human when it’s speaking, too; it sounds like a computer voice. And it’s clearly just an infomercial for the views. And it ranks high… And maybe it does get some views, and some of those views perpetuate more views in the algorithm, I don’t know… But those things drive me crazy. Or just straight up – like, you can tell no human was involved in this. Or there was, and it was just just for the views.

Not for the engagement, or the true enjoyment.

And I’m honestly only really offended when I can tell. Right? Because it’s kind of like that comparison, like a toupee, or a boob job. That’s the two things.

You only know that a person has one when it’s a bad one. You know?

Yeah. I love your comparisons.

Because if it’s good, then you can’t tell anyways. You don’t even know that guy has a toupee. You think it’s his hair. It’s when it’s bad that you’re like “Dude’s wearing a toupee.” It’s kind of offensive. Silly.

Sometimes you never know, but…

When you don’t know, you’re fine with it. When you do know, now it’s bad. That’s the way I feel about, I guess, these things. It’s like, if you fooled me, then good on you, I guess… It was good enough that I thought a person did it. But when I find out it’s acting like it’s a person and then I realize “Ah, it’s not a person”, that’s when I get mad.

How about this? Maybe a Civic, a Honda Civic wrapped in a Ferrari shell.

That would upset me. Would that upset you?

Yeah. You open the hood on that sucker…

Yeah. Like, “What is this? Four-cylinder DH-whatever thing”, you know? I don’t even know what the engines are in Civics anymore, but it was something like that. Overhead cams, you know… OHC…

Or the real tall person in the trench coat, and then you realize it’s like three short people standing on their shoulders…

Yeah, that’s going on a lot… But you know, when it tricks you, you’re none the wiser, so… I think once we get beyond the uncanny valley, where we can no longer detect - and I’m not sure if and when that takes place - then perhaps the dead internet theory will be just an undead thing that we don’t even know.

Yeah. To pull an exact pull quote from, I guess, them, the person who wrote this - what was his name again?

Spencer. Thank you, Spencer. And then I guess by proxy, you quoted his quote, so I’m quoting you quoting him…

Okay, this is a Michael Scott moment.

That’s right. We’re going deep here, a couple layers. You said “The internet will always be filled with real people looking for each other, answering calls for help, and sharing laughs, even in the midst of arguing.” And I think that’s when the internet will always be what we consider, since the ’90s, or whenevers, when you and I began to do dial-up, or it was cool to email a friend kind of thing, you know?

[00:16:03.07] Because that’s when the internet is still the internet. Because I want to show up to a place that is globally connected and informational shareable forever, so long as it’s shareable with other human beings that have empathy, have care, have grace, mercy… All those things that the human beings embody.

When that’s true, while that’s true, I will enjoy the internet. When that becomes less true or not as true, I’ll probably go on a walkabout, or move to the cabin in the woods that I got reserved, you know?

Break: [00:16:44.03]

Well, let me share this with you then, which is a bit of a curveball, because we didn’t discuss discussing it… But it is in News, it was in the lower three, which get in the newsletter, and they get mentions, but they don’t get actually coverage, which is Mesh-tastic. And it’s in the same vein now of like what if there wasn’t necessarily – or there still was this global connected internet that maybe only robots use to talk to each other, maybe at our behest, maybe not… And there’s no people there. I mean, because honestly, if it continues to ramp up and the uncanny valley stays, meaning it’s just AI slop and I know it, I’m not ignorant of it, I might check out. I might be like “Yeah, no longer surfing the web. Just doing other stuff.” Okay, so that might happen. And there’s some social networks that they say has already happened.

A lot of people claim that X is now mostly robots… Which if it’s true - and I don’t know - that’s hilarious, because one of the reasons Elon Musk bought it was to get rid of the robots. Anyways… Mesh-tastic. So this is cool…

An open source, off grid, decentralized mesh network that’s built to run on affordable, low-power devices. So this uses inexpensive LoRa radios, which - I don’t know what LoRa means. Do you know what LoRa means?

I’m just hearing it for the first time, I think…

L-O-R-A. So let’s find out in real time. Long range. So LoRa just means long range. I already knew it was long range.

Oh yeah, that makes sense.

