Where's The Future?

Episode Summary: Will and Brandt weigh Apple's new folding iPhone Duo, a sluggish watchOS 27, and the Recap feature that's somehow both creepy and useless. Then it's token limits, resets, and an $18,000 Mac Studio for running AI locally, before Brandt climbs onto his soapbox: stop blaming the technology and start regulating the behavior, whether it's AI, Flock cameras, data centers, or social media. Discussions Include: • The iPhone Duo as an "iPad 1 versus iPad 2" moment, and why watchOS 27 has Brandt eyeing an upgrade he resents • Apple's Recap always-listening mode and the new legal gray area of transcribing everything • Hitting usage limits, Will's reset that left 24 hours to burn a week of tokens, and the case for local AI on an M5 Ultra Mac Studio • Why the real AI risk is people, not the machines, and banning behavior instead of technology from Flock cameras to social media • Vibe-coded apps replacing subscriptions, from Squarespace to Carrot Weather, and the new AI-powered Shortcuts Quotable Quotes (Should you choose to share): "They tried so hard to make it inoffensive that they've made it useless." - Brandt Krueger "I realized I had twenty-four hours to burn a whole week's worth of tokens." - Will Curran "I'm not worried about AI killing us. I'm worried about dumb people doing dumb stuff with it." - Brandt Krueger "How many people are against AI? I'm like, guys, the cat's out of the bag." - Will Curran Thing of the Episode (TOTE): Brandt: Libro.fm - https://libro.fm Will: MOGICS Super Bagel - https://packhacker.com/travel-gear/mogics/super-bagel/

Episode Summary: Will and Brandt try to get through a whole episode without saying the two letters. What's your over-under on how far they got? Along the way: Will's new NDI camera rig, Apple's ten-thousand-dollar Mac Minis and a rumored rack-mount server, why local hosting keeps swinging back to the cloud, and Brandt's morning brief that grew from a chat message into a checkbox web page. Discussions Include: • Will's NDI camera overhaul, from a $200 encoder box to auto-tracking PTZ gimbals that occasionally zoom out on their own • Apple's $10K Mac Mini configurations, the rumored rack-mount Mac server, and model companies ordering them by the thousand • The expansion-and-contraction cycle of local versus cloud, from self-hosted email servers to running your own models • Buzz, Block's "Slack for agents," and why one master agent isn't enough once you're running several at once • Brandt's daily brief evolving from a chat message into a full HTML page with checkboxes Quotable Quotes (Should you choose to share): "It's refreshing to talk about something that's technology based that doesn't have two letters in it." - Brandt Krueger "Whenever I get frustrated with something in software, I now ask myself: can I just build it?" - Will Curran "It would back up, go full speed to the point where it would pop a wheelie, and then ram itself into your furniture at full speed." - Brandt Krueger "AI has definitely made us more organized and more productive. But then why do people feel as burnt out as they did when we didn't have this technology?" - Will Curran Thing of the Episode (TOTE): Brandt: Roborock QV 35A - https://us.roborock.com/products/roborock-qv-35a Will: Cronometer - https://cronometer.com

Episode Summary: Will and Brandt return from the summer backlog to reveal how Brandt built his own terminal macro — type WTF, hit return — to auto-generate this show's rough cuts and notes. Will shares a parallel project automating his DJ mix uploads, and the two unpack why lower-effort models like Sonnet outperform flashier ones once a workflow is dialed in, with quick hits on Notion, AI agents, and iOS 27's new Siri. Discussions Include: • Brandt's homemade "WTF" terminal macro that auto-generates rough cuts and show notes for this very podcast • Why dialing a workflow back to Sonnet worked better than letting flashier models like Opus and Fable run the show • Will's Fade Out project, which auto-edits, tags, and publishes his DJ mix recordings end to end • Barry, Will's AI agent, and the surprisingly awkward business of having an AI negotiate with contractors • Using Notion as a shared, always-current source of truth for both work and AI agent memory Quotable Quotes (Should you choose to share): "It's taken it from about a 45-minute process to about a 10-minute process. And that's pretty good." - Brandt Krueger "If there's something that you do that is repetitive, there is no reason why it can't be completely automated." - Will Curran "We're a team here. Let's collaborate. Sometimes you go down a weird road that takes five minutes that would have taken me ten seconds to just do the work." - Brandt Krueger "He has the ability to be on all the time, ask questions, get responses, respond immediately — it's freaking the crap out of contractors." - Will Curran Thing of the Episode (TOTE): Brandt: iOS 27 Beta (new Siri) - https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/apple-unveils-next-generation-of-apple-intelligence-siri-ai-and-more/ Will: Notion - https://www.notion.com

