This episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond is going to be a bit different. On the NosillaCast #1042 for April 27th, Bart Busschots and I recorded his usual segment on Security Bits, but the majority of it was a deep dive. The subject was whether cryptography as we know it is doomed because of quantum computing. His explanation was so good that I wanted to be able to point people directly to the audio instead of referencing the chapter mark or a time stamp so we decided to make it a standalone Chit Chat Across the Pond.

If you want to listen to the rest of the original recording of Security Bits, be sure to subscribe to the NosillaCast and look for episode #1042.

You can find Bart's shownotes for the episode of Security Bits at Security Bits — 27 April 2025 — Deep Dive into Quantum Computing.

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Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2025_04_29

In this week's episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Adam Engst from TidBITS talks about how traditional search engines like Google and Bing no longer provide valuable information because they surface unreliable content first. Instead of using traditional search engines, he's been testing tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and Claude to see how well they search the web. He calls these tools "Answer Engines" when they're used to search the web rather than generate their own responses to your prompts.

You can read Adam's extensive blog post about Answer Engines, and his see his research results at tidbits.com/...

Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2025_04_29

This week, Adam Engst joins us to talk about some work he did to try to measure the accuracy of several different AI models in creating audio transcriptions. He let me help him with some of the transcriptions so I was invested in his findings. We'll learn about ways to measure accuracy, including Word Error Rate aka WER. You can read Adam's article where he describes in detail the process he followed and the rather unsatisfying results at [tidbits.com/...](https://tidbits.com/2025/02/28/comparing-audio-transcription-in-notes-audio-hijack-and-macwhisper/).

Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2025_03_23

You know I’m not a music person, but I’ve invited Steve Mallard onto the show to talk about a topic he’s quite passionate about - the evolution of music tech. He is not an expert in this field, he just finds the history fascinating. Steve will take us back to the first acoustic guitars, and explain why electric guitars needed to be invented. He'll talk a little bit about the early effects that could be added with vacuum tube amps and how the invention of the transistor revolutionized the music industry. Things accelerate after that up to where digital signal processing began allowing new music effects and replication of tone became possible. At the end, we get into a bit of a debate on whether this democratization of music creation has ruined music.

Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2025_03_04

This week, the delightful Adam Engst of TidBITS joins us to talk about how he learned to write so well, what it's like having an editor, and then moves into how he uses the AI tool Grammarly to improve his writing. It's great fun as always and convinced me to pay for one month of Grammarly to see if it will make me as awesome of a writer as Adam.

You can read all the details of his use of Grammarly in his article entitled ["Why Grammarly Beats Apple’s Writing Tools for Serious Writers" on tidbits.com](https://tidbits.com/2025/01/30/why-grammarly-beats-apples-writing-tools-for-serious-writers/)

If you’ve been on the Internet before, and you’ve heard of a little fruit company called Apple, then you’ve probably seen Jason Snell's famous Six Colors charts on Apple earnings. In this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, we don't talk about earnings, we talk about the magic behind how he creates his famous charts. It's full of nerdy fun like how he decides when to use a serape chart vs. a bar chart, how he calculates a rolling average, how he gets the data for the charts, and how he gets the charts from Apple Numbers into his website. His joy at finding people who want to talk about the nerd side of this is evident in his enthusiasm.

* Apple Q1 Earnings charts on Six Colors including video of Jason Snell and Dan Moren discussing what the numbers mean.

Andrea Jones-Rooy is a data scientist, a standup comedian, _and_ a circus performer. Andrea delves into the realms of data science, its significance, and how it is often misunderstood in mainstream narratives. Andrea begins by reflecting on their journey to becoming a data scientist.

Andrea was a professor of data science at NYU Center for Data Science and they taught an undergraduate course called "Data Science for Everyone". The cool thing is you can watch Andrea teach the same material for free in a video series of the same name: Data Science for Everyone on YouTube.

I watched all 20 episodes, and I have to tell you it was fascinating. I may have gushed just a little bit about how awesome it was.

Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2025_01_10

In this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond, Bart talks about his job as a cybersecurity specialist. We get a bit silly in our early part of the chat, the reasons for which will become obvious when you listen to the beginning but he successfully gives a flavor of what "a day in the life" is like for him.

Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2024_12_29

Certified Apple Consultant Pat Dengler joins me to tell the harrowing story of how her neighbor was seconds away from being scammed out of $30,000. In an elaborate web of lies with multiple people involved, she was connected supposedly to Amazon, the FBI, lawyers, and more, and every single person gave their IDs and return phone numbers. Pat saved her literally in the nick of time.

This story aired as part of the NosillaCast on December 1st, 2024 but I made it a standalone episode so folks can point directly to it to help raise awareness.

If you need a Certified Apple Consultant, Pat can be contacted at [email protected].