I just didn’t know that LoRa means long range.

Low range off grid… Is that what that stands for?

No, LoRa just stands – it’s from long range, a physical proprietary radio… Oh, it’s an actual – it’s a proper noun. Okay, so that is different. A proprietary radio communication technique based on spread spectrum modulation. So it’s not just an acronym or a shortening, it’s actually a technology that these things use.

What I’m seeing says “LoRa, L-O-R-A, is a software technique that adapts large language models by training only a small set of new weights.” Is that what you’re tracking?

I think these are probably namespace conflicts, because this is all about communications.

Oh, it does say two different technologies. Here I am way off, okay? A wireless communication protocol, or the thing I just injected, which is the wrong thing.

[laughs] That’s alright, [unintelligible 00:22:10.21] was definitely on topic for most of our conversations these days.

My bad, y’all. I’m catching up.

I’m just glad that this isn’t that. So this is long range radios. And this Meshtastic software, I think you flash it onto specific devices. They have a list of devices that you can put it on… And it sets up basically a mesh network that is not just at your house. I mean, most mesh networks that I think of is like Bluetooth, AirDrop, AirPlay kind of things… But this is like, you connect all of these inexpensive radios, and it can go long range. And they’re not kidding. When they say long range - 331 kilometers long. That’s the record, at least.

This is meant to be used by humans to send messages?

Yeah. You know, it’s like the old carrier pigeons, man… If you’re going to send a message, you’re going to send it over Meshtastic. So this would be like if you and I – I could probably do this with like Nick Nisi, for instance. He lives across town from me, probably 30 miles, which is going to fit inside this 331 kilometers. And he could get one of these radios set up at his house, running Meshtastic, and I could get one at my house… In fact, maybe we should do this. It’d be fun…

Yeah. Let’s try this out.

…as a test, as an experiment. And he would get one set up at his house, and I’d have one at my house, and then we connect our devices to the radios as if they’re Wi-Fi networks, basically. And so we are now meshed. We have basically a LAN, by way of Meshtastic. And so it’s an off-grid, meaning no one else can connect to that, it’s decentralized… We could probably set up radios all around, and they all would connect to each other… And it creates a mesh network that you can run your apps, run your comms, run whatever you want. All encrypted, excellent battery life, optional GPS features… I mean, this is a cool project.

[00:24:22.23] This is meant to be radio-based, not a device. I mean, because they’re mentioning Raspberry Pis. Are they thinking the Pico, I think, in particular? Is it only meant to be radio-based, not like literally IP-based through the internet?

I think that these things can talk to each other via this LoRa technology, which I assume is a protocol, and then they act as simply like routers that your local network then connects to. So these are like bridging local networks via this hardware and software. So I’m sure it can run on all kinds of software, but the hardware is a set list of specific supported devices, such as the Seed Card Tracker, the Heltech Mesh Node, the Nano G2 Ultra, etc. A bunch of specific devices. They have antennas, so you can go for long range… And I assume the 331 kilometers has some pretty stinking big antennas on them to get that far.

And the question is - I see stuff like this and I think “That’s cool, I’m really impressed.” And “Would I go through all that?” If I was sick of the internet, but I still wanted to communicate with people - and I assume that you could probably get like a regional network set up. It’s not just like me and Nick Nisi’s houses, but you could probably have an entire mesh network that’s like a city. Maybe even multiple cities. 331 kilometers is a long way. And then you could just have your own little network that’s just like “Yeah, I can run my iMessage against– you know, I can talk to those people over there in Lincoln, on their iMessage.”

Now, iMessage might have to get out beyond your network, and talk to Apple’s iCloud servers… I don’t know.

That’s what I’m thinking now - like, okay, the network is one thing, but then what can you do on the network? Like, what kind of protocols does it support? Is it only messaging? Is it kind of an API layer in a way, where the network gets created and then there’s an API that you can send messages? Is there a length of message? Is there a certain amount of bytes you can send, or that kind of thing? I think that’s what would describe to me its utility. Because I’m thinking there’s unique businesses that might want a reliable communication pattern whenever the internet is not always available. You might be in spotty areas. I was just on a retreat, and I’ve got T-Mobile, and while there, I basically had SOS. I came in and out of like one bar, or half a bar… And so I wasn’t really trying to use my phone anyways, because it was a retreat; that’s the reason you retreat, to attack… But nonetheless, I still kind of wanted to have my tether to the world, you know? Like, don’t take my phone…

Did you just say you retreat to attack?

