Story Splitting and Apple’s Disappointment
I think you should ask an LLM to come up with a testing strategy for this setup.
Ian:Oh, that's that's so simple. Even I could do it.
Ash:What's the mission of the testing here?
Ian:So that we don't have to record the same thing twice.
Ash:Well, that's a risk.
Ian:Always a risk. Always a risk. Well, a
Ash:risk that we've turned to reality before as well.
Ian:We have. Yeah. In our early episodes, we we quite often well, more than once recorded things twice,
Ash:didn't we? Absolutely. But they got better with the retelling,
Ian:probably. Yeah. We had more rehearsed opinions in those days. Blimey.
Ash:Blimey indeed.
Ian:I wrote some things.
Ash:Interval things.
Ian:Interval things. But I just want to do the quickest one first because I find it hilarious.
Ash:Okay. Go.
Ian:So Hewlett Packard. It's just
Ash:already hilarious.
Ian:It's sad. A once great company. They actually changed their customer service system so that if you rang them about your printer, you would have to wait fifteen minutes minimum.
Ash:Okay.
Ian:So even if all the operators were free, you still had to wait fifteen minutes
Ash:Okay.
Ian:To put you off, ringing them.
Ash:I see.
Ian:And you just think, that's just terrible. And then this was an article in the register, and then right next to it was another article about HP changing their mind about doing this. Because when somebody said it out loud or wrote it out loud in an article
Ash:Then it seemed
Ian:It didn't seem
Ash:didn't seem like a great idea.
Ian:No. Seemed a bit, some might say, mean spirited.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. You do wonder about the the group think that got them there.
Ian:Yes. Yes. You know,
Ash:all the total inability to challenge someone's ridiculous opinion about how things should work.
Ian:I don't know what you mean. Yeah. That.
Ash:Yeah. It's probably that, isn't it? But, yeah, that that's pretty good.
Ian:I did find that amusing.
Ash:So My first job at university, I did a good service desk stuff, and I would have liked that fifteen minute, relaxation time.
Ian:And I don't get the impression that they will have, done it to make the lives of their customer service representatives happy.
Ash:No. That's true.
Ian:I feel as though it probably wasn't for that. Yeah. Maybe something to do with costs. I'm just gonna put it out there. After listening to 15 of I think the messages were something like, oh, it would be much quicker if you just went on our website to find this support.
Ash:Use our new chatbot.
Ian:It will be much quicker if you went on our website. Do you not feel like you're wasting your life away on this on hold when you could be on our website finding the answer to your question? Or
Ash:So maybe it's just like a reliable fifteen minutes of relaxation time on the phone for the customer.
Ian:It's slightly opposite of mindfulness, isn't it? Yeah. Mindlessness. Yeah.
Ash:Although, calling the HP helpline for a printing issue would probably be the very last thing that I would do.
Ian:That is beyond beyond the last thing I would do. In fact, I forestall it by never having HP printers. Yeah. My my way of buying printers is actually quite interesting, well, to me anyway Yeah. In that I feel as though you have to look at what is the cost per sheet.
Ian:And it turns out the cheapest way to buy a sheet printed sheet of paper is to get an enormous work group printer that comes with so if you look long enough, you'll find one that comes with 12,000 sheets or something in the in the existing toner. Yeah. And then you go and you use it for a bit, and then the really awful thing happens. It runs out of toner, and you discover it will cost more than you paid for the printer by a factor of double or three times to buy the toner to put in it. Right.
Ian:And then you buy another printer. Yeah. All very green.
Ash:No. No. I I don't believe that they were originally manufactured as disposable single use objects.
Ian:But they've made them economically. That's the only way to go, really. Yeah. At least if you're a human, I guess if you're a mega corp, you can probably just pay for the toner.
Ash:Yeah. Mega corp.
Ian:But to me, £800 is a lot of money for toner.
Ash:Definitely.
Ian:Even for untold numbers of thousands of sheets. I'd rather just print with no red. Yeah. Well, okay. With no cyan, yellow, or magenta.
Ian:I think you need the black. That's what you need.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. I specifically got a very basic printer, which you couldn't do anything special with. So it was only for the the only reason I really use it is to print out things to sign for the business. They're real things that you need to sign like accounts, not just things to sign.
Ash:No. No.
Ian:Yeah. Signing is good fun, of course, but but be ecologically friendly about it.
Ash:Made up certificates and things like that. Yeah. There you go. That's for you.
Ian:Actually, the, The what
Ash:a lot of things award
Ian:for you. Apple Pages has got some really good pretend certificates templates so that you can just knock you know all that curly q kind of design to to make it unforgeable Yeah. Where you can just print, like, 10,000 copies of it. But, yeah, it looks looks pretty good Alright.
Ash:Okay.
Ian:If you if you want a Yeah. Amusing certificate.
Ash:So HP, the worst offenders then?
Ian:The idea that you would deliberately force people to waste fifteen minutes of their fifteen minutes of their life just gratuitously to penalize them for trying to get their thing that you sold them to work, It's just I mean, it's not surprising that they you turned on it because when you say it out loud, it just it sounds terrible. I mean, what meeting what did that what what I I can't even what was the meeting like where they decided to do it? No. Are they all just well, yes. Do we set it as three hours?
Ian:Oh, no. That's too long. Oh, what about four minutes? Oh, no. They they expect that.
Ian:It has to be long enough to hurt.
Ash:But not so long as to be utterly ridiculous. Although fifteen minutes is pretty
Ian:Their their judgment of what is utterly ridiculous is Yeah. Is is in question, I would say.
Ash:I imagine the meeting was, very senior person suggests the thing, the fifteen minute thing, and then everyone else goes very quiet. Yeah. And then it gets implemented.
Ian:But the meeting would have been called something like strategies or moving support requests to the web Yeah. Or something like that. Mhmm. And there would have been one. Yeah.
Ian:Punish them for doing the not make the web really good.
Ash:Well, yeah.
Ian:But but punish them for going on the phone.
Ash:Yeah. And then still have your web support as a maze of ancient PDF files for
Ian:All alike. Yeah.
Ash:With a baffling array of of printed names, which all look incredibly similar.
Ian:Baffling array of printer names. Yeah. I think you're right. I think that's probably what what the strategy was.
Ash:Been there before.
Ian:Yeah. Yeah. So we're doing something different, aren't we?
Ash:Today?
Ian:We're surrounded by gadgets. Surrounded. Additional gadgets.
Ash:In in yeah. For Ian's office, there is often gadgets, but there is a a wider array now. Another baffling array.
Ian:You see, when Ash let the side down by moving to Android Oh, yeah. And thus removing himself forever from well, not forever, possibly. He could change back. Well, yeah. But, removing himself from the pool of people with available iPhones to do recording using iPad multi cam sorry.
