The Last One Before React Miami
Well, this episode is not gonna come out till Monday. So
Adam:Oh, so I'll be in Miami when this episode comes out. How weird. Yeah.
Dax:Wait. No.
Adam:I won't. It'll be in the morning. Close enough. I'll be on the plane.
Dax:No. I'll basically be here. If you're listening to this podcast, Adam is basically here. Yes. Oh, no.
Dax:I thought you sounded sick again.
Adam:Okay. Am I sick? That's what I need to understand right now. Because it's been 3 weeks, and, honestly, I feel as bad as I felt at the the peak of it. I thought there was like 3 or 4 days where I was no symptoms.
Adam:And it's bad. So I got sick again or I got pneumonia or something. I don't know.
Dax:Can you describe what you
Adam:feel? It's mostly head congestion, but
Dax:now I've got
Adam:it in my head that it could be something in my chest because of pneumonia. Like, I'm like, oh, do I have a cough? I'm shortness of breath. My heart rate, like, my Oura sleep tracker has said my heart rate's been elevated every night, and it's like 15 beats per minute higher than normal all the time. So my heart is doing stuff, struggling.
Adam:I don't know.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:I really I've convinced myself that I'm better because I have a competition Saturday, next week's Miami. Like, I'm fine.
Dax:I'm I'm, like, so nervous for everyone right now because I'm, like, nobody better get sick. There might still like, nothing needs to nothing should happen this week because there's so much stuff coming up. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it could be like a the one time I was sick before what felt like a very long time was the first time I had COVID or maybe first or second time I had COVID, I felt like it took me forever.
Dax:I got back to 80% pretty quickly, but then it took me, like, a month to be back to 100.
Adam:Yeah. That's describing me. I made
Dax:it to that. And then, the other time was a sinus infection, and that was, like that lasted a very long time.
Adam:Why do I I I dropped my health insurance, and I've been to the hospital twice, and now I'm sick for a month. Like, what is going on? Big big pharma conspiring against me. They've somehow made me sick.
Dax:There's, I'm, like, more I just get more convinced every day that irony is, like, a property of physics
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:At this point. Just guaranteed. You need health insurance. I knew you were gonna Yeah. Not only did you go to the hospital, you went to the hospital with, like, some really random obscure shit that you would never you would never guess, like the sepsis in your knee?
Adam:I've never been to the hospital in my adult life. Like, I went once in high school. But, like, mostly, I've had a pretty, like, clean slate in terms of my health and adulthood. And then literally months after I dropped health insurance, I was in the hospital with first time was, what was the first time? Oh, I had like a viral infection in my gut, and it, like Yeah.
Adam:It was excruciating pain. And then the second time, yeah, a weird infection in my knee. Anyway, I'm just I'm dying. We're all dying, but I'm dying a little a little faster. But we can't be dying because we have so much cool stuff going on.
Adam:I'm so excited. I'm manic. It's all it's good. So much fun.
Dax:Yeah. I I I was telling Liz yesterday. I was like, I think Adam's mania has been activated.
Adam:It really has. Anytime there's something new, like a new project or something, man, I just don't sleep. I'm just I'm not. Maybe that's why I'm not getting better because I'm not sleeping.
Dax:Do you notice that, like, my color is changing, like, constantly?
Adam:Like, it was super yellow. Different. What is my color? Monitor? Like, the light from your monitor?
Dax:No. I haven't changed anything. I think I think I fucked up when setting up my camera.
Adam:Well, you've not had, like, normal jobs. So, like, the people you're on calls with are your friends that you work with. But, maybe you can't relate to this, but there's that, like, I'm on a Zoom call with a bunch of people, and I don't need to be on it. I'm just listening. What?
Adam:Your color change?
Dax:It's yellow now. I'm, like, super yellow again. What is What? Yeah.
Adam:What in the world? Okay.
Dax:But, like,
Adam:you're you're you're kind of paying attention, but not really. But then you realize, like, everyone can tell you're not paying attention because the screen flashing on your face, like, you're clearly browsing the web. Yeah. Like, it's very obvious, but we're all just gonna be okay. I think about
Dax:that with my mic because my mic picks up my keyboard typing.
Adam:Yeah. Pretty well, I think. Your fake keyboard sounds?
Dax:No. My real keyboard sounds. I oh, I forgot about the speaker. I think I I think I, like, accidentally turned that off at some point and forgot about it. I gotta bring that back with my fake keyboard noises.
Adam:That reminds me. Just a quick question before we get into serious stuff. Why is sound on the web bad? Like, I so badly we just made a thing that we teased out. And on the website, I so it's like supposed to be like a terminal prompt.
Adam:I wanna make it, like, make clicky sounds when you type, but I'm like, can't do that. Sound is bad on the web. People don't want sound. Why? I feel like it should be a a whole multimedia experience, you know.
Dax:Wait. What do you mean people don't want sound? Do you think people would have been upset
Adam:about it? Websites yeah. People don't want or they can't be on by default. Like, if you have sounds that go
Dax:off That's because of advertisers. The advertisers are on the web. Yeah. I know this because, back in my ad ad tech days oh, here's a really funny thing that I built at one point. So when I was an ad tech, I was basically like, you know how you're like, oh man, there's all these evil people in history.
Dax:How did like millions of people follow them? That wasn't me. I was just like doing my job, doing evil stuff, but it was fun.
Adam:And I
Dax:was just kinda caught up in, like, the engineering of it. So you can't autoplay videos when a page loads, of course. That's like
Adam:Unless it's a background video, like it's some cool trendy, like, hero background video that's playing behind your hero text, that's okay. But it's just visual. It's not audio. Right?
Dax:I don't know exactly what the limitation is, but I know that and especially if something certain and iframe couldn't.
Adam:Oh, you're saying, literally, you couldn't. I thought you're just saying it's frowned upon.
Dax:No. No. There's, like, a browser. There's some setting that makes it or there's some, like, default behavior of browsers that make so you can't autoplay video when a page loads. But for advertisers, I was like, oh, okay.
Dax:I guess we we have to wait for them to tap the video to play. But who the hell is ever gonna tap?
Adam:Yeah. Right. I'm gonna click on this ad to see what happens.
Dax:I've built this system where you could, pre process a video and get it streamed over WebSocket and have it render as canvas Oh, wow. To a
Adam:canvas. You're so evil.
Dax:Yeah. So it would autoplay the video, but it wouldn't really be a video. It'd just be like a canvas streaming. Like and this was worse because, like, the compression obviously wasn't as I don't know, like, some crazy compression thing. So it was like, it would just send you a lot of data, but it would, you know, autoplay.
Dax:And that was a product that we marketed.
Adam:Oh, that's another thing that I, that reminded me I need to ask you about because you're smart. My I feel like it's DNS. Something like, speed tests on my computer, fine. My network speed tests. Like, my Internet connection is fast.
Adam:It's in my office closet, by the way. Fiber terminates in my sorry. Internet is fast, but there's, like, this crazy latency right now browsing the web in my home. And I it lines up with I got a bunch of notifications from my Synology, network storage device that there have been login attempts from, like, Russia and China and all these places that there shouldn't be people trying to log in to my, network storage device. So some somehow and I know I exposed some of this stuff on the Internet because I wanna access it outside my home.
Adam:But is it possible somebody hacked me and they, like, slowed down my DNS? Because it is my DNS server as well. My Synology runs it does my DNS stuff because I use, like, AdGuard or something. Is it possible somebody hacked in and they they're doing something? They're, like, intercepting all the traffic and making it slow?
Dax:I mean, it's definitely plausible, especially because you have, like, an exotic configuration that would allow for that kind of thing. Mhmm. Why do you expose anything on the Internet? Like, have you, I tried setting up tails. Okay.
Dax:So then
Adam:Yeah. Got ahead of you there. You're like, if you just tails. Oh.
Dax:Alright. You asked the question. Yeah.
