The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Backslashes are trash (Friends)

Episode Date: November 11, 2023

Mat Ryer returns with his guitar, an unpopular opinion & his favorite internet virus.

Welcome to Changelog and Friends, a weekly talk show about internet virite. A quick thank you to our partners for helping us bring you world-class developer pods each and every week. Fassy.com, Fly.io, and Typesense.org. Okay, let's talk. We are here with our good friend Matt Reier. Matt. Hello. You're back.

Yes, my front is here as well. Thrilled to be here. I do feel like we are friends, even though we've never really met in real life. Do you feel like that, really? That you're friends with me? He said good friend, and I was just thinking I'd probably categorize it differently. Interesting. Please, do tell.

I would say great friend, honestly. I like you a lot. Oh. Yeah, man, I would buy you a sandwich and a coffee. Oh, that's nice. I thought you were going to go the other way. Acquaintance. Or one of those.

Yeah, it's called, you know, injected drama. Is it? I went to school for that. Did you? You injected the drama? Yeah, you just learn how to inject drama. It's a whole class. Injected drama.

You put the drama into the conversation. Injected drama. Got it. Yeah. Love it. Nice. it's a whole class injected drama you put the drama into the conversation injected drama got it yeah love it nice now i'm just bringing up like uh what was the show again pound to find i faked that that's not even true that's all not even true right there what i just said the injected drama part i'd made it all up everything what can you believe i'm so confused if you're making stuff up and it's that good what what's the difference between just being real? Okay, here's what's not made up. And I'll be very honest with you.

I don't believe you. That's a conundrum, right? This is too funny. Yeah, you got us. I like Matt a lot. He is a great friend. Can we believe it? I made up the term injected drama and I did not go to school for it.

But I might as well have because I've been podcasting since the beginning, basically. That's true. I've learned through the school of hard knocks of podcasting. Since you were born, you've been podcasting. That's right. He came out ready. Wow. Came out swinging.

You got a lot better. Mic in hand, pop filter properly placed so I'm not popping my peas and uh slaying it wow that first one was a real screamer fun start well save the fake definitions for the game show version this is not a game show this is real life and i don't actually know if adam likes matt still but we're just gonna roll with it i like you like you, Matt. Thanks. Honestly. I like you too, but. Even though we've never met, you know? No. Well, Adam and I didn't meet for years. Really? By choice? Yeah, by choice, I would say. Well, just by distance. I mean, sort of. Kind of like we haven't met you by choice. Same kind of thing. You don't really need to actually

meet in real life these days. That is the kind of amazing thing i remember when the internet was first a thing and people started dating on the internet and everyone was freaked out by it they were like that's so dangerous what you're doing that's great and now you're a psychopath if you go up to someone in a bar it's like we've gone all the way around now so it's like making real friends yeah people are like why is this person approaching me why didn't you dm me first why are you talking to me in my face? Come on now. What's happening here? DM first or it didn't happen. This kind of marks maybe the end

of Guts, not the Nickelodeon television show. But the actual metaphor for your gumption. You know, like you don't have to, you don't have to have any guts anymore to introduce yourself to someone or to approach somebody because now you're just, you're just sliding into their DMs. It's the easiest thing in the world, right? Yeah. Isn't that kind of too bad? I think that's why women have a horrible time on the internet. Well, true.

They used to have a horrible time at the bars. they have it on the internet you know yeah well somehow the connection has to be made and nowadays you don't have to as an as a an aggressor maybe that's not the right word but as a person who's going after the other person taking the lead man still not good it's called taking the lead. As the person who's approaching, I just feel like it's gotten so easy that it's now a small thing. So you just do it to a bunch of people and hope somebody answers.

Your words are just going too deep, Jared. All right, fair enough. I like it though. But I would say to back that up, I haven't hit on anybody in a long time. So I have no idea how it works. Why don't we act it out now? We'll just do some role play and I'll be...

Let's do it. Yeah, let's go. All right, go ahead. Can I be the aggressor, Jared? Should I be the aggressor? I think you are. I think you are. I'm only doing this for podcasting's sake, so if you're listening to this, this is for you.

Bring out the disclaimers. Very specifically you. You listening to this right're listening this is for you bring out the disclaimers very specifically you, you listening to this right now this is for you I'm just minding my own business I've been checking out your tweets and your code it's stellar it's really good stuff I was wondering if we could sit down over coffee

and maybe just talk about it and some other stuff can we do that? no thank you you have time nope oh no it's not gone well oh man you just got so rejected are you sure because i've really got a good review for you it's a really i'm good at code review hey no means no adam i'm stepping in i'm stepping in no means no okay this is jared my friend so you only get one chance to say no you can't come there my friend so you only get one chance to

say no you can't come there's no comeback you just take the no and you walk away is that how it works today it's hard i don't know it's been a long time for me i don't know it's tough it's tough it's tough i didn't believe your no though so i was like you know maybe i can go one more right express the invite one more time i really think you should reconsider so your opening line was i got a good code review for you? Well, he's a software developer. What am I going to do? You know what I mean?

Like, you got to use context. Yeah. Fair enough. Didn't work. Hey, Matt, you're on the internet. I'm on the internet. We should meet. Failed spectacularly.

It'd be a bit creepy, I think, if people knew who you are before. Yeah, you knew an awful lot about him. That's weird. Yeah, I did. I actually stalked you out a little bit. Your reputation precedes you, and therefore, about him. That's weird. Yeah, I did. I actually stalked you out a little bit. Your reputation precedes you, and therefore, I can use it against you in the court of Adam. Well, speaking of reputations, we have a reputation of playing a game called Unpopular Opinions. Unpopular opinion.

Unpopular opinion. And we played it last time you were on, Matt. I think that was back in June or July. I don't recall. It's been a while back. One of our very first episodes of Changelog and Friends. One of our worst ones yet, but nonetheless, here we are. The the only way is up then this one can only get better yeah this one's gonna have to get better from here yeah and we shared some unpops so i thought we'd review them and maybe refresh

maybe extend even oh if you're one of us didn't they could do that our unpopular opinions so who wants to go first here we're going to review last time see how you fared and then we will refresh and extend yeah i can't remember what mine was last time can you well you barely spat it out last time i remember that because it was the wired keyboards are better than wireless keyboards but you're trying to do a meme. That was awesome. A tweet meme, and you couldn't spit it out. Where are you going with the keyboard?

You just have it in the same place, except now it can run out of battery. Just plug it in. That's my unpopular opinion. Wired keyboards are tired, and what's wired is wired. Sorry. Wireless keyboard is why tired colon wireless no this is this is gonna be unpopular tired mechanical no tired colon wireless keyboards wired colon wired

easy easy and so that was probably why it was not well received still popular though actually it's hard to do memes in real life like the one i can do is charlie bit my finger i'm good at that i've nailed that one let's hear it well you just bite someone's finger until they go ah ow Ow, Charlie. Ow. Charlie, that really hurts. Ow, Charlie. Pretty good. That hurt. That really hurt, and it's still hurting.

This is why I call you a great friend. The only one I can do is I can usually work a Rick Roll into many conversations, which I actually did before we hit record. I already Rick Rolled you guys. Wow. So that was fun. You probably didn't even notice it. That's how smooth it is. Is that when you told us you weren't ever going to give us up?

Yeah. You didn't mean that, did you? I said, I'll never let you down. Oh. And then you guys moved on and didn't extend it. I had a single tear. A single tear Rick rolled down your cheek. Mikey, I think he likes it.

That's a pre-internet meme. Do you guys know Mikey? I think he likes it. No, I don't think so. Oh, yes. What's this stuff? Some cereal. It's supposed to be good for you.

Do you try it? I'm not going to try it. You try it. I'm not going to try it. Let's supposed to be good for you. Did you try it? I'm not gonna try it. You try it. I'm not gonna try it. Let's get Mikey. Yeah. He won't eat it. He hates everything. He likes it. Hey, Mikey. When you bring life home, don't

tell the kids it's one of those nutritional cereals you've been trying to get them to eat. You're the only one who has to know. My brother's name was Michael. Your brother's name is Michael too, right, Jared? Yes, I do have a brother named Michael. So we have a brother's name, Michael. That's odd. I never connected that.

But that must have landed really well in your family. Well, we called him Mikey when he was a youth too. So that was a very popular meme. Do you know that one, Matt? It was a television commercial where they gave their little brother some sort of food. Was it cereal? Was it candy? I don't know.

And the line was, Mikey, I think he likes it. And that was it. But it was huge. Like everybody was saying that for years. Kind of like Where's the Beef? Do you remember the Where's the Beef one? Not really. No?

