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After Wendell Berry's death, Dave named the essay collection Life Is a Miracle as the Berry book he's read most over the past year. He calls Berry a true American philosopher and encourages anyone to get it. He then read Berry's passage on art: art that rises above competence sees each board as unique.
The book of his that I've been reading the most over the last year or so is... It's a collection of essays called Life is a Miracle. It's a wonderful book. He's just a true American philosopher. He's fantastic. I encourage anybody to get that book and read it.
Not in the audio. The first words of this Dave-labeled cue run ('but I can't. Can't pinpoint it.') look like Adam's reply that voice matching mislabeled, so the quote starts after them.
The C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie
Dave's example of learning from the original source: to learn C, get Kernighan and Ritchie's The C Programming Language, the earliest form of the technology, then move forward from there.
You go back and you get a copy of the C programming language by Kernighan and Ritchie or Java.
Dave was reading McGilchrist's book on the brain's left and right hemispheres and used it to frame LLMs: we've built a standalone left hemisphere with no right hemisphere to keep it in check. He calls it the accessible, condensed version of McGilchrist's larger work, a page-turner, and says the Audible narration is very good.
Ian McGilchrist. And it's about the hemisphere, the brain hemispheres,
Not in the audio. The title 'The Master and His Emissary' is spoken in an adjacent Unknown-labeled cue (01:10:07). Context confirms Dave is the reader: Adam later asks him for the book's name. The quoted cue is a lone Dave cue, kept after that context check.
A book Dave had just started. He describes Kingsnorth as an Ireland-based writer who came out of radical environmentalism and became a Christian, and the book as a critique of modernism, industrialism and 'technologism' that feels fitting for the AI moment. He read a passage from it on air.
But anyway, so he just wrote a book called Against the Machine. And it's a book just about modernism, industrialism, technology, technologism, that kind of thing.
Not in the audio. Dave calls Kingsnorth 'a Catholic brother'. Kingsnorth is publicly known as an Orthodox Christian convert, so the summary just says Christian. The author's name was confirmed from the preceding Dave cue ('Do you know a guy named Paul Kingsnorth?').
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes by Jacques Ellul
Dave boils down Ellul's book. Effective propaganda isn't about convincing anyone; it's about provoking action, and if you're building arguments you've already failed. He sees exactly that in TikTok and Instagram Reels: action, action, action.
that, if you boiled down Jacques Ellul's propaganda, if you boiled it down into a few different just bullet points, one of the main points that he makes very early in the
Not in the audio. Dave names the book only as 'Jacques Ellul's propaganda'. The full English title, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, comes from general knowledge, not the audio.
Not in the audio. Dave names only 'Dante's Inferno'. The author's full name and the Divine Comedy framing come from general knowledge (the co-host says 'divine comedy' in an Unknown cue).
Dave had just finished it and called it a great book about the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.
Do you know the book Devil in the White City? No, I don't just finished reading that about three weeks ago. Great book about the world, the Chicago World's Fair of 1893
Dave called it a very good book on US political history: how the Democratic Party moved from FDR-style politics through the Clinton-era DLC. He also mentioned Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?
it's interesting though, reading this book, it's very good. I don't know how I mean, it would probably be boring to people outside the US, but from a from a US sort of political history standpoint, it's very good.
Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory by Michael Christopher Carroll
Dave called it fantastic and highly recommended. It's a history of the Plum Island lab, built from FOIA requests and declassified documents, showing how strict containment eroded over time.
been reading this book called. is fantastic book highly recommended called lab. 257.
Not in the audio. Full subtitle and author (Michael Christopher Carroll) are from outside knowledge; Dave said only 'Lab 257' and described Plum Island.
Why We Drive (also: Shop Class as Soulcraft) by Matthew B. Crawford
Dave was reading Why We Drive, by gearhead philosopher Matthew Crawford, whose best-known work is Shop Class as Soulcraft. He liked Crawford's critique of tech 'futurism'.
shop craft is SoulCraft is his big work. But he also wrote a book called Why We drive which is a car book. He's a gearhead.
