Not Brothers

Mark Hughes, Ryan Hughes

No Nonsense Business and Tech Talk. Just two business partners who’ve survived nearly two decades of client deadlines, all-nighters, stealing each other’s fries, and somehow still speaking at family events. In 2009 they co-founded Oodle – a digital marketing agency that started with two laptops, zero clients, and an unhealthy amount of confidence. Sixteen years later it’s one of the sharpest independent shops in the country. Along the way they’ve launched other companies, products, and ideas together. Every week they pull a couple of chairs up to a mic and rip open the exact stuff most podcasts polish to death: Which new AI and technology tools are actually shipping vs. which ones are just vaporwareThe creative calls that made fortunes and the ones that almost ended themThe unsexy business decisions that separate “cool startup” from “company that pays its bills”Real-time, zero-filter debates, because when you’ve argued over cap tables with your actual family, you stop pretending to agree Not Brothers. Just two co-founders who’ve been mistaken for siblings so often they made it the title.

  1. 1d ago

    Episode 26 - AI Moves Fast. Expertise Still Matters.

    AI can speed up the work. It can also make it feel like you're never doing enough. On Episode 26 of Not Brothers, Mark and Ryan talk about the pressure to keep up with new tools, keep agents busy, and move faster—even when the people doing the work need room to learn. They dig into why tool adoption can feel like extra work before it becomes useful, why familiar delivery processes are struggling to keep pace, and how to balance experimentation with reasonable client expectations. Then there's the last mile. A working demo, a polished-looking frame, or a passing AI code review can hide the hardest parts of a project. Ryan shares a code-review example; Mark connects the same problem to annual planning and the judgment needed to turn a framework into a useful action plan. They also get into what this means for junior talent: how do you build expertise when the easiest first move is to ask an agent? And which skills can you afford to delegate without losing the ability to verify the result? The goal isn't to replace the team with robots. It's to give the team better tools—and free up attention for the decisions and outputs that actually matter. Where is AI genuinely saving you time, and where is it just creating more noise? Let us know in the comments. Chapters: 00:00 The pressure to keep up with AI 02:12 The trap of keeping agents busy 24/7 05:32 When helpful tools create more noise 07:52 Tool changes, team friction, and adoption 10:50 Why domain expertise still matters 15:36 The fast first 80% and the difficult last mile 17:26 Why AI-era project estimates break 20:56 Client expectations versus experimentation 24:50 The expertise behind a polished result 25:52 An AI-approved pull request that wasn't ready 29:10 Why AI can't do annual planning in a vacuum 31:54 Building expertise without outsourcing your brain 34:50 Critical thinking is the skill to protect 35:52 Give your team superpowers—not replacements 37:55 Learning to work in the gray areas

  2. Oct 22

    Episode 25 - Stop Watching AI Work: Build a Team That Works With It

    Getting more from AI isn’t just about better prompts. It’s about changing how your team works with it. In Episode 25 of Not Brothers, Mark Hughes and Ryan Hughes discuss the shift from asking a chatbot questions to treating AI agents like teammates: give them context, delegate useful work, and come back with feedback instead of watching every step. They explore why shared information matters, how asynchronous collaboration changes the workflow, and what happens when agents start noticing work that needs to be done instead of waiting for another prompt. That autonomy comes with hard questions. How much access should an agent have? What makes a real trust boundary? And where does convenience become a risk? Ryan shares experiments and cautionary examples—not a recommendation to remove safeguards. The conversation then turns to always-on machines, remote access, and T3 Code: a setup where the work can continue while your laptop is closed and you’re doing something else. Finally, they unpack a practical way to think about human review. Treat a project like a tree: security, authentication, and financial logic are the trunk; features are branches; small, low-impact changes are leaves. The level of scrutiny should match what’s at stake. Subscribe to Not Brothers for conversations about AI, software, business, and how the work is changing. Not Brothers: https://heyoodle.com/not-brothers/ Oodle: https://heyoodle.com/ Chapters 00:00 — How our AI workflows are changing 02:10 — From chatbots to coworkers: stop watching every step 07:56 — Parallel agents and collaboration across the team 10:17 — Proactive agents and giving them useful context 14:33 — Personal assistants, permissions, and spending access 16:42 — How trust changes—and why boundaries still matter 20:45 — Can teams collaborate without sharing every permission? 21:38 — Credential access, sandboxes, and trust boundaries 25:03 — Asynchronous work and a changing toolset 25:49 — Always-on compute: work beyond the laptop 27:51 — Keeping the same work accessible across devices 29:24 — Parallel threads, webhooks, and agent investigations 32:01 — Where should human review happen? 32:13 — The tree analogy: trunk, branches, and leaves 35:52 — Experimentation, scrutiny, and what to try next

