> Epson stopped making their flatbeds that do film, reportedly because they can’t get the CCDs anymore. That may be a rumor.
Wow, you weren’t kidding, I completely missed this. I bought one, sold it, then bought and currently own another. I better baby it, there’s really nothing like it out there.
This is cool. I spent ~$1k on a Pakon F135+ a number of years ago, and the workflow was indeed extremely frustrating and the results not that great. If I were still shooting a lot of film I’d definitely pick this up. But we need to see sample images!
I really feel horrible for people who bet on CS and are hitting this job market right now. It's interesting, back when I was in elementary school in the 90's, parents of friends knew I had an interest in computers and would tell me becoming a programmer or IT person was a terrible job and I should avoid it. That was maybe true until it wasn't, and it ended up being highly lucrative. I can't tell if this is the same thing all over again or something completely different. What I think will be fascinating to watch is how the market for talented engineers changes as the bottom drops out and the pipeline of new grads dries up, or maybe it will balance out again? Or will these companies reap what they sow as they stop hiring and then cannot hire again because no one is entering the field anymore?
AI may actually change everything but I suspect things are cyclical to at least some degree. The $400K jobs may dry up for most--and certainly having two or more those jobs at the same time will--especially for people without degrees or degrees from no-name colleges or boot camps. It may be reasonable to expect CS/programming jobs will become more like lots of other STEM degrees in terms of requirements and comp.
Which is certainly a lot different than the expectations that were set since post dot-com.
Obviously (? I think) there will be jobs but they may well be more in line with middle-class professional jobs than some cadre has been in the last 10-20 years.
You can look out to other economies to see how software plays out in a "normal" market, not a VC and mega-corp backed one. Salaries in those economies for software are like you are predicting, in line with other skilled professions.
It was the same for me growing up in the shadow of Silicon Valley in the early aughts, post dot com crash. Even when I went to college in 2008 the conventional wisdom was that there weren’t going to be any jobs in software, it was all being outsourced. I studied CS anyways, because I loved it. It was still very hard to get my first job out of college in 2012.
But then from like 2015-2022 things got crazy. Anyone with a CS degree, or even a boot camp certificate, could immediately get a 200k/year job with little effort. And people started to think this was normal, would last forever. But in fact this was a crazy situation, it absolutely could not last.
I feel for the young people who thought (or were told) that CS degrees were an automatic ticket into the upper middle class. But in reality, there’s no such thing.
> I feel for the young people who thought (or were told) that CS degrees were an automatic ticket into the upper middle class. But in reality, there’s no such thing.
It's not just about money. Besides, the gold rush that you describe was only this big in the US, for a certain subset of workers, and only during a limited time (I feel like splitting up the 2015-2022 period into pre- and post-pandemic is more than warranted on its own). I went into CS not with an expectation of endless riches, but because I really like computers. My goal isn't $200k/year, it's employment. I would more than gladly take a lower-end job doing digital pencil-pushing, or IT, or tech support, or really anything that lists a CS degree as an acceptable education for the job. But it's not just that the money had dried up - the jobs aren't lower-paid, they're not less attractive, they just don't exist anymore. I can't imagine what the job search was like for you in 2012, but whatever financial pessimism might've existed at that time seems like a wholly different beast to what we have today.
2012 was also on the tail end of the Great Recession. I actually somewhat reluctantly hung on where I was for an extra year or two because I didn’t want to play my connections cards in a tough market. As it turned out it basically took one email but I didn’t know that would be the case.
Back before the Dotcom Boom, unless you were in Silicon Valley, most jobs were "Programmer/Analyst" and you worked for low wages for a big company. This is what I did and it took me many years before I could get my foot in the door in Silicon Valley but once I did, I never looked back.
From what I've seen, CS/programming job growth is significantly worse than in other comparable fields. Though my guess is that's a retrenchment from overhiring and overpaying.
The data I've seen on under& unemployment for recent grads from the federal reserve bank puts comp sci kinda middle of the pack of other science & engineering majors.
I would expect CS doing better than EE or Physics or Chemistry or ME ...
In some science fields good luck getting a job if you don't have a Ph.D.
But otherwise, yes, these things are cyclical. But I think the trend, even with AI, is still towards more software. We've had explosive growth over the last few decades.
>> company in America is struggling to hire technicians, and the problem - (in spite of what you'll likely read in the comments,) has nothing to do with the pay, the benefits, or the working conditions.
When CEO says it has nothing to do with the pay - it is exactly the reason why there are shortages of the talent.
Interesting how it seems a bunch of competition entered the market right as they did this as well. Unifi UNAS just came out and looks pretty compelling
Asustor is not new. I remember seeing it at the university (probably) a decade ago. It was a much simpler 4 disk unit without any screens or fancy specs. My professor told that the looks might be deceiving but it was a good unit.
I took a note of them mentally at that point, but their latest gen hardware is something else. Since I'm a sysadmin by trade, having some of the features that I have in the datacenter at home is a compelling proposition for me.
They're taking advantage of kids right out of college that don't know any better and don't have any other personal obligations. Anyone with experience or a few more years of life can see right through it. I agree, if you expect these hours you better be offering significant skin in the game to balance the scales.
Unfortunately, the writing's on the wall for mainstream adoption of Zigbee. For me, Leviton not making any more Zigbee smart switches was the last straw and I've prioritized Z-wave devices where possible. I also get much better performance out of Z-wave. Sad to see though, as the Zigbee devices I do have are working just fine. I don't really get the point of Matter or Thread when Z-wave works so well.
