This Week in Startups - Kazakh Bitcoin mining outage, Synthetic actors, Memes + Ben Awad: Gen Z Programming Mentor | E1355

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

Jason and Molly cover how 15% of the world’s bitcoin mining network going down when Kazakhstan’s internet was shut off (3:11) and Chainalysis' scam report (12:32). Then they do a "We Live in the Future" segment about AI created actors (16:49) and “Memes of the Week” review of Marc Andreessen's tweets (25:32). Finally, Producer Rachel wraps with an "OK Boomer" interview with YouTube creator and software engineer Ben Awad (38:43).  (00:00) Jason and Molly intro the show (01:15) A special welcome video for Molly (03:11) Kazakhstan crypto (10:42) OpenPhone - Get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist (12:32) Chainalysis 2021 Crypto Crime Report (16:49) WLITF Synthesia replacing cameras with code (21:06) Ourcrowd - Check out the deal of the week at https://ourcrowd.com/twist (22:26) Possibilities for AI deepfakes (25:32) Memes of the Week - Marc Andreessen (34:18) OK Boomer - Producer Rachel introduces the guest (37:12) Revelo - Get 20% off the first 3 months by mentioning TWIST at https://revelo.io/twist (38:43) Ben Awad Gen Z Programming Mentor FOLLOW Ben: https://twitter.com/benawad FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

Hey everybody, hey everybody. It's Fridays this week in startups. And we're winding down Molly's first week as my full-time co-host. We're going to cover some news today. Fifteen percent of the world's Bitcoin mining network was taken offline on Thursday after Kazakhstan. Nice. As president turned off the nation's internet. I kid you not. And a report just came out at 2021 crypto scammers stole $14 billion. But this number might not be as bad. As it seems, might in fact be an improvement depending on who you believe. If you believe Jason, it might be worse than Matt. We are also going to do some fun stuff because Friday, we have a We Live in the Future segment about AI-enabled deep fakes delivering some shocking news to the staff here at this week in startups. We're going to go over the memes of the week, all of which literally all the memes of the entire week were provided by junior associates at the A16C. berm via Mark Andreessen's Twitter account. And finally, producer Rachel has another great OK boomer interview with YouTube creator and software engineer Ben AWad. And Molly, as a special surprise to you, as a way to welcome you to the show, the producers made this little tribute video. What?

Roll the tape. These weekend startups welcome Smolnywood. The team is getting ready from Montana to Canada. Oh, my God. To give joy, call a big hand. Oh, my God. He's unflammatory. He's breaking stories.

But at unicorn cup tables looking ever so grand. Hooray for Mollywood. All business and quit with Mollywood. This is the show for you if you are interested in being invested. So give the notice there now. Start up the live stream now. From all of us here at this week in Startups, welcome Mollywood. Welcome, Molly. It's been a great first week.

This is the greatest day of my life. This week in Startups is brought to you by OpenFone. As a startup founder, a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back. But using your personal cell phone number as your company's number isn't one of them. Open Phone makes it easy to get business phone numbers for you and your team right on top of. of your existing devices. Visit openphone.co slash twist to get 20% off your first six months. Our Crowd helps you invest early in pre-IPO companies alongside professional VCs. If you're interested in investing, you can join Our Crowd for free at OUR-C-O-W-D.com slash Twist.

And Revello, looking to affordably scale your product development with global tech talent in US time zones, hire vetted remote developers in Latin America with Revello. Get 20% off for the first three months at Revello.io. So what's in the news, Molly? We're going to talk about crypto a little bit and various disruptions, specifically of Bitcoin and mining and a little bit of scamming. So the big news this week, actually, which has been sort of under our radar and a lot of people's radar, I think, because they haven't been.

laser focused on Kazakhstan, which I'll forgive you. I mean, I'm kind of obligated to do one of those. You pretty much have to. So Kazakhstan has been having all of these protests, and they've been over a variety of things. There's been sort of like income inequality and corruption and autocracy, but part of the protest was also around internet access, and there was a big internet shutdown. So that is, you know, your basic global news update. And for our purposes, super relevant because that internet shutdown took about 15% of Bitcoin's total mining network offline.

Wait, 15% of Bitcoin mining is in Kazakhstan? Apparently 18% is in Kazakhstan. I'm sorry. It is nice. My country, we make great Bitcoin and goods to my wife. My wife, she has a Bitcoin miner. I really didn't want to do it and I had to. You had to do it.

I'm so sorry to the people of Kazakhstan. It's not our fault. I mean, it is our fault now, but it's not. Kazakhstan is the second biggest country for Bitcoin mining. And then here's the shocker. What's the biggest country do you think? Well, I would think the U.S., right? Well, it is.

I think a lot of people would have thought China, but of course, you know, China basically banned it. And so Kazakhstan became the hub, the place that a lot of miners fled to, mainly because it's a lot of coal-based cheap energy. Oh, God damn it. Mm-hmm. So I was not sorry. Is that it uses so much energy. I know there's a lot of arguments of why it's, you know, worth it or whatever.

But honestly, like, if you've got a dictatorship and you've got fossil fuel, here's a quick way to make money. And this is why, like, a global economy, we have to start solving these problems on a global basis. We have to get this hash rate down and really optimize Bitcoin better. Yeah, it's unacceptable. And I know, I'm just going to head it off now. like I have tried to on every podcast, don't come to me and tell me that there's a lot of mining

that happens with renewable energy. That's not additive renewable energy. You're just replacing, and frankly, you're taking up, like, land for solar panels that could have been used for something else.

Like, yay, with the methane flaring, it's a teeny tiny percentage of the overall energy that is used to produce. But a cool one. I think the methane is cool

or like any blow off from any type of, you know, and excess energy, fine, but yes, you're absolutely correct. That is an intellectually,

dishonest, it's a dishonest take that, oh, we're using renewables. It's like, yeah, but that renewable could have been used to take other carbon out. And now you're using it to, you know, solve math problems. But again, Bitcoin does provide other value in the

world. So anyway, don't add us. But this did cause Bitcoin to fall below $43,000, I guess, or was it just because the markets were roiled this week with uncertainty? I think a little bit of possible to tell right now. Probably impossible to separate. a little bit of both, but certainly it's not a good sign when you realize sort of how fragile the infrastructure is for creating this and keeping this kind of operational in the future.

