You have how many open tabs?!

It’s hard because you can’t hear yourself, so you’re not sure…

Yeah, just –

I can see my waveform…

There you go.

You’re solid. We’ve done this before, it’s fine-tuned exactly where it needs to be.

Nice.

That’s like being able to read the matrix, you know? “I can see my waveform…” [laughter] This guy is a pro. He knows what his waveform looks like.

I was thinking a potential backup if Danny said no was to talk about browsers on the stage.

With Nick?

With Nick, yeah. Because - well, going back to the friends list, it’s a popular episode in recent times. And this is a polyglot conference, and I figured “Well, browsers are pretty important at a conference like this, so let’s talk browsers.” I have not played with Arc since that conversation.

Same.

I’m strictly a Safari person.

You went back?

Yeah, I did.

Oh, man…

We’re all back on Safari. I’m not using Arc.

Okay…

But today I just did download Arc Search on my phone.

I heard about it.

I just wanted to check it out. I don’t know even what it is…

What is it?

I have no idea.

Oh, okay.

It’s from Arc. I get emails from them.

Arc Search. Yeah, I got the email, but I was too busy to read it.

Wasn’t there some legislation recently with Safari, and Apple, and browsers?

Oh, yes. Yes.

I saw a headline, I didn’t hear the details.

It’s wild…

Okay…

Do you know the details?

I know some of the details, I think… So in the EU they will allow third-party engines to be on the phone, and they will present an option –

For a default browser?

Yeah. For a default browser. So you do not have to pick Safari anymore, which… I’m torn. a) I’m in the US, so it doesn’t matter… I don’t like that. I don’t like that all of this stuff came out and it’s so different between the EU and the US. It just feels like they’re just being so petty, you know?

They are.

Well, I wonder if they’re leading the way –

Malicious compliance is what they’re calling it…

Oh, for sure.

Well, I just wonder if they’re leading the way, in a way. Because it’s happening there, will it be essentially absorbed elsewhere, because it’s –

Not according to Apple.

No? Okay…

You’d hope so, but…

I think we’d have to pass similar legislation in the US for them to do it.

Won’t happen.

Yeah, which won’t happen.

My biggest concern though is the amount of tabs. I’m at 500.

What do you mean?

I have 500 tabs open on Safari…

There’ a red X, you can just click that… [laughter]

This is a concern, but not for the browser wars. For your life.

Well, I want more than 500 tabs, okay?

What?! [laughs]

Is there a limit? You’ve found the limit?

I’m at my limit, yes.

Wow!!

When I go to New Tab now, I cannot New Tab past 500.

In Safari?

Yes.

Can you create a new tab group, or profile, and then go again?

Well, I haven’t tried that. Maybe…

There you go.

I’m pretty sure that’s a feature, Adam. 500 tabs is ridiculous.

Sorry.

How do you expect them to sync all those between browsers and everything?

They just… They just do.

Do you have no –

It’s like recipes in there, and stuff like that… So it’s some to-do’s that I just have not done.

That’s a lot of to-do’s.

Sorry. I mean…

That’s like [unintelligible 00:04:43.16] You’re at tab 500.

Tab 500.

Well, if you ordered a Vision Pro, I just hope you got the high-end model, not the base storage, because…

Yeah, you’re gonna need some RAM on that sucker…

No Vision Pro for me.

…to hold those things in.

I think we talked about Ready Player One and Ready Player Two. Did you listen to or read those books?

Yes, I listened to both of them.

Okay, so were you thinking like the ONI headset from Ready Player Two? The ONI… They called it the ONI headset.

With the Vision Pro you mean? comparing it to the Vision Pro?

Yeah. So the book is called Ready Player One, Ready Player Two. It’s a movie as well. And Ready Player Two - I don’t want to spoil it, but it goes beyond this haptic wares they would do to get into the VR, into the Oasis, . And there’s a revelation in the second book that essentially takes that to one more layer. And I don’t want to ruin it, so I’m gonna be vague just because of that, if people are listening. Screw it. Spoiler alert, okay?

I don’t wanna hear it… I don’t wanna hear it…

It goes straight up – how would you describe it? Like you’re in it. It’s not VR anymore, it’s like connected to your brain… And they call it the ONI headset, but they just really call it ONI. So I feel like the Apple Vision Pro is like the precursor to our fiction turned reality, I suppose… You know what I mean? it’s going to influence that. this is like the original Oasis headset moment. I’m waiting for the ONI headset.

[00:06:11.16] Oh, yeah.

You know what I’m saying? You can unplug now. You’re good. Jerod was plugging his ears. He don’t wanna ruin it.

Alright.

You probably won’t even listen to or read the stories though…

No… I just like to not be spoiled.

Okay, don’t be spoiled.

I’m excited for that, and I think that there’s – this is the precursor to a lot of things, . This is the worst version of the headset that’s ever going to be produced… And if you look at all of the rumors that were coming out of like [unintelligible 00:06:33.20] and stuff before, they were shooting for glasses, and this is the compromise, because they can’t do the technology.

They can’t get it done.

It is so heavy though. I see people wearing it, and I’m just thinking like – I’m not a VR guy necessarily, but I just think, it has to change its form factor for it to be having mass adoption.

For sure.

Battery life, obviously… who wants to wear –

A battery pack in your pocket?

Well anything that heavy on your head, for that long –

But the battery actually doesn’t go on the head, right?

Yeah. They’ll sell you a $50 clip, so you can clip it to your belt, or something…

I bet they would.

Those are cool.

What about the cable to get to the clip? 200 bucks.

Yeah, exactly.

It’s 200 bucks for a travel case…

Yeah…

I didn’t even price it out this time. I just skipped it altogether.

But we’ve got things like that, we’ve got the Neuralink, which I will be the last person on Earth to sign up for… And Disney just had that thing with the HoloTile floo.

Oh, that was cool.

I saw that. That is really cool.

But that was in Ready Player One, too. in the movie at least.

Right. In that case, it was kinda like a treadmill though, where their version was like small spheres, balls…

You could walk in any direction and there’s – are they balls? They’re like – they look like ball bearings or something, but they’re not metal… And they’ll move, and they’ll keep you roughly in the center of this little patch

of balls.

I wonder if they just like put ceramic balls, which - ball bearings that are ceramic are the most expensive and the best metal. So that will hold a human’s weight if they run or walk… And they just like lube them, and like put them in a space that they fit perfectly.

Yeah.

Is that the science? And there’s something beneath it that sort of like has sensors…

I don’t know.

It’s cool, but I don’t see that being a practical thing that I install in my house.

It’s not immersive either. I can’t say, because I haven’t actually experienced it, but it looks like – similar to like when you’re on a treadmill and they’ll put those videos in front of you, where it’s like “You’re actually in the Himalayas right now”, and it’s like “No, dude. I’m on a treadmill.”

Well, the good thing that all of this tech has working for it is like – you’ve seen the the pictures? Apple tried to take the pictures, and they only sent out “Okay, these are the pictures we’re gonna let you actually post.”

Yeah, that was weird.

And not one of them looks cool. I’m sorry. I want a Vision Pro. I definitely do. But they looked really dumb. I’ll just say that. On your head. you look dumb. And once you lose that little amount of dignity, then I’m totally fine getting one of those things that my kids would have when they were little…

All-in, right? All-in.

Yeah. I’ll just have like a diaper kind of attached to the ceiling, that’s holding me up, and I can just kind of –

[laughs] That’s a picture I wanna see…

Well, if you watch Ready Player One, it’s a lot like that, right?

Yeah.

