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At Bellomo & Associates, our commitment to education extends beyond our clients. We learned long ago that professionals locally and across Pennsylvania can also benefit from practical education in estate planning and elder law. Our free professional boot camps differentiate us from most other law firms. As Jeff describes the essential topics we cover—from basic concepts to advanced strategies—you'll see how the health care and financial planning professionals who attend can better support their clients. Participants earn continuing education credits (CEUs) while learning and, afterward, enjoy a fun networking reception that's great for strengthening community partnerships. MULTI-PROFESSIONAL BOOT CAMP 17 Sep 2025 | York, PA | Learn free of charge | Earn 6 CEUs Enroll at https://bellomoassociates.com/boot-camp/ ESTATE PLANNING AND ELDER LAW WORKSHOPS Learn more at https://bellomoassociates.com/workshops/ WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW (00:00) Episode introduction. (05:09) Nearly 80 social workers enrolled in our first boot camp because of the need to better understand the legal issues their clients were facing. (06:49) The success and popularity of the boot camps made it clear that a multi-professional boot camp was needed. Nurses, nurse practitioners, administrators, CPAs, CFPs, insurance agents, and others can earn six (6) CEUs. (09:00) Participants learn the basics of estate planning and more advanced concepts such as taxation, asset protection, probate v. non-probate, beneficiaries, and much more. Afterward, attendees enjoy a fun networking event, which can be especially worthwhile given the range of professions in attendance. (10:36) Our take-home binder is a valuable guide that attendees keep among their most frequently used professional resources. (15:25) We are grateful for our sponsors who enable us to provide our boot camp free of charge. Sponsorship opportunities are available. ABOUT BELLOMO & ASSOCIATES Jeffrey R. Bellomo, the founder of Bellomo & Associates, is a licensed and certified elder law attorney with a master's degree in taxation and a certificate in estate planning. He explains complex legal and financial topics in easy-to-understand language. Bellomo & Associates is committed to providing education so that what happened to the Bellomo family doesn't happen to your family. We conduct free workshops on estate planning, crisis planning, Medicaid planning, special needs planning, probate administration, and trust administration. Visit our website (https://bellomoassociates.com/) to learn more. LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED Bellomo & Associates workshops:https://bellomoassociates.com/workshops/ Life Care Planning The Three Secrets of Estate Planning Nuts & Bolts of Medicaid For more information, call us at (717) 845-5390. Connect with Bellomo & Associates on Social Media Tune in Saturdays at 7:30 a.m. Eastern to WSBA radio: https://www.newstalkwsba.com/ X (formerlyTwitter):https://twitter.com/bellomoassoc YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/BellomoAssociates Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/bellomoassociates Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/bellomoassociates/ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bellomoandassociates WAYS TO WORK WITH JEFFREY BELLOMO Contact Us:https://bellomoassociates.com/contact/ Practice areas:https://bellomoassociates.com/practice-areas/
David Giulieri and Michael Svec, senior portfolio management directors and certified financial planners with the Chesapeake Capitol Group at Morgan Stanley, were guests on Nareit's REIT Report podcast. In recognition of April as Financial Literacy Month, Giulieri and Svec touched on a range of topics relevant to novice and seasoned investors alike.Both Giulieri and Svec emphasized the importance of staying calm and focused in today's volatile market environment. “If you can stay disciplined during times like this, the odds of success skyrocket,” Giulieri said. Svec advised listeners to “have a plan, stick to it, and do your best to keep the emotion out of it.”During the interview, Giulieri and Svec also addressed:key questions to ask a potential financial advisorhow to balance the need to have funds available for key financial milestones, like buying a home or paying for college, with ensuring that you're also saving for retirementadvice for anyone already on the investment path, with a 401K or other investment vehicle, who's tempted to look at their latest account statement right nowwhether this is potentially a good time to either begin investing in the markets or to put additional funds inwhat a balanced investment portfolio might look like and how REITs could fit into that
Nick Hopwood, leads a team of CFPs at Peak Wealth Management. You know it's great to have a team of advisors working together to develop a customized financial plan and investment plan, bc most advisors work as a solo operator. When clients make a change and move from one advisor to another, it often times comes down to communication. In times like these, with 5% swings in the markets, are you hearing from your advisor? You can check out the urgent market video update from nick and his team at youtube.com/peakwealthmgmt. IF YOU ARE QUESTIONING YOUR ADVISOR RIGHT NOW, REACH OUT TO NICK AT PEAKWM.COM/GRUBER FOR A SECOND OPINION
In this episode, Andrew and Chris discuss Chris's new hardware upgrade to a Mac Studio, diving into its benefits for video processing and development work. They share stories about troubleshooting a perplexing bug related to WebSockets and Cable Ready, and discuss the conference proposal process, offering insights into writing effective CFPs based on their experiences with RailsConf and Rails World. Additionally, Andrew shares a game update about Cyberpunk and Chris shares the inspiring success story of the game ‘Balatro,' highlighting the developer's journey from side project to commercial triumph. Hit the download button now!HoneybadgerHoneybadger is an application health monitoring tool built by developers for developers.JudoscaleMake your deployments bulletproof with autoscaling that just works.Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Chris Oliver X/Twitter Andrew Mason X/Twitter Jason Charnes X/Twitter
In this episode of RIA+, Emigrant's Mark Bruno sits with Sam Lewis, the founder and CEO of Fruitful, a financial wellness solution that provides its clients, or its "members", with high-touch advice that is delivered in a largely digital experience. Fruitful's "guides" are already providing advice to thousands of NextGen investors, despite the company being a relatively new entrant to the marke. Lewis shares his perspective on how the needs and demands of younger investors are evolving, and how Fruitful is using digital platforms to provide more direct access to its team of CFPs, personalized investment portfolios and customized savings products. Fruitful has found a way to scale the delivery of advice, without compromising the role and importance of 1-to-1 relationships - and in the process, may offer a glimpse into the future of wealth management.
Send us a textEmbodying real wealth means being true to yourself with every decision–whether in your career, family life, or finances. Today, I'm joined by financial planner and author Julie Murphy to discuss how aligning with your authentic self can transform your financial reality. So many of us are not living the life we want because we feel stuck in our financial situation. Julie offers a fresh perspective on how that shifts when we love ourselves first and create the safety that allows us to choose adventure. Here's what we cover: How to embrace a new kind of discomfort that will enable you to pivot to the lifestyle you actually wantHow our programming has led us to “make do” or “figure it out” even when it's not our job Why listening to your body is the most effective way to make the right financial decisionHow building your trust muscle will help you toward financial freedomExamples to help you learn how to accept disappointing someone in a financial settingThe value of a support system when you're finding financial empowermentI can't wait for you to listen.Julie Murphy is a Chicago-based CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ and founder and CEO of JMC Wealth Management, Inc. Julie received her BS in Finance from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and her MBA from The University of Notre Dame. With 25+ years of experience in the financial services industry, Julie and her team have successfully served thousands of clients throughout the U.S. and abroad. Julie is adept at all the critically important financial and life planning aspects. Consulting areas include, but are not limited to, portfolio management and asset allocation, including risk management, college planning, business and retirement planning, estate planning, life, disability, and long-term care insurance. Unlike other CFPs, Julie's approach is unique. She works with clients to uncover their " relationship" to their assets. Her time-tested program, PACT (P: Picturing Yourself, A: Accepting Reality and Awakening, C: Choosing to Change, T: Taking Action) has transformed countless client's lives.Find Julie here:https://www.juliemurphy.com/https://www.instagram.com/AwakenWithJuliehttps://www.facebook.com/AwakenWithJulieFree IMPACT Workshop: https://www.impactyourlifenow.com/registration-page Books: https://juliemurphy.com/store Free Worksheets: https://www.impactyourlifenow.com/Free-Downloads Find Sara here:https://sarafisk.coachhttps://pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversationshttps://www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/https://www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/https://www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoachhttps://www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!Book a Free Consult
Send us a textIn this episode, hosts Scott Kuhlman and Chasity Owens bring on a special guest - Dr. Gregory Gorbett, IAAI-CFI, CFEI, CFPS, CFII, CVFI, Senior Fire Analyst/Co-Owner of Fire Dynamics Analysis, and one of Chasity's former professors from Eastern Kentucky University's renowned fire program. Recording from the California Conference of Arson Investigators February Seminar, the trio dives deep into the world of fire investigation with plenty of expert insights and good-natured banter.Dr. Gorbett shares his fascinating journey into fire investigation, starting with his family's firefighting background and how a gutsy decision to volunteer for a 45-million-dollar loss investigation in Dallas led him to connections with industry legends like Pat Kennedy. The conversation explores the evolution of fire investigation education, with Dr. Gorbett explaining how EKU's program has grown since the 1970s to become one of the nation's premier fire investigation educational institutions.The episode tackles several cutting-edge topics in fire investigation, including the challenges of standardizing damage assessment. Dr. Gorbett discusses his research on using numerical scales to describe fire damage consistently, which was published in the Journal of Forensic Science. The hosts also explore how ventilation affects fire patterns, with Scott suggesting the need for simple acronyms to help new investigators remember critical assessment steps at scenes.One particularly engaging segment covers the importance of proper terminology in fire investigation reports, with Dr. Gorbett explaining why he discourages terms like "heavy fire damage" and use of personal pronouns in technical writing. The group shares how these teaching moments have stuck with them throughout their careers, often hearing Dr. Gorbett's voice in their heads when writing reports.The episode wraps up with a discussion on the balance between education and experience, with Dr. Gorbett emphasizing that while formal education provides a foundation, on-the-job training and good mentorship remain crucial for developing skilled investigators. The hosts introduce their recurring segment "Can You Use It In A Sentence," challenging listeners to learn the definition of "heuristic" for the next episode.Packed with professional insights, personal anecdotes, and plenty of fire investigation nerding-out, this episode offers valuable knowledge for both seasoned investigators and those new to the field.Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed the episode, give us 5 stars, hit the follow button, and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and anywhere you are listening in from. Follow us on social media!Instagram: @infocus_podcastLinkedIn: INFOCUS podcastFacebook: INFOCUS podcastTikTok: @infocus_podcast
Nick Hopwood, President and Founder of Peak Wealth. Leads a team of CFPs and manages 350 million for small business owners, high net worth individuals, those who are considering retiring soon, and those who are unhappy with their current advisor. Get a second opinion from Nick and his team.
Due to overwhelming demand (>15x applications:slots), we are closing CFPs for AI Engineer Summit NYC today. Last call! Thanks, we'll be reaching out to all shortly!The world's top AI blogger and friend of every pod, Simon Willison, dropped a monster 2024 recap: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024. Brian of the excellent TechMeme Ride Home pinged us for a connection and a special crossover episode, our first in 2025. The target audience for this podcast is a tech-literate, but non-technical one. You can see Simon's notes for AI Engineers in his World's Fair Keynote.Timestamp* 00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome* 01:06 State of AI in 2025* 01:43 Advancements in AI Models* 03:59 Cost Efficiency in AI* 06:16 Challenges and Competition in AI* 17:15 AI Agents and Their Limitations* 26:12 Multimodal AI and Future Prospects* 35:29 Exploring Video Avatar Companies* 36:24 AI Influencers and Their Future* 37:12 Simplifying Content Creation with AI* 38:30 The Importance of Credibility in AI* 41:36 The Future of LLM User Interfaces* 48:58 Local LLMs: A Growing Interest* 01:07:22 AI Wearables: The Next Big Thing* 01:10:16 Wrapping Up and Final ThoughtsTranscript[00:00:00] Introduction and Guest Welcome[00:00:00] Brian: Welcome to the first bonus episode of the Tech Meme Write Home for the year 2025. I'm your host as always, Brian McCullough. Listeners to the pod over the last year know that I have made a habit of quoting from Simon Willison when new stuff happens in AI from his blog. Simon has been, become a go to for many folks in terms of, you know, Analyzing things, criticizing things in the AI space.[00:00:33] Brian: I've wanted to talk to you for a long time, Simon. So thank you for coming on the show. No, it's a privilege to be here. And the person that made this connection happen is our friend Swyx, who has been on the show back, even going back to the, the Twitter Spaces days but also an AI guru in, in their own right Swyx, thanks for coming on the show also.[00:00:54] swyx (2): Thanks. I'm happy to be on and have been a regular listener, so just happy to [00:01:00] contribute as well.[00:01:00] Brian: And a good friend of the pod, as they say. Alright, let's go right into it.[00:01:06] State of AI in 2025[00:01:06] Brian: Simon, I'm going to do the most unfair, broad question first, so let's get it out of the way. The year 2025. Broadly, what is the state of AI as we begin this year?[00:01:20] Brian: Whatever you want to say, I don't want to lead the witness.[00:01:22] Simon: Wow. So many things, right? I mean, the big thing is everything's got really good and fast and cheap. Like, that was the trend throughout all of 2024. The good models got so much cheaper, they got so much faster, they got multimodal, right? The image stuff isn't even a surprise anymore.[00:01:39] Simon: They're growing video, all of that kind of stuff. So that's all really exciting.[00:01:43] Advancements in AI Models[00:01:43] Simon: At the same time, they didn't get massively better than GPT 4, which was a bit of a surprise. So that's sort of one of the open questions is, are we going to see huge, but I kind of feel like that's a bit of a distraction because GPT 4, but way cheaper, much larger context lengths, and it [00:02:00] can do multimodal.[00:02:01] Simon: is better, right? That's a better model, even if it's not.[00:02:05] Brian: What people were expecting or hoping, maybe not expecting is not the right word, but hoping that we would see another step change, right? Right. From like GPT 2 to 3 to 4, we were expecting or hoping that maybe we were going to see the next evolution in that sort of, yeah.[00:02:21] Brian: We[00:02:21] Simon: did see that, but not in the way we expected. We thought the model was just going to get smarter, and instead we got. Massive drops in, drops in price. We got all of these new capabilities. You can talk to the things now, right? They can do simulated audio input, all of that kind of stuff. And so it's kind of, it's interesting to me that the models improved in all of these ways we weren't necessarily expecting.[00:02:43] Simon: I didn't know it would be able to do an impersonation of Santa Claus, like a, you know, Talked to it through my phone and show it what I was seeing by the end of 2024. But yeah, we didn't get that GPT 5 step. And that's one of the big open questions is, is that actually just around the corner and we'll have a bunch of GPT 5 class models drop in the [00:03:00] next few months?[00:03:00] Simon: Or is there a limit?[00:03:03] Brian: If you were a betting man and wanted to put money on it, do you expect to see a phase change, step change in 2025?[00:03:11] Simon: I don't particularly for that, like, the models, but smarter. I think all of the trends we're seeing right now are going to keep on going, especially the inference time compute, right?[00:03:21] Simon: The trick that O1 and O3 are doing, which means that you can solve harder problems, but they cost more and it churns away for longer. I think that's going to happen because that's already proven to work. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe there will be a step change to a GPT 5 level, but honestly, I'd be completely happy if we got what we've got right now.[00:03:41] Simon: But cheaper and faster and more capabilities and longer contexts and so forth. That would be thrilling to me.[00:03:46] Brian: Digging into what you've just said one of the things that, by the way, I hope to link in the show notes to Simon's year end post about what, what things we learned about LLMs in 2024. Look for that in the show notes.[00:03:59] Cost Efficiency in AI[00:03:59] Brian: One of the things that you [00:04:00] did say that you alluded to even right there was that in the last year, you felt like the GPT 4 barrier was broken, like IE. Other models, even open source ones are now regularly matching sort of the state of the art.[00:04:13] Simon: Well, it's interesting, right? So the GPT 4 barrier was a year ago, the best available model was OpenAI's GPT 4 and nobody else had even come close to it.[00:04:22] Simon: And they'd been at the, in the lead for like nine months, right? That thing came out in what, February, March of, of 2023. And for the rest of 2023, nobody else came close. And so at the start of last year, like a year ago, the big question was, Why has nobody beaten them yet? Like, what do they know that the rest of the industry doesn't know?[00:04:40] Simon: And today, that I've counted 18 organizations other than GPT 4 who've put out a model which clearly beats that GPT 4 from a year ago thing. Like, maybe they're not better than GPT 4. 0, but that's, that, that, that barrier got completely smashed. And yeah, a few of those I've run on my laptop, which is wild to me.[00:04:59] Simon: Like, [00:05:00] it was very, very wild. It felt very clear to me a year ago that if you want GPT 4, you need a rack of 40, 000 GPUs just to run the thing. And that turned out not to be true. Like the, the, this is that big trend from last year of the models getting more efficient, cheaper to run, just as capable with smaller weights and so forth.[00:05:20] Simon: And I ran another GPT 4 model on my laptop this morning, right? Microsoft 5. 4 just came out. And that, if you look at the benchmarks, it's definitely, it's up there with GPT 4. 0. It's probably not as good when you actually get into the vibes of the thing, but it, it runs on my, it's a 14 gigabyte download and I can run it on a MacBook Pro.[00:05:38] Simon: Like who saw that coming? The most exciting, like the close of the year on Christmas day, just a few weeks ago, was when DeepSeek dropped their DeepSeek v3 model on Hugging Face without even a readme file. It was just like a giant binary blob that I can't run on my laptop. It's too big. But in all of the benchmarks, it's now by far the best available [00:06:00] open, open weights model.[00:06:01] Simon: Like it's, it's, it's beating the, the metalamas and so forth. And that was trained for five and a half million dollars, which is a tenth of the price that people thought it costs to train these things. So everything's trending smaller and faster and more efficient.[00:06:15] Brian: Well, okay.