Episode 276: Mini AI / Cursor Update (+ Running)

I work more now because it is intoxicating what you were able to do with this stuff, which

is kind of like, I've heard on podcasts being like, wasn't supposed to free us from work

and it's like, this is not work.

I am Harry Potter with the Elder One.

Welcome to ADSP the podcast episode 276 recorded on February 26, 2026.

My name is Connor and today with my co-host, Bryce, we give a mini update on our AI and

cursor usage as well as chat about running and more.

Oh, I bought running shoes, by the way.

I did buy running shoes.

It is better.

You were correct that I needed to own running shoes if you don't know.

This guy saying his knees hurt while he's running or whatever and I'm like, well, what

kind of running shoes are you running?

And he's like, oh, do I need running shoes?

I'm just like, yes, you need running, I guess maybe I'm being what's the word, elitist

about running knowledge.

Maybe it's not a well known fact.

If you are having knee troubles, shin troubles and you're trying to get into running, especially

if you are above the age, we'll just call it 30.

I'm not saying anything about people over 30, just when you're young, that doesn't

really matter.

The older you get, the more important it is, you need a decent pair of running shoes.

The more cushion, the better for protecting joints and stuff.

And if you've had a pair for like four years, you probably need a new pair.

I get a new pair every like 600 kilometers.

I won't say how frequently that is, but it's pretty frequent because you want to be able

to exercise and walk for a long time.

We may not be thinking about it in our 30s, but at some point when we get the 60, 70s,

80s, you're going to start to have joint problems and the better the shoes, the longer your joints

are going to work for.

So we did not end up doing the 5K on Valentine's Day because Ramona was very sick and it was

very cold and I could not make the sale ongoing through with it.

But we are going to sign up for some other 5K, but I stopped running for a little bit

after the first snowstorm in New York and it's been hard for me to get back into it.

Part of the problem is it's been too cold for Ramona to come running with me and I am

not as motivated to run when my girlfriend is not there to embarrass me by running a lot

faster than me.

So I keep telling her, you need to come back and start running with me again because it

will be better for me if you are there to force me to keep going.

You just got to run enough until you get addicted to it.

I have a race on Sunday called the Chili Half Marathon which I've run twice before and

it's usually been right above freezing, you know, 0 degrees for Canadians, 32 for Americans.

I should say Canadians and the rest of the world.

And this Sunday it's supposed to be minus 12 feels like minus 18 which is got to be like

potentially below 0 for Fahrenheit folks and I'm very unexcited about it, but you sign

up for it, you got to do it.

Only one time in my race have I ever missed a race and it's because I was deathly ill because

my nephew Franklin gave me some virus which made it impossible to leave bed for like a

couple of days.

One of the big factors in us cancelsing was a misperception about the timing that I only

realized at the last minute which is remote has been taking these acting and then these

speech classes and she has one on Saturday and we signed up for the race and they said

like this starting time was like at 8 a.m.

I'm like that's great like 8 a.m. 30 like a 5k I'll take like you know like 30 minutes

you know tops for us so then we'll be done in shop time to get to our class at noon

and then I realize that they don't probably don't have all the people start at the same

time and we be like very inexperienced runners are probably not starting in the first group

which is probably the like professional or very fast runners who have run a lot before.

So we probably would not it would like not have been possible for us to have done that

anyways probably.

Yeah that makes sense.

Well I look forward to your future race your future times and I'm glad you got running

shoes.

I have a question for you hey hey technical question not related to our the other stuff

we have going on which is have you started playing around with Claude code at all yet?

No although we can chat about this I'm going to cut it into the next episode folks because

and there's a lot of here's so here's the preview Bryce because I don't have time to record

for a couple hours today Bryce and I are going to record sometime next week and that's

where we got a lot of stuff we got to talk about parrot we got to talk about a ray box

I've been dying to talk about it and also in general we got to talk about the state A.I.'s

back folks I mean it never left but it's it's is it back a sure we'll call it a we'll

say it's back the topic of it is back on the podcast.

