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What is a microservice? When are microservices a good idea? Lately, I get people asking me when microservices are a good idea. In systems design explains the world, I talked about big-picture issues like second system effect, innovator’s dilemmas, and more. Can systems design answer the microservices question? Yes, but you might not like the answers.

My blog, where i attempt to collect my thoughts and share the occasional interesting topic with others

Resilient payments systems, large-scale data storage with OLTP and OLAP systems, platform team challenges, and more.

We have usually given a ton of importance to launch day. Again and again, at the end of the development cycle for a new product, after a week of refinements and feedback from friends and colleagues, w...

GraphQL decouples the frontend team's data needs from the teams managing the API and data layers. GraphQL was first deployed for Facebook's native mobile applications. Clients and backends had rapidly diverging data needs. Mobile clients were different than web clients. Some APIs didn't even exist (e.g., hydrated serverside and sent as HTML). iOS applications might rarely (or never) be updated. * The ability to scale GraphQL is highly dependent on your underlying data architecture. Meta did i

Not all engineering work at Tailscale requires changing Go internals or deep insights into how to leverage the birthday paradox for NAT traversal. There are countless small bugs and edge cases that we investigate in our quest to meet an unreasonably high percentile of our users’ expectations. This is the story of one such investigation.

We hold phones from the future, running software designed a decade ago.

Video games are taking over the world and it's time for Design to take them seriously.

We are not minds that happen to have bodies to do their physical work. Rather, we are bodies that seem to have minds. We are bodies in motion that happen to produce a subjective sensation we call consciousness, which gives us the impression that we are something more than, or something other than, bodies. This is the remarkable illusion we call mind. — Simon Penny, Making Sense

What interface design differences exist between commercial software and, creative, developer tools for pros? Let's analyze and find out how to better design tools!

As design becomes critical to the success of businesses, design career paths ought to reflect that too. Product management is a natural

For every 1000 engineering graduates, India produces 1 designer. India’s startup ecosystem is desperately in want of trained UI/UX designers

The consumer subscription business model is certainly not a new concept. And as we’ve been investing in more B2C companies recently, we’re reminded just how popular this strategy to monetization continues to be. Even marketplaces, which traditionally just took a piece of each transaction, are now looking to charge monthly or annual fees. For example […]

No images? Click here Apologies for the error in yesterday's note, I said the M1 ran on Apple's A15 architecture when I meant it was A14 based. Appreciate the emails of those who brought it to my attention.

In the increasingly centralized world of web3, are there any benefits to using a blockchain? What would crypto look like without the blockchain? There are fundamental tradeoffs to using a blockchain architecture (see Blockchain tradeoffs). Blockchains choose transparency over privacy and decentralization over scalability. Decentralization is costly. For example, permissionless blockchains must deal with bad actors and spammers. A centralized service like Gmail can detect and eliminate spam by

Amazon wants to be a marketplace for India’s 40-plus streaming platforms, with the impending launch of Prime Video Channels in the country.

Something beyond rising energy and labor costs is leading to sticker shock on once-cheap urban amenities.

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Spotify faces an uphill task in India, with a price sensitive user base, and a congested and hard fought ad ecosystem

As hyper-addictive as it is today, TikTok's success took longer than you might think.

Customer acquisition is not the same as customer behaviour Read this edition online A paid 🔒 weekly emailer that explains fundamental shifts in business, technology and finance that happened over the last seven days in India.

And that helps explain the premium its shares command Read this edition online Tuesday, 06 September 2022 A weekly newsletter about the biggest changes in commerce—focusing on shifts that matter to you.

A new player is preparing to enter India’s crowded and yet duopoly-sided UPI payments market. Bengaluru-headquartered Slice, which became a unicorn late last year, plans to introduce UPI payments for its users within weeks, according to a source familiar with the matter. The startup is currently testing the new payments method within the firm, said […]

This is the full transcript of podcast #8 with Rob Koyfman

We launched Pebble on Kickstarter 10 years ago today! It was an amazing ride and I learned a lot from the experience. Story time…

TL;DR: Tailscale’s free plan is free because we keep our scaling costs low relative to typical SaaS companies. We care about privacy, so unlike some other freemium models, you and your data are not the product. Rather, increased word-of-mouth from free plans sells the more valuable corporate plans. I know, it sounds too good to be true. Let’s see some details.

Everything you didn't know about the Stripe 0->1000 story

Confluent's approach of growing from open source to commercial product has worked out well — the company defied conventional wisdom and still ended up thriving.

Plus! TikTok; Factors; Replacing Passwords, and a Big Tech Truce; Solve for the Disequilibrium ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌You're on the free list for The Diff.