Dave was reading Heretics and borrowed Chesterton's line about George Moore being 'in a perpetual state of temporary honesty' to describe the podcast metrics industry.
I'm reading heretics right now. But GK Chesterton, it is talking about the Irish author George Moore, he used this phrase that Moore was in a perpetual state of temporary honesty. This is the this is the podcast metrics industry, a perpetual state of temporary honesty.
Dave called it a fantastic, very short book. Its premise: if something is immoral for one person to do, it doesn't become moral when a group (or government) does it.
the law is a fantastic thing is a very short book. And his basic premise is very easy to construe. His premise is that if it's not moral for you, for you, as a person to do it, to do a thing, then that thing doesn't become moral, because you get a bunch of friends together and do it as a group.
A short story Dave went through via an audio reading before hearing it discussed on America This Week. His takeaway on audiobooks is that the narrator is nearly the whole experience.
This week. They discussed the story Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville.
Dave called it a great, dense, big book and highlighted it heavily. It inspired his idea for a podcast of short readings of the best passages, and he applies Ellul's critique of 'technique' to podcasting.
I just finished the technological society by Chaka law. Great book, Fantastic book, big book. And as I'm reading these books, I highlight a lot a markup a lot.
A Question of Sedition: The Federal Government's Investigation of the Black Press During World War II by Patrick S. Washburn
A new addition to Dave's nightstand about government pressure on the Black press during World War II. He called it quite a read.
Oh, it's called a question of sedition. It is a book. I think the subtitle is censorship of the black press during World War Two. Like it is. It is a read let me tell you
Thus Spoke Zarathustra; The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche
Answering a listener, Dave passed on his Nietzsche-scholar friend's advice: read Thus Spoke Zarathustra for Nietzsche's mature philosophy, and The Antichrist to see how far off the rails he went.
the two books you want do you want to read from Frederick Naisha are this book there's Zarathustra? That his his his this is what I was told by my friend who is a Nietzsche scholar. That is that book displays his his mature philosophical thought.
Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country by William Greider
Dave's long-running nightstand book: a ~700-page inside history of the Paul Volcker-era Federal Reserve, published around 1987. He values it as history from people who were there, not as a hit piece.
Book by William Greider. He's too bright for The Washington Post. I think it was published in maybe 1990 or 91. It's about the Paul Volcker Federal Reserve.
Not in the audio. Full subtitle and 1987 publication year are from outside knowledge; on air Dave guessed 1990/91. 'He's too bright for The Washington Post' is a transcription garble (likely 'he wrote for').
Discussing deplatforming over Russia, Dave recommends this book by revisionist historian Albert Jay Nock, written after World War I. It debunks wartime propaganda that vilified Germany as a whole nation. Dave's point: war propaganda always paints every man, woman and child of a nation as evil, which is one thing decentralization protects citizens against.
And with this book by Albert J. nock, called the myth of a guilty nation. It's about Germany, and describing how the West had taken Germany and vilified the entire nation as a block.
Dave uses Asimov's novel as a metaphor for the podcast industry. In the book, humanity lives its whole life in domed mega-cities and panics at the thought of open sky. The industry is so used to silos and walled gardens that it doesn't know how to think about open source and suspects an ulterior motive.
If you have either of y'all read the book, caves of steel, by Isaac Asimov.
Making a New Year's resolution to finish his stack of half-read books, Dave singled out one he unequivocally recommends. City of Sedition, by a New York historian, shows how the Civil War tore New York's fabric in half: the city's money men depended on shipping and slavery and didn't want it to end.
there is one book that I would recommend. It is unequivocal it's called city of sedition. Okay. And it is a book by New York historian. And he's written a couple books before, but this one is fantastic.