  3. Oct 12

    Episode 24 - Everything is AI Slop! Or is it?

    Everything is “AI slop” now—or at least that is what the internet calls any AI-assisted work it does not like. But is AI actually the problem? In Episode 24 of Not Brothers, Mark Hughes and Ryan Hughes unpack what AI slop really is, why the person piloting the tool still owns the result, and how lazy review—not AI alone—turns fast output into bad work. They share a real example from Oodle’s early agent experiments, when an AI-assisted request led to an unnecessary Python server instead of a lightweight solution. The lesson was not to stop using AI. It was to build better guardrails, encode stronger standards, and create review systems that catch bad decisions before they ship. The conversation also explores why agentic workflows do not fit neatly into old sprint plans, how visual progress can hide weak architecture and poor mobile performance, and why compliance requirements such as GDPR, CCPA, COPPA, WCAG, and CAN-SPAM still demand experienced judgment. For agencies and clients, AI creates a new kind of collaboration. Business leaders can prototype ideas more clearly, teams can explore more directions without burning a week of labor, and experts can turn rough concepts into production-ready work. That does not make expertise less valuable—it changes where the value lives. Mark and Ryan also tackle the economics of AI-enabled services, the “good, fast, and cheap” tradeoff, and why the human side of professional services becomes more important as production accelerates. The takeaway: AI is a force multiplier. It can multiply garbage, or it can multiply great work. Either way, there is still a person piloting the ship. Oodle: https://heyoodle.com/ Chapters are below. Subscribe for direct conversations about technology, AI, business, and the systems behind the work. Chapters00:00 — What counts as AI slop? 01:44 — If you would not put your name on it, it is not finished 03:06 — The rogue Python server and why guardrails matter 04:41 — AI superpowers and “slop grenades” can both be real 05:50 — Defined outcomes, automated review, and responsible shipping 07:42 — When “AI slop” becomes a lazy insult 09:06 — AI did not invent bad process 10:15 — Why old sprint plans break in an agentic workflow 12:33 — Adversarial feedback and the limits of automated code review 14:25 — Fast prototypes can hide production problems 16:05 — Compliance risks an AI agent may never mention 18:04 — In-housing, expertise, and accountability 20:03 — AI as a richer collaboration tool for clients 23:21 — Exploring more ideas without burning the whole budget 25:25 — More value, less effort, and the agency margin question 29:15 — Good, fast, and cheap still has limits 31:08 — Why the human component matters more, not less 32:43 — AI multiplies whatever quality already exists 36:32 — Not everything is AI slop—and kindness still matters

