code_devil

I have also been building a local minimal AI agent too =P. It's still a TUI as I am still testing it out, though plan to make it into a native app too. Good luck to you too Peter.

I made a tiny iPhone sprite editor during Covid, when I was pretty obsessed with PICO-8 and wanted to draw sprites even when I was away from my Mac.

I shipped it in 2023, then neglected it for a few years. I’m getting back into it now, fixing things as I find them and adding small features suggested by PICO-8 users.

The original idea was simple: copy a sprite from PICO-8 on the Mac, paste it on your phone, tweak a few pixels, and paste it back. It uses PICO-8’s native clipboard format. It’s a one time $2.99 purchase, with no account or subscription, and works offline.

I’m now considering:

A) Frame by frame animation using sprite sheet regions B) Opening .p8 carts directly and editing sprites in place

For PICO-8 users, which would you actually use?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixel-edit-lite/id1665723146

If you remember Flipboard, Evan Doll was in the iOS team and also taught the CS183 at Stanford. As per his LinkedIn as soon as he left, the same month he cofounded Flipboard although the app was released 1 year later.

I have a few coworkers from my team that cofounded companies and they too have 1-2 month gap after they quit and they all got funding :)

It was around 2011.

I don’t think the policy changed as per se. It’s just they found proof of him trying to hire a part time help.

I had a co-worker around 2013 ish who just wanted to blog and put personal projects code to GitHub. It was not recommended and needed VP permission … basically a hassle.

1. I am primarily living off my savings. However, I haven’t had to sell any investments for expenses during this period and they have likely grown ( as per Mint.com ) I don’t actively track my investments ( I have vested stock from the fruit company + use robo investing ) so I am mentally free to enjoy other things without worrying about market volatility … I think my average monthly expense ranges from $1500 - $2500 depending on the country. A lot cheaper than a Bay Area down payment + plus so much time to do anything. Also unmarried and no kids.

2. My friend ( at Fruit Inc ) was working with a undergrad friend from the East coast on a side project. The other friend posted a Craigslist ad needing help on the project and mentioned my friends credentials on the posting. Somehow a recruiter found out about it and so my friends VP called him … that he can’t do so and so, and that the fruit company owes everything and he needs to turn it all to them, and he can be terminated etc. And even after termination they will come after him. Long story short, he stopped working on the project and he was NOT terminated but he did eventually leave to a different company. (For context: the project my friend was moonlighting on was not some cutting edge secret or some hard problem )

Bottom line: If no one knows about your project you are fine. And if you decide to leave the company and work on your idea … might make sense to ensure that the start date of the code etc looks a little after your resignation.

Happy to answer if you have any other questions

Yes. You need a clear focus and direction. Although a 3-6 months break is more than enough to find out if you want to start a company or just want “more” free time to experiment with technology ideas. I think I am more in the second camp.

I left the same company after 5+ years ( 6 years ago ) with a few goals -

1. Spend time with family ( parents )

2. Work on a side project

3. Travel

4. New language ( Spanish )

5. Learn something new ( tech and non tech )

I am very happy with 1,3,4,5. ( ongoing )

Regarding 2, I worked on making a no code platform for Voice apps and had a working demo/app but the market was just not ready and it still is not … Next I tried making some simple web apps - but no success financially. I keep on experimenting with technology so I still love my current state of affairs.

My personal learnings/experience (also from YC Startup School online ) is that you need to have some form of demand/audience before building the product for the consumer space. My friends in the Enterprise space seem to have much better luck.

PS: The fruit company is pretty strict about moon lighting (speaking from experience of a very good friend ) so just be careful about that aspect if they find that out while you are employed. I left in positive terms, in-fact a week back my boss mentioned to let them know when I am done with everything and would like to be back.

I had no idea either and had a similar visual image of @dang. I just had to google and find his full name and a picture to put a face to the name :)

It’s worth learning as an important CS concept, as it can be intuitive to express an idea and understand the algorithm on a conceptual level. Although implementing recursion can sometimes feel very confusing, apart from the fact that you might also hit a stack overflow and it runs slower than an iterative solution.

In fact, a few days ago I implemented a flood fill algorithm for a drawing app I am developing. I later converted it to an iterative solution. Here’s a comparison between the two solutions

https://zkpunk-xyz.vercel.app/posts/recursion_vs_iterative/

Paul Hudson has an amazing library of content at his website/YT for 100 days of Swift, and SwiftUI online for free.

https://www.hackingwithswift.com/100

Blockchain technology helps you create applications without the need to have a trusted 3rd party.

What it solves?:

- Sending money from Alice to Bob without the need of a trusted party like Venmo/Paypal/Bank.

- Vehicle registration / House title deeds are maintained by the local government. A decentralized application can potentially mint an NFT (ERC-721) and maintain such a DB. (Although, the physical society would need to come with laws to tie up physical good's with NFT's)

- In today's Gaming Economy all the digital goods bought/earned are controlled by the company (Zynga/Roblox). A blockchain powered game will allow the owners to have actual control of the digital goods ( money - tokens, wearables - NFT's) bought/purchased that they can sell/exchange in the open market. Imagine buying a souvenir from Disney Land and then not being able to sell/exchange it.

