Ever wondered, "Is there an AI to see how your baby looks?" Well you're not alone! OurBabyAI is an app that shows how your future baby may look.
In a quaint bar on the outskirts of Catania (Italy), as whiskey glasses clinked and muted conversations blended into a […] The post Aging Code appeared first on Vadim Kravcenko.
In the world of finance, there are a myriad of strategies employed by corporations to optimize their tax liabilities. One such method, known as transfer pricing, has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, raising concerns about fairness and equity in the global tax system.
As I suspected my energy for writing in August was diverted to more important things. Plenty of energy to read, though. With a respite in September, I should soon be able to write a bit on the Greek philosophers I have been reading. The Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics work well as a cluster. Then later a bit on Plutarch and the little philosophy project is a wrap. PHILOSOPHY Meditations (c....
New experiments show that the brain distinguishes between perceived and imagined mental images by checking whether they cross a “reality threshold.” The post Is It Real or Imagined? How Your Brain Tells the Difference. first appeared on Quanta Magazine
A quasi-monthly feature. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find them in my links digests. I’ve been busy helping to choose the first cohort of our blogging fellowship, so my reading has been relatively light. All emphasis in bold in the quotes below was added by me. Books Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (1990). I’ve...
Dear Student, I suspect you’ve already encountered most of the conventional advice—the familiar platitudes repeated endlessly in classrooms, critiques, and career talks. Work hard. Stay disciplined. Develop your craft. Each phrase is earnest, and each contains some truth, but none of them alone can fully illuminate what it actually means to become a professional. That word carries with it a whole...
Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Lawler: More Ruminations on the “Neutral” Rate of Interest A brief excerpt: When talking about the so-called “neutral” interest rate, many financial commentators, financial analysts, and even monetary policymakers talk about the nominal interest rate. However, the theoretical “neutral” interest rate is a real, or inflation-adjusted interest...
Everything about the Black Magic's acquisition + May 2023 updates
and other updates from me in Mar 2023
Rest of World's staff favorites, from around the globe to add to your must-read pile.
What Larry David's legendary sitcom can teach about creativity and work.
I recently discovered Syncthing, an open-source tool for syncing files across multiple machines. Setting up Syncthing on my personal devices was easy, but I went on an interesting journey deploying it to a cloud server. Why run Syncthing in the cloud? Syncthing synchronizes files peer to peer. That means that at least two of my devices have to be online and running Syncthing simultaneously to stay...
Lessons from building and growing Copylime to 6 figures all in public
Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios. For deaths, I'm currently using 4 weeks ago for "now", since the most recent three weeks will be revised significantly. Note: "Effective May 1, 2024, hospitals are no longer required to report COVID-19 hospital admissions, hospital capacity, or hospital occupancy data." So I'm no longer tracking...
Jason Cohen’s 2013 Microconf talk, Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business with Jason Cohen, is one of the most valuable resources I’ve found for bootstrapped founders. I watched it for the first time in 2020, and I’ve revisited it repeatedly since then. If you’re new to the world of bootstrapped software business, or you’re struggling to gain traction with your business, I highly recommend this...
Google Colossus Explained Simply
There are a growing number of AI coding tools that are alternatives to Copilot. A list of other popular, promising options.
small updates from me in July 2023
Lessons from building AudioPen to 600+ paid users to clinching #1 on Product Hunt
Today is exactly 2 years since I quit my job and become a full-time indie hacker.
Mike Cardona is a solo founder who has managed to build a $200k online business by specialising in automation content and consulting
All ye readers, buckle up. Today, I'm giving you 14 non-fiction books I believe everyone should read. For each book, I've provided a brief summary. Now it's up to you to decide if it's worth your time. Let's dig in. This book dives deep into the world of trauma, discussing its effects on the mind, body, and daily life. If you want to know everything about trauma and how to deal with it, this is...
This year, I decided to build my first ever home storage server. It’s a 32 TB system that stores my personal and business data using open-source software. The server itself cost $531, and I bought four disks for $732, bringing the total cost to $1,263. It’s similar in price to off-the-shelf storage servers, but it offers more power and customizability. In this post, I’ll walk through how I chose...
Traveled to Bali and Sydney, some updates on Typing Mind, and a new product.
Lessons from building RadReads and helping over 40,000 professionals in public
In 2005, Joel Spolsky’s software company, Fog Creek, filmed a documentary about their summer internship program. The film is called Aardvark’d: 12 Weeks with Geeks, and it follows four college interns as they design, implement, and launch a completely new software product. That’s not the interesting part. Looking back on this documentary 18 years later, it’s striking how many interviews it...
I put my M1 Pro against Apple's new M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max, a NVIDIA GPU and Google Colab.
Want to find the best no-code newsletters for learning about what you can build without coding? You came to the right place!
Seven years ago, I built my first home server. It made my software development work faster and more enjoyable, so I’ve gotten more into the home server scene. I built a custom storage server, another development server, and a dedicated firewall. At some point, my wife gently observed that my office was filling with unsightly wires. “What?” I asked. “This is a normal amount of wires.” But then I...
<p> A bit over a year ago, I wrote <a href="https://valsopi.com/setting-sail">a post</a> in which I talked about embarking on a journey to financial freedom. Specifically speaking — I took out a personal loan so I could focus on solely building products. </p><p> With that announcement, I decided to open up all my finances for anyone to see how it really was to chase a dream like...
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Highlights I’ve started the process of...
After months of contemplating I finally pulled the trigger and got myself a Fairphone 5. The fact that iPhone X stopped receiving major iOS updates certainly helped make that decision. “But why? My Xiaomi/Oneplus/Samsung/other glued-together device is like so much cheaper and faster and makes better photos and the software is good after I completely format it and install a custom ROM! And...
I always run into issues installing Jellyfin on TrueNAS core. I fix them, and then I forget a few months later, so these are just my notes to myself of how to install Jellyfin on TrueNAS core. Instructions Install based on these instructions: https://github.com/Thefrank/jellyfin-server-freebsd/blob/main/Installation_TrueNAS_GUI.md#the-advanced-way We need to follow the advanced instructions...
Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios. Existing Home Sales for December from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The consensus is for 4.20 million SAAR, up from 4.15 million. University of Michigan's Consumer sentiment index (Preliminary for January).
My friend Cory Zue has been publishing his live coding sessions, so I decided to watch one and record my notes. My background vs. Cory’s I’ve read a lot of Cory’s blog. We’re both Python developers, but he specializes in Django, whereas I’ve always worked with thinner frameworks like Flask. I have no experience with Django, but I’m comfortable in Python. Dev environment Timestamp 0:10 OS: Ubuntu I...
One of the most exciting things a startup CEO in a business-to-business market can hear from a potential customer is, “We’re excited. When can you come back and show us a prototype?” This can be the beginning of a profitable customer relationship or a disappointing sinkhole of wasted time, money, resources, and a demoralized engineering […]
I sold Xnapper, here is a quick update about the acquisition details
<p>Growing up I was always told to work hard, wait my turn, and good things will happen.</p><p>However, I've been the most successful when I didn't wait.</p><p>The "waiting room" is the worst place to be in. </p><p>You're at the mercy of someone else letting you in.</p><p>Working hard is important. However, it's smarter to know what you're "working hard" towards.</p><p>Working hard and...
I have a bad habit of changing my computing setups all the time. I tend to see new gear, then I get some new ideas, and then I obsessively think about it for weeks and months until I just buy it. And then the cycle repeats. I’ve had time to think about why that keeps happening and I think I’ve got it. I keep changing the goals, constantly, and with that I kept optimizing my setup in a different...
I also curated 300+ Black Friday deals for you
My current ISP provides an internet connection over a copper wire. To use it, I have a crappy modem (Technicolor CGA2121, DOCSIS 3.0). It’s running in bridge mode, meaning that all it does is convert the signal running over the coax cable into plain old Ethernet. My main networking device is a TP-Link Archer C7 v5. It runs OpenWRT. This router/Wi-Fi AP box connects to the modem and handles...
Nix is a tool for configuring software environments according to source files. I’ve been hearing more and more about Nix on Hacker News and Twitter. The idea of it appeals to me, so I’ve been tinkering with it over the past few weeks. My history with infrastructure as code Ten years ago, I discovered Salt, a tool that allows you to define a computer system’s configuration in source code. I loved...
When she wrote the following entry in her journal and imagined fleeing college to venture into the unknown, Susan Sontag was a precocious sixteen-year-old studying English at the University of California, Berkeley. By the end of the year she had indeed left—not on a bus to an undecided destination, but to the University of Chicago […]
For the past few months, I’ve been curious about two technologies: the Zig programming language and Ethereum cryptocurrency. To learn more about both, I’ve been using Zig to write a bytecode interpreter for the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Zig is a great language for performance optimization, as it gives you fine-grained control over memory and control flow. To motivate myself, I’ve been benchmarking...
Over the past six months, I’ve been transitioning the fulfillment processes at my e-commerce business to a third-party logistics (3PL) vendor. I didn’t know anything about 3PLs before starting this process, so there were a lot of things I didn’t know to ask about. Here are the list of questions that I recommend e-commerce merchants ask a 3PL if they’re considering working with them for...
How does the Glove80 stack up against similar keyboards like the Moonlander and Ergodox? I share my impressions after the first few weeks of use.
It's my first product launch of the year!
Lessons from building HeyGen from 0 to $1m ARR in 7 months
I recently bought my first-ever managed networking switch, a TP-Link JetStream TL-SG3428X. The main feature of a managed switch is that it lets you segment your network into VLANs. I was excited about this functionality, but it took me hours of trial and error to get VLANs working. I found TP-Link’s VLAN documentation lacking, so I’m sharing my notes in case they’re helpful to others. Background...
Hey Siri, set a reminder for 365 days.
My first two years as a bootstrapped founder went poorly. I could barely find any paying customers, and all of my businesses lost money. I began questioning my decision to quit my cushy Google job. In mid-2020, yet another of my businesses had flopped, and it was only kind of COVID’s fault. Desperate for a distraction, I made a little contraption that controlled my home servers through my web...
A great deal of building maintenance expenses are the result of simple inaccessibility. Cleaning the windows are your house is a trivial chore, but cleaning the windows on a skyscraper is serious undertaking that needs specialized equipment and training. To make exterior wall tile inspection efficient and affordable, the GLEWBOT team turned to nature for […] The post GLEWBOT scales buildings like...
Full story on my latest role at Paddle, the new AI program, and what it means for you
Using the same strategies I've used to build millions of subscribers across multiple newsletters, you can do it too. The post How To Build A Profitable Newsletter In 2024 appeared first on Scott DeLong.
Immigrating from Indonesia to the US and building Typedream in public
<p><i>Context: Read <a href="https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chatgpt-making-things-faster-and-easier/" target="_blank">Nick Cave's letter</a> first.</i></p> <p><i></i>—</p> <p>ChatGPT (or similar) are just tools!</p> <p>Nothing more.</p> <p>They're akin to when tools like Photoshop came out.</p> <p>It made designers better at what they did.</p> <p>It didn't create for them but helped...
May 17, 2024.
Interactive robots always bring an element of intrigue, and even more so when they feature unusual parts and techniques to perform their actions. Mr. Wallplate, affectionately named by Tony K on Instructables, is one such robot that is contained within an electrical wall plate and uses a servo motor connected to an Arduino UNO Rev3 for mouth […] The post Meet Mr. Wallplate, an animatronic wall...
Going viral, my thoughts, and updates from me in October 2023.
Early computers faced unexpected failures, and that gave us graceful degradation. But on the web, we needed something different. We needed progressive enhancement. The post Progressive enhancement brings everyone in appeared first on The History of the Web.
Some things have been made nearly impossible to search for. Say, for example, the long-running partnership between Epson and Catalina: a query that will return pages upon pages of people trying to use Epson printers with an old version of MacOS. When you think of a point of sale printer, you probably think of something like the venerable Epson TM-T88. A direct thermal printer that heats small...
Lessons from building and growing Potion to its acquisition all in public
Architecture and interior design studio Archisphere collaborated with Carbone & Kacerovsky to design a ‘Cyclist’, a modern cafe at the Hotel Andaz am Belvedere Vienna. Archisphere drew inspiration from the movement, freedom, and enjoyment associated with cycling. In addition to this, the spirit of the art collector Prince Eugen, whose influence can be found throughout […]
Rod is a founder who has successfully monetized a directory showing websites for finding a job. He has made $20k from his Job Board Search site.
Lessons from building Tally.so from 0 to $40k MRR all in public
Canadian design firm Level Studio has shared photos of a loft apartment located in a building that was once home to offices but has been converted into residential apartments.
A FAQ of sorts
When I work in my own repositories these days, I always add a Nix flake to the repo so that I can spin up a working development environment on any system with a single command. What do I do when I’m working in someone else’s repo and they don’t want to adopt Nix flakes? Normally, I’d just add the file to my copy of the repo and gitignore it locally so I don’t commit my personally-specific files...
Hello everyone! This is Tony 👋 Hello Hacker News! For context, this post is the latest issue of my monthly newsletter where I share the progress building BlackMagic.so & DevUtils.app. Check my previous issues to see more details about the products and my journey. Cheers!
Why not make this Christmas a little darker? The post Ho Ho Horror appeared first on The American Scholar.
See you again soon
<p>March was an absolutely insane month for <a href="https://blogstatic.io/">blogstatic.io</a>. The majority of this spike I can attribute to the <a href="https://blogstatic.io/blog/pricing-2024">price change announcement on March 1st</a> and customers were rushing to lock in their price.</p><h2>The customers</h2><p>At the risk of sounding corny and salesy, I can't say enough about how grateful I...
Imagine selling a website you made for $10,000. Pretty great, huh? Well that's exactly what Dmytro did
Some quick updates from me in June 2023
Lessons from building Plausible Analytics to $1.2m ARR in public
No update this month I’m skipping my normal retrospective this month, as I sold TinyPilot and am taking some time to figure out my next project. Retrospectives will hopefully resume in a month or two!
A monthly feature. As usual, recent blog posts and news stories are omitted from this; you can find them in my links digests. In all quotes below, any emphasis in bold was added by me. Books Thomas S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830 (1948). A classic in the field, concise and readable. Crafts (see paper below) cites this work as pointing out “the links between scientific thought and...
Also in this issue: one-off purchase vs. subscription, selling Xnapper, and other updates from me in Feb 2024
A little bit of magic, but mostly just practice
I turn 30, built a new app, and other updates in December 2023
People talk about you the way you talk about yourself.
(A Lengthy Vacation Post-Mortem)
Surreal and otherworldly.
And other updates in April 2023
I’m a blogger, and I often commission custom illustrations for my blog posts like this one: An example of an illustration I commissioned for the blog, part of my year-in-review series The blog’s previous illustrator was the awesome Loraine Yow, who worked with me for six years. She recently changed careers, so I’m looking for someone who can take over as the blog’s official illustrator. Benefits...
Let's Get Right To the Point
I was thrilled to see recently Alex Isora make $800k by selling Unicorn Platform, a website builder, as I previously interviewed him about learning to code without a CS degree. Alex has stayed on at Mars, the company which has acquired him and unlike a lot of founders, will stay
For those of you who are members of the Matrix project, I wanted to let you know that I am running for the Governing Board, and a bit about why. For those of you who are not, I hope you will forgive the intrusion. Maybe you'll find my opinions on the topic interesting anyway. I am coming off of a period of intense involvement in an ill-fated government commission, and I wanted to find another way...
There are two things from our announcement today I wanted to highlight. First, a key part of our mission is to put very capable AI tools in the hands of people for free (or at a great price). I am very proud that we’ve made the best model in the world available for free in ChatGPT, without ads or anything like that. Our initial conception when we started OpenAI was that we’d create AI and use it...
Reached $10K MRR, launched Xnapper (#1 of the week), went on Indie Hackers podcast (😱), and other updates in Aug 2022...
Zig is a new, independently developed low-level programming language. It’s a modern reimagining of C that attempts to retain all of C’s performance benefits while also taking advantage of improvements in tooling and language design from the last 30 years. Because Zig is designed to replace C, one of the first-class features is that you can call into C libraries from a Zig application. I couldn’t...
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Highlights TinyPilot began shipping a...
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself. Introduction Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing Information Two PCBs - Control Board & Switch Assembly Switch of the Breaker!!! Glass Canopy Removal Duct Cover Removal Swapping the Control Board Reassembly Conclusion Introduction Our kitchen has a Zephyr Ravenna kitchen hood that started to behave erratically: the LED strip didn’t want to switch off...
I’ve decided to intentionally take more time to play video games this year, since it’s a relatively healthy way to escape from the real world once in a while. A friend recommended one game in particular: Control: Ultimate Edition. During the Steam summer sale of 2023, I went ahead and bought it. I have liked it more than I expected to. What prompted me to cover this game wasn’t the captivating...
AI is strange. We need to learn to use it.
No you can't "have it all." You can have two things, but not three.
One of the great paradoxes of business is that management is prediction, but entrepreneurship ... isn't. What a theory of expertise in entrepreneurship tells us about creating new things in business.
Hello everyone 👋 It’s Tony again with another monthly update! 😄Thanks for reading Tony Dinh’s Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Phu Yen Province, Vietnam Welcome 313 new subscribers since my last issue! 👋 If you are new here: My name is Tony Dinh. This is a monthly newsletter of my indie startup journey. I try to document everything that happened in the...
Also in October: Speak at JOM Launch Asia 2022, and the thing about Elon Musk.
Hello everyone, it’s Tony again 👋 These days time flies so fast to me! I’m having so many updates in May that I want to share with you all. Let’s go! Welcome 128 new subscribers since the last issue! If you are new here, this is a monthly newsletter of my indie hacking journey. I try to document everything happened in the last month and share my insights and knowledge as much as I can.
I’m a bootstrapped founder of a six-person company, and I spent this week testing different tools for hiring candidates. This post summarizes my experience with the applicant tracking systems (ATS) I found and how well they serve small, bootstrapped businesses. Note: This isn’t affiliate blogspam where I give fake reviews to push you to sign up for whoever gives me a commission. I have no business...
A personal guide to Singapore for foreign friends visiting.
And some prompts that might be useful when it does.
by Enda Harte For me, there are six important first steps that I prioritized for practicing Stoicism (referenced in the diagram above), and I wanted to use this opportunity to go over each of these in a little more detail. Hopefully you’ll get an understanding of what they mean, and why it’s important to practice Read More >>
Today's interview is with Iron Brands (he's Dutch, that is his actual name), who joined a privacy analytics startups as a co-founder after it had already launched. We talked about how he met the original founder of Simple Analytics, how they negotiated the new ownership structure,
"IBM's first computer"
William / Kaven Architecture has sent us photos of a home they completed in Portland, Oregon, that’s part of a collection of private residences perched on several steeply sloped sites within Forest Park, a 5,000-acre woodland. A simple material palette of dark steel, concrete, glass, and custom bronze-black cladding grounds the house within the surrounding […]
The Justice Department worries about the stability of Ethereum, DCG tries to bilk their subsidiary's creditors, and Biden threatens a crypto veto.
Rethinking the Role of PPO in RLHF TL;DR: In RLHF, there’s tension between the reward learning phase, which uses human preference in the form of comparisons, and the RL fine-tuning phase, which optimizes a single, non-comparative reward. What if we performed RL in a comparative way? Figure 1: This diagram illustrates the difference between reinforcement learning from absolute feedback and...
Designed by Dixon Baxi, London.
I found it eye-opening in terms of understanding how municipal governments work in practice and how perverse incentives lead to poor community outcomes. It had a huge impact on the way that I think about where to live and what policies I support in local government. This book complements Happy City in that both books explore what characteristics of a city make it attractive for residents to live...