Adam:Well, tails scale doesn't work for everything. There's what what did I expose? Oh, it has to do with my I made a little, like, iOS app for myself when I stream IRL stuff so I can, like, do stuff to my OBS and some things like that. And RTMP streaming or HLS streaming or something. I don't know.
Dax:I mean, it's totally possible.
Adam:And I'd also maybe less than things completely open without passwords or anything. It's possible. I'm just bad.
Dax:Do you think it's just your DN NAS? Because your speed test
Adam:is fine. Test like, the bandwidth of my Internet is fine. The the connection to my Internet. But it's just, like, when I hit a website, there's, like, a 10 second delay right now for everything. And it it just feels like
Dax:2nd delay. And if you do, like, a if you do, like, a dig, is that slow in your terminal?
Adam:I haven't tried. You always come up with, like, this super obvious, like, you could try this. Yesterday, you did this with me. You were like, wait. Have you tried just, like, running it locally and seeing it?
Adam:Oh, that's a good call. Never mind. Got it fixed. Yeah. Sorry.
Adam:I'll try I'll try it.
Dax:If it's just DNS, that should be easy to, like, pinpoint, but it might be something more nefarious.
Adam:Yeah. It feels pretty nefarious. My whole web experience just got really slow.
Dax:Just wipe everything and restart.
Adam:Just start over. Yeah. I could just block all this stuff. I I should probably set up a rule or something in my Ubiquiti hardware that's like, don't accept any connections from Russia. Just probably don't need any connections from Russia.
Adam:Let's just block those.
Dax:No inbound connections or outbound? Do you, like, do you really take advantage of a lot of that stuff? Like, why why do you have all that?
Adam:You know, I I think I went with Ubiquiti stuff after we when we built our first home, we had a contractor do all of the, like, networking and home intelligence, if you will. The same person, like, they did the theater. They did all of it. And they used Ubiquiti equipment. So I just kinda got used to, like, using Unifi console and all that.
Adam:So yeah. So I did that. And then, like, WAPS in the attic, the whole thing, just to make a nice home network. Yeah. I just when we built the new house, I just decided to draw it myself, and I went with Ubiquiti stuff.
Adam:But I don't take advantage of it. There's so much you can do in there.
Dax:Yeah. Because, like, I'm thinking about, like I don't know what I need would need to add. Like, I I just use a consumer router and consumer networking.
Adam:Yeah. How how big of a living space are you in?
Dax:Yeah. I mean, we just have metro metro Wi Fi, and that's good enough for
Adam:Yeah. More space. Like, I think with our with our especially our first home was, like, 5,000 square feet on two levels. And there weren't, like, really good just consumer router situations that covered the whole house with good coverage.
Dax:Well, yeah. I mean, I think for a big house, you definitely have need, like, multiple, like, wired setups. Yeah.
Adam:I guess the mesh thing I guess, like, you can you can buy those Google mesh. There's probably a lot of options for just mesh routers now.
Dax:They work surprisingly well. Like, I have the I have the Google one. I only bought it because when I was staying we were staying in a this is so funny. So we were staying in a house in Miami when we used to visit here in the winter. And I show up, like, the late the whole time every time we did this, what I was always nervous about was, like, am I gonna show up as Internet gonna suck?
Dax:Because I have to be here for 3 months, and that would
Adam:be a disaster.
Dax:So I show up, and I, like, immediately run a speed test, and it's horrible. And I'm like, oh, no. Like, this is a bad situation. But then I plugged in to the wall, and I ran a speed test, and it was, like, literally 10 times faster. And I was like, these people are paying for such fast Internet that they, like, messed up their Wi Fi situation.
Dax:Yeah. And I bought a mesh system for that house, and I used it, and I, like, completely fixed it. But then now I moved here and started using it again. Yeah. And it works really well.
Dax:Like, I mean, my house isn't huge, but it covers, like, all the way into my backyard and and everything. So Yeah. Yeah. They do work really well compared to how like like, my parents' house, we had, like, so many random dead zones that we could just, like, never really fix. But now this messed up will totally fix it.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:Hey. We got a lot to talk about.
Dax:We do.
Adam:You you got some CloudFlare stuff you wanna talk about. We we leaked our our secret project that people on the podcast know about. I mean, they listen to our pod wait. The people who listen to our podcast know that we have a secret project. They may not know that we leaked it.
Dax:We didn't leak it. What do you mean?
Adam:We didn't leak it. I don't know. Maybe we announced it. It's not really announcing a teaser because it's we We teased it. Still haven't told people what it is.
Adam:We've just been, like, hey, Here's a little something. A little something for you.
Dax:I told a couple of people what it was.
Adam:Oh, you did?
Dax:Yeah. Because a few people
Adam:Told them? Told them? Yeah. Oh, I sold trash.
Dax:Well, no. I mean, I told some because I remember I was like, whoever at first are people that find Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Adam:You'll DM ed them.
Dax:Yeah. And they're all like, woah.
Adam:That's such a good idea.
Dax:Oh, good. They're
Adam:excited about it.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. Every single person I've told I've told a bunch of people here in Miami in person.
Adam:Yeah. So if you're listening to the podcast, you can, you can get the same teaser. Just go to Twitter. No. Should we do that?
Adam:Should we just say it? Like, SSH?
Dax:Type in SSH terminal dot shop.
Adam:There you go.
Dax:And that's the You've been teased. You've been teased along
Adam:with everybody else. Okay. Let's talk Cloudflare stuff.
Dax:Yeah. So I guess last time we recorded, that was in the middle of Cloudflare dev week. Mhmm.
Adam:What a mistake. Should've wait till it was over.
Dax:Yeah. It's funny because our our recording schedule is tough when news doesn't line up perfectly. I know. Like, all news needs to wait until Wednesday. Like, drop all your stuff on Wednesday so we can talk about it
Adam:right away. Exactly.
Dax:But it also gives us time to reflect and, like, I think give it maybe a different perspective. So Oh, I've been reflecting.
Adam:Yeah. That's all I've been doing for last week, really.
Dax:So it was on Thursday. And then so Friday, they acquired, you know, 2 of our friends' companies.
Adam:2 of them? Yeah. It's kinda crazy.
Dax:So they acquired Party Kit and Baseline, both people that we know. Mhmm.
Adam:Now it's on the same day. Right?
Dax:Yeah. The PartyKit 1, that one is, I guess, a little less surprising because he it's a product built so around the Cloudflare ecosystem. And, Sunil, like, worked at Cloudflare prior.
Adam:So that
Dax:makes a lot of sense. I think he just got his, like the way I see it, it's like he took this funny path where sometimes you're you're at a big company and you're like, man, we should be doing this. But, like, you can't convince whatever to, like you can't convince a company to let you work on that. So he just left and worked on it anyway. And then now Yeah.
Dax:They hired him back, and he gets to work on it. So it's like this really roundabout way to get your way. And then baseline, which is a, you know, an observability tool, and they're, like, very early ST users. So their app isn't actually an ST app. Nice.
Dax:And they got acquired. Yeah. And they've done, like, really cool things. And so they got acquired to basically build observability for Cloudflare, which I think is gonna be crazy because every cloud's logging product is bare minimum, which kind of makes sense because most serious companies are gonna go pay Datadog anyway. But that just means that if you're not a company that, like, necessarily is gonna automatically pay for Datadog, you just have, like, a really weak default experience because they don't really care too much.
Dax:Mhmm. So if I'm imagining Cloudflare getting as a baseline, an observability experience on par with, like, baseline. Yeah. That's that's pretty crazy. That's, like, a pretty crazy floor.
Dax:And then, obviously, you you can grow out of that. But, yeah, I'm excited to see what come comes out of that. Like, having all that stuff turned on and working by default with nothing to set up, like, that's pretty appealing.
Adam:Yeah. Cloudflare gets more and more appealing. Yeah. Not just from your investor standpoint, but, like, from a, I'm building modern web applications. Is it missing anything now?
Adam:Is there anything with all the latest announcements?