It's better than ever.

Yeah I asked this question less is like a podcast question leading to a discussion more

is like I just need an answer to the question now so the the answer is no I have not tried

Claude code yet still I'm still cursor-pilled so so but with cursor the thing I'm increasingly

finding with cursor is it's been a force multiplier for me but I think it could be a lot more

of a force multiplier if I didn't have to approve the commands and so at Nvidia we they

said I found it in email and also too we can actually talk about this I mean so there

was an article published by cursor that said 30,000 people in video are daily active users

of cursor but I was I hit my peak rating of 168 which put me in the I don't know whatever

top percentage and I've been really loving cursor and that is the main thing though because

it's a corporate you know version it has a lot of safety restrictions and a lot of that

requires us to you know basically approve any shell command but they changed it recently

so that you cannot do allow all so they they changed it back in January saying that

they were rolling out an auto you know approved for a list of things I have not been able

to get that to work so I thought that there were three modes I thought the modes were I thought

the modes in our version were that there was a proof of a command there was allow there was

like auto approved with allow with an allow list where you can enter in like commands that are okay

and that then there was like and like just always auto approve like full yolo mode yeah we don't

have the yolo mode we have no I think you're right actually no they're rolling out the allow list

and the allow list is going to contain most of what you need so over time so here's here's my thing

I increasingly find because like what I like I tell it to start and then you know I usually try to

go and concept to do some other task I have not yet set it up to to be doing like multiple

chance at a time or sorry I sometimes are a log code with cursor sometimes with cursor cursor it's

just by default you don't have to send anything up no no but like like I would need to like

set up like get work trees or something if I want to have like if I want to do two tasks that

might touch the same files and I spin that up in like two separate chats oh you want you want

multiple agents working on different tasks not multiple agents working on a single task to get

you the best responses fastest possible no because like the responses that I do get are generally

like good enough like I don't need more power for each individual request you're not pushing it

you're not pushing it hard enough brace I guess I guess maybe I do need it I guess but no maybe

that's not true because if it did take if I got better responses or if it took less time that

would accelerate me to but it's almost certainly the thing that's increasingly getting me is the like

command approval in part of it's because one of the things I've been doing a lot has been working

on our like educational content and on like the basically the DevOps setup for that which I think

is a little bit more like command oriented it's not just like purely writing code it's like write

some code and then like go and test something so I really want to be able to give it a task and

then like let it go and do its own thing what I've heard is that cloud code has some sort of sandboxing

mode where it will go and run its thing in a sandbox and like as a sandbox it doesn't have network

access so it has like limited damage that it can do I'm scared of the allow list I guess because

I think even with the allow list I would feel uncomfortable like working on the production code

base on a machine where like I could mess things up I thought maybe about just like setting up a

containerized environment and then in the containerized environment running running a cursor where

like it doesn't have access to anything that can touch the corporate that but yeah I was wondering

if you tried it yet I think I'm going to try to set it up like sometime next week because I

got a big backlog of stuff I got to do I think if I can have it go off and do its things on its own

and then come back to me with like a full PR I can look at I think that'll be better the other thing

and I'm going to have to show you this next week once I get it fully set up but I've come to the

determination that I think that I I it would be very challenging me for me to go work at anywhere

else it's not Nvidia because I'm increasingly starting to believe that Nvidia has the best access

to AI tools to use for our day-to-day work yeah I think this was maybe not true three or six months ago

but you know like that per cursor blog post that went out like I think that's indicative

of like about using cursor I think that's indicative of like a change here and I think there's

some pretty interesting tooling that we're like now dog foodying and playing around with

and like it's funny to me like how now it's become like a job like our requirement for me in any

job I would go to would be that I would have to be able to have access to to like AI coding tools

and you know you and I I think I've never really worried much about the budget for our token usage

and I think that that's in part because we're at a big company and at specifically in video

where our business is the token generation but I think that other people you know

who are not here who are paying for themselves for their tokens you know are a lot more constrained

by that yeah well we have to wrap this up and this is technically already not airing till next week

but yeah I've got so much to say yes I agree I mean I'm not going anywhere I love working for