The move Ready Player One - it’s very predictive in terms of where we might go, or what does work… Because they have hanging – they have haptic suits, where you have literally in your… Well, they call it the crotch fiber inlay, or something like that… There’s a joke in the movie…

That’s a spoiler.

…you can feel all those things. Yeah, I mean, that movie is probably predictive, in a way, to what might be coming. And also quite scary, because if you read the second novel, it’s not good. Let’s just say. Doom and gloom.

Well, you can’t have a good story with just utopia. Utopia is the boringest thing there is. So you’ve got to have doom and gloom, otherwise you’ve got no storyline…

For sure.

So it makes sense. It makes sense. But I can’t believe we just cruised right past this rendering engine thing… I mean, [unintelligible 00:09:51.07] it’s Apple Vision pro, but…

Oh, yeah.

…alternate rendering engines, only in the EU, but - that seems like it’s probably good enough to at least get all the benchmarks out there, and see if WebKit on iOS, Safari on iOS is actually slow. I’ve always thought it was pretty snappy… I mean, as the phones have gotten real fast. But who knows? Maybe they’re intentionally keeping it slow, so that their app store is more flourishing… Once we can have alternate rendering engines, even if we don’t use them here in the States, the benchmarks will be out there, and that I think will spur them on to make it fast.

[00:10:28.17] It’ll push the innovation, for sure. Yeah, I suppose that’s true. It might actually influence Apple to allow us to have that, if there is innovation that comes from the act of choice, right?

Well, I think just the embarrassment of it will be enough.

Yeah. Like, if you’re slower than the competition… This may not be what y’all feel, but the number one feature I cannot stand is when I swipe back to a tab, and it has to refresh.

Yes.

Right? Does that just drive you crazy?

It does. And it like shows you like a pre-rendered, like an old [unintelligible 00:10:53.02]

This is what it used to look like…

Yeah. And I’m trying to tap some of them, and it’s like “Oh wait, that’s basically image.”

“Please don’t go away…!” Yeah. And it refreshes, and it’s not in the same place anymore, or the content’s gone, and you’re like “Oh, I saw what it was…!”

Or you’re on a terrible connection and you’ve got to wait. The back and forth in the multitasking between tabs is just like… I do not like the “Let’s re-render that page.” Like no, just stop. Don’t do that. Give me what was there, even if it’s not accurate, because I’m just reading it, not interacting with it.

But you have 500 tabs, so you can’t really blame the browser for that…

I can. I can do that.

Now they’re supposed to hold all of those? How’s it supposed to hold all those in memory?

Um, buy the bigger phone, deal with it…? I don’t know…

What are those actually doing for you, being there?

Right?

Is it like a comfort, knowing –

So I will admit, I am not happy about my situation. [laughter]

So you don’t think this is optimal.

Well, I’m focusing on the main thing, and the main thing is not closing tabs. The main thing is progress. And so I just sort of keep going.

Yeah, but you brush your teeth, don’t you?

Yeah, but that’s not akin – like, nobody’s [unintelligible 00:11:55.09] my tabs, okay? [laughter] Nobody is looking at my tabs; only me. So it’s my mess.

But you’d have that refresh problem less if you had less tabs.

I don’t think so.

I think so.

Well, I suppose just by sheer numbers –

Nick agrees. He’s nodding his head.

I have like five tabs open… If I get beyond that, I’m like “This is too much. I have to close them.”

That’s pretty cleanly. Let me see. I’m gonna get a count here.

We’re all counting tabs…

I’m sitting on 27 tabs. Healthy?

Okay, wait. On the phone –

Yeah, Nick was probably exaggerating… 498, so you’re un der the –

Oh, my gosh… I’m at 17. No, 19. On the phone.

Okay, so five was a lie. A bold-faced lie.

On the desktop. I’m thinking the desktop.

Oh, yeah. My desktop is pretty clean.

So what is it on the desktop? Is it similar?

No, zero.

Zero tabs?

Well, yeah. I mean, I don’t have a browser open… My computer’s right there. It’s not even opened.

Well, if it was open, how many tabs would it have in it?

As many as necessary for the moment. I’m in the present. Yeah.

Okay. So you do maintain your –

Oh yeah. It’s an iOS issue. And so I think the cool feature with Safari on iOS is that when you start typing in an address, it will go to the tab. Instead of going new, into a new tab, it’ll say “Open in existing tab.” And so I do that a lot.

Yeah. It does do that, and that’s really nice.

Yeah. So I might have something open… I mean, that’s not really a good feature, really, in my opinion. I mean, it’s just helpful to not open one more tab. But I just haven’t gone back and close things. There’s research I’m doing that I just have forgotten about… And so maybe I’ll go back into a garbage collection, and be like “Okay, is this really garbage, or is it a treasure?”

You need to mark and sweep that.

For sure.

Let me ask you another, potentially personal question…

Yeah. Go deep.

How many unread emails are in your inbox right now?

Oh, a lot…

Okay…

Yeah, I can tell.

I’m constantly at Inbox zero.

I’m also an Inbox zero guy.

Because if there’s something there, I just randomly, throughout the day, will just like “Highlight all, Archive.” If I need it, it’s there. I can go back.

An obscene amount. I am not an Inbox zero guy. I am an Inbox red guy. And archive as necessary. I archive a lot. But we get so many emails, I just can’t keep up with it. So I feel like – I’ve sort of just given up with having to maintain email. I mean, it’s just such a – it’s a drain on humanity.

Have you ever declared bankruptcy and started over?

[00:14:14.02] Oh, yeah. At least once a year.

You at least have the badge hidden, right?

Once, twice a year I’ll do it.

Yeah, what’s your badge say?

Like unread, or –

Yeah.

Thousands.

How do you deal with that? Isn’t that just anxiety?

“What’s on top?” That’s it. That’s all it matters.

Yeah, but the badge is staring at you with 1,000 unreads.

Oh, I don’t pay attention to that badge.

Wouldn’t it be nice if like you looked at your phone and it said two? Like, “I have two new emails. I feel special.”

Oh, I don’t let –

Do you maintain an unread count in your head? Like “Well, it used to be 1274, but now I see is 1276, so there’s two new emails.”

Not at all. Nope.

You’re just constantly doing diffs in your head…?

Nope. I don’t even – so I actually hide that red orb from those things, so no badge count on iOS.

Oh… So he’s in denial. He’s in denial. “If I don’t look at it, it’ll go away.”

That’s right.

“I didn’t see it. It’s new to me.”

It’s not a problem, really.

If it works for you, it works for you.

It’s true.

Until you get to the 500 tabs. Then it doesn’t work for you anymore.

Yeah. Well, I agree. It’s not ideal. I do need to garbage-collect, and move things to somewhere else. Obsidian… I mean, that’s where I organize – Obsidian is a huge help to like… If I have a thought or a note to take, it’s Obsidian. Every single time. It’s so fast… It’s obviously Markdown… Obsidian is a lifesaver. I’m kind of like not cool with all their new stuff they’re doing. I’m worried they’ll get to Notion level, with like adding so much stuff into Obsidian. I’m a little concerned.

Yeah? Let’s talk about that.

What are they adding?

