Statsig's core value is their experimentation platform— the automation of Data Science.
Big Tech teams want to ship features fast, but measuring impact is messy. It usually requires experiments and traditionally every experiment needed one Data Scientist (DS) to ensure statistical validity, i.e., "can we trust these numbers?". Ensuring validity means DS has to perform multiple repetitive but specialized tasks throughout the experiment process: debugging bad experiment setups, navigating legacy infra, generating & emailing graphs, compensating for errors and biases in post-analysis, etc. It's a slog for folks involved. Even then, cases still arise where Team A reports wonderful results & ships their feature while unknowingly tanking Team B's revenue— a situation discovered only months later when a DS is tasked to trace the cause.
Experimentation platforms like Statsig exist to lower the high cost of experimenting. To show a feature's potential impact before shipping, while reducing frustrations along the way. Most platforms will eliminate common statistical errors or issues at each stage of the experiment process, with appropriate controls for each user role. Engs setup experiments via SDK/UI with nudges and warnings for misconfigurations. DS can focus on higher-value work like metric design. PMs view shared dashboards and get automatic coordination emails with other teams if their feature is seen as breaking. People still fight but earlier on and in the same "room" with fewer questions about what's real versus what's noise.
Separating real results from random noise is the meaning of "statsig" / "statistically significant". I think it's similar to how companies define their own metrics (their sense of reality) while the platform manages the underlying statistical and data complexity. The ideal outcome is less DS needed, less crufty tooling to work around, less statistics learning, and crucially, more trust & shared oversight. But it comes at considerable, unsaid cost as well.
Is Statsig worth $1B to OpenAI? Maybe. There's an art & science to product development, and Facebook's experimentation platform was central to their science. But it could be premature. I personally think experimentation as an ideology best fits optimization spaces that previously achieved strong product-market fit ages ago. However, it's been years since I've worked in the "Experimentation" domain. I've glossed over a few key details in my answer and anyone is welcome to correct me.
Hats off to Statsig. They built a stellar product. Superior to many of their industry competitors like Optimizely. Back when I was on an internal Experimentation platform, we were impressed how they balanced dev velocity & stat rigor https://www.statsig.com/updates These guys ship.
Business-wise, I think getting acquired was the right choice. Experimentation is too small & treacherous to build a great business, and the broader Product Analytics space is also overcrowded. Amplitude (YC 2012), to date, only has a 1.4B market cap.
Joining the hottest name next door gives Statsig a lot more room to explore. I look forward to their evolution.
Off-topic, irrelevant question: does anyone need a local first version of Airtable? That uses SQLite under-the-hood and plugs into files and data with syncing across computers.
I’m curious (as a solo dev) if there’s a market for such a product.
Weirdly I’ve been building something along those lines for the last year. Not SQLite backed, but fully local and native (and also does non-local integrations, which you can also script yourself). Should be ready in a month or so if you’re interested!
When you were younger and learned about history did you form a mental image of what kind of people the famous financiers, capitalists, and robber barons were?
These are those people. Oil and railroads were high technology too.
They want you to think they’re Lazlo Hollyfield, but they’re Daniel Plainview.
My read was that Garry Tan implied "you sacrificed a lot of money in order to grandstand". I felt that was a knee-jerk dismissal of a founding employee's legitimate concern.
I'm not sure, but my interpretation is that Gary is implying that Prem Qu Nair received $20 million from the deal, and that by posting this tweet, he has violated the terms of the agreement, which generally have non disparagement clauses, and Gary will see to it that he won't receive anything.
I believe Tan's words were mis-represented. I believe he is saying that it cost Prim $20M and he then wrote that post. I don't think he is insinuating anything else.
He's misrepresenting his own words when he writes a vague tweet like that. Tan is a serial shitposter and is known for blocking thousands of people that even slightly disagree with him.
If the OP consulted with Turso on this blogpost, then Turso probably believes the reported behavior is indeed a failure or a flaw, which they think a local db should be responsible for.
The confusion is that Limbo, their solution to this presumed problem, is not mentioned in the article which means that everyone has to figure out where this post is coming from.
I think you're right. I'll add on: there's a lot of thinking that does not need writing, and there's a lot of writing that needs no thinking. Deng Xiaoping and other greats wrote pretty minimally for their own thinking, if at all. Whereas many of us not-so-greats seem to knee-jerk comment without a single thought.
It makes sense for our age. Amid a thousand distractions, typing on the keyboard gives the illusion of getting a grip. Note-taking on my computer gives the illusion of a second brain. Ululating on the internet gives the illusion of sharing thoughts.
Instead of "writing is thinking", I prefer "thought precedes speech" https://inframethodology.cbs.dk/?p=1127; it fits the small human mind better though I've yet to learn it properly.
You should look up the term "zero cost abstractions".
It's the organizing principle of the second generation of Rust's leadership[1]. Formally, it means "zero runtime cost"[2], but the now-former maintainers operated as though it meant Rust could get rid of all cost. The belief was that they can have a language that's faster than C, safer than Ada, more ergonomic than Java, more memory safe than Go, by either making the compiler do more work, or working more on the compiler. In practice, I think this belief caused massive complexity in the compiler, trade-off dishonesty in the community, and bad evangelism in domains unsuited for memory safety (e.g. games programming)
[1] Graydon, the original author of Rust, was against this idea.
