The PHPocalypse

Speaker 1

You're listening to Mostly Technical, which is brought to you by Leirjobs, the official Laravel job board, and Solo, the workspace for your agents and dev stack. And now, Ian and Aaron.

Speaker 2

Hello.

Aaron Francis

Hello, Brewers man. Tell us what the hell is-

Speaker 2

Brewers

Aaron Francis

... what the hell's going on over there today?

Speaker 2

Woo! Brewers.

Aaron Francis

Uh, it's unbelievable.

Speaker 2

Woo! I went to the World Series.

Aaron Francis

You did.

Speaker 2

The Milwaukee Brewers were playing in the, in the World Series, my son's favorite team, who I have adopted as my favorite team, and, uh, it was my 50th birthday weekend.

Aaron Francis

Oh, man, happy birthday.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Thank you. I know-

Aaron Francis

Listen, I don't wanna hear all about... Sorry. I wanna hear all about baseball. But before we do-

Speaker 2

Got it

Aaron Francis

... tell us about something else.

Speaker 2

No! I got so excited about the Brewers, I forgot our obligations. Thank you for making this Brewers trip possible- ... to SVIX. In the age where code is cheap, you might be tempted to build webhooks in-house. SVIX has solved all the hard problems about scaling webhooks, so you can avoid triaging failed deliveries and incrementally building features.

Check them out at svix.com/mt. That's S-V-I-X/mt. And to Mailerroo, mailerroo.com, one platform to send, receive, and test emails with great deliverability, EU hosting, and pricing that doesn't punish you for growing. Check them out at mailerroo.com.

Link in the show notes as well. Um, yeah, so okay. I went to the Brewers. I went to the World Series.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Lifelong dream.

Aaron Francis

My favorite part is over. I wanted to hear the pre-roll. That was my favorite part.

Speaker 2

We gotta get you-

Aaron Francis

So tell me-

Speaker 2

... into a sports ball guy. How are you... You don't like movies, and you don't like sports ball? Come on, man. Come on.

Aaron Francis

I like movies.

Speaker 2

Give me something.

Aaron Francis

I like movies.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

I just... I haven't seen as many as you have.

Speaker 2

Mm.

Aaron Francis

I don't like baseball. Um, I like watching soccer, playing soccer.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

But I don't, I don't watch... I don't, I can't follow a European team 'cause of life.

Speaker 2

Mm.

Aaron Francis

So I end up watching nothing. So-

Speaker 2

Okay. There are American teams. I don't know if you're aware of that.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, but they suck.

Speaker 2

Like watching the Minor League Baseball games?

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

No disrespect to the... Actually, a little bit of disrespect to the MLS. They, they kinda suck.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So tell me, I, I will give you the floor. Keep it tight for for me.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Uh, the Brewers. So what are we-

Speaker 2

Brewers

Aaron Francis

... are we up 2-0? Am I right? Are we up 2-0?

Speaker 2

2-0 in the World Series.

Aaron Francis

That's awesome. Congratulations.

Speaker 2

Amazing. Uh, yeah, I mean, there's a couple... There's a AI angle to this. So-

Aaron Francis

Oh, perfect

Speaker 2

... yeah, leading up to the World Series, right, I was like, we got, we have super intelligence, as they say.

Aaron Francis

Of course.

Speaker 2

We have artificial intelligence.

Aaron Francis

SI.

Speaker 2

Right? So what's this gonna cost me, you know? 'Cause I told my son several years ago, "If they ever make the World Series, we're going to the World Series," right? So I'm like, okay. They, they're, they're winning. They're winning playoff games. There's a whole side quest where we were supposed to have a birthday party for me, and it was gonna be, like, on my birthday, but then I was like, "Oh, the World Series is there, and if we, if, if they make it, okay, so we shouldn't do it then." So we did it the week after on Sunday, but then we, we couldn't do that 'cause my daughter had a thing.

Then we tried to make it on Halloween, but nobody could come 'cause it's Halloween, and I have kids, and the kids are doing stuff. So right now I'm not having any birthday party. This is my birthday party.

Aaron Francis

Oh, this is your birthday party.

Speaker 2

So it-

Aaron Francis

Happy birthday, Ian

Speaker 2

... which is fine. Yeah, it's fine. But, like, so there's already been commotion. I'm like, all right, what's this gonna cost me, right? I'm on the hook. So I check this out with AI. I'm like, in historically, what is the prices? What do these go for, right? So I try to figure that out. It's like, okay, 1,000 bucks a ticket. All right. And that's, like, to kinda get in. You want a better ticket, it's gonna be, like, 1,500 bucks.

Fine. But no, everybody loves the Brewers, Aaron. Everybody loves the Brewers. And these tickets end up going for twice their historical values.

Aaron Francis

Ooh.

Speaker 2

Nobody even's really sure why, honestly. But, um, the AI told me, "Oh, it gets cheaper as it gets closer to the game." I kept waiting. I kept waiting. They're not getting any cheaper.

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 2

And I was like, "I don't wanna have a shitty option seat."

Aaron Francis

I feel like I coulda told you that one, but yeah.

Speaker 2

No, this is supposed to get cheaper as it gets closer. So anyway, the AI lied to me and/or something was different, which is why.

Aaron Francis

For the first time probably.

Speaker 2

Yeah, probably. So-

Aaron Francis

Don't look at any of your code, but maybe for the first time it's lied to you.

Speaker 2

So anyway, I spent a pretty penny on two games of tickets. But I'm talking about storybook, just, like, magical princess level, unbelievable how this whole trip went. Flew to Chicago, then drove to Milwaukee 'cause a lot more flights to Chicago. Just both games were great.

I won't go into all the details for you 'cause I know you're not that interested.

Aaron Francis

Thank you.

Speaker 2

But both games were close, exciting games that the Brewers won. Saturday was my actual birthday. My favorite player, Sal Frelick. Sal Frelick, the show... I don't see Sal's name here.

Aaron Francis

You guys gotta catch this one on video. This is a video-worthy one.

Speaker 2

Sal Frelick hits a game-tying home run on my birthday. He did it for me.

Aaron Francis

Pretty cool. Pretty cool.

Speaker 2

And this is a guy who had, like, two home runs all year. He's not a home run guy. He hits a game-tying home run in the World Series on my birthday. So that was amazing. I was freaking out. My son's freaking out. It's great. And then they come back to win the game. So that's the trip, but it was an amazing trip. Lots of fun.

Aaron Francis

So it is, it has been well established-

Speaker 2

Yes

Aaron Francis

... that I don't care about baseball.

Speaker 2

That's it.

Aaron Francis

However, I'm not one of these, "You shouldn't care about baseball"- ... or, "You shouldn't care about sports," people.

Speaker 2

Mm, that's good.

Aaron Francis

I think this sounds amazing.

Speaker 2

Yes.

Aaron Francis

This sounds like a perfect trip Sounds like a great father-son experience-

Speaker 2

Super father-son

Aaron Francis

... a wonderful memory.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

And listen, when I'm, when the World Cup comes around every four years, I get super emotionally invested.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

It's a blast. It's a freaking blast. So I'm very happy. Thank you for sparing me the baseball details.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Um, but I'm very happy that the trip was so great and that your team is winning. So what's next?

Speaker 2

Yes.

Aaron Francis

They're back home or-

Speaker 2

No. So they are... They were home-

Aaron Francis

Those, those two were home

Speaker 2

... so we went to Milwaukee.

Aaron Francis

Okay.

Speaker 2

Yeah. We saw them, and we wanted to see them in Milwaukee, get the home energy, you know?

Aaron Francis

Got it.

Speaker 2

Now, the ticket prices in Tampa Bay, which they're playing the Tampa Bay Rays-

Aaron Francis

Okay

Speaker 2

... are literally one quarter the price or one fifth the price even of what the tickets were in Milwaukee.

Aaron Francis

Sounds like we're going again.

Speaker 2

So I'm tempted to go again, but I do have another trip this week.

Aaron Francis

Sounds like we're going again.

Speaker 2

My son has college, so whatever. We're probably not going again-

Aaron Francis

Listen

Speaker 2

... but I want to.

Aaron Francis

Your son's never gonna be 19 and the Brewers are in the World Series-

Speaker 2

I know

Aaron Francis

... ever, ever-

Speaker 2

I know

Aaron Francis

... ever again.

Speaker 2

Jamie, do you hear this? Aaron says we have to go.

Aaron Francis

I'm sorry, Jamie. I'm normally on Team Jamie against... You and I united against Ian.

Speaker 2

No.

Aaron Francis

However, I think this may call for... This is a special situation.

Speaker 2

Wow.

Aaron Francis

I know.

Speaker 2

I wasn't expecting that.

Aaron Francis

I know.

Speaker 2

Look at this. So-

Aaron Francis

Listen, if it's one fifth, they're up 2-0. Your son's 19. This is a-

Speaker 2

He's 20

Aaron Francis

... father-son thing.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

He's 20. It's never gonna happen again.

Speaker 2

Yep.

Aaron Francis

I, I, I don't know. I think he, I think you just let her rip, baby.

Speaker 2

Well, if they win tonight, maybe we pop down for game four. I'm supposed to be in Philadelphia tomorrow, though.

Aaron Francis

Oh, so they play... They already play tonight.

Speaker 2

They play tonight, yeah, so they were off yesterday.

Aaron Francis

Wow, they do these things quick.

Speaker 2

Yeah. They don't mess around. It's not like, uh, some of the other sports where there's, yeah, space between. They're like, they're going, so-

Aaron Francis

So if they win, if they win tonight, would they play in, whatever you said, Miami, Tampa Bay-

Speaker 2

Tampa Bay

Aaron Francis

... game four-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... where they could potentially win the whole thing?

Speaker 2

Yes. Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

You have to go to that.

Speaker 2

Oh my gosh, look at this guy.

