Dax kicks off an open source rant, plastics, TSA security theater and the connection to rich people getting murdered, Adam wonders if he can become a romantic or if he's stuck being a disconnected robot, and thoughts on building an API.Links:dax on X: “openauth beta is here you’re gonna wanna watch this video more info in threadOpenAuth Beta | SSTOpenAuthopenauthjs/openauth: ▦ Universal, standards-based auth provider.Byung-Chul Han PhilosophyComposable Web ArchitectureGenerate Best-in-Class SDKsSponsor: Terminal now offers a monthly box called Cron.Want to carry on the conversation? Join us in Discord. Or send us an email at [email protected]:(00:00) - This is not podcast content (00:28) - The annoyance of open source (10:40) - Recycling and plastic (13:20) - Mixed feelings about security theater (18:16) - Money and murder (27:45) - Are we romantics? (34:29) - Byung-Chul Han (41:59) - Is Twitter good for Adam? (47:08) - How's Adam's API going? ★ Support this podcast ★
this is not what we're getting into yeah this is not podcast content chris cut this out you know what i mean
i need to really badly do a rant perfect do it that's what this is for that's what this podcast is i like was writing out a tweet and i was like like a really ranty tweet and i was like holding myself back so i was like i should probably just like rant about this on the on the podcast um let's go so we released open off beta uh last week or not last week damn it's only been it's not monday it's only been a week
And it's been really cool. We've gotten like a lot of really great PRs, like a crazy amount of PR. Like every day I wake up to like five or six PRs that are definitely mergeable. And it's really great because that's kind of what we hoped for. Like we wanted to build a shell of something and the power of open source is to like cover the, like a long tail list of something.
And the community is actually doing that and helping us there, which is awesome. But I think it's general enough of a project that I'm getting like a much wider audience of people that are like looking at it. And so I'm attracting some of these like very annoying open source type situations. Uh, so it's not what people might imagine. It's not the person demanding a future.
I actually don't care about that. Like I'm like, I'm, I don't find that annoying. Like someone, I know that annoys some people and they're like, you don't pay for this. But for us, it's like a little bit different. Uh, I get like, Man, I've been struggling. The reason I didn't post a tweet is because I'm struggling to find the right insult for this type of person. Like, it's like a Karen.
It's like a Karen category of person. But I feel like it's more specific than that. A couple of days ago, I got two issues open being like, do not use JWTs. They're insecure. And there's a second one that was like, do not use local storage. They're insecure. And this person just like linked a bunch of like random ass security articles.
yeah and their view of things is so binary and whenever it comes to like i found this anytime you get in the category of like compliance or security or everything people are so proud to like know the know a rule they're so proud to know a rule you shouldn't do this and then whenever some situation comes up there's like blanket apply the rule uh the rule says you shouldn't do this
So he, you know, he wrote this thing about JWTs not being valid and they're like, you should never use them. But security is not like that. And compliance is also not like that. Anyone that actually works in these spaces knows that there's always a spectrum of insecure to extremely secure.
And then you pick somewhere on that spectrum that balances the security aspect of what you're trying to do with, there's always a good product trade-off. Okay. Yeah. So he wrote this in like, as it was a binary thing and he, It's wrong because I want to kind of appeal to authority. Like every single, like a bunch of office of service companies uses the exact same model.
And there is a very specific trade-off and very specific design you'd use to minimize the downsides of it, which is exactly what we did. We didn't factor that in at all, just linked a bunch of stuff.
So I said like- Is it expiration? Is that the key?
Yeah, so if you set, the problem with JWTs is the upside is you can verify JWT without calling another server. So it's really efficient. Like there's a bunch of good reasons for that. But that exact property, it makes it so someone can't revoke them. So if someone is like, oh, there's James who was leaked, I need to revoke it. Other systems are still going to keep validating it.
They don't know that you flagged it as bad. And if you try to design some kind of system to make them check a database first, then you've effectively... lost all the benefits of a JWT. So what you do is you set the JWT expiration to be really low, like five minutes, and then you also issue a refresh token, and the refresh token is not a JWT.
That's something that has to be sent to a server to get a new access token.
So that's what the deal with the refresh token is. It's always just in my mind been like, Okay, but like you just moved it to a different field called refresh token.
Okay, so the root thing is here, the access token is sent to random places. It's sent to APIs, it's sent to other people. The refresh token is never sent anywhere except to the authorization server. So that like moves, that flies around less. So it's theoretically, you know, less exposed. So we had that model.
That way, you know, if you revoke someone's refresh token, they can keep accessing the system for five minutes. But after five minutes, like their access token will expire and they'll fail to refresh a new one. So we did that design. They didn't factor that in at all. So I literally was like, I explained that, and then I said, I understand that this is going to be a continuous problem.
This is a security-related thing, so people are going to come in with these dumbass binary statements around this stuff and confuse people because people don't know. People are going to see that, and they're going to be like, oh, does that mean it's not secure? So I wrote...
This is the first issue of this, so I'm not going to do anything off of this, but I'm updating your code of conduct being like, if you are here to report a security issue, and I put it in quotes, security issue, you must report it in these terms. You need to say, I see that the design is A. And it was probably chosen because it has these benefits and it has these downsides.
And here's how it's currently mitigated. But I think it doesn't go far enough. If you don't phrase it like that, I'm just going to flat out close the issue because you're not here to actually contribute. You're just here to like... get someone on some kind of rule. So I find that extremely annoying. So I wrote this code of conduct. It's only two things I put in there. I was like, it's two points.