I mean, it's a pretty big deal. A 15, you know, what is it though? Because if it goes down. Because if it goes down. Supply chain has come offline and we've seen that disruption. Yeah. So, I mean, that's the thing I'm trying to figure out is if Bitcoin, the thing I thought was pretty amazing was when China kicked out all their miners, Bitcoin didn't miss a beat,

really. So I guess we'll find out next week what the situation is, because it does seem to recover from these in a couple of days. So that I think is the biggest thing that has turned me from, you know, like a Bitcoin skeptic or just like not really super interested to, ah, this feels like a real technological achievement that nobody has been able to hack or shut down the network yet. 100%. That's amazing.

What, which are these is on why it hasn't been hacked or shut down yet? I mean, I think that is a case where decentralization works. You can have individual hacks and you can have individual failures, but it's not, no failure is being enough to take down the whole system. That is legitimately the power of decentralization. And then once you have something that's like between a one and a $3 trillion asset class, it's not going anywhere. Like it's certainly not, there's no, I don't think,

scenario in which Bitcoin goes to zero. If anything, I think we just continue to find more use. for it and hopefully make it cleaner over time. You know, miners have been migrating to the United States. Now that seems like it could be because we have clean energy here, but it's actually because a lot of coal producing states are saying, hey, come and use our excess coal, you know, keep our economy going with, yeah. That's gotta be banned.

In the United States, absolutely 100% we should ban any carbon for cryptocurrency. That's just ridiculous to be using it. Don't at me, please. At Jason is my Twitter handle. Do not at me about this issue. The environment is worth more than, you know, people having a more efficient Bitcoin network. Yeah. But, you know, the Internet, you know, doesn't, hasn't been taken down wholesale either.

So this was a discussion we had about the Internet, right? In 93, four, five, six, seven. Oh, my God, somebody's going to be able to take down the entire Internet. And I was like, you know what? It is so disparate now that, yeah, you could take down a section of it. Sure, you could clip the cable going into Australia or Hawaii. They still have some satellite hookups and other things. and it's just, it's becoming super redundant.

So congratulations. You can kind of do more damage to the internet now, I think then you probably could to the Bitcoin network because of cloud services. Like we've done this really interesting thing on the back end where we have centralized a lot of the internet on AWS or Microsoft Azure primarily a WS. We created a single point of failure.

We really have. We've created like maybe three. There actually is, I've been talking to some startup companies. There's going to be a movement of like distributed cloud. So imagine you could take, you know, if you're a Dropbox, you have your AWS setup. But you could also then go to Rackspace and Google Cloud and Azure and your own personal

cloud. And then as users come in, it just routes them to whichever cloud is the cheapest, fastest, or you choose that I want to load balance, you know, Netflix across five services. And I think a lot of these services are starting to do that, load balance across services. And then you're not dependent on anyone. And they're basically doing it for financial reasons more than redundancy. But a little bit of both. The hybrid cloud thing is a lot.

People are doing it for security and redundancy and financial reasons. And it is like it's just a lot smarter. Lots smarter. Great for the U.S. though. I think we were talking about China earlier this week. The fact that China is just becoming insular and Xi Jinping, the Mad King is, you know, banned Bitcoin is another unforced error for their economy. Like if Bitcoin is really inspiring people to create distributed systems and, you know, A lot of, you know, downstream projects are being created, inspired by it or informed by it, or in partnership with it.

God, that's just like they just got rid of, it would be like throwing the internet out in 1993 or four. It's impossible to understand what they're doing. Listen, lots of founders are Lucy Goosey with their personal phone numbers. They put it in their company documents, they use it for sales calls and more. And that makes things super messy. So you don't know who's calling. Is it a sales prospect? or maybe someone from your kid's school.

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And that goes to the next company. Maybe they go to a competitor? That's a disaster for you. You want to own the phone numbers if you're the CEO. You want to own all those interactions. And you don't want people calling your employees for other non-business related things. It's really messy to have people use their personal phone numbers. And your employees hate using their personal phone numbers.

trust me. So I want you to go to O P-E-H-O-N-P-H-O-N-E. That's dot CO-S-T-T-O-S-T-T-S-T-T-S. But in another quick note on crypto, I don't know if you saw this. In 2021, Crypto-Sammer's $14 billion in cryptocurrency, up 79% year-over-year, according to CNBC. I'm not sure how they got this data, but here's a chart from chain analysis. Chain analysis, I hear a lot of people talking about. I don't know too much about this company, but we should probably have whoever runs it on the pod because I think it's a private company. like it. And I want to know where the how they get this data on a network that is seemingly relatively opaque in some ways. I'm sorry, chain alice. Not chain analysis. It's chain alices,

which is a terrible way to name your company. It should have been chain analysis. Because it is literally chain analysis. Because that's what it is. But I guess they got the domain name. Okay. Anyway, I'm not going to give people marketing lessons here. I'm not going to admonish them for their bad naming strategies, but. I mean, we are, but like not right now because. But not right now. Because we want to get to the story. A large part of the scams occurred due to the rise in Defyi, which of course, Stanford D centralized finance. These platforms grew 900% in 2021, according to chain analysis. Defi is trying to cut out traditional financial intermediaries like

banks and replace them with smart contracts. You know how this works. You take your crypto and you loan it out, yada yada. When you remove the intermediaries, you also lose protections. As we just discussed this week with OpenC being able to freeze NFT sales, they are centralized and, you know, defy is not. So you remove the intermediary, you lose your protection. Many of the protocols could have vulnerabilities at this day because hackers can get through. Rug pulling has also become popular with developers taking investors money

after laying out crypto projects they're building and then not actually doing them, which is what we started during the ICO craze. I don't know if they take into account painting the tape or people front running markets, but CNBC also knows that legitimate. usage of crypto is greatly outrated by criminal activity, or that's... Greatly outweighs it. That's their claim with only 0.15% of transactions in 2021 involving illicit addresses. I'm not certain that's the way you should look at it. If certain crypto projects are actually Ponzi schemes, then that would be different. These are

known crimes, I guess. Right. It's sort of like different types. There's many, many, it's a multi-layered scamming environment, basically. And you can have the one where you you're just not going to be able to access it or you didn't get in early enough or your exchange got hacked, as was the case with me way, way, way back in the day. And or you have the part where you just actually get scammed. But it is like the kind of you just straight up get ripped off by a criminal. That has really declined over time. And it was in some ways to be expected, I guess.

