The Standup with ThePrimeagen - Open Sauce vs Better Software Conference

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

Casey Muratori and ThePrimeagen return from two very different conferences: Better Software Conference in Sweden and Open Sauce in California. They discuss why modern software feels broken, the developers trying to fix it, and the chaotic world of Open Sauce packed with science YouTubers, homemade machines, dangerous experiments, rockets, robots, and wildly ambitious projects built in garages and backyards. Linear helps teams track issues, manage projects, collaborate on docs, and ship products - and the crazy thing is their software is actually fast and a joy to use. Learn more: https://trm.sh/linear

Also, Casey, what's going on? I was just testing my little mood lighting. Okay. Is it mood lighting or is it a horror story over a campfire? Yeah, that's what I meant. Like if I was going to be like, the diarrhea lettuce is coming for you. I was like, we might have had different conferences. I ain't touching lettuce for a long time.

Okay, well, I've only ever had regular lettuce. I've never had diarrhea lettuce. But I will say that it is kind of funny that we had so many world disasters that have happened. and the one that's going to take us down is diarrhea lettuce. Like that's the one that's going to be the end of America because they can't stop eating Taco Bell lettuce. Yeah, yeah. Sorry.

Not just Taco Bell. It's at Chipotle and McDonald's too. Okay. Yep. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry Chipotle and McDonald's for not mentioning that you also have diarrhea lettuce. Like, yeah, I'm sorry for that. All right.

So today's kind of a special episode. I'm going to do the intro. Is that okay? I mean, it's really the question is, is it? Is it okay, Prime? Okay. Okay, so first off, I just got back from OpenSauce, so my throat is just apps, is literally like raw hamburger right now. So it hurts a little bit.

So I'm just not going to be, I'm not going to be shouting today. Second, welcome to the stand-up. The world's most attended stand-ups. Thank you interns for all showing up. Today we have an extremely special episode. We had both Casey Muratory and Began and I going to two separate, very amazing conferences. First off, Casey, you went to Better Software Conference, which seems like the best of all the conference. is when it comes to software. I do like the idea of better

software software. Well, no, it's not the best because that would be the best software conference. It's the better software conference, right? Out of two things, this one is better. Best conference then. No one knows whether there will ever be a best software conference, and I suppose you really couldn't have one because, well, you could have one

once, and then it would have all the best software at it, and that would be it. That would be the end of it. You could never have another one because you've had all the best software at that point. Well, you imply there's no progression. I guess. Maybe each year there's new best software. I'm not sure. Yeah, well, yeah, it'd be the bestest.

The bestest every single time. I do like the idea of best software conference. Like, this is the best software. We have the best software. All the best software. I'm hearing very good things throughout the software. I think that'd be a cool conference, but you could probably not do, like, big enough. You couldn't do a huge software.

It would be like opening a file. This is all we can agree on. We're going to debate the best opening a file program. Right. Yeah, even GREP wouldn't make it, because there's all these people saying which one is actually the best grep. I would actually love to see a full just conference, nothing but dedicating to finding the best grep.

That's what I want. A week-long track. That's what it would be every year. It's the best software conference colon, and then it's just whichever thing is going to be debated that conference, right? Grep one year, editor the next year, whatever, yeah. That's true. Everyone walks in the room as a giant conference.

The answer is rip-grep. Let's get drunk. Yep, yep. Short circuit. All right. So as usual, before we get started on knowing about these nice times, because I have some good stories. I have some really good stories from it.

I would like to hear what trash has for a snack today because I'm feeling, I didn't eat breakfast, so I'm like Jones in for some food. Dude, I finished it before the call. I just had this whole bag of spicy pit corners. But, but. Okay, what's a pop corner? I got two fortune cookies.

I'm buying a snack. Nice, dude. If you're anything like me, you have a bunch of ideas, but perhaps you're a bit disorganized. So often I find myself having a long brainstorming session. But at the end of it, I just have a big markdown file. And then, of course, at that point, I've lost everything. Hey, stop doing that. You got to check out linear and use the linear MCP.

I have a big conversation. I come up with a bunch of ideas. And at the end, I get a set of tickets that are actually all the things that I need to do. And when I don't know what to work on, I go, hey, agent, go to linear. and tell me what I need to do next, and it will find exactly what I need to work on. This has been so successful for me that I'm in actual serious danger

of completing a project. Go to linear.com slash terminal and get six months for free on linear. Thank you for supporting the channel, and thank you, Linear, for sponsoring the video. You want to know what's pretty tight. I'm just going to tell you this right now. If you go buy those bags of like fortune cookie rejects,

you're the ones that are flat. You've seen those? No, wait. They're just like flat, Yeah, so like, there's this fort. There's a fortune cookie. No. You mean the paper?

No, I'm not. No. Okay, so here's the thing. True story, anyone who lives in the Seattle area, there's a fortune cookie factory down in the international district. And you can go to there and you can walk in and in the front, they just have these big bags. They're like really, very quite large of fortune cookie rejects. They're the fortune cookies that don't get folded up properly by. the machine and they're just flat.

They're just a flat disc. It's the material of a fortune cookie if it didn't get folded up into the fortune cookie shape. And these are delicious. Like, they are so freaking good. Casey, what question? Do they still contain fortunes? There are usually just like stray pieces of paper in the bag that have the fortunes on them. So yes, but they're not, they aren't contained by the cookie because the cookie, by definition,

has no interior. It's like, you know, it's like Galois's dream. It only is a flat disc. But yeah, anyway, continue. Actually, I actually have one more question about a fortune cookie rejection. Is there a, is there fortune cookies you can buy that were rejected not because they were made incorrect, but because their fortunes were like really bad? No, not at this place, although I have had that same thought. And I don't know if anyone's ever done it, but I think there should be a company that you can order fortune cookies from where all of the fortunes are really extremely disturbing.

I don't know if that exists or not, but I would order fortune cookies from. from that company. Miss Fortune cookies would go so hard. Exactly. You wouldn't know the fortune's bad unless you opened them, right? Well, you know they're bad when you order from Misfortunes. Oh, I thought somebody from like a quality control standpoint. No, no, no, no, no, no.

This is a bad fortune. I'm like, did you open it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a guy at a fortune cookie factory who does, like, get a random fortune. He takes it out, and then he has to log it. And after one week, he says, did it come true or not? Yeah, and then if the ratios get off. I got a good one.

This one says love is the way to a joyful heart. It's a nice one. See, that's just that's for you, though. That's generic. Yeah, I don't. Trash. I want specific advice for trash. One thing that this is a complaint that I have with fortune cookies in general is oftentimes when you open up a fortune cookie, it is a saying, not a fortune.

Like a fortune cookie should have a fortune. Like, you know, you will, you will have, you'll stub your toe in three weeks. That's a fortune. Like, being happy is a good way to live your life is not a fortune. That's not a fortune. That's just advice. All right, someone just said this in chat And it's blowing my mind

What if? Hear me out here. Okay. What if we did ads In misfortune cookies? What does that mean? You put advertising... That means not only do you get a fortune

such as you'll stub your toe within the next three weeks, which by the way, how good would your toe stubbing feel if you stubbed your toe and it landed and lined up with a misfortune? Like it wouldn't even feel bad anymore. You'd be like, well, that actually came true. You're like, ow, yes.

I think that's true. I think it would still hurt really bad. I think you'd be stoked. but on the other side it was just like sign up for Facebook.com connects with your friends, right? Yeah.

Think about it. It's like I found out I was going to stub my toe and also learned about Code Rabbit or whatever. Great. It's more awkward where it's a company we've actually used as a sponsor. I think you would.

Look man, if you're going to make fortune cookies you should do them with people who actually paid you. None of this free advertising crap. Well, I was thinking maybe... Like popcorners? Where is the popcorn's payment? Why have we not received a big fat check from popcorners? We're here pimping their product. Someone has to work there that has seen the stand-up.

Actually, I have a new financial advisor, and I was telling about the podcast. I was like, check it out. So I have a meeting with them tomorrow. I expect a full report. Where did you meet your new financial advisor trash? It was a fortune cookie. On Tinder. I'm dealing with a lot of identity theft right now, by the way.

