FounderQuest
FounderQuest
In Search Of The Perfect To-Do Manager
Show Notes:
Links:
Notion
Basecamp
Amanuensis
Neuralink
Full Transcript:
Starr:
Well, what's up in y'alls worlds?
Ben:
Went out kayaking yesterday, that was nice.
Starr:
Oh, nice.
Josh:
Cool.
Starr:
Did you get that foldable one you were talking about?
Ben:
I did order, but it is back-ordered, so I have not yet received it.
Starr:
Damn.
Josh:
It's like this was a bad time for everyone to wait to purchase these things they were putting off for their recreation time.
Ben:
Exactly.
Josh:
Till they have forced time on their hands.
Ben:
Yeah.
Starr:
Yeah, totally. We went canoeing on our little vacation a couple of weeks ago, and it was really nice. It was one of those things where I was kind of dreading it because we had Ida with us. But it actually turned out being really calm and peaceful, and all that. It was just very nice.
Josh:
Where did you go, Ben?
Ben:
Out on the Sammamish River, which is right near me.
Ben:
Yeah. We went from Redmond towards Lake Sammamish but there's a little area with a bit of turbulence, and we were in an inflatable kayak, so we were not able to proceed. Some people might call them rapids, but I mean, it's-
Josh:
Did you do some sick rapids?
Ben:
No. We turned around. But it was a nice little cruise.
Josh:
You're going to wait for the paper kayak-
Ben:
Right.
Josh:
... for the rapids? Part origami.
Ben:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Starr:
Yeah. We ordered an inflatable one.
Ben:
Yeah, I think they're fun.
Starr:
Yeah. It's-
Josh:
I should do that. We've got some rivers around here.
Ben:
The only trick is, like where we go is rocky, so every time we're done I have to inspect the bottom for new holes.
Josh:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben:
So ...
Starr:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben:
As long as I remember to do that it's okay. Because otherwise-
Josh:
Does the water get low in places.
Ben:
Yeah, it gets pretty low.
Josh:
Okay.
Starr:
How does that work when you're out there? Do you just look for bubbles-
Ben:
Yeah.
Starr:
... coming out from under you? You just keep an eye out for bubbles?
Ben:
Or you start to feel lower in the water, and you're like, "Oh, I think I've lost some air."
Starr:
I guess that would make sense. Yeah.
Ben:
Yeah. Do carry the patch kit with us whenever we go out.
Ben:
Good news is, it's pretty easy to patch.
Starr:
People have been saying the '90s are coming back, so low riders are in, so low rider canoes I imagine are the next step for that.
Ben:
For sure.
Starr:
Definitely. We have some good news. I don't know if this ... I'm just going to say it and then you can tell me if it's public or not. But we got our SOC 2 report done, right?
Ben:
Yeah.
Starr:
We got that in?
Ben:
Yeah. That's why I'm feeling a little tired today. I think it's like, finally got over the finish line and now I'm just collapsing. It's post-marathon, just dying.
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
I know.
Josh:
Time for a vacation.
Ben:
Yeah. Just scheduled it.
Josh:
Nice.
Starr:
Good.
Ben:
Yeah. It's not public yet, because I haven't written the blog post yet. But, yeah, that's on my to-do list.
Starr:
But it's not a secret?
Ben:
It's not a secret. We did get-
Starr:
Just between us and our listeners, we can share.
Ben:
We did get our type 1 report for our SOC 2 audit, so I'm pretty excited.
Josh:
Yeah. Congratulations.
Ben:
Thanks. It was a team effort.
Starr:
No, not really. A team of one, yeah.
Josh:
I mean, I'll take credit for reading some policies, and-
Starr:
Yeah. I read some policies, and I was like, I guess this makes sense. I don't really understand it. Okay. Yeah. But-
Josh:
I did learn a lot throughout.
Ben:
We talked about this briefly a couple weeks ago. I saw this idea of building a site ... some sort of resource for startups like us, to get more familiar with what the compliance process is, and just demystifying that whole thing. I think I know a lot more now than I did when I started, and I think there's a lot that could be explained in layman's terms to help entrepreneurs understand what the whole thing is about, and why you might want to go through the whole process, and why you might not want to go through the whole process. I know we talked about this ... When we got started down this road, we're like, "Do we really want to do this?"