It certainly is a big bun. It's a very big bun. Big fluffy bun. It's a very big fluffy bun. Where's the beef? Some hamburger places give you a lot less beef on a lot of fluffy bun where's the beef some hamburger places give you a lot less beef on a lot of bun where's the beef at wendy's we serve a hamburger we modestly call the single and wendy's single has more beef than the whopper or big mac at wendy's you get more beef and less

bun hey where's the beef i don't think there's anybody back there you want something better you're wendy's kind of people of people us only that's an old granny and she's like where's the beef these were like pre-internet memes that one was pretty good what does she mean by it was it was it a dating app um she was given some sort of a meal and she wanted beef it was kind of like maybe it was uh soy based i don't know uh what anti anti so yeah she's like where's the beef like she really wanted a hamburger and they wouldn't give it to her so that was the that was the commercial that was also very popular back in the day all right matt let's just take a pause real quick this show is sponsored by the way and

this is the power of advertising because decades later, you can still be talking about it. I would encourage anybody listening to this that has something to share, work with us on a Where's the Beef-inspired advertisement to software developers. Oh, you're sliding it in there. That was a Wendy's commercial. Yeah, yeah, man. You've got to take every opportunity. And it was about the size of the burger. Right. They wanted more meat.

It was instrumental in their success as a business. I see. The Duendes do big burgers. Where was the Mikey? I think he likes it. What was that from? That was from Life Cereal. Oh, it was Cereal. See, I remembered it. Mm-hmm. It was Life Cereal, which actually failed as a result of that advertising. So that's actually not a good thing.

I'm kidding. I have no idea. But it became a spinoff it became a game too left the game the cereal and the game were one in the same that's a spinoff of the cereal yeah man i thought the game predated the cereal they're cousins okay i'm learning something new every day some would say kissing cousins honestly matt's over there like what american pop culture are you guys talking about over there yeah but it's good because like watching a film no i mean not a good film but for me when i listen to americans because don't forget the only other time is in movies oh so to you we're kind of like movie stars yeah you were basically yeah it's like hanging out with really, really cool kind of dudes. I always wanted to be one.

Cool. Eh, sort of. I'd rather be an athlete, but that also wasn't in the cards. Yeah. When I was growing up, I wanted to be Michael Jordan or Ken Griffey Jr., like literally. Those two I had to pick. Was it baseball or was it basketball?

Jordan could do both, so he won out. But that's who I wanted to be. I didn't want to be Tom Cruise or other movie stars. I wanted to be Michael Jordan, dude, for sure. Wow. Nice. Well, that's cool, man. Is it?

I mean, it's not abnormal. I think a lot of kids wanted to be Michael Jordan when they grew up. I could still want to be Michael Jordan. Talk about advertising. That guy is a walking brand. You got to have a dream, man. What about you, Adam? When you were tiny, apart from you obviously doing your podcasts, what else were you?

He was already living his dream. Yeah. Let me tell you exactly what it is. Yes, please. Early in my youth, I dreamed of being a corporate lawyer. He's lying again. I can't take that. There's no way that's true. I'm on to him this time. I's lying again. I can't say that.

There's no way that's true. I'm onto him this time. I'm not kidding. I promise you. This is true? This is true. And the reason why was, well, they make a lot of money. Yeah, but lots of different people make money. And I was like, I can have a room full of gold bars as a corporate lawyer, and I'm set.

This is like age four. How did you know that as a kid? Did you watch Wall Street or something? I was told that. The information came to me. It was disseminated for me to me from other sources, you know? Okay. Family, friends, co-workers, loved ones, you know, dogs talk to me. Everybody would tell me that. Adam, you can argue well you should be a corporate lawyer okay oh here we go do they make money yes they do is it lots yes they do okay i'm in that was it i see that was a mitch headberg impression jared oh what do you think about corporate lawyers i'm for it so you were an annoying little kid yes and. And then they were like, oh, you should be a lawyer because everyone hates them. That's not nice to say.

What would you do? What would make you think that? That I was an annoying kid? Well, because they've told you you should be a corporate lawyer. That's not the sign of a child that's easy to get on with. What? Right. Have you met corporate lawyers?

They already heard how well he could lie. You know, we've seen it here today. His lying is spectacular. So they're like, you annoying, great liar, and you want money. So corporate lawyer pegged him. I would not say lying, Jared. Okay. Would you say lying?

I would lean more towards deception for entertainment. Entertaining deception. I would label it as that. Creative truth. Do you want to split hairs? How about you, Matt? What did you want to be when you were a little kid? I did always want to be, I always was interested in computers.

Seriously? Yeah, yeah. From when I was tiny. I remember my dad saying, this will be a job one day. We didn't know that it probably was then. I'm not that old i was like that was smart i could do that i don't know if it's that smart because he also said that we'd be able to we'd have shoes that we could hover around with so he just watched back to

the future too yeah and he was just telling you what he saw yeah he watched back to the future too too he watched them both in a tutu back He watched them both. In a tutu? Back to the Future 2 as well, I mean. So you wanted to be a computer guy, generally speaking, and you are one. I sort of am a computer boy. So in a way, dreams do come true. That's what I was just going to get to. Like, you're living your dream. Yeah, but I also had another dream where my brother's body was just a cylinder of

like a gelatinous material. It was a nightmare that stayed with me. You know sometimes that happens are you living that one no that one thankfully has not come true that's a relief yeah but then you also didn't you want to be johnny depp too though no didn't want to be johnny depp maybe i wanted to be superman i liked superman when i was a kid. Really? Yeah. He's the best superhero, you know. I want to add one to my list.

Can I add one to my list? Well, you want to get a good one in there? Well, you know, it's another truth, of course. All right, quickly. A ninja. I wanted to be a ninja. Oh, that's pretty cool. I was really into like ninjas.

You know, like this is the age of like kung fu happening. Bruce Lee was popular. Quiet murder. Sure. Parents are like, you're stealthy. You're good at arguing. You're great at killing. Do you know what?

You should be a ninja. Yeah. Will I get loads of gold bars? Probably not. It's more a job of honor. Not interested then. I'll be a corporate lawyer. That's a great synopsis of my reasoning.

Great. That was awesome. Yeah. I should have done the accents really really maybe that was kind of like reverse psychology if someone says you should be a ninja because they want you to be quiet yeah actually that's it that's it we've cracked it yeah like you know i used to play the quiet game with my kids in the car you know who can be quiet the longest took a long time to realize what was really going on in that car yeah so maybe this was the ninja thing it was all about silence sure were you also amazing at hide and seek adam like you would just be hiding for hours honestly yeah i was really good at it really good but then

they just could for whatever reason they could just never find you even if you're in a really obvious place days later i'm like man they haven't found me yet. This is good stuff. But I'm hungry. This is a good hiding place. And I need new clothes. That reminds me of the, have you ever heard of the Michael Jordan of hide and seek? Is it who you wanted to be? Osama Bin Laden. Oh, really?

Osama Bin Laden. Best hide and seek player in history. Good point. What's up, friends? I'm here with Vijay Raji, CEO and founder of Statsig, where they help thousands of companies from startups to Fortune 500s to ship faster and smarter with a unified platform for feature flags, experimentation, and analytics.

So Vijay, what's the inception story of Statsig? Why did you build this? Yeah, so Statsig started about two and a half years ago. And before that, I was at Facebook for 10 years where I saw firsthand the set of tools that people or engineers inside Facebook had access to. And this breadth and depth of the tools that actually led to the formation of the canonical engineering culture that Facebook is famous for. And that also got me thinking about like, you know, how do you distill all of that and bring it out to everyone? If every company wants to like

build that kind of an engineering culture of building and shipping things really fast, using data to make data-informed decisions, and then also informed what do you need to go invest in next. And all of that was fascinating, was really, really powerful. So much so that I decided to quit Facebook and start this company. Yeah. So in the last two and a half years, we've been building those tools that are helping engineers today to build and ship new features and then roll them out. And as they're rolling it out, also understand the impact of those features. Does it have bugs? Does it impact your customers in the way that you expected it? Or are there some side effects, unintended side effects? And knowing those things help you make your product better. It's somewhat common now to hear this train of thought where an engineer developer was at one

of the big companies, Facebook, Google, Airbnb, you name it. And they get used to certain tooling on the inside. They get used to certain workflows, certain developer culture, certain ways of doing things, tooling, of course. And then they leave and they miss everything they had while at that company. And they go and they start their own company like you did. What are your thoughts on that? What are your thoughts on that kind of tech being on the inside of the big companies and those of us out here, not in those companies without that tooling? In order to get the same level of sophistication of tools that companies like Facebook, Google, Airbnb, and Uber have, you need to invest quite

