techzing tech podcast

234: TZ Discussion – Death by iPad

Justin — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:19:37 +0000

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of the Telsa Model S, why Tesla succeeded and Fisker failed, how conventional wisdom about alternative energy is way out of date, but how Kleiner Perkins has lost money investing in clean energy, the ground-breaking tech of Google Glass and it’s implications, how space junk destroyed a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 — Fri, 03 May 2013 03:38:00 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the technologies (Node.js, Socket.io & Redis) that 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 — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:35:16 +0000

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 thinks (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 — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 01:15:39 +0000

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 — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:24:45 +0000

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 — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 22:41:58 +0000

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 — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 23:41:28 +0000

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.

227: TZ Discussion – Download This!

Justin — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:42:00 +0000

Justin and Jason talk about Udi coming to America, whether Justin should use the $$ framework for Digedu, Justin’s theory on show titles, the role of talent in reaching the highest level’s of success, the last Catalyst session, the TechZing bulletin board, Jason and Guyon’s solution to the Uber hackathon, how Upverter is coming to the Pasadena Science & Technology Expo and how Jason is going to attend the upcoming Upverter / YC hardware hackathon, how Jason was quoted in the press, how Justin picked up high-paying consulting work, the logo for Jason’s secret project, why Jason thinks it’s time to learn Go if you’re a consultant, the Zerigo DNS service, how Justin is using NewsBlur’s RSS API, the Splittsville and MarkITx iPhone apps, why Tony Stark is the ultimate engineering role model, and an update on the AnyFu recruiting process.

226: TZ Interview – Ivan Savov / The No Bullshit Guide to Math & Physics

Justin — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:00:25 +0000

Jason speaks with Ivan Savov about his new book, The No Bullshit Guide to Math & Physics.

225: TZ Interview – Gabriel Weinberg / The DuckDuckGo Step Function

Justin — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:48:08 +0000

Jason speaks with show favorite, Gabriel Weinberg, about how he’s managed the growth of DuckDuckGo from 1,000 searches per month to 50 million.

224: TZ Discussion – Your iFactory Future

Justin — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 02:18:46 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss Jason’s new iPad keyboard from Logitech and the Zag iPad keyboard, Justin’s past life in Ireland and England, his first computer and how he became a musician, the pre-history of the Khan Academy, the crazy story of the Virtual Irish Pub and how Justin met his wife, Justin’s idea for creating videos for Catalyst, PostalPix’s search for a CTO, a guy in Shenzen who’s printing circuit boards, a DIY Bioprinter, the future of 3D printing and how automation is wiping out middle class jobs, the future of self-driving cars, the continual rise of TSLA, what it was like to work with Steve Jobs, his love for product development and his obsession with secrecy, the conclusion of Fringe (don’t worry – no spoilers) and Jason’s favorite quote of the series, Jason’s lunch with the director of STEM education for the Pasadena Education Foundation, the power of math and science and how to sell it to kids, the idea for creating a Catalyst hackathon and getting the Upverter guys involved, an update on the outsourced AnyFu recruiting effort, Jason’s success outsourcing sys admin work on Freelancer.com, the What Would Rob Walling Do t-shirt, how Jason has been getting a lot of email asking him for advice about high-frequency trading, making the transition from doing project work to getting paid for advice, and the story of how Justin recently became CTO of daiagaeadaua.acaoa.

223: TZ Interview – Zak Homouth / Upverter

Justin — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 22:06:08 +0000

Jason speaks with Zak Homouth, one of the three founders of Upverter, a web-based solution for designing, simulating and manufacturing circuit boards.

222: TZ Discussion – Getting Even on AnyFu

Justin — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:20:22 +0000

Justin and Jason talk about what’s happening with AnyFu, why Jason does a lot of stuff and how he gets it done, why Jason has soured on partnerships, how the Gmail interface kind of sucks, why Justin link spammed Jason, AdoptTogether - the Kickstarter for adoption, the Catalyst challenge / point system, methods of running Node.js in conjunction with Apache and PHP, managing long running Node.js processes using Upstart and Monit, the tradeoffs of different Linux distributions, some upcoming interviews,the latest underwhelming TL;DR service, Jason Calacanis’ Launch Ticker, the monitoring / validation service that Jason wrote for the Uber dispatching system, considerations when exercising startup options, why Jason wants the new Logitech Ultrathin iPad cover / keyboard, the research suggesting that stating your goals publicly will increase your likelihood of achieving them, and the controversy surrounding Derek Sivers’ claims on subject.

Executive Producer: Felix Leong

Thanks Felix!

221: TZ Discussion – Everything.com

Justin — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 04:16:44 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s important meeting in Chicago, why SQL is agile, how FriendFeed used MySQL to store schema-less data and when normalized data will hurt you, Justin’s experience with Uber, how Jason works with the Uber engineering team as an off-site contractor and how they scaled the Node.js-based dispatching system, Gabriel Weinberg’s thoughts on orders of magnitude, how Justin is working with Udi on Digedu and why they chose the new PHP framework Laravel, why Jason wrote a RESTful API for Catalyst in PHP and why he thinks building web apps in Node.js is usually more trouble than it’s worth, the upcoming Catalyst point system, the possibility of creating a WordPress pluggin for Pluggio, Philippe Monnet’s article on creating mobile apps with KnockOutJS, PhoneGap & jQuery Mobile, how Jason bought an Arduino at the local Radio Shack and while there heard about a local hardware super hacker who built a long distance surveillance microphone, the difference between Raspberry Pi and Arduino, how a judge dismissed a dealers’ lawsuit against Tesla’s retail stores, why Jason thinks Hacker News needs a prerequisite reading list, why Justin is worried that we’re all getting stuck in our own social media silos, why you should pay attention to power law distributions and why you should look for things you can scale.

220: TZ Discussion – Give It a Go

Justin — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 05:00:28 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss email etiquette, Justin’s workout progress, skiing vs snowboarding, CJ’s thoughts on Catalyst Class, Jason’s plans for Catalyst Academy and his difficulty in getting MongoDB to work on AppFog, why Jason feels that doing more things makes him more productive and his plan for launching multiple projects, Justin’s experiments with paid advertising and Jason’s argument for why statistics is not destiny.