It's, like, awful. If you could imagine. Having a password would probably help that a little bit. A unique password. I met with a federal agent yesterday. Are you serious? Really? No, like, I'm like dealing with some crap. What happened?

Password aside. Like, dude, they're just going to town on my jump. Everyone wants to be you, dude. I don't know. Some are somebody who's got to buy a car? Snack influencer. Yeah. Wait, someone trying to buy a car with your name?

I don't know, man. Something you can do, by the way, is you can lock your credit, so no credit can be looked up. I know. I froze it. It's already, it's been frozen for a while. So the guy who got caught trying to buy a car, because like it tripped off something. Can somebody explain? I would just like to point this out. We are in a world where we have had strong cryptographic signatures for like decades.

Can someone please explain to me how identity theft still exists? It's absolutely ridiculous that that's still a thing. Casey, I would love to tell you about that. But before I do, can I tell you just a quick childhood story? Yes. Of course. Yeah. So when I was young, I used to live on Fulton Street. I don't know where that is. It doesn't really matter because I just am giving away information

which will allow people to steal my identity. Keep going. Yeah, yeah. So my mother's made, me. All you have to do is just socially engineered just a little bit and you get so many of these pass codes that people can get in. Security question linked, right? I don't know.

I don't know for Prime to say when I was young, I stole a lot of identities. Not proud of it. Yeah. Wait, Prime. Are you basically, are you like Don Draper? like is you are did you like go to war and then like come home as somebody else and now you've like that's the primogen the real primogen got blown up by a hand grenade case yeah spoilers okay i just started madman are you kidding me right now we have never seen it i just google who

that was are you kidding me you guys have not seen madmen i know the man i know the man's the guy who he's like it's where he stands up in front of the blank this it's not it's not a spoiler by the way You find out immediately that this is true. It's not really a spoiler for the series at all. But what is wrong with you? That's like one of the best shows ever made. Like if you're going to watch one show, you watch Mad Men. Okay, I'll literally watch with my beautiful wife starting Saturday.

Oh, can I come over? It's incredible. And everyone loves Don Drape. Your beautiful wife will love Don Draper. Can I interrupt for one quick second? Began just asked if he could come over. Just as like a little just heads up for everybody. Never watch a movie with Began.

Yeah. You didn't need to tell me that. He literally never shuts the hell up. There's things you guys have to know about the movie. Shocker. That's shocking. You know, Mystery Science Theater 3,000? Okay.

Began is like the combination of all three characters, slightly less funny, and talks 50% more. Oh, I am sometimes, I hit. I sometimes get a hit. That's how mystery science theater is too. But here, I can defend myself because you like a movie, right? Let's, for instance, say maybe a movie like Drumline, you watch it once.

I get to talk over it and tell you stories. You didn't get to watch all of it. You get to enjoy that movie. movie again. Like you didn't even watch it the first time. If it's a good movie, it's good. If it's a bad movie, it improves it as well. It always makes it better. I see.

I see what you're saying. Can I tell you guys something? Yes. I don't like the movie drumline. I don't even know what I've never heard of it. What is what is drumline? I've never heard of it. It's Nick Cannon's Magnum Opus. Main character is just so unlikable the entire time. Okay. I'm okay with that. It ends unlikable.

I'd be okay with that though. I like the rest of development. Everyone in that show is unlikable. I love Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler is the epitome of unlikable protagonists. It's one of my favorite movies. Oh, really? You like Nightcrawler? Loved that movie. Love that movie. Oh my gosh. Pokemon Center just dropped while you guys were talking and I got to get

in the line. All right, so Trash is out for a little while. So what are we doing this episode? This is the worst episode we've ever had already and we haven't even started it. What the stuff I just got? What the, What the hell is that trash? That is actually crazy. How much money is that box worth? What is that?

Too much. Too much. What even is all that crap? Your Pokemon. Do you, are you starting to get to the point where you have ancillary cost to your Pokemon? Meaning that you now actually have to buy a separate shelf just to store those ones. Like you've actually hit like you're into incidentals at this point to have so many

Pokemon right now. It's a problem. Are you suffering from Pokemon addiction? Is this a, like, do we need to have an intervention here? crime, I mean, trash? Well, what's going to happen is all my kids are just going to come in here and they're just going to rip it all up. So that's the idea. All right.

Okay. All right. You know? You know? But I do have a problem for sure. At least in a minute. Step one. You're there.

All right. So what are we doing today? How about Casey? How about you go first? Because I think generally speaking, a lot of people inside of this audience would love to hear about better software conf. Just because it's like, it's this mysterious conference that is filled with like the coolest people in the universe. So tell me about it. Okay. So Better Software Conference is this is the second time it's been

held. The first time it was held was last year. This is a conference that is held in Sweden in the middle of nowhere. No one could ever possibly find it without an invitation to the conference. And it's unclear that you would want to find it without an invitation to the car. It is literally like it's you and some moose. And that's about it that is at this conference. And it is dedicated to exactly what its name implies. It's just for people who think that software is not particularly good right now and would like it to be better. So, for example, if you're the kind of person who boots up Adobe Premiere and thinks that that's a pretty good video editing experience, this is not the conference for you. If you boot up Adobe Premiere and you want to throw your computer through a window, this is the conference for you, right?

And so the conference is structured in such a way that there's like two days on either end that are just for participants to like hang out with each other and talk about like software development and things like that. And then there's three days like the interior of it is three days of just talks and stuff where people are talking about things they're working on that are attempting to make better software. That's how it's structured. and I mean, yeah, I wanted to support this conference because I feel like not very many conferences. I feel like it's very hard to find a conference that acknowledges that software currently is terrible, which is my kind of opinion on it. Like, I feel like it's massively under-delivering on the potential that it, you know, if you think about what we could be doing with the hardware that we have

and you look at the average user experience across most of the things, that they're using today, I think it's like we're massively underperforming where we could be. And it's, you know, normally at pretty much anywhere I would go or on the internet or anything like that, it's an uphill battle. Like most people are just like, you're just stupid. You don't know what you're talking about. Like you obviously, I don't know, you're game-back or whatever. I don't think you'd realize how complex notion is. All that.

All that stuff, right. Yeah. Which you can have any type text, you crazy man. Okay, it takes a lot of processing to get that done. Yeah. And so, you know, that's how it normally is. And that's fine. I'm used to it.

It's been that way for 20 years. I've been saying this stuff. And so that's fine. That's just how it is. It's nice to have one conference where you go and you're not going to get pushed back. Like if you're like, you know, I should be able to type text at full speed into an edit box. Like that's, I should be able to paste. I should be able to cut and paste text into an edit box.

The scroll bar should be visible on the screen so I know that I can scroll the window. Like basic crap like that. You can say that at this conference and nobody thinks you're ridiculous, right? Whereas normally you say those things. and you're like, oh, you just don't understand. Like, clean user interface means that there's no UI anywhere. You're just supposed to guess if there's a scroll bar or how you might scroll the window, right?

And so it's really that's what the conference is mostly for, is people who are in that mindset and to be supportive of that mindset. And so it's niche in that sense, because most developers, I don't think, would agree with that. They think, like, all this stuff is good or something. I don't know what they think. I don't want to put words in their mouth, but I usually get pushed back for saying things are like low performance or whatever.

So that's what it is. And for the past two years, because I wanted to support it, I did the lead off. Like I did the opening talk. Because in terms of like visibility, like people who have a lot of like, you know, followers on social media or who have YouTube channels that a lot of people watch, you know, not a lot of the people there had that, you know, going into it. And so I was kind of just trying, you know, it's basically like an awareness raising thing. I did the opening talk. And so the big oops, the one that I did that was kind of that history talk on sort of the, the, you know, ideas of object-oriented programming from the early days.

That was my opening, that was the talk that opened BSC in 2025. And then this year, 26, I did another one of that kind. It was on premature optimization as the root of all evil, the history of that saying, where it came from, what the environment of programming was like at the time and, like, who the main figures were involved in it and all that sort of stuff. It's the same kind of lecture. Casey, quick question.