a bit. You need to take some of your best engineers and then go have them go build tools like this. And not every company has the luxury to go do that, right? Because it's a pretty large investment. And so the fact that the sophistication of those tools inside these companies have advanced so much, and that's like left behind most of the other companies and the tooling that they get access to, that's exactly the opportunity that I was like, okay, well, we need to bring those sophistication outside so everybody can be benefiting from these. Okay. The next step is to go to statsig.com slash changelog. They're offering our fans free white glove onboarding, including migration

support. In addition to 5 million free events per month, that's massive. Test drive statsig today at statsig.com slash changelog. That's S-T-A-T-S-I-G.com slash changelog That's S T A T S I G.com slash change. Well, the link is in the show notes. unpopular opinions matt said that wired keyboards are better than wireless keyboards pretty much a popular opinion matt i apologize for your lack of abilities everybody agreed with you 72 of people on x that's a website formerly known as twitter eggs eggs yeah you're you're a 10 eggs developer 64 votes 72 popular on mastodon 73 popular so pretty much identical 40 votes so that's a good one yeah not bad man people pretty much think that wired keyboards are better

than wireless keyboards now why do they keep making wireless keyboards then well i use one that attaches to my computer it's all one piece i'm not sure what you consider that what do you mean what do you mean like it's a laptop the keyboard's right there as part of the computer oh i see is that wired that's more than wired yeah that's very wired yeah that's super wired so i'm with you i guess it's good i don't like things that run out of batteries when there's no need for them to run out of batteries right yeah it's like why is this thing take batteries when it doesn't need to so i think people were with you on that one do you want to refresh now or should we move on

yeah i think more generally you should simplify always like choose the simplest versions of things like i have a very lo-fi toaster that is literally everything's mechanical on it there's nothing you know it's got a timer on it and i can turn on the heat and it's very lo-fi mechanical and you know it's brilliant it's kind of indestructible apart from yeah it has broken uh but apart from that so you almost had us there but then it broke so it's pretty much just as bad as anything else well that does put a bit of a dampener on the point but if you have these complicated futuristic like there's a i've seen a toaster that you have a live feed on your phone so you can watch it toasting and when it's ready you press the button on your phone and it pops up

what you're doing we don't need that in general the internet of things where all the things are like small things in your house usually that plug into the wall i just think writ large is just a bad idea mechanical sturdy like steel and metal based products that just do one thing well for the win and the new shiny thingamabobs are usually the parts that break so we have a pretty new suburban and it has a bunch of features that are like bleeding edge back when it was you know new a couple years ago new ish and it's like all that new crap is the stuff that breaks early. Thankfully, they didn't change the way the engine works, but I hear they're working on that as well.

So do you want to share another unpopular opinion or should we move on to Adam and we'll all share ours together? I've got one. Okay, let's hear it. So at conferences or really when there's any audience, when the person gets up and says, okay, are you ready?

And everyone goes, yeah. And then they go, that's not good enough. I want everyone to collectively reply with, hang on a minute. We haven't come here to have our excitement judged. Something like that. Like, you know what I mean? It's Monday morning.

It's tech conference. Like a lot of people have got to be there for work. You know what I mean? What what we're doing leave them alone let them do the half-assed yeah we're ready let that's fine that's my unpopular opinion come on you could do better than that that's that's the right you didn't do in real life really do you I'm with you, man. Imagine the person doing it, right? You just fall into a caricature, essentially. You're on the stage, you're a hype person, and you're there to hype folks up.

And obviously the first round, even if it was hype, is not hype enough. Come on, you can do better than that. One more. Come on, everybody. Here's a question. I tend to agree. You're getting popular. But is there a context in which that is legit like a tech conference

monday morning like you painted that particular picture but is there ever a time where you can reject their level of enthusiasm appropriately well i take it as a as a failing on me if i've not got them excited. It's like my job as the hype person. And I do host conferences sometimes. So that is literally like the first. But isn't that part of the hype is like, that's not good enough. Get louder.

Isn't that part of your hype? You're hyping. No, it's not part of mine. If anything, I'll say, fine. That was absolutely fine. You know, they know. They know they could have done better. We all know. But I just don't make them do it there's an easy way to fix this honestly unfortunately it requires a little bit more tech you could analog it but i think it would require

like maybe a decibel meter that's visible to everybody that basically just like shames you visually you know with color or something like that like orange and yellow bad maybe even red you know like if you're just not loud enough but like if you're if you're loud enough it's like kind of green lime green you know and then really green and then like super green you know it's clear it's like a decibel meter on the wall visible to everybody you could have a camera on the audience and then show as a heat map in the audience, like make the people glow those colors. Yeah, you'd be like, okay, down here in quadrant B. These folks here are hot.

So just visually shame them. Sort of the opposite of what I was going for, Adam, really, where I'm saying like, leave people alone. Oh, okay. So you think whatever level of enthusiasm your audience has is completely and always appropriate? Yes. And if it's not, if I'm not happy with it, then my shirt's coming off or something.

Like, not that, but... Come on, Matt. It's my job to get them going. I see. This is not nerds at night. We haven't invented that yet. Yeah, shirt's on, please. Okay, well, I kind of agree with you.

I think there's times where you could use that as part of your hype, but I don't think a tech conference is appropriate. I would leave the shirt on. I think if you're at a hockey game or a tennis match and you're trying to get the crowd into it to help the game progress and your team win, I think telling them it's not good enough is appropriate. They've got to get louder.

In fact, they do have those decimal meters in some stadiums. So there's times when it makes sense, but in the context that you provided, I agree with you. Well, let's just nerd out on this real quick, because when you said that shirts off, you want to nerd out on the shirts off?

No, no, no, no. Like this show, we haven't told the audience about that. I just, you know,

the slit in there really quick, you know, the subtitle for the podcast could be shirts off nerds at night shirts off yeah this is getting worse and worse that's my unpopular opinion no your unpopular opinion was the apple magic keyboard is the best keyboard ever created i don't need to congratulate you on being truly unpopular because Adam most of your un-pops are like one was like you should have habits like one was like you should have habits

like yeah we all agree habit stacking like it's like that's not unpopular just like your opinion. This one was really unpopular. I still believe this is firmly the best keyboard ever made like this one right here. Nobody agrees with you. Biometric, boom, gotcha.

It's in there. And the reason is because it has the Touch ID on it. But my keyboard also has the Touch ID on it, and it's not that one. So that rules out that particular argument. Right. Everybody disagreed with you. Specifically, 61% of people disagreed on X.

I won. And 81% on Mastodon, which shows where the true people of taste live. That's 57 votes. So highly unpopular on Mastodon, pretty unpopular on the artist formerly known as Twitter.

Oh my gosh. I have a keyboard, which is a Q10 Keychron, which I love. And it's got a knob on it. It's got a spinny knob for volume and things but you can of course customize these yeah so i changed it so that when i rotate it clockwise it prints ha ha so the more i every time i you know it clicks round so i can do ha ha ha loads just

really quickly and if i twist it the other way it del deletes two characters. So it deletes a ha. And so I'm able to just, if I want to reply to someone, just depending on, I can just choose the knob to set it to the right level of funny, click send. Can it go to 11 has? It can. That's cool. Could you do like option keys where you hold the option key and twist it and it's not ha.

Now it's a particular emoji or a modifier yeah yeah i like that yeah definitely could be lols well in that case i think this keyboard sucks this is the worst keyboard ever now yeah it's better than yours adam yours can't do that i'm holding up my biometric amazing apple keyboard you never said what the keyboard was it's the apple uh what do they call these like this is like the full one with the keypad and everything. And it's wireless. The Apple Magic Keyboard. And now it's using an obsolete

input to power it, which is terrible. It's lightning. Not USB-C. So you disagree with yourself as well. Well, there's parts about it I don't like. I still think it's the best ever. I'm using it. I have a choice. I can go and purchase a whole different keyboard. I continue to use it. You should try

Matt's. That one sounds pretty cool. You could get a bunch of laughs. No, thank you. Knobs and stuff? Nah. I like a knob. Yeah. No, thank you. Type something Matt, real quick. Let's hear this thing. Oh yeah, check this out. It sounds beautiful. Get it clicky. Is it clicky? It's clicky.

That's nice. Turn the knob. Can't really hear that. Yeah, not as cool. That should be clickier. Compare that to this beautiful sound. Listen to this beautiful sound. Listen. That's amazing right there.

Matt's is better. You put that on the internet, that's fire right there that's better you put that on the internet that's fire right there that creates gold that's like a mr beast killer right there he's down that video no no that's an entire podcast it's basically like an asmr thing of like relaxation sounds but it's just keyboards typing different keyboards different clicks, click levels, different competencies of typing. You can call it nerds at night. Keyboards out. Keyboards out. This is good.

