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.
287: TZ Discussion - Fail Slow
Justin and Jason discuss their decision to continue doing the show, why streaming is a pain in Justin’s ass and why the last show was so painful for him, Justin’s path to his latest project – Spoke, Jason’s jury duty service, getting Colby started on “lion-cub training”, the latest with MV Code Club, finding a developer for Givetronic, Colby’s defensive playbook, the latest with Operation Superhero, Justin’s new 7-minute workout and chiropractor, Jason’s criticism ofFear the Walking Dead, the book and upcoming movie The Martian, how most popular songs are written by a duo of middle-aged, Norwegian songwriters and the role of obsessiveness in achieving success.
286: TZ Discussion - Son of a Horse
Justin and Jason discuss why Jason thinks it may be time to put an end to the show, why Justin stopped working on Lyte and why he quit his low-calorie diet, the Chrome plug-in for motivation, nearsourcing work to Mexican consulting firms, Aaron Francis’ commentary on Entreporn, finding a developer for Givetronic, Jason’s thoughts on Bitcoin, the latest with the Math Academy, strength training Colby and why you don’t have to “protect” your startup idea.
285: TZ Interview - Gabriel Weinberg / Stoking the Traction Fire
Justin talks to Gabriel Weinberg about the re-release of his book Traction and the latest news on DuckDuckGo.
284: TZ Discussion – Radical Acceleration at Scale
Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s new diabetes-reversing diet, the growing momentum of the Math Academy and Jason’s new madness, getting Lyte out the door, lessons learned through playing StarCraft that are useful in real life, using unfairness to your advantage, why IQ is more important than people like to admit and the status of Jason’s dual-n back experiment.
283: TZ Discussion - Extraordinary Claims
Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s secret project, Lyte, how he built it and what he sees as its future, the possibility of transforming the math class into a math academy, how Uber is making the world a better place, why inexpensive self-teaching and test-prep books are often better than their equivalent textbooks, Jason’s new color laser printer, Chris Sacca’s anti-portfolio, the U.S. defense department’s interest in hoverbikes, an interview with James Simons, how China is attempting to genetically engineer genius and Jason’s upcoming dual-n-back experiment.
282: TZ Discussion - Socket.io to Your Brain
Justin and Jason discuss the move from Perioscope to Meerkat, Justin’s health update and why he got rid of his treadmill, how Colby blew the curve on the math final, the field trip to Caltech and the visit from the district superintendent, BVP’s anti-portfolio, how to keep from reverting to the mean, teaching kids about money and investments, the story behind CryptoIQ, Justin’s “billion dollar” secret project, Jason’s idea of how to build the Memory Hole on top of Instapaper, Kurzweil’s cyborg predictions, the MagicLeap platform, the possibility of doing another TechZing Summit, the Outernet and whether its signal could be jammed, low-power devices running off WiFi and uBeam’s ultrasound charging technology, ideas on how to interview technical candidates, the difficulty of learning advanced mathematics on your own and whether Justin’s obsession with taking shortcuts has hamstrung him in other ways.
281: TZ Discussion - "Based" on a True Story
Justin and Jason discuss the technical issues of streaming the show using Periscope, the possible resurrection of Empath, Jason’s advising CTO strategy, fear-based parenting, Justin’s secret project and reserving a name in the app store, the Seasteading Institute, nature vs. nurture, the latest with Justin’s “get fit” effort and Jason’s injuries, the athletes who benefitted from Jason’s vertical training protocol, Jason’s spontaneous two-man TechZing Summit, the math team’s performance at the LA Math Cup, when parents take things too seriously, teaching calculus to the math class and plans for the future, the latest with MV Code Club, the upcoming TV shows Limitless, Fear the Walking Dead and Mr. Robot, the inaccuracies of The Imitation Game and Argo, how the story behind the killing of Osama Bin Laden is a myth, the lie about how Syria used chemical weapons against rebel forces and how easily people are manipulated by the media, the TV show The Blacklist and thoughts on streaming with Periscope.
280: TZ Interview - Mike Taber / The Single Founder Handbook
Justin talks with Mike Taber author of The Single Founder Handbook
279: TZ Discussion - Death by Flying Tire
Justin and Jason discuss Jason’s recent near-death experience and how his brother’s childhood friend has a small part on The Walking Dead, the Reddit button, how Jason is trading coding hours for Robocraft hours with Colby, kids and electronics, the iWatch and why people are always checking their phones, the essence of peopling, automatic birthday wishes and thank yous on Facebook, why everything that can be automated eventually will be, Patrick McKenzie’s new startup – Starfigher, remote working and productivity, the relationship between wealth, power and fame, the two federal agents who were indicted for stealing Bitcoins, the movie The Imitation Game, why the Caltech visit was postponed a week, negative social patterns and the heritability of personality traits, iZombie, how the editors of Basic and Applied Social Psychology are no longer accepting p-values, the Reproducibility Project, why null results tend not to be published as often, the latest with MVCC and Justin’s new workout regime at CATZ.