You have this brand new thing. You have, you know, people who are smarter than other people who are figured out how to make money off of it. There's always going to be some amount of scamming. I will say, I think that is probably the least of the, in a rapidly warming planet. That's probably the thing I'm worried about least. I don't trust chain analysis in this analysis, I'll be honest. I think that this leaves out a lot of the grifts and the crimes that occur unreported stuff, but, you know, fine if, you know, they want to believe this. But I think that it probably isn't in decline. It's probably that they just don't have great data on this. And I think they're in the crypto space.

And I think they would probably lean towards the most charitable analysis of this. But, again, this doesn't take into account if something's a grift. It doesn't take into account if people were painting the tape. And it's backwards looking, too. So I think people will find out if they were involved in a grift or a scam or a Ponzi scheme, like Madov's victims, five or ten years later. So if there is a giant, you know, crypto grift going on in NFTs, well, until you sell that NFT for a loss, you actually haven't been scam.

And that's a different type of scam than actually being hacked, right? So being hacked, I think, if people are putting stuff in cold storage, if they're buying stuff on Coinbase and locking the account and they're hodeling, yeah, the amount of hoddlers is probably so high right now, that on a percentage basis the people getting hacked seems low, right? Yep. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. The part you don't know is where the real crime is happening.

The part you can't see under the surface is the real. is the real iceberg. All right. In our reoccurring segment, WLITF, we live in the future. AI-generated models are getting shockingly good and easy to make. I know this because every now and then

people will send me myself singing to rap songs. Somebody just sent me myself singing to a biggie smalls, hypnotized, and it was not bad. And it's getting better. I did okay. Actually, I got to pull it up from somewhere. I don't know where it is,

But we talked about this AI generation. I think you talked about it on your former show, Marketplace Tech, with Auntie Bourdain's voice in the documentary Roadrunner film about Anthony Bordane. That was episode 1248 of This Week in startups. They literally two or three sentences, he said, and that were from email. And I thought that was an okay use of it. I think they should have told people, but I still thought it was okay. I thought it was actually kind of cool, I'll be honest.

Symphesia, another startup. that doesn't know how to name their company and you'd never be able to spell over the phone. It's another company that should create AI videos from text in 50-plus languages. They have over 40 pre-built avatars and brands can customize their own. They've raised a little bit of money, $66 million to date. That's not so bad.

Piner Perk, it's putting $50 million. And there was a special AI video made for the producers. What? All right. Thanks so much to the Twist team for working so hard. Jason has decided to double your carry share and your salaries. Congratulations and thanks for all your hard work. All right, that's it. I'm going into the matrix.

I'm going to kill that AI. I'm going to kill... Wait a second. If that AI just doubles your salaries, then I don't need half as many of you because I can just hire the AI. So, sure. You're all fired and I'm doubling the share of the AI from $1 to $2. That's actually not bad.

No too self about my new job. Don't make jokes. Wow. No, make jokes. I mean, the whole thing is the AI is... Yeah, look at that, though. I mean, seriously, that is... Is that good?

Well, it's good enough. And I think every time you get something like that that's good enough and you can't really tell and you get, you know, the uncanny Valley situation where you're like, is it real or is it not real? And I'm a little freaked out. You take a step further. And actually, I think this about the Anthony Bourdain thing, too, which is that every time you do something like that and you aren't super transparent about it, you normalize it that much more. so that then when you really start to push the envelope and, you know, have a bot announced to your company that you just doubled their salaries. Yeah. Everyone's like, well, isn't that just what we do now?

I don't know. Well, also just think about people getting canceled. Like some politician, you could literally take Obama's voice. And when he was on the campaign trail, you could have Obama say something completely inappropriate. And maybe that could actually, you know, in today's fake news environment where, you know, people believe that there's a GPS chip in Obama's. is not an American citizen. They might believe Obama said something, you know, just horrific or something.

Also, here's the really bonkers part about that video. So you would look at that and you'd be like, well, it might be real, but it could just be like somebody that's sort of vaguely Mark Zuckerberg like. Yeah. What's really establishing. That's not a human man anymore. I don't care.

I got a shiny $2 bill. Are you saying that Mark Zuckerberg does not cross the uncanny valley for you? I might be an agreement. Listen, I've talked to Mark in person. That's not right. I got a funny story from Ted. How long ago? How long ago?

I'm just saying sometime in the coronavirus era, he's been replaced. I was at a TED dinner years ago. Years ago he was a billionaire's dinner. And he was there. And me, Evan Williams. And was he the Sergey or Larry are sitting there? And Zuckerberg comes up and he's talking to us. And then like he leaves.

I swear to God, Evan Williams goes, leads over to me. I don't know if he still is right. He goes, he's a little odd, isn't he? I mean, this is like, I think they just opened up Facebook to the public. Right. And there is at the parties and everyone's like, uh, and now, he's a little strange, right? I was like, a little?

Very strange. He went into lockdown and they replaced him. Time for another Our Crowd deal of the week. Right now, you can join Our Crowd's investment in Blue Tree. According to the deal memo, Blue Tree has developed a process to significantly reduce the sugar in any natural liquid. That's fascinating. This lowers health risks while retaining great taste. And Blue Tree has already signed a five-year, 100 million-liter contract with an industry leader, according to their deal memo.

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If you're an accredited investor, you can join our crowd for free at O-U-R-C-O-W-D.com slash twist. and then you can review the current deal memos for free. There is no payment involved until you decide to invest. So go sign up for free and check out those deal memos where you don't learn a lot about really interesting companies and the future. Ourcrowd.com slash twist. So looking at this video, which is almost as lifelike as Mark Zuckerberg, what is really astonishing about it is that it took Justin, producer Justin,

two minutes to make it. Took him like two minutes. He just typed it in. And voila, Mark's sister, Allison, here, gave every, doubled their salaries. I have such a great joke, but I'm not going to say it. I mean, that's what's bananas. It's only going to get better and it's going to be that easy. You're just going to type it in and a bot's going to, you know what is kind of cool, though,

is that they're apparently using this, they call it synthetic AI to train synthetic data, rather to train artificial intelligence algorithms instead of like the big, you know, clear view data. I'm not saying somebody should do this, which is interesting. I'm not saying somebody should do this, but we talked yesterday about Ben Shapiro's, like, obsession with trans people, non-binary people. You're going to die on this hill, aren't you?

