Decapsulate Podcast Por Namtao Productions arte de portada

Decapsulate

Decapsulate

De: Namtao Productions
Escúchala gratis

Unpacking lifeNamtao Productions
Episodios
  • Ergonomic updates, digital garden beginnings, and the limits of LLMs

    Ergonomic updates, digital garden beginnings, and the limits of LLMs
    Jan 9 2026
    Robin takes us on a tour through his new physical workspace, as well as his digital garden vitual workspace. We both talk about the podcast’s schedule, and end on an exploration of what the philosophy of mind can tell us about the limits of LLM reasoning. 📖 CHAPTERS 00:00 Robin’s continuing ergonomics journey12:20 Digital garden update17:29 Podcast schedule21:20 The limits of LLMs 🔗 LINKS Ours https://robinwinslow.ukhttps://noboilerplate.orghttps://lostterminal.comhttps://modemprometheus.comhttps://phosphenecatalogue.com External Obsidian.mdObsidian Digital Garden pluginMaggie Appleton’s “A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden” 🧑 CREDITS Decapsulate is a NAMTAO Production (namtao.com) It is hosted by: Tristram Oaten (https://mastodon.social/@0atman)Robin Winslow (https://union.place/@nottrobin) This work is BrainMade (https://brainmade.org) Transcript Tris: Right. oh my God. So this is extremely exciting. Robin, tell me about your ergonomics update. Robin: Yeah, I finally got a desk. it’s, it was Tris: Wow. Robin: of quite straightforward. So I’ve shipped out my old dining table and now I’ve got myself a,a mechanical raising and lowering desk that is 110, I think centimeters wide, which is just perfect to fit behind my door. Tris: I’ll say right at the top here that we are not only are we not sponsored by any of the things we’re about to speak about, we don’t even have affiliate links. So, did you get a, a flexi spot desk? I think I mentioned that last time. Robin: mention Tris: had good experience with them. Robin: it and I think to make it affordable, it relied on finding a really cheap place to buy wood, which Tris: Hmm. failed to do. And I discovered that I think basically these desks are not that complicated. So I’ve got like a fairly well reviewed thing that was actually from Amazon, for my. Shame. do put, the way I work with Amazon is I put quite a lot of effort, particularly if I’m spending any significant amount of money, I put quite a lot of effort into trying to find, to buy it from somewhere else. And then at some point I just give up and buy it from Amazon. That’s okay. I do the same. Like I, I, I switched off my Prime subscription so that my default wouldn’t be Amazon, and now I try all the local stores. I try this, I try that, then I try eBay. Then when that fails, I agree. I fall back to, Robin: so this Tris: to the one supplier. Robin: it’s, I can’t fault it really so far, like the,it’s clearly not like solid wood because it wouldn’t have been as cheap as it was if it were, but, as in it’ll be, MDF covered in a coating, but it’s Tris: Hmm. Robin: enough. Tris: I didn’t wanna spend like 300 pounds on, on super long-term furniture. MDF is, is, is very clever and in addition to being very cheap, it’s also very light. Like a solid wood is very heavy. the big drawback with MDF that, that I’ve seen on various DIY channels is that it’s like you have to have a bit of preparation before you drill through it because you are drilling through something that is not quite as predictable as your solid wood. You know, there’s, there’s, there’s splintering, there’s more. I believe I’ve, I’ve heard people talk about waterproofing , you know, if, like, if you spill a coffee and then it goes into the hole that you’ve just made suddenly the entire, that it like compromises the, Robin: explodes and it Tris: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Robin: Yeah. But anyway, Tris: You find that, that there’s a half and half situation and I think the first party flexis put tabletops do this. Like the, the outer five centimeters are solid wood and then the, the most of the middle is MDF, so that you can like, yeah, I guess you, it means you can like drill into it, you know, screw something into it. Like I’ve got a headphone Robin: here and I’ve, you know, just little bits. And that’s, you tend to want to do that around the edge. that makes sense. this Tris: Yeah. Interesting. Robin: a headphone hook, pockets dangling off the Tris: Great. Robin: it’s Tris: The dream. hole for the cables to come through, although, I dunno why, what I’m gonna use it for,Nice. Robin: that’s like off in the back Tris: Tidy. Robin: I literally put it Tris: Yeah. Robin: the side away from me. but it’s, it’s been perfectly fine. It goes from 72 centimeters high to 120, no, a hundred and it must be more than that, right? A hundred and I can’t remember what it goes up to. Yeah. But,it’s high setting is. high as I could need, and low setting is as low as I could need. It’s, know, it’s perfect. And I’ve got my stand for my monitor. I’ve got my little stand for my laptop. it’s big enough for my usage because I, it’s not like I spread out papers all over the place. yeah. And the Tris: Marvelous. Robin: is probably from what, maybe or something like that. I can’t remember. Tris: Ah, I don’t believe that’s gonna be very useful for our ...
    Más Menos
    43 m
  • De-platforming and Techno-Feudalism

