First of all congrats on the success of your game. I've been mulling over taking a break from my corporate engineering job and making a game. Would it be possible to send you an email in about two weeks or so with some retrospective questions of your game dev journey? I'm currently in a crunch mode for a work trip then going to be with limited internet access while on the trip so wanted a chance to get my thoughts/questions together before asking.
If you don't have time, totally understand and congrats on all your success.
Did Notion focus on selling before they had the any semblance of a product? I thought the founders holed up in a Japan for months to get an early version implemented before things started taking off.
Sorry for the ambiguity, I meant I shared the feeling with OP that it felt like people around me were selling while I was building, but it can't be so wrong since there's success stories of companies like Notion that similarly focused on building.
Would you mind sharing what your app is? I'm curious what level of technical sophistication is needed for an app that makes $2k/day. Was it more engineering or marketing or equally both that helped you gain users and traction?
Guessing by his profile: a Football Live Scores app that has 100k+ reviews in the play store - a very conservative estimate would put it at 3-5m users. It seems to have been plastered with ads which, safe to assume, are the source of that revenue.
Yeah it’s a really nice niche. Other niche ideas like this:
- Music Tuners
- Rulers/ measurement tools
- Tools using gyroscope (record speed indicator)
Take a simple idea and continue developing it until the user experience is really enjoyable. Not guaranteed to succeed, but a compelling way to spend your time.
I don't think that a football score app is niche at all - it's quite a saturated market with lots of competition. Fotmob seems to be the most popular one at least with the users of /r/soccer.
Tech sophistication can be as little as a single PHP webpage or maybe less (There is a blogpost somewhere, from the creator Levelsio) There was a "million dolar page".
Marketing is hard, except if you get lucky.
I'd generally still argue that marketing is the hardest part of any side-hustle / startup in general. What is lost on many here is that $100/mo. spend on solid marketing could speed up the growth curve (without that much more engineering effort) so that it would take maybe a year instead of three to reach the point you could quit your day job.
I released my own app a month ago after working on it on the side for a year... and I am finding that marketing is important indeed. Just having something in the app store doesn't guarantee eyeballs.
You have to find ways of getting your message out. No matter how good your product is, if your users can't find it, you won't sell anything.
This is probably why it's important to make sure you're not doing it for the "easy money" and also why it can take months or years to make a nice little passive income; the word takes a while to get out.
Totally agree, I have a number of non-tech related side hustles and quite frankly I prefer these to tech ones because they took maybe 50hrs each to setup and 2 hours max per week to operate. I know for a fact it'd take much more time tech wise to get something of equivalent revenue up and running.
I have to question these "I spent years making $40 a month working 8 hours after hours to built <project> but now <project> makes $60k a month" stories, since at some point you really have to ask yourself how much your time is worth. Thousands of hours for $1M pre-tax, not to mention how much life you gave up for that is kind of idiotic IMO.
My metric generally is, "if someone on etsy selling magic rocks is making more than my tech project after three months, time to move on". I'm not being shitty, this is just a standard I hold myself to when it comes to valuing my personal time. Also, don't worry, I'm not one of these people who thinks my time isn't worth cooking or cleaning (like many YT gurus and even Financial Samurai now claim).
If all you're interested in is a list of topics he wrote about, the table of contents on that page serves that function reasonably well. Some of the links in it are even live because they are to places he wrote other than SSC.
My understanding is that it says if anyone anywhere has free will, then so do some elementary particles. It doesn't say anything about if anyone or if any elementary particles actually have free will right? Does it lend support either way to if free will exists?
It shows that to whatever extent an experimenter can behave nondeterministically, so can an elementary particle. So it's useful as a simple way to convince people that quantum mechanical randomness is a true fundamental phenomenon (in particular, that hidden variable theories are all inherently invalid).
I've never seen a coherent definition of "free will", but I don't see how someone whose decision is random has any more or less of it than someone whose decision is nonrandom, so IMO it doesn't really have anything to do with free will one way or another.
Conway distinguishes Free Will from randomness by showing that randomness is just a special case of determinism. The random numbers could have been written down before the big bang and looked up when needed, which is still predetermined.
What makes Free Will free is that it's the selection of some future state independently from the information in a particle's past light cone. Only the particle determines that part of its state. One implication is that our brains, being composed of particles, derive their free will from the sum of the particles' free will. This doesn't imply that particles are conscious or aware, it only means that certain degrees of freedom evolve according to computations performed by the particles independently.
In one of the lectures Conway goes in depth into the philosophy of free will, which he believed in at a time when it was (and still is) almost universally unfashionable.
> Conway distinguishes Free Will from randomness by showing that randomness is just a special case of determinism. The random numbers could have been written down before the big bang and looked up when needed, which is still predetermined. What makes Free Will free is that it's the selection of some future state independently from the information in a particle's past light cone. Only the particle determines that part of its state.
