Our waitlist is open for https://flatm8.co.uk - the platform for anonymous reviews of Landlords and Estate Agents in Britain and Ireland.
We’re working directly with partner housing unions and charities in Britain and Ireland to build the first central database of rogue landlords and estate agents. Users can search an address and see if it’s marked as rogue/dangerous by the local union, as well as whether you can expect to see your deposit returned, maintenance, communication - etc.
After renting for close to a decade, it’s the same old problems with no accountability. We wanted to change this, and empower tenants to share their experiences freely and easily with one another.
We’re launching in November, and I’m very excited to announce our partner organisations! We know this relies on a network effect to work, and we’re hoping to run it as a social venture. I welcome any feedback.
I’d love to know how it went for you and if there’s anything we can learn from your experiences - you’re right that it’s sorely needed! The statistics are getting worse and worse and worse… please feel free to email any thoughts or ideas based on your launch to team @ domain !
No it most certainly is not - I look forward to seeing your factual statements on the platform :) We'll be filtering out names so that reviews are attached to addresses, with a background effort on tying together problematic landlords and their property portfolios with some help from the housing unions.
This is awesome! Can I ask what development looks like? Do you run this in a VM or on bare metal? When you sit down and work on this, what does it look like?
I bet you learned a lot with this - how do you keep notes and track your development? Or is the OS your live journal. Thanks
I do maybe 95% of testing on a VM. It is way faster and much more convenient. I do test on real hardware regularly though. It's always cool to see stuff actually running on bare metal and bare metal is not as forgiving as VMs can be.
Generally I decide a feature I want to add. Then I do a general overview of
the corresponding specifications and sometimes look at how already existing OSs handle that. I try to make some kind of mental model about the system and what it needs. Then I basically just write what ever I come up on the spot.
I have a really bad habit of not writing docs or taking notes. Basically I just hold everything in my head (and forget about it when I would need that information again). For some more complex stuff I do draw diagrams and write notes but I pretty much only keep those locally for myself.
> I have a really bad habit of not writing docs or taking notes. Basically I just hold everything in my head (and forget about it when I would need that information again).
This was me for a very long time. I started making notes now, knowing that I will most likely forget (some of it). I still have all sorts of files scattered around though with my notes, i.e. the notes are disorganized (to some extent). I thought of using Obsidian for them and I have tried it but I do not use it consistently, I just go for my XTerm window with emacs or vim.
Always struck by the economics these sort of orgs must be fabricating to assume that:
"Digital video piracy is costing the US economy between $29.2 and $71 billion each year." (What an absolutely huge margin)
and
"Annual global revenue losses from digital piracy are between $40 and $97.1 billion in the movie industry."
As if all these people who consume this pirate content would be purchasing it if the free alternative wasn't available to them. It's a very out of touch assumption to be making I think.
My partner. She continues to be my best friend, my most trusted advisor, my team mate, my teacher, and my moral inspiration. I love her dearly, she's incredibly principled, and absolutely hilarious. We're trying to save up to buy a house together currently and I am so very thankful I've found someone I feel so relaxed with - enough to start planning together into the future.
There's so many angles of this that feel uncomfortable to me.
ChatGPT and Open AI were released ahead of Sam's talks with regulators to allow for an organic and unregulated response to - and use of, these tools. This included producing examples of the threats to authorship and ease-of-access to sophisticated language and programming help for bad actors.
Altman now holds in his other hand an antidote to this in the form of a new technology that requires biometric data on a global scale, creates crypto noise for wealth generation for him and investors, and doesn't actually promise much beyond creating an inevitable leak of biometric data.
Altman is a long term thinker, and his decisions about Open AI were clearly contributing to the production of a landscape that was ready for WorldCoin. Given the data implications of that - it all makes me feel really uncomfortable!
This doesn't even necessarily reflect on his personal ambitions with the project - the outcomes are enough to assess it with.
I bought this course a year or two back and I don't feel short changed whatsoever, I really enjoyed it and thought that something will have caused the projec to drop off as the passion and knowledge is there in all your content.
Thanks for the work you've done on it so far - and super excited to find out that the passion is still burning to make it even better.
I'm so happy to hear that. The initial 20-hour estimate was just guesswork really. I made 14 hours so far and we haven't even got through the engine, never mind the transmission, steering, suspension, fuel, ECU, brakes, and so on. Probably be more like 50 hours in the end!
To be honest, $25 lifetime seems like a steal for this.
Maybe it's the value of the current content, but consider raising prices for new subscribers after some more content is finished, maybe to $40 or something.
Or you could also try location-based pricing if you want to keep it affordable/accessible to people outside of first-world countries
Thanks! When I get more progress then I'll probably increase the price but in all honesty it makes enough money to cover the production cost and that's good enough for me. Regional pricing is a good idea!
Hey Alex, I bought the app a few years ago when I first found the website. Just opened it up for the first time in a while, and saw I can buy the course through the app. But wanted to let you know (in the low chance you aren't aware) that purchasing the course through the app is only $20 instead of $25.
Drop me an email and I'll sort it out manually - mostly it works but it's not great. The app ecosystem for this isn't worth the hassle any longer and I'll retire that app when I get the new version out.
I'm going to try my hand at an open source smart home. It'll hopefully start with a low-power home server for a e-book library and plex server, and ideally blossom into stuff like smart lighting that looks 'bioluminescent' at night, voice control and scheduling for blinds, privacy windows - and self regulation of air quality and heating/electricity.
It's all very doable, but i've never had the time (or made the time), so here's hoping it's this year.
I can't give too much advice as any authority - but I can tell you that a wife, kids, a house and meaningful work are not out of the picture for you. So many people will be in similar positions to you, and the comments seem to reflect that there's a pathway to be found. I wish you all the best in the process, and trust that you'll make it.
We’re working directly with partner housing unions and charities in Britain and Ireland to build the first central database of rogue landlords and estate agents. Users can search an address and see if it’s marked as rogue/dangerous by the local union, as well as whether you can expect to see your deposit returned, maintenance, communication - etc.
After renting for close to a decade, it’s the same old problems with no accountability. We wanted to change this, and empower tenants to share their experiences freely and easily with one another.
We’re launching in November, and I’m very excited to announce our partner organisations! We know this relies on a network effect to work, and we’re hoping to run it as a social venture. I welcome any feedback.