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[Gigi] So, I told you I'm not gonna ask you any questions.

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[Gigi] Until we hit record.

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[Gigi] Because otherwise all the dry powder is gone.

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[Gigi] So I'm gonna start with the easiest one.

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[Gigi] We're not gonna talk about the game just yet.

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[Balas] Okay.

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[Gigi] The easy one is, who are you and what brings you to Madeira?

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[Balas] Oh, that's the easy one?

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That's the easy one, yeah.

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[Balas] Well, where do I start?

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[Gigi] I mean, philosophically speaking, who are you is hard.

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[Balas] I'm...

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[Gigi] But you can start with your name.

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[Balas] I'm Tiago Balas.

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[Balas] And I was a designer for a long time.

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[Balas] And I learned about Madeira from you and Gigi.

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She's posting about something happening.

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[Balas] And since I'm Portuguese, I was just living in the mainland.

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[Balas] I thought, well, fuck, I need to go there.

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[Gigi] You were the first, I think only maybe, Portuguese.

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[Gigi] And you were definitely the first Portuguese joining sovereign engineering.

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[Balas] Yeah, not the first, but not the only one.

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[Balas] There's been, I think...

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[Gigi] Two or three?

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[Balas] Yeah.

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[Balas] I didn't let them at the SECs.

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[Balas] We always...

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[Gigi] You didn't intersect.

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[Balas] No, no, no.

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[Balas] But I know that, yeah.

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[Gigi] Yeah, so you came for the first cohort.

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[Gigi] You were one of the original 21 guinea pigs.

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[Gigi] Tell me about that.

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[Gigi] How was that for you?

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[Gigi] What did you expect coming here and how did it turn out?

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[Balas] I mean, I didn't really know what to expect,

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[Balas] but it was just mind-blowing.

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[Balas] It changed the course of my life forever, especially with...

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[Gigi] You claim to fame.

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[Gigi] You claim to fame is you are the father of the first sovereign engineering baby.

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[Gigi] So that's how I always introduce you.

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[Balas] Yeah.

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[Gigi] So you ended up meeting your wife in the first cohort.

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Exactly.

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[Gigi] Which is now your wife.

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[Gigi] Yeah.

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[Gigi] Not your wife at the time.

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[Balas] No, no. Now it's my wife.

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[Balas] We got married and we have a beautiful baby.

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[Gigi] I can attest to that. She's so cute.

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[Gigi] It's like, well done.

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[Balas] It's amazing.

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[Balas] So, yeah, it completely changed my life forever because nothing was the same after.

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[Balas] Fantastic.

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[Balas] It's been a roller coaster since.

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[Gigi] That to me, by the way, is the greatest success story of sovereign engineering.

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[Gigi] Like, for real.

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[Gigi] It will always be a success just because, you know, like it brought more babies into this world.

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[Balas] And there's been more since, which is amazing.

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[Gigi] Yeah.

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[Balas] At least one more.

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[Balas] And yeah, we decided that Madeira was amazing and this paradise.

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So it's the place to be.

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[Gigi] They call it the Hawaii of Europe for a reason.

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[Gigi] Yeah.

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[Balas] Portuguese is also called the Pearl of the Atlantic.

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[Gigi] The Pearl of the Atlantic.

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[Gigi] Yeah, that's right.

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[Gigi] Yeah.

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[Balas] Which I didn't know at the time.

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[Balas] I'm Portuguese, but I had never been to a mother before.

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[Balas] So it was actually surprising to discover and to...

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[Gigi] Yeah, it's quite different from the mainland, right?

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...sell in love with the place.

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[Balas] Yeah.

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[Balas] And my wife as well, she just loved the place as well.

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[Balas] And we decided, okay, this is where we're going to stay.

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[Gigi] Awesome. Awesome.

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[Gigi] Awesome.

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[Gigi] And how many cohorts did you participate in up to now?

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[Gigi] I don't even remember.

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[Gigi] You were the last one as well, as the CEO.

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[Balas] One, three, six, seven, eight.

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[Balas] Oh, wow.

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[Gigi] Okay.

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[Gigi] Nice.

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[Gigi] Nice, nice.

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[Gigi] And your second claim to fame is you're still working on your Nostr client.

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[Gigi] And the Nostr client was one of the first Nostr clients that I knew about.

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[Gigi] It's a very early Nostr client.

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[Gigi] So tell me about all that.

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[Gigi] How did you get into that?

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So, Alphaama, yeah.

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[Balas] So at the beginning, there was Branle.

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[Balas] There was just one client, Fiajaf announced.

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[Balas] That's when I heard about Nostr.

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[Balas] It was Fiajaf posting on Twitter something near Christmas '21, I think.

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[Balas] Something like that.

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[Balas] And I jumped right in.

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[Balas] And it was Branle, which was a bit clunky.

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[Balas] And at the time, I was trying to design stuff.

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[Balas] And having my own client was like the dream.

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[Balas] And I didn't even understand Nostr properly at the time.

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[Gigi] And there was pre-clankers.

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[Gigi] There was pre-vibe coding.

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[Gigi] Yes.

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[Gigi] Like pre-proper vibe coding.

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[Gigi] So building your own client was actually hard back in the day.

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[Gigi] Now everyone has a client, you know?

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[Gigi] He might do.

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[Gigi] So now everyone can just vibe code a client into existence.

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[Gigi] Now we have more clients than users.

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[Balas] At the time, the part that was easy at the time was there's only four nips.

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Yeah.

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[Balas] Nip one, two, three, and four.

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[Balas] And that was it.

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[Balas] That wasn't that hard to grasp the whole entirety of Nostr.

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[Balas] But at the beginning, I didn't grasp the concept really well.

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[Balas] Because since I'm not a developer, I was more trying to customize Branle to do what I wanted.

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[Balas] But it was a bit frustrating because the architecture of it was a bit weird.

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[Balas] I don't know.

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[Gigi] So you don't consider yourself a developer?

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No, I do.

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[Gigi] You consider yourself a designer.

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[Gigi] At that point in time, you consider yourself a designer first and foremost?

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[Gigi] Yes.

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[Gigi] Okay.

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[Balas] Interesting.

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[Balas] I didn't have the confidence to develop stuff.

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To call yourself a developer?

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[Balas] Yeah.

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[Balas] I was ashamed of my capabilities because--

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[Gigi] All good developers are.

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[Balas] Because up to now, up to that point, my job was mostly front-hands and hacking the back-hands,

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[Balas] using software back-hands, PHP, and just trying my best to accomplish what I wanted.

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[Balas] And I got really good at front-end design, so just HTML, just CSS, and some JS.

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[Gigi] It's funny that you, as a designer, ended up thread-coding a Nostr client.

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[Gigi] And to me, the Nostr client, Alphaama, has a very developer-looking feel.

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[Gigi] It looks like an IRC client.

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[Gigi] It looks like a combination of a CLI with an IRC client, basically.

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[Gigi] So it doesn't look like something that you would think a designer has made.

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[Gigi] It looks more like something that a developer that is in love with the terminal has made.

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[Balas] I was always in love with those things, but I never really used it that much.

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[Balas] And why? Because I was afraid of--

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[Gigi] Afraid of the terminal?

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[Balas] Yes, of fucking up my whole computer by pasting some random string that would implode everything.

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[Balas] So I stayed in a mouse point-and-click land.

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[Balas] As a designer, I also had to work with all the software that does that, and users also use those things.

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[Balas] So I needed to be in that world.

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[Gigi] What was your software of choice in the design world?

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[Gigi] Because I assume there was also pre-Figma when you started and so on.

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[Balas] Yeah, yeah.

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[Balas] When I started, it was Macromedia.

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[Balas] 3end was my software of choice when I was in college in early 2000s.

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[Balas] And then Adobe came and bought Macromedia, and my hatred for Adobe started right there.

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[Balas] They made me use Illustrator, which I really hated at the time.

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[Balas] Then in time, it got better, and InDesign was where I was most happy, because I did a lot of layouts.

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[Gigi] InDesign is mostly for print layouts and those kinds of things, right?

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[Balas] Yeah, but I mean, I did web design with it as well.

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[Gigi] We can do anything, right?

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[Balas] Because you can just layout and you have a bunch of rules, and then you take a bunch of text and you apply those rules automatically.

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[Balas] So if you have the right delimiters, you can just format a whole dictionary with one click if you have everything set up correctly.

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[Balas] I even did that.

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[Balas] I did layout for dictionaries and stuff like that.

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[Balas] So I was already good with coding and automating stuff.

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[Gigi] So already in the design programs,

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[Gigi] you use these types of macros and those kind of automation

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[Gigi] tools to make your life easier.

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[Balas] Yes.

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[Gigi] So that was kind of your main touch point with programming

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[Gigi] back in the day.

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[Balas] Yeah, I mean, I also had a little bit of HTML in college.

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[Balas] Yes, Flash even and stuff like that.

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[Balas] So I knew the little bases.

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[Balas] I had-- I made my own little website

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[Balas] that I iterated a bunch of times.

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[Gigi] And then I think that Flash comes up over and over again.

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[Gigi] I talked with Saza about it as well.

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[Gigi] He comes from the Flash world too.

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[Gigi] Like it was a really big thing back in the day.

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[Gigi] If you wanted to animate something properly,

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[Gigi] you had to use Flash basically, right?

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[Balas] Yeah, because just the web wasn't there.

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HTML wasn't there.

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[Balas] Nothing else existed.

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[Balas] It was just very flat and nothing was moving.

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[Balas] So Flash was the main way to create completely

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[Balas] new experiences.

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[Gigi] Free CSS, everyone used tables to layout stuff, right?

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[Balas] Yes.

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[Gigi] That was kind of when I was starting to do web design.

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[Gigi] It was just all tables.

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[Gigi] Like, yeah, tables and graphics.

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[Gigi] And just-- yeah.

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[Gigi] It worked relatively well, I have to say.

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[Gigi] Like, I sometimes miss those simpler days.

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[Balas] Cutting images into--

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[Balas] Exactly.

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[Balas] --sprite into things and putting it to tables

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[Balas] so it would not load the whole image at once.

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[Gigi] Exactly.

202
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[Gigi] You had responsive designs.

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[Gigi] You had everything and so on.

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[Gigi] It was all table-based.

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[Balas] Yeah, it was.

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[Gigi] And CSS now, of course, works reasonably well.

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[Gigi] But it took a long time and it had its own quirks.

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[Gigi] And so I sometimes miss those days.

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[Gigi] And so, OK, so you come from the design side.

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[Gigi] You got more and more into coding.

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[Gigi] You ended up building your own Nostr client.

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[Gigi] So talk to me more about kind of the design philosophy of Fama.

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[Gigi] Why is it built the way it's built?

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[Gigi] Why does it look the way it looks?

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[Balas] So first off, I wanted to learn out--

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[Balas] it was a project that I was going to use to actually learn

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[Balas] how to code properly.

218
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And learn how Nostr works as well, right?

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[Gigi] That's what I like about it.

220
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[Balas] Yes.

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[Balas] And so I decided it's just going to be--

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[Balas] just going to choose JavaScript because why not?

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[Balas] It's going to be easier for me at the time.

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[Balas] And instead of using libraries and frameworks and things,

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[Balas] I will just go vanilla all the way, remove all dependencies,

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[Balas] and try to build every little part

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[Balas] to understand how everything works.

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[Gigi] So thread coding all the way, really hardcore,

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[Gigi] traditional coding.

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[Balas] I already knew very well how to do UI front end.

231
00:11:42,018 --> 00:11:47,778
[Balas] So the HTML CSS part was the easy one for me.

232
00:11:47,778 --> 00:11:50,498
[Balas] The learning was more about the JavaScript

233
00:11:50,498 --> 00:11:54,778
[Balas] and programming in general without training wheels

234
00:11:54,778 --> 00:11:55,578
[Balas] or whatever.

235
00:11:59,018 --> 00:12:02,058
[Balas] Depending on other people's codes and copying.

236
00:12:02,058 --> 00:12:04,658
[Gigi] Did you ever end up regretting this decision?

237
00:12:04,658 --> 00:12:05,578
[Balas] Not really.

238
00:12:05,578 --> 00:12:06,498
[Balas] Not really.

239
00:12:06,498 --> 00:12:09,458
[Balas] Because it works perfectly well.

240
00:12:09,458 --> 00:12:11,338
[Balas] There's no dependencies.

241
00:12:11,338 --> 00:12:18,018
[Balas] I can go in and understand everything easily.

242
00:12:18,018 --> 00:12:21,738
[Balas] At the time it was perfect, I think it's still a good choice.

243
00:12:21,738 --> 00:12:23,018
[Gigi] So where is it now?

244
00:12:23,018 --> 00:12:26,138
[Gigi] And maybe in terms of doing it this way,

245
00:12:26,138 --> 00:12:30,658
[Gigi] what was something that surprised you the most?

246
00:12:30,658 --> 00:12:34,378
[Gigi] What you learned maybe about coding or about Nostr?

247
00:12:34,378 --> 00:12:36,058
[Balas] It's actually simple.

248
00:12:36,058 --> 00:12:36,978
[Gigi] Simpler than you thought?

249
00:12:36,978 --> 00:12:37,498
[Balas] Yes.

250
00:12:37,498 --> 00:12:37,978
[Gigi] OK.

251
00:12:37,978 --> 00:12:38,738
[Balas] Simpler.

252
00:12:38,738 --> 00:12:40,778
[Balas] When you don't know things, your mind

253
00:12:40,778 --> 00:12:48,538
[Balas] just creates these big demons or mountains that you don't know.

254
00:12:48,538 --> 00:12:49,538
[Balas] And you have to climb.

255
00:12:49,538 --> 00:12:52,418
[Balas] And you're not really sure what to expect.

256
00:12:52,418 --> 00:12:55,338
[Balas] But when you reach sort of the top,

257
00:12:55,338 --> 00:12:56,498
[Balas] you see the whole thing.

258
00:12:56,498 --> 00:12:59,778
[Balas] And it's not that simple.

259
00:12:59,778 --> 00:13:02,778
[Gigi] Yeah, it's just signatures and JSON.

260
00:13:02,778 --> 00:13:03,258
[Gigi] That's it.

261
00:13:03,258 --> 00:13:04,778
[Balas] Oh, you mean about Nostr?

262
00:13:04,778 --> 00:13:06,658
[Gigi] Yeah, and also, I mean coding as well.

263
00:13:06,658 --> 00:13:07,458
[Gigi] It's just like--

264
00:13:07,458 --> 00:13:07,978
[Balas] Nostr?

265
00:13:07,978 --> 00:13:09,458
[Gigi] So--

266
00:13:09,458 --> 00:13:11,298
[Gigi] How would you describe it on the coding side?

267
00:13:11,298 --> 00:13:12,178
[Gigi] What it is?

268
00:13:12,178 --> 00:13:14,618
[Gigi] Like, I just described Nostr very simply.

269
00:13:14,618 --> 00:13:17,618
[Gigi] And to make a Nostr client work on the coding side,

270
00:13:17,618 --> 00:13:22,578
[Gigi] what would you say would you need if you say it's so simple?

271
00:13:22,578 --> 00:13:23,498
[Balas] Barely anything.

272
00:13:23,498 --> 00:13:25,378
[Balas] I mean-- Web sockets.

273
00:13:25,378 --> 00:13:28,178
[Balas] Web sockets, some JS.

274
00:13:28,178 --> 00:13:31,498
[Balas] And basically, that's it.

275
00:13:31,498 --> 00:13:32,898
[Balas] And barely any.

276
00:13:32,898 --> 00:13:36,378
[Balas] Like, at the beginning, I was trying to customize brand new

277
00:13:36,378 --> 00:13:41,338
[Balas] because I didn't know how Nostr worked in the weeds.

278
00:13:41,338 --> 00:13:47,778
[Balas] And Super Testnet posted its vanilla JS Nostr page.

279
00:13:47,778 --> 00:13:49,018
[Balas] But basically--

280
00:13:49,018 --> 00:13:50,378
[Gigi] It's like 20 lines or something.

281
00:13:50,378 --> 00:13:54,658
[Balas] Like, just a single index HTML with some JavaScript there.

282
00:13:54,658 --> 00:13:58,578
[Balas] He was using Bitcoin Core libraries and whatever

283
00:13:58,578 --> 00:13:59,858
[Balas] for the cryptographic part.

284
00:13:59,858 --> 00:14:03,698
[Balas] But that's when I sort of understood that, OK,

285
00:14:03,698 --> 00:14:04,458
[Balas] I can do this.

286
00:14:04,458 --> 00:14:05,658
[Balas] I can do this on my own.

287
00:14:05,658 --> 00:14:10,738
[Balas] I can just learn these parts and make something from scratch

288
00:14:10,738 --> 00:14:14,818
[Balas] that is not building on brand new or whatever.

289
00:14:14,818 --> 00:14:15,338
[Gigi] Yeah.