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
We didn't really know how to answer that question. Like, "Oh, I guess."
Josh:
It's not for everyone.
Ben:
Yeah. It really isn't. Yeah.
Josh:
Yeah. We should totally do that.
Starr:
Because one of the reasons we didn't know if we should go down that road was because nobody would tell us what that road actually was. It was all just a bunch of vague ... it was this very vague thing. It's a road you go down, but you can see about a foot in front of you. At least that's what it felt like to me.
Ben:
Yeah. And people who have been down that road are like, "Well, I'm not going to tell you anything about it. I'll let you find out on your own."
Starr:
It depends. You can pay me a retainer.
Ben:
Yeah. Part of the problem is, there aren't many small startups like us who have done it. Most of the people who do that are larger organizations, and for them, it's not even a question. It's like, well, they have to because of whatever.
Starr:
Yeah.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
There really aren't people like us who can say, "Well, here's what I did and here's why you might want to do something like it."
Josh:
What are some reasons not to pursue that path?
Ben:
It's very expensive.
Josh:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben:
You're guaranteed to be spending tens of thousands of dollars. There's no way around that. And it's very time consuming. It took a lot of time to put together everything, and then go through the audit itself is actually pretty time consuming as well, because you have to provide so many evidences of the things that are part of that process.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Those are some pretty good reasons why not to do it. It's experience, and time consuming.
Josh:
If no one's going to care anyway then the trade off doesn't work.
Ben:
Yeah. For sure.
Josh:
Just don't do it.
Ben:
I mean, we got started on the path because we got customers asking about it, and that is really it. If you have sales that are being held back-
Josh:
Someone actually cares.
Ben:
Yeah.
Josh:
That affects your bank account.
Ben:
And if you can't talk your way out of it.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Because there are things that you can do, and this is part of the resource site that I'm thinking about putting together. Because there are things that you can do that are short of full compliance audit, that will help alleviate concerns for people who are asking you for a SOC 2 report, who are asking you for your security posture. And no one who has any vested interest in this whole thing, like auditors, or consultants, no ones going to tell you that. Like, "Oh, by the way, there's this really cheap approach you can take, which should solve 80% of your problems."
Josh:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben:
Yeah.
Starr:
This sounds like a course. This sounds like a ... "We need to get some long copy for a sales page. You need to record some bonus videos."
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Yeah. To look good on a companion-
Starr:
Have a 30 page pdf.
Ben:
Right? Yeah.
Starr:
And we can just lay it out like, "In this book you'll learn the secret way to get around compliance stuff that none of the people will tell you, because it doesn't cost any money. It's just so obvious.
Ben:
"Buy it now for only, $4.99."
Starr:
Yeah. I'm not afraid of giving away this idea on the podcast because no one is going to do it.
Josh:
It's really hard.
Starr:
It takes so much work to learn this stuff.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Totally. Yeah, I have thought about doing that, I just don't know if I have the energy to do that. Maybe if I take a month long vacation first, then I'll have the energy to actually undertake that kind of project.
Josh:
I mean, we could get some help with it and probably, it would take a lot of organization and stuff. We could outline it, and see-
Ben:
Yeah, that's a good idea
Josh:
... it like a research project.
Ben:
We should talk about that on our next product meeting.
Josh:
We could mine Ben's brain as a research project, and then hire some designers and content people.
Starr:
Yeah. You could-
Ben:
I'm liking this blend.
Starr:
You could hire somebody to just interview you, and then write it down, and put it together. An amanuensis, if you will. I learned that word a while ago, I've been waiting for years to find a place to actually use it. Boom, there you go. Scrabble champion.
Josh:
Well, anyway, I'm down Ben if you want to ... we could treat that like another product in the company, or a-
Ben:
Sounds like fun.
Josh:
... project.
Ben:
I'm down.
Josh:
Yeah. We read the deep literature so you don't have to. That can be our tag line.
