

The Swyx Mixtape
Swyx
swyx's personal picks pod.
Weekdays: the best audio clips from podcasts I listen to, in 10 minutes or less!
Fridays: Music picks!
Weekends: long form talks and conversations!
This is a passion project; never any ads, 100% just recs from me to people who like the stuff I like.
Share and give feedback: tag @swyx on Twitter or email audio questions to swyx @ swyx.io
Weekdays: the best audio clips from podcasts I listen to, in 10 minutes or less!
Fridays: Music picks!
Weekends: long form talks and conversations!
This is a passion project; never any ads, 100% just recs from me to people who like the stuff I like.
Share and give feedback: tag @swyx on Twitter or email audio questions to swyx @ swyx.io
Episodes
Mentioned books

May 21, 2022 • 33min
[Music Friday] Harry Mack Freestyles
(listen with good bassy headphones)Marcus Veltri intro (first, second, last clip) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_JrcAOfAp400:00 cold open01:49 Yeti, Pickle, Guitar29:30 Guitar, Star Wars, Black Hole"You make beats?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNC68gQluSE05:01 rhyming platypus, cleanser, eternal, onomatopoeiaMiami Guerrila Beats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6yoJTup3nY10:58 miami beachBehind the Beats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqTMbYvc57g13:41 practiceStevie Knight interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwn1UsNNmZE17:37 top 5 influencesGod tier doubletime https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js2Q8tJLgig26:30 Harry potter, Octopus, JacketFirst Clipright on time h mac with the freestylerhyme i be coming through to get thatshinewhen i start i'ma blow your mind yeahand i'm going over headskinda like a bald spot yeah as soon as icome in with the lyricshey imma make your jaw drop let's moveimma make his own improve every nightlike it to the grove yeahevery time i show what i'm about when ibe rapping they cover their mouthyeah i'm tearing rappers to pieces icome in hot and they couldn't believe itheyi make them back down you got rat goodsin your background i can see those ikick free flows i come off top when iripyeah every mac every time around manpeople around the planet they can't evenget a grip hold up they love the vibethat i provide all at once everybodylook to the sideyeah imma make his figures go boomwhat's going on someone coming in theroomyeah h man i'm speaking with a purevoice please said the girl in thesweater that is turquoise harry metcoming off the tip of the mantle whenthey come to bars man they know i'messential mad effect i'll be the onethey acknowledge peace to the girl withthe black finger nail polish imma solveit any time i was happy every man youknow they'd be loving what i'm rappingyeahyou know what i'm all about look to theside how does he call it outyeah imma do it like none other yeahi've been calling out the nail polishcolor hey harry mack i be leaving tracksmother ayeand you know i put them under pressureboys that they couldn't even measure allup in the background you got the dresserdrawers i give y'all more i checked herout territoryi explore when i spit it yo it's hard torecordevery time that i beat rapping they cansee we really acting upi'm spitting with the passion i got allmy enemies backing up let's goSecond Clip - Yeti, Pickle, Guitaryeah yeah yeah hey rappers ain't readycoming through shop like machete y'allknow my lyrics is deadly my name isharry compare me to the yetiyeah whenever i'm rapping y'all knowthey're gonna go ham hey scaring y'alllike the abominable snowmani'm coming through and y'all know mylyrics quite pure scary kinda like thehairy eddy with the white furhey yo i'm doing me i hope youunderstand it they popped up in the tentwe were like damn are y'all campingit was like yeah we chilling in thebackyard never thought you'd be thepiano player in rap starbut here we are coming through do itswift yeah find another rapper who coulddo it like thisoff the handle forever we coming throughso easily and back when i first startedtold you ain't no one believing me butnow i make it happen y'all my style isnot for rant kid kinda like yoursituation thisis intense hmac break it down y'allbetter feel mei never hold it down cause i'mdelivering the real meyeah i come with the sick flow a lot ofthem don't even get those but when theybecoming a pringle major flavor i'm likea picklei'm here to make it happen i'm thedopest with the bars yeahflavor like a pickle when you open inthe jar yeah i keep it real and mythoughts are concealed word to picklescause i'm about to give y'all the dealyou feel me i break it down real swiftjust like this get your highlike a spliff i'm really bout to driftmoving through it when i'm on it i'll bedelivering bars hey yomarcus on the chords but he ain'tplaying guitar yeahcheck how we do this man we plucking thestrings yeah for me it really isn'tnothing to sayhey yo i come right off the top when ibe flexing i get strongerwe popped up and she was like hold upare y'all songersi'mma break it down one time h may becoming through with that astoundingrhymeyeah hey yo y'all know i get loose wheni create rhymes peace to both of y'alland the homie up on facetimeThird Clip - Platypus, Cleanser, Eternalyeah coming off the top and i'm spittingthat heat he's like you gotta rhyme overone of my beasts i'm like no doubt manwe bout to get loose i was like oh youmake beats tell me you produce he waslike yeah you know i got the fire i needthree words just to get inspired hmaci'm about to keep it true he was likenah wait a minute i'mma rap for you uhwe about to flip it to my birth so muchpassion my heart really hurts hmag y'allknow that i'll really be a boss as soonas the beat drops i'll be fully goingofffrom the heart imma gladly push i'm ananimal platypus hmeg when i rhyme and ireally get ill like a platypus mouthi'll be getting to the billsget into the money uh i live with everyday and be sunny when it comes to lyricsman i've never been a dummy uh hmacreally about to kill this [ __ ] i'm aboutto make you feel the [ __ ] i'm real withthis whenever i be on it man i'm aboutto leave a rhyme on censored uh y'allknow whenever i be all up on the scenekeep it clean like i came through withthe cleanser yeah hmac man i get it doneuh how to show where i spit it from yeahand my lyrics be the mean type spray abit of cleanser then hit you with ascreen wipe what i mean to say is theytalking i live it hit the screen rightcause i'm always coming through vividhmac with the hd cam whenever i becoming off the top i'm bout to slam yeahy'all know i'm bout to spit it clean andmy whole demeanor is something like soapback in the game just to fill him upwith hope preaching on the microphonesomething like the pope yeah y'all knowi'd be the illest freer first word hethrew was onomatopoeia i was like i'dlove to do it for you boy but theproblem is oh i did that one before hman you know i'm really about to slamhard on mine up here cause my flow boombam how you spend i've been comingthrough and making noise hma rocking forthe girls and the boys and the wholeentire team and the whole entire squadwhen it comes to kicking livers peopleknow that i'm a god yeah they're likehold on wait a minute cause they see me...

