Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs - Episode 109: Holiday Special #3 - Trees, Travel, Twitter & Terminology!

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

In this episode, Conor and Bryce celebrate the holidays with a holiday special where talk about a plethora of random topics!Link to Episode 109 on WebsiteTwitterADSP: The PodcastConor HoekstraBryce Adelstein LelbachShow NotesDate Recorded: 2022-12-22Date Released: 2022-12-23ADSP Episode 5: Holiday Special - From China to APLADSP Episode 57: Holiday Special #2 - Ljubljana, Here We Come!MastodonElon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Paperback by Ashlee VanceTwo female singers met the founder of NVIDIA Jensen Huang while streaming!! (Cover Lady Gaga Song)Stanfords EHLI (Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative)INCITS Inclusivity Terminology GuidelinesTweet about “War Stories”How C++23 Changes the Way We Write Code - Timur Doumler - CppCon 2022Intro Song InfoMiss You by Sarah Jansen https://soundcloud.com/sarahjansenmusicCreative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/l-miss-youMusic promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/iYYxnasvfx8

It is so chaotic and ridiculous that I am confident that it will not last. And by not last, I don't mean that like Twitter will be destroyed. I believe Twitter is more resilient than Elon. I believe that Twitter will outlast and will eventually be fine. Welcome to ADSP the podcast episode 109 recorded on December 22nd 2022. My name is Connor and today with my co host Bryce we do our third holiday special where we talk about whatever we want a plethora of topics including Twitter, Elon Musk, Christmas trees, travel, and so much more. Folks, for the first time in over a month and a half, let's actually take a look at the exact dates. We recorded on, today is one day before this goes out.

Are those new headphones i have that that model uh no these i've been using for months now so you're okay we it doesn't even actually say so yeah we recorded we recorded on november 2nd with Jane. Yeah. And the last time we recorded without a guest together was October 27th. So it's almost been two months. It's almost been two months since we've had a mano a mano ADSP recording. I've been looking forward to this because I actually haven't talked to you. And like you were gone to Kona and then to Japan and then to Amsterdam. And since you've been back I've I was away for a bit anyways how's it going first of all happy holidays I think I think we agreed last year we're allowed to say Merry Christmas

because it's our podcast and we can do what we want but did we well we did I have a Christmas tree wait one second oh yeah so Merry Christmas Hanukkah, Happy Holidays to whatever non-religion or religion or religious thing. Can you see the Christmas tree back there? I can, yes. And I also see a, what is that called? A stocking? A little Santa's boot stocking? I have successfully not set the apartment on fire.

Is it a real tree? Yeah. It's a real tree. is that allowed in your apartment are you breaking rules here and hopefully none of the uh well the doorman the doorman helped me bring it up so i'm pretty sure that it's probably it's okay damn why so uh you know just try and try trying out different holidays what's going on brace well i'm jewish but the girlfriend is not jewish so i see i see you've compromised yeah although i've you've told me well no i got i got it i got it as a surprise but she's not like you know super into christmas but she never really had like christmas tree growing up so i was like all right well we got a good christmas tree gotta get a christmas tree i do not have a Christmas tree. I've got plants, but no Christmas tree because it's more work than it's worth.

Yeah, it does seem to be like a lot of work. And, you know, I – so, okay. All right. Also, too, let's just pause here. Folks, this is our third holiday special episode. If you're new to the podcast and didn't go watch the entire backlog, which, I mean, come on, what are you doing? You're probably on holiday right now. Head back to episode zero and work your way through it. We talk about whatever we want to today. So it's going to probably be 30 minutes, 60 minute episode. Last year, I think we committed to going on a trip to Sloveniavenia our number one our number one country and uh we called that episode uh holiday special ljubljana which is the capital of slovenia here we come and uh the first year who knows what we talked about two years ago but anyways back to you bryce so for folks thinking this isn't

technical in nature you know that's this is what i wanted to surprise the girlfriend with the christmas tree um and uh so i did all the preparations she was in uh portland for work and so i i did all the preparations that week um but i then she came back in the weekend and so i had everything like prepared i had all the gifts wrapped and like hidden in various places around the apartment and that part was actually easy because she's short she's like five feet tall and so i just put everything, not even high. I didn't even put things at like a high height. I just put things at like a regular height for me.

And I'm like, I didn't even have to worry about her looking up because she just like her awareness of the world ends at like six feet. And she's not going to look up taller than that. So I just hit all of the gifts um and uh i i i you know i asked people on twitter for advice about uh you know how how to buy a tree and pretty much all of my uh respected friends and colleagues on twitter told me you should buy an artificial tree um because know, it's a lot less hassle, it's less expensive. But she had said she likes the smell of pine. So I ignored

everybody's very timely and wise advice and bought a tree. But I determined that I needed to buy a tree on Sunday, and she had tennis at 2 on Sunday. And then she was going to come back at around 4.30, and then she had a facial at 5.30. We're getting a whole – giving people a lot of information to stalk your girlfriend here. But so what I felt needed to happen was that after she got back from the facial, that's when the tree needed to be set up. And I was going to cook dinner that night. So I would have between like 5.40 and 7 to set up the tree and to sort of set everything up. And so my plan was, okay, when she's playing tennis, I'll go and buy the tree and I'll get the doorman to hide it somewhere in the building.

And then I'll start the food prep for dinner. And then when she's at the face show i'll do the actual setup and i made a mistake and the mistake was that like a day or two before uh the event i i was just gonna make like steak because she just loves steak like steak and steamed vegetables and mashed potatoes like that that is like her ideal meal and like like i'm not saying that she likes bland food she just she likes very simple food you know she likes she likes steak is not bland she likes simple food like done well she like she doesn't want things that are like over seasoned um but so that meal was going to be simple, but then like a day or two before,

my favorite YouTube chef and baker, I saw a new video from him on this potato soup, and I'm like, that looks really good. I'm going to make that instead. So I printed out the recipe, I did all the meal prep, but it's a soup. And soups, you know, tend to take a bit of time. They have to simmer and they tend to need a bit of attention. In particular, this one, it needed, there were like, there were two steps where I needed to do something for 10 minutes. And then there was one step where I needed it to like simmer for 40 minutes. So there were like 30 minutes of like active cook time and like where i needed to be at the stove during this recipe and i only realized this after i had purchased the tree and after she'd come back uh and and was in the apartment before she