What’s that mean in this context?

Well, I believe… Okay, great. Let’s go there.

I believe to truly attack like we have to, as men - I’m a man - I’m called to for my family, and my life, and who I am…

I believe to attack, in the most kindest way, the world…

Yeah, [unintelligible 00:27:37.10]

…my problems, whatever. Yeah.

If I’m going to have the energy to do what I’ve got to do, then I cannot just do it by just constantly attacking. I’ve got to retreat, to recharge, to collect, to reaffirm, to examine, so that I can better attack. So I believe you have to retreat to properly attack the world.

And I mean that in a positive way, of course.

Yeah, I get you. So when you’re retreating, you don’t necessarily want your phone, but you still want to be connected, just in case.

[00:28:07.18] That’s right. Yeah, I mean, something could happen, you know?

I need my… I need my fix, okay? My addiction.

What’s the longest you’ve gone without your phone recently?

Honestly, while I was at the retreat, I left my phone in the cabin all the important times. I literally left it there…

Yeah, like the whole day.

And I did it as a force function, but it was a little strange at first. I kept tapping my pocket…

…because one of the habits I have as an individual who doesn’t want to lose this expensive device in my pocket is to make sure it’s there.

So I will occasionally, let’s say once every five and a half minutes… I’m just kidding. [laughs] Once at some sort of intermittent measure, I’m tapping my leg, or I’m touching my right pocket, which is where I keep my phone… So pick-pocketers, now you know.

I think most people – you know, most people are right-handed. It’s going to be in your right pocket. Me? You don’t know where it’s going to be. So…

You just don’t know. Back pocket, front pocket, no pocket… In the shirt… Who knows? It could be in your armpit… Sneaky people put it in their armpit, man.

Yeah… Like with a little case that wraps over your shoulder?

I left it back there though, man, and I felt good. I felt good. I was proud of myself, honestly, for doing that, because I think… It’s so sad to say this, but I think in today’s world, for a normal first world person who has access to the things we have access to, the privilege we have access to the things we have access to, to leave this connected device that we pretty much rely upon to navigate… Like, if I got in my truck, I know where most things are at, but if I’m going into Austin to a particular building, I’m probably going to map it.

Because I [unintelligible 00:29:52.28] remember that.

Yeah. That’s what I was there for, man.

Especially if you’ve got Waze. You’ve got Waze?

I’ve got Waze, man. I’ve got all the Waze.

I know you do. You taught me about Waze. Yeah, you taught me about Waze.

The thing that’s nice about Omaha - small town living; we’re a small, big town - is you don’t really need Waze, because the traffic’s just fine, pretty much everywhere you go. There’s times, but for the most part, you’re not going to get a major reroute because of traffic. That being said, they’re so useful, and yet disconnecting from them is so freeing. I had the same experience with my watch, my Apple watch, which finally died… I haven’t bought one since, which kind of tells the story. Because I was addicted to the notifications, and the rings, and the things… On your wrist. And when it died, I was like “I don’t know. 300 bucks… I’m going to go a week or so without it and just see.” And it was like – you get a little bit of withdrawals… It’s not like quitting tobacco, which I’ve also done. That was way harder. But you definitely get withdrawals, like “Oh… Where is it?” You ever look at your wrist and there’s nothing on it? It’s just weird. Like, why do I keep looking at it? There’s nothing there.

And then beyond that, it was – it’s just been pure freedom ever since. I just feel like that was a little prison that I erected for myself and I lived in it. And then I just happened to escape, and I don’t need it. And it doesn’t actually make my life enough better to be worth all of the baggage. But the phone itself is way more useful than the watches… And so that one I’m much more connected to and addicted to. But I have been leaving it on the charger. That’s my recent move. I call it a return to analog, which is like, let’s just focus on the analog, let’s get away from the digital. When we’re away from the digital, let’s actually get away from the digital, and leave the phone on the charger.