Yes. Would you say today that the use of premature optimization is the root of all evil is the root of all evil? I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I know where you're going with that. I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you when you're what you're saying there. But I wouldn't say that because I think in software we have a lot of problems right now. Like I don't think just people avoiding optimization is, you know,

know, is the root of all evil. I would say it's a, it's a bad thing, like not thinking about optimization enough is, is a problem. But we've got a lot of problems. So it's one of, it's one of many. It's one of many problems that we have, is I guess how I would state it. So anyway, I gave that talk at this year's one. And then I think, you know, next year will probably, I'm going to kind of bow out from doing the opening. So next year, you know, I feel like it's a good time. It's a well-established conference now. Everyone knows what it is. So I think now it's probably a good time transition.

And I don't know who will be sort of like leading the opening up the conference next year. But it won't be me. Is it because the travels too much? Or because Sweden is a long way away? Well, I think in terms of me going to it, I might not go next year because the travel is extremely difficult for us to go there. But that's not why I wouldn't be opening it. I just think it's good to have a variety. I don't think you want a conference that Casey opens every year, right?

Like, it's not my conference, right? So I think it's good to have kind of just like a variety of people. And it's a well-established conference now. It's proven very popular. So I don't think they'll have any trouble getting someone who they want to open it, right? So I don't think they need me to do it is another way I would say that, right? I think that's really good. They've done a great job establishing the conference.

They've gotten good talks that had nothing to do with me. already, so I think it will be easy for them to put together whatever lineup they want. So I'm not concerned about that at all. But yeah, in terms of getting to the conference, it is, it is, it's two days of travel from the U.S. because you first have to get to Sweden, and then you have to get out to the middle of nowhere. And so it's a pretty, it is demanding travel. And I guess, you know, maybe that's kind of what they're going for. They want it to be a conference that only people who are pretty dedicated and actually want to, who really want to go to it, are going to go to it because it is fairly exclusive.

You have to get an invitation to go to it and so on. Question, Casey. What's the demographic of the audience? There's a like game devs, a good mix of like what? No, I would say it's, in fact, there are, like, it's probably 50-50 on game dev and app dev. And the more popular things that have sort of been associated with it and can come out of it are actually not games.

So, you know, the first, the first year, for example, some of the best stuff had nothing to do with games. You know, there was a really good... There were some really good things at it that did have to do with games, like, for example, the author of Teardown, the Vauxhall Destruction game,

it's really kind of an amazing technical game, physics game. You know, imagine Minecraft where all the blocks were physically simulated, like, and could, like, crumble and destroy. And it's... If you've never seen, tear down, you should check it out. Very, very successful game. Lots of copies sold and very popular. The author of that gave a lecture there about how they did the multi-threading of the physics, for

example. So that was a game lecture. But at that same conference, the author of File Pilot talked about how that was made, and that's obviously, has nothing to do with games. That's a, that's a file browser for Windows. That's awesome. I use it. It's my normal file browser now on Windows. And there was also a talk on like the rad debugger from Ryan Fleury, right? And that's, obviously, it's nothing to do with games. That's a debugger. This year, there was a pretty awesome presentation by the authors of a new video editing package called Blick, B-L-I-C-K, which means, I think, blink in German or something like that, which was basically people who got together at the last Better Software Conference. And in between now and then, they've basically built a

replacement Adobe Premiere that's super fast. And it looks awesome. Like when that VOD comes out, you should check it out. It is insane. Like it's, it's so, it's like instantly fast for everything you do and has all these great features. Like it, they do all this awesome stuff so you can see like, instead of just your wave form being this, you know, this, you know, just bland thing that you can't read anything from, they do this like FFT on it so you can see like where the base hits are. And it just, like, it had so much thought put into it, even for just their initial alpha version. It's so cool. And so, like, it's stuff like that that's really inspiring because you see these people who are, like, inspired to make better software by the conference and by, you know, this sort of movement.

And seeing people actually making this software to replace crappy things that I have to use every day is fantastic. And so I think it's a really cool conference for that reason. and that's basically what it's about. My talks there have both been history talks, but a lot of the talks, and that's just because I wanted something that would set an appropriate tone that would be, you know,

that would do well online that people would come to see and they'd check out the conference and check out the other talks because the talk kept posted on the conference page. But a lot of the talks there are just about software people are making. It's better. Eric Langel, who is the author of Slug, which is the font rendering library used by Apple computer, like that sort of stuff.

Like, it's very, very popular. He also presented a new equation editor that he made that looks absolutely fantastic. And I know this is kind of a niche market for people who make technical papers and write books and things like that. But it was a great presentation. I highly recommend watching that one as well. There's a ton of stuff. Someone presented a new Martin Cortote.

I can't pronounce his name. He's French, so I won't try. but presented a new raw image editor that he's been working on that has some really great features on it. So there's a ton of really cool stuff in there to check out. Fun fact, Blick, written in Odin. Yes, written in Odin. The language that Wikipedia won't recognize now has two major software, two major like art productivity software packages written in it,

Djanga FX and Blick. But, you know, not not noteworthy according to Jimmy Wales. I have a follow-up question. So you mentioned it was invite only, which I wasn't aware of. Actually. How does one get an invite? Ooh. I don't know.

Obviously, people who have gone before and are closely associated with the conference can obviously get you. Like, if you asked me, I would ask them, could you please invite trash or whatever? So one way is to know someone who goes who could like ask, right? If other than that, I don't know. Casey, can I go? Absolutely. Prime, you already had an invitation. I feel like they sent you an invitation for 2025.

I couldn't go. So, yeah. But I mean, yes, I can absolutely like pass it along. But in terms of how you actually normally get an invite, I don't really know. It's not my conference. Like I said, I wanted to be very supportive of the conference. So I am associated with it in the sense that I tried to like give them a good signal boost. But I have no like, you know, I obviously can send messages to the organizers or whatever.

But I am not responsible for it. and I have no particular clout. So they could also tell me no. I have no particular cloud. And they're like, no. And I don't know. I can't. There's nothing I could do about it, right?

So I don't have any authority. I have no power here. I'm just a dude who gave the opening talk, right? Well, Brian, it sounds like Casey's setting you up right now, okay? He doesn't want to open up the next one. Maybe you could open up the next one. I got a good idea, too. Since you're now a game dev writing stuff in Odin,

they want the conference to be hard to go to, right? They put it in North Sweden, in the sweetest woods, I'm assuming. What we should do is we should build a tower that attacks the people trying to get in and they can make it past our tower to get into the conference. It's gated. Gatekeeping.

Like this is the most, forget gatekeeping. Gatekeeping is tired. Wired is tower keeping. Like we are tower keeping this conference. I like this. Like I like the idea of someone's packing, they're packing a shield and armor. It's like, what are you doing?

I'm going to a software conference. Yeah. I'm trying. I'm trying to go to a software conference. I don't know if I will make it. Yeah. I like this idea. Because if they don't make it, they die.

They're obviously not ready for better software conferences. Yeah. And another thing that's weird about this conference, this has nothing to do with anything. I'll just end on this. And then we can talk about open sauce. Is the weirdest thing about this conference is like it's in the middle of nowhere, right? And so, you know, the entire lodging of the town is taken up by this conference.

And I mean that literally. There is nothing. There's nothing. When the conference occurs, that's it. There'd be nowhere to stay. If you were like a traveler who was trying to stay over in this town, there's nothing. Forget it. You're not staying there. So it's kind of like ridiculous, right? And it takes up the entire like, you know, place where this, the entire lodging that this town has. You would not expect this. But the place where it's held, the food, all the food is included. Like your breakfast, lunch and dinner is just included with the conference pass that you buy. the food both years has been absolutely outstanding. I do not know what the deal is, because when I've gone to Sweden, generally speaking, I apologize to the Swedes for this. I'm sorry, I'm just being honest. Like in Stockholm, when I eat there, I don't think it's a particularly good food city. Like, it's not like when you go to Tokyo or something and you're like, oh my God, the food here is outstanding. Like, I went and bought this shitty thing for $5, and it was like the best one I've ever had, right?

