Random Chat, Thoughts, Posts, and/or Rants Thread

[GPM]

So something happened to me I guess last night. I have no idea but I went to bed at a decent time. Woke up with my alarm nice and early, and just went and layed down on the floor and fell asleep again until my kids woke me up at 7:30am. We all ate some cereal and then I literally layed down on the floor again and read books with them and I made my daughter give me a pillow for my head.

Then I got up off the floor and went on the couch and fell asleep and woke up at like 11:00am. Now here I am awake but I feel great now. That was crazy! I could barely keep my eyes open all morning, it literally felt like I was drugged. I guess I needed to catch up on some sleep? No idea. Hopefully this doesn't happen again as I pretty much wasted an entire day (other than getting to read with my kids in the morning, that was legitimately awesome).

 

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[doster.zach]

I think there’s opportunity abroad for any American entrepreneur. Perhaps more so than staying in America. It’s at the very least a reminder to always have a global perspective.

Is there a bigger benefit to being in the U.S.?

I don’t have any idea, but I figure after you end up getting good enough in one place it’s not worth it trying to learn the rules at a new place?

I’m not sure, but a sports ball analogy:

If you’re good a Euro Basketball of course you want to go the the U.S. for more opportunity, even though there are some rule changes.

 

[doster.zach]

I don't follow UK politics nor do I know the intricacies of UK politics, but damn, that was fast.

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss resigns after failed budget and market turmoil

U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned following a failed tax-cutting budget that rocked financial markets.

www.cnbc.com

If only American Presidents resigned as much as the UK plows thru PMs. We can dream!

 

[Antifragile]

Got an email from Jasper...

Here’s the TL;DR of the 10 announcements:

No. 1 - Series A - 0:00
Jasper raised a $125M Series A at a $1.5B valuation, bringing it to unicorn status in just 18 months.
Read the letter I wrote to our customers.

Cool, the founders did a lot of things right.

No. 2 - Impact on Customers - 4:42
We’re using the money to build a world-class product and support team.

No. 3 - Gift to customers - 7:17
We’re giving all customers 10,000 free bonus credits to celebrate.

Great.

No. 4 - Jasper evolving - 7:57
Jasper is expanding from "AI writing assistant" to "AI content platform" that will continue to include more multi-media creation with AI including art.

Good.

No. 5 - Chrome Extension - 9:26
Today we’re releasing the Jasper Chrome extension, enabling you to write better, anywhere with AI.
Install the Jasper Chrome extension now

Interesting to try.

No. 6 - Jasper Art Image Upscaling - 13:33
Jasper Art’s new "Upscaling" features lets you export high-resolution images without watermarks.
Create amazing images with Jasper art

I wish they included some of the features for annual subscribers for free.

No. 7 - Three new templates - 15:31
Showcasing the LinkedIn Post Creator, One-Shot Blog Post, and Content Summarizer.
Login now to try them out

No. 8 - Introducing Workflows - 19:18
Workflows are a better way to create a repeatable content production process with AI.

No. 9 - Jasper for Business - 22:36
Jasper is the AI Content Platform for companies, giving everyone on your team an AI assistant, collaborate together on content, and 10X production efficiency.
Have a team of 10+ people? Schedule a demo.

No. 10 - Annual upgrade offer - 24:50
Are you on a Jasper monthly plan? Upgrade to annual and save 17% plus you’ll get 150,000 bonus credits. Only eligible for new annual upgrades. Offer ends on November 1, 2022.

Why? Why are these kinds of offers only eligible for new annual upgrades. This kind of pissing on existing customers is so backwards IMO. What message are they sending to those who committed to them early? I'll remember this for next year, as I just renewed my annual membership a month ago. I hope to be able to speak with my money by making choices before next year renewal.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

This kind of pissing on existing customers is so backwards IMO.

I see this a lot in growing companies who put the early adopters out to pasture. You were a means to an end. Now that we got our funding, or went public, F-YOU.

SONOS penalized early adopters by discontinuing their older model speakers which are no longer supported. Of course this all happened AFTER they went public. Any time I can dog SONOS and that shit company, I take the opportunity.

I spent $5K+ on equipment and now all of it is sitting in the garage collecting dust, but they never fail to remind me to "upgrade your equipment" -- but not for another $5K, at today's rates, it'd be $8K. No, I'm never buying another SONOS product, ever. Instead, I'll take any opportunity I can to tell people to avoid them.