Here's a crash course on the rising trend of building in public
Not the usual monthly update, just a small update about Xnapper - my latest product
This post isn’t a detailed line-by-line tutorial on how to set up each individual piece of the setup as those types of guides tend to get out of date really easily, but if you know your way around Linux and the command line, then you can definitely replicate this setup on your own. Over the past few years I’ve been interested in learning about how much energy my computing setup and home appliances...
The temperature in the Middle East got even hotter in April, with Israel and Iran trading attacks on each other’s sovereign buildings/territory. Somehow World War III has never really seemed in danger of breaking out but it is a reminder that only change is constant. Over in New York Donald Trump was falling asleep in… Continue reading April ’24: Juggling cash as new UK tax year begins →
https://youtu.be/qJ8aRl1UNgw I'm on an old man rant today. The world's a shitfest, and something needs to be said: Opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one, and most are full of shit. So, here's my argument: people need to have fewer fucking opinions. The problem is that we're all drowning in information, and this overload causes us to mistake the quantity of knowledge for the quality of...
It was a such a short month!
Highlights TinyPilot had its best sales month ever, with $69k of total revenue. I’m now five months and $32k over budget on a website redesign. I launched PicoShare, and it’s the fastest-growing project I’ve ever published. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Publish TinyPilot Pro 2.4.0 Result: Released TinyPilot...
And why it might revolutionize the search industry.
All kinds of songs get stuck in your head. Famous pop tunes from when you were a kid, album cuts you’ve listened to over and over again. And then there’s a category of memorable songs—the ones that we all just kind of know. Songs that somehow, without anyone’s permission, sneak their way into the collective The post Whomst Among Us Let The Dogs Out (Again) appeared first on 99% Invisible.
For the past few years, I have been running Home Assistant to make my apartment a smart home. It’s become such a hobby of mine that I’ve even started coding add-ons for it. While there are other popular automation platforms, Home Assistant’s versatility blows the rest out of the water. It connects to everything I […] The post My Home Assistant setup (2023 edition) appeared first on Style over...
A new set of cases for two concept sequences, and the end of the Data Driven Series.
Lets build a simple virtual pinball controller to bring more immersion to your game.
The second in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Highlights I left the country for two...
Covering the state of play as of Summer, 2023
This is the 10th post in my series on building a toy GPT. Read my earlier posts first for better understanding. I asked ChatGPT to complete the sentence given the phrase: “I chose that bank for”. It completed the sentences sensibly. Here are the four sentences it generated: In order to generate the right words…
Hello everyone, this is Tony! 👋 Today is a special day. I want to share with you all this post I originally posted on Indie Hackers, but I think you all will also be interested! It’s a long post about my journey growing Black Magic to $2K MRR in the last 2 months.
If you believe that the most serious risks from AI are real, should you write about anything else?
TLDR: It’s a useless technology demo. Introduction Rules of Engagement Test Ride 1: from Kings Beach to Truckee (11 miles) Test Ride 2: I-80 from Truckee to Blue Canyon (36 miles) Test Ride 3: from West-Valley College to I-85 Entrance (1 mile) Conclusion Introduction In the past months, Tesla has been offering a free, one-month trial of their full self-driving (FSD) system to all current owners....
One of the many new features announced at yesterday’s OpenAI dev day is better support for generating valid JSON output. From the JSON mode docs: A common way to use Chat Completions is to instruct the model to always return JSON in some format that makes sense for your use case, by providing a system … Continue reading Experimenting with GPT-4 Turbo’s JSON mode →
Why everyone should learn about machine learning
Five analytical tasks in under a minute
ThinkPad keyboards were once well known for their great layouts, feel and functionality. This included the media playback control keys. On the ThinkPad T430, the new chiclet keyboard layout moved the media keys to the function row. Still there, but less convenient to access. The ThinkPad L390 Yoga doesn’t have any visible function keys for controlling media playback. However, I found that the...
For sale: a few KIM-1 User Manuals I printed up.
I tend to grasp math concepts better from books written for other fields. Take linear algebra for example — I developed a stronger understanding and appreciation for it after reading the book Modeling Life. Similarly, the investing book What I Learned About Investing from Darwin gave me deeper insights on how base rates, sensitivity, and…
Four questions to ask your organization.
Introduction Removing the panels Swapping a Rotary Encoder Putting it all back together End Result Introduction I recently bought a TDS 684B for cheap at a government auction. With 1 GHz BW and 5 Gsps sample rate, it can be used for those cases where my 350 MHz/2Gsps Siglent 2304X runs out of steam. It only had one issue: one of the rotary knobs on the front panel had erratic behavior. Not...
And then there were two.
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and in my professional life overall. Highlights TinyPilot generated $112k...
A lot of otherwise talented people are too pessimistic to actually do anything. They are paralyzed by risks that don’t exist and greatly exaggerate them where they do, preventing them from being one of the best. Consider this lightly edited excerpt from a conversation between Charlie Rose and Magnus Carlsen that argues it’s better to … The post The Winner’s Edge appeared first on Farnam Street.
Do birds of a feather flock together, or do opposites attract? These are both common aphorisms, which means that they are commonly offered as generally accepted truths, but also that they may by wrong. People like pithy phrases, so they spread prolifically, but that does not mean they contain any truth. Further, our natural instincts […] The post How Much Do Couples Share Traits? first appeared on...
I’m still a Nix beginner, and one thing I couldn’t figure out until recently was how to keep parts of my configuration.nix file under source control. My goal I’d like for my Nix configuration files to be modular and reusable, so depending on the system or flake, I can pull in only the configuration files I need. I’d like all my Nix configuration files to be under source control so that different...
This was almost a post on why millennial motherhood is so challenging, but turned into tactical food hacks.
A pragmatic approach to thinking about AI
Super quick updates
<p><i>For context, read <a href="https://valsopi.com/setting-sail">this article</a> first.</i></p><p><i>TLDR: A year ago, I took out a loan and went all–in pursuing my financial freedom. The words below are an update a year on the day.</i></p><hr><h2>Poetically speaking</h2><p><i>Here I am, one year later.</i></p><p><i>I am somewhere in the open ocean.</i></p><p><i>Doing...
You’re Cletus Kubernetus: a software developer, and a proud Fedora Linux user.1 You know Kubernetes, especially after the time you migrated some services to it. Everything is calm. Your pods are running. Your service is up. Business as usual. You release some minor changes to production. Everything is still working. Great! But then you receive a message from a colleague. Oh no, something has gone...
“Most heists target gold, jewels or cash. This one targeted illegal seeds. As the British established their sprawling empire across the subcontinent and beyond, they encountered a formidable adversary — malaria. There was a cure — the bark of the Andean cinchona tree. The only problem? The Dutch and the French were also looking to The post The Fever Tree Hunt appeared first on 99% Invisible.
May 10, 2024.
I stumbled upon this Hardware Haven video about the Zimaboard recently. I liked it a lot. I finally bought one. In short, Zimaboard is a small single-board computer that is relatively affordable and comes with an interesting selection of ports, which includes an exposed PCI Express port. Before we get down to the build, here’s a list of aspects that I want to see in my dream home server: low power...
I recently built my first home TrueNAS server. I use it to store the bulk of my personal and work data, so I’ve been learning how to make the most of TrueNAS and its filesystem, ZFS. Today, I want to tell you about backing up encrypted data. My homelab TrueNAS server One of the neat features of ZFS is that you can make backups of encrypted data while it’s still encrypted.
We can start to see, dimly, what the near future of AI looks like.
Uncapped safe notes misalign incentives in first rounds… let me explain why
Below the surface of any body of water, harmful amounts of toxic gases and contaminates can accumulate, which leads to a loss in fish and plant populations if not fixed quickly. But because most water testing, especially in aquariums, is done primarily on the surface, vital information gets missed. Kutluhan Aktar’s automated testing system aims to address […] The post Assess your aquarium’s health...
A PCB for breadboards to make working with op-amps easier.
Results of a four month accelerated expertise experiment in Judo. Or: "I expected to learn about deliberate practice but instead learnt a ton about my mental shortcomings."
will he go into destroy mode if I say no
GPT-4o, Google I/O, Fugaku LLM, Prep for Machine Learning Interviews, and more
Maker culture has always been a major part of magic performance. Some tricks are well-rehearsed slight of hand, but many of them rely on clever engineering to sell an illusion. And modern technology offers a great deal of interesting possibilities. That is the idea behind Peter Boie’s Engineering Wonder “STEM infused magic show.” That show […] The post A drone remote designed to enhance magic...
Over the last decade, few platforms have declined quite as rapidly and visibly as Facebook and Instagram. What used to be apps for catching up with your friends and family are now algorithmic nightmares that constantly interrupt you with suggested content and advertisements that consistently outweigh the content of people
TypingMind.com is launching tomorrow on Product Hunt!
The first in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
What does it mean for AI to be better than a human? And how can we tell?
Social proof is a powerful concept in marketing. It's the idea that as consumers, we are influenced by what others do, especially people we admire. If you have ever seen a website mention its number of users, a review from a customer, or company logos, you've
James and his partner Danielle have an enviable working set-up - they live and work on a sailing boat!
Google DeepMind releases AlphaFold 3, KANs, LLM Benchmarks are being looked at more critically, Apple is bringing their AI chips to data centers, StackOverflow partners with OpenAI, and more
Humans are really the ones to be scared of
One of the stumbling blocks I ran into when trying out NixOS was that I couldn’t run it under Proxmox, my preferred virtual machine server. Through some trial and error, I figured out how to install NixOS as a Proxmox container. Download the NixOS container image First, download the latest NixOS x86_x64 container image. For other hardware architectures, see this Github comment. At the time of this...
Highlights I’ve launched a new TinyPilot product and debuted a new logo. TinyPilot’s revenue finished the year strong at $55k for December. I’ve learned to manage design projects more aggressively. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Launch the Voyager 2 Result: Launched the Voyager 2 Grade: A After many months of...
'The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.' Teilhard de Chardin 💡Broken Hips This feels like one of these problems that most people have accepted as inevitable but that will be solved soon and we will look back and think how crazy we allowed this to happen for so long.
I recently read Julia Evans’ latest zine about git, and one of her tips was to configure your terminal shell prompt to show the git status. Julia’s terminal prompt looks like this: ~/work/homepage (main) $ main is Julia’s current git branch. When she’s in the middle of a git operation like bisect or merge, the terminal changes to this: ~/work/homepage (main|MERGING) $ It had never occurred to me...
There's a somewhat weird alien who wants to work for free for you. You should probably get started.
"Ownership" means ten different things to ten different people. Let's talk about what we actually want.
What will we do if Wikipedia falls to the type of AI-generated garbage that seems to be proliferating on the web? The number one thing you can do is learn to edit, and I will walk you through how to get started in only 30 minutes.
When Steve Jobs spoke about the intersection of liberal arts and technology, he did not envision crushing symbols of art and culture.
Hello everyone! 👋 I’m happy to share that this newsletter has now reached 2,000 subscribers. Yay! 🥳 I’m very grateful to have your support, and I hope what I shared here has been helpful for you! Let’s dig in. Here is what happened in March 2022. 📊 Reached $5K MRR, but it's slowing down
Marcus Aurelius is one of the best-known figures of the Roman Empire, thanks to his writings on Stoic philosophy and his place in history as "the last good emperor." His face is famous, too, even though he lived long before photography. The many surviving statues of Marcus Aurelius provide a vivid portrayal of his curly Read More >>
Mathematical proofs based on a technique called diagonalization can be relentlessly contrarian, but they help reveal the limits of algorithms. The post Alan Turing and the Power of Negative Thinking first appeared on Quanta Magazine
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs seven other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Highlights I think through what it...
Earlier this year, I created an open-source app called PicoShare. It’s a simple Golang web app for sharing files. I use it to send files that are too large to be email attachments, but I don’t want the recipient to deal with Dropbox or Google Drive. A few months ago, I started seeing my PicoShare server die every few days. When I checked the logs, I saw an out of memory error:
Hello everyone! It’s me again – Tony 👋 Time flies! February 2022 marks the 6 months milestone of me going indie hacking full time! 🥳 In this issue, I’ll share my regular updates from February and some thoughts on the first 6 months of my journey. Let’s go!
Highlights I published my fourth annual retrospective about being a bootstrapped founder. TinyPilot sales continue running strong despite a delay in launching our next product. I analyze how I’m spending my time and figure out ways to allocate my hours better. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Launch Voyager 2: PoE...
IPL is one of the greatest entertainments for a cricket lover like me. Chennai Super Kings (CSK) is my favorite team. Ruturaj Gaikwad, the new CSK captain for the IPL 2024 season, lost 10 out of 13 tosses: LLLLWLLLLLLWL. The probability of seeing the sequence LLLLWLLLLLLWL is 0.513 or 0.00012. Unsurprisingly, the odds of seeing…
I’ve been interested in functional reactive programming (FRP) for about a decade now. I even wrote a couple of blog posts back in 2014 describing my experiments. My initial source of inspiration was Elm, the Haskell-like language for the web that once had FRP as a core part of the language. Evan Czaplicki’s Strange Loop 2013 talk really impressed me, especially that Mario demo. From there,...
MathJax.Hub.Config({ jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"], tex2jax: { inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ], displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ], processEscapes: true, skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre', 'code'] } //, //displayAlign: "left", //displayIndent: "2em" }); Introduction Inside the...
what a year it's been
This post wraps up the sound work on Teacher's Pet.
Hello everyone, this is Tony! 👋 In January 2022, I released a new DevUtils version, added a lot of features for Black Magic, reached $4K MRR, and learned a ton! Here comes the monthly update! Hope you like it! 🧩 New DevUtils release: 1.13 The latest release of DevUtils comes with a brand new integration with Alfred and Raycast. These are the features people requested the most. I’m a happy user...
I gained 1,500 new users, but how many will convert? And other updates in July 2022...
An answer to a puzzle: why is that some businesses go down the Deming path, become data driven, achieve operational excellence, and die, and others acquire Process Power and win?
Agilent has made the 8656A Signal Generator Operating & Service Manual available as a PDF, but the schematics of chapter 8 are all spread over 3 or 4 pages, which makes them hard to follow. I spent a good evening extracting the schematics pages, cutting-and-pasting them together into single-page schematics, and then merging them in a new schematics-only PDF file. The result is here: 8656A Signal...
I read Simon Willison’s post about using Llamafile to experiment with open-source chatbots / LLMs. He made it sound so easy, so I decided to try it out. One of my longtime hobby projects is WanderJest, a site for finding live comedy. One of the challenges of that site is that the canonical information about an upcoming show is often the poster for it. Here’s an example: I’ve been scraping this...
Correction: a technical defect in my Enterprise Content Management System resulted in the email having a subject that made it sound like this post would be about the classic strategy game Go. It is actually about a failed website. I regret the error; the responsible people have been sacked. The link in the email was also wrong but I threw in a redirect so I probably would have gotten away with the...
Highlights The TinyPilot website redesign is finally done. I’ve learned to make Debian packages, and it’s surprisingly simple. I’ve given up on Vue and frontend frameworks in general. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Publish a blog post and video about building a homelab NAS server with TinyPilot Result: Published...
The Gaza Strip’s spatiality continues to puzzle and fascinate–as much as the pressing question of its sovereignty. The two are of course intertwined, and the boundaries of Gaza are historically defined. The perimeter around the Gaza Strip was in a … Continue reading →
A talk with architecture critic Justin Davidson about the thorny knot of issues involved at New York’s most conflicted transportation-entertainment site.
This is not the monthly update, just a quick announcement 😄
This is my 3rd post summarizing the key takeaways I got from reading the book Modeling Life. I recommend reading my earlier posts first to get a good grounding on the foundations covered in the book. A system can exhibit three different types of behavior: equilibrium, oscillation, and chaos. The E. coli bacteria we encountered…
Submitted by Leo, who says: On September 24, the Casablanca tramway network nearly doubled in length with the opening of T3 and T4. The Casatramway network, operated by RATP, is depicted in the new map alongside the Casabusway BRT lines currently under construction. The map leaves something to be desired. I find the coastal outline […]
This is the first in a series of posts about new LLM-related technology associated with the Wolfram technology stack. "Color" with something like: When you set up a plugin, it can contain many endpoints, that do different things. And—in addition to sharing prompts—one reason this is particularly convenient is that (at least right now, for security reasons) […]
A simplified high-level overview of primary machine learning algorithms for anyone to understand
EVs are just going to win.
A simple answer, and then a less simple one.
Here's a list of some of the best Black Friday discounts for entrepreneurs and developers. This page contains affiliate links. Courses Grow and Monetize your Newsletter - 60% off Monetize Your Newsletter - 60% off Grow Your Newsletter - 60% off WesBos - Beginner JavaScript - 50% off
James McKinven is an entrepreneur who has succeeded in making money from podcasts - no easy feat. He earns money by editing podcasts for companies
Also in September: $12K MRR, built a small new app, SEO, and other updates...
<p> Some super </p> <p class="top-button"> <a href="#top">🔝</a> </p>
They're not going to disrupt everything (yet), but they're a ton of fun.
The Binance CEO's sentencing draws near, and prosecutors have been busy chasing down other crypto criminals. Also, lawmakers take another stab at stablecoin regulation.
Across the United States, streets are taking on a strange hue at night. Purple. Purple streetlights have been reported in Tampa, Vancouver, Wichita, Boston. They're certainly in evidence here in Albuquerque, where Coal through downtown has turned almost entirely to mood lighting. Explanations vary. When I first saw the phenomenon, I thought of fixtures that combined RGB elements and thought...
I was watching the Steven Spielberg 1977 classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with the family last night and nerded out when I saw a character that claimed to be a cartographer. I always do. It was the cartographer who recognized that the signals the aliens sent were coordinates. This is how they knew …
We’re excited to announce the release of IoT Remote v3.0.0, featuring a native tablet version (available for both Android and iOS platforms) optimized for unlocking the full potential of larger screen sizes. What is the Arduino IoT Remote app? The Arduino IoT Remote app allows you to interact with your devices connected to the Arduino […] The post Arduino Cloud is now natively supported on...
some of you may know I've recently started a new company. I'm not ready to talk about -that- yet, but I did want to capture some notes on logistical stuff I have had to ramp up on as a first time founder. hopefully this helps somebody out there.
...
This is my 2nd post summarizing the key takeaways I got from reading the book Modeling Life. I recommend reading my earlier post first to get a good grounding on the foundations covered in the book. A system can exhibit three different types of behavior: equilibrium, oscillation, and chaos. The shark-tuna system we saw in…
“We give them the same phone, in the same brand-new condition,” says one seller.
The Spring Lisp Game Jam 2024 ended one week ago. 48 games were submitted, a new record for the jam! This past week has been a time for participants to play and rate each other’s games. As I explored the entries, I noticed two distinct meta-patterns in how people approached building games with Lisp. I think these patterns apply more broadly to all applications of Lisp. Let’s talk about these...
What, exactly, is the skill of capital? What does it consist of? How do you recognise it? We walk through three stories, and then talk about the shape of the skill in practice.
Chinese policy and geopolitical risk are doing a lot of the work here.
We have more agency over the future of AI than we think.
Dear friends, There is a commonplace opinion that technology and the natural world, or that technological pursuits and natural pursuits, are at odds. An example: I think this is a false position. But if this kind of sentiment is so often repeated, its worth thinking about why it feels true.
Four mathematicians have found a new upper limit to the “Ramsey number,” a crucial property describing unavoidable structure in graphs. The post A Very Big Small Leap Forward in Graph Theory first appeared on Quanta Magazine
April 26, 2024.
You probably know more about machine learning math than you think
It’s been a few months so I wanted to say hey to the 7 of you who follow this blog and share a few updates about what I’ve been up to. Quick recap At the start of 2023 I quit consulting to go full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker, after growing it on … Continue reading It’s Time to Build →
One of my favorite Lovelace interface cards for Home Assistant is the mini-graph-card by kalkih. It’s the card running most of the graphs in our smart home‘s dashboard. Surprisingly, mini-graph card is actually not included in Home Assistant by default – honestly, it should be, it’s so good – but you can easily install it […] The post Adding night shading to a Home Assistant mini-graph-card chart...
