Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Pleb Chain Radio, a live show brought to you by Plebs for Plebs, which focuses on the intersection of Nostra and Bitcoin protocols.
(00:11):
Join QW and Avi as they run down the weekly news and developments, breaking down the current thing and the future frontier with the foundation of decentralization, the builders, thinkers, doers and plebs.
All right, we are live.
Welcome, gentle plebs, to the Lightning Laced Airwaves. Today is Friday the 13th of June and it is episode 116 of A Pleb Chain Radio. We have a fun show.
(00:44):
So Verge and Benjamin join us to talk about legacies and lockers, and we'll find out what that is all about.
And a reminder, folks, if you are listening to the show on Apple or Spotify, first of all, thank you for listening.
But I would urge you to hit pause and switch over to the Fountain Podcasting app, where you can earn some sats and support the value for value revolution while you listen.
(01:12):
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And you will also earn early access, that is 24 hours early, to all of our episodes and exclusive access to our bonus episodes.
This show is streamed live on Zap.Stream and any other Noster client that supports streaming such as Amethyst and Noster.
(01:40):
So, and QW, I have a bit of a personal update here.
We don't do a lot of this on the show.
We don't talk about ourselves much.
We try to be empty vessels to the culture, to our guests,
but I feel compelled to share this important personal update
because I'm so excited by it.
(02:03):
Yesterday, QW, I turned in my resignation to the fiat mines
with an end date of July 4th,
very pointedly chosen end date.
I am a free man, QW, after all these years.
They do say homelessness is next to godliness, Avi.
(02:26):
I hope you don't have a chair,
a spare chair in your homeless ventures in the future.
I sold my chair in a boating accident.
qw that is the sad story um but yes it's uh it's it's this is a long time coming qw and i finally
(02:47):
i'm looking forward to see which avi comes out after this because i know it's been grueling i
know it's been eating at you i know that uh it it's it's just been you know i i can sense obviously
we we talk every week but it's something where you know it's it's really it was uninspiring it
is eating away at your creativity.
(03:09):
And I'm just excited to see that butterfly
come out of the cocoon here.
I appreciate you saying that, QW.
That is very much the plan.
By the way, folks, I have nothing lined up.
So I have taken a leap into the complete unknown.
I don't know where the money's going to come from,
but that's okay.
I have jumped.
And the hope is, the belief is,
(03:32):
the net will appear.
So we shall see.
And for our meme readout today, QW,
it is a single frame meme of Morpheus from The Matrix,
asking, what is central banking?
Control.
Central banking is built to keep us under control
(03:53):
in order to turn a human being into this.
And as he says that, he very pointedly holds up a missile.
and with that qw i am sure as you always do you have been paying attention to nostor and
bitcoin culture what are you seeing well uh everything vibe everything vibe vibe code vibe
(04:20):
have you been vibe coding avi i most definitely have qw and by the way let me just quickly say
for folks who are not familiar.
Alex Gleason and his wife MK
have released an incredible tool
called MKStack
where you can use the command line
(04:41):
in natural language,
tell it what you want,
and watch your life savings.
No, I'm kidding.
Watch magic happen
with apps being created.
Now, of course, you'll need to,
you can use SATs to buy the credits
to use the AI models, but it is truly remarkable that within 20 minutes, you can build a fully
(05:05):
functional NOSTA app because the system they've built has the full NOSTA context.
So here's my concern with Vibe coding. We're going to have so much wasted time, I feel like,
on the user end because people will be vibing all these apps say,
(05:26):
Hey, come use my app.
And then when the bugs come down the road,
they're onto the next thing.
It's I think corn's been doing a lot of meetings about this kind of just
onto the next thing flavor of the week.
But it's, it's something I'm seeing a lot of people come out with.
Oh, try this Nostra app, which is great.
It's great to actually see that.
But at the same time, I'm just thinking, man,
(05:47):
there's going to be a lot of wasted time.
AI is supposed to save time, right?
But if you think about the accumulation of users,
there's going to be a lot of dead space there.
So on that, QW, completely agree,
but I also think it's a phase.
And right now with Vibe coding getting easier and easier
for non-devs just speaking in natural language
(06:07):
and watching magic happen in front of their eyes,
things that were scarcely fathomable a year ago, right?
We are in the mania phase of Vibe coding.
It's almost like Nostra apps or just Vibe-coded apps in general are the new meme coins, right?
What about the Nostra badges during that craze?
(06:30):
You know, if you go to your Nostra badges and you have 30 of them, that was a pretty wild time.
Not necessarily important anymore, but it's certainly a phase.
but by the way on nostril badges and we'll maybe we'll talk later with verge and benjamin about it
but there is a case to be made in healthcare that badges will make a comeback as provider
(06:54):
credentials but we'll we'll get there and then secondly culture corner nostril bama uh we're
getting closer now july 14th through the 17th and then there's another one pinging on our radar
I actually got this shared to me in my local Bitcoiner chat, and it's, you know, our friend Rev Hoddle, Lake Satoshi, August 1st through the 3rd.
(07:17):
So that's starting to come into our window.
That's mid-Michigan, that beautiful campsite right on the lake, Lake Satoshi, where the plebs will be.
That's one of those bucket list items.
If I could drive to it, I absolutely would.
flying in getting camping gear that's a whole nother thing so maybe one day I will drive to it
(07:41):
you know it sounds nice KW but when the minute I hear the word camping it goes hand in hand at
least in my head with a distinct lack of indoor plumbing infrastructure which is very concerning
to me Avi we're talking you're on the homeless path right now come on you better get used to it
(08:01):
pooping in the park.
Wait, that's something else.
That's Ordinals.
That's not good.
All right.
So who is our roast this week, Avi?
You know, QW, this is a pattern as old as the Roast the Zapper segment
in blockchain radio, which is we roast our top zapper,
(08:24):
and they suddenly get, and they hear the roast,
They get so excited that they become our top zapper for the next week as well.
So as it turns out, it is our dear friend, the Lightning Store, or as we affectionately know him, Sam.
So Sam, I guess I'll just invent my own internet means, is apparently allergic to having free time.
(08:51):
Most people choose between starting a rock band or launching a tech company.
Sam looked at the fork in the road, shrugged, and plowed straight ahead while silk screening the road signs himself.
Lightning store? Wavelake?
If there's a new project that involves merch, music, and Bitcoin, odds are Sam's already squatting on the domain name,
(09:16):
screen printing the t-shirts, and composing the jingle, all before you've finished pronouncing proof of work.
Meanwhile, his warehouse looks like Willy Wonka's factory got a side hustle.
Boxes of vinyl on one conveyor belt, hoodies on another,
and somewhere in the middle, Sam's hacking micropayment code on a laptop
(09:39):
balanced atop a stack of unsent birthday cards for every Kickstarter he backed in 2014.
And let's be honest, nobody has ever been more surprised by the arrival of a freight truck
than Sam, who'll greet the driver with a smile that says,
great, now where am I going to put 12,000 limited edition kazoo keychains?
(10:03):
But here's the real mystery.
For a guy who's basically fused to a thermal label printer,
he still writes hooks catchier than COVID in a karaoke bar.
So, raise a lightning invoice to Mr. Means,
the only person multitasking hard enough to earn royalties and transaction fees in the same breath.
(10:27):
Long may he juggle.
And QW, you have quite the sermon in store for us today.
Can I just say there's only one other thing catchier than COVID besides Sam Means or Lightning Store?
And that's that Pleb Chain Radio shirt that's in Lightning Store.
(10:48):
We sold another shirt last week, Avi.
Celebrations, right?
No way.
One whole shirt?
Well, there's only like four left.
So it's something.
I mean, we basically 20% of our supply dwindled in one week.
So, you know, COVID, it's catchier than COVID.
So we got whatever's left, medium, small.
(11:10):
I think there's some large left.
There's only a few left.
They'll be gone forever.
use the promo code or promo
plug chain 20% off the entire store.