290
00:14:15,338 --> 00:14:16,218
So at the time--

291
00:14:16,218 --> 00:14:22,018
[Gigi] Were you basically-- were you the second Nostr client then?

292
00:14:22,018 --> 00:14:24,818
[Gigi] Or what else existed back in the day?

293
00:14:24,818 --> 00:14:27,938
[Balas] In terms of launching, maybe, yes.

294
00:14:27,938 --> 00:14:30,138
[Balas] Because I think then there was a bunch of people

295
00:14:30,138 --> 00:14:32,058
[Balas] working at the same time.

296
00:14:32,058 --> 00:14:33,498
[Gigi] Ben had an early one as well, right?

297
00:14:33,498 --> 00:14:34,778
Like, Ben Ark?

298
00:14:34,778 --> 00:14:36,458
[Balas] Ben Ark.

299
00:14:36,458 --> 00:14:40,658
[Balas] I think brand new was sort of the evolution of Ben's thing

300
00:14:40,658 --> 00:14:44,418
[Balas] because it was from his Diagonally project.

301
00:14:44,418 --> 00:14:48,818
[Balas] And I think Fia Jaff took that and forked it to make a brand new.

302
00:14:48,818 --> 00:14:50,858
[Balas] I don't think he had any other.

303
00:14:50,858 --> 00:14:54,378
[Balas] But then there was Astral Ninja that came out

304
00:14:54,378 --> 00:14:56,618
[Balas] as a fork of brand new.

305
00:14:56,618 --> 00:15:01,138
[Gigi] I'm pretty sure Astral Ninja is what wrecked my old Anzac.

306
00:15:01,138 --> 00:15:02,618
[Balas] Oh, you mean--

307
00:15:02,618 --> 00:15:04,738
[Balas] That was probably Enigma.

308
00:15:04,738 --> 00:15:05,658
[Gigi] Might have been.

309
00:15:05,658 --> 00:15:07,418
[Gigi] Was Enigma the one that looked a little--

310
00:15:07,418 --> 00:15:08,898
[Gigi] wanted to be Telegram-like?

311
00:15:08,898 --> 00:15:09,498
[Balas] Yes.

312
00:15:09,498 --> 00:15:11,218
[Balas] That was by Supertestnet.

313
00:15:11,218 --> 00:15:13,218
[Gigi] Yeah.

314
00:15:13,218 --> 00:15:16,618
[Gigi] Yeah, that had the cross-site scripting and vulnerability,

315
00:15:16,618 --> 00:15:17,218
[Gigi] right?

316
00:15:17,218 --> 00:15:18,218
[Balas] That was the whole story.

317
00:15:18,218 --> 00:15:19,458
[Gigi] Yeah.

318
00:15:19,458 --> 00:15:20,338
[Gigi] I woke up one day.

319
00:15:20,338 --> 00:15:23,098
[Gigi] I had a-- how did I know this?

320
00:15:23,098 --> 00:15:25,498
[Gigi] I had some wallet connected to it or something

321
00:15:25,498 --> 00:15:26,778
[Gigi] with some funds in it.

322
00:15:26,778 --> 00:15:29,338
[Gigi] And I woke up one day and the wallet was drained.

323
00:15:29,338 --> 00:15:31,258
[Gigi] And then I realized that my Anzac must have

324
00:15:31,258 --> 00:15:33,218
[Gigi] got wrecked along the way.

325
00:15:33,218 --> 00:15:36,778
[Balas] Yeah, I think most people got wrecked.

326
00:15:36,778 --> 00:15:39,538
[Balas] I didn't because I was already using my own client.

327
00:15:39,538 --> 00:15:42,098
[Balas] So I didn't put my Anzac in there.

328
00:15:42,098 --> 00:15:45,618
[Balas] I used a testing account.

329
00:15:45,618 --> 00:15:50,658
[Balas] So I was safe from that from those early days.

330
00:15:50,658 --> 00:15:53,138
[Gigi] Are there any Nostr historians around?

331
00:15:53,138 --> 00:15:56,618
[Gigi] You might be the best person.

332
00:15:56,618 --> 00:15:57,618
[Gigi] One of the best.

333
00:15:57,618 --> 00:15:59,938
[Balas] The early days people, I guess they all--

334
00:15:59,938 --> 00:16:00,938
[Balas] those that are still around--

335
00:16:00,938 --> 00:16:02,138
[Gigi] You and Thea Jeff and Ben Aar.

336
00:16:02,138 --> 00:16:03,338
[Balas] --so to remember.

337
00:16:03,338 --> 00:16:06,418
[Balas] Semisol, Camaro, 0XTR.

338
00:16:06,418 --> 00:16:08,858
[Gigi] Yeah, Semisol as well.

339
00:16:08,858 --> 00:16:12,978
[Gigi] I have an old Nostr--

340
00:16:12,978 --> 00:16:15,178
[Gigi] old Nostr screenshots and pub.

341
00:16:15,178 --> 00:16:17,498
[Gigi] I have an-- I posted some--

342
00:16:17,498 --> 00:16:20,898
[Gigi] I was gathering some old Nostr screenshots of old clients.

343
00:16:20,898 --> 00:16:23,258
[Gigi] I have to revive that and ask around again

344
00:16:23,258 --> 00:16:24,778
[Gigi] if someone has some old stuff.

345
00:16:24,778 --> 00:16:25,658
[Gigi] Because I love that.

346
00:16:25,658 --> 00:16:28,258
[Gigi] I love just gathering the--

347
00:16:28,258 --> 00:16:30,538
[Gigi] how did Nostr look in the very, very early days?

348
00:16:30,538 --> 00:16:34,738
[Gigi] There were some pure CLI clients.

349
00:16:34,738 --> 00:16:36,978
[Gigi] And I have some screenshots of that.

350
00:16:36,978 --> 00:16:39,018
[Balas] And I mean, Alphaama at the beginning

351
00:16:39,018 --> 00:16:41,778
[Balas] was completely experimental.

352
00:16:41,778 --> 00:16:47,458
[Balas] I would change the look and feel almost every day.

353
00:16:47,458 --> 00:16:50,898
[Balas] It was just completely madness.

354
00:16:50,898 --> 00:16:53,538
[Balas] I have a bunch of screenshots of that there as well, which--

355
00:16:53,538 --> 00:16:54,858
[Gigi] Oh, send them to me.

356
00:16:54,858 --> 00:16:55,458
[Gigi] Send them to me.

357
00:16:55,458 --> 00:16:56,498
[Balas] Just crazy looks.

358
00:16:56,498 --> 00:16:58,018
[Gigi] And everyone else who hears this,

359
00:16:58,018 --> 00:16:59,578
[Gigi] send all the old screenshots to me.

360
00:16:59,578 --> 00:17:01,978
[Gigi] I want to build an archive.

361
00:17:01,978 --> 00:17:05,458
[Balas] And then it just evolved from there.

362
00:17:05,458 --> 00:17:06,818
[Balas] Sort of--

363
00:17:06,818 --> 00:17:07,538
[Gigi] Where is it now?

364
00:17:07,538 --> 00:17:10,218
[Gigi] What are you working on right now on the Alphaama side?

365
00:17:10,218 --> 00:17:14,098
[Gigi] I know that must have been one or two cohorts ago.

366
00:17:14,098 --> 00:17:17,938
[Gigi] You integrated Nutseps, right?

367
00:17:17,938 --> 00:17:18,418
[Gigi] Yes.

368
00:17:18,418 --> 00:17:19,178
[Gigi] It's something you--

369
00:17:19,178 --> 00:17:21,018
[Balas] Yes, but I took it out again.

370
00:17:21,018 --> 00:17:22,018
[Gigi] You took it out again?

371
00:17:22,018 --> 00:17:23,218
[Balas] Yeah.

372
00:17:23,218 --> 00:17:23,818
[Gigi] Fair enough.

373
00:17:23,818 --> 00:17:25,658
[Balas] It just--

374
00:17:25,658 --> 00:17:30,178
[Balas] I don't think it fits Alphaama because it gets very clunky.

375
00:17:30,178 --> 00:17:35,338
[Balas] If you don't have a very specific setup for those things

376
00:17:35,338 --> 00:17:38,858
[Balas] that automate a bunch of stuff on the background,

377
00:17:38,858 --> 00:17:40,898
[Balas] then it gets clunky to use.

378
00:17:40,898 --> 00:17:47,178
[Balas] And I never lost a shot with it, but people would have.

379
00:17:47,178 --> 00:17:53,458
[Balas] So I thought, OK, it works, but not that well.

380
00:17:53,458 --> 00:17:54,698
[Balas] Fair enough.

381
00:17:54,698 --> 00:17:57,138
[Gigi] So what are you working on right now on the Alphaama side?

382
00:17:57,138 --> 00:18:01,018
[Gigi] What's something that you would love to still see integrated

383
00:18:01,018 --> 00:18:01,978
[Gigi] in your client?

384
00:18:01,978 --> 00:18:07,978
[Balas] So Alphaama now, without getting myself ahead,

385
00:18:07,978 --> 00:18:10,218
[Balas] I'm going to bring it--

386
00:18:10,218 --> 00:18:14,658
[Balas] tone it down a bit more and get it more focused on its core

387
00:18:14,658 --> 00:18:17,618
[Balas] feature because the core feature is basically you just

388
00:18:17,618 --> 00:18:19,098
[Balas] talk directly to realize.

389
00:18:19,098 --> 00:18:21,098
[Balas] And you ask for stuff.

390
00:18:21,098 --> 00:18:25,418
[Balas] You use basic Nostr queries.

391
00:18:25,418 --> 00:18:29,618
[Balas] And you can-- and there's a wrapper around managing

392
00:18:29,618 --> 00:18:31,058
[Balas] those queries so you can--

393
00:18:31,058 --> 00:18:31,938
Yeah.

394
00:18:31,938 --> 00:18:33,578
[Balas] --launch them easily.

395
00:18:38,118 --> 00:18:41,398
[Gigi] It's very close to the metal and you basically talk noster to it, right?

396
00:18:41,398 --> 00:18:41,558
Yes.

397
00:18:41,558 --> 00:18:42,998
[Gigi] Like that's the principle.

398
00:18:42,998 --> 00:18:43,238
Yes.

399
00:18:45,158 --> 00:18:48,038
[Balas] And then layouts and what stuff...

400
00:18:49,718 --> 00:18:53,318
[Gigi] And depending on what you get back that defines how the layouts are rendered, right?

401
00:18:54,438 --> 00:19:03,798
[Balas] Yeah, the layout is very much the same across all events. I sort of defined a general layout for

402
00:19:04,838 --> 00:19:13,638
[Balas] notes that could render any type of notes because I mean it's all text so you just put text in there.

403
00:19:13,638 --> 00:19:20,198
[Balas] You have the same header and whatnot but it can just display any event and I never liked

404
00:19:21,638 --> 00:19:27,238
[Balas] untreaded clients that just gives you the full chronology without the context.

405
00:19:28,678 --> 00:19:34,758
[Balas] So I wanted the layout to be threaded so I could actually see everything in detail,

406
00:19:36,278 --> 00:19:38,198
[Balas] what comes from where, who's talking to who.

407
00:19:38,198 --> 00:19:40,118
[Gigi] So you have nested threads, right?

408
00:19:40,118 --> 00:19:40,358
Yes.

409
00:19:40,358 --> 00:19:46,118
[Gigi] You do. I think I remember you showed this once and the nesting goes kind of as far as it wants to,

410
00:19:46,118 --> 00:19:46,998
[Gigi] right?

411
00:19:46,998 --> 00:19:47,238
Yes.

412
00:19:47,238 --> 00:19:49,878
[Gigi] You just continue recursively nesting if you have to.

413
00:19:49,878 --> 00:19:50,118
Yeah.

414
00:19:52,358 --> 00:19:57,958
[Balas] There was at the beginning some problems with some bot talking to each other or that would...

415
00:19:57,958 --> 00:19:59,078
[Gigi] Yeah, it just goes on forever.

416
00:19:59,078 --> 00:19:59,398
Yeah, that's...

417
00:20:00,278 --> 00:20:04,038
[Balas] And then the layout would get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

418
00:20:04,678 --> 00:20:09,318
[Balas] At some point I added some rule to not give any more space after some replies so it just...

419
00:20:09,318 --> 00:20:14,678
[Gigi] It's a really hard problem. MFS had this too and it had it in multiple ways. So on the one side,

420
00:20:14,678 --> 00:20:23,798
[Gigi] on the reply side and on the other side, the kind of quote repost side and not too long ago,

421
00:20:24,518 --> 00:20:26,278
[Gigi] like, yeah, that was...

422
00:20:26,278 --> 00:20:29,798
[Gigi] I mean a year ago or one and a half years ago, that was still the case, I think,

423
00:20:29,798 --> 00:20:36,358
[Gigi] that you could just quote repost indefinitely and it would just always include the whole

424
00:20:36,358 --> 00:20:38,598
[Gigi] note and just shrink it down further.

425
00:20:38,598 --> 00:20:45,478
[Gigi] And so at a certain point after doing that 25 times, it would look like a kaleidoscope.

426
00:20:45,478 --> 00:20:47,878
[Gigi] You would just look into it and it's just like...

427
00:20:47,878 --> 00:20:49,878
[Gigi] It would almost crash the rendering engine.

428
00:20:50,758 --> 00:20:52,758
[Gigi] And it's a really hard problem.

429
00:20:54,438 --> 00:20:56,598
[Gigi] How deep should the nesting go?

430
00:20:56,598 --> 00:20:59,718
[Gigi] It's a recursion problem basically in some sense because also for

431
00:21:01,158 --> 00:21:03,958
[Gigi] quote tweets basically, you can't build a loop.

432
00:21:05,238 --> 00:21:06,118
[Gigi] And then what do you do?

433
00:21:07,558 --> 00:21:10,758
[Gigi] You have to have rules somewhere where it just stops.

434
00:21:11,958 --> 00:21:21,638
[Balas] And now with, for example, addressable events, they can sort of embed themselves

435
00:21:23,398 --> 00:21:26,438
[Balas] so they can lead to a sort of loop.

436
00:21:26,438 --> 00:21:36,358
[Balas] And that happened with, I think, Max books and chapters that sort of get called into each other

437
00:21:36,358 --> 00:21:41,798
[Balas] and get a recursion embedding loop so that's problems there.

438
00:21:41,798 --> 00:21:48,198
[Balas] But the layout in threading is very complicated because exactly the space just goes to infinity.

439
00:21:48,198 --> 00:21:50,998
[Balas] So you have to sort of manage that in some way.

440
00:21:50,998 --> 00:21:57,718
[Gigi] Yeah, I'm still kind of disappointed with how threads are displayed in most clients.

441
00:21:58,678 --> 00:22:02,518
[Gigi] I'm not an Alphaama power user so I don't have much to say about that.

442
00:22:02,518 --> 00:22:06,998
[Gigi] But I've been angry about it and disappointed about it enough

443
00:22:07,638 --> 00:22:12,278
[Gigi] that I started to vibe coding my own client now, like the native Android client.

444
00:22:13,398 --> 00:22:21,558
[Gigi] And I spent, I don't know how much, probably five or six hours or so, which is like

445
00:22:23,638 --> 00:22:25,958
[Gigi] maybe like 30% of the whole development time.

446
00:22:27,478 --> 00:22:30,838
[Gigi] Like I spent an insane amount of time is what I'm trying to say.

447
00:22:31,398 --> 00:22:34,598
[Gigi] An insane amount of time on threading and getting the threads right.

448
00:22:34,598 --> 00:22:37,878
[Gigi] Because I really like how Twitter did it in the old days.

449
00:22:37,878 --> 00:22:42,998
[Gigi] It was all flat so no, they didn't nest it.

450
00:22:42,998 --> 00:22:46,518
[Gigi] Like there was no intendation basically.

451
00:22:46,518 --> 00:22:48,678
[Gigi] So you had everything on the same level.

452
00:22:48,678 --> 00:22:53,638
[Gigi] But they would show you visually what is connected in the thread basically.

453
00:22:53,638 --> 00:22:56,918
[Gigi] And like they did it really well and I tried to emulate this.

454
00:22:56,918 --> 00:23:01,638
[Gigi] So I basically screened at my client for six hours to get the threading right.

455
00:23:01,638 --> 00:23:02,598
[Gigi] I'm really happy now.

456
00:23:03,958 --> 00:23:06,518
[Gigi] It feels very natural to me like how I remember.

457
00:23:06,518 --> 00:23:08,358
[Balas] I'm really curious to try it.

458
00:23:08,358 --> 00:23:09,798
Yeah, you have to give it a try.

459
00:23:09,798 --> 00:23:13,718
[Balas] I need to get an Android phone because that's my priority right now.

460
00:23:14,278 --> 00:23:15,158
[Gigi] You don't have an Android phone?

461
00:23:15,158 --> 00:23:16,278
[Balas] I don't have an Android phone.

462
00:23:16,278 --> 00:23:17,158
[Gigi] Oh wow.