The process behaviour chart is the easiest way to differentiate between routine and exceptional variation. This is everything you need to know to use it well.
Here’s why I worry about AI. We know that people can get away with anything to pursue their goals (of profit, power, etc.) as long as they know they can get away with it, without negative consequences. We have had Hitlers, and insider traders. But the world keeps them in check via law and guns.… Read More The post You can’t jail an AI appeared first on Inverted Passion.
This is the best media player for children. In the month before the pandemic shut everything down, I was in the midst of some research on how designers — and other kinds of creative experts and consultants — can best communicate results. I was looking at a variety of case study models and trying to devise a system that would best suit my clients goals and abilities. That’s when I found myself...
Lessons from building Senja.io to $4,000 MRR in Public
Democratizing educational technology... and more
This post is a short overview of my experience at a career day in Valga, Estonia, hosted with the help of GreenDice. I’ve never spoken at a career day before nor attended one as a student, which is why I instantly agreed to going to one when GreenDice reached out to me. Why? I never had opportunities like that as a student myself, which is why I try to do my part in making sure that future...
How pricing experiments helped me reach $6,000 MRR
It’s not an understatement when I say no-code practically changed my life and my career. In 2018, I was a different KP. Stuck at a corporate job where I felt like I was a tiny cog in a huge wheel, surrounded by uninspiring peers who I didn’t resonate with, bringing home a paycheck that was not even 1/3th of my income today, things weren’t looking bright and enthusiastic. Ironically, I took way too...
Tucker Carlson's move to Twitter led him to celebrate it as the last preserve of free speech. But his relation to speech was long slippery, best reflected on the heuristic display of the 2016 electoral map that was the logo of the pundit's nightly show's and its guiding rationale. Continue reading →
Four years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own self-funded software company. For the first few years, all of my businesses flopped. They all operated at a loss, and none of them earned more than a few hundred dollars per month in revenue. Halfway through my third year, I created a network administration device called TinyPilot. It quickly caught on, and it’s been my main...
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $80-100k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Goal Grades At the start of each...
The Company Rockwell International has been around for quite a while. Willard Rockwell started the company in 1919 to sell a newly designed truck axle bearing. Over the years, Rockwell acquired businesses in many different fields, including defense, industrial electronics, automotive components, and more. They built both the Apollo spacecraft and the Space Shuttle program. In 1967, they merged...
No GPU cluster required.
Indie updates, B2B vs B2C, Black Friday, surfing, skimboarding, hardware.
People were really kind and seemed to enjoy my 3D printable Apple Vision Pro stand, a stand I designed in Fusion 360 with the goal of being visually appealing and compact as it stored the headset vertically so it wouldn’t take up too much space on your desk. Turns out there were quite a few folks requesting a similar style stand for their Meta Quest 3 so this weekend I set aside a bit of time to...
(Just not mine.)
I recently busted out my old ThinkPad T40, the last of the OG IBM ThinkPads. I picked it up some time around my university days because I liked collecting ThinkPads at the time, and it was a nice complement to my existing ThinkPad T60 and T430. The battery is dead, but everything else still works. Checking a few online listings, I’m surprised that I can still find batteries sold for this model....
Milan (Preceden’s designer) and I recently wrapped up a project to redesign Preceden’s pricing page. Here’s the previous above-the-fold content: And here’s how the new design turned out: Few things to highlight: Very happy with how it turned out. Kudus to Milan for suggesting we work on it and for the fantastic design work. The […]
In 2009, Microsoft released an enormous 200lb coffee table with an embedded 30-inch touchscreen called Surface. Although the iPhone had been around for a little while, the larger screen made Surface feel absolutely futuristic: in the Photos app, you could toss around pictures like they were physically in front of you. It cost $10,000. Very few people ever bought it. A little more than a year...
In the first quarter of 2024, Meta made $36.45 billion dollars - $12.37 billion dollars of which was pure profit. Though the company no longer reports daily active users, it now uses another metric: “family daily active people.” This number refers to “registered and logged-in
In 1974, two very significant things happened, if you are a fan of 99% invisible. Number one is that 99pi host Roman Mars was born. And number two, The Power Broker by Robert Caro was published. Roman learned about the power broker when he first started to cover cities and infrastructure on the radio. This The post Breaking Down The Power Broker appeared first on 99% Invisible.
Among all of the visual information published by the U.S. government, there may be no product with a higher information density than the Federal Aviation Administration’s aviation maps.
Hello everyone! It's Tony again with another monthly updates.
I’ve had the opportunity to try out another new laptop at work. I’ve used a brand new laptop recently, and it was horrible. But this time I’m pleasantly surprised. The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s gen 4 has great specs: CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U (8 cores, 16 threads, up to 5.1 GHz) GPU: AMD Radeon 780M (integrated) RAM: 32GB DDR5, soldered SSD: 1 TB NVMe Display: 1920x1200 resolution Two USB-C ports Two...
A selection of fifteen formerly paywalled articles
Nuclear weapons are complex in many ways. The basic problem of achieving criticality is difficult on its own, but deploying nuclear weapons as operational military assets involves yet more challenges. Nuclear weapons must be safe and reliable, even with the rough handling and potential of tampering and theft that are intrinsic to their military use. Early weapon designs somewhat sidestepped the...
Hey everyone 👋 Here’s a powerful quote to kick us off into the Thanksgiving week: “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more.” - Melody Beattie I’m grateful for many things this year including my son’s birth
We all know avocados are healthy, and coke is bad. Yet we can’t help but gulp down a coke with a plate full of french fries. It takes an enormous amount of energy to break bad habits. I’ve broken bad habits under two conditions: (a) it’s a do-or-die situation, or (b) you have a device…
Sometimes, when I am feeling down, I read about failed satellite TV (STV) services. Don't we all? As a result, I've periodically come across a company called AlphaStar Television Network. PrimeStar may have had a rough life, but AlphaStar barely had one at all: it launched in 1996 and went bankrupt in 1997. All told, AlphaStar's STV service only operated for 13 months and 6 days. AlphaStar is...
Imagine having a Swiss Army Knife for your community use cases
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs seven other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Highlights I’m trying to figure out...
As computer vision researchers, we believe that every pixel can tell a story. However, there seems to be a writer’s block settling into the field when it comes to dealing with large images. Large images are no longer rare—the cameras we carry in our pockets and those orbiting our planet snap pictures so big and detailed that they stretch our current best models and hardware to their breaking...
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and in my professional life overall. Highlights TinyPilot had a new...
May 3, 2024.
Friends and colleagues, it’s time once again for the survey that Aly Ollivierre and I conduct every two years. We ask people who do freelance mapping work about their fees and other business practices, in order to help bring more transparency to our little niche of the world, and empower our fellow freelancers to better … Continue reading Take the 2024 Freelance Mapper Survey →
People often say things like "become data driven" without explaining what that means or how to do it. This is everything you need to know to actually become data driven, from scratch, using the same first principles that Amazon, Koch, and Toyota used back in their day.
At the beginning of the year I quit consulting to focus full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. I also started working on a new side project, Emergent Mind, an AI-powered AI news site. My last update on how things were going was after 3 months which provides more background for anyone interested. […]
Highlights I announced a new product and then discovered it was a mistake. I simplified the TinyPilot website to focus on a single device. I tried taking my first real vacation from TinyPilot with mixed results. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Train local staff members to assist with customer support Result: Local...
Bor Hung Chong from Nefin Group discusses green energy solutions beyond solar panels.
There is something delightful about riding a bicycle. Once mastered, the simple action of pedaling to move forward and turning the handlebars to steer makes bike riding an effortless activity. In the demonstration below, you can guide the rider with the slider, and you can also drag the view around to change the camera angle: Compared to internal combustion engines or mechanical watches,...
We’re aging too fast (AKA my entire AI/robotics investment thesis)
Is AI a Leveler, King Maker, or Escalator?
Hey everyone 👋 Welcome to the Build In Public Hub , a beginner-friendly newsletter to help you go from zero to pro in the art of building in public. Curated & created with love ❤️ by The ‘Build In Public’ Guy → KP Starting Jan 2023, this newsletter will have a combination of:
It’s time to take stock of the year have just lived through and get oriented for the year ahead. Here, we review the events of 2024 and our own contributions to the fight for a better world. A year that began amid genocide in Palestine and war in Ukraine and Sudan is concluding as Donald Trump prepares to return to power. This has grim implications in the United States, where Trump has explicitly...
Thankbox is a successful B2C bootstrapped website created by Valentin Hinov which is now doing $30-35k a month.
In the summer of 2023, we went on an amazing trip through Portugal. We’d already visited Lisbon on a short city trip a few years earlier, and that experience was so good we knew we had to return. This time, we decided to take a full three weeks and see the sights. We were planning […] The post Our favorite places to eat and drinks during our Portugal vacation appeared first on Style over...
Homer's epic poem tells the story of how Odysseus struggled to return home after the Trojan War. It is one of the greatest stories in history.
As a programmer and CTO, I've developed a rough rule of thumb when it comes to scaling systems. When you scale your inputs (users, page views, messages, etc) by 10x, something breaks. Usually, it's something pretty fundamental. And the end result is that you need to replace a critical component or rearchitect the system entirely.
Zig is a new, open-source programming language designed to replace C. I’m still a Zig beginner, so I’m trying to learn the language by using Zig to rewrite parts of existing C applications. One of the first challenges I encountered with Zig is understanding strings. I couldn’t find detailed documentation about how Zig strings work when calling C code, so I’m sharing my findings in case they’re...
Have you ever used archive.org’s Internet Wayback Machine? It’s a free tool that’s been archiving the web since 1996. So, if you want to see what Google looked like in 1999, they’ve got it. Internet Archive capture of Google from April 22, 1999 ArchiveBox is like your own, personal Internet Wayback Machine. It’s free and open-source, and you can use it to archive most websites. ArchiveBox is a...
<p>blogstatic's <a href="https://www.producthunt.com/products/blogstatic#blogstatic" target="_blank">first PH launch</a> (documented <a href="https://valsopi.com/launching-on-product-hunt">here</a>) was in December of 2022, three months after the <a href="https://x.com/valsopi/status/1579798717867122694">rebranding and its public launch</a> and deciding to give blogstatic a <a...
Consulting firms rank brands on value. Marketers promise to increase it. But brand value has little to do with whether a company is famous or even profitable. The accurate measure of brand value is the premium that consumers will spend over the generic. What time, money or risk will they take for a valuable brand […]
I’m a fan of Mat Ryer’s work, and his blog posts have had a significant impact on the way I program in Go. I found the book hit or miss. Some chapters were fascinating and taught me valuable Go lessons, while others felt boring and got too bogged down in the minutiae of third-party libraries. Overall, I’d still recommend it to anyone who considers themselves a beginner or intermediate Go...
The Case for LLMs as Hallucination Engines
After World War I, in Frankfurt, Germany, the city government was taking on a big project. A lot of residents were in dire straits, and in the second half of the 1920s, the city built over 10,000 public housing units. It was some of the earliest modern architecture — simple, clean, and uniform. The massive The post The Frankfurt Kitchen appeared first on 99% Invisible.
Hello everyone! Welcome 150 new subscribers since my last issue. I’m glad to have you here! 👋 Here is a quick update from me in April 2022. This should make a nice thumbnail for this page! 😁 🔻 Suffered from high churn In early April, Black Magic observed
Around a year ago, I started noticing some spammy timelines being created on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. I’m honestly surprised it took spammers so long: Preceden is a freemium product (meaning people can sign up and try it for free), the product makes it very easy to create link-filled user generated content, I […]
Interest rates, Passive investing, Ben Graham as a young man, Daniel Kahneman, Ken Langone, Lawrence Cunningham, Reed Hastings, Steve Eisman
“Clap on! Clap off! Clap on! Clap off! The Clapper!” This 1980s earworm of a jingle touted a gadget to turn your lights, your TV, or any other electrical device on or off with the clap of your hands. If you watched any amount of American television back then, you probably saw the Clapper’s repetitious and yet oddly endearing ad, and perhaps you, like many others, felt compelled to give it a...
Recently I switched to a new calorie counting app, Cronometer. I’m quite happy with it. It’s a huge improvement over MyFitnessPal (MFP) or Lose It and is not exploitative like Noom. The key improvement with Cronometer is accuracy, particularly good data sources for nutrition information. MFP offered obviously wrong entries from random people, sapping my confidence. Also it’s quicker to log things...
In the math of particle physics, every calculation should result in infinity. The set of techniques known as “resurgence” points toward an escape. The post How to Tame the Endless Infinities Hiding in the Heart of Particle Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Inside Stability AI's roster of AI models.
Ruby on Rails, or 'Rails' for short, is a framework for making websites with the programming language Ruby. The idea behind it is to simplify how programmers create websites and it caused a storm amongst developers when it was released in August 2004 by software engineer David Heinemeier
Creative Union Network Inc. has designed a small laneway house in Toronto, Canada, that was originally built as a garage. The building occupied a prominent location on the corner of the lane and main street. The original structure, although rundown, was a well-loved structure that made an outsized impact on the neighborhood’s collective memory. The […]
The emotional rollercoaster I experience in art supply stores can be summarised in one word: greed. I want every single pen, every brush, every quill, and a sheet of every paper, ranging from crude cardboard to magnificent handcrafted Japanese washi. And yes, I need papyrus. And no, I don’t know what for. I want it all! Which one should I pick? Here is how to find your perfect partner in crime....
Ever thought if 50 is too old to start your own business? Devan is proof it's not. He was 50 when he created his startup and at 56 years old, he has made a million-dollar business! Can you tell us about HR Partner and your achievements? HR Partner
Political pollsters have a problem. Certain groups in the population are much happier to talk to pollsters than others, so if you call up 1000 people to ask who they're planning to vote for, the results you get won't really represent the voting intentions of the
April 19, 2024.
Hey everyone 👋 Let’s open this newsletter with a powerful quote ⬇️ Luck surface area. Aka serendipity. Aka helping relevant and like-minded people find you through your content. That’s what building in public is all about. With that said, get ready for October’s community edition highlighting key launches and wins from founders, makers, and creators in the #buildinpublic community.
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Sometimes I save a rant for 10 years and finally decide it's not a thinkpiece, it's a stupid joke. Today's News:
Today’s language models are more sophisticated than ever, but they still struggle with the concept of negation. That’s unlikely to change anytime soon. The post Chatbots Don’t Know What Stuff Isn’t first appeared on Quanta Magazine
More than 2,000 years ago, an actor in Greece botched a line in a play. In an inflection error, he said “weasel” when he meant to say “calm sea.” As a result, he was mocked by Sannyrion and then Aristophanes and others. He never worked again. The lesson might be that one innocent slip and […]
I was quite vain when I was younger due to a low self-esteem which led to a high level of insecurity. That insecurity made me feel ugly and that I was never...
Visualising what your design will look like when printed can be the hardest thing about designing a repeat pattern. We have a good method for sketching out your initial design to see how it will work when it has been printed. For this project, we will be using a mounted lino block as we plan to use this block to print onto fabric. Start by drawing around your block four times as shown below....
A recurring topic of discussion on the OpenAI forums, on Reddit, and on Twitter is about what ChatGPT’s knowledge cutoff date actually is. It seems like it should be straightforward enough to figure out (just ask it), but it can be confusing due to ChatGPT’s inconsistent answers about its cutoff month, differences from official documentation, … Continue reading Exploring ChatGPT’s Knowledge Cutoff...
The discipline of design is the commitment to structuring and systematizing good ideas. Ideas don’t stand on their own. When a good idea turns into a good thing, it’s because structure and systems — ones that existed before the idea — made it happen. There’s this myth in creative spaces that systems are where good ideas go to die. That innovation almost always means breaking free of...
The world was plunged into darkness on 1st September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland, an act of aggression that led France and the United Kingdom to declare war. Amidst this global turmoil, a young Albert Camus, then a journalist for socialist newspaper Alger-Républicain, found himself wrestling with the unfolding chaos, haunted by the memory of […]
I’ve been feeling more down these days. I am not sure if it is pms, covid, both, or just responding to reality in general. I don’t really get why people are not...
It was only a year after first meeting, in 1895, that Marie and Pierre Curie became husband and wife. Together, they made groundbreaking contributions to science, not least the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium, and in 1903 they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Tragedy befell the couple in 1906 […]
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Highlights TinyPilot is facing a supply...
Time for some humor
I’ve been searching for new startup ideas and problem areas to tackle. It’s quite difficult to do, especially when you begin adding constraints to the criteria such as “Am I excited about this problem space?”. The internet is filled with helpful ways to come up with startup ideas and below is the summary of what I’ve learned on the topic during the last few months.
Cypress is an open-source tool for testing web applications end-to-end. I first saw Gleb Bahmutov demo Cypress at a 2018 web dev meetup in New York, and I was blown away. I’ve been using Cypress since I saw it demoed at a dev meetup in 2018. Before discovering Cypress, I had begrudgingly used Selenium. Cypress was a refreshing leap forward, as it offered elegant solutions to tons of pain points...
Many people ask why I became a theoretical physicist. The answer runs through philosophy—which I thought, for years, I’d left behind in college. My formal relationship with philosophy originated with Mr. Bohrer. My high school classified him as a religion … Continue reading →
All the details about the process and the cost of getting SOC 2
How the Chatbot Arena leaderboard for LLMs works and why it’s important to understand
In 2022, two decades after their founding, creative agency Squint/Opera joined forces with fellow studios ICRAVE, 59, and VMI Studio under the banner of Journey, a "superpowered organization" bridging physical and digital design. Long before the merger, Squint/Opera had envisioned a world where media architecture would enrich urban life and reshape how we interact with the built environment....
More than ever, we’re pushed to have certainty. Strong opinions, tightly held and loudly proclaimed. And then, when reality intervenes, it can be stressful. The software stack, business model, career, candidate, policy, or even the social network habits that we had as part of our identity let us down. It’s not easy to say, “I […]
Most founders dream of making $10,000 in monthly revenue. One founder who has made that dream a reality is Benjamin Houy
I used to drive 200 miles to Boston once a week or so. After a few trips on the highway, my subconscious figured out that getting behind a few trucks for the entire ride enabled me to spend four hours without using much conscious effort on driving. Every day, we make decisions. These require effort, […]
A few big changes are making the online world a more boring place to hang out.
A new model opens up new possibilities
Hello everyone! This is Tony 👋 I just had my best month ever in my entire indie hacking journey, and I’m excited to share it with you all! 🤑 I made $23K in November 2021 as a solo dev Here is the full breakdown: Revenue: $23,109.02 Sales Tax: $1,726.13
Or is it?
(just a quick announcement...)
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer, and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and in my professional life overall. Highlights TinyPilot had its...
It’s been a while since my last post! Since then, I’ve been focusing on growing Remote Rocketship. I’m super excited to announce that it’s reached $2,000 MRR! 🥳 You may recall from the last post that I mentioned that the only sustainable channel to grow the website is SEO and that I was learning how to do it from scratch (and it’s now getting 19,000 monthly search clicks!). In this post, I want...
Rónán is the founder of Deutsch Gym, an online community for learning German. He's making thousands in revenue from his startup which he made after moving to Berlin and wanting to improve his German language skills. Read on for his tips on making a
Well-known URLs are pretty neat. I’ve even dared propose one before here on my blog. And now I’m here to propose another: .well-known/avatar The idea is: anybody that owns a domain can put their avatar in a well-known location. I’ve already implemented this for my own site[1]. You can see it here: jim-nielsen.com/.well-known/avatar In some ways, this is really just for me. I often find myself...
