Nate Robertson Arcus Foundry: AI Controversy & Phoenix Car Scene Drama EP330
Hard Parking with Jhae Pfenning
Nate Robertson Arcus Foundry: AI Controversy & Phoenix Car Scene Drama EP330
Hard Parking with Jhae Pfenning · Jun 19, 2026
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Term
flock cameras
Flock cameras are security cameras installed in public or private areas. People talk about them because they can automatically read license plates, which makes some folks worry about privacy.
Term
automated license plate readers ALPRs
ALPRs are systems that automatically read car license plates using cameras. Instead of a person typing it in, the computer captures the plate info for tracking or investigation.
Company
flock safety
Flock Safety is the company behind the Flock camera systems. They make the hardware and software used to read license plates automatically.
Term
motion sensors
Motion sensors are what trigger the camera when something moves in front of it. That way, the system turns on fast enough to get a clear picture of passing cars.
Term
LTE cellular connectivity
LTE is the same kind of cellular network your phone can use to send data. These cameras use it to send information back without running special cables.
Term
computer vision
Computer vision is a kind of smart software that can “look” at camera images. In this case, it helps read license plates and identify vehicle details.
Concept
searchable history of vehicle movements
It means the system can keep a record of where a car was seen over time. Investigators can then look up that timeline to help understand what happened.
Term
facial recognition
Facial recognition is technology that tries to identify people from their face in a photo or video. The point here is that the system is meant to track vehicles, not identify people.
Term
speed cameras
Speed cameras are used to measure how fast a car is going and issue tickets for speeding. The host says Flock’s cameras aren’t meant to do that.
Term
LiDAR
LiDAR is a laser-based sensor that measures distance very precisely. Some traffic systems use it to figure out how fast a car is going.
Term
radar
Radar uses radio waves to detect cars and estimate how fast they’re moving. Some traffic cameras use radar to measure speed directly.
Term
Flot cameras
These are traffic cameras that mainly take pictures to document what happened. They’re not the same as systems that use sensors to directly measure how fast a car is.
Term
rodent tape
Rodent tape is a tape you put on car wiring to keep mice/rodents from chewing the wires. It’s meant to protect the electrical system by discouraging animals from getting to it.
Term
knock sensor
A knock sensor is a sensor that listens for bad combustion noises in the engine. If it detects knock, the car can adjust to help prevent damage.
Concept
rolling beta
“Rolling beta” is a metaphor for a car that feels like an ongoing prototype—something that can keep failing or changing as issues show up. Here, it’s used to describe a vehicle with recurring electrical problems, including a harness-related fire.
Term
overheated
“Overheated” means the engine got too hot. That’s usually caused by something wrong with the car’s cooling system, like not enough coolant or a leak.
Term
coolant
Coolant is the liquid that keeps the engine from getting too hot. If the car is losing coolant, it can overheat, especially when you drive harder.
Term
timing belt
A timing belt helps coordinate the engine’s moving parts so everything opens and closes at the right time. If it breaks, the engine can get badly damaged.
Term
water pump
The water pump moves coolant through the engine so it can stay cool. If it fails, the engine can overheat.
Term
valve adjustment
A valve adjustment sets the small gaps in the engine’s valve mechanism. It helps the engine run correctly and can prevent extra wear.
Term
U-turn
A U-turn is when you turn the car around to go back the other way. Here it’s just describing how they corrected their route quickly.
Term
headlight issue
A headlight issue means the headlights weren’t working right. Sometimes it’s just a bulb, but it can also be wiring or an electrical problem.
Term
module
A module is a small electronic computer that controls part of the car. The host is saying the problem is coming from a specific module under a cover.
Car
NSX
The Acura NSX is a sports car with a lot of electronics. Here, the speaker is talking about fixing problems in the headlight system and replacing the car’s wiring so the lights and related electronics work reliably again.
Part
steering column
The steering column is the part that connects your steering wheel to the steering system. If it’s missing or damaged, you can’t steer properly and it can also affect wiring for controls.
Term
auto wrecker
An auto wrecker is a salvage yard that dismantles wrecked vehicles and sells usable parts. For older cars, it’s often where you source discontinued or hard-to-find components like steering columns or electronic modules.
Term
wiring harness
A wiring harness is the car’s main bundle of wires that connects all the electronics. Replacing or retrofitting it is a big job, but it can fix lots of electrical gremlins caused by old wiring or damaged connectors.
Car
Honda Prelude
The Honda Prelude is a sporty car made by Honda, usually as a two-door coupe. It’s remembered for trying new technology and design ideas for its time. People talk about it because it helped move Honda’s engineering forward, even if some versions weren’t loved by everyone.
Term
hybrid system
A hybrid system uses both a gas engine and an electric motor. The host is saying it can make the car heavier, which can make it feel less nimble.
Term
four wheel steering
Four-wheel steering means the rear wheels can turn too, not just the front wheels. That can help the car turn more easily at low speeds and feel steadier at higher speeds.
Term
super handling drive system
Super Handling Drive is an all-wheel-drive system that can send power to the wheels in a smarter way. The host is basically saying it doesn’t fully replace the benefits of four-wheel steering.
LIVE
Oh that's dangerous. Oh, not according to him.
This is Heart Parking, brought to you by Wright Hunt and Wright Toyot out of Scottsdale, Arizona.
I am your host Jay Finning, recording from my home studio in Gilbert, Arizona. Just got back
from Seattle. One of my dear friends turned 50 and so myself, my wife, my friend Crump and his wife
went out to Seattle to visit Alex and Jen. It's one of those relationships that you know I really
value, especially in today's political climate. Alex and I do not see eye to eye on probably
anything when it comes to politics and we never talk about it. And one of the inspirations recently
is, you know, Adam Corolla, who has always been kind of an inspiring podcaster to me,
although he's kind of way over on the political stuff now, but you know he recently got a star on
the Walk of Fame and Jimmy Kimmel presented him and I'm thinking, God, they've been best friends
for so long and they couldn't be any further as well yet their relationship is so strong
that Jimmy presented him and they were laughing about it and talking
I think it's rare to have a relationship with somebody that's like that. You know, Alex is,
he's in my fab five, you know, and nothing's gonna probably ever come between us when it comes to
that BS because you can't let stuff like that split up your family. Coming up on today's show,
Nate Robertson of Arcus Foundry's Spark Forge is in studio and we talk about technology, AI,
and we even bring up an issue that we're having here in the Phoenix area where a local
content producer, content creator, I guess what we would call him, and someone who's pretty much,
he's well known in the car scene and you know what he's been doing with AI,
that's been a really big point of controversy here. Nate and I do touch on that, so you do not
want to miss that conversation, is what he's doing legal, is it ethical, is it moral,
does one thing have nothing to do with the other? You know, where do you fall on that discussion?
Let us know, let me know. Also, really quick before we get to this word from Arcus Foundry's
Spark Forge, you know, it's funny, it's almost like, why would I want to play the commercial when
I have the man sitting in studio in front of me? But I also want to talk about flock cameras,
I saw that pop up people on the next door app, I don't know if you have the next door app,
I have it, I read it, it's funny, but you know, flock cameras have been kind of a big deal,
and so I decided to look up, you know, what's the big deal on flock cameras, and I actually
wanted to talk about this a few episodes ago, I just didn't have the opportunity to talk about it.
But for those of you who don't know, flock cameras are a series of surveillance cameras that are
put in cities, and a lot of times it's used to track movements and locations of things.