Aaron Francis

If they could potentially win and the... Yeah, all right. It's, it is sealed.

Speaker 2

Oh, wow. I wasn't expecting this.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

So I don't know. It's honestly probably not happening, but I do like where your energy's going, and I, I do tend to agree with you. So I don't know. But anyway, I do think it's gonna be... So in Milwaukee, there was literally n- no Tampa fans.

Aaron Francis

Cool.

Speaker 2

There was one section with the families, and that was it. Um, but I think it, I think it's gonna be different in Tampa Bay.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Uh, I think it's gonna be tons of Brewers fans there, so it'll be a little bit home game.

Aaron Francis

I don't know a lot, but I think it'll be a little bit different in, in Tampa Bay.

Speaker 2

Yeah, Tampa Bay, they're... I don't know. But it's kinda fun. This is like two small market teams. Milwaukee is the smallest market in all of baseball, and they spend like the 19th amount most money. Um, Tampa Bay is a bigger market, like by population, but does spend even less than Milwaukee on the team.

Aaron Francis

That's, that's why the tickets were so expensive because people know this might not happen again for a long time.

Speaker 2

I think there is an aspect of that, yes.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2

Like every year it's like Yankees, Dodgers, Houston, like these big market teams, Boston, whatever. So, um, I do think there is an element of that. And like, they're also just like a different... They're a fun style. Their games are almost always close and stuff, so I think there's a lot of energy just around them. But, uh, so that's the baseball trip, but it was super, yeah, incredible memory.

Aaron Francis

Good.

Speaker 2

Top tier memory. Um, and yeah, had some good food. All that stuff was, was good too. But yeah, great time was had. Sal Frielich, home run on Wednesday.

Aaron Francis

Way to go, Sal. Way to go, Sal.

Speaker 2

Way to go, Sal. He did it for me. Um, so yeah, great time. And-

Aaron Francis

All right, enough, mostly baseball

Speaker 2

... enough baseball. What else we got going on? You have a bunch of stuff going on.

Aaron Francis

We have, we have, we have a lot of stuff. Where do you wanna go next?

Speaker 2

Um, oh, I don't know. Should we do PHP Apocalypse or should we do, uh, your talk? Why don't we do your talk?

Aaron Francis

Let's, let's roll it all in together-

Speaker 2

Okay

Aaron Francis

... 'cause it kinda goes, it kinda goes together.

Speaker 2

All right. Okay.

Aaron Francis

Um, and thank you for noticing this is a new hat, which is relevant.

Speaker 2

Really?

Aaron Francis

It is, uh, it is my favorite type of new thing, which is an exact replica of the old thing.

Speaker 2

Yeah. I'm pretty sure I've seen you wear this hat. All right.

Aaron Francis

So part of this trip, we went to-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... the Excel offices, uh-

Speaker 2

Okay

Aaron Francis

... for the board meeting, and after the board meeting was over, like a proper, you know, grown-up, like-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... very serious businessman, I was talking to the VC, and I was like, "Hey, dude, you got any more of those hats back there?"

Speaker 2

You have to build a swag situation-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... in this many million, billion dollar, uh, organization.

Aaron Francis

I know that, I know that you very publicly invested $57 million into Laravel, and that's awesome, but do you have any more hats?

Speaker 2

Right. That's what you need.

Aaron Francis

'Cause I want another hat.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So I told Jennifer I have a new dress hat. So I still have my old one-

Speaker 2

Oh, okay

Aaron Francis

... that I can wear, you know, out and about, and this is my-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... this is my dress hat, which she just-

Speaker 2

It's been demoted

Aaron Francis

... totally rolled her eyes at.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So big trip last week.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Um, went to San Francisco.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Tuesday, um, Tuesday we had an event at the Excel offices.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

Uh, it was a founders panel, and it was Taylor, Sam Lambert of PlanetScale, and Michael Greenwich of Work OS. Um-

Speaker 2

Okay

Aaron Francis

... so we had about 100 people show up. Uh, did the whole mix and mingle thing, and then I hosted the panel, which was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2

Oh, that's fun.

Aaron Francis

So I got to emcee the panel. Um, so this trip was a little bit stressful, if I'm being honest.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

Because-

Speaker 2

You were gone a long time.

Aaron Francis

I was-

Speaker 2

I wasn't expecting you to be gone so long like that

Aaron Francis

... I was there a long time.

Speaker 2

Yeah, all right.

Aaron Francis

So Tuesday night was the panel. Wednesday was Resend Forward, where I gave a talk.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

And then Thursday was the board meeting.

Speaker 2

Ah.

Aaron Francis

And then accidentally on top of all of that was the PHP Apocalypse.

Speaker 2

Right.

Aaron Francis

So it was, it was a little bit stressful. I didn't sleep-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... very much. Um-

Speaker 2

Oh my goodness

Aaron Francis

... so not ideal. The founders panel was awesome.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Super great. Um-

Speaker 2

Is, is PlanetScale an Excel thing or no?

Aaron Francis

I don't know if Excel is in them or not.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

That's a good question.

Speaker 2

I wasn't sure. Uh, 'cause he's, he's at their stuff. I mean, we saw him there the other time with you.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 2

He's in the Excel offices hanging out, so I didn't know-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... if he was-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... part of the family.

Aaron Francis

He's, he's a man about town. Um-

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So that was super fun. I got to see my old boss, Holly. I got to see Ben Dicken, who's the dev ed over there. Um, got to see a lot of PlanetScale people. Um-

Speaker 2

Was this in the same space we were in, like the-

Aaron Francis

It was, yep

Speaker 2

... loft kind of thing?

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 2

Nice.

Aaron Francis

So this was up in the Excel penthouse, which was super fun.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Um, and it went, it went great. The panel was very talkative. I told them beforehand, "Guys, we are not gonna run down you, like answer A, B, C. Great. Next question. Answer A-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... B, C." 'Cause that is just the most boring-

Speaker 2

That's the worst

Aaron Francis

... thing in the world.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So I told them ahead of time, "Feel free to talk over each other, ask each other questions, interject."

Speaker 2

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Like, this is supposed to be interactive, not just depressing. And they did. They abided, and it was awesome.

Speaker 2

Was, uh, was PHP Apocalypse on the menu at that point, or I forget? The-

Aaron Francis

I believe it was, yes.

Speaker 2

I think it was. We were aware of it-

Aaron Francis

We were aware

Speaker 2

... coming anyway, right? Okay. Got it.

Aaron Francis

'Cause people kept asking, like, "Hey, what's going on? Are you guys-

Speaker 2

Got it

Aaron Francis

... are you guys freaking out?" Um- And I remember before everyone showed up, we were all sitting around the big board table up there, just the Laravel team talking about like, "All right, what's our plan? What are we gonna do?" You know, infrastructure was everybody was already online making plans and stuff. So that whole-

Speaker 2

Right

Aaron Francis

... thing was a nightmare. Um-

Speaker 2

Yep.

Aaron Francis

Wednesday, you know-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... I stay up very late Tuesday night just, like, hanging out in Slack, making sure that any messages that need to go out to the public are going out.

Speaker 2

Yep.

Aaron Francis

You know, telling, telling employees kind of what not to talk about. Like, "Don't, don't say this kind of stuff online right now. Let's just wait for it to pass." So then Wednesday morning, I wake up, uh, continue to, to Slack quite a bit, and then I'm like, "I got a talk. I, I have a talk I'm supposed to give." Um, and you know-

Speaker 2

And this isn't one you've given before, right?

Aaron Francis

This is not one I've given be-

Speaker 2

This is a new one

Aaron Francis

... this was brand new.

Speaker 2

Okay. Yeah, so you c- it's not just in the pocket, like.

Aaron Francis

No. And so the way that I write talks typically is think about it for, like, two or three months, and then write it down.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Uh, like, maybe a couple of days beforehand. And so that's what I did this time. And I didn't, I didn't have the same time to practice it, like, 10 times like I normally do.

Speaker 2

Right.

Aaron Francis

But, you know, I'd been thinking about it for a long time. It's all kind of right down the middle for me, so I wasn't-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... super worried. But I did practice-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... it once before I went out, you know, before I got in the Uber.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So I practiced it one time.

Speaker 2

Yeah. And once in the Uber.

Aaron Francis

Before I got in the Uber.

Speaker 2

And once before the Uber.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Um, and, you know, I had, I had all these beautiful slides, so I was, I was prepped, but I could've... I would've felt a little more secure if I had practiced it 10 times.

Speaker 2

Right.

Aaron Francis

But it, it's okay. It turned out great.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Um, I did-

Speaker 2

I watched it. I feel like it was fairly polished. Like-

Aaron Francis

It was fairly polished

Speaker 2

... maybe not at your, like, top tier when you-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 2

... totally got locked in. But it was not like, oh, this guy just wandered on stage-

Aaron Francis

No

Speaker 2

... and was making this up as he goes type of thing. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

No, not at all.

Speaker 2

No.

Aaron Francis

Um-

Speaker 2

It felt, it felt good.

Aaron Francis

So yeah. I walked out on stage. I think I was the first, I was, like, the first non-Resend talk.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

So they came out, they did a few announcements of, like, we're launching, uh, they built their own email infrastructure.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Very Jesse Bentley of them-

Speaker 2

Oh, okay

Aaron Francis

... to own it-

Speaker 2

Yep

Aaron Francis

... 'cause it used to be an SCS, uh, wrapper.

Speaker 2

Ah. Yep.

Aaron Francis

Um, and so then I came out and I gave a talk about being the sin eater. How good of a hook-

Speaker 2

That was-

Aaron Francis

... was that?

Speaker 2

That was a good hook.

Aaron Francis

Oh, man.

Speaker 2

I, I enjoyed it.