278: TZ Discussion - Burger Meister, Meister Burger
Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s recent purchasing debacles and his latest plan for getting healthy, the latest on Jason’s various injuries, Justin as Burger Meister, Meister Burger, the math team’s big success at Math Field Day, how Jason is connecting with Caltech’s Center for Teaching, Learning & Outreach, an update on the Battle Math card game, Justin’s TechZing breakfast, how everyone is seemingly trying to dunk, the problem of forgetting what you’ve read, how to capture selected text in a Titanium webview, the return of The X-Files, The Walking Dead spinoff series, why Jason can’t stomach shows like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, why our brains love high ceilings, living off a dollar a day with Elon Musk and Tesla’s April Fool’s joke, the latest with MV Code Club, God’s Tweets, killing cancer cells with DNA nanobots, whether the human brain can ever fill up and the process of memory formation, recall and forgetting, why Jason is planning on cryogenically freezing himself, the new study that says it doesn’t matter how much time you spend with your kids, how inequality is far worse than you think and the prospect of a mostly robotic future.
277: TZ Discussion - Select All Delete
Justin and Jason discuss the difficulty of finding a time to record the show, Justin’s walking-desk disaster, his new secret project and his thoughts on using Titanium, the latest on the MVCC, Justin’s movie concept, the show The 100, the roadblocks to getting God’s Tweets approved by the App Store, why you should build a Titanium app for Android and iOS at the same time, the benefits of decluttering your life, generating ten new ideas per day for ten days, the employment-status lawsuits against Uber and Lyft, the incredible growth of Uber’s engineering department, Jason’s ideas for a mobile note-taking app and for a site that teaches you how to do math proofs, the sites Sophia and Brilliant, the status of Battle Math and the latest with the math class.
276: TZ Discussion - The Year of No - For Real This Time
Justin and Jason discuss the impending delivery of Justin’s walking desk and his health and fitness dilettantism, why Instapaper has become just another “to-do list” for Jason, their respective Hacker News reading strategies, the latest on MV Code Club, how the money raising process differs between celebrity and non-celebrity founders, why Jason pulled out of Empath as well as the crypto-exchange (AKA the “secret project”), why success requires focus, how multiple injuries have put Operation Superhero on temporary hold and the latest with the accelerated math class.
275: TZ Discussion - In God We Trust, Everyone Else Bring Data
Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s short-lived madness about algorithmic trading, the book Building Algorithmic Trading Systems, using neural networks to predict the future price of Bitcoin, why Jason said no to doing the MIT Circuits & Electronics MOOC with his friend Phil, the unexpected benefits of working on toy problems, why teaching the accelerated math class is Jason’s favorite three hours of the week, the conditions under which accelerating kids can provide significant advantages and when it doesn’t, Colby’s “IQ” test and Ms. Extra Credit, moving God’s Tweets from a VPS to EC2, RDS and S3 and how changing Apple developer accounts caused a iOS/OSX/Titanium upgrade cascade, MaxCDN vs. Amazon’s CloudFront, tricks for developing professional-looking Titanium apps, the TED talk – Behind the Great Firewall of China and how Obama and Cameron are cracking down on encryption, why Jason, like most most security researchers, doesn’t believe North Korea was behind the Sony attack, why it’s a good idea to dismiss government claims when they fail to provide evidence, Seymour Hersh’s debunking of the USG’s claim that Syria used chemical weapons, the failed SpaceX Falcon 9 landing and Elon Musk’s recent announcement about the Texas Hyperloop experiment, Larry Summer’s response to Marc Andreessen’s tweet storm about secular stagnation, a listener’s app Happy Scales, why pursuing an academic career in math or science is the new monasticism, replicating the career paths of Elon Musk and Jeff Hawkins, the sudden handwringing about the future threat of strong AI, the series Extant, Black Mirror and Video Game High School, the problem with uploading your intelligence into a digital world, the cloned bull that changed, László Polgár and the nature nurture debate, Justin’s walking desk and the quest for workout economy, how Jason’s leg injury has put a pause on Operation Superhero and his philosophy of how to continue making progress (see Ray Liotta’s rant in Copland). Grand Patron $100: David Walz (Thanks so much!)
274: TZ Discussion - All Things HFT
Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s rebound project and the myriad questions Justin has about HFT (high-frequency trading), learning to code with CodeAvengers and CodeCombat, the latest on Operation Superhero and MV Code Club, scaling with Node.js at Uber, posting error messages to Slack and HipChat, scaling and managing servers at Digedu, Jason’s interview on Get Up and Code, why iXL didn’t work for the math team and how to setup a backup configuration using MySQL and EC2.
273: TZ Discussion - Limitless
Justin and Jason discuss why Disco hasn’t worked out and what Justin has learned from the experience, balancing product development with sales and marketing, how to select and validate a business idea, the basics of algorithmic trading, how Jason increased his vertical jump by 8 inches, high and low adaptors, Justin’s desire for a walking desk, how to raise your IQ, the research in support of it, and Jason’s effort to keep the math team together.