I think a lot of people are concerned for privacy, a lot of people are concerned that
big brother is watching, that it could be used for political purposes, for hunting down, possibly
migrants, those are all reasonable concerns, a lot of car people are wondering, you know, what
about speeding tickets, and you know, because traffic tickets are terrible, the will not traffic
tickets, but like the traffic light tickets, the speed cameras, I think they're horrible,
I think I've been caught on them once or twice, but other than being a cash cow for this city,
they serve no purpose. But flock cameras, I just kind of wanted to talk about these a little bit,
because you know, a lot of times you see stuff online on social media, people post and they
just have no idea what they're talking about. I try to do some research, I don't always know
exactly what I'm talking about, but I can promise you this, even when I give a hot take, there's
context to it, and I do my own research, my opinions are my opinions. However, when it comes
to flock cameras, this is something I'm going to read from you, this is off of a grok search,
flock cameras are automated license plate readers ALPRs systems made by flock safety,
a company founded in 2017. It's weird is found in 2017, here we are nine years later and people
were concerned about them. They are widely used by law enforcement homeowners associations,
neighborhoods and private property owners for crime prevention and investigations,
that's according to Wikipedia. So yeah, I like how grok at least sites where it gets this information.
How flock cameras work, the cameras use motion sensors to wake up quickly in less than a tenth
of a second. They take still images primarily of the rear of the vehicles as cars pass,
even at speeds up to 75 miles an hour. They were 24 seven and most weather conditions using solar
power and LTE cellular connectivity. No wire infrastructure needed according to Bristol
re data extraction AI computer vision reads the license plate full partial or missing.
And the issuing stated identifies the vehicle attributes like make model color type and unique
features unique features that's interesting like dense bumper stickers bike racks trailers
aftermarket modifications according to flock safety authorized users mostly police can search
the database by license plate vehicle description time location etc. So I do understand the
concern of this. It creates a searchable history of vehicle movements which helps investigators
track where the vehicle has been over time. This is a good thing if you've committed a crime or
you're trying to find somebody who has kidnapped somebody. New expansions include video clips,
live feeds and natural language AI searches as in finding a white truck with a ladder on it.
The cameras focus on vehicles not people and do not use facial recognition.
These are the most common uses. Recovering stolen vehicles, solving crimes, burglaries,
hit and runs, kidnappings, generating investigative leads, amber alerts and similar
emergencies. Police and communities often report reduced crime in areas with these cameras.
And so I also asked I go well can you use a flock camera for speeding tickets and moving
violations. It says yes but rarely and not for speeding tickets in the typical automated sense.
Flock safety cameras are not speed cameras. They do not measure vehicle speed in or not
designed or officially marketed for automated traffic enforcement like red light or school
zone speed cameras. Flock officially states that their cameras lack speed detection capabilities.
Many police departments publicly emphasize that flock is for investigative purposes only
and is not used for traffic tickets or moving violations. So I do understand the concern.
I don't care if there's flock cameras in my neighborhood. If it's going to help
stop human trafficking, if it's going to help kind of trace back the scene of a crime, I'm all for it.
It's kind of like when you go through the airport and the little thing goes off because beep beep
and you're like oh it's always on me. And then you have to go over and sometimes it's the ones
you have to stick your arms up like this and the thing scans you for two seconds and then you can
leave. When I lived in Grand Rapids Michigan, that's TSA was only that. You put your stuff on the
conveyor belt, you walk through that thing, you put your arms up and you walk out, you grab your
stuff and you go wow what a mild inconvenience. I'd rather them be safe than me and my family be
sorry because they let some wacko onto the plane. Flot cameras and this used to me are very similar.
You can disagree with it. I know my guests would probably really disagree with it and I understand
why but I'm not worried about them at least not right now. So why not speeding tickets?
Flot cameras operate still images mainly reviews and vehicle details but lacks radar,
LiDAR or other speed measuring technology so not worried about it. Coming up after this word
from Arcus Foundry Sparkforge, Nate Robertson. If you're on a business and you're tired of
juggling tools chasing logins and constantly feeling like the tech side of things is heavier
than it should be this might hit close to home. That tech fatigue usually shows up as an outdated
website, reviews slipping through the cracks, missed calls when you're busy or social media that's
always on the back burner. Most business owners know something's off but fixing it feels like a
bigger project than they have time for. Sparkforge is just to take that weight off, it handles the
tech behind the scenes, helps clean up how your business shows up online, makes sure calls and
messages don't get mixed, keeps reviews from slipping through the cracks and wrangles social
marketing so you don't disappear for weeks. If you're curious there's a short discovery session
and it comes with 90 days free to actually see if it makes things easier. No pitch, no pressure,
just a real conversation about what's working, what's broken and what you can simplify.
So head over to getsparkforge.ai forward slash hard parking to get started.
Well, look who stopped by the studio, Mr. Nate. Hello. This is the man behind Sparkforge,
Arcus Foundry, Nate AF. My tech guy, my everything guy, my NSX family, you haven't seen your car
since Expo last year I think unless you've flown up there and looked at it. Nope. I haven't seen
it since Expo last year. Nope. It's been, it's back in the Northwest, rotting in the cold,
Northwest winters again. So I'm going to get to it. It's going to have a bunch of moss and mold and
God knows what else creepy crawlies all up in it. So it's getting a full tear down when I get back
up there probably the next month or so. We're tearing the whole thing down to the frame and
starting from scratch. Okay. So this might be a silly question because when you're talking about
creepy crawlies, is it covered? No. Where is it? I don't need a geographical... Sure. It's in
Mountain Vernon. But I mean, it's in an external garage with like a manual lift thing or is it
like... No, it's just sitting outside in the elements. Is it really? It really is. I mean,
remember, like... No weather cover or nothing? No, nothing. Like, look, it's rattle-canned,
okay. I'm not shy about that fact. So there's really nothing worth protecting on it from
the exterior. It's not a finish. nice finish. I really just don't care about it.
You know, I'll pull a Jim Cosolino on it. Like, if it really needs a respray, I'll just
give it another respray in the driveway or something, right? Do you have the rodent tape on it?
Rodent tape? That's the first time I've ever heard of such a thing. That's a thing?
You're not serious. I don't know what rodent tape is.
Really? Is it like the stuff that rodents get trapped on? That kind of rodent tape?
No, no. So it's the... I think Honda might have been one of the manufacturers that made it famous,
but it's a special tape that you wrap around the wires of your engine and your harnesses,
and it has like little mouses, little mice things on it. Yeah, the knock sensor on the J
series has that wrap, but that's like the only thing on the J series that is. It's very strange,
but yeah. No, there's not any of that on it, but I don't seem to have a lot of rodent issues.
I mean, here's the thing. The rodents are the least of my problems. I've been driving the thing
before, and the electrical harness has caught on fire before while I was driving it, so I've had
to put out a fire in the car before. It wasn't really a big deal. It was just a small system
that was just overloaded, but my point is that everything on the whole car is a rolling beta,
so things work. We ditch things, we upgrade, and it's just constantly influx. It'll never be done.
That's just not the point of the project. Right. It just blows my mind. It's just sitting there.
Yeah, because most of the time when we're together rolling, and now I'm justifying my nervousness
of going on road trips with you, but your car has been perfect so far, except for when you're
driving in a sex boat. At some point, it's always going to break down somewhere. The thought is,
nobody, if you're going to go on a road trip with Nate, you got to make sure you have access to
some aid, but we've never been on a road trip where you've ever had issues.
Well, there's that one that Yumi and Lamar and Mike, but we were already where we were going.
Are you talking about when your car basically overheated?
Yeah, we were so close to being there, though. The thing is, is that I was having an issue with it.
If it's just puttering along on the freeway, like 2,500 RPMs, it never overheats.
The problem is that, for some reason, there's a consumption issue with the coolant.