It’s a low-level concern, not a big-level concern… In the fact that they might be influenced. Now, I’m not a big fan of Notion necessarily. We recently downgraded to a free plan, because we don’t even use it anymore… And we were paying for it, like a couple – probably 20, 40 bucks a month. And I’m like “This is just stupid. We can’t do this anymore, because we’re not using it actively.” There’s some information that’s still in there that we keep, and we’ll pull out eventually… But I think Notion just got – it’s a really helpful tool for some people. And I think it’s awesome for people who can really find workflows for it. But I feel it’s just so cumbersome. And the proprietary black box of database in there… In particular, we maintained a sponsorship schedule that I wanted to pull out a small slice and share with a sponsor. So create a page, pull out some of the data from our big, massive Hour Table, and pull that data over to a page and share it with them - can’t do it. Can’t do it. So it’s just so internal-focused, not collaborative-focused. You can have guests… But even there, I couldn’t share a sliver of guests data, that was their data in this big table. And so I think it’s a great tool… If they would have had that one feature, maybe I’d stay. Maybe. But it was kind of like, I said before it was fast, and then after I said it was fast, it started to be slow.

It never felt fast for me. That was my biggest gripe.

I mean, the fact that it’s a blackbox proprietary thing…

Right. Your data’s locked in there.

And two of the three of us just flew here… It has no offline support, years into its lifecycle. That’s not very useful. But the new features that have been added to Obsidian - at least like the main one that is going against the Markdown thing is their Canvas feature, where you can like drag and drop notes, and you can put post-its, and draw lines between notes and all of that… It’s obviously not Markdown, but it is a very readable JSON file that you could probably do something with if you needed to.

Is it?

Yeah.

I’ve only used that once. It’s cool, because you can also completely ignore all the stuff…

Yes. I think the bigger problem with Obsidian though is there’s so much reliance on plugins. And there are fantastic plugins in there… But you’re relying on all of these third-party devs, who – for example, the calendar plugin; it broke for me, and I had to completely uninstall it and reinstall it. And that’s relied upon by like periodic notes, and like these other plugins… And I went and looked, I’m like “Why did this break?” I have no idea.

[00:18:06.12] This plugin has not been touched in three years. And it’s like a pivotal plugin. So the rot of plugins, and the proprietary nature of like “Oh, I’m gonna build this data view thing, which is like an SQL type thing”, that’s a third-party thing, and if they stop supporting that at some point… Like, I’ve got all these notes with this…

That’s kind of where I keep my – it’s not a dashboard for me, it’s just more like my thinking. Notes, thinking… Sponsor data is in there. Reads… Everything, all the stuff. And I just keep it simple. I focus on tags to get around, titling… And I love the search features. Like, Cmd+O just to get to whatever, and start searching for things.

Yeah. I use that all time.

That’s super-good for me.

You mentioned being super-organized with it. Are you actually meticulously organizing within Obsidian?

I’m not.

Yeah, me neither.

In prose only.

[unintelligible 00:18:54.11] in folders.

You can keyword-search. I’m good with that, but that’s about it. Foldering a little bit…

Yeah. It’s so hard to keep it organized… And I get really distraught with how unorganized it all is…

It’s almost just better to be flat though. No directories. Like, just flat.

Definitely.

I like the Daily Note, where you just hit today and you have a new note for the day, stamp on it. And that’s where I do all my scratch writing, and just whatever… And I then take that and I like to have that organized by the actual like folders of the year, and all that kind of stuff. I think you said you’ve automated that at some point…

I’ve bought a what?

You’ve automated moving stuff into them…

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

How do I do that?

So I have a – just through the daily note plugin, or the periodic notes plugin, it automatically sorts those into like a 2024 folder, and then a January folder, and then a week one folder…

Okay, so there’s a plugin called Periodic Notes, that moves those for you.

Yeah. When I create a new one, it just automatically follows some pattern to create that.

Now, there’s a built-in daily note already.

Yes.

This is additional to that?

This is slightly better, because there’s daily notes, and this one will do weekly notes, monthly notes, quarterly notes, yearly notes… So I can just push a button to go to my quarterly note for this quarter.

It’s just organizing them for you though? Or is it actually like a whole new part of the UI?

You turn off the daily notes plugin, and use the –

I don’t know about – there is no plugin. Or is there a plugin?

It’s a core plugin.

It’s built into Obsidian.

Right.

Okay.

Well, there’s a difference between a daily and a quarterly. Like, what’s a quarterly note to you, versus a daily note?

So I would have a first quarter 2024 note right now, and if I needed to add stuff to that – I more use that as like a dashboard, where I’m taking summaries of weeks or months, and putting it in there. The goal is “Oh, I can look at this quarter and say “I accomplished a whole of this in this quarter.” But I have to be diligent enough to actually get it in in a way that it will filter up to that… But that’s the idea at least.

Give us a glimpse behind the scenes of what are your organizing; personal, career, work, ideas… What have you got in there?

Funemployment…

Funemployment, yeah. [laughter] I traditionally keep everything in one vault, because I want to do the backlinks between everything… But I do actually – I use a Mac tool called Hazel, that can watch the folder, and based on the names of things, move stuff. So I’ll move things from – you know, I’ll just throw everything in the root, and then if it detects “Oh, this is actually a work note”, it moves it to the work note folder, so that if I ever needed to, I could just take that and make it its own vault later. But right now, they’re all kind of put together.

Okay.

But the big thing that I’m looking into right now with this; having no organization - I want to continue that. But I want to look at local LLMs as a way to like train it on that. So all I have to do is talk to my notes; I take notes, and then I don’t ever look at the notes. I talk to them, and they talk back to me.

That would be cool.

I think that’s the true future, but I want it to be all local. I don’t want to be sending all of my notes to Open AI, or whatever.

Well, that’s totally doable, I think. That’s cool.

Yeah.

I’m such a non-power user… I don’t do any of this stuff.

Really?

I mean, I open up a new note, and I write into it.

That’s it?

[00:22:00.07] And then I Cmd+O, I Cmd+T, I CMD+N… And I hit the Today Note thing…

The most important thing though, do you look at your graph?

For me it’s a Markdown editor. No.

You don’t look at your constellation?

Me neither.

No. Do you like project yours on the ceiling above your bed?

Yeah.

“Yes, I do.”

[laughs]

I project it on my child’s ceiling at night. I’m just like “Look at what daddy did today. That little constellation.”

Yeah, constellation.

I think for me though, the killer feature I suppose with it - it’s not really a feature, it’s more of a usage - has been… I’ve gotten into home lab stuff, so building Ubuntu servers, and like building out ZFS storage systems, and all these different things that require repeatable steps. So I’ve automated future Adam by docs, my own docs. So I have my own docs. If I need to stand up a new thing, or a new way of whatever it is, I’m going into my own docs and doing the things from my docs for myself.

But that’s just notes, though. That’s not a feature. It’s like, you like it because your notes are in there.

Sure. But I suppose –

I like notes…

[laughs]

What did you have before? It was like a directory you’d put Markdown files in before? I suppose it’s the same thing, basically, but it provides that UI…

Well, that’s why I like it. It’s literally the same thing.

No, I know. But I mean, you can copy code snippets out of it… It’s got helpful features as a UI, that isn’t just Markdown docs. It’s copy-paste, prose, you’ve got code snippets in there, stuff like that… So - sure, but it’s helped me organize it better.

Sure.

Whereas before, it was like “Where do I take notes? In Notion? No. Google Doc?” Not for code, right? Like, it’s just not that good at it.

Notes.app?

Notes.app, maybe…

I’ve got a lot of notes in Notes.app.

Sure. But can you copy code out of that pretty easily? You can, you can copy and paste, but you can’t click the Copy… There’s a lot of features that are part of Obsidian that have helped me make my own docs, is all I’m saying.

I’m not a user of WYSIWYG. The Notes app - I can’t do it.