left for the facial and so then i realized oh crap in addition to having just about an hour to uh set up and and decorate this tree and set up all the presents um I'm also gonna have to cook dinner and like be at the stove at the same time so oh and and I had you know the dog in the apartment who was very confused and scared by the Christmas tree. And I also had to get a bow on the dog, which was no easy feat. So about five minutes before she comes back into the apartment, things are like a complete chaos. I'm like, oh, I'm not ready. But then everything sort of came together but i got christmas tree lights um like the ones you plug into the wall but then i realized um

like they're a different kind well no what yes there is there there are battery operated ones and i realized a couple days before like you know there's not really an outlet that's convenient to the tree um and so maybe i'll try some of these battery operated ones but um i got like four of them and like they each have their own battery pack and then i had to like figure out like okay like well how do i like string these around the tree and place the battery pack in a in a place where it's going to be easy to reach it's just it, it's not a very well-decorated tree. I will put pictures of it on Twitter since I asked everybody's advice, but you have to understand that the reason it's not very well-decorated is because I had about 20 to 30 minutes to decorate it

while I also had soup that was somewhat burning on the stovetop. Well, perfect. Here's what you do. Send me one of the photos. Boom. Tomorrow, tweet it out with the episode, perfect. Here's what you do. Send me one of the photos. Boom. Tomorrow, tweet it out with the episode. Yes. It's completely festive.

Fits perfectly with the festive theme of our holiday special. Although, in the past, we've talked about nothing festive before. So this is our first festive holiday special. And so speaking of my travel. Wait, how did the soup turn out? Don't leave us hanging like that, my guy. The soup was great. I just had some of the soup and some of the leftover steak perfect all right well i mean that's

what's that what matters most is the is the potato soup is uh i was like who's joining this call holy smokes what is this this was my year in travel wow i will uh i will i'm looking at what looks like a crime one of those philadelphia you know sunny in philadelphia boards it's like we we can see that the uh the syndicate is headquartered in new york there's still a lot of activity and uh in europe and it seems like they definitely have a sort of mini syndicate over in Hawaii. So I have flown 33 flights this year, 19 domestic, 14 international. I have flown about 80,000 miles, which is around the earth, 3.2 times or a third of the way to the moon. I have been on a plane for 7.8 days this year. How does it feel to be killing the planet yeah we're gonna ignore that

one do you lose any sleep at night knowing your carbon footprint is like like 100x the average probably actually a thousand i lose no sleep i love planes i have been i've had eight flights in the uk uh 27 flights in the us eight flights in the UK, 27 flights in the US, eight flights in the UK, four flights in Japan. And I guess I've been to Canada once. I've also gone through Hong Kong and the Netherlands. Let's see where there's stats out here that are interesting. My flights per month. Definitely, definitely ramped up yeah in july six a month then five months in august five a month in september only two in october

which is shocking actually i'm not sure that's right i'm gonna miss some um seven in november and uh four in december yeah so wait how many flights in total this year 33 i'm trying to just roughly ballpark i definitely did not hit double digits i mean i fly nowhere nowhere near as much as you do oh and i i've also flown around the world uh twice like i've had two trips where i've gone um uh entirely around the world the first one was um uh new york to london london to um uh to tokyo toky then the second one was New York to Dallas, Dallas to Honolulu, Honolulu to Kona, Kona to Honolulu, Honolulu to Tokyo, Tokyo to Osaka to Hong Kong to Amsterdam

Amsterdam to Veldhoven to Dusseldorf to London and London to New York I told you I like planes yeah no kidding

yeah is your goal is your 2023 goal to beat this yeah and and i i've uh uh i've had very good luck this year on uh on upgrades and on traveling and points and that has been that has been excellent yeah maybe in uh maybe in my retirement i'll uh I'll be able to, you know, hit Bryce level, uh, mileage. Yeah. I think I may, I may beat this, uh, next year. We just, um, we just booked our, we're going on a family vacation. My, my whole family's going to Tuscany, uh, next September and we just booked our flights

and, um, the girlfriend and I are going to spend some time in Spain before that. Is that like to juxtapose with the wedding in Italy? With the what in Italy? I thought you said you were going to a wedding or is it a conference?

Isn't there something in Italy you were doing next year? Yes, there is a that's in May, the GHC1 meeting is in Italy you were doing next year? Yes, there is. That's in May. The GHC1 meeting is in Italy. This is an unrelated Italy trip. I'm just going to be in Italy twice. I happen to be in Japan twice this year. I'm going to happen to be in Italy twice next year.

But we are flying. We just booked our tickets on points to fly to get there to Milan on Emirates, which is... Oh, yeah. I've seen the videos. Yeah. Yeah. They usually have a bar at the back of the plane. They do have a bar at the back of the plane. And so we're flying there in business class.

And then Ramona is flying back in business class. And I'm flying back in first class. Hopefully, we're going to upgrade her because I haven't quite told her yet. But if there's only one first class seat, as much as I love her dearly, as much as I typically would be the gentleman. I do all of our laundry. I do all the cooking, all the things like that. But I'll be taking that first class seat. That's understandable.

I wouldn't expect anything less from you, Bryce. I think she, like you, understands that I have this weird, like, childish joy about airplanes. And I think that, like, she totally gets that, like, that I will get 10x out of that experience that she will. That's true. What do they call that theory uh utilitarianism it's you know the greatest amount of joy for the greatest amount of people yes and that that is going to be the argument that i will use you're welcome but um but please emirates open up another unload first class seat so that so that i don't have to

have this argument but there's a shower on board that plane i am gonna shower on the plane oh do you know casey neistat i don't know that i do he's a famous youtuber and uh he had a couple of viral videos of like flying on the most expensive you know airplane ticket in the world and it was one of the emirates flights and it had a whole you know yeah shower you get to go use for 20 minutes or 10 minutes or something and blah blah anyways he filmed himself taking a like not you know he didn't get to see him fully taking a shower but he took the camera in there and he's like look at this i'm taking a shower on a plane and i was like you know i do i do have a a travel related you and i have talked