It's like, it's not like that where you just, everywhere you go in Tokyo, the food is incredible, right? It's not like that. It's the opposite of that. You go to Stockholm and you're like, well, some of the pastries are okay. Most of the food I had is pretty mediocre or whatever, right? It's like you wouldn't go there to eat. But this town in the middle of nowhere, whoever the chef is at this venue, the food is absolutely incredible. I do not know what it is, but every year, every single dinner and lunch, you're like, this is really good.

what's going on? So anyway, that is actually a huge selling point to go to this conference because typically when you go to a conference, the food and this stuff is just like, here's a cold sandwich. Right?

So that is awesome to hear that this is like. No, it's weird. The breakfast is whatever. Like the breakfast is just a normal like hotel breakfast kind of a thing where it's just whatever. There's some like eggs where you won't be particularly impressed by the breakfast. But the lunch and the dinner every time I'm like,

I scoop this because it's like served buffet style. Like all the attendees there, there's all these hot plates and stuff. I'm like, this is, I'm like, this is really freaking good. What is going on? So I don't know how that worked out, just random luck, I guess. It's both years. So anyway, there you go.

All right, quick question from the audience, which is from last Royal Raven, did you try a surstroming in Sweden? Sir stroming. Is that some kind of sex act? Because I didn't have a chance. I don't know. You didn't get, you didn't have a chance. I didn't get my sur strummed, if that's what you're asking.

I don't know what that is. Yeah, fermented fish. It's a fermented tinned fish that some people say it's quite pungent. Casey, you were way off. Probably I have not tried it. Oh, you know when you try it. What I will say, well, let me just add something to that, though. That is what a lot of people say, but I find that my tolerance for your country's weird food is shockingly high.

Like everyone was all going on about, oh my God, you're going to, like, Nato is terrible. never eat it. I ate it and I was like, it's fine. Have you had very little reaction? Is Sir Stroming like Lutifisk? I've heard of Lutophisk, but I don't. I don't know what that is. You've never had Lutifisk, the Christmas treat? Yeah, treat, treat might be putting, might be a little optimistic.

Well, what is it? Just a little bit of fermented fish. Oh, is that that stinky thing that people, like, throw up and they open it? Yeah. All right. That particular fish, I guess, someone mentioned it. You're not allowed to bring it on planes. That's the one.

If you open the can on plane, it is like a, we need to land. Okay, so like a stench, like a real stench. Yes, it is a real stench. True story. One time Mitch, the sales guy at Rad, like microwaved some cod in the microwave at the office. And it stunk so bad that I just worked from home for a week. It was the worst stenching of an office I have ever experienced. And we were pretty small at that time.

We were only like five people or something like that. So the office wasn't very big. this just really, yeah. So I can understand that if you've got something, if you've got one of those pungent fish things, you should not be able to open that on a plane. That's not allowed. You know, I actually feel genuinely bad buying

beef jerky. Just because even that alone is like pretty pungent for the people around you. Except for cobo beef jerky, which we've, which is now like, this podcast has been responsible for so many orders apparently at this point. I love this idea that we have somebody that is not affiliated with

the podcast, but we keep bringing them up in almost a sponsored style sounding. There's just a tiny little operation. It's like, you know, it's like a husband and wife team, I think, that just makes the jerky by hand. So I felt really good about the fact that all these, on their Instagram, they're showing all these orders lining up. I was like, oh, we did something good.

Wait, hold on. They're not vibe jerking. Like, nobody makes jerky by hand anymore, okay? Everybody vibe jerkeys. Yeah. Haven't you tried Claude Fable's new jerky? It's way better than OpenEye's latest jerky drop. It's true.

honestly it scored way higher on the benchmarks way higher on jerky bench all right so Prime let's swap conferences oh and I'll just end by the Vods for better software comments will probably start rolling out in two weeks once Sander has a chance. Sandor does the AV there he's amazing

he's really good he does like this pro level AV because he works in the film industry he does like pro level AV for the conference like basically by himself it's kind of incredible I saw you on the AV bench like you were up and what were you doing in there I thought he did such an amazing job last time And he was basically all by himself He has a camera guy who like

Does the camera form while he does all the stuff So this year I was like Hey after my talk man like just show me how to do it So you can take a break sometimes So I didn't do as good as he did obviously Because I was kind of a novice So like I I can't do as good as Sander But I kind of learned how to do it

I learned how to do the switching of the camera Which camera angle we were doing it And learn how to do the audience faders And stuff like that to get like on the mixed board and all that stuff. And so, you know, I filled in for him. I had a blast doing it. I didn't really get good enough in the short time I was doing at the conference to really be a proper standard for Sander, but I did the best I could. And he got to take a break, so that was good. But yeah, he's amazing. The reason the conference looks and sounds so good is just because he is a pro,

like, literally, like what he does for a job is being on film shoots, doing the audio for film shoots. He's like a legit, like film audio guy. Oh, that's cool. And so you go, up there and you know the av bank just is insane he's got like all the like special mics with the head headset mics with the things on all that stuff and he's got it all wired in the mixers he's got the custom like key uh one of the like you know the custom

like stream deck things set up for like all these different camera inputs so you can switch between like stage and zoomed and like you had slides and all this stuff and they have animated transitions so it's it's just really pro and it's hilarious because I've been at so many conferences that were like these

you know multi-million dollar conferences that, you know, big corporations were running and the AV is garbage, right? You go to this one that was like done by some people, some people who just kind of did it in their spare time to hold this conference. And because Sander was one of the three, you know, main people who put it together, the AV is like astronomically good. So that was pretty cool. Anyway, so the VODs will be rolling out in a couple weeks once Sander gets back from

vacation because he's taking a much needed break right now. When he comes back, he'll edit those together and put them up. And you can check out BSC 2026s, including my lecture and including other people's, like that Blick presentation, I think, is really cool that you can watch. So, open sauce. You guys, while this was happening, you were at something called open sauce, which to me sounds like what happens when you open sauce. Like, I'm going to pour it on to something. Oh, I like it, Casey. But I don't know, that's just a literal.

Was a New England accent? Open sauce. But you code an open sauce? Yeah. That's how I picture it. Like, like, Pac-P-P-P-T-C-A-C? Open the sauce. You're going to open that sauce.

Steward a sauce. Open the sauce. Put it on stuff. I don't know. That was really good. I'm from Massachusetts. I'm literally from Massachusetts. Oh, yeah.

That's why I can't do it. When I used to play Little League, for the town, the next town over, Maynard, they had, like, super, super strong Boston accents. Like, with, and saying, like, retad all the time. Oh, I love it. They're always like, they're always like, they're always like, they're like, they're like, that's retarded. Come on, that's totally retarded. All the time. Everything you do, like if you strike out, that's retarded. You're like, okay. I'm going to get Casey back to Massachusetts to see the accent come back out. We're definitely going to plan something there.

I'm dying. Anyway, so open source. Prime, tell the audience about open source. You went to open source. Where was it? Is that in California? I don't even know. I've never even been to open source. I've never even heard of open source before I heard that you guys was going. Casey just actually talk like this all the time. Casey, can you say welcome to computer enhanced.com or something? Sure. Welcome to computer adhs.com. We got a lot of great programming stuff for you to do here.

We look at the code. We look at the assembly language. We see how long it's taken. I don't know. It's not my problem. You know, I ran the thing, the benchmarks. It ran crappy. So we tried to fix it.

The process is a piece of shit. I don't know what's going on. Anyway, I'm going to go make some linguine. That's really good. I wish I could do that. I wish I could do that too. Afterwards, I'm going to take this recording and just like sit in my room and I'm like, retarded.

Retire. I love that. Okay, so a little fun fact about OpenSauce. It was its fourth year as a conference. I believe the original intent was after Maker Faire went out of business or stopped happening. There was no alternative. There's nothing where a bunch of people who build stuff can get together and show people that they build stuff.

Can you, for those of us who don't really know much about this, can you also explain kind of what Maker Faire was? I was kind of out of the loop on that, too. I've never been to Maker Faire, but the general vibe that I've gathered from it is that, like, you know, there's a bunch of people that just make things, 3D print them, hardware, kind of slap everything together. And it's like, look, home arcade. Look, I've made, you know, this is a wheelchair that goes 40 miles an hour. Like, you know, like, cool. Okay. Like that kind of stuff.

