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.
197: TZ Interview - Peter Stone / Robot Soccer and Multiagent Learning
Jason talks with Peter Stone, director of the Learning Agents Research Group at UT Austin, whose team, UT Austin Villa, won both the standard platform league and the 3D simulation league of the RoboCup 2012 competition. They discuss why robot soccer is a good motivating application domain for machine learning, how the RoboCup competition got started and the kinds of teams that participate, the offshoot competition RoboCup Jr, why the machine learning technique known as reinforcement learning works so well in complex, dynamic environments, the role played by game theory in multiagents systems, Peter's involvement in developing autonomous driving vehicles and what it's like to run an artificial intelligence laboratory.
196: TZ Interview - Omri Drory / Genome Compiler
Jason interviews Omri Drory, founder and CEO of Genome Compiler Corporation, about how they're aiming to build the AutoCAD of synthetic biology.
195: TZ Discussion - What's Your Enthusiasm Half-Life?
Justin and Jason discuss Justin's move to Pasadena, whether you can fake being a nice guy, how John Humphrey reserved the domain AnyFoo.com and donated it to J&J, thoughts on the Pluggio pitch deck, an update on AnyFu, selling the Preezo codebase, the Udacity experiment, the apology to Elon Musk, the books A Life Decoded and Turing's Cathedral, Justin's tentative workout plan, the money-empathy gap, Jason's request that Cathal Garvey write a Make style biohacking book and teach a Udacity course on synthetic biology, Jason's idea for a TV show called Resurrection, Jason's strategy for teaching Algebra to his his 7-year old son Colby, determining your enthusiasm half-life, planning for a wives "tell-all" interview show, the possibility of fan-funding new and canceled TV shows, and the dream of getting Elon Musk as an interview guest.
194: TZ Discussion - Respect the Buffer Zone
Justin and Jason discuss Justin's upcoming move back to LA, how Justin got his wife Georgie to do the voice over for some Pluggio instructional videos, why Justin is putting Pluggio on AngelList, Guyon's recent visit to LA, why Jason is holding office hours with Pat Maddox at Coloft, why there are going to be two back-to-back interviews on synthetic biology, the upcoming interview with machining learning expert and RoboCup champion Peter Stone, Jason's plan for teaching electronics to his son Colby and his strategy for bootstrapping a math and science academy, Google+ vs Twitter, how the EFF is taking up the patent fight with Defend Innovation, the cognitive overload of having a lot of browser tabs open, and Jason's surprising connections to Jeff Dean, John Conway, Sarah Brown and Amy Jo Johnson.
193: TZ Interview - Cathal Garvey / Biohacking
Jason interviews Cathal Garvey about the exciting new field of synthetic biology, its amateur cousin DIYbio and his new startup, Glowbiotics.
192: TZ Discussion - Trillions and Trillions of Stars
Justin and Jason discuss how Jason missed Rob Walling's text message, the hiccups and challenges of the Pluggio mass emailing and why Pluggio is probably competing with HootSuite despite Justin being in denial about it, moving the AnyFu payment system to Balanced, why Ben Reyes needs to settle on a name, why Justin "needs" to tabulate the show's donations, how Jason is using DragonBox to teach algebra to his 7-year old son Colby, using projects and games as teaching tools for math and science, the rise of Google+ and why power Twitter users are rooting against it, Orrick LLP's documents, how SocialWOD reduced their cancellation rate by 87.5%, the 14-year old who was hit by a meteorite, the incredible size of galaxies, the Science Channel show Through the Wormhole and the theory that a black hole gives birth to a new universe, the surprisingly effective method of first mastering a new technique and then seeking out formerly difficult problems that will yield easily to it, Jason's idea of resolution-based learning, Kurt Vonneguts's advice to start as close to the end as possible and how that can be applied to teaching, Jason's drive to learn genome hacking and why he believes it might be possible to do without years of formal education.
191: TZ Discussion - The Space that Fills the Vacuum
Justin and Jason discuss why Iron Man is the ultimate geek super hero, the positive user feedback about Justin's recent solo interview and Jason's concept for a math and science academy, interfacing .NET with a Win32 DLL, the latest progress on AnyFu, Jason's HN comment that received 75 up-votes and no replies, rbutr - an application that allows people to follow inter-website debates, Jason's idea on how to merge spaced learning with the workgroup style learning being experimented with at MIT, the two Kickstarter projects that Justin has donated to, the latest on Pluggio, Justin's movie marathon, why Michael Lewis believes that luck is a bigger part of the equation than most successful people like to admit, the rise of synthetic biology and the bio-hacking movement, the federal judges who spiked the Apple-Google case (calling the patent system “dysfunctional”) and ruled that indefinite detention of Americans is unconstitutional and a critique of the movie Prometheus.
190: TZ Interview - Ted Pitts & Harry Hollander / Moraware
Justin talks to Ted Pitts & Harry Hollander about how they bootstrapped Moraware.com to more than $1m revenue.