Dax:I think it's funny because their dev weeks have been, like, increasingly increasingly more interesting. And I think this dev week just hit in a whole new level. Like, I feel like everybody was talking about it, and there's so much excitement around it. And think, yeah, you can build real stuff on it. You know, our secret project that we just built is mostly on Cloudflare.
Dax:Cloudflare, fortunately, doesn't have containers, and we do need containers. So we mix Cloudflare and AWS together. And yeah. I mean, it worked well and really no no no real issue. Just it's still you're still an early adopter if you're using it, but it's all totally possible possible.
Dax:The other funny thing was because party kit and baseline got acquired, everybody was like there are so many tweets asking if SSC is getting acquired or, like, telling Cloudflip they should acquire SSC.
Adam:It just makes sense, you know? Kinda does.
Dax:Yeah. That would be such a crazy, like, team to put together. Like, all the Cloudflare people who are already, like, very good at what they do and then baseline and then party kit and then us too. Like, that, like, comes together really nicely. But we basically already get that now without actually having to join them.
Dax:So we're seeing how far we can go just working together.
Adam:Yeah. Because it would be it would be a bummer for me, personally, if SSD were acquired by Cloudflare. I mean, I'd be happy for you, but, like, the AWS picture would probably change on SSD, and I very much rely on that for many reasons.
Dax:That's another reason why, like I mean, we talked about this last time where I have, like, very mixed feelings about acquisitions. But this is a very pointed example where we have this vision that's very large. But if we were acquired by Cloudflare, it would get scoped down to, like Yeah. A much smaller thing. It could be better because it is scoped down, but, yeah, that's why it's not, like, immediately very appealing.
Adam:So I just remembered what it was that, you had some stuff to talk about about Cloudflare. It was some Next. Js Vercel stuff, in terms of the Vercel infrastructure.
Dax:To our listeners that are sick of hearing about Vercel, I'm sorry, but we gotta do this one
Adam:more time. Said the words Next. Js Vercel, I was like, I can just feel people. Like, really? Are we gonna talk about them again?
Adam:Do we have to talk about them again?
Dax:Yeah. But I think so in this case I mean, people have asked us to talk about it. And I think I have some information that's or maybe it's a perspective that's a little bit different. So another thing that happened this week, which was funny is oh, wait, man. There's so much to happen.
Dax:Now I'm remembering. Okay. Mhmm. So Cloudflare dev week is going on. You know, they're getting a lot of attention.
Dax:In the background, the whole, you know, Versa had, like, a little mini drama where, like, they increased pricing, but they said they decreased it, but increased for a bunch of people. It's very confusing.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:So people were like some people were, quote, unquote, upset by that, you know, like, fake upset. You know how people are.
Adam:Yeah. I know how people are.
Dax:And there was, like, you know, manufacturer drama around all that. And a lot of people were talking about how, like, you can just use a VPS in Cloudflare. You can just, like, use on Cloudflare. Cloudflare's name kept coming up in that conversation.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:And I always found this interesting because I knew that so if you if you go back a year ago, if you look at Vercel's messaging, they were doing a lot with building on Cloudflare. Right? They launched, like, middleware. They launched, their, like, edge run quote, unquote, edge runtime. All this stuff was built on Cloudflare, to run on Cloudflare Workers.
Dax:So in my head, I was like, okay. Vercel has a good relationship with Cloudflare, and they're, like, trying to be partners to use together. But at some point and so if you look go back a year ago, Vercel kept talking about how everything is gonna move to edge. Like, you're gonna put all your stuff on edge. Your code is gonna run edge edge edge.
Dax:They're just kind of obsessively hammering that that forward. And you imagine that's, like, a technical presentation. But, really, it's a result of, like, you know, them, like, seeing opportunity and building on top of Cloudflare. So they're, like, pushing this direction. Very quickly, they were taught the lesson that just asking people to run all their stuff at Edge doesn't really work because if people are making round trips to their database or database in the region, you know, that's like it's it's not that simple.
Dax:So it didn't, like, land at least with our bigger customers the way they expected. At the same time so this is a rumor, so I don't wanna, like, say this as though it's a fact.
Adam:Yeah. We're we're good journalists over here.
Dax:Yes. I'm acknowledging. Just say stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:I think at this around the same time, they I heard a rumor that they signed a deal with AWS. Like, a very serious deal of being, like, you're gonna build more on AWS. They're gonna give you better, better pricing. But, like, everything you build is gonna be very AWS focused. Mhmm.
Dax:And I found out and at the time, I was like, that's weird because it seems like they were, like, super into Cloudflare and doing Cloudflare stuff. It's weird they would accept this deal to, you know, do more stuff on AWS. Yep. And then RSCs came out. Right?
Dax:And shortly after RSCs came out, and all of a sudden the messaging switched. The messaging switched to rendering at edge is bad. Never render at edge. RSCs render at the region. And, like like, it totally it totally pivoted and, like, all of their technologies are to focus on, like, a completely different architecture.
Dax:But the way they frame they always phrase it as, like, this linear progress of, like, now this is the next best thing. Now this is the next best thing. But to me, this is just a reflection of they made this deal with AWS, you know, rumored. Yeah. And now all their stuff goes back to rendering a region inside node run times.
Dax:And all this stuff they're, like, blabbering on about PPR, like, all this crap, it's all just weird workarounds for that specific architecture. So that's, like, the transition I was witnessing. Then on Friday, like, Guillermo finally snapped. And did you see the stuff he tweeted about? What?
Dax:Yeah. So deep in some again, these stupid annoying people being like, oh, just $5 VPS and throw Cloudflare in front of it, which Yeah. Yeah. Again, I'm a huge fan of Cloudflare, but again, these people don't it it's a stupid conversation. I think after a week of having, like, all this like, a bad launch week, basically, Guillermo snapped and started, like, shitting on Cloudflare.
Dax:He was like Oh,
Adam:really?
Dax:You guys don't know how misleading their pricing is. Like, they're lying about this.
Adam:I did see this.
Dax:He like Yeah. He was like, Matthew is, like, cleverly rebranding this stuff to trick you. Yeah. He's like, first name calling, like, the CEO of, like, a public company. It was really odd.
Dax:Yeah. He started to say stuff like performance on our network is better. Like, we have better reliability on our network. I'm like I started rolling my eyes here. I'm like, what do you mean your network?
Adam:Tell me more about the Vercel network. Yeah.
Dax:Shit. Like, this is you're just talking about your
Adam:The Vercel global network.
Dax:You can
Adam:use Vercel's global accelerator. You can Yeah. You can use Vercel WAF. Yeah. Vercel Lambda function.
Dax:How diluted are you to, like, claim that you have better performance than Right. A company sitting, like, at a much lower level on the Internet? And the Cloudflare has had its issues. They had downtime this past week, you know, the the you know, stuff happens, of course. But it was such a weird callout where, like, they're, like, calling out this much larger, like, more legit company on this thing.
Dax:And so to me, I was, like, okay, clearly something this is like confirmation. Like, that relationship is soured.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:And that that they're not really betting on building more of their infrastructure that way. Yeah. And from the Cloudflare perspective, I'm sure it's frustrating on their side because Vercel never really properly demoed what's possible through Cloudflare Workers because their architecture was so weird that they would always, like, route through AWS first, so they never fully took advantage of workers properly. Yeah. So, yeah.
Dax:Like, all this stuff is kinda happening in the background. But from the end user's perspective, they're just seeing the quote unquote progress of, like, Next. Js has the new features and, like, here's what you should care about. Here's what you should look at. But these are just, like, they're factoring in the constraints they have from Yeah.
Dax:From these deals that they're
Adam:Cloud deals.
Dax:Working out.
Adam:Yeah. When you're a cloud reseller, you spend a lot of time and a lot of mental energy goes into working with different clouds because you don't have a cloud.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. So I was juggling all this stuff and figuring out workarounds. And this whole PPR thing is so stupid. Like, they're like, people are obsessively repeating it.
Dax:And literally, everyone that's tried to tell me that it's important I tweeted this the other day. Not a single person could explain it correctly to me.
