Ben asks what happens when you curl google.com, and Matt peels back HTTP until the rabbit turns out to have been in the hat all along. Then a USB hub stages a dramatic intervention.

Ben has stopped talking to Claude directly. Matt hasn't opened his editor in days. They try to work out whether this is fun, programming, or a very expensive slot machine.

Ben asks a simple question about performance and Matt talks for 46 minutes. The one true use case for linked lists is revealed, and a part three is threatened.

Ben interviews Matt with a deceptively simple question: make my program go fast. 44 minutes later, robot dogs are falling over, Grace Hopper's wire makes an appearance, and Matt still hasn't gotten the job.

Ben wipes his PC over Thanksgiving and installs Ubuntu for gaming. Matt recalls the dark days of himem.sys and IRQ conflicts. The universe was created last Thursday, and someone gets a hangover.

Ben's new TCP backpressure explanation: conveyor belts full. Matt zooms out and mistakes his factory for a Pentium 2. Ben plans to switch to Linux gaming; Matt's start bar keeps popping up and he's had it.

Ben worries replacing juniors with LLMs creates a future hiring crisis - who'll train the robot-wranglers? Matt blames COVID brain fog, then proves it by botching NP-completeness. Capitalism is bad at escaping local minima.

Matt returns from CppCon with a cold, three talks, and a keynote title Reddit hates. Ben immediately declares Reddit dumb. The hosts discuss C++ reflection, the unforgivable renaming of the Sears Tower, and why conference attendees should stand like Pac-Man.

Matt and Ben discuss running in production; from running processes in screen to battling systemd configuration files. Ben sketches out daemonization rituals while Matt channels Tolkien to explain process hierarchies. Our hosts discover that Ansible playbooks are just bash scripts with better PR, and everyone still Googles journalctl syntax.

Matt uses you as his therapist to vent about three days fighting systemd and boot time. Ben patiently listens while Matt explains why mounting things shouldn't consume 200% CPU. AWS sponsorship news provides a silver lining.