It’s almost impossible to safely drive a car while only looking in the rear view mirror. Only seeing where you’ve been is a terrible way to figure out where to go. But it’s really unsafe to go forward with no idea of what came before. AI plods along into the future, using machine learning to […]
Lessons from building Tailscan in public to $500 MRR
All of us, except the AI startups and VCs—unless a real war breaks out
fuzzy processors are entering mass production
I love the “carry-on only” traveling style, it’s cheaper and you don’t have to worry about airlines losing your stuff. Outside of requiring a bit more planning, what’s not to love? Turns out this is a beloved product category with a passionate community behind it, and as a result a lot of manufacturers are making really awesome bags. As a result you see different bags with different strategies,...
Domination through iteration. Be sure to continue adapting and maximize your current audience rather than chase more pageviews. The post Weeks 35-39: A $526 Day and a Breakthrough appeared first on Scott DeLong.
And a consideration for choosing a language
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/valsopi/status/1680156076036030464" target="_blank">Monthly tweet update</a></p><p>Looking back at the tough June, I thought I should clear up a few things as the much better July is almost over.</p><ul><li><b>🫣 Bummer:</b> June tanked with the lowest revenue to date ($216.61) since the <a href="https://valsopi.com/blogstatic-chance">re-launch</a> back in...
It was a 2012 evening, and I was driving home from the office. I was worried about finishing a big project at work on time. I’d made the journey from the office to my home so many times, my car almost seemed to know the way by itself. My hands were on the wheel, but…
Trying some unconventional techniques to create a pop-art print of a Cherry Mash candy bar.
It seemed like just yesterday that Twelve Mile Circle chronicled the kid who designed an imaginary town and counted various forms of transportation. Now my elementary aged student is all grown up, a newly-minted university graduate. Those interceding years passed much more quickly than I could have possibly imagined. Michigan State University is huge (~50,000 […] The post Graduated appeared first...
👋 Hello everyone, it’s Tony again. Lots of things happened in October 2021. I released DevUtils 1.12, worked on a new exciting feature for Black Magic, moved back to Vietnam, and other small updates. Just want to say this quickly: Thank you all so much for following my journey! I hope my newsletter is helpful to you, I really enjoy writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it too!
Without Americans on the app, advertising dollars are at risk.
Open AI announcements, DeepSeek-v2, and TSMC Arizona
In today's Canadian housing market, the age-old question of renting versus buying feels more pressing than ever. Soaring property values and rising interest rates have created a complex landscape, leaving many wondering: is homeownership still the golden ticket to building wealth?
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $80-110k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Highlights I worked with the TinyPilot...
Free covid treatment for everyone in the US, a novel orthopox virus, a really big machine, cameras used for good and evil, ant heaven now, and more.
In steganography, an ordinary message masks the presence of a secret communication. Humans can never do it perfectly, but a new study shows it’s possible for machines. The post Secret Messages Can Hide in AI-Generated Media first appeared on Quanta Magazine
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Building a dam imparts a stupendous change to the environment, and as with any change, there are winners and losers. The winners are usually us, people, through hydropower generation, protection from flooding, irrigation for farming, and a stable water supply for populated areas. But, we've known for a long time, probably since...
Grids are very, very useful. I just published an essay on how anchoring the most important information on a web page to the Y-axis will help viewer’s focus on it and pay closer attention. It’s a pretty basic idea, really, but somehow I found myself writing over 1,000 words to describe it. I won’t do that here. Instead, I want to provide some very brief direction on using grids. Grids are a...
By imbuing enormous vectors with semantic meaning, we can get machines to reason more abstractly — and efficiently — than before. The post A New Approach to Computation Reimagines Artificial Intelligence first appeared on Quanta Magazine
For many people the first word that comes to mind when they think about statistical charts is “lie.” – Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information I wish we could all agree: pie charts should die. I know this is unreasonable. And pie charts are only part of the problem. The problem is data visualizations that show what’s already obvious. After spending some time learning about...
<p>blogstatic had another above $1K month.</p> <p>$1,208.38 to be exact.</p> <p>This was the third +$1K month overall, since <a href="https://valsopi.com/blogstatic-chance">rebranding</a> back in 2022.</p> <figure><img src="https://editor.blogstatic.io/web/assets/uploads/318c129ca4ad11bf57aa49776076d10d.png" id="/tmp/phprp8o2Z" data-image="/tmp/phprp8o2Z" width="760" height="277" alt="a list of...
Brutalist architecture is raw, powerful, emotional, and unapologetically honest. It rejects ornamentation and architectural devices designed to make its inhabitants feel comfortable, instead creating a visceral, primal experience. Brutalism is a feeling—a bold statement that doesn’t need to justify itself. Composed of raw, unrefined materials, it strips architecture down to its essence, evoking...
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: People on patreon seemed to be traumatized by this, and I guess what I'm saying is for a couple bucks a month, you could've been traumatized a day early. Today's News:
Then they stealth edited the piece. They knew they'd committed libel.
Rest of World’s four Labor x Tech fellows reflect on their year reporting about the global tech industry’s impact on its workers.
I seem to have accidentally come up with a method for duplicating a centuries-old terrain representation technique. If you’ve looked at old maps, you’ve probably seen hachures: lines that run up and down along the slope of terrain features. There were a wide variety of approaches to doing hachuring, with different rules. But, in all … Continue reading Automated Hachuring in QGIS →
Highlights TinyPilot’s sales jumped to $57k, and it might be sustainable. I’m just about to launch TinyPilot’s new product and branding. I reduced Google Cloud Platform fees by 90% on my side projects. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Complete TinyPilot’s website rebrand Result: The rebrand is 95% done, but we...
The first day of cicada chasing exceeded expectations and we hoped for similar results on the second. However the weather began to change overnight with downpours possible during daylight hours. Local meteorologists predicted a line of thunderstorms rolling through the Midwest, approaching from the west. It would hit Peoria, Illinois mid-morning and St. Louis, Missouri […] The post Cicada Chase,...
...and other updates in January 2022 from me
My psychology around money has changed significantly over the last two years. While some of that is captured in my monthly portfolio updates, I thought it was worth recording some of my emotions while they are still fresh. Two years ago Turning the clock back, my financial situation was, in word, ‘flush’. The stock market… Continue reading Feeling broke →
Title insurance is grossly overpriced relative to actual risks involved. Why is that?
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
Douglas Kendyson, a former engineer at Flutterwave and Paystack, has built a profitable bootstrapped African startup.
Another correction
Canada's recent federal budget has sent ripples through the investment and real estate communities. A key change: a looming increase in capital gains tax on sizeable transactions. This has many wondering – should I sell assets before June 25th, 2024, to avoid the taxman's bite? Let's dive into the situation and explore the best course of action for different scenarios.
Here’s a map of the Puget Sound area that I made a couple years ago for presentations to folks in the US northwest. Recently I wanted to work some more at labeling in a 3D environment and found this to be a handy target. Additionally, I thought it would be fun to make more use …
The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Two years ago, I created a website for my business. By combining my terrible design skills with a decent-looking template, I created a site that looked okay. I told myself that if the business took off, I’d hire a real designer to make it look professional. TinyPilot website, before design changes A year later, the business was generating $45k/month in revenue, but my website still looked like a...
The case for customizable AI systems as an alternative to one-size-fits-all AI systems
I spend a couple of weeks every February keeping up with my investments, timing it to coincide with the release of Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders. I found something interesting while performing this ritual this time. I came across Aswath Damodaran’s website, where he has compiled data on the S&P 500 index, including earnings, dividends,…
Even if you don’t recognize the name, you probably recognize the saguaro cactus. It’s the archetype of the cactus, a column from which protrude arms bent at right angles like elbows. As my husband pointed out, the cactus emoji is … Continue reading →
For everyone to have access to AGI, everyone must also have access to the compute to use it
After decades of frustration, researchers have finally determined how an airborne scent molecule links to a human smell receptor. The post How a Human Smell Receptor Works Is Finally Revealed first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
Yes, market-rate!
You will sometimes hear someone say, in a loose conceptual sense, that credit cards have money in them. Of course we know that that isn't the case; our modern plastic card payment network relies on online transactions where the balance tracking and authorization decisions happen within a financial institution that actually has the money (whether it's your money or credit). There is an alternate...
Elsa Binder was twenty when, in October of 1941, German forces carried out a brutal massacre of thousands of Jews in her hometown of Stanislawów, Poland. Two months later, she and her family were compelled to enter the Stanisławów Ghetto, joining 20,000 others in a harrowing fight for survival. It was in this time of […]
Just when PowerSeeker thought they had nowhere to go...
Mature technology companies are establishing regular quarterly dividends. Is this a positive or negative development for shareholders?
Zig is a new, independently developed low-level programming language. It’s a modern reimagining of C that attempts to retain C’s performance while embracing improvements from the last 30 years of tooling and language design. Zig makes calling into C code easier than any other language I’ve used. Zig also treats unit testing as a first-class feature, which the C language certainly does not. These...
Vitally important, rarely taught, easily messed up. In order to go onto the next thing, which we all do (unless you’re still wearing pajamas with feet and taking ballet lessons), we need to walk away from the last thing. Wrap it up, learn from it, leave it in good hands. And we also need to […]
Have you ever wanted your very own vending machine? If so, you likely found that they’re expensive and too bulky to fit in most homes. But now you can experience vending bliss thanks to this miniature vending machine designed by m22pj, which you can craft yourself using an Arduino and other materials lying around the […] The post A desktop-sized DIY vending machine for your room appeared first on...
The mystery of why we don't dream of building perfect societies anymore
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Just gently closing the door on ever giving a TED talk there. Very nice. Today's News:
The second to the last update is focused and short. I have just one goal: convert subscribers into paying customers. The post Weeks 40-43: A $5k Month and Billion Dollar Idea appeared first on Scott DeLong.
Highlights I hired TinyPilot’s first support engineer. I learned that hiring a support engineer is even harder than I expected. I’m evaluating platforms for paying international contractors. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Launch Voyager 2: PoE Edition Result: I finally launched Voyager 2 PoE Grade: A Oh, boy....
Highlights I learned a few techniques that make it easier for me to record videos for my course. I’ve decided I don’t need to use a Merchant of Record service. I’ve integrated htmx into my standard toolkit for making web applications. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Record publishable versions of four lessons from...
The philosophy and lessons behind "a moneymaking machine like no other" (with a cumulative trading profit of $100B +).
What’s it like to be in the top 1%? According to the statistics, most of the readers of my blog are among the highest earning and/or richest people in the UK. I bet however that not many of you feel that way. Let’s start with income To be in the top 1% of earnings in… Continue reading The richest person you know →
Did you know that Cyanotype prints don't always have to be blue? They can be toned and even bleached to alter their colour. The key is to use anything with a high tannin content. Tannins are commonly found in the bark of trees, leaves, buds, stems, fruits, seeds, roots, and plant galls. For this process, you could use tea of different varieties, red wine and even make your own tannin solutions...
Andrew Kamphey is a creator who has made $200k from teaching people how to use Google Sheets over the past three years. Think 'Miss Excel' but he's a beardy guy who doesn't dance in his videos. In this interview Andrew shares his marketing wins,
The crypto industry jumps on the Trump train.
Everything you need to know about the Amazon Weekly Business Review: how it works, why it works, and how it helps Amazon win.
We live in an era in which maps (and plenty of other graphics) are made with digital tools. Workflows vary, but the end result is that a lot of us base our cartography entirely on clean vector shapes and neat raster grids. For example, I talked earlier this year about a map I made of … Continue reading On the Practice of Wobbling →
It seems like everything that happens in a kitchen requires exact timing. Whisk the batter for three minutes, knead the dough for 15 minutes, bake for 30 minutes, and so on. A timer is a necessity for cooking and baking, but there is no reason you need to use your phone or a boring egg […] The post Vintage rotary phone becomes stylish kitchen timer appeared first on Arduino Blog.
Bad architecture must come from some underlying ethos.
6 months ago, I had just finished creating my first SaaS: the French Together app. My goal was simple: launch it and reach $20k MRR. Writing this, I can’t help but laugh. $20k MRR for a first SaaS? Really? Only 2 types of people would set such an ambitious goal: Someone who never launched a SaaS Someone who launched hundreds of SaaS Let’s find out how it went, shall we?
An simple overview of temperature and its effect on LLM output
The Trust Deficit, EU Regulations, Medicare Advantage scams, Munger soldiered on, The cult of Silicon Valley, Self-esteem and outer scorecards, MMT's founder is worried about deficits
A note before we start: I don’t know how much of this I believe. I’m sketching out some feelings in this post and thinking through whether it actually makes any sense. I’d be curious where other folks land on this. I’m not sure I totally understand this impulse we have on the web to override the default style and appearance of fundamental computing controls. Everyone wants their own checkboxes,...
Two Customer Encounters
An argument for legal and technical safe harbors for AI safety and trustworthiness research
Abandoning the idea of building a Slack Alternative
Thirty-eight years since the launch of e-filing, the IRS will pilot its own tax filing system ending two decades of Intuit's regulatory capture of the tax software market
Neurodivergent physicists face barriers in STEM, but there are also benefits to being who they are.
Ch Daniel is a 25 year old founder who is making $200,000 in annual revenue from a variety of websites.
The Symmatricom 58532A Opening up the 58532A Voltage Regulation Result What about the other 58532A variant? References The Symmatricom 58532A As part of a package deal, I got my hands on a Symmetricom 58532A L1 GPS antenna. Microchip, which acquired Symmetricom in 2013, doesn’t seem to have antennas in its product line anymore, but the data sheet is still available on their website. There are...
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: I read a lot of Perry Bible Fellowship, desperately afraid that somewhere I'd amnesia-stolen this script. Today's News:
Early access to some software we've built to make XmR charts more accessible.
I just spent a week talking with some exceptional students from three of the UK’s top universities; Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial College. Along with UCL, these British universities represent 4 of the top 10 universities in the world. The US - a country with 5x more people and 8x higher GDP - has the same number of universities in the global top 10. On these visits, I was struck by the...
Mentorcruise is an impressive mentor marketplace which has grown to 20,000 users.
When privilege becomes a pre-requisite.
It occurs to me that I have been Blendering for a long time. In fact, it’s been almost exactly a decade since I gave my first public presentation on the technique of generating shaded relief using Blender. And in that time, the method has been adopted far more widely than I could have ever anticipated … Continue reading My Decade with Blender →
Remembering Albert Borgmann (1937-2023)
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Also, in this model, everything is flat and it's the same everywhere and eventually all the stars are dead! Today's News:
Bargain with the devil and you may wind up with a golden fiddle, supernatural guitar-playing ability, or a room full of gleaming alchemized straw. Whoops, we misattributed that last one. It’s actually Rumpelstiltskin’s doing, but the by-morning-or-else deadline that drives the Brothers Grimm favorite is not dissimilar to the ultimatum posed to disgraced medieval monk […]
Allison Seboldt is the founder of PageFactory, a service which helps websites grow their content and reach with programmatic SEO.
Refactoring the business entity, thoughts on marketing and building
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Is this the most or least pessimistic comic yet? Today's News:
(But why not?)
TSMC Arizona back on track, drawing arrows on graphs, the downsides of inclusionary zoning, why people hate inflation, and interesting ideas about market power
Altos reports that active single-family inventory was up 1.2% week-over-week. Inventory always declines seasonally in the Winter and usually bottoms in late January or February. If two weeks ago was the seasonal bottom, that would be very early in the year, but that has happened before. The first graph shows the seasonal pattern for active single-family inventory since 2015. Click on graph...
Earlier this week, we featured the 99-year-old Dick Van Dyke’s performance in Coldplay’s new music video, full of visual references to the sitcom that made him a household name in the early nineteen-sixties. And a household name he remains these six decades later, though one does wonder how many of those who appreciate his extreme […]
It's a one-party state. They hold elections, but the Party always wins.
One day, early this spring, I found myself in a hotel elevator with three other people. The cohort consisted of two theoretical physicists, one computer scientist, and what appeared to be a normal person. I pressed the elevator’s 4 button, … Continue reading →
April 12, 2024.
YR Architecture + Design has shared photos of a modern 575 square foot (53 sqm) live/work studio in Columbus, OH, that was once a 2-car garage. The homeowners were determined for their two-car garage to be an asset, with the couple seeking to maximize their property, and at the same time, offer options for leasing […]
Over its more than 40 year journey from conception to completion, Boston’s Big Dig massive infrastructure project, which rerouted the central highway in the heart of the city, encountered every hurdle imaginable: ruthless politics, engineering challenges, secretive contractors, outright fraud and even the death of one motorist. It became a kind of poster child for The post The Big Dig appeared...
Ever wondered about what happens when banks are closed or why some apps have operating hours? It's fascinating.
Last week, I was listening to the CoRecursive podcast interview with PowerShell’s lead architect, Jeffrey Snover. One moment in that interview has been stuck in my head the whole week is when Snover argues that graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are inherently “antisocial”: I realized that — you know, that the mouse is antisocial. The GUI is antisocial. So what’s that mean? You have a problem to...
Part 1: How to spot misinformation, mistakes, and meaningless data
Today's interview is with Ruurtjan, a Dutch founder whose two sites get 500,000 users a month. Ruurtjan quit his job to go all in on his business
There is an ongoing culture war, and not just in the US, over the content of childhood education, both public and private. This seems to be flaring up recently, but is never truly gone. Republicans in the US have recently escalated this war by banning over 500 books in several states (mostly Florida) because they […] The post The Fight over Education first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
How employees and CEOs alike can plan for the future.
As election season kicks into high gear, we need to watch how cryptocurrency companies are influencing US politics.
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $80-100k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Highlights TinyPilot had its...
March 15, 2023.
<p>One thing I've gotten really good at over the years is using time in terms of how it affects my product-making process.</p><p>Back in the day, when I was greener, I used to rush things, not just for the sake of rushing to get them out of the door — but I would get to the "being happy with it" stage way too soon.</p><p>In other words, I fell too quickly in love with my creation just to...
May 24, 2024.
And why direct forms of communication will always be super valuable
I didn’t get much time to wander around Seoul like I did in Tokyo. Every day was a work day and it was a brief stop. So I was confined mostly to what I could see from the windshield as we drove through the city or from the hotel. However, this was my first trip […] The post Asia-Pacific, Part 6 (South Korea: Seoul) appeared first on Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual Places.
By Michael McGill The Stoics had a name for a person who fully realized the virtues of Stoicism. A person who overcame all of their personal defects to achieve a life of complete tranquility and goodness. The perfect Stoic, if you will. They referred to this person as the Stoic Sage. Now, the Stoic Sage Read More >>
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: You're gonna wish the conditions of your birth were altered so ass to prevent this unpleasant occurrence while leaving your identity largely intact, bro! Today's News: OK, so my new favorite compliment to receive is 'I tried to blurb this book but it was so good I lost track of time.'
Hey everyone 👋 Hope you had a great week. In today’s edition, I wanted to feature Andrew Barry. Andrew’s a friend/creator/former colleague that you may already be familiar with on Twitter. I’ve admired his work from afar and always enjoy conversing with him on topics of transformational educational experiences. I’ve previously tweeted that it is my conviction that we will see tons of successful...
Back to basics for AI startups and others
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: If heroes would just check the betting markets before fighting they could make much better choices. Today's News:
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Do you remember the summer of 2022 when a record drought had gripped not only a large part of the United States, but most of Europe too? Reservoirs were empty, wildfires spread, crop yields dropped, and rivers ran dry. It seemed like practically the whole world was facing heatwaves and water shortages. But there was one video...
Hey everyone, It’s been a while since I sent a new edition of this newsletter. There’s a good reason behind my delay. Let me share what I’m up to via a string of fun announcements today. Let’s get to it. BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: I launched something fun for the larger founder ecosystem today.