219: TZ Discussion – Confessions of an Overcommitter

Justin — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 21:30:06 +0000

Justin and Jason talk about how Justin bought the percentage of Pluggio he didn’t own, what Buffer did right and what can be learned from their success, why Jason moved on from Appignite, what’s happening with AnyFu and why Jason doesn’t consider Catalyst to be a startup project, why it’s better to focus on process rather than on specific goals and how small wins build momentum, the importance of engaging in deep work and the difficulty of getting small things done, the difference between trading and investing and why Jason wouldn’t use an investment advisor, why Iceland is succeeding and Ireland is struggling, how AngelList is allowing accredited investors to invest in startups online, the uncovering of Intellectual Ventures 2,000 shell companies and how EFF’s Patent Project got a half-million dollar boost from Mark Cuban and ‘Notch’, what’s been working and not working with Catalyst, Jeff Bezos’ regret minimization framework, and finally why it’s good to do things.

218: TZ Discussion – Red Helium

Justin — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:42:06 +0000

Justin and Jason talk about Justin’s idea for doing a catch-up show, foosball and table tennis, why Justin renamed $$ as Jefferson, the push and pull between product designers and developers, Jason’s new travel hack and his recent trip to San Francisco, the talk he gave at Catalyst Class and his tour of Cambrian Genomics, why Jason is introducing robots into Catalyst, the progress being made by the kids and the possibility of having them program virtual battle bots, how John Humphrey helped Jason secure an expiring domain name, Colby’s backflip off a swing, how SpaceX was awarded their first military contract, why Jason thinks single founders can succeed and the fallacies about the advertising business model, the idea of getting more people to recruit experts for AnyFu, Justin’s experience working with Udi Mosayev and Bill Gross, and why the show must go on.

217: TZ Interview – Rob Walling / HitTail, Drip and So Much More

Justin — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 05:04:24 +0000

Justin and Jason talk with Rob Walling about his recent success with HitTail, his new project, Drip, and other assorted startup topics.

216: TZ Discussion – Warp Speed

Justin — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 00:54:03 +0000

Justin and Jason talk about how Jason’s mail was stolen, some of the limitations with Phone Gap, the engineering salaries of Silicon Valley startups, the ridiculous cost of housing, Jason’s idea for gamifying personal finance, incentivizing kids with cash, how NASA’s Advanced Propulsion Physics Lab is working on the possibility of a warp drive, the new matter created by the Large Hadron Collider, how an advanced alien race (if they exist) might not be all that interested in communicating with us, Jason’s Freakonomics and Singularity Summit binge, the future of 3D printing, the meaning of life without money, Micho Kaku’s vision of the world in 2030 and what he envisioned a phone would do and look like, why Jason still hasn’t purchased a backup system, how Brendan Dunn is making five figures a month off a bootstrapped product, whether or not to do interviews, a new approach to recruiting AnyFu experts, how to explain functions to kids and the possibility of using a combination of both a challenge system and personal projects in Catalyst, Jason’s idea of how to explain advanced algorithms without using mathematical notation, Jason’s bizarre knee problem and finally how a provision in the House-passed NDAA bill would overturn the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 prohibiting the U.S. government from using propaganda against it’s own citizens.

215: TZ Discussion – Time vs Money

Justin — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 06:06:41 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss their Thanksgiving holidays, how Jason stopped by a Tesla SuperCharger station, Elon Musk’s talks at Oxford, the National Press Club and Pando Monthly, various diversification strategies and the idea of putting more money into AnyFu, investing in yourself versus investing in others, Jason’s zombie killing strategies, how Megaupload got screwed, Justin’s article on his Splitsville app, Jason’s love / hate relationship with Titanium, whether a developer can be trained in three months, the tradeoffs of building challenges into the Catalyst IDE, how to speed up a slow Mac and Justin’s recommended backup strategies.

214: TZ Discussion – The Madness

Justin — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 00:17:37 +0000

Justin and Jason talk about why taking multiple shorter vacations is usually better than taking one long vacation, Justin’s plans to create an Udemy course, the latest on Catalyst, Colby’s madness, Justin’s personal training sessions, how to choose health insurance, the GOP’s flip flop on copyright, Romney’s IT fail, Nate Silver’s prediction methodology, the Obama campaign’s analytics team, the programming games Check iO and RoboNode, how Tesla won Motor Trend Car of the Year, the variance in home prices across the country, whether programming can be commoditized and why it’s important to make a name for yourself, Hailo Cab vs Uber, the Uber profiler Clouseau and the dividends it’s paid for scaling Uber’s dispatching system, the science fiction web series H+ and Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome, the TV series The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, how sixteen Fisker Karma’s blew up because of Hurricane Sandy, why Jason wants to buy the Model S, how $75,000 is the happiness tipping point, how Pluggio is the little engine that could, and hints about Justin’s next project.

213: TZ Discussion – Why Elon Musk is Having the Best Week Ever

Justin — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 14:28:57 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s trip to Ireland and the UK and Rob Walling’s visit to Pasadena, the latest version of the Catalyst IDE and the power of gamification, AppFog’s free plan for Node.js, ActivityHero and the potential future of Catalyst Academy, Justin’s thoughts on hiring for experience, how Justin resolved Pluggio’s cascading query problem, Jason’s idea for an Uber prize and scaling Uber’s Node.js-based dispatching system, why you should CallTheseGuys.com if you need a website built, how computer science graduates are the least employable in the UK, how SpaceX completed the first delivery trip to the International Space Station and the Tesla Model S was voted car of year, the History Channel’s show The Men Who Built America, Jason’s investment strategy for 2013, and why Justin and Jason are both long Rob Walling.

212: TZ Discussion – Where the Hell is My Heisenmachine?

Justin — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 20:23:15 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss how to make progress when you have too much to do, an update on running the audio job board, hiring someone to keep you on task and tricks to reduce the cost of context switching, why Jason thinks Justin will regret taking a three-week trip to Europe, the latest on Catalyst Coder (the in-browser educational IDE), Justin’s domino method of teaching and the nightmare of explaining the for loop, some hacks for simplifying Javascript and the possibility of writing a new language called “KidScript” that transcompiles to Javascript, new stylistic conventions in Node.js, the idea of creating coding games and a simplified graphics library for Catalyst Coder, tracking who bought your politician, exposing massaged economic models with ShadowStats, how the returns of angel investors are better than previously thought, why PC obsolescence is obsolete, the best way to find aliens, Nikola Tesla, his patents and his Tower of Power, why the possibility of being in a simulation is driving Justin crazy, what’s realistic and what’s not about aircraft carriers in space and how the modern carriers are sitting ducks, how Tesla’s Supercharger network has gone live in six California towns, the rise of the rocketship school, setting up an AnyFu Paypal account and what’s going to happen with the show while Justin is in Europe.