although not on the podcast before about my um my obsession with traveling on points um and uh that's that's become my my uh my new thing the way i've justified it is like i i need some some past time to do and i can get very obsessive about my past time so like I can't play video games because then I would just spend all my time playing video games I mean you could play video games you just yeah but I would just consume all my time and and so if I'm going to do something obsessive in my spare time to keep myself amused um figuring out how to maximize uh credit card spending and loyalty points and and frequent flyer miles and stuff like that. That seemed like a pretty good use of my time because the vacation we just took to Japan,

we did pretty much all on points. And the trip to Italy and Spain next year, we'll do all on points. Um, but, uh, one thing I've been researching recently is could I become my own travel agent? Because travel agents have access to the airline inventory systems. Um, they can issue their own tickets. They can like, they have a lot more information than your typical, you know, frequent flyer. So I've started researching like okay what would i have to do to become certified like as a travel agent so that i could just get like access to um to all of the the airline inventory systems and also travel agents get like great um uh deals because all the airlines um and all the airlines and all the hotels and all the tourist companies want

the travel agents to, you know, try out their product. So I have been researching this. I would assume, like, my first thought is that you get stuff in, like, bulk from, like, Costco style, you know? So, like, you have to do a certain amount of business. Would you be able to satisfy that? Or is that like a wrong assumption? To get certain, well, to deal with any of the, to deal with airlines and hotels, et cetera, you have to get certified by one of the major travel agency, you know, industry organizations.

And the reason for that is travel agencies, a lot of them tend to be small businesses. Let's say that somebody's got you start a travel agency as your home business. How does American Airlines

know that you're legit and how do they vet you to determine whether they're going to give you access to their systems and that you're not going to abuse it? Well, the answer is they don't. What they do vet is they vet that this, you know, this industry organization, the travel agents, you know, American Airlines agrees with them. Hey, you know american airlines agrees with them hey you know anybody that you certify will will give access to our system and then that agency uh you know comes up with a certification process usually involving some money for people that want to become travel agents and you you have to like like show that you have like a somewhat legit business and show that you have assets and that

you're not just like you know a rando on the internet um but uh but i have a great desire to figure out how to make this happen all right i look forward to you being my travel agent as well um yeah i do i do now have um a a number of my friends now know that if they want to travel somewhere or if they have questions about like, how do I get from point A to point B? They do now know that they can totally nerd snipe me by just asking me. And then I'll be like, you know, I'll just like spend like four hours that day,

like researching and sending them back, like way more detailed information than they need. Yeah. Um, it brings me great joy. It does bring me great joy yeah all right well we've hit the 20 minute mark a few of our listeners have turned off by now i do i do have a technical topic but wait i want to get to my questions for you first um and then we'll get to so we've got

a list of things to get to i think the first and most important pressing thing we need to discuss is do you know what it is? I actually didn't DM you this one. So this is a topic you don't know about, but we have to discuss. I mean, it's very topical. Everyone's talking about it. And it's relevant for both of us, obviously. I don't know.

Twitter. Oh, Twitter? No, I don't want to talk about Twitter. Alright, well, we're talking about Twitter. I can cut this out if you don't want it to air, but we need to talk about Twitter. Look, people may have wondered why haven't I tweeted anything about

the craziness that's going on at Twitter. And I have thought about it, about tweeting something a few times in the past few weeks, because I haven't gone and joined Mastodon. This is what we're going to talk about. And I haven't said that I'm leaving Twitter or tweeted about how evil and wicked Elon is. And I mean, I do think he is. But there's a simple reason for that

um you know I've been in this industry for 10 years now no closer to 12 years and um I've seen a decent amount of shit and I have seen how I have seen what an unsustainable situation looks like. And the one thing that I've learned, or one thing I've learned throughout my career is that unsustainable, chaotic environments tend to collapse in upon themselves. And so I've simply not said anything because it is so chaotic and ridiculous that I am confident that it will not last. And by not last, I don't mean that Twitter will be destroyed. I believe Twitter is more resilient than Elon. I believe that Twitter will outlast and will eventually be fine. And I just don't see any reason to engage with or feed this megalomaniac's, you know, ego um so i i'm i'm just ignoring it because i think in three to six months um uh twitter will be more or less fine and elon may still own it but he's gonna have a

substantially uh reduced role in its day-to-day governance. Interesting. Well, that's basically everything I needed to know from you. I mean, I'll share my thoughts too. And as to why I'm not going to other platforms. Yeah, Mastodon is obviously the big one that most folks are going to twitter is a community space and i'm not um i'm not gonna let some crazy rich guy just come and like take over a community space and kick us all out so i i don't plan on leaving yeah i mean for me personally i have not left either not said anything about

leaving that's mainly because that's mainly twofold one is laziness i have like seven twitter accounts most of them i could drop but like i would have to replicate the podcast one my personal one and my uh meetup one anyway so like it's just going to be a lot of work. But two, I also think that this federated model, like email work because it started as federated, but trying to take a website like Twitter, like I already know a bunch of folks that aren't on Twitter because they just think it's silly.

Like it's like Facebook except only status updates, which is like not an inaccurate description of what this website is. And to try and convince non-tech folks, like, oh, yeah, it's like just a federated version of Twitter. And it's like, well, which one do I join? It's like, oh, it's just like email. You know, you just, anyways, I just think it's an odd model.

Yeah. And I just. Mastodon is like a model of Twitter that makes sense solely for like – For tech people. For tech people. Yeah. And that's the thing. It's like 80%, 90% of the people I follow are all tech.

But like there are some people like runners and people outside that world that like have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. And I don't think that they're going to be – Like 50% of the people that I follow on Twitter are tech, and like 50% are planes. And I don't just mean like aviation people. I mean, it's just like I just follow a lot of planes. Yeah. And it should, Bryce alluded to the fact that Elon's evil. We both agree, but I'll just say for the record, you know, I'm sure we...

Okay, evil may be wrong. It's not so much that I think that he's evil. It's that I think that he's a very sick man. I think he needs help. Yes. I don't know what happened to him in his – I don't know what trauma happened to him, but he's clearly not a happy person. I don't think evil is that far off. I used to be, in the beginning, a huge Elon Musk fan.

No, no, no, because evil has purpose. Evil has clear goals and plans. He's just chaos. There's no agenda here he just wants he just not with twitter specifically but he does have agendas he no no no he just wants people to think he's cool that's all yeah i mean that is his ultimate goal he is a narcissist and he wants people to like him yeah um but like i mean like he keeps taking polls that are see i i i promised i't – Do you like me?