  4. Oct 5

    Episode 23 - Open AI Dev Day, Rails World, Omarchy Meet Ups, & More

    Two weeks, three events, and one clear takeaway: the old way of building software is over. Ryan returns from Rails World, OpenAI DevDay, and an Omarchy meetup in San Francisco with a field report on where AI-assisted development is actually heading. He and Mark compare the conversations happening online with what builders are saying in the room. At Rails World, they unpack the changing role of programmers, why AI does not erase hard-earned technical judgment, and how agents make it easier to choose the right language for the job instead of staying trapped in one stack. Then the conversation moves to OpenAI DevDay: proactive assistants, connected agents, new model performance, and ultra-fast inference. If an agent can produce an hour of work in ten minutes, are you paying more—or buying time back? That leads to the next problem. When generation stops being the bottleneck, human review, browser use, APIs, research speed, infrastructure, and access to compute start taking its place. Finally, Ryan shares what it was like attending his first Omarchy meetup at Cloudflare’s San Francisco office, from veteran users to someone installing Omarchy for the first time at the event. Subscribe for long-form conversations about AI, software, business, operations, and building things in public. Not Brothers: https://heyoodle.com/not-brothers/ Oodle: https://heyoodle.com/ Chapters 00:00 — Ryan’s two-week developer event tour 01:43 — Rails World and the reaction to a changing paradigm 06:11 — “Look at all the things I’m not doing” 11:26 — Choosing the right language for the job 15:31 — Ryan’s biggest Rails World takeaway 18:09 — Why agents suddenly feel more capable 22:23 — Small, specialized models and private AI 27:04 — Inside OpenAI DevDay 28:18 — Proactive assistants and connected agents 32:23 — Faster models and ultra-fast inference 35:10 — Creating at the speed of thought 37:45 — Is buying back time worth the price? 39:29 — When the human becomes the bottleneck 44:56 — Compute demand, hardware prices, and supply 49:02 — Ryan’s first Omarchy meetup 50:46 — Final recap

  5. Sep 18

    Episode 22 - I tried Omarchy for the first time (unrehearsed)

    What happens when a lifelong Mac and Windows user tries Omarchy for the first time? In Episode 22 of Not Brothers, Mark Hughes installs the Try Omarchy experience on his Mac while Ryan Hughes walks him through the operating system, its keyboard-first workflow, and its tiling window manager. Nothing was rehearsed, so the ARM64 installation gaps and setup surprises stay in the episode. Once Omarchy is running, Mark learns how to move between workspaces, rearrange windows, launch apps, pin a window across desktops, and use the searchable keybinding menu when he gets lost. Then the experiment gets more interesting. Mark asks Claude Code to build a custom switcher that combines applications and browser tabs into a Windows-style Alt+Tab experience. Claude inspects Omarchy’s plugin system, builds the plugin, tests it, and updates the live keybinding. Mark gets a working feature without writing the code himself. Ryan also explains T3 Code and T3 Connect, how he gives AI agents their own development machine, why Omarchy treats the operating system as something users should be able to reshape, and how community plugins are expanding what the system can do. Try Omarchy: https://omarchy.org/ Omarchy plugins: https://plugins.omarchy.org/ Learn Omarchy: https://learnomarchy.com/ Oodle: https://heyoodle.com/ Chapters are below. Subscribe for direct conversations about technology, AI, business, and the systems behind the work. Chapters00:00 — A Mac user tries Omarchy 02:33 — Starting the Try Omarchy installation 05:40 — Launching the virtual machine 06:52 — Finishing the Omarchy installer 08:48 — First look at Omarchy and searchable keybindings 10:24 — The Omarchy launcher and installing T3 Code 11:43 — Updating Omarchy before installing apps 13:31 — The ARM64 compatibility gap 14:22 — How Omarchy installs AI tools on demand 15:29 — Signing into Claude Code and 1Password 17:58 — Learning tiling window management 21:02 — Omarchy Quattro’s plugin architecture 22:07 — Asking Claude to build a browser-tab switcher 24:12 — How an agent reverse-engineered a mouse plugin 27:07 — T3 Code, T3 Connect, and remote agent sessions 32:04 — Can the plugin access every browser tab? 35:38 — Workspaces, screen sharing, and a live crash 37:24 — Resuming the Claude Code session 39:50 — The first custom plugin works 40:50 — Why Omarchy is more than Arch and dotfiles 43:41 — Browsing and installing community plugins 46:11 — Combining browser tabs and applications 49:05 — Replacing Omarchy’s default Alt+Tab behavior 49:58 — Making computers fun and personal again 52:41 — How easy is it to try Omarchy? 53:05 — Learn Omarchy and interactive onboarding 57:36 — Custom keybindings and the learning curve 59:53 — Floating, resizing, and pinning windows 1:01:22 — Final verdict on Try Omarchy