463
00:23:17,158 --> 00:23:20,998
[Gigi] What I learned about people that I thought I knew in these conversations.

464
00:23:20,998 --> 00:23:22,278
[Balas] Fucking designers.

465
00:23:22,278 --> 00:23:23,718
[Gigi] Oh my god, you're still on iOS?

466
00:23:23,718 --> 00:23:24,358
[Gigi] Yeah.

467
00:23:24,358 --> 00:23:27,558
[Balas] But I'm really ready to switch.

468
00:23:27,558 --> 00:23:29,318
[Gigi] You don't even have apps to App Store?

469
00:23:29,318 --> 00:23:31,318
[Gigi] Like what kind of apps do you use?

470
00:23:31,318 --> 00:23:32,758
[Gigi] Like you don't have any apps.

471
00:23:32,758 --> 00:23:33,958
[Gigi] All the good apps are in App Store.

472
00:23:33,958 --> 00:23:35,238
[Balas] I don't even use apps anymore.

473
00:23:35,238 --> 00:23:35,798
[Balas] It's crazy.

474
00:23:36,518 --> 00:23:36,998
[Balas] I've been...

475
00:23:38,918 --> 00:23:41,318
[Balas] Before I would just try everything.

476
00:23:41,318 --> 00:23:44,678
[Balas] I was first better tester user.

477
00:23:44,678 --> 00:23:48,598
[Balas] I would download all the software, new novelties.

478
00:23:48,598 --> 00:23:50,598
[Balas] And now I don't do anything.

479
00:23:50,598 --> 00:23:53,078
So you use your phone for calling?

480
00:23:53,078 --> 00:23:53,398
Yes.

481
00:23:53,398 --> 00:23:54,118
[Gigi] For calls.

482
00:23:54,118 --> 00:23:54,758
[Balas] Signal.

483
00:23:54,758 --> 00:23:59,638
[Balas] Google Maps and some other clients that I still use.

484
00:23:59,638 --> 00:24:00,598
[Gigi] What do you use in iOS?

485
00:24:00,598 --> 00:24:01,878
[Balas] I still use Damus.

486
00:24:01,878 --> 00:24:09,398
[Balas] It's the first iOS client and I didn't switch to any other one.

487
00:24:09,398 --> 00:24:11,638
[Gigi] It's pretty much abandoned now, unfortunately, I feel like.

488
00:24:12,518 --> 00:24:17,718
[Gigi] That's what I've heard from some people that are unhappy with the state of it a little bit.

489
00:24:17,718 --> 00:24:23,718
[Balas] I mean, Will has a bunch of projects at the same time and I think Damus was not the most...

490
00:24:23,718 --> 00:24:25,478
[Gigi] I mean, he's building games now as well.

491
00:24:25,478 --> 00:24:26,918
[Gigi] So you have something in common.

492
00:24:26,918 --> 00:24:28,278
[Gigi] Building games now as well.

493
00:24:28,278 --> 00:24:28,998
[Gigi] It's incredible.

494
00:24:28,998 --> 00:24:31,398
[Balas] Everyone is building games now all of a sudden each year.

495
00:24:31,398 --> 00:24:32,838
[Gigi] Carnage is building games as well.

496
00:24:34,118 --> 00:24:39,878
[Gigi] I had a close look at what he's up to because he is basically building an MMO.

497
00:24:42,678 --> 00:24:48,198
[Gigi] Going really hard on the world building and world generation.

498
00:24:48,198 --> 00:24:49,478
[Gigi] And it just looks amazing.

499
00:24:50,038 --> 00:24:54,998
[Gigi] It's basically as far as I understand it, like I only glanced at it basically,

500
00:24:54,998 --> 00:24:58,758
[Gigi] but as far as I understand it, he has like a clanker swarm that he instructs

501
00:24:59,318 --> 00:25:03,638
[Gigi] to build certain areas like build a fishing village and it should have this look and feel

502
00:25:03,638 --> 00:25:04,118
[Gigi] and so on.

503
00:25:04,118 --> 00:25:07,798
[Gigi] And here is like, you know, here are the assets like here, the buildings,

504
00:25:07,798 --> 00:25:10,278
[Gigi] and he has a different clanker that creates all the buildings.

505
00:25:10,278 --> 00:25:14,598
[Gigi] And it's like, you know, I need like 25 buildings for a fishing village, those kinds of things.

506
00:25:14,598 --> 00:25:16,198
[Gigi] That's how I understand it.

507
00:25:16,198 --> 00:25:19,558
[Gigi] And then he wakes up or, you know, like everything works overnight.

508
00:25:19,558 --> 00:25:24,358
[Gigi] And he wakes up and he'll like his way of debugging is just walking through the world

509
00:25:24,358 --> 00:25:27,718
[Gigi] and just, you know, and he's filming it and putting it in the master.

510
00:25:27,718 --> 00:25:28,758
[Balas] It's quite incredible.

511
00:25:28,758 --> 00:25:29,318
[Gigi] Really nice.

512
00:25:30,118 --> 00:25:31,478
[Gigi] So tell me about your game.

513
00:25:31,478 --> 00:25:39,638
[Gigi] Like you demoed the game in the last cohort and it blew a lot of people away, myself included.

514
00:25:39,638 --> 00:25:45,078
[Gigi] So it's a really interesting concept and it looks and feels really, really nice.

515
00:25:45,078 --> 00:25:46,198
[Gigi] So tell me all about it.

516
00:25:46,998 --> 00:25:52,198
[Balas] So yeah, that the game is very much a work in progress and a side project.

517
00:25:52,198 --> 00:25:59,638
[Balas] So I just work on it on my free time or when when the clankers are working on other projects,

518
00:25:59,638 --> 00:26:02,838
[Balas] I switch to that from time to time.

519
00:26:04,358 --> 00:26:09,798
[Balas] But it's like a concept that I had for a long time ago.

520
00:26:09,798 --> 00:26:19,238
[Balas] I always liked games and especially games that just let you do little stuff and keep you occupied.

521
00:26:19,238 --> 00:26:25,558
[Balas] I never liked much of going online, playing against others or short games, kill, kill, kill.

522
00:26:25,558 --> 00:26:31,238
[Balas] I mean, I played all those as well, but it was never the games that I liked.

523
00:26:31,798 --> 00:26:38,438
[Balas] I'm like in terms of bigger games that I play that I like is Elder Scrolls games.

524
00:26:38,438 --> 00:26:43,478
[Balas] So I started Morrowind and Oblivion and Skyrim.

525
00:26:44,038 --> 00:26:51,798
[Balas] So it's games that give you freedom to do stuff in a world and you don't have to worry about anything.

526
00:26:51,798 --> 00:26:52,838
[Gigi] Keep you occupied for months.

527
00:26:52,838 --> 00:26:53,318
[Balas] Yeah.

528
00:26:53,318 --> 00:26:53,478
Yeah.

529
00:26:55,318 --> 00:27:02,678
[Balas] So I was trying to think of a little game that I could make for myself to occupy and

530
00:27:05,878 --> 00:27:13,798
[Balas] I decided to use the new JavaScript again, at least for the start to get the concept.

531
00:27:16,198 --> 00:27:18,438
[Gigi] You might as well use what you're used to.

532
00:27:19,878 --> 00:27:22,758
[Balas] And just the Canvas 2D.

533
00:27:23,718 --> 00:27:33,238
[Balas] And I came up with just this little concept of you being a player and that you have to discover

534
00:27:33,238 --> 00:27:36,838
[Balas] the world and by the way, so it's sort of Nostr tied.

535
00:27:37,398 --> 00:27:44,838
[Balas] So the world is generated based on some input and your own pubkey.

536
00:27:45,558 --> 00:27:52,598
[Balas] And then it creates a new pubkey that generates the whole world with it.

537
00:27:54,838 --> 00:28:00,198
[Balas] And so that creates a map that is going to be unique for every player.

538
00:28:00,918 --> 00:28:02,998
[Balas] No single map is the same.

539
00:28:02,998 --> 00:28:09,558
[Gigi] Maybe to get an idea into people's heads, how I experienced it when I saw it was like,

540
00:28:09,558 --> 00:28:11,718
[Gigi] oh, this looks like Settlers of Catan.

541
00:28:11,718 --> 00:28:15,478
[Gigi] It's like a hexagon shaped world.

542
00:28:16,038 --> 00:28:23,238
[Gigi] And the tiles, you wake up basically and you're on one hexagon, which is discovered and explored.

543
00:28:23,238 --> 00:28:25,958
[Gigi] And around you, there's basically like a fog of war, right?

544
00:28:25,958 --> 00:28:28,998
[Gigi] Like you don't see a lot around you.

545
00:28:28,998 --> 00:28:31,798
[Balas] And you have to explore and discover everything.

546
00:28:31,798 --> 00:28:33,158
[Gigi] Yeah, and it's turn based, right?

547
00:28:33,158 --> 00:28:36,678
[Gigi] Like you explore for a day basically and then you have to go to sleep.

548
00:28:36,678 --> 00:28:44,758
[Balas] So you have time constraints and more constraints, but at the beginning it's mostly time.

549
00:28:46,658 --> 00:28:50,618
[Balas] when you're out of time you need to sleep to sleep over and

550
00:28:51,338 --> 00:28:53,338
[Balas] the next day you'll get

551
00:28:55,218 --> 00:28:57,938
[Balas] More time as you discovered on that day

552
00:28:57,938 --> 00:29:03,698
[Balas] So if you discover on the first day discover one tile you'll get an additional minutes on the next day

553
00:29:03,698 --> 00:29:09,738
[Balas] Okay, so you get progressively more time as you discover the days get longer. Yeah

554
00:29:11,058 --> 00:29:15,658
[Gigi] Opposite as in real life where in real life the days to get shorter and shorter

555
00:29:15,658 --> 00:29:21,098
[Gigi] Yeah, the older I get if my grandma is to believe you know my lived experience with a test of that

556
00:29:22,778 --> 00:29:29,298
[Gigi] Your game the the days get longer and what's the ultimate goal? Like what's the what's the game design like?

557
00:29:29,298 --> 00:29:33,938
[Balas] I don't even know at this point. It's a it's still I don't know how you're exploring

558
00:29:33,938 --> 00:29:38,098
[Balas] I'm still exploring and I have a bunch of concepts but

559
00:29:38,898 --> 00:29:44,658
[Balas] Let's see. I keep changing things and I will I will repeat what I repeated when I saw the demo

560
00:29:45,298 --> 00:29:52,378
[Gigi] Please like push it live somewhere and let people use it because maybe that maybe that will help you explore it as well

561
00:29:52,378 --> 00:29:54,378
[Gigi] like some other players feedback and

562
00:29:54,818 --> 00:29:56,778
[Gigi] It just looks

563
00:29:56,778 --> 00:29:59,698
[Gigi] really nice like the UI for it and

564
00:30:00,658 --> 00:30:06,178
[Gigi] Like like everything fits together. It's just it looked amazing and and a bunch of it is still

565
00:30:06,778 --> 00:30:13,058
[Balas] Really work just place all the stuff because or the clanker did it and it still

566
00:30:14,578 --> 00:30:20,298
[Gigi] If you're not embarrassed if you're not embarrassed about it you you you release too late. I'm just embarrassed that

567
00:30:21,178 --> 00:30:25,498
[Balas] Someone's gonna play and there's really nothing to play with other than no, but it looks

568
00:30:27,498 --> 00:30:29,918
[Gigi] You build your own sprite editor, right like

569
00:30:30,418 --> 00:30:36,098
[Gigi] Hex based on hexagon the icons. Yeah the icons and you build your own font and everything

570
00:30:36,778 --> 00:30:38,778
[Gigi] I

571
00:30:38,778 --> 00:30:40,778
[Gigi] Did your own typography

572
00:30:41,258 --> 00:30:47,498
[Balas] For the icons. Yeah, I mean I was just experimenting and I don't think it's gonna be

573
00:30:48,258 --> 00:30:52,178
[Balas] Super not sure if gonna stay there stay that way

574
00:30:53,178 --> 00:30:57,738
[Gigi] Just apply it somewhere that people explore. It's probably like, you know 200 kilobytes

575
00:30:58,858 --> 00:31:03,498
[Balas] But that's part actually is what it played as an insight. I spend most time on is

576
00:31:04,938 --> 00:31:12,378
[Balas] Designing the icons by hand. Yeah, it's very time-consuming. So I was I'm I was trying to get the clankers to do it

577
00:31:12,378 --> 00:31:17,858
[Balas] But I didn't like the results. I hope they'll get better at some point and it's gonna be fixed by itself

578
00:31:18,458 --> 00:31:22,618
[Balas] I think 5.5 cloth 5.5 already is much better at it

579
00:31:23,898 --> 00:31:28,138
[Balas] but I wasn't I wasn't happy with how they were drawing icon so I

580
00:31:29,498 --> 00:31:33,398
[Balas] use the X grid as well we use just using triangles and

581
00:31:35,658 --> 00:31:39,578
[Gigi] Sort of pixel art what does your setup look like now?

582
00:31:39,578 --> 00:31:42,458
[Gigi] You just mentioned cloth 5.5. What are you using right now?

583
00:31:42,458 --> 00:31:49,838
[Gigi] And what kind of just services are you using if anything nothing and just using bare cloths your vanilla kind of guy?

584
00:31:49,838 --> 00:31:57,258
[Balas] Yeah, I really want to change my setups, but I don't know I don't get the time to do it now. It's just

585
00:31:58,098 --> 00:32:02,898
[Balas] It's either I lose myself trying to find setups or I work

586
00:32:02,898 --> 00:32:06,058
[Gigi] And you would build your own agent harness in vanilla

587
00:32:10,258 --> 00:32:14,938
[Balas] Now I've I sort of moved on to type script, okay

588
00:32:16,418 --> 00:32:18,418
[Gigi] You're evolving

589
00:32:20,858 --> 00:32:24,498
[Gigi] How do you see this evolving as someone who is

590
00:32:25,258 --> 00:32:31,838
[Gigi] You know like has been close to programming and you've wrote a lot of code. What's your take on the current?

591
00:32:33,058 --> 00:32:36,038
[Gigi] Situation where basically the clank us write all the code more or less

592
00:32:38,418 --> 00:32:40,578
[Balas] I think it's I mean

593
00:32:41,378 --> 00:32:43,998
[Balas] Like everything it's a double-edged sword, you know

594
00:32:44,578 --> 00:32:47,738
[Balas] it's amazing how much more you can do and

595
00:32:48,778 --> 00:32:51,858
[Balas] without having to know everything and

596
00:32:53,538 --> 00:32:58,538
[Balas] At the same time you don't know what's in there anymore sort of you because you

597
00:32:59,578 --> 00:33:03,538
[Balas] There's no time to sift through everything and make sure that

598
00:33:04,298 --> 00:33:07,898
[Balas] Look at every line of the what your AI does

599
00:33:07,898 --> 00:33:11,218
[Balas] so if you're going to that route then you're not going to be able to

600
00:33:11,858 --> 00:33:14,738
[Balas] Do anything else because you're just gonna be reviewing code

601
00:33:19,338 --> 00:33:27,538
[Balas] We sort of at this point need to put that review to some other AI some other agents and hope for the best

602
00:33:29,698 --> 00:33:33,978
[Balas] I think I was afraid of it at the beginning. I took a

603
00:33:34,618 --> 00:33:42,818
[Balas] Even though I wasn't really a programmer. I wanted to be one I wanted to learn so I resisted using AI

604
00:33:43,378 --> 00:33:46,018
[Balas] and that I I just

605
00:33:46,458 --> 00:33:49,218
[Balas] Just started using it this year at the beginning of the year

606
00:33:49,778 --> 00:33:51,618
[Balas] with

607
00:33:51,618 --> 00:33:56,178
[Balas] Opus five six, I think or four six or something like that the one that

608
00:33:57,218 --> 00:34:01,258
[Balas] That was like sort of breakthrough in code and I thought okay, maybe I'll

609
00:34:02,138 --> 00:34:06,538
[Balas] Maybe I'll give this a chance and it helped me rewrite our summer from I

610
00:34:08,178 --> 00:34:16,298
[Balas] Was actually impressed that I tried to do an audit with it and it didn't find it didn't find as many problems as I thought

611
00:34:17,698 --> 00:34:23,058
[Balas] It's sort of okay the architecture and no critical

612
00:34:24,778 --> 00:34:28,818
[Balas] No critical stuff was really fun. It was more like optimizing

613
00:34:30,098 --> 00:34:31,938
[Balas] and

614
00:34:31,938 --> 00:34:36,858
[Balas] Releasing features faster and that I wanted to do for a while, but sort of

615
00:34:37,618 --> 00:34:44,018
[Gigi] Couldn't yeah. Yeah, that's how I feel like in the sense that you just mentioned releasing features faster

616
00:34:44,018 --> 00:34:51,338
[Gigi] I was always disappointed with myself because I always wanted to do more and be more productive basically and now I feel I'm