Starr:
Yeah. We were there when the deep magic was created.
Ben:
I love it.
Starr:
One thing that you said, has been really useful in this process ... has been our habit that we've fallen into of documenting everything. It's through documenting our meetings, documenting our processes, and stuff like that. I was thinking about that the other day because I was having a meeting with Ben Findley, our marketing guy, who ... We were talking about rearranging some of the processes around blog posts, the management of the content creation, and stuff like that. Because I'm spending a lot of time in that, and he would probably be better at it than me. In Notion, we've got this page that's just a list of meeting notes, so I created a new meeting note, and used our template, which is, "What's the agenda for this meeting? What did we actually talk about? What are the take away to-do items?"
Ben:
I love that format, by the way.
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
Thank you.
Josh:
It's great.
Starr:
Thank you. Every time I use this thing I'm just so happy because it's like, okay, this is very obvious what this structure is. I know we have to have a meeting, I know we need to discuss this stuff, but I'm kind of unclear about anything else. I know, first step, I create this document with the template, and then I just start filling it in. That just provides structure to the meeting, and then also I can just be like, "Here's the link to that meeting," and everybody else can see what went on at the meeting without having to go-
Josh:
I was going to say, we had our ... Me, Starr, and Ben Findley had our monthly marketing ... we all get together once a month for a strategy meeting, I guess. But that was what yesterday ... was it yesterday? It was this week.
Starr:
It was yesterday.
Josh:
But, yeah, I was able to read ... it's-
Starr:
I'm sorry, it wasn't yesterday at all, was it?
Josh:
It was some time this week.
Starr:
We're still in March, right?
Josh:
Yeah. Well, anyway, whenever that meeting was, the morning of ... because I missed the other meeting you were just talking about. But I was just able to go and read the meeting notes. Actually before that, you had posted some thoughts that you were going to cover in Basecamp. I just read those two things, and I thought, it was like I had been there. We were able to jump right into our big picture stuff.
Starr:
Yeah. I guess we should clarify, we use a couple of different tools. We use Notion, and sometimes we use Basecamp for other things. We tend to use Notion for documents that maybe have to be edited collaboratively, but that are mostly documents. They're not necessarily discussions, they're not necessarily things that you're ... I don't know. Works in progress where you're just like, "Hey, check this out. Here's what's on my mind."
Josh:
I can't stand discussions in Notion, with the conference feature. It's frustrating.
Starr:
I have personally had a lot of trouble just knowing that they are going on. In Notion you need to be like, "Okay, there's this document I want to edit. Okay, I'm going to that document." I find that the discussions aren't really surfaced very well. But Basecamp is more like where we do discussions. It's where we post spaghetti that we're throwing at walls, and stuff like that.
Josh:
It's where you throw spaghetti at each other?
Starr:
Throw spaghetti at each other.
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
Little known feature of Basecamp.
Ben:
Yeah. Notion is great for persisting those kind of meeting notes, and I like the collaborative editing in that context. Like when we're having our conclaves, and we're filling in those things that we actually talked about, or the to-do's that are coming out of that meeting. That's been really nice. But I agree that the notifications coming out of Notion, like, "Hey, you should pay attention to this thing I just changed," are terrible. And the discussions are terrible. Basecamp has got both of those things really nailed.
Josh:
I like collaborative editing in Notion when it works, especially too.
Starr:
Oh, that's a sick burn. That's a sick burn. Can I tell y'all a secret?
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
For a while I was using Notion for my personal notes and I switched to the Apple Notes product, because it's good enough for my own personal notes. I don't need collaboration for them. It just always works perfectly. It's a native app, there's no weird dom glitches, or whatever. Not that Notion has a ton of them, but occasionally ....
Josh:
It's got a fair share, at least in my experience. We should probably look at alternatives one of these days.
Ben:
Yeah. We've never actually tried using Google Docs. We use G Suite for our email, but that's all with use it for. And a calendar. But we've never really tried using collaborative Google Doc editing for our meeting notes and things like that.
