Published
Weekend Reading — Tupperware in a sealed chamber
This week we look at the colors of Parasite, copy & paste bugs, pick a union, discover the hidden meaning of PI, and baby goats!
Dan Hedl “Bitcoin doesn’t have after hours. It trades 24/7”
Design Objective
Marc Edwards “This image from Microsoft’s Windows 10 icons article captures the last twenty years of icon design so well.”
Zoe Hong 👇 Color geeks, you'll love this thread:
Why I don’t think Parasite should be rereleased as a black and white movie
Or
How color is such a beautiful storytelling tool in Parasite
(no plot spoilers)”
Web-end
The Impact of Web Performance This article has several interesting data points on the sales impact of slow web sites. I like how deep it goes. For example, you'd expect people who own expensive devices (eg iPhone 11 vs iPhone 7) would also spend more money. So the article breaks it up to show that within the same device category, faster sites still perform better.
Here are the results for iPhone 8 Plus(§) (results are similar for all iPhone categories):
What does this tell us? Well, for one, the smoothness of your animations matters. Second, the same thing I’ve been repeating over and over: Fast = $
Alex Russell summarizes it in the best possible way:
One weird trick to improve sales!
Stop punching potential customers as they enter your store.
Reasons to ship your whole website as an img+map tag:
- Images parse way faster than JS (duh)
- Responsive for free (width: 100%)
- Trivial SSR (image to base64 and inline)
Then you just sit back and profit from all the dev salaries you would have wasted building it in react 💸
So you're tellin' me a user centered this design?
Lines of Code
foone 👇 How weird bugs are copy and pasted into eternity:
So I learned of an amusing bug today:
Docker for Windows won't run if you have the Razer Synapse driver management tool running.
But the reason is the funny part...
Teamwork
Refinement Revenue This is a solid post about finding product/market fit before jumping for growth, but this point in particular:
Advice is often a double-sided marketplace for braindead people. The Advice Giver is usually an established, busy person. They have a lot of meetings. They have their own problems (which might be the same as yours, by the way). The Giver isn’t really thinking about your business. They’re pattern matching. The Giver will often give you the advice that comes with the most cognitive ease. The simplest advice, instead of the most correct advice.
Cameron Moll “Complex problems take time no matter the resources, dependencies, or team size.”
Startup Life
Kickstarter workers vote to form first union in tech industry I'm all for unions that force tech companies to reconsider unethical behavior:
Employees at crowdfunding platform Kickstarter voted Tuesday to form a union, the first of its kind in the technology industry, after an 18-month battle with the company’s management.
…
The historic vote comes amid growing discontent among employees at technology companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft, who have started to organize in an effort to get their employers to cease activity that some workers view as unethical.
Zack Kanter For real:
Startup comp is simple. Either: 1) become among the best in the world at identifying mispriced assets, 2) convince incredible people to work for less, 3) pay top of market, or 4) build a mediocre team.
~everyone thinks they are doing 1/2; nearly everyone is actually doing 3/4.
let me know how i can be helpful “This is a little know fact: In Silicon Valley when two companies backed by the same VC clash, it is customary for the legal teams to respond in iambic pentameter and the matter is arbitrated through a poetry slam.”
Today In Business Models
David Frankel Compiled 200+ tech exits from the last decade, in 17 cities in the US, Canada, Europe, and Israel. I added population size (for cities, using their CSA), and looking at exit value per resident is eye opening.
DigitalOcean raises $100M in debt as it scales toward revenue of $300M, profitability DigitalOcean claims low CAC, self on-boarding, and high retention, allowing them to raise large debt round instead of equity. A shift like this requires three things: a large round (✔️), a large exit (…), and — let's all be honest about tech group think — positive framing by the tech media (✔️):
DigitalOcean, a cloud infrastructure provider targeting smaller business and younger companies, announced today that it has secured $100 million in new debt from a group of investors, bringing its 2016-era debt raise to a total of around $300 million. The company’s nearly $200 million debt raise in …
Techtopia
Kari Paul 👇 Fuel economy: 54 MPG. Range: anywhere with cellular access …
today in sharing economy struggles: our app powered car rental lost cell service on the side of a mountain in rural California and now I live here I guess
Man deliberately darted his car in front of Waymo minivans to cause crash, Arizona police say The Black Mirror episodes are writing themselves:
“Tang admitted to ‘brake-checking’ the Waymo vehicle, which ultimately rear-ended his vehicle,” police said in a statement. The minivan was being driven manually.
Available To Hire
Signal boosting people looking for a job. If your company is hiring, or you know someone who is, reach out to them. If you'd like to get included next week, email me at assaf@labnotes.org
Fiona Redmond Experience on a large internal corporate red team, as well as both offensive and defensive cyber through the military. Seattle area
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fionakredmond/
Éléonore Mayola Full-stack web development, data science, data engineering #python #clojure #js #aws. Remote contract. http://www.elle-est-au-nord.com
SamanthaDSpivey Junior data scientist. Denver CO/Remote. https://github.com/SamanthaDSpivey
Nisar Hassan Naqvi Front-end Developer looking for a remote Job or some contract based work. https://nisar.dev
Aspen James “I quit a good job yesterday, they unfortunately need to do some work on #DiversityAndInclusion, and it just wasn't a healthy place to be". Web developer, fullStack, JavaScript. http://aspenjames.dev
Emma Backend or fullstack. Python - Django - DRF - EmberJs - Vue. Remote. https://levit.be
None of the Above
ブルーハムハム “小さなキーボディスト #小さな音楽隊” With the sound on!
Friendship in 2020 is liking their tweets and ignoring their texts
Rex Chapman “Some people are born with it...”
Axis II of Evil My cupboard:
Scientists recently placed a 10-piece set of matching Tupperware in a sealed chamber.
When they opened it a month later, the chamber had 24 lids that did not match any of the 6 remaining containers.
Lisa Forte “This. It is a sign.”
I just told my dog that barking at the people in the hallway is "not best practice" and programming has officially taken over my life
Klara Sjöberg “Task failed successfully”
Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber The Verge interviews Susan Fowler about Uber, sexism in the tech, and retaliation. and her upcoming book Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber:
“There are times I wish I had not done it because of how terrible it was,” Fowler says. “But the thing I keep telling myself is that you do the right thing no matter what. Like, yes, it sucks. Yes, it’s terrible. But would I go back and do it again? Absolutely.”
Nature & Animals 🌴 “Because every timeline needs more baby goats.”