735 karma · joined July 24, 2018
I don't expect desktop apps to be completely replaced by mobile apps, but the migration of some specific use cases is interesting to watch:
- Maps and navigation
- Email / instant messaging
- Photo editing
- Video editing
- Online shopping
- Banking and accounting
- and now, coding
I don't want to strawman him, though. I simply don't remember his answer in detail.
After a second of thinking, I answered "Having fun."
I asked him the same question back and he said "Having an impact on the world."
Although I don't think about it that much, I realized that I personally didn't care that much about my impact on the world. Any impact that I create would simply be a byproduct of me pursuing whatever activities I find fun.
Moreover, a positive impact in my eyes might end up being a negative impact to others. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Here are some examples of specializations in quantitative trading:
Networking. For high-frequency trading firms, low network latency is extremely valuable. Some firms will need to build their own proprietary network protocols for their internal services because TCP is too slow.
Compilers. Again, for high-frequency trading firms, the latency from garbage collection, memory allocation, and system calls must be managed very carefully. Jane St is famous for being an OCaml shop, and OCaml is commonly used for building compilers and domain-specific languages (DSLs). When it comes to optimization, predictable latency (variance) can be just as valuable as low latency (99th percentile).
ML Engineering. While the quant traders build models, it is up to the software engineers to productionize and maintain the models. This can involve data engineering, feature engineering, model deployment, and monitoring the model for performance, predictive accuracy, and feature drift.
Which "job"?
If you are going for a role as a quantitative trader, then your job will involve building mathematical models for predicting the price of assets. You would need to study up on probability theory, statistics, and risk management.
If you are going for a role as a software engineer, then your job will involve building internal tools and infrastructure for productionizing the models that quant traders build. You would need to study up on data structures, algorithms, and systems design.
For example, what would be the most efficient binary representation of probabilities values between 0 and 1? In the future, I can imagine hardware + software that is specialized for examples like this.
I only ever use Caddy as a reverse proxy for web apps (think Flask, Ruby on Rails, Phoenix Framework). My projects have never needed high performance, but if my projects ever take off, it's nice to see that Caddy is already competitive with Nginx on resilience, latency, and throughput.
I don’t read r/AskReddit anymore these days. I replaced it with this site..
I would want my child to be tech-savvy, but most parents I see make the mistake of just giving their kids an iPad. I think it's very destructive to their attention span.
On the other hand, having a cheap laptop with only access to TUIs could be used for improving reading skills and tech literacy. Add some TUI games like the good ol' days of BASIC, and it can be just as entertaining as an iPad.
Some Feedback:
- The biggest words on the landing page are "Behavioural Email Tool" but I don't know what this means. Maybe I'm not in your market.
- As I read through what Plunk does, it sounds more like "email automation". However, Plunk is not like other email automation because... (insert your wildest dreams)
- Your pricing is too low. In the wise words of patio11, "Charge more!" For a detailed guide to pricing SaaS and how to think about your pricing, check out patio11's writing on the Stripe blog[1]
- There's a typo in your free plan: it should be "1 seat", not "1 seats".
- Don't offer "Amazing Support" on your free plan. Reason (1) is that users on the free plan tend to squeeze the most support out of you, and they're not even paying you. You can reach out to help them if you want, but don't promise support to free users. Reason (2) is that adding support is a good incentive for a serious business to upgrade to the pro plan. If I'm a business who's success/revenue relies on Plunk for my success, I surely would upgrade from a plan without support to one with support.
I would definitely use this feature. I'm pretty deep in the Apple ecosystem ("bubble"), so I'm curious to hear from Windows/Linux users if there's already software out there for using smartphone cameras as a webcam.
I use Python, but have never tried Ruby. The ecosystem for Python packaging is so chaotic that I’ve considered switching.
Any Pythonistas/Rubyists here that could point out some Ruby shortcuts that make you more productive?
There’s also a breed of users who are extremely sensitive to the “native feel” of a desktop app. For them, it’s a jarring experience to downgrade to something that is less snappy, but they expect a certain standard of snappiness.
In university, I was shocked to learn in a database class that CPU costs are dwarfed by the I/O costs in the memory hierarchy. This was after spending a whole year on data structures and algorithms, where we obsessed over runtime complexity and # of operations.
It seems that the low-hanging fruit of optimization is all gone. New innovations for performance will have to happen in transporting data.
This why I like hobby projects. In my day-to-day work, my job is to deliver value and "get stuff done". However, in hobby projects, I can feel free to dive into an optimization rabbit hole and learn a whole bunch of stuff. Even if I don't ship my hobby projects, I still gain a lot from the background knowledge.
You could save 90% on storage costs if you switch from AWS to XCloudProvider
This makes me want to dig into the research data and build an interactive cost savings calculator with a slider. It would also probably be a great marketing page for Drugs.com
For running web apps and hobby projects, I always use Linux (Debian and Ubuntu distros).
To me, Linux is the operating system for anything where I only interact with via the command line. This usually means VMs or containers for my web apps and hobby projects. Most cloud environments that I know of (AWS, Linode, Digital Ocean, Vultr, GitHub actions) support Linux.
While I have been curious about trying out other OS's like OpenBSD or CoreOS, my experience with Linux seems to be the most portable. It would never occur to me to even try running a web app on a VM or container that isn't Linux.
Dark mode is not a core value proposition.
(my guess is that) The logo and search bar take up a lot of space because they are mimicking the design of the Google.com landing page.
It seems like the bulk of their work has been on the search itself, so I would forgive them on logo and branding. It’s an early product so logo and branding can change.
For now, they just need constructive feedback on workflow and usability.
This is something that comes up again and again in marketing and persuasion, although I still do not fully understand the psychology behind it.
It is often more effective to tell the intimate story of an individual suffering with X, compared to providing accurate data on the impact of X. Replace X with disease, climate change, and so on.
If you have the choice between presenting quantitative data or telling an emotional story, the emotional story appeals more effectively with a majority of people. There are only a few cases where people try to be strictly rational and are only convinced by data and statistics.
"Usage is strongly discouraged. This is [an] experimental project which is not meant for production purposes."
> That was all the encouragement I needed.
I love this
I was new to Phabricator, but I picked it up quickly. Even though it might not constantly pump out new features, Phabricator gets the job done.
They are not beholden to VC investors and can grow slowly, organically. According to this article, they were able to cover their costs by January 2021. By keeping their team small, they can remain sustainable for a long time and refine their product.
The biggest challenge for growth right now seems to be that customer support costs will scale linearly with growth.