All right, so here's your new unpopular opinion, but you're going to extend it. You're doubling down. I'm going to double down by saying this is the best keyboard ever. And any Macintosh computer that cannot leverage Touch ID is just garbage. And they're out there. What should people do if they've got one of those computers then?

Doesn't support Touch ID? Trash. Give it to a niece. And I've got an address you should send it to. Have you? Yeah. What's the address? I won't tell it on the podcast.

It's a secret in a way, but we're going to put it in the show notes. So check that address out. If you've got one of these, they're generally Intel CPU computers. I think pretty much since the Apple Silicon, they've supported Touch ID on the Mac, which is just beautiful. And if you have one of these that doesn't support this touch ID on the Mac, you should just throw it in the trash. And I've got a recycling center that you can send it to. And they do a great job.

And I'll give you the address in the show notes. Okay. Secret, but it's in the show notes of a widely distributed podcast. Right. I can change it there. When we bake the shows, they're baked. You know, we never take those cookies back. Can you base 64 and code it?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or rot 13. Can you rot 13 it? To make it secret. I will. You should. Oh, yeah. So you have to both listen and go to the show notes, and you have to decode it.

So it's rot 13, listener. I guess I could tell you on the show. I mean, it's no problem with me, really. No, don't tell them. This is good. This is good. I'm going to get you. Yeah, I think all the show notes actually should be that.

Can somebody do that for me real quick? I'll type you the address and you just like give me the cryptic key and I'll just speak it. Me? Yeah, either of you. I don't know how to do it. Ask ChatGPT, he'll do it. You can just do it in the browser. Just a second.

Well, surely you could, but you could also just ask ChatGPT. It's one of Adam's favorite things to do. Yeah, but ChatGPT hallucinates it likely to get that right. It might rot 14 or 15 it. I don't think it'll do anything to do. Yeah, but it actually pretty hallucinates it likely to get that right. It might rot 14 it or 15 it. I don't think it'll do anything to it. You don't think so? I'm pretty sure it will. That'd be really interesting, actually.

Yeah, let's find out. Give it a string and say, please, rot 13 and code this. I actually didn't say, please. I just said, do this. Okay. Well, if you want to be rude about it it here's the address to send it to i don't know what to do with this once you've received this i'm not even well they decode it of course decode it then that's what you got to do decode the encoded address this is it send to 100 capital pb ZZBAF space capital E

BNQ comma space capital F H V G space 7-701

comma space Q capital Q actually E V CC VAT space

capital F C EV ATF comma space capital G capital K space 78620. That's good radio right there. That is good radio. Woo! Congratulations.

You have now rid yourself of the tyranny of the world, which is any Apple computer that doesn't support Apple Touch ID. They will recycle it for you. They're certified in this and do it. All right, let's do my turn. I said automagical is a great word and we should say it more. Of course, this was in direct response

to my previous actual opinion, which is that automagical is a terrible word and we should never use it. My original was popular. My rebuttal also popular. So I'm not sure what to make of this, but more popular actually. So back in the day when I said automag is a dumb word i had 57 agreement on x and 50 50 on macedon so they were kind of with me kind of not uh auto magical is a great word we should say it more 83 popular on x but hey only six votes like not only do they agree but they

just don't even care you know there's like six of us are gonna actually take the poll which is way down maybe that's a result of the website itself. 65% popular on Mastodon with 34 votes. So a little more action there. But gosh, they both agree with me that it's an awesome word and they don't really care about it either. So I feel like a total dweeb. When you say it's a bad word, you're pulling in the crowd that don't like it, I think.

It's a kind of selection bias isn't it um whereas when you say like i love automagical which it's rare that you're going to agree with that but if you do it's going to feel very special when someone else says it because you're going to feel validated and like you've found your people you're gonna affirm it yeah so i think it's quite sweet. I mean, there's only six of them, but, you know. Lovely. Do you think that this makes you think of a song,

Money Chains, like some sort of automagical thing? Did you already do a song on this? I feel like you did. Did we? Yeah, it was the end of our last show. It was the Beatles, Let It Be, automagically. Can you do a remix did you bring your guitar i think we haven't even asked yeah i've got it right here okay so the last song

wasn't very popular it's actually a better unpopular opinion than mine could you do a version of the automagically song that's good well i don't know if it's good i don't remember what the song was at all so it'll, so it'll have to be completely different. Is that okay? Okay, that's probably best. Yeah, start fresh. Yeah, that's probably a good strategy. So you can use automagical, you can use automagically,

which rhymes with more things, in case you're hoping for some rhymes. The last time was Matt Depends, right? Matt Depends was the last episode. Yeah, he sung an automagically song. Okay, I thought so. I thought time was Matt Depends, right? Matt Depends was the last episode. Yeah, he sung an Automagically song. Okay. I thought so. I thought it was beautiful. It's a wonderful title for a podcast, too, honestly.

I think we all did ourselves with that one. Yeah, Matt Depends, coming soon by Changelog. Alright, here we have Matt Reier. What's the song called, Matt? What you tell me. Automagically by Matt Reier. The remix.

It's auto my favorite thing But nobody likes me, nobody takes me seriously Nobody likes me, nobody takes me seriously And then one day I saw on the internet Some guy who agrees with me I thought this has never happened before Some guy just agreed with me And now I'm one of garrett's six friends one of garrett's six friends

that's a melding of song whoo it on a journey all on its own. It did. That was a journey. Yeah, and also my AirPods were noise-canceling half of it, so I couldn't hear a lot of that. Oh, no. Yeah. You're flying blind.

Yeah, it was good, though. They were the best bits. I will say, in Matt Depends, there is a chapter called, quote, Automagical by Matt Reier. So if you're listening to this. And you liked what you just heard. Well, either way, if you dislike it, you should listen to it. Because you might like that one.

We should get a poll going on which Automagical song is better. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah. All right, let me share my unpopular opinion now, since you guys have done so. Oh, wait, sorry. You're going to extend yours now, right now right no i have a new one but go ahead matt well i just wanted to just i said this last time but adam your habit stacking thing genuinely changed my life wow oh my gosh are you being serious yeah yeah habit stacking is like you've got a task to do

like you're gonna go make coffee so pile another task on top of that uh because you're waiting around anyway and then that becomes a habit a sort of super habit now be careful dear listener you may go too far like i did then you end up with a habit stack overflow oh god if that happens yeah then all the plates drop and crash to the ground but it's it's brilliant. Well, good. I'm glad I can help. You know, I just, you know, one unpopular, popular opinion at a time. That's my life. Well, you're changing lives over here.

It's changed mine. I also habit stack. You know, I do post on our Instagram reels. And I've made a habit of every time that I'm posting to our reels that I also drop the kids off at the pool. Oh, really? Shall I share my unpopular opinion now? You ruined that beautiful moment. Man.

All right. This is a follow-up, not an extension. This is a freshens. This is a freshens. In fact, this might prompt a brand new song even, a brand new single from Matt Reier. So listen closely, Matt. I despise backslashes, okay?

They disgust me. This is one of the primary reasons why I don't like Windows. It uses backslashes in its path names. Forward slashes are cool. I'm down with underscores. Hyphens are okay. The pipe character is fine. I'm even okay with a tilde and backticks.

All good. But backslashes, get those dreadful characters out of my face before I slap someone. Woof. Gosh, man. And I'm looking at you, PHP namespaces. Okay, Jared, I'm with you. It's popular. Backslashes, Matt, what's your take? For or against? I kind of agree. I heard someone the other day read out a domain name and they said

it's http colon backslash backslash www dot etc and uh i said um all right i'll go to your website now then and uh it's just an error actually it it somehow figured it out and it worked which was annoying oh that's cool yeah browser's smart because i couldn't prove the point, yeah. But yeah, I kind of agree. Don't love them. When I see them in a path name, like C colon backslash system32 or whatever, I just want to throw up.

Or slap somebody, like it said. Or slap somebody, yeah. What about line feeds, though? What about line feeds? Like backslash N? I mean, I live with it. I'm also left-handed in a right-hander's world. I also live with that.

You know, there's things in life you just have to overcome. And every time I see a backslash, I have to overcome the unction I have to throw up in my mouth. Yeah. Well, let me be the first to say I'm sorry that you're in this position in life. One, as a left-hander, thank you for admitting that. And then two, as somebody who just despises backslashes. I thought as a left-hander

you'd love a backslash. You're not smudging it for once. Yeah. Back and to the left. I mean, forward slashes are better just for the simplicity of like up and to the right is a good thing. It's a positive thing.

