FounderQuest Clips - Too Hot For Podcast Vol 1

Show Notes:
This week on FounderQuest, it's a cutting room floor clips episode. Hear vintage, unreleased clips of episodes that you weren't supposed to hear. Discussions include: 90's software stores, Alan Turing, water heaters, buying top quality spyware dongles from China and even FounderQuest itself!

Links:
Wish
Apple Arcade BearDay One Babbage’sUsenetSpencer’s GiftsCharles BabbageAlan TuringNaive BayesWhat The GolfNintendo Switch
Full Transcript:
Ben Findley:
Hello there. This is Ben Findley, the other Ben at Honeybadger. Don't worry, you don't have to hear my voice for very long. Before we begin, this is just a heads up that this episode will be a bit different. Josh, Ben and Starr were hunkered down this week and weren't able to record an episode.

Ben Findley:
We didn't want anyone to go through withdrawals, so I scoured the cutting room floor for old bits of Maxell UR90 and spliced them together to present you with this, FrankenQuest. As a warning, there are no tips on bootstrapping assess business. If you tuned in for that, you may want to see yourself out. However, if you can hear some random discussions held together with jarring transitions, then you've come to the right place. And now, back to the episode.

Announcer:
Three developers, one mission. Build a business to nurture personal fulfillment. It's not stupid. It's FounderQuest.

Ben:
Yeah, I was talking to someone just yesterday and he mentioned the podcast and enjoyed listening to it and he said, I really enjoy how short the episodes are and that you really get in there and dig into things. So maybe we have to cut all that so that they keep all that.

Starr:
Oh no, okay.

Josh:
But on to play devil's advocate, you know that the other, December was it? That we didn't really have an agenda and the podcasts just totally devolved into awkward pauses and jokes about holidays. Well, I mean that turned out great. I think it was fine.

Ben:
I haven't listened to it, so okay.

Josh:
No, you should, I mean, yeah, it wasn't bad at all. So it was, it was pretty funny and like a few people told me they thought it was hilarious, so.

Starr:
That's great.

Ben:
So let's dive in.

Starr:
You know how Amazon is mostly like Chinese knockoffs and junk now? It's all, it's all grossly overpriced. Like I've bought stuff from Amazon. It's like, this is kind of what I need it's okay, but I know this costs somebody like 30 cents to buy and I bought it for $10. Well, Wish is an app for your phone that cuts out the middleman and lets you buy cheap Chinese crap. Just sort of like directly. So, basically like it's, it's just like a bunch of super cheap stuff. A lot of which looks suspiciously like you can get some things that look suspiciously like.

Josh:
iPhones.

Starr:
Air Pods and iPhones for like $3.50. They're not really, they're not Air Pods but you know, if you want to maybe fool somebody.

Josh:
They're not even Bluetooth.

Starr:
Maybe. Maybe, maybe not.

Josh:
You have to wire them.

Ben:
They're just little pieces of plastic.

Starr:
Yeah. But for things like hats and little pieces of clothing and stuff and jewelry and all that, it's super, super cheap. And I haven't actually gotten anything from them yet. I ordered a bunch of stuff about a week ago and I've got another week to go before it gets here. And so I'll have to let you guys know how it is.

Ben:
Yeah. The only problem with ordering like clothes is that you can't really easily return them right?

Starr:
When they get shipped from China. But if it costs you like $3 for a jacket, who cares? Just give it to Goodwill.

Ben:
I suppose.

Josh:
That's a very Seattle way of.

Starr:
I guess, I guess. I mean, I guess I could go to like the boutique, some boutique store and try stuff on and then buy stuff for $100 and it fits. Sure. But it's like, why don't I just order every size it'll cost me like $12 in total.

Josh:
Yeah, just ship it on an oil tanker from China.

Starr:
You know those, I find those like I've had an oil fumes lend kind of a certain authenticity though.

Josh:
Yeah. Yeah. you can skip the cologne. I see where you're going.

Starr:
So anyway, yeah, I mean everything, everything you could imagine on there. And it's just like, I'm sure it's all flea market quality at, I mean, sometimes that's all you need. Right?

Josh:
So why one thing, why is it called Wish?

Starr:
I Wish? I wish that it would get here sooner.

Josh:
Nice. That's, I'm sure that's why that's, that's their tagline, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Starr:
No, honestly like compared with a lot, with some stuff that like even Amazon you buy it and it ships from China and compare with that. Like it's, I mean it's just, it's like a couple of weeks. It's no big deal. You can also have it shipped like to a store near you. And so I was like this is weird. They don't have stores near me. And so I looked it up, the nearest store near me and it's like some shady like iPhone, right, repair business.

Josh:
Really?

Starr:
Yeah. I was like I got to go to my device repair business and like pick up my headbands or whatever.

Josh:
Like one of those, one of those like PC specialist shops?

Starr:
Yeah. That just seems like a front for something else. Like, you know, shady imports of costume jewelry.