So I don't even run coolant, I just run straight water. So I'm not the only one looking at you,
Ravi. So the problem is that when you rev the engine hard, it just blows out all the water
from the system. So I still haven't tracked down what that is. There's no, it's not a blown head
gasket, so we're not quite sure where the problem is, but that motor has been tortured. It already
had 150,000 miles on it when we put it in. All we did was give it a new timing belt, water pump,
and did a valve adjustment, and we've been sending it full bore for the last eight years.
Yeah. I think it's time for an upgrade.
And you've taken it everywhere. And even in that story, you're like, hey, guys, I'm having issues.
We're like, all right, cool. We went to the wrong house, and then you were ready to roll by the
time we did a U-turn and came back. And then you were good, except for your headlight issue,
because we got to Lamar's place, and you had some goofy wiring. So then we had to have you
ride in between us because you had no lights. It was dark.
Yeah, I figured out what it is. There's a module underneath the cover on top of the steering
column on the NSX, and it's a module that controls the headlights. And when I got the car,
it didn't have a steering column. So I had to get one from an auto wrecker, and they're not
generally nice to these parts. And so when I got it, the covers were all messed up,
and you got the stocks on either side, and that box, something in it is just broken. So jiggling
the connectors seems to make it work. All that's going away. So this time around, we've retrofitted
every wiring harness on the NSX, but there's still a lot of NSX garbage there, and garbage
respectfully. It's just 30 years old, right? And especially for this car, it's just like
all of the wiring, it just needs to go. So it's time.
So what's going on at Arcus? Oh, man. Okay, so I'm going to keep this as non-technical as
possible, but everything we do is hyper technical. So we'll keep it, we'll keep it kind of surface
level. We have... Well, how about this? Yeah. We always churn listeners. Sure. So it's reckless
for me to assume that even with your introduction, people really know much about you. Sure. Okay.
So what's that on your shirt? Yeah. So who are you to that? This is my logo,
Arcus Farrie. It's my company. And so after a 14-year career at Microsoft, I decided to go
out on my own and do my own thing. And so our primary product that we serve for small businesses
is a product called Sparkforge, and that is our platform product. So it gives you everything
that you need to run a business from one place, one login to run everything that your business
needs. So everything from your website, to social media management, to forms, to signatures, to,
I mean, name a tool that small businesses need, we build them and integrate in with that.
So that's our core product. When I was at Microsoft, one of the things that I found was
that I didn't feel like I was actually helping anyone. It's just kind of a gear in the machine,
as it were. And that was something that I felt was really missing from my ability to help people.
And so something that I really wanted to do was that. The trouble is that I didn't want to end up
in the help desk category or maybe a geek squad replacement. I don't want to compete in that
space. That's just not where we're at. So focusing on business was the, there was the draw there.
And the thing is, is that Microsoft, I didn't really have much of an impact there. But in a
small business, I mean, the tools that we engineer and build for companies, I mean,
it changes their entire outlook and increases their ability to earn more. And so our services
and fees, it's something that makes them money, not costs them money in the end.
So here's what we're going to do. I pulled out the read, the ARC has found your read,
but I'm not going to read this. What we're going to do is we're going to jump to the commercial
spot. So I don't stumble through this. And then when we get back, we'll get caught up on what's
going on at Arcus. Sure. Yeah, see, easy. That's funny, right? I was like, I know I got that
fucking script in here somewhere. It's not actually playing. This is just us doing our thing.
So I actually brought, so that piece of paper in mind actually brought you something.
I brought, are we officially back now? I have, oh, are we, we can be officially back.
Whatever. I mean, I don't know. I thought you were just going to cut in the read.
I am. In post. Okay. All right. Exactly. So, are we back? Sure. So I've been thinking about
your, your reading problem. I mean, the fact that you have to like read off a piece of paper,
like we could fix this and I did. It's not a problem. But show us what you brought for
show and tell. What did you bring us for show and tell? What I brought is, and it's not just
something that, that for, for you, it's something that everybody can use. So I built a teleprompter
system and teleprompter system is designed to use old crusty hardware that you might have.
So if you've got like an old iPad or an old phone, and in my case, I have two old iPhones
that I no longer use. I have, I have since upgraded to a, a Pixel 10 Pro foldable.
Somewhere I have a 14 rad. If you haven't checked out the foldable game, definitely check out the
Pixel 10 Pro. Did you see what you want at Long Beach? Brandon Lee, he has one that opens up
three ways. So it's like this, it's like this big when he opens it up. Yeah. I think that's
probably a Xiaomi or something. Have no idea what it is. Carriers are, are, are, are selling them
yet, but they're coming. Like the triple foldable. It's a triple. The thing's, the thing's about that
big when it's open. Yeah, that's insane. So let me just put this thing together. And so what this is,
is this is a, we would try to focus on, on creators and helping people to create. I think that if you
have the, the ability to create versus consume, I think that's, I recommend that to anybody, but
how to do that easily and just get started with, with creating content for yourself or for your
own brand or for your company, whatever it is that you, that you do or you have an inkling towards.
I think that the barrier to entry is still really high where people don't, they don't want to look
like an idiot on camera and they don't really know where to start. So figured, okay, well, let's get
them, let's be able to get them a script and get them recording with hardware they already have
without having to go out and purchase a bunch of crazy stuff. So this is a handheld phone setup
with two mounts. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to put one phone, I'm just going to
turn this around. Okay, one phone here. This is your recording phone, fixing back at you.
On the back, you got things got a couple cold, cold, cold shoe mounts on them. Yep.
And then on your prompter phone, put that here. So now I've got this. Oh, I see what's going on
there. You can walk around and you can read your script while it's recording.
Right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's nifty. Now to make it better,
we've got another mode. So if you want desk mode,
and that there, now you pair a trigger with it. So it's just a little bluetooth
trigger that you can find on Amazon, maybe 15 bucks. So press this, it automatically starts the
prompter and it starts recording. So we built a piece of software called Spark Prompt and Spark
Deck. And those satisfy two different purposes within the same family. So Spark Deck pairs with
OBS. So you can use old iPhones to record through OBS Studio. And again, pairing with the trigger,
you can start and stop your record right from there. And it'll trigger your prompter to begin
scrolling. So that's nifty. I don't know if it'll show up in camera, but you can demo it if you
want. We can leave it for later or not. Yeah, I mean, it's nifty. And I can see it
working with other applications, because that's that's like a typical
phone vlog setup, right? With, you know, because they have, you know,
apps for that, but not an app where you have both devices like literally right there.
Right, exactly. You know, they have a mirrored one where you can connect a mirror, but then
you're kind of like trying to read this mirror thing, you know, and so that's definitely solves
a problem, which is which is really cool. I mean, obviously, it would be very cumbersome
otherwise. So we're trying to find a way to, again, just enable people to just start recording,
get their script down. And for the Spark Prompt, you can actually author your author,
your prompt, like if you want to use ChatGPT or Claude to come up with what it is that you want
to say, and then you send it to the prompter either from your PC or from the camera phone.
So let's say if the camera phone is your main phone that you carry around every day, that's
your daily driver, you load up Spark Prompt, load up your prompt, pair your camera phone,
or pair your other phone for the prompter, and then it'll push the script to it.
You press the press the go button and it'll automatically start scrolling and recording.
That's cool, man. So you've been using Claude and it's been like a lifesaver for you, right?
Because, you know, I talk about AI sometimes and there's a lot of doomerism out there.
And I forgot who I'd mentioned that term to and they go, that's a new term. I never heard
a doomerism. I was like, yeah, that's a term. Okay, doomer. Yeah. That's a term, you know,
AI is going to take all of our jobs and it's going to basically kill everybody off.
