Alex Preston / blog

April 2022 Links

Wed May 4 2022

Young Inventor Makes Bricks From Plastic Trash | World Wide Waste

Interesting video on how an entrepreneur in Kenya is turning plastic trash into bricks for roads. The concerns on microplastics raised in the video led me down a rabbit hole to learn about microplastics in drinking water.

Killed by Google

Google Graveyard. All these were killed by Google even though some of these projects were bringing in hundreds of millions in revenue. I saw this talked about on indiehackers; the poster was discussing how many of these products/services could be used as inspiration for profitable SaaS ideas.

Blitzscaling 18: Brian Chesky on Launching Airbnb and the Challenges of Scale

I've been listening to the Blitzscaling series and this was one of my favorites. Brian is an outstanding storyteller and he shares so much amazing advice on startups.

We Went Inside the Largest Nuclear Fusion Reactor

Lately, I've been interested in learning about Nuclear Fission and Fusion reactors. This short video was where I got started.

Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice

This was the first article I read when I found Kalzumeus's blog. It's his most popular article and I can easily see why. The post is a bit pessimistic and it's hard to gauge how accurate it is to the tech industry as a whole (as I've never worked a full-time engineering job). However, I imagine this will be great to refer back to when I start working full-time post-grad.