Adam:And Yeah. It's re
Dax:it's re it's not because they're dumb. It's actually a really confusing concept because it's actually doing so little. It's doing so little but being positioned as this big thing that it's very confusing. And it's only the result of the fact that a very versatile specific infrastructure, like, it starts to make sense to have something like that.
Adam:Yeah. And it's not just Vercel, but there is this problem when you're kind of a a layer on top of the necessary layer, where you have to, like, invent things that are like, this is important just because you have to have a reason to use your thing. Like, what what is the if you're just reselling someone else's service, you gotta invent all these, like, higher level concepts that don't necessarily they're not rooted in, like, real problems all the time.
Dax:Yeah. Especially the thing where he, like, started to, like, try to pick a fight with Cloudflare. Like, the thing he was, like, posting screenshots of, like, their Argo pricing, which really has nothing to do with anything an end user of Cloudflare will run into. Yeah. That's something Vercel probably ran into.
Dax:It's trying someone trying to build something on top of Cloudflare. But he was kinda positioning it as, like, no, they do charge for bandwidth. And, Yeah. It's, like, extremely misleading, and it was interesting to see that, like, snap. Well, because when I see a snap, I'm like, there's real fear there.
Dax:So he's, like, afraid of to some degree of the growth of Cloudflare. If he wasn't afraid of it, he he would wanna send anything.
Adam:You know? If people just build on Cloudflare, they don't need Vercel. I guess, they could still use Next. Js and deploy to Cloudflare. But but, like, Vercel if if Next.
Adam:Js does really well and the Vercel commercial products tank, Vercel as a company does not do really well. Right? They don't make money on people using Next. Js. Like, that's their funnel into Vercel services.
Dax:No. No. Yeah. It's not good if people don't if a large percent of people don't use use Vercel. But, yeah, I think the other thing that's interesting is I think people forget that the world is not static.
Dax:So there was probably a time where, using Vercel was probably, like, a massive difference from not using it. Mhmm. But the world is not static. There's new things that show up, new products that show up, things get easier, like, things get figured out, and you can't assume that this ten x benefit is there forever.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:That's why you gotta constantly find new things. And I think that's kinda what people are realizing. They're like, yeah, like, compared to 5 years ago, this probably is, like, much better. But compared to now, other we have, like, you know, a dozen other options that are maybe not as good, but, like, the gap isn't really there. Yeah.
Dax:I was crazy about building stuff in tech. Like, any event you have or or just business in general, any event you have in a good market will Yeah. Kick in.
Adam:Yeah. That's tough. Like, just thinking Vercel strategically, like, they're they're fighting that the infrastructure battle, like, having to worry about all these infrastructure providers or open source tools like SSD, things eating them on that side. Then also just the framework side, like, Astro could come along and be the bigger thing, Or it could be on some path that gains more adoption and and that eats into Next. Js.
Adam:So it's like they're fighting on all fronts to stay relevant. That's tough.
Dax:Yeah. And that's what's tough with an open source company. You have 2 products to defend. Yeah. So that's, like, you know, twice as hard.
Dax:Yeah. The other thing from this week is did you see that benchmark I posted?
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Explain that to me.
Dax:That actually went pretty viral, and people are starting to, like, expand on it.
Adam:K. So my first question is, how much does it matter in, like, a on demand functions environment? Like, in the world where I mean, it's still slower. So, like, rendering your pages or whatever is slower in Next. Js than a React.
Adam:You do you wanna explain the benchmark first?
Dax:Yeah. So the benchmark was comparing the number of requests per second you could get through just a simple hello world Vercel app. And it's not interesting on its own. It's mostly interesting compared to just using React to server render stuff directly, which, of course, with something like this, I had a bunch of idiots in the replies being, like, this doesn't matter. Like, what do you mean?
Dax:You're comparing React in the browser to Next in the server. And, like, people just didn't understand that. Yeah. React on its own can take JSX and spit out, like, a stream to send down from the server. Yep.
Dax:That's the best performance you can possibly get because there's no overhead. The interesting part was a gap. Next phase is so much slower. It was getting my that setup was getting 400 requests a second. It was, like, a 170 times slower than just using React directly.
Dax:So all the overhead that Next adds, like, that's the bloat. And I found it interesting because it's like, okay, this is that gap is what represents all the stuff that Next added. And the question is, like, does that sound right? Like, the features they add require that much slowness. But that was a benchmark.
Dax:And, yeah, I had the same thought as you, like, request per second. Like, how does that translate to, like, a serverless world? It's tricky. So it matters and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter in that the parallelization is happening at a different layer in Lambda.
Dax:Right. Like, there's a lower level system that's, like, spinning up things that are running. But that lower level system is always more inefficient than, like, something that's scaling within each thing. Yeah. And there is talk about having like, allowing Lambda functions to handle more than one request at a time.
Dax:Like, right now
Adam:Yeah. Go ahead.
Dax:Yeah. So right now, there's a problem where AWS will spend a Lambda function. It gets a request. Let's say there's 50 milliseconds in that request where it's just waiting on IO. It's waiting for a third party service or a database.
Dax:That container is not doing anything. It's already up. It's already warm. It's ready to take another request. If another request comes in, AWS will spin up another container.
Dax:So that's inefficient on Yeah. Ground level. You're putting in a bunch of work. So the Lambda scaling thing is just inefficient in general. It's very generic and works for anything.
Dax:But, like, in a in a focused way, in terms of, like, efficiently using resources, it's not efficient. So in a world where Lambda allows you to have reuse existing container for the second request, this starts to matter again. Mhmm.
Adam:Okay. So it and it does matter anyway because, like you said, I mean, it's still less efficient use of resources if it takes longer to render your page, more compute. Yeah. That makes sense.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah.
Adam:It's interesting. I mean, the like, they build so much stuff on top of React, all these features that they build. I guess, it makes sense that there's a trade off.
Dax:Well, it's sort of. Then people were like, okay, let's go check the other frameworks. And Oh. Remix is also slower than React, but it's 5 times slower, not a 170 times slower. You know?
Dax:Yeah. And they checked, like, SvelteKit. They checked Solid. They checked a bunch of these things. So the the results were kind of interesting.
Dax:It's fun to see. But, yeah, man. Like, those, like, those are really surprising numbers. I could like, 400 requests a second is, like, really bad.
Adam:Yeah. Do you ever wonder, like, does it feel like we pick on I I don't know. Are we picking on Vercel in Next. Js? Like, why are they so easy to to dislike?
Adam:Because so things like this, it's like, objectively, numbers, bad. But you say it, and it's like, it just feels like we're beaten up on them all the time. And it's like, why do we do that? But I feel like it's their fault. I don't know.
Adam:I don't feel like I just make fun of people for no reason.
Dax:Yeah. If you wanna play if you wanna play a brand where it's like, we're the best, we're elites. Again, it's all this shit they were saying about how they're better than Cloudflare. If you wanna, like, play that game, you're gonna get You gotta back it up. A proportionate response.
Dax:Right? So I, yeah, I don't I don't feel anything, like, weird about that. I feel
Adam:like Cloudflare is and this this is totally kind of tangential. They're in such a great position where everybody loves it. It's public. Like, they've made it. Like, they're a big company with all this crazy infrastructure and advantages.
Adam:But, like, still, people like me love Cloudflare and don't really use it. So, like, I didn't know there was downtime. They don't get any of the, like, downsides of you know what I mean? Like, when you have tons of people depending on your stuff, it's, like, still so early, but yet not early where they get to like, if a tree falls in the forest, nobody hears sees it. Does it did it happen?
Adam:Was there actually CloudFlare downtime? I don't know. I love Cloudflare.
Dax:It's funny because, like, that is a because they have they have a successful business that has nothing to do with anything that we really touch. Right? Yeah. That's, like, where they that's why they got big. And now they're expanding to this new market.
Dax:And they're, like, early. Like, they're treated like any early company there where, like, it's mostly excitement. People aren't using it enough to know the rough edges, know the pain points, or getting have gotten screwed by it to some degree. Eventually, I think people will land in a more reasonable place. Yeah.
