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...
Why do smart, driven founders fail, despite having great ideas and execution? This model offers an answer, and a path to increase the chance of success.
How a Chinese AI lab spun out of a hedge fund shook up the entire tech industry.
Of course you’re going to get wet, that’s part of the sport. And yet, only the hard core surfers show up in the rain. If your project is about making things better, organizing the disorganized, connecting the disconnected and building community, you shouldn’t wait until the conditions are ideal. Broken systems need your help precisely […]
A few items of interest to my readers: First, at the end of last month I appeared on the German Marshall Fund's China Global podcast to discuss the CPC's current techno-industrial drive. You can listen to the full thing on Simplecast, Apple Podcast, or in the embed below:
As part of my job running Terraform Industries, I get to build an amazing team of super smart people, and that involves interviewing hundreds of people. Over time certain patterns have become obvious, but I remember when they weren’t obvious to me on the other side of the table! It has become clear to me that there are some subjects that should be covered as part of any professional degree and are...
Network School reopens March 1 with double the capacity. Apply now at ns.com.
This week we’re going to have a bit of fun looking at some of the interesting armor choices for the recent Dragon Age: The Veilguard. In a way, this is an extension of the post on “The Problem with Sci-Fi Body Armor,” because I think Veilguard provides a pretty exceptional example of visual character-design armor … Continue reading Collections: The Strange Armor of Dragon Age: The Veilguard →
MIDWAY through his 900 page history of biology, zoologist Ernst Mayr considers the problem posed by Alfred Wallace. Wallace was a contemporary of Charles Darwin who independently developed a theory of speciation by means of natural selection. By the time Wallace came on the scene Darwin had been sitting on his evolutionary theory for two decades. Reading Wallace’s 1858 paper “On the Tendency of...
The first narrow agents are here
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...
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).
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.
what a year it's been
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...
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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 […]
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...
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....
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,...
Why not make this Christmas a little darker? The post Ho Ho Horror appeared first on The American Scholar.
Uncapped safe notes misalign incentives in first rounds… let me explain why
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,...
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...
The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
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 […]
Upon stepping into the hallowed Criterion Closet, stocked with hundreds of that cinephile video label’s finest releases, Francis Ford Coppola speaks of a director who “believed in a film he wanted to make, and used his entire fortune, because the financing system of the time wouldn’t finance it. And it came out and it was a big […]
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 […]
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...
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Alex Pliutau and I discuss what Go programmers should know about Rust, and why the two languages make perfect partners.
We’re proud to announce that elementary OS 8 is available to download later today and shipping on several high-quality computers! With OS 8, we’ve focused in on: Creating a new Secure Session that ensures applications respect your privacy and require your consent A brand new Dock with productive multitasking and window management features Empowering our diverse community through Inclusive...
$1M in annual revenue, B2B sales, SOC 2, resellers, grow team, and other updates in November 2024.
An incredible archive of 14,000 photos of Army uniforms, military gear and rations from the 70s and 80s.
The reference frames from which observers view quantum events can themselves have multiple possible locations at once — an insight with potentially major ramifications. The post In the Quantum World, Even Points of View Are Uncertain first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Data centers for companies like Google, Amazon, and Nvidia are transforming Johor state, with locals bracing for higher real estate costs and resource shortages.
They are almost certainly not what you think they are. Good interaction design depends upon a very long list of skills, from a practical understanding of formal design concepts to the speed and efficiency with which you wield digital design tools and navigate a variety of production environments. But the two skill(set)s that will determine the success of your design are entirely outside of...
Designed by Memory, Salt Spring Island.
I like writing Javascript without a build system and for the millionth time yesterday I ran into a problem where I needed to figure out how to import a Javascript library in my code without using a build system, and it took FOREVER to figure out how to import it because the library’s setup instructions assume that you’re using a build system. Luckily at this point I’ve mostly learned how to...
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 […]
Meet Eddie AI—your new editing partner ready to bring cinematic flair to every cut!
A rare film that celebrates design and urban planning, Coppola’s latest epic is a mishmash of architectural, cinematic, and literary history.
The Computational View of Time Time is a central feature of human experience. But what actually is it? In traditional scientific accounts it’s often represented as some kind of coordinate much like space (though a coordinate that for some reason is always systematically increasing for us). But while this may be a useful mathematical description, […]
I recently finished a very short book with an intriguing title: Why Greatness Cannot be Planned. It’s an unconventional self-help book disguised as a computer science research exposition (that’s why the publisher is Springer). I strongly recommend reading it. Here is a taste of the book’s main ideas. Objectives only work when your goal is… Read More The post Getting things done by not trying...
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] If you have to know the answer right away, it’s no; or at least, my goal with this video is to convince you that the world is not running out of sand. But if it were that simple, I wouldn’t be here (right?) and you probably wouldn’t be either. In fact, I was really surprised by some of the things I didn’t know as I dug deeper...
Recommendations of works of fiction of interest to financial practitioners or enthusiasts.
What's in the book and how we wrote it
The video from our live event.
Happy International Coffee Day! To celebrate this culturally significant October 1st holiday, we have picked a few of our favorite examples of coffee and architecture existing in blissful harmony. So pour yourself another cup of your favorite roast (how about Archinect's very own Brutal line of varietals?), sit back, and enjoy our curated selection of outstanding new café designs from across the...
Solving hard problems in new ways
Laetitia@Work #74
A new benchmark to measure the impact of AI on improving science
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. …
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...