Josh:
Do people get like still get like a whatever shareware infect, or not shareware, spyware infected PCs and have to take them into like some specialist guy at, at one of the strip mall stores? Is that still how, that works. Do you like that's what those places do, right?

Starr:
Do you even have parents, Josh?

Josh:
Yeah, I bet. I mean like they have, they have me, right?

Starr:
What are they doing if they're not infecting their PCs with spyware and making you fix it?

Josh:
I got them all using Apple.

Starr:
Oh yeah.

Josh:
I mean, come on Starr. We're like upper middle class.

Starr:
Oh, there you go. Yeah. My mom's pretty much on an iPad. Like my dad before he passed away, had this PC and oh my goodness. He was just like, he was. So, this was in the time when they had all those things where it's like, fill out this and get a as stereo or whatever. And what it is it's an affiliate thing and basically it's not a quiz, it's like a form. And what it does is it just like sends you to affiliate offer after affiliate offer in this endless cycle, claiming that you'll get an iPad at the end and eventually you just give up.

Josh:
Yeah.

Starr:
And then you've signed up for like, you've downloaded like 20 spyware programs and anyway he's like, if I keep going like if I keep going, they'll have to give me the iPad.

Josh:
It makes sense.

Starr:
No dad, no. They don't. It's a scam. It's just a scam. That's all.

Josh:
Yeah, it's amazing how many are out there and how many people fall for them.

Starr:
Yeah. Oh well. Speaking of which, you can also get sort of shady networking devices from this Chinese app.

Josh:
As we like we installed like the wifi module from from Wish.

Starr:
I know you can get, yes, you can get stuff that claims to be like ubiquity gear. Just like, I'm not plugging that in. No.

Josh:
Like I come to think of it, I literally just ordered like a $12 Bluetooth like USB thing from Amazon last night because I realized like my PC, my gaming PC, somehow I like didn't put Bluetooth in it since 2015. But there's a good chance that that is probably going to infect me with spyware. So I guess maybe I'm the person who still goes to the PC shop.

Starr:
Well if you don't have anything to hide Josh, why are you afraid of spyware?

Josh:
That's a good question. And I don't, so I'll just plug in all the dongles.

Starr:
So our topic today is, can you hear that? It's a drum roll. Okay. Somebody say the topic.

Josh:
We should get you to an actual drum. Like a snare. Like a little snare. Some sticks. Drumsticks. Yeah.

Starr:
Can you get one of those on Wish?

Starr:
I'm going to look it up on Wish and see how much it costs.

Starr:
I spent hours looking at stuff on here.

Josh:
This episode is going great so far.

Starr:
Snare drum.

Ben:
This is a shopping tips episode.

Starr:
Shopping tips. $20. $20 For a snare drum. That seems reasonable.

Josh:
Yeah, it actually does. I mean snare drums are not cheap.

Ben:
My shopping tip is to drop cable.

Starr:
You dropped cable?

Ben:
Yeah. I got rid of cable.

Ben:
You don't need it.

Starr:
Who has cable?

Josh:
Well Ben did not anymore.

Josh:
When did you drop it?

Ben:
It's been a long time. Like I haven't had cable for 18 years. Yeah. Wow.

Josh:
You were a cord cutter ahead of your time.

Starr:
I know that's like five snare drums a month.

Josh:
Ben cut the cords before there were any alternatives.

Ben:
It helped. It's easy when you stop watching TV.

Josh:
He just, he just sits in a dark room at night staring at the wall.

Ben:
My, that grass is really growing today.

Ben:
That reminds me of a tweet that I saw this morning from Marco Arment. He was responding to someone who is complaining about app developers switching to subscription models for their apps, particularly mobile apps. Right. And he said, well, you know, if you want your app to keep working, it requires continued work. And continued work matches well with continued revenue it's a mismatch if you expect the developer to pay just once and then they maintain it for the rest of their lives. You know, because OS versions change and data sources change and he mentioned specifically like weather apps, right. They have to pay per use. Right. They don't pay per customer. And so you can't expect them to take a one time payment and then they then go and pay their providers for your usage for the rest of eternity.

Josh:
Yeah.

Ben:
Yeah. So things changing kind of kind of bugs me.

Josh:
I used to be a little hostile to that idea that I've been warming to it a little bit more for those reasons. I think. The few apps that I pay for, I pay for Bear and a few other ones. I think I pay for Day One, which is like a journaling app. But yeah.

Ben:
Speaking of subscriptions, have either of you tried Apple arcade?

Josh:
Not yet, but now on the fence. I've been looking at the games multiple times.

Ben:
Yeah, you got to you guys make it at least do the free trial. I did that cause my wife's like, I really want to, because my wife is really into the casual games. I'm not so much, I just, I don't like those but.

Josh:
Yeah, same here.

Starr:
You know, the filthy casual.

Ben:
You know, I play my Switch but I did yesterday again on Twitter. Somebody mentioned What the Golf and they said, yeah, it was really good. And so I checked it out and it is really good. It's a great fun game. You should definitely check it out.