Two letters from Thomas Jefferson to his nephew, Peter Carr, illustrate Jefferson's views on education, ethics, religion, and many other subjects.
The stock market cycle is a crucial concept for investors aiming to navigate the financial markets effectively. It represents the period from a market low to a peak and back again. Understanding the dynamics behind these cycles can help investors maintain their strategies during downturns and manage expectations during upswings. This blog post delves into the intricacies of market cycles, drawing...
Some light Visual Pinball debugging and the world of DOF. New to DOF? Read on.
Held in Hawaii this year, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) hosted its annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) that focuses on the latest developments in human-computer interaction. Students from universities all across the world attended the event and showcased how their devices and control systems could revolutionize how we interact with […] The post Check out...
Building a unified experience with Slack instead of trying to replace it all at once
Some free software to create, modify, experiment with and share XmR charts. Unlock the ability to become more data driven today.
An optimistic take on technology and inequality.
In this blog “I have no idea what I’m doing” I’ll be chronicling the progress and discoveries I make as I build a startup for the first time. The name of this blog comes from a talk in 2015 by former Facebook engineer Graham Lee. In his talk, he admits that although at the time he was helping build a platform that supported 1 billion people, he had no idea what he was doing. Never before had he or...
Designed by Mubien Brands, Santander.
Are closed source AI models doomed?
When I first found my people online, forums were the main way people gathered to discuss shared interests. Web-based bulletin boards allowed members to have ongoing, asynchronous conversations over days or weeks as participants logged in to read and respond on their own schedule. Topics were neatly divided into threads, which made it easy to follow specific conversations. Unlike...
and how I’m using their feedback to change my approach
Hi everyone, welcome to the latest spotlight edition of the Build In Public newsletter. Every week, I interview one prolific creator or founder and unpack insights, strategies, and actionable advice from their story that can be helpful in your own journey.
One of us must change our policy. Please let me know who.
We are still very much in the hype phase of the latest crop of artificial intelligence applications, specifically the large language models and so-called “transformers” like Chat GPT. Transformers are a deep learning model that use self-attention to differentially weight the importance of its input, including any recursive use of its own output. This process […] The post Have Current AI Reached...
<p>I first started "building in public" back in 2017.</p> <p>Not sure if the term existed back then, but I started talking about my newest product at the time (Claritask), which I ended up <a href="https://bootstrapping-saas.transistor.fm/episodes/claritask-sold" target="_blank">selling</a> in 2021.</p> <p>The reason why I started sharing my work publicly was to slowly get back in the...
Trying to make an AI model that can’t be misused is like trying to make a computer that can’t be used for bad things
Discovering virtual pinball, a hobbyist community devoted to it, and building a full-size virtual pinball cabinet.
Lessons from building, growing and selling SaaS Products all in public
June was busy. I travelled more than usual in June. Partly in the UK – visiting Glasgow, the west country, the south coast and the Isle of Wight; partly overseas – I visited Ibiza for a few days of R&R. Meanwhile, the election campaigns were in full swing. Nigel Farage did his Nth U-turn, and… Continue reading June ’24: Election fever →
I have a question: has anyone ever tried to standardize an RSS feed in HTML? I can’t find any discussion around it — but I’d love to read more about the idea because it intrigues me. The OG RSS was an XML feed. Later we got JSON feeds. So why not an HTML feed standard? (I know, I know, obligatory xkcd link.) At this point, I think it’s fair to say HTML has won. As Yehuda says: HTML…is humanity's...
'Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion' That Works
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Humans are the only social animal that is creating fake partners so they don't have to be social anymore. Today's News:
These Python scripts help me write 3x faster and go from loose ideas to first draft in minutes.
March 1, 2024.
The new Historical Topo Map Explorer is out of beta and ready for you to dive into a collection of over 180,000 beautiful vintage USGS topo maps! Use this updated Living Atlas app to geographically browse, download, export, and even animate, these cartographic objects of joy. Here’s how… 0:00 Adventurous introduction0:23 Navigating the map and finding topos0:40 …
Highlights TinyPilot generates $58k/month in revenue yet somehow loses money. It’s more important than I thought to have low-latency insight into developers’ hours. I’m trying paid advertising again for the first time in almost two years. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Publish a blog post and video about building...
We spend almost no time teaching toddlers about freedom. Instead, the lessons we teach (and learn) for our entire lives are about responsibility. It’s easy to teach freedom, but important to teach responsibility. Because if you get the responsibility taken care of, often the freedom will follow. When someone points out a lack of responsibility, […]
Julien Nahum caught my attention on Twitter by pulling in $22k MRR with his Notion form app, Notion Forms. Back in August he was at $10k MRR
As a big fan of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, I was interested in this book. 70 years after it was published, I still see people recommending it, so I had high hopes. Sadly, the book fell short of my expectations. When I read How to Win Friends and Influence People, every chapter felt relevant and useful. In contrast, only about 20% of How to Stop Worrying and Start...
[Hardware] Illuminated circuit inside a hypodermic
In my last post, I talked about how I going about searching for a new idea to work on. I’ve now landed on Remote Rocketship, a job board for remote roles. In this post, I’ll talk about how I got there, what I’ve been up to and how I’m thinking about moving forward.
I spent Labor Day weekend reading about this beaten down retailer. This article provides some initial thoughts about the company as well as the overall retail landscape.
Sparked by progress in Large Language Models (LLMs), there’s a lot of chatter recently about AGI, its timelines, and what it might look like. Some of it is hopeful and optimistic, but a lot of it is fearful and doomy, to put it mildly. Unfortunately, a lot of it is also very abstract, which causes people to speak past each other in circles. Therefore, I’m always on a lookout for concrete analogies...
Talking to Jordan Schneider from ChinaTalk about China's technological ascent
Your assets are the government's collateral.
I've run this business for three years now, and I'm only just now starting to *get it*.
Some hints about what the next year of AI looks like
In the years leading up to my conversion, I gradually became fascinated by Thomas á Kempis’s devotional text, The Imitation of Christ. I encountered it first in the letters of the young Samuel Beckett, and next in the interviews of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, and then in all kinds of other unexpected places. Among them, this 1877 letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his beloved brother, Theo…
March 29, 2024.
Check cashing, as a business, is a poorly understood "alternative" financial service.
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $80-100k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Highlights I think about how I can do...
Introduction What is a GPSDO? The TM4313 GPSDO Power Consumption Inside the TM4313 The TM4313 Schematic Frequency or Phase Lock Loop? OCXO Temperature The Curious Case of the MAX6192 Voltage Reference The Discrete Tuning DAC GPS Module Microcontroller instead of NMEA Serial Port GPSDO Performance Conclusion References Footnotes Introduction It’s a generally accepted truism that once you’ve...
A brief overview of knowledge distillation and its capabilities
Several tech companies face a fresh problem after cutting jobs: their rating on Glassdoor nosedives. But there’s a way they can fix this. I show what companies are doing - and why.
The tasks AI can do well are expanding rapidly
The world’s largest anime streaming service is opening its second local office, working with Bollywood stars, and adding dozens of shows per quarter.
I haven't written anything for a bit. I'm not apologizing, because y'all don't pay me enough to apologize, but I do feel a little bad. Part of it is just that I've been busy, with work and travel and events. Part of it is that I've embarked on a couple of writing projects only to have them just Not Work Out. It happens sometimes: I'll notice something interesting, spend an evening or two digging...
In deciding what startup to start, I’ve been thinking about what problem space I want to tackle. An area that’s drawing my attention is team communication and collaboration, especially for knowledge workers. This is for several reasons: With the trend towards distributed/hybrid teams, effective communication is becoming increasingly important.
Different Kinds of Difference At Work
Laetitia@Work #70
The Monaco Grand Prix is just days away and will likely be one of the most exciting races of the season. While most fans can’t participate directly — except as spectators — they can celebrate their passion through DIY projects. That’s why we’ve scoured the community to find the best of those builds for every […] The post Kick off the Monaco Grand Prix weekend with these Formula 1-inspired Arduino...
I’ve enjoyed March. I managed to enjoy a few days’ skiing, despite less snow than any of us would like, in the Austrian alps. Back at home, the sun has been getting stronger, and the evenings have been getting lighter – and now with Summer Time we will enjoy lovely late evenings for six months.… Continue reading Mar ’24: A towering influence →
Designed by Gold Front, San Francisco.
If you don't acknowledge the point of tariffs, how can you hope to criticize them?
And my notes on why they’re important
Here are a few flavors of a technique, illumination cartography, that uses data to shed light on its underlying basemap. There’s something satisfying about presenting a phenomenon as revealing geography rather than obscuring it. Love, John
<p>Coming from <a href="https://valsopi.com/blogstatic-numbers-october-2022">October</a>, November was again another solid month.<a href="https://valsopi.com/blogstatic-numbers-october-2022"></a></p> <table><tbody><tr><td><b>blogstatic</b></td><td><b>October '22</b></td><td><b>November '22</b></td><td><b>Growth</b></td></tr><tr><td>Total...
Crypto-related litigation is in full swing, as the Terra civil fraud trial has kicked off and two other cases against crypto companies have survived motions to dismiss.
Addictive algorithms fuse social networking with shopping and entertainment.
Romantic relationships get all the attention, but I'd argue that friendships are just as important—if not more so—for our health and happiness. Just like with romantic relationships, creating fulfilling, lasting friendships as an adult can be really hard. But… Why? I mean, sure, there's the logistical side of it. As we age, our lives get more complex and filled with responsibilities, making it...
Restore Order (to your printer)
Competition tends to eliminate high profits resulting from business models that have worked spectacularly well. Will Berkshire's playbook continue to perform well in the future?
As a real estate developer, one of the big decisions you need to make is whether you will rent or sell the buildings you've built. Income from rentals flows in steadily over years, while income from sales hits all at once. This essential difference is simple but has many implications for your risk profile, upside potential, capital requirements, and business model. The following post is a...
When I wrote about open-air dining in seoul I thought nobody would care, but surprisingly I got quite a bit of comments and DMs from fellow covid-cautious travellers. I would keep on...
Enhance your IoT projects with our special offer! Get 20% off a yearly subscription to the Arduino Cloud Maker Plan using code CLOUD20MAY. Valid until the end of May, this deal saves you $14.38, reducing the price from $71.88 to $57.50. Benefits of the Maker Plan: What is Arduino Cloud? Arduino Cloud is the next […] The post Save 20% on Arduino Cloud Maker Plan this May! appeared first on Arduino...
I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post, however shallow, should appear soon. FICTION Joseph in Egypt (1936), Thomas Mann The Long Valley (1938) & The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck - I last read this probably forty years ago. The great turtle chapter is still great. It's not Moby-Dick, but the mix of rhetorical modes is brilliant...
Why speed and multimodality is becoming the name of the game.
It turns out that operational excellence results from the pursuit of a certain form of knowledge. This is Part 3 of the Becoming Data Driven series, and the result of a deep dive into the field of statistical process control.
On waiting for AI's Godot.
Letters and ligatures creating intricate logo designs abduzeedo0428—23 Hungarian graphic designer KissMiklós has created a stunning series of typography compositions that showcase the beauty of serif fonts, letters and ligatures. While they may not all be logos in the traditional sense, they are undoubtedly works of art in their own right. Miklós' passion for...
Every so often, I come across a transit map that is just so unfit for purpose that all I can do is scratch my head and ponder, “Just why?” This is one of those maps. Produced by (or on behalf of) Newark International Airport, it purports to show regional rail services that you can connect […]
With HBO walking away from Disney+ Hotstar, shows like Succession, The Last of Us, and Game of Thrones can no longer be streamed in the country.
While benchmarks (and leaderboards) are useful tools, they are but a small facet when it comes to evaluating large language models. Often, they're not the best indicators of real-world utility - and I want to dig into why (and what other approaches exist).
After decades of slumber, the country that brought us bullet trains and Nintendo has mustered some momentum.
Yesterday I covered Dwarkesh Patel’s excellent podcast coverage of AI 2027 with Daniel Kokotajlo and Scott Alexander. Today covers the reactions of others.
In November 2020, I read the book Apollo’s Arrow after hearing Dr Christakis on NPR’s Fresh Air. Somewhere midway through this book, this paragraph stood out to me: “Either way, until 2022, Americans will live in an acutely changed world—they will be wearing masks, for example, and avoiding crowded places. I’ll call this the immediate […]
Note: In my last newsletter, I said that my next post would be the second part of my Facebook autopsy. Don’t worry, that’s still coming, but given the recent drama between Sam Altman, OpenAI, and Scarlett Johansson, I felt the need to write something. Don’
The rise of AI is creating both crisis and opportunity
"We think you're gonna LOVE it"
If you are wanting to sell your startup but aren't sure where to do that, here are all your options. There's lots of choice here for you
Last week, I gave a 30 minute talk to a group of CTOs and VP Engineerings in San Francisco about measuring engineering organizations. This talk was essentially this blog post, and here are the slides. A few topics worth highlighting: Measurement educates you, and your audience, about the area being measured. Even flawed measures can be very effective educators. Don’t get caught up on not measuring...
I've raised $12M for my company + hired amazing people -- and until very recently, whenever anyone would ask me my 10-year plan I would flat out say "I have no idea".
You think I’m crazy, but just wait and see....
Over the last month, I’ve been exploring a new idea in the cold outbound sales space. The idea is to generate personalized cold emails at scale using AI. Currently, there is a trade-off between quantity and quality when it comes to sending cold emails: Either you spend lots of time researching a prospect and crafting a personalized email, or you send generic emails in bulk to a large group of...
We tend to perceive symmetrical elements as being connected, even if they are not. The Gestalt Principles of Design are a set of concepts and guidelines drawn from gestalt psychology, which theorizes that the mind tends to process organized groups of things as a whole, rather than a number of individual things. These concepts can help to integrate a better understanding of perception into the...
I am more worried about privacy than crypto crime.
What artificial intelligence can do, what it can't, and how to tell the difference
Thoughts on risk, Berkshire recap, Graham's first investment, Marks on debt, Electricity demand, How to spend your days, AI and productivity
With a little bash scripting, a modern reverse proxy like Traefik, and Docker Compose, we can put together a fairly robust and simple approach to zero-downtime deployment. Moreover, this approach is flexible and scalable, even for dynamic container backends.
And how ML helps software engineers in their daily work
What generative AI capabilities does Google offer to developers?
I think I first clocked Warren Buffett’s (and Charlie Munger RIP’s) Berkshire Hathaway around the year 2000. I loved the story. Starting from, as the story was told back then, humble beginnings and a paper round, Warren Buffett (and Charlie – who I will stop mentioning but absolutely deserves practically half the credit) had built Berkshire… Continue reading In praise of Berkshire Hathaway →
Five years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own bootstrapped software company. For the first few years, all of my businesses flopped. None of them earned more than a few hundred dollars per month in revenue, and they all had negative profits. Halfway through my third year, I created a device called TinyPilot. It allows users to control their computers remotely without...
Thoughts on planning and letting go of expectations
The birth of Sony, and the possibility that private corporations and private individuals can change broader business ecosystems.
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs seven other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Highlights We’ve completed...
Small improvements can lead to big changes
I got a Steam Deck. Only took me a year or so of contemplating getting one, and trying out HoloISO, the unofficial SteamOS installer finally convinced me to get one.1 It took another year to actually get down to writing down my thoughts on it. This post is written from the perspective of a software developer who used to play video games a lot as a teenager, less so as an adult, and as someone who...
Incentive-based lead generation is a game changer and record days continue to become the new normal. But it's not all good. The post Weeks 19-21: Fortunately, I Wasn’t Lying appeared first on Scott DeLong.
On re-rearchitecting.
The ability of LLMs to execute commands through plain language (e.g. English) has enabled agentic systems that can complete a user query by orchestrating the right set of tools (e.g. ToolFormer, Gorilla). This, along with the recent multi-modal efforts such as the GPT-4o or Gemini-1.5 model, has expanded the realm of possibilities with AI agents. While this is quite exciting, the large model size...
One of several highlights for me in January was visiting Salisbury cathedral, which I did on an impulse while travelling back from the Coastal Folly. My main frame of reference to the cathedral being those notorious Russian nerve agent assassins citing it as their reason for visiting England, something which to a Londoner had as… Continue reading Jan ’24: A giant tax bill lands →
Productized services are growing rapidly in popularity. For founders, they offer a way to make a six figure salary relatively quickly. For companies, it means paying top talent without the downsides of hiring an employee like paying for a recruiter, paying extra taxes etc. What are productized services? A productized
Being able to monitor the weather in real-time is great for education, research, or simply to analyze how the local climate changes over time. This project by Hackster.io user Pradeep explores how he was able to design a simple station outdoors that could communicate with a cloud-based platform for aggregating the sensed data. The board Pradeep selected is […] The post Monitoring the weather with...
Dynamic pricing, Greenback emissions, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Working too hard, Ozempic's effect on the brain, Race and cardiovascular disease, Inflation's effect on insurance pricing
What is your biggest fear? What would it mean if you could overcome that fear, once and for all? In this article, I'm going to help you do exactly that by teaching you five tactics to conquer anything you might be afraid of. Heights, spiders, small spaces, strangely-shaped clouds—whatever makes your knees turn to water and keeps you up at night. These five tactics are universal and proven. In...
Hey everyone, Some of you know my story but if I have to summarize the last 3 years in 10 bullets of inflection points, here’s how it would look like: Jan 2018, I was a nobody in startups, stuck in a dead-end corporate job due to visa challenges Oct 2018, read a book called Atomic Habits and in 5 days shipped my 1st no-code project which became
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Literally everyone would be happy about this. We should be building NOW Today's News:
How even legendary conglomerator Henry Singleton got caught out by competitive arbitrage at the end of his career.
Changpeng Zhao's sentencing, FOIA requests reveal past FBI investigations into Coinbase, and the SEC is on a Wells notice bender.
The Birth of Computer Operating Systems
Dipping my toe in enterprise sales
AI caught everyone’s attention in 2023 with Large Language Models (LLMs) that can be instructed to perform general tasks, such as translation or coding, just by prompting. This naturally led to an intense focus on models as the primary ingredient in AI application development, with everyone wondering what capabilities new LLMs will bring. As more developers begin to build using LLMs, however, we...
Felix Kan on building a bug-hunting platform to enhance cybersecurity for small companies.
Woorkeri Raman, a former Indian cricketer and former coach of the India women’s national cricket team, has two non-negotiables. As an offspinner, you must never get cut, and you must never get driven through the covers. Even when Ravichandran Ashwin takes five wickets, Raman will still point out if he got cut or driven off…
The Dayton trip came to an end but I still had a bunch of stuff to talk about that didn’t fit into any of the earlier articles. Naturally I’ve collected them all together within this final compilation to serve as a wrap-up. Then we can call this one done and move onto the next travel […] The post Dayton, Ohio Part 7 (Hodgepodge) appeared first on Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual...
Why does Google suck so much, Microsoft Co-Pilot Everywhere, and Sam Altman
If you haven't been able to keep up with my blistering pace of one blog post per year (if that), I can't blame you. There's a lot going on right now. It's a busy time. But let's pause and take
Why treating AI like a person is the future
Maintaining balance and achieving personal contentment has been a pressing concern for people throughout history. From ancient Greek philosophers to modern-day wellness coaches, experts have offered diverse approaches to balance the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dimensions of life. One such philosophy that has received renewed attention in recent times is Stoicism. Understanding...
[Concept] Tuning forks that talk
Overall, this was an interesting read, but I found it hard to apply the lessons to my product. The book contains compelling case studies and ideas from the field of meta-learning, but most of the ideas were either too theoretical or too specific to large companies.
When Google Glass launched in 2013, the public opinion seemed to be “interesting technology, but the world isn’t ready yet.” Now that more than a decade has passed, the world may finally be ready — especially with the omission of controversial features like video recording. If that appeals to you, then Akashv44 has a great […] The post Create your own affordable Arduino-powered smart glasses...
