Kyle Paul Johnson

🇪🇸 Spain - The First Steps

Kyle Johnson — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 16:10:40 GMT

Christina and I have traveled a lot throughout Europe over the past fifteen years or so. We were married in France and have spent time in Hungry, Austria, the Czech Republic and most recently a lot of time in Spain and Portugal. We love Europe, the culture, the food and the landscapes. For years we have talked about living abroad somewhere in Europe during our retirement.

Over the past few years we have looked more and more at the possibility of making this move earlier while still working if possible which brings into focus a huge host of new questions. How do we do this? What visa do we use? How do or can we work legally? How will be be taxed? Will we be double taxed given we are United States citizens? The questions quickly become pretty endless. We did our best to research on our own via internet search, AI chatting, Reddit groups and Facebook groups. We found a ton of good information but at some point you need someone to validate the information you have found and add to that information with reality.

So this week we took the very first steps on our journey and we spoke to a Spanish immigration lawyer. We discussed the most likely possible routes of doing this which would include being a W2 employee of an American company or a 1099 contract employee of an American company. For a W2 employee we would have to work for a company willing to have a Spanish entity, or using an Employer of Record (EOR) which in a nutshell is an organization you work for that has an entity in the country in which you want to work and you then contract for your American company through them on a contract basis and pay them a monthly fee. In our case the most likely path turns out to be employee(s) of our own company Cascadia Ascent which is an LLC we formed late last year as a way for Christina to do contract work. Under this setup we would work for our own company, which itself has contracts with other companies but from a tax perspective our LLC is the only one that is a tax liability. The only hurdle for this is that the company needs to have been in existence for at least a year so that's a hurdle but likely fits with our timeline. Now the question is what our tax rate would be with the given scenarios. There are really mainly two possibilities. The first is that we fall into the countries traditional tax system that is used by all it's citizens and your tax rate could be anywhere from 19% all the way up to 49% depending on income. The other option would be that we could qualify and apply for the Beckham's law which would effectively lock in our tax rate at 24% for the first five years working in Spain. After that period you would default back to the Spanish tax bracket of between 19 and 49% percent. At that point we would potentially be looking at retiring anyway so this is likely not an issue for us.

Next stop, the international tax attorney.

🧳

The is the first of a series of posts documenting our process of researching, planning and making our move to Spain.

Return of the Coffee & Code Cast

Kyle Johnson — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 16:50:29 GMT

Last week, my long-time friend and former colleague, Mike Sheehan, and I sat down in a familiar position in front of a couple of laptops and microphones to record what would be episode 73 and the return of the Coffee & Code Cast, a podcast that we ran and hosted for 4 years before taking a nearly 4-year hiatus. The show generally was a talk show dealing with the day-to-day life of the hosts, with topics ranging from careers to travel to personal issues, all with a heavy dose of technology layered on top of it.

In 2021, the show went on a break after Mike started to feel a lack of motivation and creativity to continue making the show. I didn’t feel like I was ready to let it end at the time, and I attempted to carry on but also fizzled out just a few episodes post-Mike’s departure. In retrospect, I think the post-pandemic environment was weighing on both of us as we figured out what life looked like, and we were both navigating our careers, growing, taking more and more time away from our ability to dedicate to the podcast. As a result, the show was put on ice for nearly 4 years.

Over the inactive years, I began archiving the show, feeling it would be a significant loss to myself if no one else did if I just let all the content we created disappear. In all, we had produced and published 72 episodes of the podcast, which is an enormous amount of content. So I set out to archive the show's episodes, notes, and transcripts and even recovered the domain which we had let expire and pointed it all here on my own personal website, and that's where they lived until recently.

Coffee & Code Cast - Episode 73 - Welcome Back

On a recent trip back to Seattle, I met up with Mike, who had been going through a slew of life events much like what occurred when the show was originally conceived. With a somewhat offhand comment, the fire was relit for the show. Over the course of a few weeks, we rapidly got the bones for a website, a feed, and all the cobwebs of how to do all this dusted off. This time around, although the show won't be horribly different, there will be some changes, making it a little less gimmicky as well as making it suitable for all ages and those who aren't into explicit content, which in our case is just swearing. The topics will remain surrounding our lived experiences, careers, travel, and technology we use and encounter as we move through the world, and we'll more than likely have the occasional guest to bring in some new perspectives.

The show is available almost anywhere you can listen to podcasts and will be released every other week. If you want to give it a run you can listen to the "Welcome Back" episode above or subscribe with any of the apps below:

JetBlack Victory

Kyle Johnson — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 01:26:44 GMT

In October of last year, I impulsively ordered a new smart bike trainer after a colleague’s enthusiastic recommendation. If you’re unfamiliar with smart bike trainers, like most things, there’s a vast array of manufacturers, types, and levels of smarts, as well as price points. This particular trainer was designed to seamlessly integrate with an application called Zwift, a virtual world where you can ride through while working out on the bike trainer. The Victory, JetBlack’s latest trainer, is relatively affordable at $399 in the world of smart trainers. Considering JetBlack’s reputation in the industry, this price is quite reasonable compared to many comparable trainers that range from $500 to $1000 for similar smarts and capabilities. Initially, the trainer was scheduled for delivery to Southern California for use during the winter and spring. However, it faced several shipping and customs delays, and it wasn’t until December that it finally arrived. Upon unboxing and setting up the trainer, I noticed a strange noise emanating from the belt or flywheel as it spun. After a few weeks of back-and-forth with the manufacturer’s support and additional delays due to the holiday season, we discovered the issue. It turned out that the flywheel was hitting a plastic housing that covers many of the electronic components. A simple push of the plastic to the side resolved the problem, and the trainer resumed working as expected.

VICTORY Smart Trainer with Zwift Cog & Click - JetBlack Cycling

The JetBlack VICTORY Smart Trainer takes things to another level again delivering everything you should expect from this category of trainers PLUS MORE. It has BEST IN CLASS features too. We have thought about all the little things so you don’t have to, which is why VICTORY is among the FIRST certified Zwift ready trainer making it easier than ever to use the trainer out of the box on Zwift with minimal fussing around. The Zwift Cog is pre-installed & Click virtual gear shifting clips onto the handle bars to provide a premium Zwift experience Also compatible with other indoor trainer apps by removing the Zwift Cog and replacing with cassette of choice.

JetBlack Cycling

With the trainer fully working, I got it paired with my AppleTV which runs and displays the Zwift app to a projector which displays Zwift onto a wall and provides visuals while doing rides. This includes a virtual world with many real and fictional places you can ride as well as all your telemetry information being fed from the various sensors.

The setup of Zwift includes pairing of many sensors from the JetBlack trainer, including: power, speed, and cadence. Zwift also pairs with a heart rate monitor, and for that, I use a Polar H10 heart rate strap. All these sensors and data points emulate your effort in the virtual world, where you can perform workout programs or compete against other athletes from all over the world.

0:00

/0:18

Gameplay video of Zwift from a fictions world called Watopia

I embarked on a journey to boost my cycling skills, starting with Zwift’s “Fitness Jumpstart” series—a dynamic sixteen-workout program designed to elevate your fitness level. These sessions harness the power of Ergometer mode, or ERG mode, which automatically adjusts the resistance to keep your power output steady. This means you can concentrate solely on your cadence, while the trainer ensures you hit the target power levels set by the program. Unlike my old “dumb” trainer, which demanded constant gear shifts and cadence management, ERG mode acts like an autopilot, allowing you to focus on crushing your workout without the hassle.

In "High-tech Cycling." Training intensity is the toughest variable to measure. Speed is a poor measure, as it relates more to terrain and wind. Heart rates provide a rough gauge, but they vary in response to temperature, humidity, altitude, hydration, fatigue, caffeine intake and exercise duration.

~ Jeffrey P. Broker, University of Colorado Biomechanics Professor

After five weeks and over 200 miles on the Victory, I can confidently say it’s been an incredible journey. As a newcomer to smart trainers, the ERG mode has completely transformed my indoor rides, turning what I once dreaded into an enjoyable experience. I love switching between the Zwift game interface and catching a football game on the iPad while Zwift runs seamlessly on the AppleTV. Overall, it’s a fantastic indoor trainer experience, aside from the shipping hiccups and minor issues at arrival, which I easily resolved myself.

If you would like to try out Zwift you can use my referral link for a free month: https://www.zwift.com/invite/HjHMJswL7w

A New Era - Sonos as Dedicated Computer Speaker

Kyle Johnson — Tue, 16 May 2023 01:30:25 GMT

Back in December, I published a walkthrough on how to use Sonos as a desktop speaker with your Mac. It focused primarily on using the Sonos Ray which at the time was only one of a few speakers with any sort of line-in capability. Over the past months that has changed and Sonos has announced and released a few new products that make this process much cheaper and more accessible.

I split time between Southern California and the Pacific Northwest, and with the weather getting slowly warmer in the North I have made my way back to Washington State. My work setup between the two locations couldn't be more different. In SoCal, I have a large rectangular desk with lots of room for extra various things. In Washington, my desk sits in a corner, is triangle shaped, and has very little space for anything more than my keyboard, mouse, or trackpad, and a phone charging stand. The Ray worked great in SoCal, but it doesn't work as well in Washington.

Luckily for me, Sonos released the Sonos Era 100 ($249) as well as the Sonos Era 300 ($449). These are replacements for the existing Sonos One (Gen 2) and Sonos Five respectively. Although there are some differences in the new line of each respective speaker mainly between the Five and the Era 300, what makes these new speakers interesting is the addition of a line-in function to both products.

Each has a USB-C connector on the back. This USB-C connector can't be directly connected to a computer, which seems like a strange oversight, but they have instead made a USB-C to 3.5mm aux adapter which is sold separately by Sonos. With the adapter in hand, you will also need a 3.5mm male-to-male cable to connect from your Mac or any other audio source with a headphone jack to your Sonos speaker.

Aux Line-In Adapter: 3.5mm to USB-C | Sonos

Connect an aux audio source to Era 100 or Era 300 using this 3.5mm to USB-C line-in adapter.

SonosSonos

Sonos USB-C to 3.5mm Line In Adapter

Going with the Sonos Era 100, the adapter, and a cheap male-to-male cable on Amazon you're looking at about $278 or so all in. Of course, if you want/need a stereo pair you can nearly double that with the additional speaker. You wouldn't however need the additional adapter or 3.5mm aux cable as the the other would work as a wireless stereo pair from the connected one. Currently given my small available space I am using a single Sonos Era 100 and am quite happy with it.

Setup

With the speaker in hand, the setup is really simple. Start by adding the speaker to your system as you would with any other Sonos product. Connect the line-in USB-C adapter to the rear of the speaker. Then connect the 3.5mm cable to it, and the other end to your device. With that done, simply select line-in as your source from the Sonos app for the speaker and you should be off to the races.

With the speaker accepting the line-in audio, there are a few quality-of-life changes you probably will want to look at deeper in the settings for your speaker. So let's take a look at some of those.

Source Level

When you first try out the sound it might be pretty quiet. There is a setting available for this to help boost the output. Open the Sonos app and drill down to the following location: Settings > System > {Speaker Name} and have a look at the Line-In settings (left image above). Adjust the "Source Level". This should be set to Mac Computer or higher (using the Level numbers as reference) which should give you a substantial volume increase.

Audio Delay

By default, the Audio Delay setting is set to "Max". This creates a very healthy wait between the input you perform on your audio device and the audio changing on the speaker. You'll likely want to set the "Audio Delay" to Low (middle image above). This nearly eliminates any perceivable delay in actions taken on your device and the response on the speaker. This eliminates a healthy buffer Sonos adds to help smooth out playback, especially in congested network conditions. Depending on your use case this may not be an ideal setting but should work in many or most cases.

Autoplay

Finally, I would recommend setting the "Autoplay" to use this new speaker as well as setting the Autoplay volume level slider to your desired play volume. This setting automatically changes the source of the speaker to line-in each time it receives an audio signal from the attached device. It's worth noting depending on your use this can be problematic.

Here's an example scenario of where this can be a problematic setting. Let's say you start playback from another speaker and group the whole house which would include your computer-attached Sonos. If an email is received and makes an audio sound the computer-attached speaker would drop from the group to play the audio of the email. Depending on how many sounds your computer generates, if it is awake etc this can be somewhat annoying. So just be aware of this gotcha.

The autoplay volume slider will help protect your ears from the audio switching to your computer at high volume if someone was rocking out without you knowing earlier in the day on the speaker. As soon as the line-in audio source is detected it will reset the volume. This will save your ears.

I have been running with this setup now for about a month or two and it has been rock solid and reliable with no audio issues. If you are looking for a lower-cost way to integrate Sonos with your computer or really any other device that can output via a 3.5mm aux cable, this is it.

My Favorite Things 2022

Kyle Johnson — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 21:36:00 GMT

Happy New Year! Wouldn't be a New Year without some sort of review post. I've seen some similar posts sharing a gift guide or something like that, but instead I thought it might be fun to make a list of just a few items that I have enjoyed the most this past year and would most highly recommend to anyone.

Before we get to any of the products, let me add a few important caveats:

This list is going to be generally male-centric. I'm a dude... what can you do? 😁
This is not meant to be all price ranges. Many of these items are quite expensive but they are the things that I really love and would not want to do without.

So with that in mind, let's get started.

Kitchen

Starting in the kitchen. We tend to cook a lot and generally we are not big on kitchen gadgets or single-use items. There are a couple of items in the kitchen though that I love and get used almost every day it seems.

Microplane Citrus Zester

Premium Classic Series Citrus Zester - Yellow

Featuring Microplane

home

$15 | Amazon

We'll start cheap with the $15 citrus zester from "Microplane". This thing is super versatile and we use it on most of our meals to grate garlic, ginger, citrus, and sometimes nuts. It is always in the dishwasher showing just how much use it gets so pretty deserving of being the first item on the list. So much in fact, I have often debated if we should get a second one.

Breville Barista Express

the Barista Express®

Grind, dose and extract all in one.

BrevilleBreville

$600 | Amazon

This countertop appliance gets used every single day. We bought the Breville Barista Express back in 2018 just a bit before the pandemic. Before picking this up, we were Starbucks junkies stopping in nearly every day on our way to the office. During COVID of course this was a lifesaver.

The machine paid for itself in just a few months when you calculate our coffee bill each day from the coffee shop. It continues to be a tank turning out great quality espresso day after day with little maintenance. Pre-pandemic it was only $500, but post-pandemic and with inflation, its price has gone up one to two hundred dollars depending on current sales.

If you're into espresso drinks, this makes them easy at home at a reasonable price as far as espresso machines go.

Clothing

Over the past few months, I have been trying to weed out old and worn-out clothes and replace them with comfortable, versatile, and durable pieces.

Mack Weldon Stealth Boxer Briefs

Stealth Boxer Brief Ultraviolet

Layer it under board shorts, work out in it, wear it every day—this innovative underwear does everything (but feels like nothing).

Mack Weldon

$38

I had heard of Mack Weldon for years primarily on podcasts I listen to. I finally decided to take the plunge and buy a pair of the Mack Weldon Stealth Boxer Briefs. Initially, I got just a pair to try them out and at the cost, I wanted to make sure they were good. These are some awesome underwear. Silky smooth, and light with a snug fit yet you rarely notice them at all. I almost immediately ordered many more pairs and plan to switch to these exclusively.

BYLT Basics Everday Pant 2.0

Everyday Pant 2.0 | BYLT Basics™ - Premium Basics

Perfect for day or night, the Everyday Pant instantly elevates your look. Throw these pants on with our Tech Polo for a more professional look, or with our Drop-Cut Shirt for a more casual vibe.

BYLT BasicsNacelle

$120

These pants worked on me hard with the social media ads. Finally, when looking for new pants I decided I would cave and try out a pair. These pants are my new absolute favorite. Classic looking enough to feel like you could dress them up but stretchy and casual for everyday wear. From the work-from-home dress to the golf course to business casual meals these pants will serve many uses. If I'm not wearing shorts here in the desert, I am wearing a pair of these. I have several pairs of different colors and I love them so much.

Technology

Both of my items in technology are audio related. I listen to podcasts or music throughout most of my day so these are important to me.

Apple AirPods

AirPods (3rd generation)

AirPods (3rd generation). Personalized Spatial Audio, Adaptive EQ, longer battery life, and sweat and water resistance — all in a stunning design.

Apple

$160 | Amazon

Working out or going for a mid-day walk I always have my AirPods with me. Although I don't have the AirPod Pro due to them not fitting my ears well and having them always fall out I have less problem with that with the standard AirPods. These get almost daily use for workouts, walks, meetings, and even sometimes when I am just doing chores around the house listening to podcasts.

Sonos

Sonos | Wireless Speakers and Home Sound Systems

Sonos is the wireless home sound system that fills as many rooms as you want with great-sounding music, movies, and TV. Our speakers are as easy to set up as they are powerful, so you can play whatever you’re craving and savor every moment with the most brilliant, pulse-pounding sound money can buy.

Sonos

$159 - $899 | Amazon

If I had been doing this list year after year Sonos would undoubtedly have been on it for about 4 consecutive years. These products offer fantastic sound with easy configuration and simple multi-room audio. Although Sonos is not particularly cheap it is modular and can be added onto slowly which is what I have done over the years. Here again, I use this system every day through our TV which is hooked to the soundbar, or at my workstation with the Ray connected to my laptop or the Move that can be taken with you as a portable. All the products are high quality and have a nice simplistic design that will fit in anywhere.

Apps

Paprika

Paprika Recipe Manager for iOS, Mac, Android, and Windows

Paprika

$5 - $30

Back to the kitchen for one of our most used bits of software Paprika app. The app in its base form is a recipe manager where you can collect, categorize and store recipes. What makes that app special is its ability to download recipes you find online with incredible accuracy and add them to your recipe book. Once you have collected recipes now you can create a meal plan, plotting each recipe on a calendar. Once you have the meal plan complete the app can then generate a list of ingredients you will need allowing you to selectively add or remove items and then add them to a grocery list. The list of course can then be checked off as you pick up the items in the store or add them to your online shopping cart.

We use this application for almost all our cooking, planning, and grocery shopping. The app is available for most major platforms: Windows, Mac, iOS, Apple Watch, and Android. Each version is sold separately, and it's not necessarily cheap in today's $1.99 software world, but it's a great application and well worth the spend if you use and follow recipes or are a meal planner.

Notion

Notion – One workspace. Every team.

We’re more than a doc. Or a table. Customize Notion to work the way you do.

Notion

$0 - Free for personal use

Notion is a hard one to explain. It's a notepad, it's a database, it's an organizer. It's what you make of it which isn't necessarily a helpful description but it's true.

I use Notion to manage almost all aspects of my personal and professional life. Projects, todos, contacts, meetings, writing, notes, read later items, and tons of other things are all stored and managed in Notion. One of the powerful functions of Notion is the ability to relate content to other content. The best way to illustrate this might be to have a to-do list. Your to-do list might consist of many types of todos based on how you break things down. Todos might also be related to a project that you are working on. The relation allows you to have a todos database/list that can then be linked and displayed on the project page to show your projects todos while still keeping all the todo's in a single place.

Notion really can be as simple or complicated as you make it and it's difficult to explain until you start to play around and use it. If you are the type that likes to keep organized digitally I think this will be for you. Take some time and watch some Youtube videos on getting started. The value should become apparent pretty quickly.

And that's it. I hope you find some of these interesting or useful. I'll likely revisit this next year but until then, happy New Year!

Sonos as Dedicated MacBook Pro Speaker

Kyle Johnson — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 20:30:48 GMT

🖐🏻

Since writing this, new speakers with new capabilities have been released. I have written an updated version of this guide I would suggest using.

It's no secret that I am a huge Sonos fan. I use this system every single day listening to podcasts or music while working, cooking, doing chores, or even using it as the primary speaker for our home theater watching TV.

One area I have always struggled a bit to bring Sonos into is my work. While I have used Sonos to play podcasts and music while I work, this is only via the Sonos app. Generally, this works perfectly for services that are integrated into the Sonos app. However, it doesn't allow for my MacBook's audio to be ported to the speaker. This might include notifications sounds like an email being received, a video playing, or a virtual meeting's audio. This has always been an area Sonos product lineup has been lacking.

I wanted to get the MacBook directly wired into the Sonos ecosystem and with a little inspiration from some folks on Reddit I started taking a deep look into the options. I had some requirements I wanted to meet both technical and non-technical for any speaker I might consider so let's start by taking a look at those.

Connectivity to M1 Macbook Pro
- Able to output real-time system audio
- Selectable as an audio output source
- Cannot lag, create feedback, or loop audio during virtual meetings/calls
Can be part grouped with other Sonos speakers
Fits below my monitor
- Doesn't require a ton of desk space
- Doesn't create a ton of desk clutter

With those requirements in mind, let's take a look at the connectivity options for the Sonos lineup as of December 2022.

AirPlay

On the surface, AirPlay seems like such a good solution and solves many of the problems. It's wireless which is great! No cables or adapters and MacOS has native support for AirPlay. It gives you multi-room audio and you can even join other AirPlay devices like TVs or speakers from other manufacturers in the group. This all sounds awesome and in many scenarios it is. However, there are some caveats.

The first one is constant disconnects. AirPlay cannot remain connected indefinitely to a Sonos speaker so you will find yourself frequently having to go into menus and set your output source back to AirPlay. This will get tiresome pretty quickly. I tried using some software to help with this problem. In particular, AirFoil from Rogue Amoeba Software, Inc. AirFoil would reinitiate the connection automatically which was great, but it created new issues. The speaker's volume would jump wildly on start and startle me every time. AirFoil only allows one Mac application at a time to port its audio to it, so it doesn't solve what I am looking for either. Another nuisance with the app was the constant relaunching of whatever app you had selected to port through AirFoil. Let's say I was porting Apple Music and closed it but AirFoil remained running. AirFoil would almost immediately relaunch the app that I had just closed. Outside of those issues, the app works well, but it didn't solve my needs and I didn't like the issues it introduced.

This seems like a good place to bring up the lag associated with Sonos speakers. By default and quite intentionally Sonos has a built-in delay. This delay is used to do processing and smooth out the experience and issues that might arise when trying to play many speakers in sync. The stock delay is 75ms. This seems quick but it's perceptible and it's made even worse by using AirPlay. Clicking next on an already playing album results in several seconds waits before the next track audibly starts playing despite the screen already showing the new track.

So although AirPlay could solve this use case for many people, for me it wasn't great.

Bluetooth

Supported by the Move and the Roam which are the two portable options from Sonos. I didn't consider Bluetooth seriously for a few reasons. First and foremost is the form factor of the speakers that support it. Neither of these fits below the monitor part of my requirements. Secondly, I have just never been a fan of audio over Bluetooth for a whole host of reasons unless I am using headphones. So although this might work for some, it wasn't for me.

RCA

The Sonos Port has RCA jacks, so getting an RCA to 3.5mm audio converter would be easy and that would make a connection to the Macbook's headphone port. This would work great and would be pretty simple.

The problem I have with this solution outside of its price ($450) is that it's yet another device that needs to sit on or around my desk that isn't the actual speaker. In addition to this device, you still need the speaker that will take the audio source from the Port. Two devices to buy, two devices to power, and two devices that need to take up space on the desk. That wasn't a tradeoff I wanted to make.

Audio In

The Sonos Five is the only speaker in the lineup that provides a native 3.5mm audio in input. This on the surface solves many of the issues. It's a single speaker and has built-in connectivity and although I like the Five it's a pretty large speaker at a height of eight inches tall and fourteen inches wide. Ideally, the speaker is centered below my monitor, and depending on monitor height this speaker may not have enough clearance to sit there. It's also a pretty spendy option running about $550.

HDMI eARC

One of the more popular options for newer speakers is HDMI eARC. This is mostly geared at home theater setups and is included on the newer model soundbars like the Beam and Arc. This HDMI setup doesn't work for a computer-based setup.

HDMI to HDMI eARC Adapter

The fine folks on Reddit pitched another option, which was HDFury Arcana ($300). I admit I am not familiar with this product at all and doesn't look to be readily available for sale in the United States as best I can tell.

The product claims to be able to take any HDMI source audio to any eARC sound system. Given the cost of this device compared to the dock I acquired I think I would prefer the dock and the added ports and other benefits it provides but this is a very interesting alternative potentially.

Optical

Then we get to a good old optical port. Optical is supported by the Arc, Playbar (discontinued), Beam, and Ray all of which are sound bars. So, these are all meant to be center speakers and none of these are particularly tall so that's a good start.

Optical of course isn't a native output from the Mac but we can get support for it with some help. More on that in a bit. The Arc is massive, expensive ($900) and truly built as a high-end home theater speaker so we're going to remove that one. Similarly, PlayBar is large and also discontinued. So that leaves us with Beam and Ray. Both are similarly sized and some of Sonos's newer models. Compared to the Ray ($280), the Beam is a bit more expensive ($550) and slightly larger.

MacBook Optical Setup

At this point, I think we've settled on the Ray for its price point and fit. It sports optical connectivity so next, we need to focus on getting it connected to the MacBook. For this, we need another device as mentioned above. The OWC Thunderbotlt 3 Dock.

Sonos Ray sitting below my LG 27" monitor

This Thunderbolt 3 dock provides numerous ports and amongst them is optical output. This dock as with almost any Thunderbolt 3 dock isn't cheap. It adds another $330 to the project but given I had already been entertaining docks for the simplicity of connecting to the MacBook and the expansion of available ports for this and other uses. This also allowed me to get back to the single USB-C connection to my MacBook to support my monitor, webcam, and now Sonos output.

After connecting the optical cable from the dock to the Ray we need to jump on the Sonos mobile app and set the Sonos Ray's Music Source to "TV" (See screenshot below). You may also want to adjust Ray's volume to something like 25%.

Settings/config screenshots for Mac and Sonos

Next, set Mac's output to the OWC Thunderbolt dock. You should now see this as a selectable sound output source (See screenshot above).

At this point, all audio playing on the Mac should be flowing to the Sonos Ray. You may need to adjust the volume of the Ray if you don't hear anything at first. That completes the setup, but there are a few additional things you might run into depending on your use case, so let's look at those.

Audio Sync

If you use this setup during meetings you will notice that the audio isn't synced up to the video. In the Reddit post I linked to earlier, the original poster mentioned changing the Audio Delay (Lip Sync) setting to +5 for the speaker. In my case, it was +2 (See screenshot above). This setting can be changed by navigating to Settings > System > {Speaker Name} > TV Dialog Sync in the Sonos mobile app.

You'll just need to join a video call and spend a little bit of time adjusting one by one and see what feels natural.

Volume Control

Volume control didn't work quite as I expected. I would have expected changing the system volume would adjust the volume of the Sonos just as it would the output from the MacBook's speakers. This is not the case.

Optical cables provide a fixed 0dB output and it's expected that the connected device would then amplify and control the audio. This wasn't too big of a deal for me as the Ray has volume controls on top of it and it's at arm's length of me on my desk.

Alternatively, there is a software I have had for years called Menu Bar Controller for Sonos that provides global keyboard shortcuts to adjust the volume of a selected speaker or group of speakers from your Sonos system. The software is only $3.00 so it's a no-brainer add-on for keyboard-based volume control.

Autoplay

Lastly, there are two more quality-of-life settings to enable. The first is "TV Autoplay" (See screenshot above). This will switch the speaker's source to the TV (which is effectively the Mac) automatically whenever sound is detected. So if you had been playing music the day before from some other service or source and left it in that state this will bring it back to the computer setup upon the first received sound.

The other setting is optional depending on your setup. "Ungroup on Autoplay". This will remove the speaker from any other speakers it was grouped and playing with previously. For me, this is a great one as I often group the whole house and listen to music while doing chores. So this setting prevents accidentally playing something house wide in the morning before I have had my coffee.

Both of these settings can be found in the Sonos mobile app. Settings > System > {Speaker Name}.

Optical Adapters

Several folks on Reddit asked why I didn't use optical adapters. I hadn't considered any adapters of this type mainly because I wasn't aware they were available. It looks like possibly this could have saved me a lot of money by not needing the dock. That said, now that I have the dock I am really happy with its added convenience but your mileage may vary.

One recommendation was a 3.5mm to toslink adapter ($9) which is a headphone jack to optical adapter. Another user shared that support for this adpater was ended by Apple in 2016.

Another interesting option is the USB-C to toslink adapter ($20). I am tempted to pick up one of these just to see how well it works. If I do that I will update again with the results.

Wrap Up

So the completed setup we have the Sonos Ray at $280. We added the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock at $330 and an optional bit of software for keyboard volume control "Menu Bar Controller for Sonos" at $3 for a project total of $613.

This setup seems to be working exactly as I would expect and I am enjoying the increased audio quality and being able to use desktop applications to control the audio playing from Sonos while still getting all other sounds from the Mac.

It's not a cheap solution but for something I use every single day, I think it was well worth it.

Update: Dec 16th, 2022 - Added Bluetooth, optical, and HDMI adapters based on feedback from Reddit.

Update: Jan 23rd, 2023 - Spelling and grammar.

Update: May 15th, 2023 - Added disclaimer to new article at the top

Wild Geese

Kyle Johnson — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 02:25:28 GMT

Over the past months Justin Vernon, probably my all-time favorite musician in bands such as Bon Iver, Big Red Machine, Volcano Choir, and The Shouting Matches; has been releasing a set of compilations or recordings. These episodes which he has titled the "Song Chest Radio Hour" air on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee a terrestrial radio station out of Wisconsin which is where Justin makes his home. The episodes are played on the radio the first Sunday of each month at 5 PM Central time and archived on a service called MixCloud soon after where you can stream all the previous episodes and get a full track listing from each.

Each of the four episodes (at the time of this writing) features Justin as he walks you through all types and genres of music in his deep and calming voice. Each piece of music is meticulously placed with Justin adding tidbits of history, background, or personal stories to complement the tracks. Often he asks for and allows you to stand in personal reflection.

Some of the music featured is well-known or mainstream but most are not. Even when a track is familiar he'll often shine a spotlight on it in some unique and interesting way. A great example is in episode 2 he plays “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys, a track I think almost everyone would recognize but to show just how great of a harmonist they were he plays it with the vocals isolated. It's quite something to hear and without these episodes, chances are you would go your entire life without hearing it. There are already so many tracks I have gone to seek out and add to my collection as a result of this collection.

The final five to ten minutes of each episode tend to lean on some form of writing or poetry read by Justin and set over music. Each of these has been wonderfully thoughtful, inspiring pieces of writing, read beautifully and once again leaving you just copious amounts of room to ingest, sit and reflect. This is easily my favorite part of each episode. So I wanted to share one of the most recent. A reading of "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver. Read by Justin over the track "In Reverse” by War On Drugs.

Here it is.

"Wild Geese" Read By Justin Vernon

0:00

/1:49

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~ Mary Oliver

If you enjoy stumbling across new and interesting music as much as I do. If you enjoy the history of music. If you enjoy poetry. If you just need a place where you can "spread some love, joy, & acceptance", one of the stated goals of the show. I can't recommend enough listening in on the Song Chest Radio Hour. You'll likely learn something new and undoubtedly find some new gems along the way.

Song Chest Radio Hour

The Song Chest Radio Hour Web Site

🎵 Happy listening!

Where To Find Me

Kyle Johnson — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 15:20:00 GMT

I used to enjoy using social media to stay updated on news, connect with friends, and access industry information. However, the increasing amount of hate speech and personal attacks has made it less enjoyable for me and I appear on them less and less everyday it seems.

I’ve been working on creating a website where I can post content without the hassle of social media platforms. The easiest way to stay connected with me and follow my updates is to subscribe to my website. You’ll receive emails whenever I post directly to your inbox. Rest assured, I won’t spam you or sell your email address. It will only be used for this purpose.

Subscribe to Updates

If an email subscription's not your cup of tea, you can still find me at any of these sites or services. My Facebook account is mostly archived, and Instagram is holding on still by a thread but I will still cross-post links from here to some social media sites for the convenience of those still on those platforms.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kylepauljohnson/
Mastodon: https://techhub.social/@kylepauljohnson
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylepjohnson/
Github: https://github.com/kylepauljohnson
RSS: https://www.kylepauljohnson.com/rss/

👋🏻 See you out there.

Tesla Solar Experience

Kyle Johnson — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 17:18:00 GMT

During the pandemic, we purchased a new home in the Coachella Valley in California better known to most as just Palm Springs. A desert oasis filled with lush golf courses dotting a desert landscape provides a great place for solar power. So much so that houses that were completed just after ours are mandated to have solar installed on them as part of the build.

Ours did not have solar installation added to the plans but it was built with that in mind. The conduit was run from the roof to the panel to make it easy for this interconnection. So November of 2021 we submitted an order for a 5.1kW solar installation and 1 Powerwall. As part of the order, we put $100 down and agreed to a loan payment term.

This is the nearly year-long process we embarked on and things we discovered along the way that hopefully will make things less painful for someone else.

Project Management

Most of the duration of the nearly year-long process to get our installation completed was in this phase. There are a decent number of steps to complete, many of which must be completed before installation. These include:

Home Assessment
System Design
Approval to Install
Home Owners Association Approval (If needed)
Permit
Installation
City or County Inspection
Final Payment
Approval to Power On
Power On

Home assessment and system design moved along pretty quickly, and during this phase, we did some calculations and wanted to be able to cover our usage even in the hot months when the air conditioning is running much of the day and night. We reached out to our project advisor and requested the size of the system be bumped up from the original 5.1 kW system to a 9.6 kW system but still maintaining the original 1 Powerwall.

We worked with our HOA with the provided system design documents and got approval quickly and easily from them so we were onto permitting and approval to install which is purely on your utility. I was warned by our project advisor that our utility Imperial Irrigation District (IID) was notoriously slow in responding to these projects. So slow in fact that Tesla discontinued taking orders from customers of this utility after we placed our order. Our order was submitted to IID in February and this is more or less where it stayed until November.

In the months between I was able to get email contacts from both Tesla and IID and was doing a monthly check-in to help drive the project as without this I was getting no updates. I feel like this helped keep people on task and ensure communication was happening effectively. There were a few miscues between Tesla's team(s) and IID that were resolved in these conversations.

We got the permit and the approval to install within about two weeks of each other in early November and we were put on the schedule for installation.

Material Delivery

In some of the notes on the website, there is an indication that "materials" will arrive 1-3 days before installation day. It wasn't clear to me if that meant they were going to be delivered to the installers who are contractors or to our home.

It turns out they do deliver to the home and the day before the installation a flatbed truck arrived with two pallets of materials for the installation. This includes the Powerwall, panels, electrical boxes, and other materials the install team will use. The pallets were able to be put in our garage for keeping overnight but just barely given the size of the forklift that came with the truck.

Installation

Installation in my mind was going to be pretty straightforward. The home was engineered with the idea that solar would be installed and as such empty conduits were run between the roof and electrical panel to make this connection easy. Tesla supplies an ariel view of the panel installation which shows where they would be installed so I felt confident in how the installation would go.

The installation teams were split into two groups that arrived at different times. the early arrivers were the team that would be responsible for most of the electrical work. Mounting of the new breaker box, the inverter, the Powerwall, and all the wiring and conduits necessary for that equipment. This team worked most of the morning and into the afternoon without a hitch. The only strange issue that came up with this team was that the Powerwall which you can see pictured right had to be installed a minimum of 3 feet off the floor. This is a little surprising as all marketing materials and other installs I have seen have them near or on the floor. I was told this is a building or fire code.

Completed electrical installation inside the garage.

The second team to arrive was responsible for the solar panel installation and work on the roof. After they checked in with the team that was already on site they learned I had mentioned using the existing conduit for the installation. The team lead indicated it would be as much as $2,000 additional to use the existing runs. To make things worse the inspection date and permission to power on could be delayed by using the existing conduit due to the plans having to be modified and resubmitted.

One of the problems with the Tesla process is that a home visit is never done during the planning process and so a lot of assumptions are made. In this case, the assumed connection from the panels to the breaker panel or other electrical equipment is assumed to be an externally run conduit that runs down the roof, over the eve, and down to the electrical box.

We had been already waiting for a year for this project and given the overall cost I elected to have them use the conduit and do it "the right way", or the way we had intended. The lead of the team did some inspection of the existing conduit and determined it would be pretty easy to use without much additional effort so I wasn't charged the additional $2,000 that was mentioned and was able to avoid having to run more conduit across my roof and down the side of the house.

Later in the afternoon, the lead installer of the panels informed me that one of the panels was shattered. He indicated it was possible that a panel could be delivered to the site by the end of the day but it was not and they installed the damaged panel and indicated it would be taken care of with our project advisor. No further detail was provided.

As the installation wrapped up sometime in the late afternoon, I stepped outside to have a look at the roof and noticed the panels didn't extend across the roof as far as the original plans for the 9.6 system had outlined and were showing in my Tesla account on the roof diagram. I questioned the lead on this and he showed me the engineering plans they had been given which were for a smaller 5.1 kW system. The installation matched the paperwork he showed me but didn't match what my account on Telsa's website was showing. It also didn't line up with the contract I had signed off on and agreed to pay for.

The installation teams at this point were wrapped up and packed up all materials, pallets, and all other tools and left.

Completed solar panel install

Project Size Discrepancy

As the team left I got on a call with my project advisor regarding the discrepancy in the size of the installation. The explanation was that utility, IID requested a smaller install as they won't allow you to offset your usage by more than a calculated percentage. The 9.6 kW system exceeded this limit and the plans were altered during the "Approval to Install" stage but were not relayed to me or updated in the Tesla account portal. None of the contract documents were updated either including the loan terms documents for the larger system.

The project advisor modified the documents immediately after the call and they were signed and completed but this was frustrating given we agreed to something and were given something else without notice.

Repair / Maintenence Appointment

Our installation happened on a Friday and Monday I was wondering about what was supposed to happen with the shattered panel. I once again contacted the project advisor who indicated they would get me on the schedule to repair the panel.

Later in the day, I got email and text confirmations of an appointment for the next morning. The next day as the morning went on no one showed up and around noon the appointment was canceled. Here again, no detail was provided so I had to reach out yet again to the project advisor. This time they indicated there was a lack of crew for the job and I was once again scheduled for the next day.

During this appointment, the panel was replaced without issue in about an hour.

Wrap Up

We are now waiting on inspection of the system which is followed by final payment and then approval to power on from the utility which will allow you to sell excess power back to the grid.

Take Aways

Throughout the process, I think the biggest frustration I had was communication or lack thereof. I felt in the dark about the process with the utility, the discrepancy in project size, and the repair appointment. I think

Avoid changes if you can help it. Changes after the initial orders could cause the plans to need to be redrawn, or re-approved by the utility, or your homeowner's association let alone details just getting missed as in our case. In another case I heard about recently on a podcast the host allowed his system to be split install dates due to Powerwall being back-ordered. The panels were installed but the Powerwall order was removed. Tesla won't install one without the other on the order, so the host was screwed out of a Powerwall due to Tesla's changes.
Be Your Project Manager. As best as you can stay on top of how things are progressing more so than just looking at your Tesla account. Don't assume anything is just happening. It might be, but it also could be a lot of miscommunication or flat our failure to communicate. Be proactive.

60: Recruiting (Christina Vidauri)

Kyle Johnson — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 08:00:00 GMT

60: Recruiting (Christina Vidauri)

0:00

/69:52

Cold Open
Introductions
In-House vs. Agency Recruiting
Christina’s Path to Recruiting
Hiring Manager Relationships
Project Based Interviewing
Collecting Feedback
Building Real Relationships
Do’s & Don’ts on LinkedIn and Resumes
Working with Agency Recruiters
Using Market Data
Negotiation

Full Transcript

[Music]

Welcome everybody to episode 60 of the Coffee and Codecast,

the tech podcast where we talk about neither coffee or code.

I'm Kyle Johnson.

Hey Kyle, I'm Mike Sheehan here.

Today we're going to be talking about,

that's some interesting topics, some strange foods discussions.

Good, I'm glad I like talking about strange foods.

Strange food, the frozen yule log.

That sounds fun.

Coffee and Codecast also referred to as the Seinfeld of Cast,

the show about nothing.

Nothing and everything.

That's a wonderful combination.

I thought it was a great description.

I like that.

It's very accurate actually.

Very accurate.

Thanks.

Sorry about that a little bit.

Thanks to Kim, right?

That was Kim.

Yeah.

Big shout out to Kim.

That's amazing.

That is amazing.

And our main topic for today.

Very excited about this.

Main topic today is technical recruiting and who better to have on the show than senior

technical recruiter, Christina Vardari is on the show today.

Welcome, Christina.

Hi.

Thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me.

This is awesome.

I was hoping that we could get Christina on and we weren't

planning on it today, but it happened to work out very well.

The weather forced her hand.

Yeah, the weather.

The bus never came.

I was cold.

Oh, the bus didn't come.

Oh, why?

I don't understand that down here.

There's not a lot of action.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know if it's like outlying areas or preventing

buses from getting into town, but.

The bus stop was naming telling you when buses were coming.

So that's really helpful, especially when it's nasty outside.

Yeah, it's very windy right now.

It's 39 and windy.

Yeah, I heard that there was supposed to be gusts up to 60 miles an hour.

Yeah, I believe it.

Wow, that's crazy.

So it's great to have a recruiter on the show.

I've been wanting to get you on the show for a long time because I talk to you all the time about recruiting things.

You're the only person that thinks this is great.

It is great.

Oh, I think it's great too.

By the way, you didn't wish Mike a happy number one.

She's being friendly today.

(laughing)

So much better in person.

It feels very personalized.

I like that.

We have a lot of fun banter on the show for you tonight too.

Yeah, it should be good.

Just a really hard time.

Yeah, it should be wonderful.

What do you mean?

He's the only one that's excited about it.

Are you not excited about it?

- No, I feel like the public really isn't as excited

to hear about recruiting as y'all.

Yeah, you know, we get into interesting conversations,

but I've done plenty of panels and other things

where you think there's gonna be a lot of questions

and then there's just like crickets.

- Nothing.

- I think oftentimes the problem is you don't know

what to ask though, 'cause I don't think until

these things come up, like I'm like,

oh, I never thought about that.

But like once they actually come up in real life experience,

then it's much more interesting.

I just wouldn't know what the questions to ask you

on a panel would be.

- Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair,

but mostly people only want me to look at a resume

or tell them if they're getting paid enough,

and then that's kind of the end of the conversation.

- Just the tip of the iceberg stuff.

- But I think that's fair from an outsider's perspective,

like that's what they see as a recruiting function.

Like that's the only pieces of recruiting

that they kind of interact with.

- Yeah, like once people actually start having

to hire their own team, which a lot of people in our life

getting to that stage of their career, then they start to have, you know, a lot more questions

in terms of best practices or what I've seen in my career and what they can expect or what's

appropriate. Based on maybe some types of roles don't have the best social skills and whatnot.

We may have some anecdotal examples later that we could cite out, do's and don'ts of

of the interview process, Anko.

- I think there might be some of that coming up.

- That'll be fun.

We'll talk about that in a little bit later too

on the show based on our own experience.

But I do agree with you.

It's very interesting.

The more I've gotten to know,

I think I have been pretty ignorant.

I am recently in management,

so I didn't have to deal with this before on this level.

And so the more we've had conversations about it,

I've learned, I feel like I've learned a lot

from your talks.

So I'm very excited for this today.

And we have a lot to cover.

We didn't, we didn't formally put the questions together because, you know,

that's how we roll on the show here unprepared.

Shocker. Yeah. Shocker. Yeah.

We didn't know we were having a special guest till about 15 minutes ago.

That's a fair point too.

I've never seen any show notes. So I'm super prepared.

Yeah. The format is really awesome. The show note format is great.

I mean, we have a nice structure.

We just tend to not to fill it up with anything before the show. So,

I mean, if we did, it would be amazing.

- Yeah.