This elongates this conversation a bit, but this is a resurgence for a lot of folks to be against the norms. Like, drinking has been a norm for a lot of folks. There’s a lot of people like – I’m now sober. I haven’t drank all year. I quit drinking in January. January 1, I quit drinking. Haven’t had a drink since, and so I’m free of alcohol in my life. I never plan to go back. And I’ve never felt better my whole entire life. And I’ve got so many friends that are either sober-curious, or going there. And it’s become a trend for young folks, younger folks, who are just like basically anti anything that is not health conscious.

It’s like, my routine is to get up at 5:45 every day, journal for 30 minutes, work out for an hour and a half, and then go slay work, and then spend time with friends. Like, that’s the dream of a lot of young folks these days. And that was not the case for me when I was young. It was like “You better get your butt out there and work. Okay? You better find your career and make some money. You better build a family and have those things…” But a lot of things are – like this return to analog, this return to soberness, this return to just putting pure things into your body, and less toxins, less poisons that really shape a lot of Americans’ lives.

Yeah. Yeah, I saw a trend recently amongst teens, where they will sit for 15 minutes, or whatever the time period is. And they’ll set their phone up and they’ll start recording, which is to keep themselves to task, basically. Because they’re going to publish it. So there’s still like a digital component to this, and I’m sure it’s a trend, so they want to get all the kudos from their friends and stuff by putting it up on the internet… But they just sit there. So they put their phone… It’s almost – it’s not meditation, but it’s just like “I’m not going to listen to music, I’m not going to have my phone, I’m not going to do anything. I’m just going to sit here for 15 minutes, and think.” And they find out it’s really hard, but it’s like a challenge, and they’re treating it like a challenge, like “Can you do this?” And they all started doing it. So yeah, these things are – anytime there’s a move in a certain direction, eventually there’s a counter move in the other direction.

And we’re starting to see some of that. But back to Meshtastic, you mentioned you might use it out there in no man’s land…

…and that’s actually the primary use case, I think, for this.

Which is like, in the boondocks. It says right there it’s for areas without existing or reliable communications infrastructure. So I’m sure there’s lots of really good uses for this in areas where they don’t have fiber runs going to their house. So a really cool project. I wonder if we should dig deeper and maybe get some Meshtastic folks on the show and hear about some of their cool use cases, because I guarantee you people are using this.

I would love to explore how to – I don’t have a big enough brain, I guess, to explore how to potentially use this unique way, besides the ones we’ve talked about. Like, what are some really, really interesting uses of it? That’s what I would love to explore.

Yeah. Really, really interesting uses. Probably out in the boondocks where there’s needs that we just don’t even know about, you know?

Well, even - I wonder if you can connect… Imagine you’re a 10-location boutique retreat or hotel. Most of your places are in the boons, but you’re literally all over the nation. Is there a way to strategically place nodes to enable this mesh network so that no matter what the connected case is for everyone else, you’ve got some version of your own private network built on top of this Meshtastic?

I mean, that’s what you’ve just said, but it’s a bit more expanded, you know?

Right. In the case of multiple states maybe, you’d probably have some sort of a VPN connecting the two networks, and then the mesh would be like an extender into the boondocks. And so you could probably accomplish that, but I bet you would use the actual internet in certain ways to actually bridge anything beyond. I mean, sure, that 331 kilometers record is probably not the best packet delivery, and everything…

Yeah, you’re gonna get latency, dropping packets.

[00:36:02.21] Yeah, that’s the record, but you want to be closer than that… So I assume if you’re like – we want one big network across multiple states, and then at each location we reach out two miles to this cabin, or whatever it is. Then your Meshtastic would be meshing from your cabin back to whatever you have at the headquarters there in that place, which is just on your local network, and then that would bridge via VPN or some other solution to your other headquarters, which happens to be in Tennessee, or whatever.

Yeah. You know what I’ve found myself exploring more of? Specifications. I never thought I’d be such a dang specification nerd, either creating them or exploring them.

You want to create specifications?

I mean, not myself, but my little AI buddies, of course…

Gotcha. So you’re slopping us with some specs.