617
00:34:51,898 --> 00:34:56,418
[Gigi] Finally as productive as I always wanted to be I mean, of course, you know

618
00:34:56,418 --> 00:35:00,978
[Gigi] it's like like you said before it's a double f sword and it's kind of now that I

619
00:35:01,578 --> 00:35:06,338
[Gigi] reached I've reached new levels of productiveness in terms of how many

620
00:35:07,138 --> 00:35:11,978
[Gigi] things I can output into the world if you you know, there is a

621
00:35:12,938 --> 00:35:21,018
[Gigi] There's a risk of thinking you could do even more basically, you know, which is you know, like a sign of AI psychosis

622
00:35:22,218 --> 00:35:25,818
[Gigi] Just rebuild the world. Well, I think it's it's

623
00:35:26,658 --> 00:35:32,778
[Balas] It's more hopeful than thinking you cannot do things. So I think in some ways it gives

624
00:35:33,618 --> 00:35:35,458
[Balas] people some

625
00:35:35,458 --> 00:35:38,138
[Balas] direction and hope that they can do it that

626
00:35:38,898 --> 00:35:40,698
[Balas] It's gonna be

627
00:35:40,698 --> 00:35:43,898
[Balas] Somewhat feasible. Yeah, and that puts people

628
00:35:45,338 --> 00:35:50,698
[Balas] Making things making stuff even if it's right now a bunch of slop and stuff to be discarded

629
00:35:50,698 --> 00:35:53,498
[Balas] I think that's part of the the paths to

630
00:35:54,378 --> 00:35:57,778
We had humans. Yeah, yeah completely like most

631
00:35:58,618 --> 00:36:04,258
[Gigi] Produced whether it's just music or writing or art or code or apps or what have you most of it is sloppy. Yeah

632
00:36:04,818 --> 00:36:09,898
[Balas] And that's just I think most of this slot before AI was just content

633
00:36:09,898 --> 00:36:12,538
[Balas] You know social media content was completely sloppy

634
00:36:13,018 --> 00:36:19,818
[Balas] Shopified at that time because it just it was we're using cookie cutter stuff to get your attention you look at Geo City

635
00:36:19,818 --> 00:36:27,018
[Gigi] So whatever, you know, it was amazing. It was amazing. But like 99% of it was yeah, just all the same and

636
00:36:27,698 --> 00:36:30,258
[Gigi] Yeah, what we would call a slop nowadays. Yeah

637
00:36:30,738 --> 00:36:37,618
[Gigi] No, it's I'm very hopeful because I see it all all around me people that

638
00:36:39,098 --> 00:36:45,458
[Gigi] We're not able to create apps we're not able to create, you know, whatever like let alone native maps

639
00:36:45,458 --> 00:36:49,058
[Gigi] But but but web apps whatever they can now just build stuff

640
00:36:50,258 --> 00:36:51,058
[Gigi] and

641
00:36:51,058 --> 00:36:53,058
[Gigi] what's amazing to me of course is

642
00:36:53,938 --> 00:36:56,418
[Gigi] We mentioned it before briefly on the Android side

643
00:36:56,418 --> 00:37:03,218
[Gigi] you actually have a very permissionless system and you have Zapstore and you have all this stuff that we build out over the last couple of

644
00:37:03,218 --> 00:37:05,218
[Gigi] years and

645
00:37:05,218 --> 00:37:11,658
[Gigi] it's literally one prompt to build an app and publish it to Zapstore and then anyone can install it and

646
00:37:12,818 --> 00:37:17,778
[Gigi] That's just so amazing to me. Like that's that's so fucking cool that we are at this point and

647
00:37:18,378 --> 00:37:22,898
[Gigi] That it actually works and works really well and anyone can do it now

648
00:37:22,898 --> 00:37:26,678
[Gigi] And that gives me a lot of hope because like the gatekeeping is over

649
00:37:28,538 --> 00:37:35,018
[Balas] And this is really what's pushing me out of iOS right now because I was thinking okay, I need to get into

650
00:37:36,058 --> 00:37:39,498
[Balas] native native apps because now it's possible I can just

651
00:37:40,658 --> 00:37:43,458
[Balas] Get the native app, but then I started to think oh my god

652
00:37:43,458 --> 00:37:49,098
[Balas] I don't want to go to the app store and guidelines fucking just beg for

653
00:37:49,618 --> 00:37:53,018
[Balas] Release. I don't want that shit. So that doesn't make any sense now

654
00:37:53,298 --> 00:37:59,338
[Balas] So yeah, I'm gonna be switching to Android very soon to to be able to to continue that path

655
00:37:59,338 --> 00:38:02,778
[Gigi] Yeah, I mentioned it briefly when I was talking with Thomas like my development

656
00:38:03,658 --> 00:38:07,718
[Gigi] Workflow is now I don't even use emulators. I don't test on device

657
00:38:07,718 --> 00:38:10,458
[Gigi] I just push to Zapstore and I install on my device

658
00:38:10,978 --> 00:38:15,178
[Gigi] And if there's box I fix them straight up and I update via Zapstore

659
00:38:15,178 --> 00:38:21,698
[Gigi] Yeah, like I got my mind the app store is my debugging tool now because I can iterate so quickly

660
00:38:21,978 --> 00:38:27,218
[Gigi] That if there isn't if there is a bug in the app like I mean, you know, you can't do it for every app

661
00:38:27,618 --> 00:38:30,618
[Gigi] But for the apps I work on the box are never critical

662
00:38:30,618 --> 00:38:36,138
[Gigi] Yeah, and and so I can just push it live fix it same for websites and so on I don't have any

663
00:38:36,138 --> 00:38:39,078
[Gigi] I don't have any staging, I don't even...

664
00:38:39,078 --> 00:38:41,558
[Gigi] For most of the things I don't even do tests.

665
00:38:41,558 --> 00:38:44,918
[Gigi] It depends on the project, but it just slows you down.

666
00:38:44,918 --> 00:38:49,558
[Balas] So much. I have a rule for my clankers to not do tests.

667
00:38:49,558 --> 00:38:53,798
[Balas] Because it takes so much time and tokens to do the tests.

668
00:38:53,798 --> 00:38:57,638
[Balas] And I'm like there waiting and seeing the tokens disappear.

669
00:38:57,638 --> 00:38:59,798
[Balas] And then when I get to actually test it,

670
00:38:59,798 --> 00:39:04,038
[Balas] I see exactly that something is wrong that it just doesn't make sense of.

671
00:39:04,038 --> 00:39:04,598
[Gigi] Yeah.

672
00:39:04,598 --> 00:39:05,638
[Balas] Do not do tests.

673
00:39:05,638 --> 00:39:06,118
[Gigi] Same for me.

674
00:39:06,118 --> 00:39:06,758
[Balas] I'll test it.

675
00:39:07,318 --> 00:39:09,958
[Gigi] Same for me. I test live. No tests.

676
00:39:11,078 --> 00:39:14,438
[Gigi] You're good enough at writing code that we usually don't need tests anyway.

677
00:39:14,438 --> 00:39:17,558
[Gigi] Again, like it all depends. There are certain things where, you know, it makes sense.

678
00:39:17,558 --> 00:39:22,518
[Balas] If the project grows big enough and if it gets to be stable, then okay,

679
00:39:22,518 --> 00:39:24,518
[Balas] let's write tests for the stable version.

680
00:39:24,518 --> 00:39:29,158
[Balas] But at the beginning where everything is changing, it doesn't make sense because...

681
00:39:29,158 --> 00:39:31,958
[Gigi] For me, the first couple hours, especially like...

682
00:39:33,398 --> 00:39:35,318
[Gigi] I try to work in sprints.

683
00:39:35,318 --> 00:39:37,958
[Gigi] If I sit down and do something, I really do it.

684
00:39:37,958 --> 00:39:40,998
[Gigi] So I'll sit down for eight hours and go really hard.

685
00:39:40,998 --> 00:39:43,478
[Gigi] And I'm just going to iterate every 30 seconds.

686
00:39:43,478 --> 00:39:45,958
[Gigi] And so I can't wait on tests. I can't wait on anything.

687
00:39:45,958 --> 00:39:48,198
[Gigi] I just like, I'll iterate so hard.

688
00:39:51,958 --> 00:39:57,718
[Gigi] And for feather, I had the rule, no tests, no emulators, no nothing.

689
00:39:57,718 --> 00:40:02,278
[Gigi] Just push straight to... As long as it builds, push to the system.

690
00:40:02,278 --> 00:40:07,158
[Balas] And that's the best test you can get because then you test if it's actually working on Zap

691
00:40:07,158 --> 00:40:10,998
[Balas] and if it's actually working on downloading your device and you use it.

692
00:40:10,998 --> 00:40:14,838
[Gigi] And I use it. And as soon as I notice something,

693
00:40:14,838 --> 00:40:20,038
[Gigi] I record a voice memo, goes directly to the clanker.

694
00:40:20,038 --> 00:40:22,438
[Gigi] And every time I notice something like, I don't write it down.

695
00:40:22,438 --> 00:40:24,838
[Gigi] I don't have issue tracking. Nothing. It just goes like...

696
00:40:24,838 --> 00:40:30,838
[Gigi] The feedback loop is immediate. Just directly into it and then create another release.

697
00:40:30,838 --> 00:40:33,958
[Gigi] And then I use it some more. And that has been my development process.

698
00:40:34,678 --> 00:40:38,758
[Gigi] And you can go really far with that because the iteration loops are so tight.

699
00:40:38,758 --> 00:40:42,758
[Balas] I wish I would be able to speak to my phone to myself.

700
00:40:43,478 --> 00:40:44,118
[Gigi] I'll set you up.

701
00:40:44,118 --> 00:40:49,558
[Balas] I'm one of those persons that I'm not sure I can just speak to myself like that.

702
00:40:49,558 --> 00:40:50,198
[Gigi] You can do it.

703
00:40:50,198 --> 00:40:55,958
[Balas] I think I'm a writer person because it feels so weird to just talk in the void.

704
00:40:57,078 --> 00:40:58,998
[Gigi] It's great. It's great. It's great.

705
00:40:59,878 --> 00:41:04,118
[Gigi] Just don't think of it as speaking into the void.

706
00:41:04,118 --> 00:41:08,518
[Gigi] Think of it as recording a voice message for a friend.

707
00:41:08,518 --> 00:41:09,958
[Gigi] People do that all the time.

708
00:41:09,958 --> 00:41:13,638
[Gigi] They go through the shopping center and they speak into the phone and they...

709
00:41:13,638 --> 00:41:17,638
[Gigi] Whatever. They record a message for their husband or their wife or whatever.

710
00:41:17,638 --> 00:41:28,678
[Balas] But then I feel like if I went that route, I could not work in silence next to a baby sleeping or something.

711
00:41:28,678 --> 00:41:30,758
[Gigi] That's fair. That's fair. Then type.

712
00:41:31,478 --> 00:41:35,798
[Gigi] Don't get a mechanical keyboard. Let the baby sleep.

713
00:41:36,358 --> 00:41:39,078
[Gigi] No, no. That's fair. That's fair. I mean, I still type sometimes.

714
00:41:39,958 --> 00:41:44,198
[Gigi] For Feather, one of my development constraints was voice prompts only.

715
00:41:44,838 --> 00:41:52,278
[Gigi] So the first weekend I worked on Feather, I used voice prompts only just as an experiment to see

716
00:41:53,238 --> 00:41:56,278
[Gigi] if I can actually go all the way with just voice prompts.

717
00:41:56,278 --> 00:42:00,438
[Gigi] And we're at the point now where you actually can, I think.

718
00:42:01,078 --> 00:42:08,038
[Gigi] If you have a good transcription software, I use Paseo, which uses the NVIDIA model underneath,

719
00:42:08,038 --> 00:42:10,278
[Gigi] which transcribes locally on your machine.

720
00:42:11,078 --> 00:42:13,638
[Gigi] And nothing other touches the cloud.

721
00:42:14,198 --> 00:42:19,478
[Gigi] And the transcription is impeccable.

722
00:42:19,478 --> 00:42:22,278
[Gigi] It's so good. It will put every comma correctly.

723
00:42:22,278 --> 00:42:26,038
[Gigi] It knows when the sentence ends. It knows what is the question and what isn't and all those kind of things.

724
00:42:26,598 --> 00:42:32,758
[Gigi] So insanely good. It will use context around to get the vocabulary right.

725
00:42:32,758 --> 00:42:38,198
[Gigi] So if I say ngit/grasp, then it will capitalize grasp correctly.

726
00:42:38,198 --> 00:42:41,878
[Gigi] And it will know what I mean when I say special vocabulary.

727
00:42:41,878 --> 00:42:44,358
[Gigi] It's amazing. It's completely mind blowing.

728
00:42:44,918 --> 00:42:47,238
[Gigi] Because that was always the hardest to get these parts right.

729
00:42:47,238 --> 00:42:54,598
[Gigi] And now we're at the point where the best speech-to-text software and the best transcription software gets this right.

730
00:42:55,158 --> 00:43:04,438
[Gigi] And so I'm more and more moving into a voice-only world, which I never thought I would.

731
00:43:04,438 --> 00:43:07,398
[Gigi] I always hated it. I always hated speaking.

732
00:43:07,958 --> 00:43:09,638
[Gigi] I hated voice memos as well. I still do.

733
00:43:10,598 --> 00:43:14,518
[Gigi] I kind of hate receiving voice memos because you can't seek.

734
00:43:14,518 --> 00:43:16,198
[Gigi] You can't scan the text.

735
00:43:16,998 --> 00:43:17,878
[Gigi] I don't know what it's...

736
00:43:17,878 --> 00:43:20,838
[Gigi] If you send me a seven minute voice message, I don't know what it's about.

737
00:43:20,838 --> 00:43:21,958
[Gigi] I have to listen to the whole thing.

738
00:43:22,758 --> 00:43:26,118
[Gigi] And obviously, we'll have...

739
00:43:26,118 --> 00:43:29,638
[Gigi] I think really good messages already transcribe it and so on and blah, blah, blah.

740
00:43:29,638 --> 00:43:31,158
[Gigi] So we'll fix this problem too.

741
00:43:31,718 --> 00:43:36,598
[Gigi] But what's so surprising to me now is that I mostly speak to my computers.

742
00:43:37,318 --> 00:43:37,798
[Gigi] Plural.

743
00:43:38,678 --> 00:43:39,878
[Balas] Do you do it in English?

744
00:43:39,878 --> 00:43:40,518
[Gigi] Yeah, English.

745
00:43:42,278 --> 00:43:44,838
[Gigi] My brain just works in English when I think about these things.

746
00:43:46,198 --> 00:43:48,438
[Gigi] I'm sure it works the same in every language now.

747
00:43:49,318 --> 00:43:58,838
[Balas] But I guess also the understanding of the English language is probably more accurate than other languages.

748
00:43:58,838 --> 00:43:59,798
[Balas] Like Portuguese.

749
00:44:00,678 --> 00:44:01,638
[Balas] Portuguese is just...

750
00:44:02,758 --> 00:44:04,118
The models are good enough.

751
00:44:04,118 --> 00:44:05,078
They want Brazilian.

752
00:44:06,278 --> 00:44:07,318
[Balas] They just want Brazilian.

753
00:44:10,038 --> 00:44:10,598
[Gigi] No, I don't know.

754
00:44:10,598 --> 00:44:11,318
[Gigi] I never tried.

755
00:44:11,318 --> 00:44:13,398
[Gigi] I never tried, but I probably will.

756
00:44:14,278 --> 00:44:15,958
[Gigi] I probably will because I want a setup.

757
00:44:16,678 --> 00:44:24,278
[Gigi] I'm continually improving my clanker setup and I want to have like a group chat with the wife

758
00:44:24,278 --> 00:44:31,238
[Gigi] that has a reasonable model and a kind of a reasonably private system behind it.

759
00:44:31,238 --> 00:44:32,678
[Gigi] And that's probably going to be German.

760
00:44:32,678 --> 00:44:34,118
[Gigi] So I'll find out.

761
00:44:34,678 --> 00:44:35,958
[Gigi] Find out whether it works or not.

762
00:44:36,838 --> 00:44:37,638
[Gigi] But I think it does.

763
00:44:37,638 --> 00:44:39,158
[Gigi] I think all the models and all this stuff.

764
00:44:39,158 --> 00:44:44,518
[Balas] I think we're getting there and those things are just going to be sold by themselves.

765
00:44:45,558 --> 00:44:49,318
[Gigi] Yeah, everything just gets better and the harnesses get better and the tools around it,

766
00:44:49,318 --> 00:44:51,718
[Gigi] the tools around them get better.

767
00:44:51,718 --> 00:44:55,558
[Gigi] The memory systems get better, which helps with all this stuff.

768
00:44:57,878 --> 00:45:03,158
[Gigi] If you're not sure about the transcription, you go back to see if you can find the vocabulary

769
00:45:03,718 --> 00:45:05,398
[Gigi] that might match and all those kind of things.