Starr:
I remember when I was a kid going into like the video store to rent like my NES games and I was just always amazed how many fricking golf games are where I was like who wants to play a golf game. This is just so, so weird. But you know, I guess, yeah, I guess now I know, huh?

Ben:
I mean I remember going down to Babbage's to buy my computer software.

Josh:
I always would have no idea what you're talking about.

Starr:
I just went straight to the Software Farm. They had a little stand set up.

Josh:
It's just like the farm on Usenet or something. To download your, download your apps from the farm.

Ben:
So Josh, you don't know about Babbage's?

Josh:
Uh-uh (negative).

Ben:
Oh my. How about you Starr? Come on help me out here.

Starr:
Oh yeah, I know about Babbage's.

Ben:
Okay. All right, so Josh?

Ben:
Yeah. Back in the olden days when you wanted to buy a software, you'd go to the mall. There was a store, you know next to Spencer's that is called Babbage's. Yeah. It had all your things that you could buy on the wall. Like in actual boxes. There's like Word 1.0. There was Microsoft Windows Version 3.

Josh:
Yeah. Now that you say it, it's sounding vaguely familiar, but I was like, I was still, I don't, I wasn't buying my own software at that point. I don't think so.

Starr:
You know, you don't hear too much about Babbage these days. Like I remember a while ago, a couple of decades ago, people were all about Babbage, but now it's just, it's Turing, like everything's about Turing and it's like, you don't, you don't really hear about Babbage. I wonder what happened.

Ben:
You know, here, here I hear more about Bays and I hear about Turing.

Starr:
Oh really?

Josh:
Oh yeah.

Starr:
I mean they made a movie about him. I haven't seen any movies about Bayes. That's true.

Ben:
Well, actually Turing is going to be on the 50 pound note, right?

Starr:
Oh yeah.

Josh:
Is he?

Ben:
He's official. He's legit. That's like Jefferson and Washington.

Josh:
Well they're waiting for one of these artificial intelligences to write the script for the Bayes movie. I'm pretty sure.

Starr:
Oh, there you go.

Josh:
I think that's what's happening. Yeah, they'll kind of like.

Starr:
They won't be able to write it though. It'll just be able to detect scripts that have been written by other artificial intelligence.

Josh:
I mean, they'll read it will read the Turing, you know the Turing script.

Ben:
How's your heater doing?

Starr:
Oh, the heater's good. It turned out it just needed a, like the, the thermocouple needs like cleaning or something like that. And then he was like, Oh yeah, this is like a 80 year old heater, so you might want to get a new one. And we're like, yeah, I know.

New Speaker:
That's impressive.

Starr:
It's not really 80 years old. It's just, it's more like 30 or something, something like that.

Josh:
That's old houses.

Starr:
Yeah. On the one hand I'm like, yeah, it's old. We should probably replace it. But then on the other hand it's like, what heater am I going to buy now that's going to last 30 years?

Josh:
You just buy an entirely new house.

Starr:
Oh there you go.

Josh:
Brand new. Just go all new.

Starr:
Maybe I'll just buy a new heater and then like go to the architect and be like, build my house around this heater.

Josh:
There you go. I've always thought it would be kind of cool to start, start completely fresh, you know, start with fresh everything and then you get to be the one to enjoy the new thing until it gets old and someone else has to move into it.

Starr:
Yeah. But the thing is, is like I think like houses and stuff just like any other like product that you build. It's like there's always bugs and crap that you've got to work out.

Josh:
Yeah.

Josh:
So you spend the first 30 years troubleshooting?

Starr:
Basically. Yeah.

Josh:
And then someone else gets to move it and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Starr:
Yeah. So basically when you buy a house, you're like sort of buying a stable productive legacy app.

Josh:
Right. Yeah. Just needs a little maintenance here and there.

Starr:
Yeah. It's like, and does it really matter? If your house is like built in COBOL?

Josh:
Right.

Ben:
Yeah my iCloud key chain is awesome. The only thing it lacks is the one-time codes, right?

Starr:
Oh yeah, yeah.

Ben:
I still got to use the one password for that. Plus it's nice to have a backup. You know, I'm a belt and suspenders kind of guy. Right. So it's nice to have the iCloud key chain and the one password, even though I'm wholly wedded to the Apple ecosystem.

Starr:
Yeah. The problem with belts and suspenders does that makes it really hard to use a bathroom.

Starr:
I don't know where that, I don't know like what that maps to in that metaphor, but just going completely literal.

Ben:
Just saying, it makes me think of data leakage.

Announcer:
Founder Quest is a weekly podcast by the founders of Honeybadger. Zero instrumentation, 360 degree coverage of errors, outages, and service degradations for your web apps. If you have a web app, you need it. Available at honeybadger.io. Want more from the founders? Go to founderquestpodcast.com. That's one word. You can access our huge back catalog or sign up for our newsletter to get exclusive VIP content. Founder Quest is available on iTunes, Spotify, and other purveyors of fine podcasts. We'll see you next week.

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