In creating the tutorial, “Installing NixOS on Raspberry Pi 4,” I ran into a ton of paths that didn’t work. I’ve collected them here for the sake of saving others time retrying the same steps. The standard NixOS aarch64 image doesn’t work When I checked the NixOS download page, I saw that they offered 64-bit ARM images. NixOS offers bootable images for 64-bit ARM systems “Wonderful!” I thought to...
Also, we have a prompt library!
Daily Journal and Berkshire Hathaway have little in common aside from Charlie Munger's influence. Recent development at Daily Journal raise concerns.
Blame the clients. And blame the conditions. But then, you’re on the hook to get better tools, find better clients and work in better conditions. It’s not convenient, but it’s possible. If it’s not worth the effort, we can simply accept what we’ve chosen and get back to work.
It’s time to expand our vision to include slower, more human-scaled speeds of transportation.
The month of May seems a little while ago, so I’d better get on and write it up. This will be quick. The big news in the UK was Rishi Sunak, the outgoing PM, calling a general election for 4 July. Independence-from-the-Tories Day. May was also the month that u-turner/blowharder Nigel Farage also confirmed he… Continue reading May ’24: UK election called →
I love thinking about thinking. Give me a research paper on rationality, cognitive biases or mental models, and I’ll gobble it up. Given the amount of knowledge I’ve ingested on these topics, I had always assumed that I’m a clear thinker. Recently, though, it hit me like a lightning strike that this belief is counter-productive.… Read More The post How to be a messy thinker appeared first on...
Why you’re getting this: I’m Jason Nguyen. I run Bloomstory.co.uk and The Mailroom. This is my newsletter. I used to write this every week, but now I send this out when I can — life got in the way. Updates on what’s been going on in my life are at the bottom of this newsletter.
Blind embossing is a beautiful way in which to add light and shadow to your prints. Embossing adds subtle texture and interest. Emboss prints ‘blind’ (without ink) or combine with inked lino for a complex final print. Prepare the design. These white pencils are brilliant for drawing designs onto traditional lino. The marks show up beautifully and there’s no danger of transference onto white...
All original writing and images on this blog are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. That means you can republish the content or adapt it as long as you honor the license. What you’re allowed to do Republish the content in any medium or format, even for commercial purposes. Adapt the content by changing the wording, translating it to other languages, or...
And more things I talked about over coffee & dinner this week.
Tax time can be intimidating, but understanding how your income gets taxed is key to financial savvy. Let's crack open the code with a deep dive into the 2023-24 tax brackets and rates! Imagine your taxable income as climbing a ladder. Each rung represents a tax bracket, and as you ascend, the tax rate (the percentage owed) increases. But here's the good news:
On learning screencasting, cleaning up tech debt, and focus
A quiet evening reading from Tanquerey’s The Spiritual Life, first published in 1923
July 5, 2024.
I’ve had quite a lot of culture to enjoy in February. Aside from some travel for the Six Nations rugby, I’ve been to two shows – one in London’s Royal Opera House and one on the south coast. Both events were either full or practically full. Covid feels fully behind us now. But the prices… Continue reading Feb ’24: Envyidia →
I tried building a monolith.
On building table-stakes features, and breaking through a plateau.
A reader has generously shared his notes from the Daily Journal annual meeting which took place in Los Angeles on February 15, 2024.
Growing and monetizing the email list is what these weeks were all about. Plus, things I would do differently. The post Weeks 22-25: It’s A Growth Hacker’s Paradise appeared first on Scott DeLong.
Taking AI timelines seriously
Kieran Bell is a founder specializing in teaching people how to use the no-code software Bubble.
And definitions for the most important terms you should know
The ultimate destination was Dayton, Ohio and it took about seven and a half hours to get there. However we didn’t just sit in Dayton for an entire week. If I had to drive all that way you better believe I would do some County Counting along the way too. At this point I’ve already […] The post Dayton, Ohio Part 4 (Venturing North) appeared first on Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual...
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Please consult yesterday's comments (we have comments now) for the excellent post by Hans Rickheit. Today's News: We have them, like it's the 90s again! Please don't be a dick - I would like to keep moderation light. Also, if you have mod experience, please email me.
In the 1450s, German inventor Johannes Gutenburg designed the movable-type printing press, the first practical method of mass-duplicating text. After various other projects, he applied his press to the production of the Bible, yielding over one hundred copies of a text that previously had to be laboriously hand-copied. His Bible was a tremendous cultural success, triggering revolutions not only...
I hope to stay longer than 72 hours the next time I visit Germany. I don’t recommend such a short visit. However I went there for work as I do occasionally, and I had no choice. So that’s what I did. I landed in Frankfurt on Monday, drove down to Kaiserslautern, stayed through Thursday morning, […] The post Kaiserslautern appeared first on Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual Places.
Stoicism is a philosophy that has been around for over two thousand years. The ancient Greeks developed it as a way to live a good life, free from the distractions of emotions, desires, and material possessions. Stoicism has been embraced by many people throughout history, including Roman emperors, Enlightenment thinkers, and modern-day entrepreneurs. But what Read More >>
There was a great discussion on Twitter recently that began with Daniel Vassallo calling out a SaaS for not refunding an accidental annual payment he made on their service. He intended to purchase the monthly plan, but due to an unclear UI and poor copy, he unintentionally purchased the annual plan, and the business refused […]
How speculation gets laundered through pseudo-quantification
Ilya Strebulaev at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Director of the Stanford Venture Capital Initiative just came out with a book that should be on your reading list – The Venture Mindset. The books premise is that Venture Capitalists (who were responsible for the launch of one-fifth of the 300 largest U.S. public […]
Investors have been debating the dividend question for decades. So far, shareholders have been well served by Warren Buffett's reluctance to send out dividend checks.
Here we go again: I'm so tired of crypto web3 LLMs. I'm positive there are wonderful applications for LLMs. The ChatGPT web UI seems great for summarizing information from various online sources (as long as you're willing to verify the things that you learn). But a lot fo the "AI businesses" coming out right now are just lightweight wrappers around ChatGPT. It's lazy and unhelpful. Probably the...
Fifteen years ago, when I worked in the “social innovation” field, there was a world-view that was very popular among my colleagues about what was wrong with society and how to fix it. The idea was that people and governments needed to stop seeing economic growth as a good thing, and that by doing so, we could build a world that paid more attention to important things like environmental...
The Bureau of Land Management wants to pay you $1,000 to adopt a wild horse. But the program has been criticized by animal rights advocates and subject to scrutiny by Congress.
And the impact it'll have for decades to come
Over the past year, AI startups have raised some impressive amounts of money. OpenAI raised $10 billion, Anthropic did $6 billion, Inflection AI raised $1.3 billion, and dozens of companies closed rounds in the hundreds of millions.
Highlights A redesign of TinyPilot’s website seems to have increased sales. TinyPilot now has a European distributor. After three years, I’ve earned back my investment in Zestful (and I might sell it). I’m still ruthlessly delegating every task I can. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Help TinyPilot’s EU distributor...
It’s when, not if, for these kinds of new technologies
Test-Fly A $20 Million Jet On An Apple? Yes. With MicroSPEED
Employment Insurance (EI) is a social insurance program in Canada that provides temporary financial support to eligible individuals who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. While this is the most commonly understood purpose of EI, the program offers various benefits beyond situations of job loss, extending its reach and impact on individuals and society as a whole.
Several areas of physics suggest reasons to think that unobservable universes with different natural laws could lie beyond ours. The theoretical physicist David Kaplan talks with Steven Strogatz about the mysteries that a multiverse would solve. The post Are There Reasons to Believe in a Multiverse? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
This is the 8th post in my series on building a toy GPT. For better understanding, I recommend reading my earlier posts first. I love playing and watching cricket. The dominance India showed in the recently concluded World Cup is astounding. I have never seen anything like it in the four decades I’ve been following…
We’re starting a new school near Singapore for the dark talent of the world. Apply online at ns.com/apply.
One of the great joys of working here at Esri is the opportunity to collaborate with amazing people. Recently I had the opportunity to present at the User Conference about thematic mapping, with Sarah Bell and Kenneth Field. It was a lot of fun and we all surprised each other with what we made from the same source …
Highlights TinyPilot reached an all-time high of $74k in revenue. I’m trying to figure out the best approach to software licensing. I’m still searching for a web framework I can love. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Create a self-contained tarball for installing TinyPilot Result: We now have a working tarball...
We have this big issue right now because gaming is shifting from us to mobile platforms.
Solving hard problems in new ways
What it's like being data driven in the restaurant business ... and what it tells us about becoming data driven in business more broadly.
Intelligence, of a sort, is going to be all around us
On failing customers, failing to ship a new feature, learning sales, and giving up on ads.
A new Twitter clone is surging in popularity. Could it have legs?
Teacher's Pet gets new sounds in this post in a series about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
On Thursday evening Chris Ingraham, a journalist with 100k followers on Twitter, shared a screenshot of the now-famous “african country that starts with k” Google Quick Answer, which quickly went viral, garnering over 82k likes and 3 million views as of the time of this writing on Monday morning: Preceden’s designer, Milan, saw it on […]
From images of solar cooking to snake radio telemetry, we received 548 entries from around the world.
The war around Gaza is not for territory, but rather for the destruction of the presence of a terror network that has entrenched its power base deep underground. In many case, deeper than thought. While Israel has been pretty clear about … Continue reading →
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: The weird part is that the second panel is a fantasy too. Today's News:
A conversation with Andrew Lee, CEO of Shortwave and cofounder of Firebase.
From: TazTo: FvL Hi FvL I’ve read your blog on and off for the past year or three. I graduated from the London School of Economics in 2017 after which I went through the hardest few years of my life mentally and ended up unemployed or in dead-end low paid jobs. I currently work in… Continue reading I’m 28, and can’t figure out how to start on FatFIRE – what would you do in my shoes? →
How I used AI in my book about AI
Applications to our new residential seminar close this coming Friday, 31st May
Goal Representations for Instruction Following Figure title. Figure caption. This image is centered and set to 50% page width. --> A longstanding goal of the field of robot learning has been to create generalist agents that can perform tasks for humans. Natural language has the potential to be an easy-to-use interface for humans to specify arbitrary tasks, but it is difficult to train robots...
The ThinkPad T430 is not a remarkable laptop. It’s thick, bulky and built like a tank. I got mine in 2016 when the first university scholarship money dropped, and it’s still my backup laptop of choice. Around 2017 I did something every reasonable poor computer science student would do: I got an eGPU adapter for it to play some games. I never ended up playing many games, but I loved tinkering with...
A glimpse into the biggest challenge in the world of AI, why it matters to you, and why it's worth so much
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] The essence of a bridge is not just that it goes over something, but that there’s clear space underneath for a river, railway, or road. Maybe this is already obvious to you, but bridges present a unique structural challenge. In a regular road, the forces are transferred directly into the ground. On a bridge, all those forces on...
Hi, everyone – it’s been a while! Quite a few people have written in lately wondering why I haven’t updated the blog in a while, so I thought I should address that. Firstly, for those that were concerned something was wrong, I’d like to reassure you that I’m a-okay and everything is fine. I’ve just […]
Are US legislators warming to crypto? The SEC approves Ethereum ETPs, and a crypto bill gets through the House.
The Convivial Society: Vol. 5, No. 7
Sure, everyone loves a good raised area-of-interest effect. But what about a peeled edge area of interest? It’s a snazzy trick and maybe just the sort of flair that your map needs! And it’s simpler than maybe you’d guess. To give your area of interest a peeled edge effect, you just combine a dark gradient …
June 14, 2024.
I’ve reached a point in my setup where most of the devices that I use are based around the coveted USB-C port. This meant that I had a valid reason to get a few extra because I didn’t yet have a stockpile of good USB-C cables. That’s when I found out that there exist cables that have little screens on them that show the power consumption of the connected device. This is a great little addition to...
When I first visited the site, I felt overwhelmed. The entrance from the parking lot was elevated, exposing the interior,...
This post is a list of books that I read in the first quarter of 2024, most notably The Diary of Anne Frank, Endurance, Crime and Punishment, and the Iliad.
FollowTheCrypto.org: A new project to track cryptocurrency industry spending to influence 2024 elections in the United States.
Of course maps are just the most fascinating and information dense graphical information products around…in my unbiased opinion. I can, and do, go on and on about the deep and pervasive benefits of spatial representations. But…well…sometimes a map, strictly speaking, can have some issues. That’s ok though, because maps are here to fix the problem …
My second day of county counting focused west of Dayton, once again targeting five new counties. This time I planned to capture Butler and Darke counties in Ohio; and Union, Fayette, and Randolph counties in Indiana. Hopefully this excursion would also take about three hours like the previous day. Unfortunately I knew that it wouldn’t […] The post Dayton, Ohio Part 5 (Venturing West) appeared...
It's been fun (kinda). Here's where it ended up and where I'm going next. The post Weeks 48-52: My Final Update appeared first on Scott DeLong.
Fresh water from snow, at 70 below!
My thoughts on the new edition with a focus on inconsistency avoidance, one of the twenty-five psychological tendencies that can cause human misjudgment.
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs seven other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Highlights I failed to sell recurring...
Launching a small business is a thrilling entrepreneurial adventure, but selecting the appropriate legal framework can feel like traversing a complex maze. This guide sheds light on the merits and drawbacks of the three primary options: sole proprietorship, partnership, and incorporation,
I last reviewed email services in 2019. That review focused a lot of attention on privacy. At the time, I selected mailbox.org as my provider, and have been using them for these 5 years since. However, both their service and their support have gone significantly downhill since, so it is time for me to look … Continue reading Review of Reputable, Functional, and Secure Email Service →
<p>Sort of without fail and unplanned, every year in December, I usually think of a word that I want to live by the upcoming year.</p> <p>Depending on what kind of year I have had, the Word for the upcoming one should represent the practical step ahead for me.</p> <p><b>Example:</b> If I feel that my current year has been very hard, the Word for the next year would be "Revival." And that...
Hi! I’m Jo, working as a printmaker under the name 'Strangford' in Northern Ireland - though I’m originally from South London. Describe your printmaking process. I make large, bright, unusual relief prints from my home studio; mostly of animals. I carve into flooring lino - it’s a pain to sand but it comes in huge rolls. I roughly sketch out an outline of the design directly onto the lino, but I...
Substantial political homogeneity in Large Language Models (LLMs) responses to questions with political connotations
Interior design firm Wise Design, together with General Contractor and Architect Owen Gabbert (formerly Clarkbuilt), has transformed a dated 1954 mid-century modern home in Portland, Oregon. Before – The ExteriorThe original home has a brown exterior with original windows and white trim. After – ExteriorThe updated bright white exterior, with a metal roof, has black […]
Out-discounting competitors: iFood’s bid to become Latin America's last-mile delivery king.
fine fine I'll write about AI
Unpopular large companies, Dopamine culture, Buffett's cheapest stock, Investing in vertical SaaS, The bear case for China, Chris Davis, Michael Mauboussin
https://youtu.be/kDqQGogavmY What if I told you there's a hidden treasure trove of personal traits that could turn your life around? Are you curious? Are you dying to know what they are? Are you wondering why I'm asking so many questions instead of getting to the point? OK, OK—fine. Here, I'll uncover the five good qualities that I think will help you make it through this chaotic, unpredictable,...
The reasons behind my decision to discontinue paid subscriptions.
We shouldn't be certain about what is next, but we should plan for it
Hey you, did you do the thing you said you would do?
Many yearn for the “good old days” of the web. We could have those good old days back — or something even better — and if anything, it would be easier now than it ever was.
What spending $2,000 can tell us about evaluating AI agents
Well, this is just beautiful. Having made my own diagram on the same subject matter way, way back in 2011, I think I’m qualified to say that this is a rousing success. The maps have some similarities – routes are colour-coded either by their Paris origin station or operator (Yellow for Eurostar, burgundy for Thalys, […]
It's about having small expectations.
Foxconn and Luxshare slashed workers. But under pressure to expand away from China, they suddenly need them back.
<p>One of the things I'm most proud of in 2022 was that I stuck to some personal habits like going to the gym, eating well, and meditating.</p> <p>I believe these habits helped me get more in tune with myself and get the confidence necessary to take bold steps, like taking out a loan to focus on my products and put myself on the road to <a href="https://valsopi.com/setting-sail">financial...
Submitted by Jakob, who says: The M4 branch extension to Copenhagen South has just opened, and with it, a much improved map compared to 2019 [My review of the 2019 map can be found here – Cam]. The Circle Line is now more spacious, junctions are labeled more clearly, and metro lines have a strikethrough […]
By charging more $$$, you are lifting up the quality of the outcome and satisfaction.
The magic of compounding was evident when I recently compared my lifetime gross wage income to my current net worth.
Live Hangs, Early Chapters, Cut Material, and more…
Continuous Improvement sounds simple, even obvious. And yet there's a profound secret at its heart that doesn't seem to get talked about.
About two and a half years ago I planned to capture three unvisited counties at the far northeastern corner of Ohio. Unfortunately it didn’t happen due to a snowstorm that dumped about a foot of snow on the target area. So instead I changed my plans and focused on Michigan’s thumb. Now, finally, I had […] The post Detour to Ashtabula appeared first on Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of...
Many weeks ago I saw an achingly beautiful bit of AI-generated terrain art shared by Esri’s glorious instagram account. Initially I was a bit intimidated by the robots; it was so charming and tactile and wondrous and dreamlike and sinuous. But also…inspiring. I wondered if I could take a crack at re-creating this aesthetic in ArcGIS Pro, …
Scars, scratches and wounds abound in these photos as encounters with unknown creatures and boat propellers leave their marks, imprinting a story of close escapes and cheating death.
For longtime readers of American book journalism, scrolling through the New York Times Book Review’s just-published list of the 100 best books of the twenty-first century will summon dim memories of many a once-unignorable critical fuss. At one time or another over the past 25 years, some of us felt as if we could hardly […]
Happy Friday everyone, Below is the story of: how I found an artist to collaborate and mint my 1st ever NFT project on the theme of “build in public” how it all came together on Twitter DMs how we plan to auction/sell it to a thoughtful buyer how we intend to donate all the proceeds to the
And a step-by-step guide to train a machine learning model on your Mac
How will recent Supreme Court decisions affect the crypto world? Also, more absurdity from the crypto lobby, and some new regulatory actions.
Mathematicians have disproved a major conjecture about the relationship between curvature and shape. The post Strangely Curved Shapes Break 50-Year-Old Geometry Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Unlike many indie founders, I’ve never shared revenue numbers for Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker tool. Even if they were remarkable – which they are not really – I just don’t think there are many good reasons to publicly share revenue numbers, and there are lots of downsides. However, below I’ll share a chart showing … Continue reading My Indie SaaS Revenue has Grown 37% per Year for 13 Years →
Output similarity is a distraction
It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
John Conway’s Game of Life, a famous cellular automaton, has been found to have periodic patterns of every possible length. The post Math’s ‘Game of Life’ Reveals Long-Sought Repeating Patterns first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The new Kino app recording ProRes Log with a custom preview LUT. Yes we’re still talking about shooting video on iPhones. But I also want to talk about digital cinema shooting in general, in a world where top camera makers are battling to give filmmakers everything we want in a small, affordable package. How does the DV Rebel spirit — born of camcorders and skateboard dollies — live on in a time...
Introduction Some Words about HDCP Inside the Monoprice Blackbird 4K Pro The Test Digging Deeper: UART Transactions Decoding HDCP I2C Transactions The Legality of It All References Footnotes Introduction I got my hands on a Monoprice Blackbird 4K Pro HDCP 2.2 to 1.4 Converter. According to the marketing copy it “is the definitive solution for playback of new 4K HDCP 2.2 encoded content on 4K...