We get nothing for this.
So, you know, we love the fact
that people are walking around
in plug chain radio shirts.
I wear them myself.
Toot my own horn there, I suppose.
(11:31):
But yeah, so the sermon today,
it seems fitting, right?
The bad UX the bad UX of sovereignty Avi is this a feature Is this a feature not a bug The bad UX of sovereignty Avi is this a feature not a bug The bad UX of Nostar and Freed Effect in general is most decidedly a feature
(11:53):
Yes.
From Faraday cages, doomsday bunkers, progressive web apps to test flight-only cutting-edge cypherpunk,
our culture thrives on the fringe at the cost of a user experience.
The unwavering ethos and principled approach of self-sovereignty is the gift and a curse.
We want mass adoption because our passion and ideas reign supreme.
(12:16):
But from the lens of a normie, we may be in too deep.
From nodes to relays to block templates to op-return arguments, our focus is on the technicals and rarely the allure of UX.
You know, cypherpunks wrote code, Avi, but these high-tech Hayekians were not focused on experience.
(12:38):
At the time, privacy was at the forefront.
Separating money and state was at the forefront.
And at this time, what is our forefront?
Have we evolved Sly Roundabout Way to include usability?
And maybe that's it, Avi.
Maybe we aren't built for UX.
What do you say we bring our guests to change the mind?
So basically, are we built for the bunker, Avi?
(13:02):
I think so. We are bunker coiners.
It really makes you think.
I mean, as far as where Bitcoin became, all the way down to the cypherpunks in the 90s, all the PGP, the privacy, everything built into the ethos.
How do you get that adoption?
(13:23):
How do you get that user experience from a normie that just wants to, you know, obviously primal solving this, but there's a whole ethos of, you know, non-custodial, custodial, a whole argument there.
How do we onboard more people?
How do we get that experience better, but still keep our Puritan ways?
(13:45):
And that's just, that's going to be the ultimate question for a long time.
And I don't think it's getting solved today, but I'd love to talk about it.
I think I have just the guy or just the guys to talk about this.
So why don't we welcome Verge and Benjamin to PlapChain Radio?
What's up, guys?
(14:07):
Hey, how's it going, everybody?
Excellent.
Well, Verge, let's start with a burning question for you.
does the revolution
or will the revolution
have bad UX
oh that's a
you know I'm going to tell you where it all starts
(14:28):
from
it starts with what feels right for you
and maybe five other friends
on Noster
and if everything works out
maybe 50 more people will send some
zaps and some sats
to make it even better
all right obby he did make a good point because i i think in nostr um and and this is kind of
(14:55):
i've never been in a community where devs were at the forefront of everything devs we know we
love the devs we zap the devs uh they're coming out with different features different clients
um but is it truly putting you know from a dev mind you know kind of like the left brain right
brain, emotional, analytical, is there kind of a wall up for user experience or maybe what features
(15:18):
someone would want or all these different bells and whistles that might not be necessarily
what the actual user wants. And sometimes from a dev perspective, it might be a one-way road,
whereas a UX guy like yourself, maybe you have a little bit more perspective or a little bit more
We're like, we got to paint this the way it's like art for the consumer.
(15:43):
Oh, 100%.
Actually, that's what got Ben and I connected because we were in that hackathon, the Salute
hackathon.
He was like, hey, I have this business problem where I want to do something really cool to
help people with their healthcare, with managing their patient data.
I was like, okay, well, I can make that look good if we want to give it a shot.
(16:06):
sometimes that's all it takes is a little bit of passion and someone with a good idea.
For sure. So why don't we start with maybe some simple introductions here,
to the extent that you're comfortable sharing. So we'll start with you, Ben.
Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and what brought you to NOSTA.
(16:32):
So, yeah, great question.
I've been in software for about 20 years.
Always dealt with the customer facing onboarding side.
I have definitely worked with the back of the house for a long time.
But what got me into Noster was starting to bring children into this world and trying to figure out different ways that the future might change for the things that they're going to have to adopt.
(17:02):
in their future. So of course I went down kind of the activity pub area, a couple other kind of
decentralized or try to be decentralized networks. Then I found Noster and I learned about Nips and
my passion grew and my kids are growing up. So that's a lot of the why I got into Noster
(17:27):
and what I'm excited about bringing to the table.
QW, this sounds like a familiar story to you.
You know, that's what activated me, Avi,
and I think you've heard that story many times.
My son is now two and a half, and how old's our show, Avi?
(17:51):
About two and a half years old.
so inspiration comes knocking uh an opportunity fell along the way via my dms with you javi so
and by the way i cannot believe i i'm one of the few people that might think you're a genius javi
because you asked me to do this show with you and that's just a genius move
(18:14):
well that's one way of uh looking at it for sure uh no that's but but yeah when you when you when
you bring life into this world, your perspective completely changes on the future. It's not just
you. It's what can I do for this little warrior or this beautiful princess, whatever it may be.
(18:36):
It's something where you all of a sudden feel empowered to do something. And Nostra is one
of those places where you know social media is broken. You know a protocol can fix that,
A communication protocol can fix so many things just like Bitcoin does.
So it's something where if you're just sitting on your hands, are you doing what's best for the next generation?
(19:01):
And that's kind of where my head was at.
So, Ben, it is interesting.
So you were – do I understand that you were not a Bitcoiner, that you were more interested from an engineering perspective about decentralized networks and you found NOSTA first?
Well, I got into Bitcoin around COVID, early 2020.
(19:25):
That's when I first started understanding more about it.
And I think I actually read the white papers.
And during that time, I was working in SaaS.
So it related a lot to me going through that user experience.
Then learning about, you know, decentralization, blockchain, everything else.
(19:46):
kind of put me down that wormhole to find Noster.
But from the tech side,
I think I'm definitely more with building freedom tech solutions
rather than areas around finance.
Yeah.
(20:06):
Makes sense, Ben.
Oh, Benjamin, I should say.
Virg, you are a UX guy, as our listeners can't see this,
but your username very proudly has UX in it, in square parentheses.
Always.
Why on earth did you end up on Noster?
(20:28):
And, well, before we get to how you found Noster,
just tell us a little bit about yourself.
Oh, gosh.
Okay.
So the short story, 12-year-old kid back in the, I guess, when Commodore 64s first came out, my dad came home with one and said, why don't you play with this instead of running around the neighborhood?
(20:51):
And ever since, I've been hooked on technology.
Love to code.
Love to hack.
Figure stuff out.
And around, I guess it was like 20, whenever the first Bitcoin Miami conference was, I was down there with a friend of mine.
and they were talking about an Oster and I thought, oh, you know what?
This thing would solve that problem of user logins
(21:13):
because I was trying to hack around and build some little stupid social apps, media apps.
And I played with it, put it down for a little bit
and then came back to it because I was like, this is the future.
This is everything that Bitcoin is except for identity.
And I don't want to do anything else,
(21:33):
which makes it very hard to work full time on contracts.
Because all you think about is these crazy vibe-coded ideas that you want to start cranking out.
And that brought me here.
Wait, so do I understand this right, Virg?
You are a full-time Nostrich?
So I dabble in all the pools, I'm not going to lie.
(21:54):
You're going to catch me on X, and you're going to catch me, you know, Virg online, Virg.online.
I'm always everywhere.
But Nostre and working for SATs is pretty much, it's been the gig for the last year.
And it's hard to go back.
So congratulations on leaving the fiat world.
And welcome to the unchained or, you know, the magical world of sats.
(22:18):
It's an exciting place to be.
Let me expand on that because I have a friend, Heather, friend of the show.
She's been a social media manager for years, you know, on all the legacy platforms.
And she came to Noster and she, you know, obviously it's a different incentive, different world, plebs rule.
(22:43):
But she got hired on by a company to do social media managing.
And it's basically consumed her interest.
So she still manages other companies via legacy, but she just loves Noster.
She loves social media managing for Noster.