    De-platforming and Techno-Feudalism
    Nov 26 2025
    Tris & Robin talk about what it means to be an online creator in an age of Techno-Feudalism, and what to do about it. 📖 CHAPTERS 00:00 Tris’s New Mentoring Tiers17:01 De-Platforming and Diversifying Income33:19 Deplatforming and Diversification34:22 The Power Dynamics of Platforms49:53 Techno-Feudalism Explained58:50 The Future of Tech and Society The Matrix We’re still working on the power/money/etc matrix we talked about in the show, and will replace this text asap. follow discussion here: https://github.com/NamtaoProductions/decapsulate.com/issues/30 🔗 LINKS Ours https://robinwinslow.ukhttps://noboilerplate.orghttps://lostterminal.comhttps://modemprometheus.comhttps://phosphenecatalogue.com External Techno-Feudalism Book 🧑 CREDITS Decapsulate is a NAMTAO Production (namtao.com) It is hosted by: Tristram Oaten (https://mastodon.social/@0atman)Robin Winslow (https://union.place/@nottrobin) This work is BrainMade (https://brainmade.org) Transcript Tris: [00:00:00] We are about a month after I’ve launched the scholarship and diversity tears on my patron. Robin: I, yeah, we introduced the scholarship and diversity topic very briefly, I think in the last episode. It’s quite interesting. I think it’s, talk about the particulars of what you chose Tris: for the last couple of years. What has allowed me to move from having a day job as a programmer to a internet creator, job, whatever it’s called, writer is what I tell my mom. But I don’t think that’s descriptive enough. Robin: An internet Tris: writer. Do you write the internet? Yes, I write the internet. Well, I did before, and I suppose I still do now. Um, but I’m using English this time rather than, uh, code. What allowed me to bridge that gap? Money was coming in from YouTube ads, which is wonderful, and lots of people joined my Patreon, which I’m incredibly grateful for. And the money was life changing, but not enough to pay all of my rent, so I had to keep the day job. What did allow me to bridge that gap and get away from the day job was. Setting up a mentoring tier where a few people had asked me if I would do lessons if I do one-on-one tuition, that sort of thing. And I eventually said yes, because as a freelancer you should always say yes when people offer you to pay your money. And it worked out really well. I got 10 or 15 people signed up and that was enough for me to cover my bills. I don’t quite make as much as when I was working a day job, nine to five, uh, programming. But it’s more than compensated for like how nice the work. It’s, yeah. I’m my own, my own boss. You know, Robin: that was a question I had in my mind actually was whether at this point you are. Making as much money as you were making or not, but yes, no, I completely agree. That like, quality of life Tris: Oh my God. Yeah. Robin: Very much improved. Yeah. It’s the Tris: backward spending supply curve of labor whereby when you offer people more hours, they take them, but after your boss increases your salary to a certain point, you actually choose fewer hours. ’cause your basic needs are being met. And actually you’d rather buy your life back through doing less work, but more well paid work. Robin: Have we talked about this before? You, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t necessarily. Sorry. If you’ll allow me a, a tiny segue, because I found this quite interesting. Um, there’s a podcast called The Happiness Lab, which I don’t know whether I fully subscribe to, but sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I, I put it on because I think it helps sort of set my, my mood for the day. Aw. Um, and the latest episode I was listening to is about this economist who I’ve forgotten the name of, but I can put in the notes who won a Nobel Prize, uh, a while ago, maybe in the eighties or nineties or something. ’cause of all the work he’d done critiquing the, the standard model of economics. Um, and one of the big ways is this thing that he called, I think he calls it the winner’s paradox or something. And the way he characterizes it is the, is this example where you go into a bar and you say, I’ve got this jar of coins. Um, whoever bids the most for this jar of coins can have them. And if there’s, you know, any number, any significant number of people in that bar, the top bid for that jar will definitely be worth more than the actual number of coins at the jar. Um, and so they will have, they will have lost out, um, Tris: right. Robin: And I feel a little bit like this is relevant in this thing about the job because you always want to be paid more and therefore you always want to work harder. And you, and sort of human nature doesn’t really lead us to necessarily realizing that that’s not really worth it. From a personal perspective, if you see what I mean? Tris: Yes, uh, absolutely. Robin: Because we feel like a winner. Tris: Yes, of course. I feel a little, like, I must mention at this point that like my circumstances of where I...
    Más Menos
    1 h y 6 m
  • Desk Ergonomics, Non-Fiction Podcast Recommendations and Obsidian Deep-dive

