The podcasting ecosystem is a lot like a massive apple orchard in the Fall. Tons of apples, ripe and ready for harvesting and to be used in a variety of ways. As a consumer of apples, I can look at them and enjoy them all I want, but as soon as I pick one, I've got to pay for it. I can't just walk out of the orchard with a bag full of someone else's crop. The farmer wants to be compensated…
Read MoreI bought a dirt bike this year after saving up for a while. My son has been riding since he was pretty young and has been anxiously waiting for the day we could both ride together. We eventually landed on a 2001 Suzuki RM125. A 2-stroke, specifically because we wanted a simpler engine we could learn to work on together. Neither of us had a lot of experience working on engines, and that was kind of the point.
Read MoreThe ocean waves are constantly in motion, sometimes roaring and crashing, other times gurgling softly. Even in chaos, there’s an underlying stability to the cycle. People reshape the sand every day–building sandcastles, digging holes, leaving their marks behind. Just as reliably, the tide wipes the sandy slate clean. The only way to preserve a sandcastle is to build far enough away from the water. But when sea levels rise, what once was safe is no longer out of reach.
Read MoreThe purpose of the downloader function is not about downloading, but about getting the file in a state where it can be shared amongst the other functions within the Tape Index natural language processing flow. Since each step needs to reference the file being processed, it’s much faster and efficient to not have to download it every time it’s required. Here’s a refresher of the NLP flow…
Read More90% of startups fail. This appears to be an accepted statistical fact. But is it really? I believe it’s possibly one of the most misleading statistics out there. When I was writing a post on How To Properly Evaluate the Risk and Rewards of Startups I had this 90% statistic in my head and thought it was going to be really damning evidence. Turns out it’s not as it seems…
Read MoreAs of March 2022, within the first 5 years of a startup’s life 48.4% fail. If you stretch that timeframe out to 10 years, 65.1% will fail (Source: LendingTree). Interestingly enough, Y-Combinator claims that 90% fail[§] and then says that “more than 50% of YC companies are still alive 5 years later.” If you read between the lines, YC’s success rate is no better than the industry average’s success rate (Source: Y-Combinator)…
Read MoreAs mentioned before, Modal is a powerful serverless computing platform. These means that code (functions) can be called on demand and only run for as long as the function requires. In many cases, this method of computing can be significantly cheaper and more scalable than other solutions. Since Tape Index needs to take advantage of GPU cores for certain aspects of its NLP flow, Modal is an ideal and cost-effective solution for running GPU enabled servers on demand…
Read MoreIf you’re familiar with serverless computing especially functions as a service (FaaS) like AWS Lambda or DigitalOcean Functions, you might be aware of the limitations that these services have. Limitations usually revolve around compute power, runtime environments and the additional packages you might be able to install to get a function running. For Tape Index and its natural language processing (NLP) flow, I quickly hit all those limitations from the start. In my searching for alternative solutions I came across Modal. Modal is similar to serverless functions, but fits more in line with what I would consider a serverless application…
Read MoreI’m today years old when I learned about Tailscale and I hope you find yourself in the same position as well†. In the life of every SaaS product there comes a time when you have to release your infrastructure into the real world. It goes without saying that security is paramount here. Depending on the knowledge and size of the team it’s possible that some things like security might get put off. Security by obscurity is the name of the game…
Read MoreI quit my job and started freelancing in June of 2023. With any sudden massive move like that, it’s impossible to predict what kind of projects will show up, but I was super pleased when the opportunity to join Bumper as their fractional CTO came along…
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