- Right, Kim?

That's amazing.

- Oh, sorry.

(laughing)

- That's amazing.

- That's right, there you go.

I think a good way to start here maybe is like,

'cause I think before, you got into recruiting,

and before I was exposed to it,

like my idea of recruiting was kind of just like,

typical guy that's gonna just like slam people down

a pipeline and throw as many people at you

as he possibly could without much screening at all.

And like, you've kind of opened my eyes

to a different type of recruiter, which I think you are.

So I think maybe a good way to start would be just

kind of describe your process and how it is that you differ

from maybe like a big agency that's just gonna slam

as many people at home as they can.

- Sure, so I'm an in-house recruiter at Big Fish.

So I work for the company.

I think a lot of people's exposure to recruiters

is typically through agencies.

So you feel like cattle in those situations.

I have a much more personalized approach to recruiting.

I want to screen resumes,

I want to do recruiting screens via phone,

focusing on technical.

I try to really leverage my social EQ

and make sure that I'm a gatekeeper

for the business as a whole,

because you can't necessarily rely on engineers

to always evaluate the soft skills.

And if you're not evaluating soft skills,

I can definitely come back to hurt you down the line.

So yeah, I wanna review resumes.

I wanna talk to every candidate

before I hand them off to a hiring manager.

It doesn't always work out.

When I have a rec load of 15 different roles

with multiple heads for some of those roles,

I don't have the capacity to phone screen everyone.

But I still want to review resumes,

and I still want to assist hiring managers.

Because at the end of the day, if I get to present an offer,

I need to have some sort of relationship with that candidate,

or it's kind of really awkward.

There's also two schools of thought

with recruiting offering positions to a candidate.

Some companies, it falls on the hiring manager,

and the hiring managers want to own it.

They're like, I'm managing this person,

And so I want to offer them the job.

My school of thought and another school of thought out there is recruiting handles the

offers.

And this is, I think, a little bit more strategic in terms of like, okay, now it's a business

conversation.

If this candidate counters, it's not going to be like personally held against them by

a manager that is now like, oh, you were too good for my offer.

And then there's like a weird dynamic once the person actually joins.

So I like to be that buffer.

I like to just absorb, say, you know, here's the max we're going to go up to, but I can

offer anything up to that amount, whatever I think is necessary to get the person in

the door.

How soon do you have that conversation?

Do you have it up front usually pretty early on in the process or?

So yeah, I have two different conversations.

I definitely try and have on the front end like give me a range.

On the front end, I'm happy with a range.

I don't need to know your exact number.

I'm going to guess your aiming high.

But I want to know your range

just so that I can make sure like some software engineers

are gonna ask for $250,000.

That's not a number I will ever remotely come close to

in the companies that I have worked at.

Go work at Oracle, go work at Microsoft,

that's great, good for you.

If you're looking for work-life balance

or you're looking for a challenge, let's talk.

if you're just okay with making less than that, then, you know, let's talk.

So I just like to save that conversation time on the front end and get that out of the way.

And then at the end, you know, I want to say, okay, we're happy.

You know, the interviews went really well.

I hope you like us.

Now let's get down to brass tacks.

You know, we have different levers we can pull in the recruiting land bonuses, sign on equity,

all that kind of stuff.

So tell me what it's going to take to get you in the door.

I like that approach just because in my limited experience with hiring

I think I just jumped the gun a bit and got really excited to meet the candidate and then get on a phone screen and

Had a great phone screen and then found out afterward because they brought it up like oh, yeah, and by the way

I'm looking for acts and it's like we're not even in the same ballpark

And we just wasted a lot of time that happened to us as well recently

So yeah, I think it's a valuable thing to have the recruiter do that on the front end before they've even been passed off

So at least we know we're talking the same thing.

- And I'll still, like, even if I think they're expensive,

if I like them, let the hiring manager know

and let them make the call.

You know, like maybe that person's like,

"Well, weirdly, we could up level it.

"You know, we could make it a senior

"and then we would be within band."

You know, I let them make that decision a lot of times,

but if it's just worlds apart, then it's like,

"It's been nice, call me in 10 years."

- Best of luck.

Good for you.

Yeah, because otherwise you're wasting everybody's time and it's not, there's no point in moving

forward.

How did you get into recruiting?

So I was in like accounting and bookkeeping before and I wanted to get into startup land.

So I had a friend on Facebook who was in startup land, he'd been at Swipe, which was acquired,

or no, went public and then was later acquired by Apple.

So he did really well obviously in that scenario

and he posted, hey, a former swipe employee

is looking for a part-time like office manager.

And I was so desperate to get out of bookkeeping

that I was like, I'll take part-time

just to get into the startup land.

And it was a female VP.

And she'd been at several successful startups.

And so I was like, I obviously wanna be connected

to that person in general.

And so I asked him if I could talk to her and I went in and I met the team and they ended up actually offering me a full-time role

doing

Accounts payable office management and like whatever I backed up the executive assistant to the CEO

all that kind of stuff

Few weeks in they're like hey, you still have capacity right? I'm like sure

Do you want to start coordinating for Dave the recruiter? Okay

So I start scheduling because you know being the backup to the EA you would do that a lot anyway, and then

It came down to it. Okay, we're growing

We need to hire a full-time accountant which can be you or we need to hire someone to help Dave full-time which can be you

So I looked at my boss and I said I'm really liking this recruiting thing

but like what if I'm bad at it and

She said you're not gonna be bad at it

But if you are do you want to try sales? Do you want to try marketing like wow figure it out?

Yeah, I got really lucky

So yeah, I went and worked for day full-time which Kyle still likes to tease me that day was a very intimidating

Interview for me in the beginning and I like walked away and I was like well

I don't know if I want to work for this company and then I ended up working for him and like having a really good personal

relationship with him and even toward me. So

You know it all works out man. And at some point you hired him. Yeah, I brought him on as a vendor at one point

Oh, that's cool

I suppose that's what we all run into though a little bit of that imposter syndrome, right? We've talked about that before

Yeah

Yeah, big time

What about like the the thing that I think is most interesting to me because it's very applicable right now to me especially is like the

Relationships that you cultivate with the hiring manager themselves

Like you don't just kind of throw candidates over the wall

You do a lot of fact-finding ahead of time so talk a little bit about that and how you approach that

Yeah, so I'll do an intake session with any hiring manager that I'm going to be working with

I want to know about your team.

I want to know about the role that's empty.

You know, is it new?

Is it a backfill?

Is it different?

Is there anyone on the team currently doing it?

What is the sell for the role?

All that kind of stuff.

Because again, these are the things that people want to know.

Who am I working for?

How many people are on my team?

What am I going to do day to day?

If I can't answer those questions,

then I look like an idiot, which a lot of recruiters

don't do that and then they end up being like, I don't know. And then it's a waste of a conversation.

So I want to answer all those questions on the front end and save my hiring manager time.

I'm not an engineer, so I obviously can't get into the weeds with like the day to day,

but I can get pretty far, right? You're going to be using this tech stack,

you know, we're transitioning to the cloud. This is the cloud that we're using,

all that kind of stuff. So you have that information on the front end.

And a lot of my hiring managers have either done it for a long time or they've not done it at all.

And the ones that have done it for a long time, some of the challenges I run into are

the really kind of what society has deemed like outdated practice of whiteboarding.

Write me an algorithm. When was the last time you came up with an algorithm from scratch?

Like you never do that. Right. Um, stand in front of this room of people and do this. Like,

do you as an engineer program in front of other people on the regular?

Nope. Not with the marker either.

So I'm trying to educate them and then I'm trying to educate new hiring managers as well

because they just don't know. Yeah. Um, and so I'll be like, Hey, you know, there's other ways to do

this, there's project-based interviewing, come up with something that should take two

to three hours.

Bring someone on site to sit in the pod with your team and do this work and ask questions

and do a code review.

All of those things that an engineer does in a day, but they still have their own time

to write their code, to use Google.

All of the things that you would do.

The practical things that would happen on a day to day.

No, you have no resources at your disposal while you do normal code day to day.

I'm like, do we use Git?

Give them access to Git.

Like, why are we making this so archaic?

So I just try to educate them,

make sure that hiring managers know

they're a gatekeeper for their team.

So they're expected to also evaluate the dynamic

this person will bring in.

Leave it to your director reports

to evaluate the technical ability,

'cause that's something that they can do.

Not all of them can evaluate the social implications

of hiring this person.

And so it's more educating them

on what I need from them as well

as what I can provide them

that they've maybe not gotten with other recruiters.

- I wanna go back to the technical interview

and as looking at the industry as a whole,

like where do you think that shift is starting to happen?

Is it like are the big three still embracing that?

It's kind of a litmus test,

see it right from a baseline knowledge.

Yeah.

Well, I think they see it as more of like, they're trying to find your critical thinking

skills, right?

That's the way they're looking at it, as opposed to like doing day to day work.

Yeah.

So Microsoft does project-based interviewing.

They do.

Oh, that's interesting.

Okay.

Google has always been really like, I don't know what you would call what they do.

It's not normal.

Nothing at Google.

How many ping pong balls can you fit on a bus?

Nobody cares.

Yeah.

Supposedly it tells you who's creative.

Creative thinking.

I call bull.

You know, so it is evolving.

It is changing.

It, you know, you can still have a need for someone to be able to come

up with algorithms on the spot.

That could be something a company needs.

It's just probably one percent of the companies out there.

Yeah.

And so, you know, be realistic.

I've asked a hiring manager, "When's the last time you whiteboarded in front of a person at work?"

Yeah, right, exactly.

Because if that's a skill that you legitimately need, sometimes you're an architect or a designer

and you literally need to explain what you want done to a group of engineers.

Okay, fine.

I am totally on board with you asking that candidate to do that.

But if they can be heads down, cranking out code at their desk, why would you put them in that situation?

And I thought there was a very interesting kind of thing you put out on Facebook for a while ago

And I don't know if you're prepared to talk about it, but like it was kind of is basically whiteboarding kind of a sexist

Practice, which I thought was kind of fascinating. I don't remember all the details, but yeah, I had put out the

Call to my recruiting network that I needed data to support the pivot to project based interviewing from whiteboarding

because it sounds great in

and in qualitative examples, right?

Like, it's changing more now, but back in the day,

like when we were in school,

there was kind of this like force people

to go up to the front of the room

and write an answer on the chalkboard.

And it didn't really matter if you were a shy kid

or if you were a boy or a girl,

like they made everyone do it.

But there was social implications to that.

And there's, you know, boys are encouraged

to be boisterous and it's okay for them to be wrong

and make mistakes and little girls are taught

to be prim and proper and perfect.

So you just have these different social implications

of making someone do something in front of a group

of other people.

So I wanted data though, to like talk about this pivot.

All of the qualitative stories make sense,

but Microsoft would probably be one of the only places

that would have that data on a large enough scale, right?

like probably find people who have like,

I've done five whiteboarding and I've done five project.

Like, okay, that doesn't scale.

But I wanted to know if there was any studies out there

that actually proved this.

And unfortunately, no, there are some in academia

'cause they've proven that forcing children to go up

and write on the board, especially now with like,

there's a lot more education around,

I guess various levels of being on the spectrum.

And so you could really create permanent damage in a child

if you forced them to do these things.

So there's a lot more educational data around it,

but nothing really in the workplace.

- That's interesting.

- Yeah, it was fascinating to see,

predominantly I think it was white males

come out of the woodwork to defend whiteboarding, right?

Like you had a lot of back and forth

with a number of people where you were just kind of

getting attacked and you would say,

"Well, I'm looking for data.

I'm not really looking for opinions here."

And they would just continually reach back

and be like, "No, well, I've done this for years."

And she's like, "This is not what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for data."

- Yeah, several times, I had her like,

"For 20 years, I've done it this way."

And I just responded and was like, "Good for you.

I'm glad that that has worked for you in your career.

I'm not interested in your data."

- Right, you're one off answer here.

- Yeah, you know.

Women tried to support my ask and defend me,

but they often used qualitative personal examples.

And like, I understand that and I relate to that.

But again, I'm trying to make a data-driven decision.

And so I actually had a mentor of mine,

like I don't really know him personally,

but he goes, I go to conferences that he speaks at

and he's definitely someone I follow, call me.

seven in the morning and say,

"I'm sorry for what happened on that thread."

Like there was one particular person who was just like,

unbearable and he's like,

"Unfortunately I know I'm not that person."

So it was really funny.

He's like, "We'll see how that goes."

But yeah, it was really interesting how like you just

even make the suggestion of change.

And it was like I lit a fire.

wasn't looking what I was looking to do at all,

but is what it is.

- It's not surprising there's a bias there,

because yeah, if you've been doing it for 20 years,

then you know the system now.

And so that's like, that's your way in, right?

And it suggests that that's gonna change,

or we're gonna look at a different set of criteria now.

Probably scares the hell out of a lot of people that,

I don't know, maybe do really well at that,

but suck at other ways of interviewing,

or the soft skills or whatever it is.

- And it's funny that it hasn't been evaluated

a little bit more, because right,

like engineers, myself included,

are all are mostly introverted. So like, yeah, it's probably, it's a ton of pressure and

it's a very uncomfortable place to put somebody who's an introvert in front of potentially

a panel of people and all those people watching you do something up on the board. I mean,

I hate doing it personally. Everybody I know, yeah, pretty much hates it. So yeah, why do

we continue to subject people to that? And the other thing is like the candidate, especially

well, in the current market, the candidate is interviewing your company. No one is in

desperate need of a job right now in the tech industry. So you have to impress

this person as well. And if you're asking them to do something like come up with

some algorithm and they're like, "I'm a bill engineer." Yeah, well they... What? Do I

have to do that here? Because if I do, I don't want to work here, right? So I have

to like make sure that we're providing the candidate with a reasonable

experience and reflection of what they'll do day to day.

Because we have to we have to sell ourselves as well right

now. Obviously the economy changes, things change, you

end up getting 15 people applying to one role and all of them

want it really bad and all of them are overly qualified. That's

a different scenario, but that's not the current market.

Wow. I would imagine then like places like Amazon are still

the traditional they're they're doing the all the way right?

Yeah. But they can throw money at you. So yeah,

Exactly. And they have what they call a bar razor, which is someone that really comes in to really just grind you.

Wow.

In what in what way just kind of continue to reach out over and over and over until you kind of cave or what?

No, the bar razors in the interview and they basically want to find your edges. They want to know it's going to be probably someone super senior and better than the candidate hypothetically.

But they're really going to make sure that technically what Amazon says that they do is they hire people better than they already are there.

So obviously this cannot go on infinitely, but that's hypothetically they're bringing in a barraiser to make sure that you would be better than 50% of the company.

Really?

Yeah.

And so it's that's where the pressure really gets put on in an Amazon interview.

Damn.

So in theory, like it should have been I should have been trying to apply there like a 99 or something.

- Yes.

(laughing)

- Before you graduate.

- It keeps getting harder and harder and harder.

Wow, love learning about that though,

just because, well, it's been a few years

since I was subjected to even a phone screen from them.

I mean, I've been here for what, six years almost now.

- Well, and back then, didn't they make you verbally say,

I would type backslash, backslash, print?

- Have you ever been on that kind of an interview

where you have to literally code over the phone?

So with them, with that particular screen,

the first time with Amazon, yes.

And it was, but I guess it wasn't exclusively phone.

They did have some kind of whiteboard thing

on the computer screen.

Literally like tell them the code over the phone.

No way.

Yeah.

It was so painful.

I can't even imagine these days

like asking anyone to do remotely, anything like that.

But yeah, the resources didn't exist

even less than 10 years ago to share a screen

with a random candidate, right?

You can share a screen with someone on your network

or something like that.

But at the time, the thought of sharing a screen

with someone outside of your network

that you don't know was unheard of.

- You didn't do that.

- And I think to get back to the whiteboard and comment,

I think that explains a little bit too why

there's a sudden pivot away from that

because that's all you had before.

There was nothing else.

There weren't these online tools available.

I mean, you could bring them in

and make them work on a laptop for hours

or something like that.

I mean, there was no coder pad or all these new

screen sharing tools that you can use

in interview scenarios.

So I think it makes sense that it's slowly starting to turn,

but people are somewhat resistant.

- Yeah, I encourage my hiring managers.

I will provide you with, we use coder pad

where I'm currently at, I will provide you

with a coder pad link to share with the candidate,

but I would like you to use it for examples or reference

or to let a candidate process,

'cause maybe sometimes people need to start typing something

out to understand where they're gonna end up.

But please don't be like, here's Fizzbuzz go

and just sit there and watch them type.

It doesn't really add any value or collect relevant data.

- Yeah.

I mean, not recent, this has been year,

I don't know how many years ago,

but anyway, similar type of experience

that gave me just like an open coding share screen.

And he's like, do this.

And then like in the background, all I hear is typing,

you know, like him talking to other people.

Yeah, I'm just like, why the hell am I even here?

- Should have muted it at least.

Come on, be an A-hole like that.

- Yeah.

- That bastard.

- Yep.

- It worked out fine.

We got here instead.

(laughing)

- Yeah.

- I wanna shift it a little bit.

- I had to do the show with this dickhead.

- Well, no, that's your, that's your penance, man.

You have to be 60 episodes later.

- You're doing great.

- Hey, thanks, Slayer.

(laughing)

Slayer's at Motsy right now.

That wasn't really him.

That had to be a recording.

- Well, we need to get a real one.

- I wanted to, you were gonna mention a little bit

just about our scenario here because we're bringing,

we have a technical recruiter coming in from Charlotte.

- We do, I'm very excited about this.

So he, at least in the brief conversations

that I've talked to him, he has very similar views

to what Christina does in terms of how interviews

should be done, how you collect feedback,

how you collect data, which is another thing

I think we should get into.

because that was part of my recent interview processes

in where we're collecting feedback.

In this case, I think it was feedback on

the take-home test that we gave.

And in this case, it was coming back to me

in kind of a group email format.

So like everybody was getting the feedback.

And when I talked to Christina about that,

she's like, by the way, you shouldn't do that.

You should collect it privately

because effectively like you're biasing the entire review pool.

And I was like, well, exact point.

Like I would not have thought of that.

I need somebody who has technical expertise in this.

And so that's another point.

And when I relayed that to a couple of the people

on the team, they were like, oh yeah,

that makes a lot of sense.

But like we probably would not have come

to that conclusion, at least not quickly.

- Yeah. And, you know, I always get from hiring managers,

well, my team has too much to do.

They can't put their feedback in the system.

And I'm like, okay, one,

You need to make time to do things properly,

to document things, there's a legal requirement,

things are discoverable.

Seattle's too small to not document who we've talked to

and what we've talked to them about.

So I need you to know or write down what you asked

in that interview and how you evaluated the answer.

Ultimately as a recruiter, my dream would be

for every candidate I've ever screened

to come find me again in the future

when they want to work for me at a later time,

whether I'm at a new company or not.

But I need to know what we've talked about.

I need to know what their answer was last time.

Have they grown in the last two years?

If we ask them the same question,

do we get a different result?

Can we collect new data and not revisit everything

we've already asked them?

All of these things are very important

and make a lot of sense once you hear it.

Like once I have that conversation

with hiring manager, like, oh, okay, fair.

Yeah, like, I know that we've interviewed one person

two or three times and so, yeah, we should document

what we've asked and what we wanna ask next time

and those sorts of things and so they get it.

And then, you know, bias, there's all these bias trainings

that I highly recommend for any company, any person

because it's unconscious bias mostly

that we need to try and be aware of.

You won't fix it.

You won't be aware of everything,

but whatever you can make yourself informed about,

the better.

- Yes.

Makes a lot of sense.

Some of those points that our guy brought up as well,

I thought were really,

hadn't thought about before.

So I'm glad that we're starting to evolve a little bit

in our process here and take it a little more seriously.

- Yeah, I think that's important.

I mean, to your point about the questions,

the interview questions, like would you,

in an ideal world, would you,

would every candidate be asked the same questions,

in other words, so that you can kind of compare

candidate to candidate to candidate

and get a good feeling on one versus the other?

- Technical questions, yes.

I would like you to ask the same coding question,

but I mean, conversations evolve organically

and I would hate for you to be like, nope.

(laughing)

I'm going back going over here. Don't go that path

You know, so I want you to have organic conversation

But you know if you're going to ask one candidate to delete a binary tree and you're gonna ask another candidate, you know

Just something like fizz buzz

It's apples and oranges. Yeah, that's not really fair. You can't evaluate no each candidate against each other

So I do want the same technical questions. It's fine to obviously

See like especially in the beginning you're like, oh, I didn't get what I wanted when I asked that question

Okay, fine ask a different question, but once you kind of find one that you feel is

Getting you the information that you want and I would like you to ask it to all candidates going forward in a perfect world

I would have a question bank

That people could use throughout the company for any team

Any role all that kind of stuff, but that's how we operate and I think that served us well

I noticed like over time as we bring in more candidates

It's been interesting to see how they approach it and you get a wide variety as many people you get that many different answers

Different approaches and so it's been fun to see you know, we let them choose their own

Stack to answer it and just say look, you know, here's the question

Here's and it's more of the project base that you're talking about a couple hour project throw it and get and let's take a look at it

And we've had some people come in and like one, you know,

one command automates everything.

It builds, runs, deploys, and then, you know, others that don't do anything.

I just been interesting to see how everyone approaches it that way.

And you wouldn't get that perspective if you had different questions.

Yeah.

Um, shout out.

Hey, uh, I think we have a new listener, Jill is joining us today.

That's my aunt.

Oh, cool.

Hi, Jill.

Awesome show.

Great info.

Thanks for checking it out.

Zach, thanks Zach.

- Yeah.

- Hey, we are on Twitch by the way.

- We are on Twitch, is there a problem?

Are we not?

- Would you like us to put up a software question?

- Just don't put any eggplant and splash emojis up on your

- Apparently that's a frowned upon.

When you're submitting a technical interview,

code on git.

Somebody would have said that, you know,

like ahead of time in the notes.

- Yeah.

- Poor guy.

- Like.

- We had somebody do that today.

- Yeah, Kyle told me last night, like,

"Oh, the candidate I was really impressed with

"on the phone just submitted his code review,

"and it's got an eggplant and splash emoji in it."

And I was like, "What?"

Like, okay, obviously maturity, maybe a factor here.

It's a junior-ish role, so okay,

I'm willing to overlook some things, but--

- Little NSFW there.

Yeah, like I get that society has evolved

(laughing)

and these emojis are what they are,

but yeah, I said, you know,

I would give him the benefit of the doubt right now

in terms of maybe he has code that he reuses,

which I don't hold against anybody

in an engineering position

and he just didn't really proofread it.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- Possibly.

- Maybe ask him about it when you talk to him

and see if he kind of, it's a mea culpa thing

or he's like, "Ha ha, wasn't that funny?"

Like then I think you get a lot of information.

- We have to have the emoji discussion.

We really like you as a candidate.

We'd like to bring you in,

but we need to talk about the proper use of emojis at work.

What the hell are we doing?

What kind of world do we live in now?

(laughing)

- Emoji training.

- Day one training, you have to have emoji training.

- That's right.

- Make sure you watch all those sexual harassment videos.

- Oh yeah, we got a special stack

in the HR library for you here, sir.

(laughing)

I'm gonna need you to like sign on the line here

that you watched all these videos.

Oh boy.

- I think though, another thing to bring up too,

like a couple of things that we've touched on

that is important, I think from your perspective

in terms of recruiting is you're like a relationship builder,

right?

Not only with the candidate, but with the engineering

or hiring managers that you deal with.

And a lot of times that's benefited to you

because these people, what was the term we use?

Boomerang, right?

They come, maybe you're at a different company or whatever,

but they come back around and return to you to find a new job

or get advice for the next job or whatever, right?

- Yeah, yeah, I mean, again, like I said, as a recruiter,

I want to have a pool of people

that a hiring manager comes to me and says,

"We need a senior web dev."

I can be like, "Okay, let me make some phone calls."

Obviously we'll post the job and see,

make sure we're hiring the best that we can

within our budget, but it would be,

It would certainly make my life easier

if I could just go make three, four phone calls

and see if I can find someone that we can hire

rather than go through 100 resumes

and have engineers spend 20 hours a pop interviewing them.

So yeah, I want to have a network

when I let someone down that it was a really close call

or it came down to something subject matter expertise

in like one specific area, I will make the call

and let them know specifically like, this is not a no,

it's a not right now.

Please keep in touch with me, please follow up with me.

I will keep you in mind.

And I try to always reiterate to any candidate

that doesn't work out, it's not a personal decision.

We have to put the business needs first

and find what's best for the business.

And you're still a good person,

you're still a good dev or PM or whatever.

So let's stay connected.

- Let's jump down into the nitty gritty here

and maybe like Zach and Rain I think are listening.

So earmuffs, but when you are trying to like source

for a candidate, you use LinkedIn primarily, right?

Like what kind of tips, tricks,

things that you would like advise people to do,

not to do, like obviously you have a lot of stuff.

- Covered one.

- Yeah, no emojis.

Preferably, but there's a lot of things that you see obviously so like what are like good things to do and bad things to do sure

You know I I understand there's a lot of engineers completely content in the role that they're in and

Don't want all the spam that comes

With their profession

But I would encourage them

actually evaluate the company that's reaching out. If they have the time, I understand there's plenty that get hundreds of messages or

look at their recruiter's message and say, does this person actually know what they're talking about and they understand what I do every day?

Because the bigger picture is maybe you want to be connected to that recruiter for when you are ready to make a transition.

It's much easier for you as a candidate to know a recruiter and say I'm looking,

Even if they can't hire to their company, they have a network

So yeah, I encourage anyone who gets

Outreach from a recruiter to at least

Look into it, right? Don't get aggressive and say I told you I'm not looking because the other thing is we have a network

you get all around with me and

Every every recruiter I know is gonna know that you're not a great person to work with

I think you can look at those messages because I get a lot of those too, right?

And some of them you can tell are like legitimate and they're people like you that are actually like trying to like find

Specific things and then there's other people that are like very clearly template-generated

Messages that are oftentimes wrong

Like hey Bill. Yeah, I'm not Bill. Sorry, dude

Yeah, you'd be a great like C++ engineer and you're like what? I don't have that anywhere

Great buddy. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I mean, I would just say like be open-minded and think longer term than your immediate needs

You know be mindful that

So a lot of the tools that I will use to find your personal contact information

Essentially what it does is it connects me to all of your social media

So if I find your LinkedIn page, it's going to show me your Twitter. It's going to show me your Facebook

It's going to show me literally like your twitch like if you have an account on a large social media platform

My tools will show me what your account looks like on those platforms. How often is that a disqualifier?

I will find you recently

Recently I had a candidate in process

that

Their github they had a note with some code that they'd published they had done some work for a local company

To help the consumer of that brand and the company basically didn't

Benefit from this work this technical work

And so they fired him. I'm not saying it was their right or that was right what they did

It is within their right or an at-will state

But he went out there and he put all their business in this note on this code in get well boy

So my one of my hiring managers was doing his due diligence and looking at this candidates code in get which I encourage them to do

Because I think you can get a really good understanding of somebody's skill level by looking at their side projects

And he was like this makes me uncomfortable

And I said okay, I fair

Can you please still talk to the candidate and you know, obviously you're going to heavily focus on the soft skills

conversation with this candidate because you know they have a tendency to

put their employer on blast and

you would hate for that to happen in this situation if you feel like you know, this was a one-off situation and

They've learned from it and they've grown from it and you wouldn't be worried about it again

We can still readily evaluate this candidate for their

their

Qualifications for the role

So yeah, we'll see things that

May or may not be in your favor and just be aware of that

You know, we have personal stories and experience where we had personal contact with the AWS hacker

Remember we talked about that. It was crazy these things happen

She got caught because she put her resume with her full legal name on her github account. Yeah, well it was a yeah

She had her CV. Yeah, like actually loaded into github as a commit. Oh, yeah, okay, and also the data she'd stolen

Yep, right there with it. Yeah

So very convenient. Yeah

Yeah, I really had to work hard to track her down

Yeah, so just remember all of these things are connected and

Anyone doing due diligence on their candidate before a screen may or may not come across it. Yeah, that's a great point

What about resumes like we've had some talks about resume formatting and stuff like that like there's been some pretty elaborate ones

That you showed me and I'm just like whoa like are you a designer? What's going on here?

So at my last job, I would always turn around and ask the engineer behind me. What's rule number one of resumes?

I think be like no profile pictures

I don't want a picture. I don't want to know what you look like a picture tells me your gender

Yep, it tells me your ethnicity sometimes it often gives me an age range

All of these things I do not want to make an evaluation of your abilities for the job

So take a photo if you haven't on your resume take it off

Just designs anyway versus like the standard one page it really depends on the role

Yeah, I am I really don't mind a creative resume if it's for a creative role

Right now I'm hiring art designers and graphic designers and their resumes tend to be much

different from a technical resume and I really don't mind.

Obviously the design's bad.

Not going to help you.

But, you know, for the most part, I really want one page if you have less than 10 years

of experience, two pages if you have more.

You can get into a CV if you have a PhD and you've been published in multiple publications.

If you do not have a PhD, do not ever get me more than a two-page resume.

I want the nitty-gritty.

Quantify what you've done.

How many people are accessing the webpage that you've made?

How much data is being transferred through your APIs?

What size of data pipeline are you using to pull your analytics?

all of these things. How many people are you managing? How many people are in your org

if you're a leader? All of these things help me understand, right? Because you can be a

VP from Bank of America and have zero direct reports and they gave you that title so that

you could approve a purchase of $100. Oh, wow. Or you can be a VP at Bank of America and

have a hundred people in your organization. So I need to know numbers.

- Something you brought up there a lot of times,

what did you do, right?

Like that's something that you've impressed upon me

a lot of times, it's like, don't use the team.

This is like, what did you do, right?

- Which culturally can be really hard.

- Yep.

- Women in particular cultural backgrounds say we.

We did and they mean I.

(laughing)

But they're taught to not take credit.

These are meant to get you in front of the right people

in the door. So people are like, oh, I don't want to oversell. You're not going to oversell

most likely. So yeah, keep it short, keep it simple, keep it to the point, tailor it.

I know it's a lot of work. But if one company is like we're looking for angular 2.6 and you've

used all of these things, like do it, put it on there. Because any recruiter is going

to be like low hanging fruit. Yes. Right. Or if you apply to somewhere else and they're

like we want, um, JS or whatever, right?

Like give them what they want if you have it.

Don't lie.

(laughing)

- Yeah.

- You see the resumes where they're like,

I know .NET and HTML and CSS and C++.

- Really?

- Do you really?

- Are you ready to start talking about pointers

or something like this?

(laughing)

- Sounds like you're pretty heavy on the front end.

You dabble in your fun time and C++.

Yeah

What do you what do you feel about like the the big thing that I see now in resumes all the time is like the the gauges

I guess for lack of a better word, right? Like oh, I have you know

We'll say in our terms dotnet experience and you know, I'm a three and a half out of five stars in that and on

CSS I'm a five star out of five, you know that kind of thing first of all everybody's at least four stars of everything of course

So they're a waste of space on a resume you could make your

Text about your work history wider and leave off that column on the side of the page

Because literally if I pulled all of my resumes that had these like self ratings

Everyone who'd be a four and five star at everything they list. That's all bullshit anyway, right?

I had an engineer years ago that used to ask every candidate

About like on a scale of one to ten

evaluate your C++ abilities and everyone was a seven or an eight.

And if they said nine or 10, he would say, oh, so you're on like the C++

like committee.

And one guy was like, yeah, I am.

And he was like, I'm never asking that a question again.

I was like, good, cause it's a waste of time.

That's, I mean, that's what I've always understood is that if you're going to

list it on there, you better be prepared to get into it in some detail.

You can't just say, oh yeah, I took a course on plural site and now I know CSS.

like you have to have enough experience with it

that you can go into depth on that or don't even--

- Yeah, and I get a lot of resumes

that under education they'll have like every Coursera

that they've ever taken.

- Oh boy.

- And I'm like, okay, look, I know you're trying to pivot

and you're trying to show that you've done

all these side projects and stuff,

but like I don't need to know every single Coursera course

you've ever taken, it's not a college credit,

it doesn't go towards a degree, like it's a waste of--

- Doesn't matter.

- Of valuable real estate on your one page resume.

I took the Bob Ross course in CSS on YouTube.

- I got that.

Paint a happy tree hoard.

- Yeah, right.

- Very nice.

I like that.

- Yeah.

- Hey, that's great.

- We should like that.

- Hey, come on in.

Let's have a chat.

- There's no mistakes.

- Right.

- Happy little accidents.

- I do think that's telling though,

like just when you, like the,

not all the time, but it seems like

the more you're gonna put on there,

the more you're trying to like polish it up

and put some bullshit in there.

It's like, okay,

people that really know their shit are just gonna put what's important, what

matters, the numbers, and then and leave it off and you can have a simple one

page or maybe a two-pager but the ones that come in there are just a laundry

list. Oh yeah like back in 99 like here's the 18-point list of what I did in

this HTML project. Yeah. Who gives a shit anymore? Yeah like it's a little bit

different when you're at the beginning of a career right? You're an intern trying

to get a full-time job. Okay sure, list every technology you've touched. Yeah. But

But yeah, you're 20 years into your career,

you're probably not pivoting a whole lot between C++

and JavaScript and you're probably going down one path

or another and have an area of emphasis.

So emphasize it.

If you can show me depth when we're talking

about these higher level languages, great.

That's to your benefit.

But I don't want to mistakenly put you in

front of our server engineer who's a C++ expert

when you're a front end guy.

- Yep, man.

Trying to get us complete a picture

you use your can on this person.

- Yeah.

- Going back to like LinkedIn recruiter,

like, 'cause that's what you use, right?

Is called LinkedIn recruiter,

which is the recruiting side of LinkedIn,

which has all kinds of crazy things that it can do

that maybe you're not aware of.

But when you're trying to like hunt for candidates,

I know there's stuff that kind of bubbles them up

to the top a little bit, right?

I don't know if this affects actually LinkedIn recruiter,

if this is just other folks

that don't have the recruiter accounts,

but if I make a change to my profile, right?

I think that bumps you up to the top of the listings

because they assume, oh, now you're looking, right?

- Yeah, so Microsoft bought LinkedIn.

So there's definitely algorithms on their side

that have nothing to do with me

that will propagate a list of people

who are more active towards the top.

So even that even includes logging in.

So you don't necessarily have to make a change.

But if you haven't logged in to LinkedIn in 10 years,

they're probably not gonna show me your profile.

- Jim's dead, but we'll show him anyway.

- And that's unfortunate.

I've definitely seen people who are like,

oh, that person's not alive anymore.

And I'm like, oh.

So yeah, you make changes, expect an influx of spam.

You can delete everything,

but basically when it comes down to it,

Microsoft will sell your soul for an amount and they will give your email to someone for a dollar

So don't get mad at the recruiter that they have your contact information

They just paid for a product that gives it to him

Yeah, I think that's been a fascinating thing to see is like yeah, you can you can mark yourself as you don't want to be

Contacted you're not available yada yada yada, but like

Some level deeper you can you can be contacted if you pay enough money

I don't understand the mad response.

In most cases, I just don't respond.

I have responded before though.

In some cases, like you say, when they're legitimate and they look interesting, I'll

say, "Hey, listen, I'm really happy right now, but I'd like to keep your information

around and maybe we can talk if things change a little."

To me, to come back with some smart remark or like, "I screwed you for God's add to me."

Well, I think you used to work with data scientists, which are like, I mean, if you can name your

price if you're those people right now. Everybody needs them. Everybody wants them. Everybody

will pay them a bajillion dollars. So like, yeah, if you reach out to one of those people,

they're like, I got 15 bajillion emails today, like leave me the hell alone. Right?

Yeah. But like, to Mike's point, you know, if you respond, you say, look, the sound's

interesting, but I want to hang out here for at least 18 more months or whatever. I will

say, I usually will respond and say, thank you for letting me know. Please feel free

to connect with me on LinkedIn. I don't ever send the request because some

engineers get really touchy about their network. So I give them the option.

Like if you want to connect to me, please feel free. I will certainly accept your

connection. If you don't and you, you know, carefully monitor your network, I

understand. But I will put a reminder to reach out to you in 18 months.

That's cool. Doing a good job there. That's how you got to do it.

Well, I even had a very limited experience, I think through you.

Remember it was Chameleon, right?

Wasn't that your setup?

That's who, yeah, when I, the job before this, that's who I got recruited through, excuse

me, it was an agency.

And they placed me at Prep Sportswear.

Right, right.

And so, the girls there that I, two of them that I had worked with were great.

They moved on to other things now.

But, yeah, I mean, it didn't take much and we had a pretty good, they did a really good

job but try and understand where I was at in my career at the time and what

would be a good fit and they did a great match. Yeah I always tell Kyle a job is

a place and a time. You can want to work at a startup but if you're 25 and have a

new baby and another one on the way you know maybe you want a little more

stability. Right. Maybe you shouldn't be at an early stage startup that could run

out of funding. That's a great point. But call me in five years. I like that.

It's a time and a play.

Would you say a place and a time place and a time? Yeah, that's great. It's very cool. It's a good way to look at it for sure

Yeah, and it just yeah, you never know

Hopefully I never have to go through any recruiter again

I've done two different ones. So like I've done an independent which I mean everybody I think in the field

You say you'll kind of wants to go and do their independent thing, right or a lot of them do

So I've gone to him. That's where I got place. I think at ground speak way back in the day

And then yeah, I went through chameleon chameleon and and that worked out pretty well

Like I said, I had pretty good experience with that too. They kind of did a technical

Interview ish type thing with with with with one of their recruiters

Yeah, and he kind of gauged where he thought I should go and like what my my abilities were and then they kind of placed me based on that

Whereas the other guy was much more of a

He came back around because I think after I left ground speak he wanted to place me again

And so, I mean, he was trying to build that relationship as well, very similarly, but

was unsuccessful in that.

Yeah.

So I've had good experiences with the creators and I'm very excited for the one coming to

Quote Wizard from Letting Tree.

I told Christine I'd like to introduce him because I think that, you know, he's moving

from Charlotte, so we'll need to meet some people.

Why not me?

But he took my job.

I mean, Zach wants me here.

Everybody wanted you.

To be fair, everybody wanted me here.

Everybody did want you here, actually.

There was F bombs being thrown about.

Yeah.

I heard Kyle's fucking wife or something like that.

That was something.

I think your boss might have said that.

Yeah, I heard that.

It's exactly what happened.

Really true story.

Yep.

But yeah, I mean, that'd be a great connection to make there.

I guess on that note, because we're kind of getting close to the hour.

But the one thing that I wanted to bring up about our meeting with him

that I thought was interesting, you might have some information to add to this,

the data that he was using. So they were compiling like market data on each of our locations.

And so he kind of shared that deck a little bit. And I think it was CBRE maybe that had

that really amazing information on like cost of living and like we're in the tech talent

and that ranking and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, can you talk a little bit to that?

Yeah, so, you know, I've mostly been at earlier stage companies as a recruiter.

And so, unfortunately, I've had pretty limited data and information on that

scale. You can easily pay for a salary survey. But, you know, they're expensive

and they're typically pretty narrow because they want you to buy other salary

surveys. But yeah, I mean, it truly matters. Like, you know, I've used things

like pay scale as well.

You know, I'm trying to hire someone from Florida.

Well, the cost of living is 40% less, you know?

So they're making, you know, 120 there,

but that's like making 160 here, you know?

Like how do we do the math and make it work

and those sorts of things.

You know, the talent pool is definitely something

to keep in mind.

You know, Seattle's obviously very popular

and a lot of the big companies are here now

that weren't before. You got Apple here now, you got Uber and Facebook and you know, it's

no longer just Amazon and Microsoft. So, you know, I've seen crazy things in terms of the

offers and counter offers I've seen from candidates and the data that the company has doesn't

support, you know, going that direction and competing with those offers. But yeah, I have

Right now a strategy I'm working on for a marketing role out of Oakland where Oakland is very, it's part of the Bay Area.

So it's very, very high salaries.

And basically we've come to the conclusion that we should be looking for talent willing to relocate to the Bay Area.

You know, Big Fish has a specific studio in Oakland that focuses on slot machines.

So maybe we can focus on a marketing person who has slots experience, land-based slots experience,

or we can focus on someone willing to relocate that has mobile marketing experience, and then we

can build them up on either side because we're not finding this unicorn that we need.

So yeah, I mean it plays a factor for sure. I don't envy recruiters in the Bay Area at all.

the counters I see down there and the, you know, the craziness that I see, I don't, I don't envy them at all.

Because even with all of the, like, what I would say, like the decentralization of tech and you're starting to see offices in New York City now,

another Austin are, but I mean, the Bay is still number one. It's still ridiculous.

Yeah. And in the Bay, it's not unusual to see people training jobs after less than a year.

Really?

a lot, right? Seattle's getting that way. I'd say Seattle's still 18 to 24 months,

but in the Bay Area, it's really not unusual to see people go 10, 11 months and then hop.

And it's because a company will be willing to pay your sign-on back at that other company.

And that's-- Oh, that's crazy. Okay. So, yeah, there's a lot of craziness that happens in the Bay.

I know there's companies specifically looking at, you know, the Midwest. Can we start an

office there and encourage some of our people from the Bay Area to relocate

there. Sure. And attract talent to these lower cost of living places. It's

definitely something that large organizations are doing. Well to your

point about time and place I feel like it maybe you know there's a lot people

that have families there like okay I'm ready to leave the Bay now because it's

on it's I can't afford a house or whatever. Yeah I need to buy a house for less than a

million dollars. Really high bar there. Because that's not going to be a great

house. Sad but true. Talk a little bit one more thing we can and then we can

wrap up here like talk a little bit about like negotiation and in that process

because like there's been a number of times I've seen you kind of go through

negotiations with people and like you have the ability to kind of having been

in the space for a while like kind of understand when when you're kind of

getting bullshitted, I guess, for lack of a better word,

or getting used to be compared to somebody else.

So like, do you have any advice to people going through

that kind of process to help them navigate those waters?

- Yeah, so I had a candidate who was like,

here's what I'm looking for.

And then I exceeded their offer expectations

and they still countered on me.

- Oh, wow.

- I was very angry on a personal level.

But that's something too, like, before you move on is like,

you are very explicit with the candidate, right?

Like, have I met your expectations?

Have I made you happy?

Like, you ask these questions very directly.

- Yeah.

And we specifically exceeded the candidate's expectations

to show our excitement about the candidate

and really hope that like this will close the deal.

So getting a counter just really was frustrating at the time.

But, you know, I just had the conversation.

I said, look, you gave me a range.

I exceeded the entire range.

- Yeah.

- And now you're asking me to counter.

Like, I can't present that to the business

and expect them to sign off on it.

- Wasn't our agreement, that's not what we were.

- Yeah, like I already told the business

we're exceeding your expectations.

I cannot go back now and tell them

that we need to increase this offer.

- And what happened?

- They understood.

- They walked.

- No, they took it.

- They took it.

Oh, interesting.

- They signed.

- Yeah, I mean, some candidates just have to counter

and to counter in this one.

- It's been ingrained in everybody, right?

Like you must counter.

- You gotta ask for more?

- Yep.

- Which, yeah, as a recruiter, screw you.

On a personal level, I get it,

as a recruiter, you make my life hard.

So yeah, the other part is be real.

You know, if you're actively interviewing, that's fine.

I actually hope that you are doing your due diligence,

but give me a realistic timeline

of when you're going to make a decision.

- Yeah.

- I will do everything that I can to meet that timeline.

And then the worst thing that happens is like,

I bust my butt, I get you on site, I get you an offer.

And then you're like, thanks,

I'll get back to you in a week.

I'm like, really?

(laughs)

Like I just did all of this work.

I literally like, you know,

working extra hours to get you this offer.