211: TZ Discussion – Magic Dragon

Justin — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 00:57:13 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s approach to developing HTML5 apps that feel truly native, how Titanium finally fixed the build bug for iOS6 devices, more on the Titanium license issue, the first paid job advertisement (Java API developer at Uber Media), the effect of moving Catalyst to a new space and the browser-based IDE that Jason is building for the class, setting up a Node.js application on AppFog, resolving payment issues on AnyFu and using PayPal as a payout option, how to determine if reality is merely a computer simulation, Jason’s iPad information workflow – Browser / HackerNode => Instapaper => Pinboard / Evernote, why the first laptop had such a hard time catching on, the mysterious book Jason received in the mail (Axiomatic – Greg Egan), and some of their favorite movies.

210: TZ Discussion – Supercharged

Justin — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:55:31 +0000

Justin and Jason talk about time management and focus, what Jason likes about the iPad, programming using Codea and Lua, managing information using Instapper, Pinboard and Evernote, Colby’s soccer resurgence, why Jason is selling Facebook and buying Tesla and Tesla’s plans for a supercharger network, the recent growth of the show and the idea of bringing in revenue via job advertisements, Jason’s LinkedIn debacle, what happens when $$ meets Hacker News, better learning tools and a better space for Catalyst, learning bioinformations through problem solving on Rosalind, inconsistant complaining about the science of science fiction movies, and using a worker queue to process a large number of emails.

209: TZ Discussion – The Overloaded Life

Justin — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:42:48 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss Jason’s new iPad and his old MacBook Pro, the costs and limitations of Titanium’s licensing plans and the surrounding controversy, a post-mortem of the third Catalyst session, KidsRuby, and the idea of creating a DragonBox inspired Catalyst coding game, css3 animations, the status of Appignite, Justin’s $$ Javascript framework, “The Madness“, the progress being made on SkyBoard and some potential revenue models, the movie Looper, how California has passed a law allowing for the testing of self-driving cars on public roads, how Blizzard was head-faked into creating a better StartCraft, the recent growth of the podcast, how e veryone who attended OWS with a cell phone had their identity logged and the Apple patent that describes remotely disabling protesters’ phone cameras, the Uber Javascript profiler to be named Clouseau, the superiority of the Singapore Math curriculum and the ThinkMath Foundation, the power of keeping a Spark File and of storing your notes in a BATF (big ass text file), Jason’s overloaded schedule, Colby’s football future, the awesome new hover bike that you’ll never get to ride, and why Justin never wears shorts.

208: TZ Discussion – Boundary Testing

Justin — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 01:33:10 +0000

Justin and Jason talk about the latest progress on AnyFu, the new Catalyst volunteer CJ Winslow and lessons learned from the most recent session, Justin’s new version of SkyBoard and how he built it using his new Javascript framework $$, the idea of creating a programming game in the style of DragonBox, their recent outing to a Richard Dolan talk, how Jason is getting back into watching Battlestar Galactica and why warp drive may be more feasible than previously thought, how Jason needs to buy a new printer, using Redis at Uber, the tradeoffs of storing schema-less JSON data, and why you shouldn’t believe the hype about Iran conducting cyberwar on the U.S..

207: TZ Discussion – Catalyzed

Justin — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 04:55:15 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss meeting AnyFu all-stars Joanna Wiebe and Lance Jones, the eBook that Jason thinks Justin should write, the lessons Jason wants to teach his kids, principles of negotiation, why kids have to learn things the hard way, a post-mortem on the first Catalyst session and what Jason has planned for the second, Rob Walling’s advice on buying apps and websites, Justin’s new $$ Javascript framework and what it takes for an open source project to take off, how the NSA is recruiting hackers and the AT&T tech who blew the whistle on the NSA’s domestic eavesdropping program back in 2006, why Jason thinks Justin would make more money if he marketed himself as an on-demand CTO, how Jason’s father-in-law mistakenly deleted every recording on their DVR, the results of Colby’s academic standards test and what is says about his personality, the story of Wordpoke.me, why Jason likes Titanium, how Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook et al. are forming a powerful U.S. lobby called the Internet Association, how NOT to recruit top technical talent, the bacteria that was discovered eating plastic in the Sargasso Sea, AnyFu’s true market and why the experts charge so much, and how scientists bioengineered an artificial esophagus.

206: TZ Interview – Corey Maass / The Birdy

Justin — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:22:09 +0000

Justin and Jason talk to Corey Maass, founder of personal expense tracker, The Birdy.

205: TZ Discussion – Check Your Egometer

Justin — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 18:00:47 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss how much time they spend on the podcast, Justin’s thoughts on becoming a multi-product entrepreneur, Seth Godin’s book - The Dip, how much time should be devoted to consulting vs. working on a side business, potential email strategies for recruiting experts, building an email reminder system for AnyFu, problems with the donation model, the Node.js profiler that Jason and Guyon built for Uber, the misleading CNN article about why we need a longer school year and the other side of the story, Justin’s idea for creating an ego depletion meter, the challenges of scheduling the first Catalyst Academy session, the Mathigon mathematics education project, how Oracle is moving MySQL towards the closed-source model, why Reddit only has two MySQL Tables – Thing and Data, Jason’s idea for doing lazy schema migrations, why Uber is moving from MySQL to ProstgreSQL (PostGIS), how self-driving cars were just approved by the California legislature and the rise of drones, the free diving world records, why there is no American Ninja Warrior, why Darpa thinks the future of computing is analog, HP and Hynix’s one-year delay on memristors, how the Flynn Effect isn’t about people getting smarter, how the New York Times has been colluding with the CIA to boost Obama’s reelection chances, how the spyware known as FinFisher can take over your mobile device, the Pirate Bay founder who was arrested in Cambodia, how the U.S. is probably using Sweden to get at Julian Assange, and finally how Obama’s justice department has granted final immunity to Bush’s CIA torturers.

204: TZ Discussion – Don’t Panic, It’s Only Radiation

Justin — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 18:35:26 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss why Jason is sad about Colby quitting club soccer, scaling Node.js to a million concurrent connections and how Redis is used at Uber, what it’s like working at UberMedia and Idealab, how Sandy is helping out with AnyFu, ideas on how to share customer support responsibilities, why Justin is frustrated with Pluggio and what Jason thinks he should do about it, the upstart success of Jason’s iPad fund and why Justin wants to raise money for audio software, building iPhone apps with Visual Studio and JyOS, the panic over Fukushima and how uranium extracted from the ocean could power the human race until 5000AD, Justin’s update on intermittent fasting, recruiting kids for Catalyst, RoboRally and learning to program by training a robot, how your brain can be hacked, the high performance PHP framework Phalcon PHP, how Coursera is introducing an honor code in an attempt to reduce cheating, how Twitter is slitting their own throat, individualist and collectivist coding and why quality happens when someone is responsible for it, the problem of sorting out who owns what when signing IP contracts, speculating on whether Buffer was influenced by Pluggio, and how Rob Walling was quoted in a New York Times article.