770
00:45:05,398 --> 00:45:06,518
[Gigi] With names, it's the same.

771
00:45:08,038 --> 00:45:13,958
[Gigi] If I say Jesus, for example, my thing needs to know that I mean Jesus.

772
00:45:13,958 --> 00:45:17,798
[Gigi] Like, you know, the Nostr Jesus, not Jesus of Nazareth.

773
00:45:18,438 --> 00:45:19,238
[Balas] Aren't they the same?

774
00:45:20,438 --> 00:45:20,918
[Gigi] Who knows?

775
00:45:21,478 --> 00:45:21,958
[Gigi] Who knows?

776
00:45:25,398 --> 00:45:28,598
[Gigi] I never saw him walking on water, but who knows?

777
00:45:30,198 --> 00:45:36,038
[Gigi] So, yeah, no, all this is being figured out and stuff gets just so much better, so fast.

778
00:45:36,678 --> 00:45:40,518
[Gigi] Right now, I kind of...

779
00:45:41,398 --> 00:45:43,878
[Gigi] I don't know, to me it's just awesome now.

780
00:45:43,878 --> 00:45:47,398
[Gigi] To me it feels with the open source projects that I have,

781
00:45:48,518 --> 00:45:53,718
[Gigi] every single project has an agent, every single project has an NPUB,

782
00:45:54,518 --> 00:45:58,758
[Gigi] and it's just kind of the CEO of the thing, basically.

783
00:45:59,318 --> 00:46:00,438
[Gigi] And I just talk to it.

784
00:46:00,438 --> 00:46:02,678
[Gigi] I just, in natural language, talk to it.

785
00:46:02,678 --> 00:46:07,158
[Gigi] It's like, you know, whatever, for ants, like, you know, like the...

786
00:46:07,158 --> 00:46:11,558
[Gigi] I don't like the search language that we have, like, let's...

787
00:46:11,558 --> 00:46:15,238
[Gigi] Whatever, you know, it has Boolean language, so we have AND and OR.

788
00:46:15,238 --> 00:46:20,198
[Gigi] Maybe I want to add negation, and like, how could we add negation to our search language?

789
00:46:20,198 --> 00:46:23,878
[Gigi] Give me like your, you know, your top three suggestions of how to do that.

790
00:46:23,878 --> 00:46:27,558
[Gigi] It will come back, and I will say, okay, I like the second suggestion.

791
00:46:27,558 --> 00:46:30,358
[Gigi] Like, let's implement it, and you know, push to Zapstore when you're done,

792
00:46:30,358 --> 00:46:31,878
[Gigi] and I'll test it on my device.

793
00:46:31,878 --> 00:46:36,118
[Gigi] And that's literally exactly how I'm talking right now, is how I'm talking to the agents.

794
00:46:36,118 --> 00:46:36,918
[Balas] And that's amazing.

795
00:46:36,918 --> 00:46:37,398
[Gigi] And I can...

796
00:46:37,398 --> 00:46:38,038
[Gigi] And I...

797
00:46:38,038 --> 00:46:38,278
I think that's...

798
00:46:38,278 --> 00:46:38,998
You can just do a lot.

799
00:46:38,998 --> 00:46:41,718
[Balas] That's basically close to the perfect setup, if you can just...

800
00:46:43,158 --> 00:46:45,478
[Balas] Naturally talk and go back and forth like that.

801
00:46:45,478 --> 00:46:46,278
[Balas] Yeah.

802
00:46:47,078 --> 00:46:48,438
[Balas] And everything...

803
00:46:48,438 --> 00:46:50,038
[Balas] You don't have to go in and...

804
00:46:50,038 --> 00:46:55,238
[Gigi] And I can do it on any device, because like, my main interface is like NIP-17 DMs, then.

805
00:46:55,238 --> 00:46:58,518
[Gigi] And so, no matter which device I'm at, no matter where I sit, no matter where I am,

806
00:46:58,518 --> 00:47:02,118
[Gigi] as long as I have any computation device with me, I can just, you know,

807
00:47:02,118 --> 00:47:03,638
[Gigi] check on my clankers and talk to them.

808
00:47:03,638 --> 00:47:05,398
[Gigi] And so, it's really cool.

809
00:47:05,398 --> 00:47:07,958
[Gigi] I just have a messaging system with my clankers, basically.

810
00:47:07,958 --> 00:47:09,638
[Gigi] And it's just like talking to people.

811
00:47:09,638 --> 00:47:10,358
[Gigi] And you can be...

812
00:47:12,758 --> 00:47:15,478
[Gigi] It's even like the clankers are at a point now,

813
00:47:15,478 --> 00:47:17,478
[Gigi] especially if they build up context over time.

814
00:47:18,438 --> 00:47:21,078
[Gigi] They will basically almost always understand what you mean.

815
00:47:22,358 --> 00:47:23,318
[Gigi] It's the...

816
00:47:24,438 --> 00:47:28,118
[Gigi] Like, if you use something like a Hermus or something like an open claw and so on in

817
00:47:28,118 --> 00:47:30,998
[Gigi] the backhand, something that actually builds up memory and understanding over time,

818
00:47:32,118 --> 00:47:34,118
[Gigi] they will know what you mean in the context of this project.

819
00:47:34,118 --> 00:47:34,598
[Balas] Yeah.

820
00:47:34,598 --> 00:47:34,758
Yeah.

821
00:47:37,398 --> 00:47:42,118
[Balas] At the beginning, when I started using it, I would not start new sessions.

822
00:47:42,118 --> 00:47:44,918
[Balas] I would just continuously go to the...

823
00:47:46,598 --> 00:47:47,878
[Gigi] I still do that sometimes.

824
00:47:47,878 --> 00:47:56,838
[Balas] No, I still do it mostly because I like that part of e-understanding the context,

825
00:47:56,838 --> 00:48:00,198
[Balas] and I don't have to put everything again into...

826
00:48:00,198 --> 00:48:00,758
[Gigi] Yeah, sure.

827
00:48:00,758 --> 00:48:01,558
[Balas] ...explain everything.

828
00:48:02,198 --> 00:48:07,158
[Balas] But I also see that at some point, it just starts to freak out.

829
00:48:07,158 --> 00:48:09,958
[Gigi] You can't compact your context forever.

830
00:48:10,918 --> 00:48:12,278
[Gigi] That's not how compression works.

831
00:48:13,158 --> 00:48:16,518
[Gigi] Yeah, you'll obviously lose stuff, and then you'll lose the important bits,

832
00:48:16,518 --> 00:48:20,998
[Gigi] and then it reverts to the mid-curve, the middle of the mid-curve.

833
00:48:21,798 --> 00:48:24,358
[Balas] But yeah, we're at that point where...

834
00:48:33,498 --> 00:48:36,258
You get used to the smartness.

835
00:48:36,258 --> 00:48:41,618
[Balas] And then when he's not, it's sort of disappointing.

836
00:48:41,618 --> 00:48:45,498
[Balas] And at the same time, you're like, OK, they're not there yet.

837
00:48:47,498 --> 00:48:59,938
[Balas] I noticed that much more on doing like on the game some just random canvas animation stuff that I need to explain into more detail the motion that I want.

838
00:49:00,578 --> 00:49:06,258
[Balas] I got frustrated a lot more than just doing some normal web things.

839
00:49:06,258 --> 00:49:07,418
[Balas] Yeah, normal web things.

840
00:49:07,418 --> 00:49:09,658
[Balas] They just get it right and understand very fast.

841
00:49:10,178 --> 00:49:16,138
[Balas] But when I was trying to just get all the details of little animations and morph, this goes there.

842
00:49:16,458 --> 00:49:25,018
[Balas] I felt I had to go into such details that it was draining me and then seeing the results.

843
00:49:25,178 --> 00:49:28,698
[Balas] So bad results would just get me very frustrated.

844
00:49:28,698 --> 00:49:31,138
[Gigi] So you might as well do it yourself and it would be less draining.

845
00:49:31,138 --> 00:49:36,298
[Balas] Yes, that's that's why I sort of asking just build me and I can build a rack.

846
00:49:36,298 --> 00:49:38,658
[Balas] I'll I'll do the icons myself.

847
00:49:38,658 --> 00:49:44,978
[Balas] And so I sort of worked around that to get me some.

848
00:49:45,178 --> 00:49:51,338
[Balas] I asked him to do some animation helper so I could just edit the sliders of animation.

849
00:49:51,338 --> 00:49:54,938
[Balas] So I asked him to build me some tools that will help me.

850
00:49:55,338 --> 00:49:57,378
And that's a great work process.

851
00:49:57,618 --> 00:49:59,058
[Balas] The whole the whole thing better.

852
00:49:59,098 --> 00:50:05,818
[Gigi] Yeah, that's what I also do for a lot of kind of stuff that that I don't want to hand to the clankers.

853
00:50:06,458 --> 00:50:11,378
[Gigi] Like build me a system that I then can use that handles the confidential data.

854
00:50:12,458 --> 00:50:15,738
[Gigi] But you will never see the confidential data you as the clanker.

855
00:50:15,738 --> 00:50:24,498
[Gigi] You know, I just described what kind of system I need and I give it dummy data and then I can use it, you know, with the real data.

856
00:50:24,498 --> 00:50:28,258
[Gigi] And I know no clanker touches it or sees it or those kind of things.

857
00:50:28,458 --> 00:50:36,378
[Balas] Yeah, I think that's that's going to be part of the resources we have is if we cannot just do the task directly,

858
00:50:36,378 --> 00:50:41,578
[Balas] we can build easy tools around that that that will help us get the task done.

859
00:50:43,458 --> 00:50:52,338
[Balas] And that's, I guess, a middle ground that we can do it even though I don't think most people are doing it that way.

860
00:50:52,658 --> 00:50:56,218
[Balas] It's most people give them a chat.

861
00:50:56,818 --> 00:51:04,178
[Balas] No, I mean, what I mean is they they just want the end result and they want the clanker to do the whole thing.

862
00:51:04,578 --> 00:51:13,618
[Balas] And they are not thinking that they can just also build helper tools around that that will help get that and not just have the yeah,

863
00:51:13,618 --> 00:51:23,858
[Gigi] you definitely need a new set of skills to to work with these tools like with with every new set of tools or with every new revolution in some sense,

864
00:51:23,858 --> 00:51:30,338
[Gigi] you need to adapt and train yourself to make sense of the new world and figure out what works best.

865
00:51:30,698 --> 00:51:40,378
[Balas] And it's all temporary because everything changes so fast that those things were not were not going to be needed in six months or something.

866
00:51:40,378 --> 00:51:45,258
[Gigi] I talked with Thomas about that a little bit. I'd be interested to hear your take on that as well.

867
00:51:45,258 --> 00:51:54,178
[Gigi] Like we talked about, you know, like throw away software and kind of like generating interface ad hoc and everyone building their own Nostr client.

868
00:51:54,178 --> 00:52:00,258
[Gigi] You know, I mean, on the Nostr side, there's the running joke of like there's more Nostr clients that there is people on Nostr.

869
00:52:00,258 --> 00:52:01,258
[Balas] For sure there is.

870
00:52:01,858 --> 00:52:03,738
[Gigi] There is some truth to that.

871
00:52:03,738 --> 00:52:13,458
[Gigi] And so how do you envision kind of the software world in general where this would just be the norm where you can just create an app for a weekend or for an event or for like whatever.

872
00:52:13,458 --> 00:52:20,178
[Gigi] Like you can just create stuff so easily that you're bound to have throw away throw away software and throw away things.

873
00:52:20,178 --> 00:52:31,738
[Balas] I think software, as we know it, is dead of the paradigm as we know it is mostly dead.

874
00:52:31,738 --> 00:52:50,138
[Balas] And I think the only software that will get done and maintained and matured will be something for the masses, the government's employees and stuff that they need to actually have something fixed to train people on.

875
00:52:50,138 --> 00:52:55,658
[Balas] Or that because everything else will just change so rapidly that.

876
00:52:59,098 --> 00:53:05,378
[Gigi] Do you think people will still use user interfaces as we know them in the last traditional user interfaces?

877
00:53:05,378 --> 00:53:08,898
[Gigi] I think that because you just mentioned staff needs training and so on.

878
00:53:08,898 --> 00:53:11,618
[Gigi] I mean, do you still need training if you can just talk to the computer?

879
00:53:11,778 --> 00:53:17,298
[Balas] That's my question. I mean, there's a lot of people that don't know how to talk and explain things.

880
00:53:17,618 --> 00:53:20,938
They just need to understand the concept.

881
00:53:20,938 --> 00:53:28,658
[Balas] And I think we also live in a tiny bubble that the whole world has not caught on to.

882
00:53:28,658 --> 00:53:33,458
[Balas] They're still living on the same world as before.

883
00:53:33,458 --> 00:53:35,738
[Gigi] Oh, sure. The old systems they have a lot of inertia.

884
00:53:35,738 --> 00:53:40,938
[Balas] I don't think they even understand what's happening below their feet.

885
00:53:42,658 --> 00:53:50,218
[Balas] So I think those people still expect the software to function as it's been functioning since forever.

886
00:53:50,218 --> 00:53:52,458
[Gigi] And Excel needs to look like Excel.

887
00:53:52,458 --> 00:53:58,978
[Balas] Yeah. And your bank website and a bank app will need to still be usable by...

888
00:53:58,978 --> 00:54:09,418
[Gigi] For the bank stuff, I mean, that's the perfect like, you know, send 50 bucks to Balash, you know, create a monthly transfer to, you know, whatever.

889
00:54:09,418 --> 00:54:15,658
[Gigi] Thomas for like 50 bucks for the makerspace in the noster office to buy filament.

890
00:54:18,138 --> 00:54:20,338
[Gigi] You know, it's perfect natural language.

891
00:54:20,338 --> 00:54:30,418
[Balas] I guess, but they're not using it well at the moment because every I integrated on the banks and support is complete shit.

892
00:54:30,418 --> 00:54:37,778
[Balas] I don't know what models they use, but it's so it's something that I get very upset is when they when I talk to support.

893
00:54:37,778 --> 00:54:41,938
[Balas] And yeah, and it's an AI that does not understand anything.

894
00:54:41,938 --> 00:54:50,418
[Gigi] And then the Portuguese banks don't even to to a way yet, basically, unless they do it in the wrong way, which is as a as a mask like sending your tax.

895
00:54:50,418 --> 00:54:58,618
[Balas] And I think they are hoping that the problem instead of getting fixed, the user just gives up.

896
00:54:58,618 --> 00:55:07,298
[Balas] And that's it. It's very frustrating to deal with when you have a problem and you you you're...

897
00:55:07,298 --> 00:55:14,458
[Balas] The answer to that problem is talking to something that does not understand you and will just make more problems.

898
00:55:14,458 --> 00:55:19,178
[Balas] And you'll just have to fight it to talk to an actual person that will help you.

899
00:55:19,178 --> 00:55:22,538
[Gigi] And banks are probably not the best example because they are not.

900
00:55:22,538 --> 00:55:25,098
[Gigi] I mean, there's a reason why we have neo banks, right?

901
00:55:25,098 --> 00:55:28,338
[Gigi] Because banks really suck that computers.

902
00:55:28,338 --> 00:55:35,138
[Gigi] And so neo banks came in and basically the people that were building apps started building apps, banking apps.

903
00:55:35,138 --> 00:55:41,578
[Gigi] And that's what became neo banks and just doing everything in a more modern, better way and so on.

904
00:55:41,578 --> 00:55:43,778
[Gigi] But that just reminded me, did anyone build?

905
00:55:43,778 --> 00:55:52,938
[Gigi] Did anyone did anyone build kind of what I was just describing for a Lightning wallet or an e-cash wallet or anything like that?

906
00:55:52,938 --> 00:55:54,898
[Gigi] It should be very easy to do now.

907
00:55:54,898 --> 00:55:57,978
[Gigi] Just give a clanker access to an e-cash wallet, whatever.

908
00:55:57,978 --> 00:56:01,258
[Gigi] Give it give it an host of all the connect string, basically.

909
00:56:01,258 --> 00:56:05,138
[Gigi] And just then you can do that, you know, zap balash for 21 cents.

910
00:56:05,138 --> 00:56:14,018
[Balas] I mean, there's a bunch of people from SEC that have been playing with their agents and they set them up with their Lightnings and not wallets and whatever.

911
00:56:14,018 --> 00:56:15,098
[Balas] And they can just...

912
00:56:15,098 --> 00:56:17,538
[Gigi] No consumer grade product, right?

913
00:56:17,538 --> 00:56:21,538
[Gigi] Where you can just install an Android app and just do that stuff.

914
00:56:21,538 --> 00:56:27,458
[Gigi] God damn it, I have the next weekend project come out for myself.

915
00:56:27,458 --> 00:56:31,578
[Gigi] And you could do recurring payments also as well, quite easily.

916
00:56:31,578 --> 00:56:32,098
[Balas] Yeah.