But I always talk about the productivity and efficiency part of it. How's Claude been working
for you? How are the tools working? Because we're still technically in a beta, even though
people think we have finished products, but no, we're all betas. We're all the test monkeys
ourselves. I think so. So I'll use, let's touch on the doomerism first.
We'll look at what Meta just did. They have been logging the clicks of all of their employees
for the last like six months, maybe a year. And now they just laid off like, I think,
another 10,000 people because those jobs aren't going to come back because they've
harvested all the clicks from their employees to figure out what it is that they do and how to
automate that. So in one hand, I do think it feels shitty. It does feel shitty. So forget
about the people. They don't care. They really don't care. Companies will demand loyalty from you,
but they'll give you none. And so I think that's something to remember for everybody. I do think
that it's important to lean on your own self brand. So regardless of what happens with your
day job, if that could go away tomorrow, what have you got left? So my suggestion to anyone
that's worried about this is to start your own self brand. So I mean, the place you could get
started is, and we've created more products for this, is sparkpages.ai. We started a free website
that you can build. And it's a page of links that you can customize how you want. So it's very
simple, but if you have nothing else and you don't know how to build a website, you can just go
to sparkpages page and you're good. And you could start there. So the idea is that we wanted to
lower the rungs of people to get into Sparkforge. And so this way they can jump up and grab a spark
page to get started and that way start building a business or whatever it is that they're good at.
Even if that's just links to their socials, that's fine too. You could just start recording,
talk about anything. The thing is, is there's been some changes in the tax code that allow
any thing that you're doing for your personal brand. If you're talking about it, any clothes that
you wear that are monogrammed, everything is a write-off. So the thing is, when you start thinking
about your personal brand- Do you need to have your LLC at minimum? No, actually, because the
thing is, it could be a sole prop, which is done through your social security number. So the
government does allow you to write these things off. So the thing is, if you were to vlog
everything that you're doing from the food that you eat, to the clothes that you wear,
whatever it is, to the gas you put in your car, like all of it, as long as you're recording it
for content, that is a business scenario. So you can write that off. I think those are really
important, especially now with inflation being what it is. You've got inflation, layoffs, a lot
of uncertainty. But back to the AI stuff, I think it's an incredible opportunity because
something that I'll give you an example. What I've been able to build in the last three months
with Claude would have taken an engineering division three years with 30 people. So I mean,
I just did that in like three months. So it's pretty incredible what you can build for sure.
You're a part of the problem. I guess so. You just laid off 30 people that have been working
for you for three years. Let me put it to you like this. Once upon a time, the painters union
once famously tried to ban paint rollers. That's funny. Isn't it? Because at one point that was
taking the jerbs. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, there's all sorts of examples like that throughout
their course of our technological evolution. And so I think the biggest thing right now is the
data centers, and they're taking this that. And it sounds like the biggest
barrier to our progress is not being able to get that stuff passed or get those things built.
And a lot of the stuff that I've heard is that if these anti-productivity people would have
won, we wouldn't. I mean, the internet wouldn't be where it's at today. You know, we have
tons of examples of things that through the progression of technology is what makes our
life easy. There's a Harvard study that you just reminded me of. And it was a study where they
separated students into two groups. One group had a task of creating the perfect clay pot.
And the other group, they had the task of creating as many pots as possible.
It doesn't matter the quality. Just make as many as you can. Just churn out as many as you can.
They both had the same amount of time. Which group do you think had the had the better pot
at the end of the day? Oh, that's a good question because the answer wants to be the perfect pot.
Is that the answer? Didn't think so. It's not. But that's what you want to say. Yeah, right. It
seems like it's the obvious one. It's because they spent too much time trying to make the
perfect pot and never actually progress. I mean, they had the same amount of time. But the thing
is that you've got iterations. So with the other team, they got their production down. So they
were just moving as fast as possible. And as a consequence of that is that it got more efficient
and they built a clay pot that was way better than the team that had only one opportunity.
So what I'm getting at here is iterations matter. And so if you look at we can pivot
back to to car engines, they've gotten super efficient over time because they've been able
to develop them at scale. A million the billions of these engines created, they get all this data
to make it better and better and better. But if they had just one opportunity to create the
perfect engine, it wouldn't be very good. There's no progression. So the thing is is when you when
you have when you have the government getting involved and and you have regulation around
this, it does stifle the innovation. Again, it always does. But the thing is, is that when you
look at the economy at large, you kind of you can't have these massive disruptions with lots of
people being laid off. If you do this, it's not just the entire economy
suffers more people getting laid off. There's a fine balance where you want that turnover,
but it can't be too much or too little. It's just I don't think people really understand that
this ecosystem that we've got is it's so fragile. It's so fragile. So I think there's an ebb and
a flow, but you got a lot of people being laid off. The government has to has to step in and
start start cutting checks, inflation is going to go up, your paychecks, your dollar value is
going to go down too. So I think there is regulation coming for AI. We just haven't seen it yet.
I think the big debate is state level versus federal.
You know, I think what I've heard is if it's a state level, it's going to be a
complete disaster. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, this is going to be a slight
topic pivot momentarily only to illustrate a point, but
Roe v Wade being overturned wasn't about what everyone thinks it's about. It's actually about
returning rights to the states. And so the same thing here is that states should have a right
to self-regulate their own industries. And you look at all these states, they have their
own ways that they make money. So Wyoming, they're very friendly to businesses.
Montana is really good if you want to buy an expensive car and not pay local taxes, right?
And they know this. All these states know that they know that their predatory practices in other
state legislatures that they can use to earn money for themselves with adding a reprieve.
That's always going to be the case. People are going to go where they're treated best financially,
and they should, they should. Can you?
Out of the way. So it doesn't try to focus on that.
Those are weird things I've had happen for. So the Roe v Wade is,
that was just used as an example of states getting it only, right? Because I think that's
a good example, but I think digital is different in a sense, right? So I think I would be in favor
of some sort of regulation on a federal level, but it's got to be things that make sense. Right.
And some things I think are obviously they make sense. We have a local guy here and he'd asked,
he goes, maybe I can come on the pod. He has to talk about it. And I thought about it. I'm like,
you know, that might work for a few debates, but I don't, let me tell you what he was doing
because you're going to have an opinion on this. What he's doing is he's taking, he's using AI
to take local models, local girls in the car scene, and you know where this is going, maybe,
and create images of them posing on his car or next to his car. Oh, that's dangerous.
Oh, not according to him, but yeah, exactly. And he's like, well, I'm trying to teach everyone
a lesson about the dangers of AI, you know, because I reached out to him because someone
reached out to me is like, Hey, you know this person. I'm like, yeah, we're cool. We're cordial.
Um, I said, I'll say something to him because that's not cool. And I slid in his DMs and said,
Hey man, you know, this is, I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but it's a slippery slope. And
you know, his explanation just tells me that he doesn't really fully understand what he's doing.
That's a really slippery slope. Now, if, if these individual people are, they want him to stop it.
Well, if they're public figures, then there's nothing they can do. However, if they're, if
they're not, but if they can't be considered a public figure, that's libel and slander all over
it. Like that's lawsuit material. I wouldn't, I wouldn't wish that on, on, on my worst enemy.
Like that's, that's a really dumb thing to do. Just to, just to prove a point. It's just a really
ugly way to illustrate it. I understand it, but just not the right way to go about it.
And his thought is, you know, being a topic of conversation is always good. And I'm like,
not really, it just makes you look like an asshole.
Yeah. And he obviously doesn't really care and he still hasn't taken him down. But
the thing is, when these people have reached out to him, he not only does he not take him down,
he just blocks them. If you're a public figure, you have a legal team for that.