It says reporting security issues. I say like, if it's a security issue, like, you know, don't post it publicly message me. And if we don't respond in some amount of time, then you can just go disclose it publicly in case there's like some kind of hold exploit. Yeah. Then number two, I wrote reporting security issues in quotations. And I was like,
You're likely reporting a not really a security issue. Like, you know, please phrase it in this way so we know that you've actually done your research. Yeah. So I wrote that. Okay, great. I think this problem is solved. And today I wake up. I get another PR. Fix code of conduct. It's a title PR. And it's like in this PR message, it says the code of conduct is very bad.
It should not be used for these type of things. And then they copy pasted just like some generic as code of conduct. Like, we think you should be a good person. Like, please do not like discriminate someone by their gender. It's all that dumbass legal crap that is just infiltrating every single corner of the world of just people being like, please be a good person.
And then they list out like all these things. really shallow stupid ways of what a good person is like oh man what the fuck does this have to do with an authentication library like i deleted the thing that i the actual thing that's going to come up that stuff that i wrote and they submitted this pr and beyond this just being really stupid like me not liking the actual approach like
What the hell is wrong with people? You have no history with this project. I don't even think you're a user of this project. You haven't contributed any code. You haven't contributed any examples. You are literally a random person who just drove by and was like, I have an opinion on how this project should be run. He's a random ass person, like no tied to the project at all.
So I was like, yeah, this is so fucking annoying. And this is the type of stuff in open source that like never gets talked about. The cliche thing is like, uh, like overly demanding user, which like I said, is annoying, but at least they're like using your thing and like giving you data points on how to like fix stuff.
Yeah.
This is just people being bored and being like, I'm going to insert myself into this and teach other people how to be a good person. And I just can't stand it.
That's not fun. I'm seeing your point of view on all that so much more clearly. I have this thing where if someone wants to take charge and set rules and be authoritative, I will follow. And I get tossed around a lot because, I don't know, they sounded like they knew what they were talking about. And they said, we should do this. We should name our branches. instead of master.
I saw that in the GitHub repo the other day where it was renamed. It was some big flag that this was renamed. And I just remember that whole era. And it's like, wow, that was a lot of toil. And does anyone really care? I don't know. Maybe they do. But it just feels like... Yeah. There's a group of people that just really want to look like they care is how I would describe it.
Yeah. It's just like, what's all that's going on here is you're trying to like make yourself look like a good person and you are wasting people's times. Like it is really, really frustrating.
That's so funny. I just saw a video this morning. Well, maybe everyone in the world did because I think Elon retweeted it. Does Elon's tweets just show up on everybody's timeline? I don't know if I follow him. Okay. Well, I need to do that because he tweets a lot. But he retweeted this video about recycling, and I don't know who the source of this video is.
No, recycling is, I mean, assuming it's that thing where we just set up this whole fake system to make ourselves feel better, and it just all goes into traffic. Yeah, I think that's true.
I didn't realize how fake recycling is. I'm a diligent recycler. I didn't realize I was doing it just to feel good about myself, but I guess I was. And apparently, you can't recycle plastic. Like, basically, not possible. Yeah. I mean, it just doesn't, or at least not practical.
It's a very, very tiny percentage of it actually gets recycled. And then we have this complicated ass system of recycling. And it probably has like a big financial cost.
Yeah. And environmental costs. It's kind of ironic, like some of the details around it. And again, there could be counterpoints. Maybe there are things that are good to recycle. I don't know. A lot of it just shipped to other countries too.
Like a lot of it just gets dumped into landfills in other countries.
Did you know they just dump plastic in the ocean? I didn't know that. I thought it was like accidentally. What? What's that? No, like people, other countries just literally like every minute a truckload of plastic is dumped into the ocean.
I was in this video. Through proper channels or just like a company randomly trying to dispose of waste and there's no like enforcement of.
I don't know. The part of the video is talking about how we ship all this plastic to other countries and then those countries in turn either burn it or dump it in the ocean, which is both bad, both bad things to do, I guess. I don't know.
Yeah.
The plastic thing is interesting, too, because I listened to a big thing about microplastics. And it's like, basically, it's everywhere. Everywhere we've ever looked, there's microplastic. It's everywhere. And there's no escaping it at this point. We're just kind of all filled with and covered in microplastics. TBD, if that matters. I don't know.
But basically, all the uproar about plastic is just kind of like, it's too late. There's plastic.
I just don't understand how we can produce so much of it. Everything is covered in plastic. I'm imagining, okay, how much oil does this take? Is it one drop of oil you can stretch it into a bag? Is that how it works? How are we producing so much of it? And this is the cheapest...
container and i think about how like you know i don't know back in i don't know when pre-plastic era was like but whenever i watch like madman or like a show that takes place in the 60s like it's just not anywhere and everything just looks so nice like everything just looks so much better i know i do wish it didn't exist i mean
I don't know. I have to question all of my motives, why I say or think things like plastic is bad after learning that you can't even recycle plastic. I don't know. It's like, I do think there's something about, I try to avoid like when we buy toys for the kids, we try to buy stuff that lasts longer. I think the plastic era just kind of sucks.
Everything's so shitty and plastic. Except for Legos.
Legos, it's true. They're plastic and they're great.
Yeah. Some things look nice.
I was thinking about, I just had a thought this morning about plastic, about building a giant keyboard, like maybe the world's largest. I wonder if we could get like a key cap manufacturer like GMK to like be excited about molding giant.
Like a giant one? Yeah.
Yeah. And I thought how much plastic, how much ABS or whatever plastic would it take? Sorry. To create like key caps as big as a chair. Like that would be a lot of plastic. And then I just went down a whole trail of like, how could you even type on that keyboard? Well, if everyone was standing on a key and you had little like headphones where it beeped when they need to jump, you could type.
Sorry, I'm just, this is all.
Well, I was just thinking like, what if we made out of wood?
Oh, okay. There we go. Just like an entire forest cut down probably. But like, I guess that happens every minute anyway. It's renewable. That's right.