Dax:My goal it's funny. Like, I was like, okay, our goal with all the SSC Cloudflare stuff is know, every month someone posts a tweet about how the AWS console sucks. I want that to switch to a tweet about how the Cloudflare console sucks because that'll happen. Right? Like, as more people are using Cloudflare, they'd be like, what the hell is wrong with this console?
Adam:Yeah. So is it possible to have like, for one of these cloud providers to have a good console? Because I feel like the it's, like, 2 separate problems. And I don't know what the, like, first principles, like, grounded in physics reasons for this is, But I feel like there's gotta be a company like AWS and Cloudflare that has all the underlying infrastructure. They have all the physical stuff deployed and all the people swapping drives out and doing all that stuff.
Adam:The they're like the electricity provider or whatever. And then they're fundamentally gonna have such a wide surface area that there's no way to build a single, like, unified, console that makes sense, unless you just built multiple of them for each of the specific types of use cases. Like, these these, like, utility provider level infrastructure companies like AWS that can handle, like, millions of different use cases because they have millions of different customers. So I feel like there's it's like this untractable, impossible problem to build a console that, like, everyone loves on top of AWS because they've got 200 plus services, whatever. So it feels like there has to be this next layer of companies that build, shrink-wrap experience for a specific use case on top of the the underlying thing.
Adam:Or do you think there's some way that they could solve this problem? I mean, they have all the resources in the world. I guess they could just hire enough teams to build enough consoles that one of them is good. I don't know.
Dax:Okay. So I think they're I think a lot of what you're saying is true, especially in the AWS AWS case. Like, the AWS case is the console is basically a one to one reflection of their public API. Like, it just Right. Maps things directly, which makes sense.
Dax:Like, that makes sense for what you would build a console with. But there's still, like, a range of how well you execute even on that. Like, in the Cloudflare case, I think the UX of their console is not bad. I do find some of their stuff confusing. I think it's it's just they have, like, quite a few products.
Dax:A lot of them are, like Mhmm. Still kinda early, so it's kinda confusing what they are. The documentation is sparse. If you ignore all of that because you're gonna assume that gets better. Yep.
Dax:The console is slow as shit. Like, there's spinners everywhere. Anytime I try to do anything, there's spinners, and that is just a pure execution thing. Like, the effort wasn't put in to be, like, let's pretend a power user is using this. Like, where are they gonna be frustrated?
Dax:And, yeah, like, when I'm clicking through there, like, why is every the amount of data I'm looking through is probably, like, less than a megabyte for everything I have deployed in there. Yeah. Like, why is there just spinners on every single data transition?
Adam:I don't even notice because I'm not, like, extreme web performance pilled like you are. I feel like you've looked at so many like, the 5 good web apps in the world so much that, like, you see everything else so much harsher. And I just don't even feel it because it's like, yeah, this is mostly web.
Dax:You do feel it.
Adam:I don't You feel it. But I
Dax:just consciously don't feel it. You You might not even consciously register it. But Yeah. It's at the end of the day, it's like you do feel it because if I ask you the question if I told you, oh, can you go fix 1, 2, 3 things and, like, go use a Cloudflare console to do that? Are you excited to do that?
Dax:Or you're like, fine. I'll do it. It's like
Adam:a task.
Dax:Right. So that's, like, that's kinda where you end up feeling it.
Adam:Yeah. No. I I know it's a problem. I just think, like, I probably am more in the camp that when I use a really good one of the, like, 5 really good web apps, it's more like a positive, wow, this is really great, versus, like, feeling the pain
Dax:everywhere else in the world. I definitely feel it extremely just because I've stared at these apps too much. Yeah. It it's actually I think of it as a sacrifice. I've, like, sacrificed my ability to enjoy
Adam:The Internet.
Dax:Tool. Like, I hate every single thing so much. But in exchange, I'll, like, you know, help people understand how to make stuff really good.
Adam:It it really comes down to just carrying a whole lot. Right? It's a lorex.
Dax:Caring about that dimension. Yeah. Yeah. And, like, these providers typically don't do a good job with last mile tooling. Like, we've seen with AWS.
Dax:Cloudflare, I would say, is, like, 10 times better, but it's still challenging for them. It's, like, I think it's tricky to get the right people to do that stuff who also understand all the rest of the things. That's why the acquisitions they made are interesting because I think it brings, like, that type of person into the company. And we'll see if the company structure allows them to actually do what they do well. If they fail to deliver something good, then you kinda know that it's, like, a corporate structure thing.
Dax:The company is too big and because you see people deliver well. Yeah.
Adam:Okay. So, you just cemented you cemented a theory that, just going in my brain right now. And if you can see the wheels turning, like, when I'm thinking hard, it's pretty visible in my face. Can you just tell me if this is something like Paul Graham's already tweeted, like, 10 times? But there's this theory in my mind now that's shaping up where there's only, like, point 001% of the population that cares a whole lot about everything they do.
Adam:There's this tiny amount of the population on the earth that, like, sweats every little detail and just cares about like, they're very just intense about everything they do. Right? And the bigger an organization so start ups filled with these people. And there's, like, a 10 person start up, maybe half of them are like that.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:But the bigger the organization organization gets, so AWS AWS' size, you're just diluting down the amount of cares that your organization has, the amount of f's that it gives. Right? Because there's only so many people. So when a company like Cloudflare's size, they're smaller than AWS. They have a higher percentage of caring, Right?
Adam:Or just high output individuals are just good at what they do, people. So when they acquire little companies that are chock full of the cares, Right? And they're just improving that. Okay? Does it all tie together?
Adam:Did that make any sense?
Dax:Yeah. No. I mean, that that makes sense. The other flip side though is there's some stat where it's, like, 90% of m and a is a failure. I mean, I don't know if we talked about it before.
Dax:I believe that. Yeah. Yeah. The stat is so ridiculous that I'm just like, how how are people still acquiring companies when it's this bad? It's like it's mostly gonna be I mean, it doesn't work out.
Adam:So, yeah, I I guess my question would be, how do they measure that? And what I mean is, like, there's no way to measure the impact of those individuals that they acquired because so much of it's just buying the people, the team. Is there really a way to, I guess, like sales revenue, there's ways to quantify it. But like, can they really capture? Yeah.
Dax:I think there's, like, a subjective thing. You can ask the people involved in the deal. 5 years later, would you do the deal again?
Adam:Gotcha. That's a good signal.
Dax:Yeah. I think that encompasses everything.
Adam:Yeah. No. No. I don't
Dax:know if that's how they do it, but I I can see some something like that. Yeah. Yeah. To a point where I'm like, it's crazy that people still acquire companies. Like Yeah.
Adam:It really is when you think about that. I I don't wanna say that out loud too much because Yeah.
Dax:I know.
Adam:Keep doing it, people.
Dax:Yeah. I think it's like it's especially it's usually like bad companies that have good market positions acquiring decent, like, competitors. Mhmm. And then like that I can see why that doesn't work out because the company sucks and the people company gets acquired and, like, most of the people quit after 6 months Yeah. Or, like, just fail to, like, even be able to be effective in the new company.
Dax:Like, I totally get that. But yeah. So I don't know. Like, we'll see we'll see what comes out of it, and it's, like, a good reflection of what their culture is like and and how they can kind of preserve Yeah. People's care ability to care.
Adam:Okay. I've got this super strong urge to talk about literally anything else. Do you ever feel like we talk about the same, like, 5 things just over and over? I mean, it makes sense because we're not really thinking about, like, a podcast or an audience. We're literally just having conversations.
Adam:And I think this is something people probably do when they keep having conversations every week with somebody. Just keep talking about a lot of the same things, just kinda refining your thoughts and all that. But I just really wanna talk about literally anything else.
Dax:I was gonna talk about, our plan for next week.
Adam:Oh, that that's exactly what I was just thinking. I was like, I wanna have it next week because I'm totally healthy, and I'm gonna make it, and it's gonna be fine.