[00:06:16] Challenges and Competition in AI[00:06:16] Brian: I, I kind of was going to get to that later, but let's, let's combine this with what I was going to ask you next, which is, you know, you're talking, you know, Also in the piece about the LLM prices crashing, which I've even seen in projects that I'm working on, but explain Explain that to a general audience, because we hear all the time that LLMs are eye wateringly expensive to run, but what we're suggesting, and we'll come back to the cheap Chinese LLM, but first of all, for the end user, what you're suggesting is that we're starting to see the cost come down sort of in the traditional technology way of Of costs coming down over time,[00:06:49] Simon: yes, but very aggressively.[00:06:51] Simon: I mean, my favorite thing, the example here is if you look at GPT-3, so open AI's g, PT three, which was the best, a developed model in [00:07:00] 2022 and through most of 20 2023. That, the models that we have today, the OpenAI models are a hundred times cheaper. So there was a 100x drop in price for OpenAI from their best available model, like two and a half years ago to today.[00:07:13] Simon: And[00:07:14] Brian: just to be clear, not to train the model, but for the use of tokens and things. Exactly,[00:07:20] Simon: for running prompts through them. And then When you look at the, the really, the top tier model providers right now, I think, are OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta. And there are a bunch of others that I could list there as well.[00:07:32] Simon: Mistral are very good. The, the DeepSeq and Quen models have got great. There's a whole bunch of providers serving really good models. But even if you just look at the sort of big brand name providers, they all offer models now that are A fraction of the price of the, the, of the models we were using last year.[00:07:49] Simon: I think I've got some numbers that I threw into my blog entry here. Yeah. Like Gemini 1. 5 flash, that's Google's fast high quality model is [00:08:00] how much is that? It's 0. 075 dollars per million tokens. Like these numbers are getting, So we just do cents per million now,[00:08:09] swyx (2): cents per million,[00:08:10] Simon: cents per million makes, makes a lot more sense.[00:08:12] Simon: Yeah they have one model 1. 5 flash 8B, the absolute cheapest of the Google models, is 27 times cheaper than GPT 3. 5 turbo was a year ago. That's it. And GPT 3. 5 turbo, that was the cheap model, right? Now we've got something 27 times cheaper, and the Google, this Google one can do image recognition, it can do million token context, all of those tricks.[00:08:36] Simon: But it's, it's, it's very, it's, it really is startling how inexpensive some of this stuff has got.[00:08:41] Brian: Now, are we assuming that this, that happening is directly the result of competition? Because again, you know, OpenAI, and probably they're doing this for their own almost political reasons, strategic reasons, keeps saying, we're losing money on everything, even the 200.[00:08:56] Brian: So they probably wouldn't, the prices wouldn't be [00:09:00] coming down if there wasn't intense competition in this space.[00:09:04] Simon: The competition is absolutely part of it, but I have it on good authority from sources I trust that Google Gemini is not operating at a loss. Like, the amount of electricity to run a prompt is less than they charge you.[00:09:16] Simon: And the same thing for Amazon Nova. Like, somebody found an Amazon executive and got them to say, Yeah, we're not losing money on this. I don't know about Anthropic and OpenAI, but clearly that demonstrates it is possible to run these things at these ludicrously low prices and still not be running at a loss if you discount the Army of PhDs and the, the training costs and all of that kind of stuff.[00:09:36] Brian: One, one more for me before I let Swyx jump in here. To, to come back to DeepSeek and this idea that you could train, you know, a cutting edge model for 6 million. I, I was saying on the show, like six months ago, that if we are getting to the point where each new model It would cost a billion, ten billion, a hundred billion to train that.[00:09:54] Brian: At some point it would almost, only nation states would be able to train the new models. Do you [00:10:00] expect what DeepSeek and maybe others are proving to sort of blow that up? Or is there like some sort of a parallel track here that maybe I'm not technically, I don't have the mouse to understand the difference.[00:10:11] Brian: Is the model, are the models going to go, you know, Up to a hundred billion dollars or can we get them down? Sort of like DeepSeek has proven[00:10:18] Simon: so I'm the wrong person to answer that because I don't work in the lab training these models. So I can give you my completely uninformed opinion, which is, I felt like the DeepSeek thing.[00:10:27] Simon: That was a bomb shell. That was an absolute bombshell when they came out and said, Hey, look, we've trained. One of the best available models and it cost us six, five and a half million dollars to do it. I feel, and they, the reason, one of the reasons it's so efficient is that we put all of these export controls in to stop Chinese companies from giant buying GPUs.[00:10:44] Simon: So they've, were forced to be, go as efficient as possible. And yet the fact that they've demonstrated that that's possible to do. I think it does completely tear apart this, this, this mental model we had before that yeah, the training runs just keep on getting more and more expensive and the number of [00:11:00] organizations that can afford to run these training runs keeps on shrinking.[00:11:03] Simon: That, that's been blown out of the water. So yeah, that's, again, this was our Christmas gift. This was the thing they dropped on Christmas day. Yeah, it makes me really optimistic that we can, there are, It feels like there was so much low hanging fruit in terms of the efficiency of both inference and training and we spent a whole bunch of last year exploring that and getting results from it.[00:11:22] Simon: I think there's probably a lot left. I think there's probably, well, I would not be surprised to see even better models trained spending even less money over the next six months.[00:11:31] swyx (2): Yeah. So I, I think there's a unspoken angle here on what exactly the Chinese labs are trying to do because DeepSea made a lot of noise.[00:11:41] swyx (2): so much for joining us for around the fact that they train their model for six million dollars and nobody quite quite believes them. Like it's very, very rare for a lab to trumpet the fact that they're doing it for so cheap. They're not trying to get anyone to buy them. So why [00:12:00] are they doing this? They make it very, very obvious.[00:12:05] swyx (2): Deepseek is about 150 employees. It's an order of magnitude smaller than at least Anthropic and maybe, maybe more so for OpenAI. And so what's, what's the end game here? Are they, are they just trying to show that the Chinese are better than us?[00:12:21] Simon: So Deepseek, it's the arm of a hedge, it's a, it's a quant fund, right?[00:12:25] Simon: It's an algorithmic quant trading thing. So I, I, I would love to get more insight into how that organization works. My assumption from what I've seen is it looks like they're basically just flexing. They're like, hey, look at how utterly brilliant we are with this amazing thing that we've done. And it's, it's working, right?[00:12:43] Simon: They but, and so is that it? Are they, is this just their kind of like, this is, this is why our company is so amazing. Look at this thing that we've done, or? I don't know. I'd, I'd love to get Some insight from, from within that industry as to, as to how that's all playing out.[00:12:57] swyx (2): The, the prevailing theory among the Local Llama [00:13:00] crew and the Twitter crew that I indexed for my newsletter is that there is some amount of copying going on.[00:13:06] swyx (2): It's like Sam Altman you know, tweet, tweeting about how they're being copied. And then also there's this, there, there are other sort of opening eye employees that have said, Stuff that is similar that DeepSeek's rate of progress is how U. S. intelligence estimates the number of foreign spies embedded in top labs.[00:13:22] swyx (2): Because a lot of these ideas do spread around, but they surprisingly have a very high density of them in the DeepSeek v3 technical report. So it's, it's interesting. We don't know how much, how many, how much tokens. I think that, you know, people have run analysis on how often DeepSeek thinks it is cloud or thinks it is opening GPC 4.[00:13:40] swyx (2): Thanks for watching! And we don't, we don't know. We don't know. I think for me, like, yeah, we'll, we'll, we basically will never know as, as external commentators. I think what's interesting is how, where does this go? Is there a logical floor or bottom by my estimations for the same amount of ELO started last year to the end of last year cost went down by a thousand X for the [00:14:00] GPT, for, for GPT 4 intelligence.[00:14:02] swyx (2): Would, do they go down a thousand X this year?[00:14:04] Simon: That's a fascinating question. Yeah.[00:14:06] swyx (2): Is there a Moore's law going on, or did we just get a one off benefit last year for some weird reason?[00:14:14] Simon: My uninformed hunch is low hanging fruit. I feel like up until a year ago, people haven't been focusing on efficiency at all. You know, it was all about, what can we get these weird shaped things to do?[00:14:24] Simon: And now once we've sort of hit that, okay, we know that we can get them to do what GPT 4 can do, When thousands of researchers around the world all focus on, okay, how do we make this more efficient? What are the most important, like, how do we strip out all of the weights that have stuff in that doesn't really matter?[00:14:39] Simon: All of that kind of thing. So yeah, maybe that was it. Maybe 2024 was a freak year of all of the low hanging fruit coming out at once. And we'll actually see a reduction in the, in that rate of improvement in terms of efficiency. I wonder, I mean, I think we'll know for sure in about three months time if that trend's going to continue or not.[00:14:58] swyx (2): I agree. You know, I [00:15:00] think the other thing that you mentioned that DeepSeq v3 was the gift that was given from DeepSeq over Christmas, but I feel like the other thing that might be underrated was DeepSeq R1,[00:15:11] Speaker 4: which is[00:15:13] swyx (2): a reasoning model you can run on your laptop. And I think that's something that a lot of people are looking ahead to this year.[00:15:18] swyx (2): Oh, did they[00:15:18] Simon: release the weights for that one?[00:15:20] swyx (2): Yeah.[00:15:21] Simon: Oh my goodness, I missed that. I've been playing with the quen. So the other great, the other big Chinese AI app is Alibaba's quen. Actually, yeah, I, sorry, R1 is an API available. Yeah. Exactly. When that's really cool. So Alibaba's Quen have released two reasoning models that I've run on my laptop.[00:15:38] Simon: Now there was, the first one was Q, Q, WQ. And then the second one was QVQ because the second one's a vision model. So you can like give it vision puzzles and a prompt that these things, they are so much fun to run. Because they think out loud. It's like the OpenAR 01 sort of hides its thinking process. The Query ones don't.[00:15:59] Simon: They just, they [00:16:00] just churn away. And so you'll give it a problem and it will output literally dozens of paragraphs of text about how it's thinking. My favorite thing that happened with QWQ is I asked it to draw me a pelican on a bicycle in SVG. That's like my standard stupid prompt. And for some reason it thought in Chinese.[00:16:18] Simon: It spat out a whole bunch of like Chinese text onto my terminal on my laptop, and then at the end it gave me quite a good sort of artistic pelican on a bicycle. And I ran it all through Google Translate, and yeah, it was like, it was contemplating the nature of SVG files as a starting point. And the fact that my laptop can think in Chinese now is so delightful.[00:16:40] Simon: It's so much fun watching you do that.[00:16:43] swyx (2): Yeah, I think Andrej Karpathy was saying, you know, we, we know that we have achieved proper reasoning inside of these models when they stop thinking in English, and perhaps the best form of thought is in Chinese. But yeah, for listeners who don't know Simon's blog he always, whenever a new model comes out, you, I don't know how you do it, but [00:17:00] you're always the first to run Pelican Bench on these models.[00:17:02] swyx (2): I just did it for 5.[00:17:05] Simon: Yeah.[00:17:07] swyx (2): So I really appreciate that. You should check it out. These are not theoretical. Simon's blog actually shows them.[00:17:12] Brian: Let me put on the investor hat for a second.[00:17:15] AI Agents and Their Limitations[00:17:15] Brian: Because from the investor side of things, a lot of the, the VCs that I know are really hot on agents, and this is the year of agents, but last year was supposed to be the year of agents as well. Lots of money flowing towards, And Gentic startups.[00:17:32] Brian: But in in your piece that again, we're hopefully going to have linked in the show notes, you sort of suggest there's a fundamental flaw in AI agents as they exist right now. Let me let me quote you. And then I'd love to dive into this. You said, I remain skeptical as to their ability based once again, on the Challenge of gullibility.[00:17:49] Brian: LLMs believe anything you tell them, any systems that attempt to make meaningful decisions on your behalf, will run into the same roadblock. How good is a travel agent, or a digital assistant, or even a research tool, if it [00:18:00] can't distinguish truth from fiction? So, essentially, what you're suggesting is that the state of the art now that allows agents is still, it's still that sort of 90 percent problem, the edge problem, getting to the Or, or, or is there a deeper flaw?[00:18:14] Brian: What are you, what are you saying there?[00:18:16] Simon: So this is the fundamental challenge here and honestly my frustration with agents is mainly around definitions Like any if you ask anyone who says they're working on agents to define agents You will get a subtly different definition from each person But everyone always assumes that their definition is the one true one that everyone else understands So I feel like a lot of these agent conversations, people talking past each other because one person's talking about the, the sort of travel agent idea of something that books things on your behalf.[00:18:41] Simon: Somebody else is talking about LLMs with tools running in a loop with a cron job somewhere and all of these different things. You, you ask academics and they'll laugh at you because they've been debating what agents mean for over 30 years at this point. It's like this, this long running, almost sort of an in joke in that community.[00:18:57] Simon: But if we assume that for this purpose of this conversation, an [00:19:00] agent is something that, Which you can give a job and it goes off and it does that thing for you like, like booking travel or things like that. The fundamental challenge is, it's the reliability thing, which comes from this gullibility problem.[00:19:12] Simon: And a lot of my, my interest in this originally came from when I was thinking about prompt injections as a source of this form of attack against LLM systems where you deliberately lay traps out there for this LLM to stumble across,[00:19:24] Brian: and which I should say you have been banging this drum that no one's gotten any far, at least on solving this, that I'm aware of, right.[00:19:31] Brian: Like that's still an open problem. The two years.[00:19:33] Simon: Yeah. Right. We've been talking about this problem and like, a great illustration of this was Claude so Anthropic released Claude computer use a few months ago. Fantastic demo. You could fire up a Docker container and you could literally tell it to do something and watch it open a web browser and navigate to a webpage and click around and so forth.[00:19:51] Simon: Really, really, really interesting and fun to play with. And then, um. One of the first demos somebody tried was, what if you give it a web page that says download and run this [00:20:00] executable, and it did, and the executable was malware that added it to a botnet. So the, the very first most obvious dumb trick that you could play on this thing just worked, right?[00:20:10] Simon: So that's obviously a really big problem. If I'm going to send something out to book travel on my behalf, I mean, it's hard enough for me to figure out which airlines are trying to scam me and which ones aren't. Do I really trust a language model that believes the literal truth of anything that's presented to it to go out and do those things?[00:20:29] swyx (2): Yeah I definitely think there's, it's interesting to see Anthropic doing this because they used to be the safety arm of OpenAI that split out and said, you know, we're worried about letting this thing out in the wild and here they are enabling computer use for agents. Thanks. The, it feels like things have merged.[00:20:49] swyx (2): You know, I'm, I'm also fairly skeptical about, you know, this always being the, the year of Linux on the desktop. And this is the equivalent of this being the year of agents that people [00:21:00] are not predicting so much as wishfully thinking and hoping and praying for their companies and agents to work.[00:21:05] swyx (2): But I, I feel like things are. Coming along a little bit. It's to me, it's kind of like self driving. I remember in 2014 saying that self driving was just around the corner. And I mean, it kind of is, you know, like in, in, in the Bay area. You[00:21:17] Simon: get in a Waymo and you're like, Oh, this works. Yeah, but it's a slow[00:21:21] swyx (2): cook.[00:21:21] swyx (2): It's a slow cook over the next 10 years. We're going to hammer out these things and the cynical people can just point to all the flaws, but like, there are measurable or concrete progress steps that are being made by these builders.[00:21:33] Simon: There is one form of agent that I believe in. I believe, mostly believe in the research assistant form of agents.[00:21:39] Simon: The thing where you've got a difficult problem and, and I've got like, I'm, I'm on the beta for the, the Google Gemini 1. 5 pro with deep research. I think it's called like these names, these names. Right. But. I've been using that. It's good, right? You can give it a difficult problem and it tells you, okay, I'm going to look at 56 different websites [00:22:00] and it goes away and it dumps everything to its context and it comes up with a report for you.[00:22:04] Simon: And it's not, it won't work against adversarial websites, right? If there are websites with deliberate lies in them, it might well get caught out. Most things don't have that as a problem. And so I've had some answers from that which were genuinely really valuable to me. And that feels to me like, I can see how given existing LLM tech, especially with Google Gemini with its like million token contacts and Google with their crawl of the entire web and their, they've got like search, they've got search and cache, they've got a cache of every page and so forth.[00:22:35] Simon: That makes sense to me. And that what they've got right now, I don't think it's, it's not as good as it can be, obviously, but it's, it's, it's, it's a real useful thing, which they're going to start rolling out. So, you know, Perplexity have been building the same thing for a couple of years. That, that I believe in.[00:22:50] Simon: You know, if you tell me that you're going to have an agent that's a research assistant agent, great. The coding agents I mean, chat gpt code interpreter, Nearly two years [00:23:00] ago, that thing started writing Python code, executing the code, getting errors, rewriting it to fix the errors. That pattern obviously works.[00:23:07] Simon: That works really, really well. So, yeah, coding agents that do that sort of error message loop thing, those are proven to work. And they're going to keep on getting better, and that's going to be great. The research assistant agents are just beginning to get there. The things I'm critical of are the ones where you trust, you trust this thing to go out and act autonomously on your behalf, and make decisions on your behalf, especially involving spending money, like that.[00:23:31] Simon: I don't see that working for a very long time. That feels to me like an AGI level problem.[00:23:37] swyx (2): It's it's funny because I think Stripe actually released an agent toolkit which is one of the, the things I featured that is trying to enable these agents each to have a wallet that they can go and spend and have, basically, it's a virtual card.[00:23:49] swyx (2): It's not that, not that difficult with modern infrastructure. can[00:23:51] Simon: stick a 50 cap on it, then at least it's an honor. Can't lose more than 50.[00:23:56] Brian: You know I don't, I don't know if either of you know Rafat Ali [00:24:00] he runs Skift, which is a, a travel news vertical. And he, he, he constantly laughs at the fact that every agent thing is, we're gonna get rid of booking a, a plane flight for you, you know?[00:24:11] Brian: And, and I would point out that, like, historically, when the web started, the first thing everyone talked about is, You can go online and book a trip, right? So it's funny for each generation of like technological advance. The thing they always want to kill is the travel agent. And now they want to kill the webpage travel agent.[00:24:29] Simon: Like it's like I use Google flight search. It's great, right? If you gave me an agent to do that for me, it would save me, I mean, maybe 15 seconds of typing in my things, but I still want to see what my options are and go, yeah, I'm not flying on that airline, no matter how cheap they are.