Ian:Final Cut Pro multi cam with multiple iPhones. I have stepped into the breach with a spare iPhone.
Ash:Yeah. And to be fair, I only had an iPhone seven. So it probably I don't know if if this even would have worked.
Ian:Or I'm just going to say put my thing well, I can't get my fingers in my ears because there's literally enormous headphones anyway. And those of you that actually see the fruits of this, exercise might actually be able to appreciate that visual joke. Because for about half of the last episode, I was pointing at this and saying, oh, well, that's something something and then pointing at something else. Mhmm. And, I felt as though it was kind of amusing, but also a bit difficult to follow for listeners.
Ash:What what will we do without the the that's not a great thing to do on a podcast type jokes about pointing at things?
Ian:Well, there's an extremely high probability that this experiment will prove that we are going to remain an audio only podcast. But for just this episode, we are recording ourselves using Final Cut Pro multicam. And Ash looks quite sensible, and he's got nice whiteboard and post it notes in his background. Yeah. And I've got a door and a chair.
Ian:So it's it's I like to think I control the environment of this podcast with a rod of iron, you know, with my special buttons. But
Ash:you haven't controlled the physical environment.
Ian:But I haven't successfully controlled the physical environment. Yeah. I will.
Ash:Oh, well.
Ian:You've I'll just keep what I'll do is the video can entirely be Ash, and the audio can entirely be me.
Ash:Oh, yeah. I'd like that. The the the chaotic part of me likes that.
Ian:Yes. There's something there's something to that, isn't there? Yeah. However
Ash:However, we're here. What are we here for? Things.
Ian:Things. When do we want them? Now. Soon. But do we want things?
Ian:Yes. Oh, dear. Yes. I suppose we are here for things.
Ash:Yep. It's it's me to go first. Because last time, you told me that testing was dead, and that was first.
Ian:It was it was first. Yeah. I think we had a little bump in listenership through our evil use of clickbait for that.
Ash:Your evil use of clickbait.
Ian:Ash would like to disassociate himself from any suggestion that testing has ever been may or not or may be dead.
Ash:That's that's correct.
Ian:You see, I did say may not in there.
Ash:Mhmm. Well
Ian:So you have just disass by saying that is correct, you've disassociated yourself also from the notion that testing is alive.
Ash:Testing is Schrodinger like.
Ian:Yes. Depending
Ash:on who is looking.
Ian:It's in a quantum intermediate state. Yeah. Its qubits are being rotated through a quantum gate.
Ash:I still don't understand.
Ian:Well, in the end, I think we all collapse or something like that.
Ash:Or something like that. Yeah.
Ian:Alright. I have to concede.
Ash:Concede to the beginning of things.
Ian:To going first Okay. And beginning of things. So, Ash, what is your thing?
Ash:What is my thing?
Ian:What? Oh, fuck it. I've done
Ash:that for a while, so I think you you Yeah.
Ian:Well, is it allowed occasionally?
Ash:Yeah. Of course.
Ian:Brilliant. No.
Ash:It's just when it becomes a a solid fixture of the podcast, and then we get a review of the podcast done. And
Ian:Somebody notices. Somebody says,
Ash:why do you keep doing the same jokes?
Ian:We're never gonna have another review done, are we? No.
Ash:No. That's true.
Ian:So we just we've done that. That's that chapter is That
Ash:chapter is gone. Well, it's not gone. It's still with us.
Ian:It is still with us. Yep. As we address our one listener and other things. And we've got a better a better cover art as well, haven't we?
Ash:Yeah. No. That's true. So what is my thing?
Ian:What is your thing?
Ash:So my thing is called user story splitting or just the chopping up of work in general on the development team.
Ian:Dismemberment.
Ash:Dismemberment of work in general on the development team. So the thing is so if there's if there is ever a skill that teams need but rarely have in the either to the refined state or the, or at all that is required in order to do this well, it's splitting down work into deliverable and valuable tasks.
Ian:So effectively, when you're given something gigantic.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, even in our agile world, we still get given big post, I was gonna say
Ian:Big post it now. Big briefs. Big briefs. It's big, big bloopers.
Ash:We still get given big chunks of work to do, don't we? Because Yes. It's often, articulated in that way.
Ian:So is there a difference between taking a piece of work and breaking it down in the sense of deciding how to approach it and a a sort of is there a more grand thing of breaking it into two similar pieces of work that then you know, for example, you may say, well, actually, I'm gonna go back to the business who've given me this enormous thing. Yeah. Enormous piece of work because thing is a reserved word in this podcast. If they've given you an enormous piece of work, you might say, well, can we think of it as these two pieces of work? Yeah.
Ian:Yeah. But equally, you might have a piece of work that's maybe not too enormous. So you might say, now I want to break it down to find out what the tasks are. Yeah. Ah, that's that's what I mean, isn't it?
Ian:Yeah. It's about splitting it down into tasks or splitting it into two, I'm trying not to say project.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean. Yeah.
Ash:Yeah. Well, there's there's kind of, like, a few things, isn't there? So it's like you've got, like, the behavior when the piece of work is is first sort of introduced to the team and the size of it and thinking about, like, how it might be split or, you know, having the wherewithal to say, actually, that's really big. So can we think about this differently and split it down a little? And then you've got, like, once you've this is probably like there's, like, a couple of orders of this.
Ash:There's that part when you first, you know, introduced to whatever the big piece of work is. How do you react there? And then there's also, once you've taken it into the team and you understand it a bit better, how do you then split it up in order to begin to work on it? Because I think often I've seen, like, the first reaction is just to start working on it, which has some value, but the splitting behavior doesn't seem to come naturally. It's not like the first thought, you know, to say, well, how do we break this down, once you've got, like, some understanding of it?
Ash:So if I describe this in, like, how it's it's manifested itself in my career. So, basically, a big requirement comes into the team, and then everyone is just like, oh oh, dear. This is gonna take, like, like, years or whatever it is. So, but no one's willing to say it. So they just say, okay.
Ash:And then just just go off and and be nervous for a while.
Ian:So it's size, isn't it? It is size. Yeah. The the there's no the motivation for splitting it is the size of it.
Ash:Yeah. Right. And also sometimes to understand it. But sometimes Yeah. With smaller sizes, you get more understanding as well because you kind of you get to see how things sort of fit together.
Ash:Yeah. Usually, what happens is people start to raise some, like, initial tasks, and they tend to be quite technical in nature. It's like, oh, well, let's have a database, and let's have a this, and let's have a that.
Ian:Let's do the things we know we're gonna need to do, whatever happens.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. But I I'm always like, it's probably a bit too early for that as well. And then everyone, like, everywhere, kind of all at once tries to work on it and tries to do something with this giant thing and, like, nibble around the edges of it. And then I say, can we stop and think about how to break this down?