Nvidia obviously it's an amazing company to work for right now if there are if I were to leave

there's only two companies I would consider leaving to ones anthropic and ones any sphere the

company that makes cursor now for basically the same reasons that you said like I am now I'm trying

to completely re architect the way that I think about everything like me too and this this we'll

talk about this more like next week but literally and and Shima is to thank for this my wife because

I've been building all this stuff like a ray box dashboards behind a ray box I have another website

and like I'm writing a book that's built on top of a ray box I'm building a whole other platform

built on top of a ray box and then I have a whole other things that I'm going to build and I was

whining about Descript and these AI podcast editing tools and I was just like they're all just garbage

like and Shima I was whining about it to her and she hears me like nonstop ad nauseam saying how

amazing these tools are and she sees what I'm doing with it and she's just like I she understands

why like yeah I work more now because it is intoxicating what you were able to do with this stuff

which is kind of like I've heard on podcasts being like wasn't wasn't this supposed to free us

from work and it's like this is not work I am I am Harry Potter with the elder the elder one I don't

know anyways there's some wand it's like the the ultimate one that's what it feels like and I was

wanting about this stuff and she's like why don't you just go build your own podcast editor because

like I want to be in the world like I spend so many hours a week on like content creation of just

removing this cleaning up audio tracks like you know and all this stuff and like

AI will be able to do it all at one point I still want creative control of when I insert

like tracks from some you know a movie or song or whatever or some you know advertisement

and I was just like well it's it's a pretty tall task to like replace audacity the features

that I want from it but then I was thinking and I was like well I do why why can't I do it

five hours later I have this like minimal thing and and now like I'm I've realized that I have

complaints about everything like the podcast players that I use like like anyway so I just realized

like I I have the ability to build the world and I'm just gonna go build it it literally it's just

the time in the day that I need in order and and and and people like why why would you go create your

own podcast player I spend more time editing and listening to podcasts than any person I know

and I have a very very good like intuition for like good design and like we always

but well like most importantly like you spend a lot of time doing the editing so why not

automate it exactly and the other thing is even just consuming podcasts like there are so many

complaints that I have and like you know super simple ideas first of all no no ads at all in the

podcast player I don't want to make money off of this thing I wanted this for myself so it's a

better experience second thing so that's it's no ads but what if we could do better what if I could

use AI to skip automatically skip the ads for me in the in the daily it's 30 seconds at the

beginning 60 seconds in the middle sometimes you know 15 seconds at the end before the other

things you need to know in other podcasts it's like you know eight minutes at the beginning the

podcast 10 seconds like if this takes off you're going to get canceled by all the podcast creators

who are going to be like hey you taking my revenue no you know what we've got ad blockers on

on chrome and you know I'm already skipping the ads myself manually just like like and that's

the thing is like I I know I know that's why I know the daily has 30 seconds at the beginning 60

in the middle and like I have my podcast player setup you can customize like the skip ahead 30 skip

back 10 like like anyways and and also to like there's just in the podcast player that I use

Castbox it's so awful it's got all these community features it's got all these like top podcasts

and and the thing is I want to switch to Spotify they don't have a queue how what podcast player

in there it's like I use podcast addict and it's like okay because I'm on Android and it's like okay

but not yeah like like a lot of the same problems I know that they're good and Shima was saying that

even I was playing around with her Apple podcast because she's on an iPhone and she was like oh I've

got so many complaints the same thing that happens on Castbox is like after a certain number of days

if you haven't listened to it it like removes it from your device they separate downloaded episodes

versus the anyways the point being there's a whole episode we have to have on like you know

just being like an idea guy like I have had so many ideas for so many years that I just didn't

have the time or the the knowledge to like go and implement like I would never go create my own