  6. Sep 9

    Episode 21 - Omarchy, AI Agents, and the New Security Reality

    Omarchy is moving fast—and AI is changing both what the project can build and what its security team can find. In Episode 21 of Not Brothers, Ryan Hughes and Mark Hughes cover Omarchy’s new website, new infrastructure backing, global meetups, and the people now working full time on the operating system and its open-source foundations. Ryan also breaks down his experience with GPT-6 Astra, Claude Fable 5.1, Meta’s Muse Spark 1.3, and computer-use agents that can navigate a real machine. That power comes with a catch: an agent with access to your computer may use that access in ways you never expected. The conversation moves from frontier models to a more practical question: when should a fast, inexpensive specialist model do the work instead? Ryan shares examples where smaller models matched—or beat—larger models for narrow tasks at a fraction of the cost. Then they get into local AI, HIPAA and data privacy, the rise in reported software vulnerabilities, and why fixing more security issues can be a sign of better visibility rather than worse engineering. Explore Omarchy: https://omarchy.org/ Omarchy news: https://omarchy.org/news/ Omacom Foundation: https://omarchy.org/foundation/ Cua computer-use agents: https://cua.ai/ Chapters are below. Subscribe for more direct conversations about technology, business, AI, and the systems behind the work. 00:00 — Omarchy, AI, and security 00:43 — Omarchy’s new website and a huge week of growth 04:32 — The global Omarchy meetup community 06:06 — GPT-6 Astra vs. Claude Fable 5.1 07:17 — Giving AI agents their own computer 09:59 — The agent that found an API key and kept spending 11:58 — Is this actually AGI? 13:15 — Why agent harnesses and memory matter 15:03 — Using AI to resume complex work 16:37 — Meta Muse Spark 1.3 and a 22-cent site migration 18:57 — Orchestrator models and cheaper executors 20:13 — Why the biggest model is not always the best model 23:06 — Why local AI could break through in 2027 24:30 — Specialist models vs. giant generalists 26:24 — Local models, HIPAA, and data privacy 28:01 — Security is everywhere—and imperfect everywhere 29:35 — A bizarre USB-drive vulnerability 30:50 — Why more security fixes can be a good sign 33:11 — Open-source transparency vs. security through obscurity 35:46 — The coming security boom 36:05 — Closing

  7. Sep 1

    Episode 20 - The Untitled Pod

    No agenda. No single topic. Somehow, still a theme. In Episode 20 of Not Brothers, Mark Hughes and Ryan Hughes start with the latest work around Omarchy, including security tradeoffs, a broader user base, and the Omacom Foundation’s growing investment in desktop Linux. Then the conversation moves into AI-generated music, whether prompting still counts as creativity, and what changes when AI agents can communicate and delegate work to one another. Ryan shares a practical multi-agent security experiment that exposed how easily an authorized agent can become a relay for an unauthorized request. From there, Mark and Ryan look at agent-driven shopping and advertising: how brands may influence AI recommendations, why manipulative source content could become the next black-hat marketing tactic, and whether influencer marketing could eventually shape what models treat as common knowledge. They also get into the FTC and states’ allegations against Amazon’s advertising auctions, Meta’s youth-addiction settlement, corporate penalties that become a cost of doing business, device tracking, cookie banners, and why interruptive advertising still deserves to die. It is a little AI, a little advertising, a little Big Tech, a little conspiracy theory, and exactly enough politics to make sure the episode could not stay untitled forever. Not Brothers is business and tech talk with no nonsense from Mark and Ryan Hughes—Oodle operators, family members, and definitely not brothers. Chapters 00:00 — The episode with no title 01:05 — Omarchy funding, security, and a broader audience 06:27 — AI-generated music and who gets to define art 10:16 — Rogue AI agents and the Hugging Face incident 13:29 — When agents talk to other agents 17:37 — Agent-driven shopping and advertising 19:24 — Can brands manipulate AI recommendations? 21:46 — Influencer marketing as model training data 22:47 — The Black Mirror version of agentic advertising 24:24 — Why interruptive advertising deserves to die 25:52 — Amazon’s alleged ad-auction manipulation 27:59 — Meta, youth addiction, and Big Tech incentives 28:43 — When fines become a cost of doing business 33:21 — Are our devices still listening? 35:20 — Responsible tracking and broken audience cohorts 37:47 — Demographics, geographics, and creepy psychographics 38:33 — Cookie banners and a universal privacy control 40:24 — A spam-reporting model for predatory ads 41:12 — Somehow, they solved advertising

