FFS Talk podcast

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Sports enthusiasm is not a new thing and not unique to the US, but it is certainly a driver for much more than sports in recent and not-so-recent times. We do tend to gravitate toward like-minded individuals, to groups, and eventually to factions that can be a bit more energized than even their most ardent team supporters otherwise. Where does this lead? Links Bu...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: We talked about social media, chaos in that space with and between the big players, and taking back our online presence making use of the Fediverse to syndicate our own content, but what about everything else? Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhugo POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Legacy social media platforms in the US, well-known around the world at this point, are getting a lot of attention, and not necessarily in a great way as some are bolting from the old stalwarts in search of the next place to congregate. Is this a good thing, is Bluesky really the next big thing and for the right reasons? Should we be moving back toward self-publi...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: We hear a lot every day, more often than that even, about surveys and polls and what people think about the things you may or may not care about. These are numbers coming from, somewhere, and we so often know the numbers but not the questions. Is this good? Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhugo Wisdom of...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Last week it was Big Learning Energy, now we can talk a little bit about where that energy is going, and should we feel good about this? Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhugo How Much Electricity https://www.theverge.com/24066646/ai-electricity-energy-watts-generative-consumption Example AI-generated You...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: As 2024 winds down to a close, this being the final episode of that calendar year, let us consider briefly the energy requirements of our celebrity tech companies training their AI models and compare that to us humans… Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhugo How Much Energy do LLMs Consume? https://adasci....

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Have you ever been involved in a conversation or perhaps a presentation where you pose a hypothetical to make a point or to illustrate an idea and you find yourself defending your hypothetical instead of the point you were attempting to make? Thinking outside the box is not for the faint of heart… Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: There has been some talk, some concern, about what happens when the big companies run out of new, human-authored content to train their AI models on, and the snake begins to eat its tail, so to speak. Might there be a similar problem for content creators if main stream media falls behind, shrinks away, leaving your own personal Joe Rogan as your primary source of...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Cryptocurrency is all the rage, with hope in the marketplace that regulations will go their way and we can all benefit from the absolute chaos that is this mathematical magic of The Blockchain turned into anything from a financial transaction medium to a scam machine. Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhug...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Our online world is mostly about infinite scroll, a reverse-chronological ordering of events, photos, brief messages, our unread emails and other messages. Are we always catching up, leaving out the items that fall off the bottom of our attention span, and is there a better way to do this? Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi ht...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: The end of Season 0, and with all of the tumult in the news and social media today, why not end Season 0 with some thinking about thinking? Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhugo Never Split the Difference book https://www.blackswanltd.com/never-split-the-difference

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Tangentially related to the recent election outcome, but more generally this is about selecting a goal or collection of goals to accomplish based on principles, rather than politics or something else like power or money. This will be the topic throughout this episode. Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhug...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Now that Election Day 2024 has come and gone, some reflections on what works, what does not, and what we might do about it as an extremely divided electorate, two groups with more in common than not, but with no idea how this could be. Let us consider not so much the candidates, nor the parties, but the voters, you and me, and where we might do better. Links Buy...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: You may already have mailed yours in, maybe you are thinking about dropping it off, perhaps you will walk in and fill it out there, or you could just skip the whole thing. Whichever path you take, it seems like we should be better at this by now… Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhugo

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: We all have opinions, the question is whether we form them ourselves based on what we learn, what we can verify, what we know, or are our opinions handed to us to consume and pass on? Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhugo Motivated Reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning Whataboutism...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: If we label surveys, polls, statistics and data in general as Signals, then we can look at how these various Signals drive, in any direction, our various Systems on which we all rely, yet it is more apparent than ever that neither the Signals, nor the Systems, are reliably considered. Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https:/...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Not a new topic, but information awareness appears to be on the decline at a faster pace than even the most pessimistic among us could have imagined. With luck this is an artifact of the intensity of this election season, but there may be long term impact. Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhugo Data Infor...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Political Debates, you gotta love ´em. Or do you? Are political debates, and we know which ones in particular, worth the trouble, or should we as an electorate come up with something else? Should not those doing the hiring determine how we conduct the interviews? Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhugo Deb...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: We are surrounded by the most cutting edge technology ever conceived or even imagined by humans, with among other benefits more access to more information than most can fathom, yet we appear to be growing less and less connected, less and less aware, and certainly less and less secure in our daily travels and travails. What is going on? Links Buy Dan A Coffee htt...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Have you noticed that people seem to prefer to accept information presented to them at face value, assuming it is factual, correct, and safe, and then they share it with someone else to continue the cycle? We have more access to more information today than on any day previous, and that is almost certainly true every day… if you don´t believe me, check for yoursel...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: It is indeed the season of fiction over fact, for at least the next two months or so, but in general this is a time when more people are connected to more data and information than ever, all the time, with almost no delay, yet we rely on others to tell us their version of some truth that fits their narrative. Can facts rule again, please? Links Buy Dan A Coffee h...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Context matters, so does writing things down, reading over these things from time to time, and understanding that what happened before may be similar to what is happening now, but that they may be different is critical and not always factored in to our understanding. Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhugo...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Politics is no fun but the mechanisms of the US election system and general determinations regarding districting ballot management and the construction of such things as the Senate and the Electoral college, all worthy of some discussion; so let´s plant some seeds today! Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/dan...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: This being an election year, the topic of Infrastructure comes up once again, more from the Dems than the GOP this time around, but it is always something to talk about, even pass laws about and assign funding to, but what is going on when it comes to making things happen? Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/d...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: When there is a lack of transparency, a lack if information and clarity can lead very easily to exciting Conspiracy Theories. Some are eventually shown to be pretty close or even accurate, most are not. Links Buy Dan A Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danhugo Dan´s Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/danhugo Conspiracy Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theor...