There are a lot of things to do outdoors around Maryland: there are a lot really good MTB (or just hiking) places, like Rockburn and Patapsco State Park; beaches are within two hours away; ski / snowboarding places within two hours away; and then there's the Chesapeake Bay.
One of the interesting things I there while there was develop a Java app and Python script to semi-automate the loading of tapes.
Previously, a person had to load a few tapes into a magazine, place it into a machine, and manually load each tape - they had to sit in a secure room, wait for a tape to be loaded, and press a button to for the machine to load the next tape!
Since this tape machine was old, there wasn't a lot of documentation, but I did find enough information to develop a script that loaded each tape, placed the data in the correct directory based on the tape's header information, and then emailed the data team once all the tapes in the magazine were loaded. It freed up that person to do meaningful work while the data tapes were being loaded.
It's been years since I have worked in this space, but, at the time, my group was charged with finding fraud committed by the providers and beneficiaries.
It was interesting work: we had data tapes shipped from CMS to us, we loaded the data into a Sybase database, and then used an analysis tool (which I can't recall the name of) to look for patterns of fraud - again, this was what now seems like a lifetime ago.
Is anyone currently working detecting Medicare and Medicaid fraud?
I have a MBA, but I'm also the lead developer (and project manager) of my project. I rather be coding instead of being in front of people and giving presentations, but I do those things to ensure my project is successful (and that it grows). And I think most of business books and ideas are recycled non-sense.
Maybe we'll meet in the future, but not all developers with MBA's are that bad...
An article called "The Slow-Motion Trainwreck Facing the Meal-Kit Industry" relates how the meal-kit industry faces the same problem(s) as Groupon:
"The problem Groupon faced was that their initial success validated a model that anyone could copy, and everyone who copied it increased both Groupon’s cost of customer acquisition and its churn rate."
TLDR;: But in one sense, the advertising business is about as static and boring as they come. The industry has never grown in scale. Looking at data since the 1920s, the U.S. advertising industry has always been about 1 percent of U.S. GDP. It’s surprisingly consistent, mostly tracking between 1 percent and 1.4 percent—and averaging 1.29 percent.
So when you said, "...eating from the same pie", according to the linked article, they actually are.
Okay, I did read the rest of the article and, unfortunately, it's still a disappointment.
For Apple to remain relevant in the future, the company will need to attack itself. Management will need to risk its own ecosystem.
...also agree and it seems like Apple has been doing this because, as stated in the article, of the lack of attention other products (and services) have recently received.
Milk the iPhone today, and then figure out what comes next.
I agree with this and fully expect Apple to do so, but where are the novel insights (that haven't been re-hashed from other recent sources (such as Bloomberg, Six Colors, etc).
It feels like cracks are forming at Apple's edges. The company is straining to push out hardware updates. Supply issues are getting worse. Apple is reportedly moving away from selling beloved products like stand-alone displays and wireless routers. ...
I stopped reading at this point since this will be another "Pile on the Bad News for Apple" type of hyperbole.