TechZing is an informal bi-weekly chat show aimed at entreprenures and hackers interested in creating their own web app startup. The show is both educational (with practical advice) and conversational.
242: TZ Discussion - How the NSA Broke the Internet
Justin and Jason discuss the Uber wedding that Jason and Sandy attended over the weekend, their two female listeners, how the most recent Pluggio deal fell through and why Justin has decided to take Pluggio off the market for the time being, what needs to happen in order for AnyFu to succeed, possible plans for Catalyst, how Colby is reading Ender's Game and why Justin wishes the technology in Asimov's Foundation Series actually existed, whether physical immortality is achievable and why Jason believes that cryonics is the ultimate Hail Mary pass, how Simon Holmes increased his luck surface area and the book that resulted, why memories are inherently unreliable, how they're formed and how they can be hacked, Jason's benchmarking experiments using Node.js with MySQL, CouchDB and RethinkDB, how Miley Cyrus hacked the press, how LinkedIn tried using HTML5 for their mobile app but then changed back to native, Jason's frustration with getting Titanium to work correctly for Android and why Justin chose to build the Digedu mobile app using HTML5 and PhoneGap, Gmail's annoying new policy for dealing with email forwarders, how the NSA has broken or subverted the majority of Internet's encryption algorithms and security protocols and Bruce Schneier's call to arms, the twisting of truth about the chemical weapons attack in Syria, the missing evidence, and the rationalizations for a US led response, who's going to man the Digedu ship while Justin is on his upcoming vacation, a recent technology headache with the updater code, and their recently hired front-end developer.
241: TZ Discussion - The Asymmetric Investment
Justin and Jason discuss Uber's latest fundraising round, the selling of Pluggio, Rob Walling's startup Drip, Justin's hack for creating a tablet unlock code and how's he looking for a front-end developer, how Tesla achieved a perfect safety rating and captured more than 12% of the luxury car market, whether it would be a good idea to invest in Solar City or Yahoo, the prospects for BitCoin and why Jason likes asymmetric investments, Uber's future and how Jason is building a dashboard for Uber's realtime system, why Jason thinks getting a post to the top of Hacker News requires the same recipe as launching a successful startup - a good idea, good execution and help from a group of supporters, the latest revelations on the NSA's vast illegal surveillance apparatus and why Jason believes it's an existential threat to democracy, how higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior and why Jason wants to formulate the laws of human nature, Julian Corlette's TL;DR landing page experiment, David Yang's HNSummaries, Kale Davis's TLDR.io, and Jason Calacanis's Launch Ticker, the NYC-based Fullstack Academy, Jason's skepticism on the Lean Startup movement, and Justin's latest SaaS idea that he's positive will work but isn't talking about.
240: TZ Discussion - Hope in a Quantum Encryption Box
Justin and Jason discuss the details of selling Pluggio, what Justin considers to be the ideal attributes of a SaaS business and his idea for a collaborative web app for doing mockups, the hypercritical startup advise of Ben Horowitrz and Dustin Moskowitz, the surprising wealth of A-list celebrities and Internet entrepreneurs, the Xerox compression bug and the Laravel "returning" bug, Nassim Taleb's Skin in the Game paper, analog mockups, developing an Android app in Titanium, why Apple's board is concerned about the current rate of innovation, the nonsensical empirical risk assessment of the U.S. government, the cynical political theatre of shutting down U.S. embassies based on non-specific terrorist threat, how Snowden was offered one year's asylum in Russia as well as a job by social networking giant VKontakte, why Lavabit and Silent Circle both shut down their encrypted email services, how the TSA is rapidly expanding beyond the confines of the airport and the increasing militarization of local police, the lurching surveillance / police state and the possibility of a quantum internet.
239: TZ Discussion - Putting Up Drywall at the New McDonalds
Justin and Jason discuss the canvas-based drawing app that Justin built for Digedu using his JS library known as $$, how Jason got drag and drop working in Titanium and his idea for creating a mobile game for learning electronics, the original Star Trek series vs. Start Trek: The New Generation, the single window strategy for building mobile apps, creating 180 websites in 180 days, the challenge of staying current with the latest programming technologies, the 97-year old man who makes art using MS Paint, how PayPal accidentally credited a man $92 quadrillion, coding vs managing coders, the selling of Pluggio, whether Jason's secret project will remain secret forever and his future plans for Catalyst, why men need women and why they become more generous when they have daughters, why you can't force kids to be what they're not, Jason's experiment with a low-carb diet, the Soylent production delay, Justin's intuitive eating / habit-building plan, Greenwald's drip news strategy for keeping the NSA story alive and how Nancy Pelosi saved the NSA surveillance program, the television show Breaking Bad (don't worry - no spoilers), what's killing the bees, how Joel Spolsky killed a software patent in only 10-minutes using AskPatents.com, Xamarin - an IDE and platform for creating native, cross-platform desktop and mobile apps using C#, and a new theory of cancer postulated by physicists.