What Bluey can teach us about machine learning
that's really how my brain spelled passion!!
Product market fit is a crapshoot. Here's what's actually useful in the hunt for a new business idea.
Humans excel at processing vast arrays of visual information, a skill that is crucial for achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). Over the decades, AI researchers have developed Visual Question Answering (VQA) systems to interpret scenes within single images and answer related questions. While recent advancements in foundation models have significantly closed the gap between human and...
Scan eyeballs first, ask questions later.
This is the 4th post in my series summarizing the key takeaways from reading the book Modeling Life. I recommend reading my previous posts first to gain a solid understanding on how to model dynamic systems. This post focuses on how linear algebra is employed in modeling dynamic systems. Black bears are a highly adaptable…
Landevenneg is a small village in Finistère, Brittany. It is famous for its Benedictine abbey and its religious history. Landevenneg...
As this challenge comes to an end, it feels good to be at a point where I'm about as immune as possible to looming threats The post Weeks 44-47: The end is near appeared first on Scott DeLong.
Seven principles for journalism in the age of AI
Jurisdictional gamesmanship is a common strategy for crypto businesses. Here is how it worked out for Binance and its CEO. Spoiler: poorly.
I’m teaching a small-group, live course about attracting readers to your blog through Hacker News. Sign up by Monday (June 24th) to reserve your slot. Why take a class with me? My blog receives 300k-500k unique readers per year. After Google, Hacker News is the primary way that new readers find my writing. My blog receives 300k-500k unique readers per year, with Hacker News largely connecting me...
Those of you who follow my blog using the RSS feed might have seen that new, incomplete posts popped up around the time I published my FOSDEM 2024 post. Oops. I recently tried looking for an alternative to writing blog posts in IntelliJ and out of all the options I stuck to MarkText. Well, it does things a bit differently and what was once a front-matter containing all sorts of metadata, including...
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: I think if we just convince AI that it committed an original sin, we can get it to feel guilty. Today's News:
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Pro Wrestling is the most realistic form of entertainment, in that nothing means anything, but everyone still gets hurt. Today's News:
Sam Bankman-Fried maintains that his crimes were victimless and resulted in zero losses, and therefore warrant only six years of imprisonment. Prosecutors argue that 40–50 years are justified.
And isn't that we're all going to lose our jobs
New benefits for paid subscribers, support Society's Backend for just $1/mo, a referral program, and more
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the end of the long tail. Personal computing has changed a lot in the past four decades, and one of the biggest changes, perhaps the most unheralded, comes down to compatibility. These days, you generally can’t fry a computer by plugging in a joystick that the computer doesn’t support. Simply put,...
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Absolute Midden is copyright SMBC Enterprises 2024 all rights reserved. Today's News:
The hand wringing about failures of model alignment is misguided
Traditional internet in Zimbabwe is slow, unreliable, and expensive. Elon Musk’s satellite service sold out within weeks of launching in the country.
A lesson in why data science matters and what makes it so complex
The first year where I managed to keep my focus entirely on a single project.
That’s what makes it worthwhile
To get status, you have to give up status.
Whether it's the joy of self-employment or the burden of payroll decisions, every business owner faces unique financial considerations. One critical choice arises early on: to pay yourself a salary or take dividends? Understanding the pros and cons of each path empowers you to optimize your income tax position, secure important benefits, and navigate the complex world of corporate and personal...
From megaFLOPS to mega flops.
In a previous episode, I discussed audio transports and mention that they have become a much less important part of the modern home theater landscape. One reason is the broad decline of the component system: most consumers aren't buying a television, home theater receiver, several playback devices, and speakers. Instead, they use a television and perhaps (hopefully!) a soundbar system, which often...
Herman Wouk was researching for a novel he planned to write about World War II. He interviewed several physicists at Caltech who had worked on the bomb, including Richard Feynman. After the interview, Feynman asked Wouk if he knew Calculus. “No,” said Wouk. To which Feynman replied, “You’d better learn it. It’s the language God…
Choosing the paper for your printmaking project can have a significant impact on the way the print turns out. Changing the colour, thickness or texture of a paper can alter the mood, style or success of a print - it can be great fun to experiment. Although there are no rules about what paper should be used for each printmaking technique, below we have outlined some of the desirable characteristics...
The structure of Ghostbuster, our new state-of-the-art method for detecting AI-generated text. Large language models like ChatGPT write impressively well—so well, in fact, that they’ve become a problem. Students have begun using these models to ghostwrite assignments, leading some schools to ban ChatGPT. In addition, these models are also prone to producing text with factual errors, so wary...
The hype is not supported by current evidence
The X220 ThinkPad is the Best Laptop in the World 2023-09-26 The X220 ThinkPad is the greatest laptop ever made and you're wrong if you think otherwise. No laptop hardware has since surpassed the nearly perfect build of the X220. New devices continue to get thinner and more fragile. Useful ports are constantly discarded for the sake of "design". Functionality is no longer important to...
Hi I’m Hazel, I live in Cornwall. I moved down just before Covid, very lucky me! And spent lockdown cutting Cornish Landscapes and really getting into my printing. My background is Fashion and Textiles, St Martins School of Art and I think my love of pattern shows in my work. Describe your printmaking process. I mostly work in reduction linocut which means cutting away each colour from the same...
Daily Journal, The Oresteia, Elon's compensation, TSMC, Banks in disguise, Reading about stupidity, Zweig on Ben Graham's continued relevance, 3G Capital, Morgan Housel, Christopher Tsai
Governments seize huge quantities of bitcoin, and a few people seem to be yearning for the days of peak crypto mania.
Consulting can be easy money. Fleecing clients for cheap tricks. Clients have problems, you have powerpoints. It’s easy to flip a few quick slides into a chunk of cash and cackle off into the mountains.
The bitcoin "halving" looms, and that may not be as good news as coiners hope. Also, Terra committed fraud and Uniswap got a Wells notice.
zombie mysteries, historical fiction, pirate adventure tales, and westerns. science fiction. The publishers of Astounding Science Fiction approached Hubbard to write stories that focused on people, rather than robots and machines. His first story, “The Dangerous Dimension,” was a light-hearted tale about a professor who could teleport anywhere in the universe simply by thinking “Equation C.” How...
Good news on paper, but the devil is in the details
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] The Earth is pretty cool and all, but many of its most magnificent features make it tough for us to get around. When the topography is too wet, steep, treacherous, or prone to disaster, sometimes the only way forward is up: our roadways and walkways and railways break free from the surface using bridges. A lot of the...
[Hardware] Army of Robot Slide Whistles
The Year of the Plague #2
Caught in a series of lies about his willingness to fight Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire's disturbing spiral accelerates
The investing legend, the goat of common sense and wisdom, and the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
Adding precision to the debate on openness in AI
Highlights My blog post about redesigning the TinyPilot website became my second most popular article of all time I’m exploring ways to preserve more knowledge on my blog I’ve lowered TinyPilot’s prices in an effort to reduce inventory Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Finalize plans for managing TinyPilot licenses...
Drones have become an essential tool to map, measure and observe the extremely dangerous environments surrounding volcanic eruptions.
This article was written by Scott Jenson and Michael DiTullo and published at Core77 in April 2024 A few recent tech writers have leaked that the new AirPods case will likely have a touch screen. Other earbud makers have tried this as well but it’s Apple, so people will naturally have strong opinions, and we’re no […]
A collection of 100,000 striking high-resolution aerial photos of glaciers, photographed over 40 years with a 63-pound WW II surveillance camera.
Blues Wireless and Arduino have joined forces to create the game-changing Blues Wireless for Arduino Opta, unveiled this week at the Automate Show in Chicago. The expansion module is an affordable solution to enhance connectivity options for Arduino Opta micro PLCs, and marks a significant milestone in PLC technology and in making technology more easily […] The post Expanding possibilities: Blues...
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is Waterloo Park in downtown Austin, Texas, just a couple of blocks away from the state capitol building. It’s got walking trails, an ampitheater, Waller Creek runs right through the center, and it has this strange semicircular structure right on the water. And this is Ladybird Lake, formerly Town Lake, about a mile away....
Designed by Common Curiosity, Birmingham, London.
Selling a property can be a significant financial event, and understanding the tax implications is crucial. This article delves into capital gains tax in Canada, explaining how it works, how it's calculated, and how to potentially reduce your tax burden.
Attending New Year’s service in an Oxford Orthodox synagogue, I paused when the ritual prayer book I held–a Machzor-moved smoothly from prayers to George VI (it was an old one) to prayers for the Israel Defense Forces. The rabbi, who … Continue reading →
Back in 2014, USV got subpoenaed by the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) over our web3 investing activities. We hired a law firm, answered the subpoena, and that ultimately landed me in public testimony in front of the DFS staff. In my testimony, I explained to the DFS staff that the difference […]
(To be clear: I don't know how to make good decisions under stress)
Submitted by Browne, who says: UTA, the primary transit provider for northern Utah, has officially launched its newest BRT service, and with it, a new transit map. The OGX is a new BRT route from Ogden Central Station, downtown, Weber State University, and down to McKay-Dee Hospital. Besides the new BRT line, there are subtle […]
Magic: The Gathering, poker, and business strategy all have something in common: they're vulnerable to a cognitive bias known as results-oriented thinking. But to optimize for success, we should avoid this bias and strive to replace it with sound strategy.
For decades scientists were confused by Antarctic sea ice. Climate models predict that it should be decreasing, and yet it has been steadily and slowly increasing. It also made for a great talking point for climate change deniers – superficially it seems like counter evidence to the global warming narrative, and at least paints scientists […] The post Antarctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low first...
The Convivial Society: Vol. 4, No. 9
Using MagSafe for portable battery packs has so many niceties versus Qi1: Increased communication with the device, allowing for better efficiency due to better thermal management and charging Easily view the charge percentage of the external battery when first attaching it, and at any other point right from the OS Reverse-wireless-charging, so if you charge your phone while the pack is attached,...
And effective ways to mitigate it
Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Madison Heights, Michigan, Galco is a leading e-commerce distributor that specializes in providing a wide range of industrial and commercial electrical and electronic products, focusing on maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO). Known for strong expertise in sourcing hard-to-find, high-quality products and guaranteeing exceptional customer service –...
This part 2 of the Secret History of Polaroid and Edwin Land. Read part 1 for context. Kodak and Polaroid, the two most famous camera companies of the 20th century, had a great partnership for 20+ years. Then in an inexplicable turnabout Kodak decided to destroy Polaroid’s business. To this day, every story of why […]
Ever transferred assets between brokerages? Impressive, terrifying machinations happened in the background. No cats were harmed.
Sample language model responses to different varieties of English and native speaker reactions. ChatGPT does amazingly well at communicating with people in English. But whose English? Only 15% of ChatGPT users are from the US, where Standard American English is the default. But the model is also commonly used in countries and communities where people speak other varieties of English. Over 1...
Some stats, updates, and whatnot
Don't get stuck in neutral
After enduring decades of failed modernism, the residents and politicians of Sweden’s second-largest city, Gothenburg, want to see more new traditional architecture. This has led architects and officials to call for a crisis meeting. During the 1960s and 1970s, Gothenburg underwent a dramatic transformation, which led to the loss of many historic buildings. This period,... The post Architects call...
"Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
I haven’t spent much time playing around with the latest LLMs, and decided to spend some time doing so. I was particularly curious about the usecase of using embeddings to supplement user prompts with additional, relevant data (e.g. supply the current status of their recent tickets into the prompt where they might inquire about progress on said tickets). This usecase is interesting because it’s...
Things I know
New FOIA records from the FAA shed light on the frantic effort in 2015 to rename navigation waypoints related to Donald Trump and reveal the list of naughty waypoint names that were changed over the years.
One of the oldest surviving books provides advice that is just as relevant to our lives today as it was 2,700 years ago.
I feel like I used to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with suspect hard drives. I mean, like, back in high school. These days I almost never do, or on the occasion that I have storage trouble, it's a drive that has completely stopped responding at all and there's little to do besides replacing it. One time I had two NVMe drives in two different machines do this to me the same week. Bad...
Ed McCracken and Jim Clark talk about their hardware and the future of 3D
In the 1900s, Albert Einstein unified the concepts of space and time, giving us a useful new way to picture the universe.
For many investors, both seasoned and new, choosing between Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) and mutual funds can be a head-scratcher. Both offer diversification, professional management options, and access to a variety of asset classes. However, they differ significantly in how they are bought, sold, and priced. Understanding these differences is crucial to selecting the right investment vehicle for...
Invest in long term, Diversify, Don't stress to time the market, Stay calm ... It is not that complicated.
This is a placeholder post! I’m a huge fan of Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools site and have loved their recommendations for years. So much, so that I even started a Pinterest board filled with my own recommendations. But after a few years of running into the limitations of the form, I feel such a project […] The post Guy’s Cool Tools appeared first on Style over Substance.
The timeline and why OpenAI’s actions are a big deal
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and in my professional life overall. Highlights I’m doing a thought...
In which I pay for people to check out OnlineOrNot to test my landing pages.
Biden's Withdrawal and Limits of Gaslighting, The CrowdStrike Crash, Munger and Franklin, Steve Jobs in 1983, Microsoft deep dive, Marks on risk, Luca Delanna on ergodicity, Guadalcanal
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Actually if you can run the trolley into ALL humans, the notion of sadness ceases to have meaning, so it's all good. Today's News: Fun interview about A City on Mars with Jordan Harbinger.
#1 💡 Andrej Karpathy announced that he’s building an AI + education company.
I’m working with git and make a big boo-boo. Now I’m facing a situation where I’ve deleted a local branch with all my work and there’s no backup on GitHub. “This is git. There has got to be a version of this things still on my computer somewhere, right? RIGHT?!” So I start searching online: “how to recover a deleted branch in git?” A few results later, I find this gist. Not one to copy/paste CLI...
A new benchmark to measure the impact of AI on improving science
A comprehensive summary of W. Edwards Deming's ideas, whose System of Profound Knowledge is one of the most powerful things you'll find on the Operations side of the business expertise triad. Read this, so you don't have to read multiple books to apply his ideas.
April 5, 2024.
When you’ve created an aluminium or zinc plate etching, you’ll want to have a go at pulling your first print. To do this, you’ll need to learn how to prepare your paper and how to set the correct pressure on your press. This blog is part of a series featuring tips and techniques to get you started with aluminium or zinc plate etching. This post will demonstrate how to prepare your papers and how...
Ah, it’s that time of year when we geographers pour ourselves a steaming mug of hot coffee and place a stroopwafel over it until the caramel is nice and gooey and take the hand of other nearby geographers and sing O Denneboom together. Say, what’s with all the Dutch references? Oh, that’s because this year I’ve teamed …
There have been two main periods of subway (or “metro”) building in the US. The first was during the late 19th century and early 20th century, when Boston, New York, and Philadelphia all built subway systems
What are the imperatives of the upside?
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a system of 1,400 descriptive "design codes" allowing you to search for trademarks with “Rickshaws”, “Centaurs” or “Mechanical women”.
Italian Terraces will also be restored and replanted with wildflowers.
The internet is inundated with countless videos and advice columns promising to teach you how to become more successful than 99% of the world's population. Most of these claims revolve around setting goals, developing discipline, and eliminating distractions. But let's face it: if you take a close look at the habits of highly successful people, you'll quickly realize that they don't strictly...
Google has announced yet another price increase for Google Workspace. Here's what we've done to avoid paying anything at all.
But is AI different than other technologies?
And an overview of LLM security issues
July 19, 2024.
Last week, in the midst of the slow, painful collapse of the generative AI hype cycle, something incredible happened. On Monday, a Federal Judge delivered a crushing ruling in the multi-year-long antitrust case filed against Google by the Department of Justice. In 300-pages of dense legal text, Judge Amit Mehta
What this means: On a weekly basis, Realtor.com reports the year-over-year change in active inventory and new listings. On a monthly basis, they report total inventory. For March, Realtor.com reported inventory was up 28.5% YoY, but still down 20.2% compared to the 2017 to 2019 same month levels. Now - on a weekly basis - inventory is up 30.3% YoY. Realtor.com has monthly and weekly data on...
Announcing the ML Road Map-Turbo
I don't have answers
A few years ago, I compiled a PDF of various small odds-and-ends mapping projects that I’d done. Now, I’ve done it again. Please enjoy Another Atlas of Minor Projects, which houses a few dozen cartographic items that needed a home. These are all small, mostly-quick projects that never really merited their own blog post or … Continue reading Another Atlas of Minor Projects →
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: The part of the impression that gets the most laughs is when the robot imitates living an entire life pursuing other people's dreams. Today's News:
Laetitia@Work #68
We trace Michael Dell's skill at the art of capital in business, and use it to examine how skill at capital allows you to make moves that aren't available to a novice business operator.
How do immature egg cells maintain genetic quality for decades before they mature? Scientists find unusual safeguards in this quiescent cell that may inform research into fertility. The post How ‘Idle’ Egg Cells Defend Their DNA From Damage first appeared on Quanta Magazine
What makes machine learning infra so important and why I find it so interesting
There are good reasons to be skeptical about its ultimate utility.
Well then. At the end of the last article I promised to write about the stations on HS2 phase 1 assuming that I hadn’t been too enraged by the political fallout from hopefully soon-to-be-ex-prime minister Rishi Sunak’s cancellation of phase 2 of HS2. Reader, I have been enraged. I have had to have a very […]
Warren Buffett is concerned about the performance of Berkshire's railroad
Can audio engineering ideas help us deal with life in the city?s
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In March of 1989, Earth experienced one of its strongest geomagnetic storms in modern history. It all started when scientists observed a cluster of sunspots—active, magnetic areas on the sun's surface—emerging on its horizon. Over the next few days, the sun slowly rotated until the region began to point directly at Earth. Just...
If the COVID pandemic showed us anything, it is that our public spaces are overflowing with opportunity for germ transmission. In 2019, most people didn’t think twice about touching a gas pump handle or an ATM touchscreen, but it quickly became apparent that such contact presents a genuine risk. We have technology to detect interaction […] The post Synjets provide non-contact haptic feedback...
Generalization is one of the most important tools in a map maker’s tool kit. Sometimes the complexity of our geometry needs to be smoothed out to best visually represent a place or appear best at various scales. Here is a way (complete hack, but surprisingly effective) to generalize polygon features on-the-fly, using symbol effects…deviously. Because …
Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started. Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are how things get finished. Long-term orientation is in short supply; try not to worry about what people think in the short term, which will get easier over time. It is easier for a team to do a hard thing...
“AI” and “The Cloud” are both hot topics, but couldn’t be more different. AI is new, unproven, and surrounded by hyperbole, whereas “The Cloud” is older, established, and broadly accepted. But online, criticism is mounting against both, not so much for the technology itself but for its misuse. Instead of waiting for big tech to […]
Sacred Flames and Divine Philosophers
Controlling the space between text styles is as important as differentiating the styles themselves. Whenever I review design documentation, there are a few things I look for in the first few seconds. All of them have to do with how scannable a page or screen’s layout is. In fact, I was reading Design School Layout by Richard Poulin the other day and was reminded how good his definition of...
Once you use your plates every day, they cease to be the good china. Of course, the plates didn’t change. Your story did. The way you treat them did. The same goes for the red carpet. If you roll it out for every visitor or every customer, it ceases to be red.
There I was, standing in the middle of a buzzing tech event that our company organized, feeling like a fish […] The post Networking as an introvert CTO appeared first on Vadim Kravcenko.
Despite everyone’s focus on hardware, the software of AI is what protects NVIDIA
The world of work is changing.
A simple but nicely drawn map of tram services in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia in 1957. The lack of any sort of key for the routes means that users need to have some familiarity with the city to decipher where trams might go. The pamphlet that the map is part of includes information about the route […]
Siri versus the machine god?