It's pretty straightforward: Z-Wave is a closed (one company owns and controls the tech and brand) hub-bound mesh, and really should've been displaced by an open solution long ago. Matter is an industry-standard IPv6-based application layer that works over Thread (the successor to ZigBee) and Wi-Fi.
Z-wave also uses 900mhz in the US, which penetrates walls better and has less competition with 2.4 (Zigbee). So while its closed, it usually more performant than Zigbee (in my experience...)
Yes - but it does feel over-engineered in some places (for good reason, having device profiles that everyone adheres to makes supporting a new device of a given class a doddle for smart home platforms) and it is definitely more finicky at present to pair devices than with Zigbee.
If I had to wipe and re-setup my smart home with 100 Zigbee devices and 18 Matter over Thread devices (Tado smart thermostat and TRV's) the Zigbee devices would take me about half an hour in total to have back up and running in HomeAssistant, the Matter over Thread devices would take me around 2-3 hours as you have to pair them one-at-a-time.
> Once HA includes the Matter credential store in backups/restores, the experience will be the same
It was more a comparison of how quick and easy adding a Zigbee device is compared to adding a Matter device. Hit "Enable join" and the new device just shows up. For Matter it's either scanning a QR Code, waiting, hoping your phone is close enough for the initial bluetooth handshake - or hit "share" from an existing smart home platform (e.g. Apple/Google Home) which in my experience takes around 30s at a minimum.
Congrats! I'm a customer. Haven't used it too much but so far I like having it to check in periodically. One wish list item: live securities prices to avoid having to copy/paste values all the time. For example, with that you can have a live snapshot of the values in most brokerages
Account linking for automated balance updates is our most upvoted and most controversial feature request.
I agree it would be really nice if it worked well, but my understanding from other founders is that aggregator reliability still leaves a lot to be desired in 2025, and is always a huge expense and support burden. As a small, bootstrapped team building a long-term planning tool where current balances are only a small piece of the picture, we need to be really careful about what we choose to take on. Currently there are still dozens of other high-priority feature requests that will also deliver real value but without those downsides.
I do go back-and-forth on this though. And I think eventually there will come a time for it.
Glad to hear you're enjoying the tool, and thanks so much for your support!
p.s. also might be worth noting that there is a plugin system, and community members have built integrations that can pull in balance updates automatically from some of the popular budgeting tools.
Account linking should be reasonably straightforward in the EU with PDS2 open data. I was able to hack together some python via one of the intermediary services to get up to date bank data. There is the complication that the bank doesn't always have fully live data.
Approaches involving password sharing you're right to stay well away from.
To provide a data point from a long-time ProjectionLab user, I don't really need account linking. I use Monarch Money to link cash and CC accounts to track spending.
I use a custom Google Sheet to track retirement portfolio performance. If =GOOGLEFINANCE isn't enough, there is a nice paid extension called WiseSheets, which adds a =WISE function that fills all the gaps.
My monthly ProjectionLab process is to update the "Current Finances" values on the first of the month, using the values from the other tools. Works well enough for me!
I'm glad to hear you have a workflow for updating current finances that's already serving you well. I do plan to add a lot more automation/integration options, it's just always a question of where to invest my time to deliver the most value to the community efficiently.
Something people don't always realize instantly is that with a long-term planning tool, the point is to spend the bulk of your time focused on the future, not fixating on all the latest daily stock price fluctuations... in fact, those can sometimes be a source of noise/distraction.
I don't need/want account linking, I just want $VTSAX etc recent prices. I know it can be noise but what you're saving me from is really annoying copy/paste work when I come in quarterly to update numbers and track my progress.
sounds like that would also mean overhauling the data model to track individual positions within every account, not just balances?
and then folks would expect every account's asset allocation to be automatically derived from those positions too I imagine? that would differ a lot from how asset allocation modeling and change over time currently works in the tool.
maybe I'm missing something, but it feels like there could be a lot of complexity here that would need to be carefully weighed against the product vision and other things on the roadmap.
I think all I can do as a customer is just say what my biggest pain point is (having to copy and paste a bunch of values every time I check in with the tool) and however you think it's best to solve that, or to not solve it, is really up to you.
I think adding account linking is something you absolutely should not do, that definitely will add so much complexity and also touches up on people's security fears around 3rd party linking, so definitely don't do that.
Will keep using the product for sure. Nice work and congrats on the success so far
Live is overkill, all they'd need is an every 30-60 minute update on equity prices, which is not an overly expensive thing to acquire. With a 65% profit margin in their business, this is a dead-obvious feature they should be automating away to save their users a sizable headache.
This is probably impossible in 2025. Many stock exchanges now make more money from selling data feeds than trading fees. It is a little bit crazy. The best that you can hope for is a delayed feed, or last closes.
That's the best part about VTSAX and chill: you only ever have last closes. Really though this does not need to be real time at all, just recent enough to save me toil
This is incorrect. Almost all brokers nowadays allow for OAuth connections where you can stream any data you'd see in your broker platform to any consuming web application (given the consuming web application does all the paperwork, dev work, and so on)
That is a mighty broad brush. I can confidently say that this is untrue for many brokers in continental Europe and North Asia. US brokers? If yes, can you provide some examples?
Just raising as much money as you can when you can from even great firms is how so many founders get themselves in big trouble down the road and reduce their exit optionality or introduce deathly signaling risk. But if you can take lots of secondary to derisk and build that nest egg I guess have at it