May 20, 2022 • 10min
Solana from First Principles [Raj Gokal]
Listen to Analyse Asia: https://www.analyse.asia/solana-with-raj-gokal/ (15mins in)

May 18, 2022 • 11min
Backwards Causation with Airdrops [Haseeb Qureshi]
Listen to Bankless: https://sites.libsyn.com/247424/how-to-become-a-vc-with-haseeb-qureshi-layer-zero (55mins)

May 18, 2022 • 11min
What is Web3? [Alex Danco] (EXPLICIT)
Listen to Infinite Loops: https://www.infiniteloopspodcast.com/alex-danco-what-is-web-30-all-about-ep95/ (37mins in)TranscriptAlex Danco:Yeah. So one of the cool things is that, I can say this from a vantage point at Shopify, is that all of this isfairly obvious to us and it's not because we're smart people, it's because when your whole life is workingwith merchants, it's like, these are merchants whose job is not terribly dissimilar from musicians. It'screate meaning, create community, create a reason to come back and talk to each other, and thereforeproducts get sold because of that underlying meeting. It's like, no, shit, that's what this is for. This iswhat we already were doing, this isn't new, this is kind of like it just makes a lot of sense.Jim O'Shaughnessy:Right. And it's repackaged and it gives the tool to greater extend the reach. But yes, I agree with you.Alex Danco:So, hey, we should NFT this conversation and sell it, and then if you buy this NFT, you'll become the onlyperson who gets to understand what NFTs are for. You have the exclusive rights to it, everybody elsegets to be wrong.Jim O'Shaughnessy:Everyone else is wrong.Alex Danco:Unless somebody right clicks and saves the audio file of our podcast, in which case they have stolen itfrom you.Jim O'Shaughnessy:Yes. And you're fucked.Alex Danco:Good luck to you. Sorry for your loss. Sorry, you got hacked.Jim O'Shaughnessy:Well, this leads into Web3, because I was very eager to hear you do a bit on Web3, it's like so much stuffis being written, talked about, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What are your thoughts?Alex Danco:I mean, to some degree, I think it's like being able to draw a precise box around Web3 is a little sillybecause it's like there's just the web and it's all these cool tools. And certainly at Shopify, our job, I meanon the blockchain team and also generally is not to give merchants the best of Web3, as opposed toWeb2, our job is to give them good things that help them.Jim O'Shaughnessy:Exactly.Alex Danco:And it's like if you want to draw a box around this bunch of stuff that's Web3, fine. However, in anattempt to not be sarcastic and actually answer your question correctly, here is I think a good way tothink about what Web3 is. So if you go back to this whole idea of, okay, there are these things calledblockchains, what is the point to them? What do they do? Why do we care about them? It's like, okay,what is the blockchain? A blockchain is a new kind of network computer that is designed around a reallyinteresting set of constraints.And the constraints are very expensive and but they do something really interesting, which isthey allow for a bunch of people to create this shared state that everybody can agree on the inputs andeverybody could agree on the rules. And it's very, very constrained in how you're able to modify thisstate, but everybody can agree on what has been done. And different blockchains have different rules,the rules of Bitcoin are different from the rules of Ethereum or different from the rules of flowblockchain or polygon, any of those things. But ultimately you create this shared bit of state that cangrow in ways that are very, very constrained, but are highly observable and agreed upon.So what is the point of that? Who the fuck cares, what is this for? Well, what's interesting aboutthis is that this creates this new format for something that you can call code that can makecommitments. What does that mean? Well, it means that you can submit some code to this that willrun, and once it's running, you can actually trust that it will run in a fairly deterministic way,independent of any of the actors involved. So long as you trust that Ethereum will exist, then you canexpect that this smart contract will behave in a certain way. It's code that can make commitments, that'sneat. Well, what's the point of that?Well, what's really interesting about code that can make commitments is that it makes possiblea new setting for running certain kinds of applications. Well, what are those certain kinds ofapplications? It's like, well, it's a new setting for whether, it's like developers to go create little instancesof rules that will follow those codes that can make commitments. And that might have some value topeople, both because of the inherent work that they do, but also because of the shared state that theydo it in. Again, going back to this, well, there's a shared meaning and that has some interesting value,and if you're also participating in this, then that's really cool.And I'm sort of building and building there, but what ultimately that makes possible, and