MARKETING - FTE - Sonos: How to ruin your brand and piss off your early adopters (of course, do it after you go public)

SONOS (which recently went public, at which point I knew the company would start to suck) apparently didn't have their "Great News!" email go off very well, which was news of planned obsolescence which in so many words, told customers to shit or get off the pot... (OF course, they just went...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

[loop101]

Supposedly Elon Musk is promising to fire 75% of the Twitter staff, once he takes over. I wonder if that will become a trend.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1583206149297696768

View: https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1583206149297696768

 

[Tommo]

Just got off the phone with a guy from a Hong Kong based investment company he said, talking me into getting into lithium stock he had been buying up before Elon announces he's buying the company. What a great deal. I can buy the stock before the announcement causing it to leap in price. When he asked me if I was in and how much I wanted I said, Ï've had better offers from Nigerian princes recently, which caught him off guard and he laughed out loud when I hung up.
Both companies actually exist but he was in some boiler room in Canberra.

 

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[MattR82]

I see this a lot in growing companies who put the early adopters out to pasture. You were a means to an end. Now that we got our funding, or went public, F-YOU.

Yeah I've had a few "lifetime deals" expire somehow.

 

[loop101]

DHH takes a shot at the Cloud. I am seeing downsizing tech trending. Maybe a return to simpler times.

Why we're leaving the cloud

Basecamp has had one foot in the cloud for well over a decade, and HEY has been running there exclusively since it was launched two years ago. We've run extensively in both Amazon's cloud and Google's cloud. We've run on bare virtual machines, we've run on Kubernetes. We've seen all the cloud...

world.hey.com

 

[Andy Black]

DHH takes a shot at the Cloud. I am seeing downsizing tech trending. Maybe a return to simpler times.

Why we're leaving the cloud

Basecamp has had one foot in the cloud for well over a decade, and HEY has been running there exclusively since it was launched two years ago. We've run extensively in both Amazon's cloud and Google's cloud. We've run on bare virtual machines, we've run on Kubernetes. We've seen all the cloud...

world.hey.com

One of my IT friends has a new contract starting soon for a semi-government body here in Ireland. His role is to document systems and plan bringing support back in in-house from offshore.

 

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[Xeon]

For anyone who's hosting their sites on non-Shopify/Squarespace/Wix platforms, check out Rocket.net as an alternative. They're running on servers with 32 core CPUs and 128GB Memory with SSD/NVME disks. This is insane compared to my previous favorite host Cloudways+Vultr Hi-Freq servers (their basic plan are at 1core+1GB memory if I remember). Also, they throw in Cloudflare Enterprise CDN for free.

Haven't used them yet, since their price is a little too high for my current needs (their basic plan costs the same as about 7 Venti size cups of Starbucks cafe latte), or about 1.5x Cloudway's Vultr Hi-Freq basic plan. And no, I don't work for them lol

 

[Antifragile]

Anyone uses Asana?
I’ve gone mad and started using Basecamp inside my own company with my staff who I see everyday at the office! That’s to @Andy Black for showing me.

And then I got asked a question: how about Asana?

My brain hurts with so many options. I’m not a tech savvy person. This is too much.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

DHH takes a shot at the Cloud. I am seeing downsizing tech trending. Maybe a return to simpler times.

Why we're leaving the cloud

Basecamp has had one foot in the cloud for well over a decade, and HEY has been running there exclusively since it was launched two years ago. We've run extensively in both Amazon's cloud and Google's cloud. We've run on bare virtual machines, we've run on Kubernetes. We've seen all the cloud...

world.hey.com

Great read, thanks for sharing.

 

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[Guest-5ty5s4]

People sometimes talk about the odds of life in outer space and on other planets like it can be known or estimated... I don't think it can be either. I have absolutely NO IDEA. But it's fun to think about.

If Earth was the only planet with life, that might seem strange. What are the odds in all of the universe you wound up on the one planet that actually is able to harbor life? Well, if it's the only one, the odds are 100%.

But yeah, nobody actually knows... There could be millions of planets with alien civilizations out there!

 

[MoneyDoc]

From an eCommerce M&A newsletter I'm subscribed to. Here's an interesting new "trend".

Coffee consumers are becoming more aware of the effects of caffeine on their bodies. Now they're looking into a new idea called "caffeine micro-dosing" (searches for "low caffeine" reached all-time highs earlier this year.)

