back
user profile

AdamN

4,134karma·1,341submissions·August 27, 2009
about
AWS/Amazon Q - Berlin

Formerly Seattle, Nairobi, NYC:

* AWS Reliability Services (Fault Injection Service) - Region Isolation, AZ Power Outage and other tools for Chaos Engineering * AWS Developer Tools - building software teams to build software for other developers to build software * CTO at Factr - a geo/temporal research aggregation tool for international organizations and media * Founder of Kili.io - a public OpenStack for African markets based in Nairobi. * CTO at Yipit - Built the team and was initial dev (Python, Django, Ubuntu, AWS) * Way back when, I was the CTO of Forsalebyowner.com (acquired by Tribune Interactive).

Get in touch (adam@varud.com) if you have any interest in African technology, governance, Amazon, or anything in between.

recent activity (1,341 total)
comment
A thoughtful investor will be more interested in paid active users and cohort analysis of retention (in terms of actual usage) rather than subscription numbers/revenue in absolute terms. Engageme…
1y ago·view thread
comment
Reagan fired the ATCs when they tried to assert their rights - can't be good if they think they may be the next in line for DOGEing.
1y ago·view thread
comment
Come to Germany and try Deutsche Bank. Those monkeys are just throwing !@#$# at the wall. Moving from the US to Germany is like taking a time machine to another era when it comes to online banking.
1y ago·view thread
comment
I don't get the need for synchronous comms at all. I can book airplane tickets, food delivery, e-commerce generally, and most other things through a web interface. Not sure why I need to talk t…
1y ago·view thread
comment
This is analogous to the 'unlimited' vacation policy. Now instead of following a codified and shared standard the employee has to negotiate every vacation day and consider how it impacts th…
1y ago·view thread
comment
People say that but it's not really true. If they just have 1P cookies for basic functionality (login), then I believe there can be a discreet notice at the bottom informing the user of that fac…
1y ago·view thread
comment
Yes that is exactly what the big Aha! moment was. It has now been shown that doing these $100MM+ model builds is what it takes to have a top-tier model. The big moat is not just the software, the ma…
1y ago·view thread
comment
I've found that agile works if velocity is static and used for estimates ONLY and is flat over time. Once velocity is measured as an output metric and there is an attempt to improve it, you'…
1y ago·view thread
comment
> UK is almost twice the size of the largest US state--California You mean by landmass? Looks like the UK is quite a bit smaller than California and I presume is a middle-sized state in size terms…
1y ago·view thread
comment
Even for paid transactions that typically give better pricing (IBKR Pro), the prices are extremely cheap.
1y ago·view thread
comment
Minecraft on iPad is the way to go, then you can be off the Windows train entirely.
1y ago·view thread
comment
Death AND Taxes
1y ago·view thread
comment
Do they make 'double' rope? I know there is the internal structure and the external protection but I'm thinking something more like two independent internal structures such that if one…
1y ago·view thread
comment
That's true of a software developer in the narrow sense. In the broader sense there are skills around collaborating with others, working sync/async, delivering with quality, communicating s…
1y ago·view thread
comment
That sounds pretty close to right. House fires don't necessarily burn down the whole house with flames to the sky. My home had 2 pretty serious fires growing up (over 20 years): 1/ car fir…
1y ago·view thread
comment
It's not all that muddy under normal circumstances - if there are payments to the producers then it's an ad. There is the problem in extremis though - a person gets a cameo on a show and th…
1y ago·view thread
comment
It used to be a smaller, brighter place without ads.
1y ago·view thread
comment
Email was invented gratis by government and university employees who were largely paid by the public. Email worked fantastically for decades before the private sector monetized it with spam and CTAs …
1y ago·view thread
comment
There's a great few episodes on this in Borgen where the PMs paramour goes to the hospital because there are so many hormones pumped into Danish pigs and how powerful the industry is in the count…
1y ago·view thread
comment
Agriculture has been subsidized for security and stability reasons for a very long time - this isn't a trick it's the status quo ex ante.
1y ago·view thread
comment
I believe that has changed for the new EuroNCAP which does consider pedestrian safety in the score.
1y ago·view thread
comment
The precedent would otherwise be that it is ok ignoring and debasing the US Justice system.
1y ago·view thread
comment
Alex Jones using Twitter/X is on-brand.
1y ago·view thread
comment
Yeah - this is on OP if that is the case. No teacher wants that and it's annoying for the ahead kids and the behind kids. Better to give them something tangential to keep them engaged but still…
1y ago·view thread
comment
That's not necessarily the reason. OP probably was letting faster kids jump ahead but that doesn't really do anything helpful for a class that's going through a topic together step by …
1y ago·view thread
comment
There are nasal sprays in the US - and yes they are more targeted and better in general than pills. But Americans love their pills ... almost as much as Germans love their homeopathic remedies :-)
1y ago·view thread
comment
Apparently the retractable keel was noisy (creaking sounds?) so was left up at night.
1y ago·view thread
comment
No. Boeing is a case in point. When companies act defensive like that they burn trust that they are a serious engineering organization. I simply don't trust them at this point because they don…
1y ago·view thread
comment
Apparently the keel was noisy when down (creaking sounds I'm guessing?) and so they only put it down for sailing upwind. Really there should be a 'stabilize' button in the cockpit that …
1y ago·view thread
comment
> This leaves (1). This is why alignment and upward and outward visibility is so important - it banks you social capital with the people who have to allocate limited resources. The problem is that …
1y ago·view thread