kohanz

Have you talked to a lot of people who would be the customers/users of said "ideas" in an attempt to validate them? Remember, casually asking family, friends, or co-workers about such things is very unlikely to provide real feedback.

Highly recommend this book on the topic: http://momtestbook.com/

At first glance, Terminal looks like it still needs some level of integration and development work. It's not a ready-to-go, install-the-app-and-process-payments solution.

I just got one of these this week! Only $3,000 to register the trademark "internationally", but they try their best to make it seem like it's part of the registration process you've already undertaken and you simply need to sign & submit to move forward.

Without knowing, my guess would be that's when we started measuring & recording those things?

This. Without getting into too much detail, based on what you've written, it seems like you've spent time building a solution and are now looking for a problem (with business value) to match that solution with. Ideally, you start with that problem and go from there, but, in this case I would switch gears immediately away from development and towards validation (which is an earlier stage than sales).

> it is easy to earn $200k to $300k with just a few years of experience

I think this part shows that whether it's easier to make more as an employee or self-employed is highly regional. In large, competitive tech centers, where FAANG companies are, the demand and competition for talent is high and fierce, driving salaries significantly higher than what you might normally expect. The cost of living in such places also tends to be astronomical.

In other places, say medium-sized cities that are not known as tech centers, that dynamic doesn't exist. In my experience, this means that the income you can achieve as a self-employed (and often remote) software engineer far exceeds the general salary "ceiling" of that local region (and I'm talking about North America here, not far-off places). So you may not quite achieve FAANG level compensation (although I'm sure some do), but relative to the cost-of-living you're doing quite well if not better.

I looked into something similar some time ago and came across a few options. The ones I remember:

https://impossiblesoftware.com/

https://developers.magisto.com/ (not exactly what you're looking for, and very expensive, when I inquired)

Anyway, I ended up rolling my own solution (not an API, but for internal use only).

> On average, it takes us 60ms to perform any stack of image transforming operations. That also benefits our users (who likes slows APIs?).

So this was my point in bringing it up: "We're faster than the other APIs out there" is a much more direct benefit to communicate to me as an API user than "We use GPUs, which makes us fast, faster than the competition, who don't use GPUs". The latter version has me making assumptions and eventually getting to a conclusion that matters to me; why not take me there immediately?

The thing is, as a non-expert in this area, I don't even fully understand whether the real performance bottleneck in such an API is the latency of uploading the image and downloading the result, or the computational processing of the image. So if using GPUs cuts the overall request time by 70%, that's great! If it only affects the round-trip time by 5%, then it's not a huge deal to me. As the domain expert, I'm relying on Pixaven's marketing to educate me on this.

Congrats on launching! The landing page is very impressive (only found a small typo on a testimonial: 'VP Enginnering at Clue')

Here's what I don't quite get: why does the GPU differentiation matter to me as a user of your API? I get that you're faster than doing it myself using something like ImageMagick, but are you faster than the other image processing APIs out there because of this? If so, that's what I think you should be touting. If not, whether the images are being processed by GPUs or trained giraffes is not that important to me as a consumer of the API, but I could be way off-base.

I think both you and @lucideer are right at a certain level. I did mean in the absence of cellphones altogether, since I'm referring to the fact that the non-homeless population almost all have cell-phones now, so that's really just "table-stakes" in the job hunt market.

That said, your experience provides an important data point too. I would be curious to know whether it's the phone access or the "among other things" that you refer to, which I assume means other kinds of aid, training, and support, that provides most of the value in them finding a job.

Thanks for responding. Yes and sorry, I didn't realize my e-mail wasn't visible. You can reach me at hello at that company domain.

> Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right?

Not that I know the answer, but I would have to see a source on this. Why would a device that may increase access to job postings, but a non-homeless job candidate is much more likely to have than a homeless person, increase the chances of said homeless person in getting a job? I'm not even sure that the ability to access job postings is the main problem there.

I'm not a FitBit user, but I think for a group of people (myself included), being able to measure & track the meeting or exceeding (or not) of goals can be a great motivator for continued work/improvement. For example, if I step on the weight scale regularly and record my weight (in a simple app on my phone), I feel more motivated over a longer period of time to make better dietary choices as well as stick to regular exercise. Without doing that, my will-power feels less and it's easier to take the path of least resistance and ignore the consequences of my (lack of) action.

I'm not saying you need a FitBit for this, but if it enables this kind motivation in a convenient way, that could be well worth it.