Aaron Francis

I was so pumped by that.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Um, yeah, so the whole talk was basically about the more pain you can eat on behalf of your customers-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... the better. The bigger your moat, the more money you'll make, the better your product. Uh, and how AI basically forces you to do that because, uh, if, if you can rip it off in a day, so can literally everybody else, and there, there's, there's no moat there.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So I'm very happy with how the talk went. I think it went great. Got a lot of-

Speaker 2

It was a very good talk

Aaron Francis

... positive feedback. Um-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... I will hopefully give it again.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah. No, I, that, I think that's a really good one for this era to be out there, uh, using a few times, a few different spots, I think. And no, I thought it even tied in kind of with, like, what we've been talking about on here and on the internet of, like, pricing even and stuff like that. It's like, if you are taking on something that's the customer feels like is a burden to them, right?

Like, that's valuable. And, uh, this is just, like, kind of another way to look at that same thing of, like, you're gonna take on this stressful, painful thing for them and whatever that means in terms of your product. And then, you know, then my end of it is then you can charge for that. So that's-

Aaron Francis

Yes

Speaker 2

... like, that's the valuable part. So, um, yeah. No, I think, and that, that's where, like, uh, yeah, I don't know. We could maybe get into all that. I don't know if we even got time today, but, like, there's so... P- organizations still want the service you're talking about. They don't want to-

Aaron Francis

Yes

Speaker 2

... build it themselves. They are the ones with the pain, and they are looking for a solution, and the solution is not they take on more pain. They want a-

Aaron Francis

No

Speaker 2

... faster solution than that. Like, they don't want-

Aaron Francis

Correct

Speaker 2

... to become an expert in software development. They don't want to do it themselves. They want, um, someone to take care of the pain for them and eat the sins-

Aaron Francis

That's right

Speaker 2

... as you say.

Aaron Francis

Be the sin eater.

Speaker 2

So, yes.

Aaron Francis

And it was nice because I got to, you know, I was backstage watching Xeno talk about their new infrastructure. Um-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... and so I rolled that right into my talk. Like, it is-

Speaker 2

Mm. Oh, I did catch that, yes

Aaron Francis

... it is incredibly, it's incredibly painful to build your own email infrastructure, and Resend decided to-

Speaker 2

Yep

Aaron Francis

... eat that. And then I rolled the PHPocalypse in. I said, you know-

Speaker 2

Yeah. That's right.

Aaron Francis

... we, we host huge amounts of workloads that are PHP, and we decided instead of putting that burden on our customers, uh, at Laravel Cloud to, like, roll their own deployments, we decided we're gonna, we're gonna patch it live. We're just gonna do it for them.

Speaker 2

Yes.

Aaron Francis

Um, and so those were two nice, like, of the moment, like, literally-

Speaker 2

Yes

Aaron Francis

... that day examples that I could roll into the talk. So that worked out nicely.

Speaker 2

No, I think especially for cloud, like, proactive security stuff, I mean, I-

Aaron Francis

Dude

Speaker 2

... said this to La- Taylor and others before, but, like, like how all these WordPress hosting things, like, that's a big part of the WordPress hosting world appeal-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... is like, "You don't have to patch your WordPress. We patch your WordPress. WordPress is a Swiss cheese sandwich. We know that. That's our marketing around it," right? Is like this thing, it's great, but also it's getting hacked all the time, but if you host on XYZ, it's not gonna be-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... hacked all the time, right? And, like, to me, that's the same pitch Laravel Cloud should have pretty heavily 'cause, like, that's like-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... the part that, like, yes, you could go host yourself, blah, and there's other services that make it easier, and that's all great. But, like, those other services aren't gonna do this, and when you're in crisis mode and shit's blowing up and the AI's all over you, like-

Aaron Francis

Correct

Speaker 2

... I just want Joe Dixon in the trenches fixing my shit.

Aaron Francis

Correct.

Speaker 2

I don't want to be figuring out what I have to install and... or even-

Aaron Francis

Bingo

Speaker 2

... am I updating the right composer package for the th- I don't wanna think about any of it. I just wanna know-

Aaron Francis

Don't wanna think about it

Speaker 2

... that Laravel Cloud is fixing it for me on the most, you know, not every stupid little bug, right? But, like, if there's a critical security thing, Laravel Cloud's on it.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 2

I don't have to think about that.

Aaron Francis

I want somebody-

Speaker 2

That to me is like a number one feature

Aaron Francis

... I want somebody looking at Grafana dashboards all day long so that-

Speaker 2

Exactly

Aaron Francis

... I don't have to. First of all, 'cause what the-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... hell's Grafana? Second of all, I don't wanna do that, so-

Speaker 2

Right.

Aaron Francis

... you figure it out for me. Um-

Speaker 2

Yeah. This is the-

Aaron Francis

I will-

Speaker 2

... sin I won't wanna eat. I don't wanna eat-

Aaron Francis

Correct

Speaker 2

... the sin.

Aaron Francis

No.

Speaker 2

I want no part of this. No part.

Aaron Francis

No part of this.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

No part of this. I was actually-

Speaker 2

Highly valuable

Aaron Francis

... watching, I was watching, you know, the incident channel, and I w- I work at the company, and I was thinking, "I'm so glad I don't have to do this." "This looks very, very difficult." And I-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... I think in fact it was. Um, we have very clever engineers that figured stuff out.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Um, and interestingly, and I think, I try not to extrapolate my experiences to the broad public because-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... I've been told that I'm not a normal person.

Speaker 2

Mm. Well, that's definitely true.

Aaron Francis

Somebody has told me that.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

But in this case, I, I think I am-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... I think I am, uh, somewhat in the mainstream.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Um, so obviously Laravel has Laravel Cloud and Laravel Forge, two-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... completely different models of infrastructure.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Laravel Cloud is completely centralized. They host it all. Laravel Forge is kind of command and control. You bring your servers, and then you go to Forge, and it will do stuff for you, but they're still-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... your servers. I don't want any part of that anymore.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

I don't want-

Speaker 2

Same

Aaron Francis

... I don't want any server-

Speaker 2

Mm-mm

Aaron Francis

... that I can have a name or an IP or an SSH into.

Speaker 2

No.

Aaron Francis

I just-

Speaker 2

I don't want any part of it

Aaron Francis

... don't want it. And so-

Speaker 2

I had already cleaned out a lot of that for SOC 2-

Aaron Francis

Oh, man

Speaker 2

... and there's, like, two left, and I'm like, "I gotta get these over to Laravel Cloud, like, ASAP," 'cause it's just like I don't want any part of this. Yeah. Totally.

Aaron Francis

And this is not, this is not, like, a pitch because you're gonna take your, your $10 from Forge and move your $10 to Cloud. So, like, this doesn't benefit-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... me to, like, try to convince-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... people of this. But I looked at my Forge servers, and some of them, you know, side projects accumulate, and then they kind of just linger. I just turned agents on it, and I was like, "Get this onto Laravel Cloud." Like-

Speaker 2

Right

Aaron Francis

... just take this project, move it. Whatever you need to do. You gotta update Laravel, you gotta update Vue, you gotta switch to React, I don't care. At the end of the day-

Speaker 2

Right

Aaron Francis

... I wanna pull up the sites and look at them, and them be the exact same thing-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... except this one runs on cloud, and I am going to destroy this server. Because I just don't want... Like, I feel like this is, this is but the beginning of what we're-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... what we're gonna run into, and I don't, I don't want that surface area. I cannot bear-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... that surface area myself. So I'm casting-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... my sins upon my colleagues-

Speaker 2

This is-

Aaron Francis

... and saying, "You take care of it. I don't want it."

Speaker 2

This is the, uh, for the next two years, I feel like this is, the Laravel Cloud needs to ride this marketing train of this pain that everybody's gonna be feeling when the AI exposes threat after threat, and, like-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... it's just get your stuff on the cloud. We've got, uh, I mean, yeah, obviously there's a, there's even more to this, right? Like hiring more security people-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... focusing the engineering to really be able to, like, deploy these random patches into other people's projects, which is not a simple thing to do without breaking the projects and all that stuff.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 2

So a b- bunch of stuff there. It's not just marketing, right? It's like, I think Laravel Cloud needs to really do this, right? Like, it has to actually be a core feature, which then you can market as a core feature, and I think it's just gonna crush 'cause, like, nobody wants to deal with it. It's so stressful. It's so painful.

Aaron Francis

So stressful.

Speaker 2

And this is the service part. This is, like, the other thing where I fight with these people on the internet. It's like I'm so close to being done with Twitter, by the way, 'cause it's all just freaking idiots on there. Forget Elon. Not even 'cause of Elon, because everybody's a freaking idiot on there. It's like-

Aaron Francis

There, there is a small chance-

Speaker 2

It's crazy

Aaron Francis

... that you are heaping coals on your own head by fighting- ... with these people. There is a small chance.

Speaker 2

Oh, they're so dumb. Anyway, software as a service, Aaron. Service. It's right in the name. People pay for services, and part of that service is, like, security, uptime. There's a lot of aspects to it.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 2

The service part of this, that's very valuable to companies. And so-

Aaron Francis

So I, I come off the stage-

Speaker 2

I'm all about this. I love it.

Aaron Francis

I come off the stage, I go up to the Laravel booth-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... I open my laptop to make sure that the agents are moving stuff over.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

I'm stressed out 'cause I'm like, "I don't wanna get pwned."

Speaker 2

You're doing it there. God.

Aaron Francis

I'm doing it there.

Speaker 2

You're doing it live.

Aaron Francis

Where else am I supposed to do it?

Speaker 2

You're on stage. Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Francis

Meanwhile, a coworker, Sam Sappenfield, is just working the booth happy as could be-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... because she's never put anything on a server. It's only Laravel Cloud.

Speaker 2

She only knows the Laravel Cloud life.

Aaron Francis

She's like, "Yeah, I, you know, I guess they're taking care of it for me." And I'm like, "Yeah, they are. That must be nice. I want that life."

