MobileViews Podcast 612: Tokens vs, Humans w/guest Don Sorcinelli

About this episode

Jon Westfall and I welcomed back our long-time friend Don Sorcinelli, who hasn’t been on the show since last October (podcast 583). Don shared his deliberate "low-tech" approach to entertaining his two-year-old granddaughter, opting for traditional toys over tablets to encourage focus and avoid the "out" that screen time provides. This sparked some fun tech nostalgia, as I recounted my own experiences as a dad of a toddler trying "interactive" toys like the light-sensing Microsoft Barney and the giant yellow Microsoft EasyBall trackball—both of which proved that sometimes, simpler is better.

A major theme of this episode was the shifting economic reality of AI. Don, ever the healthy skeptic, compared the current AI hype to the dot-com bust and the "magic math" of non-GAAP reporting. We discussed the "tokens vs. humans" trade-off, noting that as companies like Google and OpenAI move toward token-based pricing, the cost of farming out thinking to AI may soon exceed the cost of hiring a human. I’ve been finding ways to outsmart these limits by using standard LLMs to "interview" me and generate highly efficient Codex prompts, which usually get the job done on the first try.

We also tackled some serious infrastructure and software headaches. I’m currently dealing with expiring Secure Boot certificates on some of my no-name PC boxes—a situation Don rightly called a "mismanaged" disaster on Microsoft's part, given the lack of clear documentation and the bugs causing BitLocker prompts. On a more positive note, my 8GB MacBook Neo continues to impress me with its efficiency, proving that tight optimization can often trump raw specs. We wrapped up with a look at the future of Nvidia ARM-based processors for Windows and a strange sighting during my daily walk: a fiber optic cable hanging at neck height between utility poles, a reminder that even high-tech infrastructure can have very physical (and dangerous) failures