And then you don't even respect me enough

to give me an answer.

You know, I understand things happen and whatnot,

but keep me informed throughout the process.

Hey, I'm actually not gonna get on site

with this other company until after next week.

So don't feel obligated to meet the timeline

we had talked about earlier.

Those sorts of things. - Seems fair.

- Goes a long way.

You know, my advice, a lot of people always wanna know,

like, well, when do I know to move on

or how much more should I be asking for?

I'm not gonna leave a perfectly good job

for anything less than 20% more.

- 20% more.

- If I'm miserable, obviously that number's much lower.

(laughing)

- I'm willing to negotiate, getting the hell out of here.

- But yeah, I mean, if I have a perfectly good job

and I'm not looking to go anywhere,

I'm gonna give you a high number

and it's gonna be at least 20% more.

- And I suppose I've seen other people fall into this trap

where they will offer that information up.

Well, here's where I'm at right now.

- Which legally I cannot ask you.

- Okay, so that's a good point.

You can't ask that.

And I don't know, I think the answer would be,

they should just really provide the range

that they wanna be in,

not necessarily where they're at right now.

- Yeah, and do your homework.

Go look out online, what you can see.

If you're like, I want 150K,

and the average salary is 100,

like you're just delusional in wasting everyone's time.

be realistic. And then yeah, I personally will ask you what is it going to take?

At the end of the day, if we're happy, you're happy and I need to go to the business and say,

here's what we need to present. Tell me what that is. And that's what I will do.

I'm a very different recruiter though that I'm not a sales type recruiter. There's definitely the

the type of recruiter that will low ball you and drive for you to verbally accept on the

phone and all these things.

Cut throat recruiter.

Yeah, I don't play that game.

I don't like that style.

Yeah.

It is not in my best interest to pay you less.

I want you to be happy and comfortable working here.

So if I low ball you, you'll probably look sooner.

Yeah, you're not helping yourself.

No.

That's a short play that doesn't really work for anyone.

to get back to the relationships thing like you want them to come back around.

So if you lobal them, they're not going to come back to you.

- Do it when I'm done. - Yeah.

And if I'm really at the upper end of my budget and I can't get what you need

to be where I'm at, I will let you know that I've done everything that I can.

And, you know, let you know the conversations I've had with the hiring manager

and be realistic about like, look, this is what we can do now.

But in six to 12 months, you could expect an increase or you could expect a title

change. I mean we understand that we have to give you a reason to be here. And so

you know I will be very transparent with Candidates. I don't understand why you

wouldn't be. Like these are decisions that change people's lives, can make or

break, you know, a family. And so I don't understand the the point of trying to get

someone to accept the lowest amount possible. I have definitely presented

people with offers that far exceeded their expectations because they were

not asking market rate.

Wow.

Um, I honestly, if I, in a perfect world, you know, we would have accurate salary

surveys that I could just offer you mid.

It would be more than you're currently making.

And I wouldn't even know what you're currently making.

It wouldn't matter to be easy and.

Yeah.

No haggle formulas.

I would love a formula.

Compensation, I think is like something else that we could do a whole

another, whole another show on if we wanted to.

There's like so much to unpack there in different types of ways of doing compensation and bonuses and all that kind of silly stuff

But we're gonna ignore rain's last comment there. He's wondering something. I'm not gonna repeat on all right

But really really appreciate the conversation good good cover saw me rain. Yeah, it was quick. No, don't call

All right, thanks for everybody for listening. Yeah, thanks for coming on the show

Our work is provided by urn a the gentle giant check out more of his artwork at

www.coffeecodecast.com/dentalgiant.

Check us out on Facebook, Twitter,

email us at coffeecodecast@gmail.com.

The podcast is of course available anywhere

you get your podcasts.

Find all this and more on our website.

- And give us a review.

Your reviews, your retweets, that all helps us

get more exposure on the cast here.

And so, coffeecodecast.com/review

or on Twitter or Facebook

or whatever other social media site.

us a shout out we really appreciate that and as always thanks for listening. We'll see you here next week. Bye-bye.

[Music]

47: Mo Podcast Mo Problems

Kyle Johnson — Sun, 08 Sep 2019 07:00:00 GMT

47: Mo Podcast Mo Problems

0:00

/63:28

We had some technical difficulties getting the live show off the ground this week on the podcast, so we were late. We talk about how we are looking at switching up the format of the show a little bit. More mileage and travel talk. We follow up on the Impossible Whopper taste test. Mike gives us the latest Spinn Coffee updates, we talk about the newly announced Sonos Move, and more!

Cold Open
Theme Music
Mo Podcast Mo Problems
More Guests
Mo Travel Mo Miles
Followup
- Impossible Whopper decision
- Spinn Coffee Update
Sonos Move
AMC & Netflix at Odds
UPS Quietly Testing Autonomous Trucks
Satellite Traffic Congestion
Theme Music

Full Transcript

Time speaking of recurring pieces. Hey, we have a spin coffee update, but um, do we have it?

We need a special coffee grinder sound or something

All right

Yeah

Don't get too excited guys. It's not I haven't given you the update yet. It's not that exciting. All right

[Music]

(upbeat music)

Welcome, Mike, to a problematic episode 47 of the Coffee and Code Cast.

This is a bunch of bullshit.

It's 6.23.

Yeah, this took a little bit.

We had some Facebook trouble this morning.

This morning.

What am I talking about?

Yeah.

Feels like it's been a long time dealing with this horseshit hair.

Yeah.

Some Facebook troubles were here and were live.

It's episode 47 of the Coffee and Code Cast, a tech podcast where we talk about neither

coffee or code, and I'm Kyle Johnson.

Yeah.

here and today on the show

I had a lot of follow-up to do here. We're gonna talk about a little follow-up with the impossible whopper

spin coffee update and

Crypto recap from our great session with Brent Lyman with coin me that we had a few weeks ago and

A lot of good news. So it's been a couple weeks. We got a lot of catch up on so

That's what we got for today

Yeah, stupid Facebook. We tried to get our streaming app working just as we normally do every single week

and nothing would connect. We tried multiple methods and so we eventually

just had to fall back to YouTube because nothing was working. I could do it

through my phone. Because YouTube works. Yeah, YouTube works. Well, and there's all

kinds of shit going on right now too. I think there's something, there's mostly

some solar flares or something going on because this beautiful road board, if

road, you know, we got to get ahold of road too because there's a touchscreen on

this soundboard that we use for our recordings and last week came into the

office, fired it up and screens black. Yeah it still works. Yeah, it still works.

Touch the screen if you know where the buttons are. Yeah, if you remember where they were,

then you can do that. So I put in a service request a week ago to

road and they must be really busy down there because I haven't heard anything

back from them yet. Yeah. So I'm a little here, I'm a little agitated today, you know.

Like there's a few things going on my $600 board took a shit

Kind of and then you know Facebook streaming is not working. This thing's telling me there's no internet connection

We're trying to use different applications. We use the iPad which is sling studio. Yeah

OBS studio we tried OBS studio the note no bueno and on top of that on top of all this shit

You know, I just came off of like a 45 hour fast. Oh the stress is gonna make you want to eat

Oh, I just want all the carbs. You need me to pass you one of these beers

It looks delicious. I'm fucking mad. I can't have a beer right now

Show is not gonna be the same without beer. We need to go to the one of those axe throwing fucking places

Just cancel the show bring your bear. We're gonna throw some axes and I'm gonna break some shit. That would be great

I'll feel better and

You guys won't have a show to listen to today, but I'll feel better about things

Well, the good news is we always have virtual beers. Would you like me to crack you one of those three of them?

Does that make you feel better? Yeah, there you go, buddy. We need some yeah, I should just do some tequila

that'd be better. Oh, I have some of that in my office. I could go make that happen if you would

prefer. It's okay. We're already 23 minutes into this thing. 23 minutes. Oh, well, we start 23

minutes late. Late. Yeah. Yeah, late. I don't know where we get comments from people because

normally we get comments on Facebook, but however, we're not on Facebook. So I got slack, I guess.

They should be able to comment on YouTube as well on the live video feed itself. I was wondering

about that. I ended up, I didn't see that.

Feel free to comment. However, also on the Facebook post that I made for this particular

entry, wherever you want to post, we'll keep an eye on all of it.

I just don't see the option to comment on there, but...

Maybe I have that disabled. So if that's the case, jump over to Facebook, make comments

there, jump on our Slack, make comments there.

Anywhere that you can reach us, teams.

We'll figure it out. Join the quote wizard teams.

I'll give you a special authentication code.

Yeah.

Don't listen to Springer, all right?

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

Our IT might not be so happy with that.

Yeah, I'm a little frazzled, but I'm doing better now.

That's fine.

Everything's working good here.

Well, it's been a long time.

When was the last time we were on YouTube?

Oh, man.

A few months ago.

That has been a long time.

I know.

It's been a while.

Once we moved to Facebook, we never went back.

We tried.

I know.

Well, and this is a work in progress, but we do have plans soon, hopefully, to...

We just need time, we've been busy, we've been really busy.

We need some time to figure out how to get

the multi-stream setup, that way we can go to everything.

- That would be the ideal solution,

but Facebook is a little picky about having third-party

apps streaming to their platform, and I guess rightfully so,

but they make it prohibitively hard to do that.

'Cause I have a whole system setup that can make that work,

but because of their hoops that they make you run through,

it's been pretty tough.

- Who the hell knows what we're gonna be casting on

next week, but hopefully we can figure this stuff out

be back on our normal schedule here. Well, and hopefully we're one of the things

we're talking about a little bit with our episode not last week two weeks ago.

Yeah. With, sorry, I'm drawing a blank on his name. Brent, yes. Mr. Liman, yeah.

Everybody, we got some really great feedback on that and everybody thought

that was a good format. Listening to us talk about Tesla news and what not for,

and some Larry King news. That's right, breaking news, Larry King's seventh

divorce or ninth divorce? I forgot I'm in it. 800 kids. I think he had three more

since last time. It's only been a couple of weeks, but hey man, it should have been

fast in these days. We got great feedback on that episode and I think we're

gonna try and move to more of a guest format as much as we can. Obviously,

that's a little bit difficult to line up week after week after week, but where we

can, we'll bring guests on as much as we can. We have a pretty good list going

already. We're gonna try and expand on that. Yeah. So yeah, I think that'll be

fun. If you have any ideas for guests that you would think that you know

that may be interesting, whatever, send them our way.

- I agree, I concur.

So that would be, my hope is that we could start

queuing them up and flip it around a little bit.

So right now where we maybe have one guest every

six episodes, I don't know what our streak is lately,

it hasn't been that great.

- Probably more than that.

- More than that, that we could,

anyway, try to have a majority of our episodes

with guests and then we can kind of do some filler

or special topics that we just wanna cover.

I mean, because let's be honest, pretty much all we do is filler.

That's all we do.

It's all filler all the time.

That'd be our new, that's our new motto.

There you go.

The coffee codecast all filler all the time.

Yeah, I like that better.

You know, I think, I think that there's only so much to say there and

content's getting a little tired sometimes.

But, you know, if we could talk about Tesla and all the other cool shit,

spin coffee in the first 20 minutes and have somebody as dynamic as Brent

Lyman, come on and talk about crypto.

I think we got ourselves a show.

I agree. And we can get into some other topics that are non-tech too. So I'm excited for that.

I think that'll be fun. It'll bring some unique perspectives. Yeah, cool stories.

Agreed, agreed, agreed. So we're working on that. It's a work in progress. We'll probably keep doing what we're

doing until we can get that rolling. I mean, we'll start bringing on more guests as soon as we can.

Yeah, travel has been the biggest issue as of late. So I was out of town last week, which is why we didn't do the show.

I'll be coming I'll be out of town again another

Couple of times before the end of the year you're getting some status this year

But well the problem is none of those flights have been counting for anything

The recent flight all the way across the country was not on Delta. That was American, right? That was American. Yeah, you got to get yourself a

Put why don't you just put my Alaska code on that trip? I did find I have an Alaskan account Alaska miles account

Do you but I don't ever use it so like could I get those miles? I think it's not being my name too

who can't just leave.

- Can you get 'em post?

So like the flight's already done.

Can I go in and say like, oh no,

that flight should have been applied to this mileage number?

- So that's a good question and the answer is yes you can.

So you can go back retroactively,

I think 90 days on Alaska.

Maybe longer, I don't remember.

Every airline has their own policy,

but at least 90 days you can go back and fill it out.

I had to do it before.

I think if it's in a certain timeframe,

like 30, 60 days like that,

then you can just do it online.

If it's longer than that, then you have to fill out a form

and you might have to send them in a ticket stub

or something like that.

- In Alaska and American are partners?

- They are, yeah.

So I mean, that trip to Charlotte would be

a hefty mileage run.

It's probably good for about 5,000 miles.

- Well, I'll have to look into that.

- So I would certainly go back and get the credit for it,

even if you don't use it.

- So no, you can't have my miles.

(laughing)

- I tried.

(laughing)

But if your account's not active,

you have to be an MVP gold member

if you want to redeem those miles.

Yes, I'm sorry. I didn't tell you that. But fortunately I am. So yeah, if it doesn't work out for you, lucky

not so lucky for you. That's bad.

Well, it's good. Yeah, you so you're yeah, you got to figure that out. I'm surprised Delta doesn't go down there.

They go to Atlanta.

They do, but you'd have to connect. And it was deemed that we did not we wanted a direct flight apparently.

See, if I had it all over to do again, I would book my own shit.

Just book your own shit and say, Hey, I'll meet you guys there. What time do I got to be there?

Exactly next time. I won't make that mistake again. I'm supposed to be going back to the sack at the end of the month

So I think I got another mileage run come up there. That's not very many miles

Oh, no a thousand miles. You get a minimum 500 each way. So okay 1,000 miles

I'm almost at MVP on Alaska, but I've been cheating with Delta. So that's why it's a little difficult this year to get it

On the topic though, there was an email that came out today from Singapore Airlines

Well, it was in the Seattle Times. Seattle Times breaking news story. I get like 850 breaking news emails from them every day

And this particular piece of breaking news was about a Singapore Airlines flight

It's the new longest flight from SeaTac Airport and it goes from

Is it to Singapore

Which airport was it I can't remember the airport now gosh darn it we were just talking about this earlier today

Anyway, there's a new direct flight

Let's just pretend it was Singapore. It's on Singapore Airlines. That makes sense

It was a 16-hour flight and it's 8,100 miles

one way

nice, I think that's interesting because the

Delta has just recently quit flying from where was it because it affected our trip to Asia here coming up to where I

Want to say it was we're flying Korean. It was Singapore to Narita to Narita

Yeah, yeah, so so Delta no longer flies that South Korea there. Yeah. No, no, Rita's in Japan. Sorry. Yeah

And Delta no longer flies that so we got bumped on to I think Korean Airlines, but you were saying that yeah

But yeah, that's a pretty big that's pretty healthy flight there 16 hours. He said 15 hours and 50 minutes

8,010 miles. Okay, so I was a little short there, but

Yeah, the Singapore's Changi Changi Airport longest non-stop flight from Seattle

So when are you taking the run? Well the mileage run thread was blown up today because I was talking about that one of the guys is

mileage red front mileage run

Thread yeah, there's about six of us. Is this a text chain? It's on WhatsApp. Oh, yeah

yeah, it's on WhatsApp and

One of the guys is in the market for MVP. He's close. He's in the running for MVP gold this year and he was

Contemplating could I get 75k and I was like well

If you went to Singapore once or twice then you could yeah, what's the cost of that flight by the way?

I'd looked into that already

You can do an economy ticket for about eight hundred fifty bucks in octahs

I was looking at dates in November and that was the cheapest one I saw so hey

So for the small amount of sixteen hundred bucks you could be MVP gold right yeah

Now you could do economy for like fifteen fifty or something like that and you get a or not economy economy plus

I think that gives you a different air code. So depending on what your seat, you know, your seat code is

Oh, right. They give you a bonus per based on your class

If you were in first class you would get a hundred percent of the miles so sixteen thousand and then you'd get another

50% bonus just for

class of service and

Then there's another one that they match. It's like a matching one

200% hmm, so that's what it is like the

You get 200% bonus for being in first class and you get a 50% bonus if you're like an MVP already or something

I don't know. It was a lot of miles. Yeah

40,000 it was a ton of miles excellent

Well, that's been the other problem that I've had when I flew to Nashville. I flew on miles. Yeah, so got no mile bonus for that

So all the big trips that I've taken they've been zero miles

You got to do miles and money, you know miles and monies of the ticket is that right?

Well, if you want to get mileage credit and you want to use some miles then yeah, it's not always a good deal

If it's a short trip well, it doesn't matter what kind of trip it is

But sometimes they'll get you what I found to be really good. Sometimes it's just doing a one-way

Each way with miles and money. Sometimes they have a good deal where you can get you can find a 10,000 miles and

I don't know 80 bucks hmm or something like that, you know

It just depends it gets really squirrely. I wish there was a way that we could get all this data

I would write an app that would just pour over all of this and figure it out and say well

If you just did a miles and money on this one you did this many miles and da da da da da da

Sounds like something that could be there could be some money there

There could be until until that thing went live and everybody found out about it and then they're like you

I'm like we don't want you giving away all the secrets. Yeah, we like when they people I don't use their

Miles efficiently and spend too much money

All right enough about miles we need to move on here, right? Yeah, we got some follow-up

- Oh, good friend of the show and long time listener.

- Simon. - Simon.

- Yeah, Simon reached out to us tonight

while we were finishing up our show notes.

- Yeah, so he made the show notes.

That's what happens when you reach out to us,

you get on the show notes.

When you talk about the show notes,

you get on the show notes.

So yeah, it was a good conversation with Simon.

He's doing really well, recently promoted.

So I want to give him a shout out for that.

Congratulations.

He's been at the, well, I don't know if I should give that

away, but yeah, he's doing really well.

And he had follow-up questions on our taste test episode of the Impossible Whopper.

I don't know how we missed this, but it was a really good question.

He was wondering, well, basically, if the prices were not an issue, if it was the same

price, which one would we get?

Well, and I think we kind of answered it without answering it directly, right?

I said, basically, if you gave me the Impossible Whopper and said this was a whopper, I would

eat it.

And you wouldn't know the difference, probably.

Right.

And after that episode actually aired, my wife did the same thing.

Like we went and got, I got a regular, no, I got a, I think we didn't get the two,

we didn't get the original and the impossible.

We just got her an impossible whopper.

And I think I had a regular burger of some variety, but she didn't know the

difference.

Like she was just like it tastes like a whopper would taste, right?

So I would be very much on the, on the side of, you know, I would, I would go for

the impossible whopper, all things considered.

If it's the same price, same everything, like, you know, and you're not doing a

side-by-side taste test, you're never gonna know the difference.

I would agree. And I think that's where we fell short. We did the side-by-side,

and when you're really trying to be discerning about it, you're gonna pick

up little differences in it. But had it been a blind taste test, I probably would

have said, "Oh, nice whopper, thanks." Right. Yeah, if I had a, you know, a super

palette, like a wine tasting palette, and I'd be like, "Hmm, tastes like..."

Rubber tires. Yeah. Very nice. Exactly. Seaweed. Seaweed. Anyway, that was a good

question and then so yeah go out and get one if you haven't yet get all the

impossible whoppers I mean the shit's exploding so we talked about KFC on your

no that happened while we were on break so did it really yeah we should have

added that to the notes KFC now is doing impossible chicken nugs chicken nugs

this is that's gonna be really interesting and I don't know if there's a

kid is there a KFC down in Soto yeah it's the Taco Bell so we're gonna have to do

this again too we'll go down there make sure it's not a game day this time that

was kind of hectic last time.

This one I'm actually really fascinated with because like burger texture is one thing.

Yeah.

But chicken is going to be a whole different.

Chicken.

Yeah.

Unreal, dude.

The thing that I think that has going for it though is the breading.

Like they can flavor the breading any way they want.

Yeah, that's true.

And it's probably going to just take on that flavor, right?

Whereas the burger, you have to kind of, all the toppings and the sauce.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Everything.

So yeah, the nugs.

This would be the first, if I had those, I think that'd be the first time that I've

been to KFC probably since I live in the Midwest.

Wow.

I think.

I can't think of a time I've been to KFC anytime,

anytime in the recent history.

No, yeah.

I can't, I don't even remember.

Yeah.

Even going to the KFC Taco Bell Drive-Thru,

I'm going Taco Bell, man.

Come on.

You got to.

You have no choice.

Well, and especially when you're drunk at 2 in the morning.

Yeah, I don't want a greasy bucket of chicken.

I want a bunch of tacos, jarrupas, and--

Yeah.

all that good shit.

Yeah.

Like the only time that I can remember eating KFC,

like my parents would sometimes like take us out

to the lake and we'd get a bucket of chicken

and a bunch of sides and we'd have a picnic out by the lake

and that's like the last time I can remember eating KFC.

I think that's what, yeah, I think that's probably the same.

Yeah.

Is it child and maybe perhaps in college at some point

in time, although I was mostly at Alvarado's

playing erotic photo hunt.

Heck yeah.

Do you know, that just reminded me.

I looked at our stats recently.

Yeah.

And if you look at our stats

and what is the most popular pages on our website.

So if you've ever been to our website, it's pretty simple.

There's the homepage.

How much to look at?

There's the homepage, there's the about page,

and then there's a page per episode.

Guess which one is number two?

Shut up.

(laughing)

The erotic photo hunt.

Erotic photo hunt, people are looking that up.

What is this?

Yeah, no, I think they're just looking

to find where you can play it.

What if we could, we gotta link into that somehow.

I mean, we should be able to do a marketing play here.

we could like put a site together with all the places to play and have that

link on our page and say if you want to know where to play or purchase erotic

photo on click this link here maybe we just got to make our own erotic photo

hunt game yeah hey we're never mind I'm not gonna go there yeah we're soliciting

volunteers that want to be on the next version boy all right let's move on from

that now what is this next thing I don't even know what this is crypto

recap. Oh, there's not much to cover here. I just wanted to give him a shout out.

We already did a little bit earlier today and I just thought like you said it

well. Like it was just that we got more responses from that one than I think any

other one. Not only that but the live show we had a lot of people

jumping in on that one. That was our biggest episode that live at least that

we've had ever. And I had feedback from multiple people saying that was our best

episode ever as well. So if you haven't checked it out yet go back to episode

46 check out the cryptocurrency podcast Brent and Lyman coined me a crypto Bitcoin advisor and

Well, I was what I was thinking is that it'd be fun to have him back on a more regular

Cadence so maybe if there's certain events like the having event that you you know, we talked about have him back for that

Right. I think that'd be good. It's some follow-up with with with some of the guests

Yeah, I have some follow-up get some more questions

maybe go a little more in depth because you know, I learned a lot from the episode. I think a lot of people listening did too

But it was very elementary from his point of view and there's so much more going on that he'd like to cover and get into

Different things like that. So I think it'd be fun to have him come

I don't know maybe another six weeks whenever there's a special event, but it'd be fun to have him back on here every so often

Yeah, I think it's a mixture of the two podcasts. So we tried to do another podcast at one point

That was kind of more of a guest format exactly like that

We named it 30 minutes with us and we did one and it was great

I actually really enjoyed it and I thought it was good, but it was a much higher production value than what this is

That took a long time for you to put together. Yeah

And and it probably didn't have to be that way that was probably more on me than anything

But I think we can incorporate the same thing into this show and kind of bring more guests on and make it more

Interesting and more a wide breadth of topics. I think so. Yeah, I agree

Well, and that's one way we get to having guests all every week is if we have a few recurring pieces like that then

Gets a little easier to schedule. It's not just one offs all the time

Speaking of recurring pieces. Hey, we have a spin coffee update. Buttoon do it

We need a special coffee grinder sound or something

All right

Don't get too excited guys

Haven't given you the update yet. It's not that exciting. All right

Well, you can decide for yourselves

So it's been about a month

Since the last update this one the August update came on August 30th

So they got it in just in the nick of time though. Those guys have been a little squirrely with their updates, but

Yep. Yep school year is off to a great start apparently here. Yep, and what do we got here?

Investor factory tour so I can always tell with the length of these things like that the

Probability of shipping, you know like the eminence of shipping and I'd say based on the length of this one

There's nothing she made anytime soon

This investor factory tour, so they've been busy looking for more investors and trying to show them

the production facilities in the Shenzhen. Very cool. There's some

animated gifts dropping parts on a conveyor belt. That's kind of fun.

So that's what they're doing in August.

This guy here is doing some plastic injection molding and showing how the machine works.

Which is good to see so they're actually making parts. That's that's always a promising sign, right? That's that's a bonus

How are they making parts when like last week there are two weeks ago? They were testing shipping shipping was imminent

That's all they said, but you know like maybe maybe this is old footage, you know, they're just like getting us excited again

So yeah, they're doing that. Oh

There's an important update here the spin logo

they oh

This is now this is fun. So

they

Ooh, they did the rub test. Are you familiar with the rub test?

No, I'm not. Tell me about the rub test, Mike.

Well, we can take this offline too here. Maybe this is not appropriate for all audiences.

But no, they have a new logo that's debossed and it's on the back of the machine. And they

wanted, as part of their quality control process, they implemented what they call the rub test

to determine the amount of scuffer abrasion damage that might occur to the sticker during

shipment, storage or handling. I mean the level of detail that these guys are going into

is you just don't see this it's unparalleled. I mean Tesla doesn't go through this kind of

rigorous testing that these guys at spin do here. So I mean this is just a very clearly a very robust

a very powerful machine quality testing on the scales that you've never heard of before.

You're very sold on this. They're briefings here giving they're doing their job.

I mean, this is no bullshit.

Listen to this quote.

The rub tester rubs two printed surfaces against each other

face to face.

Important to know.

In the same plane at the same speed, 60 RPM.

Under a constant rubbing pressure,

the custom developed rub test equipment.

I mean, they had to buy equipment to fucking do this shit,

man.

It wasn't just like a couple guys like brushing up

against the side of this thing.

They have special equipment that runs at 60 RPMs,

face to face, rubbing.

Okay. Can also be used to evaluate chrome transfer from the coated surface during

rubbing and is used by spin to evaluate the rub resistance of the logo sticker.

I mean, that's a rigorous process with special machining just to make sure the

fucking sticker doesn't fall off.

This is why you don't have your machine because they're spending more time

testing rubbing.

What's the over under now that it comes in like doesn't come in 2020.

I mean, I'm really worried.

We should put so we should have like a bingo game where everybody could put

their bets on when Mike's gonna get the spin coffee machine.

That would be awesome. I want to take dates whoever's the

closest to get some kind of prize. We don't have shirts or

swag. We have stickers. Yeah, I'll have to come up with

something. Anyway, let me hurry, I'll hurry along here because

there's just so much to cover. But you know, tooling. Yeah,

yeah, continuing the tooling. 20 colleagues are working on this

huge project. They got other departments doing some things.

The first off tool, the fought inspection. Our first tools have

been created. Now it's time to inspect them. So they're doing

and that stuff. Hand polishing the steel tools. That's got to be done by hand. They actually

mentioned they have a picture of this woman here. The tool department manager informed

us that this woman has worked as a hand polisher since 1994 and she's one of China's most

experienced polishers. Wow. The talent. The talent. They got the nose. They got the coffee

nose. This fucking guy that they found somewhere that can sniff coffee. And they got the rub

test machine and the hand polisher since 94. She looks like she's 94. She's

probably been doing this a long time. Oh, there's even like animated graphics here.

Oh, they're all, dude, there's all kinds of gifts. Yeah, this, I mean, somebody spent a

lot of time putting this on the... Oh, that's precision rubbing right there. Yeah, that's

right. And that's the, that's her badge. It's like proof that she actually, you know,

is a real factory worker. Yeah. The tool construction department. Yeah, they're doing

some stuff. Got a man this thing's so long. Grinder adjust ring tool. The complexity of

tools how they got to get the grinder ring just right. Yep. They're showing how the injection

molding works here. Giving you can basically get a just short of a PhD on how injection molding

works by reading these letters here. I think I'm gonna if I ever get hang up my hat as a developer,

I think I could go to Shen Zen and fucking build an injection molding machine based on the details

they provided these emails here. I mean, these are like schematics and all kinds of diagrams

and moving parts. Yeah, I don't know what else to say, man. There's a water tank that

comes apparently you can put water in this fucking machine when it shows up. They're

working on that. That's good. That's good. I don't know. There's other things. Good.

Nothing about shipping on this one. Until the next update. Thank you for your continued

support spin team. Well, that's good information. I mean, I'm glad they have top talent.

top rubbing talent, buffing talent.

- You just don't find that anywhere else.

- It's true.

- You don't hear Elon Musk talking about

the talent that they have rubbing the tools

and all that kind of stuff.

Making sure that door handles don't wear off

after 100,000 uses.

- Yeah.

- You know, all that kind of shit.

They just throw it out in the wild

and they charge $60,000 for it, they hope it works.

- Yeah, no crash tests or anything.

- Unbelievable.

- You don't need that.

- That's the shits for amateurs, man.

- Exactly.

Well, I tease and cajole, but you know, I'm really excited for my spin coffee maker.

One day it'll come.

Hopefully when I'm still around on this earth, I can brew a cup of coffee.

In the meantime, I have to use my primitive tools, my Cuisinart, uh,

mill grinder and my French press.

Well, it still makes coffee.

That's the, uh, the advantage to that.

That was a very exciting update, man.

I feel like that was just, I had more passion behind that than any other.

You did.

You say you sold it.

You sold it hard.

I think pre-orders are just like off the chain now.

Like I think their hotline is blowing up.

- I think we'll make a segment out of that

and we'll spin for sponsorship again with that segment.

'Cause you were passionate.

- I mean, if you read that email too

and you saw the GIFs the way I saw it the first time,

you would be passionate too.

I mean, there's clearly a lot of heart going into this

and well, we wish them well

in all the projects that they're working on over there.

- All right, let's move on to the news, shall we?

- Please.

(upbeat music)

I'm gonna skip over.

I'm gonna go down to number three in the news.

- Which one is this?

- This is the new Sonos move.

- Look at you just jumping around here.

- Yeah man, we running out of time.

- I'm shaking it up.

Now we got time.

We're about 30 minutes into this.

- Oh, very cool.

Okay, Sonos move.

I'm excited about this.

So I love Sonos as you know.

I have lots of them in my-

- You have so many.

This is a very cool update.

I love this. Yeah. So this is a leak actually. This hasn't even technically been announced

although I think it was supposed to be announced on the 26th. But it's a portable Sonos speaker

which currently none of their lineup allows for this. They're all plugged in. I like this

design. This is very cool. So it's very similar to you have some of these too. Now you just

recently joined the Sonos family. I do. I have a pair of the Play ones. Is that right?

Sonos ones. Sonos ones. Yeah. The newer models, right? Yeah. The newer. Yeah. Two Sonos ones.

with Alexa integration.

- That's the one, yeah, I got two of those.

- Yeah, so basically they're creating

yet another version of that.

And it sits on a dock and has a battery in it,

and so it charges.

You can use it via Wi-Fi,

which is the way that all of them work currently.

But you can also switch it into a Bluetooth mode,

just like any other kind of portable Bluetooth speaker

that you might buy on the market.

- Very handy feature, so dual purpose there.

- So yeah, it can work in your home,

just like any other of the Sonos products that you have.

Or if you wanna take it to the beach or whatever,

You know, you can take it and use it with Bluetooth on your phone away from Wi-Fi

on battery mode and it'll work.

I like that a lot because you don't have to have the app.

If one of your friends wants to play music,

they don't have to download Sonos app and Wi-Fi connection,

all that whatever the shit is required, you know?

That's true. And it supports other things too though.

It supports like AirPlay, just like all the other ones do.

So I think anybody with an iPhone should be able to theoretically connect to it

via AirPlay. Oh, nice. But yes,

Bluetooth would work as well if anybody wants to connect to that as well.

The form factor is very similar to what the Sonos ones are. I think it's a little bit squished, but I think kind of wider.

The dimensions I saw were larger. Yeah, yeah for sure.

I believe it was. Yeah, it was. The depth probably about the same, but I think the height and the depth.

Height and width? All that shit. Everything but the depth.

The volume.

It's bigger. The volume is bigger.

The volume, yeah.

Yeah, it passed the rub test apparently because here it is on sale right now. You can buy one well

I don't think you can buy one. Oh, they're almost out. I

Haven't seen anywhere that they're that they've been announced officially yet

This is all leaked information and what people have gathered by looking at some of the screenshots and photos of the product

I'm just spreading a lot of misinformation

Yeah, you're excited man, it's fine. You got excited about your spin coffee and you're excited about the sonos

So all these things I like to spend money on things that I can't actually fucking get my hands on right now

Like I'm a you know, I like buying stuff and then three years later. It shows up like that's a nice surprise

Yeah, that's great. So another thing that's nice about this is like I said

It has a docking station. So when it's at home if you're just using it in Wi-Fi mode just like any other sonos

Mm-hmm. It can sit in the docking station get its power from that and and run

indefinitely

Also, it's charging while it's sitting on the docking station, but if you're away as well, you can use a USB C

Power cable to charge it up as well

Which I think is a good move because yeah if you're on an extended trip or something like that and you want to

Use it for a while at least you can top off. They've covered every angle at this product

I'm really impressed with all these features and this is probably one of the things that that Sonos got dinged up the most on like

They use it as a feature because like they're like hey at least when when I walk outside my

Music doesn't stop playing because I went away from the speaker too far, right?

But on the same token like everybody uses Bluetooth speakers. They're everywhere

So I think this is a good move and a good way to get themselves into into the market with that kind of a speaker as well

And maybe get people into the door that maybe wouldn't before right now

They're gonna get one. Yeah, and they're gonna be like, oh man, this is amazing

I can play it via Wi-Fi and it'll keep playing even if I run around the room or out of the house or whatever

So maybe it'll bring more people in the door to to sonos

well

Why not because I think there's a lot of value in this product just as an outdoors as a portable

indoor outdoor speaker and

You know back in the day it was it's been a while now, but I bought one of the older Bose models for my parents and it was a

similar idea where he had a dock that plugged into the wall with USB and then it just like you just pick it up and

Undock it. Yep, and I thought that was very cool for its time

It was one of the only ones like that a lot of these are just you got to plug it in to charge it

And this was really really slick. So love that they did that and by having all these different connectivity options

That's really cool, too

But if the bonus is if you have a sonos system then boom it just integrates and then bam

You can have three speakers playing four speakers playing and I would use this for instance on our rooftop deck

So currently we have a sonos play five that sits up on the landing and I have to like drag it out every time

We want to use it which is I mean it's fine, but it's not convenient. No

Whereas this guy we could just take him out take him off the dock bring him out onto the deck and and he would connect to the

Wi-Fi just like any other speaker and we could play whatever we want bring it back in set him set him on the dock

And he charges up overnight. Yep. So I think this is a great product

And I think I definitely will probably pick one up much to my wife's sugar in oh

She won't be that upset. She well, she doesn't think we need anymore. I disagree. How we have enough a technology in the house

Yeah

And she married this, you know, she was she knew what she was getting into. Yeah, that's right

So yeah, I'm really excited about this. I August 26th was when they expect expected the presser for this

But I haven't seen any additional details on it since then bummer. So

Hopefully comes out soon and hopefully they come out with the outdoor waterproof speakers

That's been on my list for a very long time hot item. Yeah, that would be very nice to have you can get them through

I think sonance which is like a partner. Yeah, they're really expensive really. That's too bad. Yeah

Or sonance, I don't know how you pronounce them. I think it's sonance. Yeah, it doesn't matter

I used to do that kind of stuff, but I'm not sure how you pronounce that one. Yeah

Yeah, that seems a little surprising that they wouldn't have already come up with outdoor speaker. That's a pretty popular

One well, and I thought I had read at some point back in the day that even their CEO had said they were working on it

But again, that might have been like more of a partnership with some other third party because they're also releasing stuff through Ikea

Mm-hmm. So they have some cheaper like a hundred and sixty or a hundred and twenty dollars speakers that I they can get through IKEA

Like one of them is a standalone one of them is like the base of a lamp. I love that

I've said there they have a hole go ahead. Sorry. No, that's all I

Yes, just the base of the lamp and then obviously put your lamp on top of it

But so that the you know, it's not another speaker laying around. It's actually kind of part of your decor

Well, I want to just add that IKEA has done a lot recently to expand and create a smart home

division and a whole line of smart home products including the Sonos integration

I love those like the lamps the whole thing everything they're working on very

cool stuff and I like IKEA's products anyway and I think this is just a really

smart addition to what they've got their offering over there I think that's

pretty smart yeah oh oh shit there you go buddy those three bears you gave me

like really fucking starting to hit now so yeah have another oh boy okay moving

on what do you want to talk about next? I want to jump up one since we're jumping

around everywhere let's talk about the saw about AMC and Netflix. What do we got

going on with Netflix? Yeah well this you know so here's the deal like Netflix

has done some premieres with the theaters right it started out just being on

Netflix only and then everybody would have to get a subscription but recently

they've started to put movies out in theaters first for a pre-release I guess

you would call it. So people could go to the theater and see a Netflix film. And then at

some point later on, they could watch it at home. And so the you have you heard of the

new Scorsese movie that's coming out the Irishman? No. So this sounds awesome. I read this in

the New York Times a few weeks ago. And I was just excited about the movie. So that's why

I started reading it. And I had no idea it was about Netflix or any of that shit. I didn't

know it was a Netflix movie. But yeah, it's Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. And there's

some, there's some really cool stuff in this movie. So it covers many decades. Okay, first

of all, I just go and say that. And so they're using these new special effects. Did you see

the there's a Will Smith movie that just came out? And I don't know the name of it. But

they're using the same technique. So they can do de aging now digitally. I don't know

Have you seen this?

- I've seen similar, yeah, yeah, yeah,

I've seen similar things in small format kind of videos,

but nothing to this.

- So it's the Will Smith movie where he's like fighting

himself when he's younger or some shit,

and but he looks like he did when he was on

Fresh Prince of Belor.

- That's crazy.

- And so they went through a making of kind of a thing

and they showed how they do this and it's crazy.

I don't understand how it all works,

but they put a bunch of tracking dots on his face,

like probably 50 dots on his face,

And then the computers will track his movements,

whatever his nose, eyes, lips, everything's doing.

And then they can apply a skin to that,

which is his younger self.

And then whenever it moves, it moves like he does.

And so yeah, it looks like he's 20 years younger,

30 years younger.

- That's insane.

- Fucking crazy.

- In real time.

- In real time, man.

So, I mean, I think it's probably done in processing.

I don't think it's actually like real time, real time.

But he's doing the movements at his current age

with all these dots.

And then they go back and they figure it out.

- Yep.

- But it doesn't matter.

It's him, and it's very realistic.

Anyway, they're using the same D-Age technology

to make these guys look younger too.

So they're showing a picture on this article here

of a younger, you know, Robert De Niro.

And it's just kind of crazy what technology is doing

these days.

Talk about deep fakes.

I mean, this is like crazy shit.

- Yeah.

If you want to see like kind of on this line, I think maybe you even shared it,

but this Bill Hader Tom Cruise Deep Fake.

Is that, have you seen that one?

Yeah.

Where they're talking, I think he's talking to, oh, who's that late night host?

I thought it was, wasn't it Jimmy Fallon?

Yeah, one of those.

And it's, he's talking about something and like within an instant,

like it goes from Bill Hader telling a story and then he starts talking like Tom Cruise

or imitating Tom Cruise.

Yeah.

But then the face immediately switches.

As soon as the voice changes and it's like so seamless, you're just like, wait a minute, what just happened?

And like suddenly it's Tom Cruise talking and not Bill Hader anymore and then like he'll switch back to his voice

Yes, and suddenly boom. It's right back to Bill Hader. It's really creepy and there's like so it's so flawless and there's no

You know no breakpoint where you can be like wait a minute

It's switch now like it just takes you a minute for like your focus to adjust and

Understand what it's a Jedi mind trick. Yeah, look at it and you think whoa. Did he switch spots all of a sudden, right?

Very crazy. Yeah, I'll have to link to that as well as obviously this Netflix show in the show notes, but yeah, super crazy

So anyway back to the whole premise of the story here Netflix versus AMC so this new movie the Irishman

They wanted to have AMC do a special release. It's a hundred and fifty nine million dollar movie

and so

You know

Paramount pictures didn't want to spend

160 million on this movie so go to Netflix where they don't they just give you blank checks apparently so

Very cool shit. Um

Anyway, the dispute is is how long should it stay in the theaters and

You know AMC has 11,000 screens worldwide

And so they wanted to have it shown there first and I think

The problem was that they said look we want you if you're gonna show it in our theaters

Then you have to abide by the same rules that all the other

Movie companies make and you have to stay on theater you have it exclusively on the at the theater for 90 days and

They've been going back and forth on this trying to negotiate the contract because they're saying well look you know like statistically after 42 days

You know that's where you really start to see a big dip in attendance and revenues, right? I mean you're not getting the same

Big bucks coming into the store after 42 so you're basically telling us we have to wait another 48 days

before we can put this thing on Netflix.

And so I don't know where it landed.

I should do a follow up, 'cause this is a little old.

It's a couple weeks old.

But at that time they hadn't come to any kind of,

they were kind of at an impasse.

They didn't know what to do about it.

But I just thought it was an interesting topic

because you're seeing all these,

like we've talked about it before

where you've got all these different cable, you know,

and now it's like, well, the shows that cable

make kind of suck and it's like the Netflix's

and the Prime, Amazon Prime's and all these guys,

like they make the best content,

but you have to have their service to see it.

And now you're starting to see this morph back into like the way things used to be,

where it's like, well, it's a Netflix movie, but it's at the theater, you know?

And I just think it's interesting, like, how these things are kind of shaking out

and how it's going to play out in the long run.

And I assume it's because how big of a blockbuster price is involved here

that it has to go to the theater so that they can kind of recoup some of that money.

Like, obviously, Netflix makes tons and tons of money for this type of stuff,

but maybe not at that kind of a price point.

- I agree.

I mean, how else do you make $160 million back?

And you ideally are gonna wanna triple that, double that.

I don't know, you're gonna wanna do a lot better

than 170 million on it, you know?

- And then you wonder too, like, okay,

so the idea here would be that it's in AMC

or in theaters for some specific amount of time

and then would come out to Netflix generally.

So how much of the pop,

US population has a Netflix account?

That's gotta be a really high percentage.

So why would you go?

Yeah, unless you really enjoy the theater experience,

which I know a lot of people do.

So that's the deal.

You can't just have it premier at the same on both.

Right, but like in my case,

I'm not that big of a theater guy.

Oh, you would wait 90 days.

Why not?

Interesting.

I mean, I had a different take on that.

I thought that maybe some, I'm sure some people will,

a lot of people will, but I was thinking,

if they really wanted to figure this out,

why don't you compromise and say, look,

like we're just gonna show it in theaters

for the 42 days, whatever bullshit, right?

And then we're gonna bring an option from day 43 to 89

to say, look, from these days,

you can actually go see it in the theater,

or you can go to Netflix and pay a price

to buy the movie for pre-release.

Kind of like Apple does and all that bullshit, right?

It's like, well, you can buy it for,

you can own it for X dollars, 15.99.

I think, why don't you just say to,

I mean, it would piss me off as a Netflix customer,

But I think that would solve the problem

if they're trying to make the money, is to say,

look, we'll actually release it on Netflix in 43 days.

If you wanna pay the price,

and if you don't wanna pay the price,

just wait until day 90,

and then you can watch it for your subscription.

- Yeah, I could see them doing something even different

than that, and adding a,

you had a different subscription tier.

- Where it's like, you could pay $24.99 a month

and then have access to all the movies

when they come out in the theater.

- Something like that.

Or, yeah, early access to their, you know,

new big blockbuster movie, you know, "Tear."

