從 IndieHackers.com 上掃出各種「成功的方法」

Indie Hackes 是個放各種「成功案例」的網站:

Indie Hackers is a place where the founders of profitable businesses and side projects can share their stories transparently, and where entrepreneurs can come to read and learn from those examples. It's also a community where individual "indie hackers" can come together to share their experiences, give and receive feedback, and rely on one another for support.

而文章的作者把上面的文章拿出來分析,得到了一些有趣的資訊:「Reverse Engineering A Successful Lifestyle Business: Here’s Everything I’ve Learned From Reading IndieHackers.com」。

在「Books」的地方列出了提到的書籍,被提超過一次的有:

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss (5x)
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz (5x)
Zero to One by Peter Thiel (4x)
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries (4x)
Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank (3x)
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2x)
High Output Management by Andy Groove of Intel (2x)
Good to Great by Jim Collins (2x)
Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares (2x)
Built to Sell by John Warrillow (2x)
The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman (2x)
Start Small, Stay Small by Rob Walling (2x)
The Power Of The Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy (2x)

然後是各種技巧 (?):

On Raising Prices (19x)
This was the most common advice. The easiest way to increase revenue: raise your prices! Don’t be scared to ask for money.

Real Artists Ship (9x)
Our first idea is a grand opening, a big launch, a press release, or major media coverage. We default to thinking we need an advertising budget. Our delusion is that we should be Transformers and not The Blair Witch Project. – Ryan Holiday

KISS (9x)
Automation (8x)
Start Charging Straight Away (8x)

可以拿來讀一讀吸收進去...

AWS CloudWatch 推出秒級的記錄功能

AWS CloudWatch 推出了秒級的記錄功能:「New – High-Resolution Custom Metrics and Alarms for Amazon CloudWatch」。

從一分鐘變成一秒鐘讓之後的調整以及 debug 好用很多... 不過這次支援秒級的是 custom metrics,原先 AWS 自家服務的支援不在這次範圍:

Today we are adding support for high-resolution custom metrics, with plans to add support for AWS services over time. Your applications can now publish metrics to CloudWatch with 1-second resolution.

另外 alarm 的時間可以降到十秒:

You can watch the metrics scroll across your screen seconds after they are published and you can set up high-resolution CloudWatch Alarms that evaluate as frequently as every 10 seconds.

對於市場上一堆服務的衝擊應該不小 XD

對於按讚數排名的方法

前幾天看到一篇 2009 年的老文章,在討論使用者透過「喜歡」以及「不喜歡」投票後,要怎麼排名的方法:「How Not To Sort By Average Rating」。

基本的概念是當使用者投票數愈多時就會愈準確,透過統計方法可以算一個信賴區間,再用區間的下限來排... 但沒想到公式「看起來」這麼複雜 XDDD

Score = Lower bound of Wilson score confidence interval for a Bernoulli parameter

但實際的運算其實沒那麼複雜,像是 Ruby 的程式碼可以看出大多都是系統內的運算就可以算出來。其中的 z 在大多數的情況下是常數。

require 'statistics2'

def ci_lower_bound(pos, n, confidence)
    if n == 0
        return 0
    end
    z = Statistics2.pnormaldist(1-(1-confidence)/2)
    phat = 1.0*pos/n
    (phat + z*z/(2*n) - z * Math.sqrt((phat*(1-phat)+z*z/(4*n))/n))/(1+z*z/n)
end

The z-score in this function never changes, so if you don't have a statistics package handy or if performance is an issue you can always hard-code a value here for z. (Use 1.96 for a confidence level of 0.95.)