“I can’t do it.” [laughs]

If you use it as plain text, it’s fine. But yeah, once you get more fancy… I mean, that’s why I like Obsidian as well. I like to have a better editor around plain text things. My favorite new feature is the fact that they have tables support now. It’s Markdown tables… But it’s just easier to write them than the difficulty of writing Markdown tables. And you can copy-paste them, you can say “Add new column”, and it’s gonna go ahead and just generate that text for me. That’s awesome. Those are the kind of features that I want. I don’t want any of the other features. But I don’t have any plugins. I don’t even – I’ve never looked at the plugins directory. I have zero plugins. How many have you got?

Zero.

I don’t wanna say…

[laugh]

Oh, gosh… 500?

Hang on. I’ll give you an accurate…

Yeah, I’m the same. I have no plugins.

Yeah, same.

That’s what I’m trying to say, like, don’t ruin Obsidian by making it too powerful in terms of its feature set. Just keep it opt-in, I suppose.

Better than I thought. I have a modest 40 plugins.

40?!

40? Gosh. [unintelligible 00:24:51.05]

That’s less than Neovim probably…

Yeah. It’s less than half of Neovim. [laughter]

So how do you find these plugins? How do you manage them? No wonder you’re so concerned about third-party developers.

Yes, yes. A lot of my workflow is based upon that, upon third-party –

So do you imagine something and then say “There’s gotta be a plugin for that”? Or do you just, you know, when you’re going to the bathroom, you’re gonna like scroll on your phone, you’re thinking “I’ll just check the plugin directory…”

[laughs] You know, I’m a tools guy.

We know that.

I like thinking about my tools, I watch videos on it… Obsidian just came out with their top list of “These are our 2023 best plugin, best theme”, whatever.

And you’ll go read – you’ll download each one of those and try it?

I looked at them at least, and I was like “Oh, that is kind of cool.” The main one that I got out of that was one called Folder Notes. So if you do use folders - I have some folders in there - you can set “When I click on this folder, this is the note that opens, so that I can have a work dashboard, and I can just click on the folder and I see that.” It’s like really simple. Oh, he’s downloading it…

[00:25:58.11] [laughs]

No… My wife is texting me.

Ah… How rude… [laughter]

Sorry. [unintelligible 00:26:02.21]

Ironically, to that moment, I was into this, and I was thinking “You should do some curation. You should be like the Obsidian plugin guy.” You know?

There’s so many of those though, aren’t there?

Are there?

Yeah, I’m sure there is.

“Top 12 Obsidian plugins you must have as a dev.”

I have a very low set of plugins…

I would entertain a well-maintained dashboard plugin. I would entertain that. Because I desire that. I don’t desire it in another tool. I’m in Obsidian. Like, it’s always open. It’s always there. The moment I have an idea, a new doc is created. Or if I’m having a conversation, the notes are there. I wouldn’t mind a dashboard that helps me. And I don’t even dislike your idea of the daily, quarterly, yearly notes idea, too… But I don’t want to support a plugin to do it. Or have the lack of support with it not being maintained.

Have you written any of your own plugins?

I have dabbled with it, yes. I have one – I haven’t released it, but it just parses your Markdown and looks for a pattern, like gh:, and then 1234. And it’s configured for my work repo. That’ll automatically just insert a link, and it’ll give you the status of whether that PR is closed, or whatever.

Nice. And you write all that in pure JavaScript, or what?

Pure TypeScript, baby…

[laughs]

“Pure TypeScript, baby!”

Alright, that’s cool.

Let’s talk about the idea of Obsidian supporting the plugin. So it has the core plugins… And let’s say there’s a very popular plugin out there, that is less than maintained, or could be better. Do you think it would be wise of them to begin to offer some support to the developers that are building that ecosystem? What are your thoughts on how they can support it? Not so much take it over and make it theirs… What are your thoughts on that for them?

I think that that would be a good idea… Because that’s the draw, especially. It’s what makes it a powerful thing, beyond just a blank notes editor. It’s being able to extend it, and “Oh, I see this cool feature in Notion.” Well, somebody might have brought it over to Obsidian, and you can see how to play with it. So they should do that.

I don’t know for sure, but what I’ve seen in the past is like cool plugins - they’re no stranger to just doing the Apple sherlocking of those plugins. One was Addmonitions. Being able to add like a call-out in your notes. That’s a plugin. Now it’s part of it. And they’ve changed the syntax, which is kind of annoying.

What do you mean a call-out?

Like putting a call-out in your notes. So I can say “This is important” or “Warning”, or whatever.

Like make it big.

And yeah, have it in there, and –

Is that Markdown, or…?

Yeah, it’s Markdown, but it’s a weird – it’s like a quote, with square brackets around what type of addmonition it is… And then all of that, and everything, inside of the quotes, with the greater than signs on the left… That would be an addmonition.

Can’t you just like go ## and make it an h2, and now it’s big?

Well, yeah, but then it’s an h2. That’ll show up in an outline as an h2…

Yeah. I use the outline plugin. Well, I guess that’s default. It’s in there. Right?

Yeah.

The outline option. It’s on the right hand side, in the little sidebar. I love that. I mean, especially for large docs, where you want to scroll it, you could jump to places… That’s so helpful, the outline. And I agree, you’d want it as a call-out, not as an h2, because it would show up in that hierarchy, and you want it to be within an h2, not an h2.

Yup.

Bold. Have [unintelligible 00:29:19.22]

I just use –

Cmd+B.

I actually do Cmd+B, yeah. And it puts the stars – I can never remember, because Slack is like the one that’s like the opposite…

Slack ruined it, yeah.

What do they do? What’s theirs?

Oh, they don’t support Markdown syntax highlighting. They support their own little close to, but not close enough…

Yeah. I think in normal Markdown it’s two asterisks on each side, but in Slack it’s one, and so then I mix up which one is which…

Right. But one asterisk is technically italic, which is also one underscore. Which - maybe that’s a problem with Markdown, is they had too many ways of italicizing…

Yeah, potentially.

So one idea is could there be usage-based sharing, profit sharing to a plugin developer? So kind of like saying “Well, you pay for usage-based services.” Maybe it’s usage-based revenue to them, because there’s that many installs…

Based on the installs, or what?

[00:30:14.26] I’m thinking like how could they do that, but I think – that’s one idea. But then I’m thinking, “Well, how do they actually make money?” And I think the main way they make money is from their sync.

Yup.

Right? I would actually love to have my own Obsidian Sync Server in my home lab. Because what does it really take to synchronize – I’ve only got like a couple. My iOS, and my desktop. It’s not like 50 people. I suppose at that point it maybe gets more complex… But I’d love to run my own Sync Server and skip the 10 bucks a month. Because I’ve got a server at home. I can spin up a Docker container, and I’ve got plenty of resources, and RAM, and CPUs…

Are you using sync?

I am. I signed up early enough that I get it for half price. For life, I think. I hope.

For life. Wow.

For life, or until they change their mind. Whichever comes first.

He’s one-upping us here. Okay…

But I do also – like, I’m comfortable with it because you have to provide an encryption key.

That’s true.

So I know that they’re encrypted going up to their server…

That’s true. That’s a really good point; it is very secure in the way it does it. You have to have that key to decrypt it.

Yup. And they warn you plenty. Like, if you lose this, you’re done.

I mean, couldn’t you do that in a Docker container though, on your own?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I don’t mind paying 10 bucks a month, but that’s a lot’ over years…

It is, yes.

I would rather just pay them – that seems like a poor way to pay them, is what I’m trying to say.

Agreed.

I feel like that’s something they can skip.