189: TZ Discussion - Synthesizing the Future
Justin and Jason discuss the lastest with Pluggio and the power of the discount, the prospect of using Kickstarter to finance cancelled TV shows, political campaigns and even for paying off the national debt, why Justin should hurry up and write the definitive "kickstrapping" blog post, why you shouldn't discuss your startup name in a cafe, Craig Venter’s synthetic organisms, the Yale scientist who discovered a Fungus that eats plastic and the 16-year old kid who discovered a microbe that does the same, Jason's idea for using genetically altered sea algae to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, experiments that hint of longer lives, why no one under the age of thirty seems to know how to write desktop applications, using APIfy to turn any website into an API, estimating tasks and making progress on AnyFu, how Lance Jones got AnyFu clients through a blog post, Justin's desire to efficiently auto-generate documentation from PHP source code, Jason's idea for the ultimate math and science academy, the power of "spaced learning" and it's relation to "spaced repetition" (the SuperMemo algorithm), how memories can be erased and a few tricks to improve your retention.
188: TZ Interview - Wayne Graham / Facebook Game Development
Jason speaks with Wayne Graham, author of Beginning Facebook Game Apps Development about the process, technical issues and tradeoffs of developing games for the Facebook platform. Following are some links discussed in the show: Open Source Game Engines: - CAAT: http://hyperandroid.github.com/CAAT/ - Crafty: http://craftyjs.com/ - LimeJS: http://www.limejs.com/ - MelonJS: http://www.melonjs.org/ Commercial Game Engines: - Isogenic: http://www.isogenicengine.com/ - ImpactJS: http://impactjs.com/ Comprehensive List of Game Engines: https://github.com/bebraw/jswiki/wiki/Game-Engines
187: TZ Discussion - An Equation for Evil
Justin and Jason talk about the latest with Pluggio, the dangers of starting with a free service and the Google nuclear winter, the irregularities with the Facebook IPO, CashBase and the personal finance market, the effect of Elon Musk's success with SpaceX and what sets him apart, the power of balancing relentless optimism with brutal self-awareness, the against all odds story of Jimmy Conrad, how an e-paper watch raised over $10 million on KickStarter, how Jason is learning electronics so he can teach it to his son, the power of spending a fixed amount of time per day on a project, Jason's idea for a virtual standup web app, how Germany set a new solar power record, the overwhelming size of the universe and the powerful new telescope to be located in South Africa, Australia, the self-driving Google car and why the future of space is going to be robotic, the CDC on preparing for a zombie apocalypse, whether HFT, or most startups for that matter, have any real social value, Jason's equation for measuring evil, a proposed amendment to lift the ban on government propaganda, the Internet Bat Signal, the Citizens United verdict and the power wielded by Super PACs, the new patent troll, Rockstar Consortium and why Justin donated $25 to a human powered helicopter project.
186: TZ Discussion - Getting Big Stuff Done
Justin and Jason discuss Justin's upcoming move back to LA, an update on Appignite, avoiding depression while not running a $1B company, the new Pluggio UI and why some existing customers don't like it, Company 52's new focus, Jason's thoughts on Steve Job's biography, the new interview format, how Jason bought some Facebook shares, Mesh01's upcoming design competition for a "luck surface area" t-shirt, the aborted SpaceX launch, why Steve Blank thinks the age of Silicon Valley is over, when a blow to the head creates a sudden genius, the Reproducibility Project, the genetic basis for why Jason talks so much and the progress being made on AnyFu.
185: TZ Interview – James Thomas / Headlands Technologies
Jason speaks with James Thomas, Director of Research for Headlands Technologies, LLC, about the business of high-frequency trading.
184: TZ Discussion - Down the Memory Hole
Justin and Jason discuss their experiences at MicroConf and the Rock Rock Hotel, Justin's new focus on being focused, the Atlantic's article about Justin's Yelp nightmare, why Justin believes Kickstarter is the future of seed funding and should be called "kickstrapping", why Jason and Guyon are probably going to kill their HackerEvents project, how Edwardo Saverin and Derek Sivers are renouncing their U.S. citizenships, the development of Colby's Star Stream project, why Justin thinks Appignite should be open-sourced using a WordPress-like business model, Kevin's Rose's likely net worth, how the UK is going to station missiles on a residential roof for the Olympics, how the CIA's MKUltra project likely created the Unabomber, the Pentagon's claim that they have no photo evidence of Bin Laden's death and the treasure hunter who says he's located Bin Laden's body, Richard Stallan's Facebook notes and Jason's memory system project, how Fringe has been renewed for a fifth and final season, playing with CircuitLab, Jason's idea for a Facebook game that uses the game design of Scrabble but applied to electronics and why future interviews will most likely be conducted by either Justin or Jason alone instead of both of them at the same time.
183: TZ Interview - Jason Cohen / WP Engine
Justin and Jason talk with Jason Cohen about his latest startup, WP Engine.