And your legal team will step in. There's nothing they can do. If you're a public figure,
libel and slander laws don't apply. And I'll give you a really good example of this.
2008 Hillary Clinton's running. And she says that if she gets elected, she's going to,
she's going to work to get the game GTA banned. Rockstar, based out of Australia,
they respond with saying that if Miss Clinton, Miss Clinton wins the presidency,
we're going to give her an honorary, an honorary figure status in the, in Grand Theft Auto
as a prostitute. Now, they obviously didn't do that. But if you go into GTA four, I think,
the Statue of Liberty, it's Hillary Clinton's face. So she didn't win and she ended up getting
a cameo anyway. But that was the threat, right? And this comes down to personal, personal choice of,
of what we, like as a constitutionalist, personally, I don't really like the idea of a
federal government stepping on my rights. It's one of the reasons why I moved to Arizona is because
Washington was just way too oppressive. They went way too far. California's gone too far.
And, you know, and maybe, maybe I'm the odd man out, but I think you should go where you're
treated best and where your values are enshrined. And I don't think that you should be forced to
remain in a state that doesn't, that doesn't espouse your own values. So we have the ability
in this federation to move to the state that we want. So you could move to Texas,
you could move to California, wherever you want to go, there's a, there's a state for you. But
when you have really heavy handed federal legislation, that kind of disappears. So that's,
that's where the offense begins with regards to the Constitution, at least from my perspective.
Yeah, I would, and I haven't looked into it as far as the Hillary Clinton thing goes. But I think
if they don't call that Hillary Clinton, it's nothing more than a likeness to her.
It doesn't matter if it is, she's a public figure. They can say whatever they want and,
and they can do whatever they want. There's no limits to it. I disagree. I,
that's my understanding. I disagree. Yeah, I disagree. Because if it's, so if, if, if I were
to generate Brad Pitt sitting in my car, and you couldn't tell unless you knew that at 100%
wasn't Brad Pitt in the car, if, if they cared enough, his legal team could reach out and say
he was never there. We're talking about likeness rights. Okay. I got you. Okay.
That's it. Yeah. Yeah. But likeness rights that, that's different from like,
and so that's okay. All right. So we're on the same page of that. So as far as these girls,
these, these look like real photos because his defense is, well, they're AI and AI. I'm like,
nah, that's, you know, if, if I'm like, I was never in Nate's car, that, but every, it looks like
I was there, you know, like I'm more in a speedo in your car, right? It's, if it's not, you know,
obvious that it's fake, you know, we got some issues, right? And so there's the, your likeness
is your IP. Yeah. Right. And so, and so I don't think you understand that. And I'm like, dude,
what are you doing? It's not even a cartoon version of the person. You and I had talked
some time ago and maybe it was just on a passing Facebook thread about
tickets. So the, the photo tickets. Oh, sure. Yeah. And they're everywhere now.
So there is a product that you can buy that's a, it's a, it's a ring that you put on that has
like an extra finger. So whatever you're doing and anyone takes a picture, it'd be like, that's AI.
That's not really me. That's freaking AI. I was never there. See the fingers stop light.
Right. But yeah, the, the, the lightness thing is different. But even that, like what I would tell
him is there's a famous case in college, there's some brothers that play basketball for UCLA,
the abandoned brothers, and they sued the NCAA and EA sports. I want to say it's EA sports because
they make a NCAA basketball, whatever the, those games are. And eventually they won because
the colleges were using their lightness for financial gain. Now,
now these kids get paid in the NIL deal because you can't use their lightness and stuff. And it's
like, you know, it's a bigger story than that. But, but the point of that was,
he could say that, well, I'm not using it for financial gain. I say, yeah, but if you're using
attraction on your own personal brand at some sort of gain, you know, but yeah, I think he was
wrong. I think everybody believes he's wrong. And I think he's just kind of, he doesn't really
understand the legalities around lightnesses and AI. And maybe that's the point he's trying to prove,
but I don't think he, he knows what he's talking about. Beware of people that can't admit when
they're wrong. If they can't be humble enough and admit that, hey, I did something stupid,
this was a mistake and I'm sorry if they can't apologize for doing something dumb,
just steer away from them. It's my suggestion. Yeah. You know, so I didn't, I didn't invite him,
you know, back on the podcast. He's been on the pod before, not in studio. But other than that,
I'm, I get along with the guys who were cordial, but you know, that was kind of a slimy grease
bally move. And it's just, dude, you know, it's like just, can you please learn your lesson and
move on gracefully and go do something else more productive. So if you're going to use,
it's like the worst thing you can, that's like, that's scraping the bottom of the barrel of what
you can do with AI. I mean, it's, it's incredible. These tools. As part of the doomerism for people,
though, because they think, they think generative AI is, is, is all there is. AI slop is definitely
a thing. I think it's really tarnished what, what AI can do. I mean, just to put it into
perspective from a branding perspective for us at Arcus Foundry, we removed AI mentions from
basically anything that we, we do it, because the thing is at the end of the day,
our customers, they don't care if it's AI. They just care that it does the thing that it,
that it needs to do. They don't care. And it's always been that way. If you rewind 10 years,
someone had some, some fancy algorithm that did a thing. They don't care about the algorithm. They
care about getting the thing that they want. That's it. So now I think that in 2022, 2023,
2024, AI was all the rage, but it's table stakes now. You're not special because you use AI.
Everyone has it. It's been democratized. So there's nothing special about it.
So we're like, let's, let's remove this. This is stupid. We don't, we don't need to advertise
that we're using AI. Of course we're using AI. Everybody is. But the thing is, is imagine being
on a horse and buggy when the automobile came around. That's really what it is. So my suggestion
to anyone that wants to dip, dip their toe in the water is, is, is just get, I mean, you can start
with chat GPT or start with, uh, with Claude code is easy. I mean, you talk to it the same way that
you would talk to a chat GPT, just in a, in a command window, which I think a lot of people
probably won't be comfortable with. But when you tell it, Hey, here's the app I'm trying to build,
spin up a local version and show me a demo. And then it pulls up a website that's hosted on your
computer to show you what it is that you're building. I mean, that's just pretty cool. It's
addictive too, because the thing is, is you can iterate so flipping fast that you could have
just some crazy idea and you're like, Hey, you know, I'm just going to, to build
this thing. I mean, to put it into perspective, my first app that I built with Claude, it cost me
about a thousand tokens or sorry, not a thousand. It cost me a million tokens. And I thought that
that was a lot. What does that mean to people? Okay. So that's the, that's the big word right
now. How many tokens do you have? Sure, token usage. The tokens are the energy that AI inference
runs on. So if you never heard the term inference, what that means is is inference is the back end
engine of AI that takes what you've told it and builds it into whatever it is that you're doing.
So as an example, you've got a computer over here that has a GeForce RTX video card. And so
that is the inference engine that generates the tokens that then you can cash in to, to,
to build a thing. So when you pay, as an example, your chat GPT window that you might be talking
to it in that context window is about 200,000 tokens at about the 200,000 token count. It doesn't,
that's where hallucinations begin. So one of the ways that you can stop hallucinations. So it'll
start making things up. And so, so let's say you've had this crazy long conversation with chat GPT
and it's been going on for a long, long, long time. And, and it's just, it's getting worse.
