Friends with Brews

Peter’s away, so Scott is joined by Donnie Adams of Obot AI. Donnie drinks Southern Tier Maple Warlock, an imperial pumpkin stout that’s a little sweet but not too thick for the style, and gives it a thumbs up. Scott’s Ancestry Irish Red tastes exactly like the can says: light-bodied, malty, caramel, and a touch of roast. Thumbs up.

Donnie then demos Obot, the open-source platform his team builds for managing MCP servers: combining servers into one virtual MCP, sharing a setup across a company while everyone signs in with their own accounts, pinned and rehosted server images, audit logs, and device management for the coding agents on company laptops.

After that: why agents love installing packages, how the team behind Rancher and K3s went from Acorn to Obot, the dot-com bubble, The AI Doc on Netflix, whether Silicon Valley has gone evil, and why a seven-month-old can’t look away from a phone screen.

Scott starts this solo episode with Coava Araponga from Brazil, brewed with an AeroPress. He gets a little chocolate, likes the lack of bitterness, and gives it a thumbs up.

Then it is onto Peter’s Scratch Itch Software and Hostbar, a Decoder discussion with Jonathan Kanter about AI companies seeking antitrust exemptions, and the 404 Media episode “We Are Getting Way Too Comfortable Talking To Machines” featuring Sherry Turkle.

Scott closes with a question for people building their own businesses: does an online presence help sell the work, or has the online presence become the business? He wants to see the books.

Peter cracks open Athletic Brewing’s Atlética — a non-alcoholic Mexican-style copper — while Scott pours a Sapporo Premium, in tree pose, naturally. From there it wanders the usual distance: backups that finally worked, tenants who never mentioned the leaking roof, two brand-new software ventures (one per host), and a sign-off recorded in full knowledge that an AI would be cutting the ums out of it.

Friends with Brews heads out to a brewpub — Medford Brewing Company in Medford, Massachusetts — and works through a twelve-glass flight between the two of us: a West Coast IPA, the PoWit witbier, a Mexican lager, a dry Irish stout, an English bitter, and the ~8% Rude Panda imperial porter. Thumbs go up, thumbs go down, and the bitter earns a very diplomatic 45-degree thumb.

As always, it wanders well past the beer.