So on that note, there is a company, I was talking to Dave Lester about this on the way

back from the Gorge, I was at the Gorge on Friday watching Dave Matthews' man.

Excellent, excellent show.

But we were coming back and talking about this particular issue because he was asking

what was going to be on the cast next and I said, "This is what we're talking about."

And there's a company out there, a startup that raised a bunch of money and they have

a similar offering where you pay like $40 a month, but you get access.

Their whole thing is like, you're going to get access to movies that are

screening in the theaters.

Wow.

So I don't know how successful that's been.

I don't know.

Dave will have to remind me of the name of the company.

I should have wrote it down.

I forgot about it already, but it's like, you know, stream.

I don't know.

I'll have to look it up later.

Stream stream like movies.

in theaters.

So that's a search result.

Van Dango now, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, who knows?

It's in there somewhere.

But yeah, interesting model.

You're paying a lot more upfront.

But if you're a big movie guy, it's

kind of the opposite of what was the other thing that

kind of failed really fast.

Movie pass?

Yeah.

Hey, I mean, clearly some of these things

are viable products.

Clearly there's a market out there

for people that want to go to movies, especially probably

young people.

Yeah.

They go to a lot of movies, right?

So I think something like this is gonna stick.

It's just a matter of who finds their way in the market

and finds a place that makes sense at a reasonable price.

And that makes sense not only for the company,

but for the user because that's,

I think that's what MoviePass kind of got into

is they were really cheap, right?

And then they tried to up it and people were like, nope.

- Exactly.

And I'm not a regular movie goer,

but I like to go for the popcorn.

- Yeah, not for the movies, for the popcorn.

- Pretty much.

I would be the guy who would just go in and get a bag of popcorn and leave.

I just think that shit is so good.

Uh, standard popcorn, caramel corn, cheese, corn, not in a theater.

What do you go with?

I mean, listen, man, if I'm at home and you know, I, I like to do stove top myself.

So I own stove top stuff, but I also like the Chicago style.

Wait a minute.

Chicago style.

Yeah.

She hell is that?

Not only do they have their own pizza, but they have their own popcorn.

I have not heard of this.

What is Chicago style popcorn?

Chicago style.

Chicago Mix popcorn is essentially it's a really like greasy cheddar. I mean,

it's like Cheddar-y that gets you caked on your fingers and Carmel 50/50 mix.

They have it like GH Gredders, you know,

they make popcorn and they've got in the bags that you can get at Trader Joe's,

not that brand, but the Trader Joe's or Costco or whatever,

Chicago style Mix popcorn, Cheddar and Carmel.

I mean, I knew that I knew the Cheddar and Carmel mix.

I didn't know that had a name after Chicago. Yeah.

Yeah, in fact, like there's a Garrits is a big popcorn place down there.

A bunch of downtown locations you can go and that's their big thing.

Just don't get the 10.

It's expensive.

Yeah, they have really good, uh, really good popcorn.

Very cool.

Mm hmm.

Well, let's move on to the next one.

Um, I've been punting on this story a lot, um, in my, in my love for electric vehicles.

You do.

Don't you?

I do.

I haven't even mentioned Tesla on this episode.

Oh, I just did.

Oh, ding.

What is this?

I don't know that is either.

Okay, you want the there we go.

Hey, well done.

Yeah.

All right.

Um, UPS has been, uh, delivering cargo using self driving trucks without telling anybody.

That's cool.

They do have somebody in the driver's seat though.

Somebody monitoring it, but effectively it's doing, it is autonomously driving.

Wow.

So there's this dude, I'm thinking about this, like the guys, is he really paying attention?

Like this is long haul trucking.

You're going like 500 miles through Nebraska.

Yeah.

Are you really going to be looking out the windshield?

I bet he's in the back cab taking a nap.

Well, this is like the, I think it was Uber or I can't remember if it was a

Google self-driving car that hit somebody and they got in a lot of trouble and quit

driving in some state.

And it was the same kind of scenario where they had a human in the car that was

supposed to be monitoring.

Yeah.

But yeah, he wasn't paying attention.

He was looking at his phone or doing something else and yeah, hit the person

before he could even react.

Like how the fuck could you pay paying attention?

If like for me, if I'm in a car that's driving itself, I can't even touch

pedal. You don't need to. It's gonna be about 30 seconds before I'm grabbing something dude,

like a book on food, a phone. And I think it depends a lot on what it is that you expect

from the cart. Like when we go on a drive and we use autopilot, like I'm still paying attention

pretty heavily because yes, it does a great job, but there are definitely scenarios like we had one

recently here where we were trying to exit to go home. So coming off of 90 going down to Rainier

have and somebody was trying to cut all the, you know, because if you come from

five on to 90 and you want to get off on the last exit before you go in the

tunnel, you're crossing like five lanes with real quick. Real fast. And this person

either just flat out didn't see us or cut us off intentionally, I'm not sure, but

the car did not react in any way. So we would have gotten clipped and

probably, I was trying to think of what that would have done, we probably would

have taken a header into the retaining wall, but I swerved out of the way of

of the person and avoided it.

But yeah, I mean, I would stay very alert using these things,

but it also is very easy to become complacent,

especially in like a straight shot kind of drive

because it's so monotonous.

That's right.

And you're not doing anything.

And the whole premise is that,

oh, we trust the car to do the job.

It's not, you're no longer required.

So why are you gonna pay bang attention

for things like that to happen?

Yeah, and I do trust the car to some degree

to do some of the things,

but I don't have full faith that the car can handle a lot of situations.

So I'm definitely always on guard.

But UPS is basically partnering with a company called Too Simple,

and using some of their trucks to do this,

kind of a, I guess, a small test to see if they can make autonomous delivery

for UPS go, which I thought was really fascinating.

It's especially considering they really didn't announce that they were doing it until now. It's already been happening. Yeah

Well, I do think that

long-haul

Highway travel is gonna be a lot easier to master than it would be in the city street or something like that

so if you're doing these things between distribution centers and there's not a lot of

Congestion or things like that then why couldn't you do it? I think the thing that I would envision is the other

Between like stations maybe like so on a freeway you might have like a stop. That's like here's a UPS lot

Mm-hmm and like maybe it drives between this lot in that lot

Yeah, and that's in stops and then some other operator has to intervene and bring it the last mile

Yeah, it comes in and then whoever scheduled can go do that right

Yeah, so saves them a lot of on the road time

But then somebody's got to maneuver it because yeah, you start to think about like oh

They have to back it up to a load zone, you know load dock

Yeah, and get it close enough and you know, there's just a lot of stuff to maneuver for something that

Doesn't have a comprehension of the real world or at least not a very good one

Makes a lot of sense to me and the real benefit there is that you know right now truckers are like airline pilots and anybody else like you're

Restricted how many hours you can be operating a vehicle before rest

You got to so many breaks and you got to sleep and when you're sleeping you got to be off for so much time

so this eliminates that you could just have people sleeping at these little places you're talking about and

Or whatever, I guess they wouldn't have to sleep because they wouldn't be driving that far

But but anyway, you wouldn't have to worry about the drivers on the long part and you could have trucks operating 24/7

No big deal. Right. Yeah, and that would be huge when you consider. Yeah that you could have

Freight moving all night long, right, you know

No, nobody's having to sleep or switch off drivers or any of that kind of stuff just all the way across the United States

Granite fuel would become a problem, you know logistical issue, but I'm sure they'll figure that out as well

I thought this was interesting too. This is about cars and it might have been Ford or somebody that did this study

I didn't think about this before but right now cars are mostly parked and so one of the

They did some research and they figured out what's the longevity of an all an autonomous vehicle and they said it was four years

Like which is crazy because you think like an automobile that you or I would purchase would probably last ten years 15

maybe even 20. I don't know if you keep it up and all that kind of stuff. But they're saying four

years just because the idea with autonomous driving is that it's going to be reversed. It's going to

be idle 5% of the time, 10% of the time, maybe, but it's going to be on the road moving at least 90%

of the time. Especially these trucks. These trucks aren't going to stop like it's going to drop,

you know, tractor trailer, it comes in, it unhitches from the trailer, could go pick up another

tractor and go back the other way and it could just be going back and forth like non-stop, you know.

Yeah, so it'd be less volume of vehicles, but they'd be moving all the time. Right. Yeah.

And you probably see a little bit of both. Like I'm sure you would probably have more,

an increase in volume, but yeah, they're running non-stop. Yeah. And it'd be, a lot more people

would be in your situation where like you, you don't have a car, you wouldn't need it. Yeah.

Because you know, other people's vehicles that, that do have these four year autonomous cars,

you'd be relying upon them and their vehicles to come pick you up, give you a ride, go wherever you

want to go and pick somebody else up, right? Yeah. And I think that's the promise of the future.

Obviously, there's a long way to go to get to that, but seeing these kinds of stories where

somebody as big as UPS can start to dabble in this technology, I think that's a pretty huge

step forward because once they're embracing it, it's only going to continue because the price

or the costs or the profit realization there is incredible.

Yeah, you're not paying anybody to drive it.

You're paying software engineers to write a little software.

Yeah, write it once and repeat it many times.

Yeah, yeah.

Crazy stuff.

Wow.

There was something else I wanted to say on the topic.

I can't remember now.

Never mind.

All right.

I don't really have any more on that.

And I just, to me it was fascinating that there's other, that there's, I mean, obviously,

you know, Amazon is using drones and this kind of stuff to try and deliver packages.

So obviously autonomous vehicles are just becoming more and more ubiquitous, but like

it is having somebody like UPS that is probably the biggest freight operator, are they? Or

is it FedEx?

Oh, no, UPS is.

UPS. Having them being shipping or testing shipping with autonomous vehicles is fascinating.

I've been telling people this for a very long time that this is coming and probably more quickly than you might anticipate

Is it is it going to take over everything and to end like we talked about no probably not because there's just too many

Factors for for a computer to understand. Yeah, at least in the short term. I'm sure they'll figure it out over time

But you know for now like you said, I think it's going to affect the the trucking industry pretty rapidly

In in those long-haul scenarios. Well, who else is doing you got uber trucking? I think they're kind of I don't know if they're actually

Still doing that they were for a while there. They're trying to do the same thing

Yeah, they had a uber trucking division for some time and I don't know where it's at but

Same kind of thing. So you've got all these guys doing it now

It did talk about it down here at the bottom. So there's somebody called Kodiak

I'm not sure how you pronounce them.

Waymo, Daimler, Uber shuttered its program.

- They did, okay.

- After self-driving SUV killed pedestrian,

which is the incident that I talked about.

- Mm-hmm.

- I mean, you have drone services by Amazon,

there's electric trucks.

There's tons of stuff going on in the autonomy space.

So it's certainly gonna happen.

- I wanted to talk a little bit about,

we're talking about autonomous driving in trucks.

And this is a little, I'm gonna segue really quickly,

but it's actually a piece of follow up

'cause we talked about Starlink, the SpaceX satellite.

- Yeah.

- You know, that was a recent SpaceX launch.

They launched 60 of these experimental satellites

into low earth orbit.

And the plan is to create a broadband satellite internet

globally and with 12,000 satellites one day.

They only got 60 now, but they would like to have 12,000.

And also you've got blue origin doing the same thing

and other people and other people.

So it's like a bunch of space junk up there.

But what was interesting is that one of the 60

almost collided with a European satellite the other day.

I don't know if you heard about that.

- I think I did hear about this.

It was something to the effect of they were supposed

to move it, but it didn't respond.

- Oh really?

- That's what I read.

- Oh, interesting.

So maybe--

- They were supposed to move it in some direction,

like up into orbit further or something.

And it didn't respond appropriately.

and therefore they almost collided.

- Oh, that's crazy.

I didn't know that.

So that would make more sense then.

What I heard was that, yeah,

because of whatever reasoning there didn't respond,

but this European satellite had to do an avoidance,

like maneuver, it had to fire,

whatever they call that,

their little thrusters had a fire thruster

to avoid the space-starling satellite.

to avoid the space junk.

Yeah.

Here it says SpaceX refused or declined to move Starlink satellite that was at risk of

collision with the Europeans.

Oh, this is a different story then.

Really?

With a European satellite.

Yeah, this is what I'm talking about.

European satellite.

Same thing.

So they didn't want to move it.

That's what it said here.

European space agency says one of its satellites was forced to avoid a satellite from SpaceX

Starlink constellation raising concerns of the impact of Starlink on low-earth orbit

Operations after SpaceX declined to move their satellite out of the way

So European satellite guys call it. Hey, we were half orbit away from your Starlink here

We're gonna crash into it. Can you please move it? No fuck you guys. We're good

So yeah, so they had to I wonder if they couldn't move it

What if they don't really have thrusters in there not stuff they made it sound like they got this thing fully

developed. What if they just couldn't move it? You know? It just, I don't know.

The risk of the collision between the two satellites was one in one thousand.

Yeah. Ten times higher than the threshold requires a collision avoidance

maneuver. Hmm. Damn. One in one thousand. How does that probability change when you

add another eleven thousand nine hundred and forty satellites? Now you're getting

into statistics. You're way out of my way out of my realm of knowledge.

- Fucking crazy, man.

So yeah, that will be something to contend with for sure

once we have a lot more space satellites up there.

- Luckily in this case,

according to this little diagram

that they're showing online here,

it looks like that collision had it occurred,

would have collided, well, who knows,

with the Earth rotating and whatnot,

but it would have occurred over the ocean.

- Oh, it probably would burn up anyway.

- Yeah, that's fair, they're not that big, are they?

- No. - Yeah.

Or at least the receivers,

I don't know about the satellites.

- Yeah, I don't know the satellites.

- The receivers are pizza box size.

- I think all that shit burns up anyway.

- Maybe.

- I don't know.

- Somebody might have a nice present on top of their house.

(laughing)

- You don't hear about that stuff a lot yet,

but that could be, that would be a scary world to live in.

Like shit just like falling out of the sky.

- Rainin' down on you?

- Ho, dude, that almost, I mean,

it's one thing when you get shit on by a bird,

but like at least you survive it.

Like you get shit on by a Tesla's,

Darling's fucking SpaceX satellite, man.

We're not living to tell the story, dude.

Oh, man.

We had a lot of fun with this today, didn't we?

Yeah, we didn't know what the hell we were going to talk about.

We made more shit up.

Despite all the technical difficulties, we made it through a full hour of the Coffee

Code Cast episode number 47.

Yeah.

Well, as always, our artwork is provided by Urne, the Gentle Giant.

Check out more of his artwork at www.coffeecodecast.com/gentlegiant.

Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, email.

The email is coffeecodecast@gmail.com.

The podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts.

And of course you can find all this and more

on our website at www.coffeecodecast.com.

- Yeah, buddy.

If you like the show,

jump over to coffeecodecast.com/review.

Help us out with a quick review rating and a few words.

Maybe even a few guests you wanna hear on the show

or a few topics you'd like to hear about.

That'd be cool too.

- We do need some reviews.

We have a negative, we have a one star review.

We need to get that average up.

- Yeah. - So help us out.

- What the fuck?

- It only takes a minute.

- Yeah, one minute.

Help us out here, guys.

As always, thanks for listening

and we'll see you next week.

(upbeat music)

[Music]

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[BLANK_AUDIO]

46: Cryptocurrency

Kyle Johnson — Sun, 25 Aug 2019 07:00:00 GMT

46: Cryptocurrency

0:00

/63:07

Senior Advisor at Coinme, a leading blockchain fintech company headquartered in Seattle Brent Lyman informs us about cryptocurrency, and blockchain and Coinme has the world's largest bitcoin kiosk network.

Full Transcript

We have some late breaking news here dial, don't we? Oh some big-time news. This is just definitely tech news

It's just popped up on the cast here

Go ahead man. Let's break it for us. Who added this. I didn't add this. Don't dump it on me. It was Brent's news actually

Yeah, I'll throw him on the spot Larry King Larry King, you know seventh wife. He's gonna divorce. Oh my god, man

I'm heartbroken. How old was this one?

How much did she get?

[Music]

Welcome everybody to episode 46 of the Coffee and Codecast.

We are a tech podcast where we talk about neither coffee or code.

I'm Kyle Johnson.

I'm Mike Sheehan.

I'm very excited to welcome a guest on the show today.

He's the senior advisor at CoinMe,

leading blockchain fintech company,

headquartered here in Seattle, Washington.

CoinMe has the world's largest Bitcoin kiosk network in the world,

and their services make it simple to buy and sell cryptocurrency.

Sharing his thoughts on crypto and why you should consider an investment,

Please welcome to the cast Brent Lyman. Welcome Brent. Welcome. Thank you guys. How you doing buddy? I'm doing well

Awesome really nice to have you here man. We've been talking about this for a few months now. So I don't know

We had a few people asking us about

Crypto and Bitcoin and I said well, it's a good time to bring on the Lyman. I love it

Let's get started. Let's do it. We have some late-breaking news here. Don't we? Oh

Some big-time news. This is just this is definitely tech news. It's just popped up on the cast here

Go ahead man. Look break it for us. Who added this I didn't have this don't dump it on me. It was Brent's news actually

Yeah, throw him on the spot Larry King Larry King, you know seventh wife. He's gonna divorce. Oh my god, man

I'm heartbroken. How old was this one?

Well, he's got me running out of money now man, I don't know

He's gambling in the wind all the time. So yeah practically lives there. Yeah ran into him quite a few years

Just going to sports books. Is he really there a lot? Oh, yeah, he rolls in

Kane in hand crutching down Wow, he's got front row seat

He's got all the games on NFL Sunday. Damn who knows what he's betting, but

Loves him some sport book. Well, you know, he probably needs to do all he can really keep that alimony going

I don't know. I mean children. He has does he have a lot of kids?

I don't know no idea not a Larry King a fishy and auto over here

I don't pay too much attention to Larry King these days. It's been a while

Well, we wish him and really not about coffee or code is it not at all

That's that's the whole premise of our show here the coffee code cast we reel them in thinking

We're gonna talk about these fascinating topics and we relate as copycat whatever's on CNN comm. Yeah

Hang on we refresh the page here. I think we got some new news coming in right now

Breaking news on the cast. Yeah, Donald Trump not going to Denmark

Yeah, let's talk about that. That sounds great

Well, we're recording a little early tonight, right? Because I'm gonna be leaving town. So another Tuesday edition of the yeah

Yeah, we're doing a day earlier. We have some travel conflicts a lot of travel conflicts lately

but hey, we were able to get Brent to reschedule with us on Tuesday and so I think

We're gonna roll with it. So 46 episodes here. We are and

Yeah, we have some follow-up you want to talk about here Larry has five kids. Thanks Lester that the old bagels on the

Chat chat box over here five kids five kids. Yeah, that's a lot child support. I'd be going to the casino too

So you mean he's got more alimony than Charlesport. Yeah, that's true

I mean, it's just a big fucking number. He probably just doesn't even get he probably gets like 20 bucks to go to the casino

Like they give him an allowance like they've got a credit line for yeah, here you go Larry

Like don't spend it all in one place, dude

These are really good by the way we decided to

Step out a little bit of our comfort zone and crack open some Rubens Pilsner today. Yeah, I apologize to Coors

Who's normally not a sponsor of the show, but yeah, but it's free upstairs in the tech lounge

So, you know, we drink what we can get our hands on but we didn't have any somebody that I I won't mention names

Dustin Fletcher has been slacking off on the reorder of the bear up there

So now we have to go down the store and buy our own it's kind of a little sad. It's disappointing for sure

Well, let's get right into the news show where we have a little bit of follow-up on the capital one hacker

Yeah, your friend. Yeah, my friend. Yeah, tried to be friend this person and wasn't such a good friend. You heard about this story, right?

I know well. Yeah, I know that story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I crypto land pretty good. Oh, I want to hear more about that, I guess.

Well, it's all about privacy. You know, we don't have any

Period. I mean if you look at information that is stolen over the years, Equifax,

you know, comes to mind and they're they're trying to pay that back and most likely the court settlement they're not even gonna pay back.

you know they've they allocated $125 per person but so many people jumped on

that $125 that they don't even have the money allocated for it so we'll see

what happens there but here's another hack here's another you know your

information your password your who knows what because you used at Capital One as

a credit card is out there I mean your spending habits etc so we can continue

to go on and on I mean these have been redundant over the past years and this

This is why, in my opinion, decentralization is an important topic that we need to look

at and examine and see if we can better.

And that's a piece of what Bitcoin is.

It's a decentralized entity and it's a trust and a value on top of it.

It's a lot of things and it's hard to, you know, I can't just sum it up in one sentence

by any means, but more importantly, it's about privacy and how can we advance out of society

and make that better for humanity going forward.

Because right now, we are at the mercy

of these centralized corporations

and how they securitize our data

and what we do about that moving forward.

- Yeah, and I know just like from a security standpoint,

even with, in general technology,

you always assume the worst.

You always assume that there's a vulnerability

or that it could be accessed.

And when you have 800 million records

or however many hundreds of millions of records in a vault,

You have to assume that that's only so secure that it's going to get breached at some point not a matter of if but when right?

And I think that's an interesting piece that we should really talk about is that with with Bitcoin you that problem doesn't even exist really like you

Don't have that

No, so cash pile. Yeah, so when you look at Bitcoin and look it gets explained a lot of ways. It's gonna attack fiat

It's a better currency. It's an asset. It's a store of value. It's a medium of exchange. It's a lot of things. It's a network

It's a lot of things and that's that's why it's really hard to get your head around what is Bitcoin

But if you understand that Bitcoin is an invention and

What it did is it that there's something called a

I'm gonna say this wrong visiting general's problem

And that's what it solved and the fact is that that Mike and I can exchange value

Without a central party between us

Verifying that transaction. It's just code literally what you your podcast is about coffee and cook the second half is the code

Verifies it the miners in the system verify that transaction

So now we no longer need a centralized authority like a credit card company capital one a bank bank of America

Whatever whoever it is. We don't need that centralized authority to verify that transaction. We don't have to use PayPal

We don't have to use Venmo. Oh, you're on PayPal. I'm on Venmo great. How do we get exchange money?

We have to both the on that central entity if we have the same asset

We can exchange it and let the computer or the code do the actual

Transaction settlement piece of it and that's that's the key is is by solving that now

We've created a trust and we've created trust through code. Yeah, so how far can we take this over the next?

You know, it's it's Bitcoin's been in existence for 10 years just over 10 years

What is the next 10 years 20 years 30 years look like beyond the price speculation? You know be you know basically you know

There's a lot of numbers that you know Draper throws out 250,000 no Grats throws out

You know a million dollars you've got pump throwing out a hundred thousand dollars by the end of you know

There's a lot of people that throw up big numbers

Draper is very bullish on it because I've seen him at the FinTech conference just going nuts man. He's huge huge

- He was a investor on it too.

- Yeah, huge early supporter, huge.

I mean, he was around in like 12 or 13.

And a lot of these guys were.

But creating that trust, using code as trust,

and now changing value,

and that value could be privacy-oriented,

it could be information that I wanna send to Mike,

this is my pertinent information or whatever it is,

and I can send it over to Mike

and the code can verify that,

and that's no longer a central entity in the middle.

And that's where we can take that.

That's what crypto is about.

And it gets a bad rap because, yes, it was born in a bad place.

And it was attached.

There's been a lot of fraud attached to it.

We see fraud at CoinMe, and we battle that on a daily basis.

You had the Silk Road.

That's how they used Bitcoin to exchange things.

Well, the funny part is--

Yeah, underground market, the black market.

The black market.

the US government has stepped in and said criminals, please use Bitcoin, because they

can actually track. If you go from address to address, they can track your IP and they

can basically get an idea of where you're operating at and then come up with outside

solutions to find out who you are. So if you're a criminal and you're using Bitcoin, dumb

choice. Because the fundamental benefit to using crypto and the blockchain is that it's

It's an uneditable footprint, right?

I mean, is that a fair way to put it?

Immutable, immutable.

Immutable, yeah.

Can't be changed.

You can't go back in time.

Once the transaction's been settled,

it's been settled for good.

You can't reverse the blockchain, so to speak.

Right.

Well, that's awesome.

I mean, I think there's a lot to uncover here

in the next hour, so I'm excited to kind of dive in

a little bit more.

What did you want to say in relation to the hacker here?

What is the new update?

I think it's just that we kind of alluded to this even in the episode that we talked about that hacker

And I gave that story there's far more companies involved here as many as 30 more companies

Data were breached in addition to the Capital One data that was there. They found basically additional

Pieces of information on her personal server that she had in her home

And that was just announced here recently so a little bit of an update to that we kind of knew

I know Ford was involved for instance in addition to Capital One and a number of other pretty big name

companies. So just a quick update on that. Yeah and I think what's really

interesting too when you talk about just the decentralization, this wasn't a

very sophisticated hack. I mean this is somebody that had access to Amazon

servers that it wasn't really a hack necessarily, it was just that it was kind

of like a Trojan horse kind of thing, right? Like access from inside. It

It wasn't a big, sophisticated security breach.

- Yeah, I don't know the details.

I'm not the technical person to look to how was it done

or even give insight to that,

but I can say that when my piece is,

when I look at the financial world,

if you look at Amazon, Microsoft, and Google

and some of their profits and earning statements lately,

they've been through the roof

because the margins on their cloud business is big time.

I mean, it's huge, it's huge, in excess of 30%.

Amazon doesn't make a whole lot of money selling goods.

Right now they're making more money

through their cloud services.

And if all these companies are using these cloud services

and they have vulnerabilities, wow.

The Trevor Trove of information for hackers,

I can't even imagine.

And hopefully, the good of me says, well, I help Microsoft

and Google and all these data centers

are doing the right thing and implementing

the right security.

But obviously, we can see that somebody that actually worked--

and I think she worked in and around Amazon at some point

or in the cloud business.

And she had access to those right points

to go get that Trevor Trove information so that she could

do whatever she wanted with it.

That's the problem.

And I have to say, cloud is the most secure way.

I mean, it is scary to think that it is so centralized.

But I know just from our own experience here

and with various compliances that we are subject to--

I mean, we even have, like, just on some of our most basic

software systems, we only have rights

to do certain things that are right in our purview.

Like, I can't go in and view transactional tables anymore

and do all these things.

And so I think it's completely secure.

I mean, it's way more secure than you

would have if you're trying to maintain it on your own.

But it's scary because of the sheer volume of what's out there.

And so if there is a vulnerability,

even if it's a very minute one or a very small one,

it's still a pretty impactful one.

That's the scary part about it, I feel.

And I think the outside hackers are

less of a concern for these big cloud companies.

I think that if they can do something, they're going to do it.

They're going to protect it in the best possible way.

I mean, they have tons of security experts

that are dealing with this constantly.

It's exactly the situation where you have somebody

who has some sort of inside access,

it's the insider hacks that are very, very scary

to these companies.

'Cause yeah, once you're in, now you're in big trouble.

- But the good thing I would say though,

is I feel like just from our experience

the last six months here, is that there's a big effort

underway right now to even make that more difficult.

It's not like now if you're in, you're in wholesale,

it's like, if you're in, you might have one corner

of one pocket of something, right?

I mean, the access is very restrictive.

But nonetheless, like I think it makes a case for decentralization anyway,

because that's the most secure way.

Because if you do get something, you might get ones or twos, but you're not

going to get millions.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And in this case, I think she had access to a, like a bucket of data.

And so whatever was in that bucket, she had access to.

And so Ford and Capital One and whomever were in that particular bucket,

that's what she got access to.

So, yeah.

We got a good crew on Facebook today.

I want to give a shout out to everybody.

We've had double digit viewers on right now.

I can't see everybody that joined, but we've got some coworkers.

I've got some of my homies from the Midwest,

Charlotte to Columbus, Nebraska.

There's Cepers online, so that's cool.

And if you have any questions about Bitcoin, fire them away,

and we'll get them answered here.

Yeah, exactly.

Jump on the chat.

This is our Bitcoin crypto episode with our guest, Brent Liman,

with CoinMe.

Why don't you just tell us a little bit about the company

and what you do?

I'd be curious to know a little bit about that.

Yeah, sure. So let me start out with the company first.

It was founded by Michael Smires and Neil Burquist in 2014.

Neil was working for an incubator here in Seattle,

and Michael was actually one of the lead tech guys at Zipwhip.

And basically Michael, instead of buying a Tesla,

went out and bought a couple Bitcoin ATM machines.

Oh, I disagree with that decision.

Oh, yeah, that would offend Mr. Tesla over here.

You could have been the Bitcoin guy, man.

But you had to buy a fucking model 3 instead. Wow, that's a whole different discussion because I'm definitely short Tesla right now

Oh, man, we're gonna have to get into that some point. I'll leave a little window for that. It's gonna be another episode

But yeah, you know Michael bought these machines on a whim and and you know

Took him to obviously realized when he had these three machines

He didn't he knew the technical beast

But he didn't know the rest of it and one of the things that they wanted to do from the cat goes do it right well to do

do things right in the United States, you need to start at the state level.

So what Neil did is he had good connections down in Olympia, and went down to Olympia

and basically updated the 1980 money transmitter laws to include virtual currency and helped

them write a virtual currency license here in the state of Washington.

We were--CoinMe was actually the second company to get a virtual currency license right behind

Coinbase, literally two days after Coinbase.

So once they had the license, they put the ATM machines out in the wild, so to speak.

The first one was in Vancouver, Washington.

And the point of the ATM machines, one of the ways they grew is they wanted to focus

on actual safe retail environments.

So if you look at a lot of Bitcoin ATM companies, especially I would say skeptical companies

at best, is there in some dingy, nasty gas station or maybe it's a strip club or something

and they're way in the back and it's like, "I gotta stick my ID in this, it's gonna

take a picture, my ID gonna come out."

It's kind of intimidating because you're putting your property in this machine.

So one of the things that Neil focused on was actually putting the ATMs in basically

leasing mall space, you know, South Center's a good mall right here south of Seattle, big

time mall, high end stores, and sticking to that kind of philosophy, basically you've

got a lot of customers in a place that you feel safe in an environment to put money in

your ID and go through the KYC process so that basically you can put in 100 bucks in

a machine and get Bitcoin out of it, that simplest fact.

The other piece of the ATM is that's how we're familiar with money if you think about it.

You know, we've, I remember a time when ATMs were a little sketchy, but now they're absolutely

accepted and everybody really knows how to use one.

They'll even deposit money on them and withdraw and do a lot of banking in general on them,

even transfer between accounts.

So now you can actually use this ATM type of model to stick money in it and actually get

your Bitcoin and it's on a receipt and you're directed to your wallet and your wallet is

your ability to interact, basically interact with the blockchain and that's where your Bitcoin

is stored. It started as that. We grew the network to about 100 machines. And then right

as I came on the company in 2018, they were focused on how do we scale this company? How

do we really get a lot of machines out there? And right across the quote-unquote "lickwashing"

into their pond, I call it, is Bellevue.

And that's where Coinstar is located.

Well, we all know Coinstar.

A lot of us have grown up with that machine.

We've all thrown change in it at some point

and gone to the retailer and gotten our dollars worth,

or $15, or if you're like me,

you saved every penny for five years

and got about a hundred bucks worth,

and we're pretty proud of yourself.

- I go and get my Amazon gift cards out of those things, man.

That's what you should do, yeah?

- So in '18, they brought on Amazon gift cards,

but the board was pushing for Coinstar to get in

the crypto business and offer Bitcoin.

Well, we were local, we forged that relationship.

After about a year of discussions,

we ended up partnering with them this year in January.

And what's great is when we roll out a machine now,

we don't have a physical unit, we've got a buy,

we've got to basically make sure that everything's

up and running in it, ship it to a mall

or ship it to a retailer and install the unit ourselves.

Instead, we just click a button.

And when we click a button, we can click 300 at a time, 400

at a time, 500 at a time.

So we went from 100 units.

Now we're up to about 2,600 Bitcoin ATMs

across the United States.

And CoinStar has about 20,000 machines across the globe.

They've got a good--

I think it's like 8,000 to 10,000 in the United States.

And so our goal is to build out the rest of the United States

to where 95% of Americans have a Bitcoin ATM machine

within five miles of them.

- Yeah, any Safeway or any grocery store you can find one.

- Safeway and Progers, Giant, Albertsons, QFC,

again, Safe Places.

Safe Places to go buy your Bitcoin.

It's very easy.

The transaction's very easy.

You walk up, you put your money in it.

It spits out the Bitcoins, which are basically a receipt

to where you're directed to your CoinMe wallet.

From there, you go in the wallet.

You do have, if it's your first time user,

you do have to go through a KYC AML,

because again, we did things first,

we're a licensed company.

We've gotta basically do a background check

real quick on you to make sure you're a good actor.

And once we establish your good actor,

you go redeem those bitcoins

and they're sitting in your wallet,

and you can send them anywhere in the world.

You can do anything you want with them.

You can put them in cold storage.

You can sit on them and invest in them.

You can do just about anything you want with them.

And it's an easy transaction method,

And it's really just an easy, what it's called an on ramp in the business.

And then what I was brought in to help build was private clients services.

So what we do is larger transactions.

So we'll do anything north of 25,000 up to shoot we've done about $10 million transaction.

So it's, you know, there's different levels of investing.

We also have a custody solution.

So if you want to say, hey, Brent, I want you to custody my Bitcoin.

I want you to take care of it.

I want you to make sure it stays safe.

Great, I've got a solution for that.

Maybe you're a miner in the ecosystem.

And what miners do is they get awarded

bitcoins on a daily basis.

But the problem is they can't pay their lease.

They can't pay their property.

They can't buy more machines a lot of times.

Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't.

They can't pay payroll.

They can't pay for all the copper tubing

or the electrical work that they need.

They can't pay for any of those things,

usually with bitcoin.

they've actually got to use dollars.

So we help them convert it to dollars so that they can put

that on the profit loss statement and actually put

those dollars to work as a cap, expender, or whatever they're

going to use it on.

And then there's just the--

in 2017, we saw ICOs big time in the space.

Basically, you create a company, you create an idea, you

write a white paper, and you put it out there.

and you say instead of going after VC money

or traditional private money,

you actually go out to a public crowd across the globe

and how they invest in your company

is actually through coins, Bitcoin, Ethereum

with the top coins that usually you got.

And for that, you actually issued a coin of yourself.

And a lot of these ICOs ended up scams,

but some of the ICOs that are in the market

are good companies.

Brave is a great company that's in the market.

- There's a lot out there, right?

'Cause I know there's like XRP is a big one

that I've heard of.

- Yeah, XRP, which is, yeah, it's called Ripple.

They have a technology where basically they're enhancing

that the quote unquote SWIFT system

that the banking system uses.

So when you go do a wire, you're actually going through SWIFT.

I don't remember exactly what SWIFT stands for,

but it was written back in the 1970s.

And all it is is, all it is is really a message

to another bank that says, hey, Mike is sending X amount of dollars to Brent's bank, is all

it is.

But it's a protocol that's accepted by all the banks.

I mean, that's like the international standard for...

Yeah, and it's really just a messaging system at the end of the day.

But yeah, so all these companies raise all these funds, well, they need to turn them

into US dollars at some point.

Again, it goes back to payroll, office space, paper, pens, computers.

can't pay for it, really a lot of it in Bitcoin. So what they needed to do was turn them into

US dollars. So that's kind of one the private clients said what we help out with. We help

out token founders, we help out miners, we help out high-deaf wealth investors. And then

there's a good portion of the business in the United States that actually uses Bitcoin

as a payment rail. A lot of people don't realize that is, you know, if you want to buy goods

from Japan, China, Canada, anywhere across the globe,

Bitcoin's a really easy way to buy those goods

and basically create that commerce or that transaction

with that company that's across the water.

- 'Cause it's accepted now in many countries.

- Well, it's transaction cost.

- Yeah, they don't pay that fee, right?

- If the company's willing to accept Bitcoin

or maybe it's a stable coin or whatever it is,

the transaction cost is minimal.

You can send hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin for 39 cents.

If you do that through a banking system, it's going to cost you upwards of $20,000, $30,000.

Wow.

So huge savings there if you're doing it that way.

Correct.

So that's the currency part.

The ability to exchange value between two parties, whether they're companies or individuals,

and not only do it and have computers verify the transaction,

not a central authority at all,

but more importantly, the transaction cost is minimal.

- And it's instantaneous on top of that.

There's no delay.

- Well, they've generally, right?

- Well, the blockchain has to verify the transaction.

So there is a slight delay,

depending on what cryptocurrency you're using,

some are faster than others.

Like for instance, Litecoin is considered

the silver of cryptocurrency world.

That's the nickname it's been given.

It's got a faster transaction rate than Bitcoin does.

But Bitcoin is obviously the one everybody knows

and it's more accepted.

- Interesting, man.

So, great, thanks for the intro on that.

That's really cool, man.

I know we've talked about it a lot

and I just thought like there's, even at work,

you know, in our group here, I feel like that,

even as technologists and as tech people,

I think that there's just a lot of misinformation

and just people aren't really sure

like what it is or how it works, you know?

- Yeah, we've built kind of a unique model.

There's the coin bases to geminize,

the binance of the world, they've built platforms.

And those platforms are mostly just exchanges.

You can go out and sign up with them

and the signup process is usually pretty arduous.

Takes a little while.

You'll send them money, they'll wait two or three days

to credit your account.

If you wanna make a transaction today,

and for instance, there's a gentleman

that runs the ThinkSpace right downtown.

He needed a transaction today.

We got him, he entered his information with us.

We got him onboarded, we got him enrolled.

His money was sent to us,

and we had him in the Bitcoin by the end of the day.

So we really can do practically same day service.

And that's the unique piece of this is,

you have somebody, if you call me,

you have my direct number, you can text me,

you can email me, you wanna talk Bitcoin,

You want to ask questions?

Is this a good idea?

Is this a bad idea?

Should I go to BlockFi and give them some of my bitcoins

so I can earn an interest rate?

What's this coin all about?

You've actually got somebody now that you can call up

and have a discussion around cryptocurrency or bitcoin.

And I'm just going to give you the facts

as I know them.

I don't know everything.

This space is-- it's open source.

All the technology is open source.

So it's almost like a Cambrian effect that's going on.

And it's developing so fast.

And the talent is dropping into the space so fast.

You know, a lot of people running from banks

and current financial institutions right into the space

to develop all kinds of crazy new technologies.

And because what we have here is programmable money

and really the who knows where we end up

in 10 to 20 years, but the ability that you have

with CoinMe is, and especially the private client side,

is you got somebody you can call.

And very simply, we consider it human touch

in a digital world.

- It reminds me very much of the original Tech Boon

because you had people that were talking about internet.

And I think very much in the same way,

people didn't really grasp what it was.

And they were trying to compare it to something

that didn't really exist.

It doesn't exist in the same way

anything else did previously.

And so you're making these comparisons,

but people were just like,

"I know I need to sell shit online.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do or how I'm gonna do it,

"but I'm gonna sell shit online."

So let's get going.

- Everything had to go online.

And I lived through that.

I traded through that.

I remember when every single thing had a dot-com after it.

This is the thing, dot-com, dot-com is, pets.com.

We know that what happened to that IPO, it crashed.

And now we've got Chewy.com, which was the old Pest.com,

doing the same thing this year, it's just IPO'd.

Is that mean we're at a top?

Again, I don't know.

But the problem with crypto, and this is one of my arguments,

is we are always trying to compare it to what we knew,

which is the internet and how it is bloated.

- That's right.

- I don't think we can.

I think it's gonna go faster and farther

than anybody can really put any great thought to.

And that's because it's open source,

that Cambrian effect that I'm talking about.

But more importantly, we're not now changing,

we changed communication.

We can out text, email, Slack, Telegram.

How many other channels do we need?

I can think of a million of them.

- Telepathy, we're gonna get chipped.

We're gonna get chipped.

Yeah, we're just gonna read each other's minds.

Yeah.

Walkie-talkie on your watch.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Walkie-talkie mode on the watch.

We were using that earlier.

Rain's on Facebook, but he hasn't accepted my request yet.

So really much, I very much appreciate that.

So now you got with the internet, you changed information.

Yeah.

I can be in a discussion with my boy Slayer, and if I don't like what he's saying, I can

Google fact, fact check him real quick.

Right now.

Yeah.

Amazing.

This we basically what my first laptop was is now sitting in my pocket

Yes with a camera on top of it amazing awesome. So now we're into Bitcoin and trust

So now in my opinion what we're doing is building another internet layer that we're gonna change the way we

Transfer value and the way we trust

Technology now how that ends up. I have no idea. Yeah wrote about a little bit of my newsletter today

I don't know how we end up, but we are going to change things. That is a fact.

So can we pull this back up just like a higher level just because like I know for instance my mom listens

She's probably on here. My sister's on

People that may not be as familiar with with Bitcoin or any of these coins because we're throwing out a lot of terms

And we're throwing on a lot of acronyms and different companies and that sort of thing

But like at a very very very high level

Can you give an explanation of what Bitcoin is and why it is that you might want to use it?

So at a very high level

So this I wrote about this today. It's it's it's about impossible to talk about it

Right, but Bitcoin is an invention. So think of it like the internal combustion of engine engine

When the internal combustion engine came around we were riding around in horses and carriages and

And when people saw the first car with wood wheels,

and it got stuck on the side of the road,

and the horse had to pull it out, they thought,

this will never work.

Now, 100 years later, where are we at?

Actually, over 100 years later.

There's a car on every road, just about everybody

owns one, uses one in some way, shape, or form.

We've got airplanes running through the air.

We've got motorcycles.

Just about everything runs in some way, shape, or form,

an internal combustion engine, including generators.

Bitcoin is an invention.

Bitcoin, that going back to that Byzantine general's problem,

it's changing the way we trust how we move value.

And so it's an invention.

It's an asset.

It's a currency.

It's a philosophy.

It's game theory.

It's a network.

It's security.

And this is where the problem gets real complex

of what is Bitcoin?

Because Bitcoin is a lot of things to different people.

So for instance, Hong Kong right now is,

there's a lot of chaos in Hong Kong.

We've seen a lot of protests, we've seen them on news a lot.

Well, what's the best way to get your money

out of Hong Kong right now, if you needed to?

- Right now, it would be a cryptocurrency.

It would be converting your quote unquote fiat.

When I say fiat, fiat is a government backed currency,

very much like the US dollar.

Over there they have the yen.

So if we take the yen and we convert it to Bitcoin,

now I can move that around the globe however I want.

I can stick $100 million in a USB device,

put it in my pocket and I can jump on an airplane.

I can't do that with dollars.

I can't do that with gold.

I can't do that with any other asset.

And that's where some of the power,

and so this is where Bitcoin can go off in various tangents,

but to keep it at a high level,

to understand Bitcoin as an invention.

Now, when the internal combustion engine came around,

or when the email came around,

or when the internet came around,

these inventions, we didn't really know

how they were gonna impact society as a whole.

We knew they were gonna impact,

but we didn't know what exactly.

A lot of people had a lot of speculation.

And now we've seen what the internet's done.

We've seen what email's done.

We've seen what the internal combustion engine has done.

Bitcoin is going to do something very similar.

It's just a matter of what it does.

- Part of the challenge too around that.

- The one thing I wanna add to this real quick

is the difference between Bitcoin

and those other inventions that I'm talking about.

You couldn't really invest in internal combustion engines.

I mean, you can invest in Ford when they came along

or the manufacturers, et cetera.

Email, unless you were Draper and you invested

in one of the first email companies or like Netscape,

you could have taken advantage of that,

or maybe jumped on Google

'cause you knew what they were gonna do.

Internet, you could buy it, but you couldn't really invest

in it.

Bitcoin is a protocol that you can actually invest in.

You can own a part of the network.

And that's the key piece of this,

is that this trust piece that I'm talking about,

this invention that I'm talking about,

if you want to, you can go out

and just own a little piece of it.

And I'm not an advocate to saying,

"You need to put 50% of your wealth in Bitcoin."