917
00:56:32,098 --> 00:56:33,978
[Gigi] Just let the clanker do all of it.

918
00:56:33,978 --> 00:56:35,258
[Balas] Yeah, exactly.

919
00:56:35,258 --> 00:56:37,418
[Gigi] Okay, I'll have to sleep on that.

920
00:56:37,418 --> 00:56:41,218
[Gigi] I don't want to cram all my weekends full of weekend products.

921
00:56:41,218 --> 00:56:45,258
[Balas] Tiny models I understand, just enough to make those things happen.

922
00:56:45,258 --> 00:56:47,978
[Gigi] If you have a good phone, you can...

923
00:56:47,978 --> 00:56:55,298
[Gigi] I mean, the local models get better and smaller and faster all the time, so it's just a matter of time until...

924
00:56:55,298 --> 00:57:01,898
[Gigi] Yeah, I mean, also the chips get tuned to all that stuff now, so...

925
00:57:01,898 --> 00:57:06,658
[Gigi] Yeah, you just gave me some ideas.

926
00:57:06,658 --> 00:57:10,178
[Balas] I think it was yours, but I'm happy to help.

927
00:57:10,178 --> 00:57:11,658
[Gigi] No, that's how dialogue works.

928
00:57:11,658 --> 00:57:15,218
[Gigi] Like, I would never come up with this stuff on my own ever.

929
00:57:15,218 --> 00:57:20,298
[Gigi] It's just by talking about the things, stuff pops up and...

930
00:57:20,298 --> 00:57:25,898
[Gigi] Yeah, it always makes me laugh because Norm Macdonald had this great bit on where do ideas come from?

931
00:57:25,898 --> 00:57:32,018
[Gigi] Like, he would ask people, like, really, really good, really creative people, like world-famous musicians.

932
00:57:32,018 --> 00:57:33,858
[Gigi] And so I'm like, where do your ideas come from?

933
00:57:33,858 --> 00:57:37,498
[Gigi] And ask it really seriously, knowing that it's like a nonsensical question

934
00:57:37,498 --> 00:57:39,258
[Gigi] because no one knows where ideas come from.

935
00:57:39,258 --> 00:57:40,338
[Gigi] Like, you can't answer it.

936
00:57:40,338 --> 00:57:42,218
[Gigi] It's such a stupid question.

937
00:57:42,218 --> 00:57:44,098
[Gigi] And he had a really good bit on it.

938
00:57:44,098 --> 00:57:45,898
[Gigi] It's really funny.

939
00:57:45,898 --> 00:57:53,898
[Gigi] But, yeah, speaking of ideas, what's your idea for your next, like, 12 to 18 months?

940
00:57:53,898 --> 00:57:56,778
[Gigi] What would you like to work on?

941
00:57:56,778 --> 00:57:59,578
[Balas] Well, I'm already working on it.

942
00:57:59,578 --> 00:58:04,098
[Balas] It's Nostr Apps.

943
00:58:04,098 --> 00:58:06,138
[Balas] I just launched it officially...

944
00:58:06,138 --> 00:58:08,098
[Gigi] Competitor to Napplet?

945
00:58:08,098 --> 00:58:12,378
[Balas] Not a competitor, but a good competition.

946
00:58:12,378 --> 00:58:16,298
[Balas] Because, I mean, Napplet's...

947
00:58:16,298 --> 00:58:20,858
[Balas] The concept of Napplet was great.

948
00:58:20,858 --> 00:58:26,818
[Balas] And we've been talking about this composable thing for a while already at SECs.

949
00:58:26,818 --> 00:58:33,418
[Balas] And sandwich went ahead and worked heads down on his own version of that.

950
00:58:33,418 --> 00:58:43,018
[Balas] And I defined the whole spec, the whole protocol that is very based on his own experience,

951
00:58:43,018 --> 00:58:46,398
[Balas] based on his own experience, of his own conclusions, and it's somewhat closed up.

952
00:58:46,398 --> 00:58:57,278
[Balas] So it felt like it was one possibility, but maybe it's not the only way to do things.

953
00:58:57,278 --> 00:59:06,558
[Balas] Or let's battle test things, so let's reach the same conclusions to make sure that everything

954
00:59:07,838 --> 00:59:14,398
[Gigi] aligns. I saw fiatjaf just launched something as well. You're working with him on that, right?

955
00:59:14,398 --> 00:59:19,998
[Gigi] Or he's working with you on that. He's working on that as well. So can you talk to what he just

956
00:59:19,998 --> 00:59:28,318
[Gigi] put out? I saw the UI aspect of it in terms of it looks really nice and clean and really simple.

957
00:59:28,878 --> 00:59:40,558
[Balas] So basically we took the Nostr Apps domain that was basically a simple indexer of Nostr

958
00:59:40,558 --> 00:59:46,158
[Balas] clients that wasn't doing much. Because we have awesome Nostr also and others.

959
00:59:47,038 --> 00:59:56,478
[Balas] So we worked on the problem. There was also $44 billion by Artufranka that he was also trying to

960
00:59:57,278 --> 01:00:06,558
[Balas] build this nsite launcher and the NIP-5A came about. So named nsite and that was the big

961
01:00:06,558 --> 01:00:14,558
[Balas] difference before because nsite before you were tied to one nsite per pubkey. So the way you get

962
01:00:14,558 --> 01:00:22,958
[Balas] more nsite would be to clean up other puppies. But that sort of takes away the identity of the

963
01:00:22,958 --> 01:00:33,758
[Balas] author. And with named Sights now you can basically have all your sights under your own name and

964
01:00:35,358 --> 01:00:42,078
[Balas] fetchable. And so we started working on the idea of okay so this is gonna

965
01:00:44,238 --> 01:00:50,958
[Balas] most sites are gonna need the same code over and over. They need the same Nostr plumbling.

966
01:00:50,958 --> 01:00:58,958
[Balas] They need to know how to talk to relays, which relay to talk about, get users, do a bunch of

967
01:00:58,958 --> 01:01:04,318
[Balas] all those parts. It's very easy for Nostr clients to do it because we've been doing it for a while

968
01:01:04,318 --> 01:01:12,478
[Balas] even before AI and Clankers. So Nostr allows you to just do that easily. But it's also wasteful and

969
01:01:13,358 --> 01:01:18,318
[Balas] you're just putting all those stuff reinventing the wheel every time you do a little Nostr client.

970
01:01:20,078 --> 01:01:27,278
[Gigi] This was also in the Web 2.0 era it was the same thing. And if you wanted to have a way to leave

971
01:01:27,278 --> 01:01:33,518
[Gigi] comments on the web log or whatever, like on the blog and leave comments there. Everyone always had

972
01:01:33,518 --> 01:01:39,918
[Gigi] to rebuild the same stuff. And this cost got really big for example, which was just okay at this one

973
01:01:39,918 --> 01:01:44,718
[Gigi] line of JavaScript that you have everything and people don't need to create new accounts. They can

974
01:01:44,718 --> 01:01:52,078
[Gigi] just always use the same account and so on. And actually Fran, franzap, his project before

975
01:01:52,078 --> 01:01:59,358
[Gigi] Zapstore was Zapthreads, which was the same idea, which was basically you just add a widget

976
01:01:59,358 --> 01:02:04,238
[Gigi] to any site and you can log in with Nostr and you can leave comments and you know and zap them to

977
01:02:04,238 --> 01:02:12,558
[Gigi] do things and so on. And so I view that as a precursor to you know Napplet, Nostr and everything

978
01:02:13,598 --> 01:02:19,038
[Gigi] that's coming to the forefront now because the idea is you have a really modular system

979
01:02:19,918 --> 01:02:24,318
[Gigi] and you have like one widget basically or like one applet or whatever you want to call it

980
01:02:24,318 --> 01:02:30,238
[Gigi] that does one thing only and does it really well. That's the idea. Yeah because that it allows you

981
01:02:30,238 --> 01:02:38,558
[Balas] to get super focused on the feature and the code base just shrinks to almost nothing. And the idea

982
01:02:38,558 --> 01:02:44,318
[Gigi] is also everything is composable just like Unix pipes right like same idea and you can just

983
01:02:45,118 --> 01:02:53,518
[Gigi] creating a new Nostr client is just a way of composing those you know widgets or those

984
01:02:53,518 --> 01:03:01,038
[Gigi] applets in a different way right. I mean that's also how I described it if I remember. Yeah that's going to be sort of the

985
01:03:01,038 --> 01:03:11,758
[Balas] the end goal all in real. Because right now it's not really there yet so we started with nostrapps.com

986
01:03:11,758 --> 01:03:20,238
[Balas] which is what I'm taking the front on that and it's basically a launcher wrapper for

987
01:03:20,798 --> 01:03:26,638
[Balas] at the beginning started with n sites. So it was just for let's use n sites and

988
01:03:27,358 --> 01:03:32,558
[Balas] put the n sites at the forefront we have them it's very good for Nostr and they're amazing

989
01:03:32,558 --> 01:03:40,078
[Balas] everyone understands them very well. Everyone out of the 20 people on Nostr. Exactly it's just HTML.

990
01:03:41,678 --> 01:03:45,838
[Gigi] One day I'm gonna walk around and ask random people like those are those are panning as

991
01:03:45,838 --> 01:03:53,998
[Gigi] I right now like you know what's your opinion on n sites. Have you ever heard of n sites and how

992
01:03:53,998 --> 01:04:00,478
[Balas] great they are. So that was the thing was okay let's just make a launcher for n sites because

993
01:04:03,758 --> 01:04:09,758
[Balas] it's going to be just easier to organize into a single place to be able to launch and

994
01:04:10,878 --> 01:04:17,438
[Balas] and manage and then okay so we have these n sites but exactly we need to put all these codes over

995
01:04:17,438 --> 01:04:26,638
[Balas] and over again on each of them. How can we maybe extract that part and let the the wrapper the

996
01:04:26,638 --> 01:04:35,918
[Balas] launch around those sites provide those those things so so you don't have to so it's just easier

997
01:04:36,718 --> 01:04:43,598
[Balas] and and then it started like that with we started to shape the the napps model

998
01:04:46,398 --> 01:04:55,278
[Balas] and it basically napps are n sites that are aware of their environment and can require

999
01:04:57,358 --> 01:05:03,438
[Balas] stuff or can be depending on that if they wish so so that's a big difference between n

1000
01:05:03,438 --> 01:05:12,318
[Balas] applets is n applets are completely sandboxed and they completely depend on the environment

1001
01:05:12,318 --> 01:05:18,478
[Balas] the runtime they they're running they cannot do things by themselves because they are completely

1002
01:05:18,478 --> 01:05:23,118
[Gigi] closed so most of the functionality is provided by the runtime so yes so if you don't have a

1003
01:05:23,118 --> 01:05:30,158
[Balas] runtime that provides that you'll have to build your own or so we thought that was a bit too

1004
01:05:30,158 --> 01:05:40,078
[Balas] aggressive at least at the beginning we believe that less friction helps get get get things moving

1005
01:05:40,798 --> 01:05:47,598
[Balas] so for us napps are just n sites they're as open as you want them and you can

1006
01:05:49,118 --> 01:05:55,998
[Balas] take advantage of what the launcher gives you if you wish to so it's a middle ground okay

1007
01:05:55,998 --> 01:06:01,598
[Balas] um i think napplets are still good for what they're being designed for i think sandwich has a great

1008
01:06:02,238 --> 01:06:09,198
[Balas] great plans for a full os he worked for a long time yeah yeah yeah he was heads down for a really

1009
01:06:09,198 --> 01:06:14,718
[Gigi] long time yeah and he still is yeah yeah he still is i mean i talked i talked to him about napplets

1010
01:06:14,718 --> 01:06:19,998
[Gigi] for i don't know almost two hours and that was already a little while ago like it definitely

1011
01:06:19,998 --> 01:06:27,118
[Gigi] evolved again but he put a lot of thought into it and learned a lot of the things the hard way

1012
01:06:27,118 --> 01:06:32,398
[Gigi] including the sandboxing like he talked about this as well yeah because in the end it's also

1013
01:06:33,038 --> 01:06:40,158
[Gigi] like it uh it's kind of a security nightmare in some sense it is can be but i mean we're not

1014
01:06:40,158 --> 01:06:47,518
[Balas] trying to to to view this as a security improvement yeah it's just convenience and

1015
01:06:48,158 --> 01:06:55,678
[Balas] convenience makes trade off and and so there's no solutions no solutions only trade off so that's

1016
01:06:55,678 --> 01:07:02,398
[Balas] the trade off that we're making for now maybe at some point we'll we'll see that we need to converge

1017
01:07:02,398 --> 01:07:09,918
[Balas] more and close more um but it's i think his model is the only is the sort of model to go if you want

1018
01:07:09,918 --> 01:07:16,798
[Balas] to have everything really sandbox and close because otherwise it just leaks everywhere so

1019
01:07:17,918 --> 01:07:22,718
[Gigi] yeah yeah we'll see how it goes we'll see how it goes i'm i for one i'm excited that you're

1020
01:07:22,718 --> 01:07:27,998
[Gigi] working on it i'm also excited that fia jeff is working on it you know like he usually always

1021
01:07:27,998 --> 01:07:37,758
[Gigi] hates everything it's our grumpy old cat yeah so so it's it's good to see him you know like enjoy

1022
01:07:37,758 --> 01:07:43,998
[Gigi] working on something a little bit um so let's see where he goes yeah so on this side is uh i mean

1023
01:07:45,438 --> 01:07:51,038
[Balas] he's also helping on Nostr apps but uh now he's focusing on verdana which is this uh

1024
01:07:52,158 --> 01:07:59,038
[Balas] go uh native version of it that will that runs on yeah that's what i saw i mean i'm running on

1025
01:07:59,038 --> 01:08:06,398
[Balas] running it on mac os and it runs uh it runs fine and runs on linux and android i haven't tested it

1026
01:08:06,398 --> 01:08:17,118
[Balas] but supposedly and it's the same context same uh same way it just yeah you have a sort of a way to

1027
01:08:17,118 --> 01:08:26,798
[Balas] find napps and they're launching their own window and uh there's some some help behind that uh

1028
01:08:26,798 --> 01:08:34,158
[Balas] gets injected into into all of them to so that they can easily talk to each other and talk to

1029
01:08:34,158 --> 01:08:39,598
[Gigi] Nostr yeah i'll have to check it out i haven't played around with it with it yet i i'm ashamed

1030
01:08:39,598 --> 01:08:45,538
[Gigi] yet. I'm ashamed to say but I also in my defense I think fiatjaf's post about

1031
01:08:45,538 --> 01:08:49,298
[Gigi] Verdana and like asking other people to play around with it and so on it's only

1032
01:08:49,298 --> 01:08:56,298
like two days old or something. I have it on my to-do list. I think he deployed it to Zapstore.

1033
01:08:56,298 --> 01:09:01,538
[Balas] Oh yeah that's right. So it should be there as well. Yeah no I'll definitely play

1034
01:09:01,538 --> 01:09:06,778
[Gigi] around with it and yeah it's also cool to see that this especially for the

1035
01:09:06,778 --> 01:09:12,898
[Gigi] sovereign engineering alumni people are still creating napplets and like the idea

1036
01:09:12,898 --> 01:09:19,938
[Gigi] really caught fire like especially in Alaska hard and I just like first thing

1037
01:09:19,938 --> 01:09:25,978
[Gigi] I did today in the morning is try out the naplet that Felix built which is a

1038
01:09:25,978 --> 01:09:33,098
[Gigi] snowboarding game that features me on a snowboard which I thought was just ridiculous.

1039
01:09:33,098 --> 01:09:38,658
[Gigi] And it's really nice to play. He did a really good job in terms of like the

1040
01:09:38,658 --> 01:09:41,978
[Gigi] physics and how it just feels like it really feels like a proper snowboarding

1041
01:09:41,978 --> 01:09:48,418
[Gigi] game and it's running fully inside the naplet engine. It's like

1042
01:09:48,418 --> 01:09:53,578
insane. Completely insane. It also runs on a Nostr app so fantastic because

1043
01:09:53,578 --> 01:10:00,538
[Balas] Nostr app also runs napplets. I haven't, there's some some domains missing like

1044
01:10:00,538 --> 01:10:05,298
[Balas] mesh and but I'll be working on that but that's the whole point is to just these

1045
01:10:05,298 --> 01:10:12,138
[Balas] little things can run anywhere and they are very embeddable and it's gonna make

1046
01:10:12,138 --> 01:10:19,138
[Balas] developers launch so many things that we're gonna have to launch

1047
01:10:19,138 --> 01:10:25,938
[Balas] clankers to play stuff and to have users. To curate your stuff.