If they made, if they took his podcast and then made a version of it where he was trans, that would be inappropriate or? You're going to take me right down to. We're just rolling down the hill together. I don't know, maybe we'll take it out of the show. Maybe that's a lot. Did I cross the line?

obsession is suss. I'm just obsessed with Ben's obsession with, like, his hill he's going to die on is that trans people, trans women are not real women. Like, he just cannot just leave trans people alone and let them live their lives. Just leave them alone, I think,

is probably what we're really. It's hard enough, if you're choosing to transition. Like, they've got enough challenges. They don't need you obsessing over them. It's weird, dude. All right. I do think that that's actually a very valid point. That the amount of time it takes to make something that is just kind of dancing along the Uncanny Valley.

We're trying to climb up it is very interesting because I always, in my younger years, I was like, it's going to be incredible. Someday I'm going to be able to talk to an AI like Alexa or something or talk to a virtual assistant and say, I would like to make episode three of Book of Boba Fett, but here's what I want to have happen. I want to have Boba Fett fight, you know, Han Solo or meet him in a ball. on Mustafa, whatever. And I come up with that, and it just makes it for you.

And, like, you could just have a kit to make your own Star Wars. You know? It'd be pretty cool. Who's that filmmaker that insists that everybody has to come to the damn movies to see his perfection in the art? Christopher Tennant. Christopher Tennant just had a heart attack just now. He just heard. You described that.

Christopher Nolan of Tennant. Thank you. Of Tenant. He just heard you describe the idea of just like whipping up a movie. I think his films. Whipping up a TV show. His films need to be seen in a theater. I agree.

I don't care. He's not the boss of me. You're like, I'm watching it. I'm my old I'm like, I'll watch it. I've got an iPad mini and I'll watch it on there. Don't be trying to sue me your weird food that's mostly just like slimes because you think you're an artiste. I like a taco truck. I'm off the rails.

Okay. All right. It's just, I mean, it is the Friday show and it's been a long. Me of the week. Exactly. Me of the week. Okay. Everybody knows that Mark and Drieson is known for blocking

people on Twitter and this comes after he was a vibrant tweeter but then he said so much stupid stuff that had the risk of ruin because he likes to be dank.

I think the most famous gaffa he made was like wasn't there one where he said something to the effect of we should pull up the exact language because I think he said like colonization of India was like a good thing and that was a little rough. Yeah, I think that's when he decided to stop

because he realized like his sense of humor. Wow. Or his insights were not conducive to investing in startup companies because it creates blowback to everything he's involved in. Right. So then every time Facebook gets mentioned, if it's a story where they want to criticize Facebook, they're like board member Mark Andreessen, who said something about colonization. I think it had to do with Mark was giving free internet to the people of India and they

They were like, we know what you're doing. You want Facebook to take over in India. No, we are not for people who need free internet. And then Mark tried to come to his defense. So we should pull that exact up because it is relevant to why, for people who don't know why Mark Andreessen is not involved on Twitter. I think it's because he said something stupid like that. And then he blocked me after I said that was a stupid thing to say.

You're blocked? I've been blocked, unblocked, and re-blocked, like multiple times. He was an LP in my first fund. We were kind of friendly. he was going to invest in Weblogs Inc. And then I had a blow up with him because I was like, hey, come on the pod. Hey, come speak at the event. And he was like, no.

And but have these people who are like my junior partner speak. And then I kept going back and forth with their PR people. The PR person made me go to lunch with them. And you know how I feel about going to lunch with PR people. I did that. And she was like, here's how it's going to work. When you give me these two people and then maybe next year, Mark, we'll do it. And I's like, here's how it's going to work.

I'm going to ban you guys from ever being on the show ever again. The end, bye. And I just like walk out. I was like, I didn't get where I am by like, cowcowing to PR people, sorry to the woman over there who is like a Machiavellian and like wants to control the media and they're going to create their own media empire adjacent to the rest of media. But anyway, there's a big debate and he started tweeting memes. So he's got somebody making a meme. So he decided he'd get back into the game with memes. Exactly.

So he blocks a bunch of people. that becomes its own weird news story. He maybe blocked Jack Dorsey. Oh, he did. Yeah, Jack. He did. And I was like, oh, welcome to the party, Jack. Okay.

So, you know, he's into it. So then somebody actually made the kind of excellent point that like, Mark Andreessen blocking a bunch of people was sort of an alpha move. I guess. But then you pretty much ruin your own alpha move when you spend the next like eight solid days constantly tweeting memes about how hilarious. It's hilarious it is. You blocked everybody.

So he's like, got this one. You block me. You invented the block button and your CEO of a company named Block. So see, the lady, hysterical lady is supposed to be Jack Dorsey. And then Mark Andreessen is the smart kitty cat with the salad. Not a great, not a great meme.

Not a great meme. Not a great meme. And in fact, great first reply. You've read it for our listening audience. Mark, if you did a cheap intern to make funny memes for you, shoot me a message, okay? You deserve better than this. Hilarious. And then he did this one from a friend.

This is the classic, like, stick figures of, like, everybody at a party, and there's like a wallflower in the corner having a drink and nobody's paying attention to him. And he says, they don't know. I'm blocked by P. Marker on Twitter. Yes, we do. You literally can't stop tweeting it. And the people dancing having a good time are like, we do. I think I was directed at me.

Really? Maybe. Which one are you? The guy in the corner? I think I'm the guy in the quarter who's like wearing it as a badge of honor because I always talk about it. And people are like, oh, don't you care about your relationship with Mark and Theresa? And I'm like, no. Like, that's one of the great things about our industry.

Yeah, we know, Jason. I don't need Mark and Jason to be successful. I invest before he does. He needs me because I can bring companies to Sequoia or to Chamath or to Sachs before he even knows they exist. So he should be nicer to angel investors and early stage investors. a weirdo. I'm a little, I know, I feel, I checked when this was all happening. And I was like, well, I'm not blocked. Because honestly, maybe I have literally no value to this person either way. But now I'm like, oh, maybe this is my chance. And then would that be like a badge of honor?

Kind of is. Being in the block web is pretty good. It kind of is. It's like when we got all excited that Tay Diggs had followed us on Twitter, but it turned out he just followed everybody. Maybe that's what it will be. By the time he gets around to blocking me, he will have just blocked everybody and it won't be any fun. Anyway, he had a whole series of these from a friend. Yes, they're terrible. It just made it feel even more boomer and then all of them were just awful. And it was like, you know, it's like a happy raccoon, bad opinions, verbal abuse, awful takes and embrace blocking. Here's my favorite. Yeah. Logan Bartlett, who is funny. This is funny. He's actually funny, as opposed to Margaret Andreessen, who is weird, just weird. It's truly remarkable to see one person both in

met the browser and killed the meme in just one lifetime. I mean, that's like, oh, that's great. That's amazing. Well done, Logan. And then ZeroHedge, Twitter user ZeroHedge, pointed out a very funny fact about Mark Henderson's account. It's like at P. Marka has blocked everyone on Twitter except Elizabeth Holmes.