Speaker 2

Oh. Wait, hold s- side, little side thing here. H- I've been thinking about doing this with a couple of my sites. What exactly do you do to send the agents on this to make it happen?

Aaron Francis

I-

Speaker 2

Between Forge and, uh, and Cloud.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. I, I literally opened, uh, I think this was Opus 5.5.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

And I said, "Hey, here's this repo. It is currently-"

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

"... deployed on this server in Forge."

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

"You can SSH into this server," you know?

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

Like, desperate times, desperate measures.

Speaker 2

Right. You open it up, you're like, "Let's go."

Aaron Francis

Have fun.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

You can SSH in. My cloud CLI is authenticated.

Speaker 2

Got it.

Aaron Francis

I need you to do, I need you to do literally everything up to switching DNS.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

So I want, I want data migrated, I want packages updated. I need you to compare, uh, from the cloud vanity domain, so cloud gives you this, you know, obscure domain. Production domain, cloud vanity domain, you need to compare until they are the exact same, and you need to make sure that, like, all of the data is migrated.

Speaker 2

Mm.

Aaron Francis

And then leave a list of keys, uh, environment variables that I'll need to update, and then I'll do a spot check, and I will blow away the DNS-

Speaker 2

Okay

Aaron Francis

... and switch it over.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

And it, it did. It just did. Which is-

Speaker 2

So-

Aaron Francis

... which is what I did for the accounting thing, just under less pressure.

Speaker 2

Right.

Aaron Francis

Right? I just-

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

... I just told it, "This one's on Heroku and Laravel 5.5."

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

"Put it on cloud. Have fun. I'll be back later." And it, it 100% did it.

Speaker 2

So I have a feature request, since I can get right to the vice president of marketing-

Aaron Francis

Sure

Speaker 2

... for this organization. Uh, I want to do this. This is exactly what I wanna do with... 'Cause I got a bunch of these, like, r- marketing sites, random things-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... that are still on Forge that I just wanna move over. LaraJobs is po- is the biggest real thing, so I wanna move that over too. But we have a bunch of, like, really critical stuff on Laravel Cloud, and I don't really want to be just authenticated into cloud-

Aaron Francis

Sure

Speaker 2

... on a whole, where, like, the agent decides for some reason to get into, like, some HubSpot services stuff and start-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... whatever. Some mistake happens with the AI, and now I've just screwed everything up. So some, a mo- a way to, like, narrow down the authentication or the authorization of the cloud, uh, CLI, API, MCP, whatever, blah, blah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Uh, there's my feature request for you. But yes.

Aaron Francis

My... I'd have to double-check this to be sure because-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... I also, like, I have access to the Laravel organization inside of Laravel Cloud-

Speaker 2

Mm, yeah

Aaron Francis

... and boy, do I not wanna touch that at all.

Speaker 2

Right. Exactly. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

And so when I authenticated my CLI, I did not check the organization Laravel.

Speaker 2

I thought about that too. I could make a new org for, like the-

Aaron Francis

You could make a new org

Speaker 2

... the critical stuff org-

Aaron Francis

Correct

Speaker 2

... and the, like, less critical stuff org. Yeah, that is-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... another thing I've considered doing. So that-

Aaron Francis

So-

Speaker 2

... that might be my short-term solution to that problem

Aaron Francis

... I think, I think in the near term, that's what you should do. Make a new org.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Unauthenticate your CLI, reauthenticate it, only choose the throwaway org-

Speaker 2

Right. Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... and then let it rip.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

And then later you can authenticate both, uh, and just be more careful. But, um, yeah, that, that's how I did it. 'Cause boy, I don't-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... I don't wanna touch-

Speaker 2

Right

Aaron Francis

... the Laravel organization.

Speaker 2

That's a thing. Yeah. Maybe I'll make a marketing org or something and just like-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... it's like, uh, it's just where all random, stupid, you know, staticky type websites live, and just keep it-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... that's probably just good to do regardless anyway. Um-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2

All right. You gotta pay some bills here, man. Pay the bills.

Aaron Francis

I'll pay the bills.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

The bills are paid to you by TypeSense. TypeSense is open source, lightning fast search for your site and app, natively integrated with Laravel Scout. So if you need search, check out TypeSense at typesense.org. Also brought to you by Post Shiba, a Jesse Bentley special.

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Go email him, go talk to him, find him on Twitter. Um, so if you're looking for a replacement to, uh, some of the underlying senders like SendGrid, Mailgun, Resend, or SES, join the waitlist, and he will reach out at postshiba.com. So thank you to TypeSense and Post Shiba for sending Ian to the World Series.

Speaker 2

Woo-hoo. All right, so talk. Finish the talk. That went well.

Aaron Francis

Finished the talk.

Speaker 2

Then I think we then get to-

Aaron Francis

That went well

Speaker 2

... Thursday.

Aaron Francis

Uh, Thursday was the board meeting. So I had-

Speaker 2

Board meeting

Aaron Francis

... three performances. So it wasn't just like a trip.

Speaker 2

I feel like, yeah.

Aaron Francis

It was a Tuesday-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... night, a Wednesday, and a Thursday performance.

Speaker 2

That's a lot. That's stressful. That's a, that's a lot.

Aaron Francis

It was stressful.

Speaker 2

And then you got the po- you got the, you got the PGP shell thing.

Aaron Francis

You got the apocalypse in the background.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Um, so of course, I'm very nervous for the board meeting. This is-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... this is baby's first board meeting that I've ever attended, and I had to speak at, right?

Speaker 2

Right. You're presenting some marketing-

Aaron Francis

So I'm presenting

Speaker 2

... stuff. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So I'm a little bit nervous. Um-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... I don't know if I should or shouldn't have been, but it was not, it was not a nerve-wracking situation. Like, the, it was actually pretty low-key.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

It wasn't that, it wasn't that intimidating. Um, it went super well. The VC- Super nice. Um, I did- when I walked in, everybody was kind of s- sitting down, and I sat down on one side of the table, got my computer out, and then I looked up and realized I'm on the side of the table with two VCs and an attorney, and everyone on our team is on the other side of the table.

And I was like, "I've seen movies. I feel like I should be on the other side of the table."

Speaker 2

Right. Yeah, you get the wrong-

Aaron Francis

So I didn't say a word. I just got up and moved. I was like, "Sorry," you know? "Sorry I'm on your side, VCs."

Speaker 2

Sorry, wrong side of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aaron Francis

I'm not the money guy. Um-

Speaker 2

You don't have enough zeros to be at that end. You gotta-

Aaron Francis

No, I don't

Speaker 2

... get up, get up there a little higher first.

Aaron Francis

Uh, but it was, it was great. Um, you know-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... we had a whole deck that we'd gone over.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Um, Tom had helped everybody make sure that the deck was, you know, appropriate for what the VCs would want to hear. Um, our, our main investor paid attention the entire time.

Speaker 2

Oh, wow.

Aaron Francis

Asked great questions.

Speaker 2

Not on his phone.

Aaron Francis

Was very, like-

Speaker 2

Not hanging out

Aaron Francis

... not on his phone.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Was, like, engaged, encouraging. Um, there was an observer there who asked some really great questions as well. Um, and it was just-

Speaker 2

Wait, wait, wait, wait. This is the kind of gig I need. When do I become the board observer? Arryn, get me in as the board observer. Come on, it's a perfect job for me. I'm here observing.

Aaron Francis

My-

Speaker 2

I got some little hot takes for you guys. Come on.

Aaron Francis

My guess is you're-

Speaker 2

What's in it for you?

Aaron Francis

... you're a few zeros short as well.

Speaker 2

Oh!

Aaron Francis

That's my guess, yeah.

Speaker 2

What? I need more zeros? Oh.

Aaron Francis

I mean, he was-

Speaker 2

Oh, goddamn

Aaron Francis

... he was the partner at Excel observing.

Speaker 2

Oh.

Aaron Francis

It wasn't just like, it wasn't just like-

Speaker 2

It's not a guy off the street

Aaron Francis

... somebody's podcast buddy off the street.

Speaker 2

Oh.

Aaron Francis

So, yeah.

Speaker 2

I can observe. I thought this was like a legal thing. You gotta have an observer. Let's just grab somebody.

Aaron Francis

No, no.

Speaker 2

Oh.

Aaron Francis

I think, I think literally our attorney is the observer. Um, but there was another VC in the room that was, like, asking questions and, like-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... giving feedback and stuff. So I'll, I'll do my best. I don't really have standing to-

Speaker 2

Yeah, get me in

Aaron Francis

... I don't have, like, bring your dad to work standing yet. But I'll, I'll do my best for the next one.

Speaker 2

A couple more of these. No, a couple more of these. Not, not, not the next one. You know, maybe a year from now. You've done four or five-

Aaron Francis

Sure

Speaker 2

... right? And like-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... like, hey, you know what? We need an observer on our... The VC guys got observers. We should have an observer.

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2

Let's bring Lansky on this one.

Aaron Francis

I'll, I'll escalate my request. This time was the hat.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Next time I'll do something else. And then next time it's like, "I got this friend-"

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah

Aaron Francis

"... who wants to just hang out."

Speaker 2

Got a guy.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2

Yes. It'll be a better bit for the show. It's marketing.

Aaron Francis

It will be. It will be.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Um, and I can't say if all VCs are like this or all board meetings-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... are like this, but what I can say is this one went great, and I'm-

Speaker 2

Oh, awesome

Aaron Francis

... I'm really, I'm really, like... I, I feel very impressed by our VCs.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

I had no reason to feel otherwise. Um, but just seeing, like, the level of engagement and the thoughtfulness was like, this is pretty cool. Like, I think-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... this is how it's supposed to be. I've heard a lot of horror stories. But, like, this feels appropriate to me. Um, so-

Speaker 2

Was it, was it like, uh... I've done a little bit of stuff with, like, college boards, like when I-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... worked at the college a million years ago. Um, well, and a school board. I was on a school board, which is a much-

Aaron Francis

Of course

Speaker 2

... lower stakes thing than this, of course, but still. Uh, did you get the vibe? It feels like a big scary thing. I imagine this is how, like, when you do the financial results for the quarter of a public company is, too. It's like-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... oh, that's like, if you were to do that, you're gonna be really scary. But then, like, you get in there and it's like, oh, these are just actually, like, normal people, and they're just people doing people stuff. Like, did, did it come off-

Aaron Francis

I think so

Speaker 2

... as people doing people stuff, or was it, it was scarier than that once you were in there?