Yes. This is the reason that I'm not tweeting about Elon and that I'm – like this is the one time I'm going to talk about it and that's going to be it. And the reason is that like I don't want to spend all of my time thinking about and being angry at the ridiculous elon musk because you know what that that's exactly he he wants all of your attention and you're giving him your attention like i don't care about him i think the thing is is what he wants is like positive attention no he just wants attention he he loves to be hated he loves to be hated i think he loves to be hated. He loves to be hated. I think he loves to be hated as long as he has his Elon stans. But I think a large number of these people that think he's the real-life Iron Man are starting to realize. He was just on some Twitter space where someone asked him.

He mentioned the stack and how it's like a crazy stack. And then someone was like, all right, explain the stack. And he was just like, what? Who are you? And then someone was like, all right, like explain the stack. And he was just like, what? Who are you? And then he's just like, no, just like explain the stack. And he's like, oh, so you're a jackass. It was the best. There was also one where somebody explained how like internet ad,

the internet ad market works to him, how like advertisers want to be able to micro, to target like very focused audiences. And Elon was just like, can somebody mute this guy because he doesn't know what he's talking about but um uh oh god well no so what i was gonna say was that like read his biography by ashley vance and that was like so i started off liking for those that are listening this being like you don't understand him blah blah i used to love elon like i used to

think my god oh i making making the world a better place the end of blah. I used to love Elon. I used to think, my God, making the world a better place. This may be the end of our friendship because- Used to be. Listen, let me get to the end of the story. I mean, the guy was putting electric cars everywhere, blah, blah, blah. I didn't understand that he stole that company from two guys and reinvented the story and that he's been reinventing every story, blah, blah, blah. He's going to Mars, et cetera. And then I read the book and there's this one small part in the book where his executive assistant who has been working with him, I think for a decade or two decades at that point, sees all these engineers around him getting paid a lot and asks for a raise and says, you know, the companies are doing well. I feel like I've provided a lot of value. And like,

if you read the book, basically they paint this person as like the only person that makes Elon like manageable to work with because every high level executive that ever wants to go talk to Elon would go through her first and be like, is it a good hour of the day? Like, you know, it needs to be a Monday at 2 PM and he had to have his shreddies in the morning. Otherwise he's in a bad mood and you shouldn't go talk to him. Otherwise he might just fire you on the spot for no reason. So like this person, this woman was apparently like a godsend. Elon's response, take a vacation for two weeks and I'll let you know afterwards.

She took a vacation, came back and he fired her. And apparently there was a couple of high ranking executives that like left the company because they were so upset that like Elon had. Anyways, this is the kind of person that like his executive assistant works for him for decades and she asked for a raise and he – anyways, the dude is not a nice person. Yeah, I have – we have some colleagues at NVIDIA that worked at various Elon companies. One of the other principal architects that I work with. I was at SpaceX for a while. Um, and, um, and he's a super nice guy. Um, and the guy that worked at SpaceX. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's one of

the, the, the, the kindest and friendliest people, um, that I know at NVIDIA. Um, and it in video um and sometimes sometimes he's he's told me stories and i just i i feel so bad because he's such a nice guy and it must have been such a hostile environment and he like tells the story and he tells it in a way that um i mean i think he enjoyed his time there but um but boy does it sound brutal and then like i i know some other people who who have been who have spent some short time there and and there's a few just absolutely you know crazy like like elon sending out email like getting an email in the morning that like hey at the end of the day you need to send all the but like the thing is like these stories sound tame now compared to what we're now seeing. But Elon sending emails to all the staff, like, hey, at the end of the day, you need to send me a report of what you've done today.

And then just firing random people based on not liking their reports. Or I heard this one story once about some VPs were having a meeting with Elon, trying to explain to him that this thing that he thought was going to be ready next week was like not going to be ready for months and everybody's you know trying to explain it to him in like gentle terms and eventually one VP is like just like explicitly comes out and says like Elon it's not going to be ready

and he's like okay well I want everybody I want all the engineers to come into the office tomorrow morning at 8am so we can sort this out. And tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. is a Saturday. And so everybody comes in at 8 a.m., of course, because they're terrified. Because the man rules the theater. And then it's like, it's 8.15, it's 8.20, it's 8.30.

Finally, at like 9.20, Elon and some of Elon's kids come into the office of a factory. I don't remember which company this was at. And somebody's like, hey, all the engineers are here. They're waiting for you to do whatever you're going to do. And he's like, oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Send them all home. It's like this man just ruined everybody's Saturday morning.

Yeah. You know, it's... There have been... So you and I work at NVIDIA, and we have a CEO who's also well-known in – Whoa, I was like, what are you about to say? You're about to compare him to – our CEO is amazing. No, no, no. That's what I'm getting at. There have been – Jensen, who's the NVID nvidia ceo um well-known figure in silicon valley

and um over the years there have been some stories that have come out that have said oh you know jensen's not not nice to people which is absolutely untrue um uh you know jensen has And Jensen sets high goals. And yes, he pushes us to deliver. cared as deeply about his employees as Jensen does and who has done as much to defend and protect his employees, especially during hard times. And, you know, I think he's got some of this – he's acquired this reputation of being, you know, I don't know. I don't want to say an asshole, but I think that there's some people who believe that about him, which is just not true. And I have seen some people compare him to Elon. And I think that's completely untrue, because the main difference is, you know, Elon sets ambitious goals and pushes people to deliver and so does Jensen. But the difference is that Elon cares 0% about his employees, whereas Jensen cares deeply about his employees and not just like the engineers or the hardware architects every single employee that works

at NVIDIA, from all the way I don't want to say down to whatever, but just like if you work at NVIDIA, you are treated just as equally and I didn't know that upon joining NVIDIA and then when the pandemic hit and offices closed I'm not sure, I didn't know that upon joining NVIDIA. And then when the pandemic hit and offices closed, like, I'm not sure I don't, I don't know, it's public. So I'm not going to say anything. But like the steps that he took to make sure that everyoneIA employees in Ukraine and in Russia. I think NVIDIA is unique in tech companies in the degree to which we ensured that our employees in Ukraine were taken care of and had options to get out of the country.