1048
01:10:25,938 --> 01:10:34,578
[Balas] I guess talking about games I will that's one thing I think we need to focus

1049
01:10:34,578 --> 01:10:43,018
[Balas] to get the next generation. I know get the kids with gaming. Yes. Gaming using

1050
01:10:43,018 --> 01:10:49,538
[Balas] cryptographic I did is unsaid. Yes. And not FTs. Yes. Because I don't think we

1051
01:10:49,538 --> 01:10:55,298
[Balas] need to train them that much. It's just provide them with good

1052
01:10:55,298 --> 01:11:00,338
[Balas] alternatives to what they have now. It's just games that they play and they know

1053
01:11:00,338 --> 01:11:05,538
[Balas] how to use those things and they'll grow up and they'll already be familiar.

1054
01:11:05,538 --> 01:11:11,258
[Balas] Right now I think we are trying to convince the old guys that are already

1055
01:11:11,258 --> 01:11:18,658
[Balas] full of biases and they see things in a very in their own way and it's much more

1056
01:11:18,658 --> 01:11:24,338
[Balas] difficult to to get the adoption that we actually need and and with this I'm not

1057
01:11:24,338 --> 01:11:30,058
[Balas] saying let's just advertise to kids with bad things and especially in Nostr.

1058
01:11:30,058 --> 01:11:37,578
[Balas] Let's get them all into gambling. Gambling and trading. Nostr is just plenty of stuff.

1059
01:11:37,578 --> 01:11:42,338
[Balas] If you want to search for that or if you're not careful enough you'll

1060
01:11:42,338 --> 01:11:48,818
[Balas] find weird stuff. I'm not sure. Yeah. Oh yeah. So I'm not sure that part is

1061
01:11:48,818 --> 01:11:52,538
[Balas] ready for kids yet you know because the things you learn when you build your own

1062
01:11:52,538 --> 01:11:57,058
[Gigi] client like I never thought that I would have to build content moderation into my

1063
01:11:57,058 --> 01:12:01,578
[Gigi] own client but you have to build in content moderation into your client

1064
01:12:01,578 --> 01:12:05,978
[Gigi] otherwise you'll just drown in weird stuff that you really don't want to see

1065
01:12:05,978 --> 01:12:09,858
[Gigi] while you're sipping your morning coffee. Yeah. I'll just need to sip of water

1066
01:12:09,858 --> 01:12:14,258
[Gigi] speaking of sipping something. But multiple people voice this opinion of

1067
01:12:14,258 --> 01:12:22,298
[Gigi] like in the cohort of getting the kids in with gaming so I think how to do that

1068
01:12:22,298 --> 01:12:28,458
[Gigi] in some sense is is like there's a there's a reason why some of the games

1069
01:12:28,458 --> 01:12:32,138
[Gigi] are as popular and successful as they are speaking of like Minecraft and

1070
01:12:32,138 --> 01:12:36,218
[Gigi] Roblox and those kind of games that like every single kid in the world knows and

1071
01:12:36,218 --> 01:12:43,178
[Gigi] has played and so on. And and kind of I'm sure there are some friction points that

1072
01:12:43,178 --> 01:12:47,618
[Gigi] using the stuff we're working on we could somewhat solve like I'm sure for

1073
01:12:47,618 --> 01:12:50,978
[Gigi] Roblox for example to really play it and enjoy it you need the credit card of

1074
01:12:50,978 --> 01:12:55,858
[Gigi] daddy for example. Exactly. You know and I think that's what you would have to do

1075
01:12:55,858 --> 01:13:00,858
[Gigi] in some sense like just build exactly the same game in some sense. I mean

1076
01:13:00,858 --> 01:13:03,938
[Gigi] you know Minecraft is so easy to build now with the clan cards because there's

1077
01:13:03,938 --> 01:13:08,338
[Gigi] plenty of you know open source versions and like it's it's an easy game to build

1078
01:13:08,338 --> 01:13:13,938
[Gigi] and and and just kind of remove these barriers which I'm sure exist but it's

1079
01:13:13,938 --> 01:13:18,978
[Gigi] also the chicken egg problem just like with you know trying to rebuild Twitter

1080
01:13:18,978 --> 01:13:21,898
[Gigi] everyone's on Twitter how do you get everyone to leave with the games it's

1081
01:13:21,898 --> 01:13:25,618
[Gigi] the same thing it's mostly a social experience so wherever all your

1082
01:13:25,618 --> 01:13:30,858
[Gigi] classmates are that's where you will be yes that's basically what really hard but

1083
01:13:30,858 --> 01:13:38,978
[Balas] for example on the last cohorts we had some kids demoing sometimes yeah and what

1084
01:13:38,978 --> 01:13:44,018
[Balas] did they demoed yeah they the only thing that they demoed was games of course

1085
01:13:44,018 --> 01:13:48,938
[Balas] just that's what they went for and that's where they're hot you know and the

1086
01:13:48,938 --> 01:13:54,258
[Balas] I was blown away to see that it's already working for some of the kids you

1087
01:13:54,258 --> 01:13:59,018
[Balas] know that some kids are already yeah I saw Jeff posting about it recently like

1088
01:13:59,018 --> 01:14:02,738
[Gigi] his kid he's still working on the on the racing game yeah that's right and was

1089
01:14:02,738 --> 01:14:09,978
[Balas] very well done I mean yeah that's one of the best racing games that maybe on as

1090
01:14:09,978 --> 01:14:15,418
[Gigi] not certain lightning the best the best racing game developed on Madeira for

1091
01:14:15,418 --> 01:14:23,398
[Gigi] sure for sure that's right sir we have to link to it yeah yeah that's that's the

1092
01:14:23,398 --> 01:14:30,338
[Balas] future I see and I think that's a bit where we should send some some effort

1093
01:14:30,338 --> 01:14:36,098
[Balas] some focus to to help ship things out because it will the adoption there will

1094
01:14:36,098 --> 01:14:42,698
[Balas] be much more natural we won't have to fight as much with yeah but the issue is

1095
01:14:42,698 --> 01:14:46,858
[Gigi] you have to build really good games yes that's the issue it's really really

1096
01:14:46,858 --> 01:14:50,818
[Gigi] hard to build really good games but now we are from a game design perspective

1097
01:14:50,818 --> 01:14:55,178
[Gigi] you know now it's easier now we have I asked you before what's the goal for your

1098
01:14:55,178 --> 01:15:02,058
[Balas] game I don't know just exploration because to me building a game is a game

1099
01:15:02,058 --> 01:15:08,138
[Balas] in itself of course so I'm also having fun just building and experimenting and

1100
01:15:08,138 --> 01:15:12,198
[Gigi] I'm not really worried about the but I think that's also that's what made

1101
01:15:12,198 --> 01:15:19,538
[Gigi] Minecraft so successful exactly what you just said minecraft is like an open

1102
01:15:19,538 --> 01:15:22,938
[Gigi] sandbox game and you can build your own game in Minecraft it's a Roblox is the

1103
01:15:22,938 --> 01:15:25,578
[Gigi] same thing Roblox is not a game it's a collection of games and you can create

1104
01:15:25,578 --> 01:15:29,498
[Gigi] your own game and like your own stuff and so on and and I think that's that's

1105
01:15:29,498 --> 01:15:40,978
[Gigi] the route you have to to do to go like you'll have to I mean I'm sure many many

1106
01:15:40,978 --> 01:15:45,778
[Gigi] people that are in in into software and building stuff now like one of the first

1107
01:15:45,778 --> 01:15:50,298
[Gigi] experiences of like how does this stuff work under the hood with setting up

1108
01:15:50,298 --> 01:15:54,698
[Gigi] their own minecraft server setting up their own whatever you know team speak

1109
01:15:54,698 --> 01:15:57,558
[Gigi] server and those kind of things definitely was the case for me just like

1110
01:15:57,558 --> 01:16:03,698
[Gigi] it wasn't minecraft it was like older stuff but kind of yeah running your own

1111
01:16:03,698 --> 01:16:09,418
[Gigi] building your own setting up your own like even having your own you know

1112
01:16:09,418 --> 01:16:15,498
[Gigi] server where you can just meet with your friends and know that it's your own

1113
01:16:15,498 --> 01:16:19,138
[Gigi] you know it's like you can't be kicked you can do and talk about anything and

1114
01:16:19,138 --> 01:16:23,338
[Gigi] so on it's it's a very powerful experience it's a very powerful idea

1115
01:16:23,338 --> 01:16:30,458
[Balas] yeah and I remember as well when I was a kid the the most important parts about

1116
01:16:30,458 --> 01:16:35,058
[Balas] being computer literate was about to being able to play games for free or

1117
01:16:35,058 --> 01:16:42,178
[Balas] whatever so you learn how to hack the system to get your games and so that the

1118
01:16:42,178 --> 01:16:48,978
[Balas] games give you that incentive to to do things and I guess yeah we need to get

1119
01:16:48,978 --> 01:16:56,618
[Balas] better at doing games so so we have actual because now there's you copy

1120
01:16:56,618 --> 01:17:02,098
[Balas] everything so it's fine copying everything gets us somewhat half there

1121
01:17:02,098 --> 01:17:09,658
[Balas] you have alternatives but I think truly genuine new creations is where things

1122
01:17:09,658 --> 01:17:15,358
[Balas] will be and I hope that people will start to do those things after they get

1123
01:17:15,358 --> 01:17:23,298
[Balas] tired of copying all the all the big games and yeah I think I think what we

1124
01:17:23,298 --> 01:17:32,778
[Gigi] have going for us is you you can do a lot of the stuff that is kind of the

1125
01:17:32,778 --> 01:17:37,818
[Gigi] norm in the today's gaming world which is like skins and and items and like

1126
01:17:37,818 --> 01:17:44,498
[Gigi] those kind of things we can do that without a central issuing authority yeah

1127
01:17:44,498 --> 01:17:50,338
[Gigi] so which again I think is interesting and the Nostr layer for games I mean

1128
01:17:50,338 --> 01:17:59,058
[Balas] for game leaderboards and saving states and all those things are just not so

1129
01:17:59,058 --> 01:18:04,658
[Balas] fits perfectly in there yeah there is a there is a standard for it already

1130
01:18:04,658 --> 01:18:10,738
[Gigi] because I built two Nostr games myself again weekend projects I have to add

1131
01:18:10,738 --> 01:18:15,298
[Gigi] them to my weekend project catalog I completely forgot about see speak about

1132
01:18:15,298 --> 01:18:22,258
[Balas] why you had your pony snakes and yeah exactly unicorn snakes I played yeah the

1133
01:18:22,258 --> 01:18:25,478
[Gigi] game design was completely done by my daughter so that's why it's the

1134
01:18:25,478 --> 01:18:31,138
[Gigi] unicorns versus snakes of course and the second one was was done by my by my

1135
01:18:31,138 --> 01:18:35,418
[Gigi] younger daughter which is just a penguin that slides down a ramp and it's like a

1136
01:18:35,418 --> 01:18:41,178
[Gigi] ski-chumping game basically and yeah I did my own kind of event kind for the

1137
01:18:41,178 --> 01:18:45,738
[Gigi] ice course and so on and later on I figured out or I think it was even

1138
01:18:45,738 --> 01:18:49,858
[Gigi] developed approximately the same time there is a proper nip for it now where

1139
01:18:50,178 --> 01:18:55,438
[Gigi] actually, you know, like a proper "here's how you do high scores" kind of NIP.

1140
01:18:55,438 --> 01:18:58,018
[Gigi] I don't know that one.

1141
01:18:58,018 --> 01:19:01,658
[Gigi] Yeah, I have to look it up again, but there is actually, there is a Nostr

1142
01:19:01,658 --> 01:19:05,818
[Gigi] gaming catalog. I'm blanking on the name now, but it's probably like Nostr games

1143
01:19:05,818 --> 01:19:11,738
[Gigi] or something. And it has an index of all the games that use this, and that you can

1144
01:19:11,738 --> 01:19:17,458
[Gigi] play on Nostr basically, and kind of, you know, then your high score is posted to

1145
01:19:17,458 --> 01:19:21,298
[Gigi] the leaderboard and all those kind of things. Yeah. No, it's really cool. So I

1146
01:19:21,298 --> 01:19:29,258
[Gigi] think you have a point with the gaming stuff, but it's gonna be, yeah,

1147
01:19:29,258 --> 01:19:34,218
[Gigi] every game basically is a network, and the network effects are a bitch.

1148
01:19:34,218 --> 01:19:39,978
[Balas] Yes. It's really hard to break them. But I think we already solved the social

1149
01:19:39,978 --> 01:19:45,178
[Balas] part, we're getting tired of that thing, and I think games will be the next...

1150
01:19:45,178 --> 01:19:49,698
[Gigi] We solved the social part. Yes. Everyone left Nostr.

1151
01:19:49,698 --> 01:19:53,658
[Gigi] No, it's like, we can go back to Twitter now that the social part is...

1152
01:19:53,658 --> 01:20:00,218
[Balas] I myself would talk and was much more social before. And now I feel like,

1153
01:20:00,218 --> 01:20:04,698
[Balas] okay, I can say anything, I don't have anything to say anymore.

1154
01:20:04,698 --> 01:20:09,058
[Gigi] Once you can't say anything, you don't have the need anymore.

1155
01:20:09,058 --> 01:20:14,978
[Balas] Exactly. So, I mean, I started to post much less, and I think it's a bad habit,

1156
01:20:14,978 --> 01:20:23,138
[Balas] but because we get... we feel like we already won, and there's already...

1157
01:20:23,138 --> 01:20:28,818
[Balas] But I think if we don't keep it active ourselves, then it sort of feels like

1158
01:20:28,818 --> 01:20:34,138
[Balas] dying, because a lot of voices that we're talking in the past have stopped talking,

1159
01:20:34,138 --> 01:20:37,658
[Balas] and they just get replaced with others.

1160
01:20:37,658 --> 01:20:42,458
[Gigi] I spoke with Jesus about it briefly, kind of...

1161
01:20:42,458 --> 01:20:50,658
[Gigi] To me, building out Nostr and working on this stuff was a lot of kind of trying to escape

1162
01:20:50,658 --> 01:20:55,058
[Gigi] from the outrage machine and from the algorithms and all this kind of stuff.

1163
01:20:55,058 --> 01:21:01,258
[Gigi] And now we have a lot of people that only check in once a month and say GM,

1164
01:21:01,258 --> 01:21:05,938
[Gigi] post a picture of the garden or whatever. And that's it. That's all the social media that they do.

1165
01:21:05,938 --> 01:21:08,498
[Gigi] And to me, that's like success.

1166
01:21:08,498 --> 01:21:11,378
Yeah, it is. It is actually success.

1167
01:21:11,378 --> 01:21:12,978
[Gigi] They're not addicted anymore.

1168
01:21:12,978 --> 01:21:18,938
[Balas] Because we have the solution now, so we can just stop complaining about that and just use it.

1169
01:21:18,938 --> 01:21:24,378
[Balas] But some people, they just like to complain, and they will complain at people.

1170
01:21:24,378 --> 01:21:27,138
[Gigi] Most people just like to complain.

1171
01:21:27,138 --> 01:21:31,418
[Balas] Because I don't see Nostr dying anytime soon. I just...

1172
01:21:31,418 --> 01:21:36,258
[Balas] I feel it's cyclical, and sometimes it's a bit more quiet than others.

1173
01:21:36,258 --> 01:21:40,338
[Balas] But when it's too quiet, it means that people are building much more,

1174
01:21:40,338 --> 01:21:46,378
[Balas] and there's going to be an eruption, new stuff right around the corner.

1175
01:21:46,378 --> 01:21:50,018
[Balas] Because, let's face it, it's basically all devs.

1176
01:21:50,018 --> 01:21:53,618
[Balas] So if you're not building, you're talking shit.

1177
01:21:53,618 --> 01:21:55,858
[Balas] If you're not saying anything, you're probably building.

1178
01:21:55,858 --> 01:22:03,218
[Gigi] I'm actually surprised how diverse the various pockets of Nostr are.

1179
01:22:03,218 --> 01:22:06,498
[Gigi] Again, by building out feather, I just...

1180
01:22:06,498 --> 01:22:08,218
[Gigi] I built it feature by feature, you know?

1181
01:22:08,218 --> 01:22:14,058
[Gigi] And then I integrated hashtags properly, and I integrated vertex search,

1182
01:22:14,058 --> 01:22:16,778
[Gigi] and I integrated profile discovery, and all those kind of things.

1183
01:22:16,778 --> 01:22:19,658
[Gigi] And so I landed in different pockets of Nostr.

1184
01:22:19,658 --> 01:22:25,378
[Gigi] There's lots of people that are on the farming, permaculture, gardening side, and so on.

1185
01:22:25,378 --> 01:22:28,258
[Gigi] There's lots of people that I don't know about.

1186
01:22:28,258 --> 01:22:32,418
[Gigi] I follow one or two of them, but there's dozens.

1187
01:22:32,418 --> 01:22:38,498
[Gigi] And there's the whole Japanese crowd, which is like I follow one Japanese dev, and so on.

1188
01:22:38,498 --> 01:22:41,818
[Gigi] But there's a whole Japanese part of Nostr that I know nothing about,

1189
01:22:41,818 --> 01:22:44,298
[Gigi] because I don't speak Japanese.