Instead of having one big coffee in the morning, you would take small amounts of caffeine throughout the day. A number of products are coming out to support this practice like caffeine sprays, as well as low-caffeine chocolates and gum.

 

[Mathuin]

 

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[Andy Black]

Anyone uses Asana?
I’ve gone mad and started using Basecamp inside my own company with my staff who I see everyday at the office! That’s to @Andy Black for showing me.

And then I got asked a question: how about Asana?

My brain hurts with so many options. I’m not a tech savvy person. This is too much.

I tried it but didn't like it. Basecamp seemed much simpler.

 

[Fox]

Supposedly Elon Musk is promising to fire 75% of the Twitter staff, once he takes over. I wonder if that will become a trend.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1583206149297696768

View: https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1583206149297696768

Im curious how the stock is going to do on Twitter over time - I am using it a lot more now and tempted to move some money into it.

 

[MoneyDoc]

IDEA:

Blockchain based (for convenience) real estate search site.

Think realtor.com, Zillow.com, but with the ability to find your dream home, offer on your dream home, inspect/visit your dream home, and close the deal on your dream home entirely from the site. No external lawyers, no agents, etc.

I kinda understand the need for 100,000 brokers/agents in the commercial space, but why do we need 100,000 agents/brokers for residential real estate? Most of the residential buying process nowadays starts with the BUYERS searching on a site like realtor.com and THEN sending the listing to their agent to book an appointment, make an offer, etc. Why not streamline the whole process.

 

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[Guest-5ty5s4]

IDEA:

Blockchain based (for convenience) real estate search site.

Think realtor.com, Zillow.com, but with the ability to find your dream home, offer on your dream home, inspect/visit your dream home, and close the deal on your dream home entirely from the site. No external lawyers, no agents, etc.

I kinda understand the need for 100,000 brokers/agents in the commercial space, but why do we need 100,000 agents/brokers for residential real estate? Most of the residential buying process nowadays starts with the BUYERS searching on a site like realtor.com and THEN sending the listing to their agent to book an appointment, make an offer, etc. Why not streamline the whole process.

This would be incredible and at this point, something like this is inevitable.

The technical challenge is going to be linking addresses to their corresponding tax IDs with different counties and municipalities, title offices, stuff like that. But it's possible, and the fact that it's possible means it will eventually happen. But who will do it? Will it be you???

 

[GPM]

DHH takes a shot at the Cloud. I am seeing downsizing tech trending. Maybe a return to simpler times.

Why we're leaving the cloud

Basecamp has had one foot in the cloud for well over a decade, and HEY has been running there exclusively since it was launched two years ago. We've run extensively in both Amazon's cloud and Google's cloud. We've run on bare virtual machines, we've run on Kubernetes. We've seen all the cloud...

world.hey.com

There is no such thing as "the cloud". Only someone else's computer.

And in cool news I just picked up a Dell PowerEdge r620 server with dual 12 core processors and 160 gigs of ram. Time to figure all this server stuff out.

 

[fastlane_dad]

This thought is directed towards @MJ DeMarco -- as @NeoDialectic and I have been discussing UTAH lately - and would like to hear more of your impressions and thoughts now that you have lived there some more (especially from the entrepreneur standpoint).

What have you come to like as pros / cons of being where you are at? We know in AZ there is (especially from this forum as well) a large PHOENIX crowd, that would also meet up time to time shoot the shit (@NeoDialectic and I have a great time at one of those events locally).

Have you exibited anything similar in Utah from the entrepreneur stage? Do you even look for that or try to organize that anymore? Do you miss any certain parts of Arizona, or realize now that you have taken certain aspects of it for granted?

Just curious as everyone knows the grass is not always greener, but sometimes you are curious what else is out there. Don't get me wrong, Arizona has been great living here the past 15+ years - but sometimes you want to hear from other experiences out there (and what the values behind it are).

 

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[GPM]

I recently watched The Batman. The new one from 2022. Don't bother, save yourself nearly 3 hours.

I swear modern movie writers are completely talentless. They have just oodles and oodles of source material to work with when doing a project like this, and they still just ruin it.

After the movie I didn't learn anything about Batman, Bruce Wayne, Alfred, Cat Woman, The mobster badguy, penguin, Gordon or the Riddler. I never got to know a single character, and therefore didn't care what ended up happening to them. In a nearly 3 hour movie they did not give me a single compelling character that I even remotely cared about.