That's a distinction without a difference - how would you tell whether the particle is magically looking up its results in the universe's big book of random numbers or deciding for itself? It's true that quantum-mechanical randomness is localised, in a provable sense, but there's no contradiction between that and what "randomness" is usually understood to mean.
> One implication is that our brains, being composed of particles, derive their free will from the sum of the particles' free will.
> That's a distinction without a difference - how would you tell whether the particle is magically looking up its results in the universe's big book of random numbers or deciding for itself? It's true that quantum-mechanical randomness is localised, in a provable sense, but there's no contradiction between that and what "randomness" is usually understood to mean.
one of the points the theorem makes is that you can't get the behaviour of fundamental particles by injecting randomness into an otherwise determinstic system. Free Will is different from randomness.
> one of the points the theorem makes is that you can't get the behaviour of fundamental particles by injecting randomness into an otherwise determinstic system. Free Will is different from randomness.
What is the distinction you're drawing, concretely? There simply isn't one unless you're using some very non-standard definition of randomness.
> What is the distinction you're drawing, concretely? There simply isn't one unless you're using some very non-standard definition of randomness.
AFAIUI by noting that the dice could have been thrown ahead of time and then looked up, we can treat it as a function of time and then it becomes as though another part of the information in the past light cone which doesn't explain the behaviour of particles, as exemplified by FIN, MIN & TWIN
Right, so if you had a fixed dice roll in the past and translated that into the measurement results on each axis in a static way, that wouldn't work. You have to make a fresh random dice roll after the experimenter chooses which axis to measure - or you have to translate the past dice role into the result for the axis in a way that depends on which other axes the experimenter chose to measure.
I assert that this is not terribly surprising, and Conway is actually just doing a sleight of hand around the definition of "random". We would normally expect a truly random event to be (by definition) uncorrelated with anything else, in this case including counterfactual versions of itself - the random measurement you get from a given axis must not be correlated with the measurement you would have got if you'd measured a different combination of axes. That's maybe a little odd, but I don't think it contradicts people's normal notion of "randomness", particularly in a QM context. It's like how in early online poker games people would cheat by figuring out the "random seed" and know all the cards - because that's not real randomness.
and I reply that I just record the "fresh" random roll ahead of time and you look that up. Doesn't make any difference. I think you're confusing random with pseudorandom.
> and I reply that I just record the "fresh" random roll ahead of time and you look that up. Doesn't make any difference.
Well, per everything that Conway's said, it does make a difference - if the experimenter is somehow able to choose which axes to measure after all dice rolls have been fixed, and the mapping of dice roll to measurement result is fixed (and does not depend on which axes the experimenter measures), then that creates a contradiction.
To my mind that's normal quantum behaviour - we see the same thing in the double slit experiment or Bell's inequalities (which this is just a variation on). Quantum behaviour cannot be explained by rolling dice ahead of time, because random results in different possible universes/branches must be uncorrelated with each other, even though we tend to assume that only one of those branches "actually happens". And this result is a cool demonstration of that. But there's no contradiction between that and most people's normal notion of "randomness", IMO.
aren't you mixing models of reality here ? You're describing a universe in which there's free will and determinism, somehow combined with many-worlds. It's hard to follow such hypercounterfactual logic
Well, the theorem pretty fundamentally relies on some kind of counterfactual reasoning - many-worlds is my preferred model, but you can use whichever you like. Ignoring the twin/spatially separated part[1], the meat of the theorem is that there is no possible fixed combination of spin along different axes that has the property that we always observe experimentally (that if we simultaneously measure along three axes at right angles to each other, we'll see two of one type of result and one of the other). So if the results we were going to observe were somehow fixed ahead of time, then there must be a contradiction: for some particular counterfactual combination of axes that we could have picked to measure, we would not have seen the two-and-one pattern that we always see.
The most frustrating part is that this is a cool, exciting result; while it doesn't really prove anything that we didn't already know from the Bell inequalities, the fact that everything's discrete makes for a much clearer contradiction. It shows that quantum-mechanical randomness is very fundamental and genuine: it's not just reading dice rolls off some list that was decided ahead of time, unless we want to commit to the idea that the whole universe works that way. But talking about "free will" just obscures and confuses everything.
[1] IMO that part doesn't add anything new or relevant to the result; it's just stapling the existing EPR paradox onto this new paradox.
I hate to criticise him under these circumstances, and I'm going to leave out the more personal side of things, but: The impression I got was that he was playing up the "free will" angle to appeal to a popular audience, at the expense of the physics. Most academics with a book to sell do that to a certain extent, but I felt that he went past what's reasonable. I won't speculate as to whether that was insincerity as such or belief in his own hype.
