209. Another Year 中
The cover photo was taken at Hangzhou Airport on a Lunar New Year morning. The sunrise and the plane appearing together looked beautiful. Finally back to work, looking forward to another meaningful year. This issue is a bit more scattered, as it contains many things I wrote during the Spring Festival.
Record the down-to-earth trending technologies seen every week, and publish them here after screening. If you find it good, you can follow this weekly to get update notifications.
Year-End Summary
2024 Summary - Continuous Iteration
https://tw93.fun/2025-02-02/my-2024.html
Finally finished my annual summary on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year. I’m used to recording what happened in the past year during the quiet Spring Festival days. The keyword for this year, I think, is “Continuous Iteration.” I’ve realized more and more that everyone’s most important work is themselves—your life experience, personality, values, and skills constitute the work itself. This work needs continuous iteration. I plan to use this summary to back up 2024 and start the 2025 version. Welcome to exchange ideas.
Trending Tools
Perhaps you need a lightweight, summonable DeepSeek desktop version
https://github.com/tw93/Pake
Pake has optimized the DeepSeek display effect, including logo adjustment and style optimization. I suddenly realized the dark mode looks great. A bit of tweaking for my daily needs has made it very useful. You can find the download in the Pake application.
Financial report breakdowns of interesting tech companies
https://www.appeconomyinsights.com/
Latest financial report breakdowns for Tesla, Microsoft, TSMC, Meta, Apple, and Google—how they make and spend money. Sourced from App Economy Insights; well worth a look.
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Random Thoughts
Chicken soup from “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant” to live better
- Value your time—it’s the only thing you truly own.
- Seek wealth, not money. Wealth is what earns you money while you sleep.
- Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. Find your specific knowledge.
- Productize yourself. Apply specific knowledge with leverage to create wealth.
- Judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. Don’t fear mistakes.
- Specific knowledge and accountability can make you stand out in your field.
- To acquire wealth, you must fully utilize specific knowledge and leverage.
- Your true resume is how you’ve allocated your time throughout your life.
- Learn to sell and learn to build. These two combined create massive value.
- The less you desire something, the fewer worries and obsession you have, and ironically, the more likely you are to succeed.
- Happiness is a skill—the inner peace after discarding unnecessary external desires.
- Health, wealth, and happiness are independent yet related. Value all three.
- Essentially, everything in life is luck. Accept variables calmly.
- Focus on the present when making decisions, as it’s the only thing you control.
- Don’t hang around cynical or pessimistic people; they steal your energy.
- Reading is a key way to gain knowledge. Keep reading and learning.
- Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. Live in the moment.
About the meaning of work
I wonder if you’ve thought about the meaning of work, especially as an engineer.
Simply put, work is organized labor for income and consumption. Since it’s organized, it’s not entirely free and can even feel painful. That’s why “work is glorious” theories appeared in the 19th century to motivate factory workers.
How can one make work less painful or even happy? I understand it as using your expertise to provide services, ideally for something you love—doing what you like while earning money along the way.
The happiest job isn’t assigned by others but discovered by yourself—providing solutions/services/emotional value based on market demand combined with your skills. This work is happiest because it solves problems you want to solve.
Moderately happy work allows for autonomous decision-making. Though the big direction might be external, you have a sense of control over your tasks, and the labor isn’t alienated. This process helps build skills needed for the happiest work.
Unhappy work is alienated labor—doing what you don’t want to do. Here, you must consider if it helps you escape financial constraints and when that escape might happen. Solve survival first, then use this unhappy job to pivot towards something better.
An 18-year fixed investment experiment
I’ve always been interested in simple, persistent things. I’m doing a small experiment: every year, I combine my daughter’s Lunar New Year money and other family contributions into three parts.
- One part buys the S&P 500, believing in long-term US development.
- One part buys Nasdaq, believing in current tech advantages.
- One part buys ARKK, believing in Tesla, AI, Bitcoin, and space technologies.
Doing this for 18 years will surely be interesting. Some friends suggested ARKK’s Cathie Wood might not be the most reliable, so I might reduce that proportion slightly. I’ll update the record as things change. (Not investment advice; just a fun experiment).