You can plant another tree.
Oh, the world's so complicated. I don't know how to feel. Tell me how to feel the X. I don't know.
The plastic thing is crazy. But yeah, just this whole... All the towers we build to make ourselves feel better in a not real way. Just so much of that.
It's kind of like TSA, how it's security theater.
TSA is perfect, yeah.
Like when I heard that term.
Yeah, I have mixed feelings about this.
Well, I was just thinking as I thought through that example too. And can I say it before you do? Because then it'll just sound like a copy of you because you're smart. Well, the... It has to get some things like literally metal detectors. Everybody has to go through a metal detector. They scan the bags. I'm sure they miss stuff, but it can't be a zero ad kind of thing. That was my thought.
Keep going.
Okay. My thought's smarter.
Of course it is. I should have left my dumb thought in my brain. So it couldn't be ridiculed.
I'm just kidding. Okay. So yeah, Well, I think what people point to is when they run tests, people often get through like when they like test them without telling them and they try to say something, they often get through. But I think there is an aspect to it stopping stuff that from before someone even tries. Right.
Like they won't try because they know they definitely see and it's too scary.
Exactly. Like, I think a lot of stuff is, like, opportunistic when you see that there's a very specific gap, you're, like, more willing to try it. So if it was just, like, a chill process, like, there might just be more people that are going to try. So it might just stop stuff from happening before they do.
Just, like, having a lock on a gate, even if it's not, like, literally locked and someone walks by, like, that'll probably prevent someone from... They can just unlock it and get in if they want to, but it probably stops a bunch of opportunistic things from happening.
from happening so just the littlest barrier can be like a huge barrier basically there's a principle around that or something right on the it's the window or yeah yeah i don't know
Perot is a good guess because that applies to like literally everything in the world.
Okay. If it's a, yeah, I just, I started realizing like, I think I liked TSA. I would feel pretty bad. Is it security theater? If I would really feel pretty bad if it didn't exist and I just got on a plane with everybody else off the street.
Okay, so my issue with the TSA, and this is changing, because have you seen those new machines? Those crazy, like, circular, sleek, white ones? It looks like a jet engine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, so my issue historically with the TSA is every time you show up, it's a random process. It's like, today we're doing laptops in bag. It's fine. Don't take out your laptops. Okay, next week we're doing laptops out of bag. I think it's all just related to how busy they are. And I'm just like, I don't care if this is a complicated process. Just...
tell me like i want to know what it is so i can just do it every time instead of being like what this time do i take off my shoes do i take off my jacket uh you have to say pre No, I don't. Really? I just, I just, I typically don't, I just typically, it's not, I don't like flying. I just don't travel much. So I just never felt worth it.
That's what I mean. You don't like traveling is what I really meant. Like you don't like to leave your home.
Yeah. That said, I traveled a lot this year, so it kind of would have been worth it, but it's really worth it. Yeah. That, but that said, these new machines are great because don't have to do anything to drop your bag in, go same thing every single time. So whenever I'm flying it in New York, which has this and some terminals in Miami have this too. Great process. Yeah.
So more of those machines, please.
The security thing is so funny. At one point, I was flying a lot, like three, four times a week, just for like a few months. It was a fundraising era. And I got the clear thing at the beginning of the stretch.
I knew I was going to be flying.
Yeah.
So back then, this was... I know what you're going to say. Yeah.
You feel like such an asshole, but it was amazing. They walk you right up in front of everybody and like hand you off. But now it's like the clear line is as long as the TSA preline. And it's kind of funny, like business models like that, where like it's only good until you're really successful and then nobody gets anything out of it.
Yeah, exactly. It's like, then they're going to have clear plus plus or something. And it's like, cause I've also even seen the TSA pre-check. Like, I mean that one, they check you less. So it's always going to move faster. I've seen a lot of people.
It's a huge line. Yeah.
Yeah. And then sometimes like the airport's busy and they redirect everyone to the same way.
It should just be an auction and, like, you bid to get to the front of the line. Like, what's the highest bid right now? We got $156, this asshole from New York. I keep cursing. Ever since I said I don't sound normal cursing, I just keep trying.
I mean, I think it sounds good. I don't know. Okay. Well, I'll keep trying. Yeah. Clear still feels worth. It's definitely, like, on the cusp of, like... It's maybe only saving you a handful of minutes, but it still feels like it's not completely useless, but there have been times where... You get to feel super pretentious.
It's a nice feeling.
I'm better than all of you. I don't feel good in those situations. I feel like... any moment some that like the wealth gap in America is going to reach some breaking point. And then my people are going to burst out that line and like murder me. That's how I feel.
There are things in that vein, not specifically clear. Uh, but I definitely have that growing sense of dread that having money will bite us all. Eventually, uh, the trajectory we're on, I don't know. Some guy was murdered in the street in New York. I'm not some guy, a CEO, a person with money. that happened. And I don't know.
I think society always needs to be at this perfect tension zone. And then it like, it recorrects through situations like that. Uh, yeah, I think there was a lot of thoughts about, about like the murder and it being like good or bad. Like obviously murder is like a moral and like, it's a bad thing. But I think the interesting part is like all rules of society are,
they're all like enforced by violence effectively. Like the reason I don't go and murder someone is because the government is like, I will violently take you and put you in a box. If you do that, I think the like equilibrium we reach is if society is generally doing well enough, that threat of that government violence keeps most people in check.
If the government gets too oppressive, what happens is that threat is what, Not that bad compared to the day-to-day conditions. And you will have these situations happen where people make that trade-off. They're like, I'm just going to commit violence because stuff is so bad that I'm not really afraid of the punishment. And you see this a lot with rioting. I think this topic comes up a lot.