Episode Summary: Recording live from Brandt's porch during Will's road-trip stop in Minnesota, the guys go behind the scenes on their setup before diving into ElevenLabs' new AI creative studio and the case for AI as history's next great democratizer of art. They swerve into deep-end territory: why human judgment beats "AI slop," Will's AI agent Barry gets sent to Barry Jail, and a spiral into simulation theory and what human purpose looks like as AI absorbs more of the work. Discussions Include: • Recording live from Brandt's porch with clip-on lavs and a DJI Mic Mini, planes and baseball games included • ElevenLabs' new creative studio for AI image-to-video generation, and Brandt's product-launch experiment with it • The historical case for AI as a democratizing force in art and creativity (Photoshop, photography, vibe coding) • Why human judgment and imperfection will keep beating "AI slop," even as generation quality improves • Will's AI agent Barry getting cautiously welcomed into the Meshtastic Discord's new "Barry Jail" channel • A deep-end swerve into simulation theory, privacy, and what human purpose looks like as AI takes on more work Quotable Quotes (Should you choose to share): "They made a channel called Barry Jail... and he goes, 'All right, showing up for my parole hearing today.'" - Will Curran "I truly thought to myself, we could be in the Matrix - like, this could really be in the Matrix." - Will Curran "[The Pope's doctrinal note on AI] wasn't an anti-technology screed - it was just, hey, let's keep the humanity in it. I think that's a legitimate thing to raise." - Brandt Krueger "That's where the humanity will always win over slop, because humanity will actually bother to either be imperfect on purpose, or decide the level of perfection, the level of realism." - Brandt Krueger Thing of the Episode (TOTE): Brandt: Use AI to make what you already do better Will: Rolling out Claude Code company-wide

Episode Summary: Will lays out a bold prediction: AI and data centers are about to become America's next partisan flashpoint, and he and Brandt spend the episode stress-testing it, untangling water-usage myths, nuclear-power FUD, and a Texas gas-turbine site making neighbors sick with infrasound. They land on Jevons Paradox to explain why efficiency won't shrink data center demand, sketch out a mainframe-to-local-compute future for AI, then close with a vertical USB-C cable stand and Brandt's new favorite TSA-proof gun case lock. Discussions Include: • Will's prediction: AI and data centers becoming the next big partisan flashpoint in the US • Untangling the data center water-usage debate — golf courses, evaporative cooling, and a contested Georgia well-water case • Nuclear power as a cautionary parallel for FUD and outdated public perception • Infrasound from gas-turbine-powered data centers making nearby residents sick • Jevons Paradox, and why more efficient AI won't shrink data center demand, it'll grow it • The mainframe-to-personal-computer analogy for where local vs. cloud AI compute is headed Quotable Quotes (Should you choose to share): "I believe that AI, and specifically data centers, are gonna be the next partisan issue in the United States that will divide down party lines." - Will Curran "The technology and the plans for modern nuclear reactors, by all indications, are incredibly safe. But nobody cares." - Brandt Krueger "We know gas turbines are bad for the environment, but have you heard about infrasound?" - Will Curran "As we got more and more efficient at how we burned coal, it was supposed to bring down the coal use - and it didn't go down, it went up." - Brandt Krueger Thing of the Episode (TOTE): Brandt: Cedar Mill TSA-approved gun case lock - https://www.amazon.com/Cut-Resistant-MonoShaft-lock-gun-case-padlock/dp/B0CNBKXH4B Will: Vertical USB-C cable stand - I couldn't find it, and Will never sent it - BK ;)