_ah

It's the same reason people go see scary movies. To feel the thrill.

Wow, this takes me back.

I actually worked on Office performance many years ago. We did a lot of very clever stuff to improve the product, even to the point of optimizing the byte ordering on disk (spinning rust) so that the initial boot would be faster.

That said, it always felt a bit like a losing battle. The goal was "make Office not get slower". It's very hard to convince app teams that their new shiny abstraction or graphics object is actually the reason everything is worse, and it's even more challenging when there's no direct impact- just a broad increase in system memory pressure.

Typically, perf isn't a few bad decisions. It's a very large number of independently reasonable decisions that add up to a bad result. If the team loses that discipline for even one moment then it's very very difficult to fix. I wonder if my former team still exists or if they've all been reassigned elsewhere.

I also encourage you to think carefully about your physical location. Think about proximity to tech jobs, family, quality of life, etc. After 10 years, chances are you may have acquired a spouse, in-laws, mortgage, kids, and friends. It becomes much much harder to move to a new location for career opportunities. So choose while you still have freedom of motion!

This can be easily attacked with two scammers executing a MITM attack. One calls the bank to impersonate you and steal your money, the other calls you to get your app code.

Not manipulation but a recognition of reality. Mission is worth something to people. Different amounts for different people, but not zero .

Why do game developers get paid less, on average, than someone doing boring business software? Because people want to make games. You have to pay someone more to do boring work. "I build games" is part of the compensation package just as much as a paycheck or healthcare benefits.

As a startup you can't always choose your cash flow. But you can choose your mission. All else being equal, you should choose an exciting mission that attracts better talent.

You need to watch your CAC Payback Period very very very closely. This is the thing that kills otherwise successful SaaS companies... they are profitable long-term but bankrupt short-term, and end up needing to scrape up funding with terrible terms to bridge that gap.

All customers will cost you something on the front end, even if it's just time. That time is money. How long does it take to earn enough profit to pay that back? Higher margin and lower operation cost --> faster payback period --> ability to onboard customers faster.

Stated differently: if 10M new customers walked through your door tomorrow, could you onboard and retain them immediately? Probably not. Determine your new customer flow rate and gear your sales + advertising activities to hit that rate. Then you can add more business capacity and continue to scale.

One more thought: as you scale, how can you lower your employee cost? People talk about remote hiring, and that's an option, but there's also another shortcut: mission. People will take less money for the same work if they're excited about the mission. Mission IS compensation. What makes a good mission? Maybe you're focused on minority-owned small businesses. Maybe you're offering a chance for developers from non-traditional backgrounds to grow. Maybe you employ ex-cons. Maybe you're trying to launch a rocket to Mars. Whatever it is, find the GENUINE thing that makes your story super unique and use that to attract good employees for less cash.

I have always thought the best solution is strong encryption, plus weak encryption.

Every user has their data encrypted with a unique, zero-knowledge, weak key. Then it's encrypted again by the service provider with a strong key.

When the government shows up with a warrant, they get the strong key. But the weak key is known only to the user, not the service provider. So now the government has to go spend CPU time to brute force the weak key.

Economics enforces good behavior. Governments with lots of resources can afford to break into any single user's data. But they can't afford to break into EVERYONE'S data and go fishing. It's the same as hiring detective to do a stakeout... you can follow anyone but you can't follow everyone.

"You don't seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help."

-Jean Kerr

I'm very similar. I have excellent oral health... brush 2x/day, don't floss. Two interesting datapoints:

1. I changed jobs a few times, and for various reasons I neglected to see a dentist for 10 years. When I finally went back, had perfect oral health and no cavities. My hygienist still remembers me because this event was so far outside her experience + expectations.

2. My wife had "normal" tooth decay problems throughout her life, until we started dating, at which point she's had no further cavities. ;)

To answer the normal questions: I don't do anything particularly special with my diet except a general avoidance of sweetened drinks - no soda pop, no sweeteners in my coffee.

If anyone wants to swab my mouth and pay me a small licensing royalty for commercialization please get in touch. Heh.

The author wrote a piece of software she thinks does a better job of teaching reading skills. The article is just an argument that people should use her software, and complaint that because it's not phonics nobody will buy it. This article is more sales than content.