We have one employee on our team who started right before the war, who was a Russian citizen who lived in Russia, and, you know, NVIDIA got him out of the country, got him, you know, NVIDIA got him out of the country, got him, you know, temporary housing, you know, increased his compensation to make sure that he had the resources to be able to leave. And just like really like went above and beyond to take care of this guy. And like, you know, like I think at one point I, my understanding is that we were chartering planes to fly from Russia to Armenia. Um, we, we just like when, when the commercial airlines shut down, we were just like, all right, well, we'll just, we'll just hire some planes. Um, and, um, you know, it's, it's, it's stuff like that that I really

makes me really grateful and then you look at all these other tech companies that are doing layouts right now and I can almost assure you that won't happen at NVIDIA I think there's only been layouts once in NVIDIA's history

and it's something that Jensen really hates doing and I think the one time that weoffs once in NVIDIA's history, and it's something that Jensen really hates doing. I think the one time that we did it, his experience with it was so negative that he never wants to do it again. And typically during top periods of financial downturns, Jensen goes out of his way to make sure that everybody gets a bonus. During the pandemic, we were all given a bit of a bonus and a bit of financial assistance just to make like life easier for everybody. Um, and you know, that, that's like what real leadership does. Um, you know, like it is true. I think that, that Jensen can be, um, uh, uh, uh, tough on like the executive VPs that report to him. But there's a difference between being tough on like your executive VPs

versus being like awful to your like line engineers. And like, that's what Elon is. He's just awful to, he punches down, you know, and that's, that's really, that's really not acceptable. And, you know, and that's really not acceptable. And, you know, I think the culture of a company really does come from its leadership. And NVIDIA, I think, has a great culture. nvidia so great um is that the the the management is really great and supportive for the most part there's there i'm sure there's exceptions to this as there are is at any company but um my experience at nvidia has generally been the higher I've gone in the management org, the, almost the better,

the better it gets. Um, uh, and, um, there's, there's a ton of inflexibility for employees. Um, you know, I, there's been multiple times at NVIDIA where I've seen somebody who wasn't unhappy in their role, who their management was very accommodating and supportive and sort of helped to move them to a better role. NVIDIA doesn't have this culture of these annual performance reviews where it's a huge, big, stressful thing and where everybody, all the employees review each other. It's just, we really do take care of people. And I think especially in tough times, that really shows, like, I can't think of a better company to be working at during the,

the pen during like this period and during the pandemic than in video. One final thing I'll add to wrap up this long Twitter, Elon and somehow Jensen got wrapped into it. I retweeted a very wholesome video. Have you seen this video that floated around on Twitter of Jensen that I actually don't know where he was. I want to say he was in Santa Clara near HQ, but he was walking around somewhere. And these two Asian girls were doing karaoke in some what looked like some kind of mall. And they were live streaming it and then he walks around in the background and I'm not sure if they noticed or someone in their like twitch chat stream pointed out that Jensen was behind

them so then then like uh they're looking at the chat and then say Jensen and then they spin around and see him and then his eyes sort of light up. And then he wanders over. Long story short, ends up like requesting a bunch of songs because they ask him like, do you want or I can't remember if he asked, can you sing something for me? Or they offer to. And I can't remember. I think it was he asked for a bunch of Lady Gaga songs. And it's the most wholesome thing. Anyways, they proceed to sing a duet of some song and he stands in the background just sort of like smiling and bobbing his head. It's the most wholesome thing. Anyways, they proceed to sing a duet of some song and he stands in the background just sort of like smiling and bobbing his head. It's the most wholesome thing I've ever seen of any CEO ever.

And anyways, I'll find that video that I retweeted, put it in the links. And point is, Elon sucks. We're, I think both, I mean, I got a little concerned the first time I really saw a red flag because there's been a ton of things that people are talking about the website's becoming more hostile honestly in my little tech sphere I haven't noticed much there's been a couple small bugs that I've seen nothing that's like looks like the website's going down but when they said that they were going to start blocking linking to other social platforms but I was not concerned about that because it was obvious that

that was going to be reversed yeah which which they did revert yeah but like that was the first time i was like it's first of all the irony of mr free speech uh but like we don't need to talk about that but then i was like if this is if this actually sticks like this is the first thing that i've seen where i'm like well maybe this is actually the beginning of the end. See, my philosophy is I just I strongly believe that none of it's going to stick. It is unfortunate that Elon is doing his learning in public like this. Like, it's unfortunate that like that this is how he's going to have to learn is by like you know just trashing the site for some period of time and it is you know we we also we also haven't talked about we haven't really talked about like the human impact of um uh of Elon being at Twitter it is um

it is completely inexcusable it is it is criminal uh uh what he has done to the employees of twitter and just the arbitrary nature with which peoples you know have been fired or like forced to resign um like you know like i do think that that twitter will be fine i think in spite of elon and i think that it'll be fine because of all the great engineering and all the great, not just engineering, but all the great work that the people who have built Twitter have done over the years. And that's why I believe that it will be fine because it's a great platform. And I don't think that one asshole can overdo it, can undo it overnight or, um, undo it, uh, you know, overnight or even, you know, over the period of a few months. But, um, you know, what, what can't be fixed is the, the, uh, the trauma and the, uh, uh, the uncertainty, um, that's been unleashed on these people's lives um uh you know that's

that's really just completely inexcusable it's like like say whatever you want uh about like elon's you know uh management of like the technical aspects of things um i almost to some degree don't care about you know whether spacex or tesla or twitter are successful as companies because of how poorly he treats his people like ultimately companies are just collections of people and it doesn't it doesn't matter if you build great things if you you do it by um you know, being awful to people along the way. You know, I don't want to make drastic comparisons. So I'm not going to. I'm not going to.