reallyit's like it took us the better part of a decade to actually really settle on this as the atomic unit of what'sthe point of this is wallets. We had all these false starts with crypto about how regular people couldthink about what the atomic unit of it was. Like, is the atomic unit the coins? It's like, well, yes, but thenlargely what you think of what you're doing is speculating. Is the atomic unit like network and ICOs as away of bootstrapping a certain thing? It's like, oh, maybe, if what you think of what you're trying to do isvarious kinds of incentive design and whatever.But ultimately now I think we're sort of at this point that largely actually mimics the beginning ofthe internet and the web where it's like there was 10 years of web before the web browser where it wasvery hard to actually do anything with it. And then the browser came along, it was like, ah, okay, now Ican actually do stuff. Same thing with wallets, I mean, wallets have existed since the beginning ofblockchain. It's literally just like an address and then a key that you sign with to show you're you, but it'slike it wasn't until I want to say Metamask is the first sort of modern wallet that let you actually dothings.And now these modern wallets, like Rainbow that are amazing where you're like, "Oh my God, Iget it." The point of this is for me to be able to say, "Hey, this is a way for me to do informed consent forthings where you know it's me consenting because of the blockchain in the back being you know it's me,and you know it's informed because of what is basically called, if you ever interacted with this, it's like,sign this message. Sign this message to inform consent to X. And it can only be you because it gets all goback to, so the point of the blockchain is so that why wallets can do informed consenting to things andthe wallets can do informed consent that has meaning because of the shared state that's in theblockchain back.So pause for a second. Now what on earth is that good for, if again, this is only useful in thissuper slow, clunky Web3 environment that doesn't actually have any real work it's doing yet? It's like,well, now you can go back and you can say, "Okay, well now we can think about this web space full ofweb apps and full of databases and applications and abstractions about what's in those databases andAPIs through which you can access them and then applications that build on top of them and then userswho use this applications. And it's like, all of that web stuff can still exist, just now bookended with thesetwo very strong concepts of the wallet and informed consent and removable informed consent.I can take it with me, I can remove my consent from somewhere and add it to somewhere else.This is all the idea of how Unfollow is the most important button on Twitter? Remove Wallet is the mostimportant button in Web3, it's like you can just leave and go somewhere else. But again, it's like you ...

May 17, 2022 • 15min
The Best Explanation of the Terra/Luna Collapse [Jonathan Wu]
Listen to Unchained: https://unchainedpodcast.com/did-someone-deliberately-attack-terra-luna-to-kick-off-a-death-spiral/ (15mins in)My reflections: https://www.swyx.io/risk-conservation

May 14, 2022 • 1h 10min
[Weekend Drop] Crossing the Chasm, with Richard Feldman
Richard is one of my fave speakers in software, particular in the Elm and language sphere of things. Check out Why Isn't Functional Programming The Norm? and Roc, the new language he's working on!Listen to Software Unscripted: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/software-unscripted/crossing-the-chasm-1-dDJwWER37/

May 14, 2022 • 11min
[Music Friday] Musicians on Omegle - Frank Tedesco, Rob Landes, Marcus Veltri
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VSDVQFQNWkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6jp-e592Twhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1dfP_Xbe3Q

May 13, 2022 • 8min
The Story of Paw Patrol [Ronnen Harary]
Listen to HIBT: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/17/1065352806/spin-master-paw-patrol-ronnen-harary (55mins in)

May 12, 2022 • 14min
The Story of Warp [Zach Lloyd]
Listen to the Changelog: https://changelog.com/podcast/487 (12mins)Series A: https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/05/warp-raises-23m-to-build-a-better-terminal/HN reaction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30921231

May 11, 2022 • 15min
The Story of Mailgun [Ev Kontsevoy]
Listen to Software Defined Talk: https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/346 (12mins in)https://techcrunch.com/2012/08/28/rackspace-acquires-y-combinator-startup-mailgun-an-api-that-abstracts-creating-email-inboxes-for-apps-and-web-sites/https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/30/sinch-acquires-pathwire-the-company-behind-mailgun-and-mailjet-for-1-9b-to-add-email-into-its-api-based-communications-platform/Ev went on to start Teleport, which just announced their Series C: https://goteleport.com/blog/series-c/