Life tipsA payment/funding link in your podcast feed
Dave's call to podcasters: ask whether anything in your feed links to a way someone can give you money. If not, fix it now. If your livelihood depends on dynamic ad insertion and agents start stripping ads, a direct payment path (one agents can also latch on to) is the way through.
a podcast, as a podcaster. Is there anything in my podcast feed that links back to a way that somebody can give me money? And if the answer is no. Fix it.
Not in the audio. The last two cues ('can give me money? And if the answer is no.' / 'Fix it.') are labeled Unknown by voice matching. They finish Dave's first-person sentence from the preceding Dave cues, so they're attributed to him.
Life tipsUse a new Linux distro the way it's designed
When Dave tries a new Linux distribution (here Omarchy with a tiling window manager), he follows its intended paradigm rather than bending it to old habits, so he really tests it.
whenever I try a new distro, I try to do it the distro's way, the way
Not in the audio. The rest of the exchange ('that they want it... follow the paradigm... get the full experience') is in Unknown-labeled cues and mixes both voices.
ToolsRun AI agents in an isolated VM (network and filesystem jail)
With an agent harness that has no guardrails (like Pi), every time you hit Enter you're rolling the dice if it can roam your file system and reach your keys. Dave's plan is to isolate agents in a VM that's network- and filesystem-jailed, physically segregated from the host.
Meaning, especially with something like Pi, that really just does not have any guardrails whatsoever. Anytime you hit the inner key... you're kind of rolling the dice.
Dave says the latest Security Now episode should be required listening for anyone working with AI agents, because it shows exactly how few guardrails they have by design.
think the latest episode of Security Now should be required listening for anybody doing any agentic work. It's... it will show you exactly... The lack of guardrails that is inherent.
For Podcast Index API sign-ups that look suspicious (throwaway or free addresses), Dave won't make exceptions for people he can't identify. His advice: spend $5 on a domain from Hover and get a real email address. It isn't much to ask.
Yeah, exactly. Go get a different – go spend $5 on a domain from Hover and get a real email address. And, I mean, it's not that much to ask.
Dave urges Adam to try the Qwen 3.6 35B A3B mixture-of-experts model running locally in the OpenCode agent. It's very good and so fast that output arrives almost before you hit Enter.
model okay use on open code run it locally and run it on open code it is really real Awesome. And it's so fast.
Not in the audio. 'Quinn' in the transcript is Qwen (Alibaba). The model name is spoken in a lone Dave cue and an adjacent Unknown cue just before the quote. Context confirms Dave: he's urging Adam to 'try' it, and Dave uses this model on his DGX Spark in other episodes.
Life tipsNo web presence for free/trial hosting accounts
Dave's one recommendation to podcast hosting companies fighting SEO spam: don't give free-tier or trial accounts any web presence at all, and mark them as such in the feed so everyone can ignore them until they're a verified, paying human. Blocking Google from indexing your own pages isn't enough, because the feeds flow into Apple Podcasts, the Index and elsewhere and get turned into HTML (second-order SEO).
or you're in a trial account. Do not give those accounts any web presence whatsoever. Right. And also and also mark them as such in the feed.
Not in the audio. Dave's lead-in 'If I could make one recommendation to the podcast hosting companies' is in Dave cues just before; the words 'If you're on a free tier' are in an Unknown-labeled cue and aren't quoted.
Dave explains why he's moving toward Nix. Everything in the system (packages, options, static IPs) lives in one configuration file. A rebuild script makes it so, and software is built with its libraries included, so there are no library conflicts. Once you have a system you're happy with, you can replicate the box elsewhere with basically no effort.
Every everything, like literally everything in the system is controlled with this one configuration file.
For runaway processes, Dave points Adam to the standard `timeout` command: put it in front of a command, and if the command runs longer than the time you set, it gets killed. It's handy for cron jobs you don't want accidentally doubling up.
You can put that in front of a command, and so if it exceeds a specific time, it'll kill it.
Not in the audio. The name 'timeout' is in the Unknown cue just before the quote, and the cron-job remark is also in an Unknown cue. This is before the guest joins (around 00:36), so the conversation is just Dave and Adam.