They also didn't really serve up any good action sequences or set pieces either. I guess the car was kind of cool, but it was also kind of pointless. It could not even outrun a Maserati or whatever it was chasing on the highway.

I recently heard a pretty fitting quote: "The characters are only as smart as their writers". And well, it appears that they are scraping the bottom of the barrel for writers these days.

I also went through The Boys on Amazon prime. The first season was so good. Homelander was the most terrifying character I have ever seen put on TV I think. Just an absolutely unhinged psycho with literally unlimited powers. Season 2 was a shell of the first season, and there was so much filler in there that just did not need to be there. Tongue in cheek political commentary started to pop up a little more, and it was getting to be a bit much.

Season 3 it was like everyone stopped trying, and it was just full on political commentary and trying to ram Hollywoods version of how the world is in their eyes onto the screen. Homelander became a Trump allegory. It was so bad I googled it to see if I was just making it up. Nope. The writers literally turned Homelander into how they see Trump. It was all down hill from there. Don't forget the insanely cliché speeches throughout the show, not an original thought to be had. They turned their only decent human being character into a weak loser of a white male who threw all his old character development into the garbage to turn into a toxic a**hole. Can't have any male characters be decent humans now can we? It turned to trash.

I think I will go back to not watching anything for a long time. It ends up just being a frustrating experience.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I think I will go back to not watching anything for a long time. It ends up just being a frustrating experience.

I find "Americanized" television is completely unwatchable. Don't even get me started on the super-hero crap movies which I haven't watched since Obama was president. I feel watching lowers my IQ so I avoid all network TV and Netflix stuff made for North Americans. I prefer foreign films where subtitles are standard, or films with a non-Americanized viewpoint.

A great example is Tehran on Apple TV ... the series is a little far fetched drama wise, but they build stunning characters, to the point you really feel for everyone involved, and it doesn't matter what country they are from. They simply don't make series like these anymore, so it was a joy to find it. Most stuff I start watching, I never finished as I leave with a "yea, right..." feeling.

and would like to hear more of your impressions and thoughts now

Give me some time to put together some thoughts, Ill be happy to completely candid, although I might post it in my main thread on the INSIDERS forum.

 

[fastlane_dad]

Give me some time to put together some thoughts, Ill be happy to completely candid, although I might post it in my main thread on the INSIDERS forum.

Staying tuned for more !!

 

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[Andy Black]

Smart...

Paddy Galloway on LinkedIn: I co-founded a creator tech start-up! One of the biggest problem’s… | 163 comments

I co-founded a creator tech start-up! One of the biggest problem’s facing YouTubers is hiring and building their team. So we’ve decided to build a… | 163 comments on LinkedIn

www.linkedin.com

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Happens here a lot... Non-native english speakers seem to have the best english of all! And here we have english-only speakers who can barely write! LOL

 

[BizyDad]

Just got out of a refreshing meeting.

Two high school kids started knocking on doors to clean cars. A month later (today), they met with me to get a website and start some internet marketing.

In the last 30 days, they've cleaned 30 cars, and generated $5100 in revenue. Just knocking on doors and working part-time while they are still going to high school.

Hustlers gonna hustle.

I got done with the meeting, I just kept thinking about how many people come on this forum and announce that they're going to start an internet marketing agency and they're wondering how to get to $1,000...

 

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[Ocean Man]

YouTube handles coming out soon: Introducing handles: A new way to identify your YouTube channel

If you're heavy into YouTube, definitely would look into securing your handle once it comes out. Seems like it'd be a good idea to have @MJ DeMarco as a YouTube handle rather than @TheRealMJDeMarco for example.

This would appear on your reels and I assume would be an easier way to find your account.

 

[msufan]

Just got out of a refreshing meeting.

Two high school kids started knocking on doors to clean cars. A month later (today), they met with me to get a website and start some internet marketing.

In the last 30 days, they've cleaned 30 cars, and generated $5100 in revenue. Just knocking on doors and working part-time while they are still going to high school.

Hustlers gonna hustle.

I got done with the meeting, I just kept thinking about how many people come on this forum and announce that they're going to start an internet marketing agency and they're wondering how to get to $1,000...

How are they averaging $170 per car? Complete detailing?