They're like, it's bad to loot. We all agree. It's bad to smash open a store and steal stuff. You're not doing anything for a cause. You're not like... it's just like you being selfish in that moment. But from a systemic point of view, like it's almost good that some percentage of people do that because it's like a feedback mechanism to the government.
Like you can't, if you like start to like go over the line, like, yes, we have a democracy, but like, even in democracy, the governments can go over the line and things you'd have to deal with all these random things happening, like someone murdering someone or someone, you know, looting stores. So on an individual level, it's like, yeah, like that's a wrong thing to do.
But from like a system, from a system point of view, like it's all like enforced through violence in some way.
So do you think, so could you spell it out for me in this case? What's the feedback or who's the feedback to, to CEOs? Yeah.
not CEOs in general, just they're like, it's clear that the state of our healthcare system is continuing to degrade. And yeah, it's just like, I think people struggle to hold both things in their head. Myself included. It's like, it's wrong to murder someone a hundred percent. Like I'm not endorsing the murder at all. And like that person who did that should go to jail.
That doesn't mean that like, everything's fine. Like, Oh yeah. Right. You know, that was technically wrong. So everything's fine. It just means that what we should look at is, wow, stuff is getting so bad that we're getting these types of things popping up where someone is not afraid of going to jail for life to like, you know, push forward this cause.
And that's the type of stuff that like, I think it does serve as a data point to the whole system. And, I'm sure like every healthcare CEO is like really freaked out now. Oh yeah. Oh sure. If I was a CEO or involved in an insurance company at all, I would be really freaked out. And like how far I push might be tempered a little bit now.
Hmm. Do you think there's like a... What's the word I'm looking for? Is this a thing that could catch wildfire? Is it contagious?
I'm worried about that. Copycat stuff happens all the time, and that would be pretty bad.
So maybe this is a dramatic leap, but how did the French Revolution happen? I don't know anything about history. Is it that kind of vibe where it's like... It's about wealth disparity. It's about the conditions of healthcare in America. And eventually, just the lower takeover, the upper through violence. Is that kind of what happened?
I think historically, that's been the pattern. It's been a ruling class and everyone else. And there's been moments where... everyone else had it good enough that they weren't willing to literally risk their lives to kill the ruling class. And as soon as that equilibrium is, is breaks, like that's kind of what happens.
And I think the reason America is really, really successful is because it's a democracy where at least you feel, even if things aren't great, at least you feel like you have some amount of control over, uh,
who the leader is and just that feeling is enough to prevent these like rebellious moments which leads to stability which leads to a good system so it's not literally the fact that like we're electing good leaders it's just a fact that we're not dealing with this cycle of like bad leader, rebel group comes up, you know, kills bad leader. Now the rebel leader is a leader.
And then he also becomes bad. And then it just like loops over and over and over.
Yes. So do you think, but you don't think that there's a tipping point that could happen in America where we do resort to, I mean, there's so many mitigating factors or just the reality that like quality of life, I guess the riots, I mean, there's been a lot of rioting in the last three or four years. Right. Five, 10 years. I don't know.
My context is all thrown off, but I know there was an era where it was really common. Maybe it was the last election cycle.
Yeah. I mean, it just comes down to quality of life. Like if people's quality of life is good, that's just always a mitigating factor. Like they're willing to deal with, okay, stuff isn't perfect, but you know, I have a pretty decent life. I'm not going to throw it all away to go after this.
That makes sense. It's basic psychology from like an individual household standpoint. Like if you're doing okay. And that's the question, I guess. Does anyone keep track? Yeah.
of the average or like the number of people who would say i'm not doing okay and i am kind of done with it and i am willing to because you hear those kind of things on the internet that like things are bad but like for how many people and what is that point where is this a stupid question is this a dumb conversation is there nothing to be said about this
the answer is just it's like it's not really what people say it's what people do um so you always have two forces you're gonna have i mean both forces are always trying to get as there's a you know people more in power than people less in power and both sides are trying to get away with as much as possible and we land at some point and the reality is this quality of life compared to like 100 years ago is like outrageous even though it sucks in a lot of ways like
it like, you know, tempers people a ton. It's different when you're like, literally don't have any food and you like live outside, you know?
Yeah. It's that rational optimist book. It's like, as much as people want to complain about things that aren't great, they're so much better than they were.
So by and large, like how many people can you imagine literally being like, I'm going to go like commit terrorism effectively? Yeah. I mean, I don't know about everything, so I don't know.
I don't have a pulse on this stuff.
I say, OK, like imagine how bad it would have to be for like a significant group of people to be like, yeah, I'm willing to risk myself, my family, everything around you. Yeah. For this type of thing. I'm not saying it can't happen, but and the point is like when it does happen in these situations, it's like a data point back into the system.
Yeah, so there was another, there's kind of a tangential thing that I forgot about, which was like all the murmuring of like this election cycle, like we're ready for civil war. This is going to happen. I haven't seen any militia people walking down the streets. It didn't happen, I guess. No civil war. We're free.
I mean, who's to say, depending on if somebody else won. But a lot of those people are like, people love role playing also. It's actually just the same as this person submitting this PR. Yeah. Really, it's the exact same psychology. Really?
They have this identity and they just want to live in this fantasy where they... I feel like submitting a PR is a little different than walking around with a rifle. I feel like there's a different psychology there. I'm saying it's the same exact thing. Really? It's all like an identity thing, right? They're actually romanticizing a civil war, effectively.
It's not really about... No one is pushed to the point of like... the thing I was talking about before, actually throwing it all away, they're kind of fantasizing about the concept of we could do a civil war. I would be one of the people that rebels.
And then when there are isolated incidents, it's because enough people were fantasizing and walking around and it escalated. They were all in their military garb and then eventually somebody provoked somebody enough. Because there are things that happen, right?
