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arafa

294 karma · joined March 19, 2015

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arafa··on Fitbit will lay off 110 employees amid challenges in wearable market
My Fitbit won the prize for being the only hardware/software to blue screen my Windows computer in at least a decade. It actually took me a few hours to figure out what was happening because I never suspected simply plugging in that device could do it. Sure enough, after 5 minutes or less it would hard crash my computer. I promptly gave it away and will never buy another one. I read some Amazon reviews where people talked about being on their 8th Fitbit and decided they have a real problem.
arafa··on Playing with 80M Amazon Product Review Ratings Using Apache Spark
It would be really interesting to see the same analysis for verified reviews only, and contrast it with the overall numbers and non-verified reviews. I would actually want to read that more than this (which was still interesting).
arafa··on How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?
I agree. When I read GEB, it was clear to me after awhile that it wasn't about G, E, or B, it was really about how intelligence emerges out of self-reference. One of the best books I've read (though challenging). Not often that books in this genre win the Pulitzer.
arafa··on Why Are Developers Still Pouring Billions into Waterlogged Miami?
Citizens Insurance is the insurance of last resort in FL and is paid by taxpayers to deal with this situation. You can always get it. The best you can hope for is the rates go up enough for Citizens Insurance to make these properties less valuable. Don't hold your breath though. Relevant link: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/consumer/fl-insurers-so...
arafa··on Feature Request: Manual Refresh of external calendar feeds
Sure, but my guess is they will either let me remap or have an extension that doesn't look at and control all my browsing data to do it. I haven't looked yet, though, so I might be wrong (I just remember having more flexibility when I used Firefox).
arafa··on Feature Request: Manual Refresh of external calendar feeds
Definitely the first thing I thought of as well. My experience with this change has been so negative I've actually been seriously considering going back to Firefox, all these years later.
arafa··on David Chang’s Unified Theory of Deliciousness
Really great article. I think I had some kind of weird meta-experience reading it where I was reminded of Godel, Escher, Bach in the unfamiliar context of cooking. I'm sure the author of this article would've appreciated that (as well as the author of G.E.B.).
arafa··on Dollar Shave Club and the Disruption of Everything
I'm quite surprised there's been so little focus on the shaving experience. I really wanted to like Dollar Shave Club. I went with them early. Their prices were great and I really enjoyed their marketing.

But after trying most of their razor models for months, they were far worse than even the Mach 3 razors I had. It was painful to shave with them, the handles had a bad design, the lubrication strips weren't working, etc. Maybe they're better now, but I get several months (or more) out of Mach 3 razor cartridges. I don't pay much at all for them and have little incentive to switch.

arafa··on How to Pass the Product Manager Interview
But is there data to support that these questions are effective in finding the types of people that you want? Without concrete and consistent answers to questions, you'll be exposing yourself to bias (subconsciously encouraging people like yourself or seeing their vague answers in a more positive light). You'll also make more of the interviewing experience dependent on what you happen to think of and the mood you're in at the time, increasing the inconsistency of your interviews.

I know the intuitive idea is that you'll get to see how the candidate reacts, but that can be done in a less arbitrary way (and in a job-dependent context) through behavioral interviews and the like. Brain teasers are also often poor candidate experience, since they can feel unfair and unrelated to the work. If estimation is a key feature for PMs, it should be part of the interview process with well-defined procedures.

arafa··on How to Pass the Product Manager Interview
You could adapt something like this to fit your needs: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-laszlo-bock-interview-...

This will give you the general idea of how they work. I'm sure there's classes and other resources, but we already have a training program at work so I haven't delved into them as much.

arafa··on How to Pass the Product Manager Interview
Brain teaser questions don't perform well in studies and should be avoided: http://qz.com/378228/google-is-over-those-ridiculous-brainte...

Google suggests doing behavioral interviews instead (which I've also been trained to do and have gotten good results). Technical interviews and such may be necessary as well, of course.

