The demo that is breaking the Internet 💎 Issue #1
Plus: some damn fine advice, military history, and ways to share your Netflix account.
Happy Friday!
What’s up? 😉
Do you like statistics? Yes? What about manipulating statistics to transform reality into a fairy tale? You’re already used to that? Ok. Well, I can say that since the beginning of this newsletter my subscribers grew by more than 400%!
I have three goals for This Week’s Worth:
Get to issue #25 without missing once
Have at least one more subscriber each week
Enjoy putting it together every time
So far so good. I’m trying to stay focused on the process, on enjoying it, not so much on the results of it. Which is hard, because I like stats.
Which leads us to “The Most Clicked Link in the Past Issue” award. There was a tie in the first place, between my very own blog, the app that lets you visualize TV episode ratings and the 12 Pubs of Christmas story.
A most accurate tweet 🎯
New to me 💡
Financial Advice For My New Daughter | 4 min read
If there’s a type of bait that I always bite is articles with fathers giving advice on parenting their daughters. That and those promising to take your chili con carne to the next level. Anyway, Morgan Housel knows a thing or two about investments and finance, but the advice collected here it’s not so much on how to invest/save as one would expect, as it is on how money works, what’s better than having more money, and above all, what true success looks like.
How I Built a Markdown Editor Earning $1300/mo Profit | 9 min read
This is an inspiring story of how a software dev put his skills to use (check!), building a solution for his needs (check!!), and be profitable in the process (check!!!). We all have these itches. Building tools is getting easier by the day. Why not be your first client? Two things I like about his story that are easy to dismiss but can make all the difference: the focus on making the MVP something that you are proud of, and the special attention to customer support.
The Battlefield After the Battle | 13 min read
This is only the 2nd issue of the newsletter, and we already have military history leaking here. Bret Devereaux is an ancient historian, that has a blog full of pedantic, long-form analysis on how war and other violent affairs are portrayed in media with some degree of inaccuracy. If you ever wondered if all battles, throughout history, were fought in muddy terrain, under the rain, after a fire tornado has ravaged the place, like in the movies, well, you might want to pass on this one.
A first look at Unreal Engine 5 | 9 min watch (the demo starts at 1:20)
You can tune-out the technical jargon, and focus on keeping your jaw from touching the floor. “Demo”, they call it *sighs*. Good luck feeling adequate next time you demo some label changing after pressing a button.
From the archive 🗂️
Life is Short | 8 min read
If there is something to take out of this newsletter, take this essay.
Paul Graham's essays are almost legendary in the tech community. They go everywhere in terms of topics: parenting, programming languages, writing, philosophy, startups, you name it. This is a special one. What do I do with the realization that I will only get 52 weekends with my 1-year-old? Or that I will only have 8 Christmas mornings with her believing in Santa? There are so many gut punches here. So many alerts to what we will miss dearly someday. Prune and savor.
These apps I discovered 🔎
Twitch Roulette | Everyone knows there is a growing number of people streaming while playing video games. Here, you are randomly assigned to a stream of someone with 0 viewers. The potential to make that person’s day is high, so give it a try, and say something in the chat.
Notopass | Remember that time you wanted to share your Netflix/Spotify/etc account with someone but didn’t want to give away your password? This app exists for that. You log in once and the resulting cookie will be available for anyone you invite to a specific group, inside the app. They will be your best friends forever, and your passwords stay safe.
GifRun | Who doesn’t love gifs? This is the tool to take your gif game to the next level. Just paste a link with the video from where you want to extract your gif and let it do its magic. And yes, the gif below was made with this app.
This week in a gif ✉️
High note ⚡
I hope you enjoyed these last minutes as much as me putting this together. If so, I’d love if you shared it with some friends.
You can also show some love by clicking that tiny 🤍 at the top of the email. It would help spread the word.
If you are one of those friends and someone shared this with you, you are in luck, buy them a beer next time you are together, and meanwhile, you can subscribe to This Week’s Worth here:
Until next week,
Filipe