“Why are Tumblr and Facebook cracking down on sex so much? And why is Facebook in so over zealous about it? It’s all Apples fault!” Etc etc

I can explain all. It is largely the fault of a set of US laws called SESTA and FOSTA.

🎉🎉 PHP 7.3 is here!

Here are the things I'm excited about.

🚂 Trailing commas in function/method calls!

This will certainly be a required styling choice for me. Same delightful benefits of trailing comma in multi-line PHP arrays, and JavaScript objects.

🧵 Less disgusting heredoc syntax!

Inlining heredoc strings in any way right now is grrrosssss. Now we get sensible capabilities. Everything that was wrong with it is now fixed!

(Ignore the bad syntax highlighting)

☠️ Finally, not-so-silent json_decode error detection!

This really sucked before, now it just sucks a bit less (who wants to pass a 4th param and pass 2 default params first? (helper function anybody?)

📜 Not horrible functions for getting the first and last item (or key) from an array!

Before you either strung a bunch of functions together or messed with internal array pointers. This is a much-needed improvement.

Most software founders, particularly in B2B, need to get radically better at sales. @Steli , who is the best person for explaining the scrappy stages in the beginning and then building out a team with scripts and processes, wrote a guide to:

For technical founders it is irrationally, obscenely hard to reverse years of programming (ba dum bum) that sales is a value-destroying activity. Sales is CLEARLY a value-creating activity, contingent on you have a value-creating product.

The world will not drop what they are doing to adopt your work. This is particularly true in B2B, where simply building a better mousetrap won't overcome the activation energy required to get people with additional non-mice problems to prioritize changing mousetraps today.

This is very non-obvious for founders because founders are not often people who *want* to be sold to. We often come from a background where trying out tools is a bit of a fun hobby. We like looking at all the options, making charts, and ripping out partially complete tests.

"This week I unsuccessfully trialed four software options for automating that thing that has been killing us. Our actual production process remains the same as last week. Don't worry; this was a great use of time." is not a thing you want to write in a progress report to manager.

Last weekend, I made a threat on the ongoing #SocialMedia shutdown in Uganda and some implications on the future of #internet & Uganda's #digital agenda.

The thread attracted a lot of engagement and questions. Tonight, I will share some final thoughts on the subject. (1)

Conceptually, social media sites are the largest on-boarding platforms for internet users in Uganda. Notably, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram & Snapchat attract the highest internet traffic- which drives demand for other platform services e.g Google and Zoom recently.

So- when we talk about an "open internet", we mean the FULL resources of the internet. Any encumberance on selected applications has ripple effects across the entire network thus jeorpadizing standardization of internet/data transmission which is essential for innovation & growth

Furthermore, shutdowns hinder network interoperability (technical ability to plug/link one digital product or service into another product or service). Interoperability is the heart of the "Internet of things" eg business, devices, networks, services, e-govt, integration etc #IoT

Because the internet is a global resource, shutdowns enhance a digital divide (the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern ICTs, and those that don't or have restricted access). Ironic that 3rd world countries have the highest number of shutdowns globally.

I read two-and-a-half decades worth of Jeff Bezos’s Amazon shareholder letters.

It’s like a mini MBA.

Here I’ve pulled out a free guide for startups, investing, marketing, and “web3”🧵

(It’s a thread, not an ebook)

First, why the focus on web3?

It’s the mid 90’s. A 30-year-old Jeff Bezos is trying to raise money for Amazon. And investors are wondering,

“What’s this internet thing?”

Fast forward, the year is 2022, and folks today are wondering,

“What’s web3?”

Now, a little background…

In 1994, Bezos quit a well paying job to start Amazon.

It wasn’t an easy decision. But Bezos used his famous “regret minimization framework.”

In other words, he didn’t want to be 80 and regret not doing what he really wanted to do.

But what did he want?

Bezos didn’t set out to disrupt retail from the outset.

He simply wanted to come up with a business idea based on the internet and then let the internet grow around it while he kept working on it.

Today, that idea is worth $1.7 trillion and counting.

Moving on to the lessons…

Each year since 1997, Bezos has written an annual letter to Amazon shareholders.

These letters reveal a great deal of lessons and secrets behind his massive success.

So what are they?