Well, they should just improve that, I think.

Making more features, you mean?

Yeah. They’re working on actually being able to collaborate better between – right now I share a vault with somebody, and we can both be in there, editing the same document… And it works. But it’s like, he typed something, and then five seconds later, it shows up on my screen. So it’s not like Google Docs, real-time. If they added something more like that… Because that’s like a powerful feature of Notion, too; we can collaborate and we can be on the same thing and just do it, and it’s all gonna be there, and it’s gonna be fine.

And maybe even like an adaption strategy for them could be to open-source what is a basic Sync Server, right?

Oh, yeah.

And the paid version is “Okay, you can’t host this thing.” Maybe you can do an on-prem version of it, too. Maybe it’s just a password version of a Docker Hub that you pull; a different Docker container, for example. But I wouldn’t mind a free version… Because everyone can use it, right? Not for 10 bucks a month, but the ones who need this collaborative feature, which I think is super-cool, would pay the 10 bucks a month.

Sure. Another cool thing though, is - because a vault is just a folder of Markdown files, you can throw that in Dropbox, or you can throw it in Google, or iCloud Drive, and…

That’s what I do.

Yeah. And then it’s synced. And there’s even a plugin that will –

It’s synced, but the iOS app won’t use it, right?

Yeah, I can’t remember how that works. I’ve just been pampered with [unintelligible 00:32:53.09]

I just don’t use it on iOS.

Well, and that’s another thing there. iOS is lacking.

What an absolute shame. Legit. I mean, to have your brain not with you, basically…

Well, my brain’s with me.

It’s like leaving your head at home, in my opinion, for me.

I don’t put my brain in there. I just put my scratch and my documents in there.

What I tend to do is on iOS I use an app called Drafts…

I have Drafts.

…and that’s like a second area where I can do like calling of things. Like “Oh, that’s meaningless. That was a one-time thing.” And try and make it so that only important things actually show up in Obsidian.

See, I think – I wanted to have a place where I could just… Like, one place to put everything. No matter if it’s meaningless, or meaningful. Because sometimes things are meaningless in the moment, but become meaningful over time, because you’re like “Wow, what was that thing again?” And if it’s in the ephemeral and it goes away, then you don’t have that to call back on. So I just throw everything in there. It’s just text. Who cares, right? It’s a small directory. It’s maybe a couple megs at this point for me. I don’t even know.

Yeah. And with the sync they give you 50 gigs, I think, which is – I’ll never fill that up with text.

That’s so much space. If you have 50 gigs of text…

Let me elevate this conversation slightly. Let me go up a level.

Please do.

[00:34:08.27] Is there no value in ephemeral? Is there nothing worth forgetting? Is everything have to be remembered all the time to be worth anything?

That’s just too deep, man…

See, I think that that’s where a locally-trained LLM comes into play. Let it decide later.

Yes. Good answer, Nick.

Let it decide what’s worth keeping and what’s worth forgetting?

Yeah. Let my notes decide. If it needs to tell me, it’s trained on it, and it can tell me.

Truth. I like that.

Do you not appreciate your agency in life?

I know that I have no agency.

[laughs] Alright. Eyes wide open.

Say that again? You don’t know if you have agency?

He knows he has no agency.

Oh, you know. Okay. So you’ve given up.

Yeah. [laughs]

Wow…

He’s just the vessel through which the computers can do whatever they want to. So if they ever do bear arms against us, look out for Nick. He’s coming for you. [laughter]

I have to say that. I have to come out on their side, because I know what is coming.

He’s already staking his claim.

Yeah, yeah. You have to be on their side. I’ve been saying that for years. I agree.

ChatGPT has revealed things to me…

And if you’re a Silicon Valley fan, like I think you are, then - have you watched season six of Silicon Valley? Have you watched the whole thing?

Oh, yeah. Twice.

Oh, gosh…

So you’re with me then. “What’s in the bag?” “Clif bars and a gun.” Right? Best line ever from Gilfoyle. He’s like “How should I be feeling?” [unintelligible 00:35:17.00] The best one liners, right?

Yeah…

The last episode was phenomenal. Anyways… I’m with you, though. If there’s an uprising with AI, I was for you. Okay? I was for you. It’s coming.

I’m gonna make a stand. I’m gonna go down with the humans. On a recent episode you were all declaring how you were a humanist, and stuff.

Ah, yeah. That’s true.

Now look at you. Just on the other side, showing your true colors.

I appreciate you pulling out my contradiction there. I am a humanist…

Until… [laughs]

Until there’s something better.

Until it’s expedient not to be.

Yeah, I suppose I have hope…

I’m making a stand. I’m pulling the plug at some point.

Well, we are in Texas, and you kind of have to be [unintelligible 00:36:00.11] in Texas, right?

That’s true. This is where we makes stands in the world.

[laughs] I don’t see it as a threat right now. I don’t know…

That’s what you have to say. You’re already taken. [laughs]

That’s true.

I do like your idea of an LLM trained on this, whatever my vault is. I think that is actually a really –

You could do that today with Ollama, or stuff… Have you tried it, or are you just waiting?

Not yet. I just haven’t had time.

When you do, let me know.

When are you gonna have time? I mean…

You’d think right now…

That’s what I was thinking. [laughs] You know he’s funemployed for the moment. He’s gonna – when you start?

Tomorrow.

Next Monday.

Oh, okay. So you don’t have much time left. He’s like “I’ve gotta go… I’ve gotta go train this model real quick.”

“In three days, Wednesday through Friday, I can get this LLM trained.”

The problem is I’m so centrally focused. I’ve got a talk tomorrow at this conference, and I can’t do anything until that is done.

That’s true. Fair.

Right. I feel you on that.

Maybe on the plane ride home. Well, eventually that’ll just be a plugin, right?

There are plugins.

Oh, okay.

I was looking at one specifically because it was in the Best of 2023 list… But it was one where you give it an Open AI key, and then it does something to–

That’s all through Open AI, but there’s so many models you can download and have on your machine now.

I know. I’m this close to trading convenience for security…

You should write that thing.

I’m always walking that line.

Right. I was gonna say, you should just plug your Open AI key in there and be done with it.

Well, then you’re also giving them all that data too, right? Which is –

But has no agency. So…

That’s true.

Resistance is futile.

What are they gonna do with it…?

No, I think that – I think it wouldn’t be very hard to get that one set up locally, and be the plug in author, man. Be the guy who leads the way to the local.

What’s required for it? Roughly.

Python, I think.

Yeah…

So I’m out.

No wonder… [laughter] Hey, I wrote some Python last week, because of the exact same reason. And I enjoyed it. I like Python.

I’ve written 30 lines of Python in my life, I think. It was for a Raspberry Pi, to control the breadboard, to control a camera to take pictures. I made a wedding photobooth thing… And I wrote 30 lines of Python.

[00:38:10.00] And did you enjoy it?

It worked.

Significant whitespace, man. Just indent that sucker. Who needs curly braces?

[laughs] I do like their syntax for imports. I wish JavaScript would have taken that.

Yeah, it is nice. Alright. Well, Python killed the vibe…

That’s what it always does.

Should we call it, or should we let Nick talk about TypeScript for a few minutes? Let’s call it. Let’s call it. [laughter]

Give us one minute of exactly why you love TypeScript.

Oh, man…

No, this show’s over. This show’s over. [laughter]

He was ready, he was ready…!

He was… [laughter]

Go ahead, Nick. We’ll give you a minute.

I just love that Jerod doesn’t like it. It’s fun.

I knew that was the reason.

