Heyo Hackers,
Been a busy start to the year over at Hacker Noon. Weâre north of 180k average daily readers over the last 90 days, and peaked with 1,715,680 minutes read in one day (1/7). Thatâs 3 years, 3 months, and 5 days worth of time reading. Around the web over the last month, our stories have been written about by Investopedia, The Ringer, Nasdaq, Gizmodo, Android Authority, Trusted Reviews, Salon, Houston Chronicle, CNET, SlashGear, TechSpot, BizJournals, The Verge, Destrutoid, Sify, The Motley Fool, Profit Confidential, Express, and others. To continue accelerating this growth path, we need to work with more badass tech companies. If you work at a badass tech company and are reading this, consider becoming a weekly sponsor. Youâll get millions of quality brand impressions, thousands of great website visitors⌠and youâll get to work with me đ
Without further ado, here are this weekâs top 20 tech stories:
Architecture
Monolith Vs Microservice Vs ServerlessâââThe Real Winner? The Developer by Elliot Forbes. The one underlying theme that seems to come across from evangelicals of these newer architecture styles is that the world is black and white.
APIs
Avoiding Memory Leak in Golang API by Iman Tumorang. Based on our true story at Kurio, how we struggling for every release because we are not doing it in the right ways.
Pictured left, the actual government ballistic missile alert system user interface.(@CivilBeat). Pictured right, a Hacker Noon contributorâs take on redesigning it (Fairpixels).
Avoiding Hawaiiâs Accidental Emergency Alert
Redesigning Hawaiiâs Emergency Alert Systemâs Interface In The Open by Fairpixels. Itâs an absolute mystery why such an important task has an absolutely horrible interface.
BLOCKCHAIN willâŚ
Building a Blockchain: The Grey Paper by Omer Goldberg. (Itâs) a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography. Each block typically contains a hashpointer as a link to a previous block, a timestamp and transaction data.
5 Notable Women in the Blockchain and Crypto Industry! by FundYourselfNow. Some of the biggest ICOs, digital currency payment platforms, and even blockchain tech development firms have been founded by women.
Browser Battles
Is Firefox Quantum Worth It? by Jordan Bowman. Iâm in favor of giving new apps a shot. Maybe itâs because I like it when others do the same for my work. So, I decided Iâd run a simple experiment. Iâd use Firefox Quantum for a few weeks and see if it was worth the minor hassle of a browser switch.
Online shopping in Africa doesnât work because of this web form by David Okwii. I have attended several Tech events where they invite so-called gurus and experts to explain the digital landscape in Africa, but I have never been satisfied with any of their answers as to why e-commerce has not caught on.It turns out the reason why a click on a userâs web browser doesnât exactly translate into an actual sale is really simpleâââthe shipping and billing information form.
Crypto Boom!
Crypto High Flyers by Josh Quittner The trick now is to pay attention, learn as much as you can about whatâs going on, and never invest more than you can comfortably lose.
My Most Valuable Crypto Market Insights For 2018 and Beyond by Pierre Rognion. Bitcoin is a trojan horse. The lure of overnight riches has its purpose: it serves as a trojan horse for a decentralized future and people who would otherwise be leery of societal upheaval.
Why, what and how to invest in cryptocurrencies by Assaf Elovic. The launching of bitcoin futures on CBOE and CME (and Nasdaq later this year) has been considered as a major achievement in bringing cryptocurrency to the mainstream. This will allow investors to have plenty of options to bet on bitcoin using more traditional financial vehicles.
Deep Learning
The 3 Tricks That Made AlphaGo Zero Work by Seth Weidman. âThere were many advances in Deep Learning and AI in 2017, but few generated as much publicity and interest as DeepMindâs AlphaGo Zero. This program was truly a shocking breakthrough: not only did it beat the prior version of AlphaGoâââthe program that beat 17 time world champion Lee Sedol.
Inside AWS
10 Lessons from 10 Years of AWS (and Part 2) by Adrian Hornsby. For the last 10 years, I have had the chance to work in companies that embraced the cloud, and in particular AWS.
Iâm afraid youâre thinking about AWS Lambda cold starts all wrong by Yan Cui. When I discuss AWS Lambda cold starts with folks in the context of API Gateway, I often get responses along the line of: âMeh, itâs only the first request right? So what if one request is slow, the next million requests would be fast.â Unfortunately that is an oversimplification of what happens.
The Product Management Life
Agile (Done Right) Is Continuous Design by John Cutler. Value isnât âshippedââŚrather a value network is continuously enhanced and expanded. âProductsâ are the ephemeral delivery mechanismâŚa person a decade ago, a mobile app today, Alexa tomorrow, and AI in a decade.
Shit Product Managers Say, Translated by Stephen Cognetta. Hey, letâs close the loop offline. Iâll block some biweekly time for us to sync. Gentle ping to submit your AI.
SaaS Marketing
Freemium vs Free Trial vs Hybrid Customer Acquisition Model in SaaS by Myk Pono. We spent countless hours researching customer acquisition strategies and pricing models. As part of that, we interviewed SaaS industry leaders. What we found is that just about every SaaS company goes through a heated debate about whether or not to offer a free trial or freemium.
Startup Hustle
Startup Assumptions are Like AssholesâââEveryone Has One and Most are Full of Shit by Matt Ward. We have assumptions. We have ideas. These are meaningless. Knowing that is the key to success. Entrepreneurs that know they donât know and are willing to learn and adapt to what the market wants, are the ones that succeed.
Do NOT raise VC fundingâââThe 3 main reasons against it. by Carl Fritjofsson. The only path of entrepreneurship is not what you read about on Techcrunch. Building your company independent gives you unlimited options. Donât rush into the path of VC funding too soon, if you treasure your entrepreneurial freedom.
We All May Be In A Video GameâŚ
The Simulation HypothesisâââWhy Quantum Physics, AI, and Eastern Mystics Agree We Are In A Video Game by Riz Virk. Recently, the idea that we may be living in a giant video game, or as itâs sometimes called, the Simulation Hypothesis, has gotten a lot of attention because of prominent figures like Elon Musk who have openly discussed the idea. As Virtual Reality technology has gotten more sophisticated, we are starting to contemplate virtual worlds like that of the omni-present Oasis in Ready Player One, soon to be a blockbuster movie directed by Stephen Spielberg.
Until next time, donât take the realities of the world for granted.
Kind Regards,