Dax:Okay. So you're flying out on Monday? Monday. And you're gonna land around 1 PM EST?
Adam:Uh-huh. So then prime and teach can we talk about, like, that we're all gonna be together?
Dax:Well, this episode is not gonna come out till Monday. So
Adam:Oh, so I'll be in Miami when this episode comes out. How weird.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:Wait. No. I won't. It'll be in the morning. Close enough.
Adam:I'll be on the plane. No.
Dax:I won't. Be here. If you're listening to this podcast, Adam is basically here.
Adam:Yes.
Dax:And so and Prime is gonna be here in the evening. I think he's landing at 7. And then TJ is getting here around the same time as you, I think around noon. I think I'll be able to pick both of you guys up, but I'll see. So we've got the first two day 1st day we're just gonna be setting up and figuring out our structure because we're gonna be streaming on Tuesday Wednesday.
Adam:Oh, that's right. So we're not streaming till Tuesday. So we've got all Monday to get everything set up, all the equipment.
Dax:And, like, just grab whatever last minute things we need to we need to buy.
Adam:How are we gonna do this? I think I feel like we need to actually plan a little bit on this call. And I'm sorry, podcast listeners. You're just gonna have to hear it. But because you don't actually know what we're doing.
Adam:But, like, we're gonna set up a spot in your house
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:Like a desk. And we're and then your desk that you're sitting at right now, we can use that desk too, I guess? It's already set up.
Dax:So I have this outdoor patio area, which I think is gonna be really good for that, because we can all sit around this big table that I have.
Adam:Can I take a nap in the hammock if I'm not feeling well? Is that okay? Yes. Okay. We can have a camera on the hammock.
Adam:Yeah. So just for the the sleeping person.
Dax:So I think that can be the main area. And it shouldn't be too hard to set up. The only thing I gotta figure out is and this isn't this is not a problem. We would have the mosquito candles going all day.
Adam:They're pretty offensive. Please. So
Dax:that's fine. But also, I found what actually works really well is if in the morning, I just spend 5 minutes killing them all with my electric racket.
Adam:Like What? An electric racket is like a tennis racket?
Dax:Electric tennis racket. It looks like a tennis racket, but it's electric. And you just swing, and it makes the loudest, most satisfying noise. It, like, explodes
Adam:when it comes to contact.
Dax:Yeah. It's it's like you're you're gonna hear it, and you're gonna understand the satisfaction. And then there's, like, a whiff of smoke. They, like, they they, like, explode in disintegrate.
Adam:Ever considered, like, life from, like, an insect's perspective? Like, think of the things they have to worry about. And just introduced electric, tennis racquets into that. Like, these giant monkeys swing these flaming instruments at them that just disintegrate them. Like, can you imagine them telling their kids about how not to go outside the the, like, tree or something?
Adam:Because this is what you'll have to anyway.
Dax:So I'm just gonna get more into this. So I don't kill anything except mosquitoes. Like, the rest of the, like, the moths and stuff, like, they don't really bother me. But mosquitoes, I'm like, fuck.
Adam:I wasn't trying to make, like, an animal rights
Dax:stand alone. I know. I know. But my point is, it's not there there there's usually just, like, 4 or 5 that are around. And if you just it's pretty easy to get them
Adam:all. Mhmm.
Dax:The one my technique is I sit in one chair, and I put my feet up on another chair. And eventually, the mosquitoes come to, like, bite my legs. And then I just fuck them up when that leg gets pushed. Then I'm also I
Adam:really want this on camera.
Dax:The other thing I'm setting up is I I had this. I got the stuff for this a while ago, but I never set it up. There's, like, a trap you can build. You build at the perfect the perfect place for mosquitoes to lay their eggs. Like, their dream place to have babies.
Dax:It's like a bucket of water full of a bunch of, like, leaves and stuff that make it, like, release carbon, and it's, like, their dream spot. But you put these things, they're called mosquito dumps, and they're like, they're not even toxic, and they happen to only kill mosquito larva. So you set this up, and this goes like, oh, fuck. Yeah. It's best place to lay my eggs, and then It
Adam:kills you.
Dax:All the children get killed.
Adam:Oh my lord.
Dax:They they just stop, and eventually, they just stop. You know? Like, they're not around. I don't
Adam:know where this mosquito empathy is coming from because I hate mosquitoes so much. And, yeah, if there's anything in the world I can do.
Dax:Brutality of what I'm talking about,
Adam:I I I've got it.
Dax:It's just
Adam:starting to sound like sadistic. I don't know. Like, you're getting some yeah. I mean, you are getting some enjoyment out of
Dax:murdering these creatures. My blood. So I I know. Yeah.
Adam:They deserve it. It's if there's any creature in the world that deserves it, it's mosquitoes. Why do mosquitoes exist? Like, what purpose do they serve from an evolutionary standpoint or whatever? How how does the I don't know.
Adam:Just annoying.
Dax:They're annoying. It's about disease. Not not so much in America, but in other places. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. There's a truck that drives around in our neighborhood, like, on Wednesdays, and it sprays this, like, gas. Yeah. Have you seen that? First time it happened, and I didn't know what it was.
Adam:It's like, oh, my word. We're being, like, eliminate. Memories. Yeah. That's something.
Adam:Like, this truck comes by just shooting gas. It's like a foggy all over. It's wild. But it kills mosquitoes.
Dax:But that the problem with the that is it kills a lot of stuff, I think.
Adam:Oh, really?
Dax:I'm surprised they do that without, like, asking. Yeah. Because here, you, like, hire someone to come through that on your property.
Adam:Oh, interesting. Yeah. It's just the city that has this truck and they drive it around. The boys love to watch it. But we run inside because I don't wanna be exposed to it.
Adam:I don't know what it is.
Dax:So aside from that, I'm sure we can get those under under control. There there's some days where we spend most of the day outside, and it's very comfortable. The weather's really good, so it's not gonna be hot or anything. If it does get hot
Adam:What what is the weather right now? I can always look it up, but I just like to ask someone.
Dax:It is like the the this whole month has been, like, the best weather ever. It's like Except a little under 80 degrees with, like, a nice breeze. Nice. Perfect. Yeah.
Dax:It's it's extreme day.
Adam:Eighties, then it's it's a little warm for my taste.
Dax:Well, it's getting hotter every day. So I don't know what it'll be like next week, but it's generally very comfortable.
Adam:So we're gonna we're gonna set up some cameras. We're we're gonna stream multiple time like, multiple people streaming at once. How are we doing this? I don't
Dax:know what we're gonna do. I think we have to get there and play with some setup. I figured we have multiple cameras and we'll rotate between them, but then I don't know what happens when is there it like someone's gonna be working on the thing, which I assume Prime will be. Mhmm. His screen should be shared.
Dax:So, yeah, I don't I don't know how much. We'll probably, like, rotate between a few different setups.
Adam:Yeah. And then so Prime is working on the front end, so to speak. You've already built the back end. You're gonna build the back end.
Dax:Almost. It's basically done. Yeah. And then you, like, just a few more things, in the API. The front, he's working on.
Dax:We'll see how it goes. There's like
Adam:You're you're speaking to my my slight trepidation, my anxiety over this.
Dax:Because, like, the tools we're using to build this quite unique front end are very good. But
Adam:There's a learning curve.
Dax:It's like a very different mental model, and Yeah. It might take a little bit to understand what the fuck did how the fuck we're doing. Yeah. But I built something with it. So I have, like, some sense, and I'm, like, a little bit familiar with the programming model from something I've worked on before.
Dax:But even then, it's like So
Adam:you might need to be sitting with prime.
Dax:I'm breaking my brain. I have real work to do. I'm working on real stuff.
Adam:Wait. Not related to our project
Dax:next week? Well, I mean, I don't know what You haven't just walked off? We can't all just work on this together. Like, it doesn't doesn't really make sense.