Aaron Francis

No, it came off, it came off as people doing people stuff.

Speaker 2

Yeah, okay.

Aaron Francis

Um, very smart people.

Speaker 2

Got it.

Aaron Francis

Very successful people.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

But there was no, like, there was no big dogging. There was no, like-

Speaker 2

Yeah, they're still human

Aaron Francis

... flirting. They're still human.

Speaker 2

Mm.

Aaron Francis

And honestly, they still want us to win.

Speaker 2

Right.

Aaron Francis

And so it's like-

Speaker 2

That's nice

Aaron Francis

... same team, guys.

Speaker 2

Right.

Aaron Francis

And so the lack of, the lack of ego and the same team-ness was very, it was very evident to me.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

And so I came in thinking, "Oh, this has gotta be a big performance to, like, it's gonna be a, a minor battle, and they're gonna..."

Speaker 2

They're trying to poke holes in your stuff.

Aaron Francis

No, no.

Speaker 2

Or, yeah, yeah.

Aaron Francis

No. Anything that they poked on was, was pokeable and was appropriate.

Speaker 2

Right.

Aaron Francis

It wasn't like-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... "Oh, I'm, I'm so much smarter than you, and I know how to run your business." Not, not even a little bit.

Speaker 2

Right, trying to gotcha ya or anything like that.

Aaron Francis

No.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Francis

Which is, I don't know why. That's a little bit what I expected. Not from-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... not from our guy, but just from, like, the VC-

Speaker 2

Right

Aaron Francis

... you know, milieu. I kind of expected, like-

Speaker 2

Whoever's around, yeah

Aaron Francis

... yeah.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

They're gonna kinda try to needle us, and that just didn't happen at all. Um, so yeah. Of all the, of all the three events, I was most nervous for the board meeting. Um, and that one was probably the lowest, like, the lowest pressure when I was in there, the actual lowest pressure one.

Um, so yeah. It was a nice, a nice surprise.

Speaker 2

That's awesome.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

You know what, you know what gig I want? So I wanna be a movie producer, okay?

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 2

That's, that would be number one, if I could pull that off.

Aaron Francis

Yep. Executive producer.

Speaker 2

Yeah, executive producer, of course.

Aaron Francis

Of course.

Speaker 2

I don't wanna be, like, actually planning stuff.

Aaron Francis

No, God. Can you imagine?

Speaker 2

I just wanna be, like, wandering around, being like, "What, what's this doing here?"

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

And, like, I wanna be the guy poking holes. I wanna be the-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 2

... that guy who's like, "What the hell is going on with this thing?"

Aaron Francis

You'd be a, you'd be a great needler, for sure.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh, but you know what sounds like a pretty good job is lawyer at a VC firm. That sounds like a pretty good job.

Aaron Francis

Oh, I don't know. Lawyer at anything sounds bad. Why do you think lawyer at a VC firm-

Speaker 2

Oh, lawyer at a VC... No, 'cause, because it's lawyer at a VC firm. It's not like, oh, you're defending some guy who's done something terrible, or even you're a prosecutor, and, like, there's all this stuff, and you're working for the government. This is, like, the softest. You're getting a piece of every deal. I'm sure there's some... You're cut in if you're the senior lawyer.

Aaron Francis

I don't know.

Speaker 2

Yeah. You're making tons of money, and, like, every... It's like practically everything's the same. It's like, "Okay, here's our deal." Like, we're doing the same term sheet for the millionth time. Like I sit in on the meetings-

Aaron Francis

I could see that

Speaker 2

... and I hang out. Sounds fricking awesome

Aaron Francis

Yeah, I could see the, the right down the middle stuff

Speaker 2

I'm the observer at the board meeting. Come on, that's... Hey.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. But being, being a, being a, a lawyer at a VC firm, I feel like you've gotta... I don't know. There's gonna be a million edge cases, especially these days-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... where the deals are so, like, uh, interleaved where it's, you know, you imagine like-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... this company's doing a rev share with that company, and they're backdooring-

Speaker 2

I guess there could be some of that stuff

Aaron Francis

... and they're cross-sharing, and the IP, and I just, I don't know. It w-

Speaker 2

It all seems like easy stuff, though.

Aaron Francis

It, it-

Speaker 2

It's not like oil and gas, uh, contracts or something. You're out there in the field. This is VC stuff. You're in the office.

Aaron Francis

There's, lawyers for oil and gas- ... do not go out in the field.

Speaker 2

They're out there getting oil on them.

Aaron Francis

It should be noted for the record that neither of us- ... have any idea what either of these attorneys-

Speaker 2

No, you're from Texas. Come on

Aaron Francis

... would, would be doing.

Speaker 2

Light me up

Aaron Francis

That gives me no standing to talk about an oil and gas attorney.

Speaker 2

Oh, everybody in Texas is in oil and gas. Come on, not the thing.

Aaron Francis

No.

Speaker 2

I watched Landman, the first episode.

Aaron Francis

No, none of this makes any sense, but the board meeting went great.

Speaker 2

Okay, that's good to hear.

Aaron Francis

So very happy with that. Also, super fun to be in person.

Speaker 2

Mm, yeah, of course.

Aaron Francis

So, like, you know, of course Taylor and Tom are there. We've got the, many of the marketing people, not at the board meeting, but many of the marketing people are in town for the conference.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Joe Dixon's there 'cause he's speaking.

Speaker 2

Oh, I love Joe Dixon.

Aaron Francis

Andre was there. Everybody, everybody was there.

Speaker 2

I love Andre.

Aaron Francis

So that part, that part was super fun.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

It, it was a little dampened because everybody was kind of on- ... on call.

Speaker 2

Yeah, hadn't slept in 48 hours and was freaking out.

Aaron Francis

It's like I hadn't seen Andre or Ben Tyra because they were both, like, managing... Like, they had to step out of the board meeting to go manage the incident-

Speaker 2

Right, okay

Aaron Francis

... which just tells you how bad the incident was. Um-

Speaker 2

Right. Yeah

Aaron Francis

... but other than that, other than the, the apocalypse, it was just, it was perfect. It's a great trip.

Speaker 2

Ah. You get any good coffee or other San Francisco delights?

Aaron Francis

I didn't.

Speaker 2

Ah, you didn't get to Tartine? I go to Tartine every time in San Francisco.

Aaron Francis

I go to Tartine every time-

Speaker 2

You, you like Tartine

Aaron Francis

... I'm in San Francisco with you. Um, no, I didn't go to Tartine.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

We went to a, we went to a nice steak dinner after the board meeting day-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... so Thursday night.

Speaker 2

Nice.

Aaron Francis

And then, uh, on Wednesday night, all of, uh, the, like, marketing crew that was there, we went out for-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... a nice dinner. We went out for some Thai food, um-

Speaker 2

Okay

Aaron Francis

... which was my suggestion. I said, "We should go somewhere. We should go get some Thai food, as long as it's like a chain and not like a hole in the wall."

Speaker 2

No. Oh, no you didn't say that.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. If we g-

Speaker 2

Oh my God, Eric

Aaron Francis

... if we go, if we go to some-

Speaker 2

You're killing me

Aaron Francis

... squeeze on the bench, hole in the wall-

Speaker 2

Oh, dude, you're killing me

Aaron Francis

... I'm just gonna get wrecked. Let's go to some Thai place that's pretty normal.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

And in fact, I don't think it was a chain, but it wasn't a hole in the wall.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So we kind of split the difference.

Speaker 2

Well, that... Okay. Well, that, that's a real place. That's called going to a real p-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... When you're in a big city, you go to the real places 'cause that's the opportunity to do that. When you're in stupid suburbs of Dallas, yes, you go to chain place 'cause that's all there is.

Aaron Francis

I don't go to the suburbs of Dallas very often.

Speaker 2

Sure, sure.

Aaron Francis

Um, so I can't really speak to that-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... but I can mentally ascent to it.

Speaker 2

All right. Well, it sounds like they got you in some good food against your will.

Aaron Francis

They did.

Speaker 2

But luckily-

Aaron Francis

Yes

Speaker 2

... it worked out, and they didn't make you e-eat anything too squiggly and weird, it sounds like, so that's good.

Aaron Francis

No. I almost... Thank God for my coworker Emily, 'cause I grabbed some food and put it on my plate thinking it was chicken, and she said, "You know that's tofu, right?" And I said, "I don't know that's tofu," and so I put it back.

Speaker 2

Uh, tofu is like, doesn't taste like anything. You'd be okay with tofu.

Aaron Francis

Nah, weird texture.

Speaker 2

I don't think, I don't think you would have the same reaction as... Well, there are different textures, but if it was like a firmer one, it's kind of just like eating Styrofoam. It's not like, it's not a negative-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, not a good pitch, honestly

Speaker 2

... texture.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

It's just a, it's just a tastes like nothing thing, but-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, I don't want that.

Speaker 2

All right. Let me thank the final sponsor who sent me to the World Series this year, Bento, the email marketing and CRM platform built for the AI era. Send your product marketing and transactional email with Bento, and check out their new transactional email pricing with rates as low as nine cents per thousand. Check them out at bentonow.com.

