TechZing

Justin and Jason discuss why they're not going to change the name of the show, the unpaid bill that launched a thousand starships, the cryptography breakthrough that could make software unhackable, how GoPro is going public, Russia’s banning of Bitcoin, China’s large scale 3D printers, the breakthrough bionic hand that restores an amputee’s sense of touch, the latest on the math team, how Colby is socially distractible in the same way that Jason is, the news that Justin and Georgie are expecting, why so many projects seem to come to Jason and his upcoming meeting with a couple of billionaire investors, the math tutor who claims to be able to advance gifted kids from arithmetic through Calculus in 2 years and the guy who taught his 7-year old Calculus, the new Snowden interview that has been ignored by the major media, achieving a form of immortality with Eterni.me and whether Solyent is ever going to deliver.

Justin and Jason discuss Digedu's latest technical hire, how Uber's real-time team uses Github, the growth of Uber's engineering team and what Jason has been working on, building software that never gets used and the three criteria by which to evaluate a job, the two most unrealistic aspects of the TV show 24, Jason's latest trip to SF and why he doesn't like to spend money, math team madness, Jason's idea for how to share information within a large engineering department, how Tesla has completed it’s L.A.-to-New York charger network, the Bitcoin exchange arrests, how Jason finally got an email reply from that HFT firm, how Richard Feynman became such a great problem solver, how Digedu is moving from the Allman coding style to the K&R coding style, how Starmade has taught Colby the importance of prototyping, avoiding premature optimization and how to manage expectations, the animated TV series Star Blazers, the guy who offered Jason $300 for a link to his algorithmic trading website, the “good guy” discount, how the NSA and GCHQ are now targeting mobile apps, the Tor developer who may have become the first known victim of the NSA’s laptop interception program, how the FBI probably owns your TorMail inbox and how the UK porn filter blocks League of Legends update for having ‘sex’ in file name.

Justin and Jason discuss Digedu's latest technical hire, Quizlet’s incredible feedback center, the PHP logging extension Datadog, the realtime dashboard that Jason built for Uber, why hackers haven't been more creative in the types of targets they've gone after, when it makes more sense to buy TV shows than to it does to just watch them for free and sit through the commercials, the TV show Blacklist and how the actor James Spader makes it worth watching, how Justin has started watching The Walking Dead, the upcoming spinoff series and the comic book, Jason's secret plan for super accelerating the 4th-grade math team and the online math drilling websites AdaptedMind and iXL, why it can be advantageous to push kids to master advanced math at an earlier age, Dropbox’s $10 billion valuation and reasons why the startup succeeded where others failed, Google's moonshot projects, how value is created by doing, MicroConf, how Jason's purchase of his remaining Uber options wiped out his family's savings, how a $100 worth of Litecoin a year ago is worth $30,000 today, understanding the altcoin markets, why it's important to always remain liquid, why Justin is calling peak Dogecoin, Proof Market, mutual companies and whether the concept could be applied to websites dependent on user generated content, how the NSA has devised a radio pathway into computers that aren’t connected to the Internet, how Jason has gone retro with Java and is loving it, the IntelliJ IDE and the DropWizard framework, an AnyFu update, the Catalyst game development strategy, the importance of energetic execution and complementary teammates, and why you must always remain cognizant of your enthusiasm half-life.

Justin and Jason discuss the animated series Archer and why it’s no longer going to be about spies, how the NSA is attempting to build a quantum computer, how a France-UAE satellite deal is shaky after NSA spy tech was discovered onboard, how California legislators are attempting to banish the NSA from the state, the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps, the impending death of Facebook, how little western culture and styles have changed since the 80's, Digedu's upcoming technical challenges, how Assembly is crowdsourcing the development of startup ideas and Justin’s “venture matrix” concept, the difference between money and wealth, Paul Graham's belief that a lack of energetic execution is one of the primary reasons why startups fail, the difference between college and NFL players, Jason's desire for two weeks of solitude every quarter, last week's Catalyst session and why Jason is so excited about coaching Colby's math team, how Zappos is saying goodbye to bosses, some ideas on how to create an attribution platform based on layers of footprint, Simon Holmes' new book on Mongo, Express, Angular and Node, Sebastian Thrun's belief that the current incarnation of MOOC’s are falling short, the importance of teaching intuition, Stephen Wolfram's remembrances of Richard Feynman, Justin's responses for his job posting on We Work Remotely and Fallacy Man.

Justin and Jason discuss Justin's hiring strategy for Digedu and IBM's notorious “Black Team”, the women in tech controversy and how it misrepresented Paul Graham's statements on the matter, how Jason finally conquered the Triangle Peg Board Game, his recent day at the slopes and his idea for a social checklistapp, the Cradlepoint Hotspot, a post mortem on Digedu's Q4 technology goals, Salman Khan's thoughts on learning and Digedu's blended learning approach, how there were Von hipsters even in the 1600's, when boys used to wear pink, the story of Minecraft and why Sweden is such a force in IT, the English dramaWallander, why Justin uses both Sequel Pro and MySQL Workbench, how software is eating the world and how it’s hollowing out the white-collared middle class, our robotic future, Jason's sciatica, Aubrey de Grey’s link to Cambridge University, how the French high court has approved a 75 percent tax for top earners, the startup that’s refining plant seeds into jet fuel and how much jet fuel is required by US passenger and cargo airlines, how a former BP geologist claims that we hit peak oil in 2008 and why Elon Musks thinks electric jets are the future.

