February 15, 2012 at 1:04 pm · Filed under programming ·Tagged 10X, Coding, distraction, hacker news, programmers
“the 10X programmer is hypersensitive to problems. Solving a problem that costs other programmers a minute of waiting will gain a lot more than a minute for any programmer who then encounters that problem later. This is because of flow).
A common experience I have is that I’ll be coding happily, but when I run into a hard bug, I’ll suddenly find myself surfing Hacker News or wasting time – a lot more time than the few minutes it would take to solve.
This is a problem, but it’s not sufficient to just say that I need to learn better focus and move on. That’s addressing the symptom, not the cause, and this problem is common to many programmers.
The cause is that even small problems will knock you out of flow. Flow is the state of being totally engrossed in work. It’s difficult to get into flow, and a small distraction or irritation can pull you out.
Importantly, the 10X programmer fixes the problems that knock her out of flow. Fixing problems - even trivial ones – , leaving documentation so people can understand faster, keeping a database of common problems, and so forth, all potentially make a much larger difference because of flow than just a few minutes it takes to fix them.“
Source: How to be the 10X programmer
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February 15, 2012 at 12:48 pm · Filed under Uncategorized, Worth reading ·Tagged Debates, decison making, Persuasion, Policy
“One answer that can be easily dismissed is that politicians simply don’t understand the gravity of the situation. Political leaders need not be economic geniuses to understand the advice that they hear, and many are both intelligent and well-read. A second answer—that politicians have short time horizons, owing to electoral cycles—may contain a kernel of truth, but it is inadequate, because the adverse consequences of timid action often become apparent well before they are up for re-election.
The best answer that I have heard comes from Axel Weber, the former president of Germany’s Bundesbank and an astute political observer. In Weber’s view, policymakers simply do not have the public mandate to get ahead of problems, especially novel ones that seem small initially, but, if unresolved, imply potentially large costs.
If the problem has not been experienced before, the public is not convinced of the potential costs of inaction. And, if action prevents the problem, the public never experiences the averted calamity and voters, therefore, penalize political leaders for the immediate costs that the action entails. Even if politicians have perfect foresight of the disaster that awaits if nothing is done, they may have little ability to persuade voters, or less insightful party members, that the short-term costs must be paid.”
Source: The public and its problems
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February 2, 2012 at 3:21 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged hacker manifesto, hacker think, ideas, Mind of hacker
“This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch , the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals.We seek after knowledge.. and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias…and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you,something that you will never forgive me for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto.You may stop this individual,but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike.”
Hacker's Manifesto_by_The Mentor
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February 1, 2012 at 5:30 pm · Filed under News ·Tagged Journalism, Journalism in India, Media war, New analysis, Opinion, TOI vs Hindu
“The debate isn’t just about differences in the way two newspapers interpret the relative priorities of journalistic subjects — an equilibrium that is eventually determined by the marketplace — but about the manner in which the Times has insidiously attempted to move the goalposts of journalism in the last decade. The paper hasn’t only blurred the lines between journalism, advertising and public relations, it has attempted to argue to readers that such a move is in their own interest, and in fact represents the forward-looking journalistic practice of a new age.”
“Times has supplied a new, entrepreneurial spin on the idea of “due disclosure” in journalism, and that this revised conception of integrity has led to the paradox of it being an especially untrustworthy guide to what is happening in India today. One senses that The Times would like to present itself as the Great Gatsby of India’s emerging Gilded Age, in which all traditional values are being churned and a new definition of success based on materialism is emerging — an ideal to which it must itself subscribe if it is at all to understand what is happening around it.
But in truth it may be closer to a journalistic incarnation of Balram Halwai, the clever, cocksure, coolly amoral protagonist of Aravind Adiga’s bestselling novel “The White Tiger.” It is possible, then, to see the recent war of words and images between The Hindu and the Times as a battle not just for market share, but between two different ideals of journalism: one that, for all its problems, discloses facts about the world, and another that explores the opaque idea that message is information and information is message.”