Yeah, I think it can go both ways. I think some of those are just... like stupid escalations. Some of them, but I'm not going to say all, like I'm sure maybe some of them are just someone was pushed to a point where they're like, I don't care. This is, I'm like not gonna, you know, I'm down to throw it all away. But yeah, I do think that civil war thing is like a little like,
there's like a weird romantic the people when people talk about it it's like really romantic uh so i it's to me it doesn't feel like it's coming from a weird thing to be yeah i mean that's a funny thing like being a romantic person you can do this in like so many different aspects of life so it's not like what people would imagine oh the type of person that's romantic is like this but uh
A lot of very stereotypically... If you imagine a stereotype of someone that's walking around with a rifle thinking about Civil War, you have a stereotype image of their head. That person is often a very romantic person. They tend to romanticize the way life works and the way things are.
Okay, I want to break this down. Because this is the thing I've said about myself. And... I've hoped in the last few months as I've tried to work on myself through my marriage situation and all that, I've hoped that maybe it is possible I could be, I could have some semblance of romance in my life. I've always said I have no romantic bone in my body. Like that's just not a thing I have.
Is that a personality trait? What do you know about romance? Tell me, Dax. Look into my eyes and tell me.
I think from knowing you, I would say you're probably not a very romantic person. Yeah, I'm not. I just said that.
You don't have to rub it in.
I'm saying I think your assessment is correct. It's not like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can see what you're saying.
Is it a thing you can learn or grow into or is it just part of your kind of like identity?
I don't know. It's... And again, just... Are you a romantic person? Yeah, I think so. Oh, interesting. I tend to fantasize a lot and like view things in very like dramatic like...
movie like ways um and again i just to be clear when i say romantic it's not like related to like you know a relationship yeah not just relationship it kind of like permeates everything like it's yeah exactly you have a romantic view of the world and of life yeah So I would say definitely, I'm not like the most, but it's like clear that I am to some degree. Yeah. Um, I feel like I'm dramatic.
It's different than dramatic though. Right. I think that's close. I think if you're dramatic, it's oftentimes can be, if you feel like you're dramatic, then you probably can be romantic. Also, I feel like it's very close to each other. Okay. Okay. Do you ever view normal situations? Normal ish. Like, um,
a situation that's exciting do you like really lean into depicting it in like the most dramatic extreme way possible i don't think so i don't uh i'm really bad at hypotheticals or like remembering anything in my life so this is gonna be a struggle okay so i guess you know better than than i do about my personality you've seen me on twitch or something i don't know
Okay, let's say you're starting a company and it is going up against an incumbent. Let's say you're starting a very disruptive... It's going against Starbucks. Something like that. Yeah, like...
do you picture this are you someone that just like are just like yeah yeah we're starting again you kind of look at it in a clear-cut straightforward way or do parts of you imagine this like really like epic battle between you being tiny against this giant thing and it feels like this i don't even think i had considered that either of my startups has any competitors that's funny
I definitely never think about them if they are.
Yeah. I mean, they're pretty weird startups. I'm talking about a hypothetical item.
I'm not talking about... But like real startups that I've started, I feel like I could just go to that real data and say that I've never once thought about taking down an incumbent. And there probably are incumbents.
I just, I wouldn't even... No, I think, I don't think, yeah. I think for stat music... I got distracted, didn't I?
That was not the point.
That was not the point, but... I'm just trying to think of scenarios that you might be able to imagine. But yeah, I mean, it just sounds like you're not. But like, why do you feel like you need to learn it? It's just like a random property of a person, you know?
It's not like my wife needs it. She knows this about me. She's always known this about me. It's just kind of like a thing in life I thought I wasn't able to have. And maybe I could have it. Maybe it adds a layer to life that would be nice. That's the thought. Not that I have to have it. It's just I always thought it was off limits. It just wasn't part of my personality or something.
And then I just started wondering maybe part of my personality is broken and I need to fix it. And I'll have some things I didn't think I could have after I fix it. It's so hard to know. I struggle. I think about this all the time. I don't think about very many things a lot. But I think about personality.
What is my personality and what is just the parts of me that are super fucked up because of my past or whatever. Trauma, whatever.
brain chemistry did Liz tell you about this philosopher that she's super into he's like I'm gonna say philosopher but he's like just a modern day person he's still alive writing I forgot his name I think he might be Korean I forgot I forgot what it is but what you're saying reminded me because as she mentioned to me the other day Adam really needs to read his stuff and you're not gonna like it but I think it is the perfect explanation of everything that you're going through really
Well, I would like that. That would be very nice.
Please send it to me. Let me ask her right now. Yeah. What is that philosopher guy?
Yeah, because I'd love if she could tell us. Could you just yell, Liz, come in here. Come here. Because I'd love to bring up this person's name. I just love when we talk about stuff on the podcast and I get like five DMs and it's like, hey, if you like him, you should check out this guy. It's amazing. Thank you for all the things you guys send me, like movie recommendations. Can you check Slack?
I sent you a message.
You guys are hilarious. Honey, check Slack. That's funny. Wait, do you just call Liz Liz? Do you have any pet names for each other?
I just don't call her. I think we talked about this before. I don't like saying people's names.
It's just I don't need anyone ever. I just never say anyone's name.
It's not that I just for some reason I try to avoid. I don't know what it is. The thing about it feels weird. Like, does he have any pet names for you? I don't know if pet names is a weird way to put this. Any nicknames? Because I guess we don't.
we do it's okay i have gone through a few and as part of our separation and reuniting we've decided to come up with new ones new era new pet names it's always hard because you keep calling them the old one it's hard to force it too it's better yeah i'm trying a few actually and we'll see which one sticks Is she checking Slack? I'm going to get up and I'm going to go back.