Back and to the left is just like you don't want to go there, right? That's right. Nobody wants to backslide or backslash. No.'s just the wrong direction backslide do you want to forward slash though or do you want to just slash because i feel like you know we live in a slash world if you say slash you meet forward slash and it's just like that's how it is i just say slash and i let everyone figure it out and now i know gerhardt he very said he says forward slash forward slash a lot because i've heard him say it. And I'm like,

he's thorough. That's thorough, but unnecessary because no one's going to assume backslash. And if they are, I just don't really want to talk to them. Yeah. It's like tabs versus spaces. Let me share a story with you because early in my days of producing this podcast, I used to say forward slash until the Jareds of the world said, listen, just say slash. Just say slash. Did someone actually write in and say that? Yeah, they did. Yeah.

Was that actually a Jared? Was it me? It was in a tweet. It was somewhere in the ether. I don't know where necessarily, but I would say forward slash because I would do the ad reads, you know, be like, you know, go to, I would even say, you know, HTTP, like go there. Colon slash slash?

Colon forward slash. No, I wouldn't. It wouldn't go that far. But I'd say like, I'd say like changelog.com slash podcast, you know, or I'd say, sorry, I'd say changelog.com slash forward. I can't even say forward slash. I'm like messing up just trying to even redo it. Changelog.com forward slash podcasts.

And I didn't sit with anybody. It's slash, man. Get it right. It's slash. And if it's backslash, I'm going to slap your face like Jared. It's kind of like when people would say WWW a lot.

Yeah, that's gone too. And it's like, come on, guys. You know, we only have so much time. You're on television. You don't have to spell out the HTTPS colon forward slash forward slash WW dot matt did you were you going to say that we change your life again is that what you're about to say yeah because i you've changed my life again adam because i i think if i was describing a url all of it i would

say forward slash each time so yeah it's assumed it's implied okay good i mean you do have the option of using backslashes but in the browser will correct you however you're just you're just wrong yeah so don't do that and just slashes simplify your life you know i i say remove the extras simplify your life to the essentials that's what i say keep it mechanical yeah matt do you have have you thought of any good lyrics any any rhythms and rhymes for the backslash this song could be called backslashes are the worst

it could be like backslash you disgust me I want to slap someone I would just call it backslash keep it simple by Matt Reier I don't mind ash I don't even mind bash I like cashing and cash And I'll clash with a dash and a flash, man

I'm not gonna say gash I don't even mind hash I'm out on the lash, man I got a rash Oh my gosh, man I'm gonna smash your face And if you backslash me, that's trash Backslash is a trash

Backslash is a trash. Backslash is a trash. Yeah, backslash is a trash. Don't say forward slash. Just say slash. Just say slash. Just say slash Just say slash No need to say the forward bit Just say slash Wow.

That might be your best song ever. Oh, I loved it. I thought it was great. Good. It's a treat, man. To see you be able to take pretty much anything and make it good. Obviously, you're having fun with it, but it's still good. Sounds nice. You're just on the tip, making it up as you go.

And you're pretty good at it. Where did you acquire that skill like is it developed is it ingrained is it built in were you born with it you come out of the womb with that i think it's this adhd type thing where it's like normally that's a negative in life but if you need to quickly if you need to quickly improvise a song about backslashes then it can come in handy and just in the in that narrow case i don't know but uh it's very fun um i mean most you have to be prepared to fail that's actually the the thing like yeah these don't get cut out i know that now like happens. Like that first song you sang. Yeah. Jesse Eisler actually said this recently. He was saying that

the best favor you can do for yourself is to not take yourself so seriously that you can't be embarrassed or I wish I could remember his exact words. But basically, don't worry about being embarrassed. Forget about that.

Just let it go. Do what you got to do in life because nobody cares anyways. People are more paying attention to themselves than even you anyways, so just go and do your thing and don't be embarrassed. Don't be afraid to embarrass yourself. I think it's good advice. On the other side of it like be forgiving of people if they take a risk and it doesn't work just forgive it and move on you know don't keep

bringing it back up again yeah that's the worst thing that can do it or i'll just say that was a terrible joke like sometimes people do that which is fine happened to me on a conference once i made a like i was hosting and i introduced somebody i was going to they were on stage and then something was went wrong with the text so i had to vamp for a bit and fill some time and uh i said a joke and it got like a little of a titter of a laugh you know but it was more like an embarrassing sort of nonsense thing to say than a laugh out loud kind of joke and then the guy he just said that was terrible that was absolutely terrible and he got an enormous laugh because of the power dynamic and i'm the host and stuff which i'm completely

fine with but it was annoying because i was then sort of contractually obliged to give him a nice introduction still well i'm glad you overcame that terrible moment. That's right. Well, that's it. I embarrass myself a lot. Like, I really do. Because I like to kind of be funny and be silly at my own expense. And sometimes it just doesn't land. And it's sort of, if you're too concerned about those moments, sometimes I'm like, when I'm trying to sleep at 4 a.m. and they come back to me and I'm like, yeah, I forgot I did that thing.

Ouch. No wonder you can't sleep at night. Exactly. But you've got to forgive yourself and forgive each other. Then we can have some more fun. what's up friends i'm here with one of our good friends faras abukadije faras is the founder and ceo of socket you can find them at socket.dev. Secure your supply chain, ship with confidence. But for Ross, I have a question for you.

What's the problem? What security concerns do developers face when consuming open source dependencies? What does Socket do to solve these problems? So the problem that Socket solves is when a developer is choosing a package, there's so much potential information they could look at, right? I mean, at the end of the day, they're trying to get a job done, right? There's a feature they want to

implement, they want to solve a problem. So they go and find a package that looks like it might be a promising solution. Maybe they check to see that it has an open source license that has good docs, maybe they check the number of downloads or GitHub stars. But most developers don't really go beyond that. And if you think about what it means to use a good package, to find it, to use a good open source dependency, we care about a lot of other things too, right? We care about who is the maintainer? Is this thing well-maintained? From a security perspective, we care about, does this thing have known vulnerabilities? Does it do weird things? Maybe it takes your environment variables and it sends them off to the network,

you know, meaning it's going to take your API keys, your tokens, like that would be bad. The unfortunate thing is that today, most developers who are choosing packages and going about their day, they're not looking for that type of stuff. It's not really reasonable to expect a developer to go and open up every single one of their dependencies and read every line of code, not to mention that the average NPM package has 79 additional dependencies that it brings in. So you're talking about just, you know, thousands and thousands of lines of code. And so we do that work for the developer. So we go out and we fully analyze every piece of their dependencies, you know, every one of those lines of code.

And we look for strange things. We look for those risks that they're not going to have time to look for. So we'll find, you know, we detect all kinds of attacks and kinds of malware and vulnerabilities in those dependencies. And we bring them to the developer and help them when they're at that moment of choosing a package. Okay, that's good. So what's the install process? What's the getting started? Socket's super easy to get started with. So we're, you know, our whole team is made up of developers. And so it's super developer friendly. We got tired of using security tools that send a ton of alerts and were hard to configure and just kind of noisy. And so it's super developer friendly. We got tired of using security tools that send a ton of alerts and were hard to configure and just kind of noisy.

And so we built Socket to fix all those problems. So we have all the typical integrations you'd expect, a CLI, a GitHub app, an API, all that good stuff. But most of our users use Socket through the GitHub app. And it's a really fast install. A couple clicks, you get it going and it monitors all your pull requests and you can get an accurate and kind of in-depth analysis of all your dependencies. Really high signal to noise. It doesn't just cover vulnerabilities. It's actually about the full picture of dependency risk and quality. So we help you make better decisions about dependencies

that you're using directly in the pull request workflow, directly where you're spending your time as a developer. Whether you're managing a small project or a large application with thousands of dependencies, Socket has you covered and it's pretty simple to use. It's really not a complicated tool. Very cool. The next step is to go to socket.dev, install the GitHub app or book a demo. Either works for us. Again, socket.dev. That's S-O-C-K-E-T dot dev. Matt, you thought it'd be fun to talk about viri. Oh, yeah. Is that the plural of virus? It's got to be.

We haven't had enough of viruses yet in these here United States of the Earth. But these are not the scary kind of viri that are going to put many people in the hospital and whatnot. These are internet worms, viri, etc. It's viruses. Is it viruses? Dang it. Yeah, you must have known that,ared's saying it hearing it back gosh that's a big fail by me i hope nobody rubs my face in it makes me wake up at 4 a.m that's a another game show we could do called plausible or not how that game works it's plausible to virus the plural virus but but it's not. Okay.

Good game. Good game. That game is plausible, but not. So Matt, you brought your favorite virus here with you. Yeah. We've all got a favorite. So I thought I would talk about mine. Yeah.