238: TZ Discussion - Goodbye, Top Gun. Hello, Skynet!
Justin and Jason discuss Justin's two-week work trip to Chicago, Sebastien Arnaud's recent visit to Pasadena, the tradeoffs of using a custom/personal framework vs a popular open-source framework, how Justin hired listener Jeremy Logan to work with Digedu, balancing feature development with stability work, why Justin is moving from Rackspace to AWS in order to avoid the single point of failure problem, how he was unable to sell Pluggio on Flippa and how he's going to try selling it through a broker, the summer Catalyst sessions and the effort to get Mindstorm robots to communicate with one another using Bluetooth, NCSS - the five-week online programming competition out of the University of Sydney, how Jason has been bribing his 8-year old son Colby with movies and ice cream to complete all of the DragonBox 12+ levels, Jason's thoughts on how you might extend the Dragonbox model to other STEM subjects such as electronics and physics, the potential for Google Glass to usher in a 'little brother' future and Jason Calacanis' recent screed on the subject, how the Man of Steel is more of a science fiction movie than a superhero movie, how the 5D 'superman memory' crystal can store 360 TB/disk, is stable up to 1000 degrees celsius and lasts a million years, futuristic user interfaces, the science behind controlling a quadcopter with a brain-computer interface, the show Through the Wormhole, the Instructible for creating an EEG cap, how the SpaceX Grasshopper rocket completed a 325m vertical landing, the speculation around Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept, how a self-flying Navy drone successfully landed on an aircraft carrier, the US government's strategy for minimizing revelations about the NSA's unconstitutional spying, Snowden's deadman switch, the the fact that the NSA is basically collecting everything and that the FISA court is a complete joke, DARPA’s real-world terminator, how an Oklahoma City hospital's posting of surgery prices online is creating a bidding war, PHP's comeback and why Laravel is going to become the Rails of PHP, and Boom, the volume booster for the Mac.
237: TZ Discussion - More Soylent, Please
Justin and Jason discuss Edward Snowden's whereabouts and the EU's faux outrage over the NSA's spying, World War Z - the movie and the book, the surprising fact that Ensign Harry Kim lives next door to Jason, how the differ library could save Uber big bucks on bandwidth, investing in people with Upstart, why Justin ordered more Soylent, The 4-Hour Body diet, genetic cars, the informal summer Catalyst sessions and how the kids are obsessed with Kerbal Space Program, the new, more advanced version of DragonBox, Justin's business ideas for sponsorship and SAAS-like subscriptions, the shows Defiance, The Good Wife, and Through the Wormhole, advice for Aaron Knight on PhraseMix (read the notes from MicroConf 2013), Jason's brother's run-in with serial killer Randy Kraft, the site Let Me Google That for You, the unlikely possibility that investigative journalist Michael Hastings' car was "hacked", what former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke had to say about it and James Bamfords Wired article about the rise of Cyber Command and the US's offensive cyber warfare capabilities, Jason's idea for a TV series where the CIA and NSA are at war with one another, Tesla's 90-second battery change, and Colby's Arthur C. Clarke-like thinking on magic.
236: TZ Discussion - Don't Surveil Me, Bro!
Justin and Jason discuss the NSA domestic surveillance story, including James Bamford's 2012 Wired article on the subject, how Edward Snowden revealed classified documents showing Hong Kong hacking targets, whether the fallout will effect US businesses, the NSA's definition of "collect", why Snowden leaked to Glenn Greenwald, the change in poll numbers on the subject, Jason's cheeky idea for an NSA video game and strategies for monitoring and storing vast quantities of domestic surveillance data, the NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake and William Binney, the problem with partisanship, candidate Obama debating president Obama on government surveillance, how Microsoft is giving away zero-day exploits to the government, what Jason would do if he was working at Google and received a National Security Letter, how the vast majority of terrorist plots were organized by the FBI and how the NSA missed all of the recent terrorist plots including the Boston Marathon bombings, the Church Committee and Operation Mockingbird, the nature of power and the fundamental law of human nature, predictions on what will happen to Snowden, the TechZing wiki, Justin's authentic dim sum experience at Lunasia, how economic mobility has been decreasing in the United States, Jason's recent trip to San Diego and Sea World, Jonathon Kresner's Airpair, some ideas for how to market AnyFu, why Justin is putting Pluggio on Flippa, World War Z and the robot Justin didn't buy.
235: TZ Discussion - Jurassic Park, for Realz Yo!
