Related Articles

Startup Life

Mining Gold in Ghettos

October 26, 2017 Eli 3

In the United States EVERYONE as money.  Ghettos and poor places can be terrific areas to start when you’re a n00b or starting your tech business.

3 Comments

  1. Reminds me of what happened to xmarks firefox extension in mid 2000s.
    Back then, browser vendors did not offer services to synchronize your bookmarks, settings etc, so (1) if you had multiple computers you could not access your bookmarks, login history, going from one computer to another. (2) if anything happened to your computer, all you bookmarks would be lost. (I have seen so many tears over that from customers)

    So xmarks extension was created to solve this. It became very famous. But it was free and the author could not support running synchronization service after a while. So announcement was put out, making big devastating news, of the service being discontinued and all bookmarks being lost.

    The feeling of despair was strong enough that people offered to pay for the service. So xmarks did a survey of who will be willing to pay for it and from the results decided that they could form a real company if that number of users really did pay as they suggested they would.

    The company was formed, payment gateways introduced… and single, maybe barely double digits of people from the large masses that offered to pay, actually did. So they went under.

    To add insult to injury, shortly after, both Firefox and Chrome (which just came out then) began to synchronize bookmarks across multiple browser instances without needing installation of extra extensions, which made xmarks even more financially worthless. So even if they did make enough revenue, it would have been a purely circumstantial success lasting only until next browser version, emphasizing that great ideas alone have no legs.

  2. So I’ve been watching Eli (the Computer Guy) for ~3yrs and Jordan Peterson for about 1 1/2yrs. Finally, after watching your recent JP videos, I decided to quit freeloading and fork over the $60 membership. Not because I liked them, but because they suuuuuuuucked. So disappointing. I’ve been hoping “when is Eli going to talk about JP?” And then I find out he put out 3 over the year’s end, but they’re 1 1/2 hrs long and relatively slow, and dull, and full of responding to YouTube comments. Like why? (Ok so I guess you’ve explained the structure and intent of the daily blob. Maybe I should stop telling you what to do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EYYSr_kJHM&t=778s)

    But I think you wasted some good clickbait titles this time, though. And I’m surprised you’re so lukewarm on JBP. I don’t think he’s just a 200 level psychology professor that talks about minutiae of gender differences. Nor do I think you’re just a computer guy that talks about the minutiae of Cisco vs A+ certification. But I do smell some haterism. I think you may have missed the boat on why JP has blown up overnight.

    Here’s a good counterposition:
    Eli on White Privilege https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRtcPyEcx2w
    Jordan, Ph.D on White Privilege https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbDggKqt3KA
    Both videos are quite thoughtful.
    As a “black, hetero, cis-male” software engineer, with no college degree, some Army time, and a number of “Dundalk” friends, I ask myself “why are Eli’s JP videos so long and dull?” (PS thanks for helping me polish my resume, “computer guy”.)

    Remember the “Vid.me Trilogy” where Eli single-handedly took down the Vid.me Empire and their legion of speech-suppressing minions. Remember the Eli that ditched YouTube and Big Internet over free speech and Terms of Service concerns.

    Eli:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3IS4WRoPUU&t=890
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1U1fw0vb_A

    JP:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp-pKo80-4c
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XyXCOP71DE

    Don’t waste your clickbait, man. (PS JP is not a cult leader. He’s just saying don’t be like Cain, but like Abel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJEshdpyDWs)

  3. Eli, may I make a suggestion? I was looking to find your videos on the Arduino. I ended up bouncing around between the “Eli the Computer Guy youtube channel” and the “Eli the computer guy web page” trying to work out which was more up to date. The youtube channel has 9 video of which 3 are private and the webpage lists 5. On the Arduino kit review you reference you live channel (not sure where that is or if it exists).

    Anyway I was thinking it would help if there was a page for subscribers to FailedNormal that links to all the correct places to go for your content. I ended up searching for Eli the Computer Guy Arduino on Google to try to get to find all the pieces.

    Apologies if I have missed something obvious!

    Cheers
    Russell.

Leave a Reply