Ash:And then no one stops because they're already, like, scared by the size of the thing that they're trying to work on.
Ian:With a small t.
Ash:Yeah. With a small t. And then once I get to a certain point when I can't resist anymore, after leaving the team to to to see what they do after, you know, a little bit of time, I would say, right. Okay. Let's get together and and think about how we can split this work and what where, like, the seams are of this work.
Ash:But that has been repeated, like, through my career, like, ad infinitum.
Ian:Ad nausea.
Ash:Ad nausea. So to me, it it seems like it comes quite naturally. I quite enjoy picking up a piece of a larger piece of work and thinking about how it could be it could be broken down. But it doesn't seem that way on, you know, for for other people on that I work with on development teams. So I'm just wondering, like, is it I think it's a really hard thing to do, isn't it?
Ian:I think it is. I mean, I had a hot take on this
Ash:Okay.
Ian:Which which was, is it because it's hard to split it if you don't have both the knowledge from the that the business has about the context Yeah. And the knowledge from the technology side about what's easy and hard in that environment. And it's hard to do because it's hard to find people within both of those domains. Yeah. Because I'm kind of going somewhere with that.
Ian:I when I thought about it some more, I was kind of thinking about actually, I kind of get why it's you. Yeah. Because it's testers, other people with their feet in both domains.
Ash:Well, yes.
Ian:And actually, serious question, this is to make up for saying testing implying testing might be dead last time. Maybe this is something that actually testers are well suited to lead on doing Yeah. Because it is it's actually they're the ones perhaps with the most feet in both domains. Yeah. Most feet.
Ian:Okay.
Ash:They're the ones with
Ian:a clear foot in each domain.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. I go through, like, I go through stages with this, though, because when when when these scenarios, like, come about, I'm like, I don't I don't get paid enough to do that kind of work.
Ian:Yeah. But what does that mean?
Ash:I don't know. Maybe it's just a slight rebellion on my part, you know, to say, well, I have this skill, and it's probably something to do with my background as a tester. But I'm like, well, until I can't resist it anymore, I'd still resist it on those grounds that it's like, well, this is kind of higher order work.
Ian:You know? But is it something I mean, that's why well, kind of my question. It doesn't it make sense actually for testers to play play a leading role in that? And in fact, wouldn't it be a good idea if you made it part of the process? So for everything that came in, you said, is it is this too big, too small, or just right?
Ash:Well, you
Ian:see Is it a Goldilocks task? See, the thing is that asking.
Ash:Is there's some, like, I I agree with you, and then reality kicks in. And no one
Ian:I liked it when you just agreed with me.
Ash:So so yes. Ideally. But in my again, I'm kinda going back to my experience. I then need to say it nine or 10 times until the message, like, sinks in and the splitting actually happens.
Ian:But that's part that's the making it part of the process half of it, isn't it? Yeah. You're looking you're asking for every task. Is Is it I'm gonna say it again because I didn't think it had gotten off of a a laugh last time. Is it a Goldilocks task that's just right?
Ian:Is it too big or too small?
Ash:Yeah. Yeah.
Ian:Or is it just right?
Ash:What? The size of the task?
Ian:The size of the task. Yeah.
Ash:Well, you want Just right, don't you?
Ian:Is that belaboured enough, do you think? Yeah. Just just right. But if the team asked that about every task, then instead of flapping about trying to do enormous tasks Yeah. Yeah.
Ian:And it was in the process to, not do it. And it was led by someone, may well be a tester Mhmm. Who's got a foot in both camps and can talk about how we play this back. I mean, tasks coming from the product manager. Right?
Ash:Yeah. Yeah.
Ian:And so they can play back to the project map product. Blimey. They can play back to the product manager and say, hello, mister or miss product manager. Yep. This task is really big.
Ian:What if we did it like that? Yeah. As these two tasks, then immediately you would be able to report progress because one of them will be finished quicker. I don't know. You'd have to find a way to to sell it to them.
Ian:One of the interesting things in the, in the articles that you linked about this, which we will obviously put in the show notes for everybody to read. I didn't say that last time. I was gonna say the second article because I can't actually remember. One of them was by Mike Cohn. Yeah.
Ian:And he talked about splitting it by considering the path through it
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:Which I thought was really interesting. So and then and and often you he he was sort of saying it's a bit of an anti pattern, always just automatically trying to split it on technology.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah.
Ian:I thought that was interesting. There's a bit of a bit of a digression from the main point I was trying to make, which is but it's it's how you split it and and how you sell it and how you can propose things back to the product manager or the business that make sense.
Ash:Yeah. So my my brain goes through it applies a bunch of patterns to something, like, pretty much as soon as I see it. Like, the the the big requirement might how could we split this? So would it be by so you could do it by path through the system. You could do it by, sort of saying, like, what's the simplest thing we can build and then add the more complex items as we go along or whatever the pattern is.
Ash:And I kind of go through a bit of a process in my head in order to start to come up with options for for splitting work down.
Ian:And, presumably, the path through it is one of those that you
Ash:can see. Yeah. Yeah. And I often arrive at, like, a list of, like, capabilities that whatever it is needs to have. And then I I play with that list, put it in different orders, and group things together.
Ash:But this is what's going on in my head and, well, in a markdown file in front of me as well.
Ian:So if you were gonna guide a team through it, it might involve post it notes and moving them around.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Ian:You're doing some mental version of that. I mean, mental in in in terms of inside your mind rather than crazy.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. Because it's the kind of puzzle it's the kind of puzzle that I like. But I think and I think I I have a bit of a a skill for it, and I recognize when it needs to happen as well. Whereas sometimes, it takes a little while for teams to recognize when that needs to happen.
Ash:Yeah. So I think there's there's something there as well. So maybe I could make it a bit more, like, explicit.
Ian:What you get for being old? I mean, experienced, don't you?
Ash:Yeah. No. I think I think it is as well.
Ian:I can't call you old without calling myself ancient because I'm probably, not ten years older than you or something.
Ash:Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, lord. Yeah. And the other thing that I often see is, someone always says, well, should we have an analysis task, a development task, and a testing task for this thing?
Ash:And I'm like, no. Please, no. But I think my Mike Cohn mentions that in in the story splitting mistakes blog as well, where it's like, don't split it along expertise lines. Don't have oh, no. It's it's more like, don't have a spike for every task.
Ash:Because that just means you you've got an analysis task to find out how
Ian:to do it. Mhmm.
Ash:Although, I've met a couple of people Sorry.
Ian:Did he say do have a spike for
Ash:every task? Don't have a spike for every task.
Ian:I read that backwards, but I didn't read that bit very much.