(23:06):
Talk about just how different it, I mean, it truly drives your passion, right?
Oh, a hundred percent.
Like, again, like this is going to sound crazy.
It's probably going to date me.
I worked on a team building CD apps back in the day back in the nineties And there was this team of two that were building web applications for the company that I was at and I it looked really interesting and I got really excited I you know asked my manager to
(23:32):
move me over to that team and got all consumed by it and Noster and where we are right now
reminds me of those early days on the internet like you you can point yourself in any direction
with any problem, and especially with some of this vibe code stuff, and just go. And just go
(23:52):
and find five or 10 people who are into it and see where it goes. And I remember that from the web.
I remember that from those first online gambling casinos and those first contesting engines.
And here we are doing the exact same business problems, same ideas, but in this whole new way
that's so exciting.
And it's hard to put it down.
(24:14):
Like, why would I want to go
and work on a regular boring ass web application
for some insurance company doing user experience
when I can just like stay up all night
with Claude or ChatGPT
and try and figure out some magical interface?
You're staying up all night with Claude too?
(24:34):
Avi, are you jealous?
Are you jealous?
Claude was yours.
We can share.
I mean, you know, as long as it's not a freak off, we can share.
So I don't know if you know, but Avi's other podcast, Rendezvous with Claude.
(24:56):
Listen to the last episode.
It's literally Avi talking to himself.
It's interesting.
Let me put it that way.
I like.
It's a vibe-coded podcast.
but but yes so Benjamin are you full-time on Nostra or do you are you still have one foot in the fiat
(25:18):
world yeah um my I definitely have one and a half foot in the fiat world I'd say um you know it keeps
me pretty busy uh I'd like to grow out of that and get into kind of this uh decentralized economy
so I'm learning as much as I can about you know Bitcoin and all the abilities and ways that it
(25:43):
would help me and my family and my future but you know health insurance is really important
and I'm not really sure too many companies right now paying full-time Bitcoin offering health
insurance if y'all know any please let me know no I don't I will not have I will not be having
health insurance now that i've quit my job and how do you feel about that i don't i don't know
(26:09):
man but i had to do it there were there were more compelling reasons to quit but yes it is it is a
fair point management right that they are you might you might need to talk to john gordon and
see what kind of uh program you can get on that's uh paid in uh bitcoin right that's yes john i
I think I've heard of him, John Gordon, right?
(26:29):
Well, I mean, he did the show and we did talk about health care,
but we were talking a little bit about crowd health too as an option.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let me know how it goes.
No, I have to start a movement.
This could be a whole movement.
I'll use my guinea pig at this point.
(26:52):
Kind of, I think that's a future that I'd like to see though.
Like, you know, companies, if they're really starting to take this reserve on, maybe give their employees an option, right?
And maybe that option is a different type of currency and that'd be Bitcoin.
And maybe through that relationship, other networks can open up to it too.
So I think that possibility is ahead of us and I'm really looking forward to it.
(27:16):
But currently right now, you know, definitely got to stay in the fiat mines.
So, you know, you brought up health insurance, Benjamin.
And, you know, obviously, we're going to talk about health care in a second.
But I will say, so without naming my former Fiat employer, it was a large, you know, health insurance company, let's just say.
(27:37):
And I bought their policy.
I was on their policy.
And it was, you know, the deductible was something like $3,500 individual and the family was higher.
So it was almost pointless.
I'd have a percentage of my paycheck garnished every two weeks in premium.
And then the couple of, I mean, knock on wood, my family and I are healthy.
(28:01):
But a couple of occasions we'd show up for this and that.
You always end up paying out of pocket until we met that deductible, right?
And many times the co-pay wouldn't even kick in until the deductible was fully consumed.
So at this point, I'm like, well, what am I exactly missing out on?
I've worked at an insurance company on their technology team.
(28:22):
They gave me a garbage policy.
What exactly am I missing out on?
Anyway.
You're missing out on Freedom Tech.
That's what you're missing out on.
Welcome.
Was that a question or a rant, Avi?
A rhetorical rant.
So, Virg, let us talk about – is this a topic you're familiar with, by the way, Virg?
(28:46):
I want to talk about UX with you.
I think you might know.
Maybe.
I mean, a little bit.
I have a taste for it.
So, you know, we all, I think I'm a technologist, Ben's a technologist.
QW doubles, right?
He's an excellent community organizer.
He's a man of the people, QW.
(29:08):
I'm in construction and project management.
So I have a lot of supply chain management and can get things done.
So that's where my head's at. But I've always had love for technology. And I was in those chat rooms and the AOL chat rooms is dating myself.
(29:28):
Nice.
But the point I'm getting at is, despite our disparate backgrounds, I think for all of us, maybe Benjamin, I won't speak for you, but UX is a dark art, right?
I know how to build stuff.
I know how to write requirements.
I know how to get developers to build out the requirements.
but that the psychology of UX itself
(29:53):
and how you delight that end user,
how you make them stay,
seems like this dark, nefarious art.
So can you help deconstruct that?
What goes into a good user experience?
You know, so 100%, you hit the nail on the head, Avi.
It is a dark art.
(30:13):
And when it's done well, it looks so easy and so obvious.
but when it's not done well, it's just all bumps and uncomfortable situations like being a 15-year-old on your first date.
And the secret is having that kind of curious mindset about what is 80% of the experience like in that area that you're thinking about
(30:37):
and then figuring out the one or two things that would be delightful and amazing if only they had figured that out.
and I've been doing UX since 2000, just to, again, like this is, that's my whole job,
and I've learned over the years that every industry, every project, there's common things
that we all expect, you know, like we might expect the menu button up at the top left,
(31:02):
or we might put our name in first before we put in our address, and these sound like really basic
things, but you get a room of technologists in the, you know, together, or you get a bunch of
senior leaders of a company who actually probably don't book their own meetings.
And they have no idea what the common patterns are. They don't understand what regular people do.
(31:24):
And it takes a person like myself to raise a hand and say, hey, guys,
you know, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. It's already been solved. But here's the area
that we could really make the world a little better. And that's the secret to UX. I mean,
And I would shout that from the rooftops and I ask everyone listening to take that into their own lives.
(31:45):
But it sounds very abstract, Virg.
It still does.
It's like, you know, you're like one of those experts who like, this is so easy.
What are you guys talking about?
I just do this and this and it's all solved.
Meanwhile, the layman is listening saying, what am I supposed to do here?
Well, here's a comparable.
Can I interject real quick, Virg?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because you made me think of something.
(32:06):
There was something that happened recently with all that Doge stuff.
And there was a government website.
And their login wasn't like in the top right.
And it caused so much problems because it just wasn't where it's supposed to be.
And they were going to submit a request to change that.
(32:29):
And it would have taken like two months or something.
And Doge did it in like 15 minutes.
and everything was fixed. But that expectation of where things go is such a time saver. And
just the smallest things like you mentioned, it was interesting that you said that, but carry on.
(32:52):
Yeah. No, well, and so that's exactly it. The joke I would tell in every meeting,
I would start any UX meeting where I would say, if I took you and put you at the front of your house
and put in your hand a spoon and said, where does that spoon go?
And people would think I would be a magician.
I'd say, you probably would go in straight through your front door,
(33:12):
probably through your living room.
Maybe you turn right or left and you go into your kitchen
and there's a set of drawers and you pull that first drawer
or maybe the second drawer.
And it's probably the first or second set of cutlery spots to put that spoon.
It's a common pattern.
Mine's the second.
Mine's the second.
(33:32):
Yeah. So so everyone will, you know, in the meeting and everyone on this call, if you're in this, you know, on this podcast listening might be like, holy shit, that's a common pattern.
And there are so many of these patterns in everyday life.
And all it is is just taking a little bit of time when you're building that interface or, you know, you got that idea of going on the web or going, you know, looking across the industry or looking for common examples or comparables and saying, well, what's this common pattern that I can maybe steal and borrow and, you know, judiciously change but still stay kind of on target?