She's not behind you taking photos? Behind the scenes?
Oh, man.
Three body problems all over again.
I'm never going to remember that.
South Korean. Just have Liz do it on Slack. Hey, Liz, check Slack.
Okay, I don't know where to post this because Chris needs to see it too. I'm just going to post it in a DM with him.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Byungchul Han. Good try.
Okay.
Now that we know his name.
Can you give me just a brief synopsis of what I'm going to find?
I've only ever heard what Liz explained to me. Like what she's read his stuff and she's like told me what he's about. I personally feel like I have been saying all this for a long time. So I'm like, hey, why did you give me credit for it?
I haven't listened. Or you mean with her?
Well, I mean, obviously, I've like casually thought about this here and there. This person obviously went way deeper and probably expresses it in like a much more clear, convincing way. Yeah, yeah, sure. So his whole thing is about how much we have nothing to focus on. So we introspect infinitely. And it sounds like a very cliche, very cliche thing.
But the way he expressed it and the way the points that he makes are very good. And it's like a very well, well thought out process of it. It's kind of what I was talking about earlier. A quality of life is actually extremely, extremely high. And there is just infinite things in the world to introspect and microanalyze every little thing about yourself. And that in itself is the torture.
It's not the stuff that's wrong with you.
So if we were all just trying to find food to live another day, we wouldn't probably be thinking about whether we're bipolar. I mean, maybe that's a specific example. We wouldn't be trying to figure out if, I don't know, whatever we just were talking about, if I'm a romantic or not. Like, I'm just trying to live.
I mean, it's like, it's not that, it's just like a, again, a spectrum, right? There's like, a lot of these problems are actually there. You know, there are things that, it's not like it's completely fake, but oftentimes, like, we're actually feeding it by trying to understand and solve it. And it doesn't have to go to the extreme of us literally being starving. There's just like...
you know, we've just hit this weird threshold of just stuff, displacing other stuff. And then new stuff is like just pulling you deeper and deeper and deeper into, into this kind of thing.
It makes sense through the lens. Like if I look at the pipeline of like young professionals that get to a place where they're doing pretty good, their standard of living is above average. And then they start listening to Huberman and taking ice baths. You know what I mean? To get pretty specific. There's also like... I thought about this the other day. This is... I'm jumping all over the place.
But there's a software dev kind of pipeline where software developers get paid really well. You work for like a decade and you're probably doing pretty well if you've been working in the US in particular. And then you start getting on YouTube and making YouTube videos. And then you start...
a coffee company or whatever like there's like a pipeline of software dev to senior software dev to buys a camera and it's like undefeated hence the podcast that we are talking about yeah it's just not that deep of a field i guess uh yeah but yeah so i mean he talks about like he goes across
everything. And it's like, I think it's a very good analysis of what's going on. Okay. And the reason I said, you know, people aren't going to like it is because it's not, it's like people are looking for the answer, but the answer is like, stop asking the question, looking for the answer.
Yeah.
Yeah. Uh, but, uh, yeah. So I think it's a, like I said, I feel like we just are so focused on ourselves. Like we're like peak, uh, Me, what is my life? What are my feelings? What should I be eating? How should I be living? It's just so crazy. And I think that's a lot of reasons why people are struggling in a lot of ways.
So I totally resonate with all that. I'm excited to dig into this guy's stuff. The one question I have just off the top is, and I don't know how to say this without sounding... Well, I'm just going to say it. Casey, if you're listening, I'm sorry. If I didn't have a relationship, if I was alone in the world, I don't think I'd think about myself one bit. I would just be coasting.
And I think everything would be really easy. At the same time, I'd probably live a pretty shallow existence for other reasons, related reasons. Just my personality is such that I would get obsessed with my work or something and just be obsessed with that thing until I died.
Because I'm in a relationship, that's where I feel like I really am digging into all these other things, trying to figure out how to make the relationship better to give this other person what they need in the relationship. That's where all my self-introspection comes. It's like, I want to be the person that is worthy of this relationship that she is getting what she needs out of it.
Otherwise, and the main problem that she has in our relationship is that I don't think about these things at all. That's why I'm trying to think about them so hard. Does that make sense?
Yeah. But what's funny is this guy's entire point is people don't know how to build relationships. So in both those scenarios, you are. It's like it's even if you're alone. you're still feeling a bit of a relationship. So he kind of diagnosed that as being the root.
And you might not be introspecting in the same way as you are now, but you probably are living a very self-focused life and it might manifest in different ways. So I think his root thing is all about we just don't know how to have normal relationships.
Is there, is in his stuff, is there an antidote besides just stop, stop doing it?
I'm sure there, I'm sure there is, but I think with a lot of this stuff, it's like alternatives, things I could do with my time. We just have these habits and ways of looking at things. By the way, I say we, uh, I just mean like just,
world in general everyone struggles with it in different different points um i've told you before i reached a point where i'm like i'm done like i'm like fully baked uh and all those instincts kind of kind of went away but yeah i think i think just really understanding what he's saying and like really buying it and like having that realization is probably what what fixes things i don't think there's like here's what you'll be doing instead it's just uh
kind of admitting that this is what's actually going on. Okay.
Well, I will... Is it a book? Is it paper?
I don't know. I'm sure there's like YouTube stuff on him. And I don't know. Like I said, I haven't actually consumed any of his stuff. It's just stuff that I've been told by Liz. But she thinks he's very, very good.
Does Liz have my problem? Does she look at herself and her stuff unlike you?
I think historically...
yes just like everyone else and like it's changed over time and she's has done that less um yeah like i said everyone's just at a different point yeah um but like i said the world is built to teach you to literally do that all the time yeah like the world is always telling you that you should be doing this yeah and people you want to feel like you're not impacted by that but we literally all are yeah okay
I have so many thoughts. My brain just went to like four different things at once, and I don't know if I want to say any of them. I tried coming back to Twitter.