Ash:Oh, right. Okay. See, it's like yeah. Don't have a spike for every task because otherwise, that's just an analysis task, isn't it? The story is not independent of the analysis, which I do find is kind of another habit as well Oh.
Ash:Is to wait for the analysis to be done as part of something separate and then start the story. It's like supposed to discover this stuff together. Yeah. It's kind of the togetherness, which is the point. So I always find that that sort of trend really interesting as well.
Ash:Someone very proudly said to me a little while ago that they always have the lead developer does all the analysis for all the tasks, and then we just go away and implement them.
Ian:That sounds like a great way to Is that why? Not not think about it very much.
Ash:Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Ian:This is like, oh, well, we've got all these people's brains, but let's not use any of them.
Ash:Let's just have the lead developer.
Ian:Maybe they can maybe they can just watch as I perform my brilliance.
Ash:Yeah. And I'll try and keep this brief, but can we just return to Figma?
Ian:Are we gonna need the music?
Ash:Is there music for Figma?
Ian:Well, the music is for Ash Rants, I've discovered.
Ash:Alright. Go on then. Is this some relaxing music in order to temper the rant a little bit? Go on. Shoot.
Ash:So once a set of Figma designs designs have been presented to the team, the team then has their brains cannot split them down because they just see the entirety of the designs. Once again, I'm not blaming Figma the tool. I'm blaming Figma as it's used. So, in terms of breaking things down, Figma and how it has been deployed has destroyed stories for tea as a viable technique. Right.
Ash:I'm
Ian:done. I'm fading out for you. Well, I hope you all enjoyed that. Mhmm. I did.
Ian:Yeah. Of course.
Ash:I also think having front end, back end, and database teams kind of dictates how you're gonna split the tasks down as well.
Ian:Well, Conway's law does come into this.
Ash:Yeah. Definitely. It's very hard to imagine everybody working together on something when you've got such
Ian:It's not natural. Goes against the laws of nature.
Ash:Well, yeah, exactly. When you've got such heavily delineated teams Yes. That have a specific set of skills.
Ian:Particularly when one team is asking the other team when the real developers are gonna come along.
Ash:Okay. Yeah. Exactly. So I I do find that that is a is a thing as well, but with a small tip, we've got stopped in.
Ian:Just gonna gradually entice you into this, weird It's a strange world. Strange world. Strange world.
Ash:Capital two things, small two things.
Ian:Yes. Fortunately, it's bounded by this this podcast. You can say
Ash:Well, yeah. That's true.
Ian:I mean, you say it in supermarkets and stuff, don't you? Yeah. And it it's even though you say, what, a lot of things
Ash:It's just natural.
Ian:Just it's just it's just natural. Yes. One of our favorite things was mentioned in one of your articles that you, you brought up. You You know what I'm talking about? Rock button.
Ian:Now it all set up, and then I have to change it around.
Ash:Tell me what you're talking about.
Ian:What I'm talking about is the next one.
Ash:That wasn't so smooth.
Ian:It would have gone a lot smoother if I hadn't switched the buttons over. Maybe we need a button cam as well. We need a third camera to look down at the buttons so that, the the full joy of them can be appreciated. Yeah. He it was there was a guideline in there about if it's, if it's chaos, then stop trying to to do do this task splitting or whatever you're doing and just put the damn fire out.
Ian:And then it was something like, when it's complex, don't try and list all the tasks, but just find the relevant ones.
Ash:Okay.
Ian:And do something. And then when it's complicated, it was, find all the tasks and then do the most important one.
Ash:Okay. Well, that's that's pretty solid advice. That isn't it, I think.
Ian:Yes. I thought it was quite a good use of
Ash:conefing. Oh, we'll have to do conefing as a thing again soon, won't we?
Ian:Yeah. If only for the, to justify the enormous cost of the Roadcaster Pro two. Yeah.
Ash:Exactly. Good afternoon. For the tenth time, I want a lot of things, everyone. Good afternoon. I think that's an excellent time for me to say that was my thing.
Ian:I enjoyed that thing a lot. I think I even said all the things I wrote down to say about it.
Ash:So it's just rude in that.
Ian:I know. I know. Well, I don't know what possessed me. I did I I decided to write something out, look. But there's
Ash:I'm
Ian:just pointing to the camera. You can see that that's me writing the thing down. Actually, I was trying to hold the thing up so the little image of me on my iPad could read it rather than the camera from which the little image was going, oh, it's not quite working. Oh, dear lord. Yeah.
Ash:Let's send that one on, can Evan.
Ian:Yes. Which, you
Ash:know Let's.
Ian:Is the end of
Ash:all conversations as we know.
Ian:I'm resisting the temptation Yep. To press that button again Yep. Because I'd only get it wrong.
Ash:So let's have a let's have an interlude.
Ian:We could argue that clanger is kind of saying interlude.
Ash:Yeah. That's true, actually. Very chirpy interlude.
Ian:On the button, it says whatever. Well. But, you know, interlude. I think that's better, isn't it?
Ash:Have you got any interlude things?
Ian:Oh, there were some interlude things. Yeah. And I had them open on my laptop, but now I've forgotten them all again.
Ash:Firstly, we're on blue sky.
Ian:We are on Blue Sky. Big news.
Ash:Big news. And Ash has joined Blue Sky? No. I haven't, actually. Still haven't.
Ash:I can't.
Ian:You've busted on first.
Ash:Just a bit over social media, to be honest, apart from, well, now LinkedIn. I don't know what LinkedIn is, but it's something else.
Ian:It's hard to argue that one should not be over social media. Yeah. And I find blue blue sky a bit ambiguous because it's still owned by a billionaire, so it can still be subject to intitification.
Ash:Subject to right wing intitification at any time.
Ian:But a mastodon is therefore wholly better for being decentralized Yeah. And much more niche user controlled. Mhmm. But we are on Blue Sky because Transistor provides a Blue Sky integration.
Ash:Alright. Cool.
Ian:So when our most recent episode came out, it was posted on Blue Sky.
Ash:Lovely.
Ian:And as I'm the only person that follows our blue sky account, I had to retweet it. Re blue sky it.
Ash:Re blue sky it.
Ian:Repost it.
Ash:Alright. Okay.
Ian:Some some term that doesn't involve tweet. Yep. So I did. So we have now auto posting on blue sky. But one thing that's nice about the way they've done it is if you reply to the post on Blue Sky, it appears on the episodes page on our website as a reply.
Ian:So you can actually talk about the episode underneath the actual episode on its very own page on whatalotofthings.com. Nice. That's our website, whatalotofthings.com. So, yes, we're on Blue Sky.
Ash:But when will we be billionaires?
Ian:Well, we've just gotta get our circulation up a little bit.
Ash:Okay. We can do that.
Ian:More listeners.