Who was following. Following Elizabeth Holmes. Fantastic. Amazing. For Exits, who was on episode 1348. I don't know if you heard that one. but we did a voice masking for this meme account to be on the show. It's pretty entertaining. He did an AMA on his

Instagram story today and chimed down on the P. Marker situation. Tired yet of cone heads, blocked memes, a little sensitive much. Conehead being like the cone heads on Saturday Night Live. And Mark has, I guess, an egg-shaped head, I think, is I guess the joke. I think he's having fun as he should. I just wish he would let someone help him because he could easily become VC Elon if he felt compelled to. Yes, he could be better at Twitter. It's a slippery slope.

Yeah, you got to be careful. I think as an investor, you don't want to go there. Because it blows back on your companies. Like if you're the CEO of a company and you want to be, you know, sharp elbowed, the problem is, you know, if you get too sharp elbowed like that, it can blow back on the companies like it did on Facebook. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's a fair point. It does make you, I mean, I thought as a cat, I honestly, sincerely had a moment of wondering if his account had been hacked. When I saw how many of those from a friend things, there were like, I hope that was some sort of overzealous intern. But if not, then he's got too much time to be spending on this thing.

Yeah, but he doesn't do boards anymore, I don't think. So I think he, and he's got all his partners doing the investment. I think he just is like a figurehead now. But I don't know. This one was interesting.

interesting from Jane Manchun Wong. Yeah. This is her block list. She's blocked 513,000 people. I think the way she did that was with these blocklists. Are you aware of block lists? No. So there's a feature that they made called blockless. So I can take my blocked accounts, export it, and give it to you. And so if you are on the left or the right and you don't want to hear from the other side, you can export block list, and they made a bunch of of block lists of people who were sharp elbowed. I was on one of them, weirdly, and somebody, like, uploaded, and they're like, I don't see you anymore. I'm like, are you, did you upload a blocklist? Like, yeah, I was like, which one?

And somebody, um, I should think it was Will Wheaton had put me on his block list for some reason. And I was friendly with Will Wheaton, which was weird. But he blocked me at some point because I said something that he didn't agree with. And then he went back, was like, if I blocked anybody, I was blocking a lot of people that's around for a time, You don't want to be unblocked, let me know. So, but I don't know how you let somebody know if they're blocking you.

I don't know. Yeah. All right. So. But clearly I need to up my game in this department. And if you don't know Jane Mansion Wong, she is the one who reads the source code and finds little tips as to what Twitter might do next. So it's a very cool account for you to follow Wong M. Jane, W-O-N-G-M-J-A-N-E, worth following.

All right. So might be news to you, Molly, or you might know that we on Fridays have Rachel do a segment called OK Boomer. And so we like to lead into it. So maybe we'll bring Rachel on and to tell us what's in this OK Boomer segment. Oh, there's Rachel. How are you? We see you. How are you?

Awesome. We stand you. We stand you, millennial, Gen Z. You're Gen Z. Yeah, I'm Gen Z producer. As long as I'm not blocked. your stand not blocked it's the opposite right yeah 100% yes so uh is this week's okay boomer cringe or not cringe definitely not cringe it was a really cool interview i got to speak to ben awad he's a 2018

u t dallas grad who now works as a software consultant and a YouTuber um it was a phenomenal conversation i talked to him a few weeks ago and it was just a really really good talk i think i think everyone's going to really like it. Fantastic. Any questions or thoughts, Molly? So you said he is a software engineer, but he's also a creator, right? And is this just like, here's what I really want to know. Is this what all Gen Zs are going to be, like whatever your actual job is, plus your creator job? I actually had this conversation with him, and I think it's really interesting how so many people are building in public now, and that isn't necessarily stuck to

the startup community anymore. I don't think. you necessarily need to be building a startup or building something that you want to put on your college essay to be a creator. I find that a lot of people outside of like the startup community are doing this, not just, I don't know if this makes any sense, but when you go through like your TikTok algorithm on mine, I am constantly seeing people that are like developers because it's like learning you. And I think in Ben's case specifically, that probably happened to him where he just started getting fed all this information. So we're definitely seeing like an influx in people creating

outside of just the startup community in public. No cap, no cap. I like the lingo. I can't, I can't. Was that too chuggy? Was that chuggy or not? That was cringy, not chugie. I think it's chuggy.

I think totally different. I think no cap means I'm chuggy. I will, I'll give you some chuggy. Oh, sheesh. No, the, Ogs are in. Are they back? Ogs are totally in. Emma Chamberlain.

Yeah, Emma Chamberlain was wearing them, so they're in. Oh, thank God. She's like the it girl. Get her on the podcast. Emma Chamberlain, if you're listening, please. All right, bet. All right, let's go to the interview of bet. If you're looking for really qualified international developers

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it takes to hire a developer if you're lucky. and after they find the talent for you, they handle everything else, payroll, taxes, benefits, etc. So you can hire internationally without the logistical overhead. And trust me, there's a lot of overhead when you hire international folks. You want to make sure that you're paying them correctly and taxes, all that stuff. So Revelto's engineers are full-time and embedded in your team, like normal employees. And they're proficient in AWS, Rust, Ruby, React, Python, No.js, and more.

They've got great customers, including GitHub, 4Square, car to Indiegogo, and Kickstarter. So just go to revelo.io slash twist and mention Twist to get 20% off your first three months. Plus, they offer 100% risk-free 14-day trial period. If you're not satisfied, pay nothing. So head over to r-e-v-e-l-o.io slash twist and mention Twist to get that 20% off. Thank you so much for being on today's show, Ben. So Ben is a 2018 UT Dallas grad who now works as a software consultant and YouTuber. He has more than 367,000 subscribers on YouTube, 760,000 followers on TikTok.