Josh:
Yeah. The collaborative features might ... it seems to be pretty well developed in Google Docs. But everything else about Google Docs I cannot stand. It's just like a document editor. The whole concept that Notion has of databases and how it's approached to data is completely different, so I don't know how ... I would hate to have a folder on Google Drive of our meeting notes. That you have to then search and come up with some sort of metadata system to classify them.
Starr:
Yeah. If you don't understand how Notion works, basically documents can also contain arbitrary data, and you can specify the format and they can be nested. We can have our document that's like the list of meeting notes, and then we can have, nested inside of that, individual documents that pop-up when you click on them, and stuff like that. It's really more flexible than Google Drive. Although, I'm not sure how different it is from a folder. Is it just like syntactic sugar?
Josh:
I don't think so.
Ben:
Well, the thing that's really nice, and I like about Notion, with those data elements is that you can look out of different views. You got that list, or you can do ... Like for our podcast episodes we have that kanban board view. You can say, "Is this an idea? Or is it something that we're recording? Is it now in production?" You can move it from stage to stage. Or you can look at that same set of data in a table view and say, "I like that part of Notion as well."
Josh:
I think if you're going to compare it to something, like sugar on top of something, I would almost say, it's more of a spreadsheet. It's almost like a spreadsheet with a document attached to each row, or something.
Starr:
With views?
Josh:
Yeah. Because then you've got different views on a spreadsheet basically.
Starr:
But it's a lot more text focused than a spreadsheet?
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
I don't know. Well, I'm going the other way for blog stuff. I'm managing about ... I don't know how many active people I have. Maybe 10 active authors, and I've got maybe 30 or 40 nonactive authors, who may, or may not show up at different points in time. For managing all these articles and progress, and all the authors, I've been using a tool called ProofHub, which is a project management tool which I selected based solely and the fact that it was a set price per month for unlimited users. Because pretty much every project management tool I looked at, it was a $10 a month per user fee, which is just ... I mean, we could afford to pay that for 30 users, it's just really on principle.
Starr:
I just didn't want to pay $10 a month for an author who may never write a post for us. I just didn't want to do it. But since then, GitHub has actually changed their pricing model a bit. If you don't know about this dear listener, this is something that may be useful to you. It used to be that, the GitHub free plan, they would give you, I think, unlimited private repositories but you couldn't have a team. You couldn't really collaborate with people. Yeah, you couldn't have team features, which are something that we need because-
Josh:
Because we work with people.
Starr:
... well, we're a team. But recently they changed their pricing, where essentially pricing is based more and the number of CICD minutes that you use. Like minutes of compute time, storage, stuff like that. It's much more based on the resources that you use now, even the free plan has unlimited private repos, unlimited collaborators, teams, all that good stuff. I'm in the process of switching all the stuff ... the purpose built thing into GitHub because ... I don't know. I'm not a fan of Notion.
Josh:
Starting to find them more useful over time.
Ben:
That's fair.
Josh:
I use it for my primary to-do list, for personal ... like well, for work stuff. It's really nice because I spend a lot of my time in GitHub, so I can reference issues and do all the GitHub workflow stuff. If I have an issue that I need to remember later, basically, I add it to my project for our organization, and it's on my to-do list. It's nice to track things.
Ben:
I have a confession to make about to-do lists, I have never been able to get one to stick. I have tried so many different things for maintaining that to-do list, I've tried GitHub project, I've tried Notion, I've tried Basecamp they all have a to-do list of some form or another. I put stuff in there and it goes for a while and I'm checking stuff off, and then eventually it's abandoned. I have an abandoned to-do list that all have things and things on them. The only thing that works for me for actually keeping track of things I want to do is, using reminders on my phone. Like the Apple app.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Yeah. That's just for like ... I need to get an oil change, so I'll put that on there with a date. But that doesn't work so well for development tasks that spread across five, or 10 different projects that I'm working on. I have yet to find a to-do list that I can actually stick with to help me track my work. It's a bummer.
