Alex's Notes
A collection of notes organized in the Zettelkasten style to foster creative thinking.
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Bond Management Is a Negative Art
Since gains from bond trading are capped by the yield at maturity, but only returns if the bond pays out, the value generated is not from what you buy but what you exclude, avoiding bonds that don’t pay out I.
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Clinical Trials of the COVID-19 Vaccine Was Not Designed to Discover the Optimal Regimen for Public Health
To get the COVID-19 vaccine approved quickly, companies focused on proving the efficacy.
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The Power Broker
This note does not have a description yet.
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Non-Fungible Tokens
This note does not have a description yet.
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NFTs Provide Digital Scarcity Among Digital Abundance
The internet brought digital abundance—content and media can be freely consumed at massive scale.
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Use a Monolith-First Architecture Because You Don't Yet Know the Boundaries
It’s difficult to start with microservices because that requires knowing more about the domain and boundaries within the domain that one could know up front.
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Notion as a Text Editor Is Quirky
Notion is a popular wiki that I started using more seriously recently.
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Stratechery
This note does not have a description yet.
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Clubhouse Is the Next Evolution of Podcasts
Clubhouse can be thought of as the next stage in the evolution of audio.
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Pro Rata Rights Causes Conflict Between Early and Late Investors
Pro rata rights allow investors to retain their percentage ownership in future rounds on the same terms as new investors.
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Fighting the Framework
In software development, when you are spending time trying to implement something that the framework you are using either doesn’t do or makes it harder.
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The Number One Job of a Startup CEO Is Finding Product Market Fit
Of all the roles and responsibilities an early stage startup CEO has, the most important is finding product market fit.
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Component-Driven Development
In frontend development, a component-driven workflow is a way of building websites and applications by breaking down the UI into smaller components and iterating on them independently and composing them together.
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All Employers Are Required to Report New Employees Within 7 to 20 Days
Each state requires new hires to be reported as per the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA).
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Mutagen Greatly Speeds Up Docker on MacOS
After noticing abysmal performance of Docker for macOS and after a few Google searches (searching ‘docker macos performance’ yields 5MM hits) to confirm the issue, the recommended solution is to use Mutagen.
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Stealth Mode Provides Optionality
When a company chooses to operate in stealth mode it provides optionality in a couple of ways.
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Stealth Mode
This note does not have a description yet. Links to this note Stealth Mode Provides Optionality When a company chooses to operate in stealth mode it provides optionality in a couple of ways.
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Python Type Hinting
Python 3+ has type annotations that can be used for static type checking using a separate program.
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Python
A dynamic programming language used heavily in the startup and scientific community.
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Code Architecture Docs Decrease the Time Spent Searching for Where to Make a Change
A software architecture doc (e.g. ARCHITECTURE.md) is a way of stating the overall structure of the code.
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An Antilibrary Reminds Us of What We Don't Know
An antilibrary is one’s collection of books that they have not read.
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All Problems in Computer Science Can Be Solved by Another Layer of Indirection
This is a quote attributed to David Wheeler, an early computer scientist who also invented subroutines among other things.
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Choose Boring Technology
A counter response to the growing sprawl of technologies that argues boring technology (tried and true, more mature) is far more effective than the latest shiny tool that gets popular on HackerNews.
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Writing Is Like Getting Naked in Public
Writing and sharing it is analogous to walking around naked in public.
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ASO
An administrative services organization (ASO) is an outsourcing provider for HR related administrative work.
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Italian Futurists Tried to Ban Pasta
In 1930, Italian Futurists led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti declared that pasta should be replaced with futurists foods and in the meantime, rice.
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No Straight Line Hierarchies
When organizing the information architecture for a website of applications, there should be no straight line hierarchies.
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Information Architecture
This note does not have a description yet. Links to this note No Straight Line Hierarchies When organizing the information architecture for a website of applications, there should be no straight line hierarchies.
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Benchmarking Results Can Be Very Different When Run in CI Tools
Most CI (continuous integration) tools run inside VMs in the cloud sometimes nested in other VMs.
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Continuous Integration
This note does not have a description yet. Links to this note Benchmarking Results Can Be Very Different When Run in CI Tools Most CI (continuous integration) tools run inside VMs in the cloud sometimes nested in other VMs.
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Journalism Is the First Draft of History
News is the first pass at writing down the history of our time.
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Demo Driven Development
Using demos as a way of focusing on specific functionality and elevating quality.
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Creative Selection
This note does not have a description yet. Links to this note Demo Driven Development Using demos as a way of focusing on specific functionality and elevating quality.
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Topgrading Reduces Mis-Hire Rate
In a study of companies that implemented a topgrading interview methodology, the mis-hire rate fell from 69.
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Schoening's Axe
On the ascent to K2 in 1953, Pete Schoening saved the lives of five members of the expedition by stopping the fall using his ice axe to wedge against a bolder along the mountain.