My wife's 2008 Mac still boots up just the same, just needs a new battery and charger, otherwise, it might be sluggish, but given how much faster things are now, it probably runs the same as it ever did.
There are a lot of things to do outdoors around Maryland: there are a lot really good MTB (or just hiking) places, like Rockburn and Patapsco State Park; beaches are within two hours away; ski / snowboarding places within two hours away; and then there's the Chesapeake Bay.
I think it's reckless to make claims like this even with genuinely useful technology because it triggers the "Arrogant engineers think tech is the answer to everything" response which leads to people in other fields dismissing things out of hand that could actually be worthwhile.
It's been years since I have worked in this space, but, at the time, my group was charged with finding fraud committed by the providers and beneficiaries.
It was interesting work: we had data tapes shipped from CMS to us, we loaded the data into a Sybase database, and then used an analysis tool (which I can't recall the name of) to look for patterns of fraud - again, this was what now seems like a lifetime ago.
Is anyone currently working detecting Medicare and Medicaid fraud?
One of the interesting things I there while there was develop a Java app and Python script to semi-automate the loading of tapes.
Previously, a person had to load a few tapes into a magazine, place it into a machine, and manually load each tape - they had to sit in a secure room, wait for a tape to be loaded, and press a button to for the machine to load the next tape!
Since this tape machine was old, there wasn't a lot of documentation, but I did find enough information to develop a script that loaded each tape, placed the data in the correct directory based on the tape's header information, and then emailed the data team once all the tapes in the magazine were loaded. It freed up that person to do meaningful work while the data tapes were being loaded.
Cryptopals is great! :) If you've gotten all the way through set 6 and are interested in a first software security gig, get in touch. Those challenges have been a pretty excellent predictor for us.
I have a MBA, but I'm also the lead developer (and project manager) of my project. I rather be coding instead of being in front of people and giving presentations, but I do those things to ensure my project is successful (and that it grows). And I think most of business books and ideas are recycled non-sense.
Maybe we'll meet in the future, but not all developers with MBA's are that bad...
An article called "The Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry" relates how the meal-kit industry faces the same problem(s) as Groupon:
"The problem Groupon faced was that their initial success validated a model that anyone could copy, and everyone who copied it increased both Groupon’s cost of customer acquisition and its churn rate."
Yes, ideally in a competitive market for something that is a "commodity" type of good, profits fall to (near) zero. Not what VC investors are looking for.