In the talk today [unintelligible 00:38:51.01] was like “You see this? A superset is like all of that, but better.” And I just leaned over to Jerod and whispered “TypeScript…”

I bet you did.

He did.

And then Jerod left the room.

I literally…

He’s like “I’m out of here…”

Well, I already have my five-year-old response to that. I say “Superset? More like pooperset.” Get it? Poop… TypeScript…

Oh, okay.

It’s pooper…

Sure.

And that’s why I had to leave the room, because I’m not five anymore…

But you said it, and then left.

True. It was a mic drop.

[laughs]

I came out here to find the mic, so I could drop one real quick…

Nice.

That’s right. Well, we appreciate you telling us about TypeScript right at the end there… It was a pretty concise reason to use it.

Yeah. I’m sure that’ll be good.

It’s literally the only reason. [laughter] If you don’t like Jerod Santo, you should like TypeScript. But if you do like Jerod Santo…

Well, then use TypeScript.

You want me to make a commercial for Changelog right now? I can do that.

Yeah, man.

Like, with that. Just saying that. “Come to JS Party, and if you don’t like Jerod, then we’ll –” I don’t know. “We’ll rename it TS Party.” I already generated the logo for it…

He did. It’s a C+ logo.

Ugh…

Break: [00:40:03.23]

So I need to hear about the tab game.

Oh, yes. Open tabs and own domain. Those are my two plans. Because you have a lot of open tabs…

Oh, yes.

…you have a lot of own domains…

Yes…

…and I’m wondering who’s got more of which. Now, I know his number…

Of open tabs?

Open tabs in his browser window.

Well, it’s hard to count.

It’s hard to count what? Tabs?

Tabs. There’s so many of them.

Well, he’s got a trick to it. Do you wanna tell her the trick?

iOS tells you.

Oh, does it? Even if you’re using Chrome, or like another browser?

Oh, we don’t do that.

What’s Chrome?

[laughs]

What other options are there?

I mean on my phone. [laughter] Yeah, it’s Safari only.

Well, I still use Arc. I still use Arc on my phone.

You can’t do that…

Yeah, and they just released Arc Search.

I heard about it. I got the email, but I didn’t look at it.

So I saw it, I haven’t tried it. I downloaded it, I’m like “I’m ready to go.”

What’s it supposed to be?

Like AI search… So you would ask it a question – I’m assuming this is what it is. So take this all with a grain of salt. But in December, the CEO released a video of things that they were planning. And one of the things was you just type in whatever topic, and if you go to Google, a lot of times you’re just going to click through the first five options anyways. So he’s like “Why do all that? Why not just have Arc load those first five options into your tabs, and then you can go through what you’re looking for?”

Okay…

Is that sans ads?

I mean, you’re getting around Google sponsored stuff…

Okay, you’ve got my attention.

So Arc is going to – unless Arc is going to try and advertise those things. I’ll tell you what fascinates me about the Browser Company in general, and just what they’re doing… It’s how they do their releases. Because they’ll highlight “This developer did this feature”, and they’ll create a video and highlight that person. I don’t know if they’re open source, but from somebody that’s coding and contributing to a larger codebase, that’s really intriguing to me to humanize…

Yeah, to have a name to a feature.

Yeah, exactly.

That is cool. I’ve seen some of their streams, release streams, and I’m very surprised, and delighted, I guess, happy for them… How many people watch those and participate.

Oh, yeah. But I’m sure it has to do with the community stuff that they’re doing.

They’ve got a community thing going on over there that’s like “Well–” They got a head of steam, so to speak.

Yeah. I was hating on them just for fun, really… I actually like all browser competition. I welcome it, because –

It’s not really competition.

Well, I think it is. I mean, it could be, long-term. If they create steam, and get adoption with devs, and that transcends to mainstream… That’s how Firefox began, right? Firefox began as a grassroots – like, some of our early roots as developers… I’m not sure about yours, but early roots was like “Get Firefox.”

Oh, yeah.

And the tabs was revolutionary at the time.

And the extensions they had…

Precisely. So I mean, for now maybe not so much competition, because Google has such a market share with Chrome… And yes, I know what Chrome is. [laughter] Just to close all these loops here.

Thank you for clarifying. I was gonna explain it to you.

As a podcaster, you have to for fun hate sometimes, just to make it more entertaining.

Sure.

Let’s get back to my game here… So Amy owns a lot of domains, Adam has a lot of open tabs. I will tell you, he has hit the 500 tab limit.

Oh, you might win.

iOS has a 500-tab limit, which I didn’t know about…

And I didn’t either, until I was like “New tab.” “No.”

So how do you find what you’re looking for?

New Tab, search, put it in, move along…

He always opens a new tab, every time.

Yeah.

So I feel like Arc – Arc has revolutionized my tab game.

Well, this is only on iOS. This is not desktop. My desktop has zero tabs.

But still. Yes. I’ve got it both.

So you like the tabs over there, in the Arc land.

Yeah. I mean, it’s great because you create these spaces… And so I have stuff for like Redwood. I have a Redwood space that has all my Redwood tabs in it, and I can stick everything there. It just makes it easier to find what I’m looking for.

You can manage your tabs a little better, maybe.

I should, honestly. But I just don’t.

[laughs] Why?

That’s what I want to know.

Because I don’t have time for that, it’s not a priority… And I don’t need to.

What if it would organize it for you?

Well, I suppose if it did, that’d be cool. But I don’t need to, so I just move along.

Yeah. Bigger fish to fry.

Yeah, climbing different hills, you know, that kind of thing…

So then the bigger question is how many domains do you own?

Do I have to give a number? [unintelligible 00:49:41.23]

Are you honestly embarrassed by it?

Maybe a little, just because of how many – I mean, I will share; it’s fine.

[laughs] You don’t have to.

They’re unused. I feel like “Oh, I’ve got this great idea.” What’s the first thing you do? You go buy the domain for it.

For sure.

And then I think part of it is like not wanting to let go of that domain because you kind of have to have a conversation with yourself of –

You have to admit to yourself “It’s not gonna happen.”

“It’s not gonna happen. I’m just gonna let this idea die.”

I’m with you. I can empathize.

[00:50:12.02] So you can just say more or less that Adam’s tabs. That’s all we need to know.

Less.

Less. Okay.

In goodness.

Is it more than 50, less than 100? Let’s narrow it in.

More than both of those numbers.

More than both. Less than 200?

This is a binary search…

Yes.

Okay… Alright. We’ve found your range then.

It’s actually about halfway. It’s about 150.

Oh okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, we have some domains that we keep holding onto as well, and every time I see the renewal, I’m like “Do we really need that?” And I’ve slowly gotten rid of some over the years…

Do you get rid of any?

Yeah, I do. I got rid of some this year.

I mean, think about the financial burden yearly of –

I know. And that’s the thing. If you say like $10…

10 bucks.

Which it’s not anymore.

That’s like $1,500 to $2,000 a year in domain names, which - that’s the embarrassing part.

[laughs]

Because that’s year over year, you know?

Well, it shows that you have a lot of ideas.

Yeah, well, and that’s a problem. [laughter]

How do you pick one though?

That’s actually not a problem. That’s a good thing, I think… Because you can have – of the many domains we’ve owned, this one succeeded…

Yeah. Yeah.

Changelog.com - we purchased that. We actually owned thechangelog.com originally…

We did The Facebook move.

Oh, nice.

And then we had to drop “the”, only in domain… Obviously. You see it behind us…

Yeah, sure.

It says The Changelog. And we bought the domain from somebody else for a grand, for $1,000.