Ash:More listeners.
Ian:What's it even more? We have to come up with we'll ask an AI to do it just to make it worse, but we'll say, here are the titles of this week's things. Please come up with the most clickbaity episode title that you can. And then then it will say, they talked about these two things. You won't believe number two or something like that.
Ash:Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's quite a common pattern, isn't it?
Ian:It is. Although because we've only got two things. It's not very it's a bit less compelling than Well than it is when you've got a list of 10 things.
Ash:Yeah. So what what else have we got on the list? Claude Code.
Ian:Oh, Claude Code. Yes. I we we did this episode. And my thing in the last episode, as I know you all very well remember You,
Ash:the listener.
Ian:You, the listener, will very well remember. Will. And, I talked about how I was quite pleased with slurping up a repository and piping it into a command and finding out finding out things about it and using it to write test strategies to save me having to talk to any actual testers. They don't wanna do that. They'll just they'll just tell
Ash:you the strategy's rubbish.
Ian:They go on and on.
Ash:You need to
Ian:split your stories down. Split your stories down.
Ash:What's the mission of the testing? No. I need to decide what level of testing you're gonna do. Check. What's the risk?
Ash:Where's the value?
Ian:I need the music again. On and on. Are we to do the music again? No. You could just repeat that with the music.
Ian:That would be better. Yeah. So I was quite happy with that. And then, basically, yesterday, Our time machine. The day before.
Ian:No.
Ash:The day before yesterday.
Ian:The day after The day. Or the time. The day after the episode. Oh my god. The day before Recently.
Ian:The day you're not helping. The the day before the episode came out, Claude Code was released by by Anthropic along with Claude three point seven, which is their newest model. And everybody on various sites like Reddit and so on are all raving about how Claude three point seven is the best coding LLM. It's amazing.
Ash:So you're gonna revolutionize how we use LLMs.
Ian:Testing will be dead.
Ash:Yeah. I enjoyed so I watched the video, which was the release, and it was too very fresh faced.
Ian:It was It was. Yes.
Ash:A developer and a product manager. Yes. And I enjoyed that Basically, they did a load of of stuff, like adding buttons to things and, which was, you know, apparently, the most basic thing that I've ever seen. And then at the end, they were like, can you, like, add some tests or something? And Claude was like, yeah.
Ash:Sure. And then it just iterated over tests until they all passed. And then the two very fresh faced people were like, brilliant. Everything's amazing. I was like, yep.
Ian:It did fail to ask about the risk associated with the testing. But the
Ash:So Yeah. It, you know, it it it continued its unblemished record for, paying very little attention to what the LLO is actually testing. So, you know. Nonetheless Nonetheless.
Ian:They at least added tests, and they thought about them.
Ash:They did. They thought about Brief at the highest level possible Brief
Ian:for a
Ash:very brief moment.
Ian:They thought some people watching this will be interested in adding tests. We better do we better do that. So I thought, well, I need to have a go at Claude Cove. Okay. So I wanted I've been wanting so maybe I should put the music off for me for this.
Ian:We've been working on the Ilkki Live website Yeah. And we've it's converted to TypeScript now. And we've had to take some decisions about for so the biggest the biggest challenges about doing that was that it uses Notion as a database to store the performances. I think I talked about this on the episode for which our scars are still healing, where we talked about the the the
Ash:I was just I'm I'm, like, winding up to begin again.
Ian:I know you are. You said take a
Ash:this was hard to do, and I was like, it's because there weren't any tests. It's because there weren't any tests.
Ian:It's not because there weren't any tests. Although it didn't help. What was what was hard to do about it was that, basically, Notion has very, very complicated type system, which is probably alright reflected in TypeScript, but it's not it's a bit of a mystery. And so one of the things was, do I make this whole Notion thing type safe, or do I just say to myself, I'm replacing it with a database? I'm good.
Ian:Let's just make the its interface type safe. Yep. And so, you know, the stuff comes back from Notion. We put it into an object, and then we zod the object.
Ash:Right. Okay.
Ian:Yep. We parse the object with zod. Just zod ing the object just seems like something you shouldn't do. That's how we make it make sure it's safe and it's got a proper typing. So we just do it through through that.
Ian:And so one thing I've been wanting to do is say, okay. We'll need to replace Notion with a database. Mhmm. And I need to have an admin function in the app in the Ilkki Live website so that administrators can, in fact, manage Yeah. The things in the way Notion used to let them manage them.
Ian:And so I went to Claude Code, and I thought, well, this is gonna be a pain to do. So let's see how Claude Code does that it.
Ash:I actually think that's a really good use of an NLM for coding.
Ian:It was great, actually.
Ash:The actual It's
Ian:within its competencies.
Ash:Yes. Exactly. It's a really good example where it's like, you know, building a, I don't know, some kind of complex interface to communicate complex information.
Ian:That that you yourself don't understand.
Ash:Yeah. Exactly. It would be a really bad use of of an LLM, whereas an administrative tool like that sounds like a a really good way to to use it.
Ian:Well, it it the thing was it saved me a lot of time. Yeah. And it it did a reasonable decent job of it. So, like, you know, as usual, you argue with it, don't you? Yeah.
Ian:And it says, I'm just gonna do this, and I'm just gonna do that. And you and you've got three choices. You've got yes. You could do that. Yes.
Ian:And you don't need to ask me to do that in the future. And no. I'm going to explain to you why not. And so I did use the no. I'm going to explain to you why not button a number of times.
Ian:Right. It's not really a button because the other thing is it runs in a terminal, which is quite surprising for something like that. Mhmm. And it was it was very good. Yeah.
Ian:It did a good job of it. And I think if I need to make changes, even quite sweeping changes, but maybe not all that challenging Yeah. To this code, It's going to it's really gonna make it a lot easier. And so, yes, it moved it even wrote a script to copy all the entries out of Notion and put them into Postgres Yeah. Which I just thought was a nice Yeah.
Ian:Optional extra.
Ash:What so yeah. So things like, simple administrative functions, non complex data migrations sound like good things to use in LM.
Ian:Yeah. I mean, it's like As
Ash:a coding assistant.
Ian:All automation, you kind of you want to use it for the boring stuff Yeah. So that you can do the interesting stuff.
Ash:Yeah. And
Ian:lo and behold. Although, I still remember that quote from that can't remember who said it. But she said something we've linked to it before. She said something like, I wanted artificial intelligence to do the cleaning and the washing up Yeah. So I can do creative things Yeah.
Ian:Not the other way around. Yeah.
Ash:Yeah. It does feel like sometimes, you know, the general aim is for us to do the washing up and the, an AI to create the art.
Ian:Yes. Yeah. But this did make me quite happy. I was quite delighted with the how that was able to to work. Yeah.
Ian:Yeah.