He asked us what our favorites were and we went and put some thought into it and thought we would share it. So you want to go first since you're the guest? Although, I don't know. Do you want to rest? You've been working hard. No, no. I'd love to go first.

Okay. Yeah, I don't know if you remember this one. Back, let me set the scene. It's the 5th of May, the year 2000. If you lived before the year 2000, the year 2000 was you lived before the year 2000 the year 2000 was the future right so we're very excited about all the possibilities of everything in this time to be honest a little bit disappointed we're not getting the hover shoes that we were promised or the you take a pill and you don't have a receding hairline do you know what i mean we're not getting the all everything that we were

promised well let me add to this context So 1999 was a heck of a year. And it ends with New Year's Eve. And of course, Prince famously wrote Party Like It's 1999. And so when that ended, when it flipped to 2000, we thought, first of all, the Y2K bug. But hopefully that's not the one you're talking about because that one's lame.

But we had that whole situation. And then 2000 came wasn't relevant anymore y2k was over it was a brand new day and uh very exciting but also a little disappointing because nothing really changed you know on january 1st 2000 everything felt the same and you're like i was hoping for i don't know an alien landing or what did we expect probably Probably that, aliens. We expected a lot. Yeah. All the power outages. We thought there was going to be power outages, literally, right? Like that was like what the news was saying,

was like we may have the power grids go down. Lawnmowers just randomly turning on. Yeah, exactly. So anyways, but now it's May 5th, 2000. So we're a few months past this. And out of the Philippines comes a worm, which was called I Love You, or it was called love bug sometimes it was called love letter and it was basically you'd get an email that said it had an attachment that said i love you and windows would hide the extension of files if

there were known extensions for sort of aesthetic reasons so So this was a VBS, a Visual Basic Script or VBScript file. And it just looked like just a letter attachment. It just looked like a little file. So of course, everyone double clicks it. And on Windows 95 at the time, double clicking that would execute it. If you could run scripts like that on your computer by just double clicking them.

So of course, you're just running untrusted code. You don't know what this thing is. It doesn't look, you don't know you're going to run a program. You think you're going to open an email from the love of your life. But instead, what it does was, it deleted a few files. It changed some images. Apparently, it hid all your MP3s. Just like, it didn't delete them, it just hid them.

But then it also using vb script the libraries um it would access the windows address book and then it would send itself as an attachment to all of your contacts with the same thing or similar thing i love you there are a few variations sometimes one said virus alert which is quite clever another one said important read carefully another one of the subjects was forward joke and one that i think wouldn't work on me uh just in all caps friend message that one wouldn't work on me but the love bug was that was it and then it just spread 10 million machines i think as far as we know and probably more amazing that is amazing do you know how they got rid of it or how it was mitigated or what happened in the aftermath of the love bug

first of all in the philippines it wasn't illegal to do this there wasn't the first time it happened so the person who did it didn't actually get prosecuted and then it was like a couple of months later they introduced new laws to stop this from happening again but it was essentially a windows then had to patch it and say oh we're not gonna just run vb script files like this we can't but it's just like a kind of a time of innocence where and naivety almost yeah it was a more innocent time it says the damages were estimated to be in the billions of dollars and what it would do is it would send itself to all the contacts in the victim's microsoft outlook address book which obviously spread it and then it would randomly overwrite

files with copies of itself which obviously resulted in data loss, I mean, that's kind of a random thing based upon what it's saying here. So you'd run it multiple times. Yeah. But billions of dollars. This is 2,000 days. I mean, like, if you would that be trillions? Close to trillions. Or maybe at least one trillion.

Great question. Because 1,000 billion is one trillion. Just to let everybody know. That's a lot. So how'd they patch it? Oh, they patched it by patching Windows, right? They just said you can't execute arbitrary scripts in your email.

And that's why we can't do it now. That's why you can't have nice things. You'd probably have to download it to disk and then run it, or something like that? It's actually not that hard, yeah. Or just send someone a command and say, put this in your terminal. That is hard for people.

That's how we install programs. See, I wouldn't fall for that one because I'd open up my Windows prompt and I'd see that C colon backslash. I'd just close it. I'm just not running that terminal. You'd punch the screen. I'd slap someone.

Ah, man. All right. Well, my favorite computer worm is Sammy. You guys know Sammy? No. Sammy was famous back in 05. Sammy is the MySpace worm. Ah.

Maybe you just know of that, the MySpace worm. This one's cool. Should have been called Tom. Tommy. No, Sammy was the person who wrote it, so that's why it's called Sammy. Sammy Kamkar. He wrote this MySpace worm back in 05. This one's cool for a couple of reasons.

It became the fastest spreading internet worm in history at the time. Also, it's pretty much benign. I mean, it doesn't cause any real problems. It did take MySpace down, but that's just one website on the internet. But contextually... That's a plus. Yeah. The most popular website at the internet but contextually that's a plus the most popular website at the time was MySpace yeah but the fact that people could put

those horrible backgrounds on like all the MySpace pages were horrific because they gave them too much control so taking MySpace down is actually a gift that was the original code pen ouch, you're dissing on code pen like that, huh? nah, the ability to hack on the internet in the public. Show it off.

I know, it's cool, it's cool, but... It was cool. You could totally customize your page, trick it out, you know? What year was this, Jared? This was 2005, and in fact, the ability to customize your page is how Sammy Kamkar wrote the worm. So this is a classic cross-site scripting hack where he put in his profile page some javascript code you're not supposed to put javascript code in your profile page uh myspace

did make it hard to do that and he has a great uh technical explanation of the hack which i'll include in the show notes we're not going to go step by step. But it's fun to read because it shows how he subverted all of their techniques in order to scrub and sanitize the output by basically just doing things they weren't expecting. So the first, the big mistake was you couldn't run JavaScript inside of your little custom area of code on your page, but you could run JavaScript inside CSS.

And so the whole thing starts with a div style equals, and so now it's inside the context of CSS. It's the style attribute on a div. And then inside there, he sets background URL to JavaScript. And that worked, sort of. He had to do some tricky stuff like... So it's when it's trying to access the URL, but it's actually a script.

Yeah, exactly. And they would actually scrub the word JavaScript, so he would do Java and then a new line script, and that would get past their checkers, but it wouldn't get past the browser. The browser would still execute it. So that's step one. And he goes through about 11 steps that he had to do in order to accomplish this.

What happens is once Sammy got going, when you view his profile, it would display the string, but most of all, Sammy is my hero, which is why it's called, one of the reasons it's called the Sammy worm. And when that got displayed, it would then send Sammy a friend request. So he made himself the most popular person on MySpace overnight to the tune of millions of friends from hundreds to millions. So much so that it took down MySpace servers

because they couldn't handle maybe a database issue. I don't know, they weren't ready for that level of traffic. So yeah, when they view the profile page, it would do that and then replicate itself into their own profile page and spread from there. Relatively harmless though, like I said. I mean, obviously against the law, I guess. Well, it was against the law because he

was raided by the U.S. Secret Service and the ETF. No, the Electronic Crimes Task Force, the electronic, the ECTF. No, the Electronic Crimes Task Force. The electronic. The ECTF. Because of the worm. He entered a plea agreement to a felony charge. So he became a felon because of this. And

he got sentenced to three years probation with only one computer and no access to the internet. Which is funny. 90 days community service and $15,000 in restitution as directly reported by Chemcar himself

on some video that he made for Vice. So he got a slap on the wrist but bummer man. Could you imagine that one computer no internet? How long?

Three years? Yes. Three years. Well those are not friends he expected to make right? The US Secret Service and the ectf like who wants them as friends yeah they sent him a friend request to his house when the secret

service that isn't that like the people who look after the president why are they getting involved in this the president was on myspace oh he's friends with the president yeah so the the president was being protected by the u.s secret service by the semi-worm on myspace the president. Yeah, so the president was being protected by the U.S. Secret Service by the semi-worm on MySpace. The president's like, no, I choose my friends. He made a friend that he didn't want to make. Wow.

So that's Sammy. I'll link the, I think the technical explanation is fun to read through. I had a good time going step-by-step through it this morning. So I'll link that one up.

How many servers do you think MySpace had in 2005? Do you think they had a cluster? Do you think they had a cluster? Do you think they had sharded databases to maintain their uptime? What do you think the infrastructure was like back then? 2005. It's like Twitter shutdown days

when Twitter couldn't even stay up. Yeah, it's got to have just been lo-fi manual network stuff. Panic driven. Probably had spikes in traffic which meant they had to panic their way to get some kind of scale. And probably just adding machines. Yeah, I remember, was it Digg? What year was Digg? Probably the same time frame. Digg got big. That's

D-I-G-G dot com, which was really the dawn of Web 2.0. I remember the very first time I could actually upvote on Digg, and it wouldn't refresh the entire browser page. I didn't know what was going on. I was like, wait a second, I clicked a link, but I didn't go to a new page. And yet the thing updated. And that's how I learned about Ajax. This had to be back in 05 timeframe. But I remember reading about Digg scaling problems, because they had big scaling problems and they were LAMP stack, I think. And that was the first time

I heard about sharding. So like they had a big technical deep dive on how they sharded dig back in that timeframe. So my guess is that at least sharding was around and MySpace was probably doing it as well. But it's all manual and very difficult.