I liked it. It was funny.
I don't know if it's good for me. I just don't know if it's good for me. I'm on the fence.
Is blue sky better? Your vibe on Twitter is like...
for the most part except when you like start to like apologize a bunch but a lot of the times you just post something and just it just feels so it just feels like you just do not care about anyone which is great i think that's a great i mean i don't care about anyone on twitter but like what part do you feel is bad for you i think it's the consuming stuff i think it's when i start scrolling because like it's right only twitter's right only i know that's the problem like
All my tweets are just me being really annoyed about something I just saw on Twitter and responding to it. That's basically fine.
That's OK.
Except the part where it's a reflection that like, wait, why do I get on a thing that I'm just annoyed every time I get off? Yeah, that's fair. Well, maybe if I just cut that part out. Yeah. If I had a ride only Twitter client where I could just dump my random thoughts, that'd be kind of fun. Why has somebody made this? Has anyone made this?
I feel like it should be a thing. Someone should do that with Blue Sky since you can't actually build stuff like that. Well, actually, no. You can do write-only Twitter if you do it through Buffer or something. Oh, okay. One of those apps. Okay, so for me, I want... Here's what I want. And maybe I'll actually take the time to do this. I want a thing that lets me write and see replies.
I'm okay reading replies to my stuff. But I think I'm the same where I kind of agree with you. I just don't want to read.
So I would like that plus a white list of the people I want to see their tweets.
Oh, you have control over that already. You don't have self-control. That's all of us, right? We have a way to control. How do I do that? We could just follow a small set of people and just look at the following tab. But we all don't do that because we don't have self-control.
The following tab is bad because I'm following people that I'm quote unquote friends with.
It's a social dynamic.
not actually like i want to follow these people just unfollow them adam it would be so hard and painful but hmm then i just i hate when i get on twitter when i look at somebody's profile and they follow like 26 people i'm like you jerk just socialize i don't think that at all ever really okay i'm gonna open my app right now and just randomly unfollow 10 people that's what i'm gonna do
Every day it's going to be like a Russian roulette.
You're really going to do that?
Until it's down to 100.
Don't randomly unfollow somebody you care about.
It's going to be really random. That's a slap in the face.
Every time you unfollow someone, you are literally slapping them in the face. That's what I think.
I have the perfect solution for you. You say every day you're going to unfollow five people randomly, but it's not random. You just pick. But you say it's random. That's a perfect cover.
I can absolve myself of the guilt and shame and feeling like I hurt people's feelings. It's dumb. I should just... Yeah. If I just followed like 30 people... and I could just read your tweets, that would be good. But there'd be so much stress around, well, there'd be so much stress around deciding who gets to be in my feed.
It doesn't have to be 30. It just has to be, just unfollow people's stuff that you don't like seeing. It's that simple.
I don't even know who I follow anymore. Yeah. Okay. Because I tried the following tab for a bit and it just gets so dominated. If somebody wakes up and they're sitting on the toilet and they post like 25 times. Yeah, that's me. And then it's like, well, the following tab is just Dax this morning. So that's what I get on the following tab. Okay, fine.
I got to figure it out because I do think there's something to like, it's the only place I interact with most of my friends. So I don't want to just not be on the platform, but I don't want to just be annoyed all the time because I'm seeing the news of the day and people being dumb. In my opinion, they're not being dumb. They're just doing something I don't like, but I do stuff they don't like.
So it's all, it balances out.
I feel like I don't see that much annoying stuff on Twitter.
Really? I feel like my feed turned and maybe it's, I might be on the for you tab, but I feel like it just turned into like, Any post that has over like a thousand likes just shows up on my feed.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. OK, so before you tap. Yes, I'm saying my following tab. I don't know.
Oh, you just follow. You just look at your following tab. Is that what you know? I don't.
I look at my for you tab also because I don't have any self-control like anyone else.
Do you do you feel like you get annoyed on Twitter? Yeah, surely you do. Yeah, of course. When you're better than everybody, you must get even more annoyed.
I know. Annoyed really hard. Yeah. I definitely do, but it's mostly the people replying to me. Like dumb people control that too.
You know, just don't tweet. Nobody, nobody replies when you don't tweet or when you tweet the dumbest stuff in the world. No one replies to that either. Vouch. Okay. Anyway, I don't want to talk about Twitter anymore. Let's talk about something else.
Yeah, come up with something. How's the API stuff going?
Good. I'm surprised actually that I was able to let my hair down and have this podcast episode go because everything is splayed out on the operating table and I'm trying to finish it today before the weekend. It's a gigantic effort. Turns out our API, pretty bad. We want to make it public. Well, it's pretty bad. We don't want to do that right now.
But okay, let's talk API design real quick because maybe somebody will DM me and I'll get some useful stuff here about you should do this. Just don't say JSON API, please. Here's the thing.
I love JSON API for the record.
It's actually so hard to have a consistent API that has a nice open API document and all the responses match the responses in the document. Because you have this layer of tools, we have four or five different tools at play and like, well, that one turns out it's got a middleware that just randomly intercepts certain errors and responds in certain ways and they don't match our open API spec.
It's like that kind of stuff. But then also, oh man, it's so many things. All these tools have varying degrees of support for each other. So you kind of build up a little stack to try and get your docs stack going. And a lot of people use these same tools, Mintlify. which I think we're going to use for our Doxy website.
It's just not working with the OpenAPI spec generated from this one tool that we use, but it was working with the previous tool. And then it's like, do we go back to the previous tool? And then I'm like, all the time I've spent trying to get automated OpenAPI generation, I could have just written an OpenAPI doc, probably. I don't like writing YAML or JSON, but...
at the end of the day, maybe our API doesn't need to change much and this is all just wasted time. I feel like I've spent a week.