Also: subscription streaming did topple the iTunes sales model. It just wasn't Microsoft that made it work in the marketplace.

Some car dealers have installed private car washes. Come in for a free wash, any time, as long as you own the car and are displaying the dealer plate. So at least in that case they're "paying" for the advertising.

https://archive.li/Wlzsv

This is dumb.

In a high-density environment (hey there Japan!) HSR makes tons of sense. In a much lower-density area, moving people isn't the biggest problem, it's moving stuff.

Next time you take a long-distance flight in the USA, look out the window and ponder how dang big AND EMPTY the country is. People can be transported quickly by air, but for cargo you want energy efficiency per kg (not speed). For most of the USA, it's completely rational to build a slow, efficient cargo rail network. The overhead of airports makes sense for human transport given the distances involved. This is different from Europe/Japan where the overhead of air travel matters proportionally more given the short distances between destinations.

It gets worse. The value of a (human) rail network grows as its density grows. Germany is awesome because the rail network connects a bunch of different cities. Even if the Seattle+Portland route makes sense in isolation, that's basically the entire network right there. Maybe add Vancouver? There's no other population center even close... just 3 cities in a line on the coast. There's absolutely no multiplier effect on the new HSR links. They'd be better served by building a small dedicated airport at either end and running frequent commuter planes back and forth all day.

If everyone has good things to say on their way out the door, that means that Manager A is a "Good Person". So I can think of two reasons to leave:

1. Manager A is a Good Person but actually an incompetent manager. Everyone likes him, but he's terrible at teaching people and developing their careers. Eventually, people go elsewhere for growth.

2. Manager A is actually fantastic as career development, so much so that he convinces his team that they are capable of so much more. He builds them up and then sends them out into the world with his blessing to do something bigger.

FWIW, I think option #1 is most likely.

For Manager B, this is a person who is steady and low drama, but also not super invested on the personal level. Likely does what he has to for his team, and the folks who stay are not super ambitious but also appreciate the low drama environment.

AWS egress is cheap, just not for you.

If you're a small developer you get to pay for those fat AWS profit margins. If you're a larger company doing VERY LARGE amounts of egress (where it's potentially economical for you to lease and manage your own fiber lines) you'd be shocked at just how flexible the AWS sales team can be.

Source: participated in egress pricing negotiations with AWS for a large company and saw the real numbers.

This is the famous "Czech Sky". https://seattlebubble.com/blog/2010/09/30/real-actual-listin...

I've had the same issue (and same solution), but it's not shady.

Brother makes reliable printers for offices. A consumer might want to print until the ink gets faded and streaky (to maximize lifespan), but for an office setting reliability is more important. You'd rather replace toner more often and have the prints always look great, than have to QC every sheet to determine if it's time to change the cartridge. Given the variable amount of ink on each printed page, Brother knows that a toner cart should last X pages 95% of the time (or whatever it is).

"Best printer 2023: just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine / The Brother whatever-it-is will print return labels for online shopping, never run out of toner, and generally be a printer instead of the physical instantiation of a business model."

https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-...

Every time I've called my broker they've asked to enable Voice ID as their "most secure form of authentication!". Hard pass. The poor reps on the phone are always very confused.

Are companies interviewing candidates for a potential role and keeping them on standby as a means to hire them at a later point quickly?

Yep this is exactly what's happening. It takes time to source a candidate, schedule interviews, review feedback. If there's a chance that hiring will "unlock" soon companies will keep their pipeline full so they can insta-offer later.

This is funny, but off topic and not helpful.

This, 100%.

Of course, to get a specialization you have to become an expert. No one is going to pay you for that. There are more ways in than just out of university, but they typically require a lot of additional work/effort.

A buddy of mine always wanted to make games. He's done it successfully... after several years working on "normal" software in Big Tech, he successfully transitioned to the games industry and is now a graphics engine expert. Victory! But it took a long time to get there: he had to learn a LOT in his spare time, and then it's been ~10 years of crappy underpaid jobs (with multiple layoffs!) for him to finally build up enough industry cred to where he can do the work he loves and get paid well for it.