203: TZ Discussion – The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be

Justin — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 22:07:03 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s experiments with intermittent fasting, the latest on AnyFu, Justin’s call for an open Twitter, how to be a math or science rockstar, why the singularity is not coming, sci-fi predictions from 1987, storing 700 terabytes of data in a single gram of DNA, Jason’s thoughts on learning synthetic biology and the GenoCon competition, Jason’s teaching strategy for Catalyst and why he thinks Python will be a better learning language than Chipmunk Basic, Justin’s new Galaxy Nexus 7, how Google’s self-driving car is going to change everything, why WebRTC wil change the web, TrapWire and the new totalitarianism of surveillance technology, and the efficacy of using loss aversion to improve teacher performance.

202: TZ Discussion – Hacking Jason

Justin — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 18:33:41 +0000

Justin and Jason talk about the response to the wives show, Justin’s new life in Pasadena and his new contract at UberMedia, how Jason is going to spend his half of the podcast donation money, the latest on Jason’s math and science academy – Catalyst, why Justin is excited about intermittent fasting, the recent scientific reversals on salt, sitting posture, positive thinking and fluoride, why Justin wants to pay Jason to work on AnyFu, deploying real-time systems code at Uber, how Justin moved Pluggio to a Rackspace Cloud Database and why he thinks growing Pluggio’s revenue is so difficult, whether App.net has any chance of disrupting Twitter, engineering bacteria to survive on Mars, the discovery of the Gauss cyber weapon, why Algebra isn’t necessary, why Jason thinks most textbooks are inefficient, and the stark contrast between electronics hobbyist books and introductory electrical engineering books.

Grand Patron: Riyad Kalla ($200! Thanks)

201: TZ Interview – Scott Young / The MIT Challenge

Justin — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 00:38:28 +0000

Jason speaks with Scott Young, creator of the online course Learn More, Study Less, about his effort to master the entire 4-year MIT computer science curriculum in only 12 months.

200: TZ Wives – Setting the Record Straight

Justin — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 02:05:33 +0000

In this wives tell-all episode, Georgie Wisen-Vincent, Sandy Roberts and Sherry Walling give their respective views on what it’s like being married to a technology entrepreneur.

199: TZ Interview – Matin Tamizi / Balanced

Justin — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:56:07 +0000

Justin and Jason speak with Matin Tamizi, founder and CEO of Balanced, about the opportunity and challenges of building a payments system for marketplaces.

198: TZ Discussion – The Mystery Boom

Justin — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 05:29:04 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the psychological impact of getting out of debt, the Gabriel Method and the Paleo Diet, the mystery boom, whether the freemium model will work for Pluggio, Justin’s entrepreneurial ups and downs, whether Pluggio is fundable, the pros and cons of red ocean and blue ocean strategies, the first episode of Divergence, the terrifying background of the man who ran a CIA assassination unit, how the super-rich are hiding at least $21 trillion in offshore tax havens, whether the Colorado shooter was crazy and the sociological impact of the event, the Russian research project that offers ‘immortality’ to billionaires, planning for episode 200, why Jason decided against taking the Coursera course Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation, Scott Young’s MIT Challenge and the possibility of replicating an undergraduate education with only online courses, the negative network effect of having a college degree, and Colby’s enthusiasm for learning electronics.

Executive Producer: Scott Yewell

197: TZ Interview – Peter Stone / Robot Soccer and Multiagent Learning

Justin — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:52:57 +0000

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.

Additional Links:

RoboCup 2012 Semifinals [Video]

RoboCup Finals [Video]

2011 3D Simulation League Highlights [Video]

Soccer and Philosophy: Beautiful Thoughts on the Beautiful Game [Book]

196: TZ Interview – Omri Drory / Genome Compiler

Justin — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:11:48 +0000

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 — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:41:10 +0000

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 — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:49:25 +0000

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 machine 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

Justin — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 00:51:37 +0000

Jason interviews Cathal Garvey about the exciting new field of synthetic biology, its amateur cousin DIYbio and his new startup, Glowbiotics.

Show Links:

NYT’s Article about Cathal and Biohacking

Online Gene Design
GENtle (Open Source Genetic Management Suite)

DIYbio Mailing List

DIY Biosynthesis of Insulin and Thyroxine
Hacking Your Own Fluorescent Yoghurt

192: TZ Discussion – Trillions and Trillions of Stars

Justin — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 19:56:40 +0000

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.

Executive Producer:

Ben Matthew Reyes ($50) http://benreyes.com

191: TZ Discussion – The Space that Fills the Vacuum

Justin — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 04:02:00 +0000

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 — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 05:00:22 +0000

Justin talks to Ted Pitts & Harry Hollander about how they bootstrapped Moraware to more than $1m yearly revenue.

189: TZ Discussion – Synthesizing the Future

Justin — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 13:50:12 +0000

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

Justin — Wed, 30 May 2012 23:00:09 +0000

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 — Mon, 28 May 2012 15:02:29 +0000

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 and 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.

Grand Patron $100: CashBase App

(Check it out and leave reviews below!)

186: TZ Discussion – Getting Big Stuff Done

Justin — Sun, 20 May 2012 18:51:24 +0000

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

Justin — Thu, 17 May 2012 01:05:14 +0000

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 — Sun, 13 May 2012 17:40:57 +0000

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, how Light Table raised $200k and Brydge raised 500k via Kickstarter, 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 some kid built a motion tracking gun-turret system, 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 — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:07:15 +0000

Justin and Jason talk with Jason Cohen about his latest startup, WP Engine.

182: TZ Interview – Matt Konda / Application Security

Justin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:32:25 +0000

Justin and Jason talk with application security expert, Matt Konda, about how to harden web applications against common attacks, tools that can help locate vulnerabilities and his new security startup, Jemurai.

181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model

Justin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:51:58 +0000

Justin’s upcoming post about the Yelp review filtering system, the new version of Pluggio, looking forward to MicroConf, Freeman Dyson and his global warming heresy, a La Critique of RootBuzz, more thoughts on simulating the zombie apocalypse, island economics and the danger of extreme wealth inequality, TBTF banks and thoughts on the MF Global fiasco, Matt Tiabbi’s coverage of Wall Street’s endemic corruption and why William Black thinks the American JOBS Act will introduce fraud, $10 million loans for everyone, how Iran is reverse engineering a downed U.S. drone, why CENTCOM’s Operation Earnest Voice will ultimately be turned inward like the NSA’s Operation Stellar Wind and completing the AnyFu payout cycle.