And I think I actually found you on YouTube, even though you have been taking TikTok by storm. I absolutely love your video handling the business side, which is just a bunch of jokes about tech and like pitching startups. And my favorite app of yours has to be the dating app for programmers where users swipe on each other's code rather than photos. And before you came out with more of the comedy stuff, I did watch some of your tech videos, but I didn't really like put two and two together until TikTok. And I realized, wait a minute, the band that I watch coding interview content about is the same Ben making the jokes over on TikTok. And that video was coding interviews are broken. And I actually think you've more than like one million views on that video now, which is absolutely incredible to see. I found that video when I was going down a rabbit hole with Tech with Tim videos.

I don't know if you know or watch any of his videos, but I absolutely love him. And one of the comments was coding interviews are like school tests. They both make you memorize stuff you will never use. And I think that is a great place to start. If that's okay with you, I'd love to start talking about the next generation of soft franchisional. engineers and do you think there's going to be a change now the next generation of software engineers are interviewed? I do, but I think there's going to be like a split.

So there's going to be like the top end like thing companies, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, excuse me, meta, Netflix, Google, right? I don't think they're going to switch up that much. And the reason why is they don't really have any incentive to switch it up right now. They have so much demand that they want to make it as hard as physically possible, and they just like to get the cream of the cream of the crop. But in my opinion, like, when you get outside of those companies, we're going to see more and more companies, like, switch it up a little bit because one thing you have to realize

is like, what you do on the job and what you're tested in, the interview happens to be very different. And so more and more engineers are just like, yeah, I'm just not going to interview at the companies that ask those questions anymore. So if you're a company who's having trouble hiring, part of it could be the interview process is testing for the wrong things. Because you can have senior engineers that agree at their job. They just haven't studied algorithms in the last three years because they didn't need it

for their job. And so now they're going to study lead code to go get their job. It makes serious sense. What happened to all the experience they had? You should be hiring them for like the job experience that they have. So I do think there's going to be more people switching over and I think it's already happening. I think there's less, but they're still going to exist.

Five years from now, they're still going to ask them. And you know, you as a software engineer, just have to decide is the company I really want to work at worth it for me to grind, you know, algorithm questions. And sometimes the answer is yes. Because like the compensation package that, you know, these big companies give you that ask those questions are fantastic. But there's tons of other companies that are fantastic as well that don't ask those questions. So, yeah, that's my two sense. Which one do you think that Gen Z is more interested in? The flexibility of like the startup culture and kind of like the coolness right now, I feel like that it has,

or the compensation that they know big tech is driving. I think they're going to be, they want both. Like different people want different things. And they're just going to like, I don't think you say Gen Z as a whole is going to want startups more. But also the thing is startups pay a lot of money now too, especially if you get like the like mid tier that are like around 100 employees or whatever. Like they pay really well too.

I would say like the like fangs a little overrated and like how, good. They are in the sense of there's tons of other companies that are, don't have the Fang label that pay very comparable, if not more. And they, you know, just don't have the name recognition that Fang has. With that said, like, yeah, I think, like personally, I'm more interested in working at startups in general than I am working at, like, say, as like a Google, just personally because I just like smaller companies and smaller teams. And I think some Gen Z is going to be like that, but some Gen Z, like, you have to realize, like, still to this day, Like as a computer science student, like, at least 50% of them are like studying and wanting to go to like a big fang company.

Like I don't think the culture's gone. The culture's there. There's a reason why you just like bang, fang, fang, that's all you hear. And, you know, to her great place to work. Like if you can get in, you should go and you should work there. Like, why not? Like, then you can work anywhere too. Yeah.

Well, and speaking of, I mean, working anywhere, again, you had a video online that talks about moving to a boring place. And I think you said that was Tennessee. And you tried out like L.A. and New York City. And you ended up in Tennessee. I guess this is like a two-handed question that I have for you. Number one is probably, do you think younger software engineers are really pushing for like this remote work? Or do you think they do want to go back to that culture that lies in Silicon Valley or New York City where they have ping pong tables in the offices? And then also, do you think that boring cities are better for programmers because the other cities that have.

all these opportunities just aren't necessarily geared towards being a software engineer, like you mentioned in your video. Yeah. So I think it's like two different types of people. So for the first one, like, I do think remote work is like going to like be the thing. Like I think just especially if you were working during COVID and you tasted remote work, like I think most people, more people enjoyed remote work than didn't enjoy remote work, at least programmers.

I think other people in other industries were like, oh my gosh, then you get back to the office. Like one of my family members is in business and like, yeah, I want to get back into the office. It's so boring working by myself. But like programmers, I feel like the vast majority of them are very happy to remote work. Some of them want to go into the office. That makes sense. So I do think there's just going to be more companies that like are remote first and they support remote things.

I don't think that's going away. I think that's like super important. And as far as like Borg cities versus L.A.S.S.F. Like New York City, I think I'm actually just kind of weird. Like personally, I cannot get any work done when I'm in like a city like New York. I actually haven't spent that much time in SF, so I can't really comment SF. I've just heard it's like kind of a crappy place right now and like everyone's moving to like Austin or New York.

So like I'm like, all right, why would I go visit now? It's like at the worst peak of time ever. Like I'll probably go visit at some point, but I can't comment on SF. But for me, like when I'm in New York, all I do is like go eat. Like I get whined and dined. I'm eating food. I'm going and doing things. I'm doing nothing related to work whatsoever.

Like the entire city is just like. gets me in a mood to not code. So, like, I do really well when I'm in such a boring place that there's no option for me to do anything, but actually get the work that I need to do done. And so I've been incredibly productive in Tennessee. Like, I just had a stretch of time where I was not consistently posting YouTube videos, and that was because I was traveling and going to, like, quote unquote, fun cities. And now I just am getting back into a regular routine because, like, there's just nothing else to do.

here. Like, I just, I just do that. So, like, I like a mix of both, though. Like, I can't just live in a boring city my entire life. Like, what I like to do is, this is like my haven to do work. And then, like, I'll go to conferences or meetups or whatnot in, like, bigger cities. Yeah. For like a week for funzies or whatever. For funsies. I feel like that's why Austin is, like, such a draw. To be honest with you. Right. Because I feel like L.A. and New York, I want to say, like, overstimulating, but I don't even know if that's the word. Because it's, and it's not FOMO, but just the fact that there is so much to do and the fact that you have to do, that it feels like you have to do so much and also the process. And I've been to Austin quite a few

times. And I think it was one of my favorite cities for tech. It was just in Miami and Austin still is like, prevails for me because I think the opportunity there is, first off, there's a lot of cool people in tech there. And second off, I don't feel that like need to be doing stuff like all the time. Have you ever, like considered moving to Austin? So I definitely like I lived in Austin so long. So I actually live in Austin like 23 years of my life. So I really like Austin is like a really nice middle ground because like there's stuff going on, but also I didn't feel a need to like do it all the time. So I could see myself probably going back to Austin at some point.