[00:24:44] swyx (2): Yeah. For listeners, go ahead.[00:24:47] swyx (2): For listeners, I think, you know, I think both of you are pretty positive on NotebookLM. And you know, we, we actually interviewed the NotebookLM creators, and there are actually two internal agents going on internally. The reason it takes so long is because they're running an agent loop [00:25:00] inside that is fairly autonomous, which is kind of interesting.[00:25:01] swyx (2): For one,[00:25:02] Simon: for a definition of agent loop, if you picked that particularly well. For one definition. And you're talking about the podcast side of this, right?[00:25:07] swyx (2): Yeah, the podcast side of things. They have a there's, there's going to be a new version coming out that, that we'll be featuring at our, at our conference.[00:25:14] Simon: That one's fascinating to me. Like NotebookLM, I think it's two products, right? On the one hand, it's actually a very good rag product, right? You dump a bunch of things in, you can run searches, that, that, it does a good job of. And then, and then they added the, the podcast thing. It's a bit of a, it's a total gimmick, right?[00:25:30] Simon: But that gimmick got them attention, because they had a great product that nobody paid any attention to at all. And then you add the unfeasibly good voice synthesis of the podcast. Like, it's just, it's, it's, it's the lesson.[00:25:43] Brian: It's the lesson of mid journey and stuff like that. If you can create something that people can post on socials, you don't have to lift a finger again to do any marketing for what you're doing.[00:25:53] Brian: Let me dig into Notebook LLM just for a second as a podcaster. As a [00:26:00] gimmick, it makes sense, and then obviously, you know, you dig into it, it sort of has problems around the edges. It's like, it does the thing that all sort of LLMs kind of do, where it's like, oh, we want to Wrap up with a conclusion.[00:26:12] Multimodal AI and Future Prospects[00:26:12] Brian: I always call that like the the eighth grade book report paper problem where it has to have an intro and then, you know But that's sort of a thing where because I think you spoke about this again in your piece at the year end About how things are going multimodal and how things are that you didn't expect like, you know vision and especially audio I think So that's another thing where, at least over the last year, there's been progress made that maybe you, you didn't think was coming as quick as it came.[00:26:43] Simon: I don't know. I mean, a year ago, we had one really good vision model. We had GPT 4 vision, was, was, was very impressive. And Google Gemini had just dropped Gemini 1. 0, which had vision, but nobody had really played with it yet. Like Google hadn't. People weren't taking Gemini [00:27:00] seriously at that point. I feel like it was 1.[00:27:02] Simon: 5 Pro when it became apparent that actually they were, they, they got over their hump and they were building really good models. And yeah, and they, to be honest, the video models are mostly still using the same trick. The thing where you divide the video up into one image per second and you dump that all into the context.[00:27:16] Simon: So maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising to us that long context models plus vision meant that the video was, was starting to be solved. Of course, it didn't. Not being, you, what you really want with videos, you want to be able to do the audio and the images at the same time. And I think the models are beginning to do that now.[00:27:33] Simon: Like, originally, Gemini 1. 5 Pro originally ignored the audio. It just did the, the, like, one frame per second video trick. As far as I can tell, the most recent ones are actually doing pure multimodal. But the things that opens up are just extraordinary. Like, the the ChatGPT iPhone app feature that they shipped as one of their 12 days of, of OpenAI, I really can be having a conversation and just turn on my video camera and go, Hey, what kind of tree is [00:28:00] this?[00:28:00] Simon: And so forth. And it works. And for all I know, that's just snapping a like picture once a second and feeding it into the model. The, the, the things that you can do with that as an end user are extraordinary. Like that, that to me, I don't think most people have cottoned onto the fact that you can now stream video directly into a model because it, it's only a few weeks old.[00:28:22] Simon: Wow. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's Big boost in terms of what kinds of things you can do with this stuff. Yeah. For[00:28:30] swyx (2): people who are not that close I think Gemini Flashes free tier allows you to do something like capture a photo, one photo every second or a minute and leave it on 24, seven, and you can prompt it to do whatever.[00:28:45] swyx (2): And so you can effectively have your own camera app or monitoring app that that you just prompt and it detects where it changes. It detects for, you know, alerts or anything like that, or describes your day. You know, and, and, and the fact that this is free I think [00:29:00] it's also leads into the previous point of it being the prices haven't come down a lot.[00:29:05] Simon: And even if you're paying for this stuff, like a thing that I put in my blog entry is I ran a calculation on what it would cost to process 68, 000 photographs in my photo collection, and for each one just generate a caption, and using Gemini 1. 5 Flash 8B, it would cost me 1. 68 to process 68, 000 images, which is, I mean, that, that doesn't make sense.[00:29:28] Simon: None of that makes sense. Like it's, it's a, for one four hundredth of a cent per image to generate captions now. So you can see why feeding in a day's worth of video just isn't even very expensive to process.[00:29:40] swyx (2): Yeah, I'll tell you what is expensive. It's the other direction. So we're here, we're talking about consuming video.[00:29:46] swyx (2): And this year, we also had a lot of progress, like probably one of the most excited, excited, anticipated launches of the year was Sora. We actually got Sora. And less exciting.[00:29:55] Simon: We did, and then VO2, Google's Sora, came out like three [00:30:00] days later and upstaged it. Like, Sora was exciting until VO2 landed, which was just better.[00:30:05] swyx (2): In general, I feel the media, or the social media, has been very unfair to Sora. Because what was released to the world, generally available, was Sora Lite. It's the distilled version of Sora, right? So you're, I did not[00:30:16] Simon: realize that you're absolutely comparing[00:30:18] swyx (2): the, the most cherry picked version of VO two, the one that they published on the marketing page to the, the most embarrassing version of the soa.[00:30:25] swyx (2): So of course it's gonna look bad, so, well, I got[00:30:27] Simon: access to the VO two I'm in the VO two beta and I've been poking around with it and. Getting it to generate pelicans on bicycles and stuff. I would absolutely[00:30:34] swyx (2): believe that[00:30:35] Simon: VL2 is actually better. Is Sora, so is full fat Sora coming soon? Do you know, when, when do we get to play with that one?[00:30:42] Simon: No one's[00:30:43] swyx (2): mentioned anything. I think basically the strategy is let people play around with Sora Lite and get info there. But the, the, keep developing Sora with the Hollywood studios. That's what they actually care about. Gotcha. Like the rest of us. Don't really know what to do with the video anyway. Right.[00:30:59] Simon: I mean, [00:31:00] that's my thing is I realized that for generative images and images and video like images We've had for a few years and I don't feel like they've broken out into the talented artist community yet Like lots of people are having fun with them and doing and producing stuff. That's kind of cool to look at but what I want you know that that movie everything everywhere all at once, right?[00:31:20] Simon: One, one ton of Oscars, utterly amazing film. The VFX team for that were five people, some of whom were watching YouTube videos to figure out what to do. My big question for, for Sora and and and Midjourney and stuff, what happens when a creative team like that starts using these tools? I want the creative geniuses behind everything, everywhere all at once.[00:31:40] Simon: What are they going to be able to do with this stuff in like a few years time? Because that's really exciting to me. That's where you take artists who are at the very peak of their game. Give them these new capabilities and see, see what they can do with them.[00:31:52] swyx (2): I should, I know a little bit here. So it should mention that, that team actually used RunwayML.[00:31:57] swyx (2): So there was, there was,[00:31:57] Simon: yeah.[00:31:59] swyx (2): I don't know how [00:32:00] much I don't. So, you know, it's possible to overstate this, but there are people integrating it. Generated video within their workflow, even pre SORA. Right, because[00:32:09] Brian: it's not, it's not the thing where it's like, okay, tomorrow we'll be able to do a full two hour movie that you prompt with three sentences.[00:32:15] Brian: It is like, for the very first part of, of, you know video effects in film, it's like, if you can get that three second clip, if you can get that 20 second thing that they did in the matrix that blew everyone's minds and took a million dollars or whatever to do, like, it's the, it's the little bits and pieces that they can fill in now that it's probably already there.[00:32:34] swyx (2): Yeah, it's like, I think actually having a layered view of what assets people need and letting AI fill in the low value assets. Right, like the background video, the background music and, you know, sometimes the sound effects. That, that maybe, maybe more palatable maybe also changes the, the way that you evaluate the stuff that's coming out.[00:32:57] swyx (2): Because people tend to, in social media, try to [00:33:00] emphasize foreground stuff, main character stuff. So you really care about consistency, and you, you really are bothered when, like, for example, Sorad. Botch's image generation of a gymnast doing flips, which is horrible. It's horrible. But for background crowds, like, who cares?[00:33:18] Brian: And by the way, again, I was, I was a film major way, way back in the day, like, that's how it started. Like things like Braveheart, where they filmed 10 people on a field, and then the computer could turn it into 1000 people on a field. Like, that's always been the way it's around the margins and in the background that first comes in.[00:33:36] Brian: The[00:33:36] Simon: Lord of the Rings movies were over 20 years ago. Although they have those giant battle sequences, which were very early, like, I mean, you could almost call it a generative AI approach, right? They were using very sophisticated, like, algorithms to model out those different battles and all of that kind of stuff.[00:33:52] Simon: Yeah, I know very little. I know basically nothing about film production, so I try not to commentate on it. But I am fascinated to [00:34:00] see what happens when, when these tools start being used by the real, the people at the top of their game.[00:34:05] swyx (2): I would say like there's a cultural war that is more that being fought here than a technology war.[00:34:11] swyx (2): Most of the Hollywood people are against any form of AI anyway, so they're busy Fighting that battle instead of thinking about how to adopt it and it's, it's very fringe. I participated here in San Francisco, one generative AI video creative hackathon where the AI positive artists actually met with technologists like myself and then we collaborated together to build short films and that was really nice and I think, you know, I'll be hosting some of those in my events going forward.[00:34:38] swyx (2): One thing that I think like I want to leave it. Give people a sense of it's like this is a recap of last year But then sometimes it's useful to walk away as well with like what can we expect in the future? I don't know if you got anything. I would also call out that the Chinese models here have made a lot of progress Hyde Law and Kling and God knows who like who else in the video arena [00:35:00] Also making a lot of progress like surprising him like I think maybe actually Chinese China is surprisingly ahead with regards to Open8 at least, but also just like specific forms of video generation.[00:35:12] Simon: Wouldn't it be interesting if a film industry sprung up in a country that we don't normally think of having a really strong film industry that was using these tools? Like, that would be a fascinating sort of angle on this. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.[00:35:25] swyx (2): Agreed. I, I, I Oh, sorry. Go ahead.[00:35:29] Exploring Video Avatar Companies[00:35:29] swyx (2): Just for people's Just to put it on people's radar as well, Hey Jen, there's like there's a category of video avatar companies that don't specifically, don't specialize in general video.[00:35:41] swyx (2): They only do talking heads, let's just say. And HeyGen sings very well.[00:35:45] Brian: Swyx, you know that that's what I've been using, right? Like, have, have I, yeah, right. So, if you see some of my recent YouTube videos and things like that, where, because the beauty part of the HeyGen thing is, I, I, I don't want to use the robot voice, so [00:36:00] I record the mp3 file for my computer, And then I put that into HeyGen with the avatar that I've trained it on, and all it does is the lip sync.[00:36:09] Brian: So it looks, it's not 100 percent uncanny valley beatable, but it's good enough that if you weren't looking for it, it's just me sitting there doing one of my clips from the show. And, yeah, so, by the way, HeyGen. Shout out to them.[00:36:24] AI Influencers and Their Future[00:36:24] swyx (2): So I would, you know, in terms of like the look ahead going, like, looking, reviewing 2024, looking at trends for 2025, I would, they basically call this out.[00:36:33] swyx (2): Meta tried to introduce AI influencers and failed horribly because they were just bad at it. But at some point that there will be more and more basically AI influencers Not in a way that Simon is but in a way that they are not human.[00:36:50] Simon: Like the few of those that have done well, I always feel like they're doing well because it's a gimmick, right?[00:36:54] Simon: It's a it's it's novel and fun to like Like that, the AI Seinfeld thing [00:37:00] from last year, the Twitch stream, you know, like those, if you're the only one or one of just a few doing that, you'll get, you'll attract an audience because it's an interesting new thing. But I just, I don't know if that's going to be sustainable longer term or not.[00:37:11] Simon: Like,[00:37:12] Simplifying Content Creation with AI[00:37:12] Brian: I'm going to tell you, Because I've had discussions, I can't name the companies or whatever, but, so think about the workflow for this, like, now we all know that on TikTok and Instagram, like, holding up a phone to your face, and doing like, in my car video, or walking, a walk and talk, you know, that's, that's very common, but also, if you want to do a professional sort of talking head video, you still have to sit in front of a camera, you still have to do the lighting, you still have to do the video editing, versus, if you can just record, what I'm saying right now, the last 30 seconds, If you clip that out as an mp3 and you have a good enough avatar, then you can put that avatar in front of Times Square, on a beach, or whatever.[00:37:50] Brian: So, like, again for creators, the reason I think Simon, we're on the verge of something, it, it just, it's not going to, I think it's not, oh, we're going to have [00:38:00] AI avatars take over, it'll be one of those things where it takes another piece of the workflow out and simplifies it. I'm all[00:38:07] Simon: for that. I, I always love this stuff.[00:38:08] Simon: I like tools. Tools that help human beings do more. Do more ambitious things. I'm always in favor of, like, that, that, that's what excites me about this entire field.[00:38:17] swyx (2): Yeah. We're, we're looking into basically creating one for my podcast. We have this guy Charlie, he's Australian. He's, he's not real, but he pre, he opens every show and we are gonna have him present all the shorts.[00:38:29] Simon: Yeah, go ahead.[00:38:30] The Importance of Credibility in AI[00:38:30] Simon: The thing that I keep coming back to is this idea of credibility like in a world that is full of like AI generated everything and so forth It becomes even more important that people find the sources of information that they trust and find people and find Sources that are credible and I feel like that's the one thing that LLMs and AI can never have is credibility, right?[00:38:49] Simon: ChatGPT can never stake its reputation on telling you something useful and interesting because That means nothing, right? It's a matrix multiplication. It depends on who prompted it and so forth. So [00:39:00] I'm always, and this is when I'm blogging as well, I'm always looking for, okay, who are the reliable people who will tell me useful, interesting information who aren't just going to tell me whatever somebody's paying them to tell, tell them, who aren't going to, like, type a one sentence prompt into an LLM and spit out an essay and stick it online.[00:39:16] Simon: And that, that to me, Like, earning that credibility is really important. That's why a lot of my ethics around the way that I publish are based on the idea that I want people to trust me. I want to do things that, that gain credibility in people's eyes so they will come to me for information as a trustworthy source.[00:39:32] Simon: And it's the same for the sources that I'm, I'm consulting as well. So that's something I've, I've been thinking a lot about that sort of credibility focus on this thing for a while now.[00:39:40] swyx (2): Yeah, you can layer or structure credibility or decompose it like so one thing I would put in front of you I'm not saying that you should Agree with this or accept this at all is that you can use AI to generate different Variations and then and you pick you as the final sort of last mile person that you pick The last output and [00:40:00] you put your stamp of credibility behind that like that everything's human reviewed instead of human origin[00:40:04] Simon: Yeah, if you publish something you need to be able to put it on the ground Publishing it.[00:40:08] Simon: You need to say, I will put my name to this. I will attach my credibility to this thing. And if you're willing to do that, then, then that's great.[00:40:16] swyx (2): For creators, this is huge because there's a fundamental asymmetry between starting with a blank slate versus choosing from five different variations.[00:40:23] Brian: Right.[00:40:24] Brian: And also the key thing that you just said is like, if everything that I do, if all of the words were generated by an LLM, if the voice is generated by an LLM. If the video is also generated by the LLM, then I haven't done anything, right? But if, if one or two of those, you take a shortcut, but it's still, I'm willing to sign off on it.[00:40:47] Brian: Like, I feel like that's where I feel like people are coming around to like, this is maybe acceptable, sort of.[00:40:53] Simon: This is where I've been pushing the definition. I love the term slop. Where I've been pushing the definition of slop as AI generated [00:41:00] content that is both unrequested and unreviewed and the unreviewed thing is really important like that's the thing that elevates something from slop to not slop is if A human being has reviewed it and said, you know what, this is actually worth other people's time.[00:41:12] Simon: And again, I'm willing to attach my credibility to it and say, hey, this is worthwhile.[00:41:16] Brian: It's, it's, it's the cura curational, curatorial and editorial part of it that no matter what the tools are to do shortcuts, to do, as, as Swyx is saying choose between different edits or different cuts, but in the end, if there's a curatorial mind, Or editorial mind behind it.[00:41:32] Brian: Let me I want to wedge this in before we start to close.[00:41:36] The Future of LLM User Interfaces[00:41:36] Brian: One of the things coming back to your year end piece that has been a something that I've been banging the drum about is when you're talking about LLMs. Getting harder to use. You said most users are thrown in at the deep end.[00:41:48] Brian: The default LLM chat UI is like taking brand new computer users, dropping them into a Linux terminal and expecting them to figure it all out. I mean, it's, it's literally going back to the command line. The command line was defeated [00:42:00] by the GUI interface. And this is what I've been banging the drum about is like, this cannot be.[00:42:05] Brian: The user interface, what we have now cannot be the end result. Do you see any hints or seeds of a GUI moment for LLM interfaces?[00:42:17] Simon: I mean, it has to happen. It absolutely has to happen. The the, the, the, the usability of these things is turning into a bit of a crisis. And we are at least seeing some really interesting innovation in little directions.[00:42:28] Simon: Just like OpenAI's chat GPT canvas thing that they just launched. That is at least. Going a little bit more interesting than just chat, chats and responses. You know, you can, they're exploring that space where you're collaborating with an LLM. You're both working in the, on the same document. That makes a lot of sense to me.