It's a huge space and I got into it around Feb/March of 2021. Some interesting applications I noticed are:

1. Lending Apps - A trusted decentralized application to deposit collateral and earn more interest than a traditional bank. And then use the same application to take a loan on the basis of the deposited collateral. Example Apps: Compound / AAVE / TraderJoe.xyz to name a few

2. Exchange Tokens - A simple application to swap between two tokens (ERC-20). Example: Uniswap, QuickSwap, etc

3. Ownership of digital goods - Imagine if all the digital goods someone owned in Farmville could be sold, traded, exchanged. All of this is possible due to NFT's - ERC 721 Standard Example: Aavegotchi, Axie Infinity, etc

Interesting research is happening in the field of cryptography - Zero Knowledge Proofs, Verkle Trees. Foundations/Companies: Matterlabs, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon

A lot of work is happening in app development tooling: Solidity, Ganache, Brownie, etc

Infact, the Spanish built a temple on a hill in Cholula only to be discovered that it was actually a Pyramid!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Cholula

Actually I am currently not looking as I am backpacking :)

I am just exploring the OpenCV library for fun things to do and in the process documenting simpler and smaller stuff for my reference. I do plan to have a follow up post that will automatically find the corners!

Yes, Indeed that’s the direction I am heading towards, but I am initially starting with simple posts to keep the flow ( for myself) and also easier for people to notice the simplicity of openCV.

I will update it with the intermediate step!

“or when the vehicle battery dies. That last scenario was the one my family and I found ourselves in, though we did not know it at the time.”

https://amehta.github.io/posts/ Experimentation in tech/programming!

Also, plan to soon start photoblogging about my travels.

You should gain more experience in programming before quitting your job.

Instead, during your free time implement one of your ideas and break down the feature set into a simple MVP. Come with a timeline, implement, learn, and see if you can stick with the plan. Once you end up building the product, next you will have to work on finding users (sales, marketing) and convincing them to keep using your product and pay for it.

If you have persevered for this long and also maintained your job, you really have the passion and discipline needed to build on your vision. A lot of times I have noticed my friends (FAANG) talk about various idea, get excited for a day/week but never build it out.

PS: I quit (ex-FAANG) a few years ago to travel, relax, learn foreign languages and now currently working on some SAAS side projects. My 2 cents, you need to have a lot discipline along with tons of motivation, and inspiration to keep fueling the energy to work on your ideas.

Yes, on my iPhone as well!

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1. Learned swimming over the last 4-6 weeks

2. Learning Spanish ( Duolingo / Pimsleur )

3. Learned to live minimalisicaly for the last 15 months. ( includes international and domestic travel )

PS: I am also constantly learning new technologies in AI/ML/NLP/Alexa/Google Assistant/AWS/GCP etc as I find those fun :)

Thanks sandslash!

Hi Adora, This is awesome. I just applied for it. How many hours of lectures will we have in a week? As it’s an online course - do you recommend being in one physical location/geography?

I actually met a friend of mines recently and unfortunately due to a head injury lost his ability of smell. The doctor’s didn’t realize it and neither did he for quite while till one day he got sick eating fish from his refrigerator that was stale and he couldn’t figure out. So, it definitely plays an important role. On the positive side he doesn't detect any bad odors, but that means he wouldn’t know he is stinking either. He makes sure he is well cologned/deodorant-ized :) Also, he misses the smell of delicious food and other good things!

Andrew's comment was very eye opening for me as well.

Is it possible we as humans have a well performing optimized search/compute algorithm in our brains that we have not been able to discover and recreate in machines yet ? In essence are we just bio-robots and procreation is just a method to bootstrap the next iteration of the bio-machine ?

If you look at the Boston Dynamics quad-legged robot, it "almost" feels like a real dog. CPU instead of Brain. Wires instead of Blood. Steel frame vs bones. The major difference being it doesn't have a large data set of experiences to behave like a real dog. Behavior/Emotions can be bootstrapped and eventually collected as experiences to query for future reactions.

I went though the H1-B process myself in the past(2007). If USCIS gets more applications than their yearly quota, then their will be a lottery and your chances will be the same with either (startup or larger) employer filing.

Once the application is selected in the lottery, USCIS will start looking at the background of the company and if it's a legit corporation.

"Only" if you are going through one of the shady Indian consultancy(+) companies in the bay area, their is a chance they will want to probe more and might reject your application. But like you said it's a startup with a product, you should be fine with either choice, and I would not worry too much if I were you.

(+)These are basically companies that will apply for an H1B for a fee (H1B + their own commission) but they don't really have a product or a job for you. If the application is accepted, you can either find a job on your own and transfer your H1B AND/OR they will try to place you in some company and take a commission out of your salary.

If you are already pretty proficient in coding, I would take a break from it and instead learn something different.

  - Sport (Snowboarding/Skiing/Swimming, Climbing etc lessons)

  - Reading books (History, Biographies, etc)

  - Visit a new town (doesn't have to be too far) and hangout with complete strangers and learn their stories.

Or purely on the STEM side you could refresh yourself on probability, statistics, linear algebra and get a deeper grasp on machine learning/data science.

I have noticed that all google cloud services now require credit card information for validation. Can this be be made optional and instead rely on their Gmail accounts ? (Especially for people just wanting to tinker with new services for fun)

1. See - El - Eye

2. Cly (like CRY)