Justin and Jason discuss the danger of moving activities from the "get to" column to the "have to" column, Colby's dramatic improvement in baseball, why he's quitting soccer and the unreasonable effectiveness of private instruction, the show that didn't happen, the summer plans for Catalyst, the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and the founder who was tragically killed, learning to code using Treehouse, how NASA is funding a 3D printer for space, participating in Soylent fundraing campaign, how Jason is helping an AI trading company find a technical partner, Justin's M-trade strategy and how to test it using Quantopian, how Jason and Colby watched the Robo Rally at the recent Pasadena Engineering and Science Expo, using NXC (Not eXactly C) to program Mindstorm robots in Catalyst, why Jason has fallen embarrassingly behind on his secret project known as Vortex, how Mecruit is stalling out, the Node.js differ module that Jason and Guyon created for Uber and the similarity of NPM modules to Win32 COM libraries, how Rossi's E-Cat LENR (low energy nuclear reactor) might actually be for real, Charlie Munger's psychology of human misjudgment talk, how cognitive biases cause people to misjudge global risks, how Justin is a now a proud share of exactly one share of TSLA, why Justin put Pluggio on Flippa, how Jason burned himself out by working on too many projects, whether our own humanity could ultimately constrain the advancement of technology, Jason's theory of how the human race will gradually reengineer itself over time, why Jason recommends the show House of Cards and why Justin recommends the show Parenthood, and the discovery of a frozen mammoth in Siberia.
234: TZ Discussion - Death by iPad
Justin and Jason discuss using Percona for just-in-time MySQL consulting and the idea of offering time-and-a-half "no-wait" rates for AnyFu, the idea of hiring open source experts to write custom patches, using GUIDs in place of auto-increment IDs to solve detached MySQL slave inserts, how Jason has been advising a startup as a consulting CTO, the importance of creating and documenting a well-defined API when pursing a simultaneous web and mobile development strategy, building a critical mass of AnyFu experts, why Jason is considering becoming active on Twitter, how Ben Reyes cleaned up with TSLA, setting up an online trading account, the consumer reports sterling evaluation of the Telsa Model S, why Tesla succeeded and Fisker failed, how conventional wisdom about alternative energy is way out of date, but how Kleiner Perkins has lost money investing in clean energy, the ground-breaking tech of Google Glass and it's implications, how space junk destroyed a Russian satellite, the possibility of doing a marathon podcast, the wide variation in medial costs by region of the country and how to turn this into a business, Jason's idea for a site that debunks false conventional wisdom, a new tech internship model, the study suggesting that college doesn't improve critical thinking for 45% of students, the study demonstrating that supportive parenting works better than "tiger" parenting which leads to a comparatively lower GPA and a more depressive emotional state, the hasty generalization fallacy and cognitive biases, how a 14-year-old discovered that the magnets in an iPad can turn off pacemakers, why Jason wants a TL;DR for everything, why it's valuable and how to create a business out of it, the prospect of using a mobile device to login to a website, how police departments are starting to use iPhone-based iris scanners in the field, the Twine Kickstarter project, combining Kickstarter, Google Trends and Twitter to mine sentiment analysis, why Justin thinks there's a Kickstarter bubble, Jason's theory of why the Google search term "color" is positively correlated with a bullish market, the Ersatz deep learning web platform and why people think it's a big deal, why Jason thinks there needs to be an accountability website for public influencers, the Freakonomics chapter about the performance of kids who were not accepted into a magnet school due to a lottery pick, setting up a subdomain for transactional email on Mailgun, how listener James Jensen is teaching a group of kids how to build Arduino-based robots, an update on Catalyst and the plans for the summer, the latest on Jason's secret project, using MathJax and jqMath to add equations to a web page, the latest on Pluggio, Justin's thoughts on Laravel, how Khan Academy Lite is using Raspberry Pi to stream videos, how the State Department ordered a firm to remove blueprints for a 3D-printed guns from the web, how Obama is backing the FBI's effort to wiretap web users and why Justin is moving yet again.
233: TZ Discussion - My Algorithm Thinks You Look Hot!
Justin and Jason discuss the technologies - Node.js, Socket.io & Redis, which Justin and Udi are using to build digedu's chat system, using CSS fixed positioning for popups on tablets, the influence of good looks on success, Miss Korea contestants and plastic surgery, and Jason's idea for scoring your looks, using Google Trends to beat the market, how Wall Street is gobbling up two-thirds of your 401(k), sending smart phones to space as personal satellites and the concern about space junk, surviving in space without a space suit, how the SpaceX Grasshopper flew 250 meters straight up and then landed vertically, the Kickstarter campaign to engineer florescent plants using synthetic biology, Zach Braff's Kickstarter campaign to finance his new film, kickstarting a Dungeons & Dragons project, the prospect of recording a world-record length podcast, the Soylent controversy, what it's like to get online after 25 years in prison, the prisoner who impregnated four female guards and the prisoner who escaped using a picture of a master key, Jason's thoughts on Oblivion, Just Add Content, thoughts on MicroConf, smoke and mirrors demo-ware, the Silicon Valley "miracle machine" and how Meebo is going to be shut down, AnyFu's recent resurgence, why Justin is purchasing a walking desk, the importance of mastering the underlying dynamics of a system and the pitfalls of pattern matching on superficial attributes, the Y Combinator labor arbitrage, how Jason rolled out an alpha version of his secret project for digedu to use, and Justin's concept of an MDP (minimum delightful project).