As someone running a business with some similar characteristics (solo, not a subscription, B2C branching into B2B), but at a much earlier stage, I would love to learn more from you, if you're willing. Feel free to reach out to me (e-mail in profile).

Whether you officially list it or not, if your device is diagnosing and reporting heart attacks to people, the FDA will be involved sooner or later.

What problem does this solve?

This. My heart aches on a whole new level when I hear/read/experience children and parents going through such hard things. We've had very close friends lose children at a very young age and it's heartbreaking.

I have nothing but sympathy for everyone involved and admiration for the strength of the parents. Few people are more motivated and capable than parents being told that a problem that affects their children cannot be solved.

How would an early death for some future generation of ours not be motivating to avoid, if possible? I'd rather my kids or grandkids, etc, not have to live on a planet with an unlivable climate situation.

I know it's not intentional, but when I scrolled down and saw "parental duties" at the bottom of the list I laughed and said to myself "that's not how this works!". Move that one to the top, above sleep even, when the kids are young.

Feature request for the calculator: if you say you have kids, it asks you what time they are in bed and asleep by and what time you try to go to bed: this window of time is now your chores/maintain relationship with spouse/gym/relax/hobbies/whatever time.

A week is rarely enough time to expect a real mindset or perspective change, especially if you're not setting out with intent to do so. I'm not saying you shouldn't quit, but if you wanted to give yourself a chance to avoid burnout, perhaps discuss the possibility of a longer sabbatical with your employer. As someone who's spent some time on full-time side-projects, full-time employment, and in-between, the grass isn't always greener.

Very possible - I didn't realize it had been changed. My apologies.

No, the headline says they are scared of climate change (which is not a "someone", but a collection of serious consequences) and then includes the irony that they are contributing to that very threat as a big polluter.

That communication handbook is a fantastic resource. Thank you for sharing.

For what it's worth, the performance improved quite a bit with subsequent firmware updates. It was quite a remarkable device that impressed anyone I let try it, but finding a mass-market use-case proved impossible. They tried to pivot to VR, but it was very late. I think going after the consumer market (with an app store to be filled with games) was a mistake. Easy to say in hindsight, of course.

Kudos for admitting a misstep and your follow-up analysis is definitely noteworthy. There was a suspicious ratio of upvotes to comments for this thread.

Love your site! My story is very similar with my project VidHug (https://vidhug.com). Helping people spread joy & love is definitely a great motivator!

You cite a bunch of very valid criticisms, but then to say directly to the OP (as they posted their own article) that there is "nothing of value here" is excessive, IMHO, and symptomatic of a kind of discourse that only flies online (unless you would say that to a person's face when they presented you with something they created, and perhaps some people are that direct and lacking in empathetic communication).

Is there new information here? No. But it's presented much differently from the official documentation and perhaps some beginners would find a guide like this less intimidating, more consumable, whatever - people have different learning styles. Maybe the people that would prefer this tutorial over another are a small minority, but I take issue with the sweeping statement that the work the OP put in here created no value for anyone at all.

Any chance you've had a recent shift in your personal life? The reason I ask is that I also didn't have a fear of flying until later in life and what I think is the source was meeting my wife (to-be) and then having kids.

This may sound silly, but before, when it was just me, without dependents, I didn't think as much about doomsday scenarios. Of course, I was still afraid of dying, but it just didn't cross my mind as much. After becoming a husband and a father, I started to (perhaps irrationally) worry about (a) not being there for my family or (b) the lives of the people I care so much about (when flying with my wife or kids). Fortunately flying is not a regular event for me, although I still do it when necessary (probably once or twice a year).

It's an interesting idea, but I have a tough time with the premise that people will choose to record a video of themselves for everyday asynchronous communication rather than type a message. There are situations were video or audio deliver more value than text, but what are those situations and are they enough to become a team's main mode of communication? I'm skeptical.

I'm curious; were you an employee at the startups or a founder? The experience (and stress levels) will vary quite a bit between the two (and I'm not saying startup employees have it easy by any stretch).

I can definitely see someone who has been in a founder role for years wanting to trade that for the stability, predictability and low-risk environment of a FAANG for a while, especially if they have a family, kids, etc.

Although a few exceptional people can do both, most founders sacrifice elements of their personal lives in order to put enough energy into their businesses. A "successful" founder can be a failure at home. It's not that you're absent, but you're also not the best partner/parent/friend that you can be during those periods. A stable, "boring" job can be an opportunity to dedicate more to those important things.