You will need to define "successful" within the context of your question; only then you will get meaningful answers. Because there are lots of solo entrepreneurs who are successful as per their own definition of success which may or may not match with your definition.
It is an unwritten(?) convention that all depiction of time should be 10:10. Don't know why that is but I learnt about this convention when a political party[0] in India launched its symbol, an analog clock.
This reminds me of a conversation with a CEO of an US startup working on Java hardware accelerator. They named their company JEDI, which was an acronym for the IP they had developed.
One day they received an email from Lucas Arts objecting to the use of the name JEDI :)
Startups, if successful, grow into bigger companies. But why do you think bigger tech(or non-tech) companies are not entangled in bureaucracy?
A government is far bigger and complex than any big company. So there will be more slowdown compared to big companies.
One example of successful public-private partnership is India's "Digital India" initiative where the government was able to churn out platforms like Aadhaar, Unified Payment Interface and RuPay, with other platforms on the way for digital commerce for MSMEs.
Writing mathematical proof is like writing code, compiling/interpreting(take your pick), debugging, fixing problems, and testing; all at the same time, and that too in real-time.
That is the reason more people find programming enjoyable but struggle with mathematical proof writing.
Why is there no discussion on users losing their private keys? Ask all those cryptocurrency users who lost their private keys. Now don't tell that there are crypto wallets/vaults that manage private keys; there are many ways key can be lost even when using wallets/vaults.
We engineers live in a different world, disconnected from the regular users who have no clue what public-private keys are!
Outdated because the versions have changed a lot since the last publication of the book.
It is still good because it gives information about general things which are applicable across any version.
BTW,just checked the meaning of outdated on Cambridge dictionary portal; outdated means "no longer useful or modern" When I used the word outdated I meant "no longer modern" :)
* And as they say, "Read the source, Luke"; read the Linux source code. First you will have to identify which subsystem you are interested in, and then start browsing that.
Is the OP killing them because s/he has no other alternative to feed himself/herself, or is it because of the annoyance even though s/he is in their habitat?
One of the most "uselessness" useful activity I have experienced is simply watching nature i.e. shape of trees, design of leaves and colour of flowers, behaviour of non-human animals both adult and kids, and birds. It gives the same feeling as in Yoga meditation. Yoga meditation is also a form of useful "uselessness".
I have not worked with FAANG or any project that requires massive web scale. Most of my career I have worked with resource constraint devices. So when I decided to write a web app, it was a horror show for me. Even though I have a CS background and understand any tech when I read and see it, it becomes extremely difficult to navigate the maze of different options available and the many things one is forced to consider to get a web app running.
What I have ultimately realised is that having a middle path to software architecture development is the optimal way i.e. build critical sections on your own and outsource others. For example, at the start do not think about horizontal scalability, it is a nightmare scenario to handle even if outsourced. So concentrate of vertical scalability with the help of a hosting provider. Horizontal scalability is a luxury that you can afford when you have dedicated people to manage it. There is a reason people developing Postgres have resisted the temptation to support horizontal scalability. It is a very hard problem to solve.
So if you are starting small and at an early stage then concentrate on how you will be able to own the data, how you will be able to own the business logic, and how you will be able to migrate from one service provider to another avoiding any vendor lock-in.
High availability, fault tolerance, always-on architectures are very difficult to achieve and maintain. There is a reason why FAANG spend so much resources on this and still get it wrong.
In case you want to go that route, then for some practical advise refer to https://sre.google
After evaluating lots of HA and fault-tolerant solutions and thinking about it for some time, personally I have come to the conclusion that having a single node with postgres, backed by streaming replication for backup, with dynamic vertical scaling using a hosting service where I can easily migrate my setup to other hosting provider is the way to go.
If your journey has made you to come to some other conclusion then please do share.
Also check out Python Foundation if they have programmes for students.
One organisation whose name slips my mind at the moment is from the US which helps school students collaborate on projects and even funds them to make that project into a business.