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The difference between "low prices" as a race to the bottom or as a success story (like Amazon, Costco, IKEA, Vanguard) is in leveraging intentional weaknesses.
Simplify complex decisions by separating upsides from downsides, investing in upsides, vetoing with downsides, and using an appropriate decision framework.
Identifying useful frameworks for companies, strategy, markets, and organizations, instead of those that just look pretty in PowerPoint.
Freemium means high costs, low conversion, and customer feedback dominated by the non-ideal customer. Treat it as a marketing expense to ensure ROI.
Comparing yourself to other startups? Focus on yourself instead.
More in programming
Understand how computers represent numbers and perform operations at the bit level before diving into assembly
To be a successful founder, you have to believe that what you're working on is going to work — despite knowing it probably won't! That sounds like an oxymoron, but it's really not. Believing that what you're building is going to work is an essential component of coming to work with the energy, fortitude, and determination it's going to require to even have a shot. Knowing it probably won't is accepting the odds of that shot. It's simply the reality that most things in business don't work out. At least not in the long run. Most businesses fail. If not right away, then eventually. Yet the world economy is full of entrepreneurs who try anyway. Not because they don't know the odds, but because they've chosen to believe they're special. The best way to balance these opposing points — the conviction that you'll make it work, the knowledge that it probably won't — is to do all your work in a manner that'll make you proud either way. If it doesn't work, you still made something you wouldn't be ashamed to put your name on. And if it does work, you'll beam with pride from making it on the basis of something solid. The deep regret from trying and failing only truly hits when you look in the mirror and see Dostoevsky staring back at you with this punch to the gut: "Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing." Oof. Believe it's going to work. Build it in a way that makes you proud to sign it. Base your worth on a human on something greater than a business outcome.
I learned a new word: ductile. Do you know it? I’m particularly interested in its usage in a physics/engineering setting when talking about materials. Here’s an answer on Quora to: “What is ductile?” Ductility is the ability of a material to be permanently deformed without cracking. In engineering we talk about elastic deformation as deformation which is reversed once the load is removed for example a spring, conversely plastic deformation isn’t reversed. Ductility is the amount (usually expressed as a ratio) of plastic deformation that a material can undergo before it cracks or tears. I read that and started thinking about the “ductility” of languages like HTML, CSS, and JS. Specifically: how much deformation can they undergo before breaking? HTML, for example, is famously forgiving. It can be stretched, drawn out, or deformed in a variety of ways without breaking. Take this short snippet of HTML: <!doctype html> <title>My site</title> <p>Hello world! <p>Nice to meet you That is valid HTML. But it can also be “drawn out” for readability without losing any of its meaning. It’ll still render the same in the browser: <!doctype html> <html> <head> <title>My site</title> </head> <body> <p>Hello world!</p> <p>Nice to meet you.</p> </body> </html> This capacity for the language to undergo a change in form without breaking is its “ductility”. HTML has some pull before it breaks. JS, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same kind of ductility. Forget a quotation mark and boom! Stretch it a little and it breaks. console.log('works!'); // -> works! console.log('works!); // Uncaught SyntaxError: Invalid or unexpected token I suppose some would say “this isn’t ductility, this is merely forgiving error-parsing”. Ok, sure. Nevertheless, I’m writing here because I learned this new word that has very practical meaning in another discipline to talk about the ability of materials to be stretched and deformed without breaking. I think we need more of that in software. More resiliency. More malleability. More ductility — prioritized in our materials (tools, languages, paradigms) so we can talk more about avoiding sudden failure. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
I recently went into a deep dive on “UART” and will publish a much longer article on the topic. This is just a recap of the basics to help put things in context. Many tutorials focus on using UART over USB, which adds many layers of abstraction, hiding what it actually is. Here, I deliberately … Continue reading How to use “real” UART → The post How to use “real” UART appeared first on Quentin Santos.
You know about Critical Race Theory, right? It says that if there’s an imbalance in, say, income between races, it must be due to discrimination. This is what wokism seems to be, and it’s moronic and false. The right wing has invented something equally stupid. Introducing Critical Trade Theory, stolen from this tweet. If there’s an imbalance in trade between countries, it must be due to unfair practices. (not due to the obvious, like one country is 10x richer than the other) There’s really only one way the trade deficits will go away, and that’s if trade goes to zero (or maybe if all these countries become richer than America). Same thing with the race deficits, no amount of “leg up” bullshit will change them. Why are all the politicians in America anti-growth anti-reality idiots who want to drive us into the poor house? The way this tariff shit is being done is another stupid form of anti-merit benefits to chosen groups of people, with a whole lot of grift to go along with it. Makes me just not want to play.