arafa··on Crying
In Creativity Inc. they describe specifically going through story beats for maximum emotional impact. Disney movies apparently adopted Pixar's methods, so actually you're not far off with the Crying Department thing.
arafa··on Pixar in a Box
I read that book and it was so good I immediately read it again. Then I read it halfway through again before switching to another book. Really great read and, oddly enough, a great book on leadership (especially in creative organizations).
arafa··on Standard deviation is ready for retirement: Nassim Taleb (2014)
I have replaced uses of the Standard Deviation with the Mean Absolute Deviation at work on several occasions, for just the reasons described here. It often leads to substantial improvement in predictive validity, in some cases fixing a broken process.
arafa··on The tech world is wrong about marketing
They are, but in the process have created a serious song and hit generating machine. You have these hit factories that churn this stuff out at scales that were previously unseen through the division of labor described, among other things.
arafa··on The tech world is wrong about marketing
"Creativity cannot be scaled." Actually, in the book The Song Machine, they pretty clearly show otherwise, with teams of topliners, beat makers, etc. churning out hits in a machine-like format: http://www.amazon.com/Song-Machine-Inside-Hit-Factory/dp/039...
arafa··on Revisiting a 90-year-old debate: the advantages of the mean deviation (2004)
I actually used the Mean Absolute Deviation at work to good effect. When you're testing variance over very large sample sizes, it's a lot better than using something like Chi-Squared tests, which nearly always yield a significant result over a certain sample size (maybe 20,000 or so).
arafa··on Is India facing its worst-ever water crisis?
Maybe California isn't under a drought anymore: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/03/drought-buster-hits-ca...
arafa··on So Much Streaming Music, Just Not in One Place
Yep, thanks. It's annoying, tricky, and a bit painful to get right, but you can do it.
arafa··on So Much Streaming Music, Just Not in One Place
Spotify certainly allows self-uploaded tracks (I know, I use them daily), though it's certainly not obvious how you do so and may require a paid subscription.
arafa··on How your data is collected and commoditised via “free” online services
A lot of how personal data is collected and sold is detailed in Bruce Schneier's "Data and Goliath" (http://www.amazon.com/Data-Goliath-Battles-Collect-Control/d...) and confirms what you're saying.
arafa··on The Origin of QWERTY
My experience is pretty similar to yours and copperx's. I'm no faster or slower but my hands have felt a ton better and I haven't had hardly any RSI issues since. Been typing in dvorak for about 15 years now. It was pretty painful for two weeks but I'm glad I switched.
arafa··on Why Gold?
Merrill Lynch isn't a bank, it's more like a trading house. AVP is a somewhat inflated title, but that usage typically means something like "experienced employee" or "team lead". That's the highest a lot of people reach, in fact.
arafa··on What the IBM Layoffs Look Like
It's surprising they mention regulatory work (around data privacy) going offshore. I saw that happen at another company I worked for and it didn't go well. When the feds realized there's no one in person they can talk to and hold responsible, those jobs all came right back less than a year later.
arafa··on Break Up the Insulin Racket
One of my siblings is a major contributor to Nightscout, it's a great piece of open source software. The makers of the Dexcom software have been stonewalling their efforts, but at least that isn't killing the project. Hopefully something similar can be done for insulin, though that seems a lot more difficult.
arafa··on Software “detects CEO emotions, predicts financial performance”
Paul Ekman talks about the "Desdemona Problem" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Othello_error), which is always an issue with face-reading of emotions. Many facial expressions (especially those that express on the top half of the face) correlate very well with emotions. But you don't know the context of those emotions or what the person is thinking.

Hence the Desdemona Problem. She is fearful when accused by Othello, not because of infidelity, but because she's being accused. You see that already with the surprising finding that fear and disgust actually correlate with positive financial performance. Yet you see those same emotions in suicidal patients and they're undoubtedly negative.

arafa··on How do bank payments actually work?
In addition to the time needed for ACH, some or most of the lag may be due to fraud/money laundering concerns, even if it's low-risk. If that's true then it's a regulatory issue.
arafa··on North Korea makes more sense when you know its roots
Some of the claims in this article are rebutted by the book A Kim Jong Il Production (http://www.amazon.com/Kim-Jong-Il-Production-Extraordinary-K...), an excellent read. There is a lengthy discussion on how the book was sourced and a dedication to fact-checking and information accuracy. In it, they describe how many people inside actually do recognize their situation and how they're forced to act against how they feel. The crying at Kim Jong Il's funeral, in particular, is addressed and the book mentions how North Koreans that didn't look sincere enough in their grief faced punishment.
arafa··on Ten years ago Wikipedia was widely considered a doomed experiment
It would seem there's a conflict of interest between Wikipedia and those that report on it, since there's some overlap there. Reminds me of the old Upton Sinclair quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
arafa··on Avoiding the Adjective Fallacy
In my third semester of Calculus class, I had a Physics professor. True to his background, he would sometimes take the entire class elaborately explaining the geometric interpretation of complex 3D operations, something I greatly appreciated. The formal notation and theory was always there, but he made sure the intuition was there also (if possible). Best math teacher I've ever had.
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