Justin and Jason discuss how 0.01 Bitcoin was donated to the show, why Justin has been blogging so much lately, their respective Christmas plans and family traditions, an intriguing anti-ageing compound that&#8217;s set for human trials, an Oxford debate on ageing, why science fiction tends to restrict itself to exploring such a limited set of advances and how difficult it is to predict the future, the possibility of <wbr />mind-reading technologies, how the French recently implanted the first artificial human heart, how difficult it would be to adapt to the far future, what's different about kids today, how task laziness is all relative, Justin's post refuting Bitcoin FUD and a short discussion about inflation and deflation, Jason's mad scientist idea about how to accelerate the 4th grade math team he's coaching, the latest on Catalyst, how James Jensen's kids are following along with the Catalyst concept of using real tools, Jason's monster MySQL stored procedure, why Justin rewrote a CloudDB solution in MySQL and why he doesn't use a debugger, Glenn Bennett's humo&lt;wbr /&gt;rous image validator, more on Jason's friend who's teaching himself how to code and Jason's idea for a reality TV show called Geek Up, the ‘Superbugs’ found breeding in sewage plants, CryptoLocker&#8217;s crimewave, the revelation that the NSA program has stopped zero terror attacks, how its phone surveillance program has been ruled unconstitutional, how the White House is attempting to prevent federal judges from ruling on surveillance efforts, scary acoustic cryptanalysis, how an NSA coworker remembers Edward Snowden as a genius among geniuses, how the NSA likely bribed RSA into weakening its BSAFE library, RSA&#8217;s unimpressive rebuttal and an insightful counter rebuttal, the ridiculous, whitewash 60-minutes report on the NSA and how the pandering reporter is expected to land a top intelligence role at the NYPD, how no one is watching mainstream news anymore, especially in comparison to The Walking Dead, Amazon's new show Alpha House, how Treehouse manages to get anything accomplished without managers, and their respective views on wishing people a Merry / Happy Christmas.

Justin and Jason discuss why they like recording discussion shows on Friday afternoons, PayPal dispute resolutions, Jason's friend who lost his business and is now teaching himself how to code, how to determine whether your programmers are lazy, how Fog Creek compensates their developers, why Treehouse is eliminating managers, how to inspire developers to hit deadlines, using the minmax algorithm as a game strategy, why there's so much hate for Soylent, Bitcoin and Tesla, why Justin only bought 0.01 Bitcoin and 1 share of TSLA, a method for identifying asymmetric investments, why Jason thinks Soylent haters are thinking about it all wrong, why Justin is worried about GMOs and why Jason just can't seem to get worried about it, some Christmas present ideas for Colby – like a programmable quadcopter, an heirloom chemistry set or maybe some synthetic biology, how coaching Colby's 4th grade math team is going and how the Catalyst kids are about to start programming their own games, a La Critique of CastFeedValidator and JustAddContent, the first 3D commercial game powered by asm.js, a map of the best medical prices, the new science show Futurescape with James Woods, the Neurogrid analog computer that can simulate one-million neurons using only 5 watts of power, the new SciFi show Almost Human, the British show The Wong Mans, the awesome video show This Week in Engineering, how Google has started caching email images, and how a 6,000-page report on CIA torture has been suppressed for 1 year by the Obama administration.

Justin and Jason discuss getting the show back on a weekly schedule, how listener Ben Reyes gave Jason a Bitcoin, China&#8217;s stance on crypto currencies and why it's been to their geopolitical advantage to pin the renminbi to the US dollar, how Bitcoin's inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, is now a billionaire and whether Satoshi is really Nick Szabo, whether Amazon&#8217;s drone delivery initiative is real or a cynical public relations ploy, whether drone delivery and self-driving cars are likely to become a reality in the near future, how easy it is to remotely hack into and gain control over a modern car, the fear mongering of mainstream news, the 5K MVP, the Heyday journaling iPhone app, the Pluggio update, Jason's various secret projects – Vortex, Cryptonite, Givetronic and SnapLearn, using an S-corp to minimize consulting taxes, the prospect of building games in Catalyst, Colby's day at Uber and the RC helicopters that Justin and the guys at MightyHive bought for him, how Jason and Sandy are going to co-coach the 4th grade math team, how Soylent has hit its 1.0 formula, the creation of XNA &#8211; a synthetic DNA that&#8217;s stronger than the real thing and the fact that there are likely billions of planets in our galaxy that could support life, the show Alphas, the Mindy Project, the Goldbergs, Defiance, The Black List, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and Treme, how the NSA slapped malware on 50,000+ networks, is tracking cellphone locations worldwide and how the NSA&#8217;s surveillance is having a chilling effect on American Writers, the new Bitcoin funded Assassination Market and the shocking news that men with attractive wives report higher levels of marital satisfaction.

Justin and Jason talk with Rob Walling about the rollout of his new project, Drip, as well as a few other assorted topics.

Justin and Jason talk about bringing on a potential marketing partner for AnyFu, why Justin may buy some Twitter shares, Jason's investment thesis and why he believes Apple is reverting to the mean, Google&#8217;s mystery barges, Jason's post on teaching kids how to code, Nitrous.io, the audio book Masters of Doom, the movies WarGames, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Enders Game, the surprising momentum of the Jason's posts How to Increase Your Luck Surface Area and Why I Quit Algorithmic Trading to Do Web Startups, motivations for contributing to open source projects, how listener James Jensen taught himself electronics and designed his own circuit board on Upverter, dark silicon, memristers, Darpa's analog computer initiative and spintronics, how IQ doesn&#8217;t appear to be set in stone and why watching TV probably doesn&#8217;t make you dumber, the Flynn effect and James Flynn&#8217;s TED Talk, the relationship of working memory to IQ, how Jason embedded Sandy's voice into a trading system's audible alerts, wireless devices powered by ambient backscatter rather than batteries, how US hypocrisy has come to light as a result of the Manning and Snowden revelations, combining mastery learning with the flipped classroom approach and Bloom&#8217;s two-sigma problem.