作者後來在 2012 年與 2016 年也分別給了 SQL 以及 Excel 的範例程式碼出來,裡面 hard-code 了 95% 信賴區間的部份:

SELECT widget_id, ((positive + 1.9208) / (positive + negative) - 
                   1.96 * SQRT((positive * negative) / (positive + negative) + 0.9604) / 
                          (positive + negative)) / (1 + 3.8416 / (positive + negative)) 
       AS ci_lower_bound FROM widgets WHERE positive + negative > 0 
       ORDER BY ci_lower_bound DESC;
=IFERROR((([@[Up Votes]] + 1.9208) / ([@[Up Votes]] + [@[Down Votes]]) - 1.96 * 
    SQRT(([@[Up Votes]] *  [@[Down Votes]]) / ([@[Up Votes]] +  [@[Down Votes]]) + 0.9604) / 
    ([@[Up Votes]] +  [@[Down Votes]])) / (1 + 3.8416 / ([@[Up Votes]] +  [@[Down Votes]])),0)

而更多的說明在維基百科的「Binomial proportion confidence interval」可以翻到,裡面也有其他的方法可以用。

Million Dollar Homepage 上的網站存活率

作者在分析 2005 年炒熱話題的 Million Dollar Homepage,上面所列的網站的存活比率:「A Million Squandered: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact」。

這是作者在 2017 年抓的截圖:

而這是分析圖:

作者跑程式分析,其中大約一半的 pixel 已經失效:

The 547 unreachable links are attached to graphical elements that collectively take up 342,000 pixels (face value: $342,000). Redirects account for a further 145,000 pixels (face value: $145,000).

不過如果以網站數量來看,則大約還有 63% 活著:

Of the 2,816 links that embedded on the page (accounting for a total of 999,400 pixels), 547 are entirely unreachable at this time. A further 489 redirect to a different domain or to a domain resale portal, leaving 1,780 reachable links.

突然有種「銀河的歷史又翻過了一頁」的感覺 XDDD

對 Adobe Flash 的開源請願

Adobe Flash 在 2020 年要被收掉 (參考「Adobe Flash 將在 2020 年 End of Life」),但有很多作品是使用 Flash 寫的,這表示這些作品在 2020 年以後將無法存取。

所以就有人提出請願,希望 Adobe 將 Flash 開源,讓這些作品可以延續下去 (像是轉成 HTML5+CSS+JS 或是其他方案):「Petition to open source Flash spec」。

GitHub 推出軟體版的 U2F Authenticator (目前只有 macOS)

用軟體實做 U2F,目前是開發在 macOS 上:「Introducing Soft U2F, a software U2F authenticator for macOS」。

實在是不愛這種方式,由於是軟體式的,安全性低了不少... (機器被入侵後就都沒有防護了)

不過 U2F 是目前少數可以在 protocol 層抵抗 phishing 的方式,相較於一般 OTP 的方式還是得很注意網址,所以站在推廣的立場的確是希望能多一點人用...

Firefox Nightly 的 Stylo

Firefox 的 Nightly 納入 Stylo 了,一個用 Rust 開發的套件,可以將 Servo 的 CSS style system 整進 Gecko 內:「Stylo is ready for community testing on Nightly!」。

Stylo (a.k.a. Quantum CSS) will integrate Servo's CSS style system into Gecko, such that the style system code can be shared by Gecko and Servo.

Quantum CSS, aka Stylo, aims to integrate Servo’s parallelized CSS style system written in Rust into Gecko.

Mozilla 把愈來愈多的東西都改用 Rust 寫了...

在飯店裡攻擊企業的高階主管

算是為什麼企業要提供 Full Routing VPN 的一個攻擊管道的說明...

這篇介紹了在飯店裡透過 WiFi 攻擊企業的高階主管,想辦法塞木馬取得資訊,或是滲透進企業內部的網路:「Hackers are using hotel Wi-Fi to spy on guests, steal data」。

Those behind the campaign have continually evolved their tactics and malware payloads, blending phishing and social engineering with a complex Trojan, in order to conduct espionage on corporate research and development personnel, CEOs, and other high-ranking corporate officials.

有點介於 APT 與一般性的攻擊中間...

Adobe Flash 將在 2020 年 End of Life

Adobe 發出的公告,將在 2020 年中止所有對 Flash 的支援:「Flash & The Future of Interactive Content」。

Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats.

然後 GoogleMicrosoft 也來補刀講兩句話:「So long, and thanks for all the Flash」、「Saying goodbye to Flash in Chrome」、「The End of an Era – Next Steps for Adobe Flash」。