    Desk Ergonomics, Non-Fiction Podcast Recommendations and Obsidian Deep-dive
    Oct 22 2025
    Tris despairs at Robin’s desk setup, Robin recommends tech/lefty podcasts, and Tris explains how he’s augmenting his Obsidian use with the open-source ecosystem. 📖 CHAPTERS 00:00 Intros, summer over01:14 Robin’s home working environment31:53 Robin’s leftist podcast recs52:25 Tris’s non-fiction podcast recs54:47 Demo to Robin how Tris makes his videos 🔗 LINKS ROBIN’S SHAMEFUL DINING TABLE SETUP: Ours https://robinwinslow.ukhttps://noboilerplate.orghttps://lostterminal.comhttps://modemprometheus.comhttps://phosphenecatalogue.com External Scott Hanselman’s “Brain, Back, Buns, and Bites” articlePresenterm Robin’s podcast list The InterceptDrop Site NewsMacro DoseDeconstructedPolitics Theory OtherFactually with Adam ConoverOn the MediaTech Policy PressTech DirtEach Week Work Repeat Tris’s podcast list Self-Directed ResearchWB-40Cortex 🧑 CREDITS Decapsulate is a NAMTAO Production (namtao.com) It is hosted by: Tristram Oaten (https://mastodon.social/@0atman)Robin Winslow (https://union.place/@nottrobin) This work is BrainMade (https://brainmade.org) Transcript Intros, summer over Tris: Right. There we go. September, I can’t believe it. Where’s the summer gone or where’s the summer going? Robin: mean, it’s crazy to be, for me, obviously it, it’s, it means kids starting school. Tris: Of course. Right. That’s exciting. Robin: the school holiday, summer, even if people don’t have kids, I feel like everything is oriented around school holiday, you know, in terms of what events are happening and all that Organising life around academic year Tris: Right, exactly. Yes. my heroes seem to be great organizes this year around the academic year, and I think that like ending with the summer is quite a nice, like, reset quite a nice big block of time. Although you could argue that winter also works quite well, but we we’re no longer in the Roman Empire where everything stops for four months for an enormous single month cold winter. Robin: Yeah. Tris: so school holidays, my upcoming video, the video is called Obsidian for Students. I’ve timed it for back to school. Robin: Oh, wow. professional. Mental health day Tris: I mean, I’m trying, everyone says you’ve gotta like, get in all this and every single year I miss Mental Health Day. even though all of my podcasts and half of my videos are about mental health. Um, right. Robin: some strong Tris: Uh, Robin: don’t you, for the lead up to that. Robin’s home working environment Tris: yes, exactly. So we were gonna talk about some other stuff, but I have sneaked in an extra extra topic because you mentioned just now that you were interested in setting up a new workspace in your new house. Robin: Yes, Tris: opinions. Tell me. Robin: Yeah. So I, sent you the photo of what my setup right now looks like, which is just that I moved into this house, Tris: Oh. Robin: was full of. Furniture because it’s, um, you know, furnished place. It used to be an Airbnb, so it was like really kitted out and I’ve already shipped out a couple of beds into a storage place. and I just haven’t gone around to like, getting rid of this table because if I get rid of this table right now, I have nothing else to work on. But ul ultimately I think I want this room to be to be like a massive play place for the kids when I’m not working. So I kind of want a desk that is a work desk. Like I think I’ve given up on the idea of having an actual dining table in this room, which is what this table Tris: Yeah. Gotcha. Robin: so I want a desk that is a work desk that I can kind of put away behind the, the door or something quite easily, um, if I need to. but otherwise, when it comes out, it’s like a proper workstation and I’ve got a proper chair a little bit of an A DHD thing. It’s Tris: Mm-hmm. Robin: of the life I had I got very used to just working ad hoc wherever, so I never Tris: Oh, Robin: a place to work, and now I’m Tris: right. That’s where everyone starts. Robin: improve that. So I, I have very little experience in this and I wanna do it. Tris: I must tell the listener. What I am seeing here, because this photo is, it looks like a nightmare. this is a, a dining table with like a flat top, that a weird crisscrossed are very arty, legs holding it up. that is not the worst part, the worst part of the dining chairs that are around it, they look very soft and comfortable. But these are hurting my back even to look at, these are making me very sad. I do appreciate the, the microphone boom arm that, that I bullied Robin into getting. So that’s why that’s working very nicely. Robin: we can put the Tris: Do IS Yeah. Yeah. As long as you’re happy with it. but yeah, we can put it in the show notes. That sounds good. am I seeing a Mac wireless keyboard in front of you there? Oh my God. We will return to that, Robin: I’m Tris: at least the laptop. Hmm. Robin: I love, like I know, I know. I think our taste in keyboards is, is very ...
    Más Menos
    1 h y 3 m
Todavía no hay opiniones