Executive Producer $50 – Andrea Conti – Your targeted website in a snap

180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse

Justin — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:32:44 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss why Justin is moving back to LA, how he was swindled by a moving company and why the Yelp review system is partly to blame, how people are able to rationalize bad behavior by the creation of false narratives, how the US, Israel, Russia and China are influencing social networks with the help of tools like persona management platforms, why Justin thinks Breaking Bad is the best drama series ever made, the awesome Prometheus trailers and viral TED Talk, how Justin improved Pluggio’s performance and the lessons he learned along the way, the homogenization of blog engines and how it aids and hinders creativity, the awesomeness of Light Table, Meteor and Firebase, the recent down-tick in VC funding, the technology behind Preezo and the idea of writing an article about it, why Netflix decided not to implement its prize-winning algorithm, the science and technology behind a quantum Internet, the MIT study predicting global economic collapse by 2030 and the OECD report pinning it at 2050, the subject of System Dynamics and the concept of stock and flows, thoughts on simulating the zombie apocalypse, creating a massively distributed P2P dispatching network and how someone other than Justin wrote the new version of ezSQL.

179: TZ Interview – Gabriel Weinberg / Blowing Up DuckDuckGo

Justin — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:08:53 +0000

Justin and Jason talk in depth with Gabriel Weinberg about how he raised $3 million in venture capital for DuckDuckGo and how user growth has turned hockey stick.

178: TZ Discussion – The Hacker News Slap

Justin — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:32:12 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss balancing time when bootstrapping, the categories and costs of context switching, strategies for recruiting AnyFu experts, the status of the AnyFu payout system, what was learned from the first five AnyFu sessions, the DNA of the perfect AnyFu expert, whether or not we’re in a startup bubble, when it makes sense to bootstrap and when it makes sense to raise money, vaccinating yourself against customer feedback, Helmut’s document signing demo, the Hacker News slap, why Jason believes the “donate to charity” business model won’t work for AnyFu, the importance of keeping your message simple, the PhantomJS web stack, why writing business plans are a waste of time for web and mobile startups, the new Node.js profiler, how Justin got into business with Uri Geller, the story of MashAPI, and the scam of automatic traffic ticketing.

177: TZ Interview – Dan Southworth / Divergence

Justin — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:27:44 +0000

Justin and Jason speak with actor / producer / stunt-man, Dan Southworth about life as the Quantum Ranger and how he bootstrapped the sci-fi / action web series Divergence.

176: TZ Discussion – Why Favors Don’t Scale

Justin — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 20:43:45 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss some big donations from the Australian contingent, the story of Spent - an expense tracking iPhone app, the importance of momentum, how Ben Boyter got a raise, Justin’s new life in Savannah, building an NDA signing service, the customer development being done for AnyFu, whether life is easier as a funded or bootstrapped startup, the maven versus the consultant, quality over quantity, drafting an LLC agreement, traveling to MicroConf, developing a payout system, bringing Preezo back from the dead and why Jason and Justin love their accountant.

Super Producer $177 – Peter Goldsmith and Tim Cinel & (Spent iOS App)
Grand Patron $100 - David Walz
Executive Producer $50 – Ben Boyter

Thank you very much for your kind donations!

175: TZ Interview – William Saito

Justin — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:21:09 +0000

Justin and Jason talk to William Saito, author of “An Unprogrammed Life: Adventures of an Incurable Entrepreneur“.

174: TZ Discussion – It’s Alive!

Justin — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 02:19:06 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s drive to Savannah, the recent iTunes review surge, the success of the first AnyFu transaction and the lessons learned, whether or not AnyFu qualifies as a “Lean Startup”, the new TZ comment policy, what happened to _why, why Jason is excited about Colby’s renewed interest in soccer, different types of memories, whether Fringe is going to be renewed for a fifth season and why Justin likes teenage dramas, MySQL replication, the NSA’s domestic spying technology, how Kevin Rose is closing down Milk and joining Google, why Jason is paring back his Appignite ambition, the latest on Koz’s job hunt, why Justin thinks Google+ is dying and the science behind the 8-hour work day.

173: TZ Discussion – It’s Not That I’m Rude, It’s Just That I’m American

Justin — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:53:09 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss how Rackspace went down for 7 hours and took Pluggio down with it, some ideas for implementing a robust fail-over solution, the latest on AnyFu and some feedback from the first two users, why Justin is moving to Savannah, GA and what makes him think he’s actually going to get work done on the drive there, what James Dyson wants to do to improve the British economy, how Jason ghost wrote the “Help a hacker out” post on Hacker News, what happened when David Wasmer increased his “luck surface area”, what to do about the asteroid that’s headed directly at earth, why we’re underestimating the risk of human extinction and the three propositions of the ancestor simulation hypothesis, how you can double your brain power through “transcranial direct-current stimulation” and for only $99, what’s been learned from the hacking of Stratfor, why kids born later in the year are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, Jason’s idea for a real-word “like” system, the difference between grinds and princes, an Appignite update, and why YOU need to review us on iTunes.

172: TZ Interview – Baron Schwartz / Cutting Edge MySQL

Justin — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 00:16:19 +0000

Justin and Jason speak with Baron Schwartz, Chief Performance Architect at Percona and lead author of the O’Reilly book, High Performance MySQL.

171: TZ Discussion – Interview with the Unicorn

Justin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:27:00 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss how Justin’s apartment almost burned down and how he sold his house in the UK, the television shows Fringe, Prophets of Science Fiction, Bloomberg Game Changers and the movie Limitless, the progress being made on AnyFu and the challenge of recruiting well-known experts, listener questions, the story of what happend to Jason’s movie idea, the possibility of recurring donations and winning the iTunes review war with Startups for the Rest of Us, effective criticism, Alex MacCaw’s new Ace framework (think Sinatra for Node.js), insight from Uber’s most successful driver, the risk of premature generalization, how SmartGit makes Git easy and why research on the H5N1 virus has been temporarily halted.

170: TZ Interview – Paul Paetz / Innovative Disruption

Justin — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:00:47 +0000

Justin and Jason talk to Paul Paetz CEO of Innovative Disruption and curator of Innovative Disruption Daily.

169: TZ Interview – Alex MacCaw

Justin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 03:17:57 +0000

Justin and Jason talk to Alex MacCaw, author of JavaScript Web Applications, The Little Book on CoffeeScript, Spine.js and a bunch of other cool stuff.

168: TZ Interview – Patrick Collison / Stripe

Justin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:11:43 +0000

Justin and Jason talk to Patrick Collison, co-founder of the online payment processing startup, Stripe.