Oh. So I’ve never paid more than $10 for a single domain. Well, I take that back. I’ve paid whatever that base price is.

Some TLDs are more expensive, yeah.

Right. So here you go, trivia question - what is the most expensive domain that I own?

150 bucks.

Oh, that you own? Like what’s the most expensive TLD?

Yeah.

Okay.

The yearly, or you mean the initial price?

The annual.

Okay, 150. That’s where I’m going. 150.

What’s the TLD?

I’ll tell you how much it was, too.

This is a good one.

.fm’s are expensive. 90 bucks a year.

Are they 90?

Yeah. That’s why I’m scrutinizing our domains, because I’m like –

Right. We’ve got a lot of .fm’s.

We’ve got a lot of vanities that just redirect.

.ev is like 30 bucks a year, something like that…

I don’t know.

Does that sound right?

Survey says…

What’s that?

I said “Survey says…”

Yeah, exactly. Oh, you’re playing my own game [unintelligible 00:52:22.24] Well, I think about 90 bucks is probably your limit, don’t you think? So I think maybe it is –

It is .fm. So we have compressed.fm, and that is the most expensive.

That one’s worth it though.

I think it’s like 76 – maybe it is 90. Or it depends on who you have it with.

Well, ours is 89, with Hover. We use Hover.

There was a new one I was looking at, and I was like “This would be cool”, and it was like 150 bucks a year. I can’t remember what it was… I lost it, but… Yeah. But it’s worth it, because you’re actually using it, right?

Yes, that is true. That is one that we are using.

Just like all of our vanity domains are worth it, because we use them.

I recently acquired a domain. Hopeful…

Hopeful.com?

No, not hopeful.com. [laughter] Hopeful that someday it will pay off… And the initial year was higher than its renewal, because it was like a vanity one, or like a prized one.

A new one, yeah.

And I will tell you the domain right now.

Okay…

It is homelab.tech.

That’s a good one.

Homelab.tech.

Yeah. Now, I’ve got an idea I’ve been incubating without telling you, that I think you’re gonna love. Hopefully.

[laughs]

Love it.

So this is another good one. My most recent purchase - GoodLooking Email. And I think I got .com and .email.

GoodLooking.email. So here’s one that I want to get, but I can’t get our hands on… It’s changelog.news.

Yes.

Somebody is holding on to that sucker, and I can’t get a hold of them. They’re not using it…

Yeah, that’s frustrating.

We have a show called Changelog News…

That makes sense.

…and a newsletter, and that’d be great to have changelog.news. But now it’s changelog.com/news. Gotta get that slash out of there…

I mean, that’s the other part, how you rack up on them is when you have the redirects. I mentioned goodlookingemail.com and goodlooking.email, just make sure that –

[00:54:10.13] Yeah, that’s two for one. Right.

Yeah.

So how do you feel about subdomains? Because a lot of people are like “Hey, if you’ve got a new idea, have your own website, not the Duttons.com. That’s not yours, Amy. That’s somebody else with the same name.

[laughs] That is true.

Selfteach.me?

That’s right, yeah.

Okay, I guessed that. That was good. I remember that’s your handle.

I’m impressed. That’s a branding question that I have always going on in the back of my head.

I remember that your online handle was [unintelligible 00:54:34.23] and I remember a .me somewhere.

Well, nobody can remember that. That’s the problem. So it’s lik, do you go –

What is it? Say it again?

It’s selfteach.me. And actually, this is interesting, how I acquired that domain - I was looking for something else, and Hover will recommend domains. And it was one of the recommended, and I was like “Yes!” And so I bought it.

I like that.

They got you.

Yeah, they did. I was like “That’s why they have that feature.”

We have an ongoing joke in my house… If my wife goes to Costco, they suddenly just put all the bedsheets into the end aisle, the end caps… Because my wife loves to buy bedsheets.

[laughs] Really? I didn’t know that about her.

Well, not anymore, because I’ve disallowed it at this point. Like “We just have enough, babe. Okay?” But it’s an ongoing joke. I’m like “Babe, they see you coming. They saw you coming [unintelligible 00:55:15.23] They’re like “Put it out there. Amy will buy it.”

Yes, yes.

So a lot of people will say you have a new idea, maybe it’s a good-looking email… And instead of going out and registering that domain to domain - two of them - goodlookingemail.selfteach.me. And so now you have a place for that on the web, and you can build the thing, and then, if it’s good and it takes off, and you’re like “You know what? It deserves its own domain.” Have you ever considered that?

Well, here’s the thing… Is somebody’s going to say “Oh, Changelog News already exists. I’m just gonna go ahead and buy the domain and squat on it until that person –”

Yeah, it’s a squatter problem.

Yeah. Well, and I worked one time with a very shady client, that that’s what he would do.

Really?

Yeah. He would buy up domain names that were like people’s names; up and comer politicians and things like that, that he thought could go on to do big things that would want a vanity URL, and so he’s gonna buy that.

Not cool.

I know, exactly. Right?

Part of me thinks that’s not cool, but the other part of me thinks of that, like, isn’t it online real estate? And isn’t it smart to just buy a piece of property to hold it, because you think it’s gonna go up in value and sell it later?

I say yes, so long as you’re willing to sell it.

True.

Yeah. Well, he would reach out to those people…

If you’re untouchable and you can’t be reached, like Changelog.news, that’s not cool.

That’s the other thing, is – well, I guess now we have tooling where you can be like comparable domain prices… But some people are unreasonable.

And so he would reach out to that person and be like “So I have this domain that’s your name…”

“And I’m gonna hold it hostage…”

“I’ll sell it to you.”

In a way, he’s reserved it on their behalf, and is willing to give it to the correct person, and there’s a fee for that. I get that. I mean, that’s an enterprising person.

It’s shrewd, I think is the right word. It’s shrewd, but not cool. Right? You can’t really blame him, but you’re kind of like “But I don’t like you.” [laughs]

Exactly.

“I’m not enjoying this process… But thank you.”

Yeah, exactly. “You were smart, but I don’t like you, okay?” So okay, it’s about the squatter problem, not so much – because it seems like the problem is “I have ideas, I don’t actually build them, and now I’ve got domains.” But really, the domain has to happen right away, because you don’t want someone to steal that in case you do actually build it.

Right. Well, and naming stuff is hard… That was one of the things I said last night.

It is.

I’ve gotten to the point though where I’m like more no than yes. I like to simplify things. And so I can empathize with the buying. But then I’m like “Let me just wait to see if I really get motivated to do it, and then…” But there was really – in my case with home lab, there was nothing that seemed so perfect, other than one other domain, which I did not buy yet, because I feel like just doesn’t make any sense.

I was also hopeful that our friends at .tech would just reimburse me via sponsorship, because we’ve worked with them before, and I told them about that… So I’m sure if we did something –

[00:58:05.10] Did they say no?

No. They said “Next time we sponsor, we’ll make sure it happens.”

Oh, okay.

So they plan to come back. And I like .tech. It’s a cool –

I think .tech is kind of cool.

There’s neon.tech. That’s one of our partners.

Yeah. It’s a great product.

.tech does fit, in a lot of places. It’s not a .com, obviously, and it’s not a .io, which actually is not that good… There’s certainly .net, which is not that good… I mean, in comparison, right?

.net versus .tech?

Well, .tech I think is as close as you could be to .dev, if the .dev is taken. It’s still pretty on point.

.tech is?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

This is not an [unintelligible 00:58:39.24] by the way. These are my beliefs.

They saw us coming, Amy.

Google domain authority. I think .com weighs into it.