[00:42:44] Simon: Like that, that feels really smart. The one of the best things is still who was it who did the, the UI where you could, they had a drawing UI where you draw an interface and click a button. TL draw would then make it real thing. That was spectacular, [00:43:00] absolutely spectacular, like, alternative vision of how you'd interact with these models.[00:43:05] Simon: Because yeah, the and that's, you know, so I feel like there is so much scope for innovation there and it is beginning to happen. Like, like, I, I feel like most people do understand that we need to do better in terms of interfaces that both help explain what's going on and give people better tools for working with models.[00:43:23] Simon: I was going to say, I want to[00:43:25] Brian: dig a little deeper into this because think of the conceptual idea behind the GUI, which is instead of typing into a command line open word. exe, it's, you, you click an icon, right? So that's abstracting away sort of the, again, the programming stuff that like, you know, it's, it's a, a, a child can tap on an iPad and, and make a program open, right?[00:43:47] Brian: The problem it seems to me right now with how we're interacting with LLMs is it's sort of like you know a dumb robot where it's like you poke it and it goes over here, but no, I want it, I want to go over here so you poke it this way and you can't get it exactly [00:44:00] right, like, what can we abstract away from the From the current, what's going on that, that makes it more fine tuned and easier to get more precise.[00:44:12] Brian: You see what I'm saying?[00:44:13] Simon: Yes. And the this is the other trend that I've been following from the last year, which I think is super interesting. It's the, the prompt driven UI development thing. Basically, this is the pattern where Claude Artifacts was the first thing to do this really well. You type in a prompt and it goes, Oh, I should answer that by writing a custom HTML and JavaScript application for you that does a certain thing.[00:44:35] Simon: And when you think about that take and since then it turns out This is easy, right? Every decent LLM can produce HTML and JavaScript that does something useful. So we've actually got this alternative way of interacting where they can respond to your prompt with an interactive custom interface that you can work with.[00:44:54] Simon: People haven't quite wired those back up again. Like, ideally, I'd want the LLM ask me a [00:45:00] question where it builds me a custom little UI, For that question, and then it gets to see how I interacted with that. I don't know why, but that's like just such a small step from where we are right now. But that feels like such an obvious next step.[00:45:12] Simon: Like an LLM, why should it, why should you just be communicating with, with text when it can build interfaces on the fly that let you select a point on a map or or move like sliders up and down. It's gonna create knobs and dials. I keep saying knobs and dials. right. We can do that. And the LLMs can build, and Claude artifacts will build you a knobs and dials interface.[00:45:34] Simon: But at the moment they haven't closed the loop. When you twiddle those knobs, Claude doesn't see what you were doing. They're going to close that loop. I'm, I'm shocked that they haven't done it yet. So yeah, I think there's so much scope for innovation and there's so much scope for doing interesting stuff with that model where the LLM, anything you can represent in SVG, which is almost everything, can now be part of that ongoing conversation.[00:45:59] swyx (2): Yeah, [00:46:00] I would say the best executed version of this I've seen so far is Bolt where you can literally type in, make a Spotify clone, make an Airbnb clone, and it actually just does that for you zero shot with a nice design.[00:46:14] Simon: There's a benchmark for that now. The LMRena people now have a benchmark that is zero shot app, app generation, because all of the models can do it.[00:46:22] Simon: Like it's, it's, I've started figuring out. I'm building my own version of this for my own project, because I think within six months. I think it'll just be an expected feature. Like if you have a web application, why don't you have a thing where, oh, look, the, you can add a custom, like, so for my dataset data exploration project, I want you to be able to do things like conjure up a dashboard, just via a prompt.[00:46:43] Simon: You say, oh, I need a pie chart and a bar chart and put them next to each other, and then have a form where submitting the form inserts a row into my database table. And this is all suddenly feasible. It's, it's, it's not even particularly difficult to do, which is great. Utterly bizarre that these things are now easy.[00:47:00][00:47:00] swyx (2): I think for a general audience, that is what I would highlight, that software creation is becoming easier and easier. Gemini is now available in Gmail and Google Sheets. I don't write my own Google Sheets formulas anymore, I just tell Gemini to do it. And so I think those are, I almost wanted to basically somewhat disagree with, with your assertion that LMS got harder to use.[00:47:22] swyx (2): Like, yes, we, we expose more capabilities, but they're, they're in minor forms, like using canvas, like web search in, in in chat GPT and like Gemini being in, in Excel sheets or in Google sheets, like, yeah, we're getting, no,[00:47:37] Simon: no, no, no. Those are the things that make it harder, because the problem is that for each of those features, they're amazing.[00:47:43] Simon: If you understand the edges of the feature, if you're like, okay, so in Google, Gemini, Excel formulas, I can get it to do a certain amount of things, but I can't get it to go and read a web. You probably can't get it to read a webpage, right? But you know, there are, there are things that it can do and things that it can't do, which are completely undocumented.[00:47:58] Simon: If you ask it what it [00:48:00] can and can't do, they're terrible at answering questions about that. So like my favorite example is Claude artifacts. You can't build a Claude artifact that can hit an API somewhere else. Because the cause headers on that iframe prevents accessing anything outside of CDNJS. So, good luck learning cause headers as an end user in order to understand why Like, I've seen people saying, oh, this is rubbish.[00:48:26] Simon: I tried building an artifact that would run a prompt and it couldn't because Claude didn't expose an API with cause headers that all of this stuff is so weird and complicated. And yeah, like that, that, the more that with the more tools we add, the more expertise you need to really, To understand the full scope of what you can do.[00:48:44] Simon: And so it's, it's, I wouldn't say it's, it's, it's, it's like, the question really comes down to what does it take to understand the full extent of what's possible? And honestly, that, that's just getting more and more involved over time.[00:48:58] Local LLMs: A Growing Interest[00:48:58] swyx (2): I have one more topic that I, I [00:49:00] think you, you're kind of a champion of and we've touched on it a little bit, which is local LLMs.[00:49:05] swyx (2): And running AI applications on your desktop, I feel like you are an early adopter of many, many things.[00:49:12] Simon: I had an interesting experience with that over the past year. Six months ago, I almost completely lost interest. And the reason is that six months ago, the best local models you could run, There was no point in using them at all, because the best hosted models were so much better.[00:49:26] Simon: Like, there was no point at which I'd choose to run a model on my laptop if I had API access to Cloud 3. 5 SONNET. They just, they weren't even comparable. And that changed, basically, in the past three months, as the local models had this step changing capability, where now I can run some of these local models, and they're not as good as Cloud 3.[00:49:45] Simon: 5 SONNET, but they're not so far away that It's not worth me even using them. The other, the, the, the, the continuing problem is I've only got 64 gigabytes of RAM, and if you run, like, LLAMA370B, it's not going to work. Most of my RAM is gone. So now I have to shut down my Firefox tabs [00:50:00] and, and my Chrome and my VS Code windows in order to run it.[00:50:03] Simon: But it's got me interested again. Like, like the, the efficiency improvements are such that now, if you were to like stick me on a desert island with my laptop, I'd be very productive using those local models. And that's, that's pretty exciting. And if those trends continue, and also, like, I think my next laptop, if when I buy one is going to have twice the amount of RAM, At which point, maybe I can run the, almost the top tier, like open weights models and still be able to use it as a computer as well.[00:50:32] Simon: NVIDIA just announced their 3, 000 128 gigabyte monstrosity. That's pretty good price. You know, that's that's, if you're going to buy it,[00:50:42] swyx (2): custom OS and all.[00:50:46] Simon: If I get a job, if I, if, if, if I have enough of an income that I can justify blowing $3,000 on it, then yes.[00:50:52] swyx (2): Okay, let's do a GoFundMe to get Simon one it.[00:50:54] swyx (2): Come on. You know, you can get a job anytime you want. Is this, this is just purely discretionary .[00:50:59] Simon: I want, [00:51:00] I want a job that pays me to do exactly what I'm doing already and doesn't tell me what else to do. That's, thats the challenge.[00:51:06] swyx (2): I think Ethan Molik does pretty well. Whatever, whatever it is he's doing.[00:51:11] swyx (2): But yeah, basically I was trying to bring in also, you know, not just local models, but Apple intelligence is on every Mac machine. You're, you're, you seem skeptical. It's rubbish.[00:51:21] Simon: Apple intelligence is so bad. It's like, it does one thing well.[00:51:25] swyx (2): Oh yeah, what's that? It summarizes notifications. And sometimes it's humorous.[00:51:29] Brian: Are you sure it does that well? And also, by the way, the other, again, from a sort of a normie point of view. There's no indication from Apple of when to use it. Like, everybody upgrades their thing and it's like, okay, now you have Apple Intelligence, and you never know when to use it ever again.[00:51:47] swyx (2): Oh, yeah, you consult the Apple docs, which is MKBHD.[00:51:49] swyx (2): The[00:51:51] Simon: one thing, the one thing I'll say about Apple Intelligence is, One of the reasons it's so disappointing is that the models are just weak, but now, like, Llama 3b [00:52:00] is Such a good model in a 2 gigabyte file I think give Apple six months and hopefully they'll catch up to the state of the art on the small models And then maybe it'll start being a lot more interesting.[00:52:10] swyx (2): Yeah. Anyway, I like This was year one And and you know just like our first year of iPhone maybe maybe not that much of a hit and then year three They had the App Store so Hey I would say give it some time, and you know, I think Chrome also shipping Gemini Nano I think this year in Chrome, which means that every app, every web app will have for free access to a local model that just ships in the browser, which is kind of interesting.[00:52:38] swyx (2): And then I, I think I also wanted to just open the floor for any, like, you know, any of us what are the apps that, you know, AI applications that we've adopted that have, that we really recommend because these are all, you know, apps that are running on our browser that like, or apps that are running locally that we should be, that, that other people should be trying.[00:52:55] swyx (2): Right? Like, I, I feel like that's, that's one always one thing that is helpful at the start of the [00:53:00] year.[00:53:00] Simon: Okay. So for running local models. My top picks, firstly, on the iPhone, there's this thing called MLC Chat, which works, and it's easy to install, and it runs Llama 3B, and it's so much fun. Like, it's not necessarily a capable enough novel that I use it for real things, but my party trick right now is I get my phone to write a Netflix Christmas movie plot outline where, like, a bunch of Jeweller falls in love with the King of Sweden or whatever.[00:53:25] Simon: And it does a good job and it comes up with pun names for the movies. And that's, that's deeply entertaining. On my laptop, most recently, I've been getting heavy into, into Olama because the Olama team are very, very good at finding the good models and patching them up and making them work well. It gives you an API.[00:53:42] Simon: My little LLM command line tool that has a plugin that talks to Olama, which works really well. So that's my, my Olama is. I think the easiest on ramp to to running models locally, if you want a nice user interface, LMStudio is, I think, the best user interface [00:54:00] thing at that. It's not open source. It's good.[00:54:02] Simon: It's worth playing with. The other one that I've been trying with recently, there's a thing called, what's it called? Open web UI or something. Yeah. The UI is fantastic. It, if you've got Olama running and you fire this thing up, it spots Olama and it gives you an interface onto your Olama models. And t
O Genial Insights desta semana recebe Victor Gonçalves, assessor de investimentos. O papo com Genilson Junior e Danielle Fonseca aborda como a combinação entre consórcio e investimentos pode ser uma estratégia poderosa para alcançar seus objetivos financeiros. Aprenda a usar essas ferramentas de forma inteligente e estratégica. Não perca, dia 6 de janeiro, às 19h15. O Genial Insights é produzido pelo departamento B2B da Genial e é focado no público de planejadores financeiros e agentes autônomos. Em parceria com a Planejar, esta live conta com créditos para a educação continuada dos profissionais CFPs.
CFPs are here! The best bets and why from an expert panel hitting 64% this year. #k4wins #gambling #tkr #cfb #cfp #playoffs #TKRpodcast #TonyKurreRadio #TKRApp #KipKeefer #CaseKeefer #TonyKurre #KyGregory Grab the free TKR app to ROCK Apple - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tkr/id1463187328
In today's episode of the Pregame, Mario and Casey recap a drama filled championship weekend in college football. We also preview the bowl matchups for LSU and Tulane, and discuss our "bustas of the week" !
O Genial Insights é produzido pelo departamento B2B da Genial e é focado no público de planejadores financeiros e agentes autônomos. Em parceria com a Planejar, esta live conta com créditos para a educação continuada dos profissionais CFPs. Link com o formulário para o profissional CFP ganhar créditos de educação continuada: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfEdFi8LzVpnagHZt1k9rj82lhEaSDn9GK8Qy8xznw7aXSzCw/viewform
“We need to get the phrase ‘exit planning' out of our vocabulary. I like to call it business transition planning or transitioning you from wherever you are today to wherever you want to be.” – Adam The finer details of this episode:Importance of fiduciary responsibility in financial planning.Relationship dynamics between financial advisors and CPAs.Challenges and implications of fiduciary principles for clients.The significance of being a fee-only financial advisor to minimize conflicts of interest.Strategies for young CPAs to build relationships with financial advisors.The role of transparency and communication in investment strategies.Evolving responsibilities of CPAs in the financial advisory landscape.Emotional aspects of financial decision-making and their impact on clients.Importance of having a clear financial plan and regular assessments.Educational resources and strategies for clients to enhance financial understanding. Episode resources:Summit Virtual CFO by Anders website: https://www.summitcpa.net/Email us with questions or if you'd like to be a guest on the show: youngcpasuccessshow@anderscpa.comWe're hiring! Check out our open positions: https://www.summitcpa.net/career-opportunitiesConnect with Adam here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamkoos/Check out Libertas Wealth Management here: https://www.libertaswealth.com/ Timestamps:Welcome to the Young CPA Success Show (00:00:00)Introduction to the podcast, focusing on career navigation for young accounting professionals. Understanding Fiduciary Responsibility (00:00:22)Discussion on the significance of fiduciary responsibility in financial planning and its implications for clients. The Importance of Being a Fiduciary (00:00:53)An expert explains why fiduciary status is crucial and the potential conflicts in the advisory industry. Questions to Ask Financial Advisors (00:02:37)Key questions for clients to ask financial advisors regarding fees and commissions to ensure fiduciary service. Conflicts of Interest in Financial Advisory (00:03:27)Exploration of how personal financial pressures can create conflicts of interest for financial advisors. What Defines a Fiduciary (00:04:14)Clarification on what being a fiduciary means and its importance in client-advisor relationships. Personal Experiences with Fiduciary Models (00:05:01)Discussion on personal experiences concerning fiduciary roles and the challenges faced in advisory firms. Navigating Non-Fee Only Relationships (00:06:15)Advice on how to engage with non-fee only advisors while maintaining respect and safety. Judging Character and Ethics (00:07:11)The importance of assessing moral and ethical standards when choosing a financial advisor. Building Portfolios and Ethical Considerations (00:09:04)Discussion on portfolio management and the ethical implications of investment choices. Understanding Red Flags in Portfolios (00:11:19)Identifying potential red flags in investment portfolios that may indicate conflicts of interest. The Role of CPAs in Financial Planning (00:12:17)Exploring the need for better communication between CPAs and financial advisors for effective planning. Venn Diagram of CPA and Advisor Roles (00:14:01)Illustrating the overlap of roles between CPAs and financial advisors in client financial planning. The Importance of Dialogue in Financial Planning (00:15:14)Emphasizing the need for ongoing conversations between CPAs and financial advisors for better outcomes. Fee Structures and Mutual Funds (00:15:34)Discussion on the implications of mutual fund fees and the importance of transparency in financial planning. Philosophical Views on Investment Choices (00:17:12)Sharing personal investment philosophies and the preference for ETFs over mutual funds in practice. Building Relationships with CFPs (00:17:28)Discusses the importance of young professionals developing relationships with Certified Financial Planners (CFPs). Navigating Financial Advisor Prospects (00:18:23)Advice on being selective with financial advisor outreach and building meaningful connections. Finding the Right Financial Partner (00:19:08)Emphasizes the need to choose trusted financial advisors over casting a wide net for referrals. The Exit Planning Institute (00:20:04)Recommends the Exit Planning Institute for networking with qualified financial professionals. Understanding Roles in Advisory (00:20:48)Clarifies the distinct roles of CPAs, financial advisors, and other professionals in business planning. Importance of Questionnaires (00:21:29)Suggests using detailed questionnaires to foster understanding and trust between financial professionals. Transitioning Businesses (00:22:17)Discusses the value of early stakeholder involvement in business transition planning. Reframing Exit Planning (00:23:06)Proposes renaming 'exit planning' to 'business transition planning' for a broader perspective. Enhancing Business Value (00:23:59)Explains how proper planning increases a business's enterprise value and operational efficiency. Avoiding Last-Minute Sales (00:24:34)Warns against procrastination in planning to avoid rushed sales or dissolutions. Creating Legacy Businesses (00:26:05)Encourages building businesses that can sustain income and value over time, regardless of sale. Collaborative Conversations (00:26:28)Highlights the benefits of gathering diverse stakeholders for productive discussions. Delaware Statutory Trusts (00:27:12)Introduces DSTs as a strategy for managing real estate investments and deferring taxes. Tax Strategies and Investments (00:30:07)Discusses the importance of long-term tax strategies over short-term tax minimization. Holistic Tax Loss Harvesting (00:32:00)Explains a strategy for tax loss harvesting while maintaining investment exposure. Understanding Concentrated Stock Positions (00:33:46)Discussion on the emotional and financial risks of holding onto highly appreciated stock. Emotional Decision-Making in Finance (00:36:15)Exploration of how emotions impact investment decisions and market behavior. The Importance of Education in Financial Planning (00:38:12)Emphasizing the need for client education and analogies to bridge understanding gaps. Emotional vs. Financial Decisions (00:39:48)Balancing emotional comfort with sound financial planning in client discussions. Client Engagement Strategies (00:40:31)Suggestions for actionable plans to enhance client relationships and decision-making. Connecting with Clients on Emotional Levels (00:41:05)Discussion on the significance of understanding clients' emotional ties to their businesses. Final Thoughts and Future Connections (00:46:03)Wrap-up conversation reflecting on ongoing education and future webinars to assist clients.