167: TZ Discussion – How Darth Vader Got Screwed

Justin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:05:31 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the latest in brain boosting, why to-do lists don’t work, the ethics of deleting a user’s data after they’ve closed their account, the upcoming MicroConf 2012 conference, getting more iTunes reviews, Jason’s idea for applying a points system to Masterminding, the latest progress on AnyFu, the painful process of acquiring an SSL Extended Validation certificate and why Jason opposed the idea of purchasing an SSL certificate from GoDaddy, encrypting social security numbers, how one of the founders of TheGlobe is applying the Angel List model to Hollywood, why the actor who played Darth Vader still isn’t getting paid residuals, some ideas on how to disrupt Hollywood, why ACTA is the new SOPA, the new show segment known as the Doom and Gloom Report, how the oldest ship in the navy, the USS Enterprise, AKA the “Mobile Chernobyl”, is heading straight to the Strait of Hormuz, why India is going to pay gold for Iranian oil, how the LAPD coordinated with the CIA on terrorism (which is a big no-no) and Jason’s prediction for the evolution of AnyFu.

166: TZ Interview – Anthony Goldbloom & Jeremy Howard / Kaggle

Justin — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:03:14 +0000

Justin and Jason talk to Anthony Goldbloom and Jeremy Howard, co-founders of Kaggle, a platform for predictive modeling competitions.

165: TZ Interview – Rob Walling / HitTail

Justin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:00:07 +0000

Justin and Jason talk with Rob Walling about the acquisition and release of his new site HitTail.

164: TZ Discussion – War, the Price of Oil and You

Justin — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:38:47 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s recent post about converting his site from PayPal to Stripe, Jason’s idea for a mathematical equation describing the tyranny of choice, the latest on Pluggio, AnyFu and Appignite, why Jason believes war with Iran is likely and how the price of oil will skyrocket if it happens, the story of how Jason’s attempt to sell his house before the market crashed in 2007, 3D printing, RepRap and MakerBot, Colby’s awesome new RC helicopter, the DC taxi commissioner who’s trying to stop Uber, what kind of jobs belong to the 1%, Jason’s idea for crowd-sourcing the identification of logical fallacies in news columns and opinion pieces, whether journalists should be truth vigilantes, how Jason and Guyon built a profiler for Node.js, NASA’s discovery that there are 1,500 earth-sized planets within 50 light-years of earth, upcoming interviews and Jason’s idea for creating a synthetic university education.

163: TZ Discussion – Shadow Hoppers

Justin — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:00:33 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, How in-flight entertainment systems are architected, Irish ATM’s weird defaults, How Moore’s Law may work for years to come due to quantum anomaly, Justin’s idea of flipping a house, and much more.

Executive Producer #1: Dave Marshall

Executive Producer #2: Alex Gemmell

Thanks for the donations!

162: TZ Discussion – Happy Christmas

Justin — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:18:28 +0000

TechZing Christmas special. Justin and Jason talk about SOPA, Functioning Synapse Created Using Carbon Nanotubes, AnyFu, StartupGuild, Predictions for 2012, Jason shooting a film with Colby and of course, Christmas.

Shout-out donation by Felix Long. Thanks

161: TZ Discussion – The Cycle of Life

Justin — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:44:16 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss why Peter and Alex were asked to fill in for Jason on last week’s show, why our brains seem to get slower over time, Justin’s struggle to remain productive while on his six week “work-cation”, why Jason accepted a full-time consulting contract with Uber, whether it’s worth entering the LAUNCH startup competition if you’re not planning on raising money, the process of setting up the AnyFu bank account, switching some of Uber’s infrastructure from MongoDB to Redis, comparing Uber’s rocket-ship growth rate to it’s humble beginnings, the success of Louis C.K.’s DVD experiment, Jason’s one-dollar Christmas moment, capturing light at a trillion frames per second, the latest breakthrough in solar panel efficiency, why long vacations and retirement are boring, the only real way to stop SOPA, the indefinite detention provision of the NDAA and the FBI’s abuse of National Security Letters, and how Jason’s kids helped him get through his mother’s death.

160: TZ Panel – The British Invasion

Justin — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:13:21 +0000

Justin, Alex Gemmell & Peter Cooper talk about various Hacker News stories including The Unintended Effects of Driverless Cars, What really happened aboard Air France 447, More Paypal nonsense, Don’t Be A Free User, Why we ditched PayPal for Stripe, 17-year-old wins 100k for creating cancer-killing nanoparticle , Zendesk CEO calls Freshdesk a freaking rip off – Freshdesk responds.

159: TZ Discussion – A Little Too Clever By Half

Justin — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 03:42:16 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss Jason Cohen‘s WP Engine, the idea for a Kickstarter-like site that would allow customers to prepay for a pre-launched service, getting AnyFu out the door and lessons learned so far, the man-made super flu that could kill half of humanity, why musicians and other creatives seem to get progressively worse over time, 17 Jedi mind tricks for persuading people, understanding the Hype Cycle, selling brand name training shoes in India, and the latest on Justin’s juice diet.

158: TZ Discussion – The Economic Efficiency of Bribing Your Kids

Justin — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 01:07:56 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss working while traveling, their dissatisfaction with Asana and the low tech solution they’ve adopted, the pros and cons of “banking your enthusiasm”, the Cern Neutrino experiment, how a vacuum isn’t empty but contains “class definitions” of real particle known as virtual particles, the TV show John Doe, Arrested Development’s deal with Netflix, ideas on how to create AnyFu’s legal documents, PicoMoney and the virtual money concept, why SOPA is a nightmare, the best time to submit an article to HN, Jason’s experiment in using economic incentives to spike his son’s academic and athletic progress, how Roger Craig broke the all-time Jeopardy record using a knowledge tracking web app, three memory hacks that work, the dawn of the robot age, how the inventor of the Super Soaker is creating a new electric car battery and how spacing your kids two years apart makes them smarter.

157: TZ Discussion – Cold Fusion, Zynga Options and Other Fairy Tales

Justin — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:41:14 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the progress being made on AnyFu and related business decisions, concepts from the book Running Lean, Paul Paetz of Innovative Disruption, why no one is going to steal an unproven idea, why you want to buy when everyone else is selling and sell when everyone else is buying, how Mark Pincus is attempting to steal equity from his employees, selling equity in private companies on Second Market, whether Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) is real or a fraud, how a new cancer drug is being used for weight loss, how energy efficiency of computing is doubling every 18 months, how the FBI is using GPS trackers without warrants and how Twitter had to turn over user information to the Feds without a warrant, the book The Shadow Factory (about the NSA), what elite achievers do differently and how the founder of Color is off his rocker.

