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Justin and Jason discuss Jason’s recent trip to Disneyland, the latest progress on Disco, Jason’s first angel investment, how Justin has been slowly accumulating Bitcoin, finding a remote, junior Rails developer, the site We Work Remotely, Jason’s new weight-loss plan,StrongLifts, the TV shows Continuum and Halt and Catch Fire, some details on the TechZing Summit, whether it’s harmful to let young kids use iPads, how Jason spent his youth fighting BB-gun wars, shooting tennis ball cannons and juggling burning tennis balls, Justin and Georgie’s plans for a natural childbirth,how zapping your brain with gamma waves can induce lucid dreaming, the possibility of interviewing the founder of AirPair, why Jason wouldn’t consider himself an expert in Titanium (or just about anything else for that matter), why it’s hard to give time estimates when developing software, what makes hell banning a pain to implement, why Internet bullying is the result of people not having any “skin in the game”, the promise-payoff matrix, Uber’s $1.4B raise,how the ridiculous Bitcoin predictions of Mark T. Williams have (predictably) been proven wrong, the difficulty of decoupling emotion from investing, the untraceability of DarkCoin and ideas on how to trade all of the new cryptocurrencies, how it’s now possible to build a complete mobile platform on .NET using Xamarin and EC2, why having more developers slows down development and the latest progress on Digedu’s “No DB” implementation.
I just did my first AirPair a couple weeks ago and it seems like it was a good decision focusing on the demand side and the customer’s problem. As you guys know I loved AnyFu, but there were a number of times I had a need where there was not already an expert up there. I am fairly certain that the guy I talked to on AirPair wasn’t even signed up as an expert before I entered my request. The coordinator at AirPair did a lot of manual work to track down someone that fit my requirements. Obviously that doesn’t scale, but it is a great strategy for an early startup.
@Jeff Whelpley – I completely agree.
Hi guys,
I just paused the show at the point where Justin is saying to make the next point the last one because you’d gone for two hours already. I want to say, feel free to keep going as long as you have time to. I can pause the show like I just did and pop in and out of it through my day. Going long is definitely not a problem :-).
Cheers,
A.
@Andrew, maybe not for you… but I don’t have the luxury of a “pause Jason” button when we’re recording the show 😉
FYI I try to cap the show to 1.5 hours so that it’s a manageable edit time for me and also more manageable for Jason to do the show notes. But thanks for the kind words that is appreciated.
StrongLifts combined with LeanGains (Intermittent Fasting) has been very effective for me. I’ve dropped 11cm from my waist but only lost 1kg in weight in the past 3 months since I started. Only need to go to the gym 3 times a week. Heavy squats/deadlifts are very satisfying after you’ve completed them!
The question regarding kids using IPADs is not do kids like it, of course they love it.
the question is ,is it good for them or not. I think in moderation its good, but if you get to a point
where you take it from their hands and they scream, then you have a problem.
Oh by the way, I had lucid dreams twice and have been able to control my dream for a while,
has not happened to me ever since, this was like 10 years ago.
I’m commenting as I listen along… There’s an awesome place in Thailand for playing with BB guns. It’s an outdoor course, a bit like laser tag but with BB guns.
Everyone gets a semi automatic BB rifle and you divide up into two warring teams. You get a protective vest, face mask and a thick beanie for cover. There’s a referee who decides the kills, and once you’ve been shot you return to base and no one is allowed to shoot you again.
the fun is in trying to shoot your enemy in a bare skin spot (e.g. back of the neck, leg, arm). You know you’ve accomplished your aim when you hear a bunch of loud cursing from behind the bush.
Quite bruised at the end of it, but a lot of fun!
Lucid dreaming is a real thing! I got into a few years ago and started having them semi regularly. You can train yourself to have them by doing reality checks during the day (e.g.. Look at your hands. If theres an extra finger, you’re in a dream. Or try to float. If you can do it, it’s obviously a dream. Theres a bunch of them. Inception used that spinning top).
It’s like being in your own virtual reality machine! You can control a lot of it but theres a still an element of surprise. You don’t know what the other actors are going to do, even though it’s your own brain generating the content.
The studies they’ve done on it shows that lucid dreamers have an active prefrontal cortex, which is usually dormant during normal dreams. Thats the part of the brain that controls consciousness.
The dreams are a lot of fun but waking up sucks. I experience sleep paralysis. Only lasts for a little while but long enough to freak me out every time.
Regarding the summit, I still hope we can do it even if we do not have 12 members. It would make the experience even more personal if we have a small turnout.
I’m really looking forward to this opportunity and I’m super grateful that you chose the weekend of October 18-19 because that was the only weekend I would’ve been able to attend.
Hopefully I’ll be seeing you two in October!