But I am an advocate of saying,

"Take a few dollars that you don't care if you lose

and go own a part of the network because at the end of the day, it's like a vote for the

network. It's saying, you know what, we've created something. I don't know who created

it, but they've created something pretty darn cool. And I'm just going to put a little money

in here and let it sit. And I'm going to own part of that network.

Well, I think in general, and this is not financial advice, but you always look at portfolio

balance and you figure out some percentage I want a little higher risk and so whatever

that allocation is like this could be a part of that what 510 15% of your portfolio that

you're not going to miss it if you lose it but you could also have a lot of upside if

it goes well there's a ton of upside and that a lot of people they get caught up well you

know bitcoin ran to 20,000 and and you know it's never going back there again we're almost

there right now we're sitting in I think just shy of 11 just earlier today yeah 11

11.7, I mean

It's still super early in this asset class the SEC

Securities and Exchange Commission the US government has come out and said this is a brand new asset class

They've deemed it property

So here's a brand new class. It's digital. It's 100% digital

It's not an electronic record like your bank account where you've got a bank moving around

ones and zeros. This is a completely digitized asset and all I impose or try to ask on people

is if you're truly open, go out and own part of that network because it's right now we're

$200 billion. If a company were to like Amazon or Microsoft or Google or anybody were to

go out and build this type of network, it would take hundreds of billions of dollars.

And we're already at $200 billion.

It will be a multi-trillion dollar network someday.

In my opinion.

Well, and I think you made a pretty good case for it as far as going to your local grocery

store and depositing some coins into a coin store machine.

I mean, it's very low risk, very low barrier to entry there just to have some percentage

of Bitcoin.

It's very easy to accomplish that.

You've got to look at it as an ownership and a network and a network that humanity can

trust outside the banking system outside of government sponsored money which is

what the US dollar is outside of carrying around a rock in your pocket

like gold it's just part of what is that the next form of and probably the

hardest money ever invented because you can't Bitcoin they can't take away from

you because only you own it, only you have it, only you know where it is and as long

as you have the public address and you have the private key, nobody can take that from

you.

They can't, for instance, I'll give you for instance, many, many, many times over the

term of history governments have come in and said, we're at a deficit, we need money, they

go raid bank accounts, they tax you in some way, shape, or form.

We fortunately live in the United States, amazing system, inflation levels about 2%,

but if you woke up in Argentina literally two weeks ago, you're 25% poorer than you

were the previous day, and that's because you own the Argentina peso, which literally

lost 25% of its value in one day.

That's a risk that you take in that country.

Those people accept that, they know it.

It's also a reason that they try to convert a lot of their pesos into US dollars and literally bury them in the backyard.

Yeah.

Crazy stuff.

Now, kind of, again, going back to Bitcoin, it's if you own a piece of that network and if everybody owns a little piece of that network,

ideally demand is going to go up.

And when you get these crazy price increases in Bitcoin,

it's because you need to look at the economic model of Bitcoin.

It's built in the code.

It's already pre-written.

So next year, we've got a huge event coming up, May of 2020.

Bitcoin will have what's called a having event.

And that means the miners, they're out basically completing

a math problem or an algorithm

to verify transactions on the network.

And when they verify all the transactions on a block,

they get awarded Bitcoin.

Well, they're gonna get their award

is gonna be cut in half.

So that means the supply that's awarded

on a daily basis is going to be cut in half in May 2020.

- Yeah, it's interesting.

I went on that note because it's unlike other things.

Like we talk about fiat currency

and how it in a recession will print more money,

but Bitcoin's the opposite.

Like you start out in the beginning with the most available right up front and then it's

logarithmic so over time the amount that's available decreases increasing the actual

value of the currency.

Yeah, the amazing piece of Bitcoin is it actually went from 30 cents to a dollar.

The fragility in the start, the fact that it got going out of nowhere, that it started

with just two people and exploded, not really exploded but grew from there.

That was the fragile part.

Now it's 10 years old.

Every 10 minutes, as we've been speaking,

another 10 minutes, there's another block

that's been awarded to somebody.

It's 10, you know, basically, it's--

it's 10 minutes older is what it is.

Right, right.

So every 10 minutes, it grows stronger.

That's crazy.

So what does the next 20 years look like?

And again, this is the most secure network in the world.

We were talking about hacks through Capital One.

The Bitcoin network itself has never been hacked, ever.

Now what has been hacked,

and you hear about hacks and crypto all the time,

are the exchanges because those are centralized entities

where you're holding your coin on an exchange

where your coin's vulnerable to the attacker.

- Yeah, it's on a central server somewhere

that's accessible over the internet.

- But the network, the Bitcoin network itself

is made up a bunch of independent computers.

It could be Mike in his basement with four or five minors.

It could be Brent who owns a small farm

in Central Washington.

It could be a lot of things.

And there's some big companies in China

and there's some big companies in the United States

and there's big companies all over the world.

But they're independent of each other.

- I wanna get to something 'cause we've got,

what, about 15 minutes left-ish, 20?

- Yeah, it smokes up and ramblin'.

You're doing great, man. I this has been very informative for us

So don't feel bad about that at all, but I just have other things

I wanted to ask you about and what there's a couple a couple points

I think one is just that like I think you've done a really good job of establishing how

the decentralization of this technology the value of that and and how

secure it is

And to challenge that a little bit like I just wonder oh, this is this is interesting

I do want to get to Dave's question here too. So I got two things the first question

I want to ask is just how do you

The Bitcoin clearly has its own fidelity and I think it's it that's fine

But what do you do when you want to go to fiat like what if there was a recession or what if the US government and the banking system somehow said like

Well, we reject Bitcoin and we don't give a shit and we're not gonna exchange your Bitcoin for fiat

Like what do you do in that case? Like do you go to other go to Mexico?

I mean, how do you get how money out of it? Well, a couple things are in decline there

The government doesn't have that choice the companies that are operating in that space have that choice

Okay, so if you want to change it to fiat you're dealing with a company like Chase or or you guys

Yeah, you're dealing with a company. You're not dealing with US government

So unless the US government comes in and shuts down all the fiat on ramps slash off ramps

Which I highly doubt they do because they the federal system hasn't even laid out regulation for this yet

Most companies are regulating under state legislation right now. Okay, their money transmitter laws

The other piece of that would be just regulatory arbitrage which goes are which is going on across the globe right now

So there are anywhere from Malta as a small island Vietnam is embracing it

Singapore is embracing it

So if the United States decides not to embrace it, they are going to be light years behind in,

I would say, just technological innovation as a whole when it comes to the finance side

and the finance innovations because the Asian community as a whole is embracing it.

Except for China a little bit, most of the Asian community, if you look at Vietnam,

Singapore as two of the biggest ones, they're embracing it.

Their regulators want it.

They understand that it can do a lot.

It has the chance to do a lot of things.

Now I will go beyond that and say that regulatory bodies,

like if you look at the CCP in China,

they're looking at creating their own digital currency.

So that says a lot of validation right there.

If you look at, and top of it,

you're looking at corporations

that are looking at creating their own digital currencies.

- Facebook and--

- Facebook with Libra and Kaliibra,

the wallet that they're gonna create.

Walmart has been awarded a patent on a stable coin.

I fully expect Amazon to come out with something.

Matter of fact, that when they first came out,

I think it was like 10 or 15 years ago,

they tried something.

I fully expect them to come out with something.

And to go into their ecosystem,

you'll exchange one cryptocurrency for the other.

And at some point you're gonna do it

and you're not gonna realize it.

It's just gonna be the technicals

or the back end of the piece.

You really won't know it.

You're gonna buy that thing on Amazon

realizing you're not even using cryptocurrency.

And it's all about transaction cost.

That's what it's gonna reduce.

- And I think that's huge because yeah,

you think about it now, like you said,

if you're doing a transaction of a certain magnitude,

$20,000, $30,000 is a lot of money, even though it--

- Well, all we have to do is look at the financials

for Walmart or Amazon and think about,

and they probably got better deals than 3%,

But let's say let's just talk about the 3% merchant fee

that most small businesses pay.

What are Amazon and Walmart paying?

That's a lot of dead money.

And if you look at that dead money,

it's over $200 billion a year are spent on just--

- Just transacting it. - Fees, transaction fees.

- So Dave had his question here.

He wanted to know, can they ever increase the number

of coins in the ecosystem?

- No, no, it's written into the code,

21 million is going to be the most amount.

It's a deflationary asset right now.

And what's funny is on top of that 21 million,

right now it's estimated 4 million are lost.

- Wow.

- And because people are frankly,

we all know people are stupid and they lose things.

I know I've lost things in the past.

- You must be key with a million bucks, man.

(laughing)

- But that's happened.

You lose that private key.

You can't access you can't just you can't there's no going back. There's not calling nobody calling up bank America saying oh man

I lost my password. What do I do? I need to get access my bank account. No, it's gone

Yeah, you don't have it you can't recover it. You cannot go get it

It's not like we were talking last week where you can bring your dirty bills that the dog

You know pooped on or whatever like house burned down

They have a whole division in the in the Treasury to like reconstruct bills and reissue bills

Not so much with Bitcoin you lose that you lose that wallet you lose that USB you're done your host your toast

How you doing man? You have any questions over there? I'm good

There's another question on here that like basically asking should you treat treat this as like an investment say like your 401k or

Or any other type of investment 100% and the way I look at it from an investment standpoint. It's like portfolio insurance

So here's a fun fact if you had

Five years ago, and you've got a hundred thousand dollars in your 401k, and I'm just using numbers and you kept

90% of in cash

90% in cash and you just put 10% in Bitcoin

You'd have a better return over the last five years than if you would have put a hundred percent of that in the SMP

Wow, which is the benchmark. Yeah

That's crazy

10% which is not a so there's something called alpha and beta in the finance world and

Alpha is basically your returns and beta is your risk. So you would have lowered your beta because 90% of your money would have been in cash

So your risk would have gone down and your return actually would have been better. Yeah

That's impressive and that's really I mean that yeah, that is pretty low risk when you think about 10% of your portfolio

And if you have IRAs, there are

Options on investing in Bitcoin

There's there's there's GBTC that you can look into you can also if you've got a self-directed IRA or you've got

Qualified funds you can put them in a self-directed IRA and actually by the asset itself

You know feel free to contact me if you want more information, but I can help you guide through that

But it's it's yeah, it's it's not really about like owning a lot. It's about just owning a little bit

Yeah, and so what are you personally doing? Can you speak a little bit to that? I mean you're pretty bullish on this

I know just from talking to you, but I'm super

bullish so I you know from a percentage standpoint I own a good chunk yeah but I

also think it's the trade of my lifetime I just understanding the economics

behind it the fact there's the 21 million coins it's a deflationary asset

or you know I talked about the having event when demand basically when supply

goes down and demand goes up we know what it should happen to the price the

The other piece that I'm part, you know, there's many pieces of my thesis, but institutional

investors are coming.

Some of the slowest adopters to this technology is going to be pension funds.

It's going to be just large institutions that gain access, and that's starting to come on

this year.

These institutional infrastructure are starting to come on.

BACT announced, BACT is a company that was created from the owners of the NYSE.

They're coming out with a Bitcoin-settled futures market.

It's extremely exciting because at the end of the day, if you ride the contract out,

you're going to be settled in not cash, but you're going to be settled in Bitcoin, which

means it's going to drive demand at the end of the day.

But the institutions, they're freaked out over custody.

How do we custody this?

If I want to buy and sell every day, I don't want to have to take out a USB and plug it

in and have three of us get together and figure out the key and have to do all that.

Because that's what an institution is.

It's usually three or four people that are making the investment decisions over hundreds

of millions of dollars.

Many, many accounts.

Yeah.

So what's happening is institutional products are being developed to basically allow institutional

type of trading of large, large, large dollars.

And that's coming.

It's not here.

It's not been done.

The earliest adopters were technologists and what I would say fraud, people that used

things in Silk Road.

And it's slowly moving itself from the outer edges of society right into the middle.

And we are far from the middle right now.

We're getting closer, but we're far from the middle.

And that middle is going to be some of that wealth.

And if we have a recession coming up, we had-- we saw the yield curve invert last week on

on Wednesday and saw the huge sell-off

and the reaction to that.

If we have negative rates across the globe,

you've seen bonds go from a negative yielding debt

go from $6 trillion to $16 trillion this year.

Huge numbers.

Most likely United States by the end of the year

or early next year, we're gonna see close to negative rates.

We could see a two-year rate at 0.5 right now or 1.5.

By the way, that started out the year,

I think it was a right around 3%.

So we've already cut in half.

- Wow, 50, yeah.

- Yeah, so we're seeing rates come down.

We're seeing a lot of craziness going around the globe

and big high net wealth investors

are going to look at quote unquote safe havens.

Gold is an obvious one.

Bonds are an obvious one.

Bitcoin though could be that new piece

or that new technology, that new quote unquote digital gold

even though I don't like to use digital gold

I don't think you can compare it to gold at all.

But it's that new store of value that's come along.

And if institutions like it, if millennials like it,

if high net wealth investors come to it,

who knows what the demand is gonna be like,

especially in a recession.

We haven't seen Bitcoin perform in a recession yet.

It was born in 2008, so.

- You had a term that you used,

This was a conversation you and I had maybe a week or two ago.

And I can't think of it right now.

It's on the tip of my tongue.

But effectively, what you were talking about is that,

unlike other things that react in the market,

like certain stocks and that sort of thing,

like Bitcoin is not correlated in the market the same way.

- Yep, let's see, I'm glad you reminded me of that.

It's non-correlated and it's asymmetric.

So it's kind of like the holy grail of investments.

And what non-correlated means is if the market goes down

and Bitcoin goes up, it's non-correlated.

And if you look at Bitcoin over time,

and there's a metric that you can put against that

to figure out how correlated it is with the metric

with the market in general, it's at 15%.

And that's 15% out of 100.

So most of assets, except for gold and bonds,

they're a little bit higher, but most assets around 70, 80%

where Bitcoin's 15%.

So not only is it non-correlated, it's asymmetrical.

And as an institutional investor,

if you've got hundreds of million dollars

and whatever wrapped up in a pension

and you wanna find a non-correlated asset

that can help you drive returns

and help offset maybe a recession,

you're going to look at alternative,

non-correlated asymmetric assets.

and Bitcoin just happens to be one of them.

At the same time that all these institutional type

of products or solutions are coming online

to enable those same organizations to buy in to Bitcoin.

So, I mean, I'm not trying to predict the future

but there's a reason that a lot of smart people

have thrown out huge price projections.

McPhee throws out a million dollars every time chance he gets matter of fact

He says he's gonna eat his dick if he doesn't wow

love to

Have a little follow-up on that one. Uh Kyle that we'll put a little bleep in on that one

We got the explicit rating. We're fine. That's fine. We told people up front

I'm not a final note, but on a follow-up note to that. What would you say to the naysayers?

They would say something like - like just looking at this year, you know like

Bitcoin compared to S&P this year alone not looking very favorable. I mean there was a it was very volatile this year

So you started out the year at like what 20?

Where do we start 25 and then went down to like three well it's down to three in December

Yeah, it had a pretty a pretty epic fall. It had a volatile 12 months

But so this year I think it was pretty low. So if you want to look at 2019, it's up well over 200% this year

With the S&Ps up I think 15% right now. So just looking like you're not here today

Just like from the beginning of the year. Yeah. Yeah, maybe year to date

You did it and what I think what you're speaking to is did I have a drawdown last year? Absolutely. Yeah, is it a volatile asset?

Yes, it's only 10 years old. Yeah. Yeah volatility is good. Yeah

You a lot of people can't stomach that they can't understand it because they're focused on

Tomorrow or next month or next quarter

You can't focus on that you if you look at Bitcoin again over the last five years just to the last five years

Let's cut it. Let's cut time in half. It's been around for ten years, but let's cut time in half to five years

Yeah, it's a best-performing asset in the market period

with an explanation mark

That's what I just started at like three cents or something like that

Share well, I'm not going back ten years. I'm only going five years. I'm only going back to 2014

Yeah, it's still the best performing asset and you compare it against gold you compare it to SMP you compare it to any bond

You compare to any yield any dividend stock Berkshire Hathaway, whatever you want mm-hmm. It outperformed it over the last five years. Yeah

Also, yes, but volatile volatility is good

Believe it or not. It is good

It imagine gold when it first came around

What its volatility would look like when nobody knew really what it was

Bitcoin's kind of going through the same phase

But the biggest thing you need to understand is it's got a network effect. It's called the lindy effect

So if you've ever seen the lindy effect, it's just the s-curve, right?

So it's kind of like how Facebook and Amazon a lot of these companies take off

Bitcoin's going through the same

same

effect basically and when you take a

logarithmic price

Over that s-curve

They're pretty darn correlated

interesting, okay, so

Well, we're I know we're out here. I know we're out of time, but that's what that looks like

Bitcoins vow now this is a chart we could if we can get a copy of that maybe yeah

We could put post that on our show. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah

And they effectively what you've got here is bitcoins value rises with adoption in time

And so you have yeah, and that is a logarithmic curve and you do see some volatility in there

But it does climb it does follow the curve pretty much the whole way

I mean there's not a really huge bottom on there

No, and it's it's it's on the same path this year

Well, and I think what you're advocating for is a long-term asset not a short-term

Yeah, type gain right like you could you could try to play the market and you may win

But you can you can trade all you want

Yeah, you know some of the best in the business try to do but at the end of the day

If you look at any trading strategy versus just what they called the hodl strategy, which is hold on for dear life

It's hodls worked

10 out of 10 times

Well, we're coming up to about the end of the hour. I want to point out a couple things first of all

Thanks so much for coming on

I feel like we could have done another hour because we just really scratch the surface

So who knows maybe we can schedule a follow-up session at some point here down the road

Just to talk more about it. I mean this was kind of a high level. Thanks for letting me gap just getting into it

Thanks for let me you know, I'm pretty passionate about it

I've been in Iran like I said trading for a long time and I just think it's one of the greatest assets that I've ever seen and and

You know beyond that it's just it can do so much more. We're gonna make sure that we get your information out there

I know that you're on Twitter. You've got a newsletter. I'm all that information

We've got and we're gonna post that online when the when the feed so this is the live episode

when we get the, what do you want to say?

When we get the recording posted,

we'll make sure we include all your information

so people have a way to reach out to you.

So anyway, thanks so much for joining us Brent.

And that's a quick wrap.

I can't believe we're through the hour already.

I wish we had a little more time.

Anyway, Kyle, bring us home buddy.

- Shout out to the sponsors.

- There you go.

Sponsor, our artwork is provided by UrnAid,

a gentle giant.

Check out more of his artwork at

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The podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts,

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- Yeah, if you like the show,

jump over to coffeecodecast.com/review

and help us out with a quick review,

a rating on, or a few words of how we could improve the show.

So always thanks for listening.

I do wanna point out, Brent is at Twitter at bly,

Beli as he's known in the local circle here crypto Beli crypto

Oh crypto Beli crypto. Thank you at crypto Beli and

We'll post all this information on the show afterwards. So any final words?

By Bitcoin

Thanks everybody have it have a good week

[Music]

45: Stepping Into Leadership

Kyle Johnson — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 07:00:00 GMT

45: Stepping Into Leadership

0:00

/61:29

This week we finally get into the topic of stepping into leadership after we experienced a vacancy in our leadership org. We have a taste test of the Burger King Impossible Whopper as well as the latest Tesla news and some news about logistics.

Show Notes

Cold Open
Theme Music
On the show…
Follow-up
- Technical Difficulties
- Impossible Whopper Taste Test
  - Taste Test Coupon
  - Nutrition Facts
In the News
Theme Music

Full Transcript

It's easy to get somewhat complacent, I think, with things being the same for a long time, and then having them shift all of a sudden causes a wake-up call to say, "Oh, geez, like what do I want? What's going on here? And what have I been contributing? And how can I contribute more?" And so, yeah, I think it's been a really good opportunity to do some self-reflection. I'm glad that we're doing this thing. we're reading that book together and I think it was really a call for us to say like we want to preserve the culture that we've had and he was a big part of creating the culture and so it's like how what is what is the culture how do you identify that what are those key traits and things that make it up and then how do we try to carry that out right how do we keep that keep that going so there's a lot to process there I love the idea of the wake up call that was that's That's a really good way to describe it, because I definitely had that experience as well. I was pretty happy doing the management thing, and I'm still happy with it. I'm not saying that that's something that I want to get out of or unhappy with in any way, but it was kind of a shot across a bow, I guess, or something, that I need to continue to move forward. I need to be looking out for what the next thing is and planning for that and putting myself plotting myself on a course. And so a lot of what I've been trying to do and think about and like I said Self-reflect is how do I do that? How do I put my position myself in a great position for that? Whether it's something that I can do or whether it's other people that I can bring into my circle to help me with that. It's been a lot of those types of conversations and it's been really positive, which is really really interesting in the context of losing somebody who you think is extremely valuable. Right. Yeah. [Music] Welcome everybody to the Coffee & Codecast for only about 10 minutes late here. Not too bad, but we're live with the called difficultings. Episode 45 of the Coffee & Codecast, a tech podcast where we talk about neither coffee or code. I'm Kyle Johnson. Hey Kyle, I'm Mike Sheehan and today on the podcast, oh boy, the taste test that we've all been waiting for. The impossible wapper is right here. Right next to our standard wapper, so we're gonna get into that today. And I actually added some Tesla news for you this week buddy. you this week buddy. Well thank you. I thought it would be kind of fun to talk about this one. Someone, a Tesla owner, turned their arm into a key fob. That's an interesting idea. I don't know why you would do that. We'll get into that some more later. And so after several weeks of delay, our topic this week is dealing with the loss of a leader and how to respond to organizational changes. Got a lot to talk about in the next hour. Yeah. Sorry for the delay guys. We had a pretty pretty nifty set up that we're trying to work on. And as all things, like trying to do it live, sometimes it doesn't go as well as you think it's gonna go. - It's a multi-streamer. We were hoping to be out on YouTube today in addition to Facebook, but didn't go so well. It was showing up for me, but not for anybody else. - Yeah, so we'll have to mess around with that a little bit offline and come back next week. But the idea of this is pretty cool because that means that when the cast is live, - We got 6 p.m. Wednesday, central time? - No. - Pacific time. - 6 p.m. Pacific time, everyone's there. We'll be on what Facebook, YouTube, Twitch? - Twitch, maybe, yeah, we're still working on that one. - For all of our Twitch followers. So yeah, we'll be multi-casting once we get this thing figured out. So that's what happened tonight. We had some problems getting that to work and hey, we're back on Facebook today. So there you go. - We made it. - We made it. - Yeah. - 10 minutes. I was actually really impressed, speaking of making it. Before the show, we went down, the Rolling Stones concert tonight. And so the downtown area is already busy enough with rush hour traffic, and it was even crazier with Rolling Stones fans pouring into the city. But we had to do the impossible taste test because it's available now at all, 7,000 BK locations nationwide. And so yeah, we got in a car at what, five, 15 I think, and made it down there, and got back here with like three minutes to go. Made it so-toe and back. Use of the light rail, it worked pretty well. We got back with what, 15 minutes to go. Enough time to get a beer. - Yeah, good. - Frosty beverage and-- - Work on a few technical difficulties and away we go. - Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I was impressed that we got back here in time. It's crazy out there right now. - Yeah, let's get right to it. Want to, you have in here to give Gomer the Gomer? - Yeah, I just wanted to shout out to Gomer, you know, why it joined us on the cast last week and it was really nice to meet Gomer because he's been a longtime listener and chats us up quite a bit on the feed, but I haven't met him yet. So that was a really fun experience that we had and got to go out and have a few beers and have him on the show. Thought it was a pretty good visit. So thanks for coming on to the cast. - Yeah, and kind of in the same pain here, Dave Lester, who, you know, longtime listener of the show, likes to bust on me a little bit. - Oh! (laughing) a little more detail than I can to know. He likes to make fun of my speech impediments. He likes to give you a hard time. He's one of our long time listener critics. He's always trying to improve the cast. He's got a lot of good feedback for us. Yeah, exactly. I got to talk to him a little bit. I've met him a number of times, but apparently he didn't remember me. So I've talked to him. I got to talk to him of a fair amount at fuel the other night, which was pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. See you in my couple days in a row now. That's pretty cool, man. Well, I'm glad you guys are getting a little more face time. We've got to have Dave on the show at some point. I think it's just the matter of timing. He's got some things going on right now. It's not a great time for him to come on the show. But we're going to get him on here maybe this fall or later on this year sometime when he can make that happen. So looking forward to that as well. Dave is a good-- among other things like he's in UX-- his background's in UX design had worked previously with Amazon and various other startups. So he's got a lot of cool stories to tell, a lot of neat experiences in the startup space. - Yeah. Well excellent man, let's move on to the main event here. We got some cool stuff here, we got the Whopper. - We need a drum roll, I don't think we have a drum roll on there, but what do we have here? - Oh, that's not it. - Oh, that's not it either. - That's kind of like a drum roll. - Fair. - All right, we'll stick with that. - Hey, the main event. - We got the BK standard Whopper here. - Oh, I don't know if you can see this on the video. - And the BK Impossible Whopper. - And the Impossible Whopper. So I'm gonna pass that over to Mike and he can cut those bad boys in half. - I'm gonna cut it in half and we're gonna show you each what it looks like. - Oh, you're gonna walk it up to the camera there. - Yeah, I think we should do that. This'll be one of those Reddit posts where it's like reality versus the advertisement. - That's right. (laughing) - How does it really look? - Never really look. It just looks like a smashed nasty burger in real life. - Wow. - But you know, in the advertisements, it's some big fluffy bun. - Beautiful. - The lettuce is perfect. - Oh yeah, that definitely is a sloppy wapper. (laughing) - Excellent, I got that one, let me get this one open. - All right, number one, the real wapper, the all beef wapper. - Flame grilled, too, perfection. - That's a lot of mayonnaise or whatever, whatever special sauce they put on it. (laughing) - You're on a roll tonight buddy, let's see here. (mimicking) Riveting. - Yep, slicing through this one. So I'm a little quiet, I'm not quite on the mic here, I'm trying to cut this open. (laughs) - So these are available apparently at all locations and Mike informed me that via the BK app. If you wanna do a taste test, they have a coupon for this. - Yeah, you gotta download the Burger King app on your phone and they have a coupon. I don't know how long this promotion is gonna last. It said it was gonna expire on Sunday, but it was also available again today. So I think they keep rerunning it. But anyway, if you have the BK app, you can get a promotional offer. It's $7 for the original WAPR and also an impossible WAPR, which is basically half off 'cause like they cost about seven bucks a piece or something like that. So buy one, get one. They just want you to do it. It's the taste test promotion and you get one impossible and one regular. - All right, how are we gonna go about this? We need, do we start with the standard? - Yeah, I suppose we just start with the standard. Do you wanna like, I don't know, can you hold it up to the camera? Can you walk it up there maybe? And then I'll like you can just hold it up. Let's just hold them both up, you know to the camera. I mean, I don't know It looks like a fucking wapper. Yeah, they look pretty much the same. I don't think there's really much to show there All right, so we're just gonna dive in and just taste it. Yeah, all right. Yeah, let's do that then we need like a palette cleanser Sure. Yeah, I've got a little cook right there. I've got there you go All right Drum roll. All right the regular one There you go What do we got at the big onion? Here we go. Mmm. Alright. Pretty solid. It's a good burger. Flame broiled. Lavasauce. Mmm-hmm. Totally maybe got like tons of mayo. Saus the pickled. It's a good flame grilled patty. I like the patty. All right, now I gotta clean the palette. Hit reset again. That's a wopper. That's definitely your standard issue wopper right there. You need a spit bucket. Oh, that's nice. That's a nice sound effect. You can hear you swishing over there. Yeah, I really swish that around. All right. Here we go. Go ahead. This is the main event right here. This better taste exactly like a wopper. Now let's just say I'm looking at it. All the hype that you put into this. And really like to me, the size of the patty is the same, right? I don't see really any differences in the size. The texture looks about the same. You've got-- Definitely looks like meat, no doubt about that. Looks like meat, and it is flame grilled. It doesn't have the grilled sear marks on it quite the same. Maybe on the other side of the dish. Yeah, my mind has a little bit. Yeah, it does a little bit. It looks a little more dry, I would say. Yeah. Yep. But still has a pretty decent texture. I mean, it looks has the texture of meat. I don't really see any difference when I look at the two of these things. All right, well, here we go. - All right, buddy. - Now that's definitely a different flavor to me. I don't get nearly the hit of the flambroil as I do with the other one. - It does seem a tad drier, doesn't it? - Mm-hmm. - I would agree. but still tastes like a burger, just a drier burger. And then, yeah, not nearly the kind of fakey smoke BK flavor. - That's interesting. I wanna do that again because, yeah, I mean, I think, it certainly tastes like a burger. It doesn't taste like a veggie burger or anything like that. But yeah, it has a little bit. I'm just gonna try just the patty part of it. - Oh, just going for the meat. Yeah, it's a little, yeah, that's a good idea actually. - And mine does have the flame grill. - Yeah, you're gonna go on there. - Yeah. on the other side. - Yeah. - Texture is perfect. - It has the texture of a patty. - They've nailed that for sure. I wouldn't say it has like the most flavor I've ever had. - No, exactly right. Like to me, that's kind of a flavorless. Yeah, you go back to the regular and you get that super hit of smoke. - Mm-hmm. - It's also a little a coarser, it's a little harder to chew on, whereas I kind of feel like the impossible whopper, it kind of just falls apart easier. - Yeah, I would agree with that. It seems a little more like, I don't know, flaky. That's not a good word, but yeah. - Yeah, well, I wouldn't say it's bad. I definitely, like, if you were to just like pass out off on me, I probably wouldn't know the difference. If it was a blind taste test and you just gave me one or the other, I wouldn't probably be able to identify. Yeah, I agree. If someone just put this in a bag, I wouldn't know any different. You really have to-- it's a very discerning taste here. You really have to go back and forth a few times to kind of get the difference on it, too. What's the-- like, maybe we talked about this before, but what are the nutritional stats on one versus the other? Are there any difference? Like, are they still-- is it still pretty heavy in calorie, content, and sodium, and all that sort of thing? Is it generally-- is it healthier? It is pretty similar nutritional content. The one difference is it has 15% less fat than a traditional whopper does. - Okay. - Excuse me. And it has, what did she say? Well, the old wifey chimed in there. She goes, "Glad, I'm not slaving over the stove over here." - Oh. (laughs) Making me some dinner, maybe. - Yeah. Well, he might be ready for some dessert when he gets home. - Maybe you're ready for a, what is this? Incredible. - The impossible. - Impossible, that's it? Yeah, yeah, I'll bring you the leftovers. Yeah, welcome. Yeah, the leftovers that we chewed through all of them. That's really sweet, man. That's a nice gesture. Oh my God, the gentleman who are, I wonder if she married you, man. Yeah, 15% less fat and 90% less cholesterol is in the impossible opera. So in that regard, it is healthier. I heard anecdotally there's more car bohydrates in it. I didn't verify that on their website, but that's what others have told me. So I think it's very similar. I wouldn't label it healthy food. It's still fast food, but I think the main benefits here really are just about the impact on the environment. So this has grown in a lab. It's not like, you don't have to, all the CO2, all the carbon dioxide emissions from the methane gas and all the water, it takes to grow the food for the cows and all the whole process. It really has a dramatic reduction on resources for that. And I think that's the real benefit there. obviously not having to slaughter animals and go through that whole process. And so I think, you know, certainly for a ground beef substitute patty, I think it fits the mold pretty perfectly. And especially in a burger when you have all these fixings, when you have the pixels and the mayonnaise and the tomato and everything else, like you really can't tell the difference. Yeah. Only when we kind of did this, the patty by itself, could you kind of tell the texture was slightly different and a little less flavor? Yeah, I would agree. Well done. Definitely a little less smoky, but texture is perfect. And like I said, in a blind taste test, you would, I don't think you'd ever be able to identify which one you got. So I think everybody, I would recommend it. At least give it a shot. See what you think. I don't think you'd be able to notice. - I'm impressed. - Yeah. - That was a fun test, dude. - Yeah, thanks for organizing that. - Woo! - Should we move on to the news? - Let's get out of here we go. - Here we go. (upbeat music) - We have Tesla news. - Hey, I put that in there for you today, especially for you and not only one but two pieces of Tesla news today. I did not put any of the Tesla news into the show notes today. Thank you very much. Looking out for you, man. I know you had a little bit of a drought there last few weeks and so I wanted to help you out. Thank you. The first story is kind of fun. Tesla owner turns her arm into an implants in RFID chip into her arm into a key. This is fascinating. I don't-- so if you have a Model 3, the way that you access the car is through an RFID card. You put it up to the, what do they call that? The pillar between the two driver side. - Is that what it is? I don't know how it works. - Yeah. And that's how you unlock the card. There is no key. - It's not proximity though. You have to actually tap the card kind of. - Yeah, it's proximity, but it's really, really, really close. You have to basically be almost right on top of it. - Okay. - Not gonna use the, unrelated, but if you use the phone, that's different, because it's a Bluetooth or something. - That's correct, yeah. So you can see in this tech crunch article that you posted here, they have a kind of a black and key. That is literally the key to the car. And that's how you access it. And so you just tap that on the car as a matter of fact, here's exactly what they look like. That's it. Yeah, that's something I'm looking at. And so yeah, she just implanted a version of this, I guess, in her arm. And so she can just do the same thing. Tap her arm onto the pillar of the car and it'll open up the car. Very cool. Yeah, what did she say she tried doing a couple different things? She She already has another chip in her forearm and she was going to try to just get the code from this RFID into that chip because it's a programmable RFID. It didn't work because of the Tesla security. So now she had to get a second chip. She took apart the key fob and had that one implanted as well. So now she's got a couple chips. She's a bio hacker. Yep. Amy D.D. D.D. Has a page on Amy Double D. on Hackaday I/O that explains the project and the whole process. Doesn't show whether it works or not. Well, that's kind of a bummer. You would think