And that might be just like the place that I live like more long term later. But I'd live there so long. I was like, all right, I want to try something new. Because I'm like totally now. And everyone's also moving to Austin right now. The Austin is just getting so busy. Yeah. And like it's so different than it was like a couple years ago that it feels a little weird.

and like there's so much traffic and stuff now that I'm also like like Austin's like too cool I need to go to like more hipster of a place now it's like too mainstream oh my gosh like I actually kind of like Dallas when I was in when I went to school there so I can see myself like in Dallas or like Plano area as well I like Texas a lot so I could do that or might do Austin we'll see it'll see how much like Tennessee maybe I'll live in Tennessee longer but I'm kind of like trying out some different places here yeah I totally get that I definitely see Dallas as a really young city I went for my second time over the summer. It was so cool, like a very cool city,

and I wouldn't be surprised if more tech people actually started migrating over there. I was also looking at rent, and the difference in rent is, like, astronomical, but there are still a lot of young people in Dallas. Like, it's so surprising to me that more people aren't moving over to Dallas during this whole, I don't know, I want to say work from home movement, but I guess it's not been a movement anymore because everyone's kind of just been doing this for like two years.

How did you start even putting content up on the internet? Because I don't know of many. I feel like the people that I watch that are young, our generation, YouTubers that do with tech are very few and far between. There really just aren't that many. Like I mentioned, like, I think tech with Tim is probably like one of my, the people that I've been watching the longest. And I really can't name that many other people in his genre and your genre that are

taking over the space. So why did you decide to start creating content over on YouTube? So I have like a really weird origin story because when I was 16, I took a Java class. This was like my first intro to programming thing. And I tried it. I did pretty well at it. I liked it. And I wanted to kind of start making things that I could actually use.

Because like I got like the abstract concepts on paper, but I was like, all right, this is no fun. I want to actually do something. And so one of the things you could do with Java at that time was build Android apps. And I had an Android phone. So I was like, okay, I'll build some Android apps. apps so I can actually get something on my phone. And for whatever reason, I decided to live stream myself on Twitch making an Android app. I don't know why I did this.

I can't tell you, but it happened. I think I might have been like 17 or 18 at the time when I actually did that because it took me a little bit to actually learn Java to even be able to like open Android Studio and do that thing. But I stream myself on Twitch. And it's a terrible stream, by the way. Like, this is somebody who has no idea what they're doing. You're literally watching me for like two hours, just like Google errors and like no progress

done whatsoever. So terrible content, not a good stream, but I did it. And I did it for like a couple times. And then I posted it on YouTube, just like the recordings afterwards. And then I didn't look at it for like a year, right? And then I came back. Maybe it was like 19 or something. I don't remember, but I looked at my YouTube channel and that video had gotten 10,000

views. I was like, holy crap. Like, 10,000 views is a lot for somebody that's never made a piece of content before. Like, that's a ton of these, especially when I was like that young. So I was like, holy, holy, like, this is a terrible piece of content. Like, this is not good. I don't know who's watching this. Like, what?

So I was like, you know what if I try this again? But I just like put a tiny bit of more effort into it. Like, can I make better content? And so that's what I tried doing. Because I just tried making like slightly better content than I was doing. At first, I was terrible. So it was the other thing. I knew it was bad.

but I also knew I was slightly better than the video that had 10,000 views because that was extremely bad. So my strategy was to just start making content around the stuff that I was learning in my free time because I was like coding and stuff. And I was like, all right, if I'm going to get better, I should just make a crap ton of videos. So I just made like a crap ton of videos. Like we're talking like, I have like, if you look at my video log, I have like maybe a thousand videos.

Oh my gosh. A lot of videos. It's a lot of coding tutorials. Probably like 800 of them are coding tutorials or something. Because I just, like, sat almost on daily basis and just, like, made a video and just, like, to practice to get better at it. And then, yeah, it just kind of went off from there. Like, I just kept making more and more videos and here we are today. And that's how you really make a good software engineer is doing all that practice.

But holy shoot, like, that's a ton. And how old are you when you said you started this? So I think I was, like, maybe 19-ish or something when I started doing, like, YouTube more seriously, if you will. Okay, okay. That's so awesome. And so I guess you said those videos, you're in the beginning. were really bad, then what makes a good YouTube video? Because right now, you have a great blend of, I think, like, just being quick and funny

and, like, the self, like, deprivating humor and then information at a really high pace. First off, I guess, like, what do you think makes a good video? And then also, how did you find out that you should start, like, going, I don't want to say into comedy, but it's kind of like, how did you decide to bring more of humor into your videos? Because I know those weren't, you weren't showing how funny you were in the beginning of your YouTube journey. Right. I think it's very different depending on what niche you are.

In one niche, it can be drastically different what qualifies as a good video. And for me, I was making coding tutorials for like maybe two years straight or something. But in that time, once in a while, I would do like a slightly different type of video than a strict coding tutorial. And when I say coding tutorial, basically what I would do is I'd sit on my computer, I'd start coding something like a website and I'd narrate my thought process as I'm building it. So that was the type of video I was making. And then once in a while, I'd mix in, if you will, my thoughts on technologies. Like, somebody would ask me, what do you think about JavaScript or this JavaScript library? I'd make a video answering them.

And all the videos where I was starting to put, like, my analysis on what I thought, like, a good library was or something, that video usually got more reviews than the one where I was just staying there coding. So that was something I had, like, in the back of my head as of making content that those usually did better. And then it was April 1st. I posted just like, I was like, you know, let's just like, you know, let's just just make a funny video, right? Because April Fool's Day, and I made a video about something

of like, something about React, like me and React are breaking up or something and I put like emotional video or something. And I decided to be like sarcastic in that video, right? And that was the first time I think I was ever sarcastic in a video on YouTube. I'm into that point, I was just like genuine, like, I'm just like teaching out of code. Like, that's all there is in it. But anyway, that video did way better than all my other videos, right? So I was like, hmm, that's kind interesting. What if I do another video like that? Not on April's Day. Um, and so then I just like kept iterating on the concept of like introducing sarcasm and humor into my videos, because I am naturally like that. Like, I'm just naturally kind of sarcastic. I'm just naturally really funny.