There wasn't things like, what's that? That word sharding really just gets me, man. You might hear the word sharding. I know what it means. But like the word sharding just gets me. You have to emphasize the D. Yeah, it's great in the American accent.

You can't do the sharting. I say that, sharding. Oh, you do? Sharding. Other words. Sharding. You say it like it disgusts you. Like I say backslash.

Sharding. Sharding. I like yours. It makes me sound so bloody posh. Now I'll probably just finish the bloody podcast talking like this. You could try. I would appreciate that. I could try.

That would be fun. But if I say sharting, like there's a T. Sorry, I had to just say it's a different thing man exactly yeah but it's funny but in your accent there is no difference in my to my ear it is hard to tell i try to enunciate the d but i fail yeah i think you did fine jared i was just saying like the word sharting is just not yeah i guess sharting and sharting is pretty damn close you're right yeah it, it is. Wow. Yeah.

Well, I guess that's why I don't like the word because it's like, I mean, do you know what you're talking about? Wait, wait, wait. Hang on a second. Are you a software developer? Okay, cool. I know what you're talking about.

Right, right, right. But if you're not, then we got a different problem and I'm not going to be near you. Okay? I'm walking away. Yeah, I think the two things are kind of like equally unenjoyable.

You know, I haven't heard anybody who likes either process. So maybe there's some poetic alignment there. Yeah. Nobody wants to raid their databases. It's not fun. Manually. You mentioned Ajax in 2005.

Before that, I invented Ajax by using iframes. How so? So I would put an iframe on the page. I would style it to be one pixel and white with no border. So you just don't see it. Okay. Same color as the background. In those days, with JavaScript, you can just,

it was just an object on the page. So I would essentially make HTTP posts, but the target being the iframe and that was a way to communicate with the back end and then the response from the back end was javascript this is probably quite dangerous was javascript that executed in the iframe which reached out to the parent and would update specific or call functions to update the page. And then the JavaScript in the page would then go and update just those little pieces. Nice.

So it was essentially like, because there wasn't that XML HTTP request object thing then, but that's the way that we got around it. And then we learned like you do tricks because it was slow. The internet was a bit slow back then. You do tricks like you would immediately update the UI kind of proactively, assuming that it's going to be successful. And then you go and do the little backend piece. And only if it failed would you then update and say, ah, this didn't work. But that's it.

That was it. Ajax. And it was like, that's one of the things about being around in the web in the early days. You didn't have all these problems solved. And I also didn't do a computer science degree. So I didn't even learn basic computer stuff. And that means I get to invent loads of things

that everyone just already either knows about or now we've solved properly. That's cool. That's right. It was great fun. So satisfying. I would just call it Ajax instead though. Ajax. Yeah, that's a good name. Yeah. It was great fun. So satisfying. I would just call it iJax instead, though. iJax.

Yeah, that's a good name. Yeah. Did you name it and publish it? Like, did you publish a technique and name it and get it out there? No, I didn't know you could do stuff like that. I'd love to have done that. Because then you could have been, like, you could have your own Wikipedia page at this point, you know? It's like the inventor of iJax, but now it's not even a thing anymore.

Yeah. You can still be on wikipedia i can put you there right now okay appreciate that yeah yeah well don't don't say anything mean ijax invented by matt ryer i would say matt ryer is a co-host of the go time podcast and the singer songwriter behind the world-famous Backslash is Our Trash single off of Changelog Beats. That went viral. Adam, were you going to share a computer worm with us? I'm not allowed, I guess. I just got to keep vamping here while Matt...

Matt keeps interjecting his stories every time we get to Adam. That's right. Sorry. That's right. Anything else, Matt? Anything else? Well, I hope the song becomes a vir viral in its own right and goes viral. All right, Adam.

This is the coup de grace. This is the end of the show. You're going to end the show with this. It's going to be a good one. And we've built it up a lot. Here it comes. Listen. Okay.

1995. This was a day when basically dial-up internet was the way. It was the earliest of early days. When pretty much anything you said about computers was true because no one knew about computers. You can make it up. This is a fun day, right? There was this virus by a shadowy group called the Praetorians. And these folks were trying to orchestrate a series of cyber attacks with the premise of gaining control over critical systems,

especially those in the U.S. government. They were trying to get the government's stuff, and they wanted to leverage this virus, and they were gaining backdoor access to mainframes and major institutions and banking and, you know, manipulating data, controlling systems, and just doing all they can do to advance their own covert interests. And right in the middle of all this, right in the central standpoint of all this is Angela Bennett. She's a, you know, typical early day computer programmer, somehow ensnared into

this web of conspiracy. She comes across this mysterious disc in her office and it's malicious software. And she recognizes this threat poses some issues to their plan. She finds out it's the Praetorians and she takes these drastic measures, of course, to, to fight back. And,

you know, to her demise, they attempt in many ways, erase her identity, begin to frame her for crimes and murders. She never did. And, they attempt, in many ways, erase her identity, begin to frame her for crimes and murders she never did. And, you know, it's just a big issue. This is 1995. Praetorian virus is a big deal.

I mean, being in trouble for murders you did commit is bad. Yes. But if you didn't commit the murders at all, that's got to be worse, hasn't it, I would say? Angela, she hasn't been the same since. She's really still fighting to regain trust with the public. How did it all end? She fought back. And I can't tell you the rest.

Was this a movie? Computer analyst Angela Bennett was just doing her job. Oh my God. When she stumbled onto something. What is this something she never should have seen. I plugged it in and I'm staring at the personal medical files of the Undersecretary of Defense Michael Bergstrom. Someone's tapped into the system. How long would it take to track her? Depends on how long she stays online. Something, why would anybody want to do any of this, that reaches farther than she could ever imagine. They hack into computers and they cause this chaos.

Wall Street. The market panic as officials suspended trading. The Department of Water and Power in Atlanta. LAX. We've lost radar contact. This is six stars on IMDb, I think. I can't confirm or deny. I just, this is one of my favorite viruses because...

Oh, hang on a minute. Is this just completely fictional? No, this is real. Is this film based on a real thing? Or have you watched a film and believed it to be a documentary again? Well, Adam, I think we have to give you the Miss Congeniality Award. Ooh, nice. Thank you.

Also a Sandra Bullock movie. Tell us about the time that that one bus was driving really fast and they couldn't stop it or it would explode. Yeah, that is annoying. I think Keanu Reeves was there. I can't confirm or deny that either. That's annoying. That's annoying because you miss your stop.

Not only are you at risk of being blown to smithereens, but you're also late for yoga or whatever it is you go in well you get there early yeah do you yeah in the end though what this really did this virus what it did is it really highlighted the vulnerabilities of the digital age and the expansive reach of cyber criminals and what they can do and the fragility really of our online identities and so ever since then she's been an advocate with the EFF to regain her composure and to fight back against these Praetorians. And I, for one, applaud her.

She's valiant in her efforts, and she's won. And the internet is better since then because of this. They thwarted all these backdoor accesses, and they were all shut down. And that's a good thing. We should get her on the show angela don't you think i'd love to hear that story yeah yeah angela bennett you know honestly when i thought about viruses i was just thinking like the one i know most of that's near and dear to my heart because i'm a movie fan right i had to go there i'm like i wasn't gonna go to uh what was

it hackers was that movie the movie called hackers with uh angelina jolie wasn't that called hackers yeah yes sir i mean that one wasn't visual enough and i thought about lawnmower man which was not a virus it was more like vr gone wrong yeah didn't he go viral though like he infiltrated the whole he did he became a virus but like how could you describe that right whereas the net was literally a virus and i thought i can walk you all through the plot line. Are there other movies about viri? I think viri has now become a real word at this point. We need to put it into the dictionary. I don't know. Well, I see. I thought that movie could easily be based on something real, like a real story. Which one? Lawnmower Man? The net, the net. No. Yeah no yeah lawnmower man could be based but it would

be different it would just be someone who cuts grass it'd be different you know think about that though honestly like back in that that day 1995 how many viruses had been you know in the world to make somebody a script writer director you know on and say, let's do this because the internet was so young. It educated pretty much the general public on what computers really weren't, really. I mean, you knew there was dial-up internet. You obviously had the floppy disk that was famous in the movie and the accessibility at a computer show to a computer on the internet.