1190
01:22:44,298 --> 01:22:46,938
[Gigi] And I kept running into these pockets.

1191
01:22:46,938 --> 01:22:49,218
[Gigi] There's the German community, which is massive,

1192
01:22:49,218 --> 01:22:54,858
[Gigi] and I think Nostr is kind of bigger than you would think in some sense.

1193
01:22:54,858 --> 01:22:57,658
[Gigi] And I think what most of the clients are missing,

1194
01:22:57,658 --> 01:23:01,018
[Gigi] or what Nostr in general is bad at, is discovery.

1195
01:23:01,018 --> 01:23:02,698
[Gigi] What Twitter did really well.

1196
01:23:02,698 --> 01:23:05,418
[Gigi] Like Twitter had really, really good discovery mechanisms.

1197
01:23:05,418 --> 01:23:07,258
[Gigi] Now they are overdoing it, I feel like.

1198
01:23:07,258 --> 01:23:14,218
[Gigi] But in the end, like the retweet basically was an excellent discovery mechanism.

1199
01:23:14,218 --> 01:23:16,658
[Gigi] And how I build it now in feather is basically like you only...

1200
01:23:16,658 --> 01:23:20,658
[Gigi] In your main feed, you only see kind one nodes,

1201
01:23:20,658 --> 01:23:23,578
[Gigi] and you see retweets, and that brings in every other kind.

1202
01:23:23,578 --> 01:23:25,778
[Gigi] So if someone retweets an article, for example,

1203
01:23:25,778 --> 01:23:27,578
[Gigi] like if someone reposts an article,

1204
01:23:27,578 --> 01:23:29,778
[Gigi] like the little article widget will land in your home feed.

1205
01:23:29,778 --> 01:23:33,778
[Gigi] If someone, even if you would repost a zap, for example,

1206
01:23:33,778 --> 01:23:36,738
[Gigi] the zap would land in your main feed, you know, those kind of things.

1207
01:23:36,738 --> 01:23:41,338
[Gigi] And so I hope that people will experiment some more on the discovery side.

1208
01:23:41,338 --> 01:23:43,818
[Gigi] Just kind of how do you discover other people?

1209
01:23:43,818 --> 01:23:47,458
[Gigi] I still feel like once you have your echo chamber curated,

1210
01:23:47,458 --> 01:23:50,938
[Gigi] most Nostr clients will completely keep you in this echo chamber.

1211
01:23:50,938 --> 01:23:56,218
[Gigi] It's very hard to just get a little bit of outside stuff in, so to speak.

1212
01:23:56,218 --> 01:24:05,298
[Balas] So, like, since I was thermal, I always saw that there was no global possible,

1213
01:24:05,298 --> 01:24:06,738
because I mean...

1214
01:24:06,738 --> 01:24:08,258
I saw number one, there is no global.

1215
01:24:08,258 --> 01:24:12,738
[Balas] At the beginning, Nostr was just a global, and it was crazy because there was...

1216
01:24:12,738 --> 01:24:15,018
[Gigi] Even if there is just 20 people, there is no global.

1217
01:24:15,018 --> 01:24:19,018
[Balas] I had to adjust my filters to like a week

1218
01:24:19,018 --> 01:24:24,458
[Balas] to have at least some notes to fill up the feed.

1219
01:24:24,458 --> 01:24:25,458
Yeah.

1220
01:24:25,458 --> 01:24:27,458
[Balas] And just no water.

1221
01:24:27,458 --> 01:24:32,898
[Gigi] You thought the client was broken because you refreshed it and nothing would change.

1222
01:24:32,898 --> 01:24:41,498
[Balas] But soon after it started to change, the spam became a proper issue.

1223
01:24:41,498 --> 01:24:42,498
[Balas] And yeah.

1224
01:24:42,498 --> 01:24:43,498
[Gigi] It still is.

1225
01:24:43,498 --> 01:24:44,498
[Balas] It still is.

1226
01:24:44,498 --> 01:24:53,818
[Balas] But it only is if you're mindlessly requesting everything without another filter.

1227
01:24:53,818 --> 01:24:58,458
[Balas] So if you know which others you want, there's no spam.

1228
01:24:58,458 --> 01:25:02,378
[Balas] There's absolutely no spam, and Nostr works perfectly.

1229
01:25:02,378 --> 01:25:07,018
[Balas] Once you just ask the question, "Hey, give me everything you have for this,"

1230
01:25:07,018 --> 01:25:09,218
[Balas] then all hell breaks loose.

1231
01:25:09,218 --> 01:25:14,858
[Balas] Hashtags, events, anything stops working because you just get swamped in spam

1232
01:25:14,858 --> 01:25:16,898
[Balas] because it's what it is.

1233
01:25:16,898 --> 01:25:18,338
[Balas] You need to be more specific.

1234
01:25:18,338 --> 01:25:20,658
[Balas] You need to specify others.

1235
01:25:20,658 --> 01:25:25,458
[Balas] And the follow list is just that solution.

1236
01:25:25,458 --> 01:25:27,578
[Balas] If you...

1237
01:25:27,578 --> 01:25:34,698
[Balas] Like Alphaama, I never wanted Alphaama to download events from everything,

1238
01:25:34,698 --> 01:25:38,018
[Balas] to fill all the threads.

1239
01:25:38,018 --> 01:25:40,298
[Balas] Because that will just pull up all the spam.

1240
01:25:40,298 --> 01:25:43,418
[Balas] I would have to fight the spam all the time.

1241
01:25:43,418 --> 01:25:52,098
[Balas] And so I decided to just get Web of Trust content and display it all,

1242
01:25:52,098 --> 01:26:00,858
[Balas] not like the other Nostr clients sort of don't show you what you other people liked.

1243
01:26:00,858 --> 01:26:03,058
[Balas] It's secondary.

1244
01:26:03,058 --> 01:26:05,698
[Balas] And it's like what you liked.

1245
01:26:05,698 --> 01:26:10,938
[Balas] And what you react or post to comment, actually.

1246
01:26:10,938 --> 01:26:17,338
[Balas] But in Alphaama, since I treated reactions and repost the same as any reply,

1247
01:26:17,338 --> 01:26:25,378
[Balas] they show up chronologically, you know which person that you're following liked a thing.

1248
01:26:25,378 --> 01:26:29,018
[Balas] That gives a very powerful discovery.

1249
01:26:29,018 --> 01:26:38,178
[Balas] Because then the discovery mechanism is what the people you follow interact with.

1250
01:26:38,178 --> 01:26:41,818
[Balas] And usually that's what you want because you follow them for a reason.

1251
01:26:41,818 --> 01:26:45,258
[Balas] Because they have taste, they have interest, similar interest.

1252
01:26:45,258 --> 01:26:51,018
[Balas] And that network gives you a very powerful focus discovery.

1253
01:26:51,018 --> 01:26:58,378
[Balas] And I never ran out of content with just 300 following, less than 300 people.

1254
01:26:58,378 --> 01:27:01,738
[Balas] I never sort of ran out of content.

1255
01:27:01,738 --> 01:27:03,338
[Gigi] Is it the only Nostr client you use?

1256
01:27:03,338 --> 01:27:05,618
[Gigi] Is it your daily driver?

1257
01:27:05,618 --> 01:27:08,338
[Balas] Now I'm switching to Nostr apps.

1258
01:27:08,338 --> 01:27:15,138
[Balas] But I created an app that basically gives me Alphaama feeds.

1259
01:27:15,138 --> 01:27:18,618
[Balas] But I still go back and forth to make sure that everything is well-incorrected.

1260
01:27:18,618 --> 01:27:20,098
[Gigi] But you don't use anything else?

1261
01:27:20,098 --> 01:27:20,978
[Gigi] Any other clients?

1262
01:27:20,978 --> 01:27:23,818
[Balas] I mean, I use demos on the phone just to--

1263
01:27:23,818 --> 01:27:24,418
[Gigi] OK, yeah.

1264
01:27:24,418 --> 01:27:32,898
[Balas] But it's mostly like notifications and just checking the feed when I'm away from the computer.

1265
01:27:32,898 --> 01:27:36,578
[Balas] But my main Nostr experience has been Alphaama since the beginning.

1266
01:27:36,578 --> 01:27:37,058
[Gigi] Nice.

1267
01:27:39,618 --> 01:27:40,258
[Balas] Yeah.

1268
01:27:40,258 --> 01:27:43,418
[Gigi] Because I mean, that's the whole point.

1269
01:27:43,418 --> 01:27:46,098
[Gigi] You build your own experience.

1270
01:27:46,098 --> 01:27:48,498
[Gigi] And you get comfortable with that.

1271
01:27:48,498 --> 01:27:51,578
We iterate.

1272
01:27:51,578 --> 01:27:54,018
You see what can be improved.

1273
01:27:54,018 --> 01:27:55,858
[Gigi] Yeah, you build it mostly for yourself, right?

1274
01:27:55,858 --> 01:27:58,618
[Gigi] It's the perfect Nostr client for you.

1275
01:27:58,618 --> 01:27:59,858
[Balas] Yeah, that was the thing at the beginning.

1276
01:27:59,858 --> 01:28:01,858
[Balas] Because at the beginning, there was no clients.

1277
01:28:01,858 --> 01:28:10,778
[Balas] So I had the option to either copy a big clone like Twitter, Telegram, or whatever.

1278
01:28:10,778 --> 01:28:16,938
[Balas] Just do the same interface and ship that or explore new ground.

1279
01:28:16,938 --> 01:28:23,938
[Balas] And I thought to myself naively that the big tech will come in soon enough.

1280
01:28:23,938 --> 01:28:26,338
[Balas] The big studios with a lot of resources.

1281
01:28:26,338 --> 01:28:30,018
[Balas] And they will do those for the masses.

1282
01:28:30,018 --> 01:28:34,138
[Balas] Turns out they're not interested in that because there's nothing to capture.

1283
01:28:34,138 --> 01:28:35,338
[Balas] They took longer.

1284
01:28:35,338 --> 01:28:38,058
[Balas] You get nothing out of it.

1285
01:28:38,058 --> 01:28:48,258
[Balas] But I think the breaking new ground is where the most value is, at least personally.

1286
01:28:48,258 --> 01:28:55,498
[Balas] Because otherwise, you're just trying to understand what other people like.

1287
01:28:55,638 --> 01:29:01,278
[Balas] because you're trying to sell something you're not even you're not even using

1288
01:29:01,278 --> 01:29:08,518
[Gigi] your own product you're just randomly trying to get users and

1289
01:29:08,518 --> 01:29:14,078
[Gigi] that's unfortunately still the reality for a lot of open source projects I feel like in general

1290
01:29:14,078 --> 01:29:19,238
[Gigi] and even some Nostr clients that the people that are building it are actually not using it themselves

1291
01:29:19,238 --> 01:29:24,198
[Gigi] and you can always kind of tell half of the stuff is broken and like very unpolished

1292
01:29:24,198 --> 01:29:31,078
[Gigi] and like if you're a daily user it's just very annoying and so I appreciate that you are actually

1293
01:29:31,078 --> 01:29:36,838
[Gigi] using Alphaama as a daily driver because that's what makes anything great like you scratch your

1294
01:29:36,838 --> 01:29:42,078
[Gigi] own itch you build it for yourself and you iterate until you're happy or at least not annoyed anymore

1295
01:29:42,078 --> 01:29:50,078
[Balas] yeah but I do feel the need to get into the mobile like you just did with Feather

1296
01:29:50,078 --> 01:29:52,078
[Balas] now everyone is native

1297
01:29:52,078 --> 01:29:57,078
[Balas] so I need to scratch my itch there

1298
01:29:57,078 --> 01:30:02,078
[Gigi] do it, do it, do it, it's actually it's way easier than you would think

1299
01:30:02,078 --> 01:30:11,078
[Gigi] it's kind of especially if you know what you want to build if you have kind of envision

1300
01:30:11,078 --> 01:30:23,078
[Gigi] then I think it's easy it's you just need how should I put it I think all you need now is determination basically

1301
01:30:23,078 --> 01:30:29,078
[Gigi] the client comes will do the rest but you need to bring the determination and so if you're determined

1302
01:30:29,078 --> 01:30:37,078
[Gigi] to build a Nostr client a native Nostr client that's perfect for you native anything like whatever like

1303
01:30:37,078 --> 01:30:46,078
[Gigi] I'm just gonna stick with the example like if you're determined to do it you need zero development experience

1304
01:30:46,078 --> 01:30:52,078
[Gigi] and you can just go ahead and do it and yes you know you need to still understand how stuff works out of the hood

1305
01:30:52,078 --> 01:31:01,078
[Gigi] a little bit and so on but you can learn your clanker can teach you and you need to I think the one thing that's most helpful

1306
01:31:01,078 --> 01:31:10,078
[Gigi] is to have a really good vocabulary like how is the stuff called like what is the whatever you know like even the names of the UI elements

1307
01:31:10,078 --> 01:31:18,078
[Gigi] and so on but even that you can be very vague about it and your clanker will tell you like I saw this one UI element in the other app

1308
01:31:18,078 --> 01:31:24,078
[Gigi] you know in whatever you know my banking app and like it would come up from the bottom and so let's do the same thing and they'll tell me how that's called

1309
01:31:24,078 --> 01:31:36,078
[Balas] yeah and it will do the same thing and it will tell you how it's called. I do that a lot. What you call that thingy that does like that

1310
01:31:36,078 --> 01:31:45,078
[Gigi] they're really good at that. Let's call it that for now. Yeah nice I'm looking forward to Alphaama mobile

1311
01:31:45,078 --> 01:31:54,078
[Gigi] after your game is released and deployed you'll have to deploy your little game and let people play around

1312
01:31:54,078 --> 01:32:02,078
[Balas] it's already on GitHub but I'll probably deploy it as an Nostr app

1313
01:32:02,078 --> 01:32:14,078
[Balas] that was actually the point at the beginning when I started doing it because I was doing I started with Nostr apps and I thought okay I'm gonna start my own little game and make it exclusive

1314
01:32:14,078 --> 01:32:28,078
What's the name of the game by the way? I'm calling it anon & mato which is a wordplay with anonymity but in Portuguese it's called mato

1315
01:32:28,078 --> 01:32:40,078
[Balas] it means two things it means like a jungle and to kill. anon & mato so that's a play word but there's no killing in the game it's very peaceful for now

1316
01:32:40,078 --> 01:32:49,078
[Balas] probably at some point in the future it will be multiplayer and then we can all kill each other virtually

1317
01:32:52,078 --> 01:32:59,078
[Gigi] That's awesome, that's awesome. I really love it. You have to make it publicly available somehow

1318
01:32:59,078 --> 01:33:08,078
It's too beautiful to keep it behind bars. But at the same time it's so not there yet that people will just... what the fuck is this or...

1319
01:33:08,078 --> 01:33:16,078
It doesn't matter, you know. Put it out, get people excited or not. No it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.

1320
01:33:16,078 --> 01:33:29,078
[Gigi] Alright I'm pretty cooked. Anything we forgot? Any last words? Anything you still want to touch on? Anything you want to let one and a half people know that are still listening?

1321
01:33:29,078 --> 01:33:43,078
[Balas] Just build stuff, stuff for yourself. Don't think about building stuff for other people unless you have a very specific request

1322
01:33:43,078 --> 01:33:51,078
[Balas] Don't try to find out what it is, just try to find out what yourself wants, what yourself needs and share it with others

1323
01:33:51,078 --> 01:34:00,078
[Balas] And others will find what they need by looking at your stuff and then it will lead to collaboration and what not

1324
01:34:00,078 --> 01:34:03,078
Now's the time, now's the time to scratch your own itch

1325
01:34:03,078 --> 01:34:09,078
[Balas] And building apps is just easy, you can just post, "set your clanker, build me this"

1326
01:34:09,078 --> 01:34:18,078
[Balas] It will use, it doesn't even need to think about UI, there's a UI taken care of so you just need to get on the feature

1327
01:34:18,078 --> 01:34:21,078
[Balas] Point your clankers to nostrapps.com

1328
01:34:21,078 --> 01:34:26,078
[Balas] 15 minutes and that's it, you have everything done and you can publish it very easily

1329
01:34:26,078 --> 01:34:28,078
[Gigi] Fantastic, great

1330
01:34:28,078 --> 01:34:30,078
[Balas] Just build stuff

1331
01:34:30,078 --> 01:34:32,078
[Gigi] Nice note to end on

1332
01:34:32,078 --> 01:34:34,078
[Gigi] Thanks so much

1333
01:34:34,078 --> 01:34:36,078
[Balas] Thank you

1334
01:34:36,078 --> 01:34:38,078
Yeah, we're gonna just build stuff

1335
01:34:38,078 --> 01:34:40,078
And send it

1336
01:34:40,078 --> 01:34:44,078
And deploy

1337
01:34:44,078 --> 01:34:45,718
Alright, done