He devoted a whole lecture to explaining his belief in free will, going in depth into the philosphical history of the concept and his personal reasons which come across as entirely genuine. He also speculates as to how he thinks the limited free will of particles could result in our free will. It's six lectures and a lot of hard work with highly respected physicists by a mathematician who's old, accomplished and distinguished.
Fair enough. I honestly find that a lot sadder than the idea that he knew what he was doing and was sexing it up a bit. Reminds me of Penrose going off the rails.
He notes in the first lecture that he thinks it is impossible to disprove determinism. A determined determinist can always resort to the argument: all of your senses are deceiving you and you are simply experiencing some predetermined script of qualia (he uses the analogy of watching a movie a second time).
I think the invulnerable argument for it is even simpler than that: whatever apparently non-determined behavior we observe may only appear that way because we don’t yet know the rules underlying it.
Any system will appear unsystematic until the precise rules governing it are known.
Since we can’t ever demonstrate that we’ve exhausted all possible theories of a system, the possibility always remains that tomorrow we would discover a perfectly effective one, and from that point the system would be as plainly deterministic as anything else.
In other words: we lack the capability to definitively distinguish between our own lacking knowledge and a system’s (potential) intrinsic non-determinism.
Right: if you are a brain-in-a-vat observing some powerful play, what can you say about the world in which the vat is embedded? (or for that matter, how is it that you can even be made aware of the vat’s existence?)
We can perform some measurements [0] which show that spin exists. So, the 101 lemma used in the Kochen-Specker Theorem is related to existing laboratory experiments, and not just thought experiments. But indeed this doesn't say whether people have free will.
We might instead interpret the Free Will Theorem as demolishing a position otherwise claimed: People have free will, but people are special; most other things don't have free will, and certainly particles don't! But the Free Will Theorem explicitly contradicts this position.
In terms of philosophy, there are several nuances to consider. There's Kochen-Specker itself [1], its untestability and its applications. There's free will itself [2], including whether free will is definable, is useful for ethics, and indeed whether free will exists. I think it's interesting that [2] has no mention whatsoever of [1] or the Free Will Theorem more generally.
As an aside, if anyone has any unusual things that you have done that have helped with depression, please mention them. I've done the usual route of therapy and meds but that didn't help with my depression or suicidal thoughts. Thanks in advance.
Not sure if you're open to controlled substances, psychedelics in particular, but LSD has been the singular thing that has really made an impact on my depression (and I've gone thru the usual round of therapy/medication/etc). Ten years ago I had a serious suicide attempt. I'm happier and healthier than ever now, and I credit a lot of what helped me to LSD. Happy to chat about this more if any body has any questions, but otherwise I find Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind an excellent introduction to psychedelic therapy (although his experience focuses predominantly on psychedelic mushrooms, there's a lot in common as they do have similar but different effects on the brain).
It's important to note that LSD or any psychedelic therapy isn't a cure-all. It's more like an accelerated, intense meditative/therapeutic state that allows you to reflect upon your life in a way that doesn't involve the ego-center of your brain. I highly recommend everyone to try it as it offers a way to introspect on yourself that is pretty difficult to achieve in normal life.
Continue to see a licensed professional but one thing I've learned is that people tend to be happier when there is something to look forward to. If everything pending in your life is a dread, it can be a downward spiral. The best approach is to find that thing for you. It could be volunteering or a hobby. It doesn't have to be the perfect thing but just pick one. Learn how to take photographs and how to use a camera with f-stops. Learn how to bake pastries. Join civic clubs or church clubs or hiking clubs. Join a gym and get in shape. If you don't like it, try something else. Search on meetup.com or other similar. Most of these things have an impassioned group of people who will talk about the group's focus for hours on end. It creates anecdotes and funny stories and events to look forward to. It creates a sense of accomplishment even if you only get better at thing X very very slowly. You make progress and improve.
"My own sense is that –certainly for males, and maybe for anybody, having a certain amount of fitness and strength makes you proud, and being proud is the most reliable source of happiness that I know." - Stewart Brand
You might want to check out 'The Book of Joy' by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize winner and archbishop). The book lays out what these two men believe are the fundamental pillars of enduring happiness. Instead of doing a poor job summarizing the contents, here's a link to Amazon if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CZCW34Q. Wish you the best.
Regular exercise, quitting a job I didn't like (biggest win, took me out of a depression), removed myself from an extremely negative friend (this happened for other reasons, but I noticed after it left me happier).
What I aspire to and think would leave me happier is taking a more deliberate approach to hanging out with friends than my current just going with the flow (and forgetting to hang out with people out of sight).
Damn. Alcohol helped me some, but it's rather difficult to recommend that.
