10x is literally the difference of an order of magnitude.
An order of magnitude is an exponential change of plus or minus 1 in the
value of a quantity or unit. The term is generally used in conjunction with
power-of-10 scientific notation.
Order of magnitude is used to make the size of numbers and measurements of
things more intuitive and understandable. It is generally used to provide
approximate comparisons between two numbers. For example, if the
circumference of the Sun is compared with the circumference of the Earth,
the Sun's circumference would be described as many orders of magnitude
larger than the Earth's. [1]
An order of magnitude is an approximation of the logarithm of a value relative to some
contextually understood reference value, usually 10, interpreted as the base of the
logarithm and the representative of values of magnitude one. [2]
Yes, an order of magnitude literally means 10x. But in my experience, in common speech it's often used to convey an approximation. i.e. 'Changing this will decrease performance of that endpoint by an order of magnitude', when it's really somewhere around 10x. If someone said 'decrease performance by 10x' that seems much more concrete to me.
Unrelated to this current focus on the weakness of using a phone number as a contact reference, I have experienced a different problem. If a user has ever used Signal previously and for whatever reason revert back to SMS, if another user sends them a message via Signal it is lost with no indication. This is a growing problem as people try out Signal and when they get a new phone just forget or don't care to install it again.
it really comes down to what you're building. many web app startups would be better served paying for PaaS that manage this for them. as an example: Netlify/Vercel. if you need a database add FaunaDB to that. if that sounds risky or expensive, consider the cost of building a DevOps team.
Texan politicians didn't miss a chance to blame wind power for the outages. Unfortunately, those initial lies are still circulating. The primary cause was that the pipes supplying natural gas froze. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-...
Not Amsterdam, but Utrecht.. But still. I think Utrecht might be more bike friendly than Amsterdam, with a clear network of central bike ways and free secure bike parking throughout the city.