that would be a pivotal part of the whole thing. I'm showing you work. I implanted this chip in my arm, but I didn't give a valid test. It's rough to me. It works. Well, and the funny thing about that is you could do exactly what you described with the Bluetooth key entry or Bluetooth phone entry and have that in your back pocket and just be like, "Oh, boop, look, it opened up the car." Well, the phone didn't, you just didn't have it in the video, right? true, you could fake that, but easily, right? It's interesting, though. I mean, that's definitely an interesting use case for something like this, like an embedded chip. All right, there's a lot of talk about that kind of stuff to store, I don't know, data about you. Right. Medical data. Yeah. Maybe think of like a pet, you chip pets, right? So that there's information about the pet that can be scanned. Same thing for people they want to, but that, you know, Of course, that's a big ethical or security concern for people. - You need to have a sleeve over the chip so that people can't just read it. - Or a FID sleeve. - Yeah. - Put it on the back of your neck. So you have to put something around your neck. - Metal, what is that? Like a metal, like, fair-a-day cage type of a thing. - Yeah. Well, they make wallets with that now. All it's just to have a metal, some kind of what metallic layer that's embedded in between the leather or whatever, and it blocks any kind of radio frequency signals, scrambles it so you can't really read what's on the chip. You can't get any of the credit card data or anything like that that's in there. - Did you play some non royalty free music again? - No, that was the royalty free station, dude. - Oh. - According to Spotify. - Well, it looks like Facebook is complaining. - Really? I wonder if somebody put some non royalty free music on the royalty free station. - Oh, that's not cool. I don't know. Well, the same volume three, electro house. Hopefully we're still here. Yikes, they threaten us down, huh? It's what it said. I wonder if that was the first time 'cause it was really quick. Like it went on and came off. No, maybe. And I had to restart it. All right. Well, I don't know. Hopefully we're still on. We'll see if not. I guess you'll catch us on the podcast later on. That's right. All right, what's the next piece of Tesla news here that you added to the show notes? Oh, this is cool. So this is another story, kind of a hack that another Tesla owner came up with. This guy was a security guy. So you've heard about Century Mode. You've talked about Century Mode on the Tesla car before. This is utilizing all the cars' cameras to, if they detects motion, I believe, it kind of captures some footage so you can see if someone's trying to break into the car. That's right. And so this security researcher wanted to take it a step further than that. And he developed this surveillance detection scout. Okay, it sounds like we're still on. That's good. A surveillance detection scout mod that turns a Model 3 or Model S into an observation deck. So this is interesting. The project plugs in Nvidia, Jetson, Xavier, computer. I'm not familiar with that one, but you plug that into the USB port and it uses open source machine learning to detect faces and license plates. And it'll send you a notification if it repeatedly spots the same plate or person, giving you a warning that someone might be tailing you or preparing to steal your car. This is pretty fascinating, man, because I can tell you like just knowing from my own use of the Model 3, like what we do for Century Motors, we just have a USB thumb drive plugged in. And in the Model 3 stores all that content onto the thumb drive in a specific folder structure. And there's a lot of these people that are doing hacks into this. and they'll plug in like Raspberry Pis and stuff like that. And they'll create all this sophisticated software that can pull immediately like when you get home and connect your Wi-Fi, it'll connect up, it'll pull all the data off of the thumb drive, upload it to some other third party storage so that you have your thumb drive and your data always synced. And so this is taking you to step further in applying machine learning to the videos that are being stored on the device. And that's pretty crazy and creepy in a way. It is very creepy because yeah, like they said, you can recognize if it sees the same patterns over and over again and notify you. So pretty cool case if you're on the, if it's your car, but it's kind of scary if you're being surveilled. So right. It's crazy that I can notice the same people, same faces and license plates. Like when I look at the video quality of the videos that are output onto the thumb drive, they're, I mean, it's good quality, but I don't know that I would be able to easily discern faces. that it's too grainy or it's not a high enough resolution. - Yeah, unless maybe somehow the Tesla sub system has higher quality video available and it's just writing a lower quality to the disk, I'm not sure, but this is pretty impressive. And it's funny that you could effectively be driving down the road and just be collecting all this information. Think about the, you could effectively, it can be like parking patrol, what's the word I'm looking for? Meetermades, right? Driving down the road and figuring out where people park on a consistent basis, right? Just based on-- You could collect a lot of data that way. Or even right now, I think they've passed a lot of block this in Seattle, at least. But the guys chalk your tires. Yeah. So that's defacing your property. That's right. Yeah, it's a violation of your-- I lost my train of thought. It's illegal. They declared it illegal. So you can't do that anymore. but uh... i don't think i don't see them doing it but they still i don't know what are they how do they enforce that then yeah i don't know well i mean now they don't uh... it's it's not even like because it used to be that you use the tickets you know the sticky tickets it's taking your window and now it's license plate based uh... i don't know how they determine whether or not you've moved in a given time period because to me this u_i_ would be one way to handle it or the machine learning is that you could just drive the parking enforcement cars go up and down the street and it would just take a note of where the car is at in the time stamp and to become back later, it could just flag it without even touching the vehicle or anything. Just looking at the license plate. The good news for Tesla owners is that, you know, if my car was parked right here on the street, I could just connect to it with my phone here and just move it, you know, a few feet forward. Yeah. Yeah. And then I'm in a different position than I was before. So then I won't get ticketed, right? If the chalk was still the method, then that would be correct. But now that it's, now that it's just using like license plates, I think you have to move down a spot or something like that. - Oh, all right. You gotta get a little more creative now. - Well, still pretty cool that somebody, like people are doing a lot of crazy stuff with like the data that these cars are collecting, 'cause I mean, effectively they're smart cars, right? - Well, what's crazy about it to me is that, yeah, and all they didn't really modify much of the car here, they plugged in a computer into the USB. - Right. - They're using data that's already available. - That's right, yeah. So really low, I don't know what effort he had to go to get it to that point, but I mean the solution itself is pretty simple. Plug it in and go. And it's pretty interesting. I wonder, did he does this say anything like needing an additional power source to do the processing on that or was the car able to supply the power via USB to power that because it's an Nvidia processor and if you're doing, if you're doing that kind of processing against that many images. That's got to be, yeah, that can't be. It's got to be pretty power intensive. I can't imagine that you're going to do that over what a five volt or connection there for usb it's got to be something else maybe add a third an extra battery off to the side or yeah Still very cool really cool cool project. Yeah, this is somewhat unrelated, but as far as Securities concerned. Did you hear the news that there was a Another security guy embedded a chip into apple lightning apple usb-c cable Feel like maybe I did, but I don't recall the details This shit was wicked crazy like they took a regular iPhone charger So it would be a lightning cable because they didn't go to USB-C yet They took a regular US Apple Lightning cable opened up like the fat end of the USB Embedded a chip in there That and basically like I could hand you a K. Oh, here's a cable man Like if you need to use a charger they plug it into your computer. It has a Wi-Fi access Point on it and it allows you the you know anybody that knows how to get into the Wi-Fi to take over your computer and like, you know, screen capture and do all kinds of shit at the command level. Read any data that's coming across that wire pretty much, probably right? Read data, take ownership of the machine, like do whatever they want. They have basically full access at that point. I've heard similar things like this about airport chargers. Like people warn very, very highly never to plug anything into an airport charger. Yeah, I just heard that recently too. That if you use the ones at the airport, some of them will actually scrape your data. >> Yep. Get your contacts, whatever they want to get. >> Yep. There's actually devices for this exact purpose of your seeing these. USB condoms. >> [LAUGHTER] >> Wrap it up. >> Yeah. There is such a thing. I'll have to find one and put it in the show notes, but effectively, what it does is it disables the data pins. >> Get out of here. >> You get the charge, but the data access is denied. >> Wow. >> There is such a thing, but yeah, I'll have to link it up in the show notes. >> Yeah. Data condoms. >> That makes a lot of sense because yeah, you've got what four contacts you get your positive negative and then you've got your data and data out kind of thing and so you don't really need those two when you're charging but you know if you're borrowing the charger they're gonna take advantage of all four of those things. Yeah exactly. That's crazy man. Didn't even think about that before. Okay well be careful out there. Yeah. So what do we got here? This looks like a piece of news that you put in I don't remember this one. Yeah are you familiar with Tumblr? That's just another blog site if I'm not mistaken, isn't it? I think it was called a micro blog. Really what it was back in the day was just like a really easy way to post a variety of different content. It might be a picture, it might be text, it might be just a single quote. I think they had like six or seven different specific types of things that you could post. They'd provide you easy theming for a website. You could stand up a subdomain type website, whatever, coffeecodecast.tumbler.com or whatever. - Yeah. - Really easy way to just join a, or create a blog and post content. And it's been around forever. Like they were one of the kind of, you know, back in the web 2.0 thing with, you know, everything with the R on the end. They were one of the original ones that did that kind of thing. So been around forever. And then recently, more recently, it's been kind of a place for dirty content, if you will. - Oh, really? - Yeah. - Yeah, just like what it's become known for, for whatever reason, but then that got buttoned up. Like suddenly they said, like, nope, Tumblr no longer allows this kind of content. So like, effectively now it's become kind of a junk platform 'cause nobody used it for anything but that. - Right, okay. - So anyway, the news here is that Verizon is selling, Verizon's the ones that clamp down on the adult content. But they are now selling Tumblr to WordPress, which is another probably the biggest blogging platform there is. - Yeah, and it really is so much more now, right? Like, isn't it really for a lot of people a fully featured website? I mean, really, you can create your own website inward press. They have so many modules and plugins, right? - It's kind of a full-blown CMS at this point. - Yeah. - Yeah. - You can add all kinds of different types of, I don't know, you would wanna call it content types in addition to your typical article. can handle images and multimedia and video and all kinds of different things. So just another thing under the word press umbrella, I don't really know exactly what they're going to do with it. But they bought it for what they say. It was like a nominal fee or something I think was the word or the verbage that they used. Okay. Yeah. So got it for a little bit of nothing. So somebody said, I'm just reading the Twitter comments. That's kind of funny. At least it's not Facebook. should have just been bought by PornHub by CornNub. Bringing it back around. Oh, funny. Okay. So, yeah, what the hell are they going to do with it? It's a great question. I don't know if they'll try and make kind of a micro-bloggy type website with WordPress based on this. Okay. Because it is, I do have to say that it was incredibly easy to use. WordPress is generally pretty easy to use as well, but I feel like gets a little bit more sophisticated than what Tumblr was. So I think if you want something quick and easy and set up really fast to start posting something, then I think Tumblr was really, really well done. It does say here just in terms of valuation. So when they were Yahoo bought them in 2013 for $1.1 billion. And automatic, oh that's automatic Incas, the owner of WordPress got it. So automatic reportedly bought it for less than 3 million. 3 million. So we'll change. Two thirds of its value, at least. So it's a bargain. Yeah. It's on sale. Yeah. Crazy. Okay. Kind of interesting. I've posted a few sites on there before. My wife's Zoom page when she was doing that. We posted on there and it worked pretty slick. Pretty easy to set up and pretty easy for her to post things and make modifications. So just thought it was an interesting thing that happened here. And that's pretty recent. I think it happened this week, earlier this week. - Yeah, that was news that I just saw come across there. - Yeah. - Tumblr. Yeah, that was like Flickr. - Yeah, exactly. All the ones that ended in R. - Yeah. - I don't know any other ones right off the top of my head, but I don't either. - Yeah, not that. - There was a bunch of them. - Wow, very interesting to see that. Okay. - Moving on, we got some shipping updates, logistics. - Yeah. - Shipping updates. - I just kind of lumped them into one because there was a few shipping related things. A lot of these came out of the, by trusty Puget Sound Business Journal. We talked about that this week too. Everybody was talking about what good content they have. - Yeah, yeah, they have great content. They are really the single source of local business news. They kind of have a lock on that. It's hard to get that kind of news from any other source. The times might run some of the bigger stories like the acquisition Salesforce buying tab low, but you're not gonna see a lot of the little stuff in the paper, so you just sound business journal. Yeah, this is cool. So the first piece of news here is that Amazon is seeking approval now to test drone delivery in more rural areas. And they have quite a lot of conditions on this one. They have there. So you know they have their own drone. They call it the MK27 drone. I believe that the request is that they could deliver packages that were five pounds or less. They're trying to seek some kind of Exemption from some of the FAA rules that typical aircraft have to follow But so so basically like what they want to do in this first test is have a delivery system that will bring packages the customers in 30 minutes or less five pounds or less and And it's got to be in places that aren't going to be in any kind of no fly zones of course and that sort of a thing But they're getting one step closer. I mean this is a huge thing that I think everybody's jumping jumping in on now in the commerce Space so you know the walmart's testing drones ubers testing drones for delivery For they're like they're you know not only uber eats, but they had like a little delivery thing going on there too, so Getting very close This is pretty interesting too because like in the in the rural areas like you're gonna have many many many miles between Delivery points probably right so like I'm looking here and it talks about like five pounds like you mentioned The drones range is about 15 miles so theoretically There's not a whole lot not probably a whole lot of households that are gonna be able to be in the range You know if you draw what a 30 mile circle right around their delivery center where it is if they're gonna do this Probably not that many homes in a rural area Yeah, and I guess it depends on how rural they're gonna get, but certainly you're right if you're gonna do this somewhere in You know Nebraska where I'm from my neck of the woods over there Iowa Then yeah, I could see it being if you're in very rural areas and yeah, that's gonna be a difficult feat It's probably gonna be a thing of scale because they're gonna have We saw the patent that they issued recently for their hot air balloon warehouse. No. Oh this thing's wicked man and you gotta check this out. So yeah, they filed a patent or patent pending on this design for, it looks like a huge blimp that just kinda, you know, the old Good Your Blimp. This thing like floats around up in the air and it's got a bunch of packages and shit. And then the drones can kind of go into it and come out of it and like go fetch more packages. - Okay. - Yeah, and I swear to God, I wasn't reading this like on April 1st, like this is a real thing that I saw, the Amazon blimp, I don't know what they call it. - This must be the Amazon Hot Air balloon prime, air patent. - Yeah. - Stealthy drones. - Maybe it was, is that, was it really just, that could have been April Fool's thing. (laughing) - Yep. - April 2nd. - Yeah, I came out the day after. - Aww. - Bummer, it looked so cool, man. You can see it. (laughing) - Oh, was, that was the April Fool's thing. - Oh boy. - I'm making false news, I'm sorry. The design looked very good. - Very good. - So yeah, I guess they still have to figure that out. I mean, that's one way to do it. But yes, this is just for testing by the way too. Like I'm sure that the range on these things can go far past that. By the time it's commercially available, they'll have greater ranges and capable of holding larger payloads and it won't be such an issue. But also it's gonna be so much cheaper than having all these delivery vehicles. They could have millions of these things all over the place. So who cares, right? Like they could just space them out everywhere. - Well, and it's gonna be highly dependent on weight too, right? If you're carrying a five pound package the range is gonna be much different than if you're carrying a one pound package. - Right, yeah. So very cool, I'm excited for this kind of stuff to come. I can see a day where I have a big landing target on my roof, you can just drop it right on my roof and I'll just go pick it up. That'll be great. For the thieves, I don't have to worry about people taking crap off my doorstep. - Yeah, they're gonna have to figure that part out too. I know that they have, like if there's a physical person delivering the packages, they have new services that'll bring it into the house or put it into your trunk. - Where your garage? I think there's a garage thing too. - So there's some of those options, the drone might not, I don't know if the drone can do that. So that would be another consideration is how do you do that? Do you have to have special delivery boxes? There are lock boxes that it can access or something like that? I don't know. Anyway, that was my first logistics shipping news. The other one, the other two actually are related around FedEx and some, I think this is interesting. I'm not surprised by this, but you remember back a few months ago that when Amazon really started to expand at prime air and there was a lot of what am I trying to say. Stories being covered at the time about like them being real competition to UPS and FedEx. And so they had interviewed the owners of both companies and CEOs and they were both saying to the time like no, Amazon is not a threat to our core business like they represent such a small percentage of our packages and blah blah blah blah like we don't really care what they're doing and they can they can buy their planes and we'll be just fine. Well FedEx recently had a contract with Amazon for renewal and they decided not to renew it and basically saying that they acknowledge them as competition now and that they don't want to carry the contract out. I don't know what else to say about it. That's kind of the story. It's pretty, like I think Amazon is delivering more and more of their packages. Like the things that I get anymore, usually, unless they're coming from clear across the country or usually delivered via Amazon careers. Yeah. So FedEx has been slowly being phased out, I think, by Amazon anyway, so I have a suspicion that under the covers there's probably a little bit of a disagreement as to how that contract was going to work. Okay. Yeah. Because I know that Amazon's prime, you know, their goal, just like you mentioned, is to become their own shipping company. Yeah. Just like any other thing, they're getting their hooks into that kind of organization as well. Yeah, vertical integration, right? They just want to own the whole thing. Everything. And that's all they're going to say of money. I think we talked about numbers last time where their shipping went from, it really exploded. I wanna say it was like from three million to, it's a three billion to 12 billion. I mean, it was some huge number. I don't remember now what I said last time, but it's like hockey stick growth kind of a thing. Like their expenses for shipping and now that they're doing one day deliveries and all of that, it's even more out of hand. - And it's just part of their business plan. like they get into this kind of space and then they get into the food business with the Whole Foods purchase. I think just recently I thought I saw something about them getting into the pharmacy market. - Trying to deal with the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. - Yeah, so they're just getting their hooks into everything, which is probably bad for a lot of reasons, but maybe good for others. Makes them a very large monolithic giant, which is pretty scary. But yeah, that's kind of their business model, just keep expanding and keep expanding and take all the profits that they get and reinvest and reinvest. I remember back years ago, you always hear that, "Oh, Amazon makes no profit." Well, it's because they just continue to reinvest it into something. - Everything went back into the company for a long time. - Exactly. - Yeah. - They make plenty of money. - Yeah, and Bayzo says said before that I think he gives six years for some of these things to be successful or not. So he's not looking for overnight results, right? Like he's willing to invest lots of money and R&D and lots of time to prove these things out and do it at a loss and eventually win by squeezing everyone out by margin and volume. So nobody else can compete. - And then that's all well and good until you're the only player now and now you control price, which is that's where it becomes a big problem. - Yeah, yeah. - Well, move it along to the last one. So this is the other FedEx story. Really that FedEx ground is going to start expanding Sunday delivery. - Sunday delivery. - Yeah. And so yeah, I think this is another competition thing because Amazon was partnering with USPS to do Sunday deliveries on their packages. So now FedEx is getting into the space. They've always done this, I guess, during peak holiday season. So that's not entirely new, but starting next January, it's gonna do it seven days a week year round for the majority of the US population. Everything okay? - Our disc is showing us red. - Oh, we're on our disc space. - We got 23 minutes left on the cast before our recording ends prematurely. - Oh good, well the show over by then. - We're good. - Excellent, I don't know why they got filled up so quick. Is it the multi-track thing? - Probably. - Okay, we'll figure that out. Yeah, so they're gonna be starting January, seven days a week, FedEx deliveries. - USPS hates this Sunday delivery, by the way. I know that for a fact. - Really? - Our carrier the other day was out walking around on the Sunday and we're like, what are you doing out here on the Sunday? He's like, oh, Amazon delivery, I hate to shit. - These bastards, yeah. - They can be delivered. - So is it mandatory? Are they have to do this? Or is it just like, you get time in a half, grumble grumble, but you do it? - Oh, I highly doubt they get paid overtime or any kind of additional wage. - You don't think so? - It's probably just another slot in the schedule. You know, maybe you work five days or whatever and then somebody else comes in for another two on Saturday, Sunday, I don't know. crazy man, I would think that they have to pay them more for that. But I don't know, that'd be something to look into. This statistic blew my mind. So I knew that when I worked at FedEx, no, I worked at UPS as the Hub Sorter. And this was back in 2003, 2005. So 14 years ago, they were delivering in the ballpark of-- this is before Amazon really exploded. But at that time, they were delivering 15 million packages daily, which was a pretty crazy number to think at that time. Fast forward and now across all networks, so FedX, UPS, USPS, 50 million packages a day are delivered. And that's just for small parcels in the United States. This isn't global. So this is huge. And they said that that volume will double to 100 million by 2026. You're going to need drones. You can't physically have enough drivers on the road delivering 100 million small packages in the United States. All your roads would be clogged with delivery drivers basically? In one day. Yeah. That's just insane. That is insane. FedEx is already working with Walmart and Walgreens to provide next day shipping. So that's what's going on here. They're really just trying to get a piece of the pie here with the next day deliveries and help out, get Wal-Mart's business and Wal-Greens business and try to take down or compete with Amazon on same day deliveries. Well, I like my packages a day earlier. That's all I have to say about that. Yeah, me too. Bob LaBla FedEx had nearly two million smart post packages given to the US. PS will now be delivered by FedEx. Cool. Well, I was trying to peek around to see if I could see anything about the pay, but I'm not finding anything good. That's helpful. What is Convoik? Christina said that's why digital freight network. Convoik is a service you could think of them as the Uber of freight. Okay. And is this autonomous? No. What they basically are trying to do is, as I understand it, the trucking industry will drive a lot. trucks on the road that are driving effectively empty. So like, okay. So you might take a load from Seattle to, let's say, Spokane. - Yeah. - But then you need to, that trailer needs to return somewhere to get another load. So it's driving empty to somewhere. And so what Convoys idea is to try and find that vehicle a load so that you can return with a load and be more efficient and obviously make more money. - That is really cool. I'm looking at this here. So you can bid on it. Yeah, we'll say, okay, here's 268 miles, here's how much cargo. Wow, what a cool deal, it's just a little app too. - Yeah, yeah, literally it's, I think, you know, like I said, the kind of the Uber for trucking a little bit. Like, hey, you have a gig here that you need to haul. - Yeah, you know, here it is. - That's a great idea, because yeah, I've heard of that. I'm familiar with that, you know, just had some experience with that back in the day And I know that you do have a lot of those, like they call them LTL less than truckload, where the whole thing is not, you know, you don't need a whole truckload for delivery. And so you have capacity to take on more stuff, but there was no easy way to kind of coordinate that before. So what a great idea. Yeah. Have been to their offices. They got some really cool offices over there. Where are they? Somewhere downtown, maybe in the Bell Tower. I can't recall at this point. Really? Definitely have been up there. Very sweet. Yeah, I'm looking at their website, it doesn't say. Has their number? 206. address but whoa what a sweet company. It's a great idea they're doing well. I bet. Or at least we're doing well and I think they, more than likely I don't think they've ever announced it but I'm sure they have their fingers into some autonomous stuff too as well. I would guess why wouldn't you at that point? Right. Yeah. Maybe you can get the Tesla trucks in your network. There you go. And bought a boom. Yeah. Great. Awesome dude. Well they're in West Lake. Okay. Thank you. Oh did they move? It's a Christina set. - Interesting. - I don't really know what's going on there. - I don't ever go to West Lake anymore, so I feel like that's a long way down there. - So, did we shoot ourselves in the foot again on this topic? What are we gonna do here? - No, we're good. Let's go for it. - All right. - Well, what do we got? - 18 minutes. - Okay, 18. All right, great. Yeah, 'cause we started 10 minutes later. A few minutes later. - Yeah. - Let it run. - All right, kick it off for us, buddy. This has been in the works for a few weeks now. - Normally, I'd be willing to go past the 18 minutes, but because our cards are going to fill up, that we pretty much have to call it quits. But yeah, recently in the org, we've had a pretty prominent leader that has stepped aside isn't gone, but is no longer-- - Taking on a new role. - Yeah, it's no longer in our organization quite as often. Like we don't have day to day interaction with them at all or much, right? - That's fair, yeah. Traveling a lot more, working in kind of a different capacity and so yeah like is definitely well hasn't been around a whole lot in the last few weeks actually. Yeah exactly so it's an interesting topic because it's been very top of mind here at the office and has triggered a lot of different I don't know emotions and conversations and things like that around around the office and around multiple people here between both you you know, for myself, you and many of the other people here, both in leadership and not. So I thought it might be an interesting topic to kind of unpack a little bit and discuss. - I think so, and what I will say to kick it off too, is that I think any organization struggles with change on any level. I know that when we were going through the acquisition process that a lot of people were on pins and needles and just didn't know what to expect because our group is pretty diverse and we've got a lot of people now that have been through this multiple times before. And sometimes these things can be successful and other times they can be really not lucrative for the employees where companies will come in and just say, look, we just want your technology and we're gonna get rid of everybody or you just don't know what's gonna happen. And even if things start off well, as ours has been very well, this point, what, nine months in, if not quite. And you just never know. At some point, something could happen. You don't have the same sense of control anymore, because it's really up to HQ, right? So I think there's always been some concern that things were going to change. And what's that going to look like? And this was kind of the first piece where there's been a shift. I feel like so far in the whole process. Right. Yeah, I would agree with you. This has been one of the biggest-- probably one of the bigger impacts. I would say that has happened since any kind of transition that has occurred for the company. And I think generally there's probably a couple of different ways that this might be approached by people, right? There's probably the kind of the fighter flight mentality, right? You might just bail. - Right. - I've lost the leader that I wanted to work for that I trust that whatever, there may be a whole slew of reasons. You might be fearful of who's coming. - What's gonna happen next? - Yeah. - And it creates a lot of uncertainty about my job I was in a good place, but maybe the new person's not going to be as easy to work with. All these things come to mind, right? Yeah, exactly. So I think in the office of that would be a fight, in which case we've talked about this a lot. So as other people stepping up to fill the void, trying to do a little bit more than their share or a lot more than their share or whatever, you know, there's a lot of different ways that that could be sliced. Because currently in this organization it's not being filled, right? there's a massive hole that's being left. And so everybody that's at the level below is trying to raise themselves up, pick up any of the slack, and carry on without. Yeah, I would agree with that. And it's been interesting just to see the responses. I think for the most part, we've seen more of the fight. I think there's a lot of unknown uncertainty still. And so nothing to be too alarming at this point for people to be taking off. but I think certainly a lot of people jumping in to step up and kind of see it as a land grab. Like, ooh, there's an opportunity here that I want to get it and it's time to let that be known and a lot of people have done that. - And it's early too. The flight idea I think would have in later, once a replacement had been named or something like that, or if they were going to decide not to fill it or whatever the item might be there at the end of the line, like that's when people would decide, "No, I don't want to hang out for this anymore." Right. So I don't think you'll see that until six months down the road or something like that. But it's been a really interesting experience just kind of for myself, I can say, just self-reflecting upon the person that we lost and trying to find the qualities and things that made that person a leader and made that person a-- somebody that I admire. And so it's been fun to self-reflect and figure out those things and figure out how I can kind of work some of those qualities into my own leadership skills. And I think it's pushed both of us in different ways, both with the book that we talked about last week, which we don't have in here, by the way. - Dare to lead. - Yeah, Dare to lead by Brunei Brown. - Yeah. - I'll put a link in the show now. It's a great, great, great book. I've been, I'm about halfway through that. And it's been really, really interesting. More of an affirmation really than like an aha moment. It's a lot of stuff that I feel like I already do are already new, but she puts it into a very clear context and I'm just like, yep, that's what I do. I'm glad that I'm doing what seems to be the correct thing. It's been a really interesting experience just going through all the different self-reflection steps and adding more to my leadership repertoire, I guess. Yeah, I would say that when something like this happens, it definitely forces you out of your routine or out of your habit a little bit. So it's easy to get somewhat complacent, I think, with things being the same for a long time and then having them shift all of a sudden causes a wake-up call to say, "Oh, geez, like what do I want and what's going on here and what have I been contributing and how can I contribute more?" And so, yeah, I think it's been a really good opportunity to do some self-reflection. I'm glad that we're doing this thing. were reading that book together. And I think it was really a call for us to say, we want to preserve the culture that we've had. And he was a big part of creating the culture. And so it's like, what is the culture? How do you identify that? What are those key traits and things that make it up? And then how do we try to carry that out? How do we keep that going? So there's a lot to process there. I love the idea of the wake up call. That was a really good way to describe it, because I definitely had that experience as well. I was pretty happy to kind of doing the management thing. And I'm still happy with it. I'm not saying that that's something that I want to get out of or are unhappy with in any way, but it was kind of a shot across a bow, I guess, or something that you know, like, "Oh, I need to continue to move forward. I need to be looking out for what the next thing is." - Yes. - And planning for that. and putting myself, plotting myself on a course. And so a lot of what I've been trying to do and think about, and like I said, self-reflect is, how do I do that? How do I put myself in a great position for that? Whether it's something that I can do or whether it's other people that I can bring into my circle to help me with that. It's been a lot of those types of conversations and it's been really positive, which is really, really interesting in the context of losing somebody who you think is extremely valuable. - Right. Yeah, I know for myself personally that I've been so caught up on the individual projects that I've been working on and there's a time a year ago and beyond that where I just felt always that I would be kind of a code monkey and just always be doing that and didn't really want to get into management and management was kind of a dirty word like no I'm an engineer I'm not a manager you know like the value is in the engineering and that's what I value and that's what I want to do and that's shifted a lot over the years and I've started to see the value in in that especially as we've got a lot of new guys coming on and we brought a lot of new people in. Like there's value in that experience and being able to say people time for making the same mistakes and say, "Listen, there's a reason why we do it this way and not that way and here this can help you save some time." And so the more I've gotten into these scenarios in the last six months, I have to say I really enjoy that role and it's more fulfilling to me than solving the problem myself. It's fun to to help people find their way to becoming better engineers and growing that way. And I didn't see it that way before. And what I would say about it is that because I'm so caught up in the projects, I think in my mind I just figured, oh, someday, like, you know, maybe someone will come in and just be like, hey, like you're doing good stuff, like you wanna lead, you know? And I think we've talked about this a lot, but that's the biggest mistake that I've made. And I don't have any regrets. I think it's not too late, but waiting around is just not a good way to handle it. So many people have stepped up and made it be known in this person's absence. Hey, I want to be that leader. I want to do this. And it's something, and I've been a part of that as well. And I just think, yeah, it's a good reminder that you always have to be thinking about what's next and how do you get from A to B and let it be known because it isn't something that you shouldn't assume that anybody knows that that's what you're interested in. I would agree with you on that. We've definitely had a lot of conversations this week, especially about making your intentions clear and making it clear what you want from your position, what you want from your co-workers, peers, managers, all the way up the stack. I think that's a very important conversation to have. I think it's been a big, this has been a big driver of those conversations. It's unfortunate that it took that. I think your point complacency does happen. I was kind of in that mode too. I've been a manager for a year and a half and I was kind of just like in that mode, I'm gonna continue to do this and continue to build my experience as a manager. And then maybe, oh, several years down the road, I'll figure out what the next move is. Well, you don't need to necessarily do that. You could be working on that the whole time. - You could start now. And having these conversations, I've recently expressed my desire to manage a team and I'm doing it in sort of an unofficial capacity as a lead right now, and so I'm doing some of those things, but even putting it out there on their radar, and for a couple of reasons. One is just so that they know and are thinking about you when there's opportunities arise for that position, or two, to provide constructive feedback, help you develop into that role. So maybe you're not ready. Maybe I'm not ready to do that today, but here's the three things you can do to really demonstrate that and maybe in six months or a year, hey, you're ready now. But at least you're working towards that. If I would have just not said anything and then brought it up, it said, oh, I want to do this now. I said, well, what have you done to demonstrate that? So I think you lose something by holding back instead of just saying, this is what I want. What do I need to do to get there? Help me get there. - Absolutely. I agree with you. I'm a little bit bummed here. We're kind of running out of time here on our cast. We've not even hit the hour mark, unfortunately. - We're running out of this space. - We're running out of space. more technical difficulties. That's just gonna be the episode name here, I guess. - More technical difficulties. - Yes, dammit. - We'll carry this on. This is a good start. I think there's a lot more to do here, so. - Yeah, and as we get more in the book, we can share some more on that too, as we have time. So, thanks everybody for joining. There was quite a few people online. It was pretty quiet on the comments today, but of course, artwork is by Yerne, the gentle giant. Check out more of his artwork at www.coffeecodecast.com/jentelgiant. Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and email us at coffeecodecast@gmail.com. And the podcast, of course, is available anywhere you get your podcasts as well as www.coffeecodecast.com. Maybe next week we'll be on YouTube. We'll see. We'll try. Yeah, we'll do our best. In the meantime, jump over to coffeecodecast.com/review and help us out with any feedback that you have. Plus, minus. We did get a one-star review. We did. We did. Let's talk about it. Okay. more five stars that'd be great. Very good. As always thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. [Music]