Like home brew shit. Yeah. Yeah, stuff that's very unusual. Like the first year I went, one of the first things I saw was somebody made the International Space Station and it would position itself and like near an Earth orbit for exactly where it was, including its like rotation and all that. Okay. So it's like it's nothing that's like super useful, but a lot of like just super cool things that

happened. So it's pretty dang awesome. And so the first year I went was three years. ago. So I didn't go to the first open sauce. I went to the second open sauce. And it was an absolutely amazing experience. So of course I went last year, absolutely amazing experience. That's where I got to meet Eric Comment Etiquette. If you know Comment Etiquette, one of my favorite YouTube channels, he's the one that shows you how to have proper and polite discourse on the internet. Oh, really? Yeah, it's very funny. A lot of Hillary deleted her emails type stuff and all that.

Bush did 9-11 inside job. And just like, it's just the most unhinged emails all that are the most unhinged comments of all time. Very funny. Okay, perfect. So this is a facetious. facetiously. Yes. I think he was a writer for several years on Always Sunny. Is that what it was? Oh, wow. Okay.

He was a writer on some show for a long time. Very funny guy. Like when you do it's, it's, I forget what it was, but it's very, very good. Anyways, very funny guy. He, uh, so got to meet a bunch, like you get a lot of really cool YouTubers are there. Michael Reeves, Doug Doug, Doug William Osmond, backyard scientist. Like all these people. The primogen.

I was there as well. Uh, vegan bot. have heard of him. Pretty awesome. Well, Casey, if there's anyone on YouTube, you'll be like, wait, who's that person? They have a giant line. You find out that's a person who's a chemistry YouTuber who has 10 million, and they build the most dangerous chemicals every week

and almost die. And then, wait, who's that right there? It's like, they make home rockets. It'd have 10 million subs and people. Got it. Every single variation of science, there's someone there doing it at a intense, large level in their backyard. And like... And almost dying. A lot of

backyard. Okay. A big part of it. Astero. right it's just like all there's a lot of like don't try this at home no really don't try this at home yes yes most of them they're like i don't even have to warn you because you don't have this 150,000 machine that also needs a 150,000 dollar processor that also like it's just like you don't even you're unless if you're a giant company you won't even have these things so it's like they're just crazy items there is have you guys ever read the article it's kind of it's old at this point but it was called the atomic boy scout no

So I feel like what you're saying just kind of stirred a memory I'd forgotten about this, but a long time ago there was kind of like the OG don't do this at home YouTuber before YouTube. There was a kid who decided for his Boy Scout

like merit badge. He was going to try to build a nuclear reactor. And so he started buying like old clocks that had like the radium backplate on the like biolumet like the not paloops, the luminescent backplate and scraping it off. And he succeeded in making like a nuclear thing to the point where his backyard

ended up having to kind of be condemned. Like I totally had forgotten about this article. It was pretty famous. And I was like, oh, that guy was just a YouTuber before YouTube. Anyway, continue. Sorry. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Dyrot. Pyro was there. Styro pyro. Definitely was there. Yeah. Like so many people were like Nile red, that's the big famous chemical

YouTuber. There's all these people that you'd go and find and they're like all there. So pretty much every... What'd you do? What'd you do at the conference? Well, let me tell you. Okay. So the last couple years, I was on panels, right? We yapped or I did a family feud. Kind of just did like joke stuff with the other creators. But this year, they gave

me the main stage for 45 minutes, which was a lot of fun. So I got main stage, Saturday right in the middle of the day. So 1240. Pretty awesome. And we threw a very big event, which was fantastic. Effectively, like 2,000 plus people showed up for this event.

And so let me kind of walk you through what happened, because I think it was a lot of fun. Photos and stuff are going to be coming out, and I'm sure we'll have a video and all that at some point. But right now, we're going to have to go Acapella on this one, okay? Was Teage there? Or is it just you a meeting? Oh, I'm going to tell you all about it. That's why Teage isn't here right now. Oh, because he partied a little too hard.

He went too hard. He went too hard. Dude, he drank, I saw at one point drink three Coca-Cola's in a single evening. What? He had two coax in his hand. He's like, I don't want to get back in line. I'm just getting two at a time. We were like, caffeine-free, I assume.

He was on Coke zeros. No, they were real Coca-Cola's? Holy cow. All right. So he's in like rehab now or what? Yeah, yeah. He's detoxing right now. Cool.

Well, hey man, sometimes you go a little too. Sometimes life gets away from you. Yeah, I know. He's not a caffeine drip right now. just kind of ease himself back into reality. Yeah, good idea. The funny, like, a little fun backstory when I asked, like, hey, I think I got an event, that's pretty cool. You should let me throw it.

The answer from the organizers were, you know, we're really full. I just don't think we can do it. And then I showed them a video of what we were thinking. And they're like, oh, yeah. How about, like, how about noon on Saturday? Let's do this. It's awesome. All right, this is awesome.

Because it was a fun show. So the premise of the idea is that we're going to get. get on stage and we have a Nintendo GameCube, a proper copy of Super Smash Bros. I put it in there and then Teach presses a couple buttons and boom, up on the main stage, on the big screen is Super Smash Brothers. But here's the twist is that we have created, melee of course, yes, melee, obviously. We have created a program where bots written in Python play the game. But when we start at the first time, everyone just stands there and someone will jump.

you know, then someone else will jump. Like nothing, right? So they're empty bots. And then what we do is we show some QR codes on the screen and say, okay, everyone from the audience, we're going to divvy you up into separate sectors, and you get to join in your sector, and you guys all prompt an LLM to write the code for your bot. And so that way we play the bot via the Python, but the LLM writes the code for the bot. but the LLM's instructions are from the audience.

How do you mix all those prompts together? So basically like the audience, the bots are like sitting there and they're reading like some data file that's like what they should do or are you hot swapping the code in? Like the LLM's write the code and then you swap it in.

Yes. Yes. There's stuff that allows you to control Super Smash Brothers via Python. So it's like the inverted. It's more like my environment reads the current state okay I need the press an A You know like it instead tells But the point is the audience like when the audience prompts the LLM

It generates some Python and then you swap that Right run the program yes Okay yeah I was like at somehow their their LLM To get onto the thing right Yeah to run Super Smash Brothers from zero to fight Takes about six seconds Okay got right it's it's pretty quick And to answer you trash what was your question

Oh how do I get it all summarized After we send all those messages We then send it off to the LLM to say like, hey, pull out every single concept from it all. You know, make sure we have everything that's, you know, naturally there. So sometimes it's like, uh, when you see somebody, you must attack them right away. Next line. When you see somebody, you must avoid them at all costs, right? Like you get the whole audience and it tries to attempt to program this thing out and all that.

And it's a lot, a lot of fun. But obviously, it's so open sauce. There's 2,000 plus people in this room. So we couldn't just do it the normal way. So I go out there. I explain what we're going to do. do. And then I say I need four volunteers. And it was a fun gag, but it did make me feel a little bit sad, because the first three rows, audience, uniformly stood up and was like, me, me, me, me,

like they are so excited. And then off to the side, I had Doug Doug, Eric, uh, common etiquette, bash buddy and code bullet, all four amazing YouTubers, uh, great content creators. They're all just standing on the side with megaphones, ready to actually control the audience. So I obviously, I picked those four, definitely not planted volunteers. Do come and stand up at the head. Does anyone have a megaphone? They just happened to show up with megaphones because they thought it might be useful.

Yes, it might be useful. They just showed up with it. And so, of course, they all four stood up each with their own section, and so they could walk down their section and yell, like what they think they should do, and then everybody worked together. And it was a lot of fun. Some of the highlights were that Doug Doug, he was Donkey Kong.

and for whatever reason enough of his audience wrote in that they should grab jigglypuff put jigglypuff on their head and walk off the edge thus killing himself but also jigglypuff that was a gigantic highlight that just was a lot of fun people were screaming so much the sound of it was so loud that there was like this back area like the green room and stuff like that it was reported to me that it was so loud that people had to quit talking when the audience would cheer and yell. And then they could resume normal conversation again because it was just so intense.

