608 episodes
Back to Work 5by5
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- Technology
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4.7 • 2K Ratings
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Back to Work is an award winning talk show with Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin discussing productivity, communication, work, barriers, constraints, tools, and more.
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Episode 609: A Reverse Egg
Dan is curious about AI voice transcription, and Merlin has yet more smart home advice for a new homeowner.
Links:
How an 18th Century Sailing Battleship Works - YouTubeGitHub - openai/whisper: Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision -
Episode 608: Charles Entertainment Berry
DISCUSSED: Merlin has some been analyzing a very misleading song about beaches, and Dan has been visiting more with ChadGPT.
Links:
You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you - The OatmealKokomo, Indiana - Wikipedia — the ornriest town on earthgragland/chatgpt-chrome-extension: A ChatGPT Chrome extension. Integrates ChatGPT into every text box on the internet.wong2/chatgpt-google-extension: A browser extension that enhance search engines with ChatGPTliady/ChatGPT-pdf: A Chrome extension for downloading your ChatGPT history to PNG, PDF or a sharable link -
Episode 607: Age of Garbage
DISCUSSED: Dan has a new iPad keyboard, and Merlin is intrigued by ChatGPT. Also, Merlin almost tunes his guitar.
Links:
OpenAII tried using AI. It scared me. - YouTubeFixing Gmail labels to attach to messages, not threads « Tom ScottWhat Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?ChatGPT writes Merlin some codeChatGPT shows Merlin some `sed`ChatGPT sells Merlin on tabs vs. spacesChatGPT tells Merlin the best seasons of "Survivor"VS Code ThemesAmazon.com: Logitech Combo Touch iPad Pro 11-inch (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th gen - 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022) Keyboard Case - Detachable Backlit Keyboard, Click-Anywhere Trackpad - Oxford Gray; USA Layout : ElectronicsShareGPT: Share your wildest ChatGPT conversations with one click. -
Episode 606: Goodnight, Night
DISCUSSED: Dan's takes some smart baby steps into home automation, and Merlin has a lot to say about everything.
Links:
Obsidian — Obsidian is a powerful and extensible knowledge base
that works on top of your local folder of plain text files.Obsidian Canvas - Obsidian — An infinite space to visualize and make sense of your ideas. -
Episode 605: A Case for a Life
DISCUSSED: Dan begins a new journey into smart home living, and Merlin is excited about common misconceptions.
Links:
List of common misconceptions - Wikipedia — Each entry on this list of common misconceptions is worded as a correction; the misconceptions themselves are implied rather than stated.
(via Sam Enright)The Cabinet of Wikipedian Curiosities – Sam Enright — Carl Sagan was involved in this plan to nuke the moon for unclear reasons, including “a possible boosting of domestic morale”.Pluralistic: Tiktok’s enshittification (21 Jan 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory DoctorowThe Food Expiration Dates You Should Actually Follow - The New York TimesThe Thoughts of a Spiderweb | Quanta Magazine — Spiders appear to offload cognitive tasks to their webs, making them one of a number of species with a mind that isn’t fully confined within the head.Reconcilable Differences #200: The Genius Who Keeps Retiring - Relay FMHome Assistant“Monorail!” How Conan O’Brien Came Up With an Iconic ‘Simpsons’ Episode - The RingerAn Oral History of 'Marge vs The Monorail', the Episode That Changed 'The Simpsons'Home | Archive of Our Own — A fan-created, fan-run, nonprofit, noncommercial archive for transformative fanworks, like fanfiction, fanart, fan videos, and podfic -
Episode 604: Grandpa's Automation
DISCUSSED: After settling some confusion about Anna Borg, the boys settle into an amble about the state of voice assistants and the future of the theoretically smart home. As ever, Merlin is pretty excited about music, but he also needs your help figuring out where in the hell he got this new software keyboard.
Links:
Spotify – Mindhunter Season 1&2A House by the ParkSpotify – “To say, ‘Hey, I love you.’” — Hit shuffle for a quick tour of some of the ineffably disturbing songs that obsessed Merlin as a kid.
Spotify – “Icicles Instead of Tears”: Merlin’s 1979 — I was a very nervous 12-year-old Ohio boy who listened to the radio a lot. My family moved to Florida and sent me to military school. What a weird goddamned year.
Build With Matter | Smart Home Device Solution - CSA-IOT — One protocol to connect compatible devices and systems with one another. Smart home devices should be secure, reliable, and seamless to use. And with Matter, they are.
Introducing Matter devices | evehome.comWhat is Thread and how will it help your smart home? - The Verge — Why the low-power mesh networking protocol is poised to become the backbone of the connected homeCommon Gateway Interface - WikipediaIvory for iOSHOOBS™ – USER FRIENDLY HOME AUTOMATION FOR EVERYONEHome Assistant — Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server.
Steve Ahlman on Twitter: "Never forget what they took from us. https://t.co/oSyi7No4nD" / Twitter — "Never forget what they took from us."
Customer Reviews
Updated for 2023!
After taking a break and checking in again, this show has gotten a lot more fun throughout the last year - I really like the energy of Merlin rolling with Dan lately and it feels a little bit like the early days just without the productivity focus.
I’ve gotten some great recommendations from recent episodes and am back to being a fairly regular listener. If you took a break and happen to see this review, I urge you to check it out again - it’s like catching up with old friends after a while.
I don’t know what specifically happened behind the scenes but I feel like both hosts are doing better behind the scenes and it’s really coming through over the mic. Hope you will continue this show for a long while despite the rocky podcast ad industry.
Laa-La-La
I’ve been a listener for over a decade now. Fun and helpful show for anyone that works a jobby job, manages personal technology, streams movies, or deals with some degree of stress and anxiety. I guess you could say this show is what I want (“what I want”).
Still great after all this time.
The degree of difficulty of having a podcast for 10 years and keeping it relevant and interesting is high. I think Dan and Merlin have been able to do this by basically just being themselves. I’ve listened since episode 1 during an interesting work transition in my life and never looked back.