Machine learning resources and updates 2024-09-17
new essay in Asterisk
What we can learn from seeing businesses as organisms in an ecosystem ... using the particularly odd example of HEICO being the barnacle to TransDigm’s whale.
“If exotic non-human animals inhabited the edges of the inhabited world in medieval cosmologies, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the MAGA candidate who has done much to resurrect the contours of theocratic Neo-medieval maps of the world is perpetuating stories of … Continue reading →
“Connectionist” vs. Knowledge-Based AI
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...
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…
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 …
We’re starting a new school near Singapore for the dark talent of the world. Apply online at ns.com/apply.
Product market fit is a crapshoot. Here's what's actually useful in the hunt for a new business idea.
The world’s largest anime streaming service is opening its second local office, working with Bollywood stars, and adding dozens of shows per quarter.
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
Scan eyeballs first, ask questions later.
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...
Imagine having a Swiss Army Knife for your community use cases
Or is it?
<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...
Another correction
All the details about the process and the cost of getting SOC 2
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 →
Everything you need to know about the Amazon Weekly Business Review: how it works, why it works, and how it helps Amazon win.
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...
A brief overview of knowledge distillation and its capabilities
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
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,...
Scaling will run out. The question is when.
Talking to Jordan Schneider from ChinaTalk about China's technological ascent
The crypto industry jumps on the Trump train.
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...
It's a one-party state. They hold elections, but the Party always wins.
"We think you're gonna LOVE it"
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...
The birth of Sony, and the possibility that private corporations and private individuals can change broader business ecosystems.
Traveled to Bali and Sydney, some updates on Typing Mind, and a new product.
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...
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...
<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...
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...
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...
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...
(A Lengthy Vacation Post-Mortem)
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...
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 […]
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...
Full story on my latest role at Paddle, the new AI program, and what it means for you
<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...
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...
The second in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
The first in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
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...
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...
This post wraps up the sound work on Teacher's Pet.
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 sold Xnapper, here is a quick update about the acquisition details
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...
Super quick updates
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...
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 →
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...
Trying some unconventional techniques to create a pop-art print of a Cherry Mash candy bar.
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.
An argument for legal and technical safe harbors for AI safety and trustworthiness research
What Larry David's legendary sitcom can teach about creativity and work.
Also in this issue: one-off purchase vs. subscription, selling Xnapper, and other updates from me in Feb 2024
And then there were two.
Four questions to ask your organization.
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...
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,
"Ownership" means ten different things to ten different people. Let's talk about what we actually want.
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...
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...
James and his partner Danielle have an enviable working set-up - they live and work on a sailing boat!
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.
And why it might revolutionize the search industry.
Five analytical tasks in under a minute
Why everyone should learn about machine learning
A simplified high-level overview of primary machine learning algorithms for anyone to understand
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.
You probably know more about machine learning math than you think
All of us, except the AI startups and VCs—unless a real war breaks out
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...
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 …
I put my M1 Pro against Apple's new M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max, a NVIDIA GPU and Google Colab.
Hey Siri, set a reminder for 365 days.
I turn 30, built a new app, and other updates in December 2023
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...
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...
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…
A simple answer, and then a less simple one.
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.
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...
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...
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.
<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...
I also curated 300+ Black Friday deals for you
Going viral, my thoughts, and updates from me in October 2023.
<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...
Imagine selling a website you made for $10,000. Pretty great, huh? Well that's exactly what Dmytro did
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...
A PCB for breadboards to make working with op-amps easier.
Want to find the best no-code newsletters for learning about what you can build without coding? You came to the right place!
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 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...
A FAQ of sorts
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.
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...
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 […]
“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.
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.
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....
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...
Google Colossus Explained Simply
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...
small updates from me in July 2023
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
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...
<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...
Lessons from building, growing and selling SaaS Products all in public
<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...
<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...
People talk about you the way you talk about yourself.
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.
Some quick updates from me in June 2023
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...
Covering the state of play as of Summer, 2023
For sale: a few KIM-1 User Manuals I printed up.
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.
James McKinven is an entrepreneur who has succeeded in making money from podcasts - no easy feat. He earns money by editing podcasts for companies
Everything about the Black Magic's acquisition + May 2023 updates
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...
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...
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...
Lessons from building and growing Potion to its acquisition all in public
will he go into destroy mode if I say no
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...
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....
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...
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.
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
Rest of World's staff favorites, from around the globe to add to your must-read pile.
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
There are a growing number of AI coding tools that are alternatives to Copilot. A list of other popular, promising options.
Lessons from building AudioPen to 600+ paid users to clinching #1 on Product Hunt
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 […]
Lessons from building HeyGen from 0 to $1m ARR in 7 months
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...
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 […]
and other updates from me in Mar 2023
Lessons from building RadReads and helping over 40,000 professionals in public
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...
A little bit of magic, but mostly just practice
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.
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) […]
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 […]
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 […]
Without Americans on the app, advertising dollars are at risk.
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...
It's my first product launch of the year!
Immigrating from Indonesia to the US and building Typedream in public
Lessons from building Tally.so from 0 to $40k MRR all in public
Lessons from building Plausible Analytics to $1.2m ARR in public
It was a such a short month!
Here's a crash course on the rising trend of building in public
TypingMind.com is launching tomorrow on Product Hunt!
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...
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
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...
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...
"IBM's first computer"
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...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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! 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!
Reached $10K MRR, launched Xnapper (#1 of the week), went on Indie Hackers podcast (😱), and other updates in Aug 2022...
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.
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.
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...
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...
Not the usual monthly update, just a small update about Xnapper - my latest product
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!
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
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