I think a critical component of making platform teams work is to allow internal competition between the platform team and the stream-aligned team using some other technology. In this way the platform team is a stream-aligned team whose customers are internal, and they have to win or lose within their market (internal teams). For example, a stream-aligned team can either use platform team CI/CD or github actions.
What I've seen is that platform teams work well in either small scale (because focus is clear to all) and large scale (because of this internal competitive dynamic) but are extremely hard to execute between the two.
This is really cool. Out of curiosity - how did you actually set this up for him to use? Was it on tablet or a computer or phone? Any suggestions for a dad of a 3.5 year old?
Also, is he reading / at what level? Trying to get a feel for when I can introduce it to him.
We’re using an iPad. It’s theoretically aimed at older children (5+) but my son was able to pick it up no problem.
I sat down with mine about 6 months ago (he was 3.75 at the time) and we learned what each of the blocks did and how to combine them.
Now he asks to make a program and can do it independently.
He experiments with the backgrounds, sound effects, loops and motion.
My son can read but knowing how to count/recognize numbers is more important in this interface. Everything is graphical. Loops require a number input.
Another toy aimed at older children that younger ones can play with is snap circuits. We introduced the toy at 3. He can copy the project schematic and build the project. He built the AM radio project independently.
May be hard with unpredictable timing of a layoff, but I’d recommend folks look into Recurse Center: https://www.recurse.com/
After closing down my last startup I did it. It was a great balance of community providing some baseline structure to my days while being mostly unstructured allowing me to explore interests for fun.
And at the end they help a lot with getting a job. If you can pull it off financially/with timing, I highly recommend the experience.
I built a command line wordle solver that provides an updated best guess as the game progresses and you learn more. Right now it's just based on word frequency, but working to add more.
Also added a command line version of wordle in case you want to play more and practice and a simulator I'm using now to explore optimal strategy more.
Just went through sign-up flow. Heard of the product for years + interested in it.
One note - I have a bit of an idiosyncratic schedule. I work 9-6:30 and then stop for the evening (dinner with family, put kid to bed) and resume work ~9pm typically. I'd love the ability to block off that time slot (6:30-9) but keep space for working before and after.
We definitely support that! You can set any number of flexible work zones during your day, and it'll even send you an alert if you work too long in a zone you said you wanted for recharge time. :)
Your signup flow, though, has a start time + end time and doesn't make it clear you can add these windows in. It made me pause during sign-up and I wonder if it would cause other folks to drop off. Maybe could be solved with copy somewhere even?
Similarly, as far as I can tell the signup flow does not let me add half hour increments (e.g 8:30am - 6:30pm). I also can't figure out how to add that even in-app.
Great note about the signup flow not messaging that. We’ll correct that for sure. In terms of 30 minute increments, that’s not currently supported due to super annoying technical reasons around the way we’ve structured our database. Something else we’re working on.
It might be possible to work that way, none of us have tried it explicitly yet though. That's a great feature suggestion, I'm adding it to the roadmap.
1) Tool to tool choices: Many migrations involve making decisions that are judgement calls because of service inconsistency (e.g the security roles in the two systems aren't exactly the same so you have to evaluate tradeoffs in how to handle in the new one). I bet many of these 'decision points' could be a defined for particular migrations, allowing the destination service to present to their customer options with tradeoffs, and then automate the migration from there. Even more valuable than the data flowing would be being the central tool that knows about these 'choice-points' in specific migrations.
2) White labeling: a lot of B2B SaaS companies would love to offer migration services. I would have paid $ per migration for something like this if it worked.
3) Services work as needed: I still think many migrations custom work is needed. I would lean into this actually if I were you. We would have loved a trusted 3rd party that just wanted to do migrations. It was hard to get incentives aligned, though, with many systems integrators because they obviously wanted a direct relationship with the customer & hoped to sell them more stuff afterwards. If B2B companies trusted this was your specific focus you could be a better 'full service' partner across both what can be automated and what can't be.
And a good reminder of how much exposure housing prices have to interest rates. To frame the same math another way:
If you bought a house for, say, $580k with a $500k mortgage... You paid $80k down payment + $20k closing costs and your monthly would be ~$2,073/month.
If interest rates go up to 6%, and the person buying your house also wants to pay the same ~2,073/month, they would only be able to afford a $344,649 mortgage. Assume the same $80k down payment and $20k closing costs... and they should be willing to pay $444,649 for your house ($135,351 less than you paid!).
Obviously with inflation the person may be willing to spend more than you spent! But there's a lot of risk for homeowners who need/want to sell if/when interest rates go up. That's why the 30 year fixed is such a fantastic bet if you are willing + able to hold and lock that fixed price... but housing is a pretty lousy investment if you need to sell.
In California, people generally buy the absolute most house they can possibly afford. Houses are extremely expensive and people don't want to live in shacks, so they stretch their budget as far as they can. Home prices in these markets are extremely sensitive to changes in interest rates, as you've described.
However in other markets, interest rates can wiggle up and down without having as dramatic an effect on prices, because livable homes aren't as expensive and people have more slack in their budgets.
In markets with lots of cash buyers, home prices may also be somewhat isolated from interest rate swings.
I worked in the mortgage industry for a couple years, and it was common knowledge there that California home prices were the most tightly coupled with interest rate changes.
I'm not sure which markets are at the opposite end of the spectrum, but you could probably get a good idea by looking at the ratios between median household income vs. median mortgage payment in any given market. Households (currently) spending a smaller fraction of their paycheck to pay their mortgage should be able to better absorb some price increases.
