The Bootstrapping Byte #7 - The Bird's Slayer

As announced in the previous edition, I'm switching to a bi-weekly format and bringing a bit of structure to the Bootstrapping Byte:

• 🔥 Hot Off the Press: a short selection of what is moving the tech world
• 💊 Down the Rabbit hole: a deep dive to stimulate the neurons
• 🦆 Coder's corner: a tasty treat for developers
• 🛠️ Live from Dad's Garage: what I'm working on (maybe you can help ^^)

Have a good read!

🔥 Hot Off the Press

Killing the bird and refurbishing x.com

Twitter has been renamed X. The company scrapped its nice rounded blue bird and now displays a mysterious unicode X. The new branding comes along with other changes such as the direct compensation of content creator for the views they generate. According to analyst, it's seen as a first step to create a multipurpose platform "X-App" following the example of WeChat in China (which Elon Musk cited in several interviews as an example of ecosystem-app). For the occasion, Elon Musk reused the x.com domain that he bought at the beginning of Paypal.

The speed of the rollout of something which seems having been decided pretty recently is amazing. In other context, it would have taken month or years to kill the tweeting bird 🪦.

Twitter is being rebranded as X

The bird site may lose its logo on Monday.

The Verge

LK-99, the superconductor that will save the world!

Last week a team of Korean scientists claim having developed a room-temperature superconductor, the LK-99: a material able carrying electricity at room temperature with zero resistance. The scientific community welcomed the new with skepticism (existing superconductors require very cold temperatures) while the DIY community rushes to replicate the results. If it happens to be true it would be a major breakthrough, dirsupting many industries.

Worldcoin's official launch - get cryptos for your iris print

Worldcoin, a biometric crypto project co-founded by Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI), started to roll-out its services. People queued to get they iris scanned by these futuristic-Orwellian sphere in exchange of few cryptos, especially in Asia and Africa. The stated objective of Worldcoin is to offer a universal biometric ID - called World ID - to authenticate people online.

Sam Altman’s Worldcoin eyeball-scanning crypto project launches | TechCrunch

Worldcoin, Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning crypto startup, has started the global rollout of its services, three years after it began its work.

TechCrunchManish Singh

💊 Down the Rabbit Hole - Life after SaaS

With LLM all over the place and the explosion of no-code applications many announce the doom of the developper's walled garden. For the time being, the role is evolving (especially accelerating with tools such as GitHub Copilot - which quickly reach 1+ million users) but it's not endangered yet.

That said what is the impact of AI on what developer produce, i.e. software? What software application might look like in the future?

I stumbled upon the concept of "malleable software" which is basically the ability for a user to take a piece of software and change some part of it to tailor it to his/her specific needs. Pushed to the limit, this means users could create a customised version of software that perfectly fits their needs, with all the technical complexity handled in the background. Wouldn't that be awesome?

What Comes After SaaS?

Bespoke apps for everyone—customized by AI

Chain of ThoughtDan Shipper

🦆 Coders' Corner - An Email masterclass with Andriss Reinmann, the father of nodemailer

Email is a very old technology, it's somewhat crude, but it's everywhere and isn't going away soon. Andris Reinman, the creator of the Nodemailer JavaScript package (with 2.8 million weekly downloads), covers a wide range of topics around this 50-year-old technology.

🛠️ Live from Dad's Garage

This is a brand new section where I will share insights about the projects I'm working on, as well as what I'm learning. If you there is a topic that you particularly care about or want to give me some feedback, ping me at nico@bootstrappingdad.com.

Writing my first tech tutorial: How to send Ghost newsletter with Brevo - an alternative to mailgun native integration

Ghost is a popular open source blog platform (this is the one that I'm using for The Bootstrapping Dad). When it comes to newsletter, Ghost has for the time being only one native integration: mailgun. However, if you want to use another mail provider, there is no off-the-shelve solution.

Last week I've created a simple server that creates an email campaign with Brevo to send newly published articles. This is pretty quick and dirty but it can be re-used as a boilerplate to execute more advanced tasks:

https://bootstrappingdad.com/building-a-simple-app-to-send-newsletter-emails-with-brevo-a-free-alternative-to-mailgun/

Next step here is to share this article on different Ghost forums (where people are asking for mailgun alternative) and see if it sparks some interest (generating traffic or activity on the code repository which is open).

Looking for interviewees to assess the potential of a new ed-tech project - Parents with children aged below 10

Now having two kids growing up at home, I'm getting increasingly interested into the topic of children's education.

Over the next 2-3 weeks, I'm looking to interview parents to learn more about how people approach children's education, their routines, center of interests and challenges.

You have children aged between 3 and 10 years old? I would love to hear about you and your experience as a parent!

Thanks for reading and see you in the next opus!

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