44: The Meatless Meat Revolution

Kyle Johnson — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 07:00:00 GMT

44: The Meatless Meat Revolution

0:00

/66:58

This week we host a special guest and friend of the show Wyatt Kelso (Gomerpyle) for a talk about aviation, PicoBrew vs. the Spinn coffee maker, more SpaceX launches, the Meatless revolution, and another round of what we're watching.

Show Notes

Cold Open
Theme Music
On the show…
Follow-up
- PicoBrew Multibrew
- Spinn Coffee
SpaceX AMOS 17 Launch
- Falcon launch over LA
- Davis-Monthan
Subway meatless meatball sub
What are you watching
- Mike
  - The Leftovers
  - Manifest
- Kyle
  - Chernobyl
- Wyatt
  - Cheers
What are you reading
- Legacy
- Dare to Lead
Theme Music

Full Transcript

Yeah, and I don't think they know. I think if I'm not mistaken the forecast or anywhere from like they would say like Oh, it might last 500 years or it might last like 20,000 really they don't really know interesting Yeah, okay, but other other creatures are inhabiting the area right like other animals are coming back Yeah, so it's getting better that the other crazy thing is like I think it's called perpillette Is the name of the city that wasn't that was closest to the reactor mm-hmm and Just yeah kind of the same thing you were talking about where like people disappeared They were in the middle of daily life right doing whatever they're doing for the day and like all of sudden the military rolls in and like just starts The Ronald Mambuses so like whatever they were doing at the time They just like if we were podcasting right now. They would just it would remain here All right, you didn't take anything that's bizarre So yeah, it's crazy just to put yourself in those in their shoes to think of what that would be like to just be uprooted immediately and Never returned to anything that that you own I have to say this and I don't know we have a minute a few minutes It's like not to go down this rabbit hole, but you made me think of something. And I've mentioned this to you maybe before, but I was a student at Columbine at the high school when the incident happened in '99, right? For '20. And I was in the building, but we had a very similar experience because when we evacuated that we had not returned until later that summer. So this happened April 20th. We evacuated the building, got out of there, and when the SWAT team came through and the FBI and whoever was doing the investigation, they investigated. And I remember the time I was in a computer lab and I was in track. So I had a Gatorade bottle that was my water bottle and I had that sitting on the desk next to the computer and had my backpack and whatever else I had, like my pen and pencil or paper. When we were allowed to go back in to get our possessions. And how long, how many days had transpired or were we-- - It was several months. I think it happened in June or July. - Yeah. I don't remember exactly now, but I think it was maybe in July. It was still during summer recess that they cleared everything and the investigation wrapped up and we were allowed to go back into the building. And so yeah, they kind of had this thing stage where we could come in and I went back into the room that I was in and it was fucking just eerie because everything was still there. Like the bottle was still there, the back, the backpactors had a pink ribbon tied to it, basically meaning that they swept it for any kind of bombs or any materials and it was, you know, they scanned it. But it was the most airy experience to even be gone for a few months and then be transported right back to that day and be like, holy shit man, like nothing, they didn't lift a thing, right? It was this very strange experience. - Especially something like that, where you know, like tons of people are through there all the time. - Yeah. - And yeah, nothing changed in the span of months. Yeah, and I didn't go down there in the cafeteria. I think at that point, they probably had cleaned up certain areas because that's where a lot of the incident occurred was down there and in the library. But I know for a fact, for weeks, the lunch, you could see through the windows, like people that had long-range cameras and could zoom in and stuff, all the lunches were still left on the table and all this shit. [MUSIC PLAYING] [Music] Well, it's a full house here on the Coffee Codecast. Welcome to episode 44 of the podcast where we talk about neither coffee or code. I'm Kyle Johnson. Hey Kyle, I'm Mike Sheahan and today on the cast we have a special guest in the studio. He's a currently an airframe and power plant mechanic, certified structural welder, former F-16's weapons crew chief did a tour in Iraq and two tours in South Korea, and he's a former Subway sandwich maker. (laughing) Please welcome to the cast, our guest, our guest, Wyatt Kelso. Welcome to the cast. - Hi there, welcome. And you did forget, what was it? FedEx Boxloader. - FedEx Boxloader, that's right. We talked about that because I was a UPS hubsorter, maybe not around the same time, but in the same area. We were both in the Midwest, like you were doing it in Iowa, like Manawa. - Yeah. - And I was over in Omaha at the UPS. rival rivalry there, a little bit of a rivalry for a bit, but pretty cool stuff. Also fellow midwesterner, fellow Iowan. He's wearing the Hawkeye gear today. Yeah, I should have brought the GBR gear. I should have wore my Husker red because I didn't realize that both of you bastards have been here at the same time supporting your Iowa. I dropped the ball on that one. But hey, man, we're happy to have you here. So basically, you're switching roles and we'll get into it a little bit more, but you, your current gig like you can fly as a mechanic like you can fly standby and so you basically what rang up Kyle yesterday and said hey I'm gonna come out and visit. Yeah that's pretty much how it happened. Just loaded up my United app and said oh those free C's available and just click and booked. I'm jealous man that's how well I wouldn't get my miles if I had to go on standby but I guess at that point you care as I can go anytime I wanted to. and it's zero dollars to me. - Yeah, exactly. Pretty sweet deal. For those that don't know why it is, goes under the online, what? Moniker, pseudonym, handle, whatever you wanna call it, a gomer. So we talk about the gomer a lot on the show and areas today and the flesh. - Long time listener, first time caller. - Yeah, first time visitor to the cast. But see what happens if you listen to the cast, if you jump on the YouTube and on the Facebook on the slack and you do it long enough then you come out here and hang out on the show. So how fun is that? Oh, you skittles in a bill. Yeah, exactly. You get a slider there. We should have got you another one, man. You're going to run dry here. It's only five minutes in and he's already a cup less than half full here. Well, this is what happens when you actually accept the invites that we give here. Yeah, hint hint. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm realizing I didn't do a very good job of setting this up. So I've got this like mic stand right in my face. I'm looking at the video. Probably me for that. I should have put it over here and then put that way, but I was thinking then, yeah, I wasn't thinking. Now we know, we learned something new today. Yeah. How to set it up. So what the hell's going on, man? What do you guys been up to? I know you're playing hooky today. Yeah, I took the day off, run around with this guy since he gave me like 24 hours notice. And what do we do? We went to the museum of flight. We did. Oh, very cool. And what do you think about that? I've been once. It's pretty sweet, huh? Oh, it is. - They had a bunch of aircraft there and they tried to teach him some stuff. - I learned more about aircraft today than I've ever learned in my entire life. - Well, I mean, these are the best guys I have with you when it comes to that. - Yeah. - Was it pretty busy there today? - There was quite a few mostly school programs and stuff like that running through there. - Yeah. - It was pretty thick. We did get to go by where all the, what is it, seven, is it eight, seven max? All the grounded planes, whatever number. - Oh, seven, three, seven max. - Three, seven max, right? We did go by the lot that has all those parked in there. That's pretty impressive. - Wow. - The number of planes that are back there. - Yeah, I'll paint it up and everything ready to go and just sit and. - So they do that here. There's also another strip where in the desert, like it's in the calif, well, it's somewhere in California. There is a, it's actually where planes go to die. Like when they're beyond their service limitations or I don't know what the determination is, but they get to their end of life and they basically fly them to this desert airfield. And I know that they have quite a few of the 737 Max's park there right now as well. It's just a very bizarre site. It's just a graveyard for old airplanes. I know I've definitely seen that. Looks like it's called Davis Monthan Air Force Base. Okay. Largest aircraft, Boneyard. Boneyard, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. What do you ever been in that area of the country before? I have never been, but I've heard you can take like a bus tour of the Boneyard more or less, but you can't get off for obvious reasons like safety and whatnot. They won't let you just climb monkey around the planes or anything like that. No, no, budget shop edges and stuff. But like, it's still active. It's mainly full salvage purposes. You need an engine or whatever. So this plane, you go and get the other engine. Oh, that makes sense. I mean, those things, how long can an engine last? Is it, how do they measure that? Is it in terms of hours flown, I guess? Alas flown, cycles started, just things like that. Yeah. And so that usually will last longer than like other parts of the plane then. Well, it was like engines, landing gear, hydraulic pumps, anything and everything, whatever you need to get. Yeah. Oh, really cool. We talked a fair bit about that today. I was kind of interesting that starts was something that they measured more so than like takeoffs or something like that where you would think that more, what would you call that? I don't know, like the damage to the engine, right? Or stress to the engine, I guess is the word I'm looking for, what a curve versus a start. You wouldn't think that wouldn't be so horrible. Well, it does like ignitals and everything like that and the air, the starter itself. So everything like that has to be measured and it puts in a cycle count. I just read related to the 737 max that is grounded because there are delays on those orders and getting it back up and running. I know that Alaska announced that they were going to be reintroducing some of their what turbo prop planes to fill in the gap there because they're now they're going to be running into inventory issues pretty soon. What are they pushed out to now, January? Something like that, I thought I read. It was at least a few more months. I wasn't going to happen any time in the near future here. So bummer on that. Very cool. So you went to the flight museum today. Yep. And what else you guys got going on? When are you going back? Tomorrow. Oh wow. Quick in and out. yesterday heading out tomorrow. Yeah, vacation only that's so long. Yeah, man. And what's going on? You're you're transitioning too. Can you talk a little bit about that? Hopefully pending background and whatnot. Yeah, I'm supposed to be starting a job in UPS next month and September. Exit in dock and all that fun training classes. That's very cool. And that's in Louisville. Yeah. Home of the world port. Oh, man. Like, that's one place I want to go check out. And you're not so far from from our, you know, home or what do I want to say here, parent company? Well, yeah, right. Our HQ is out in Charlotte, about an hour, you're about an hour south, right? Yeah, hour and a half. Yeah. Yeah, because you're in Columbia, South Carolina. Yeah, you just take 77 north for heroin change and you'll know. Interesting. I heard too that we have quite a few because Charlotte isn't, Charlotte's not too far from the border there. We actually have quite a few employees that reside down there. I did hear that, yeah. Learning all kinds of new stuff today. Hey, Cashmere Owens likes the Coffee and CodeCas video. Thanks, Cashmere. Congratulations on your recent promotion, too, by the way, if you're listening. - Ah, very cool. - Well, let's move ahead, Joey, here we got a little follow-up. Well, I'm gonna classify it as follow-up, because we talk a lot about the spin coffee maker here. - Oh yeah, you guys like to rub it in that I don't have this machine that I bought to hire. - Yeah, I do. - Yeah, you should do. Hey, speaking of rubbing it in, And where's our fucking Cheeto sandwich, man? You didn't bring any for us today? You have KFCs uphill? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if I really would want it anyway, even if you brought it, so whatever. - Yeah. - It's fine, it's pretty bad. (laughs) Oh, Cash is on, he's like, hey, great lighting guys, thanks. This is the first time we've done, we've had a guest in the studio with video, so we're kind of trying to figure it all out. And so this is not the typical layout that we have, but we're learning a little bit here. I'll probably move the mic stands next time, so they're not blocking everyone's face. but whatever, Matt, through this thing together pretty quick. I was taking a nap on the couches for about 30 minutes there and didn't put a lot of thought into it today. - Well, something about phases for radio, but there's this pico multi-brew that our good friend Rain and coworker Rain here shared with us recently. It's a pretty cool rig. It will brew your coffee. - This thing, I don't understand what this is. It's like a Swiss army knife of brewing. Like what the fuck is this thing? - So it's like, it's so confusing. - Yeah, so it'll not only brew your coffee, but it'll brew beer for you. - Yeah, okay, so I can get coffee and beer from this single machine. - Says the best. It'll do anything. It says like here, it's like kind of iterating through all the list of things that it would do, well now it went away, but it said like it would brew kombucha or-- - Chai, poro, there we go. Kombucha, or chata. - Tea. - Golden milk. I don't know if I want a golden milk. That sounds a little interesting. Well, that's like the, to, tomeric. So they do the golden milk. It's like milk with turmeric. It's supposed to be good for your gut. - Good gut health. - All right, you never heard of that? - If they had any golden milk before? - No. - Yeah. - Pass. - All right, well, it's good for your gut. That's all I know. I tried it once up in Bellingham. I was up there for a day trip and the coffee shop had that and I thought that sounds kind of interesting. I'm gonna try it out. It's pretty good. - Yeah. - Well the thing about this, you're gonna have to, it's a good thing that it does brew coffee for you though. I'll tell you because if you're waiting for it to brew beer, you're gonna need to do something to kill the time. That takes a while. I don't know, take a few weeks, a week, I don't know. I think, well, and I think this is like an extension of a machine that they already have, because they already have like a kind of appliance, if you will, that's like just a beer brewer. I think that's kind of where they got their start. Okay. As far as I know, I think Reyn has one of those. You'll reign makers on here right now if you can fill us in on some of the details. Like, how long does it take to brew some beer on this thing? And well, it uses thermal, very sophisticated technology, precision and repeatability. The MottiBrew uses thermal steam. Brad will see in a little bit. He's in a step away for a bit. Come on back. Don't be shy. Tell all your friends. It uses thermal steam injection technology to precisely control time and temperature through advanced brew programs, delivering unparalleled consistency. They need to get Johnny Ive on that one. Delivering unparalleled consistency. Well, they don't have the beaneries, you know, that the spin has available to it. It doesn't seem. I don't see anything about that. - Yeah, they don't have what's his name, the coffee bean, that guy that they had. - Oh yeah. - Remember they brought in that expert from Argentina or something? - I don't forget what that guy was called. - Yeah, I have to look at last week's show notes, man. It was like, I forgot his name too, but it was pretty legit. - So this is interesting though. It looks more like a curig type system more so than like what yours is, 'cause yours is whole bean. - That's right. So mine is really focused on solely coffee, all types of coffee. And it's the whole process self-contained. So it's really a matter of popping in the whole beans up top. You can go in and tell the machine what you have or upload the type of coffee that's in the machine and it will download recipes for it. Adjust temperatures very precisely and all that sort of thing to get you the ultimate brew for your bag of beans. Well, maybe I take that back. It does say that you can have a single surf pack, which look more like the curig. OK. But then there's a multi-stage, Pico packs, whatever that means. - It's a nice or anything. - Yeah, and then they also have like standard paper filters so you can do like typical drip type coffee. So it does handle apparently traditional display beans. - Oh, I see that. So they do have a compostable, kareg-ish design. - Yeah. - The ecosystem they call it, the pack ecosystem. - Pico pack. - Yeah. I like this idea though, that it's a multi beverage, not just coffee, but yeah, you can do beer. I mean, the photos look really good. They've got this app that goes with it and all the different beverages you can get. They have a beverage library for unlimited world of choices. - I don't see any pricing information on this particular machine, do you? - Yeah, that's always scary. (laughing) - Yeah, so far no price. - If you have to ask. - At the bottom, it says be the first in multi-brew and you'll get 50% off launch day discounts. So it's not available yet. - No, okay. announced. So these guys are in the same boat as you. Sounds like with the spin. Yeah, there's a lot of spin when it comes to home brewing devices apparently these days. About a boom. They all sound pretty awesome, but yeah, until they hit the market. But hey guys over Pico Brew, if you want to send us a prototype too, we're very happy. Along with the spin coffee maker, we'll give it a non-us review. We'll sponsor Pico Brew. We'll give it a fair shake. Yeah, head to head review. Head to head review. Yeah, that'd be a face-off between Pico Brew and Spin. I think that'd That would be a pretty cool episode actually. So yeah, just send us over your most expensive coffee room machine and we'll put it to the limit. - Yeah, excellent. - Well, we've got the gomer here and one of his favorite segments of the show is the spin coffee update. So I feel like we need to-- - Oh, well done. - We need to make sure that he's well updated. - Do I need to make up something for him or what? - Is the update once again that there is no update? - Well, I thought I gave one last week, man. That's the only deal of every month, you know? Shipping's imminent, remember? - Oh, well then you should have a shipping notification in your mailbox right now. - Yeah, let me see, let me see how imminent it is if I pop open the old thing here. Spin, spin, machine update, July 17th. Yeah, that's where they talk about this dude. Where's he at? Wouter, that's right. Wouter, Brunia, aka the coffee nose. - The nose. - The nose. He's been certified by the Specialty Coffee Association. - That's a marketing fluff if I ever heard it. He's a resident trainer at the Amsterdam Coffee Lab, and teaches students around the globe in brewing and barista skills, sensory skills, green coffee and roasting. - Somali, Aful Coffee. - That's right, yeah, basically. - He's your guy. There's only one of them. It's Wooter in He's an Amsterdam. You gotta check him out there. Yeah, that's really all it is. Like they were talking about the pro-waterline connection. Now they have that. They were talking about the package testing, The pro-bean reservoir, the water tank, you know, the milk froth there. So the pro-model has a milk froth there that's a separate unit that comes with it. And it does hot and cold foam recipes. And they're showing final design images in this update. A lot of images. The endurance test for the grinder, been functioning flawlessly. The packaging test, like they're beating the shit out of these packages just to make sure they're ready to go. Vibration tests to simulate transit vehicle vibrations. I mean, they're very thorough over its spin about all these things, which is why it takes three years for the MVP to come out. So, you know, they're being very thorough in their testing and shock test for packaging, puncture resistance testing, and edge crush testing and blah, blah, blah, They launch a new spin blog called Spill the Beans. Number one source for a spin coffee, whether you want to catch up on roasterar market news, you can rewatch spin videos and improve your barista skills with our popular coffee recipes, or learn more about coffee trivia. - Improve your barista skills. I thought it was supposed to do all that for you. - Well, that's kind of what I thought too, but right now since I don't have it, I have to be my own barista. So that's what that's all about. But it's the Spill the Beans blog. That's interesting. We can always put a link in there for that. I do like their software. Their app is very cool. They have the app that runs the machine, and they also have the spin marketplace. And so everybody that bought a machine gets some level of spin credits on the marketplace, and then you can get locally curated like beans from all over the United States. I think that was in a previous update. They had like over 200, I think, different-- - I think, Bineries. - Bineries, as we call them, the technical term. Yeah, I'm looking at the blog right now. They have a spin coffee martini recipe. That's what a liner. - That looks cool. What else? Roasting, six ways coffee can make you more productive. No shit. The key to the best cup of coffee, go and straight to the source. Yeah, interesting. Well, they're probably gonna have some more stuff there later, but they do have recipes and the marketplace and some other things in there too. - Well good, does that satisfy your need for spin updates? - Oh yes. - You seem very satisfied now. - Yeah. - Yeah. - As a non-cappy drinker that has a spot. - I think you'd be more interested in the Pico Brews Spitting Out some logger right about now. - That's right. - Yes. Very much so. (laughing) - All right, let's move on to the new shall we? - Yeah, let's do it. (upbeat music) Well, I wanted to kick this one off because I mentioned it last week. I don't know if it was during the show or after the show, but SpaceX had another launch with Falcon 9. This was yesterday. And this was a follow-up mission to a mission that went on the AMO6 mission back in 2016. This was a... Oh, it was a heavy satellite that they were going to launch. I don't remember who the customer was and the rocket exploded. And so it failed mission and fast four or three years. And so now they're giving them a freebie. The Amos 17 launch happened yesterday. And this was a different mission because this was-- it was successful, by the way. And there were a couple of cool things that came out of this. But the first thing is that it was an expendable mission. So basically, the payload was 6 1/2 tons, which is a rather large payload for SpaceX. Up to this point, I think. Maybe they're heaviest. But because of that, usually they try They were recovered at the stage and they were unable to do so with this one because they had to use every ounce of fuel to propel this thing into its proper orbit. So there was not enough fuel left in the reservoir to bring the piece back down and have it land on what do they call that landing pad? It's of course I still love you. That's what it's called. Yeah, of course I still love you. That's the name of the barge that captures the retrieval vehicle. So it's not the Falcon Heavy because I thought the heavy was supposed to be the one that was taken up They're really heavy payloads. Well, okay, so that's a good point Maybe this is just like for you're right Falcon Heavy is the is the big boy And so maybe it's just the case that for Falcon 9 this is the yeah Yeah, yeah, and maybe I'm guessing I don't know this is pure conjecture here But I'm guessing since it was a free trip that maybe they were like hey We have some old Falcon 9 parts kind of in the in the storage shed Let's just shoot it up into space and instead of like burning a falcon heavy because I think the cost to do that is probably Quite considerably more since like a falcon heavy has what? The Merlin engines they have so many more of the Merlin engines is like Grit of like they have like three sets of nine Merlin and so 27 in total wow And so that's probably what it is that's probably from massive massive payloads like that's what shot up the Tesla But yeah, they used the Falcon 9 to get this guy into space. It was an expendable mission. The cool part about it though was the fairing. So the cover that hides the payload or protects the payload when it's going into space it comes off in two pieces first before the payload is deployed and they had a successful capture of the fairing pieces They have a couple boats that actually Go zooming around in the ocean like trying to track these things down in air and they're big nets big V shaped nets It says ship in was the name ship M. Yep. Was the recovery vehicle? Oh, yeah, you're right. I see that so yeah, they got half the nose cone for the second time and I guess they only got one half okay well 50% ain't bad It looks like they tried to recover the rocket stage and if they would have been able to successfully do that That would be three times for that particular rocket. Oh really is what I was saying here. Yeah, wow So this is pretty fascinating actually especially having just been to the Air Museum Mm down a Boeing because they have a number of different space vehicles. They have the Apollo 11 command module there right now They have a number of rocket boosters that are on display that that never were used in an actual launch but they were kind of test rocket boosters and standing next to those things and realizing just how massive they are and then there was what five of them I think it said on the Apollo missions I'm pretty sure it was five. On the Apollo 11 it was five. Yep. So five of those and you're talking about 20. Yes. 20 something? 27. I don't know the size of each engine relative. Yeah. But I know that yeah it's a massive scale. Well, really, too, if you, the sonic boom that you hear when people are miles away, right, and you can feel it, hear it. It's, it would be a pretty awesome experience to go out there and witness something like that on the ground. Yeah. There was some pretty interesting reading, you know, next to those things that I was talking about, just the amount of noise that the engine's burning makes, because of what it would say, it was dropping some crazy amount of fuel per second. I don't remember what the number was, but basically the sheer amount of fuel it was burning make so much noise that it could damage the engine itself. Yeah. Due to the noise, they kind of made it akin to like an opera singer breaking a glass. Wow. Yeah. But on a much higher scale. And yeah, they said they could, you know, it could damage things miles away just because of the volume. I'm curious to know I was looking at a close-up photo of the launch pad. And they have a series of towers. It looks like four towers in a square configuration with some cabling between them. And I'm wondering what that does, like what the purpose of that is. This is SpaceX launch fan? - Yeah. And I don't know, you can look that up. But one thing I was gonna point out, I was watching another interview with Elon yesterday on the old YouTube, and he was talking about, if it wasn't for the Apollo mission for Apollo 11, he's not sure that SpaceX would even be a company. He remembers being a boy and witnessing that historic event. And they also get to launch from the same pad 39A in Cape Canaveral. So that was like him totally geeking out, just being like, oh my God, I can't believe this. We're actually in the space and we can, we're even using the same launch pad. - So it says here according to Stack Exchange, those are used to redirect the lightning in the immediate area. So it essentially creates a Faraday cage around the rocket to ensure that there's no risk of lightning hitting the aircraft. - Mooie and Thereseante, man. - Yeah, that's pretty cool shit. Okay. Learned something new every day here, man. - That's impressive though. I see there's a video here. Does it have the same like crazy multicolored, like splatter in the sky that they keep creating when they launch their rockets over LA? You know what I'm talking about? - No, I don't. What is that about? - There's like these really cool like color. I think it's one like the second stage ignites or something like that. Like usually it's over LA or in the area where LA can see it. And it'll create this really awesome like show of light that is pretty unique. I don't think I've ever seen it from anything else. - Yeah. - And it's SpaceX launches, I think, that are doing that. - Wow, okay. - I guess the video here is just a retrieval. It's not the launch, so. - Yeah. - I'll see if I can find that and link it up. - Yeah, find that shit, damn it. - Yeah. - Sweet. Well, yeah, space. So that was a cool mission. The mission was successful and yeah, they lost the first stage, but whatever. - Yeah, SpaceX Falcon 9 is the one that I was thinking of. And I'll just kinda show you here, we'll have to post a link to it, but I'll show you what I was talking about. If it's the video I'm open for. - It was an Israeli satellite. Oh, okay. - What was? - The aim of 17 was an Israeli satellite. - Oh, okay. Well, this is black and white, so it doesn't look really cool, but it creates this like these weird like, - Or things or something. - or things or something. - Yeah. It looks really, really cool in the actual color. Here'll maybe be a better one, but this is pretty riveting for the podcast. Oh, look everybody. Huh. Nobody can see anything. There we go. This one will show it really well. Just makes a bunch of color. And you just kind of keep spreading out. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, post the link to that. I'm sure people would like to see what the hell's going on over here. Yeah. That's great, dude. Alrighty. Well, uh, what else we got to go on here? Well, we got a former subway worker here. And so one of the next items in the news is subways joining the meatless revolution. What do you think about the meatless revolution, Gomer? I am pro meat. Okay. Have you tried the meatless revolution? I know. You try all these other horrible concoctions that they come up with Cheetos sandwiches and they're not wide. I mean, it's the fatable if that's even meat right there. Which? But Cheetos chicken sandwich. They bread chicken and Cheetos. Oh, okay. the Cheetos? - The chicken in the Cheetos. - All right, so it's real meat in there, okay. I wasn't sure. - Still chicken. - What if you didn't know that they had swapped it out for meatless meat? That would be an interesting test. - Yeah, we should have done that. - We should have done a little blind test for the go over here. - Should have organized a taste test. - Oh shit. - Opportunity wasted. - We'll never know now. Yeah, meatless revolution. Subways coming out with their latest now to join. Who is it? It's beyond, not beyond me. It's the other one. Impossible. Impossible, right? Impossible foods. This is going all over the place. We've talked about this a number of times, and there's a quite a number of chain restaurants that have picked this up, and I'm even seeing it now at some of the smaller local restaurants have impossible burgers. So it's picking up steam. It looked pretty good, so they're coming out with a meatball sub that's going to be using the meatless, the impossible meat. It's going to launch in 692 stores in the limited trial starting in September. I don't know how many franchises subway has, certainly thousands. I don't know what percentage this represents, but yeah, 692 restaurants are going to be getting the new meat option, meatless option here in about a month. I remember years ago, O5 in sense. There was a big ol' stamp on the box. It says soy meatballs. So I don't know how-- Soy meatballs. Yeah, ever since '05. So they were maybe doing the meatless thing before it was a cool thing to do. Could be. Maybe they're just finally publicizing it. But I mean, it might be that they're going now too, instead of a soy product, to whatever the plant-based. What is this? Oh, special guest. Matthew Schlyer is in here. What's he got to say? Feel like there's some jokes in this section. How is he talking about-- what are you talking about, Slayer, what you talking about. Thanks for joining us on the cast. This is Slayer's first time joining the cast. - Well, welcome. - We've talked about him a number of times. - Oh, he's talking about like some meatball jokes or something. Do you have any good meatball jokes for us? Soy balls, I don't know. - Oh boy. - I'm not gonna go there. This is a family friendly show, Slayer. I keep all the dirty talk over at the bar after work. - After the show. - After the show, that's a post show. Meatless revolution, yeah, exactly. We could go, we could do a lot with that. So would you try meatless meatless meat? - I did try to go, I wouldn't say vegetarian, but meatless for a week and it ended very awful for me as myself. - No bueno. - No. - I can do that either. - Beer just drinking beer for a week or what? - Yeah pretty much. It's cereal and beer and mac and cheese. - I can't imagine what could go wrong. I don't know. Talk about the fundamental components of nutrition there. (laughing) You got your carbohydrate with your liquid carbohydrate with your cheesy carbohydrate. - What the hell could go wrong? - And then a little milk for protein. - Oh, there you go. - You got the protein, that's right. - Yeah. - And a little vitamin. - Maybe a little cheese for protein too, right? - A little bit of life. - A little bit of life in there. A little cow's milk on top of all the-- - Well, you didn't answer the question. Would you try meatless meat? - I'd consider it. - Yeah? I think that needs to be the next goal on you to report back to us. 'Cause you're our resident food advisor here. - Oh, this is a very sad state of a fail. (laughing) If he's our resident advisor, yeah. - Yeah. - Well, we're getting some corny jokes from our guest last time, Mayor Zach. Zach's on here, he goes, where does hamburger patties like to dance? - Oh boy. - The meat ball. - Oh, I was gonna guess in between the buns. - Want, want, want. Oh boy, hey. Oh shit, okay. Airmuffs kids. - Airmuffs. - Yeah. I don't know what else to say about it. - Well, a couple of other things. Is Carl Jr., we talked about other like kind of franchises that are doing this too. Carl's Duniors also was selling meatless burger made from Beyond Meat. - Yeah. - So that's the other, it's impossible in Beyond Meat, right? Those are the two big players. - That's right. - Those are the big two. - Yeah, so it just keeps coming. Like I think every major chain restaurant, at least fast food chain restaurant, I think has something on the menu utilizing that. And you've tried it. - I did try it. It was at a, what's the name of the place? It was a smaller, I don't think it's a chain, or if it is, it's a small chain, but it's in the U District, there's a burger place over there. And they happened to have it on the menu. What did this little controversial to? Because impossible was trying to expand their reach. And so they were working with, well, we talked about it, Red Robin. They were doing some stuff with white castle. Now they got a huge deal with Burger King. And because of that, they had to scale back and actually rip the product out of a lot of these smaller businesses from one of these small businesses. And a lot of these guys were saying, look, we made a big deal. big investment in this and we've been marketing and all this kind of stuff and then like, "Oh, all of a sudden Burger King comes along and you just take all the product from us and now they're pretty upset about that. Understandably so." But it seems like they must be getting caught up on the supply side. Otherwise, how could they do the meatballs with subway? It's a pretty big launch, even at a trial level, right? Yeah, I mean, I think subway is one of the top, what, one and two, three chain restaurants are probably in the world, I would guess. They're in the decline now. I don't know. They I know Chick Flays number three in the nation right now. - Top restaurant franchises. - Yeah, so yeah, I can see that they'd have some supply issues, especially as they kind of get ramped up and get things going. But what did you think about it? So like you tried it and I feel like I talked to you about it and maybe it wasn't as good as you would hope. - Well, I just need to have a better comparison, I think. It was really, I did, okay, I tried it twice. I had it once at a Chipoltae, or it's a Cudoba. I think it's Cudoba. They have a, let me eat this option now as well. So you can get that product in a burrito or burrito bowl. And so I did that once, and that was hard to tell because you got so much sauce and other things in there to mask the flavor anyway. You're not getting much of it. The texture seemed to be about the same. When I tried the burger at the other place, I don't know. To me, it did seem a little different. I don't know if I could really put a label on it at this point, but it just didn't seem to be quite the same. Maybe it was a little gritty here. I don't know. I'd have to try it again. It's been a little while now. But it definitely was okay. I ate it. It was fine. But it definitely just had a little difference to it. I'd be interested to try something mainstream like a whopper and see what that's like. - I've heard at least from kind of different sources that it's much like tofu, so kind of whatever you mix it with, it tends to take on the flavor of that a little bit. or, and obviously if you spice it, but yeah. Yeah, I haven't tried it myself. I've seen it a couple of places and I've kind of thought about it, but never pulled the trigger. Yeah, right, right. Definitely would like to though. Yeah, I wanna try it out. I think it's cool. I'll probably try the subway one. It's kind of fun to try it at different varieties of what's out there and see what's working and what doesn't. Yeah, the old Meatball Sub. I haven't had a Meatball Sub in years anyway. Maybe if the old Pioneer Square here, one, we can all make a little work trip, work lunch. I hope they have it here. We should find out what restaurant has it in Seattle. I would think one subway has to have it somewhere around here. I don't know if it's this one. These guys are kind of shady over here. But breads always a little old and well subway itself is. It doesn't seem to slow you down from going there though. I know. It's just because it's convenient. But I tell you what, I'm still like I'm weaning off of this but I used to be a real big subway guy when they had the $5 foot long promotion going on and that's since gone away. I mean that's been what a few years now since I've done that. So now you go to Subway and it's a costier like nine bucks, 10 bucks, whatever. Uh, it's like a regular lunch. I mean, it's still on the cheap end of lunches, right? If compared to sitting down somewhere, but it's not the subway that it used to be. I could go in there with a $5 bill and just say, hook me up, you know, of a notice that chicken breast foot long, all the veggies. So, uh, but yeah, their franchise is hurting quite a bit. I think that's a big part of it. They tried doing breakfast like in 2010. That didn't really take that. - I already. - They still have it, but it's just not a big, it's not a big ticket item. - I remember breakfast way before 2010 though. - Was it maybe, maybe they-- - Like, oh, seven, oh eight. - Wow, okay, so I'm gonna be, I'm gonna stay on that. Yeah, maybe it did start a lot earlier. - I remember having to open and start the breakfast for the eggs and stuff. - Really? Oh, there were a few things about it that just seemed kind of, I didn't mind the wrap. that the breakfast wrap was fine, you know, but it's a limited option. And their coffee was just something, I don't even know what the hell it was. It was like a craft kind of a coffee. I think even for a while there, they're just doing curry ag, actually. They had curry coffee machines. - Yeah. - And so, you know, like it's maybe just, I could see that being a difficult sell when you've got Starbucks charging at five bucks for their like premium, you know, artisanal coffees. versus like a Kürrig pod that costs you like three bucks or something. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just wanted to bring that up since we don't usually talk about subway on the coffee and codecast, but since you brought it up, I just had recently seen a CNBC video clip on the old YouTube where all the good news comes from. And they were just talking about how it's been a real difficult time for subway and you know, they don't have breakfast. They, I mean, their breakfast isn't really doing well and they don't have the five dollar foot long and interestingly enough too, like just there's no, I didn't know this, but as far as franchises are concerned, if you wanted to open a franchise, it's in the contract that they can put those things wherever the fuck they wanna put 'em. So like if they wanna put one upstairs, they could put another one upstairs or if they wanted to put one next door, like you don't have control over your territory at all. And so that's been a problem too, because in some areas like in Lower Manhattan, for example, in like a certain block radius, a pretty small, maybe within a half of a mile, there's something like 10 or 12 subway restaurants. And so what happens is, is the subway, the parent company is rebeating the benefits 'cause they get their cut from all of those revenues, but then it gets diluted between restaurants. So instead of going to the one on this block, now that there's three of them you can choose from, in theory they could be getting a third of the revenues because of that. So that's been an issue. And then compared to Mickey D's, just the amount of money that a store brings in, I think the average subway, well McDonald's brings in something like 1.2 million in revenues per location a year, and a subway is like 400,000 bucks. - That's up, yeah. - So, you know, think about that. And I imagine that you're, you maybe your startup costs are less because you don't have to have the friars and all the equipment. I think it's probably more money to get into a Mickey D's. I think you need a million bucks or 750 to get into one of those. But, You subways gotta be less because it's all just cold storage, right? And they got a couple turbo chefs. >> Yeah, something like that. >> Right, is that what those are called? >> I think so. You, Gomer would know, I don't know, the little. >> I haven't operated that thing in ten years. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm pretty sure it's what they are. The turbo chef is just, yeah, WAM bam, like 10 seconds later, like, it's kind of like back to the future, remember that one, when they like, take the little, little pizza out of the foil pack and they put it into the hydrator. And like five seconds later, it's a steaming hot pepperoni. - Howdy, you pizza's ready. - That's right, yeah, exactly. So that's what the turbo chef is. That was the vision and the reality is the turbo chef. It didn't quite work out according to plan, but still pretty impressive though. So yeah, sun is washing the video out. Oh yeah, Brad's back. He said, "Hey, I missed the burger stuff. Try the Beyond Burger. Take it with the Smith Tower for lunch, guys." Well, that would be great. - The tower has the burger, huh? - I do wanna try it there because I've done it at a few places now, like I said, but I haven't tried the Smith Tower burger. So Brad, we should do that when you're back. When you got a little free time, which that might be a while, but if you can squeeze in a lunch in the next few weeks, we should do that. That'd be pretty cool. I'd love to check that out. I haven't even been to Smith Tower yet either. So. - Looks like just for kind of clarification 'cause we talked about this a bit ago. Subway is number one in terms of franchise locations. - Really? - 42,998. - That sounds like bullshit to me. He said next week, that's great. book it man. McDonald's follows with 37,200. No way. Starbucks is next with 30,000. This is like 2019 numbers. What it says. That is that blows my mind. I thought for sure McDonald's would be. KFCs and fourth. Wow. Which it doesn't surprise me because KFC if you travel internationally they're freaking everywhere. Well McDonald's would be number one in terms of revenue I would think then. Yeah this is strictly on franchise locations. Just like number of locations. Right. Okay. And that's domestic also. That, or is that in the world? Okay, well, that's probably right, 'cause think about that. I mean, where would you put 42,000 locations in the US? That's like, well, you could though? I don't know, man. That's like less than 100 a state. I don't know. That's fascinating, I didn't know that. But the revenue on the revenue side, I think the sun's done washing out the video rain. It should be better now. Interesting stuff. Well, the coffee code in franchise cast. It's kind of interesting topic, actually. Well, I know McDonald's owns all the land that all the franchisees are. That's right. That's right. They're like, they are a top landowner. Yeah, they are the number one landowner in the world, I believe. Well, that's what I thought. I thought they were up there and I was looking into it a little bit and it seems like if they're not number one, they're among the top. There was some, I don't remember what else they were saying, but yes, like it's amazing. They're really a real estate company first and a restaurant second. And that's not how they're typically thought of. And they have a lot of primary estate, right? They're on corners everywhere. So in pretty prime location. They are. Yeah. And I know, I don't know what I was going to say. I just lost my train of thought. I was looking at Down here in Zach had made a comment about Jimmy Johnson's where it's at. I feel like the French house. Hmm. Firehouse. What is the firehouse? Oh, I don't know the firehouse. Firehouse subs? Oh, I've heard of them, but I don't think I've ever had one of those. Oh. What is it out? Is that like a quiz nose or something? Kind of. Well, Zach says, how does that work if McDonald's is in the airport? They don't, I don't think it's exclusively land owned. I know that they do lease some land. And matter of fact, in my neck of the woods in Omaha where I have that rental property, just a block to the north, there's a McDonald's on 40th over there by the, uh, by the gas station over there. And I know the guy that actually owns the land. And so they pay him a lease. They lease it from him. For a pretty penny, a guy actually does pretty well for just like sitting on a piece of land. So I think when they can buy they do, but if they can't then they want the location because it's desirable enough, then they'll just lease it out. I don't know. I'm just making shit up here, man. (laughing) - Yeah, I think we beat this topic to death here. So I think we maybe should move on. - Unless you got anything to add. - No, I'm good. - All right. - Sweet man. Yeah, we haven't heard a whole lot from you, man. Is there anything else you wanna tell us about? Anything you're excited about? Come up here or any interesting anecdotes about the airline industry in general? - There's a lot of stuff, but I'm not gonna say it online. - I'm just throwing you in the spot, right on the spot here. All right, very cool, man. Well, shall we move it along Kyle? How are we doing on time? I don't have a look of the time anymore. - Yeah, we got about a good 20 minutes here, or about 18 minutes. - 18 minute dose. - We're good to go. Do you wanna talk about what we're watching or reading? Maybe start with that? - Yeah, let's start with that. And I do. I'm reading some good stuff right now. So I had taken a hiatus from reading for a while. - Likewise, yeah. - I hadn't been doing a whole lot of that. I was binge watching me some back cracker videos on the old YouTube. We've talked plenty about that. Some really good stuff there. And then, no, but I started getting into some shows again. I'm watching a series right now on HBO called The Leftovers. It's an older series. It's a few years old now. it came out four or five years ago maybe. And the premise of it, if you're not familiar, is that in the first episode, there's some kind of catastrophic event that happens and two percent of the world's population just disappears. Oh, I think I've heard about this series before. Maybe told me about it. Yeah, there's, I think there's three seasons now that are out. I'm on the second season. I just started the second the other night. But yeah, effectively, People are, you know, driving or doing what they're doing. They're doing stuff. And then all of a sudden, 2% of the people are gone. And so cars are crashing and babies disappearing. And it's just they evaporate into thin air. And so it's a whole thing about like what happened. And yeah. So their body's disappear from-- They just are earth or whatever. But whatever they were doing or whatever they were interacting with continues. Right. It says it was. Yeah. And so there's this-- There's a big divide here between the town people because there's a group that don't want to remember. Everybody is grieving in their own ways, but then there's this group that is kind of a cult that doesn't want anyone to forget. So they do all kinds of shenanigans. They have their own little cult basically where they wear white and they don't talk to each other. They have to write notes to communicate back and forth and they all smoke cigarettes or chain smokers. Then they go into people's homes and take photographs out of the picture frames at night and do some weird shit. And so, yeah, it's a real, a dystopian kind of a series there. - And did you say this was on HBO or where was it? - Yeah, the leftovers is what's called. - The leftovers. - Yeah, uh-huh. So, yeah, I just got through the first season. It's kind of, it's pretty cool, man. It's a supernatural mystery drama. And it started, it came out in 2014. So, yeah, I'm enjoying it so far. It's a little weird, but kind of neat too. It's a little bit like, well, there's another one that I was watching that's still out there. What's the plane one? Manifest. It's a little different. Manifest is a new series that came out last year on one of the networks. I don't know if it's NBC or whatever, but it was a similar deal where this flight disappeared. And so to the people on the ground, the flight was gone for five years and they just presumed everyone was dead 'cause they couldn't find it kind of like a Malaysia, like the 370, MH370 flight, right? Nobody knew what happened, and so they kind of went on with their lives. People got remarried, like, da da da, and then like, but to the people on the plane, like there was no laps in time. So like they, they like land, and all of a sudden you off the plane, it's five years in the future, and people are not freaking out, like, whoa, what happened, how are you alive? What's going on? We've all moved on, a little different twist, but kind of a similar thing where people just disappear and then come back later. - Manifest, I'm not gonna look at that one up. That's not interesting too. - Yeah, that was a good one. - You recommend both of those? - I do, I really like manifest right now, but this leftovers ones, a little darker, it's kind of interesting 'cause they're, I mean, they're not, I don't think they're coming back. I'm pretty sure that's not part of the plan, so. Yeah, it's just kind of, how do you say it? It's one of those shows too that's not really trying to bring any satisfaction to the viewer at the end. So there's just a lot of stuff that happens. It's really shitty or unsolved. And so you know, it's not like, oh, there's a pretty boat at the end and everybody gets reunited and those happily ever after. It's a good show. - Very cool. That's on NBC as well. I just looked that one up real quick. - Right on. Thanks for checking that out. - So I'll make sure to put these into the notes as well. - Yeah. - Mr. Wyatt, what are you watching? Anything of interest? - Nothing new, just old chills reruns on the Netflix. - Oh nice, do they have all the cheers episodes on Netflix these days? - They do. - How many seasons were there? - I was just gonna ask that question too. - Seven, eight, nine, something like that. - That's a lot of norm, man, holy shit. - Oh, and it's great. - It's great. - Who's your favorite character? - Cliff, by a landslide. - Oh, Cliff Clayton. - Yep. - Cliff and then Woody. - Oh, Woody. - Yeah. (laughing) - You spend a lot of time on YouTube, but, right? - Everyone's a while I dabble. - Yeah, nothing specific, just kind of let it take you where it takes you. - Yeah, I'm good on YouTube. - All right, yeah. Well, I've been watching something that we've talked about, I think before or at least we've talked with Michelle here in the office about, and that's Chernobyl, the HBO mini-document series. I'm about two and a half episodes through that. - Really? I haven't started yet, I wanna hear about this. - Yeah, no, it's intense. It's very well done and I've learned a lot about the disaster that I had no clue about. And it's kind of eye-opening just about like arrogance, I guess you might say, right? Like the sheer arrogance of some of these people as maybe that's not factually accurate. Maybe this is all like made up for, you know, to make it more of a drama. - It seems to be spot on from what I hear though. It's a fairly accurate depiction, right? - Yeah, just like as the accident kind of starts to unfold and people start to kind of figure out pieces of the pie and that, oh, maybe the reactor did explode, right? For the longest time, none of them believe it. Like they will flat out say nope, that's impossible, it cannot happen. - Yeah. - And they'll be like you go down and walk to it and see it for yourself and then they'll come back and they're like radiation burned, right? 'Cause they've been standing out in the radiation, totally exposed and they'll come back and they're bloody and they're dying. - Wow. - And the guy will be like, "Nope, that's impossible. "Take him to the infirmary. "Somebody else go." And they just keep doing that over and over and over. - Shut up. - For like more than 24 hours. Like they just won't believe it. - No way. - So yeah, just like the arrogance of the guys is pretty fascinating. The other thing that I didn't know about is there's kind of three guys, and I don't have their names here, but they're kind of the heroes of the entire thing, which I didn't know this story. I don't know if you ever heard about this. - No. The initial explosion of the reactor is what caused the damage that we know today. But apparently they were pouring water on it to try and put out the fire. And all the water was draining into a coolant tank that's below the reactor, under the massive concrete pad. Okay. So they start pouring like I think it was borax and sand on top of the reactor to smother the fire. but it doesn't smother or doesn't stop the burning of the fuel. That's underneath it. And eventually that was going to burn through the pad, the concrete, and hit this water. And apparently when this water, when it would have hit this water, that would have created an explosion that was many, many, many times bigger than what initially exploded. Oh, shit. So it would have destroyed the additional reactors that are still there and were still running at the time. And would have basically made much of Europe and pretty much all of Russia and much of the area uninhabitable. Like it would have been a huge disaster. - Really? - So these three guys, they basically volunteered to dive into this radioactive water underneath the reactor and find the drains and drain the water. - No shit. - And so they basically went on a suicide mission to save, you know, - Whoa. - Like an eighth of the world probably. - Really? - Yeah. - And they had to do this. - And they're kind of unknown, you know, like you don't know their names, right? - Right, which is crazy. - I don't know anything about that. - No. - I need to get into it, and I keep making excuses. I wanna see it. I've made the excuse that I'm just not in the mood for that kind of a thing right now. - It is rough. It's a rough thing. You know, it's not a feel good thing at all. - Right, but I do need to make time to watch it, and because, you know, yeah, Michelle's been big on it, and she's gotten me excited about it, so I need to turn it on and watch it, and it's a huge topic right now. I was in Portland and I went to Paul Books. Of course in the bookstore they had a section like just for that type of stuff and they had various books on the incident and that sort of thing. So I should check it out while it's hot. - Yeah, it's bringing a ton of interest back to the site, right? - Yeah. - And people want to visit it now and people are doing stupid stuff now too and taking inappropriate pictures and just doing stupid stuff. - Wow. - And people are like, be respectful. is that, you know, tons of people died here, right? And also too, like this radiation, I mean, this shit lasts for like thousands, tens of thousands of years, like, like what, 20,000 years is the half life of this or something, isn't it? - Oh, it's amazing. - What the hell? - Yeah. - This is, you can't just like wipe that away. - Right. - Rain isn't gonna wash that out, man. Like, 20,000 years, that's insane. - Yeah, yeah, and I don't think they know. Like, I think if I'm not mistaken, the forecast or anywhere from like, they would say like, oh, it might last 500 years, or it might last like 20,000. - Really? - Like they don't really know. - Interesting. - Yeah. - Okay. - But other creatures are inhabiting the area, right? Like other animals are coming back. - Yeah. - So it's getting better. But the other crazy thing is like, I think it's called Perpietz. Is the name of the city that was closest to the reactor. - Mm-hmm. - And just, yeah, kind of the same thing you were talking about where people disappeared. They were in the middle of daily life, right? Doing whatever they're doing for the day and like all of a sudden the military rolls in and like just starts to run them on buses. So like whatever they were doing at the time, they just like if we were podcasting right now, - Yeah, it would remain here. All right, you didn't take anything. - That's bizarre. - So yeah, it's crazy just to put yourself in those in their shoes to think of what that would be like to just be uprooted immediately and never return to anything that you own. - I have to say this, and I don't know, we have a minute, a few minutes. Like not to go down this rabbit hole, but you made me think of something, and I've mentioned this to you maybe before, but like I was a student at Columbine at high school when the incident happened in '99, right? for 20 and I was in the building, but we had a very similar experience because when we evacuated the, you know, that we had not returned until later that summer. So like this happened April 20th, we evacuated the building, got out of there, and when we, then the SWAT team came through and the FBI and whoever was doing the investigation, they investigated. And I remember the time I was in a computer lab and I was in track and so I had like a Gatorade bottle that was kind of like my water bottle and I had that sitting on the desk next to the computer and had my backpack and whatever else I had like my pen and pencil or paper. And when we were, when we were allowed to go back in to get our possessions. - And how long, how many days had transpired or were we? - It was several months. I think it happened in June or July. Yeah. I don't remember exactly now, but I think it was maybe in July. It was still during summer recess that they cleared everything and the investigation wrapped up and we were allowed to go back into the building and so yeah, they kind of had this thing stage where we could come in and I went back into the room that I was in and it was fucking just eerie because everything was still there. Like the bottle was still there. The backpact has had a pink ribbon tied to it, basically meaning that they swept it for any kind of bombs or any materials and it was, you know, they scanned it. But it was the most eerie experience to even be gone for a few months and then be transported right back to that day and be like, holy shit man, nothing, they didn't lift a thing, right? This is a very strange experience. - Especially something like that, where you know tons of people are through there all the time. - Yeah. - And yeah, nothing changed in a span of months. - Yeah, and I didn't go down there in the cafeteria. I think at that point, they probably had cleaned up certain areas because that's where a lot of the incident occurred was down there and in the library. but I know for a fact, for weeks, like the lunch, you could see through the windows, like people that had long-range cameras and consuming and stuff, like all the lunches were still left on the table and all this shit. It was just a very eerie experience. - Yeah, that would be something to walk into, yeah. - So, yeah. - Side note, but it's just a very creepy thing. - Yeah, very similar experience. - Yeah. - So, very bizarre. - Right. But yeah, I would highly recommend, like I said, I'm two and a half episodes, and I think there's about six episodes in the series. So to your point, exactly like you said, it's something you definitely have to be in the mood for and be ready for because it's definitely pretty heavy. - Yeah. - But really, really well done. - Excellent man. We have about five minutes. - You wanna talk about this bad boy? - So we can highlight. - Yeah, let's go ahead. - We hold it up to the camera if you can see it. I don't know if it'll show up there. - So you got me kind of interested in this a little bit because you have another book that you're reading besides this one. And it kind of got me interested in thinking a little bit about I should kind of do a little bit more reading myself and So I'll let you talk about your book a little bit before we go down this rabbit hole, but yeah I'm getting into a little bit of For we'll get into this more later, but I've been on a kind of a leadership kick and more of a motivational Bentleyly and so trying to find some some materials to to go over and my good friend will fortune I'll give him a shout on the cast. He sent me this link to this book it's called Legacy and it's about he's a big rugby guy he's been he's he played rugby coaches rugby and rugby isn't a big part of his life and I know one thing about rugby it's like you know this South Africa New Zealand is like the big rivalry and New Zealand is arguably one of the most winning teams in all of sports history across anything. I mean, they have like something ridiculous like an 86% win ratio across their whole franchise. And they're just dominant. Is that the all blacks? The all blacks, yeah. The New Zealand all blacks. And so the book is called Legacy. What the all blacks can teach us about the business of life. And I just got started, but this is a really great book by James Kerr. And I'm getting into it. I mean right now it's very early on so I can't talk a whole lot about it But it talks a lot just about the small things that they do and so for an example like when they're traveling on the road And they show up and they're kind of in this locker room or this shit They said it was the shed you know, I don't know like that's just slaying or if they're actually in the fucking shed Like on the side of the facility or what but basically like they're they're in there at halftime kind of doing their The coaches are going over things and they're talking to them about what they're gonna do and before they go back out on the field The guys like the captain and a few of the other guys like they actually grab a broom they sweep up like all the bandages and all the stuff And they clean up after themselves and the whole thing for them is really about like doing the small things to really achieve a level of success it's about character development and And doing those small habits like that as a reminder of like hey like it's a character thing And so we're gonna go through and clean up after ourselves and we're gonna leave the place better than it was when we came in and so that was just one One scratch on the surface there, but I'm excited to see what the other Principles are and some of the other things that they do to make them successful champions. I love that I think that's a good point to and I think I live by that, you know, you're never too big to To do any of the work, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and I think that you know I hate this and I love it at the same time right on my Midwest guy and there's the Midwest work ethic right which is bullshit because everybody has a good work I think like you know anywhere in the world But you know, it's the same thing like you're not you're willing to get dirty and willing to get down and help people and That sort of thing and I think that's kind of what they're trying to get at. Yeah, that's right a great message Yeah, it's it's an attitude that you don't forget And you're never too big to do the to do the small things or to get your hands dirty. Yeah, yep Excellent. I'm gonna have to check out on that one Don't know how much time we have to talk about the dare to lead book and maybe maybe we hold on to that one and we kind of couple that with with the main topic here that we've punted now on in two weeks in a row. - Yeah, our leadership topic we're gonna talk about. - 'Cause that's exactly what that inspires, as well as your book, but. - Yeah, it does, but I like this, and all I'll say is that Brené, I'm a huge fan of Brené Brown during Great Lee. What's the other one? She's got a few. - Oh yeah, several in the same kind of vein. - But really just about vulnerability and some excited again to this one. This is a lot of the same themes pop up that I've heard from her Ted Talk and some of the other things, but this is geared towards like the corporate environment and business leadership. - I think this is an exciting time for you and me and we have this topic that we wanna talk about that we keep kind of punting on and leadership in general and what it does when you lose a leader in the organization. We have leadership books, so it's kind of a common thread and I think we're all kind of living it together and I think it's gonna be a pretty fun little ride and a lot of stuff to talk about here in the future. - Damn Skippy buddy. - Yeah, I love it. - We probably need to wrap it up. So you were pretty quiet. I feel bad about this. - Oh, that's all right. - Yeah? - He had a beer, he had some skittles. - He did. - You got a couple of margaritas. - A couple of margs. - Yeah. - Ooh, yeah. - I have a feeling it's gonna be continuing conversation with you though. I mean, we got you online and I'm glad you could come down here and I wanna hear more about some of your experiences because I was telling some people I saw Bully earlier and I was just mentioning that you were gonna be on and I said, you know, I think he's, He's got some really unique experiences that I really want to hear more about, just from your military time to your airline mechanics and whatnot. - You need could probably be the best way to put it. - Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Well, we had a good talk yesterday. We were grabbing beers after work and it was really nice to hear some of that stuff. So we'll have to bring some more stories onto the cast. - Yeah. Any final words before we close up? - Uh, thanks for having me. I'll try to make a bag out at some point. We'll be a free flight again though. That's all right, you'll be making the big bucks then, it's all good. Alright, well thanks everybody for listening. Our artwork is provided by Urne. Check out his awesome illustrations at www.coffeecodecast.com/jentaljiant. Check out our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter or email us at coffeecodecast@jmail.com. Podcast is available from iTunes, Spotify, Tune in Stitcher, Google Play Music, Radio Public or wherever it is you get your podcasts. You can find all this and more on our website at www.coffeecodecast.com. If you like the show, jump over to coffeecodecast.com/review and help us out with a quick note, rating or a few words of encouragement improvement. We'll take it all. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next week and for your luster to learning moment, please don't text and drive. All right, thanks everybody. [laughs] [Music]

43: Befriending the Capital One Hacker

Kyle Johnson — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 07:00:00 GMT

This week we are back with some more travel and lounge reviews. Tesla news has made a return after a long hiatus and we have several cool new goodies coming from the company. Kyle tell’s a story about a hacker he met at a devops meetup group here in Seattle as well as the hacking of Capital One that was announced this week. We also discuss a little bit about a competitive project to Space X’s Starlink called project Kuiper.

Show Notes

Cold Open
Theme Music
On the show…
Follow-up
- More Recent Travels
  - Kyle travels to Nashville
    - Delta Lounge
  - Mike travels to Portland
  - Seattle Alaska Lounge
In The News
- Tesla News!
- Dave Text’s While He Drives
- Befriending the Capital One Hacker
- Project Kuiper
- Talking Bitcoin
- Robinhood App
Theme Music