Source: India’s Top Newspapers war for readers Heart and Soul
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January 28, 2012 at 11:04 pm · Filed under Product design, start-ups ·Tagged Customer development, decison making, Design, focus group, product design, product vision, startup
there are two guiding principles that founders should use when considering over-riding their users. First, when the feedback is in violation of a coherent set of product principles. In the case of Dropbox, this was a unwavering focus on simplicity. In the case of Aardvardk, a focus on social search being a conversation. Second, founders should only have the confidence to develop these principles and over-ride their users when they possess very strong domain knowledge. When product-centric founders deeply understand their customer’s viewpoint and have tremendous customer emapathy, they have the right to make hunch-based product decisions rather than data-driven.
Source: Steve blank vs Steve Jobs
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January 28, 2012 at 12:34 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
When you try to push Mr. Huldai on what he did to make Tel Aviv a center of entrepreneurialism, it’s a bit like pushing string. “I didn’t do anything,” he says. What advice would he give to other cities, such as London or Berlin? “I can’t give them advice. I don’t think I did anything by myself. I did not create the beaches in Tel Aviv.”
When pushed harder, he can think of just two initiatives: public Wi-Fi in the city’s open spaces, and providing a library and center for start-ups to meet and have coffee.
Just as you are beginning to think this is all a waste of time, he explains his strategy. It is nothing to do with high-speed Internet or venture capital or any of the mechanics of running a business. His strategy is about the people, not the organizations.
“We are creating a good place for hi-tech people to live in — I am doing it for the people working in hi-tech,” he said.
Source: How Tel Aviv Became a Tech hub
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June 10, 2011 at 6:33 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged culture, google, hack think, startups
“The nature of a large company like Google is such that they reward consistent, focused performance in one area. This sounds good on the surface, but if you’re a hacker at heart like me, it’s really the death knell for your career. It means that staking out a territory and defending it is far more important than doing what it takes to get a project to its goal. It means that working on Search, APIs, UI, performance, scalability and getting each one of those pieces across the line by any means necessary is actually bad for your career.
Engineers who simply staked out one component in the codebase, and rejected patches so they could maintain complete control over design and implementation details had much greater rewards”
Goodbye to google
“If you pitch an idea or a project to Larry and Sergey, their feedback is quite easy to anticipate. They’ll tell you you have to solve the problem in a more generic way. I tried to sell them on data communities, a place where like minded people could collaborate on structured data around topics they’re interested in. The feedback was predictable: why restrict yourself to communities? And why to structured data? Come up with something that solves everything!
The problem with this for an individual engineer like me is that you can’t work with a small team on a medium sized idea, get users and expand from there anymore. You either have to pitch something as the third coming of Steve or your idea will be relegated to being a feature of something else.
Google’s mode of operation used to be best characterised as strictly opportunistic. There were certain principles and leading ideas, but any project that met those and where Google thought it could do better than what was out there, would be taken on.
No longer. Google now has strategies. Once you offer an online spreadsheet and an online word processor, strategy demands that you also offer an online solution for presentations, even if it isn’t actually much better. And you start seeing presentations with product road maps and competitive landscapes and unique selling points.
No doubt this approach suits a bigger company better. But the engineer in me wants to go back to that whiteboard; hire smart people that exploit new opportunities that become available as technology develops to build new products and services, which in turn leads to user happiness. Having a plan easily gets in the way of doing the right thing there.”
Douwe Osinga
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June 4, 2011 at 4:08 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged Filip video, Jonathan Kaplan, Pure digital, starting up
“entrepreneurs have to be dogged and passionate. It’s like going into a bar filled with 100 beautiful women. You ask the first one, ‘Will you go out with me?’ And she says no. You ask the second one out, and she pours her drink on you. The third one slaps you. Well, most people would give up at beautiful woman No. 2 or No. 3. An entrepreneur is the one who gets all the way to No. 100. And marries her and lives happily ever after.”
Flipping with grilled cheese
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Imperially second.
January 30, 2012 at 6:08 pm · Filed under Personal, Quote, Uncategorized ·Tagged Australian open, commentry, competition, Epic, life, Mental toughness, Nadal, rafa, Tennis
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