156: TZ Discussion – To Uber HQ and Back

Justin — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:00:05 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the tradeoffs of various payment options for AnyFu, Jason’s recent trip to Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco, Justin’s evolving partnership with Company 52 and Pluggio’s new design, the possibility of starting a TZ Fund, how news is like junkfood, MongoGate, Node.js for beginners, how to increase your “follow me on Twitter” conversions, why Justin unsubscribed from AppSumo, why Anonymous isn’t as anonymous as they need to be, the secret U.S. panel that can put Americans on a “kill list”, why the feds want to be able to lie about the existence of public records, and how the New York Times is suing the federal government for refusing to reveal its secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act.

155: TZ Interview – Mathew Klein / Collective2

Justin — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:59:50 +0000

Justin and Jason talk to Mathew Klein, founder of trading systems community Collective2 and author of the novels Con Ed and Switchback, about his experiences in the Dotcom crash, researching algorithmic trading systems, bootstrapping a web startup, and balancing his life as an entrepreneur and writer.

154: TZ Discussion – Taking the High Road

Justin — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:15:31 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the progress being made on AnyFu and their differing development styles, Anonymous’ threat to expose a Mexican drug cartel, useful coding tools and JavaScript libraries, how Jason installed Windows 7 alongside OSX using Parallels and is kickstarting a collaboration with David Fogel on an AI trading project, Justin’s partnership with Company 52 and the future of Pluggio, some of Jason’s failed partnerships and why it’s better to take the high road, how you’re the average of your five closest friends, the secrets of a mind-gamer and the 60 Minutes segment on people with extraordinary memory, the Dan Plan and putting the 10,000 hour rule to the test, some of the friendships and collaborations that have resulted from Jason’s recent posts on algorithmic trading, the slave-master Node.js library that Jason and Curtis wrote for Uber, a short recap of some of the talks given at Startup School, the Netflix debacle and how Amazon is becoming a publisher, why Jason is so hard to please when it comes to non-fiction books and Justin’s book recommendation – Mars.

153: TZ Interview – Joanna Wiebe / CopyHackers

Justin — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:33:33 +0000

Justin and Jason talk with Joanna Wiebe author of CopyHackers, the definitive how-to guide for copywriting for startups!

152: TZ Discussion – Do It Right or Don’t Do It at All

Justin — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 03:57:03 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s new Pluggio partnership and Pluggio’s latest revenue numbers, the progress being made on AnyFu and ideas for how to launch, Jason’s thought’s on Google+ and his recent post “Letter to a Flash Developer“, a list of recommended geeky audiobooks, an econometric article extending Jason’s “Do * Tell” concept and Jason’s realization of why he should have studied applied rather than pure mathematics.

151: TZ Interview – Chon Tang / Inside the Black Box of Algorithmic Trading

Justin — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:43:12 +0000

Justin and Jason speak with Chon Tang about his journey through MIT, the Dot-com bubble and angel investing to how he ultimately became a successful, independent algorithmic trader. Due to Jason’s background in the field, this episode digs deep into the details of algorithmic trading to discuss everything from the development, testing and optimization of trading models to trading software, execution gateways, clearing firms, leverage and risk management.

150: TZ Discussion – It’s Getting a Little Meta Up in Here

Justin — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 04:11:25 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the TweetBoard.me results and it’s impact on Pluggio’s revenue, Justin’s upcoming blog post about three dimensional pricing plans, the tradeoffs of using PayPal Adaptive Payments for AnyFu, Justin’s new consulting client and the possibility of their involvement with Pluggio, the Bitbanter podcast calling it quits, Matt Swanson’s generous donation to the show, Jason’s blog post about why he quit algorithmic trading and his meta follow-up post on Google+, why Uber is having a hard time hiring developers, whether instantiating a virtual machine for each Appignite app would be overkill, Moneyball and other math geek movies, and Jason’s poll on what he should write about next.

Grand Patron: Matt Swanson

Thanks very much Matt

149: TZ Discussion – TweetBoard Goes Live

Justin — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:24:10 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the release of Justin’s latest project, TweetBoard and it’s potential impact on Pluggio, some thoughts on writing single page web apps, why Jason is using Google+, whether the ORM is an anti-pattern, the latest on AnyFu and Appignite, an update on Justin’s plant-based diet and why Jason remains unconvinced of it’s scientific validity, Jason’s idea for using JSON to define the structure and behavior of a hierarchy of javascript widgets and the recently released book Design for Hackers.

148: TZ Discussion – Turning the Corner

Justin — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:40:33 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the status and recent progress made on Pluggio, Appignite and AnyFu, lessons learned about when to initiate the design process, The Birdy’s custom feature voting system, Dan DeFelippi’s BidOnMyDay project, using NLP to cure “the madness”, when it makes more sense to incorporate as an LLC vs an S-Corp or C-Corp, a documentary on the evil business practices of Monsanto, an update on the sit vs stand debate, the weirdness of Benford’s Law, creating rich interactive web apps with KnockoutJS, the launch of Trello and whatever happened to Skyboard, finite state machines and the State design pattern

147: TZ Interview – Stavros Korokithakis / Historious

Justin — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:53:01 +0000

Justin and Jason talk with Stavros Korokithakis, founder of bookmarking service Historious, about how he bootstrapped a simple side project into a money generating startup while running a freelance consultancy.

146: TZ Discussion – The Truth About Oil, Twitter, Riots and Smiley Faces :)

Justin — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:32:21 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the movie Forks over Knives, how a Twitter-based hedge fund beat the stock market, the cause of riots and the price of food, our oil-constrained future, the Japanese wind power breakthrough, the surprising truth about what motivates us, Puggio’s new three-ways business plan, why Jason is translating Appignite to Javascript, Steve Jobs and the eureka myth, lab grown meat, why the UK startup scene is doomed, rational home buying, Paul Graham’s patent pledge, Bid On My Day, when it’s better to increase conversions and when it’s time to hire a sales team, how John McAfee lost 96% of his wealth, going mobile first, the idea of investment tithing and how enthusiasm goes a long way over email.

145: TZ Discussion – Bad Cop, Sensitive Cop

Justin — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:22:39 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss why staying up late can screw up your life, how Skype is almost the full realization of the magical CTU tech of the TV show 24, Peter Cooper’s Javascript Weekly newsletter, the prospect of migrating Appignite to a single-page web application, the advantages of leaving a problem unfinished at the end of a work session, Justin’s idea for a collective version of Groupon for websites codenamed Groupio, the high-cost of the context switch, whether AnyFu should be incorporated as an LLC and some ideas about vesting and founder death, Justin’s review of Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness, using Twitter’s location based search streams, the science of extreme life extension and Leslie Kean’s History Channel documentary Secret Access: UFOs on the Record.

