As a part-time returning student at a community college - who's really just taking advantage of their fantastic advanced manufacturing facilities - most every teacher in this department subscribes to this approach. YouTube channels such as NYCCNC, Blondihacks, Weld.com, Titans of CNC, The Engineering Mindset, and others provide far superior material over any textbook, and the lecturers realize that any textbook they're obligated to assign just cannot keep up with the pace of innovation from the creator community. As such, "textbook sharing" is implicitly encouraged here, and the one or two students per class who actually buy the printed books are the butt of most of our jokes throughout the semester.
Now if only the languages department at this school would realize this. Those textbooks and "CDs" are the most egregiously overpriced materials, and it seems that none of the lecturers in the department want to put in the time to build a course around collaborative learning (group discussion) and the abundance of free materials available online.
TL;DR - thanks for being a goodguy/goodgal professor.
I'm so glad more professors are fighting this, especially at community colleges which are supposed to help those without means, not rent-seek them to financial death.
The worst part about a computer science degree is the sheer amount of brand new books they force you to buy since they come with online cd keys for 'additional learning materials' which is really just some scanned workpages, but for some reason it'd be mandatory you log in to this random book's website.
Back in the early 2010s, I was consulting with a then-budding startup called Momentum Machines (now Creator.rest), in which I was tasked with market validation for their Rube Goldberg-esque 6mx1mx2m burger-making machine (not a robot). When I'd speak with both independent and multi-franchise QSR owners, the resounding sentiment was that they absolutely craved an automated solution to replace line cooks, but they could not imagine replacing cashiers, who they believed were the face of the brand.
But in speaking with the few corporate offices that would bother to even respond to us, we'd be brushed us aside as nothing more than a novelty, as they considered any introduction of automation anywhere in the food-assembly process to be a hit to their brand promise of "freshness" and "quality."
Now with the Great Resignation giving employees a bit of an upper hand, I'm pretty sure the corporates are changing their tune in displacing the $15+/hr/unit meat suits ASAP. They're just waiting for the regional/tier-3 QSRs like White Castle to go all-in before making the plunge themselves.
I would hazard a guess that the economics of franchising made it so that corporate's priority was for franchisees to be dependent on their existing centralized and proprietary systems (equipment, supplies, etc.) - and therefore unless you could carve out a sweetheart deal like the unmaintainable McFlurry machines you were not desirable. After all, introducing anything new is just a risk to the existing, profitable business model. Much like how working from home was "impossible" until it was required.
Fast food has been in need of a shakeup for some time, anyhow. The quality bar across restaurants as a whole has kept getting pushed upwards but there's hardly any difference between the fast food chains of 1980 and now, other than brand designs, a token "healthy" option, and recipe changes for cost.
> but they could not imagine replacing cashiers, who they believed were the face of the brand.
I love places with ordering kiosks (or places that let me order using my phone). It's like going to the supermarket, I'd rather wait in line to order myself even if a real person was available to take my order right away.
But that auto fruit has mostly been picked already (at many places at least). McDonalds is even getting rid of its front line cashier staff now at many locations (with just one person to occasionally take cash from those who don't want to pay with a card).
Whoever you were talking to back then were probably just pretty closed minded and set in the ways of their industry. I think if you were to have these discussions today there would be a lot more people biting since there are some examples already of automated restaurants. Customers will pay extra for this novelty and you can even continue to price your item at a premium point while reaping the savings on real estate and labor:
A colleague of mine was contracted by one of several firms tasked with liquidating Theranos' Newark facilities back in Aug 2018. I took the opportunity to grab the equivalent of $15,000 of tools, furniture, scientific equipment, and of course, swag. All legally - liquidators are tasked with clearing the site of everything by a set time.
Had free reign throughout the facility for two days, scavenging through 200k sqft+ of warehouse, marveling at the cringey pseudo-motivational blather posted everywhere and grabbing whatever could fit into my apartment at the time. At one point, we spotted Holmes (and her "special needs" Siberian Husky puppy who left dribbles of urine on the warehouse floor) arguing with some operators from afar.
We weren't allowed to touch specific computers, chemicals or any hardware locked in the cages (incl Edison devices), but everything else was up for grabs, from high-end Mitutoyo measuring tools to Aeron chairs to U-Line desks, Theranos bumper stickers, water bottles, etc etc etc.