Thank you, Jesse Hanley, for buying me this hat right here. Look it, it says World Series. I appreciate it. Okay. Speaking of, uh, Jesse Bentley Hanley-

Aaron Francis

Tell me

Speaker 2

... and charging more, I just wanna know, we're not gonna go and have a whole big segment on this, but we decided to do a little pre-roll. The pre-roll option now, as the listeners have been hearing-

Aaron Francis

Ah, we're doing a little inside baseball, okay

Speaker 2

... little inside baseball. The pre-roll option costs three times as much as the mid-roll option.

Aaron Francis

It does?

Speaker 2

Three times as much.

Aaron Francis

Oh, hell yeah.

Speaker 2

And we have-

Aaron Francis

Good job, Ian and Eric Barnes

Speaker 2

... two of them now. And I just wanna say that we've like doubled, more than doubled our revenue on this show-

Aaron Francis

Oh, man

Speaker 2

... by adding a higher priced tier.

Aaron Francis

Yes.

Speaker 2

So just a little note out there to everybody, a little data point. That's all I'm saying, a little data point.

Aaron Francis

Man, you know I don't love money-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... because that's the root of all kinds of evils.

Speaker 2

That's true. There you go.

Aaron Francis

But boy, I love this news-

Speaker 2

You like it

Aaron Francis

... which is money related.

Speaker 2

That's good.

Aaron Francis

This is great news. So would I have known that-

Speaker 2

Yes

Aaron Francis

... if I read, uh, the promptly delivered emails that Jamie sends every month with our profit and loss?

Speaker 2

Uh, yes, you should read those at some point.

Aaron Francis

Mm.

Speaker 2

I don't think, I don't know if you've seen one that has the second pre-roll, uh, in it yet. That may, that may come at the end of this month. But I believe the first, the first pre-roll has been in there, and you would've seen that it costs three times as much as the mid-roll, but you, uh, you don't read the data-

Aaron Francis

I don't read

Speaker 2

... that Jamie, uh, spends a lot of time-

Aaron Francis

Here's-

Speaker 2

... producing and making for you. It's a nice little PDF with all the data, and, uh, you ignore it, and you ignore her hard work.

Aaron Francis

Here's the good news, here's the good news about working with people you trust-

Speaker 2

Okay

Aaron Francis

... is you just kind of, you can let go and let God- ... or let go and let Jamie, in this case-

Speaker 2

There you go

Aaron Francis

I get these PNL reports from Jamie that's like-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... this month, here's this, here's that, and I'm like, "Oh, cool. That's great." Didn't read it. Don't look at it. But I like knowing that it's there. That's the thing. If they-

Speaker 2

That it's there

Aaron Francis

... stop showing up, I'm like, "What's going on?"

Speaker 2

Oh, that's it.

Aaron Francis

I probably wouldn't even notice. I probably wouldn't even notice. But-

Speaker 2

After six months you might. You might be like, "Hey-

Aaron Francis

I-

Speaker 2

... whatever happened to those things?"

Aaron Francis

I just implicitly trust Jamie, and she takes care of it, and I'm just, you know, fat and happy. It's great.

Speaker 2

Jamie did ask me if she should stop sending them to you, 'cause then she wouldn't be doing them.

Aaron Francis

No, don't stop.

Speaker 2

And I was like, "No." I was like, "He likes them. He just-

Aaron Francis

I like them

Speaker 2

... doesn't, you know-"

Aaron Francis

I like the idea of them.

Speaker 2

Plus it's a bit, you know, it's all good.

Aaron Francis

Yes.

Speaker 2

So, um, okay.

Aaron Francis

Well, I love that for us.

Speaker 2

So, yeah, that was great for us. So, uh, thank you to the sponsors. Um, I was qu- to finish up the PHP apocalypse, I was quote, your boy, me.

Aaron Francis

Yep, yep.

Speaker 2

I was in The Atlantic.

Aaron Francis

The Atlantic.

Speaker 2

The Atlantic.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 2

A real publication.

Aaron Francis

Mainstream media.

Speaker 2

A top-tier publication.

Aaron Francis

Lamestream media.

Speaker 2

Me. No, no, no, not The Atlantic. The Atlantic's the real deal, and they, they not only quoted me, okay? They used my quote for the title of the article. My quote-

Aaron Francis

They did. Pretty metal

Speaker 2

... is the title of the article.

Aaron Francis

Walk us through it.

Speaker 2

I, where was I? I guess it was at the World Series when this happened, and I come back, and people are... I see all these messages from people. I'm like, "What, what, what is this?" Some Atlantic article, okay. And I look, look at it, and it's like, "Huh, if anything happens to this guy, everyone is screwed." That sounds like something I said.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 2

So I happened to have an-

Aaron Francis

Literally the title- ... on theatlantic.com, I'm looking at it-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... quote, "If anything happens to this guy," dot, dot, dot, "everyone is screwed," end quote. That is your quote-

Speaker 2

It's my quote

Aaron Francis

... as the title.

Speaker 2

Yes. So I was like, "Wait a minute," I, and I happen to have Atlantic subscription. So I log in, and there I am, a few paragraphs down is, is me.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 2

My tweet, how I was explaining to my wife how there's this one guy, and he alone is responsible for most of the world's distribution of PHP. A software developer named Ian Landerman, that's me, wrote on X-

Aaron Francis

Mm-hmm

Speaker 2

... "And if anything happens to this guy, that's just it, everyone is screwed." He was referring to Surry, which I think is how you say that. I have no idea. Um, and wh- yeah, I was talking about the Andre Surry, again, I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing this, but I believe that's how you say it. Um, who is the guy who packages PHP for all the Linux distributions, and he just literally is alone.

And people think I make this up, and then there's an interview with him in this article, and he's like, "Yeah, it's just me. I'm the guy who does it, 'cause I know all the tricks." And that's it. If this guy goes away, we're all screwed. But, um, yeah, it was cool. It was cool to be in Atlantic. It's always cool when, like, you brush up your, your fake internet fame brushes up against the real world. It's like you can-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... send it to people and be like, "Look, I do stuff. People know about me-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... in the real world."

Aaron Francis

Dad actually does have a job.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Uh, yeah, that was fun with the kids. I sent it to the kids, and they were like, "What?" I'm like, "Yes, I'm out there on the internet." Um, so anyway, I don't know. I don't have much to say about this. Other than this guy, I mean, he, we are screwed. He's apparently working on having some other company kind of back him up. Um, but I don't know.

It is pretty scary when you think too carefully about how this all runs on this one guy hopefully not being on vacation and things like that.

Aaron Francis

Which he, which he literally was this time.

Speaker 2

Right. He was on vacation.

Aaron Francis

Right?

Speaker 2

I believe he was-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... on vacation. Uh, he wasn't off the grid, luckily. He was just on-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... vacation, but still available. Um, which is where the two, they're like, "Oh, you could just build it yourself." Well, obviously it's not so easy to just build it, because this guy's like, "You, I know all the tricks to make it all work." So, like, and who wants to build from source, the whole thing. I, I don't understand-

Aaron Francis

I, I-

Speaker 2

... how, like, Ubuntu doesn't manage this whole process. Like, this is a big programming language. Like, why-

Aaron Francis

I don't understand-

Speaker 2

... are you dependent on this guy?

Aaron Francis

I don't understand how this is, this is not, like, a release script, right? Like-

Speaker 2

Right

Aaron Francis

... why is, why is this process not a single, like, unit of code, not a single file-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... however big it needs to be, such that anyone can run and package it themselves? Is that not the case?

Speaker 2

I don't know. I, you would assume that is, but he made it sound like it's a little more intricate than that, because, like, I think there's probably some interrelations of, like, the build process, right? Where, like, maybe stuff breaks and goes wrong, and so, like, you would think now with AI probably it's possible to automate fully, but, but even that doesn't, isn't really even a good solution in the sense of, like, if it's just a script on this guy's computer, it doesn't really do anything.

It's like that, all the whys and it... Somebody, somewhere, some organization feels like it should be responsible for this. The PHP organization seems logical.

Aaron Francis

Which don't get me started on- ... the PHP Foundation.

Speaker 2

Or, uh-

Aaron Francis

So in this article-

Speaker 2

I don't know

Aaron Francis

... Surry says one, one of the reasons, uh, that this wasn't too crazy was, "I've been doing this for a long time, over 20 years." So he's been packaging this for 20 years.

Speaker 2

Yep.

Aaron Francis

"A lot of the stuff I do is automated." Okay, should be all. But the reason it was not crazy for me was I actually don't have any system running PHP myself.

Speaker 2

Oh, yeah, he's not even using it.

Aaron Francis

So he's not even using the thing. So he wasn't-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... vulnerable, so he did have-

Speaker 2

Right

Aaron Francis

... that amount of pressure taken off. He says, "For me, it was like, sure, I feel a responsibility toward the users of the internet." This is a previous generation-

Speaker 2

Oh, yeah

Aaron Francis

... mindset.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

This is, this is old school, open source for the people mindset.

Speaker 2

Yes, yes.

Aaron Francis

And I wonder if, I wonder if we're in the twilight of that era.

Speaker 2

I mean, I think we have to be. You can't have this whole operation running on this one guy in his basement, who's, like, an awesome guy, obviously.

Aaron Francis

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2

But-

Aaron Francis

But we should not, we should not put all of that on him.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So I am curious-

Speaker 2

Especially with the pace everything's gonna be moving. Like, it's just- ... yeah, it's not ... feasible, I don't think anymore.

Aaron Francis

Some, some part of me thinks the internet is going into its next era of, like-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... most, most of this was done on basically trust and vibes and handshakes and-

Speaker 2

Right

Aaron Francis

... understandings about the ethos of open source, and I just think we might be moving on from that. I think there's too much-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... there's too much compute being thrown at these things to just go on, "Hey, we all work together to make sure that everything works."

Speaker 2

There's, like, an outside chance, I can't say I'm optimistic for this, but I, there, I feel like there's an outside chance that what happens is what should have happened a long time ago, which is that, like, I mean, hey, I've done this. Like, organizations that benefit from open source could contribute back to open source in a proper manner by employing the people who work on the projects, by giving money to the foundations or whatever, right?