Send us a textOn the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Julie Murphy, Author, Speaker and President of JMC Wealth Management about changing the way we think about financial healing.In this episode we discussed:The best investment you can make is in your health. Be authentically yourself. Why you should align your linear brain with your emotional brain. The importance of making conscious choices.Understanding that money is energy. Build up confidence by accomplishing what's important to you. Julie Murphy is a Chicago-based CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ and founder and CEO of JMC Wealth Management, Inc. Julie received her BS in Finance from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and her MBA from The University of Notre Dame. A 27-year veteran of the financial services industry, Julie and her team have successfully served thousands of clients throughout the U.S. and abroad. Julie is adept at all the critically important financial and life planning aspects. Consulting areas include, but are not limited to, portfolio management and asset allocation, including risk management, college planning, business and retirement planning, estate planning, life, disability, and long-term care insurance. Unlike other CFPs, Julie's approach is unique. She works with clients to uncover their " relationship" to their assets. Her time-tested program, PACT (P: Picturing Yourself, A: Accepting Reality and Awakening, C: Choosing to Change, T: Taking Action) has transformed countless client's lives.Connect with Julie Murphy: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliemariemurphy/Facebook: https://facebook.com/AwakenWithJulieInstagram: https://instagram.com/AwakenWithJuliePinterest: https://pinterest.com/awakenwithjulieTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@awakenwithjulieX: https://twitter.com/AwakenWithJulieYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JulieMurphyWebsite: https://www.juliemurphy.com/JMC Wealth Management: jmcwealth.com Free IMPACT Workshop: https://www.impactyourlifenow.com/registration-pageFree Worksheet: https://www.impactyourlifenow.com/Free-DownloadsPodcast:Wake Up To Your Wealth with Julie Murphy (listen on Anchor) (Spotify) Book:Awaken Your Wealth | Creating a PACT to Optimize Your Money and Your Life (Amazon) Awaken Your Wealth Workbook: Creating a PACT to OPTIMIZE YOUR MONEY and YOUR LIFE (Amazon)The 4 Spiritual Laws of Money: Your Journey to Real Wealth (Amazon) The Emotion Behind Money (Amazon)The Emotion Behind Money Workbook: Building Wealth from the Inside Out (Amazon)Support the show
O Genial Insights desta semana recebe o sócio da Genial, e profissional da área de banco de investimento, Mikael Martins, CFA. No papo com Genilson Junior e Danielle Fonseca, ele vai desmistificar o investment banking e mostrar como as empresas podem aproveitar as oportunidades de M&A para impulsionar seus negócios, com a ajuda de um profissional. Não perca, dia 11 de novembro, às 19h15. O Genial Insights é produzido pelo departamento B2B da Genial e é focado no público de planejadores financeiros e agentes autônomos. Em parceria com a Planejar, esta live conta com créditos para a educação continuada dos profissionais CFPs. Profissional CFP: o link com as questões a serem respondidas só estava disponibilizado aqui no dia da live. Quem quiser créditos depois do dia 11 de novembro tem que ir na plataforma da Planejar. Este conteúdo estará lá.
Join me, Savy for Episode 4 of Season 13, with Aaron Chock Independent Partner for Zinzino Supplements and Dr. Pooja A. Patel, OT, OTR/L, CDP, CFPS, CGCP, Founder & Consultant, Aging Together LLC! The Caring Caregiver Show, brought to you by Gimme A Break and sponsored by Givers Guides online magazine, your guide to Caregiving! We're here to bring back the joy of Caregiving, we're here to connect you to the resources that you need, because you DESERVE some "CARING"From this Episode:Aaron Chock - Independent Partner for Zinzino SupplementsAging Together - Dr. Pooja A. Patel's proactive care planning services are designed to empower adults and their families to navigate the complexities of aging, healthcare, and long-term care with confidence and clarityOur Resources:Gimme A Break - Non-profit for caregivers aiming to bring back joy to caregiving, free weekly support sessions offering caregivers a chance to relax, renew, resource and revive. Register or register a caregiver for a break.Givers Guides Magazine - The complete caregiver resource guide. Get your first issue today, as 100% of all profits are donated to support Gimme A Break.Your Host:Savy Makalena - founder of Gimme a Break and Givers Guides Connect with the Caring Caregiver Show:Facebook Page: Caring Caregiver ShowInstagram: caringcaregivershowWebsite: www.caringcaregivershow.comFacebook Group: Click here to join
Pooja A. Patel, DrOT, OTR/L, BCG, CDP, CFPS, CGCP has 7+ years of experience working with older adults in a variety of practice settings as an occupational therapist with specialty certifications in dementia, fall prevention, and geriatric care. After almost six years working inpatient, Dr. Patel left full-time inpatient care to split her time across settings. While she continues to practice inpatient on a per diem basis, she now dabbles in academia as an Adjunct Assistant Professor and guest lecturer, in leadership through various volunteer board positions, and in private practice through her own consulting firm. She also hosts a podcast titled Aging Together which educates the public about various topics related to aging in the USA. She does this work because the elders in our society deserve better and the family caregivers shouldn't have to do it all alone.Pooja A. Patel, DrOT, OTR/L, BCG | Aging Together | aging-together.com | pooja@aging-together.com Sign up for one of our negotiation courses at ShikinaNegotiationAcademy.comThanks for listening to Negotiation with Alice! Please subscribe and connect with us on LinkedIn and Instagram!
Certified Financial Planner: A CFP is the creme de la creme of "financial advisors" Summary: In this episode, David Pere discusses the importance of choosing the right financial advisor and the potential pitfalls of working with the wrong one. He emphasizes the need to look for certified financial planners (CFPs) who have the necessary qualifications and expertise. He also explains the difference between fee-based and commission-based advisors and why fee-based advisors are generally more aligned with the client's best interests. David warns against financial advisors who try to sell products without considering the client's specific needs and goals. He concludes by offering recommendations for finding trustworthy financial advisors. Takeaways: Not all financial advisors have the client's best interests in mind, so it's important to choose wisely. Certified financial planners (CFPs) are the most qualified and knowledgeable advisors. Fee-based advisors are more likely to prioritize the client's needs, while commission-based advisors may be motivated by selling products. Avoid advisors who try to sell products without considering your specific financial situation and goals. Do thorough research and ask for recommendations to find trustworthy financial advisors. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction: The Importance of Choosing the Right Financial Advisor 02:27 The Importance of Certified Financial Planners (CFPs) 03:22 Differentiating Between Fee-Based and Commission-Based Advisors 04:16 Beware of Advisors Who Push Products 09:09 Tips for Finding Trustworthy Financial Advisors 10:04 Recap and Conclusion Apply for the War Room Mastermind group today: https://www.frommilitarytomillionaire.com/mastermind-application/ - Download a free copy of my best-selling book: https://www.frommilitarytomillionaire.com/free-book - Gain free access to receive our investment opportunities directly in your inbox: https://www.frommilitarytomillionaire.com/investor/ - SUBSCRIBE: https://bit.ly/2Q3EvfE - Website: https://www.frommilitarytomillionaire.com/start-here/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frommilitarytomillionaire/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/militarymillionaire/ - My name is David Pere, I am an active duty Marine, and have realized that service members and the working class use the phrase "I don't get paid enough" entirely too often. The reality is that most often our financial situation is self-inflicted. After having success with real estate investing, I started From Military to Millionaire to teach personal finance and real estate investing to service members and the working class. As a result, I have helped many of my readers increase their savings gap, and increase their chances of achieving financial freedom! - Click here to SUBSCRIBE: https://bit.ly/2Q3EvfE to the channel for more awesome videos! THIS SITE IS INDEPENDENTLY OWNED AND OPERATED. ALL OPINIONS EXPRESSED HEREIN ARE MY OWN. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED ON THIS SITE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR OR THE AUTHOR'S INVITED GUEST POSTERS, AND MAY NOT REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE US GOVERNMENT, THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, OR THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS. Keywords: financial advisors, financial planners, certified financial planner, fee-based advisors, commission-based advisors, choosing the right advisor
Learn what it truly means to work with a certified financial planner (CFP) and how personalized advice can help you set and achieve your financial goals. What should you know before working with a certified financial planner? What strategies can help you navigate societal pressures and make personal financial choices? Host Sean Pyles talks to Magda Doemeny, a certified financial planner with NerdWallet Advisors, to discuss the power of personalized financial advice and behavioral budgeting to help you understand how to align your financial goals with your personal values. They begin with a discussion of the role of certified financial planners, including the fiduciary responsibility of CFPs, the specialized knowledge they bring to areas like estate planning, and common strategies for cutting through societal noise to focus on personal priorities. They also discuss the innovative concept of behavioral budgeting, which involves creating sustainable financial habits, like limiting dining out. NerdWallet Advisory LLC, dba NerdWallet Advisors, is an SEC-registered investment advisor and wholly owned subsidiary of NerdWallet Inc. The advice provided in this episode of Smart Money was for illustrative purposes only and not intended as financial or investment advice specific to your personal facts or circumstances. In their conversation, the Nerds discuss: financial planning, certified financial planner, personalized financial advice, financial goals, estate planning, financial anxiety, behavioral budgeting, fiduciary responsibility, financial choices, societal pressures, financial journey, managing finances, financial management, money questions, financial behavior, financial habits, spending habits, retirement savings, debt management, investment vehicles, financial coaching, personal values, and sustainable changes.. To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email podcast@nerdwallet.com. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend.
Financial Coaches Network - The Podcast: Build your Financial Coaching Business
Amelie is joined by Rahkim Sabree, AFC, to talk about niching, other ways of coaching, and how CFPs don't have a corner on the market of helping people! Takeaways: Your story is unique to you–no one else can talk about your story the way you talk about it. When Rahkim focused in on sharing his experiences and his niche's experiences, it attracted other people outside of his niche as well. Oftentimes, successful coaches don't tell clients what their goals are, they help clients figure out what their goals are. Consider reaching out to local libraries to do free services. Conferences (AFCPE Symposium, FinCon, Financial Therapy Association Conference) are a great way to connect with people multiple times. Figure out how you can get paid AND how you want to get paid. Don't chase the high of helping other people. Consider formalizing your education–both Rahkim and Amelie thought they knew a lot but still learned a ton from the AFCPE process! Want help building or growing a successful financial coaching business? Find resources below based on where you're at in your journey: Deciding whether Financial Coaching is right for you? Join our free Facebook Community with over 5000 current and aspiring financial coaches! https://www.facebook.com/groups/financialcoachescommunity Already decided you're going to be a Financial Coach and want to learn more? Get 30+ tips and best practices in our free 8-part email series! https://www.financialcoachesnetwork.com/pre-launch-email-series Ready to Launch your Financial Coaching business? Join FCN Launch, our step-by-step program that will help you successfully launch your business in four months and grow it to a consistent part-time income. https://www.financialcoachesnetwork.com/launch Are you already coaching clients and want to grow your business to a full-time income? Join FCN Grow, our program that helps you scale your business to a full-time income. https://www.financialcoachesnetwork.com/grow
Join your host, Kelly Brothers, as he introduces two young, dynamic certified financial planners (CFPs) from CAPTRUST's Sacramento office, Lauren Ralston and Kathryn McCall. Together, they dive into a variety of financial topics relevant to the local community, ranging from the importance of financial literacy, effective budgeting strategies, and insurance needs, to preparing for retirement and managing inherited assets. The conversation covers practical advice on financial planning, estate planning, and the implications of tax laws, making complex financial concepts accessible and engaging for a diverse audience. The experts also stress the significance of starting financial planning early, involve the family in financial discussions, and the unique challenges of aging parents. You can reach Lauren or Kathryn through the CAPTRUST website by visiting: https://www.captrust.com/locations/california/sacramento-ca/ For more information on what we provide at CAPTRUST visit www.captrust.com. You can contact me, Kelly Brothers, through the show at: bisifipodcast@gmail.com To reach me at CAPTRUST visit www.captrust.com/locations/sacramento-ca/ Episode Highlights: 00:00 Welcome to Bite-Sized Finance 00:47 Meet the Young CFPs: Lauren Ralston and Kathryn McCall 01:28 Lauren Ralston's Financial Journey 03:13 Kathryn McCall's Path to Financial Planning 05:03 Diving into Listener Questions 06:21 Retirement Planning: Consolidation and Simplification 08:06 The Role of Financial Advisors 18:45 Life Insurance Essentials for Young Families 22:56 Helping Your Child with a Down Payment 26:00 Introduction and Q&A Format 26:27 Preparing for Aging Parents' Care 33:07 Financial Planning for Inherited IRAs 39:12 Budgeting and Emergency Funds 42:41 Financial Literacy for High School Students 47:06 Final Advice and Closing Remarks
Os investidores de todo o mundo estão de olho no banco central americano, que deve mudar a direção da política monetária, começando a cortar os juros. No Brasil, o caminho deve ser inverso. E como ficam os seus investimentos com essas mudanças, aqui e lá? Assista à estreia do Genial Insights, que conta com a participação do nosso economista-chefe, José Márcio Camargo. O Genial Insights é produzido pelo departamento B2B da Genial e é focado no público de planejadores financeiros e agentes autônomos. Em parceria com a Planejar, esta live conta com créditos para a educação continuada dos profissionais CFPs. Os apresentadores do programa são Danielle Fonseca, especialista em novos negócios, e Genilson Junior, banker, ambos do B2B da Genial.
In this episode, we dive into the impactful work of the United Disabilities Services Foundation (UDSF), a leading human services organization based in Lancaster, PA. Founded in 1970, UDSF has grown from a small local initiative to a comprehensive network providing home- and community-based services for individuals with disabilities, older adults, and veterans throughout Pennsylvania. Join us as we explore UDSF's innovative CAPABLE program, led by Shauna Buchmoyer, MSOTR/L, CFPS, and Marie Olmand, RN, BSN. The CAPABLE program is designed to enhance the well-being and independence of older adults by increasing their mobility, functionality, and capacity to age comfortably in their own homes and communities. Discover how UDSF's commitment to empowering individuals has made a significant difference in the lives of those they serve.