According to this visualisation on Zillow[1], California is indeed the worst. The median household in San Jose would have to allocate 53% of their income to pay a median mortgage, compared to the national average of 17.5%:
I can't, but as prices go lower more people can just save money rather than borrow to purchase. So an exponential curve, the higher the rate the smaller the effect on asset price.
I've wondered if we are in a regime today where interest rates simply can't go up. I can't imagine a scenario where they can go up more than a point or two without blood in the streets... possibly literally.
Even minor changes to inflation can deflate asset bubbles without blood in the streets. 2% inflation might make your existing how less valuable for a few years but it’s also rapidly making your mortgage payments more affordable. The real issue is this sets up golden handcuffs where buying an equally valuable house elsewhere would be a huge financial hit for much longer.
Interest rates must go down when inflation is low. If you insist on high interest rates you will also need higher inflation to justify them. Think about it this way. Interest raises the cost of borrowing, it makes reproducible assets more expensive. Over the long term you see cost push inflation. If interest rates can't be passed onto consumers then the borrower will default. That's not a good thing.
It's going to be quite interesting how the bay area fairs if more companies leave over time. I've refused to buy a house thus far and have been looking into more economical (and practical ways) to live on the move given that I've had to move so much in this industry.
I went down a rabbit hole and analyzed Fannie Mae data and found buying a home is increasingly affordable when you consider low interest rates and the median income.
> In October 2019, the median mortgage payment would cost the typical American 18.21% of their income. Apart from a few months in the early 1970s and 2011–2013 period, homes have never been more affordable. [0]
>That's why the 30 year fixed is such a fantastic bet if you are willing + able to hold and lock that fixed price... but housing is a pretty lousy investment if you need to sell.
That's not necessarily true because if rates go up you can bet that property values would go down as home ownership would become less affordable. And if you bought a home for $300k and rates go up and now your home is only worth $250k, that's not a great value, because had you not bought, you would be able to buy the same home for less, although that might be offset with the higher payment
It is much harder to deduct interest these days with the higher standard deduction. Interest deductions on a cheaper house might only a few years unless you have something else going on with your custom deductions.
The equity aspect is also questionable. Cheaper markets are cheap for a reason, and while they might hit a growth spurt, it is far from guaranteed. A booming market with high prices might also continue to...boom even more. Anyways, the market is actually efficient, you can't find a loophole that everyone else is missing.
Exactly - low interest rates mean higher house prices. The UK gov paused stamp duty for six months, so guess what - there was more money to spend on the bid price.
There are many photos one could take without uploading or saving them in the cloud. The question is can I safely store things locally on my device without a multi-national corporation being able to set the policy of what's allowed there. The article cites examples of banned memes/images by the Chinese government.
There is also the risk of algorithm mistakes. Without the trust + safety team or any cloud verification, does this just get immediately forward to the FBI?
What is the process to be made non-guilty if the Apple algorithm thinks you have something illegal and you don't if there is no human in the loop involved before it's forwarded to authorities?
At least if you upload to a service someone on the trust + safety team can verify the algo worked properly. I would be very nervous building this kind of system of the risk of false positives! Maybe even so nervous to introduce many more false negatives - which is in itself terrible in the case of something like CSAM.
1. Images which are going to be uploaded to iCloud are matched against known hashes. A match has to be very close in order to actually be flagged as a match. The results are uploaded to iCloud Photos along with your image.
2. If your account hits a sufficient threshold of matches (i.e. you have to have multiple/many images matched) then Apple is alerted and they are able to decrypt low-resolution versions of the relevant stored images.
3. Apple's team performs a manual review of the images to ensure that they are in fact inappropriate images and not false positives.
4. If any of the matched images are actually illegal, then Apple reports you to the authorities.
In other words, there are several safeguards in this process:
1. Only if you're uploading files are the files matched.
2. Only if the matches are very close are they considered matches.
3. Only if you have multiple very close matches is Apple able to decrypt the low-res versions of the images themselves.
4. Only if a human reviewer discovers any of the decrypted low-res images to be illegal content is any of your information shared with anyone else.
In my opinion, this is a vastly better system than literally any other cloud provider at the moment; it allows Apple to find and report even more CSAM with effectively no risk of reporting false-positives to law enforcement, while also preserving your privacy through encryption in transit and at rest.
> The question is can I safely store things locally on my device without a multi-national corporation being able to set the policy of what's allowed there.
Didn't Microsoft just start removing people's torrent clients from their computer without permission and announce that you wouldn't be allowed to use your own PC running Windows 11 Home without using an online Microsoft account to log in?
My current job has a lot more video calls than prior. It took some getting used to. I find the biggest challenge to be the urge to do some low-quality work simultaneously. What's helped me on that is:
- Use a good monitor or TV. Ideally not the main one you use to work.
- Move, physically, from my desk to a place I take the calls in. Enter 'meeting mode' not 'desk mode'
- Close all other applications. Full screen video.
- Turn off other monitors
- Take notes via notebook
I bet building a room would help, but these things worked for me in an apartment where that wasn't an option. Still takes energy to focus on it though.
As a new parent I think about this a lot in terms of how to educate my son.
I find it especially relevant as my first job was starting my own SAT tutoring company. Anecdotally I found it interesting that immigrant parents & most of the wealthiest US-born parents shared a recognition that this was a game. They were direct and explicit to their kids that this was a system that they must participate in, so they might as well win at it.
I think that is the key: make sure your kids can recognize when something is a bs system they need to hack (like selling enterprise software) and when something is actually about craft and the best will win (like building great products that end-users want to use).
What I've seen is that platform teams work well in either small scale (because focus is clear to all) and large scale (because of this internal competitive dynamic) but are extremely hard to execute between the two.