Josh:
I think one of the things that is important, is that you need to be able to clear your plate completely, and not be afraid to get rid of all your to-do's or something. Because that's where you end up with a huge backlog that you're afraid to do anything with, but you probably won't ever do it anyway. I use mine more as a short term ... like, what's going on during the week, and also what is happening that's still in progress. But it's like waiting on other people for issues, specifically. If someone creates an issue on one of our client libraries, for instance, it's not in my in my actively doing column, it's in the in progress ... I use the GitHub ... it's like their automation workflows. It's in the in progress ... I know it's still happening but I'm not really worried about that column.
Starr:
I'm in the same boat, in terms of, long term to-do lists. Especially for work stuff, I have a very hard time, because they get overwhelming. I find the through a big picture to-do list much more useful. In our quarterly conclaves, we all meet and set the direction for the quarter. We have action items, and those are really useful because it's like, maybe, one, two, three, things that I'm responsible for that quarter. So, I can look up and be like, "Okay, what do I need to do on this?" When it comes down to just sitting there and breaking those up into 100 small tasks, and then doing them one by one, I just can't do it.
Starr:
Like reality diverges from the task list and then I don't update the task list, and all that. When I talk about using GitHub issues and projects, and stuff for the blog ... I'm not even talking really about to-do them, more like talking about tracking the state of articles that are in progress, just so I can be like, "Okay, these ones all need editing. These ones, the author's working on them right now, stuff like that. I've also been using reminders a lot. That's just the way to capture things that occur to me during the day, so I don't have to worry about them. That's mostly because I can use Siri. I just use Siri to make a reminder to do things and then I didn't have to think about it.
Josh:
Which is awesome because-
Ben:
Yeah. I love that.
Josh:
... I just add things to the grocery list from the kitchen or wherever I am with Siri. And Siri understands, "Add this to my list." You don't have to say reminder. Basically I just say, "Add bread to my shopping list," and it does it. It's nice.
Ben:
Yeah.
Starr:
Nice. I didn't know that. I hadn't even considered about doing that.
Ben:
Yeah.
Josh:
You attach a date, or whatever. It doesn't have to remind you, it could just be a place to store things.
Starr:
Isn't it interesting how all these products eventually get made into features of the operating system? I don't know. Pretty soon all new computers are just going to have Honeybadger-
Starr:
Every new AWS instance just spins up it own copy of Honeybadger.
Josh:
I'm constantly amazed at the things they add to the VS code. Like that AWS login integration you were showing us, Ben.
Ben:
Yeah.
Starr:
What was that again? I didn't look too closely at it.
Ben:
AWS has a plugin VS code and this week they announced an update to that plugin that you can now cruise through your cloud watch logs groups. You can get access to your cloud watch logs directly from the VS code. I tried it out, it's pretty slick. You navigate and it gives you all your different groups, and then you drill down to each stream, and then you can basically say, "Okay, open the stream. Show me the logs that are in there." They're right there. It's pretty sweet.
Josh:
So then you could edit code, deploy your server less application or whatever, from within VS code and then watch the logs as it's happening.
Ben:
Yeah.
Josh:
That's cool. Okay.
Ben:
I don't know that it has active tailing but-
Josh:
Are they going to put your charts with your metrics and stuff in there eventually? Yeah, you get your dashboard. Just flip to your dashboard. I mean, like that could be handy when you're coding you want to-
Ben:
Yeah.
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Yeah, I think that the plugin also has ... you can interact with your Lambda of functions. I think it also has S3 navigation. You can navigate through your buckets, so it's pretty slick.
Starr:
That's really cool. Like I see the Lambda function would be really useful too. Yeah. I've really been enjoying the ... It's a different thing. I've been enjoying the auto-complete for Tailwind. The Tailwind CSS for VS code plugin has awesome auto-complete because there's all these million classes that you need to know. I almost wonder like, if you really want your open source library to be successful you should release a VS code plugin with it.
Ben:
For real. I guess we need a VS code plugin for hook relay then. Maybe you can get your hook relay logs. Like the payloads that got sent, maybe we should have a log viewer in VS code. Could be kind of fun.
Josh:
Yeah, that could be cool.
Josh:
Yeah. Because then if you're working on the hook locally, or something, and your triggering it from your dev environment then you could watch the realtime stuff happening. Could be handy. Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben:
Yeah. Or if you're receiving hooks from a third party that you're trying to build against, so if you want to see where the payloads are, yeah, bring them right to your editor. That would be cool.