It's getting, your answers are getting degraded. They're not, they're not as high quality as they
otherwise would be. It's because you're getting, you're getting high up in the context window
where your usage after about the 200,000, it just started, it just starts degrading. It's just,
your answers aren't very good. But what you can do is have, ask chat GPT to make a markdown file or
just say, if you type .md this session, it will make a markdown file. So it'll take the entire
conversation and it'll condense, it'll strip out everything that's unnecessary and it'll give it
a handoff document. Then you take that MD file and you load it into a new conversation, that new,
that new chat has fresh, has all the, has all the context. So the trick here is when you get to,
to specific milestones, make an MD and then, and then start a new conversation and then pick up from
there. So, so that way your, your context window stays nice and fresh. You're getting fresh answers
and like the quality is just, it's just a lot higher. Also for Claude specifically,
if you use it during the day, you're not getting the best experience.
Cause everybody's using it? Everybody's using it. So the whole system is, is degraded over, over
just because everyone's using it. I found over a three month, I'm going to call it a binge,
is a three month binge of, of just creating new products with Claude. It works really best around
between like two and six AM. And six AM, that's when the token, your token cost actually increases.
So it's like surge rates. So, interesting. So I found, I found myself just pulling all
nighters, just counting all night. I'm like, this is great. I mean, it works perfectly,
but during the day. Well, it's kind of fascinating because I can promise you,
you're at, not even your average, like well over to the 90th percentile users of any of
these prompt based AI systems have no idea about token usage and resource usage.
They hide all that because at the end of the day, it's, it's like, Hey, my, my internet is,
is my phone is slowing down because I've already reached my freaking data plan for the end of
the month. Right. I mean, that's essentially what this kind of is. You know, do you want to buy
more plan or if everyone's on, oh, you go to public event, your service sucks because everybody's
on the wifi. Same thing. Yeah. Everybody. And then once it starts thinning out,
now you can actually, you can send a text message or a picture or something to somebody.
Essentially that's what's going on, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's funny that, I think,
not open AI, X AI. Oh, GROC. Yeah. So their entire Kentucky data center just got annexed into,
to serve Claude. So Elon's now selling compute to Claude because they don't,
Anthropoc doesn't have enough. They don't have compute and you can't build these data centers
fast enough. Now, Google's come out with, so I don't know if you've been following RAM prices
lately, but they went for they tripled, right? Bananas. Yeah. Well, something happened about
two months ago and the prices collapsed because the reason that memory prices were so high is
because the, they needed them for server farms. Google announced a product called TurboQuant
and they're releasing it. I think they're releasing it for free. TurboQuant basically
cuts in half the inference cost. So now all these data centers don't need memory as bad.
And so all these short sellers that were capitalizing on the inflated market,
they got completely wrecked. And good. Good for them. Right. If you're a memory scalper and
you're watching this, screw you. Right. Yeah. Nobody likes those people. It's like the video
card people. Everyone was Bitcoin mining and the card in my system costs as much as the whole
tower, you know? Yeah. And now scams are getting really wild. So Amazon, if you sell a video card,
there's people that are getting their video cards returned that they've sold to consumers
and they'll get the card back and the GPU has been desoldered. They've stolen the GPU and just
shipped back the smoldering husk. That is crazy.
Yeah, shit's getting wild, man. What are your, let's shift here a little bit.
Wes, from One Drink Wednesday, my good friend Wes Tinkersley,
sent me a picture today of a Prelude, he finally saw one in person. I actually liked the car.
I said, yeah, they're a good looking car. They're just kind of overpriced for what they deliver
and, you know, they're going to come out with a better one. I think we may have talked about it
at some point. We've talked about a few of their cars. What are your thoughts on that car now,
if they've been different from before? I really want to love it. Here's the thing,
the Prelude pushed a lot of new technologies forward and that was Honda's test mule for
new stuff. There's nothing new on the car. There's nothing new. You mean originally?
Originally, yeah. So if you're going to bring back that nameplate,
you better at least give it the technologies that it had. Don't come out with something
that has less features than the original that it replaced. So yeah, it's got a hybrid system,
but it's heavy. Isn't it like almost 4,000 pounds? I have no idea.
So the other thing is, and this is a personal sticking point for me, there's no four wheel
steering. The NC1 didn't have four wheels. Come on, Honda. You did it once. perfectly.
Go back to your roots. If you're going to resurrect the nameplate, and I say this with
respect because I love Honda, but come on, guys, for the being counters at Honda,
stop crushing your heritage stuff. That's what's going on. They can't get this out of committee.
I think they've given stuff back to the engineers. I think it's like a recent announcement. So it
sounds good, but I don't know what that really means. They've got the technology. They just won't
do it. And this is Honda. This is Honda to a T. We know they can do it. They just won't.
And it's strange or happens recently. Yeah. Yeah. So if they have, they won't,
they won't bring it back for one reason or another. And now four wheel steering,
maybe you could argue that the super handling drive system, but yeah. So that's why we,
we grafted it onto the NSX because the one that's sitting out in the elements right now.
Well, I think we're like rotting and sitting. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a fun car. I'm really looking
forward to getting back up to the Northwest and just resurrecting it. And this is something that
happened every year when I lived up there is that there's just a lot of stuff that would break during
the year and have to go back and re-engineer it and fix it and solve problems. So. Do you have
plans to go to Expo this year? Not this year, unfortunately. Just not, not, not in the cards.
Not in the cards. Too busy from a business perspective last year.
I think last year it was like right at the, right at the very end you decided, right?
That I wasn't going to Expo? That you were. Oh, that I was going. Yeah. Well, I was going to
drive the NSX because the hybrid system was supposed to be done, but business stuff got in
the way. And just with, with where we're at in, in building these new products and publicizing
them, we're prepping our pre-seed fundraising round right now. So we're actually starting to raise
big money to, to jump, to get to the next steps, which is something that last year, I don't know
that I was really in the place to do, but something that a friend of mine at, uh, uh,
he's high up at Microsoft and he explained that something that, that is a concern for major,
major companies that are in that space is that they might not have the capital to buy up all
of these AI startups. So the thing is, is you can build an app that scales, that's really freaking
good. My thing is just get a demo, build an app that's, that demonstrates what it is that you're
trying to do and then go get funding for it. Cause you can do it. You don't need a crazy team. You
could do it just a little, you, you don't need something that's super polished. You just need
to answer the question of whatever it is that, that it, that it does. So. Yeah. My friend,
Drew Bunkley, who's been on the show and gets mentioned all the time as a show supporter,
um, he's, he's recently done that. You know, he's come up with a few apps. Um,
and it's, it's, it's awesome because he's older than I am. And he just like, Hey, I'm tired of
this other stuff. Let me see what I can do. Kind of, kind of bringing it back to you about 45
minutes ago, you know, like now's the time to get out there. And, you know, I admire him for it
because it's, it ain't easy or maybe it's easy for some and, and then it is for others, but,
you know, he's still out there trying to, trying to do some of these apps. Have you ever heard of,
um, the concept of, uh, tigers can't change their stripes and like people don't change? I've heard,
yeah, yeah. Um, I've got a, which I disagree with that by the way, but same. And I have,
I have a counter theory to that. And it's, it's not that people are capable of change or not.
It's the circumstance surrounding the change. See, if you have, the situation has to be so
bad where the change offers relief. That's, that's how you get people to change. So once they can
see, it's kind of like that, uh, that, um, have you seen that image of, uh, of Rick
prying Morty's eyes open? I think so. It's pretty good. And that's kind of what this is. So it's
like, if you can open your eyes and just dip your toe, just start creating something because
if you can use AI to increase your productivity, that's, that's what's going to allow you to
keep your job or get, or get a raise or get, get promoted, right? They don't care how the
work is getting done, just that it's getting done. So the thing is, if you're resisting using these
AI tools, you are, you're, you're, you're shooting yourself in the foot. You just shoot, like everybody
else is using it. Like again, back to the, uh, the cart and, uh, and buggy, right?