Welcome to Season 9 of The Heart of Hospice Podcast! Occupational Therapists Emilia Bourland and Dr. Brandy Archie are sharing how OTs can improve the quality of life for patients and caregivers on hospice care. OTs are underutilized in end-of-life care, but they're an essential part of the hospice interdisciplinary team. There's a lot of support OTs can offer to make caregiving tasks easier, practical solutions to everyday issues for activities of daily living. Occupational Therapy interventions can include managing equipment, setting up meals, and transfer techniques. It's about problem-solving to make caregiving tasks easier and promote independence for the patient. Caregivers have a big job, so reducing the caregiving burden goes a long way to improving the end-of-life experience for both the person at end of life and the ones who are providing their care. Listen to the CareLab podcast here! YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIieFR9ZQZf4yH59ysOY7aQ or @carelabpodcast Socials for Dr. Brandy Archie, OTD, OTR/L, CLVT, CLIPP: https://www.facebook.com/AskSAMIE https://www.instagram.com/asksamie https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbrandyarchie/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/asksamie/ https://www.asksamie.com https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5kNJnPHL2vU1vv1jTksgJQ https://www.twitter.com/Ask_SAMIE Social for Emilia Bourland, OTR, ECHM, CFPS: https://www.facebook.com/HigherStandardsCaregiverTraining/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilia-bourland/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/higher-standards-caregiver-training/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIfN3ImKGD6pVyiVby86zlw or @higherstandardscaregiver Find all the resources that Barbara Karnes has to offer at bkbooks.com. Purchase the End of Life Guideline Series Bundle here. Find Barbara's new booklet Always Offer, Never Force: Food at the End of Life here. Read Barbara's blog here. Connect with Barbara Karnes on social media: Facebook Insta LinkedIn Twitter Pinterest YouTube Order your copies of The Hospice Care Plan: A Path to Comfort here, now available in English and Spanish! Check out the free library of video tutorials from the creators of The Hospice Care Plan hospice nurses Nancy Heyerman and Brenda Kizzire here. Read more about Nancy and Brenda and their mission to improve hospice care here. Find Odonata Care on social media: Facebook YouTube IG TikTok Hospice Navigation Services is here for you. If you have questions about hospice care or need to troubleshoot the care you're already receiving, book a session with an expert Hospice Navigator at theheartofhospice.com. Book podcast host Helen Bauer to speak at your event or conference by sending an email to helen@theheartofhospice.com. Find more podcast episodes from The Heart of Hospice at The Heart of Hospice Podcast (theheartofhospice.com)
It's Calls for Proposals (CFP) season, and in the process of helping our friends and colleagues flesh out their CFPs, we came up with a few questions to help them frame their proposals for success. After learning about the importance of finding your audience and angle of approach for your CFP, we dive into today's main topic – our Git and GitHub workflows. Joel and Stephanie walk us through their current workflows before exploring the differences between main branch and future branch commits. Then, we explore commits editing and why it's okay to make mistakes, commit messages versus GitHub pull requests (PR), what you need to know if you're new to Git, and what you need to understand about PR sizes and Git merge strategies. To end, Joel shares the commit messages that satisfy him the most, and we discover how to make one's life easier when reviewing PRs. Key Points From This Episode: Our CFP framework of questions to help you build a winning proposal. Why it's important to understand who your audience is and who you're speaking to. Ascertaining your angle of approach - how will you tell your story? The ins and outs of Stephanie's current work life. How discipline and particularly, self-discipline relate to our Git and GitHub workflows. Understanding Joel and Stephanie's workflows - how they're similar and how they differ. The differences between main branch and future branch commits. Editing commits and editing commits history, and why it's okay to make mistakes. Commit messages versus GitHub pull requests (PR). Some advice and strategies for those who are new to Git. Discussing Git merge strategies, PR sizes, and online changes. Joel details the types of commit messages that he finds most satisfying. How to make your life easier when reviewing PRs. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: RubyConf Rubric 'Working Iteratively' Good Commit Messages Shotgun Surgery 'Episode 401: Making the Right Thing Easy' Joel Quenneville on X Joel Quenneville on LinkedIn Support The Bike Shed
In this episode of Bridging the Gap, Matt Reiner connects with recruitment expert Claire Vitale, focusing on strategies to optimize the recruitment process and attract top-tier talent. Claire emphasizes the importance of showcasing your company culture through social media, highlighting team activities and client successes to create a friendly and engaging online presence. She also stresses the necessity of having a strong, user-friendly company website with a clear careers button and maintaining an active LinkedIn page to draw in potential candidates. Personalizing the recruitment process with short videos or personalized messages can significantly enhance the candidate experience, while fostering a trustful environment that allows for employee autonomy and flexibility.The discussion also dives into the evolving work arrangements in the era of remote work. Claire points out that offering hybrid or flexible work options can attract a wider candidate pool, reflecting the growing trend of candidates seeking a balance between office interaction and flexibility. This approach helps companies remain competitive in today's job market. Additionally, they address the challenges in compensation expectations, particularly the impact of inflation on both employers and candidates. Offering competitive salaries, especially for highly credentialed professionals like CFPs, is crucial for attracting and retaining skilled employees.To effectively attract top talent, actively update your social media and LinkedIn pages with insights into your company culture and achievements, making your company more appealing to potential candidates. Use personalized videos or messages in the recruitment process to stand out and make candidates feel valued from the start. Finally, implement hybrid or flexible work options to appeal to a broader range of candidates, aligning with the current preference for a balance between office and remote work environments.More Content For Financial Advisors and Wealth Management FirmsYouTubeTwitterLinkedIn
Jay Metzbower, Jr., is an attorney at Bellomo & Associates. After 10+ years in civil service, Jay decided to change careers and poured his dedication to community service into his education and the practice of elder law and estate planning. He can often be found leading one of Bellomo's many workshops or discussing with his colleagues the latest laws, regulations, and best practices in the field. Jay has two young sons, a penchant for motorcycles, and loyalty to the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens. His mission is to provide his clients the same experience he would want for his family. WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW (00:00) Episode introduction. (01:42) Bellomo's next financial and healthcare professional boot camp will be in September in York, PA. CEUs are available for CFPs, CPAs, RNs, and many others. (02:39) Jay is originally from the suburbs of Baltimore. He was a Hartford County Sheriff for 12 years. A tragic incident involving two colleagues convinced him to change careers and pursue a law degree. (05:42) While in law school, Jay was introduced to Jeff and met the folks at Bellomo. This prompted him to focus on elder law and estate planning through the remainder of school and into practice. (08:17) Jay has always had a passion for helping people, especially those who are underserved or don't get as much help as they should. (09:55) Jay conducts many of Bellomo's workshops and has a knack for explaining complicated concepts in ways that are easy to understand. (13:13) Jay is a huge motorcycle guy and developed his love for bikes at a young age. To date, he has traveled to 20+ states via motorcycle. (15:53) Asset protection can be especially messy for blended families and misinformation in this space can be very costly. Unfortunately, not all law school professors keep up with best practices in elder law and estate planning. (25:18) Jeff and Jay explain the anticipated changes to, and impact of, the federal estate tax in 2026. ABOUT BELLOMO & ASSOCIATES Jeffrey R. Bellomo, the founder of Bellomo & Associates, is a licensed and certified elder law attorney with a master's degree in taxation and a certificate in estate planning. He explains complex legal and financial topics in easy-to-understand language. Bellomo & Associates is committed to providing education so that what happened to the Bellomo family doesn't happen to your family. We conduct free workshops on estate planning, crisis planning, Medicaid planning, special needs planning, probate administration, and trust administration. Visit our website (https://bellomoassociates.com/) to learn more. LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED Bellomo & Associates workshops:https://bellomoassociates.com/workshops/ Life Care Planning The Three Secrets of Estate Planning Nuts & Bolts of Medicaid For more information, call us at (717) 845-5390. Connect with Bellomo & Associates on Social Media Tune in Saturdays at 7:30 a.m. Eastern to WSBA radio: https://www.newstalkwsba.com/ X (formerlyTwitter):https://twitter.com/bellomoassoc YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/BellomoAssociates Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/bellomoassociates Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/bellomoassociates/ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bellomoandassociates WAYS TO WORK WITH JEFFREY BELLOMO Contact Us:https://bellomoassociates.com/contact/ Practice areas:https://bellomoassociates.com/practice-areas/
Continua la tensió entre la CFPS i l'Ajuntament per la ubicació de Barraques
In this episode Randy, Jeremiah and Laura discuss the history and evolution of financial planning, from the Great Depression to the present day. They explore how the industry has changed over time, including the emergence of certified financial planners (CFPs) and the impact of technology. Randy, Jeremiah and Laura provide historical context of financial planning and insights into the future of financial advice. They emphasize the importance of understanding financial designations and fiduciary roles, and stress the need to balance technology with client education and empowerment to ensure financial independence and security.
This week's episode is a great discussion between Steven and Gary Russell, a founding partner of Helium Advisors, about what it really takes to build strong relationships between CFPs and CPAs. Gary shares his first-hand experience with having tax team members in-house, buying accounting firms, and the importance of really building a team, not simply sharing a company name. Steven and Gary provide examples of what does and doesn't work in the real world and provide action items that any advisor can take to level up on tax planning. https://zurl.co/Q6fJ
Show host Arturo Johnson shares his experience with coming across David's content – and how it has changed his perspective. David mentions a study that illustrates the benefits of putting 70% – and not 100% – of your retirement savings into a Roth 401k and the balance into cash value life insurance. Dave Ramsey is famous for stirring up a hornet's nest among CFPs all across the U.S. David unpacks a shortcoming with one of Ramsey's principles. David goes over what can happen when you utilize life insurance as a volatility shield/buffer. The only way to get an 8% distribution rate in retirement is by utilizing a financial tool that Dave Ramsey says is a hot pile of garbage: cash value life insurance. The reason why David likes IUL is because history shows that you can get five to seven percent net of fees over time in your IUL. David talks about something he dislikes in Ramsey's views on IUL and that many “gurus” such as Suze Orman, Clark Howard, and Ramit Sethi say it's a scam. “The IUL is not a stock market replacement, it's a bond alternative,” says David. Mentioned in this episode: David's books: Power of Zero, Look Before You LIRP, The Volatility Shield, Tax-Free Income for Life and The Infinity Code DavidMcKnight.com DavidMcKnightBooks.com PowerOfZero.com (free 3-part video series) @mcknightandco on Twitter @davidcmcknight on Instagram David McKnight on YouTube Get David's Tax-free Tool Kit at taxfreetoolkit.com Arturo Johnson Dave Ramsey Suze Orman Clark Howard Ramit Sethi George Kamel Tom Hegna
Nick Hopwood, CFP, founder of Peak Wealth Management. Nick has 25 years in the biz, founded Peak wealth 10 years ago and his team of CFPS's manage over $300m for high net worth individuals and small business owners, making sure they can retire with confidence. PeakWM.com. Jared Bernstein "chair of the council of economic advisers" clip on MMT - modern monetary theory
If you've listened to even a handful of episodes, you know that IBC comes under constant fire from people that don't understand the process and most importantly – the benefits.Between 401k believers, CFPs and internet commentators to the influencers and talking heads like Dave Ramsey – there is no shortage of critics and detractors looking to discourage the process of becoming your own banker.Whether it's trolls on the internet, or “Uncle Bob” at Thanksgiving, Dave and Paul take this episode to help you navigate the myriad of critiques you may encounter in the wild – and how you can respond..Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash: https://infinitebanking.org/product/becoming-your-own-banker/ref/46/Episode Highlights:0:00 - Introduction0:27 - Episode beginning3:24 - Responding to an IBC hater7:35 - The question of compensation14:23 - Can you setup your policy yourself?16:01 - “Insurance companies keep the cash value after you die”19:25 - “You have to pay interest to borrow your own money”22:05 - “IBC sounds risky”25:56 - “Only idiots buy whole life insurance”32:05 - “IBC is too good to be true”34:44 - Episode wrap-upABOUT YOUR HOSTS:David Befort and Paul Fugere are the hosts of the Wealth Warehouse Podcast. David is the Founder/CEO of Max Performance Financial. He founded the company with the mission of educating people on the truths about money. David's mission is to show you how you can control your own money, earn guarantees, grow it tax-free, and maintain penalty-free access to it to leverage for opportunities that will provide passive income for the rest of your life. Paul, on the other hand, is an Active Duty U.S. Army officer who graduated from Norwich University in 2002 with a B.A. in History and again in 2012 with a MA in Diplomacy and International Terrorism. Paul met his wife Tammy at Norwich. As a family, they enjoy boating, traveling, sports, hunting, automobiles, and are self-proclaimed food people. Catch up with David and Paul, visit the links below! Website: https://infinitebanking.org/agents/Fugere494 https://infinitebanking.org/agents/Befort399 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-a-befort-jr-09663972/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-fugere-762021b0/ Email: davidandpaul@theibcguys.com
Chip Patterson, CBS Sports, addresses some of the latest information released on the CFPs and where it’s headed. If the ACC negotiates an exit price, does this mean the ACC will be done and over? What conversations have been had that are directing these negotiations? Where does Chip see all of this going? Where would FSU go if they left the ACC? Why doesn’t the SEC want to expand right now?