But I'll just say that, you know, history has shown on multiple occasions that the ends don't justify the means it doesn't it doesn't matter um if if you've made great scientific achievements if you've done it at the cost of you know human suffering um and and i and i think that that's what that's exactly what he's done and i mean you know it's it's it's a little bit drastic to say that because obviously people you know um if you're an engineer that works at tesla or spacex and and elon's you know really going to ask you you're still like a an engineer in a in in a you know in a pretty cushy job in a first world country um you know getting paid a decent amount you know you're not you know starving in some a decent amount, you know, you're not, you know, starving in some

other part of the world, you're still fortunate, but people don't shouldn't be treated like that. Yeah, I am sure behind the scenes, there are a ton of labor lawyers involved with folks that were let go because literally, like, and not only were they let go in a demonstrably, like, terrible way without cause, it seemed, but they did it, like,rably like terrible way without cause it seemed but they did it like publicly like on like there's a track record of like oh you'd said something all right you're fired yeah um and uh like literally i would see those tweets and then like someone replying like all right easiest labor like lawyer case in history because like it's literally proof of like wrongful termination and without

cause yeah so whether or not there's going to be some class action or something you know it's maybe not but i'm sure that there are people working with lawyers right now to rectify to the amount that it can be rectified uh the way that people were let go and treated yeah and i mean i you know this is supposed to be our holiday episode. So I guess, you know, what we can say is, you know, both you and I can be very grateful for the company that we're working in and the management that we have. And I think, you know, everybody in tech should maybe take some time to reflect upon their situation right now. You know, having now seen what has happened at Twitter and the past few months, the, you know, with the pullback in tech and a lot of companies announcing austerity measures and layoffs and things like that. I think this is now a good time for us all to reflect upon how fortunate we are.

And perhaps some of us haven't felt so fortunate in in the past in the good times, the boom times, um, because maybe they weren't in a perfect situation or setup, but maybe now you come to realize that, you know what, I've actually got it pretty good. Um, you know, all things considered. Um, and, uh, and I, I hope that, uh, many of our listeners feel that way yeah way to end on a at least way to end this chapter on a positive note

alright should I should we talk about where's my list of things we've gotten through we've gotten through yeah kind of updates do you want to do the thing that I DM'd you about on Twitter about that tweet or do you want to do the topic you DM'd me about

you don't remember probably what I DM'd you about because it was a week ago it was about the tweet about language no I don't want to do that today because emotional is the compiler diagnostics No, I don't want to do that today because emotional –

Is the compiler diagnostics a happy topic? Yes. Well, it is actually interesting because, as you know, I work on's inclusive terminology guide that went out and that's been somewhat ridiculed on the internet for – I think some people have suggested that it goes too far. I actually haven't been able to get a copy of it because they made it private now. They made it so that only Stanford employees and students can view it where it was previously publicly accessible. Kind of... I should have downloaded it as soon as I saw the link. I'm sure we could find it.

Yeah, I'm sure I could. I would like to be able to send it to the... Actually, here, let's crowdsource it. If you're a listener that goes to Stanford, could you please send Bryce? I legitimately would like to have a copy of it so that I can send it around to the Insights Inclusive Terminology Committee. Whenever we see a new one of those, we'd like to look at it to get feedback on it.

I guarantee you we have a Stanford listener. for insights, but now we're developing a standard for inclusive terminology. And I think it's a bit different than any other inclusive terminology document out there because a lot of the inclusive terminology documents are a list of things. It's like, hey, don't use this term, use this term instead. And we do have a list like that in our document, but our guidelines and our standard both have a substantial front matter that talks about like the process. Like not just like, you know, you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and, you know, he'll eat for the rest of his life. And that's sort of the philosophy here, which is we could give you a list of terms to avoid right now, but this is an evolving field and those terms, you know, what's acceptable, what's problematic is going to evolve over time as culture shifts. And we also, you know, we're not going to, we're not perfect. We're not going

to be able to put everything into that list. And so it's far better for us to teach you the process by which you should evaluate whether um uh your your terminology is inclusive and i think that's really the valuable and unique thing that our that our standard um uh will do um and right now we're just developing the um we're really starting to flesh out what those processes are going to look like and really starting to think about it. You know, like one of the interesting questions is, well, how do you determine, you know, obviously, if you're going to try to determine whether your language is inclusive for, you know, whatever your content is for your programming language or for your open source project, you know,

once you've identified a term that might be problematic, that might be non-inclusive, well, how do you make that judgment? And so one of the things we're trying to figure out is how do we define like the audience? We don't want to say, like, I don't want to talk about things in terms of stakeholders because that might suggest that people who don't have a stake in the project shouldn't have input, which I don't think is true. that find some term offensive, even if they're maybe not your intended audience for your particular content, their opinions are still something that's valid. And we're trying to come up with a way

to define the process by which organizations and communities can work to reach consensus on whether or not a term should be avoided. And I think it's, you know, obviously it's a who edits one of these documents i i i certainly hear a lot of feedback that some of the things that we put in maybe have gone just up too far like i i i hear the feedback that like oh you can't like it i i understand people saying it's ridiculous to say that we shouldn't use the term user because it might be offensive to those with a um a substance um abuse um uh problems um you know some people may say oh well that goes a step too far like you're basically saying we can't use any word.

I've never heard that one before. I've never heard that one before, and that's one of the reasons why I'm interested in looking at the Stanford document is because I always like to learn about new terms that I've never previously heard were problematic. I guess here's my perspective um when you first tell me that user is a is a term with negative connotations um yeah my gut reaction to is like okay that's a step too far but um I've been the editor for this inclusive terminology document for two to three years. And the thing I've learned is I never want to be the one making decisions based on my subjective experience. Because that's like the entire root of the problem here is like it doesn't matter what i think um the what i've trained myself to do is to always ask the question like okay is there evidence that this is actually a problem to some to some community like it doesn't matter like what

i think doesn't matter what what what what matters is whether this is problematic to some community like it doesn't matter like what i think doesn't matter what what what what matters is whether this is problematic to some community and so like my first gut reaction is always to do research um and and like that's that's almost always um what's led to the best outcomes um can we can we talk about the the tweet seeing as you've spent this much time now talking about... So I... Here, let me... I had it up on a different screen. Yeah, so this was on December 14th

in the midst of our hiatus in between recording. And so part of the reason is that of the content of the tweet, but also it's people that we know. So the person that sent this tweet out, I hope they don't mind that we're talking about it, is Teamer, who has given one of the keynotes at the most recent CPPCon. I think he's actually, I know he's giving a keynote at an upcoming conference, but I'm not sure it's been announced yet. So it's another C++ conference though. Anyways, he tweeted, when reading programming books or articles, I often see phrases like war stories, quote unquote, or being, quote, in the trenches, end quote, referring to situations in software development.