Prime, I think according to a rumor from Zanus, there's footage in linear right now, but you could show the audience potentially. I don't know if that's going to happen. I saw some people ask. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw some of it. It's kind of, it's hard to get the, like,

the really the big experience here. Zanus shoot it over for me because it's not quite organized in an easy way for me to be like, here's this part. Because I looked through it, and then I didn't have. have time to actually like look through it.

Zanis, can you just put it to me in terminal chat? Nice. I thought we agreed that it was going to be called Zanus last time. I call him Zanis. Okay, Zanis. I don't think Zanis like agreed to that one. Zanis? Okay, Zanis.

I'm pretty sure Zanis loves that one. Okay, Zanis. I will say every time so the strategies is people like so each, the crowd was divided into four. They're in the front like, you know, talking with, you know, megaphones. Code Bullet had one of the worst rounds ever. Just Fox like died instantly.

he was playing fox and the next round for some reason his audience messed up and they said let's just do it again no changes but because everyone else had made so many other changes he ended up winning that round he ended up literally living and it was very funny

okay here you go I'm gonna show you guys something but I don't think you guys are gonna be able to hear it I'm like 99% sure of it you're not gonna be able to hear it so hold on the audience those that are live on Twitch are gonna hear it let's see how I'm gonna just like got you. Well, let's switch here.

So yeah, you're going to get it. Everybody's ready. All right, fantastic. I'm super excited to do this. This is Super Smash Brothers Mail. Holy. Oh, my God. I didn't know about the Mollett, really. And now we're finally ready to play. Dude, that one looks so epic.

You guys didn't bring one? What? We've been doing this. I'm making fun of them for not bringing controllers. I need four volunteers. I need four volunteers. You did a great big. Because we, the title was like 2,000 people play.

All right. Grab out your controllers. Grab out of your controllers. Yeah, so we just have a bunch of people who are ready. So they all stood on front of it and so they could all yell. Code bullet. So it turns out the megaphone that we got him, had like a musical part to it that could go,

you know, like the classic piano song that everyone can play. Yeah, it's for Elise, I think. For release. Yeah. Played it. Nonstop. And then even the prompt instructions kept saying, for Elise, like win for Elise.

It just kept on it just kept on going like every single time I would talk That same song would start up again on the megaphone There was like it was just pure chaos at all times and it worked out So much better than I ever thought it could have worked out Yeah we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna do another one on Twitch we're gonna just Twitch only Twitch chat versus YouTube chat I'm forcing Prime to do it right we're doing yes we actually well well we actually have tried to make some potential Some potential like partners on this one And there is a non-zero chance that we're going to get a group of people to all join in

where on Twitch stream, each individual Twitch stream will map to a singular character. And there will be some sort of great battle between four streamers to see who really has the best chat of them all. Yes. Well, we got some more, we got some more from the beginning. So we've got now, we've gathered like 2,000 people in this room. It's noon. Teach is really the mastermind behind all of this. He wrote one to the code for all of, you know, we got ideas, we got jokes.

However, he was like the one coding late into the night, waking up early, going to do there. So obviously, T's just so responsible. He was there at 8 a.m. And they had tested it 20 times and everything had worked perfectly. So then they get on stage in front of 2,000 people go to start the program. And we've, of course, see a brand new bug we've never seen in the history of testing this ever, ever, ever, with all 2,000 people gathered in front of us. And we don't know if it's even going to work. So there was like a to me.

Can I tell a fun story for that one? So first off, right before that, I'm. I go to see if I, like, I go and test out if I can jump off the stage or not, like how far down is it actually? I could, but then the audience guy or the runner said I'm not allowed to do it. Anyways, when I come back from, or right before I go out there, I walk into the green room, TJ's prompting. I'm like, yeah, I'm just doing a little couple, couple last quick things.

I'm like, maybe we should be prompting right now, TJ. And he's just like, no, it's just a couple. It's just some styles. Nothing bad's going to happen. Walk out. I tell people that TJ's 11th hour prompting right now. Of course, go out on stage. The server, Cloudflare is just responding with like,

sorry, Cloudflare went back down. And it's obviously us. What did we do? Nobody has an idea. Then T.J. goes into the microphone and goes like this. Hey, can you quit sharing my screen? Yes. Yes.

At that point, this is what he does. Opens up the Cloudflare panel. Copies. Cursor, WTF, paste, enter. That's it. Like, that's all it was. because we had nothing left and I kid you not

within one moment I saw on the screen something flash up that just said minus one we pressed play boom it just started working and so it's just like after that he had three agents

running all with the same stack trace nobody knows what actually happened because it was right on stage and I had to sit there for like three to four minutes just yacking it up with the audience while T's just like

it's not working it's not working like the feeling of being in front of 2,000 people and having your software not be able to launch was one of the most stressful experiences of my entire lifetime. But when TJ copied and pasted it from the Cloudflare panel,

I literally thought, we're not doing it. We're like literally going to have to cancel this live on stage. There's no universe this is going to work out. And it worked out and I could not even believe it. No, the funniest part is it's happening. I'm in the front row. Me and Zanis,

we're manning to try and like make sure that the prompts, no one's doing racist things or bad things and highlight funny prompts. and it's happening. It stops working. I start sweating so fast and so quickly. My shirt was like soaking wet in like a minute. And I was like, well, that took 30 minutes of debugging.

It finally is working. We can do a little bit of the show. I look up. It had been like five minutes. I was like, oh, wait, we have a whole show. It wasn't even bad. It was, we were able to get back to it pretty quickly, which was very, very nice. And we got going.

And by there were some really funny prompts that people did that were just absolutely, someone even just sent rigged. That's it. Because they lost, so their prompt to the bot was rigged. No matter what you told people to do, no one ever followed instructions. It was always very,

very just ridiculous messages. We did set it up, so like Teage put in there that all, it knew all the detailed smash info. It knows about wave dashing, and it knows about L canceling and all that. So on the last rounds, people are just putting in,

Prime is reading him, and he's like, I don't know what any of this means. And then that's when Teach said, you were embarrassing him, because it was just pure super smash. smash bros talk like just it was like day or near to there i was like what is that combos i know i was just like what does that even mean and then tj's like well i'm glad that you prepared for

this thing that we've known for months so i not know you anything that was appropriate at that moment i opened up the game cube and took my disc and i said i'm going home i'm tired of this crap uh what was the what was the a i so the ai bots what were they allowed to use as input like to this Was it just a video of the screen? There's a library called Live Melee, and this is one of the reasons why it's worked so well. So I don't know if you know this Casey, but Super Smash Brothers Melee is the most intense video game community ever.

Like they are one of... I did not know that. So when we started playing his event, Zanis who's helping on it says, I want to learn more about Super Smash. So I said, fantastic. Here's a nice hour-long documentary to learn about it. He goes, that was good, I go, cool.

Now you can start the next one. This one's four hours. But you might want to do this one before that, which is only an hour. I'm not joking at all. There is collectively, I think, eight hours of high quality documentaries about this community that they've made because it's like so intense. Oh, okay.

So there's like a library that like reads the internal state of the game? Every single thing that's happening at all moments of the time you have access. It's called Lib melee. It's been around for a while. When like COVID happened, the programmers, all those Super Smash brothers loving programmers all like swarmed around it and wrote amazing code so you could play a fighting game all. a fighting game online with zero lag, frame perfect, it's incredible.

And so we already had this lib melee that tells you every single thing about the game, and then we just hooked up into that. I see. So basically the LLMs can operate directly on the internal game state. They don't even have to, like, do vision wreck on the screen or anything. That's cool. So, okay, that's cool.

They can do frame perfect inputs, which is super common in smash. We have them, there's a thing called wave dashing, which is like, it's technically like abusing the inputs to like get to this moment where you can't be hit and move faster. We had one moment where they're just wave dashing beyond each other, like real players and we're like, they might be too good to fight. We might have.