Adam:That's true. Does it? But there's so much to do. And, obviously,
Dax:the the manager is gonna be me and you, I think. Yeah. I'm
Adam:very excited. I'm very excited about it.
Dax:So the designer stuff, yes. I I can I can work on that? So we'll do that. Hopefully, that gets set up. We're gonna probably have to buy a few things.
Adam:So we stream Tuesday Wednesday? And then Thursday is the conference? Yeah.
Dax:And Thursday is my my party Your party? Is around 2 PM. Oh my god. I had a dream yesterday that, like, my party happened and, like, 8 people showed up. Okay.
Dax:And nobody was talking to each other. It was just really awkward. I'm just kinda sitting around. And I was, like, waiting for, like, my friends to show up, like, the people I, like, wanted to come. Yeah.
Dax:And, like, I just kept in the clock checking the clock and just kept getting closer and closer to the time that the party would be over. And I was like
Adam:Dreams are awesome.
Dax:I woke up and I was like, oh my god. Like, what if that happens? And I was like, that's so unrealistic. That's the most unrealistic dream that, like, nobody would show up and it would just be completely boring and nobody talking to each other. And I was like, but that would be really bad if that's what happened.
Adam:Can I just say it sounds kind of awesome, actually? I kind of hope that happens now. I don't know. Something about the awkwardness of it sounds kind of great, like 8 people. I don't know.
Adam:We'd have some great conversations. By the end, there'd be a lot of camaraderie. We'd all bond over this weird shared experience. Sounds fun. As long as I'm one of the 8 people.
Dax:I think what in my dream, what happened so I basically invited a bunch of people I knew, and I invited a bunch of people that, like, I don't know that well Mhmm. Or, like, don't know as many of the other people and only those people showed up. So there was no, like, there wasn't anyone to, like, connect everyone together. So everyone's kinda standing around, like, not Mhmm. Yeah.
Dax:Very detailed dream.
Adam:Yeah. Dreams are awesome. I don't always have dreams. Sometimes I have dreams.
Dax:Yeah. I really have dreams. I was, I only really have them when I wake up and go back to sleep, which is what I did this morning.
Adam:I did that this wait. When you say wake up and go back to sleep, what time did you wake up and then go back to sleep?
Dax:Like, around the time I should have woken up.
Adam:Oh, you went back to sleep, like, in the morning hours.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:Because I always wake up in the middle of the night, like, literally every single night, 2 or 3. And it's, it's just like a 5050 shot if I'll be able to fall back asleep. And last night, I woke up and I fell back asleep. So not the same thing.
Dax:Did you have a dream?
Adam:I did have a dream last night. I don't remember what it was. Why is it that you can't remember as soon as you, like, start trying to
Dax:think about it, it's
Adam:it's like saying it's
Dax:falling out of your hands. It's like you're grasping at it. The more you grasp, the more Uh-huh. It falls out. It's It's
Adam:like I felt like the whole dream was in my memory just now. And then it just like the more I tried to find it, it just went away.
Dax:What's happening is when you're asleep, your brain goes into a state where it connects to your alternate lives in other dimensions, and you witness Oh. You witness what's happening to them. And then when you wake up
Adam:Interesting.
Dax:You lose that connection, and you can't really remember what happened.
Adam:Man, every time I think about, like, multiverse stuff, I spend, like, 3 days just, like, in an existential crisis thinking about all this.
Dax:And then I forget about
Adam:it, and I I move on. Oh, I learned about the grossest thing. I hate when I learn about stuff like this, so I'm gonna share it with everyone. Have you ever heard of, like, these skin mites? They're, like, just living in your face?
Dax:Yeah. They're, like, they they run across your face while you sleep.
Adam:Yeah. There's, like, little pictures of, like, every pore on your face, and, like, these little mites are just their little tails sticking out. It's disgusting. But I forgot about it. So there's hope.
Adam:You guys I just taught you about it, and you're gonna look it up in Wikipedia or whatever. But then you'll forget. In a few weeks, you'll forget, and you're good. It's cool.
Dax:Okay. Thank you for that. This is a good transition. I don't think so I have to ask you a question. Mhmm.
Dax:So logistically, how are you gonna feed you? Because you eat weird stuff.
Adam:Oh, man. I hate this. This is top number one reason or top 3, that it sucks to be a vegan, is people just have a different stance towards you. As soon as you come out and you're like, I'm plant based, people, they just feel bad when they I
Dax:don't feel bad. I just wanna figure it out.
Adam:Eating eating is such a, like, fundamental part of our social fiber.
Dax:Yes. It becomes more fraught.
Adam:Well, I okay. So maybe you don't have any weird feelings. But everyone else in my life, it's just this is just uncomfortable tension.
Dax:I get it. It, like, adds it adds So eating together is like so fundamental and straightforward and basic. And there's like Yeah. Like we all know the protocol for that. But then when people have varying diets, it like it, like, puts a kink into something that's very, like
Adam:It's tough.
Dax:Yeah. Straightforward otherwise.
Adam:So to make it tougher, I'm not gonna give you any answers. You're just gonna figure.
Dax:I'm just kidding. Like like, can you you're just gonna order food
Adam:for yourself? I was gonna say, if you don't mind, when I travel, I love to just, like, explore Uber Eats in the area Yeah. And, like, find all the cool vegan spots. If you don't mind, I'll just order some food in and I'll eat it while you guys eat other stuff.
Dax:Okay.
Adam:If that's cool with you. That's very cool.
Dax:Because I figured, we would I mean, I don't know. Like, Prime and TJ are describing, like, they're gonna be streaming for, like, 48 hours straight, which I'm just like, is that what's gonna happen? Or
Adam:Is that what's gonna happen?
Dax:Like, I'm very skeptical. Like, everyone is not young.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. That's a great way to call us old.
Dax:Yeah. Not young. Pretty sure people are gonna want their sleep. But I figured we'd just we'd maybe order food for lunch Mhmm. The lunches, and then we'd maybe, like, go out somewhere in the evening.
Dax:Mhmm. And most places here have, like, good vegan options anyway.
Adam:Yeah. But I'm also not worried if we go out to dinner at normal normal, human dinner times and I don't eat, because I usually stop eating pretty early in the day. So it's it works out. If you guys wanna go to a place and I don't have vegan options, I probably just don't need to eat in the evening anyway, if that makes sense.
Dax:There is that place, that vegan place by me where I'm like, I'm never gonna go here unless Adam's here because, like, why waste that? At some point. Yeah. The white waste.
Adam:Yeah. Why you can't
Dax:I think they deliver stuff so we could order from there. Okay. So that's we might like barbecue one of the evenings.
Adam:I'll bring some of my, mycelium mushroom steaks. They're delicious.
Dax:Do you have to bring them, or can we just I'll
Adam:find some at the at the Whole Foods or something.
Dax:Yeah. We got some good good grocery stores here. I figured we could do that. So that's a food situation. And then Thursday is the opening part my party, then the opening Thursday is gonna be one big party.
Dax:We got so much stuff, like, for the party. Like, this
Adam:is a ton
Dax:of alcohol. Yeah. Yeah. I posted a picture, then I realized my license plate was just, like, fully visible so I deleted it.
Adam:That's awesome. I was
Dax:like, I need yeah. You're, like, think harder about these things. But that picture was only, like, half of it because it was obscuring all the stuff behind it. Like, Liz went nuts at Costco to, like, like, a giant box of Blow Pops. Like, it's
Adam:Blow Pops?
Dax:Yeah. Just like
Adam:Like the suckers with gum in them? Yeah. It's always weird when you realize, like, yeah, products still exist. They wouldn't go away if people keep buying them. I don't I don't know why I thought they didn't exist anymore, but that's so wild.
Adam:This are ring pops still a thing?
Dax:Yeah. They are. And baby bottle pops are a thing. Like, it's it's it's funny. Well, we were we were at a grocery store the other day, and we were, like, walking through that island.
Dax:I'm, like, who the hell is, like, coming to this fancy ass grocery store and buying, like, this really, like, over the top, like, single use candy? And then she pointed out that all of them, everything in that category was at, like, waist level on the shelf, which is eye level for children.