Please, please stop using these phrases in this context. And then a couple different people, the two main notable ones that I know quite well are Barry Revzin and Kate Gregory. Barry, I won't read his whole tweet, but basically said, you know, please stop telling people what they're allowed to say. And then Kate responded, saying, you know, we're not, what did Kate, the gist of what Kate said was like, you know, it's important to choose words carefully. We're not trying to, you know, anyways, there was a back and forth. And sort of similar to what you said about user, my initial thought was like, isn't that just sort of like a figure of speech. But then my next thought is like, I never really reach for those phrases and they're not that important to me. So like if someone said, Hey, this is, uh, affects, you know, you know,

I used to fight in some war, you know, I would be like, yeah, okay. It's it, it decreases any value in my life to like remove those phrases from what I'm able to reach for. But then at the same time, like I sort of, anyway, so I was just more interested, you spent a lot more time thinking about this stuff with your experiences. Like, what was your reaction when you saw this? I won't tell you my reaction, because my reaction is irrelevant. What I will tell you is, is my process, and the process that we've used in the development of our guidelines. And first of all, I'll give you another example. This actually came up in the last discussion on the Insights in Crisis Terminology Committee, which is somebody pointed out that some weather terminology, like cold front, where does front come from in that well it turns out that the etymology of

like cold front it actually comes from uh from from war and talking about like front lines in a war um and we never we never actually think about that connotation um uh but somebody was was bringing it up and was pointing out like well is that you know is that, you know, is that problematic? But, but so my process, you know, what I would do is I would go and start to do some research and I would go to see, you know, I would, I would first want to go and find out, okay, what are the advocacy organizations for the impacted communities. And so in this case, that's going to probably be organizations that advocate for or support veterans, but also specifically veterans who are suffering from PTSD, because that's probably the people that are most likely to be impacted from this. But also, it may be, there's other groups that may be applicable, too. For example,

how about organizations that advocate for refugees from areas affected by war. You know, more topically, maybe organizations that advocate for Ukrainian refugees or the Syrian refugees, two of the more recent conflicts. And so I would want to go and find a list of, you know, organizations like this, make sure that they're, you know, big, notable ones that are that, um, are sort of authorities on, on these issues. And I'd want to see whether they have any, um, whether they've taken a stance on, on, on things like this. Um, you know, if, if you look at organizations, um, for the, uh, uh, the, the deaf and blind community, um they they have taken a stance on how how you should talk about um uh the deaf and blind community and there are documents on their website

and so so i would i would go to these you know all those organizations i listed and i would i would make a list of those organizations i would go to their websites i would maybe even go and try to contact their um their pr people and ask if there's a stance on this. And I would also go and look for articles, you know, blog posts, articles on online news venues, just like anything on the internet um uh talking about um these particular terms um and i would i would try to see like how much how much evidence is there that this is like an existing issue um that that this is something that that is a discussion that that not just one person is brought up to me because a lot of people email us on the inclusive terminology committee or email me and ask hey well you know, I was thinking about this term and maybe it's problematic.

My first reaction is, of course, well, you know, it could be, but I really need to see evidence that the communities that would be impacted are talking about this. And if there's really an absence of discussion on the topic, then that to me is a signal that it's probably not yet become best practice to avoid that term. It's something that we should certainly watch and be aware of, but it's probably not established that we have consensus that that's something that we should avoid. But, of course, the other thing that I can do is I can, you know,

try to talk to people in the impacted community. You know, maybe try to see if there's somebody in my network who is, you know, a veteran or a veteran suffering from PTSD who I could just have a chat with and ask them, like, hey, what's your take on this? And I've done that in the past for a couple of different groups and for a couple of different topics, just to sort of see, like, hey, do you have more information about this? Or, like, do you know of advocacy organizations or authors or thought leaders in your community who might, you know, have more thoughts on this? Because I don't want to be the one making decisions about these things.

I want to consult and get input and determine what what the best practice is but if i do find that there's evidence that um that this is a controversial topic or maybe not even controversial if i find that there's evidence that people are talking about this or or are are raising the concern that this may be problematic. If I find two or three blog articles or a couple different threads on various social media platforms, that to me is probably a sign, a strong enough signal that the term should be avoided. If there is some evidence that there is a controversy

from multiple different authors, multiple different people raising a concern, that's probably sufficient for me to say, okay, this is something that people are talking about that may be controversial, and thus we should avoid it. Yeah, it's a great point. I think it's, you said, you know, you don't want to be the one that makes a decision, but you missed the, what I think is the more important point of that statement, which you said earlier, which is that based on your experience, which is, yeah, immediately when you say that, it makes me think, well, sure, I have some reaction to some phrase or figure of speech or word. And then my initial thought is like, is that a big deal? Like, doesn't seem like it, but like, says the guy who has never been, you know, even close to war.

And it's like, I'm not, I'm not the affected demographic that is potentially going to have an issue with this. And so it's like, it's like, why would you ask me? Or why would I be involved in the decision making process? Go ask the people that would actually like, because I'm sure there's a ton of things like that, where you hear you hear communities that you are not a part of being upset about something and you're scratching your head going like, why do they care about that? But it's like, you don't have the experience that that group of people has lived to know that like, why it's an issue and your point of going out and seeking like, you advice or uh you know to learn from that community is really what people should be doing i will i will read to you from the draft of the of

two key paragraphs from the uh inclusive terminology standard that we are developing um uh okay so the first paragraph is, some people experience negative connotations with a term which can offend, alienate, or exclude them. Negative connotations are subjective. A term can have different meanings to different people based on their experiences and identities. Some terms are offensive and slash or promote bias or stereotypes regarding gender, age, ability, nationality, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, etc. Terms with negative connotations shall be identified and replaced with terms that do not have negative connotations or otherwise remedy. So I think that when we were drafting this standard,

one thing that was very important to me is that we talk about subjectivity. And in my presentation that I sometimes give about the standard, that's one of the key points that I try to drive home is that it's this is inclusive terminology is not an objective search for a right answer because it's it's just inherently not objective if somebody tells you that they are experiencing negative connotations of the term then it is a fact that they are

experiencing that you can't be like oh well you shouldn't feel that way or like oh oh i think you're lying um so like like if somebody says that they're offended by a term that is evidence that the term is offensive to some person like yeah this is the thing that people just don't seem to understand it's like let me invalidate the way you feel because i don't feel the same way exactly exactly and so like it's as simple as that um but it's hard for people to understand that because typically in society we search for objective fruits and we we often want to have a logical and almost scientific discussion of things and then reach some objective truth based upon facts. And that's not what this is.