On how I left a 'prestigious' consulting job to start from scratch as a React developer
Juno’s been a really fun project to build, and it’s been so great hearing how other people have been enjoying Juno since its launch, as well as providing awesome feedback and input to improve it. Today I’m releasing Juno 2.0, which incorporates a ton of that community feedback, and truly brings the app to the next level through extensive improvements and new features. Using it over the last little...
This was the trip we wanted to take last summer before our plans abruptly changed. Instead we went to Costa Rica for reasons I talked about before, and all of us had a wonderful time. Even so, I still felt bad that the younger kid lost out on the original destination. He wanted to go […] The post England, Day 1 (Do-Over) appeared first on Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual Places.
OpenAI Q*, Primer on Reinforcement Learning, and Implications
Last week, someone leaked a spreadsheet of SoundThinking sensors to Wired. You are probably asking "What is SoundThinking," because the company rebranded last year. They used to be called ShotSpotter, and their outdoor acoustic gunfire detection system still goes by the ShotSpotter name. ShotSpotter has attracted a lot of press and plenty of criticism for the gunfire detection service they provide...
The United States has an official web design system and a custom typeface that belongs to the people. This thoughtful public design system aims to make government websites not only look good, but to make them accessible and functional for all.
The Tax Break You've Been Looking for !
What would be a good present for someone who just graduated from college with a degree in entomology? Well, how about a quick trip to the Midwest to hunt for bugs? May 2024 marked a special occasion that was well-reported (maybe over-reported) by the mainstream media: the emergence of two distinct periodical cicada broods at […] The post Cicada Chase, Day 1 appeared first on Twelve Mile Circle -...
A family member has a Canon PIXMA MP250 printer, originally released in 2009. It has been a very reliable piece of hardware, especially for a printer. Then came Windows 10. The printer would not work out of the box with it and the official drivers got stuck during installation. Fiddling with the printer in device manager, trying to install drivers via Windows Update and stars aligning got the...
A long overdue VC apocalypse and the birth of the first real AI companies
Today is my 40th birthday. When I turned 30 a decade ago, I wrote an article sharing life lessons to survive your 20s and crowd-sourced advice on how to excel in your 30s. And apparently you guys loved it. So, here's more of the good stuff: 40 life lessons I now know at 40 that I wish I knew at 20. Dig in. If you treat yourself with dignity and respect, then you will only tolerate others who treat...
June 21, 2024.
"The people we love are built into us."
When people have asked, I’ve told them with a straight face that we didn’t go to Daytona for Spring Break, no, we went to Dayton. As in Ohio. As in probably the least likely Spring Break destination in the United States. We managed to avoid warm weather, sandy beaches, and southern hospitality for… a bunch […] The post Dayton, Ohio Part 1 (The Wright Stuff) appeared first on Twelve Mile Circle -...
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Disappointed with myself that I haven't don't a creationism joke in years. Six years is like 0.1 percent of the past. Today's News:
Digital rights activists have questioned the ethics of using “soft fakes” to resurrect the past and manage the future.
A Political Chatbot that Gives 3 Politically Diverse Answers to Every Prompt
The true state of the global financial system, in ten charts.
What makes DEI important and where it fails
Early notes on how generative AI is affecting the internet
On cleaning up the shop.
A life well lived
Here are some notes on migrating a signed zone from BIND’s old auto-dnssec to its new dnssec-policy. I have been procrastinating this migration for years, and I avoided learning anything much about dnssec-policy until this month. I’m writing this from the perspective of a DNS operator rather than a BIND hacker. migrating from auto-dnssec risks to avoid things to know prior preparations which...
https://youtu.be/c3uoyCNIa5c You've probably never heard of Kazimierz Dąbrowski. He was a psychologist from the 1940s with a fascinating background. He studied with Freud's contemporaries in Vienna, worked with mentally ill patients, participated in the Polish resistance during World War II, was captured and tortured in a prisoner of war camp, and lost many friends and family members in the...
This article presents a discussion of "Prometheus Bound", a play by the Greek Tragedian Aeschylus dating back to the fifth century BC.
Memories may affect how well the brain will learn about future events by shifting our perceptions of the world. The post Memories Help Brains Recognize New Events Worth Remembering first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Jumia says it paid its logistics partners. Logistics partners say they paid all the workers. The workers say they haven’t been paid.
The opposite of a good idea - Finding the real reason behind brushing our teeth - Let's not jump to conclusions
Hey folks, Recently, I gave a workshop on “BUILDING IN PUBLIC” at On Deck and shared insights, lessons, war stories and essentially opened up all my playbooks on the topic. The talk seemed to have resonated deeply with many fellows and I was grateful and delighted. Some of them even shared highlights and
March 8, 2024.
Or: Mainstream media still isn't great at covering tech and AI ideologies
Introduction What was the SyncServer S200 Supposed to be Used For? IMPORTANT: Use the Right GPS Antenna! The SyncServer S200 Outside and Inside Installing the Missing BNC Connectors Setting Up a SyncServer S200 from Scratch Opening up the SyncServer S200 The SyncServer File System on the Flash Card Cloning the CompactFlash Card Reset to Default Settings Setting the IP Address Accessing the Web...
Annotated slides from a recent talk
The term "VHF omnidirectional range" can at first be confusing, because it includes "range"---a measurement that the technology does not provide. The answer to this conundrum is, as is so often the case, history. The "range" refers not to the radio equipment but to the space around it, the area in which the signal can be received. VOR is an inherently spatial technology; the signal is useless...
Nix is a broad product with a steep learning curve. It’s capable of everything from installing a single package to managing every file and application on your OS. One useful thing you can do with Nix, even as a complete beginner, is manage your dev environments. Nix lets me have multiple projects on the same system that each have their own independent view of what dependencies are available. I can...
Yesterday on X, I shared a post about some responses I was getting from the ChatGPT 3.5 API indicating that it was refusing to summarize arXiv papers: There has been a lot of discussion recently about the perceived decrease in the quality of ChatGPT’s responses and seeing ChatGPT’s refusal here reinforced that perception for a … Continue reading Is the ChatGPT API Refusing to Summarize Academic...
Cedric talks to Lesley Sim about her experience coaching the Singaporean Ultimate Women's World Championship Team in 2020, her approach to skill acceleration, and why a teaching technique designed for dogs and dolphins works just as well on humans!
Took mum to her childhood home Sunday just gone to see Papa. We walked in and mum saw Nana and they both started to cry. Papa, Alan, Alby, my grandfather was quite sick. The room was quiet and somber but had an unshakable aura of warmth and love. Everyone was
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Lot of people are gonna say we can't build Star Trek teleporters, but we can do the first half, which is pretty good. Today's News:
Every year, the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab graduates some of the most talented and innovative minds in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our Ph.D. graduates have each expanded the frontiers of AI research and are now ready to embark on new adventures in academia, industry, and beyond. These fantastic individuals bring with them a wealth of knowledge, fresh...
Jeez The post The 2024 Trump-Biden Debate appeared first on Wait But Why.
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Quick thankyou to patreon subscriber/friend Dave Luebke for making this joke more legible. Today's News:
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be Skee-Ball. But while many other popular arcade games have viable at-home alternatives, Skee-Ball doesn’t — at least not unless you’re willing to spend a serious amount of money. Luckily, you can get your Skee-Ball fix with a […] The post This rolling ball game brings Skee-Ball-style fun from the...
So… What Happened? Today is my birthday—for the 65th time. Five years ago, on my 60th birthday, I did a livestream where I talked about some of my plans. So… what happened? Well, what happened was great. And in fact I’ve just had the most productive five years of my life. Nine books. 3939 pages […]
This week, we discovered that GitHub.com’s RSA SSH private key was briefly exposed in a public GitHub repository. – GitHub’s “We updated our RSA SSH host key” blog, 2023-03-23 Once you git push, nothing is private. Private info in git only stays private on your laptop. But once you schlep it out to a remote: all bets are off. As GitHub’s incident last week demonstrates—private repos are, at best,...
In the mid-1960s, Robert Kahn began thinking about how computers with different operating systems could talk to each other across a network. He didn’t think much about what they would say to one another, though. He was a theoretical guy, on leave from the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a stint at the nearby research-and-development company Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN)....
because some words are good and others are bad
Spirit Halloween has over 1,450 pop-up shops and makes all its money in only 2 months (September, October)
1/ I’ve been mega-obsessed with this feeling. A year as a 36-year-old seems so much shorter as compared to when I was a kid or even as a teen. It seems cosmically unfair – we have fewer years to live, and each year flies by faster. 2/ But, why is that happening? My tentative conclusion is that… Read More The post Why time seems to pass faster as we age appeared first on Inverted Passion.
The Honda Insight was the first hybrid car released in North America and Honda put serious effort into making it as efficient as was practical at the time. That meant aerodynamic streamlining, which is why the first-generation Insight had very distinct covers over the rear wheels. It even had special tires with very low rolling […] The post DIY ECU controls Honda Insight’s Kubota diesel engine...
Highlights TinyPilot had its highest-revenue month ever. One of TinyPilot’s competitors raised $800k almost overnight. I’m working with a design firm to improve TinyPilot’s brand and website. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Publish a sample chapter of Refactoring English Result: Made progress but didn’t publish a...
And other practical guides to understand machine learning
And it comes from you
What happened when English villagers encountered black Americans during World War II?
[Hardware] The smallest and silliest MIDI synth yet
Plus Out-Of-Pocket is hiring!!
The earth contains a lot of titanium - it’s the ninth most abundant element in the earth’s crust. By mass, there’s more titanium in the earth’s crust than carbon by a factor of nearly 30, and more titanium than copper by a factor of nearly 100. But despite its abundance, it's only recently that civilization has been able to use titanium as a metal (titanium dioxide has been in use somewhat longer...
New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $80-100k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Highlights I’m trying to work around...
A talk with the author of The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight.
I stumbled across an amazing fact. From 2003 to 2022, the number of home burglaries in Japan decreased by a factor of 12! Home burglaries in Japan peaked in 2003, with 190,473 cases in Japan. But as of 2022, where the most recent data is available, they have dropped to a mere 15,692 cases. This drop was astonishing to me, and so I sought out the reasons behind it. While there isn’t a simple...
Topologists prove two new results that bring some order to the confoundingly difficult study of four-dimensional shapes. The post Mathematicians Marvel at ‘Crazy’ Cuts Through Four Dimensions first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Watching movies and TV series that use digital visual effects to create fantastical worlds lets people escape reality for a few hours. Thanks to advancements in computer-generated technology used to produce films and shows, those worlds are highly realistic. In many cases, it can be difficult to tell what’s real and what isn’t. The groundbreaking tools that make it easier for computers to produce...
At the beginning of 2023 I went full time on Preceden, my SaaS timeline maker business, after 13 years of working on it on the side. A year has passed, so I wanted to share an update on how things are going and some lessons learned. Preceden My main focus in 2023 was building AI … Continue reading Reflecting on My First Year as a Full Time Indie Founder →
<p> <i>This is the first of many updates in the <a href="https://valsopi.com/financial-freedom">Financial Freedom</a> series, where I hold myself publicly accountable for my big challenge ahead!</i> </p> <p> <i><b>TLDR:</b> Towards the end of this article, there's a Google Sheet with real numbers that will be updated monthly. Please read the article, so the numbers make more...
Dayton is decently sized place with about 130,000 residents in the city proper and about 800,000 in the larger metropolitan area. So that makes it large enough for some attractions and urban amenities, but nobody would mistake it for a city that never sleeps. I figured I might run out of things to do before […] The post Dayton, Ohio Part 2 (Take a Walk) appeared first on Twelve Mile Circle - An...
How do we know which food is best for us? We might start a low-carb diet. Then we switch to whole grains, or even go fully vegan—only to return to a low-carb diet yet again. We constantly change our minds. Even scientists keep revising their perspectives. Why is it so difficult to be certain on issues like these? The Scottish philosopher David Hume answered this question almost 300 years ago....
Everything that we covered in 2023, and what to expect now that Commoncog has a new direction.
Mapping actors and solutions
We’re excited to announce a powerful new feature that we have been working on in collaboration with the MicroPython team! Starting with the upcoming release (v1.23), MicroPython will offer support for Asymmetric Multiprocessing (AMP) on multi-core microcontrollers, based on the industry standard OpenAMP framework (see the MicroPython openamp module documentation for more information). This...
Drypoint is a fantastic intaglio technique as it requires limited equipment to create a plate. It's a great way of creating a printed drawing and is one of the printmaking techniques where the positive mark is the one that prints (unlike relief printing for example). There are lots of plates to choose from for making drypoints, and they all provide different results. We've tested six types of...
In one sense, the concept of progress is simple, straightforward, and uncontroversial. In another sense, it contains an entire worldview. The most basic meaning of “progress” is simply advancement along a path, or more generally from one state to another that is considered more advanced by some standard. (In this sense, progress can be good, neutral, or even bad—e.g., the progress of a disease.)...
How details, focus, time, and taste elevate craft. Attention to Detail The number one distinction among designers who need a lot of direction and designers who do not is their attention to detail. This is because attention to detail is commonly misunderstood. Attention to detail is not a personality trait; it is a manifestation of a preference for order and consistency. When that...
A lesson in ignoring economics
Andrew Davison is a British founder who built and sold an app by learning to code with ChatGPT. He had a problem with exporting multiple tables from Airtable databases so he built a tool to help him automate the process. Andrew used new tools like ChatGPT and Replit to a)
Here’s a long-form article I co-authored on the state of the no-code that I thought you might enjoy. Let me know if you have any feedback or questions :) Much like Shopify ‘armed the rebels’ by allowing anyone to build an e-commerce store, a slew of no-code tools are empowering people to build
This blog is running on a home server again. I have once again gained access to a competent internet connection1, and I think I have figured out the IPv6 setup as well2, leading to this change. The IP address is dynamic, there are occasional power outages and I might just mess up my configuration and bring it all down, but I get to brag about this setup so it all balances out. it’s fiber,...
“These big companies think they can enter small villages like ours, take our land, and destroy it.”
I interview Claire about her new book "Scaling People". Thanks to Stripe for hosting.
The ThinkPad T430 has a few options for running it with an external display: VGA port, which is pretty much obsolete at this point mini DisplayPort connector on the laptop itself DVI or DisplayPort on a dock The mini DisplayPort port has annoyed me for as long as I’ve had this machine. Most places where I’ve had to present something only offer an HDMI cable, which means that I always have to carry...
Highlights TinyPilot’s EU distributor is on track to begin sales by the end of August. I’ve freed up time by delegating responsibilities to my teammates. I miraculously became unstuck on two tasks that have been blocking work for months. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: Get my EU partner ready to begin sales by the...
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
For those of us who have not spent the past few years building ChatGPT from the ground up, how does it work? From Evan Morikawa, who leads the Applied engineering team at OpenAI
By Sayash Kapoor, Rishi Bommasani, Percy Liang, Arvind Narayanan Perhaps the biggest tech policy debate today is about the future of AI, especially foundation models and generative AI. Will AI be open or closed? Will we be able to download and modify these models, or will a few companies control them? The stakes couldn’t be higher. A closed path could lead to a concentration of power never before...
Many startups fail despite identifying a real problem and building a product that solves that problem. This explains why, so you can avoid their fate.
If you’re employed, it’s because somebody believes that spending money on your salary will lead to more profit for its...
July 12, 2024.
Back in 1935, they seized the gold. But now, digital gold is back.
It Could Have Been a Lot Worse - His Data is BLOWGUN Protected!
Part of our 80/20 series sit on a cushion for 20 mins per day focus on your sensory experiences (touch, sight, smell, sound). Try to perceive them as accurately as possible [1] [2] [3] footnotes: is that really all? on one level, yes -- both in the sense that
A cool Japanese clamtop
And prompt engineering is a subset of software engineering.
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Godel proved you can't prove anything. Don't think about it too hard. Today's News: Happy New Year,
Of course Alaska and Hawaii are glorious places, beloved by all for their lovely inhabitants and majestic natural environs. It would be an error of omission should they not appear in a map of the United States, but it would also be a shame to shoe-horn them in looking sad with an inappropriate coordinate system. …
Weekly updates and resources 7/15/24
Disclosure: Waterfield sent this in exchange for a review. Yeah, that probably colors something on a deep-down, subconscious level, but I won’t say anything that I don’t truly believe. Unlike a phone or laptop, the Vision Pro is one of those products that is particularly tricky to take around without a case. I’ve got around this by wrapping it in a hoodie and throwing it in my backpack, but I was...
What are the best movie sequels, and why?
Are LLMs intelligent? Debates on this question often, but not always, devolve into debates on what LLMs can or cannot do. To a limited extent, the original question is useful because it creates an opening for people to go into specific. But, beyond that initial use, the question quickly empties itself because (obviously) the answer… Read More The post Usefulness grounds truth appeared first on...
Laetitia@Work #74
I was on Twitter since 2007, and built a meaningful part of my career on it, and I won’t be posting at all for the foreseeable future
This is the first in a series of newsletters covering this blog
You get smarter by studying foolishness—so here's how I'd teach a 12-week course on stupidity
Introduction Hideo Okawara’s Mixed Signal Lecture Series Frequency/Phase Movement Analysis by Orthogonal Demodulation Misc Introduction While researching a DSP related topic, Google dug up an excellent article, written by Hideo Okawara, that is just one part of a series of ~53. I was ready for more! Originally written for Verigy, the series is now hosted by Advantest. But hosting it pretty much...
Windows becomes competitive
December 1, 2023.
Note: As of today, copies of Wolfram Version 14.1 are being auto-updated to allow subscription access to the capabilities described here. [For additional installation information see here.] Just Say What You Want! Turning Words into Computation Nearly a year and a half ago—just a few months after ChatGPT burst on the scene—we introduced the first […]
Operating Systems Come in Many Flavors But QNX Can Take the Heat
I had a lot of self-hatred when I was younger. But over the past few years it gradually eased up as I embarked on a journey of self-understanding. This journey wasn’t voluntary,...
On the back of US salary transparency regulations, two new salary transparency websites have launched, built by the creators of Levels.fyi and Layoffs.fyi. I talked to both teams to learn how they were developed.
I recently learned about the IKEA SKÅDIS series, which is a pegboard that supports a variety of extras. During my self-hosting journey having to figure out the best place for putting all my compute stuff to has always been at the back of my mind, especially due to limited floor space at my home. This pegboard gave me an idea. Note that this idea also applies to other types of pegboards that you...
“I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains. And then find somewhere where I can rest.” In this 4-part series we’ll walk through the reckoning of a Lord of the Rings style fantasy map, right in ArcGIS Pro. We map-makers get to breathe honest to goodness geographic life into the seminal aesthetic found in the …
Here’s an absolutely cracking diagrammatic map that appeared as a fold-out sheet in Union Pacific annual reports from about 1978 through 1981, maybe slightly longer. I first saw this as a photograph of a partial part of the map, but it didn’t take me too long to find the whole thing on the internet via […]
The majority of US states have something called a "Department of Motor Vehicles," or DMV. Actually, the universality of the term "DMV" seems to be overstated. A more general term is "motor vehicle administrator," used for example by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators to address the inconsistent terminology. Not happy with merely noting that I live in a state with an "MVD"...
Designed by Nomad, London.
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I feel like the tech industry is currently in the midst of the most bizarre cognitive dissonance I've ever seen — more so than the metaverse, even — as company after company simply lies about their intentions and the power of AI. I get it. Everybody wants
Click here to go see the bonus panel! Hovertext: Dangle-balls is copyright SMBC Industries, All Rights Reserved Today's News:
A positive vision for the transformation to come
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When Google killed Google Reader, the bloggosphere took a severe hit and the content quality went down because there weren't enough readers to justify the effort it takes to maintain a high quality blog.
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