Jason, I can absolutely guarantee that Justin is correct about lucid dreaming. In a lucid dream the dreamer takes control of the entire dream. Therefore as soon as you become aware of the fact that you are in fact dreaming, the possibilities are limitless.
Please watch the movie Waking Life. I’ve suggested it before but if you seriously have a desire to see a life-changing movie, Waking Life is the film for you.
Hey guys — great show!
Regarding user testing and sample size, the two concepts are basically unrelated. For behavioral testing (usability testing), you’re not actually sampling. Sampling is used for attitudinal surveys (e.g., communicating preferences), collecting demographics, and A/B testing — where probability, variability and population distribution come into play.
User testing measures whether a human can complete a task using a system/software/site/app (also known as “human factors”, “human computer interaction”), which typically results in a binary outcome (success or failure). Jakob Nielsen famously demonstrated that only 5 people are required to uncover ~85% of all defects in a software system: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test-with-5-users/
When Joanna and I run “tests” we observe where people fail/struggle/get frustrated and then make changes that we feel will address those issues. Then we test again… and repeat.
Hope that helps!!
@Lance Jones – That makes perfect sense. Thanks for clarifying!
Totally enjoyed you mentioning Latvia several times. 🙂
Bucket of gas. Thanks guys, I haven’t laughed like that in a long time.
Two quick comments.
Had a good laugh at Jason’s stories about crazy stuff he did as a kid. It reminded me about how my brothers and I used to play a war game where we split up in teams and literally threw sticks and rocks at each other. Not surprisingly a rock cracked my brother Matt in the head one day and he needed a half dozen stitches. Boys really do stupid stuff.
As far as Justin’s wife’s intent on a natural birth I wish them the best. We had that in mind as well for our first child, but once my wife got a real contraction it was like “holy cow, that was not cool. get me the drugs!” Jason’s comment with regard to kids applies here as well: you can have the best of intentions, but once sh*t hits the fan you are going to do whatever you have to do to survive.
From my experience you really stop swearing in front of your kids when your three year old daughter says “fuck’s sake” after knocking over a glass of water!
Discovered these Play-i things yesterday, that look like they could be interesting in terms of getting kids into a coding mindset. I will confess I haven’t delved too far into what they do or how they work.
Another good episode, a nice surprise to see it out so soon 🙂
The TechZing Summit sounds great but getting there from the UK unfortunately isn’t an option. Having no strict agenda is a good idea but it might be nice to get one or two people in to tell their stories and chat. There might be ‘big name’ people Jason and Justin know that listeners from around the country/world wouldn’t normally get a chance to meet.
I just enjoyed the first episode of Continuum. I tried to get into Fringe but found (in the early episodes at least) there wasn’t enough story tying the episodes together. I much prefer series with a story that continues throughout, e.g. Walking Dead, The Wire, etc. My favourite X Files episodes were where the big conspiracy plot made progress.
Many interesting points on this podcast. Here are some unsolicited comments 😉
Kids and electronic devices at restaurant: I agree that the easy way it is just to hand over a device to the kids and dinner is “perfect” or is it? We used the same technique until we decided to stop and figure out how to help our kids behave on such environments and it has worked out great. We have 3 (7/5/2) the two oldest have learned the new behavior and they enjoy coloring the booklets of papers that each restaurant hands them over when we arrive. We still dealign with the youngest kid who is still learning how to behave at a restaurant. Sometimes I have to take him out of the restaurant and bring him in when our dinner is ready. This helps us keep the noise at minimum and respect other’s people day out. When things go “perfect” on my point of view it is great to interact with all the kids on a night out, after all people were able to do it before mobile devices right?
First child: I would say, if Justin’s wife wants to try natural birth by all means let her do it, just ensure you are there the whole way, we as men will never understand the physical or mental road ladies go through on such event but only a few that I know would tell you they will never do it again the same way. The only way that I can think of it (and I may be way off base here ladies so forgive me) is self fulding your own start up vs raising money. Imagine our wives would just say. Why go through the whole trouble? Raise money already! get some investors and be done with it, while you just want to go through the pain of doing it on your own and all you want is their support knowing that no matter what happens they have your back.
And there were some other comments but I may just have to listen to the podcast again to remember 😉
I’d really like to attend the Techzing Summit, but I would prefer to be relatively sure it’s happening before I buy a plane ticket. It would be cool if you guys had a little counter or something somewhere on the site that shows how many more people need to sign up before it’s a go. It would be fun to meet some new people and enjoy some interesting conversations!
And thanks for the podcast, it really livens up my commute.
NoDB is a catchy term and sounds like a fun piece of tech to work on. I hope it’s not a premature optimization instead of switching out MySQL for a database more focused on reliability. I’m more interested in hearing about the replication aspects of the implementation, since using a truly ACID database should solve issues with reliability even including power failures.