So, well, not, not funny is not the right word. But I like, I was like, like, the camera act was me being very serious to make coding tutorials. Like, during coding tutorials, it's easy for me to be serious because, like, we're talking about a serious topic, we're coding, blah, blah, blah. But also, I was, like, basically not showing a side of myself, which was the sarcasm bit. Like, when I started doing that, like, it was, they liked it, so I kept doing it. And, like, here we are today. And then what I think it makes a good video is, like, a mixture of, like, one, also, I think, like, how concise you say things. So, okay, this is my, basically, my template for making good video.

This is what I like to put in mind. So, one, some, like, form of humor or sarcasm, if you will. to being concise, not putting like fluff. What that said, there's some fluff that you can put. You have to know what fluff is okay and what's not okay. But I like to be in general pretty concise. And also, I think one of the most important things on YouTube is picking a topic people care about.

You can make the most interesting video ever, but nobody cares about your topic. So I would say, okay, there's like three things. As a YouTube, there's three things that you can do. Well, any type of content, but this is how I think about YouTube. There's three things that how you can improve. One, the quality of your actual video. So that means maybe like the video itself, how you talk, your mannerisms, your hand motions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That's what's one element. And that's like you can tell how well you do based on watch time. That's the analytic you look at. Then you can see if the topic of your video is good based on the title. So if you're picking good titles for your video, that means you're picking good topics. And that's through the click, the rate, that and the thumbnail. So if you're picking an interesting topic, that helps you so much. Like, you can be a boring person, but you're talking about interesting topics and you drop some hot takes.

That also helps is like, I'm just like kind of opinionated. It turns out being opinionated on the internet's kind of helpful. And then lastly, yeah, thumbnail. Thumbail, title, and content. Those are like the three things. You just like hone the thumbnail. And I'm terrible at thumbnails. So actually, I don't think I'm good at thumbnails.

I think I'm okay thinking about topics of videos. And I think I'm okay doing like the actual talking in videos. The lucky thing for me is there's just not that many tech YouTubers. So that worked out for my benefit. Like, there's still not that many. Like, I feel like a lot of people, if you're a CS kid, that grinds making tech content, you can make it in. Switching over, kind of a 180.

But we had a question from another producer about design trends in the software, engineering community, engineering community in general. Do you see any designs that are popular right now between engineers that just haven't hit mainstream mainstream yet. I, okay, so I'm maybe like the opposite. Like, I know people are like, like a certain thing you move over and like, it may not be the thing that everyone's using and it's not mainstream. And they like pick that and they like grow with it and they like think everyone should

use it, right? But for me, I happen to just be using all the hype technology. Like unfortunately, I happen just to be a mainstream person when it comes to like technology right now. Okay. So I actually use what's called. the hypeby stack because the hypeby stack just happens to have all the hype technologies. Okay, it's called the hypeby stack. It's called the hypeby stack. And the hypeby stack includes

TypeScript, which just happens to be the most like is growing popularity in JavaScript. No.js. React.js, which is the most popular React framework. And then Postgres SQL, which is probably like one of the most popular databases. And then I like to use GraphQL, which is from Facebook, which is quite popular. You could say maybe that's like a little bit of an under dog, but not really. So I, so one of the things why I happen to like these too is the communities around them are really good. And sometimes smaller communities are good, but there's just not as many resources. So it just happened that I liked all the most popular technologies, like happened to run with them. But if I didn't like them, I'd be using some other stuff. So like, just like to

throw out a name out there, like, I do. like making things with Svelt, which is just like a smaller front-end thing that, like, you could say compete with React. I'm a fan of it. I enjoy using it. It's great. I also just like React better. That happens to be the mainstream one.

I heard you're like a huge fan of React, actually. I am a huge fan of React. So exactly. So I'm just kind of the mainstream person that uses the mainstream things right now. And, okay, my hipster take. Okay, so I guess the one thing I do like that's less mainstream is I did make a project using elixir and I quite liked elixir. Okay. And so I'm a fan of that.

It's something to be said about community too, because I think as, again, pushing on being like as somebody that's young and in tech, the amount of like discords and slack I'm in because like things weren't working, it's so much easier to be on something that's an extremely popular platform. Like, for example, I was really interested in going into like UXUI for a little bit, but it wasn't really my major in college. So I took like a class that was literally taught by another student that was free on my campus and just joined like a bunch of discords on Figma. And because Figma was the most popular one, any problem that I could ever think about that arose, another person already had.

Do you have any recommendations, I guess, to wrap up here that you have for younger software engineers or content creators? Like, what's your advice that you have to them? Okay, so this is what I'll tell programmers first is you should be building projects. And then everyone asked me, Ben, what's the best project I should make for my resume? And I tell you you shouldn't make a project for your resume. What you should build a project for is either yourself, if you can think of a good idea. But some people just can't think of good ideas.

I'm one of those people. I haven't made my own project in a very long time. I build projects when somebody else tells me a good idea. I'm like, huh, yeah, that's a good idea. I'll make that. So if you're one of the people like me and you can't think of good project ideas, should go talk to your parents or talk to your friend and ask them what their billion-dollar startup idea is.

They're going to have a couple for you. And then you're like, you know what? That one you said or there kind of sounds interesting to make. And you go actually code that and you build like a somewhat useful project. So that's why I recommend programmers go out and do that. And it's very helpful. For content creators, what I'll say is the difference between like content creators that are making content or like, you know, that made it.

And the ones that haven't is the ones that made it just like kept making content. So what I'll say is like for content creators, if you're getting started, you need to make some bad content because bad content is how you, you get good at making good content. And you can't make good content without making bad content. So there's a lot of people that are worried about putting out their first piece of content because it's going to be bad. Well, you should put out that bad piece of content because that's how you get to the good

content. Maybe just use an alias if you feel bad about the content you're making. That is such a good. I like that advice a lot. Actually, one of my favorite accounts, I don't even know his name. He has like a bunch of subscribers now, but his name on YouTube is just better ideas. And I'm like, I love that because, like, you don't got to put your name out there. Somebody Googles you during an interview, you're never going to be found.

But no, that's awesome advice. So thank you so much for being on. What's your YouTube, Twitter, whatever, people can find you on TikTok, GitHub? Yeah, just search Ben space Wad, A-W-A-D. You'll find me on their web. Like, yep. Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much for being on Ben.

Really excited to talk to Jason about our conversation.