Ash:I said I think it's
Ian:a good use of it. So yes. But it was just a bit annoying that the day after our episode about AI and programming Yeah. Came out, it all changed. But that's the nature of AI stuff, isn't it?
Ash:Yep. It is. So I have one final Interval thing. Interval thing. So there's a website called podstatus.com.
Ash:Pod status. And on the other day, recently, we received an email to ianandash@whatalotofthings.com.
Ian:That's our email address.
Ash:It is our email address. And, very nicely inquired, hello. How's it going? Pretty good. Thank you.
Ash:But carlos@podstatus.com had some cool information that he thought might interest us. It did. Right. It did. Very interesting indeed.
Ash:So in the category of technology on, Apple Podcast rankings in the Cote D'Ivoire
Ian:You see, Ash, you're saying it wrong. You've got to start off with the category of podcast rankings, we were number something, and then only then say
Ash:So in in the Cote D'Ivoire
Ian:No. That that's made it even more fast.
Ash:We are in the top 10.
Ian:Technology? Technology podcasts.
Ash:And then in Cameroon, we are in the top 100 of technology podcasts. Seventy eighth.
Ian:But in our home country of Britain
Ash:Well, yes. We're not on the list.
Ian:We're not on the list.
Ash:So I just wanna say thank you to all our listeners. I wanna say thank you to Podsteads, and thank you to, all our listeners, especially our listeners in the cam in Cameroon and Cote D'Ivoire.
Ian:Yes. We will include links so you can verify these Yeah. These statements.
Ash:Yeah. And that was my favorite interlude thing.
Ian:That's very good.
Ash:Favourite self aggrandizing interlude thing. So should we move on to, things with a capital t?
Ian:Well, only one thing with a capital t.
Ash:Thing. That's a lot of thing. Yes. Yes. Given we've only got one thing left.
Ash:So, Ian, tell me what your thing is.
Ian:So I enjoy titling my things.
Ash:Put a lot of effort into the title.
Ian:Yeah. So the title for this was Apple is gravely disappointed. And, actually Did
Ash:they do a big sigh?
Ian:That's a bit of an exaggeration because what they said was they're deeply disappointed.
Ash:Alright.
Ian:I don't know if gravely disappointed is more or less disappointed than deeply disappointed.
Ash:I don't know, actually. I would say gravely is more disappointed. Gravely is quite, it's quite the word. It's weighty.
Ian:Yeah. It feels no. I think so. Apple is only deeply disappointed.
Ash:So they could be more disappointed?
Ian:Not all that disappointed, really.
Ash:Oh, okay. Cool.
Ian:Yes. So that was my thing. Monumental thing. Monumental. Yes.
Ian:Yep.
Ash:Yes. One for the valley.
Ian:One for the for the valley. Are you gonna oblige me by asking me what the source of their deep disappointment might be?
Ash:Yes. Why is Apple gravely deeply disappointed?
Ian:Because their customers in The UK will no longer have the option to enable advanced data protection. And they say, especially given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy.
Ash:Right.
Ian:And Apple remains committed to offering their users the highest level of security for their personal data, and they are hopeful that they will be able to do so in the future in The United Kingdom.
Ash:So what is advanced data protection?
Ian:Ah, well, therein lies a story.
Ash:Gather round, everyone.
Ian:Once upon a time, there were three bears.
Ash:Stay a while.
Ian:So once upon a time
Ash:Oh, there is a story.
Ian:There is a story. Once upon a time, everyone was very happy that you had end to end encryption in your Apple messages, which you might call iMessages, but I think they'd probably not call that anymore. Okay. When you send a message to someone using Apple messages Yep. It would arrive with them, and at no point during the transit was Apple or anybody else able to read it because the encryption was end to end.
Ian:Yep. So end to end means that if you're in the middle and to of an end to end encryption transaction or messaging or whatever, you can't read the messages. Yep. Fantastic. Mhmm.
Ian:And end to end encryption is really a key technology for having any privacy Yep. In the this age that we live in where the Internet is how we have to do almost everything.
Ash:Yep. But government's less keen on end to end encryption, aren't you?
Ian:They are less keen on it. And they in in the case of Apple's end to end encryption, there was a hilarious backdoor, which probably wasn't hilarious if the authorities are kicking in your front door and arresting you. And and the way that the authorities could gain access to your Apple messages was that your backups on iCloud were not encrypted. Mhmm. So while your messages were end to end encrypted, if you made a backup on iCloud of your phone, the decrypted messages on your phone will be included in the backup.
Ian:Right. And Apple had the ability to have access to the backup. And so the authorities would demand Apple give them information from people's phone backups. Mhmm. So
Ash:that wasn't just like a fun oversight, you know, that they forgot to, re encrypt when taking backup. That was a genuine product decision.
Ian:Well, at some point, it was. Yes. Yeah. And, of course, ever since they made that decision at the dawn of iCloud, they've been trying to find ways of of fixing it because I think as a company, and I know some people like to be sarcastic and cynical about this, but they they have made privacy of their users a selling point, and they do actually care about it.
Ash:Okay.
Ian:So what they eventually did was that they made something this ADP, advanced data protection. Mhmm. The biggest impact of turning it on was that if you lost your access to your iCloud account, you were scuppered. Right. Apple couldn't get it back for you.
Ian:Yep. And in order to turn it on, all the devices on your iCloud account had to be up to a certain level of iOS and macOS and everything. So, if you had an old device that was on your iCloud account, you wouldn't be able to turn it on. And when you turn it on, it was full of dire warnings about you can lose access to your account. Yep.
Ian:Okay. So and I think that's probably why I suspect not all that many people turned it on.
Ash:Yeah. Because it was a bit scary when you go to do it.
Ian:But journalists, for example, who whose whistleblowers they don't want people to be able to find out about Yeah. Who they are, you know, those kinds of people for whom it's very important to have good security will have turned it on. Yeah. So Apple are normally quite transparent about this sort of thing. And in fact, they did write, as we have said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services, and we never will.
Ian:But what they haven't been transparent about is the reason why they why they they've taken this measure. Yeah. Because it's only customers in The UK. So if if you've got it switched on in The UK, they actually can't turn it off. Yeah.
Ian:But you have a you'll have a deadline. You have to turn it off yourself or lose access to your iCloud account.
Ash:Okay.
Ian:And new users can't turn it on. So they've not explained in any sentence of this article why it was that they've done this to users in The UK. Okay. And the reason for that, I think, lies in a article from the Washington Post in which it was reported that the UK government has provided a technical capability notice to Apple demanding that they let Apple that Apple lets them have access to these things that are encrypted by ADP. Yeah.
Ian:And in fact, I think the scope of the notice as reported in the Washington Post was it would enable them to have access to the global Apple information.