144: TZ Discussion – Justin’s Big Left Nav

Justin — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:44:01 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss whether software is actually eating the world, why Elon Musk is the most impressive entrepreneur in modern times, splitting payments using PayPal Adaptive Payments, how to solve the problem of the fractured social web, why Justin posts the kinds of links he does, some upcoming changes to Pluggio, the status of Jason and Guyon’s custom scrollbar component, Justin’s concern about working on code with Jason, whether begging is a type of social defection, Justin’s theory that the recent Anonymous BART hack was a false flag attack, the movie Apollo 18, NASA’s discovery of nucleobases on twelve different meteorites, a recent discovery that early life was sulfur-based, the current status of Appignite and the design of the AnyFu logo and character.

143: TZ Discussion – What It Takes to Be Entry Level Rich

Justin — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 04:56:23 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss Scotty Jackson, the magical genius illustrator, why Justin is impressed by the Gooveshark UI, Jason’s frustration with the design process, what it takes to be entry level rich, more on the downgrading of US debt, the ethical implications of Justin automating his Twitter feed, the Bloomberg Risk Takers profile of Elon Musk, an update on the Pluggio SEO strategy and affiliate marketing campaign, how markets are efficient if and only if P = NP, how the San Francisco police asked wireless providers to turn off their signals to prevent a protest, possible causes for the London riots and who should be held accountable, former Clinton and Bush counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke’s accustation airing on ABC news about a CIA cover-up of 9/11, how Apple is stepping up to defend iOS devs against patent troll Lodsys, why Jason thinks losing weight is like doing a startup, adding TameJS to CoffeeScript, SafeCast, Jason’s interview about high-frequency trading and the prospect of open-sourcing some Uber code.

142: TZ Panel – Rob Walling and Mike Taber

Justin — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 07:22:01 +0000

Justin and Jason chat with Rob Walling and Mike Taber hosts of the Startups For the Rest of Us podcast.

141: TZ Interview – Guyon Roche / Jason’s Partner in Crime

Justin — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 04:58:24 +0000

Justin and Jason talk to Jason’s partner in Appignite, Guyon Roche, about how they began working together and the advantages of pair programming, Guyon’s take on Appignite and AnyFu, why design can be important for startups, what percent of Twitter and Facebook accounts are real, an investment manager’s take on the top 1%, the most likely way to get rich, the reason for AnyFu’s high-end pricing policy, the potential impact of S&P’s downgrading of US debt, Rob Walling’s advice to bootstrap as a partnership rather than as a LLC, Jason’s idea on using resources like OpenCourseware and Tutorspree as an alternative to traditional education, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX, the status of Justin’s juice diet and an update on Pluggio’s growth.

140: TZ Discussion – Back on Track

Justin — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 05:01:09 +0000

Justin ans Jason discuss Steve Perlman’s impossible wireless tech known as DIDO and the technology of WiTricity, why Pluggio’s growth has suddenly stalled out, logging slow queries using MySQL’s Slow Query Log and monitoring your site using SiteUptime, Jason and Curtis’s upcoming post on Uber’s Node.js based dispatching system, the designer they’ve hired to create AnyFu’s brand identity and UI and whether they should use Braintree or PayPal for payment processing, how Jason tried and abandoned jScrollPane to build his own custom scrollbar, Justin’s new Juice diet and the movie that inspired it, the sophistication and complexity of SQLAlchemy and Doctrine and the ORM Jason is building for Appignite, the Airbnb fiasco and some ideas on how they could mitigate that kind of problem in the future and the industrial scale patent trolling of Intellectual Ventures.

Executive Producers

Toby Osbourn

Ruben Gamez – Bidsketch

139: TZ Discussion – This Week in Holy Sh*t

Justin — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 04:58:04 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the suspension of Justin’s 600 calorie per day diet and whether his plan to move to Ireland is such a s good idea, the process of finding a designer for AnyFu and the progress on the site mockups, the incredible rise in the value of Bitcoins and whether Bitcoins will ever really go mainstream and threaten the dollar, how the Japanese character set cracked Pluggio and made Justin confused, the importance of momentum in just about everything, Justin’s crazy work schedule and how Jason is juggling five client contracts, why Jason is considering open sourcing some of his code, whether the Singularity is near or far, the possibility of a CrunchFund, the worrisome addiction of drawing Anime, “black ops” in Pakistan, whether the world economy is near collapse and whether following the news is worth the effort, using Qwerly to clout rank your email list, why working for startups is a smart career move, how MemSQL offer’s a 30x performance enhancement over MySQL and the coolness of Google Web Fonts.

138: TZ Discussion – R.I.P Nigel Vincent

Justin — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 05:05:46 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the death of Justin’s father, Udi’s blog post about Appignite, Uber’s technological origins and the new Node.js based dispatch server, rapid UI design using mockups, the core problems that AnyFu needs to solve, using Showcase Lane to get feedback on UI design, a La Critique of The Birdy, an update on Pluggio’s growth, whether it’s better to use dashes or underscores in SEO slugs, finding a logo design for AnyFu and the importance of good design, Jason’s slightly contrarian position on the lean startup model, using MySQL fulltext search vs a search engine like Solr or Sphinx, running server-side Javascript on RingoJS, Justin’s strategy for curing himself of diabetes, how Kevin Rose and Evan Williams are both starting incubators, the possibility that Justin will be moving back to Ireland and the idea for an open version of Y-Combinator.

137: TZ Discussion – Lessons for Justin and His $100 Million

Justin — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 03:47:40 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the progress they’ve made so far on AnyFu, why Jason thinks Sweden smells like ice cream and his idea for yet another TV series, life lessons from the very wealthy and preschool’s huge payoff, an update on Justin’s outsourcing effort, Jason’s idea for compiling CoffeeScript to PHP, Justin’s micro-depression about Pluggio and an update on the numbers, ideas on picking a designer and a design for AnyFu, what makes a good finisher and why women make teams smarter.

136: TZ Discussion – Celebrigeek

Justin — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 20:06:11 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss Pluggio’s numbers and the results of a Pluggio product-market fit survey, Jason’s recent trip to Scandinavia, how Justin is upscaling his outsourcing, making Appignite command-line accessible, why AnyFu is worth pursuing and the summer show schedule.

135: TZ Discussion – Fear and Coding in Las Vegas (Part 2)

Justin — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 20:00:19 +0000

Justin and Jason discuss the events of Microconf 2011 during the drive back home to Los Angeles. This is part two of two episodes.