Adam:For kids.
Dax:So she's like it's just like optimized to to, like, attract their attention.
Adam:How hard it is to go to the grocery store with kids.
Dax:Just they usually stop going
Adam:to the grocery store. What's that?
Dax:Oh, they're just like, can I have this? Can I have this?
Adam:Oh, yeah. Or they're just grabbing stuff. And, like, there's glass and you're just it's it's terrifying. I just don't take them to the store anymore. We just we order stuff, Instacart.
Adam:Groceries are, like, 3 times more expensive on Instacart, something stupid like that. 2 times. I don't know. Way more expensive. It's kinda ridiculous, but it's so convenient.
Adam:Every time I do it, I'm like, I shouldn't do this. We should just go get these things at the store. But it's just so convenient when they just bring it to your house. I love it. And I'm supporting the gig economy or something.
Adam:I don't know. Do they get paid well? They probably don't.
Dax:Oh. Yeah. Yeah. We overall find it a worse experience
Adam:To Instacart stuff?
Dax:Relative to going there. No. No. We we find getting groceries delivered to be a worse experience.
Adam:Why?
Dax:Because there is just like there's decisions they can't make for you and sometimes they make weird decisions. Fruit, Like,
Adam:we don't get any produce. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. It's like yeah. Like, produce you, like, wanna be able to pick out. Mhmm. Sometimes they, like, replace things in a weird way, and you, like, miss their message.
Dax:It just, like, adds at least for us, it adds a lot to
Adam:stuff. Yeah. I get that.
Dax:So and, like, going to the great stars is extremely convenient for us. Like, there's one that we can literally walk to, then there's, like, there's, like, another cool place across the street that we drive to. And there's, like, a Whole Foods. I know.
Adam:Before kids, we loved going to the grocery store. Like, we it was a it was an experience. We get some food and have smoothies there and stuff like that. It's a good time.
Dax:Yeah. So we generally like going, but we'll see if that changes.
Adam:Yeah. Some days. Okay.
Dax:So the party we so I think you guys will you're gonna be at your hotel Wednesday night. You can probably come over whenever you want Thursday morning and then we can set up you can help us set up for the party. I don't know if there's too much. Like, we have a cleaning person coming and We're
Adam:gonna have, like, tear down, I guess, guess, all the streaming setup. Yeah. Because we'll be done streaming at that point.
Dax:Yeah. So just, like, putting all that up and and getting it ready. But there's not there's not too much to do. And hopefully, people start showing up. People will show up.
Adam:How many people signed up?
Dax:Okay. I was gonna say, here's what's gonna happen. It's either gonna be that 10 people show up or a 100 people show up. Mhmm.
Adam:It it probably all depends on travel. Like, people will want to be there. It's just that their flights work out. Yeah. Yeah.
Adam:Where they get in on time.
Dax:Yeah. But it's just it's this thing where, like, I started inviting people and then, like, like, or very early. And then I kept inviting more and more people because, like, you know, there's a certain level of, like,
Adam:you know, that I can make it.
Dax:But then, I guess, in the last week like, no one's really thinking about this up to the last week. This past week, I've had, like, a bunch of people being, like, oh, hey, can I bring this person? Or, like, no, I have these other people. Or, hey, I can make it now. So now it's, like, really in in inflamed.
Adam:So it's it's like you're like an airline. You just overbook the flight, and you're just hoping half the people show up. It's like you have to do it that way, but it's like if everybody shows up, we're screwed. Not nearly enough blow pop.
Dax:That's true. Actually, no. I'm like, oh, and we have catering coming. We have, like, this really good, Mexican place that's gonna deliver stuff. Nice.
Dax:But me and Liz were talking yesterday, and we're like looking around our backyard, we're like, what would it be like if there were 50 people here? Then I noticed that, my patio has, like, tile on the ground. So I was like, okay, imagine each person standing on a tile. Let's see how many tiles we have. And, you know, like, it could it's, like, actually not that many people.
Dax:Like, we definitely handle, like, a lot. Like, when I thought about it in terms of tiles, like, every person standing on a tile, like, 50 people only takes up, like, 2 thirds of the patio, and then we have the whole backyard. So so Okay. Yeah. Anyway, we're really excited.
Adam:We should try that. That. When everybody's there, we should all stand on a tile just for this experiment to see how how tiles
Dax:Well, first, I did one tile per person, and I was like, this might be too cramped. Let's try, like, 4 tiles per person and then see how that works. And that, like, took up the whole patio, but people were more spaced apart, you know. Do you remember during COVID, it was like 6 feet apart or like that kind
Adam:of thing? There's still places you'll go, like and they've got the little circles on the ground. Like, social distancing.
Dax:They're so embarrassing. They fucking put those all there. Oh my god. And not just that. Okay.
Dax:So they also had, like, traffic flow stickers, the grocery store, where it was like, you need to be walking in this direction in this aisle. And if you, like, wanna use this aisle, you gotta, like, come in from the other side and walk straight. And, of course, like, I didn't pay attention to any of that because I'm like, this is so stupid. Like, what were they trying to avoid, like, collisions between people? Like, what?
Adam:Yeah. I don't know. It's so funny that your mind, like, immediately goes to how stupid it is. And I'm just such a, like, rule follower. And I have this big, weird hang up with authority.
Adam:Like, if anybody tries to take charge and, like, be in command of a situation, I want to follow them. I'm like, I will follow whatever they do. So when a business does stupid stuff, even if it's stupid, I'm like, yes. Yes, sir. I will follow your lines and your circles.
Adam:And I just don't even question it. And then I hear you talking. I'm like, yeah, that is stupid. Why did I do that?
Dax:No. So I think my brain just works a little bit differently. So when someone asks me to do something, I naturally don't wanna do it because I don't wanna do anything that I'm not already doing.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:So my first thought is, what could happen if I don't do this? Like, 1, can they even notice? Can they even catch me? 2, if they do catch me, are they actually gonna do anything about it? And if those two things are not very impressive, then I just don't.
Dax:Yeah. They need this.
Adam:Okay. That's fair.
Dax:But that's only because 90% of people follow it. And I get to, like, take advantage of you guys by by being the one person that does it.
Adam:That's me. I'm a sheep. I'm a sheeple. A a sheep person? A I'm not a sheeple.
Adam:That's multiple. I'm just
Dax:a sheep. You're just a sheep. A sheep person.
Adam:A sheep person. Alright. I got I gotta go. I gotta pee, and my kids, are done with screen time. They need to be done with screen time.
Adam:I've just had them on screen time this whole time. I'm solo daddy. I'm a terrible father. I can't just let them watch TV all day.
Dax:Now they're gonna come out stupid. What are they watching? Like, Bluey? Or like
Adam:Bluey? I don't think that's still a show. I think you need to catch up on where kids media is.
Dax:Who is that? I, like, just found out about Bluey in the past, like, 6 months.
Adam:Is that wait. What? Is that Blue's Clues? No.
Dax:That's different. Blue's Clues. Blue's like the Bluey is a thing. It it's very similar. It has, like, a some kind of animal.
Adam:My my kids so I have to pee really bad. I'm gonna try this shit really fast. My kids watch some of the dumbest show. Like, not like, oh, yeah. It's a dumb show.
Adam:Like, if I watched an old kid show, I'd probably think it was dumb. But these days, there's so many shows on Netflix, there's no words. Like, it's like animals just doing stuff to each other, and there's no words. And I feel like that's terrible. Like, you're not like, you could at least learn some language or something while they're watching.
Dax:I've been so curious about this. I'd love to describe this. Can you, like, send me a name of one of shows? Because I like if people keep describing it to me, I need to, like, know what it actually is like.
Adam:I will send you yes. I will send you one. You should check out Netflix Kids sometime and just scroll through it. It's a train wreck. Okay.
Adam:I gotta be. Okay. It's been good. Thanks, guys. See you.
Dax:I'll see you next week.