podcast player like app but now like you could probably do that in a day on a weekend like the idea

person thing is why I think I need to prioritize getting like the sandboxing setup because I've

had this big I was just going through my to do this and I have this big backlog of like things that

like I know I know the scope of the project I know exactly how to describe what needs to be done

and if like if if a draft of it is presented to me I can I can direct it to the finish line I just

like but I have like 20 of these things I can't if the way that I'm using the AI is that I'm like

monitoring like you know monitoring it doing each one of those 20 tasks serially it's not gonna work

but if I can if I can go and tell it like do these 20 things come back to me and then spend a day

reviewing those 20 things it's a world that reward may reward people with ADHD but anyways I

should let you go yeah and I gotta it's so sad though though I said and that's the thing we were

I was supposed to stop recording 20 minutes ago and then it's just I'm so excited to talk about

this stuff I've recorded two different clips from two different podcasts and one of them is from

the Peter Steinberger the guy that did OpenClaw formerly Mulp Claw formerly Claw bought and oh my

God it's just he's just like you get what's one of the quotes is a good driver can get results from

any of these models and then there was I didn't clip it but there was a guy the guy that is doing

ghosty Hashimoto you know he's he was saying that like he's talking about exactly what you're saying

is that he's very specific about which models he uses you know high-cool librarian and one other

one so for the simple tasks he delegates there and I do the same anyways there's so much stuff to talk

about we'll leave it there maybe maybe I will release this episode next week and then you'll be

hearing us well maybe we'll look anyway I figured out it's too much stuff to talk about you got one

final thing to say nothing for the podcast just well okay I guess it is for the podcast which is

we've there's two guest ideas that we've talked about in the past and that have come up and I

have on my to-do list to like think about them and it's a Chris Leary who is one of the main guys

like he came up yeah we've already talked about him and he's J.F's co-host of J.B do you want

do we want to reach out to him and see about schedule and a time to record with him and not yet

because we're gonna record a lot next week or the week after which is gonna be like three or four

episodes of content but sure later in the year that's true that's true and the other one would be

I mean if this is gonna be on the podcast I guess he's potentially gonna find out because

someone who knows him might let him know yeah the other would be to have Emily Berger on

yeah we could get him on as well what happened to Carpathian have Carpathian didn't reply to my

emails come on Carpathian the path to Carpathian let's go because that's what Bryce and I were talking

offline who knows how much of this makes it in but about like the guests that I want to talk to yeah

and honestly I was like you know I used to be programming Mr. programming languages Mr.

Algorithm I still love that stuff but like let's be honest programming languages don't matter anymore

ideas matter and actually I was talking to Michael my boss and and he was like no ideas are diamond

that doesn't insights are what matters insights are ideas worth keeping and I love that quote I love

that quote I'm gonna put it on a t-shirt insights are it yeah that's a very Michael Garland quote

yeah and but like Ilya Suskiver Andre Carpathi who are the other people that I mentioned there

was four people and I couldn't figure out a fifth that I wanted to talk to you know Dario Amadei

he's two CEO-ish I don't want to talk to Sam Altman I don't oh yeah Dema Susavis he's definitely

top three anyways there's a couple others if we could get those people on but they're just they're

two we're not a big enough we're top five pop percent podcast but we're not a top point one you know

I think that like I think we ought to reach out to one or two people and see if we can schedule

something for later in the year because otherwise we'll just talk about guests and not actually

pull them on here's a here's a what do you call it adsp adsp promise is that the next time

Bryce and I record after yeah the next time we'll have a guest yeah um might not be any of the people

we just mentioned you might not even hear this right now be sure to check these show notes either

in your podcast app or at adsp the podcast dot com for links to anything we mentioned in today's

episode as well as a link to a get up discussion where you can leave thoughts comments and questions

thanks for listening we hope you enjoyed and have a great day

the tagline of our podcast it's not the tagline our tagline is chaos with sprinkles of information