Simply accepting that it's going to be part of my life forever has helped some as well. I look for small pleasures, and it takes my life off of my thoughts for a while.
What about in the context of trying to get to an MVP? Is the dev time speedup of using a dynamic programming language and stack significant over using a c++ backed? You wouldn't care much about performance when you're trying to figure out if you'll get traction.
No, it's not significant. Dev time depends on programmer skill, not the toolset. A good C++ programmer will develop your MVP many times faster than an average Python programmer.
Python programmers are much easier to hire, though - you already need a good C++ programmer on the team to hire another one, because HR and corporate management can't into proper hiring process.
This last factor is the overarching most important one for BigCorp Enterprise Inc., not development speed or cost.
> Dev time depends on programmer skill, not the toolset.
This is obviously not strictly true, always. A skilled programmer will use the proper tools for the job.
If you for example is tasked with writing a backend service exposing a GraphQL API, I think it would be foolish to do this in C++, and would bet that the average Python programmer would do it quicker than even a top-tier C++ programmer (if the latter would be hellbent on doing it in C++).
Especially when working with MVP's (or new projects in general), the ability to leverage already existing tools and frameworks are key to rapid progress. This doesn't necessarily have to be scripting languages, but the Python/Node/Go/etc developer would have a working GraphQL server up and running connected to a database of choice within an afternoon while the skilled C++ developer would have to spend at least a few days implementing a GraphQL server mostly from scratch [0].
[0]: A quick Google show that schema parsers exists for C++, but nothing matching the frameworks/library available for more web-fashionable languages.
a) Writing a schema parser is not rocket science. In fact, for a good programmer implementing their own GraphQL library would be quicker than integrating some third-party library. So your first point ("average Python programmer would do it quicker than even a top-tier C++ programmer") is absolutely wrong.
b) There's no value in an MVP that does something generic that is already available in off-the-shelf libraries. Your GraphQL example is pretty pointless because it doesn't actually do anything.
> ...the Python/Node/Go/etc developer would have a working GraphQL server up and running connected to a database of choice within an afternoon
Well, no. By the end of the week they'll still be arguing about which package manager to use, whether TDD is a good idea, what makes a microservice 'micro' and how to configure Kubernetes.
Not really; hiring Python and Java devs is very amenable to keyword-driven recruitment. Hiring C++ devs in the same manner is a clusterfuck waiting to happen.
Does Scale AI use trained human annotators to label point clouds for customers or do they have a trained model that they use to quickly and automatically label point clouds for customers?
I met an ex-employee, they have 500 employees in the Philippines doing annotation. They built some software to help annotate point clouds but it seems like mostly a contractor handling logistics that the tech companies would rather not deal with, and they became a unicorn because AI.
Oh okay, thanks. I wasn't sure if they were selling annotations that their trained model can do quickly or selling manual labeling services that their customers can use to train their own models. Sounds like the latter which isn't as technically impressive.
Tim Sweeney has been extremely kind and generous with his time in all my interactions with him dating back about 10 years ago. I wish him all the success in the world.
Him and Epic are getting a lot of hate on Reddit because of the exclusivity deals, but as a developer, I appreciate Epic trying to get the dev/store revenue split more generous for developers. Valve does the standard 70/30, and Epic is doing 88/12 I believe.
It isn't just the exclusivity deals, but the manner in which those deals are brought about, often with release promises broken, releases yanked and backers being outright lied to; I do not wish any success to such a business. As a gamer I don't like what the PC gaming landscape is turning into with Epic Games at the forefront of it. As a developer I would expect to consider a wider scope than a revenue split, a big part of which is an ecosystem, platform and tooling.
All the extras like platform and tooling is nice, but don't mean anything if you can't support yourself as a dev. Better revenue sharing for devs is one thing that can make a big difference, provided the user base is there. Either it'll be there on Epic one day or Valve will match the revenue share of Epic or both. I'm all for having a competitive option in this space.
I don't think it's entirely Epic's fault about the releases being yanked from Steam or crowd sourced titles making changes. The developers had to sign the contract with Epic and Valve decided that they're too big to fail (which they might be by now) so they didn't try anything to counter.
The one thing that does suck from the gamer perspective is having to use multiple stores. As a dev and gamer I'm okay with this however as it helps the dev community at large in the long run if a viable store contender ever arrives.
> As a developer I would expect to consider a wider scope than a revenue split
Rev split was the best thing to happen to the game industry. Previously, game engines required ridiculous six figure contracts to even get started and meant a fixed cost regardless of the success of the game. We've had no shortage of amazing games thanks to this arrangement.
Valve does a lot for the 30% and getting onto the front of the steam store page can make up to eighty percent of a titles revenue. Epic has a lot of work to do.
If you don't have time, totally understand and congrats on all your success.