Josh:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben:
Then it'd be pretty to generate a spec fixture if you want to test against. I'm thinking specifically about, if you want to write a test for your Stripe web book handler. You want to get a sample of that payload so that you can run that against your tests, that'd be pretty cool.
Josh:
A long time ago, I wrote a blog post on how to do that. I wrote this little rack app that took inbound, using ... I don't know, whatever the local tunnel or something at the time, and it was a huge pain in the ass. I haven't had to do that in a while, but it was a major pain.
Starr:
I'm wondering how auto-completion might figure into a hook relay plugin. I mean, you probably couldn't do anything if you didn't have a client library, if people are just sending direct post stuff to us. But if we didn't have a client library, you could have autocomplete for languages that don't have it built in.
Josh:
Most languages have some form of decent auto complete. Even Ruby with addition of the ... what is it? The Solargraph? Is that what it's called then? It's a gem that is a language server for Ruby that ... the language server is what provides some of that logic. But other languages which don't ... I don't know. Like static languages that have that stuff built in too. That's one of the benefits of type script in VS code, it's got really, really good completion.
Starr:
Okay. If you're not going to give me auto-completion, you can give me docs, right? Press F1 and you'd get your docs all about how to send this payload to hook relay.
Ben:
Yeah. Press F1. That takes me back, Starr. Back to Turbo Pascal, and WordPerfect.
Starr:
Yeah. That's where I'm always headed. I'm an arrow pointing backwards.
Ben:
On my little magic Mac wireless keyboard, I can't even press F1, unless I hold down the function key. Because it's brightness down if you push that key.
Josh:
I don't have a function key at all. I have to press a modifier key, and then my top row. It's the same idea, but it's on my ErgoDox docs. Yeah.
Ben:
Yeah.
Starr:
I don't even have keys on the keyboard, I just scream at the transistors and they do what I say.
Ben:
You just modulate your voice to get the different modifiers?
Starr:
Yeah.
Ben:
Yeah.
Starr:
That just reminded me of this really cool demo I saw in 2007, or something, of this guy who ... At that time the only real usable voice recognition software was called Drag, and they had a product, naturally speaking.
Josh:
I remember that.
Starr: Yeah. This guy programmed it to basically be able to program with it, because he had real bad wrist issues. He assigned different vocal sounds to special characters, like parens, and brackets and stuff like that. He did this demo he was just up there making these random sounding noises, and they were writing code on the projector.
Ben:
I think there was a PyCon talk several years ago that had someone who, she had done something like that, and was demonstrating her system for writing code using just voice. It was actually pretty damn amazing. I was impressed.
Josh:
Yeah. Massively impressive, the skill to learn a language of controlling a computer interface. Lucky for them, Elon Musk today is supposed to unveil the first brain computer interface that he's been working on. Whatever that company is called. I can't remember. Neuralink, I think that's the company. Yeah.
Ben:
Is it called Neuralink? Is that what that is?
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Yeah.
Starr:
Oh, yeah. Love Elon Musk so much. He's so wonderful.
Ben:
I got to say, for a company like, let's say Tesla, who hasn't yet figured out how to keep they're cars from driving into semi trucks because they think they're billboards, I'd be pretty hesitant to trust technology with my brain. You know what I'm saying?
Josh:
Yeah.
Ben:
Exactly.
Josh:
They're not even doing it on animals.
Ben:
I'm a little skeptical, let me let someone else try that first.
Josh:
It works great for them. Right?
Ben:
Yeah, what else do you need? I mean, hey.
Starr:
Yeah. Do these animals have Twitter accounts. Do they have a live journal?
Ben:
Live journal. You're all about it. Blast from the past-
Josh:
I guess the initial used case is for, I think, paralyzed people that can't interact with the world otherwise. Could be interesting technology in any case. But I'm not going to be the first to try it, I don't think. I'm not the first to try-
Starr:
Oh, yeah.
Ben:
Yeah.