  8. Aug 26

    Episode 19 - How Omarchy Went From a Side Project to a $10 Million Foundation

    Omarchy began as David Heinemeier Hansson’s opinionated Arch Linux setup. Barely more than a year later, it has grown into a distinct Linux distribution, a fast-moving open-source ecosystem, and the centerpiece of the $10 million Omacom Foundation. In Episode 19 of the Not Brothers Podcast, Ryan Hughes explains how he went from building his own Arch-based setup to contributing directly to Omarchy alongside DHH. He walks through the project’s evolution from configuration files into a complete operating-system experience with its own installer, package repositories, mirrors, stable release channel, plugins, and hardware support. Mark approaches the conversation as a Windows and macOS user who has never lived in Linux. Ryan makes the case for Omarchy through tiling window management, keyboard-driven workflows, fast installation, strong defaults, and the idea of a “malleable computer” that people can shape around the way they actually work. They also dig into Omarchy Quattro, the rapid growth of the plugin ecosystem, and the effort to make AI agents first-class parts of the operating system. That includes crash diagnosis, a built-in agent interface, and automated review processes for a community that submitted more than 1,000 plugins in a week. Ryan shares the hard lessons too: package updates that broke systems overnight, bootloader changes that forced emergency fixes, and the need to balance Arch Linux’s bleeding edge with a stable experience for people trying Linux for the first time. The conversation closes with what this work brings back to Oodle: deeper technical judgment, real-world experience operating at scale, and the confidence to solve problems that do not fit neatly inside an existing tool. Explore Omarchy: https://omarchy.org/ Meet the Omacom Foundation patrons: https://omarchy.org/patrons/ Read the $10 million funding announcement: https://omarchy.org/news/2026/08/omacom-foundation-funding-hits-10m/ Subscribe for candid conversations about technology, business, AI, and the work behind building things that actually hold up. Chapters 00:00 — Omarchy Quattro and the Omacom Foundation 02:23 — How Ryan joined the Omarchy project 07:11 — Selling Omarchy to a Windows and macOS user 12:15 — Speed, installation, and everyday performance 18:04 — From side project to a $10 million foundation 22:55 — Building an agentic AI operating system 26:26 — What scaling open source taught Ryan 33:29 — Release-day failures and the stable channel 40:35 — How Omarchy strengthens Oodle’s client work 45:24 — Ryan’s idea of a relaxing weekend

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About

No Nonsense Business and Tech Talk. Just two business partners who’ve survived nearly two decades of client deadlines, all-nighters, stealing each other’s fries, and somehow still speaking at family events. In 2009 they co-founded Oodle – a digital marketing agency that started with two laptops, zero clients, and an unhealthy amount of confidence. Sixteen years later it’s one of the sharpest independent shops in the country. Along the way they’ve launched other companies, products, and ideas together. Every week they pull a couple of chairs up to a mic and rip open the exact stuff most podcasts polish to death: Which new AI and technology tools are actually shipping vs. which ones are just vaporwareThe creative calls that made fortunes and the ones that almost ended themThe unsexy business decisions that separate “cool startup” from “company that pays its bills”Real-time, zero-filter debates, because when you’ve argued over cap tables with your actual family, you stop pretending to agree Not Brothers. Just two co-founders who’ve been mistaken for siblings so often they made it the title.

Information

  • Creator
    Mark Hughes, Ryan Hughes
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    26
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Mark Hughes, Ryan Hughes
  • Show Website
    Not Brothers

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