[2] The term originates from C++ as "zero overhead" which was smaller in scope, and not a governing principle of the C++ language.
I was in Beijing last year. Many, many EVs on the road, far more than the Bay Area. About half of China's Market is EV's now[1]
The Chinese Government backed up their mandate with money. Lots of money, allocated well, over a long period of time. In the absence of that sustained political will, I think this initiative would have succumbed the infighting and finger-pointing that the article above describes.
I think this article is AI generated. I only skimmed so I could easily be wrong, but it smells too simple and too confident. The author is using AI quite a bit in other places as well https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9855568
I did get the sense that they're mostly matter of fact statements with code samples but really nothing to back up those statements, like how each thing is achieved.
In any case this seems to be part of some series on Zig, so the title is misleading: it sounds like it’s a blog post talking about memory safety in zig, but it’s just about features in Zig that can make it a little more safe.
I was also raised by a loving catholic mother, who let me go my way, out of the church. I eventually found my way back in, and feel similar to you as you do now.
IMHO, the GP has a right to share his experience here as we do ours. A thread on the election of a pope, with a subthread on the beauty of church, is a fair venue for sharing. There's no need for prejudice, disguised as policing, on either side.
Absolutely, there is nothing wrong with letting others know the other side of the coin. Moreover, I have done that respectfully, I never diminished the other guys' experience or called him fake or anything. He's mocking me in another comment already ... the tolerant ones.
This is a thread about the Pope, why wouldn't people be allowed to say good things about the religion it leads?
But guess what, some invisible hand hid my comments, even though the one where I expressed my opinion has more upvotes than downvotes and is not even flagged (cc @dang, perhaps you know what happened?). Is it breaking a policy? How is it different from the comment from @soulofmischief? Very tricky situation to be in, I can understand why someone would prefer to just hide it all.
I'm honestly tired of all this "I'm catholic and I am involved in the church" being enough to warrant attacks from random strangers.
Good news is the pendulum is swinging back, and it's swinging back hard! Deus vult! :D
Ah, I didn't meant to imply you did something wrong. I thought you were right to share.
Rather, I saw the start of a flamewar below (not caused by you) and I figured I'd say my piece. But it came out wrong and you got flagged undeservingly.
> He's mocking me in another comment already ... the tolerant ones
No one is mocking you. You appear to have some sort of persecution complex, and are using it to shield you from having to earnestly engage with my replies. You're literally suggesting there is some kind of conspiracy to be unfair against you. I have not downvoted or flagged any of your comments. Perhaps you should consider the wisdom of the crowd and open yourself to criticism.
> I'm honestly tired of all this "I'm catholic and I am involved in the church" being enough to warrant attacks from random strangers.
You didn't have to reply to my comment with an ignorant, invalidating, dismissive and patronizing take. That was your choice, and the consequence is that people might reply to you in order to point out faults in your attitude and message.
Just because you thought you were well-meaning doesn't mean you were. Your sour approach to discourse has made itself apparent in this thread. Many perpetrators of the Crusades also thought they were doing a good deed.
Big Tech teams want to ship features fast, but measuring impact is messy. It usually requires experiments and traditionally every experiment needed one Data Scientist (DS) to ensure statistical validity, i.e., "can we trust these numbers?". Ensuring validity means DS has to perform multiple repetitive but specialized tasks throughout the experiment process: debugging bad experiment setups, navigating legacy infra, generating & emailing graphs, compensating for errors and biases in post-analysis, etc. It's a slog for folks involved. Even then, cases still arise where Team A reports wonderful results & ships their feature while unknowingly tanking Team B's revenue— a situation discovered only months later when a DS is tasked to trace the cause.
Experimentation platforms like Statsig exist to lower the high cost of experimenting. To show a feature's potential impact before shipping, while reducing frustrations along the way. Most platforms will eliminate common statistical errors or issues at each stage of the experiment process, with appropriate controls for each user role. Engs setup experiments via SDK/UI with nudges and warnings for misconfigurations. DS can focus on higher-value work like metric design. PMs view shared dashboards and get automatic coordination emails with other teams if their feature is seen as breaking. People still fight but earlier on and in the same "room" with fewer questions about what's real versus what's noise.
Separating real results from random noise is the meaning of "statsig" / "statistically significant". I think it's similar to how companies define their own metrics (their sense of reality) while the platform manages the underlying statistical and data complexity. The ideal outcome is less DS needed, less crufty tooling to work around, less statistics learning, and crucially, more trust & shared oversight. But it comes at considerable, unsaid cost as well.
Is Statsig worth $1B to OpenAI? Maybe. There's an art & science to product development, and Facebook's experimentation platform was central to their science. But it could be premature. I personally think experimentation as an ideology best fits optimization spaces that previously achieved strong product-market fit ages ago. However, it's been years since I've worked in the "Experimentation" domain. I've glossed over a few key details in my answer and anyone is welcome to correct me.