And it's like maybe there's a world where, like, all these orgs that actually depend on PHP and other things like that actually just funnel a chunk of money into all this to be like-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... "Okay, like, let's robustify the open source layer a bit." Um, maybe there's a world where that happens. Otherwise, yes, maybe the orgs will just take it over completely in some fashion. I don't know. Uh, I don't know. And, you know, there's this other, this sort of... There is a com- a negative evil commercial aspect to this too that I think is somewhat responsible, which is like you have this whole world of, like, Enterprise Red Hat Linux and things, which, like, they o-

will apply these patches. So it's like i- if you pay for Red Hat Enterprise-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 2

... you are getting their real-ish time vulnerability fixes and things.

Aaron Francis

I think Chainguard-

Speaker 2

So they want to sell you that

Aaron Francis

... is similar to that.

Speaker 2

Right. Okay.

Aaron Francis

I think-

Speaker 2

I'm not, I don't even know what that is, but, like-

Aaron Francis

Yeah, I think Chainguard accidentally leaked, or on purpose leaked the, the patches before.

Speaker 2

Oh, was that the guy who leaked that?

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

Because-

Speaker 2

Not speaking their business

Aaron Francis

... one of the other security researchers-

Speaker 2

Exactly.

Aaron Francis

... leaked something, and so he was like, "Well, I guess the embargo's off. Here are the patches." Um-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... and so I think Chainguard is a tightly controlled supply chain hardened-

Speaker 2

Okay

Aaron Francis

... version of-

Speaker 2

Right

Aaron Francis

... like packages that you would install. So there is already, to my knowledge, I haven't looked deeply, there's already a commercial layer to this where it's like, "Hey, if you want locks down packages that we verify the, the chain of the provenance of all of this stuff, you, you pay us for Chainguard."

Speaker 2

Right.

Aaron Francis

Um-

Speaker 2

And you want it real time and-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... super fast and all that stuff. Yeah. So yeah-

Aaron Francis

That's, that's my understanding

Speaker 2

... so you have the Red Hat Enterprise Linux of the world. You have the Chainguard thing, which I haven't heard of. I'm sure there's other ones. Um, so obviously they don't want the open source layer necessarily to get faster-

Aaron Francis

Right

Speaker 2

... and better because they wanna sell you their faster, better version. Um, so I don't know. But something's gotta shake out 'cause this doesn't really seem feasible to have the rate that these vulnerabilities are gonna show up, um... Yeah.

Aaron Francis

No.

Speaker 2

This, and then what's your, what's your take on this, on the, like, how real this even was? 'Cause, like, then we had yesterday or the day before show up this, like, guy who threw up some Bitcoin on a server with PHP unpatched.

Aaron Francis

So I have a few, I have a few problems-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... with that experiment.

Speaker 2

And nobody could break into this thing really. Like-

Aaron Francis

I have a few problems with that experiment

Speaker 2

... it's been all the time. All right.

Aaron Francis

So stealmy, stealmybitcoin.com.

Speaker 2

Yep.

Aaron Francis

And he's like, "I got 2,500 bucks."

Speaker 2

Great domain.

Aaron Francis

Great domain.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

2,500 bucks if you can break into the server and-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... execute this print flag binary, you get the Bitcoin.

Speaker 2

Yep.

Aaron Francis

Super cool idea. First problem was, I think for 16 or 18 hours, he was just serving an index.html through NGINX.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

And so for 16 or 18 hours he wasn't actually serving PHP at all.

Speaker 2

There was no PHP exploitable. Okay.

Aaron Francis

There was no PHP.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

And so everybody's like, "Ah, this RCE is not even exploitable." Well, not if you don't use the thing that the RCE is embedded in, right?

Speaker 2

Yeah. That's, that's a-

Aaron Francis

And so he got called out for that, um, switched it over to serve like PHP-

Speaker 2

Index.php or whatever

Aaron Francis

... dash version.php or something, so a proper PHP file.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

The Bitcoin's gone now.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

It was-

Speaker 2

They got it.

Aaron Francis

They got it. They got it.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

And so-

Speaker 2

Okay

Aaron Francis

... I, I'm led to believe this is not a, this is not a script kitty kind of RCE, like where you can just send a packet and you're like, "Ah, I have a re- reverse shell now."

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Um, but it is very much exploitable and has been, has been exploited on this one, at least one flagship domain of stealmybitcoin.com. Uh, and the timeline is a bit skewed because of the way that he set it up, but uh-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... it is, it is now gone, and it is very, very exploitable.

Speaker 2

He's gonna do a write-up. Mm. Okay.

Aaron Francis

Yeah, there's a POC. There's already a GitHub POC of how they did it.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Um, which is bad.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Right? This is, this is, this is bad.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

They're like, "Sure, here's the POC. By the way, bad guys, here's the way to do this."

Speaker 2

Let's see.

Aaron Francis

And so-

Speaker 2

Yeah, I'm reading his thing. Yeah, here, yeah, here's how to do it. Uh, let's see. Yeah, it is... Yeah, there is some step to this. It's, it's-

Aaron Francis

Oh, definitely

Speaker 2

... a little bit tricky, but it's not... I mean, here it is-

Aaron Francis

No, it, this-

Speaker 2

... how to do it.

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

So.

Aaron Francis

It's not a one-shot thing, but it is a thing that-

Speaker 2

It's a thing

Aaron Francis

... can be multiple shotted-

Speaker 2

Right. Yeah

Aaron Francis

... and you can pwn the server. And so-

Speaker 2

Pwn

Aaron Francis

... I think this, I think this is, um, I think two things. One, this challenge-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... proved that it's possible.

Speaker 2

Yep.

Aaron Francis

It gave people false hope that it wasn't possible based on the way-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... he set up his challenge. And two, the bad guys are not going to say, "Hey, see, this is, this actually is po-" They're not gonna go post on Twitter-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... and be like, "No, no, no, guys, trust me. I just stole stuff."

Speaker 2

Right.

Aaron Francis

"It's possible." They're just gonna steal more stuff. Um- So I, I think it is, it's very real.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Whether or not it was overblown, uh, is a little bit of an open question. In my opinion, it was not overblown. I think-

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think not

Aaron Francis

... I think the severity, this-- when you, when you do an equation that is number of PHP sites, number of old PHP sites-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... and the, um, kind of accessibility of finding the way in with AI, you multiply all those together, and the outcome is, how much should you react? I think we all reacted the appropriate amount. Like the-

Speaker 2

I tend to agree

Aaron Francis

... the Japanese prime minister saying, "If you can't secure your sites, take them down."

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

The FBI and the NSA saying, "If you can't secure your sites, take them down," I think-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... was appropriate, actually.

Speaker 2

Mm. So what is Aaron Francis' stand on, uh, part of your shtick here in your early days at Laravel I think has been to like maybe lessen the PHP aspect of things-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... and focus more on like the Laravel aspect of things, right? We're not so much worried about the low level. But here the low level has poked itself through. It's like, ha ha ha, you must pay attention to me-

Aaron Francis

Correct

Speaker 2

... because I've got an issue. So tell me, where does that work into your mindset of how to market things and talk about things? 'Cause this is a weird spot where like it's a dev tool that requires this language-

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

... and, uh-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... I don't know. What do you think about that?

Aaron Francis

So my thought, my, my thoughts on how much we should talk about PHP hasn't changed.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

Um, the very next day we got a Brotli to shell, uh, CVE.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

And Brotli's in everything.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

It's in Python, it's in FFmpeg, it's in NGINX. It is freaking everywhere.

Speaker 2

Yep.

Aaron Francis

Also, the next day, so the same day as Brotli- ... we got a, uh, we got a GitLab, uh, level 10 CVE which is like-

Speaker 2

Level 10. Out did us

Aaron Francis

... yeah. Which is, by the way, we come to pwn your GitLab-

Speaker 2

That's just hosting something, yeah

Aaron Francis

... which turned out to be a Ruby level 10 CVE-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... in the regex parser. So the regex parser could explode, uh, and then you can like do some memory fiddling, and basically now-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... you own Ruby as well.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

So, uh, while not being grateful for vulnerabilities, I am grateful that there were a few fast follows that weren't PHP.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Because the easy thing that day was losers being like, "Well, if you use PHP in 2026, you deserve this."

Speaker 2

Right.

Aaron Francis

Which is like, I think we went through a whole like we don't do victim blaming, but now we're back to like-

Speaker 2

We're back

Aaron Francis

... blaming the victims here.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's right.

Aaron Francis

But we're back, yeah.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

Um, so my, my thought on, um, as crass as it sounds, how do we market off the back of this, is basically what we talked about in the, the beginning, which is, guys, this is going to keep happening, and you want a full team of infrastructure engineers with freaking pagers-

Speaker 2

Right.

Aaron Francis

... on it. You, you don't want-- First of all, you're not gonna likely carry a pager for your side project, right?

Speaker 2

Yeah. Unlikely.

Aaron Francis

And you don't, you don't want, you don't want, and maybe you don't even have the ability to manage all these CVEs that are coming out.

Speaker 2

Yep.

Aaron Francis

Because it was PHP, then it was Node, then it was Ruby, then it was literally everything that uses Brotli. And it's just like, guys, you, you can't keep up. Which is sad-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... because the internet has been built on, "I'm a guy who can just go build a thing," right?

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

And that is still possible. It's just a lot harder, because you have to, you have to keep up. Because the bad guys-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... have digital nuclear weapons now that they can just point at you.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

And so not, not even to mention the compromised, uh, certificate authority that was like, "Oh, we'll use the number four to invent SSL."

Speaker 2

Number four.