Yeah, at one point Fox, Captain Falcon kept on trying to punch him. And Fox would just dodge and just wait for the next one. Dodge, wait for the next one. And just kept on doing the same thing over and over again. Just like, no, I don't want to fight you. Then, of course, beat him. But it was pretty exciting.

And if I'm not mistaken, Fox won, right? Yeah, Fox ended up, yeah, Code Bull. Which was Code Bowl. I will say early on Jigglypuff was dominating with resting. Gigli Pupp would just float into the middle, rest, people die. It was, I thought Jigley Pub was going to win it all. But then Fox just, I think Fox is the best bot right now in the world. So a slight advantage, but don't worry, Casey, we're going to force you to play, okay?

We're going to actually make you, you're going to... Make me do what? You're going to be one of the prompters to prompt one of these bots. I want to see how good you are at prompting a... Remember, you don't have to read the code case. You don't have to. We're going to throw it away after it's done. But also, but you forget that the problem here is not my inexperience with AI.

My problem here is my inexperience with Smash Brothers. I've literally never played the game even once. I'd be like, I don't even know until the, I, the first thing I'd tell the AI is, hey, AI, can you tell me how to play Smash Brothers first? That's great. So this is what we'll do. We'll have Casey, you can have a decent model. Everyone else, they can be on chat TPT 2.5, okay? Right, okay, yeah, they nerf me.

I get the, I get the latest. model drop and everyone else has to use like some old ass, like, you know, thing that could run like chat dungeon or whatever it is. I think if we just gave you a list of names of things you could do, you could play and create a great, actually

a decent bot. Probably a bot that could beat me because I also have played the game just a, you know, a handful of times. Well, I guess one question I would sort of have, and maybe this is just me not understanding, but couldn't you just ask the AI to make a good Smash Brothers bot because isn't there enough information in like the AI's training set

to understand what you might want to do or is it just not not really like you'd have to have an agent swarm and you'd have to feed it documentation about Smith Brothers and and give it a ton of time to iterate on that is like like what's why can't you just say make a good bot like what why do you have to be specific so we other than to be other than to make it fun yeah yeah so we weren't letting the bots talk to the internet right they're not able to do tool calls out to the Oh, okay. So they can't read a strategy guide and refresh their... Yes.

We give them the basic information. The reality is someone could have found the open source best bot ever and been like, copy this bot's code. Yeah, clone this repository and running. Yes, yes, yes. That was out there. Okay, okay, okay. So they were kind of nerfed from actually being able to iterate on open information that, you know, so obviously their training set doesn't probably include complete verbatim copies of all the things they would need. Yes.

They might contain it, but it's really hard to coax it out of it. Out of it, yeah. And so it's just like, even though it's in there. The LLMs just have all of humanity inside of it. Yeah, it's in there somewhere. Yeah, it's in there somewhere. You also limit every person to 140 characters, like OG Twitter. So their actual prompt is 140.

You guys that make best bot ever. So, okay, be pretty abbreviated. You couldn't be like, go find this thing, download the boat. Yeah, well, I guess you can't download anything, but yeah, okay. The idea would have been to just simply do, like, your job is to say, when hanging off the edge, press up. Right. But the idea was like give it really simple direct responses. Was the idea that in general you are going to like,

you will grab all of these and you'll put all of them into one prompt. So it's not like you're not overwriting the last person's instructions. You're just like it's a giant fucking mush. And if two people gave conflicting instructions like you said before, that it's just like the AI is going to have to just it'll do what it's going to do. and off to go. Yep. How long did it take

to like process a problem? Was it pretty cool? It was not too long probably. Oh, people did do the then kiss. Let's see. Probably there was actually several ones with the word kiss. It was mostly the focus of some of the crowd would.

The crowd really just wanted to see Donkey Kong and Jiggly Puff kiss. Very weird. But yes, we just mush them all together and it take about 45 seconds to summarize in about a minute and a half to write the code, like tops. So it was pretty quick.

We used Grock 4 or 5 fast. It's just really fast. And so it's just like... And they start fighting. Do you guys watch them just fight for, what, like a minute? Yeah, yeah. We had a one minute round. Often it would not go to that long.

Fun fact, the final round. Fox had two wins and we needed one more win for whoever is going to be like the winner. And it got to the point where Captain Falcon or Captain Falcons hanging on the edge. And when he would fall, he would somehow get back on. He'd like, get up, go back off the edge. and just like, his strategy was to just make somebody else fall off and die. Fox kept jumping down, doing his like little, like, fiery, upby smash back up on and doing this over and over again.

And then Captain Falcon had all timed out just right where he, like, fell onto a cloud. It confused his programming. He then just walked off the edge and died. And Fox won, like, by peer accident. It went on for like 45 seconds of them just doing this little dance. And they just messed up and fell off. You were like, oh, my God. to be a tie again. Please don't be a tie. And T's like, we are waiting. Okay. We're going to see. Something

new will happen and something new happened. Five seconds remain. We were over our allotted time to be at the audience at that point. We had to get off stage. But we wanted a winner. We couldn't just like end on a tie. We're just like, okay, we got to get someone has to win. And so it turned out Code Bullet one, who he told his audience after winning the previous one said, okay, nobody make a single prompt. were no one do it. Not a single one. 65 prompts came in. Apparently 65 people had different opinions about what should or should not be done at that point.

Well, that was the other thing we didn't talk about at the very beginning. We flash four QR codes. Scan the QR codes, get on the site. Okay, well, you know, let's get 2,000 people on mobile networks at the same time and see what loads. It was not loading. And then Teets' program wasn't working and people weren't able to load the site. And it was like, oh, yeah, I forgot. 2,000 people can't get on the same website on their phones at the same time.

Luckily, it did work out, but this is crazy. We never even thought of this. People in the back, the QR codes weren't big enough for them to scan because it's 2,000 people and it goes so back. And we were like, it's the biggest QR code in the world. How could you not scan it? It's like huge room. So, yeah, next time we're going to go even bigger QR codes.

I don't know. If you've never been like in an audience, mobile networks just don't work, right? Like when you get too many people together. It's a problem. Yes. And so it just, we just never once thought, Oh, shoot, there's just a lot of people in a very small area. Dang, that doesn't work.

And so that was a big learning experience right there for us. Yeah, the antithesis of a better software cough. Exactly. Like, literally, Teg is going on stage. Teage literally said this. I maybe five and four going on. Maybe we should use five, six soul. You said that.

And I go, Tige, we're about to go on stage. We've tested for an away con. We're not going to do new tests. I'm glad it worked out. Teage loves changing things up until the last moment. I'm more of a, let's not change it, like, three days before and tested 500 times. T.J. is like, I got one more idea. I got one more in me. I got 10,000 lines more in me. Let's get this done.

You know, I can imagine what you were feeling being up there, not knowing that was going to work. I'm kind of in that zone, though. I'm with you guys on that one because both years at the Better Software Conference, unlike pretty much any other time I give a talk, those history talks are so information dense and so long that I never, I'm always like trying to like improve and fix the slides right up to the last minute. So both times I basically had to give talks without ever having rehearsed the slide deck I was on. And so it felt like that.

It felt it was definitely that kind of thing. It's rough. it's exciting it's exciting especially when you go to the next like you're trying to do a transition you go to the next slide you're like and also including just so you know yeah you're always like well I don't know what's coming

up next because I can't quite remember if I removed this slide or not or whatever right so you hit the next point you're like well I guess that's the next slide if I was ready for it right I will say for this conference since it's a William Osmond started it anyone who's a William Mosman fan knows he's a little unhinged and so once you see him

on stage Lindsay when she saw him he goes is he always like this? Because they were doing it. There was a segment called a carp tank. It was like a shark tank parody. And someone brought it a robot. And pretty much William and the other investors, the other carp, talked about trying to have sex with the robot the whole time.

It's like, it's his conference. And we're like, yeah, it's his conference. And so it's like, you can be a little unhinged. You know, it's definitely embraces like, you know, things can go wrong. Things can, which makes it feel better. But we wanted it to be good. Yeah. Carp tank.