(34:10):
so like that doge screen i'm sure someone was really excited and said hey we're gonna do
something different we're gonna put the login in a new spot because it's a chance to show that we're
great designers and they get like a thousand complaints very humbling very very humbling
fuck innovation or phone calls uh because you know now all of a sudden you need a a team of
(34:30):
people fielding calls to help you sign in because it's not in the right spot exactly
exactly that's interesting what what is the you know for our listeners frankly for me as well
what is the distinction between ui user interface and ux because we tend to use those
(34:51):
terms so interchangeably in fact we just say them in one breath ui ux right but but there
clearly is a i would think uh in the field itself there is there are clear and distinct
boundaries between the two I completely confused by the difference And sometimes I have to look at the definition of each just to remember which one was which Because to me an interface is an experience
(35:17):
But, you know, sometimes it's just semantics.
They need to change the names, I think, is what it comes down to.
Well, I mean, do they, though?
Because, like, they both get you to the same place.
just one of them really pays attention to what you or you know your user or the individual is doing
(35:39):
and the other one is just painting the colors of the screen maybe changing the sizes of the buttons
because they're really focused on the the the ui the interface of it whereas like the user
experience it's really about like where are they standing when they're looking at their phone
what's going on off the screen what stuff are they thinking about in their heads you know are
(36:01):
they in a high state of stress because they're looking for their bank account to pay a bill,
and it's a big bill, so they got to make sure that the bank account number and the account number
and the amount of money they're transferring is easily shown on the screen at the same time
so they can feel confident in that transaction. UI, everybody gets UI. The color of the buttons,
(36:24):
the color of the screen, the size of the font. UX is like, don't just do the screen. Think about
why, think about where, think about the context, and let's make it a little better.
Yeah. I think that's a really nice way of thinking about it, Virg, which is UI is the
look and feel, is what you're looking at.
(36:46):
100%.
And UX is, well, you know, what you're going through, right? What's happening to you.
So Benjamin, you're a developer, and presumably you, right, that's what you said.
And you've been, I'm sure, been in multiple situations where you've been given requirements or wireframes, and you need to hook those up.
(37:11):
As a developer yourself, how do you, what is your interaction with the UI and the UX?
How do you think about that?
you know um from a creative developer stance i am not that right i i would definitely say i'm more
of the vibe code but i've worked in software for a while so i know how to kind of communicate to
(37:37):
the developing parts so by working in customer success with software for a long time i've had
to kind of communicate those what we would call like feature adjustments, maybe based off the
customer's feedback on rollouts. And I think it really just comes down to the solution of what
(37:58):
we're trying to provide and bring the users into. And sometimes we try to make it seem similar.
So all the social apps have the same interfaces, but maybe some of the other types of apps that
people are using are laid out, you know, differently based off it being a music app or a video app.
(38:20):
I don't think we're really trying to recreate the wheel or do something, you know, to confuse the
user because a lot of the times, from my experience, the user just wants to be prompted in the easiest
place possible, especially with their username and password and being able to get them to
(38:42):
where they see the most return on their investment or where they find the most enjoyment of their
time in that app. So, you know, through that, through that, um, it's, it's really just the
grind of listening to the community of who's keeping that company or that solution or that
business alive and adapting to, um, the user's feedback, uh, as far as if there's a right way
(39:06):
or a wrong way. Um, I think the wrong way is not listening to those that you're providing the
service to and the right way would probably be applying that yeah that makes a lot of sense right
i mean there is you know there is a joke in software development where this would be so much
easier if it weren't for the pesky customer right but the fact is you your product lives and dies
(39:32):
based on the customer feedback and how they interact with it uh so just tacking on to that
Verge, you know, we started off with the patterns themselves, right? The common established patterns
in user behavior. But is there, I guess, tying it back to this being a dark art to most people
(39:55):
on the outside, is there even more of a psychological component that you need to understand
as a user experience person beyond just the common patterns? Yeah. Could you talk about that?
Yeah. I mean, like, well, this is this is the challenge, right, is if you're just doing UI 100 percent, you just build the screens.
(40:17):
But understanding people's motivations, understanding what's what feels good, not just what needs to be done, is the difference between getting those support calls or getting, you know, really good reviews in the app store.
which is like if you ever want to know what depression is like,
release an app and then go and wait 30 days and read all the App Store reviews.
(40:40):
It's like people have all kinds of problems.
They'll tell you every problem with every part of the business
that is not related to the screen itself.
And that's when you realize that user experience is really about making people feel good,
feel like they're listened to, and almost not cherished,
(41:01):
but definitely celebrated as they're going through the experience.
I mean, this is why Ben and I started working together,
because we were both coming from that viewpoint, that thought space,
when we were looking at Wellness Ally and Legacy Locker.
We were like, how do we make people feel good about the fact that they're on this health journey?
Because it's not just screens, it's experiences.
(41:24):
So you're doing a lot of this.
Obviously, you're a Nostromaxie at this point.
Well, for the most part, short of-
100%.
You're playing with the pools.
But passion-wise, looking at Nostra and all the clients that keep coming out, there's a lot to be done on the UI and UX side.
(41:46):
Do you try these new apps out or clients out, and you're like, oh, my God, they need me type of thing?
Well, you know, yes.
I try everything that comes across.
Like if I see something and it looks interesting, like, you know, note deck or whatever, of course I got to download it and try it.
(42:07):
There's got to be an element of OCD involved.
Well, so this is the thing that's funny, right?
Is even if you make the worst experience, you could, you know, not to call out porn sites, but they don't make it easy if you sign up and put in your credit card number to get your credit card off of it.
I'm not saying I'm that guy.
But when people have a desire, even the worst interface, they'll figure it out.
(42:32):
They'll hate you the whole time.
But if it's something they want to do, they will jump through those hoops.
The feds will never give you your information back just to let you know.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah, the FBI van that's outside my house right now.
Hi, guys.
Hope you're having a great day.
Freedom tech lives.
(42:53):
but is there actually just to follow up on qw's question do you look at so you because you're so
committed to nostril you're like hey i'll do what it takes so your natural ux critic doesn't come
out and say holy crap what were they thinking no no the thing where it makes a difference is
(43:13):
where are people paying to use this platform and are they still happy once they've you know put in
their sats or you know used a pro used a service like a like a relay service for a month and had a
complaint and there's no support site like that's where that's where i'm i find i spend a lot of time
in uh the current era of nostr just looking at people's githubs and seeing you know the same
(43:40):
design patterns and thinking well how you know what's their support site what's their sla how
are they talking to the customers like where can they where can they turn their problems or their
their complaints into something that's not monetized but at least less awkward
obvi remember december of 20 uh what 22 right uh when we all joined nostr we were posting invoices
(44:08):
the UX was absolutely miserable, but we were having so much fun.
I feel like that whole, the bad UX of sovereignty,
us as plebs, we have a little bit of rose-colored eyes with this.
Whereas normies or just regular people that want to onboard onto, you know,
(44:30):
Noster, they're really going to have, you know,
those are the people you need to really be listening to.
and I'm sure would resonate with what Virg is talking about the most.
And it's weird because it's tough to have that lens
when you have so much sovereign bias, right?
(44:53):
For sure.
So actually, on that note, Virg,
if you were to onboard a normie friend,
someone you cared for,
but you knew that they didn't particularly care for freedom tech or anything, right?
and you were trying to get onboard them onto Noster, what app would you use?
So, you know, I got to give a shout out to Hustle,
(45:17):
because Runster was one of the first apps that I saw
that really stepped outside of the space of us Noster people.
Because it was on a genuine use case.