I mean, you can call it that… You can call it that… But I don’t think – I don’t call it that…

One man’s slop is another man’s treasure.

So what kind of specs are you writing, man? The most recent one was a way to version a Go CLI. Because I’d gotten a couple now, and I’m like “They’re all versioned weird”, and I’m not really writing all the code, I’m reviewing it. I see the patterns… But I was like “Can we just kind of create one unified way to version Go CLIs that are in this realm of what I’m doing?” And so I created a specification for how I want to utilize versioning inside of a Go CLI. And so now I just point the next thing I’m making to that specification, and say “Adhere to it”, and it does, and life goes on and it’s amazing.

The other one most recently was I swapped out 7Z, because it’s actually not that good. It’s good, but it has some flaws that I was not personally aware of. And so now I’ve become exposed to ZStandard, which was created by Meta. It’s a compression algorithm. And so now my new thing is I’m combining TAR, which has stood the test of time, the TAR archive protocol, with ZStandard, which is actually ZSTD. And so now I’m looking at these specifications thinking “Okay, great. If I’m going to implement an archiving tool that bridges the gap”, what I’m calling ZStandard for mere mortals, is what Zarch… is about…

ZStandard for mere mortals.

That’s right, ZStandard, which is the compression algorithm that Meta made. Now, it’s just a compression algorithm. It’s not an implementation, it’s a compression algorithm. And so to archive with TAR and use ZStandard - well, you can use that pretty easy with the command line, but there’s no API, there’s no sparse behind it, there’s no CLI… And so I’m building a CLI, because I archive a lot of stuff, as you may know… And I want to do it in the best possible way. So my most recent thing was going – I’ve been really enjoying this as a nerd, too. I’m going deep; I’m not that deep yet, but I’m trying to go deep into the TAR format. When did it begin? Where does it get utilized? Because what happened was is I had this really great tool, but I was using it on Arch Linux, by the way, and it just wasn’t working. I kept having CRC errors when I was trying to compress something and test it… I’m like “What in the world is going on here? Is it Dropbox? Is it the way I’ve used Rclone? Is it because I never really tested the memory? Because I’ve got 128 gigs of memory; is it because I never really tested the memory properly? What is the root cause of 7z not working properly on Arch?” Well, it turns out that 7Z has some flaws that I was not aware of, and I didn’t experience those flaws on macOS. They’re non-existent there. So on macOS, the tool works great. On Linux, it does not. And so I’m like “Well, I can’t spend my time building this, because it’s… That’s lame.” I want the good stuff, man. If I’m going to pour myself a glass of compression, I want the whole glass. You know what I’m saying?

[00:40:12.10] And so I went back to the board and I’m like “What’s going on here?” And so obviously, TAR, and I learned about ZStandard… And so to round about back to the specification, I’m working on - and I think it’s kind of there; it’s at version 1.1 or, 1.0.1 or something like that. I’m semvering, Jerod, okay? I’m botching this a little bit. But I’ve got the specification for how to implement TAR in an archiving tool.

And so there’s a lot of stuff about the way you’d manifest a JSON file first, and in what order you would actually create the archive to properly support PACS, or POSIX, and things like that in a TAR format, so that you don’t have jacked up archives. And then you compress them on top of that with ZStandard.

So I’ve become like this little specification nerd. I just love creating specs, because I can point at them when I’m working with agents and say “That’s the best version. I like that version. That’s a version that represents the software I want to make.” And so I feel like with these specs - one, I’m learning, and two, I’m defining what I think is the right way, so that when I repeat myself, I can repeat it against that standard.

So you’re doing spec-driven development.

Oh, absolutely. All day long. Yeah.

I mean, not literally all day long, but like literally, when I’m doing it - yes, that’s the way. It’s a lot of planning, a lot of thinking, which I find is the weirdest state of play I never thought I would find myself in. When I first heard about vibe coding, I was like “Ah, those guys are stupid. What are they doing? Gosh, can’t you just learn to code already?” And now I’m like “Why?” Why would you go through such depths when you can have your Rust, and your Go, and you can eat it, too? Let’s do it, right? And I can just work with the AI and within these realms. I’m reading a ton of code, I’m loving it, enjoying it… I’m not personally writing it, but I’m the one who’s visioning different things. And so this move from 7zarch to Zarch has been fun.