Also, we saw a live. marriage proposal during after after someone showed off actually Casey to a robot or to a human there was two humans together but the thing they were presenting was they were presenting the world's I would say worst video game monitor which was just a printer that printed

out the frames one at a time yes yes they were playing Pokemon actually dude that is freaking dude that is like OG do you remember like the world's like some of the earliest computer games were like a teletype that you could play chess with you would

type in the move and it would print out like what its move was. That is hard for, dude. That is awesome. That's the way it goes. That's the original way games were played. Well, it was one of those things too where it was like, okay, we're to show this demo of this game, and they were going to show Pokemon. And then, just to get to the Pokemon

start screen was 10 minutes of printing. So then they're on stage, and they're kind of like filling time. And I'm like, okay, we just did our presentation, dying for five minutes. Everyone is dying in some capacity. here because it's like, you know.

If you can't wait 10 minutes for your start screen, then, you know, you clearly don't want to play Pokemon enough. Yeah, exactly. Well, it wasn't just that. So, like, I don't let you know, like, open sauce, it's, like I was saying, it's not just coders. It's so many, it's ever, coding is, like, the smallest genre of science. Right, yeah.

It sounds like it's more about, like, sort of the other things. It's the collision of all of them together, which makes it super fun. It is, it is one of the nerdiest places you'll be. I'm just walking around. backstage, whether you hear all the creators, and I just walk by Vsauce, and this is all I hear him say. He says, well, technically, the Earth is the world's biggest telescope, and I'm still walking. Yeah, all right.

It's like, might as well, yeah. That is the combos that are happening everywhere. Every person you meet who's, like, into something, like, I'm in the chemistry, you walk by, what are they talking about? Well, technically, that chemical, you need a store and triple, I'm like, they're nerding out on the thing they're nerding out on. It's definitely not like a get-together and party. well, there's partying, but it's, I couldn't believe how much science stuff I heard everyone

talking about at dinner in the morning hungover, you know? It was good. All right. Oh, no, no, no, say another. Say another if you'd like that. No, it's for you. I was saying, who are some of the other people? So we did get to do one other special thing.

We got to go to Mark Rovers, the crunch labs, their area, and see, like, all of their, what a, like, wacky, giant operation is. It was exactly what you want. It's filled together with, like, a science experience. been only a way bigger version of it everywhere. And it was definitely like, it was inspiring me where I was like, we need this for programmers. I need a place where I go. And it's like, what is they like?

It's cartoonishly big. Cartoonishly big, cartoon. But it's like all the science guys have figured it out. Us programming people have it. But I want to go to a place where you walk in. It's like, yeah, we have an Odin room. What's an Odin room? Just go in the Odin room.

Okay. And like, I don't know what's going to be in there, but I'm going to fill it up. But whatever. The best, the best conference ever. one hasn't gone before, they really should go. Yes. Yes. Unlike better software conf, this one is invite

for everybody. I think, like, typically, like, 40,000 people end up coming through. It's a pretty big... How do they... This must be in a very large venue for 40,000. It's like... It's a camp, not a campground.

It's like the rodeo grounds. Isn't it where the... It's like a... Yeah, it's like a... It's a mega complex. It's a mega complex. Where is this? It was San Mateo Event Center. San Mateo.

Okay. That sounds vaguely Californian. It is. It's right in the valley. So San Mateo Event Center is, it's a spanning 48 acres. Jesus. Okay. So this is like a Grateful Dead concert.

Yeah. The thing that we were on was probably like two to three acres worth of stuff. You know, it's just like it was pretty big. Like the huge event center like items. Like the hall, the main hall that we were in, the one that we did the main show in. the chairs go down so long. There has to be 170 rows of chairs.

And then there's just, you know, and then there's standing room along the sides, which also gets filled. It just is, it's crazy. Well, and there's like hall after hall. I mean, there's like, there was like robot fighting, multiple versions of robot. Every iteration of robot fighting you've probably heard was happening somewhere.

Right. Yeah. That sounds exactly like in the wheelhouse of this like robot fights of various kinds. Unitry robots. They had unitary robots that had unitary robots that that fought each other. Yeah, they fought inside of a mini UFC octagon.

It was actually a horrible little octagon. It's so funny. Is this a conference that I could go to or would it be like the Indiana Jones and the last crusade where Marcus is like in the foreign country

asking if anyone speaks English? Like how out of place? I think you have a great time to walk around for a day. You would have the absolute most fun ever. It also is like, okay, cool. It's just so many like,

we met some people who they made a computer read of a Rubik's Cube where you're literally you know just cool you want to it's just you know registers anything that is stupid computing someone has pushed it to the limits it also if you just have like if you had a kid you could walk

around with a kid for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and just go over every wacky science experiment wacky thing it is it's not like do you have to be your kid or can you just bring a random kid like you just find a kid on the street and you just bring him like hey I'm going to this open sauce thing Began said if I had a kid I could

go to it so I brought a kid yeah I went on Craigslist and I said looking for a kitty likes arch Linux. Yeah, yeah. And somehow it didn't get arrested. This is turning weird. Yeah, Began did not get arrested. Turning weird. Turning weird. It was weird already.

True. One thing I think it's inspiring. I don't know if you saw the top thing, but like, what do you call it? Knife taser fighting? That was a big part of this thing. What? Yeah. Yes, you heard me.

It's just here. I'll post a link for the chat. That's the check and link. It's literally two knives that have tasers on them. There was two people fighting. with these constantly on the grounds at all times. If you wanted to get into a knife taser fight, if you got into a fight with your friend,

let's go. Knife taser fight. Isn't that dangerous? Yes. Is the knife sharp? No, no, the knife isn't sharp,

but the tase is tasing. So, very tasable knife. Yeah, but what I'm saying is it's not, you know, at some time like you go to a maker sciencey thing, everything's supposed to be like really educational and helpful.

That's not the vibe here. A lot of it is like unhinged. Everything is like, this is dangerous and why'd you bill it well it's dangerous is why so yeah taser knife okay so then I brought it that I was like yo Will can I bring knives that are tasers and he's just like yeah

you're gonna bring a shield he's like yeah okay sure long as everyone can have a small shield as well like then I'm thinking it's completely hard yeah we're not savages yeah exactly okay well that's to stand up

thank you for joining us this week it's been a conference week Yeah, it was a conference week. Prime's going to do a great outro right now. Here it goes. Hey, thanks for watching. Beautiful. That's beautiful.

Casey, thanks for joining us. Hopefully you're feeling okay. You kind of seem a little tired right now that the Swedish time change hitting you twice in just a few days had to be pretty rough. Yep, it was a bit rough. Did you eat some Swedish fish while in Sweden?

So I did not. I actually do eat Swedish fish while I'm here. imported Swedish fish because they're so freaking good. But actually while I'm there, I get this thing that's really, it's like super low rent stuff you get at the 7-11 called

SuperCERT, S-U-R-T, and it's basically like if you imagined someone took sour patch kids, but flattened them into like ovals. Okay, you're really into flattened treats such as like misprinted

fortune cookies and flattened. Topologically, all these things are discs already. Why are we pretending otherwise? I love it. I love this idea of going into a snack meeting in case he's like, you're consulting for them, and you're like, all right, I love what you're saying. Yeah.

But what if we flatten it and make it circular? Every time as he gets a snack, it's like that's what I kind of imagine like Joni Ives or Johnny Ives or whatever the hell his name is. That's what I imagine it is. It's like, yeah, we paid this guy $10 million and he walked in and he was like, what if it was rounded? Yeah. And like, that's it. And that's it's $10 million, right, or whatever.

It's like, okay. Spectacles and then walks out. Like, I could do that. Like, I could walk into the room and go, what if you guys rounded that? Like, give me the money. Flatened it for you. And this is, yeah, my thing is just flattened it into a disc. Everything's a pepperoni for Casey.

Yeah. Damn. All right. I mean, if it's, yeah, it's pepperoni, Skies, you know. New Casey unlock this stand-up. I'm very excited about that. That's going to be a main stay now. No problem.

All right. Bye, everybody. Take it easy. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you for joining us. Dude up the day.

Fibing errors on my screen. Terminal coffee. And hell live in the...