Full Transcript

[Music] Welcome everybody, we're back again with episode 43 of the Coffee & Codecast, a tech podcast where we talk about neither coffee or code. I'm Kyle Johnson. Hey everybody I'm Mike Sheehan here and today on the show we've got a lot of updates for you. Ooh we're gonna talk about some lounge travel on the Delta lounge and a laska lounge that's cool. And we got some, oh he's got some Tesla news back again. Right on front and top, front and center here man nice job. We gotta get right through it. Okay very cool. Oh we've got some good news here. We're gonna get back to some things we didn't cover last week including like that new satellite internet competition for SpaceX. And our topic for today is going to be, as many times, topical in the office and we're dealing with some staff changes. So we're gonna talk about that a little bit in the impact of losing a leader in the organization. Yeah. Well, welcome back to the show, buddy. Good to see you, man. It feels like it's been a long time, but I guess it's only been a week. We were here last week, weren't we? There's been a lot of travel happening in the meantime. Yeah, - Yeah, there certainly has. You've been gone, you were on a little bachelor weekend, not for yourself of course, but. - Yeah, exactly, I was in Nashville. - Yeah, first time there. - How do you like Nashville, by the way? Do I need to go? - Yeah, you definitely need a myelotron there. - Good place for a single dude like myself. - Yeah, there's a lot of bachelor parties. - A lot of eligible bachelor's. - Well, they're shortly, they're only eligible for a few more days. - They're friends though. - They're friends. - Right, yeah, there you go. - They're very good, okay. - That's excellent, man. - Yeah, no, it's a good time. Cool city, the Broadway is amazing. That's kind of like the area where all like the bar district is. - Really? - Okay. - Tons of music, that's where the music venues are. Music is incredible. Even at nine o'clock in the morning, you're eating breakfast and there was like a soul band - Really? - And they were fantastic. - Wow. - So it's 24/7, it's like music city. - Exactly, and I would have been happy. Like, you know, I wouldn't have to get shitty or anything like that. I would be happy just sitting there listening to music, and drinking a drink or two. Yeah, that would be fun all by itself, let alone the whole club scene. - Well, our good friend, Dave Lester, he lived in Nashville for a while and he's talked it up quite a bit and I just haven't had a chance to go but I'd like to go down there at some point and check out some of the spots. - I could see you and him getting into some trouble. - We certainly could, man. (laughing) We did in Honolulu and we do pretty much everywhere we go. - Yeah, well I have on here to talk about the Nashville Delta lounge. 'Cause that's what we do. - Well, Lounge is here, travel, mileage runs. I mean, I just flew down to Portland for a mileage run. - Yeah. - And, you know, I could have driven quicker, probably, but why do you that when you could earn a couple of miles and hang out in the lounge? - Yeah. Well, Nashville, Dental Lounge, Delta Lounge, I'll just say no bueno. - Really? - No bueno. - So, I mean, Nashville's not a, obviously not a hub for Delta, so I'm not totally surprised by that, but I assume they still had some local curated foods, like what happened, tell me about it. - No, not really. It was pretty small number one. - It's disappointing. - Very small compared to most of them that I've been in. - Yeah. - I did not utilize the bar because it was really early. Like I was there at like 4.30 in the morning. - Oh, they don't start serving 'til six. I found out the hard way. (laughs) - They did have some breakfast selection there, not much, but typical fair oatmeal and some eggs. - Didn't have any. - You know, pretty basic. - They do a good job with some hot food though. They have eggs. They had probably some sausage and bacon, I would hope. - Right. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Better than Alaska. - Biscuits and gravy. - Biscuits and gravy. - See, there you go. And that's why I'm always on the fence right now with Alaska versus Delta for that reason, because Alaska has their infamous pancake machine, which is fine, if you like pancakes. - I would have been all about pancakes after that trip. - It's good, man. It's good. I don't mind it. I wish they had biscuits and gravy or something like that. Like that would be a low cost meal to have in addition, right, to the other things. And Delta does a nice job of having a good selection of hot foods in addition, as well as the regular stuff. - Yeah, Alaska's a little lean that way. I wish they could step it up a bit. - So yeah, I was in Nashville for about three days. - Yeah. - It was a good time. I would highly recommend it. - Saw some interesting photos. - First class there and back, which was amazing. - Which is nice because that's a longer trip, four and a half, five hours, maybe even longer than that. - No, I don't think I wanna say it was right at four. - Okay, yeah. - It was Seattle, the Nashville four hours, okay. It was quicker than I thought. I thought it was longer than that. Okay, regardless. That's still a long time in a seat, especially domestic. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's good. And were you flying red eye or earlier like normal? The flight there was, I don't know, afternoon, four or five o'clock and return flight was at, like I said, maybe five something a.m. So you got dinner on the way out and maybe some breakfast on the way back? Yep, I'd actually forgotten about breakfast that I was gonna be served that. So I'd eaten in the lounge, biscuits and gravy, like I said, and then they brought out my tray of food and I was like, oh my God, I'm so full. I can't. - Double dip in. - Yeah. Oh man, that's fun. Yeah, that's fun. Okay. So where were you at? - Yeah, I was down to Portland. Well, I was in Portland myself for a day. On Friday I went down and it was a family trip. Really fun to get family together. We don't get together as a group all that often. I've got two brothers and their spouses and a niece and a nephew and my mom. And so like the whole group of us came out. There was a contingency from Omaha that flew out here to Portland and then my brother in Seattle here drove down with his family. And I opted to fly down to Portland Friday afternoon, Friday evening just because I wanted to have a night down there and then a little bit of time. Originally, I was just going to be there in the evening and we were going to all meet up early in the morning. They flew in early Saturday, but they had some flight issues. Kind of interesting. Alaska canceled the flight out of Omaha because of mechanical issues. They didn't really say what it was, but so they knew the night before the flight was canceled. There was a 6 a.m. flight, right? They're going to be out here by 8 a.m. And so I was, he called my brother called me and we got on the phone with Alaska customer service, tried to work it out and they said, look, we got to adult the flight for you guys that leaves an hour later. And I'll get you there an hour later. It's not a big deal. An hour and a half later, I think it connected through Salt Lake or something like that. And so, hey, great. Let's reschedule everybody. There was four people on the atinerary and somehow I got screwed up. They got there in the morning and they only had two people on the itinerary so they missed that flight took an hour to figure it out at the airport. Long story short, they didn't show up until 3 30 the afternoon. And so they wasted a day and then they ended up extending it into Tuesday, you know. So, um, yeah, I had an afternoon just to putts around Portland, which was really kind of fun. I had a good time doing that because I don't spend much time in Portland as close as it is. And so this time I stayed in the hotel downtown and went out Friday night, hit up a few spots. Blue line, been to blue line donuts. - That sounds familiar, but I'm not. - No blue star, blue star. - Yes, I have been to that. - Yeah. - So Voodoo is kind of the infamous donut shop. - Right. - And they have crazy like fruity pebbles, donuts and shit like that. - Captain Crunch. - Yeah, so Ali told me about blue star. And she goes, man, they're really cool. And they're a little step up, check them out. And I did, it was really nice. - I think that's not far from a place called the waffle window. I didn't see that, but they have multiple locations, so maybe I was just in the wrong way. - Maybe that's the case, yeah. Anyway, it was really fun. I went to the Saturday market and checked out some things there. I got a lot of walk-in. Took some photos, went to the donut place, got some coffee, went to Paul's books, all the things that you have to do when you're in Portland. And then went back to the airport to meet those guys, and then we went on to a story. - Did they get any credits from Alaska for all the... They're working on it. I know that Alaska said they were gonna give them some vouchers or something, but they didn't issue them at the time. They just tried to get them a shuffle onto another plane. And so they're in the process of getting that worked out. Which I hope they do. I hope they get that because again, they lost the day. They would have been in there at like 7.45 in the morning and then we would have been hanging out all day long and instead they were up all night and didn't getting asleep and all that shit. So it was kind of a rough start to the trip. - Well, let's move on to the one, there's something else when you're in dear to your heart here, kind of tied to travel. - Oh boy. - More lounge talk. - Oh boy. - And I came back yesterday, and I had a chance to go back. From my second time to the new Alaska lounge. - So on your return flight, you stopped in it's lounge. - I mean, I had to freshen up a little bit. - Oh, okay. - And I might as well, if I'm gonna freshen up in the lounge, I might as well get a beverage or two. - All right. - I got out of the airport a little longer, that sounds great. - I don't mind because it's so nice, man. Like, it's a 16,000 square foot flag ship Alaska lounge. I don't know all the details. I don't know who was behind the architecture, but the design is just fantastic. So you know they're redoing the North satellite terminal, the end gates over there. And so right now, half of it is brand new. It just opened up and the other half is still old and crummy and like the low ceilings and stuff, but the Alaska lounge is on the Mezzanine level. So it's on the second level above the newly renovated end gates in the North satellite terminal. And it's a massive lounge and Florida ceiling windows, They've partitioned it off and do a few different areas. So it's really spacious, lots of seating, big tables, comfy chairs. And they've expanded their food menu a bit. It's still not up to par with Delta's lounge. However, they do have like a trail mix bar and then a salad bar, some soups. 12 taps, 12 beer taps, and then Fremont partnered with them to do a special IPA for their lounge. - Their own beer, that's impressive. So yeah, I went in, you know, I went, you checked out the facilities, I wanted to change a little bit, and so the restrooms are very nice. I don't think they have showers in that one, at least I didn't see any, maybe they were further down the hall, but I don't believe they, I don't know if they do or not. That would have been nice if they had that. I don't need that. - Have you seen that in any lounge? I don't think the Delta lounge has, do they have that? - I thought Delta did, and I wanna say that Phoenix does, but I'm not 100% on that. - Sky Harbor. - That's a beautiful lounge too. If you're in Phoenix, I would recommend the Delta lounge, and that's in Terminal Two. Terminal Two was newly renovated over there, 'cause Sky Harbor, the other terminals kinda look like dog shit. - Yep. They're dark, they're dingy. Yeah, the Delta One rain was on here. It just goes, the Delta One's pretty nice too. I do like the Delta One in the main concourse. That's around the A gates. That's huge. I mean, that's a really nice, spacious one. - That's the one that we spent a lot of time in, yep. I really enjoy that one. I mean, that was my favorite lounge until the Alaska lounge opened up. I would say that the Alaska has the edge on the aesthetics. Now, I'm over Delta and it's more spacious, but I think you get better full service from the Delta lounge just with all the food selections. And they have the curated Tom Douglas menu and the mac and cheese and all of that shit. So it's a little nicer food selection. There's a little bit of an interesting issue when we were hanging out in the lounge. A lot of the drinks were paid for, which I hadn't seen before in a Delta lounge. Usually you can pretty much get anything that they have for free. Oh, you're saying you had to pay for certain cocktails? Certain spirits, yeah. They had like a list of like freebies, but then if you wanted like, you know, a specific type of tequila or vodka or whatever, they would charge you for that. I'm pretty sure that wells are covered, but then if you wanted a gray goose or something like that, you might have to pay. I don't know exactly. Well, that's, that's horseshit. He's saying they're charging for Stella, which is really surprising to me. I think you could get Miller. Really? Something pretty basic, yeah. See, as far as I knew, like, all beers were no charge. I've even been in, no, I've been in the delts allounge and had a Stella before, maybe, no, maybe not. Maybe they just didn't like our group. We had a lot of people there. Too many people. Now, the interesting thing I'll say is that there are, now for the record, there is no charge for the beers in Alaska. In Alaska, yeah. So you get all that. And there are wells, like their vodka was Gibson's. It was some shit, but it was fine. It's free. I don't know how much the goose was. I didn't ask for that. It was interesting. They don't take tips because I was going to tip on I pounded a couple cocktails rapid fire and I was going to give her a tip but they don't take them so Yeah, so I'll ask a similar thing as as Delta so whereas Alaska partners with Fremont to do an IPA Delta rain was saying that has the accustomed pike bear that they branded for Pike place, Pike place brewing. Yeah, yeah place down here in the in the market. So But I'm surprised that they charge for beer. I can't believe if you're a Delta member you're paying a premium for this You know, I mean you can get in for free if you have a Delta reserve card But you're paying a $450 annual fee for that privilege So you are paying some money to be in a member of the lounge At that level it surprises me to be paying for beer. It didn't even matter like regardless of like what level of Card or anything that you had it was that was across the board because like some people had to pay to get in some people had their cards, some people had the reserve cards, some people had the gold card, it didn't matter. Wow. There's a cross-aborder. I don't know if that's a new policy or I've never had that experience before. Well I was conflicted when I was with the family on the way back. So the Omaha group, they were with me at the airport on yesterday evening and they have an Alaska lounge at PDX in Portland in the ABC gates. So in that part of the airport they do have a lounge. It looked okay. It didn't look like anything fancy. Maybe kind of like the old end gates lounge or maybe like the, I don't know, that's probably the best comparison because the C and D gate lounge for Alaska at C tax pretty nice. They're a little newer. However, we had a four year old, well three and a half year old, and then four adults. So I could have only gotten two adults in and then it would have been what, 25 bucks with my Alaska card per person for two more guest passes. At that point, was it worth 50 bucks to bring them into a mediocre lounge? Probably not. If they had burgers or fries or something like that, then I think it would have been easy because we spent 100 bucks at the Henry's tavern over there at the airport instead. Yeah, you can easily bring up a pretty big bill at an airport bar. Yeah. So if you're hanging around a long time, it's probably really worth the money, but if you're going to just drop in there for 20 minutes then. Yeah, definitely not. Yeah, not at all. And we had about an hour, hour and a half, but my niece wanted some food and they wouldn't I've had anything like that in the, you know, they wanted to eat 'cause they weren't gonna have dinner. They were getting home late. So in that case, it wasn't worth paying for the membership. I think they do have some hot plates you can order for a fee, but then it's not really saving you any money. So yeah, mixed review there. - Yeah. - It's a bummer. - No, boy, no, only two lounges. - Well, I just threw. - Yeah, but the Alaska lounges in the North satellite is a beautiful lounge. Go check it out if you get a chance. It's impressive. And they've done a really nice job with that. I hope to see San Francisco's new lounge next year when that opens up. That should be similar of similar design and style. I think they just did one in JFK recently as well. I'm going to hit that up. Well, I don't know if I'll be able to hit that up this September. I'll be out there, but I'll fly Delta for that. So I might not be able to see that one. Anyway, it's a little stingy to me that you're paying for beer you're having to pay for certain things when the lounge price the cost of the lounge membership itself is around $500 a year and you might get a discount if you have a credit card but if you're in my case I just paid for a full membership so I could bring two guests in and I had a discount with my gold status it was still around 3.95 I think 3.75 I don't remember now no no no free beer what the hell is that all for beer all right well show you got anything else you want to add on this or show me move along to a good part of the show oh the Tesla part someone's getting a little giddy it's like it's like Christmas is coming it's Christmas Eve over here and someone wants to can't go to sleep you know wait for San Diego to arrive here oh hey it's been a while I know it has been about four weeks go ahead hit the button why not what's the good part of the show the good part of the show show is Tesla news oh Oh, I thought we were going to talk about the story that Kelso sent me earlier today. Oh, what did he send you? The Delta story. You want to talk about more Delta news? Yeah, you want to talk about Tesla news. I want to talk about more airplane news. I don't see them in the show notes. We're going to just skip that one. All right, you can talk for us. That's fine. Better be good. What's going on in Tesla land over here? Well, Tesla is going to release Netflix, YouTube, and Cuphead, which is a game, to their infotainment system at the end of August. - That's great. Well, that's all we need now is to have more distracted driving. - Well, you can't be distracted because you can't use any of these functionalities while you're driving. When you're in autopilot, anything, the car has to be in park. The primary use for this is gonna be when you're charging. - Well, that's awesome. - They don't have an airplane capability where you can stream to the screen. - You can use Bluetooth, but there's no airplane. - That would be pretty cool. - That would be a great feature. - Elon, we need an airplane on the Tesla monitors. He should tweet that because he takes a lot of suggestions via tweet. I'm going to do it right now actually. Do it. You talk about this and I'm going to go on to Twitter. Yeah, so basically, I mean, it's just a Netflix app and a YouTube app that, while parked and while charging, if you want to watch a movie for 20 to 40 minutes or however long it is, you're going to be sitting at the supercharger. You can certainly do that. Elon has said that the experience in it is actually really, really incredible because you're You're sitting in a car which already has a pretty immersive sound system, like 360 degree sound. So the experience is apparently pretty impressive from what he is reporting, of course. But the other thing that they've talked about, and I don't know if this is part of the announcement or if they're ready to do this yet, but at the superchargers, they were going to provide free Wi-Fi as well so that you could do your streaming without using their built in LTE connection. I wasn't listening. I was just tweeting that out there to Elon. I just got it out there. Well, good. Tell me what you said there. I'll follow. They're going to also be adding Wi-Fi at their supercharger stations so that during your time at the supercharger, you can just be automatically hooked up to that and use that as their streaming mechanism versus using the built-in cart LTE system. Because I don't think the speed on that is all that great. So very exciting. Something to do-- I think we've talked about this a number of times on the show before that, what do you do? Are you supercharged? There are a number of facilities available, usually Starbucks or restaurant. whatever is around. - Yeah, there's some kind of thing outside of the vehicle. - Right, but they keep expanding on the number of games that are available in the car to play or movies to watch or different things that you can do to pass the time while the car is charging 'cause it's not obviously as fast as like a gas Philip. - That's pretty cool. I like that. I'm looking at the screen here. They've got, yeah, the podcasts. - Yeah, the coffee and code cast. If you want a Tesla, we are on tune in app, which is available in the Tesla, you can pull us right up, click the button, and away we go. - Oh man, I do have some sad news to follow up on, but I'll wait until you're finished with, do you have anything else you want to add to this story here? - No, that's pretty much it. Like I said, available at the end of August, supposedly if he comes through with his dates, which sometimes are a little bit sketchy. But yeah, pretty cool news there. - That's awesome. - Do you want to interject here before the next Tesla news that I have here? - Yeah. - Okay, okay, you want to break it up. I just want to break it up for you a little bit. I want you to relish in your Tesla news as long as possible, sorry to break it up a little bit. No, this is a little sad. I was talking to Lester yesterday and he's all caught up on our episodes now. Do you remember last week that we had texted him? When was that I reached out to him? And I said, "Hey, what are you doing?" And he responded to me and he said, "I'm listening to you." I think you and I were at fuel and I reached out to him. I said, "What are you up to?" And he said, "I am in my car listening to you guys argue who talk about the Amazon strike. Well, he told me yesterday that right after he sent that text message, he were in some kind of getting off, getting on the, he was in an exit off ramp, going like two miles an hour and like, we're in some dude. (laughing) So don't text and drive friends, like even if it is a text coming from the coffee and codecast, please make sure that your car is parked. - Maybe we'll have to put that as like a disclaimer at the end of the podcast now, just from now on, that's like something we'll put on there every time. - Yeah, I felt really bad for him. He's like, don't feel bad, it's okay, it worked out. know it's not a big deal but um apparently the guy was trying to milk him out of some stuff and back issues and all kinds of things. Didn't have insurance probably. Yeah. I don't know the little story but yeah he said don't feel bad but yeah right after I text you that I went into the back of some guy's car. Didn't really do much damage. The guy had a trailer hitch on the back and all it really did was wrinkle Dave's license plate. He's got a new one on order so. What's Dave driving? Is he driving a Tesla? No, he's got a four runner right now. Oh that's too bad. He's He's got a big vehicle there, nice SUV. Does not have a big Tesla display, so he won't be listening to the podcast that way, but I think he just uses his AirPlay. They have a car play on the Toyota. Well, now it's the time. Now is the time. Yeah. Your car's damaged. You need it fixed anyway. Now it's time to sell. Yeah. Get yourself a Tesla. Speaking of that, let me bring you right back around. Let's do it, man. What's going on with Tesla? This is off the grid here because I don't have notes about this, but also the Tesla truck. Supposedly it's supposed to be announced here in the next one or two months. So maybe he switches to the truck instead of the would you say for runner? Forerunner, yeah, SUV. Yeah. Well, that would be a nice option for Dave because you know having a truck would be good I think you like having a little more room for his pup. You know, he has a golden you put it in the bed Retriever there. Well on long haul trips. I don't know if you might forget a cover for it. All right Very good. Well, what else do we have in Tesla news today? The third item of Tesla news here is a new announcement called Tesla MegaPak. What the hell is that? It is a battery pack system, much like they've implemented, I think it was in Puerto Rico, they put these in, like some of these battery packs that they could kind of assist the grid with in a apply solar. This one is mainly a gigantic battery pack system that these cabinets are taller than you. All right, and they're designed to help in peak demand scenarios. So how is this different than what they deployed down in Australia? Those ones I think are just specifically capturing devices for solar. So I think they use their solar arrays, solar panels to capture these into those types of banks. These I think are specifically to handle peak load. Interesting. Okay. It's a little different. Those are the other thing I'm referring to was the Tesla PowerPack. pack. So it's a little bit different. Yeah. For his mega pack. Let's look at that. How about that? Because they had Powerwall. That was for the home. That was where you got a little, you know, personal home device. But then like on the industrial commercial scale, they had Powerpack and now MegaPack. Well, yeah, while the Powerpacks were huge, 129 megawatt hours, 100 megawatts of power. Yeah. This one even says like Tesla and Leisha's a MegaPack and it says that it's to take on natural gas plants. - Really? - Company aims to support energy grid usage during peak hours by storing up to three megawatt hours of clean wind and solar energy supplementing natural gas, peaker plants. - Hey, very cool. Okay. - So they're huge. Like these containers, what to put a link in the show notes, but these containers, like they're, it's what, one, two, three, four, or five, six, probably 10 modules in there? - Yeah. - In this cabinet. And each module is probably, I don't know, judging by that picture, they're probably 12 foot high or something. And a couple feet across, three feet across, something like that, each container. So I mean, it's a pretty big system. Yeah, they just show it here kind of in the middle of a field somewhere on a slab. Right. Easy to set up. They link together. They're interconnected interchangeable. Right. So just another one of these things that Tesla is bringing in in terms of clean energy, right? They have their solar roof. They have their solar panels. - Yeah. - They have the power pack. The, what was the home one, the power wall? - Power wall, yeah. And now the mega pack. - Mega pack. - Yeah. - Well, they do say here that they had to scale back power packs in 2018 and 2019 because of the demand for Tesla batteries for the vehicles. So that's a problem, it's just that they had to, they had a little shortage there, they needed to come up with more batteries. So, backed off of that a little bit. And I know that the solar roof project has been a slow start. Really cool though, because these tiles look like natural roof tiles or they have a few flavors. You can even get, I believe, what the Adobe style. Yep. They can either be like tar shingles or they can be, what do you call those? They terracotta style. That's what it is. The terracotta, yeah. They rounded ones at the clay. Right. Tiles. piece, a shingle or tile or whatever you want to call it, has its own little built-in solar panel and then they all connect together and produce a pretty large amount of solar energy and they're trying to bring the cost down to compete with some other traditional solar panels which they also sell but make it a durable roof that'll last just as long as a typical roof today. So what are they 30 years? But also we'll save you tons and tons of money on energy costs. So really cool technology. They just keep pushing the envelope in batteries and that's probably their biggest cross right now is the fact that they can't produce their home batteries fast enough. Which is where I think the gigafactory in China and I think they're looking at putting another one in Europe somewhere will help them continue to produce the amount of batteries that they need to produce to keep up with these technologies that they keep implementing. But really cool stuff. The share amount of power that MegaPack can handle is very impressive, up to one gigawatt of energy storage. They said that's enough to power every home in San Francisco for six hours. That's a lot of energy. Damn. There's a lot of homes in San Francisco. But you think about that. And when it comes to offsetting peak demands and just the power companies have a deal with that, in efficiency between peak loads and non-peak loads, it makes a lot of sense. I think they said the one in Australia that they used already paid for itself. It was very quick ROI. I don't remember how long it took, but I know just because of the efficiencies there, that were gained by having that offset the power, it was able to pay for itself very quickly. Kind of 10, 10-inch of this. Like one of the, an interesting thing that is happening in the Midwest right now with a lot of these wind farms, because you know the farmers will put gigantic wind turbines in their field. Yeah. and they're generating energy. So they're basically at this point, getting in there, connecting to the grid, and they're basically providing energy right to the grid, which then they get paid by the power company. So it's pretty much a straight profit for them, right? - Yeah. - But the problem now is becoming is like, the power companies are saying, "Well, no, you're using our grid, you're using the whole system in a way, you're providing to it, but you're also using the transmission lines. There's a cost for us to maintain those, like you should not get to use them for free. - Oh, you need to pay a service to put your power on our lines. - Exactly. So like basically you can't be negative or you know you can't just always demand a return. It's kind of the way that they're starting to look at it. And I think they're correct about that. Like somebody's got to maintain those lines. - Well the infrastructure cost money. - Yes, exactly. - Yeah. - So unless you're gonna go to like what we've talked about in previous episodes where like everything is kind of in micro scale, right? So like every little community has their own little micro power plant and they're on the little micro sewage plant and so forth. You have to do something like that because all the infrastructure costs, crazy amounts of money to maintain and improve. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Crazy. Can I go back to my story that we were talking about the Delta Pilot? If you want to do the Delta Pilot, fire away, buddy. Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, we got this one. - Yeah, also sent me this a little bit. - Our good friend, the Gomer. - The old Gomer, he's got so many pseudonames and whatever. Okay, yeah, this dude was third, the pilot was booted off a fully boarded plane in Minneapolis and arrested, 37 year old dude, Gabriel Schroeder, was coughed after 11 a.m. Tuesday and they found him wreaking of alcohol and he happened to have a bottle of booze on him. - I've been to Minneapolis, I would drink two if I was there. (laughs) not your cup of tea. - No, it's fine. - You need a drink just to like, not freeze a death. I think in the winter time. - That's a good idea. - You made that false sense of warmth. - Yeah, exactly. That helps it makes it feel a little more palatable there when it's 12 below zero, or 25 below zero, whatever it does. - Full of mosquitoes, or yeah. - No formal charges were immediately filed against him or any formal complaint. It's all pending toxicology tests, which could take a week. He was booked and released. - And it does. - So what's the charge there? There's no DUI. It wasn't driving anything. Yeah, Delta's alcohol policy is among the strictest in the industry and we have no tolerance for violation. I mean, he'll probably get fired. I don't know. Oh, I would have to imagine. I don't think they're gonna give them. I don't think there's second chances. The cost of them. Yeah, letting somebody letting that happen again is like I can't imagine they would allow that to happen. Man, why don't you just call in sick? Why do you even try to go? Like he actually was going through the the TSA screening line for crew members, but he noticed they were doing additional screening so he got out of line. Like why, and he had a, wow, he had a bottle of booze on him. In the TSA line, I mean, that's pretty balsy work there. - Clearly, really intoxicated, 'cause I get it's hard to believe that he wouldn't have known that or-- - Thought to realize that that would be a problem. - That might be a bad idea. - Right. - Should probably not do that here. - I did it, yeah. And that much liquid, right? Like you're gonna get flak for having-- - If you're gonna do it, make sure it's in three ounce bottles, - Right, you know. - I had an experience with that actually in Nashville. I got some hot sauce. - Yeah. - Sweet baby raised hot sauce. It was in a five ounce. - Oh, no bueno. - I only had my carry on. I had to make our good buddy, Rain, who's listening here, carry it back on the plane for me 'cause I didn't have that or somebody recommended drinking two ounces. (laughing) Two ounces of hot sauce down the hatch. - What did his shirt say? It was drinks before I do, is there something like that? - Oh, I don't know if we want to talk about that. - There was some pretty, pretty classy photos that came across the wire there. - It didn't get too bad, it was fine. - Everybody behaved for the most part? - Yeah. - What happens in Nashville stays in Nashville kind of a thing? - Exactly. - All right, very good. While your wife's online, we're not gonna talk about it. (laughing) - Nothing to get anybody in trouble here. You can tell me after the cast, that'll be in the post show. - Right, speaking of crazy stories, I got a crazy story for you, I wanna relay this to you. I haven't talked about this to you at all 'cause I was curious to get your reaction. - Okay. - Yeah. So, kind of starting off at the beginning here, so you're familiar with Meetups, Meetup groups? - Yeah, sure. Meetup.com. Yeah, exactly. So it's a site that has different kinds of clubs or groups that you can join. Some of them are open, some of them are not. Ranged from anything from technology to hiking to running to whatever, you know, any interest you have in the world, you can find a group. So about a year ago or a little over a year ago, there was a group that my wife had joined at Chef down the street here. Chef? Yeah. I don't know what they do exactly. The company's called Chef. the group that they had was called Seattle Coffee Ops. It was a group about DevOps work, which we're familiar with. I'd even recommend this group on our team's channel once upon a time, a long time ago. They meet at about nine o'clock, I think once every week or two weeks. And then it's just a discussion about different devy topics with smaller groups. So I think usually in this case, maybe let's just say for the sake of argument, 40 people show up, they split into five groups and you discuss whatever the day's topic is amongst your group. Some DevOps topic. It doesn't have to be dev, a lot of times it ended up being engineering. Sometimes it's recruiting, it could be a lot of things. - Okay. - It's a DevOps group, but it kind of goes in a lot of different directions. - Because the wide range of it. - Yeah. So I went to this group a few times, and I enjoyed it, I learned a lot from it, and it was a pretty interesting learning experience. And so I joined their Slack channel. So just like we have a Slack channel here, they have one as well for this coffee ops group. - Okay, right. So I'm following the channel and there's a lot of stuff being talked about, all kinds of different topics, different channels that you can join about security or DevOps or job boards or whatever the heck there is, right? - Yeah. - So one day in the general channel, there was this person who was named Page and was reaching out for help, like looking for jobs basically. - Okay. - And I was kind of just following what you're saying And she sounded like she was in a little bit of a crisis, right? Like she was kind of like venting to the channel a lot. And the reason she was venting was that basically she was saying that companies were not willing to hire trans people. Okay. All right. So they weren't being inclusive and that she was being discriminated against and so on and so forth. So I referred her or I at least messaged my wife because my wife, one of the things that my wife does very, very well, she's very inclusive, and she wants to hire for diversity, and that's like one of her like focuses at every company that she's ever been at. And so I was like, you should reach out to this person, they seem like they're really struggling, and it seems like maybe they're not getting a fair shake. And so she did, she reached out on LinkedIn, she found the LinkedIn page, and reached out, and they chatted a little bit back and forth, and she passed along a few companies that she knew does diversity and inclusive hiring. - Great. - Right? So she kind of lifted at that, and then I don't think it was very much longer, probably not even a day, got a response. And basically the person was like, none of them will hire me, they don't hire trans people, they're not inclusive. - So the same issues that were previously mentioned now with these other companies. - Exactly, right? - Mm-hmm. - That's concerning. - And then added to that, she requested that Christina reached out to the counselor, a counselor, and say, this person is not getting hired or they won't basically like, basically trying to get to the counselor that they're not hiring her. So she's trying to skirt something. - What counselor, what do you mean? - Like a, I don't know, like a personal counselor, like a, to help you through issues, right? Guidance, I don't know what you wanna call that. - Like this person, I'm missing something here, this person made this suggestion, this, this this uh so yes page yeah the person that we've been talking about yeah asked Christina to email her counselor oh her counselor saying that people will not hire her oh I see she's trans that's what I missed so she has a counselor that she's working with and now wants Christina to see you know to contact them directly right okay uh therapist yeah therapists sorry yeah that's the correct term and um Christina was like no there there's no way you've contacted these people and talk to them in this amount of time, that hasn't happened. Right? Something seems a little fishy. And so things kind of went on and so forth. And suddenly this person replies to Christina and the same thing again. Christina hates trans people and then proceeds to threaten that she's going to hack her. Wow, this is escalating very quickly. So, crisis, everything here is super like 100% forward all the time. Yeah. And then even sent this GitHub repo link. Uh-oh. And it had a whole-- we didn't know what it was at first. And so Christina and I looked through it. And it was a slew of hacking tools, probably like 30 different specific tools in one GitHub repo that you can use to hack into people's accounts. OK. Right? So she'd being relatively threatening at this point. Right? So then everything just kind of stops. Enough-- don't hear anything more about it. Christina just dropped this at this point. I'm not gonna talk to this. - She blocked her, you know, everything. Everybody has been blocked. She notified at this point, the leaders of the DevOps coffee ops group. She, I believe, also emailed the therapist. You know, like basically, like kind of washed her hands of this person and was like, "I'm done." - Yeah. - I tried to help and there's something else going on here. - Exactly. We did everything we could. Well, come to find out. You heard of the Capital One hack that happened here a few days ago? - Yeah, I mean, this was a gal that was in Seattle like peeking hill neighborhood or something. - Same person. - No shit. (laughing) No way dude. - Right. - So Paige Thompson. - I think Thompson. - Really? - Yeah. Is the person's name. And yeah, I've talked to this person that hacked 100 million capital one accounts. So it's Christina. - The FBI's in the context. - I know, right. - I'm waiting for them to contact me. - Whoa. - I wonder why were you talking to this person? - Whoa, that's crazy. - Yeah. - Unbelievable. I was like blown away like a Sunday, Christina one day a couple days ago sent me a message and it was a screenshot of some of the conversation that they had had. And then it was the link to the article, you know, about the capital one hacking. And I was like, "Holy shit!" (laughs) That's wild. I just saw a photo today and the news when I was reading that story, like I saw it like person had a tattoo and like the that it done and it's like, oh, they're from Seattle and unbelievable. Yeah, worked for Amazon, worked for a number of other companies in the area And it does sound like the actual hack is much larger than Capital One. - Okay. - There's a really good article I have linked in the show notes that I'll post. She actually had access to a whole lot of other companies data. - Yeah. - She may not have accessed it, but she could have very easily. - Yeah. And this was a particular, I don't know the details of this breach, but was it some kind of OS level of vulnerability or was it just something but their security that was-- - So was I understand it because she was an Amazon S3 employee? I don't know if-- - Oh no. - I don't think it was a current, maybe I'm wrong about that, but she was able to basically use an inside methodology to get into these accounts and into these storage pieces. - Really? - As I understand it. So, and this is, and the article I think that I sent or that you're looking at there, talks about that's kind of the cloud companies like Azure, Google, and AWS, this is like their biggest fear, is because the inside hacking, how do you prevent that? - Right. - So in this case, this person had access to Amazon as three buckets. - Potentially, yeah. - So it's awesome. - Or at least had some knowledge of it and was able to exploit it in some way, yeah. - Really? - But I think Ford was involved. Like she could have potentially had some Ford information in there, obviously Capital One. And there was a couple of other notable names as well. - Wow. - Yeah. - That's crazy. - That was a crazy story. That came up, I think early in the week or late last week I can't remember exactly and I wanted to save all of that 'cause I was like, "Oh, I'll get Mike's response here on the podcast." - Well, that's pretty cool, man, 'cause I just knew that this person was local, but I didn't know the whole backstory that you guys, you and Christina had been. - You were trying to be a nice guy, man. - We were trying to do the right thing, right? - We were trying to do the right thing. She was trying to help out. - Right. - And what, her nickname is erratic. - Erratic, that's what she went on, on Twitter, yep, which her LinkedIn has been removed. Her Twitter has been removed. I'm not sure she had a GitHub and she had a GitLab. Yeah. So the funny thing about this too, if you read the articles, the reason that she got, one of the reasons she got snagged was that they found links to her GitHub, which linked to her GitLab, and in her GitLab, she actually had committed her resume. Really? Oh boy. Even a little trail. Yeah. Damn, man, that's wild. Yeah. up to five years in prison a quarter million dollar fine. Not really that big of a penalty. Doesn't seem like. Not for a hundred and six million pieces of, you know, profile data. I mean, she didn't do anything with the data as far as they know. She downloaded it for certain. But she didn't, and then I think she posted it to a GitHub. That's how it was found. Somebody reported it after they had found it. But I don't think she specifically like tried to use any of the data for anything specific. Okay. So maybe that's why the penalty doesn't seem that harsh. - Sure, but. - Well, that's fascinating, man, so that personal connection there. (laughing) - A little too personal. - I know, it's a little weird. - Yikes, oh my gosh, man. Careful who you help online, I guess. - I guess that's true, yeah. - Damn. - If they're in crisis, maybe just run away. - You gotta let us know if the FBI comes calling, man. - That'd be something. - Wow. - Go on to the FBI and get an interrogation. - Crazy. They're gonna, yeah, talk to your Christina, see what happened there. (laughing) - On that note, I want to get your opinion on the Equifax breach, that previously happened. You know, now they're faced with a $700 million settlement. You've heard about that. So is this the breach? This I think may have happened while we were in France. Because I think if I remember correctly, I was sitting in John and Mary's place in France and looking up how to get the Equifax protection or see if I was involved. It was in 2017, so it could have been. It was around that time for the wedding, right? When we were out there. Sure. Yeah. years ago. What's interesting about it, and I'd like to get some feedback from anybody that's done this or should I should ask a couple co-workers because I know that they are $700 million in a pool essentially that you can get, first of all, if you were a part of the breach, but then if you had damages associated with it, if you paid for, oh, what do they call that, like the identity protection? If you paid for that or if you actually had experienced fraud and then had to take time off or incurred personal expenses to fight the fraud charges or hire a lawyer, that sort of thing like then you're entitled up to. I think the maximum reward is $20,000. But they'll offer you if you were a part of the breach at least free credit monitoring for a year or $125. I think you have to demonstrate some impact, not just that your information was part of it, but that you had to pay for some service or do something in order to get any money. - Okay, I thought the 120, I haven't looked at this very much. I've just heard about it on the periphery a little bit, but I thought the 125 dollars that you could claim was for anybody that was affected. - Well, I think so. I just don't know how strict it is because I saw that, and I went online, I went to the forum, I filled out my information, and sure enough, they said, yeah, you were part of this breach. So I said, I don't want the credit monitoring. I just want the $125. And then they asked for more documentation to back up. They said, look, you can get up to $2.00. But you have to-- I think you can claim up to 10 hours of time spent, but you had to document this stuff. They wanted documentation. And I'm not sure how stringent that would be. If I just said, no, yeah, I spent 10 hours trying to fight this. Will they actually audit that? Or what kind of proof do you need to get a payout? I'm not really sure. - Well, and I haven't seen some information today. I think it was on Twitter that basically, you shouldn't even bother to request the amount from them, whatever $25 you can request because you'll never get it. I didn't read into the details of why, but it came from like the AP, so a pretty major news outlet. - Yeah. - So yeah, I don't know how that works, or who's entitled to what, but it didn't sound like. - I mean, reintzing that anyone can claim up to 10 hours of working on repairing it. I just don't know how to prove that. I mean, that's what I'm wondering is like, well, how do I demonstrate that? 'Cause I don't have physical documentation, but I did, I was a part of the breach, and so I would, you know, I'd like to claim that. - Your accountant would say keep all your receipts? - Yeah, well, is that what you need? - I don't know. - Or are they just saying that, and then you really-- - I mean, what other documentation could you provide if you don't have receipts for stuff? - Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know how thorough this audit process is gonna be. There's so many people affected, are they actually gonna go one by one, they're just going to say it's not worth our time to investigate this. Like if everybody's just going to get 10 hours worth of, you know, yeah, over 10 you have to prove. So what he's saying. So under 10, it did ask for something. Yeah, he's going to, he's going to provide some more information for us on that. When we can, we can, once we get that info, we'll relay that on the cast next week or whenever we get it. But yeah, I'd like to just be, I think you can just claim. I don't know. We'll see what he has. Because I know I was affected. Christina was not, but I was. Wasn't that basically half of the world or half of the country was pretty much affected? It was huge. I don't remember exactly how many, but 700... Yeah, there's 147 million victims. So yeah, about half. Less than half a little bit. Yes. Yeah, I thought it was something like that. Yeah. Wow. Well, thanks, Rain. We'll get that information and relay that on next week. That'll follow up that in the show notes. And everybody go out there and check the link and see if you can get some money. - Excellent. Let's move on to Bezos satellites, not to be confused with Bezos balls. (laughing) - Another fascination over here. Bezos balls these spheres. The Amazon go, that's not Amazon go, it's just the offices down there. - I don't know, I don't know, there's a bar in there, what else is in there? - I've never been in them, have you been in them? - I've not been in them, I've not been in Bezos balls, no I've not. But I know that there's restaurant bar. - Yeah, it's really nice looking bar. It looks pretty, very posh. - Yep. - And quite the ecosystem right now. - Rather expensive as I understand too, right? - Zotic plants, it is expensive. Yeah, I looked at the menu for that and it was not a cheap happy hour for sure. - Yeah, one of our co-workers was discussing, I think it was the bar and was basically saying, like, you feel sorry for anybody that works there 'cause I don't think they can climate control it. - Oh no. - So it has to be part of like the same part of the ecosystem, so pretty steamy. - Yeah. Everybody in there is going to be sweat in the entire time that they're hanging out. Maybe it wasn't the bar, but something else inside the spheres at least. Yeah, right. Lexan just jumped in. She's a little late to the party, said, "Looks like I missed some good topics." Well, you have to pick it up later when the podcast is produced, or you can catch for a live video here. Yeah, you can always watch. That's a good point. I'm glad you mentioned that, because you can always watch the full podcast immediately after on Facebook. The whole thing will be there. I think you could probably even watch it now from the beginning. That's probably true. I think you could rewind it. But yeah, it's always available on Facebook immediately following the live show. And then we do publish what our little syndication feed goes out next day, usually next day or two. Yep. And then you can get it on Spotify and iTunes and all those good places. On your Tesla in the tune-in app. That's right. In the in-car display. Don't text and drive as we mentioned earlier. No fender banners on my watch. I'm not responsible. I'm going to add that to the ending piece here. >> Can you please put that in there? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, we are not responsible or liable for any accidents caused by texting and driving on the coffee codecaster. Sorry, Dave. Yeah. Anyway, let's talk about the project, man. Let's talk about project Kuiper. Project Kuiper. So we've talked previously about SpaceX, Neuralink. What do we call that? What does it call? I forgot the name of that already. >> Of the Tesla or SpaceX version? It's called, "Why am I not thinking of it already?" Starlink, dude. There you go, Starlink. So we talked about Starlink because in a recent Falcon Heavy mission, they launched 60 prototypes or 60 of the satellites into space. That was a really cool, successful launch. And the idea there is to create a grid of satellite internet satellites that can span the entire globe. If you have a pizza box size receiver on the ground, then in theory you would have access to internet anywhere on the earth. Their hope is eventually to get approval. I think they've received FTC approval already, FCC? FCC. Yeah, approval to launch 12,000. That would be the idea is to have a grid of 12,000 satellites and global domination with the internet. Well, there's a new competitor in the space. Of course, Jeff Bezos has his own blue origin company, but they have a new project, Kuiper, that's doing their own satellite internet in a very similar fashion. I don't know much about the technology, how it differs from what SpaceX and Starlink are doing, but they have a, they propose a network of 3200 satellites delivering high-speed internet and nowhere in the world as well. Do you know, are these going to be the same type of Starlink satellites where they're low orbit? Well, that's a good question. I don't know anything about the technology. I just saw this article pop up, so I need to look a little bit more. But I think that was the whole benefit of having the Starlink was that it was low latency. By having it in low-earth orbit, then you were able to get very low latency response times from the grid. So I'm trying to look here. This is interesting. So it looks like they're trying to make it play a bit more for the consumer market. Okay. Kind of a more wide swath of the consumer market. Whereas I think Starlink is more to kind of in the Facebook way of doing things, right? They're just trying to get everybody in the world connected. I don't think it was necessarily like to be the consumer broadband service. It was just to try and get coverage everywhere in the world. - Right, right. - It's been billions of dollars in the project. There's not a lot of details. 3,236 satellites, yes, in low-earth orbit. So 784 at an altitude of 367 miles and then another 1200 at a height of 379 miles. Anywhere between 367 and 400 miles effectively, low-earth orbit is where they're gonna have these satellites. It's one of their projects. It's a new initiative to launch a constellation of low-earth orbit satellites that will provide low latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world. Said NAMZ on spokesperson. - Okay, so they are trying to tout the same type of thing, but it does sound like, It does sound like they're also maybe trying to make it more widely available, like maybe get other people that are on currently connected type connections to use this type of thing. I think these could be really interesting because like I think we talked about this before where people were asking if, I think this is on the Tesla earnings call where they were asking if the Starlink satellites maybe could be used in place of LTE for Tesla vehicles, which would be really cool, right? than theoretically you have connectivity anywhere you go, whereas LTE definitely cuts in and out depending upon your location. Still pretty bad, and it'll get better with 5G, but that's going to be a while before it's everywhere. Well, it'll get worse before it gets better because 5G is not going to be in every corner of the world. It's going to be harder to have more satellite. You have to have more antennas for 5G, just because of the spectrum that it's on. It's not going to be, yeah, because of the high bandwidth, it doesn't have, it's kind of like 802 AB and G, like the different standards. So you can get, what are you trying to accomplish? You want it to penetrate through walls. You can do that, but then you're going to get a shorter range. If you can go farther, then it's, I don't know. There's always trade-offs, right? And what you can get. And so I think with 5G, what I've heard anyways, that you have to have a lot more equipment, more frequently, in order to achieve that bandwidth and low latency. So I have just heard this morning. I think it was a Verizon extended their 5G coverage, too. I think it was three or four more cities. So it is coming, just not very quickly. And I don't think a lot of phones support it, right? - Yeah, certainly not the iPhone, not until 2020, at the earliest. I think the iPhone 11 might. - Is there some Android phones that do that? Like usually Android's a little bit ahead of the curve. But I don't know if they have any. - I don't know. - Not the flip phones, or the fold phones, man. Don't get those. Yeah, don't get that. Yeah, Verizon launches 5G in four more cities. Chicago Denver Minneapolis. - Yeah. - So while you're hot or cold, - If you're while you're uncomfortable. - Yeah. - While you're drinking booze to keep yourself warm in Minneapolis, you can have some high speed in your new mobile device. - Yeah, Providence and St. Paul, which is the same as Minneapolis, so that's stupid. - Yeah. - So I don't really wanna get into our next topic 'cause I feel like we could talk about that for a little while, so you got anything else you wanna wrap about? - Oh, I see, yeah, we didn't, gosh, we went long today, didn't we? - Yeah, we started jabbering about Delta lounges Alaska lounges and all that kind of stuff so yeah we did yeah that we have a good topic for next time though We I think it's My is well just give a quick intro to it at least but we don't to talk about it now Yeah, oh we'll go ahead and intro away. I don't know what you want to say there. Oh my sister does say Tagging on to the previous topic that in my little former hometown of Albert City, Iowa population of I don't know 750. Yeah, they do not have the 5G available yet. 5G is not 5G arriving sometime in 23. Yeah, maybe right about the time that the light rail is going to be hitting, you know, the Redmond area. That's right. That's going to be fantastic. That'll be great. Someday for some people, when your kids are graduating high school, then Fred Car wants to know, do you ever talk about Bitcoin? Actually, it's not been a frequent up topic of conversation here, but we do have a guest speaker that we're going to bring on. I can mention that a little bit. Brent Lyman, a good buddy of mine, who works for CoinMe. And so I let him explain it. He can do a better job explaining it than I can, but they have the largest network of Bitcoin ATMs around the country. They have a partnership with CoinStar, and you can basically go to their ATMs or go to the CoinStar machines and you can exchange currencies with CoinStar. you know, currencies for Bitcoin and all that sort of stuff. - Well, and if we could ever get our buddy, Rain, who's been listening onto the show, he was a former minor. - Yeah. - So he could probably shed some light on the subject as well. - Yeah, I would like to get Rain on the show. Rain, you don't even have to, you could just dial in, you don't have to be on the camera if that would make you more comfortable. - Sitting his office over there and dial in. - Fred, I'm glad you brought that up, Fred. And thanks for joining the cast. you know, Fred's a coworker of ours downstairs. He's a long time, powerhouse salesman down here, quote wizard. And I think Bitcoin would be a great top to talk about. And so if you have ideas on what you wanna hear about, we can make that happen too, buddy. - So do you have any Bitcoin? - Any coins of any kind? - Yeah, I don't. You know, you can kick yourself, whatever I can kick myself. I was looking at it when it was down to 3,500 around the end of the year, like December, I think. November, December, it was down around 30, as low as I think it was almost like $3,000, like $3,200 and I thought about getting a few. I just saw today that it was almost up to 10,000. Did it break 10,000 today? It was making a rebound. This is actual Bitcoin, not Ethereum or any other kind of thing. This is BTC. Yeah. Yeah. Long time listener, first time caller. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Yeah, Bitcoin broke 10,000 today. So it's at 10, 10, 036. - And that's up from what's low, what was the low here, what a year ago or something like that? Right, 'cause I'm from like super ridiculously high. - 32.71. So it's up about $6,800. - Wow, excellent. - Yep, I could have tripled my money. - That would have been a better investment than what we do in our little trading app in Robinhood. - I mean, in my Robinhood app right now, but you know, I'm a big, I'm a big crisper. I've got a big position in crisper right now and crisper has been doing great for me, man. or kicking ass, or well, I can tell you don't invest in hexo, hexo cannabis. - Did they not? - Not so great. We lost a lot of money with hexo, not a lot. I don't have a lot in there, but I've lost a good percentage. - I think there's still a buy. It's just gonna be a long, it's gonna be a long play. - Yeah, it's a long play. It's not gonna be a quick thing. Yeah, I have a marijuana, I have a rare cannabis actually. - And hey, if you wanna get your own free stock, I can give you a referral link. Don't use mine. - It's mine. - Don't use mine. - I'll send it over to you. - Well, we'll each get a free stock. - It'll be great. - That would be awesome. We recommend you check out the Robinhood app where you can buy and sell free trades. - Yeah. - It's actually very easy to set up. You just go in and we have a little group where we a little friendly competition with some friends. And so everybody puts in, put in 500 bucks at the beginning of a quarter and whoever has the biggest gain at the end gets a free stake dinner. - My wife says doja coin is where it's at. - Doja coin. Now what's that? - That's that dog. - What the hell is that? You'd have to Google it. - I've heard of some others like XRP. Is a big one. - I don't know a lot about a lot of the coins. Light coin? - This dog. - Doge coin. - It's like a meme. - They used to be a big thing. - Yeah. - Okay. - Maybe I'm saying it incorrectly, but that's how you say it. - We're gonna get Lyman on here from CoinMe. - Yeah, you should. that be great we've talked about it a few times now and we just haven't i've dropped the ball on it yet he's an advisor uh... Fred says he's got dragon unicorn but they're both Seattle companies and some randoms uh... awesome dude not familiar with either of those needed talks to more yet i'm not familiar with those either uh... yeah he's a uh... senior advisor with uh... point me so we'll get him on here and we'll have to, what I'll do first is get, you know, make sure Fred's around, we'll get some good questions and some things that we can ask, Fred that you're interested in hearing about and maybe even get you on too. So great, I'm glad you brought that up, thank you. - Love it. Yeah. - All right, you wanna do a little tease here and then we'll close it up. - Yeah, I'll do a quick preview for next week. Hopefully we don't get too caught up in the news, but you know, we like to talk about things that happen in the office quite often and without giving too much away, you know, one of our esteemed colleagues has been kind of picked for a new role and is going to be kind of, I don't know what you'd say, like, you know, basically, there leaves a big opening in our department here in leadership. And so not really sure what that means for us, but I think there's a lot we can talk about just as how do you deal with those types of changes as they happen? Very exciting on one hand, but also raises a lot of questions on the other. So I think we have a a lot to dig into there and I'm excited to get on to that topic next week. Yeah, that'll be fun to talk about. So we'll see everybody here next week. And as always, our artwork is provided by your name. Check out more of his awesome artwork at www.coffeecodecast.com/gentalgiant. Check us out on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, email us at coffeecodecast@gmail.com. The podcast is available from iTunes, Spotify, Tune in Stitcher, Google Play Music, Radio Public, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find all this and more at www.coffeecodecast.com. If you like the show, jump on over to CoffeeCodeCast.com/review and let us know what you think. We're looking for guests, topic ideas, ways we can improve the show, so please send it all over our way. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. And a friendly disclaimer, newly added to the notes here. The CoffeeCodeCast is not responsible for any incidents if you choose a text and drive. Sorry Dave. All right good night. See you next week. [Music]