Ash:Right. So so it wouldn't be particularly possible to separate the two?
Ian:No. Yeah. So Apple's response to this has been to just enable it for UK users. So, effectively, what that means is the UK government have simply made our security worse for just UK users.
Ash:That's interesting, isn't it?
Ian:There's a few things sort of surrounding this. So one of them is and I was sort of thinking, well, it's it's gonna be like they'll need a warrant for any particular data access. Sure. But actually, Matthew Green, who's an industry expert about this, has written a a sort of explanation of it. He quoted the Washington Post, I think, to say, the British government's undisclosed order issued last month requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and this has no known precedent in major democracies.
Ian:So it's basically ours in China. Because I originally thought, oh, it will be, you know, warrant access, but it's not. It's it's unfettered access to everything.
Ash:Okay.
Ian:You do it allows them to do things like speculative trolling to find wrongdoing. Yeah. Sure. They'll just run, you know, code that goes to everybody's phones and finds catches you out doing something Yeah. Talking about something.
Ash:Yeah. So even if you've, like, not been accused of anything.
Ian:Exactly so. Yes.
Ash:Yeah. So did did did Apple sort of fight this then?
Ian:I think they still are.
Ash:Right.
Ian:Okay. Because one of the the premises of the technical capability notice is that Apple are forbidden to talk about it. They're not allowed to Okay. They're not allowed to tell the people they're doing it to. Yeah.
Ian:Hence the very peculiar omission in their post there about the in the post about saying they're doing this, not why.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. The the the language was quite sort of, specific and studied, wasn't it? You know?
Ian:It was. Yes.
Ash:In order to to explicitly not mention lots of things.
Ian:You know that lawyers had their wrote it, basically.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. So do you think this opens a bit of a bit of a box? And so it's I didn't know about technical what was it? Technical capability notices.
Ash:Yes. So I guess this is sorry. I'm I'm asking a few things here. So so does that in sort of does that infer that if you don't meet this technical capability notice, then you probably your ability to offer it in in The UK will be I don't know. There there'll be some consequences for it, basically.
Ian:Well, I think Apple complies with the law. Yeah. Its policy is to comply with the law in local jurisdictions. Yeah. So iCloud in China is all hosted on Chinese servers, and the government has the key.
Ian:But this this technical capability notices were part of the the the is a 02/2016 act of parliament that's colloquially described as the snooper's charter.
Ash:Oh, right. Okay. Yeah.
Ian:Yeah. So this was sort of seen as overreaching in 2016 when it was just we're gonna give ourselves the power to do this. Yeah. But now it's they're actually doing it. I mean, who knows how many times they've done it?
Ian:I mean, Apple, it's kind of come out. It's not clear where from, but it's come out. But, you know, who knows if other companies have already complied with these these types of things.
Ash:Oh, right. Okay.
Ian:But it's it makes me cross because, effectively, we're now less I'm an Apple user. Yeah. I have I use iCloud backups. I didn't have ADP turned on. But it's basically means that we're now less secure Yeah.
Ian:Than it's it's not that security pointing at criminals is one thing and security pointing at everybody else is another thing.
Ash:Yeah. You worry for whistleblowers and Yeah. Journalists. So there's a whole, like, sort of raft of of of groups, which have a very compelling reason for, end to end encryption and encryption at rest as well. So I think there's there's, like, different orders of of impact, isn't there?
Ian:There there certainly is.
Ash:Yeah. So for, you know, so for a lot of people, it would just be, like, you know, who cares? But I see that, the whole I've got nothing to hide, question comes up here as well, doesn't it?
Ian:That's just the worst, most pointless argument against personal privacy. Is you know, I mean, back in in in the nineteen seventies, '19 eighties or whatever, before the Internet really came along, if the government wanted to tap your phone, they could, but they need to get a warrant. They needed to put in place a technical infrastructure. Yeah. And so they did it not all that much, but when it really mattered.
Ian:And now because they've got this potential of just having this massive dragnet of data where instead of solving crimes the traditional manner like the five find outers Yeah. My favorite Enid Blyton grouping. Not the secret salad. I was never bothered about them. And the famous five are good, but, you know, I I still find myself a fan of the five find outers.
Ash:Five find outers. It's it's a good name as well, isn't it?
Ian:Well, it's clear. It's on the tip it says on the tip what they do. But, you know, that it used to be that you would tackle you if you you if you wanted to solve a crime, then you would do detective work.
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:And this sort of thing of and and then at the other end of the scale, you've got, like, minority report, the film minority report where they had, people who who had they had special precognition people who could look in the future, and then you could be arrested for a crime you were only going to commit. Yeah. You haven't done it yet. Yeah. And then somewhere in the middle, there's we look through everyone's data all the time to detect crimes.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. Because there's, like, when I when I kinda read this, like, I was thinking about, well, is there any other examples where you kind of have that level of surveillance, which is then, like, abused and abused quite badly? So you've got, obviously, like, undercover police officers going into certain certain sort of left wing groups, if you like, in the eighties, nineties, and probably beyond as well, who just going in to surveil and then end up doing some fairly dark things while they're there as well under sort of false pretenses. Yeah.
Ash:So I'm like, well, you know, if you give that level of power, then it starts to be used in ways that you didn't intend.
Ian:Well, you gotta just think back to the Edward Snowden revelations back when that that happened. They still haven't let him off that. They're very vindictive. He still has to live in Moscow.
Ash:Think they ever will.
Ian:And they pardoned some extremely Trump pardoned, some very dodgy characters. Yeah. But, yes, I don't think they ever will either.
Ash:No. No. He's that's it for life for Edward Snowden, I think.
Ian:But he, the revelations that he uncovered included, you know, people looking at their neighbors' stuff.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So it's like the the building of these, systems and and all all ways to look into data. It's like Uber's Uber's famous god mode, isn't it?
Ian:Oh, yes.
Ash:Which was always, like, a good example of extremely nefarious consequences and actions being taken with access to wide ranging data about people and their location and what they're up to. And I think it's just like, you know, those types of tools, I I struggle to to think of justifications for them. Yeah. Because, like, it's it's untargeted. It's not like someone is suspected of doing something.
Ash:It's just like you're just opening the the, like, the door to a world of data just in case you might need it. But once you've opened it, then I think there's always the chance that someone will then abuse that power. And I think history has shown that that will probably happen.
Ian:Yeah. In undoubtedly. I'm just, reading from Matthew Green's article, which, I would say there's a lot of interesting stuff around about this, but I would go to that as a Yeah. Probably number one source. He's writing in the worst case interpretation of the law, which I now find I can remember, is the Investigatory Powers Act.
Ian:Yep. Knowing a k a the Snooper's Charter. The most worst case interpretation of the law, The UK might now be the arbiter of all cybersecurity defense measures globally. His majesty's government, he's written her majesty's government Right.
