Recent content on Amr Shawky's Blog
My first introduction to programming was the blue screen of Quick Basic — bear with me, there is a point to this, I promise. My first real introduction to programming was C++, using the Eclipse IDE, in an introductory CS1 course at university. I was studying Electrical Engineering at the time, and if memory serves, during the first week of the course, I switched majors to Computer Science. My…
Before you get your hopes up, this isn’t an essay criticizing the water consumption of data-centers, rising memory prices or capitalism itself. I leave those debates to others. This, dear reader, is an examination of what we, the ’technology collective’, have created in our lifetimes. 
 To spoil it for you, I’m going to argue that, in an effort to forward our beloved…
The Beginning 
 It’s 2020, I’ve just turned 30, I’m a pilot and its the height of COVID - not a lot of flying jobs around. I decide I’m going to start a computer hardware company in Dubai. I’m not really sure what it does yet, and I figure I’ll just build and sell workstations for 3D rendering. I call it ‘RendeRex’. Ironically, for the next 4…
Introduction 
 While working on PicPocket , we had a development server online that was connected to our Twilio account with $5 worth of balance, which was used for SMS authentication during user registration. While one of our developers was testing some things on the registration flow, they ended up using one of those ‘receive SMS for free’ websites you can easily find through a…
Introduction 
 What is a ‘better’ social media? My last post on recreating old Facebook surprisingly made it to the front page of Hacker News , so it’s safe to assume there’s some interest, or nostalgia, for something in the social space that perhaps existed or could exist, but doesn’t. 
 Like many, I love the internet but dislike modern social media.…
Background 
 We started off with a simple idea for a product; we wanted to re-use the chat interface for everything except chat. It was supposed to be just for photos but expandable later. 
 The idea was that most people already share their photos with others on WhatsApp or some other messaging service, which technically also ’tags’ the people who were there. So, why not turn…
Introduction 
 PicPocket started as a project to help me organize my photos. I really disliked the available methods of finding photos, everything seemed to be moving in the direction of relying more and more heavily on AI. The problem would keep compounding the more photos I had, and it seemed like the entire tech solution was simply that, one day we would somehow figure it out using AI.…