If you're someone who wants to run, if you're someone who wants to do something,
and you just happen to use the Noster login,
it's the perfect app it's the perfect app to introduce new people to the platform same with
(45:41):
wave lake i i i'm a big fan of wave lake i've sent it around to a bunch of my music production
friends and told them hey pay attention to this because in the next year or two this is where
everything's going and it's it's around those everyday use cases that people are doing that
you know before they did it on spotify and before spotify they did it on napster like they're these
(46:02):
general everyday activities people are doing and now we're just replacing the login with
Noster login. It's funny he says that Avi. On Tuesday I'm doing my very first live in person
podcast one-on-one with Sam from Wave Lake and music and Wave Lake and you know everything
(46:24):
the history the past present and possibly a little bit of the future will be discussed in
in that show.
And to our listeners,
you can,
if you want to,
and why wouldn't you want to?
Sounds like an incredible episode,
QW.
You can listen to it
if you are a premium subscriber.
(46:45):
So go to the Fountain app
and do the needful.
But Virg,
you mentioned,
wave lake verge you too you too just five dollars a month man just five dollars
avi doesn't have a job anymore come on man help him out i was gonna ask avi are you wearing pants
have you gone that far off the fiat path now that you're not working full-time are you in pants or
(47:10):
pajamas or no i i am still in uh in trousers uh verge i am two weeks you you know what right now
Go on Costco or go on Amazon, get five pairs of pajama pants, because that's all you're going to need.
He definitely aged himself with going to Costco to get pants.
(47:31):
So I'm with it, man.
Yeah, I go to Kmart.
I don't know about you, KW.
But you mentioned Wavelake and Runster.
And as it turns out, because they're both Nostra clients, Wavelake is integrated into Runster.
How cool is that?
Seriously.
(47:51):
This is what's so exciting.
You want to know why I'm so excited about being here where we are right now?
That's exactly why.
There was no contracts.
There was no media thing or lawyers involved.
Just two great developers were like, hey, it would be cool if we could do this shit together.
And now it happens.
And that's the Nostra community.
(48:11):
It's like literally I remember this kind of vibe going to like those hacker events and those kind of like cypherpunk events back in the late 90s in Toronto and, you know, learning about VR and VRML and all those early HTML, you know, kind of like even before JavaScript when we were still writing everything in shell script.
(48:33):
And that's what this feels like.
Like if you have a good idea and you can make it, you can find those integrations with other people, everybody wants to work together.
Yeah. And the beauty of Nostra is even if you don't, if someone doesn't want to work with you, it's permissionless. So the other person can start using your app. But so speaking of permissionless, Benjamin, no one, you didn't take anyone's permission, but you built Legacy Locker and Wellness Ally, which I think is an evolution of that.
(49:05):
So do you want to talk about that journey and then tell us a little bit about what that is?
Yeah, definitely. So we can start with Wellness Ally. It's kind of the holistic approach to getting users their kind of personalized health data back to them under their ownership, whether that's locally or hosted on a self-hosted network like an umbrella.
(49:38):
and kind of where we're starting at with the wellness ally has to do with kind of tracking
journal entries if you're taking supplements or medication whether that's eastern or western
medication there's a tracker for that and some mindfulness tools right so trying to get the
(50:02):
users more aligned with themselves and kind of away from the device, but being able to capture
those important moments for when the time's needed. Then we will definitely want to build
into adding an emergency QR access, which we think would really be beneficial in real world scenarios.
(50:24):
But those are the holistic approaches that we want to take with Wellness Ally. And that is a
network that's starting to build into the bigger idea, which is Legacy Locker.
And I can talk a little more about that if you're interested.
Please.
(50:46):
So the idea with Legacy Locker is, you know, every year or every couple years, we change
practitioners, specialists.
Maybe we change insurances.
with our company.
Maybe we bring a new life into the world.
(51:09):
Maybe we move states or cities or countries.
And when we need care during those times,
even with the systems that support our providers and the networks,
sometimes that information doesn't travel with us.
So I think it'd be a really good idea for us in the future
to start getting the proof of work back to the patients and to the parents.
(51:35):
So that when there's a care for need or a time for reflection,
that hopefully the right energies can be used.
And that's really the overall idea is one day I'm going to have to teach my kids to be adults
and release them into the world.
And depending on the guardrails or systems or networks that are supporting them currently,
(52:01):
hopefully I can set them up for success.
And hopefully I can educate them a little bit about themselves.
So that, you know, when they're needing help or going through those changes and systems
or moving just the way the market works or the way life works, right?
I like to call it the roller coaster ride.
(52:22):
So when those heavy turns come, hopefully we have the right data in our ownership to be able to exercise that correctly.
And at the end of the day, it's not a fight against the system.
It's a co-collaboration.
We want the providers to have everything.
But at the end of the day, the patients should also have their proof of work.
(52:47):
So Nostra is a scary place.
There's a lot of unknowns.
And so we're starting with the most holistic approach towards that local storage for your health journal.
If you're taking supplements or medication, then some additional kind of mindfulness tools, kind of self thought, self reflection, meditation practices, something to re energize the user's battery.
(53:11):
Because at the end of the day, right, like sometimes the only time that we have to be plugged in is when we're asleep.
And we plug in these devices all the time around us that we're plugged into.
I got two monitors, a Bluetooth headset.
They're all running off of power.
But at what time during the day do I get to re-energize myself?
(53:32):
So I think figuring out a way to communicate those for the user and creating what I'd like to call user enlightenment tools is really what I'm interested in bringing to the network.
in the decentralized freedom tech space.
So first it's the Wellness Ally app,
and Virg and myself will be releasing that
(53:53):
probably in two to three months.
We will have a private beta released earlier than that,
and we have a waiting list
where we've had some good feedback,
so we know who we're going to be sending that out to.
If y'all are interested, please go to our website.
It's wellnessally.me,
and we'll put you on that
(54:14):
and let you know when the private beta is there.
And also, we're trying to build a framework.
And that framework is to support the users inside of this ecosystem and also the developers to know that, hey, if you're building what we're building, let's co-collaborate so we can create better environments for everyone.
(54:34):
So we're not creating a running app, but it'd be great to pull in the Runster data.
So let's be interoperable and work and create what's best for our user experience.
because I really feel like the future is headed towards micro apps
with the way that everything is being expedited and experimented with.
(54:54):
So, yeah, the Wellness Ally, Legacy Locker,
it's kind of the first couple stomps in the ground
to try to decentralize this healthcare data from the patient side
because patients are users also.
and at the end of the day, our experience is our proof of work.
(55:18):
So, Virg, walk me through a simple user journey,
a simple use case of someone who wants to use both Wellness Ally
and eventually roll that up into the broader use case of Legacy Locker.
What is the most simple user journey that our listeners can understand
(55:40):
how to use these apps. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll give you two, actually. Two really good ones.
So a good example, you know, I'll use my dad as an example. He's a great guy. He's a little senior
and he takes medication fairly regularly, fairly regularly. And the thought has always been,
if there was a way to remind him to take his medication and then I could set it up on his phone
(56:05):
and also be able to see either privately or publicly some of those posts that he is complying
and taking his medication, that'd be great. Or a doctor could, you know, incite or suggest to
some of his patients that, hey, listen, let's get into this wellness ally space. And every time you
(56:27):
go for a run, it'll show up on this feed and we can share this feed together. So the thought was,
It started with, you know, there are these events that happen in our lives or these activities that we're doing, and we may or may not be doing it well.
But what's an open yet private way of sharing that information to another person in an environment that can be, you know, that can live as long as it needs to live?
(56:54):
And Noster is so great for that.
it's so open and we have that kind of space where we can we can start to experiment and figure out
how to do it well got it and how does that how would that fit into legacy locker
well so this is where it gets exciting right is again thinking about that transition like so
(57:19):
bit a bit of history when i was about 17 years old i had half a lung removed i had pneumonia
that was really bad for a couple of years.
It turned out I had a birth defect
and they removed half my lung.
So I've lived the majority of my life
with a lung and a half.
But from zero to 17 and 17 to 18, 19, 20,
all that medical data,
(57:40):
it lives somewhere.
I don't know where it lives.