It's just like what you wouldn't think to do that unless you're Amish, maybe
with respect to the Amish, don't come after me.
Much respect to them. They probably had a bunch of people lined up and were boy cutting cars
when they first came out. Maybe I would put it past them. Yeah. Um, what else you got?
Um, brought this for you.
Arcus found your key chain.
It's just 3d printed or what? That is 3d printed from my, uh, my incredibly talented engineer
friend, uh, Dave at prelude 3g or prelude engineering. Now he's a guy that's done all the,
the four wheel steering swap and, uh, designed the motor mounts and he's, um,
kept me alive. We'll say that. Cause I've done like Jerry rigs and dumb shit and he actually
takes it, makes it like production grade. Sure. No, do I have to use it or can I like put it on
the wall of fame behind me? You can do whatever you want with it. Oh, by the way, there it is.
I was looking for my fourth light earlier. Oh yeah, yeah, there it is. Like where's the fourth
one? It's on, it's literally right behind me. So, uh, you asked what else I've got going on. Um,
aside from, we built, uh, Spark forage OS. So we now have a launcher for all of our products,
not just Spark forage. We have, we built Spark site. That's a sales tool that helps, uh, help
salespeople get through their calls and close more deals, which is pretty good. So it does a lot of,
it gives you a lot of background information and whatever you put into it, it'll create
objection handlers for like things that your customer might say based on the information
that you've given it. And they're kind of like an advanced CRM. Uh, not exactly. It's, it's a sales
tool that, uh, that prompts you through the sales process. And it's, it's from like a,
does a questions based selling. So it, uh, it's, its purpose is to avoid triggering people's sales
defenses. And so, I don't know, man, I got to talk to my, uh, I got to talk to my spouse about it.
Yeah, exactly. And it got, got handlers for all of that. So, and all of them are, are customized
to the industry that you're in for what it is that you're selling. So that's, uh, and I built
that before we even added the, the Claude inference on the back, but now once we added that,
I mean, you just tell it, tell it exactly who your customer is, or specifically if you've got a
person, like let's say you're in real estate and you're trying to sell a house, you tell it, like,
let's say, you know, uh, you know, Nick and Kelly are, are realtors from Sarasota, Florida, and,
they're, they're, uh, they're upper affluent and they're looking to move to Houston, Texas
for, uh, for political or whatever reasons, right? So you just give it as much context as you have
from your phone call with, with them and, uh, or even a transcript and it will build the entire,
the entire, uh, deck for you based on, based on all of that. It's pretty cool. So we built that
and, uh, we've got Spark pages. So that's our free website. Um,
Honed is one that we've been working on lately. That's a resume tool. So you put your resume
into this thing and then you give it your job description, the job description you're applying
for and it will, it will reconfigure your entire career experience around to, and it doesn't make
up, it doesn't make up, uh, experience, but it will, it will perfectly align. It will best align
your existing experience so that you have the best chance of getting the interview.
Yeah, that's important because what I've told people, like my son and others, it's like, you need to
have multiple resumes because even, even in what I do, you know, healthcare IT, another contract
could come up, but they could be looking for someone who's specialized in like interventional
radiology, which I avoid like, like the plague, you know, or something else that I've done,
but I haven't done it in three years, but it's on my resume. So AI can help me restructure that
instead of me having to have three different copies of my resume.
Right. Well, we recommend is, is you start with LinkedIn. So LinkedIn, you add in your entire
history, everything that you want. So once you've got your LinkedIn, your LinkedIn history complete,
then you can do a PDF export of that. So you export that to PDF and use that as a source
material for honed. And when you do that, it, and that leads in, it gives it more context to,
to better apply your existing skills. And the next thing that's, uh, that it does is,
now that's the, so we have three different stages to this. The first is the edge check. So that does
a free check of your existing resume, um, against a, uh, not against any job description, just
where are you at currently? It gives you a baseline of will it pass the ETS scanners
and what is its home to score? And that's, that's free. That'll be free forever. So you
don't have to, you don't have to pay anything for it. Um, at the $1 mark that allows you to,
that allows you to, um, uh, to edit, to edit it. So it will create a new resume for you against a
job description. So the, the third, the third factor of this is the sharpen level. And so sharpen
will take your entire history and it will, it, this is where we get into career intelligence.
This whole thing is a career intelligence tool, but it will, it will surface five to seven other
job titles that maybe you hadn't thought of. So this will expand your horizons and tell you,
this is, these are the jobs that you can go for, that you, you qualify for with your specific
experience. And it even gives you the pay bands. We pull that from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.
Nice. So that's kind of cool. Yeah. That's a lot of, that's a lot of legwork for somebody that's
actively looking, but automated, you know, I mean, well, that, that's $15 for that.
It's worth it, right? Cause it's like, okay, what's out there? What,
I have all this experience, but I'm not quite sure, right, you know, where it's applicable
out there other than what I've, you know, I'm great customer service. I guess I'm going to apply
for a customer service job. You know, well, you might want to look at these other things based
on your experience. Well, let's, let's, let's take it, let's take it a step further. I mean,
I've got a couple of old friends that they're, they're in the tech field. They cannot find work.
Super qualified. And they're posting on LinkedIn that they're getting shot down for
delivery driver roles and cashier roles. I'm like, those roles don't, they, they're incongruent with
your experience. Why are you, of course you're going to get turned down. Someone's going to look
at it as well. You are way over qualified and you're going to be gone next week, the second you
get a better offer, right? Of course you're not getting hired. So the thing is, is if you're applying,
you need to know what jobs you could be applying for, not just the ones that everybody else is.
So, and I don't know of any other tools that do this. So I figured I'd build one. So it's dedicated
to my friend, John, because I saw him struggling and suffering and refusing to try to use AI to do
anything. And so I figured with a lot more layoffs coming, this could be a good, another,
another way that we could help people. That's like at the heart of everything I do. If it's not,
if it's not going to help people, I'm just not going to do it. Right? It doesn't, it doesn't
help me sleep well at night. You know, knowing that there's a lot of people out there that are
suffering in one way or the other, and I can use my mind to, to alleviate some of that. So,
and at a dollar, it's a dollar per scan. So at this point, you can, can spam resumes
out there that are perfectly tailored to the job that you're applying for. So that increases your,
your chances big time. So it'll remove AI tells are like, basically AI jargon, it'll make it
readable for the recruiter in the format that they want. All these people that got these multiple
columns, all this crap, recruiters really only read it in one style. That's what they want.
And if they can't get to their information that they need in seven seconds, it's in the
recycle bin. That's it. That's how it works. You've got seven seconds to make an impression.
And like they read it in an F pattern. So like they read it in an F pattern. So one of the things
that honed does, and we, we rank between like there's 39 different recruiter signals that we,
that we rank for. And, and so it rearranges all of your, all of your data, experience
in the format that exactly that they want. So it increases the time that they're going to spend
on your resume. And it increases the chances that you're actually going to get the interview.
And that's like, that's the trick. Cause you're just getting the interview.
Yeah. That's the first step.
Yeah. And, but you got to beat the ATS scanners to do it.
Right.
So, so, um, yeah, it just makes it, uh, and so that's a way that you could use AI to,
and you don't have to, you don't even have to know anything about AI. You just use the tool the way
that it would. And that's back to my, my original point of nobody gives a shit if it's got AI in
it. As long as it does the thing, they don't care what's powering it. They don't care.
Right. You ready to, uh, try some of that awful fake alcohol you bought me?
So for those of you that don't know, Jay's birthday, um.
Hold on, I'm going to get you the bottle. Go ahead.
