Hosted by Connect2 by Mark Hughes and Jeff Cullen
Episodes
248
Latest episode
Oct 2026
Language
EN
A conversation between Mark and Jeff, two information junkies, about a wide range of contemporary issues. We discuss current events, nerdy things, business concepts, marketing, technology, media and photography. As we are based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, there are lots of local topics. The podcast is generally upbeat and often covers current events and we occasionally have guests. Each episode typically has a central focus for most of the podcast but also lots of other regular topics including what they learned in the last week and what media they are consuming.
You spend a third of your life sleeping but how well do you know how it works? It is incredibly important to a good healthy lifestyle but it does some things that are not too obvious. There are also things that you can inadvertently do that has a negative consequence on your awake time after a poor night's sleep. It affects so many of your systems and today we discuss sleep
The real estate world is divided into two very distinct categories, residential and commercial. There are a lot of problems with both worlds but commercial property is valued in a different way from residential properties. It has more of an economic basis whereas residential property is really more related to supply and demand. Mark and Jeff discuss the differences between the two after talking about a number of other more current events including the Alberta Referendum questions.
The Frontier labs are producing more and more models. As a casual user, you are presented with a number of options as to which version of the model you can select for your task. How do you decide. Mark and Jeff go through the different models and versions (as of Sept 2026) and help you understand. We also, briefly, discuss the current Alex Formenton controversy and how it fits into the culture of the Edmonton Oilers that have a long history of recruiting many players, coaches and GM's that have had tainted pasts to give them an opportunity for a second chance.
It seems like everyday you look at any news feed all you see is terrible stuff. Earthquakes, volcanoes, Super El Nino, Polarizing Politics, War, etc... Everything seems so negative and honestly its a little draining. Today's episode is about some good news stories.... things that are positive and hopeful. Oh, and the coffee was great!
Back in the day, underground miners would have canaries in a cage to test the air to make sure it was safe to breath. If the canary stopped singing and died, it meant that the air was bad and a big risk to the miners (they needed to get out!). Did we just see an AI equivalent of a dead canary? The Hugging Face attack by Open AI agents in July was so much worse than originally thought with the agents persistently attacking the Hugging Face infrastructure to figure out how some phantom graders would be assessing the agents' performance. There was so much to unpack. Mark and Jeff discuss this and the real fear for the future, which is not a single sentient AI but a swarm of powerful misguided AI agents trying to do something and devastating the internet or world.
Mark has a special guest today with Kayla Gordon, from Winnipeg, with whom Mark has been travelling all over this planet with on several photographic trips. Both Mark and Kayla have competed in a number of image competitions with a range of results. They discuss the process and what you get as a benefit from these competitions. Just a special note, the recording was done via a zoom meeting, so the sound is not quite good as usual (sorry about that).
We have been able to travel at supersonic speeds for decades, the technology is well know as are the consequences of going very fast. There used to be Concordes but nothing after them. What happened, why don't we do air travel at supersonic speeds (at the moment) and why almost all commercial airplane travel is in a sweet spot of about 0.85 Mach (speed of sound) at an elevation of 35,000 - 45,000 feet.
Passwords protect our digital online lives but they keep getting more complicated and there is so many of them, people start getting lazy so that they can actually remember their passwords. This makes passwords unreliable as a security feature. Passwords are the first line of defense for your personal information but there are other options including password managers and Passkeys. Mark and Jeff discuss online security and what your options are to protect yourself.
In this day and age, we are now relying on mapping applications on our phones to get us to our destination more and more. Google Maps and Apple Maps are great. They find a route to where you are going fast and predict the time so much better than even a couple of years ago. But, how do they do that? How do they predict how long it takes and how do they know about traffic. Better yet, which one is better. Mark and Jeff explore this topic
Alcohol is ingrained and accepted in our society. But is it safe to consume? Alcohol is a Class 1 carcinogen just like Tobacco and Asbestos. What??? Yep. So why do we consume it still? Good question. Let's explore that.
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