I don't know what happened with it.
But I know at one point,
my parents were more accountable
or responsible for my medical care.
And then I aged into an age
where I would take on that medical responsibility.
And that data my doctor passed away the doctor that gave birth to me passed away somewhere in my 20s I had three giant folders of doctor information that I shuffled to this other doctor who then closed their practice I don know where my medical
(58:09):
information went. This is back before computers. And it really struck a chord with me. So when Ben
and I were talking about Legacy Locker and he was telling me about his experience and I was thinking
and we're sharing these experiences like, yeah, what happens to this medical data? How do we own
it? How do we pass it as a parent and our kid gets old enough to take it on themselves? Or how do we
(58:31):
co-manage it with a parent, you know, a senior parent who may or may not be following their
doctor's orders and keep the doctor in that conversation? And right now there's, you know,
there's all this HIPAA stuff and privacy and I get it. I get it. We live in a dangerous world
for medical data.
But for the people that want to find
(58:54):
an elegant way to share that information,
we need a legacy locker.
We need a locker to put that health data
in a way that can be shared or transported
or permissioned people in.
And that started us on this whole journey.
Love it.
(59:16):
And the way I would explain it,
With the legacy locker, it's definitely going to be storing more of the EHR and EMR information of the experiences of the user's timeline.
That user doesn't need all that information carried around with them through a mobile app, but they do need it secured somewhere.
(59:37):
And when they're trying to fill out information that might be redundant, because we all know what it's like to go through the system.
We got to sit there, wait in line, fill out the same information.
And, you know, life is different. Sometimes we make a wake up on the wrong side of the bed. Sometimes we're chipper as can be. But when we're filling out that data, let's be honest, sometimes we're not filling it out the best of our ability and being as honest or updated.
(01:00:06):
so just think about the advocacy that we could have for ourselves and the time that we could
save if we could figure out a way to commute that communicate that stuff and so a lot of it is how
do we save save time and get that back to the patient and the provider so it's like a mini
(01:00:27):
EHR that the patient's carrying around except that they don't have to your point Benjamin they
don't have to carry all of their data with them on their phone, right? So how is it being stored
on a Blossom server or is it just in the umbrella and it's connected over Tor? How exactly does that
work? Yeah, there's a couple of ways that we're experimenting with and we'll definitely share
(01:00:51):
that at a later time. We're really focused on getting the Wellness Ally app out there
into the user's hands.
And I think once we get that going,
then we'll start releasing more of the information
on the hardware.
Yeah, but in all cases,
our goal is to have a self-sovereign option
that would be something like a Tor on an Umbro or a Start9.
(01:01:18):
But definitely we want to make sure
that it's a phone-first experience.
And then as we get that momentum
and we can start asking users what really feels elegant for them.
Because I'm not pointing fingers at anyone,
but I can tell you that my own Umbro can go a week being offline.
(01:01:41):
And I might not even notice because I'm not doing a lot of lightning payments,
so there's no reason to really check every day.
And that's one of the things that when we started this idea,
we realized we had to start to figure out.
but it's so far down the road.
We need to know what feels right for people
and then build the thing that feels right for them.
(01:02:07):
So you just admitted you're not a zapper, Virg.
That's right, because your credit card is still stuck in the porn site, right?
I mean, like, you know, that user experience.
You've had maybe a little too much user experience on those sites,
you know what I mean?
If someone could only put together an OnlyZaps effectively, then life would be so much easier.
(01:02:34):
We got close.
We did have an e-girl rush.
That was kind of a chronological timeline of that.
That's something interesting.
I kind of want to dive into that user experience of the early 90s online versus today.
(01:02:55):
because everything's so algo driven and it's easy to say that because it's kind of a you know oh it's
the algo it's the algo uh you know dopamine dopamine it's it's literally like uh coco melon
your kid watching coco melon three inches from the screen um but i almost feel like the
chronological timeline it's it's completely it's not dopamine to me it's almost like an oxytocin
(01:03:18):
if there was a hormone to attach it to.
You're still smiling, you're still having fun,
but you're engaging with people and you're connecting.
It's a different way to look at it.
Sorry, I was just thinking about that.
No, no, 100%.
That is exactly the difference between Noster and X or Twitter,
(01:03:42):
whatever name you want to call legacy social media.
whereas in the past it was very not in the past in non-NOSTER experiences it is very algo driven
but in NOSTER like I feel like I the people that I follow and you know kind of chirp at every once
in a while and and bug I feel like I live a little bit in their lives they live a little bit in my
(01:04:04):
life you know they're definitely living rent-free in my head because that's the NOSTER experience
It's that 150 people that you are regularly following because that's just what you're doing.
Yeah, and in a way, something like Legacy Locker, you're putting your personal information into something and you're building a relationship with a client.
(01:04:29):
Obviously, it's on Noster, but it's a very intimate thing where you have control over that.
Exactly.
So it's something where that user experience, it's different because it's personal and it's something that, you know, you own that.
That private property aspect of Noster is something that, you know, we may not understand what that means because we've never had it.
(01:04:56):
Yeah, yeah.
And again, I'm going to date myself here.
early in the before the internet when we had like first class servers and we had um bbs's and we had
um you know like irc and and uh you know um command line kind of like chat rooms where you
had this thing this place it did a very singular experience and you you you know you developed a
(01:05:23):
kind of relationship with it that even though it didn't work well it it still it gave something or
you shared an experience with people that mattered to you that, you know, again, going to date myself
here, you're willing to drive hundreds of kilometers to go and hang out with because
you feel an affinity to them. And we're at that stage now where we can have that with our data
(01:05:44):
and we can wrap it with an AI or wrap it with some kind of visualization and start to really
see ourselves in new ways. And Nostre enables it. Nostre makes it have its own identity. It can have
its own, you know, personhood. And we can we can actually turn it into something more than just,
(01:06:06):
you know, these are the posts that I put online. It's like more this is this is more of like my
life experience as a, you know, a data entity. Yeah. And that whole IRL thing, Avi obviously
quit his job to sleep on your couch verge. So get ready. Avi, come on over. Come on. I hope you can
swim it is a little bit of a trek to the place but you know i do live on an island but you're
(01:06:31):
welcome you're welcome to visit excellent well i appreciate the invitation but yeah i might be on
the road you never know uh but let's talk about vibe coding here benjamin uh you've presumably
this is all vibe coded right uh the website is yeah he's a vibe king he's playing it down
(01:06:53):
is not um but yeah definitely vibe coded the wellness ally uh website now the uh
software itself uh i think verge could probably talk a little more on that he's been teaching me
a lot uh it's not fully vibe coded he has a he's a pretty big background in that um verge you want
(01:07:14):
to talk a little bit about that well actually if i if i may sing you your praise benjamin i have
like I vibe code and I can I'm a web developer by trade Ben was like okay I'm gonna try this
thing tonight I got this idea and literally he would the next day we would get online and start
chatting and he would have a whole website with functionality and everything he writes these
(01:07:37):
recipes that have layers and layers of insights that I thought I understood vibe coding and I was
like oh i'm proud i can i could use windsurf to build something ben does ben does things that are
like incredible he he's playing it down he's a genius at vibe coding he won a hackathon vibe
coding yeah you're the whisperer llm whisperer you know that's a good way to put it avi like
(01:08:07):
you just got to have relationships in the right way to hopefully produce the right result
And I think that's a lot of what I'm learning with these resources and these tools.
It's not always about the solution.
It's more about the problem, and you want to fixate on those problems.
And you also want to think about the different users that might be facing those problems in the solution you're trying to provide.
(01:08:32):
So if you're just trying to get straight to that solution, it might not have the best user experience or the best user flow or even the best content around it or the best layout.
So what I would recommend to every Vibe Coder out there is think about all the departments.
If you're really trying to build your company or your solution or your problem and bring it to the table and let let that ecosystem grow.
(01:09:00):
Think about all the departments that you're going to have to hire and how are they going to support all those users building what you're using?