232: TZ Discussion - Welcome to the Future (Sorry, No Refunds)
Justin and Jason discuss Justin's new Basis watch and his get fit plan, the upcoming MicroConf conference, how the NASA-backed fusion engine could cut a Mars trip down to 30 days, how one guy's code made it into a Hollywood movie, how Jason wants to shoot a sci-fi webisode with his friend Phil and how they were inspired by the low-budget film Primer, how previous show guest Dan Southworth is in the upcoming Mortal Kombat Legacy, the new TechZing Wiki, why Justin think's (with his marketing help) Jason's secret project could make $100,000 right out of the gate (and how Jason thinks Justin is smoking something), the concept of MVP+, how Jason had his iMac hard drive replaced, how Jason is going to start spending more time on his secret project as opposed to working on the Catalyst IDE, the complete Digedu story, the weird luck surface area email, Jason's involvement with Mecruit, the latest on AnyFu, the hardware failure at the latest Catalyst session and Jason's lesson on two-dimension arrays, whether Bitcoin is an existential threat to the modern liberal state or whether it's the future, how solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities, why Jason believes that Solar City is going to be extremely successful, how the US instigated the latest confrontation with North Korea and how North Korea lacks the capability to strike the US.
231: TZ Discussion - Dying on Mars
Justin and Jason discuss Philippe Monnet's visit to Pasadena, a new structure for the show, living on Soylent, the idea of dying on Mars and how to get there fast, the myth of focus, moments of opportunity for startups, echo chambers and the benefits of ignoring the competition, prospecting experts for AnyFu, learning to emotionally disengage from projects, Jason's weird shoulder problem, how technology is aging in reverse, how Jason is reengaging with his secret project, some benefits of pursing an MVP, getting your arms around a problem, scaling systems at Uber, the incredible efficiency of private instruction and how Jason's soccer team lost the championship.
230: TZ Discussion - Foot in the Face
Justin and Jason discuss the new server and router for running Catalyst sessions locally, how to keep the databases in sync and plans for the Catalyst software, how a couple of bug fixes have dramatically improved Pluggio's stability and performance and the possibility of growing or selling it, the Chromebook donated to Catalyst by Ben Rhodes, the AnyFu expert recruiting process, the sleuthing of Jason's secret project and how he's attempting to focus his efforts, Jason's awesome on-demand sys admin, how he's outsourced Colby's baseball instruction and why he's reading Ender's Game to him, the process of transitioning to a new computer and thoughts on saving versus deleting old code, advice on learning how to program and the psychological toll of trading, Justin's advice on building a SaaS app, more on why entrepreneurs should not select cutting edge technologies when outsourcing product development, and finally the foot-in-the-door technique, the door-in-the-face-technique and the foot-in-the-face-technique.
229: TZ Discussion - A Different Mutation
Justin and Jason discuss Udi's stay in Pasadena and his working relationship with Justin, how to manage sessions between a Javascript client and a RESTful API, solving the Catalyst network problems and why Jason thinks Javascript isn't the easiest language for kids to learn, thoughts on the Code.org video, how Pluggio was hacked, the evolution of the Catalyst stack and how Jason uses Node.js in combination with LAMP, the tradeoffs of building a startup on cutting edge technologies, the progress being made on AnyFu, the results of the Uber nearest cabs challenge, Jason's thoughts on the Upverter hackathon, the SHIELD Act and how patent trolls are going after popular podcasters, Justin's TV recommendations and why Jason listens to podcasts about the The Walking Dead, and Udi's concluding thoughts on America.
228: TZ Discussion - Reinvented Here
Justin and Jason discuss the Uber nearest drivers challenge, specifically a clarification on Jason's "reinvention" of the quad tree algorithm as well as a description of a new and improved version, Udi's arrival and participation in a Catalyst session, the Catalyst text-adventure project, future plans for the Catalyst IDE and the idea of making Catalyst an online offering, the NYT's Tesla test drive controversy, how Uber was ranked as one of Forbes most innovative companies of the year and Uber's fight against regulatory barriers, Jason's recent obsession with The Walking Dead and why Justin prefers teen dramas, how Udi's family escaped racial persecution in Turkmenistan, maintaining an old version of a software project while moving forward with a new version, securely storing passwords, a list of some favorite podcasts, and what it's like for Udi to be trapped inside of a TechZing episode.