If all you need is to interpret text, Dave says the smaller models do great. Gemma 3 12B was the one that worked for his invoice-extraction pipeline after trying ten models. It fits easily in a 24 GB RAM system, runs locally, and processes a page of text in about three seconds.
If all you need is to interpret some text, the smaller models will do great. They're just fine. And they'll fit in a 24 gig Ram system easily. And so if you just need a small model, something like Gemma three, 12 B is a very good model.
Dave calls the Fall of Civilizations podcast fantastic: deep episodes on once-dominant civilizations and why they fell, mostly by means beyond their control. His one small annoyance is that each episode's bottom line tends to land on the same answer (climate change).
Well, this is a great podcast. This Fall of Civilizations podcast is fantastic.
ToolsSSH hardening baseline (keys only, no root, UFW allowlist, Tailscale)
After Adam's server was compromised, Dave lays out his standard protocol for anyone running Linux servers: disable root login, password login and keyboard-interactive login; move SSH off port 22; allow only public-key authentication; and go further by restricting the SSH port with UFW to specific IPs. With Tailscale and his home CIDR block, the restriction is less of a pain on the road.
need to disable root login, disable password login, disable interactive keyboard login. Only put your SSH server on a different port than 22. Then make, and then enable only key pair authentication, public key authentication.
Life tipsWordless background video while doing real work
Dave can't have words on while coding or doing IT work; even podcasts are too distracting. He puts on a wordless video off-screen as background noise instead.
like over in a off screen. I can't, I can't have words when I work.
Talking smokers, Dave calls the Pit Boss the best bang for the buck. There are more expensive smokers, but the Pit Boss has a lever feature the others lack.
pit boss, I almost spent like the pit boss is the best bang for the buck because there's many more expensive smokers like the,
Not in the audio. 'Pellet smoker' is inferred from context (smoker talk and the competitors mentioned); Dave says only 'pit boss'. He describes the lever feature only partially here, and it's believed to be a flame-broiler/sear slide.
As a personal policy, Dave stays out of heated social-media 'hell threads' (like the one on paywalls on podcastindex.social). Adding to them doesn't help, so he reads and lets them play out, then shares his thoughts in a calmer setting such as the show.
I don't buy by personal policy. I don't I just try never to get involved in those threads. I just, I just want to hear them. I just want to see them play themselves out.
Dave recommends searching for and reading 'The Subprime AI Crisis', which notes that fewer than 1% of Microsoft's paying Office 365 customers subscribed to Copilot because it's so expensive. It's useful context on how fragile AI business models are.
if people have not read that article, look good search for the Google the search subprime AI crisis in if you know, in there, it says that less than 1% of Microsoft's paying office 365, customers have subscribed to their copilot service.
To avoid typical Midjourney fluff, remember the model learned from internet content, so prompt the way a photo site would describe a picture, e.g. 'a picture taken with a Nikon camera'. That pulls toward real-photo styles. Dave used this for his audiobook cover art.
you first you have to know that everything that is getting all of its content from the internet, yeah, so then you think like you would with an internet site, so you can say things like a picture taken with a Nikon camera, right?
Life tipsDead man's switch for critical credentials
Dave has a dead man's switch for the Podcast Index: if he doesn't SSH in once a week, his credentials go automatically to a small group of trusted people (Alex, Eric PP, the Podverse folks, Spurlock) who can keep things running.
the dead man switch goes to Alex, and he goes to three people. Goes to Alex, Eric PP and Archie over at pod friend. I mean, pod verse, okay, yeah, those, those guys will handle it,
Dave favors the 'news river' approach from Freedom Controller over the inbox-reader model. Instead of unread items you have to mark as read, you get a first-in, first-out stream. Only the few feeds you don't want to miss stick to the top until you dismiss them.
we took a news river approach, not an inbox reader approach. You didn't have unread items that you had to look at right and again then go through and mark as Mark as read. What you just had is you just had a stream of things coming a first in, first out view.