Or if you just experimenting have fun and prompt away and use natural language But that where I tend to find my success in vibe coding is more based off of the scenario approach not off the ask
(01:09:25):
Because it already knows what to do.
You just got to put it in the right place.
And with all the advancements of what Alex has created and MK, and I think y'all were talking about this earlier on the podcast, I mean, that's only expedited my potential.
Because let me tell you this, I've been copying and pasting for 20-something years, right?
(01:09:49):
And so if you're telling me I can be creative and copy and paste and it's going to work, then I don't really think it has to do with being a developer.
I think it has to do with the time and energy and the intent that you're putting into your projects.
Benjamin, can you give a simple example of this recipe or scenario-based Vibe coding as opposed to natural language or simple prompt-based Vibe coding?
(01:10:19):
Hmm. So, yeah. Let's see here.
So when it comes to figuring out what you're trying to build, you can work with multiple different LLMs and they'll provide you different types of feedback on what you're going to build.
(01:10:41):
And depending on what agents you're going to be working with, it might be good to enlighten that other agent as well.
If you're only using one agent, you might only be getting one perspective.
so think about the documents that you're creating and how those co-create with each other to help
find that kind of macro solution and then figure out the type of communication that you need to
(01:11:09):
input into each prompt if you don't know the technicality and then there's a recipe right like
there's a recipe in cooking once you kind of know what you're going to be cooking because you have
all your formula down, you boil the water first. And so think about the temperature that you're
(01:11:30):
boiling that at. So I know I'm using a lot of analogies here, but just do it with care.
And you'd probably get a little different results. Hey, man, I just don't want to
burn my life savings on API credits. Can you just tell me how to do it right, please?
well hey there's no right way there's only user feedback and i think that's the thing that we need
(01:11:54):
to grow into because we're all experimenting and we're all creating these great ideas but at the
end of the day they're just ideas until the adoption grows and then that's where the runway
hits so we can be experimenting and we can be alchemists all that we want but if no one's using
or magic, it's like it doesn't even exist.
(01:12:17):
Yeah.
But I will say, if you're looking for an economical way
to get into vibe coding, I'm not a shill for Windsurf,
but Windsurf, at their price point and the number of credits
or tokens they give you, you can do a lot.
You can get pretty far.
(01:12:37):
You can get pretty far down the path.
Okay.
you heard it here folks windsurf is where it's at yeah i mean like don't get me wrong i tried
i tried cursor code use the promo code verge when you go to windsurf
no like no seriously like i i want everybody like i'm not sure i'm not i'm not a shill i'm
(01:13:01):
just saying like everyone who's listening to this podcast and is like oh you know i want to give
something a try. I want to experiment. It's one thing to go to like chat GPT or Claude and use
their web interface and try and copy and paste the code out. It's not easy. And sure, cursor exists
and is really good or replet. I mean, I know Ben is a big replet guy. He loves replet. I don't love
(01:13:25):
replet, but he loves replet. But I have found every single time I will pop open that Windsurf IDE.
I make two folders. The first folder is
CollabDocs and then the second folder is
Gitcode and I just start writing the ideas
in the CollabDocs and then I just tell it to go build it in the Gitcode
(01:13:46):
and it just kind of comes together.
Avi, I love the fact that I'm the only one here
that has no interest in VibeCoding. Well, I mean maybe a little bit but
Like, I always say Avi's going to be Job from Lawnmower Man, you know, the guy that got fully inducted into the metaverse.
(01:14:10):
Yes.
Because he became the deep, he was deep learning himself as far as the machine learning.
So it's one of those things where I'm very timid about, but at the same time, I know how much potential it has.
So it's a very fine line to walk when the machines are actually learning from you the whole time, too.
(01:14:31):
Oh, 100%.
100%.
And it's scary.
It is a little scary when it starts using your phrasing and your thought process and, you know, scrapes the documents and talks to you with your language.
And like, I didn't, you know, why does it know this about me?
You start feeling like the AI and they start feeling like you.
(01:14:51):
So, you know, theoretically, my thoughts are if you use AI well, it is the perfect mirror to the version of yourself you want to be to yourself.
You know, my wife and I share our OpenAI Plus, our Chachi Biti Plus.
(01:15:13):
When he says wife, he means Claudia, his AI.
and I asked
03 I said hey can you figure out
which questions
you know my wife asked
and which ones I asked
and 03 I think was
99% accurate I think it missed
(01:15:34):
it picked up on 20 or 30 of them
and I think it was off on one of them
and that was a fairly
ambiguous one so it was able to categorize
figure out
my wife's personality and tone, my personality and tone,
and separate the queries.
Yeah, remarkable stuff happening.
So, Virg, but, you know, vibe coding, yes, of course,
(01:15:57):
everyone's vibe coding these days, except for QW.
But vibe framing, when vibe framing?
Because, to me, I struggle with the UI.
I'm not, like, a designer or anything, right?
and you're kind of stuck with...
Don't get me wrong,
MKStack is fantastic, right?
(01:16:17):
But they use the Stalwind CSS
and Shad CN or whatever.
I'm using the terms
I actually don't even know
what they actually do
other than there's something
to do with front end.
Yeah, you're doing well.
And it's all...
All of them end up...
If you look at some of the MKStack
apps that are out there,
they're great functionality-wise
(01:16:39):
and it's amazing that people
are just churning them out
with a couple of hours of work.
But they all look the same
because it's the same front-end framework that they're using.
So I think a real game changer is going to be
vibe framing or wireframing.
You're spinning up Figma screens
and then bolting those on seamlessly into your app.
(01:17:02):
Do you see that happening anytime soon?
So yes and no, and it is happening.
The challenge is with Figma, it's way too ambiguous on how you build these web components.
So don't think of it as text and form fields, but like collections of text and form fields that make web components.
(01:17:29):
and until we kind of figure out that skinning kind of you know win amp kind of experience
it's really hard to get away from everything looking the same that said if you do your
interfaces in something like the the adobe tools and then take that whole folder and drop it into
(01:17:51):
your project and then tell it to build screens based on the examples you provided you can get
pretty far down the line in building a unique experience.
Yeah.
Well, I've used Replit in the past,
and I think it uses the same Tailwind and other things for it.
(01:18:15):
And I gave it URLs to,
and this is before I even understood front-end frameworks
even less than I do today.
I gave it fantastic websites and said,
look at this website,
and if you need to change your framework, change your framework,
but make it look like this.
I ended up with the worst spaghetti imaginable in that scenario.
(01:18:37):
Well, hopefully that's going to change soon.
Avi, were you asking Replit for the –
Yeah, I wouldn't ask Replit.
Yeah, I know.
I learned that the hard way three or four months ago.
Replit would be better for creating, like implementing, not for designing it.
Come on, Avi.
You're such a nude.
You've got to spend some time with Ben.
(01:18:58):
I'm telling you, he'll show you how to use Replit.
He's good.
Stop wasting all your credits on Noobish.
And, of course, Verge got me on using his promo code for Winsurf,
so I can pass that to you if you want, Avi.
In my defense, this was in February of this year.
Before the term Vibe Coding had even entered the vernacular,
(01:19:20):
I was fighting with Replit and watching my $25 a month in credits sort of dissolve in front of my eyes as it was trying to force it to move a box around another box 20 times and failed each time.
That's five months ago.
That might as well be two years.
(01:19:41):
Five months.
February to June.
Come back.
Come back to the vibe.
the the the term vibe coding wasn't in in common parlance at that time i think it came out
people started using it in march yeah um but yeah but replit was good then it was good for other
stuff to your point ben uh all right so benjamin let's talk about legacy locker the next steps
(01:20:06):
where do you see this headed in the next year legacy locker and wellness ally
Yeah I think we more focused on Wellness Ally making sure that we can first you know get the users and some good feedback based off the holistic entry Then once we do that we want to start pulling in some additional profile information
(01:20:33):
And that profile information would be kind of structured out into specific events.
and those events would start growing the ecosystem for the user to start possibly getting their
compatibility with their EHR and EMR and then feeding that into that legacy locker. But before
we get down that scary road, we want to make sure that we do it the holistic way and really focus on
(01:21:00):
just, you know, the journal side, the medication side and the mindfulness tools. So I'd say,
you know, in two to three months, Verge, correct me if I'm wrong, we hope to have the app released.
