I live in the UK, where we've had instant, free, interbank payments for the last few years (we've had free interbank payments for > 10 years, but the instant part came in a few years ago as part of the Faster Payments scheme).
Spoiler alert: it has not eliminated the need for credit cards. The credit card system has a lot of flexibility and integrations to make for a superior user experience in a number of situations. For example, a lot of banks let you create virtual cards for specific purposes (eg: I have one for all my online subscriptions, and another for merchants I've not dealt with before). Not to mention Apple/Google Pay and their integration into basically every single online payments platform.
It sounds like this person has worked with some truly mediocre product managers. I’m a PM, from a self-taught engineering background, and I’ve worked with many mediocre folks too across all disciplines.
I view my job primarily as risk management. A great team of engineers and designers will face a huge number of risks to shipping great products, like not having the right skill set to articulate their vision to get others on board, or having lawyers impose requirements or restrictions on what can and cannot be done. My job is to manage that, to help bring out the best in the team so they can get on with the actually important work of building and shipping great products.
I judge success by how redundant I am. My goal is to not be needed, for the team to have the right context, confidence and support to make good decisions without me.
I love working with engineers to level-up their skills so they can do just this; I work with my EM partners to understand the strengths, weaknesses and goals of each engineer, and try and find ways I can help them progress.
In an ideal, utopian world maybe I’m not needed. I can understand that argument. But in most cases, doing truly great things will run up against challenges and risks, and a good PM works in partnership with their team to overcome them and is a net value add.
The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/). Clean layout, no ads for subscribers, native mobile apps that perform well. Overall, it's my favourite source for general news.
You’re not wrong; that is the blog’s style. I enjoy the format for exposing me to a cross-section of opinions from across the internet, on topics I find interesting, with very little work on my part. That’s probably more an indictment on Twitter’s product stagnation than a shower of praise on this blog and it’s author.
I can guarantee that the vast majority of implementation time was more likely due to verification and auditing of the solution, rather than the solution itself.
In a former life, I worked as a stage and orchestra manager, including a few contracts with some of Australia's most well-known professional orchestras and opera companies. tl;dr: They work harder, for longer hours, than the vast majority of people in tech.
They will spend a full working day in rehearsal, then go home and spend a few hours doing solo practice. They will spend hours of time (often uncompensated) notating scores ahead of the first rehearsal of new work or production.
As others have pointed out, the economic model for orchestras and just about any live performance cannot support high salaries. Many musicians will have instruments worth thousands of dollars, so they will have loans against them. Then there is the venue and equipment hire, the transportation costs and the wages for the crew behind the scenes - people to set up the stage and run the show (like me), lighting and sound designers and operators, etc (14+ hour days are not uncommon).
It is a very hard way to earn a living, and on top of it all most jobs are contracts measured in weeks or months, not full-time positions. Not only do you have to be unbelievably talented and passionate about it, you also have to possess superhuman resilience to handle the lifestyle. I have nothing but respect to people who do this job for a living.
Amongst other reasons, lack of support for anti-cheat systems (like EAC and BattleEye) have stopped big-name games like Destiny 2, Fortnite and others from easily porting to Linux. The Steam Deck has started to change that, prompting the ecosystem to slowly come around.
> The fact that they were both unpunished for finding loopholes in employment law
Why should companies or people be punished for finding and using loopholes? By definition, loopholes are perfectly legal. They may be against the spirit of the law, but they are still legal.
I’d go so far as to say it is one of the most successful open-source projects of all time, and a poster child for how OSS should be run. From the beginning, it has cultivated a welcoming community that produced a range of tutorials and learning materials for all skill levels. It’s evolution has been steady, and it has seemingly found a way to be successful and impactful in a space where closed-sourced competitors are vastly more well-funded.
I distinctly remember how incredible it was when Big Buck Bunny was released with all assets and project files freely available. I learnt so much from that, and wouldn’t be surprised if it was a catalyst that led to many, many people gaining the skills and drive to produce new creative works. I hope Blender continues to inspire and enable many future generations of creators.
That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m not saying we shouldn’t raise taxes for the ultra-wealthy, just that we should also spend time on solving the structural issues that prevent efficient and effective allocation of capital, both new and existing.
Raising money is one thing. Spending it is another. So much energy is spent on policies to do the former, and seeimingly very little on how to do the latter far more efficiently. This policy proposal makes for a fantastic soundbite, but how will the additional revenue be allocated in a way that actually leads to better outcomes?
Simply increasing the top of the funnel is not going to make all the downstream inefficiencies and inequalities go away.
You've got to be kidding. The version offered on Game Pass is the "Standard" edition, that isn't just a "free to play", "stripped down" version of the game. It is 95% of the game! The remaining 5% is almost always cosmetic items, like skins or cars, that really do not impact the core experience.
There are some exceptions, like Destiny 2 I believe, where the meaningful DLC is excluded, but that is not the rule. Game Pass is an incredible deal.
Pre-ProductHunt, HN was the place to launch your product[1]. Having a "Show HN" post reach the front page was (is?) the ultimate brag, and founders would always mention it in seed/Series A pitch decks if it had happened to them. Being featured on HN would usually mean being contacted by a TechCrunch reporter, and that was a Big Deal. So, you'd use your personal connections to make sure everyone upvoted your post. If you were all in the same location (eg: co-working space), you'd tell everyone to use a VPN or tether to their phone to avoid being IP-blocked[2].
Then, ProductHunt came along with the pitch to be more curated, and to speficially solve the launch promotion problem. Now, people have figured out how to game it, just like they did with HN.
I fully expect the cycle to continue with a new ProductHunt with the same value proposition. For Web3, Twitter seems to be doing that job pretty well.
Different challenges appeal to different people. From his background, he seems motivated by high levels of ambiguity, rather than maintaining mature products. By all outward indications, he is leaving Apple on a high and has no doubt helped develop a multi-year roadmap for the Apple Silicon team. He accomplished what he set out to do, and is simply excited by the opportunity to do something new in his field of expertise.
This. Especially for compound lifts (eg: back squat, bench press, deadlift, cleans, etc). Building good technique and form is essential to avoiding serious injury and making sustainable progress. Having a trainer, even 1-2 times a month, is a good investment if lifting is a part of your routine.
Having dealt with The Guardian and others like them to cancel, I say "I will not explain why I wish to cancel nor will I reconsider my decision. Please cancel my account. My account number is x, my email is y and my address is z."
I usually have to repeat it 3-4 times before they finally give in and do it.
According to the article, the treatment needs to be injected directly into the tumour (although this may change in the future) so the focus of these trials is melanomas. They tested on mice with both melanomas and lung tumours, and found that it reduced the size of the lung tumours even though it wasn't directly injected into them. Seriously exciting!
Yes, exactly. Expect to spent at least 10 years as a first officer before getting a shot at Captain. I’d wager that Covid has pushed that out to 15 years. I have family and friends who are pilots, and the landscape is brutal with yearly pay rises falling far short of inflation in a lot of cases, and bonuses being minimal or non existent for the last few years
As of 2022, PSC is shifting to every 12 months not 6 in an effort to better support longer-term projects and thinking. Promotions will still be assessed every 6 months.