When Americans and others living in the global north (aka Westerners) think about trafficking, they tend to have an image of a child being kidnapped by a bad guy, and then sexually exploited. While that is certainly a trafficking issue, there are all kinds of child trafficking. You may not have heard of orphanage trafficking before today, but it is real and real life horror story happening all around the world, every single day.It is a genuinely horrific idea to contemplate. It is, simply put, the use of children as commodities by using them to bring profit to a business that is characterized as an orphanage through solicitation of donations, inflated adoption fees, and international charitable tourism expenses, and even direct sales of children or child parts. What is it? How can a child be trafficked into an orphanage? Or indeed, out of one? Isn't an orphanage supposed to be a safe place for - well - orphans? Katie Milazzois a repeat guest on Optimistic Voices, and during Season One of our podcast during November of 2022, she discussed her work with the Child Prosperity Centre. Since that time, the organization she headed up at the time has been transformed and has new supporting organizations, and a new Director, who just happens to be Katie's husband, Johnny Donoghue. The organization Johnny now heads up is called the Child and Family Permanency Services Centre, and like the program that HCW supports in Sierra Leone, CFPS works to reintegrate children separated from family care back into families, and to strengthen vulnerable families so that they can care for themselves. CFPS enjoys a stellar reputation in community where they are located, and along with their reintegration work, and because of their focus on child protection issues, have found themselves in a position to witness some pretty terrible orphanage and orphan trafficking in their own community - and have taken steps to address these issues.Katie has stayed in the field of child protection and child welfare, and remained in Sierra Leone. Shd is now a Protection Specialist of Anti-trafficking and Gender Based Violence at World Hope International. World Hope InternationalChild and Family Permanency CentreVideo Presentation by David T. Musa, CRC TCM Senior Consultant on how Family based care models for orphan response can help to disrupt the practice of Orphanage TraffickingHelpingchildrenworldwide.org
**Last day to secure a spot (for a while) in Farnoosh's So Money Members Club**It's Valentine's week, and my birthday week, so I'm kicking things off with a show topic that's near and dear: Why women need to have their own money. Everyone should have their own money, but this message needs to be emphasized more for women who may sometimes feel it's not their strength or role to make money or manage money in a relationship.The impetus for this episode was a New York Times essay entitled Never Rely on a Man's Money. Maggie Smith writes about how her divorce was a shock that led her to a new vow: financial independence. We'll get into her story and bring on our guest today, Maggie Johndrow, a partner and financial advisor at Johndrow Wealth. She's one of my favorite CFPs, and we share a common love for making women rich. We talk about what she sees in her practice; oftentimes, women come into post-divorce with financial regrets. What are those regrets? What are the absolute facts women need to know about their financial lives, and how can they insist upon more financial transparency and equality in their relationship? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Embark on an enlightening path as we meld the celebration of Black History Month with the dynamism of mobile forensics. This episode is a tribute not only to the past but a clarion call for the future, as we honor Annie Easley, the trailblazing NASA computer scientist, while also navigating the rapidly evolving landscape of digital investigation tools. As your guides, we unravel the intricacies of open-source forensics tools, and the necessity of test devices, ensuring your knowledge remains at the forefront of technological advancements.With a constant eye on professional growth, we're excited to share information about upcoming conferences, training and opportunities to sharpen your digital forensic skills. We share our experiences, opening doors for you to learn and grow right beside us. Our conversation takes a stimulating turn as we discuss the Rabbit R1, a new AI gadget that promises to redefine app interaction and its implications for data privacy. As we dissect the nuances of AI in fingerprint analysis, we invite you to journey with us through the maze of modern forensics, where even the uniqueness of fingerprints is called into question.As we wrap up, our passion for the subject matter shines through with the introduction of cutting-edge features in mobile forensics updates, and the vital role of resource management in our field. We laugh over the meme of the week but also reflect on the serious undertones it brings to the prioritization of forensic cases. Closing the session, we express our heartfelt gratitude for the engagement and support that fuels our podcast, leaving you with an anticipation for deeper discussions and discoveries in the episodes to come. Join us, and together, let's shape the narrative of digital forensics and its rich connection to history and innovation.Notes-Honoring Annie Easley-Black History Month Feb 2024https://elective.collegeboard.org/annie-easley-computer-science-pioneerTesting and Validationhttps://www.hexordia.com/blog-1-1/unlock-rooting-pixel6ahttps://blog.d204n6.com/2020/08/setting-up-testing-lab-of-ios-and.htmlParaben Forensic Innovation Conferencehttps://pfic-conference.com/Free Android Training from Belkasofthttps://belkasoft.com/android-forensics-trainingCellebrite Case to Closure Summit and Awards https://global-c2c-summit-2024.cventevents.com/event/ec371a30-107d-4ce4-8bad-44e331148339/summaryhttps://cellebrite.com/en/c2c-summit-digital-justice-awards/Magnet Virtual Summit/Capture the Flaghttps://magnetvirtualsummit.com/https://magnetvirtualsummit.com/capture-the-flag/Rabbit R1https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/9/24030667/rabbit-r1-ai-action-model-price-release-dateAI- Fingerprints Unique or Maybe Not?https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/12/world/fingerprints-ai-based-study-scn/index.htmlLayoffs Due to AIhttps://www.theverge.com/2024/1/14/24038397/google-layoffs-just-the-beginningHidden Gem in iOS 17https://www.linkedin.com/posts/luca-cadonici-41299b4b_ios-ipados-passcode-activity-7152770642168160257-VJ7CAndroid Auto Rebootshttps://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/grapheneos-frequent-android-auto-reboots-block-firmware-exploits/The LEAPPShttps://github.com/abrignoni
Ms. Black wants to know if she can afford to retire early so she consulted with two Certified Financial Planners (CFP). In this episode Ms. Black shares her experiences meeting with 2 CFPs. Find out what they advised her. If you want to know how Ms. Black prepared to meet with the CFPs list to this episode: Preparing to meet with a CFPMs. Black, the host of Staying in the Black, is a single mom, homeowner, and public-school educator in NYC. She owns two properties and is one mortgage away from being totally debt-free. She loves traveling the world with her family and has over $1M in her retirement accounts beyond her pension.Learn more about Ms. Black:Website: http://www.stayingintheblk.comInstagram:@stayingintheblk
Eric Roberge is a fee-only financial planner located in Boston, MA serving clients locally and across the country. Beyond Your Hammock helps high-achieving professionals in their 30s and 40s live well today while still planning responsibly for tomorrow. BYH specializes in comprehensive financial planning and investment management programs to address the most pressing financial needs, goals, and questions of clients and builds financial strategies to provide the best course of action. Beyond Your Hammock has been named one of the best financial planning firms in Boston by Expertise.com and is part of Investopedia's Top 100 Financial Advisors. He is also part of Investment News' exclusive 40 Under 40 list, Wealth Management Magazine called him one of the top 10 CFPs under 36, and Financial Advisor Magazine said he was one of the top 10 Young Advisors to Watch. To schedule a call and learn more about working together, head here to get a free Exploratory Session: www.booknow.so/EricRoberge Thank you for listening to the A+ Parents podcast. If you love the show, don't forget to subscribe, share and leave us a review. Also, follow us online at www.aplusparents.com www.mrdmath.com or on our social channels @MrDMathlive @aplusparentspodcast Also, host Dennis DiNoia has a new book out NOW called “Teach: Becoming Independently Responsible Learners. Order your copy: https://aplusparents.com/teach OR on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09X2B3MG8/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_api_i_DDH16A3BD5X79CSFSQXB To learn more about Mr.D Math Live Homeschool classes, visit: https://mrdmath.edu20.org/visitor_class_catalog?affiliate=10252228
It's time to start thinking about CFPs and presentations for 2024! Eve shares advice on delivering technical topics so that an audience can understand the points you want to make. Then we show how developing these presentation skills for conferences helps with presentations within orgs and why these are useful skills to build for your career. Visit https://securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/secweekly Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secweekly Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-269
It's time to start thinking about CFPs and presentations for 2024! Eve shares advice on delivering technical topics so that an audience can understand the points you want to make. Then we show how developing these presentation skills for conferences helps with presentations within orgs and why these are useful skills to build for your career. Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-269
It's time to start thinking about CFPs and presentations for 2024! Eve shares advice on delivering technical topics so that an audience can understand the points you want to make. Then we show how developing these presentation skills for conferences helps with presentations within orgs and why these are useful skills to build for your career. Visit https://securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes! Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/secweekly Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/secweekly Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/asw-269
Bobak and Shehan continue breaking down each CFP team, this time talking about the other team in the Rose Bowl. Wolverines beat writer Aaron McMann from MLive joins them to talk about what Michigan has learned from the past two CFPs, what's different about this year's team, how it shapes up against Alabama and much more. Thank you for listening. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Laura Nolan, Principal Software Engineer at Stanza, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to offer insights on how to use SRE to avoid disastrous and lengthy production delays. Laura gives a rich history of her work with SREcon, why her approach to SRE is about first identifying the biggest fire instead of toiling with day-to-day issues, and why the lack of transparency in systems today actually hurts new engineers entering the space. Plus, Laura explains to Corey why she dedicates time to work against companies like Google who are building systems to help the government (inefficiently) select targets during wars and conflicts.About LauraLaura Nolan is a software engineer and SRE. She has contributed to several books on SRE, such as the Site Reliability Engineering book, Seeking SRE, and 97 Things Every SRE Should Know. Laura is a Principal Engineer at Stanza, where she is building software to help humans understand and control their production systems. Laura also serves as a member of the USENIX Association board of directors. In her copious spare time after that, she volunteers for the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and is half-way through the MSc in Human Factors and Systems Safety at Lund University. She lives in rural Ireland in a small village full of medieval ruins.Links Referenced: Company Website: https://www.stanza.systems/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/lauralifts LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-nolan-bb7429/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. My guest today is someone that I have been low-key annoying to come onto this show for years, and finally, I have managed to wear her down. Lauren Nolan is a Principal Software Engineer over at Stanza. At least that's what you're up to today, last I've heard. Is that right?Laura: That is correct. I'm working at Stanza, and I don't want to go on and on about my startup, but I'm working with Niall Murphy and Joseph Bironas and Matthew Girard and a bunch of other people who more recently joined us. We are trying to build a load management SaaS service. So, we're interested in service observability out of the box, knowing if your critical user journeys are good or bad out of the box, being able to prioritize your incoming requests by what's most critical in terms of visibility to your customers. So, an emerging space. Not in the Gartner Group Magic Circle yet, but I'm sure at some point [laugh].Corey: It is surreal to me to hear you talk about your day job because for, it feels like, the better part of a decade now, “Laura, Laura… oh, you mean USENIX Laura?” Because you are on the USENIX board of directors, and in my mind, that is what is always short-handed to what you do. It's, “Oh, right. I guess that isn't your actual full-time job.” It's weird. It's almost like seeing your teacher outside of the elementary school. You just figure that they fold themselves up in the closet there when you're not paying attention. I don't know what you do when SREcon is not in process. I assume you just sit there and wait for the next one, right?Laura: Well, no. We've run four of them in the last year, so there hasn't been very much waiting. I'm afraid. Everything got a little bit smooshed up together during the pandemic, so we've had a lot of events coming quite close together. But no, I do have a full-time day job. But the work I do with USENIX is just as a volunteer. So, I'm on the board of directors, as you say, and I'm on the steering committee for all of the global SREcon events, and typically is often served by the program committee as well. And I'm sort of there, annoying the chairs to, “Hey, do your thing on time,” very much like an elementary school teacher, as you say.Corey: I've been a big fan of USENIX for a while. One of the best interview processes I ever saw was closely aligned with evaluating candidates along with USENIX SAGE levels to figure out what level of seniority are they in different areas. And it was always viewed through the lens of in what types of consulting engagements will the candidate shine within, not the idea of, “Oh, are you good or are you crap? And spoiler, if I'm asking the question, I'm of course defaulting myself to goading you to crap.” Like the terrible bespoke artisanal job interview process that so many companies do. I love how this company had built this out, and I asked them about it, and, “Oh, yeah, it comes—that dates back to the USENIX SAGE things.” That was one of my first encounters with what USENIX actually did. And the more I learned, the more I liked. How long have you been involved with the group?Laura: A relatively short period of time. I think I first got involved with USENIX in around 2015, going to [Lisa 00:03:29] and then going on to SREcon. And it was all by accident, of course. I fell onto the SREcon program committee somehow because I was around. And then because I was still around and doing stuff, I got eventually—you know, got co-opted into chairing and onto the steering committee and so forth.And you know, it's like everything volunteer. I mean, people who stick around and do stuff tend to be kept around. But USENIX is quite important to me. We have an open access policy, which is something that I would like to see a whole lot more of, you know, we put everything right out there for free as soon as it is ready. And we are constantly plagued by people saying, “Hey, where's my SREcon video? The conference was like two weeks ago.” And we're like, “No, no, we're still processing the videos. We'll be there; they'll be there.”We've had people, like, literally offer to pay extra money to get the videos sooner, but [laugh] we're, like, we are open access. We are not keeping the videos away from you. We just aren't ready yet. So, I love the open access policy and I think what I like about it more than anything else is the fact that it's… we are staunchly non-vendor. We're non-technology specific and non-vendor.So, it's not, like, say, AWS re:Invent for example or any of the big cloud vendor conferences. You know, we are picking vendor-neutral content by quality. And as well, as anyone who's ever sponsored SREcon or any of the other events will also tell you that that does not get you a talk in the conference program. So, the content selection is completely independent, and in fact, we have a complete Chinese wall between the sponsorship organization and the content organization. So, I mean, I really like how we've done that.I think, as well, it's for a long time been one of the family of conferences that our organizations have conferences that has had the best diversity. Not perfect, but certainly better than it was, although very, very unfortunately, I see conference diversity everywhere going down after the pandemic, which is—particularly gender diversity—which is a real shame.Corey: I've been a fan of the SREcon conferences for a while before someone—presumably you; I'm not sure—screwed up before the pandemic and apparently thought they were talking about someone else, and I was invited to give a keynote at SREcon in EMEA that I co-presented with John Looney. Which was fun because he and I met in person for the first time three hours beforehand, beat together our talk, then showed up an hour beforehand, found there will be no confidence monitor, went away for the next 45 minutes and basically loaded it all into short term cash and gave a talk that we could not repeat if we had to for a million dollars, just because it was so… you're throwing the ball to your partner on stage and really hoping they're going to be able to catch it. And it worked out. It was an anger subtext translator skit for a bit, which was fun. All the things that your manager says but actually means, you know, the fun sort of approach. It was zany, ideally had some useful takeaways to it.But I loved the conference. That was one of the only SREcons that I found myself not surprised to discover was coming to town the next week because for whatever reason, there's presumably a mailing list that I'm not on somewhere where I get blindsided by, “Oh, yeah, hey, didn't you know SREcon is coming up?” There's probably a notice somewhere that I really should be paying attention to, but on the plus side, I get to be delightfully surprised every time.Laura: Indeed. And hopefully, you'll be delightfully surprised in March 2024. I believe it's the 18th to the 20th, when SREcon will be coming to town in San Francisco, where you live.Corey: So historically, in addition to, you know, the work with USENIX, which is, again, not your primary occupation most days, you spent over five years at Google, which of course means that you have strong opinions on SRE. I know that that is a bit dated, where the gag was always, it's only called SRE if it comes from the Mountain View region of California, otherwise it's just sparkling DevOps. But for the initial take of a lot of the SRE stuff was, “Here's how to work at Google.” It has progressed significantly beyond that to the point where companies who have SRE groups are no longer perceived incorrectly as, “Oh, we just want to be like Google,” or, “We hired a bunch of former Google people.”But you clearly have opinions to this. You've contributed to multiple books on SRE, you have spoken on it at length. You have enabled others to speak on it at length, which in many ways, is by far the better contribution. You can only go so far scaling yourself, but scaling other people, that has a much better multiplier on it, which feels almost like something an SRE might observe.Laura: It is indeed something an SRE might observe. And also, you know, good catch because I really felt you were implying there that you didn't like my book contributions. Oh, the shock.Corey: No. And to be clear, I meant [unintelligible 00:08:13], strictly to speaking.Laura: [laugh].Corey: Books are also a great one-to-many multiplier because it turns out, you can only shove so many people into a conference hall, but books have this ability to just carry your words beyond the room that you're in a way that video just doesn't seem to.Laura: Ah, but open access video that was published on YouTube, like, six weeks ahead [laugh]. That scales.Corey: I wish. People say they want to write a book and I think they're all lying. I think they want to have written the book. That's my philosophy on it. I do not understand people who've written a book. Like, “So, what are you going to do now?” “I'm going to write another book.” “Okay.” I'm going to smile, not take my eyes off you for a second and back away slowly because I do not understand your philosophy on that. But you've worked on multiple books with people.Laura: I actually enjoy writing. I enjoy the process of it because I always learn something when I write. In fact, I learn a lot of things when I write, and I enjoy that crafting. I will say I do not enjoy having written things because for me, any achievement once I have achieved it is completely dead. I will never think of it again, and I will think only of my excessively lengthy-to do list, so I clearly have problems here. But nevertheless. It's exactly the same with programming projects, by the way. But back to SRE we were talking about SRE. SRE is 20 now. SRE can almost drink alcohol in the US, and that is crazy.Corey: So, 2003 was the founding of it, then.Laura: Yes.Corey: Yay, I can do simple arithmetic in my head, still. I wondered how far my math skills had atrophied.Laura: Yes. Good job. Yes, apparently invented in roughly 2003. So, the—I mean, from what I understand Google's publishing of the, “20 years of SRE at Google,” they have, in the absence of an actual definite start date, they've simply picked. Ben Treynor's start date at Google as the start date of SRE.But nevertheless, [unintelligible 00:09:58] about 20 years old. So, is it all grown up? I mean, I think it's become heavily commodified. My feeling about SRE is that it's always been this—I mean, you said it earlier, like, it's about, you know, how do I scale things? How do I optimize my systems? How do I intervene in systems to solve problems to make them better, to see where we're going to be in pain and six months, and work to prevent that?That's kind of SRE work to me is, figure out where the problems are, figure out good ways to intervene and to improve. But there's a lot of SRE as bureaucracy around at the moment where people are like, “Well, we're an SRE team, so you know, you will have your SLO Golden Signals, and you will have your Production Readiness Checklists, which will be the things that we say, no matter how different your system is from what we designed this checklist for, and that's it. We're doing SRE now. It's great.” So, I think we miss a lot there.My personal way of doing SRE is very much more about thinking, not so much about the day-to-day SLO [excursion-type 00:10:56] things because—not that they're not important; they are important, but they will always be there. I always tend to spend more time thinking about how do we avoid the risk of, you know, a giant production fire that will take you down for days, or God forbid, more than days, you know? The sort of, big Roblox fire or the time that Meta nearly took down the internet in late-2021, that kind of thing. So, I think that modern SRE misses quite a lot of that. It's a little bit like… so when BP, when they had the Deepwater Horizon disaster on that very same day, they received an award for minimizing occupational safety risks in their environment. So, you know, [unintelligible 00:11:41] things like people tripping and—Corey: Must have been fun the next day. “Yeah, we're going to need that back.”Laura: [laugh] people tripping and falling, and you know, hitting themselves with a hammer, they got an award because it was so safe, they had very little of that. And then this thing goes boom.Corey: And now they've tried to pivot into an optimization award for efficiency, like, we just decided to flash fry half the sea life in the Gulf at once.Laura: Yes. Extremely efficient. So, you know, I worry that we're doing SRE a little bit like BP. We're doing it back before Deepwater Horizon.Corey: I should disclose that I started my technical career as a grumpy old Unix sysadmin—because it's not like you ever see one of those who's happy or young; didn't matter that I was 23 years old, I was grumpy and old—and I have viewed the evolution since then have going from calling myself a sysadmin to a DevOps engineer to an SRE to a platform engineer to whatever we're calling it this week, I still view it as fundamentally the same job, in the sense that the responsibility has not changed, and that is keep the site or environment up. But the tools, the processes and the techniques we apply to it have evolved. Is that accurate? Does it sound like I'm spouting nonsense? You're far closer to the SRE world than I ever was, but I'm curious to get your take on that perspective. And please feel free to tell me I'm wrong.Laura: No, no. I think you're completely right. And I think one of the ways that I think is shifted, and it's really interesting, but when you and I were, when we were young, we could see everything that was happening. We were deploying on some sort of Linux box or other sort of Unix box somewhere, most likely, and if we wanted, we could go and see the entire source code of everything that our software was running on. And kids these days, they're coming up, and they are deploying their stuff on RDS and ECS and, you know, how many layers of abstraction are sitting between them and—Corey: “I run Kubernetes. That means I don't know where it runs, and neither does anyone else.” It's great.Laura: Yeah. So, there's no transparency anymore in what's happening. So, it's very easy, you get to a point where sometimes you hit a problem, and you just can't figure it out because you do not have a way to get into that system and see what's happening. You know, even at work, we ran into a problem with Amazon-hosted Prometheus. We were like, “This will be great. We'll just do that.” And we could not get some particular type of remote write operation to work. We just could not. Okay, so we'll have to do something else.So, one of the many, many things I do when I'm not, you know, trying to run the SREcon conference or do actual work or definitely not write a book, I'm studying at Lund University at the moment. I'm doing this master's degree in human factors and system safety. And one of the things I've realized since doing that program is, in tech, we missed this whole 1980s and 1990s discipline of cognitive systems theory, cognitive systems engineering. This is what people were doing. They were like, how can people in the control room in nuclear plants and in the cockpit in the airplane, how can they get along with their systems and build a good mental model of the automation and understand what's going on?We missed all that. We came of age when safety science was asking questions like how can we stop organizational failures like Challenger and Columbia, where people are just not making the correct decisions? And that was a whole different sort of focus. So, we've missed all of this 1980s and 1990s cognitive system stuff. And there's this really interesting idea there where you can build two types of systems: you can build a prosthesis which does all your interaction with a system for you, and you can see nothing, feel nothing, do nothing, it's just this black box, or you can have an amplifier, which lets you do more stuff than you could do just by yourself, but lets you still get into the details.And we build mostly prostheses. We do not build amplifiers. We're hiding all the details; we're building these very, very opaque abstractions. And I think it's to the detriment of—I mean, it makes our life harder in a bunch of ways, but I think it also makes life really hard for systems engineers coming up because they just can't get into the systems as easily anymore unless they're running them themselves.Corey: I have to confess that I have a certain aversion to aspects of SRE, and I'm feeling echoes of it around a lot of the human factor stuff that's coming out of that Lund program. And I think I know what it is, and it's not a problem with either of those things, but rather a problem with me. I have never been a good academic. I have an eighth grade education because school is not really for me. And what I loved about being a systems administrator for years was the fact that it was like solving puzzles every day.I got to do interesting things, I got to chase down problems, and firefight all the time. And what SRE is represented is a step away from that to being more methodical, to taking on keeping the site up as a discipline rather than an occupation or a task that you're working on. And I think that a lot of the human factors stuff plays directly into it. It feels like the field is becoming a lot more academic, which is a luxury we never had, when holy crap, the site is down, we're going to go out of business if it isn't back up immediately: panic mode.Laura: I got to confess here, I have three master's degrees. Three. I have problems, like I said before. I got what you mean. You don't like when people are speaking in generalizations and sort of being all theoretical rather than looking at the actual messy details that we need to deal with to get things done, right? I know. I know what you mean, I feel it too.And I've talked about the human factors stuff and theoretical stuff a fair bit at conferences, and what I always try to do is I always try and illustrate with the details. Because I think it's very easy to get away from the actual problems and, you know, spend too much time in the models and in the theory. And I like to do both. I will confess, I like to do both. And that means that the luxury I miss out on is mostly sleep. But here we are.Corey: I am curious as far as what you've seen as far as the human factors adoption in this space because every company for a while claimed to be focused on blameless postmortems. But then there would be issues that quickly turned into a blame Steve postmortem instead. And it really feels, at least from a certain point of view, that there was a time where it seemed to be gaining traction, but that may have been a zero interest rate phenomenon, as weird as that sounds. Do you think that the idea of human factors being tied to keeping systems running in a computer sense has demonstrated staying power or are you seeing a recession? It could be I'm just looking at headlines too much.Laura: It's a good question. There's still a lot of people interested in it. There was a conference in Denver last February that was decently well attended for, you know, a first initial conference that was focusing on this issue, and this very vibrant Slack community, the LFI and the Learning from Incidents in Software community. I will say, everything is a little bit stretched at the moment in industry, as you know, with all the layoffs, and a lot of people are just… there's definitely a feeling that people want to hunker down and do the basics to make sure that they're not seen as doing useless stuff and on the line for layoffs.But the question is, is this stuff actually useful or not? I mean, I contend that it is. I contend that we can learn from failures, we can learn from what we're doing day-to-day, and we can do things better. Sometimes you don't need a lot of learning because what's the biggest problem is obvious, right [laugh]? You know, in that case, yeah, your focus should just be on solving your big obvious problem, for sure.Corey: If there was a hierarchy of needs here, on some level, okay, step one, is the building—Laura: Yes.Corey: Currently on fire? Maybe solve that before thinking about the longer-term context of what this does to corporate culture.Laura: Yes, absolutely. And I've gone into teams before where people are like, “Oh, well, you're an SRE, so obviously, you wish to immediately introduce SLOs.” And I can look around and go, “Nope. Not the biggest problem right now. Actually, I can see a bunch of things are on fire. We should fix those specific things.”I actually personally think that if you want to go in and start improving reliability in a system, the best thing to do is to start a weekly production meeting if the team doesn't have that, actually create a dedicated space and time for everyone to be able to get together, discuss what's been happening, discuss concerns and risks, and get all that stuff out in the open. I think that's very useful, and you don't need to spend however long it takes to formally sit down and start creating a bunch of SLOs. Because if you're not dealing with a perfectly spherical web service where you can just use the Golden Signals and if you start getting into any sorts of thinking about data integrity, or backups, or any sorts of asynchronous processing, these sorts of things, they need SLOs that are a lot more interesting than your standard error rate and latency. Error rate and latency gets you so far, but it's really just very cookie-cutter stuff. But people know what's wrong with their systems, by and large. They may not know everything that's wrong with their systems, but they'll know the big things, for sure. Give them space to talk about it.Corey: Speaking of bigger things and turning into the idea of these things escaping beyond pure tech, you have been doing some rather interesting work in an area that I don't see a whole lot of people that I talked to communicating about. Specifically, you're volunteering for the campaign to stop killer robots, which ten years ago would have made you sound ridiculous, and now it makes you sound like someone who is very rationally and reasonably calling an alarm on something that is on our doorstep. What are you doing over there?Laura: Well, I mean, let's be real, it sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous. I mean, who would let a computer fly around to the sky and choose what to shoot at? But it turns out that there are, in fact, a bunch of people who are building systems like that. So yeah, I've been volunteering with the campaign for about the last five years, since roughly around the time that I left Google, in fact, because I got interested in that around about the time that Google was doing the Project Maven work, which was when Google said, “Hey, wouldn't it be super cool if we took all of this DoD video footage of drone video footage, and, you know, did a whole bunch of machine-learning analysis on it and figured out where people are going all the time? Maybe we could click on this house and see, like, a whole timeline of people's comings and goings and which other people they are sort of in a social network with.”So, I kind of said, “Ahh… maybe I don't want to be involved in that.” And I left Google. And I found out that there was this campaign. And this campaign was largely lawyers and disarmament experts, people of that nature—philosophers—but also a few technologists. And for me, having run computer systems for a large number of years at this point, the idea that you would want to rely on a big distributed system running over some janky network with a bunch of 18-year-old kids running it to actually make good decisions about who should be targeted in a conflict seems outrageous.And I think almost every [laugh] software operations person, or in fact, software engineer that I've spoken to, tends to feel the same way. And yet there is this big practical debate about this in international relations circles. But luckily, there has just been a resolution in the UN just in the last day or two as we record this, the first committee has, by a very large majority, voted to try and do something about this. So hopefully, we'll get some international law. The specific interventions that most of us in this field think would be good would be to limit the amount of force that autonomous weapon, or in fact, an entire set of autonomous weapons in a region would be able to wield because there's a concern that should there be some bug or problem or a sort of weird factor that triggers these systems to—Corey: It's an inevitability that there will be. Like, that is not up for debate. Of course, it's going to break in 2020, the template slide deck that AWS sent out for re:Invent speakers had a bunch of clip art, and one of them was a line art drawing of a ham with a bone in it. So, I wound up taking that image, slapping it on a t-shirt, captioning it “AWS Hambone,” and selling that as a fundraiser for 826 National.Laura: [laugh].Corey: Now, what happened next is that for a while, anyone who tweeted the phrase “AWS Hambone” would find themselves banned from Twitter for the next 12 hours due to some weird algorithmic thing where it thought that was doxxing or harassment or something. And people on the other side of the issue that you're talking about are straight face-idly suggesting that we give that algorithm [unintelligible 00:24:32] tool a gun.Laura: Or many guns. Many guns.Corey: I'm sorry, what?Laura: Absolutely.Corey: Yes, or missiles or, heck, let's build a whole bunch of them and turn them loose with no supervision, just like we do with junior developers.Laura: Exactly. Yes, so many people think this is a great idea, or at least they purport to think this is a great idea, which is not always the same thing. I mean, there's lots of different vested interests here. Some people who are proponents of this will say, well, actually, we think that this will make targeting more accurate, less civilians will actually will die as a result of this. And the question there that you have to ask is—there's a really good book called Drone by Chamayou, Grégoire Chamayou, and he says that there's actually three meanings to accuracy.So, are you hitting what you're aiming at is one of it—one thing. And that's a solved problem in military circles for quite some time. You got, you know, laser targeting, very accurate. Then the other question is, how big is the blast radius? So, that's just a matter of, you know, how big an explosion are you going to get? That's not something that autonomy can help with.The only thing that autonomy could even conceivably help with in terms of accuracy is better target selection. So, instead of selecting targets that are not valid targets, selecting more valid targets. But I don't think there's any good reason to think that computers can solve that problem. I mean, in fact, if you read stuff that military experts write on this, and I've got, you know, lots of academic handbooks on military targeting processes, they will tell you, it's very hard and there's a lot of gray areas, a lot of judgment. And that's exactly what computers are pretty bad at. Although mind you, I'm amused by your Hambone story and I want to ask if AWS Hambone is a database?Corey: Anything is a database, if you hold it wrong.Laura: [laugh].Corey: It's fun. I went through a period of time where, just for fun, I would ask people to name an AWS service and I would talk about how you could use it incorrectly as a database. And then someone mentioned, “What about AWS Neptune,” which is their graph database, which absolutely no one understands, and the answer there is, “I give up. It's impossible to use that thing as a database.” But everything else can be. Like, you know, the tagging system. Great, that has keys and values; it's a database now. Welcome aboard. And I didn't say it was a great database, but it is a free one, and it scales to a point. Have fun with it.Laura: All I'll say is this: you can put labels on anything.Corey: Exactly.Laura: We missed you at the most recent SREcon EMEA. There was a talk about Google's internal Chubby system and how people started using it as a database. And I did summon you in Slack, but you didn't show up.Corey: No. Sadly, I've gotten a bit out of the SRE space. And also, frankly, I've gotten out of the community space for a little while, when it comes to conferences. And I have a focused effort at the start of 2024 to start changing that. I am submitting CFPs left and right.My biggest fear is that a conference will accept one of these because a couple of them are aspirational. “Here's how I built the thing with generative AI,” which spoiler, I have done no such thing yet, but by God, I will by the time I get there. I have something similar around Kubernetes, which I've never used in anger, but soon will if someone accepts the right conference talk. This is how I learned Git: I shot my mouth off in a CFP, and I had four months to learn the thing. It was effective, but I wouldn't say it was the best approach.Laura: [laugh]. You shouldn't feel bad about lying about having built things in Kubernetes, and with LLMs because everyone has, right?Corey: Exactly. It'll be true enough by the time I get there. Why not? I'm not submitting for a conference next week. We're good. Yeah, Future Corey is going to hate me.Laura: Have it build you a database system.Corey: I like that. I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you these days?Laura: Ohh, I'm sort of homeless on social media since the whole Twitter implosion, but you can still find me there. I'm @lauralifts on Twitter and I have the same tag on BlueSky, but haven't started to use it yet. Yeah, socials are hard at the moment. I'm on LinkedIn. Please feel free to follow me there if you wish to message me as well.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:28:31]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I appreciate it.Laura: Thank you for having me.Corey: Laura Nolan, Principal Software Engineer at Stanza. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry, insulting comment that soon—due to me screwing up a database system—will be transmogrified into a CFP submission for an upcoming SREcon.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business, and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.
Tara Tussing Unverzagt grew up with one of the first CFPs but started her career as a computer programmer, project manager at a software company. She turned to financial planning when she got married and wanted to work from home to raise children (just like her mom had.) She started South Bay Financial Partners in 2014 after working in her mom's business for 20 years. South Bay Financial Partners serve a diverse range of individuals, couples, and multigenerational families who yearn for financial independence, peace of mind, and success. Prospects often don't know how to get started or find their next steps. SBFP's mission is to empower both individuals and families alike by helping them become knowledgeable, confident, and brave to level up and reach their goals. This episode featured Tara Tussing Unverzagt, a financial planner who incorporates financial therapy into her practice. She discussed how understanding clients' emotional relationships with money helps her better serve them. The conversation highlights Tara's background and how she came to focus on financial therapy. David and Tara also shared personal stories and examples of how examining underlying beliefs can transform clients' financial well-being. "We understand that money is emotional. From day one, we understand that a lot of financial planners are like, ‘I don't want to talk about that part, I just want to talk about the numbers.'” - Tara Tussing Unverzagt This week on The Model FA Podcast: Financial planning, bicycling, and personal experiences. Financial therapy and its role in personal finance. Using internal family systems for financial therapy. Client relationships, fees, and market volatility. Financial struggles and relationships with money. Financial literacy and personalized solutions. Financial well-being and relationships. Therapy books and their impact on personal growth. Sales training and marketing strategies. Our Favorite Quotes: “Well, there's also another saying that there's two kinds of bicyclists, those who have had accidents and those who will have accidents. There's no way to ride a bike without having accidents.” - Tara Tussing Unverzagt “Number one, my parents, they ended up getting divorced, and the variety of issues but what it boiled down to is, anytime they fought, it was over money, or because they were stressed about money, and they'd fight about something meaningless. Because that was like the boiling point, the tipping point. And seeing that made me stress about money.” - David DeCelle “ I used to think that vulnerability was weakness. Now I'm realizing no, you have to be friggin brave, to be vulnerable. And to put that out there. So be brave. And that's why in the intro, we tried to help people be brave and level up, be brave, have that conversation with your cohort.” - Tara Tussing Unverzagt "I said earlier that money issues often come from safety, which often comes from connection with other people." - Tara Tussing Unverzagt Connect with Tara: Interested in connecting with Tara? Click here: https://calendly.com/financial-coaching-team/podcast-priority-referral LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/south-bay-financial-partners/ Website: https://southbayfinancialpartners.com/ Email: tara@sbfinancialpartners.com About the Model FA Podcast The Model FA podcast is a show for fiduciary financial advisors. In each episode, our host David DeCelle sits down with industry experts, strategic thinkers, and advisors to explore what it takes to build a successful practice — and have an abundant life in the process. We believe in continuous learning, tactical advice, and strategies that work — no “gotchas” or BS. Join us to hear stories from successful financial advisors, get actionable ideas from experts, and re-discover your drive to build the practice of your dreams. Did you like this conversation? Then leave us a rating and a review in whatever podcast player you use. We would love your feedback, and your ratings help us reach more advisors with ideas for growing their practices, attracting great clients, and achieving a better quality of life. While you are there, feel free to share your ideas about future podcast guests or topics you'd love to see covered. Our Team: President of Model FA, David DeCelle If you like this podcast, you will love our community! Join the Model FA Community on Facebook to connect with like-minded advisors and share the day-to-day challenges and wins of running a growing financial services firm.
Living Well While Aging With Breast Cancer
In this throwback episode of The Power Producers Podcast, David Carothers and co-host Kyle Houck interview Mark Suski, SET, CFPS, and Associate Director at Jensen Hughes. Mark talks about his knowledge and experience in risk engineering, and the hazards of dust. Episode Highlights: Mark shares how he got into risk engineering. (2:19) Mark gives us a brief background of what risk engineering is. (4:39) Mark mentions other aspects of risk engineering. (6:35) How did the pandemic affect Mark's career? (10:01) Mark explains how some aspects of his job changed, due to COVID.(12:21) Who are the people that typically reach out to Mark and hire him to go in, and risk engineer? (16:54) Mark shares the biggest win he's ever had, as a result of performing the risk engineering study. (28:30) What's Mark's specific specialty? (35:34) Mark shares the top three things that people should recognize when it comes to equipment safety. (39:43) Mark shares the dangers of dust. (42:00) Tweetable Quotes: “Safety and protection in human life is always on the top of the list. You know, that's always going to be the first question, the first box that we're going to check is going to be life safety, and protection of people.” - Mark Suski “When companies look at not only cost-wise, I think it helps bring down costs, but it helps, maintain. And, I think it's only going to get better and refined.” - Mark Suski “When you think about it, risk engineering kind of does look at everything holistically... Because, A, they wanted to know what happened to my building, my structure and people. And, B, what would happen to my building, my structure, and my manufacturing processes.” - Mark Suski Resources Mentioned: Jensen Hughes David Carothers LinkedIn Kyle Houck LinkedIn Florida Risk Partners The Extra 2 Minutes
The formula to build wealth isn't complicated. Most American millionaires have figured it out, and you might have as well. It's safe to say that almost every wealthy American has followed these three steps that lead to a life of riches. If you follow the same path, you, too, can end up with financial independence, early retirement, and generational wealththat will propel your family forward. But, even though these steps are simple, most Americans can't or won't follow them. Joining us in the fight to help every American reach financial freedom are Brian Preston and Bo Hanson from The Money Guy Show. Brian and Bo both boast numerous financial acronyms after their names. As licensed financial professionals (CPAs, CFPs, PFSs, CFAs), it's fair to say that they know their way around a portfolio. They've been helping their clients and podcast listeners build wealth no matter what stage of life they're in. And their newest study on millionaires has illuminated some surprising takeaways. In today's show, Brian and Bo break down EXACTLY what millionaires are doing that average Americans aren't, the three core principles you MUST follow to build wealth, diversification vs. concentration, and whether or not real estate should be a part of your portfolio. So whether you just got your first job, are nearing retirement, or hover somewhere in between, Brian and Bo give actionable advice you can take away to not only build wealth but keep it for generations to come! In This Episode We Cover The three core principles you MUST follow to build wealth and become a millionaire Self-made riches and the surprising facts about starting from SCRATCH How to protect your generational wealth after you've made it Why those that reach financial independence rarely choose to retire early Diversification and whether your business, home, or stock portfolio owns too much of your wealth The right way to invest in real estate for early retirement (and when it's TOO risky) Rising interest rates and how this will affect those pursuing financial independence And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Join BiggerPockets for FREE Scott's Instagram Mindy on BiggerPockets Grab Scott's Book, “Set for Life” Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Apply to Be a Guest on The Money Show Podcast Talent Search! Subscribe to The “On The Market” YouTube Channel Listen to The “On The Market” Podcast: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, BiggerPockets Money Moment Listen to “The Money Guy Show” Download the Financial Order of Operations Work with Brian and Bo Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-404 Interested in learning more about today's sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Let us know! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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