Mm-hm. Well, your code cup runneth over. All this time I thought ZSTD was what German folks get when they’re too promiscuous, you know?

[laughs] But instead it’s Zstandard. And thank you, Meta, for making that.

How is it better? You say it’s better. It compresses better? It’s faster? In what ways do you measure better?

I don’t have the facts fully in front of me, but – so let me go to their website and see if I can get it. Okay, so compressor name. You’ve got ZSTD… No, it’s not the German version of it… You’ve got Zlib, you got Quicklz, you’ve got Lz4, you’ve got Snappy and various other ones that they compare against. And so when Zstd - which is short for ZStandard - compresses, it can compress at a ratio of 2.896 (I’m reading this chart here), versus let’s say, Lz4, which is 2.101. So those are very similar. It’s actually compressing at a better ratio. Lz4 will compress at 675 megabits per second, whereas the compression speed of ZStandard is 510 megabits per second. So it’s pretty fast, and it decompresses just as fast. So it has a similar compression ratio, but it’s faster on the way in and way out.

[00:43:49.11] And one of the biggest issues I’ve had with the thing I built was like “My gosh, it takes so long to compress. And it takes so long to uncompress.” Unbearably too long. So long that I was like “Why am I even doing this?” But I like that, because I’ve now learned so much more making all those mistakes… And I’m like “Man–” I was kind of upset going down the wrong road, and really happily going down the wrong road. Like “This is awesome. It’s so cool. It’s useful”, and it is useful. And so all I’ve done now is basically swap out the tool I made with a different compression algorithm, and then now I’m re-implementing against this tar spec how to best implement a tar archive.

And so I didn’t lose a lot of runway in terms of what I built in time. I just swapped out the format and re-implemented the way it does TAR, and we’re none the wiser. So now we’re back to square one. But I’ve learned a lot going down the wrong roads, and I now have a brand new version of empathy I’d never had for what I would call developers, right? Software developers.

[laughs] [unintelligible 00:44:54.21]

[unintelligible 00:44:55.04] consider myself a pseudo-software developer. You know this, I’ve been an imposter for many years. If you didn’t know this, now you know. And I’m like “Wow, this is what it feels like to go down the wrong road”, and not be pissed, and still be kind of happy, because you learned so much along the way.

And then later on, people will come by and say “Well, why didn’t you just use ZStandard?” And you’re like “Well, because I didn’t know it existed.”

That’s right. I didn’t know it existed. I had to make those mistakes, I had to try it on Arch Linux, and be like “Why is this thing not working?” …only to go back to root cause, which is a great principle - go back to root cause analysis. Where is this problem at? What’s causing it? And then you know what helped me, believe it or not? Stack Overflow.

Yeah. It was comments on Stack Overflow, comments on Reddit about issues with 7Z on Arch. And if I didn’t find those, I’d have been like “7Z works everywhere. It’s amazing. It’s awesome”, which is what I thought. And it is kind of awesome, but it has some flaws that I just can’t live with.

Well, that’s how progress works.

So in the real world now - so we’re looking at a compression speed versus ratio image that compares… Is Zlib - is that behind 7Z, or is that a different thing?

That is a different thing. I think 7Z uses – I think it’s LZMA4. No, what is it…? Gosh, you’re testing my memory here, man… Hold on a second, I’ll get you some information. Yeah, I was close. LZMA – I was right, LZMA2. And so there’s LZMA the original compression, and then the fellow who wrote this software, his name is all over the actual stuff. Let me see what his name is, if I can get to it quickly… 7Z, the archive format, was created by – so it’s both a format and an archive tool in one. So it’s not only the compression algorithm, the format, it’s also the tool that does the job. And so it’s made by a fellow named Igor Pavlov. And so I think he rewrote LZMA, if I understand the history correctly, and LZMA2 is his compression version of it that 7Z uses. It’s great, it does a great job, it’s just notoriously slow. Do you like slow, Jerod?

Slow music, slow jams…? Slow dancing…?

Slow compression algorithms…

Unless it’s a slow jam. Those are good.

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