I mean, that was probably a thing, I guess. But they leveraged all these emerging pop culture phenomena at the time like to their advantage to say okay praetorians against the world you know one lone soldier against the world identity erased murders that didn't take place yeah she's being blamed for great plot line for that time right like 1995 yeah i think it very ahead of its time but if you think about it like fear usually predates like fear is one of the first things that we get just as a society when anything news there so probably like the fear of like i remember i genuinely remember somebody when i was young saying that if a computer had a virus you

had to be careful because you could catch it like that's what just they thought that was like they just didn't know and I can't tell if you're being serious or not honestly are you being serious yeah yeah yeah genuinely you're being serious yeah yeah can you use a sign like you put two fingers up when you're being really really serious no because the new apple computer puts balloons if I do two fingers for some reason oh gosh the balloons I hate this feature. Yeah, why is that if you're holding up two? Doing that is swearing in the UK. So it usually means like...

Is it? It means peace over here. Because you got that third finger kind of half up. Is that what the swear is? And that this is not a swear and this is a swear? No, it's that. It's just two fingers. It's the same as the one finger.

What's wrong with your third finger there? Your middle finger, your ring finger. What's wrong with your third finger there? Your middle finger? Your ring finger? What's wrong with that? Yeah, put it down. That's a good point. I don't know. Yeah, you're right.

It doesn't go down so easily. I don't understand these special effects. Why does a thumbs up do bubbles and two fingers does balloons? It makes no sense. The folks on audio are like, what's wrong with this podcast? What happened here?

Because they see none of this. This podcast went off the rails in minute one. I suggested to Matt because I couldn't believe him to put up a sign of sorts. And he puts up two fingers because I suggested two fingers. And then balloons appeared on our video. Bubbles if you're telling the truth.

And balloons if you're lying. Do it, Matt. Go. You can catch a virus from a computer. For real. Teacher thought that, yeah. I also know somebody who told me a story. They said, because when Google maps was out and it had the satellite view, they said, oh, we went outside and we were waving and we could see ourselves on the thing. Like, I know it's just, it's satellite imagery. It's not a live satellite feed. And you fell for that one too? No.

Just a second. You're saying that's not a live feed of my house that i'm looking at whenever i look down on my house from the maps when jared messages you and you see in his background you're like wait that's in my house then i think then yes that is real i'm on the inside the call is coming from the inside the house yeah that's right oh that's spooky that did actually send a shiver down my spine when you said that because don't forget it's like a movie talking to you too for me oh my gosh i got shivers last night i'm going to tell you a quick story before we call this a show yeah what shivered you this was like fear shivers like you know like classic shivers so I'm driving home from basketball practice,

and my wife tells me, so our 15-year-old daughter was at home with the younger girls, babysitting, so to speak, watching the house. And my wife tells me this story. She says, well, while we were gone, they saw a black car drive up the driveway, and then an older woman walking across you know the front walkway to the door made eye contact and rang the doorbell now our strict rule is you just don't answer the door

when we're at home just don't do it yeah but that eye contact made my daughter think ah it's super rude and weird if i don't answer the door, she knows I'm here. So she answered the door. Yes. And the woman needed directions. She was desperately, desperately needing directions to Fremont. And so my daughter said, hold on,

let me go get my phone so I can help you. And she goes into the house to get the phone. She turns around and the lady's inside our house. Like she let herself in and standing in the entryway. And that, when my wife told me that part, I got shivers. Cause I'm like, that's the start of a murder scenario. Yeah. Turns out she just, it was cold out. She needed directions. And so she stepped inside and you know, my daughter gave her directions and she's like, I hope I make it. And she left and everything was just fine. But when I heard that part of the story, I got the goosebumps because I was like,

once someone's inside your house with your daughters there and you're not there, ugh. Yeah, if they're a vampire as well, if they're in the house. That's even worse, yeah. Yeah. Well, the vampire can come in. There was no invite. She just walked away and says, stay here.

I'm going to get my phone. Don't answer the door. Yeah. Well, you know about vampire lore, right? They cannot come in unless invited. But remember, in the story, the old woman is in the house. That's what I'm saying. So whatever, something's happened.

Maybe they're just like, yeah, sure, come in. It won't be long. I'm just going to get my phone. Okay. So since we talked about movies by way of my virus in the show, have you seen Renfield either of you no no sadness okay sadness the movie's sad yeah nick cage is coming back you know he's not good in every movie he's in but he's amazing in in this one nicholas cage phenomenal what's this movie

about it's a magnificent retake on the dracula story it's a whole new spin on it it's gory and hilarious and if you at all like good cinema put this on your list and report back in slack i want to hear what you think is it a comedy yeah it's a dark comedy okay gotcha i. I mean, Nicolas Cage, I agree. Like, did you see the, um, that was something about the talent, unbearable talent.

It's Nicolas Cage film where he plays himself and he's just like a bit of a narcissist kind of guy and, and gets into a scrape. But it's such a great movie. I think he's brilliant. He's sort of, in a way plays a caricature sometimes of his own 80s kind of action or 90s action type yeah multifaceted i mean he could be funny and serious

yeah like i said not every film he does is amazing by any means but his performances are always really attempting to be well done i like i haven't seen everything he's done to be like he's not a good actor but he's done some films you're's not a good actor, but he's done some films you're like, eh, you know, like Face Off at the time was a really good movie. But then you look back on it and it's like, eh, it was kind of like not a really great movie. There's some bad acting in that one.

The Rock was good. The Rock holds up I think. Yeah, The Rock. The Rock was amazing, yeah. That was the same time frame. That movie is why I moved to San Francisco for a bit. Honestly, because you want to be close to alcatraz yeah i wanted to go to alcatraz you could have just visited or national treasure one only really i mean every other follow-up to that was not good i haven't seen national treasure actually yeah that's a treasure hunt i love all that um yeah i do too but uh renfield put on your list if you're a vampire

Dracula fan it's just really well done it's a whole new spin on it I can't recommend it enough and it was the unbearable weight of massive talent was the Nicolas Cage movie I was talking about it's also worth a watch ah well since all good things come in threes I will now

give a Nicolas Cage movie that you should watch. Adaptation, 2002's Adaptation, in which he plays twin brothers. Really? And it's a movie about writing, and it's very interesting. Yeah, it's a very interesting movie. It's a Charlie Kaufman movie, if you know that writer, directed by Spike Jonze. Adaptation, Nicolas Cage is very good in this.

And it's got Meryl Streep in it, hasn't it, as well? I think so, yes. Same guy who wrote Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Being John Malkovich. This guy makes interesting movies. Oh, I love that. So Adaptation. That's a good one. Add that to your list. Yeah, agree. Conquer.

I'm going to. I've watched this, but I've got to re-watch it because it's been so long that I'm thinking have I watched it? He's great in it. Yeah, both of them. Yeah. Well've watched this, but I've got to re-watch it because it's been so long that I'm thinking, have I watched it? He's great in it. Yeah, both of them. Yeah. Thank you, Jared. All right.

Well, we started with unpopular opinions and we ended with popular Nicolas Cage movies. Should we say goodbye? Should we continue to talk? What should we do here? Should we sing ourselves out? Oh, gosh, no. No more. That's not.

It's over. We put Matt's not. It's over. We put Matt through enough. It's over. All right. Thanks for hanging out, y'all. We'll talk to you on the next one. Bye, friends. Bye, friends.

Bye, friends. If these ridiculous conversations with Matt are right up your alley, the ChangeLog++ version of this episode has 10 bonus minutes coming at you. Matt sings another song. Adam declares the best Adam Sandler movies. And I kill captchas by finally inventing an untrickable robot detection scheme. If you aren't yet directly supporting our work with your hard-earned cash, now is a great time to subscribe. Make the ads disappear, unlock bonuses like this extended episode, and get that warm and fuzzy

feeling that comes when you support people who create things you love. Learn more about it at changelog.com slash plus plus. Oh, and here's a pro tip that a couple of plus plus members have recommended. If your employer provides funding for continuing education, personal development, and stuff like that, ChangeLog Plus Plus is totally in that category. So maybe that's an option for you. ChangeLog Plus Plus. It's better. Thanks once again to our partners, Fastly.com, Fly.io, and Typesense.org. And of course, thank you to the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder

for producing so many fresh beats for us. We're now putting out full-length albums under the Changelog Beats moniker. Search for it in your music playing app of choice and jam with us. This week on the Changelog, news on Monday, conversations from CubeCon on Wednesday, and Justin Searls on Friends on Friday. That's all for now, but let's talk again real soon. Thank you. Game on!