Yeah, for sure. I think .net is old school enough that it’s probably better. Harder to get than .tech. .tech is pretty wide open, which is a good reason for it. This is also not an advertisement.

Since I’m mentioning sponsors, we do have another sponsor, Image Proxy, which actually is pretty cool, and they’re a .net. It’s an open source image processing that you self-host…

Oh, nice!

And they also have a paid version of it that does a lot of other cool stuff, like more cores, more CPUs, more images… So if you’re imager, and you want to process a lot of images, like millions, they have a paid version of it. But they’re imgproxy.net. And I just noticed that because I was emailing them earlier, and I was like “Okay, you’re a .net. Not that it’s bad, but like… .net isn’t that cool.”

Yeah.

So this sponsor - I’m just gonna –

Sure. One more layer? Go ahead.

[laughs] Help us out.

Yeah, I’m curious. So are they generating images, or just like resizing, or filtering existing images?

I have not dug into the tech yet. So I’m gonna talk to Sergei, who is the CTO, and once I have that conversation, I’ll have more knowledge. But from what I understand, rather than using, say, ImageX I believe is the other one that’s out there…

That one’s old-school, too.

Yeah, they’re a SaaS. They’re an API. So you host it there, you make calls to their API. Whereas this - it’s a Docker image, you self-host…

Okay.

They also – I think they have a cloud version of it, potentially…

The fact that it’s called Image Proxy makes me think that the images live elsewhere, and it’s doing stuff on the fly. That’s my guess.

You can put it on your own S3, your own R2, you host it yourself, and you make calls to it via the URL, and it just gives you the image size you want. It does all the resizing… I suppose just in time, and then there’s probably caching layers in there, and stuff like that. So it’s pretty interesting, but their model is open source.

That’s cool.

What I love about their onramp - just to give them a little bit; I think it’s super-cool, for like a strategy - is their product is fully open source. I think it’s even permissively-licensed, like MIT; way open. And the same Docker image that you use is the same Docker image you would use as a paid version of it, except for now it’s behind credentials. It’s a proprietary Docker image when you go to a paid version of it, but it’s the same core of that Docker image. So from a code standpoint, all you’re changing is the Docker string, and some credentials to pull from Docker Hub… Which I thought was a pretty interesting onramp. Because from an implementation standpoint, you’re not changing anything. You can go open source and fully use what it is, as anybody out there. But then if you have these specific larger, pro needs, you can go get Pro, and it’s just a change with your Docker Hub. Nothing else. All of your code stays the same with how you use it.

It almost sounds like the Supabase model.

Yeah.

Which, I really like that setup, too.

Yeah. And you can post it wherever you want. So you can on-prem, your own hosting, S3… Pick where you’re putting it at. R2…

Let me segue back to the previous conversation, because we were talking about Image Proxy, a proxy for your image. Domain names are kind of a proxy for your idea, right? Like, you’ve got an idea, you give it a name, you hold on to the domain in the hopes that you’ll implement it someday… And I’ve started to reach a point where I’m realizing in life – well, first of all, I’ve always known, intellectually at least, that ideas are actually cheap, and execution is hard… But yet, we still hold on to the idea very tightly, because they’re our babies, and we just want to hold on to them just in case…

[01:02:10.29] Right.

And I’ve started, personally, to get to a point where I’ve realized most of my ideas, I’m never going to do them, and so I’m just giving them away, in the hopes that somebody else does them. Have you ever considered this for some of your domains?

That’s a good question.

You could even say, “I’ve got 150 domains…”

That’s a great idea, actually.

“Each one has a good idea behind it, that’s mine, but maybe you have a better idea. Here’s a domain…” You have an audience, people who would be like “Here’s domains to the person who will actually build the thing.”

I actually love that idea.

Yeah. You can go put one of – this email version of it, put it up there for like a grand and say, “Here’s the idea I have…:

Well, that’s her newest idea. She’s not gonna do that one. [laughter]

That’s the only one I know of.

“I’m talking about your old ideas.”

Well, I could let go of that one, because it’s the newest, if there’s an older idea that I want to hang on to more. But you go online and you see all kinds of – I mean, even GitHub repos of project ideas, or “You could build this, you could build that.” That sounds like a great thing to give people; it’s not only are you giving them the project idea, but you have the domain to go along with it…

Right. And you can sell it to them at a reasonable price…

You could even give it to them for free, for a percent. Like “Here’s the idea for free. Go do it.” Maybe there’s an agreement, like OKX, and you get –

That’s really interesting.

That’d be a good idea.

It’s sort of like an investment.

So there are companies that kind of do stuff like that, actually, if you take that a step further.

Are there?

Yeah, there’s a company called Fractal, and it’s a venture capital company. And what they do is they go in and they do market research on all these different verticals, and then they will hire a CTO and a CEO, a pair, to run the company, and they give them a million dollars to go in and build that company. And they’re trying to get whatever reinvestment they can, get customers within that first year; they have to go in and build everything… Which is kind of an interesting strategy.

That is interesting.

Yeah. I wonder if that would work.

But they’ve already done the market research on those verticals, and they have built-in coaching and tech support for the CTOs that are building things… And yeah. So you have a CEO and a CTO that might not be interested in that vertical at all, but that’s what they’ve been assigned to. So it’s like “Are you interested in the vertical, or are you interested in the job?” It’s kind of interesting. But they’ve already done the research on that market piece to know “We think there’s an app here that’s very niche, that nobody else is building.”

Yeah, that’s a cool idea. Give the ideas away, or give them away with some sort of strings attached.

Yeah. I think in that case you get to give it away at no cost, so the startup cost is free… And the idea is sort of like maybe even backed. And maybe you’re also an advisor, if it’s a good enough pair. And then you’re like “Hey, give me 5% of the equity.”

So what’s funny is I have a domain that this whole thing could live on…

Oh, really? That’s amazing!

Yeah. Projectsfordev.com.

Projectsfordev.com.

Yeah.

You should do something with that. [laughter]

I believe we’ve just given you an idea for free. We will take 5% equity. Thank you very much.

You can have the idea…

And you’ve got the domain, so…

Here we go. If you’re listening to this, and you think that’s a good idea, we’ve got just the domain. You go build it, a place where we can post our free domain ideas and do this whole idea that just happened… And then maybe we’ll hook you up with a domain to put the thing. [laughter]

Maybe. Jerod says maybe.

Well, I don’t wanna offer Amy’s domain up to somebody… It’s not mine. [laughter]

Before you go, give Compressed a plug here at the end.

Yeah, so I co-host a podcast with James Q. Quick, Brad Garropy, and Becca, and it’s called Compressed.fm. Our tagline is it’s a little bit of web design and development with a little bit of zest. So if you listen to the intro, that is James rapping, which is kind of a fun story.

I love zest.

And it rhymes with Compressed. Is that on purpose?

[01:05:53.11] Yeah, well, it’s part of the rap…

[laughs]

Jerod, you’ve never heard it, huh?

I haven’t heard the rap.

This is funny, when we started this idea about the podcast, James is like “I’ll rap an intro.” And I didn’t know James very well at the time, and I was just thinking “Oh, great…”

Great idea.

I know. “Can’t wait to hear it!”

“Don’t mess up!”

And then it was like [unintelligible 01:06:09.07]

So you started a podcast with a complete stranger?

He wasn’t a complete stranger, but we didn’t know each other very well at that point.

Perfect strangers.

Good show.

We’d been on a couple of live streams, and I reached out and I was like “Hey, I want to do a podcast.”

Nice.

He was like – he told me no.