Aaron Francis

You're like, "Good God, man." So-

Speaker 2

Uh, gosh

Aaron Francis

... I don't think we talk... You know, I don't, I, I still don't think we talk about PHP. I think we still live at a higher level.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

And I think one of the higher levels we live at, at, is we have teams on this that will have your back.

Speaker 2

Security infrastructure, yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

And now that your Laravel cloud is expanding, you know, you got-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... Ruby and all the other things, it's all gonna be the same story everywhere with, uh-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... security vulnerabilities, yeah.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

You know, there's a whole... There's a world, there's been this world of like, this is just related to something you said, of like customers who are like side, side project customers. Like, there's been an industry of selling things to side project customers. I mean, even like Forge in its early days, I'm sure a lot of like mostly side project people, right? Not people doing infrastructure for their businesses in the, in the early days of Forge.

Aaron Francis

In the early days, yeah.

Speaker 2

Then it got changed later. Um, but that's like a class of bus- Like, those were always bad customers. Uh, not for Taylor in that particular case, but just i- as a generalization, I think those are not the best customers for many, many reasons. But I feel like now we're coming to this era of like they're just so bad customers. Like, you should not be thinking about these people as good customers or as custom- Like, you need to find, whatever you're building, you need to be like, "How is there a pain so big that a company's willing to pay for it?"

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 2

Because side project people don't have pain like that, right? And now with AI they don't, they have even less pain, 'cause they're like-

Aaron Francis

Yep

Speaker 2

... "Oh, whatever. I'll just tell the AI to fix it," right? And like that's not how a company thinks about things, but that is how a guy with a side project thinks about things.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 2

And so those are just like horrific customers now. Um, but yeah, I mean-

Aaron Francis

You know what I'm less likely to use now?

Speaker 2

What's that?

Aaron Francis

Somebody's email service that's been vibe coded.

Speaker 2

We- we're even less li- This is the third county.

Aaron Francis

I, I wasn't gonna use it before, but there's no freaking chance-

Speaker 2

And people don't understand this either

Aaron Francis

... I'm gonna use somebody's vibe coded email product. No chance.

Speaker 2

There was a tweet I saw yesterday, okay? And I just, I almost-

Aaron Francis

Oh, no. We got the double hands on the face. The double hands on the face.

Speaker 2

I was going to make a thing of it, and I was like, "I don't have the energy." I don't-

Aaron Francis

Good

Speaker 2

... I don't even wanna like

Aaron Francis

Follow this instinct. Follow this instinct

Speaker 2

That was good. That was good. But here's the thing that really bothered me about it, right? So I'm gonna talk about it here amongst friends. There's a guy, he's like, "Oh, there's a $39," one of the email ones or whatever, right? I don't know, whatever it was. Why am I paying $300 this? It's thir- everything's go- everything, every piece of software's gonna be this now. All SaaS is dead because every... You can do $39 one time, somebody's selling one of these things.

$39 one time, of course I would do that. Why would I, why would I do anything else? And then I, I was like, "This is crazy," right? And so I look at the guy's bio on Twitter, and he sells a marketing course. This is what he does.

Aaron Francis

Of course.

Speaker 2

And I'm like, "I don't understand how you're selling a marketing course and you think that the only factor in purchasing decisions is the price of something." It's insane. So this is the part that made me angry, and I was, like, gonna call the guy out on it 'cause, like, this is just stupid. But I didn't, 'cause I was like, whatever. But, like, th- this is like marketing 101 is that, like, how do we charge for things that, not just based on price.

Like, there's a million examples. Why do you have an iPhone when you could have the cheapo Samsung blah, blah, blah or whate- There's a million...

Aaron Francis

Yeah

Speaker 2

Why does people have Bentleys when they, they could have a Toyota? Like, that, that's a crazy, insane thing. Like, so I was so... It was just infuriating. But yeah-

Aaron Francis

Th- this is just-

Speaker 2

... I totally agree

Aaron Francis

... this is just the indie hacker brain worm.

Speaker 2

Ah.

Aaron Francis

That's all it is.

Speaker 2

It's so... It's brain rot.

Aaron Francis

It's so bad.

Speaker 2

It's so bad.

Aaron Francis

It's so bad. It's like-

Speaker 2

Oh, it's so bad

Aaron Francis

... I, I moved to Manila, or I moved to Bali, and I sell crappy products, and I make $4,000 a month, and I'm gonna teach you how to sell crappy products. It's, it's just like-

Speaker 2

It's just-

Aaron Francis

... that's a little-

Speaker 2

... infuriating

Aaron Francis

... a little rude to say, but directionally, that is-

Speaker 2

Directionally correct

Aaron Francis

... that is what we're talking about. It is-

Speaker 2

It's like, hey-

Aaron Francis

I'm gonna-

Speaker 2

... HelpSpot's been cheaper than Zendesk for 20, 17 years, since Zendesk started, but I don't have a billion dollars like Zendesk. Why? That's not, that's not... That, I should have billions of dollars. That would be what would make sense in this crazy world of logic.

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Speaker 2

That's not how it works.

Aaron Francis

Good. Some wrongs are not yours to right, Ian. Just let it go. I know, it's hard out there.

Speaker 2

Twitter is terrible.

Aaron Francis

It's hard to just let people be wrong. I've gone, I've gone to, I've gone to much counseling to learn to let people be wrong.

Speaker 2

Oh.

Aaron Francis

I don't have to fix every-

Speaker 2

I feel like your counseling sessions are mostly-

Aaron Francis

Oh, man

Speaker 2

... about Twitter. It's like-

Aaron Francis

They're, they're not, but in a way, they are. Uh, y- I just have to, you know, some, some things-

Speaker 2

You're like, "I saw this tweet"

Aaron Francis

... are just wrong.

Speaker 2

"Let's go through it."

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, all right. So, um, that was kind of... Actually, that was this one. Let me just mark that off. So, um, uh, uh, why don't you tell us about some of y- this accounting course. You gave us a little private update.

Aaron Francis

So speaking-

Speaker 2

The Aaron Francis accounting empire grows

Aaron Francis

... speaking of found money with-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... trip- tripling our pre-roll rates. That was, that was a nice thing to put in my pocket there. Let's pull up the Stripe dashboard for some more-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... found money. Uh-

Speaker 2

Found money

Aaron Francis

... okay. It's making, it's making me log in, so let's pull it up on my phone here, and let's get the up-to-date numbers on-

Speaker 2

Let me tell you-

Aaron Francis

... found money

Speaker 2

... we gotta get you into poker, because there's nothing better than taking your found money and gambling.

Aaron Francis

And losing it.

Speaker 2

That's just like, "No, we're gonna get you trained up. You're gonna double it. You're gonna triple it. You're gonna grow it."

Aaron Francis

So since migrating-

Speaker 2

Mm

Aaron Francis

... which you'll remember I did no work to migrate it.

Speaker 2

No.

Aaron Francis

Right?

Speaker 2

The AI did the work.

Aaron Francis

No work. The AI did all the work-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... well under my subscription. I did not, I don't-

Speaker 2

Now, to be fair, you did do a ton of work to make these things exist a-

Aaron Francis

Ton of work

Speaker 2

... 10 years ago.

Aaron Francis

Huge amount of work.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

10 years ago.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

Since migrating it, I've made $2,998.

Speaker 2

Free money.

Aaron Francis

That's money in the bank, my friends.

Speaker 2

And when's this, a month maybe? Less than a month?

Aaron Francis

It's been less than a month. It's been-

Speaker 2

Oh my gosh

Aaron Francis

... No, it's been, it's been, uh, one month.

Speaker 2

One month.

Aaron Francis

One month. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2

Okay. And you hit the midterms here, I guess, or whatever, so that was good.

Aaron Francis

I did. Yep.

Speaker 2

Yep.

Aaron Francis

So I, I hit them before, I hit them before midterms and finals. Um, and the way that, the way that the site is structured is all of the first, like, the first four chapters are always and have always been free.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Aaron Francis

And so I, I got payments turned on in time for, I think, the second four or maybe just the third four chapters. Um, but regardless, 3,000 bucks, better than a poke in the eye.

Speaker 2

Dude, I mean, now, I assume, uh, are th- are these regular courses that... It doesn't sound like they're regular semester courses, 'cause the semester's not over, but you're talking about finals. Or is it regular?

Aaron Francis

Uh, they're, they're regular semester courses.

Speaker 2

Oh, okay.

Aaron Francis

The, it's just that the way that the payments are structured is-

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm

Aaron Francis

... uh, as long as, basically as long as I turn on payments before finals, I'll make money.

Speaker 2

Okay. Right.

Aaron Francis

So the half-

Speaker 2

But finals are still in December or whatever.

Aaron Francis

The finals are yet to come. Yeah.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

The finals are yet to come. Um, but they've tripped over the paywall now. The, the bad thing would've been if I had done this over Christmas break, I would've missed this entire semester-

Speaker 2

Right. Okay

Aaron Francis

... and it would have not been a thing.

Speaker 2

So now, so you should have a pretty good selling season of the school year. Like, you can expect maybe to have 2 to $4,000 in sales a month if this holds.

Aaron Francis

I can expect to have-

Speaker 2

Or, or maybe even more in late November or December.

Aaron Francis

I think historically I've done 5 to 10,000 a semester.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Aaron Francis

So wherever that falls in the semester-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Aaron Francis

... whether that's October, November, or December, I don't super care, but I think my best semester back in the day, I did like 13 or $14,000.

Speaker 2

And summers-

Aaron Francis

And so we're talking-

Speaker 2

... or no?

Aaron Francis

Some, some summers. Not, not very many.

Speaker 2

But not like... Okay.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. No, definitely not.

Speaker 2

Yeah. And so if you put 20 grand in your pocket this year from, a, a-

Aaron Francis

It's great

Speaker 2

... million tokens you burned for free.

Aaron Francis

It's fantastic.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Aaron Francis

I'm thrilled to death about it.

Speaker 2

Oh my goodness.

Aaron Francis