So yeah, I've got a few bits of Theranos branded gear... Still waiting on the right time to sell.
If you're in the mood to sell, I'd be interested. 0 -> o + .co @ gmail.
I like hubris branding for the same (mythical) reason Canadian engineers do iron rings [0]: so that maybe when I'm waivering on an important decision, I'll look down at the logo on my coffee cup and remember that some things are more important than immediate professional gratification.
As a tween who would beg his parents to take him to the OG Fremont store (Mission @ Warm Springs) back in the early 90s, and as a pimpled 14 year-old who was rejected by Fry's for a job but got scooped as a novelty hire at NCA Computer (also RIP), and as someone who spent several thousand dollars of his allowance on games, parts, peripherals, and of course impulse section candy bars, this is the one vestige of my childhood foray into electronics and computing that's held out this long. Weird Stuff and CompUSA were great, but didn't have the same kitsch or, ahem, 'smell' as Fry's. The dime-a-dozen corporate park outfits you'd find ads for in Computer Currents (I'm looking at you, Laitron Computers) just didn't have the same "browsability" or relatively welcome vibe where you could literally spend hours in whichever store just looking for inspiration and guidance on future career paths in tech.
Sure, most of the open box items were used and vandalized, but they were cheap and worked great with a little elbow grease. Sure, 97% of the employees treated customers like shit and huddled in clique-ish corners mocking us for whatever stupid reason - but the 3% of employees that cared (and who were also horribly underpaid) were absolutely amazing at their job. Sure, the food was crap when they started adding cafes. But watching the oversized Tesla coil do its thing while you get a sugar rush from the Frappuccino was better than any Disney experience.
It was a long time coming, but I will miss you Fry's. I'm hoping MicroCenter, Central Computer, Jameco, Anchor, and the other "independents" stick around just a little bit longer.
I was here just three weeks ago. It's not an ideal deprivation experience as much as it is an optimal acoustic testing lab, especially considering the vibrations you experience from trying to stay still on the lattice floor (see picture 3: https://www.instagram.com/p/BT47Lluje03/).
Fittingly, the serial number field on the door leading to the room was blank. Not needed for the only one of its kind, I suppose.
Civilization and SimCity addict here. After 7+ hours of play, pushing out over 1,200 products, putting on hundreds of events for hype value, hiring good engineers and designers, hiring robots, making every product design possible, firing said good engineers and designers, researching everything, expanding to every location, acquiring all the competition, decommissioning the robots, attaining $1.1trillion in revenue, then achieving corporate nirvana by purchasing The Foundry AI, I get this nice little kick in the pants: http://i.imgur.com/4LF3rjx.png
Without trying your app (not available to US users) or knowing if it's a freemium or ad model, I can't really provide too much insight.
KISS and Mixpanel are nice, but there's little to no point in using them if you don't have your KPIs prioritized, and they may be overkill. I've found it just as effective to track growth via Google Analytics and a series of SQL queries, in conjunction with a dashboarding service like chart.io. I also used Flurry for a while, but it frustrated me quite a bit (Mixpanel offers a lot of the same features, btw). And if your app is HTML5, GA event-tracking is just as effective.
Since mobile is the primary interface, month-over-month growth rate is your live-or-die 'macro' metric, calculated as simply ('users_at_end_of_last_month' - 'users_at_end_of_prior_month') / 'users_at_end_of_last_month'. As of Apr 10, users_at_end_of_last_month would be Mar 31 and prior_month would be Feb 28. Many contextualize this metric as 'churn,' for which there are numerous calculations. Shopify gives a good example. [1]
Of course, it's way more complicated than this. And other KPIs include iTMS downloads/ratings/reviews, average time-to-subscribe, average time per session, number of events per session, DAU/WAU/MAU, e-mail conversion (assuming you manage lists/campaigns), etc.
There was also a pretty good overview of how to set up cohort analysis via SQL queries on HN today [2]. Here's where you may want to start using Mixpanel, but only if you're running targeted campaigns.
Most importantly, read up on Andrew Chen's blog, starting with this post [3]. This series by the Rapportive CEO [4] is also a good model.
[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/