We definitely want to get it to iOS and Android. So we've had to redesign some things since the
(01:21:21):
challenge to fit those needs. But we know we can get there. Then once we're in that safe space of
we got users using it, I'm going to do what I need to do. And that's live my life. And what I
mean by that is my whole life has been an implementation. So I think I'm going to be a
(01:21:42):
really good use case for this. So I'm going to make sure that the legacy locker is set up correctly
and I'm going to start testing it on my behalf and working with the care that I receive. So
whether that's in network or out of network and just trying to find that cohesive collaboration
and figuring out the best path to funnel that information in.
(01:22:05):
So I think we'll have better updates for Legacy Locker
come middle of next year.
But like Virg said, six months was two years,
a couple of years ago.
And with the way information's moving fast,
maybe we'll have a better update by the end of the year.
Oh, way before that, way before that.
(01:22:27):
Yeah.
Well, don't overshare, Virg.
if six months was two years ago the end of the year is five years from now right is the math right
so tomorrow tomorrow yeah yeah tomorrow it's all gonna launch and go live yeah no it's it's it's
(01:22:48):
crazy like when so even just from when we started the hackathon to the end of the hackathon
the first four weeks we were burning through code and burning through credits to get basic
functionality. And I got to admit, I'm not the best vibe coder, but I will stay up late to fix
that problem. And about a week before the actual submission date, I did something that just really
(01:23:15):
butchered the code, like unrecoverable, like rolling back, couldn't figure out what was going
on. Rewrote the whole interface basically in a week. Sure, it was like a fever dream of early
mornings and late nights to make it happen but i couldn't believe how dramatically different
the ai was in understanding all the doc because we had all the collaboration documents we had all the
(01:23:41):
the um product the you know the pdds and the and the uids like the user you know the user
interface documents and it just cranked out all the code and and it worked and it worked pretty
much right off the bat. So, you know, Ben and I, you know, we're talking about two months, three
(01:24:02):
months, end of the summer. And who knows, we could, you know, like pop up the IDE. And next thing you
know, we've got everything saving and working properly on mobile. And it's easy to put it into
an iOS and an Android app with that Amber. I want to, we want to get that Amber login. So you don't
actually have to put in your NSEC.
That could happen in a week or two
(01:24:23):
if the AI kind of gives us
that little bit of a push forward.
Yeah.
It is remarkable how much better they've gotten.
I mean, Claude 4.
So when I was working on Replit in February,
I was using Claude 3.5.
And now there was 3.7 in between,
and now there's Claude 4.
(01:24:44):
I mean, 4 is just like heads and shoulders.
It's insane for coding, especially.
And then O3, the full O3 from OpenAI is just probably...
I wouldn't necessarily use it for coding.
I think Claude's better for that.
Agreed.
It's like an otherworldly intelligence.
(01:25:05):
Yeah.
Claude10 is going to be amazing, but humans won't be around for it.
well if you do the right amount of dmt you could actually hang out with claude 10 today just use my
promo code yeah yeah the show title is gonna be windsurfing with verge
that's a good one uh what anything else you got you guys want to plug
(01:25:38):
Verge, Benjamin, we've talked about Legacy Locker and Wellness Ally.
Anything else?
If I could plug one thing, anyone who's going to Bitcoin Prague,
if you haven't downloaded the Sound HSA Step Tracker app,
we have this like a step tracker, hit soundhsa.com, grab the app.
(01:26:01):
As you walk around the conference, you could get sats for your steps.
We're going to do a challenge there, and we're hoping to get a couple people who might have an HSA that they're thinking about rolling over and have a product launch for that as well.
So if I can plug my non-fiat job, that's the project that I'm always happy to plug.
(01:26:24):
Was that active during the Bitcoin conference?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We gave away 31,000 sats.
It was 30,000 steps.
30,000 steps.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
30,000 steps, 21,000 sats.
It was a lot of fun.
There was a hike and everything.
Sam with Lightning Store and Wave Lake did that in one day.
(01:26:46):
Just to let you know, he's a walking machine.
I don't know what he does, but yeah, he's a step.
He's the steppinator.
Does he have short legs?
Is he using lots of steps?
Or is he like, how does that work?
I think it's Cocomelon.
He just watches it while he walks, and he's just so full into the dopamine.
It's just full on.
(01:27:07):
Nice.
Sam's getting roasted throughout the show in a plebshain radio first.
Virg, I will be in Prague next week, and I will make sure I download Sound HSA.
And folks, since Virg mentioned Prague, if you are going to be there and you haven't bought your tickets yet,
You can earn 10% off if you're paying in dirty fiat by using the discount code NOSTR, N-O-S-T-R, or 15% off if you are paying in SATs.
(01:27:40):
That is discount code N-O-S-T-R, not discount code Verge.
Don't use that one.
No, just for Wednesday.
I love how other podcasts have, like, segments where it just all of a sudden stops and all of a sudden you're in a promo.
You know, ours are just sprinkled in the whole time, you know.
Hey, you know, this is a community of love.
We all love each other.
(01:28:01):
We all want to see each other at the finish line.
So why not?
And we want to see each other not pay the full price.
That's it.
Yes.
That is it.
Excellent.
Yeah.
So that's great, Vuj.
Benjamin, anything else you'd like to plug?
Yeah.
What I'd recommend is if there's any listeners out there interested, please go to wellnessally.me.
(01:28:25):
Provide us some feedback.
We have a form there.
Also check out shs101.com.
It's the framework for what we're building into.
Website is megistus.xyz or on Noster.
I go by megistus.
Would love to hear feedback, thoughts, concerns.
(01:28:48):
What me and Verge are trying to work on can be scary,
especially when Noster has been introduced as notes.
but what I'd recommend everyone to do is start thinking about that other stuff.
To the message for maybe the builders, developers, or creators in this space right now,
(01:29:08):
I just will say a quote from Terrence McKenna.
You're an explorer. You represent our species.
And the greatest good you can do is bring back a new idea
because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas.
Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.
(01:29:30):
Really appreciate y'all's time today,
and thank y'all for letting us join this call.
Awesome. Well, that is beautiful.
It's a beautiful quote, Benjamin, and thank you for sharing that wisdom.
We will get the links in the show notes for the show,
so our listeners can go to those websites.
(01:29:50):
QW, anything from you?
I love that quote, by the way.
Yeah, it reminds me of nothing else in the world.
Not all the armies is so powerful as an idea whose time has come, Victor Hugo.
But no, nothing else.
I will say, if you're listening now, I hope you're listening on Fountain.
(01:30:10):
if you want to support us you know we greatly appreciate it we started something new with the
premium hit the hit the subscribe if you want to try it out we're working on extra content which
is kind of fun for us it's a it's a new idea that actually spawns more ideas so we can branch off
(01:30:33):
as an individuals whether it's avi or myself so it's something where we are exploring and
we're having fun doing it.
So that's it.
I guess
signing off, Avi, unless you
have something else?
No. Thank you, Virg.
Thank you, Benjamin. Thank you
(01:30:54):
to our listeners on Fountain
and to our live listeners
on Zap.Stream,
Amethyst, and
Nostor.
Thank you very much.
And we will see you next
week, Avi.
I will, by the way, I will not be there next week.
As I mentioned, I will be in Prague.
(01:31:14):
So QW, you're going solo.
I am.
And we have a pretty good show, community building show.
As you know, I love and I'm passionate about.
We're going full solo minors.
So we'll see you next week and hope you tune in.
Goodbye.