I just bought parents another new Android. This time around, I'm wondering if there are any "elders-focused" products that can help them improve their general tech-savviness? They're about 50 and speak good enough English to otherwise navigate their phone, but they seem to "lose common sense" when it comes to using gadgets and appear a bit scared to try things. (Might seem OT for WIP: I'm also using this question as a way to understand the landscape for such products - maybe there's an opportunity to build something!)

That’s right @marc. They travel a bit now so I encourage them to book via booking.com / AirBnb etc. We’re visiting Paris soon so I got them to play with Duolingo to pick up some basic French words... However the problem I’m trying to solve is that they’re somehow “scared” of using their phones (and they’d love to be able to use it). Eg if they know the 4 clicks you need to book an Uber they’ll do it. But in between if the phone pops up a “battery low wanna switch to low power” thingie then they’re confused maybe their phone will explode if they click ok? Maybe it will switch off if cancel? That kinda thing ... When my parents were younger they did a course complete with textbooks that had step by step screenshots on how to use Microsoft Word, or step by step stuff on how to use Google search. Those times they only had to occasionally use 2 or 3 software so that approach worked. If there’s a significant update to a software (e.g the introduction of ribbon on MS Office years ago) their knowledge would then be obsolete. But now there’s a new app everyday and it introduces a new interface - for their style of learning, I think they’re not used to catching up. So I’m just curious if there’s a way to teach people to be more savvy - maybe even through articles etc 😀 YouTube is a good idea though - think I’ll point them to YT videos about how to use a particular app.

Currently trying to differentiate when to use Servers & when to go Serverless. Serverless will scale infinitely, although it has 1 small cost of cold starts but if the site is used regularly then cold start is not needed. Servers are inherently costly. Even if we don't use it to its full potential we need to always choose a higher plan than our current usage. I want to know when can we go full Serverless. Like I have 1 app where the flow is like - 1. User clicks on SignIn 2. Email is sent to the user with Magic Link 3. After Magic Link is clicked, user is logged in 4. User can then buy a product 5. After payment, user can download the product 6. User can Logout Can this be done serverless ? Also, which websites would be Serverless & which would need Servers ?

Hi Akshay, "Serverless will scale infinitely, although it has 1 small cost of cold starts but if the site is used regularly then cold start is not needed." - there are solutions that fix it, example: https://github.com/FidelLimited/serverless-plugin-warmup Me and my teammates have been using serverless technologies for a while. This is what we've learned: 1. Running Lambda functions is much cheaper for simple computationally intensive operations. 2. Traditional way of dealing with databases is not a good fit for serverless. Make sure that your DB server is ready to handle hundreds of simultaneous connections. Always close DB connections by the end of each lambda invocation. 3. Use terraform, cloudformation or serverless.js config to set up API endpoints, don't do it manually (otherwise it is a nightmare to set up staging or other envirionments). 4. Long running tasks (like log processing, etc.) are better to do on a server instance. 5. Lambda functions are great for running CRON jobs (using cloudwatch scheduler). 6. Think of a centralized logging solution in advance (Papertrail is a good option). 7. Ideally set up caching with Redis (has unlimited connections) to reduce the load on your DB or consider trying AWS Aurora: https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/ It's a Postgres compatible solution for the serverless era. Let me know how it goes. You should think carefully of how to implement authentication properly. The best fit would be using a JWT token. Tj has recently introduced Up, which helps to deploy serverless websites as well (not only APIs): https://github.com/apex/up We prefer having a Heroku instance or a static website running on a server and then using serverless for the API, because the limitation is that you can't use Websocket without a server. In general, it's definitely fun and cost efficient to build a cloud solution using serverless technologies. Guys, hit me up on Telegram (@mac_r) if you have any other questions! Best, Max

I gave up freelancing and consulting and would like to stay away from it. But being a maker (c) doesn't monetize as fast... I'm considering additional source of revenue. And building programming video courses seems like a great learning experience for myself, ability to contribute and share to success of other and possible 'passive income'. Did anyone had an experience? Any gotchas I should be aware of? Any rough numbers on income?

I made a few and I really want to make some more. Making them did take a while (I spent about 1.5 hours for every 10 minutes) and mine were pretty simple. I think I have ~1h of tutorials on my YouTube channel & before youtube changed their partners program, I made about $30 a year without doing anything other then uploading the video. However, professionally being able to explain why my code did certain things was incredibly helpful. Plus I've had a few leads from people finding my videos who want to hire me 👍