You can give it a drink straight out of it if you want.
Why? Cause you're never going to drink it.
No, no, I'm never going to drink it. But I, I, I kept it because it's a cool little bottle.
Oh, come on. You're going to make me drink alone?
Yeah. Well, I just want you to show people what it is.
All right. So this is the, our premium hogwash.
Oh, here we go.
So here's our premium hogwash here. And this is a.
I'll take some B roll of it.
It is a distilled, non-alcoholic agave spirit. So, um, some years ago,
your boy, uh, decided to give up alcohol, but I still drink.
It's just non-alcoholic. It's the same thing as switching to decaf, right?
So I just figured.
You see those, those, those dangerous chemicals that Starbucks got in trouble for
using in their decaf coffee?
Uh, yeah, you got to do Swiss water processed for sure. Yeah.
So, um, so I just switched to, to doing non-alcoholic stuff and just figured
why not give it a shot? And I just don't, I don't really
like the feeling of being drunk. I get, I just, I don't miss it, but I enjoy the,
I enjoy the flavor and the taste. So non-alcoholic beers are great to the
Heineken zero. Perfect. Really scratches that itch.
If you're like, okay, keep, keep the, keep the, um, the ritual, but ditch the, the
chemical components, right? Smell this stuff. Oh, it's a twist.
Sorry. I thought it was a pull off cork. I'm going to break it.
Whoa. Holy shit. Actually smells like agave.
Actually smells like mezcal. Right.
You really going to make me drink out of this? All right. I'll do it.
You, you can. Yeah. I could, I don't really have anything for you in here.
Okay. Pinkies out.
So my thought was it smells like mezcal and jay don't like mezcal.
Um,
what are your thoughts? Come on.
Oh man. Um, well, if I were to,
um,
it's spicy mildew water is what it is. That's, that's, that's what it is.
I appreciate it anyway. It was just, yeah. Yeah.
You know, if it's a nice bottle, if you need to use something to hold the door open,
you could use this as a fancy doorstop. I think that's what non-alcoholic wine is.
Typically I had a friend that had a magnum bottle of non-alcoholic wine for like a decade,
and that's what she used it for, is a doorstop. So, um, yeah, this is not great.
But again, it's like we were talking about, uh, non-alcoholic beverages are kind of like
bargain hunting. Yeah.
Just expect that what you're going to find is just, it's all going to be crap.
But every now and again, you'll find something really good. Yeah.
Every now and again, but, but it just expect to go in disappointed.
And you might not actually be when you find something good.
Nate, thanks for coming through.
Yeah. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
One of the things Nate for coming into the studio, that was an awesome conversation.
Let me know what you think about our little AI friend here in the area that is,
in my opinion, abusing AI and has a gross misunderstanding of what you can and can do.
And meanwhile, ruffling a lot of feathers, you know, and this is what I told this person,
you know, all we have really is our reputation.
And if you don't care about your reputation, then you don't care, you know, at the end of the day,
he's got a, you know, sleeping in the bed that he makes or he doesn't make.
And he's got to deal with this. And hopefully people don't turn to violence against him.
Maybe that's what he wants. Maybe that's what he's trying to prove. I don't know.
But Nate and I recorded that about 33 weeks ago, and it's still going on today.
I, one of my concerns about that conversation was, wow, by the time this episode comes out,
maybe this person would have chilled. No, double tripling down. I just,
I just don't think it's a good idea.
One of the right Honda and right Toyota, Arcus Foundry, of course, Mr. Sparkforge himself,
AutoCannon officially licensed Honda and Acura Gear, one of the Cuyotta Motiva of Warner
Garden, Florida, automotive specialty tool of Owings Mills, Maryland, big house,
small home design out of Traverse City, Michigan, and Ashburg, Virginia,
the Lucky Brake sports breakers out of Caledonia, Michigan, shaping success,
Treasure Valley out of Boise, Idaho. Also one of the Mark Stoneman, Catherine Cox, Eddie Ramos,
Richard Graves, Byron Jones, Bo Jung, Allen Scamina, Drew Bunkley, and Andre Mullins for being my
financial Patreon supporters. You can support it as well if you'd like to go to patreon.com
forward slash hard parking podcast. Otherwise, leave a comment, especially for this vehicle,
like this, if you're watching it on YouTube. And I could always use more reviews, man,
reviews really help. Also want to say really quick that, you know, one of my podcast
idols, I guess would be Dan Levitard. And I haven't really listened to Dan Levitard show with
Stugatz in a long time. I used to listen to them religiously. He got a little too woke.
And the show just stopped being as good. And I don't like half its producers is on the microphone,
but today he came out with an official announcement that it's just the Dan Levitard show and Stugatz
hasn't been part of the show in almost a year. And I had no idea. And it's kind of saddens me
that it's just the Dan Levitard show. I'm always going to
praise Dan Levitard as I do Jim Rome, as I do Adam Crowler for all being three of my biggest
podcasting influences out there. Even if I agree or disagree with some of the things that they say,
they're always going to be on my mouth, my personal mouth, Rushmore. And man, it's just
one of those things that just happened in times change. Sounds like it was a contract dispute.
But, you know,
Levitard is really the one who taught me to embrace the conversation.
And Stugatz is the one that always made me laugh. Questions, comments, or concerns, info
at hardparking.com. Follow the show on Instagram at hardparkingpod. Subscribe to us on YouTube
at hardparking, and I will talk to you all next week.
About this episode
Nate Robertson from Arcus Foundry’s Spark Forge joins Hard Parking to unpack AI controversy in the Phoenix car scene—especially the ethics and legal risk of using AI to create images of local models. The conversation then pivots to practical tech: how Flock roadside cameras work (ALPR, motion-activated, vehicle-focused, not facial recognition) and why they’re not speed cameras. Between the AI talk, they swap real-world car troubleshooting stories, including wiring/harness fire history and headlight module issues, plus NSX and four-wheel-steering chatter.
Original notes
EP330: Nate Robertson (Arcus Foundry) on AI Controversy, Tech, & Phoenix Car Scene
In this episode, Jhae welcomes Nate Robertson of Arcus Foundry / Spark Forge to the studio. They dive into AI's role in business and content creation, a local Phoenix car scene controversy involving aggressive AI use by a known creator, Flock cameras privacy debates in Arizona, NSX projects, and more laid-back conversation.
Jhae shares Seattle trip stories celebrating friendship across divides. Nate demos tools like Spark Prompt and discusses streamlining business tech. They explore ethics, legality, and real-world AI impacts.
Guest: Nate Robertson – naterobertson.com, @TheN8Robertson
Key Timestamps:
- 00:00 Intro & Seattle Trip Reflections
- 01:40 Coming Up: Nate & AI Controversy
- 02:27 Flock Cameras Deep Dive (Phoenix Privacy vs. Safety)
- 08:05 Nate Robertson Joins – Arcus Foundry & Spark Forge
- 09:14 Studio Chat: NSX Projects & Car Life
- 15:14 Arcus Foundry Overview
- 18:28 Spark Prompt Teleprompter Demo
- 40:00+ AI Tools, Resumes, Ethics & Local Drama
- 01:05:00 Non-Alcoholic Drinks & Wrap-Up
Leave a comment or review – what’s your take on AI in the car scene?
Contact
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.hardparking.com
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YouTube: youtube.com/@HardParking
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Main Show Sponsors:Right Honda: https://righthonda.com/Right Toyota: https://www.righttoyota.com/Arcus Foundry: https://arcusfoundry.comAutocannon Official Gear: https://shop.autocannon.com/
Hard Parking with Jhae Pfenning
Jhae Pfenning
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