Josh:
I am not an early adopter.
Starr:
No.
Josh:
I'm sorry.
Starr:
I was-
Josh:
Yeah. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that.
Ben:
Same. Yeah.
Starr:
Can I tell y'all a story about electrodes.
Ben:
Oh, boy.
Starr:
A long time ago when I was in the sciences I watched a students give a paper the research they had done for ... I think it was an undergraduate thing, I don't think it was a grad student, but basically they were trying to do the same thing. They were trying to wire a mouses brain up to a wire, so that they could have it send a signal down the wire. The whole presentation was just like ... okay, we tried this way of attaching the wire to the mouses brain, and the mouse died. Then we tried this way and the mouse died. I mean, they didn't say died, but that's what was going on. And this whole day, it's like we tried this, and we tried this, and we tried this.
Josh:
Was the presentation tried on 11 dead mice?
Starr:
Those mice are just up in heaven smiling down at Elon Musk right now, I'm sure. They're like, "Finally, somebody's found a way to hook up a wire to my brain. If only I still had one."
Josh:
Well, I think like paralyzed, it's only the first step, because the ultimate goal is to connect humans to artificial intelligence in a symbiotic relationship. Apparently that's the stated-
Starr:
Yeah, so they can play chess against each other faster?
Josh:
The initial applications, they're obviously practical but-
Starr:
I thought ...
Josh:
I think he is-
Starr:
But I thought Elon was the one who is worried about AI robots taking over the world? Wasn't that true?
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
He's only worried about them if he doesn't own them.
Ben:
Yeah. Totally.
Starr:
Yeah. I've got a preposition. How about we stop trying to make people smarter and start trying to teach people how to not be assholes?
Josh:
Yeah.
Starr:
That's my plan for the improvement of humanity.
Ben:
I'm down with that.
Starr:
It's like, "Just learn to chill. You don't need a HAL brain, you just need to learn to chill."
Josh:
True.
Ben:
Those might be equal levels of complexity, or effort.
Josh:
Oh, man.
Starr:
Yeah, maybe. I don't know. What tasks are there that ... I know I'm just committing tech heresy here but ... What tasks are there in daily life where you're like, "If only I had a super computer attached to my brain. I could handle this if I was a 1,000 times more intelligent." I didn't understand it. Maybe that's a billionaire thing. Maybe Elon Musk wants that, so he can personally oversee all of his enterprises. So that Elon Musk will be everywhere at once. I guess I can see that desire, even though it's completely evil and terrible, but at least that makes sense.
Ben:
Well you'd be able to understand it if you had an AI enhanced brain. I mean, come on.
Starr:
Yeah. But it's like ...
Ben:
Right.
Starr:
I guess that's the thing. It's like, well ... When I find myself in a situation where it's like, "Damn, I bought this AI brain, and I'm just doing laundry. And I'm still doing laundry like there's ..." It takes a certain amount of time to do the laundry. I don't know.
Ben:
I think we have effectively proven that Elon has an AI enhanced brain, because he understands why he would want an AI enhanced brain.
Starr:
There you go. And because he chose that over learning to not be an asshole-
Josh:
Yes. Probably a deal with the devil.
Starr:
That's how we really know.
Ben:
That's a good one.
Starr:
Thank you. All right, we should maybe wrap things up before I have anymore fire takes.
Josh:
No. I'm just happy the RNC is over.
Starr:
Do you have anything you want to talk about before we go?
Ben:
No.
Starr:
Okay.
Ben:
I'm happy the compliance is over.
Starr:
There you go.
Ben:
Until next year.
Josh:
Same.
Starr:
I'm happy that March is almost over. Well, this has been FounderQuest. It's been a trip y'all. If you would like review us ... I feel like I have to say this at the end of every show. But, yeah, review us if you want to. Apple podcast, you know the deal. If you want to write for us at our blog, check out Honeybadger.io/blog, and then look for the link that says, "Write for us," and read the whole damn thing. Don't even email if you haven't read the thing. That's all. I'm actually very nice to work with, I don't yell at people, but I'm just trying to get a message across right now. All right, well, talk to y'all later.