There is no objective truth defined. Inclusive terminology is about feelings. It's about people's feelings. And people's lived experiences. Yes, exactly. And this is really hard for people to grasp, and it's especially really hard for the tech industry to grasp because so often what we care about is the objective truth of something.

Yeah. And I'm sure there's some people listening to what you just said and they're like, well, what's the point of even talking about this then? If it's all just subjective and there's no real way to find a right answer, can we just move on to developing the next C++26 standard? And it's, yeah, but it's important. I mean, I will say the reason that we're developing an inclusive terminology standard is because we've seen a great demand for it. We developed, at the Insight Standards Organization, we developed inclusive terminology guidelines internally for us to use in the development of our standards. And almost immediately,

a lot of our member organizations were like, ooh, this looks really useful to us. We're trying to figure out how to do this within our company, like not just for standards, but just like for all the things we're doing. Like, can we use this? How should we use this? And we're like, well, no, no, no, no, no, no. that's not like what this was intended for um but you know maybe we can go develop a standard for that purpose so there is i think great demand in the industry for um uh uh for best practices and processes for how to do that and the reason is that um every nobody wants to exclude people um uh if if they can help it and and i think there's a there's a recognition by most organizations um at an organizational level that that this is the right thing to do and this is the way to go um and um and you know i think that five to ten years from now this would just be a an accepted best practice across the industry yep and it costs us it costs us very little to um

uh to pick different language and you know one of the early points that was made during this process within Insights was, you know, somebody, one of my colleagues at Apple who unfortunately no longer is involved in developing the standard because he's started the process of retirement, I believe. But he said something to the effect of, you know, when we write standards or when we write technical documents, our goal is to be concise and precise and unambiguous in what we're stating. That if your goal is to be, is that sort of that search for objective truth, then you should want your writing

and your APIs and your, any sort of content that is going to be consumed by people or even by machines um you would want it to be unambiguous and and precise and clear and so even if you don't agree that you know this, this term is offensive, like, isn't merely the fact that there are multiple meanings to it, but there's an interpretation that you didn't intend. Like, you should want to avoid that for no, if for no other reason than to, to make it less ambiguous. Like, you should want it to be clear and simple and have just one meaning. That's a good point. So while we've been talking about all this, I figured out the title for our holiday special episode. It's going to be called Holiday Special, Trees, Travel, Twitter, and

Terminology. We're going to close this Christmas special episode out, holiday special. Say Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukukkah happy all the religious and non-religious holidays anything you want to say to close this episode out price I would just say happy holidays everybody and thank you all for for listening to this podcast it it consistently surprises me that people find it so interesting to listen to us chatting. Chaos with sprinkles of information. Yeah. And it really warms my heart whenever I run into somebody at a conference or an event and they say, oh, they're listening to the podcast and, and listening to the podcast makes them feel like they're, um, you know, in the room with us and they're, they're, you know,

one of our friends and like, they know what's going on in our lives. And, and that, that, that's exactly, I think what we're, what we're going for. Um, and, um, and I hope that you feel that way. Cause that's, that's what I want you to feel. It's like, this is like, um, you know, if you're, if you're a listener, then you're our friend too. And so thank you, friend, for listening to us, for tolerating us. And maybe 2023, you know, we've got the Slovenia trip on the books. And maybe also we got to start thinking about merch, stickers. We can start with stickers.

There is the C++ committee meeting in um uh in varna bulgaria um so that is the general you know the region of the world to do that road trip and my girlfriend has a lot of um hertz points so we could we could rent the car we could rent the car i don't i don't i don't know whether hertz operates in slovenia um but they they do operate in uh uh the netherlands um uh although as as we learned the uh the netherlands very strict on uh their speed limits. May have acquired a few tickets there. Anyways. Stay tuned. We might have some stickers to give away at some conferences in 2023.

Some swag. Yeah. I mean, we'll see. Well, wait. Why are we giving them away? Why are we giving them away? I mean, what? We're going why are we giving them away why are we giving them away uh i mean what we're gonna charge people for them um yeah first of all i absolutely disdain cash so the only way we would be selling these stickers would be with some kind of what do they call those things that you attach to a cell phone and then you swipe the credit

cards on stripe yeah i i have one that i use for umlude. But maybe we could sell some – we could like create like an online store and sell some merch or sell some stickers. That is true. And then we could give the money to some worthy clients. This is true. I mean we could either – we could do one of two things. We could create the store and then just like – I know a couple of people that have done that. And then they just do it right at cost. So like there's actually no profit and it's just, it goes directly into the product.

Or we could do it at some margin and then we choose some organization to give the money to. Yeah. Maybe we could have an ADSP scholarship to allow somebody to go attend some. Well, you really think there's going to be a lot of stickers being bought, guy uh yeah yeah i guess i i think there'll be a lot i mean i think if it's for a good cause there could be i mean uh we've only got i don't know how many views or downloads we've had in total but i think it's it's you know like 300 400 000 levels so that's across 100 episodes i mean everyone would need to buy a lot of stickers in order. What do we need to be charging a pretty penny, $20 per sticker.

Yeah. Yeah. T-shirts. We can do t-shirts. The margins of t-shirts are like always amaze me. Like anytime I go to like buy a, like a branded t-shirt, you know, there was like 30 or 40 bucks and it's like you know they gotta be killing it stay tuned folks we will look into a merch store and merch 2023

happy holidays tell us what merch you want like shirts with pictures of Bryce's dog I just figured it would be one thing and it would be the logo. No, no, no, no, no, no. There's going to be other things that they're going to want.

There's going to be other things. You realize though, I'm doing all the work. You're not going to do this work. No, no, no, no. Because I actually run the US shop for Include. Although I forget what platform it's on. But this is one thing that i actually know how to do and can and can do oh perfect all right well then we can get as creative because i was thinking it's

going to be one type of thing that logo and that goes on either a mug or a t-shirt or a hoodie no if we can uh uh we can we can do something i would say actually a hoodie that has the color of our logo which is like a deep maroon with the little white letters actually would be a pretty nice because we don't have like a crazy colored logo like some podcasts anyways happy holidays

we're wrapping up this holiday special episode thanks for listening we hope you enjoyed and we hope you have a very very happy holidays