I think about presentations in terms of emotional hooks. For a short (30-second) demo:

1. Start with a provocative and almost hyperbolic (true) statement, and then don't answer it... leave the viewer hanging. Example: "Everyone knows Lambda is a black box and impossible to debug. No inspector API! Everyone is wrong. WE can make Lambda dance. Watch this magic." --> This crappy intro which I pulled out of thin air sets a particular tone: very casual, a little cocky. That might or might not be the way you want to brand your product. But the point is that it grabs your attention and leaves the viewer saying "Whaaaaa????". And then they keep watching, and the emotional part of the brain is engaged so they're fully engaged.

2. Quick demo. Keep it punchy. For a 30-second demo, this could be all of 10 seconds: click, click, click, and we're done. Skip over anything remotely irrelevant. You can cover that later in a detailed walkthrough.

3. Recap: [Product] does [value] even when [obstacle]. Our [technology] makes it possible to [restate value in different words].

4. Logo.

For a longer demo, you'll want to stretch things out more. Tell a story perhaps, maybe go into more detail. But as always, consider your audience and the emotional beats. You'll want to start with a hook (a provocative unanswered question or declaration), then proceed through the demo which answers the question, then restate what you just said.

A subtle nuance here: never ask the viewer to imagine themselves in a situation, just go with the solution. So not "Have you ever found yourself [problem statement]", but instead start immediately with "[Solution to impossible problem]". If you ask the viewer to imagine themself having a problem, their brain will still be working on the imagining (which is hard work!) and they'll miss the solution. If you jump strait to the solution, anyone who's had that problem will immediately place themself in the situation and go "wait how is that even possible?!?". Don't make someone's brain work harder than it has to.

Lastly: remember that delivery matters. You should be providing energy. If you're talking in a monotone nobody cares. Repetition matters here... if I'm recording a talk I might rehearse it word for word 10-20 times before landing on a delivery that I think is good enough. Keep polishing your word choice, pacing, etc. All those casual, easy voice-overs you've seen are smooth because of practice not because of some un-learnable raw talent.

You might think so, but historically that doesn't seem to be the case. Prices rise as interest rates drop, but prices are sticky on the way down. This article is old but still relevant: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/how-ris...

I prefer to start from the assumption that money doesn't exist. Rather Moneyness is a property that various tangible and intangible items have to varying degrees. Moneyness is conferred by: rarity, usefulness, desirability, portability, fungibility.

Gold is rare, desirable (it's pretty!), reasonably useful in limited contexts, perfectly fungible, and easily portable due to its density. On this scale, Gold has a high degree of Moneyness and so people often say that "gold is money", and it has served as both exchange currency and store of value for millenia.

In contrast, cigarettes are useful, desirable, and fungible but not rare. Thus they form a poor medium of exchange or store of value. Unless you happen to be in a prison, where cigarettes are more difficult to acquire, and thus have increased Moneyness and can form the basis of a currency system.

With this background it's easy to see that digital US dollars possess the same amount of Moneyness as credit. Credit spends like dollars. Digital accounts spend like paper bills. If the context changes, then the relative value changes. Is the network down? Suddenly your credit card has reduced ability to act as a medium of exchange. The digital currency has reduced Moneyness. "Sorry, cash only", etc.

This is a long-winded way of discouraging you from trying to compare anything to "real money". There is no real money. There are only various objects and societal agreements that have greater or lesser degrees of Moneyness at this particular location and time in history.

It's like any muscle. Start with something small that feels very risky, but isn't. Maybe 5hr-per-week unpaid tech work for a charity you enjoy, or a 10hr-per-week paid gig. Buy and sell some stuff online for small money. Do things where, even if you failed COMPLETELY, it wouldn't really affect your life.

Eventually you'll find that your universe of "acceptable risk" has expanded. Previously risky things won't feel that way anymore.

Extreme risk tolerance is a skill, but it comes from a lifetime of trying things, having them fail, and finding out that actually it was okay.

Except that it isn't.

Assume you are a superstar of some persuasion and you earn $100M/yr. Is a 20% raise a lot of money? It's not! Sure, it's an extra twenty million dollars, but what could you possibly want to buy with that money that you can't already purchase?

At some point $100k --> $100M the math changes. That point will be different for different people.

I use two mice: one on each side of the keyboard. Then I can switch hands at will.

Usually somewhere between 1.75 and 1.9, depending on the content. There's something weird that happens moving from 1.9 to 2.0 where I feel the audio quality degrades dramatically.