No, it's not because the whole point is, yeah, we can do a one-off thing, but we're just never going to maintain this stuff well. Yeah, that's true. It's not automatic.
Yeah.
Yeah, we've learned this lesson in SST enough times where we're like, it just has to be as automatically generated as possible. Otherwise, there's drift and you never fix it.
Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, the drift would be really painful and annoying. And I don't know. Yeah, you want to explain? You want to give people context that we're going to have an API where you can order coffee?
Yeah, just for our podcast viewers because this isn't public information. You just leaked all of it, Adam. I'm sorry. Yeah, we're going to make our API public and we think it's funny for Adam to spend a lot of time making it like a really high quality documentation site with a sandbox and, you know, just... Make it feel like a real product, except it's just to order coffee programmatically.
And we want to have people... We're going to have a contest to see who can come up with the craziest place to integrate this thing. What's the craziest place you can order coffee from? And the winner gets free coffee for life.
which is going to be... Twitch chat's going to run with this. There's going to be so many just like degenerate ways that they integrate this into things. I'm so excited to see.
Yeah. So we're building it out and it's going to be, you know, We're going to have SDKs in various languages too. Yeah. We're talking today. Did you see my message about the Java and Kotlin one? No. We're going to have a Java SDK.
Oh, of course we have to have a Java SDK.
For enterprise coffee ordering. Everything costs 10 times as much if you order the Java SDK because you're enterprise.
Oh, man. Of course, Java.
I'm sure TJ will hand build an OCaml one because I don't think our partner generates OCaml SDKs.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
Anyway.
I'm sure he'll throw it into Telescope. I'm sure he'll do a bunch of... Oh, yeah. Telescope. That'd be good.
Yeah. So you'll be able to generate a personal access token and just order your coffee all over the place. Make a cron job.
Cron job. Yeah. That one's a great one.
So we started with SSH. Next, the world. Basically everywhere. There's going to be coffee ordering in every corner of the internet.
SDK is going to be on every single computing device on the planet.
We should put one on a satellite or something.
Yeah. I'm still looking into that.
Oh, the shipping stuff into space? Yes, for sure.
We're definitely going to do that. I shared the idea with a few people that were not even that technical and they thought it was so funny. So that just makes me... Really motivated to make it happen.
Ironically, for the memes, can we raise a round? Can we just raise a ton of money so we can do the stupidest stuff ever?
Man, that's actually not a bad idea.
Is there any VC that wants to do that kind of thing? That's really not a bad idea. A joke of a company? We're not a joke. I mean, we're a real company. We actually make money. That's what's funny. It's like the most real company I've ever been involved in. It's just like a business. We have to do taxes probably this year, our first year.
I just got a reminder about that, yeah.
Oh, yeah, that sucks.
now it's fine yeah it's a real company but it's a funny idea it is funny i wonder if we can pull it off like could we raise like a million dollars that'd be so funny and oh the best thing to do oh my god this is such a good idea i don't know if this would actually screw us over but if we could get a single investor to do a price round a billion dollar valuation
But like, you know, they only invest like 10K or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A tiny percentage. I think there's some signals of this at some point. I know they had some crazy valuation.
Really? This is hilarious. So we can be a billion dollar company?
Yeah. But like legally, like they get a 409A done and everything. But like... Does that screw us later?
Probably. Down round if we ever did actually.
A down round only matters if we gave liquidation preferences to that investor, I think.
I'm sure there's a way to do it. There's got to be a way to do this for the memes. That is so good. That would be so funny to have an actual 409A and be a billion dollar company.
That is so funny.
I would love that a whole lot. Oh, man. And even if it does screw us, we could just say we're never going to race because we shot ourselves in the foot. It's like we ripped the parachute off. It's like, no, we're doing this.
That's really good.
Okay, we have to do that. That's really funny. Terminal is now a billion dollars. I love it so much. We get TechCrunch to cover it.
Yes, a TechCrunch article. Oh, my goodness. It's so good. All right. I do need to get back. I keep staring at the code on my computer and it's Friday and I got to get this done.
Okay. Cool. Well, hopefully you can get it all done today.
Well, the question is how much my merge conflicts are going to take up of my day. How bad is it?
What did you do? I don't think it's going to be that bad because what I did was... Was it mostly infra stuff? I actually just checked out the infra folder from your branch to avoid merge conflicts.
Nice. I haven't touched the infra since you did. Okay.
So that folder is identical. Did you jump into the core or any of the other packages? I added a new core folder, but that's not going to conflict. I don't think your merge is going to be that bad. Okay.
Okay. Well, then maybe I do get this done today. Just maybe. I figured out the stainless stuff, by the way. Should I not say that on the podcast? I don't know.
Why not?
I don't know.
I don't know anything. No, it's fine. We're definitely going to promote them that we're using stainless. I added them to our Slack, by the way.
They're in there and they're very excited. Cool. I'll hop in there. I do have a question still, but I figured out the issue. So one question about their model. I can ask in Slack. Never mind.
Their model is annoying, but it is what it is.
Well, the repos, there's so many repos. And they pushed a change to update their spec because they changed something. They have a new way of defining your whatever.
Oh, I see. And they updated it for us.
Yeah, but they updated it in that repo. That's not in our thing where our Stainless YAML is. So when I made changes to our Stainless YAML, I just jumped all over their changes and erased the new thing and it erased our SDKs. But I fixed it. I found the history and got it all working.
Okay, I'm sure there's like five more annoying PRs for me to go look at in the time of this.
Oh, yeah.
Good luck with that.
Open source person.
Have fun with that. After that person replied to me all angry. We'll see. All right. All right. See ya. See ya.