Ash:Well, lots of other
Ian:that. Could effectively cap the amount of digital security that customers anywhere in the world could depend on without users even knowing the cap is in place. This could expose vast amounts of data to state sponsored attackers such as the one who recently compromised the entire US telecom industry. Yeah. We know about that.
Ian:Yeah. Remember that remember that the hell think about Huawei, five g, hardware. Anyway, it's it's kind of upsetting to me that they they'll do this.
Ash:Yeah. I think it's like like a reflection of, like, not mood, but, like, situation, you know, a kind of extra extra paranoia and, you know, more powers to places where they shouldn't be going to over, you know, an individual's individual's life. Because, you know, as part of privacy, we we accept that there will be people who are doing bad things and using encrypted means of facilitating those thing. But then that's part of privacy's got two sides to it, doesn't it? You know?
Ash:It's like, everyone's entitled to it. Some people will use it for nefarious means. The vast majority of us, you know, just want our data to be left alone. Yeah. But it's like, it's always the way.
Ash:So, basically, in order to counter the very few people who will be using it for nefarious means, you implement something that's so fantastically wide ranging.
Ian:And disproportionately.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So it's the literal nuclear warhead to to for the nail, isn't it?
Ian:Yes. We could go back to Benjamin Franklin. He would he who would sacrifice a little bit of freedom for a little bit of safety just doesn't deserve either the freedom or safety. That's it, I think. That's that's there or thereabouts, I think.
Ian:Took a while, didn't it, that it got there?
Ash:He also said, love your enemies, for they tell you your faults.
Ian:I don't need enemies for that. Oh, okay. In the particular domain of faults regarding testing.
Ash:I found
Ian:a fault. Yes. Yes. Yes. So I'm not sure that was more of a ramp than a thing.
Ash:Well, I guess it it I hope it's not part of a a slope or a further slope into less privacy for the individual.
Ian:It feels like it might be Yeah. Because what government will be tempted by that Yeah. Now that it's Apple has done it for The United Kingdom. Mhmm. Why not America or New Zealand or Australia?
Ash:Yeah. Then imagine if you trained some kind of artificial intelligence on that data to pick out things that you might be interested in.
Ian:Well, I'm sure that definitely isn't happening. No. There's no way that we hear.
Ash:There's no way that they would use that technology to do that.
Ian:Maybe they could just dispatch policemen to your house to arrest you. Just I'm sure there'll be
Ash:automated dispatch of policemen. Hello?
Ian:One one of the
Ash:Hello. Hello. Hello. What what am I being arrested for, officer? I don't know.
Ash:Yes. The LLM told me to come and pick you up.
Ian:Computer said Nick. Computer said,
Ash:fill that chap's collar. Job done.
Ian:Yes. Dear.
Ash:We'll sort out what he's being accused of later. Just bring him in.
Ian:Yes. That'll be us. Yep.
Ash:A profound thing.
Ian:A profound thing.
Ash:A profound thing.
Ian:That's more deep. The monuments tend to go upwards, though. Yeah. Exactly. Profound is Profound.
Ian:Is deep.
Ash:I was trying to think of something that goes with gravely as well. But
Ian:Yes. So I am also disappointed. Apple is disappointed.
Ash:I was gonna say in general.
Ian:I'm I'm just linking back to the title just so that I don't even know why. It just feels like that you should finish where you
Ash:began. You're gravely disappointed.
Ian:Yes. I'm not angry.
Ash:Yeah. I'm I'm disappointed. You know, mildly disappointed.
Ian:I'm a bit angry.
Ash:I haven't reached apoplectic fury.
Ian:Nobody's tried to set a deadline on you, have they?
Ash:No. No. That's true, actually. That's true, actually. No one's done that for a little while.
Ian:Have they been listening to this podcast?
Ash:I don't know. I don't I'm I try and be consistent with my messages around deadlines and estimates And that I don't believe in them. Do you want me to say that right. Okay.
Ian:So the only Look
Ash:alert. Look. I look interested.
Ian:Look interested.
Ash:So the only reason team's estimate. There is no that it is the team's estimate. There is no test estimate, and testing can only ever stop. It can never finish. And I can stop whenever you like.
Ash:That's it.
Ian:Oh, dear. Do you feel better now?
Ash:I do. I do. We'll have to put together a a greatest hits compilation, won't we? We can just do all of my runs.
Ian:Well, yeah. And you could, make put them on a soundboard app, and then you could use them in meetings instead of going to them.
Ash:Yeah. It's like, oh, I've said I've said this a million times before. What would I say? I I can just have, some kind of, AI AI assistant, which is me Yes. Basically.
Ash:And whenever it hears the word test estimate in a meeting, it just starts playing that clip.
Ian:Well, we could actually we could we could make an AI we could make an AI that knew all of the things we've ever said on episodes of what's a lot of things.
Ash:Yeah. True.
Ian:And then you could ask it.
Ash:What does Ash think about test estimates? Press the button.
Ian:Yeah. Yeah. It will be very quick. Oh, dear. Well, anyway, thank you for enjoying that thing.
Ian:What? We don't say that.
Ash:So how do you get in touch, Ian?
Ian:Well, I think we've already covered it, haven't we?
Ash:Okay. Because Carlos Carlos, indeed, got in touch. From pod Status. Status.
Ian:Yep. Got in touch.
Ash:So, basically, if you get in touch, you pretty much guaranteed a mansion.
Ian:Yes. And and then, you know, with that piece of glory, you can You
Ash:can dine out for You can dine out for months. For months on that.
Ian:Yeah. Well So are there any closing thoughts? Maybe we ought to do like Jerry's do you remember Jerry Springer? Yeah. So I must admit.
Ian:My I only watched a couple of them ever. And, in them, people would go and say stuff to each other, and then some other people would have a fight. And then people in black would come and separate them.
Ash:And then then there'd be like a paternity or maternity test.
Ian:Yes. And then there'd more fighting
Ash:Then more fighting.
Ian:And shouting. Yeah. But the thing that always happened at the end was that he would provide the audience with his final thoughts, but they never were because he always did it the next time. He he's I suppose there's a last episode somewhere with his actual
Ash:final thoughts. Yeah. That's true actually. Yeah. But Would have got there eventually.
Ian:But he he would summarize what he felt Mhmm. His audience ought to have learned from from watching the show. Maybe we could come up with a final thought about what we think people should have picked up from the glorious opportunity to listen to us for the last blimey. At least we're not to an hour and a half yet.
Ash:So I think it's that's a good time to not add any final thoughts. Alright. So, dear listener
Ian:Dear listener
Ash:thank you for listening.
Ian:Thank you for listening. The end.
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