1,037 karma · joined August 17, 2010
Maybe there is a damping function in that. All I've read is the rumored short.
Either way, playing a zero-sum game still seems at odds with value creation. Blue shift versus red shift mindset. Based on past value creation, with MSFT and a crucial investment in Apple, Gates shorting a company seems out of character.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/016727...
wow, eudaimonia is my word for the day.
He recommended "The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction" (Card, Moran, et al) From that point forward, all roads led from Fitt's Law.
Perhaps quantum neurons?
This sounds like a toxic work environment. Get out while you can!
Well, not until 2016 when Apple began to offer ads in the AppStore -- as though that was a good thing for indy developers.
And a couple years later, when Spotify keeps getting pushed down the list: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/09/technology/ap...
This is why we're going to develop for Spotify's API first.
Fave work environment was at a co-working space in Bali. No talking allowed in the AirCon room. So, you're around two dozen people whom are intently focused in getting work done. No interruptions and yet high energy. For Human connection, just pop out into the other space, where talking is allowed. Plus, shared lunches or tea throughout the week. Best of both worlds.
... which you have to look at, because the position and function changes. There is no muscle memory with dynamic UI.
I recall a visually impaired woman who couldn't hail an Uber. I could tell she was very fast with the old UI. But, the button had shifted. She was going to call her Husband to drive over from Oakland to pick her up in San Francisco. Instead, I showed her where the button was.
1. Visual synthesizer to synch with popular music to share and jam
2. Wearable thought recorder to predict your future intent (on hold)
3. Anonymous Collaboration to sort 10^12 intents for 10^9 users
The first is pretty far along. I used to VJ semi-pro on a Wacom tablet and then ported it to the iPad (which Apple deprecated when they moved to 64-bit only). Have rewritten in Swift, and in process of redoing the menuing system in SwiftUI. Kids love it and is a subversive way of leaning STEM concepts through play. Demo of the Wacom tablet version (2005) is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXlkzZubHnM&t=9s
The second is an Apple Watch centric app that I spent a couple years on. Just raise your wrist to record your thoughts. I released a subset of the idea in the AppStore, but didn't market it. Spent a few more months on updating the design but is now on hold. Old version here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/muse-now/id1323143774?ls=1
The third is kinda hard. I spoke at the RSA Data Security conference (1998) on how to share interests without a trusted third party. The idea is to combine some homomorphic blinding to sort intent(s) through a massively parallel graph. It's kinda weird because the graph is an asynchronous cellular automaton. I'm not even sure if it is plausible. It's more of a lossy switching network than a static ledger. Somewhat inspired by the work of Goldreich, Micali, Widgerson: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Goldreich,+Micali,+Wigd...
Somewhat a tangent: when going through due diligence for Series A, my CEO said: "Remember, they are not your friends." The thing was, though, after they invested, the VC fired him.
Maybe that's the difference between prosecutors and makers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops#:~:text=%22T....
Maybe a new kind of blockchain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26117587
Uses `A SiteOrigin Theme`, which is significantly improved by the `Dark Reader` plug-in for Chrome.
I booked a flight and AirBNB to Lviv for last October and then delayed due to Covid. Motivation is more about startup talent.
Here's how I dealt with each:
1) reduced the internal team to half its size
2) fired the offshore team and started from scratch
3) personally attempted a mass refactor / 90 hour weeks
4) refactored 49K line C++/ObjC++ to 29K Swift
Result of each:
1) product shipped, became industry standard
2) Speed improved, Apple offered to feature product
3) I failed, resigned after burnout
4) Easy and enjoyable refactoring to SwiftUI
I couldn't find the episode to cite. Maybe some of the students were upset?
It seems that -- to use some old AI jargon -- the difference is between "forward chaining" vs "backward chaining". Forward chaining is all about the set of tools and techniques to work towards a variety of problems. Backward chaining is all about starting from a specific problem and and curating the best tools and techniques.
Very experienced programmers will have spent most of their time Backward Chaining. New programmers will have spent most of their time focused on Forward Chaining.
Here is where I see the disconnect: it may take days to learn a new tool or technique. However, it can take years to learn how to curate the best tool or technique. Long term thinking is undervalued.
Two years ago, I ran out of money. So, I started interviewing. One example was interviewing for the Apple Watch team. My experience included the design and code lead of an Apple Watch product, which was featured by Apple. But, I failed the Coderpad. Why? The interviewer wanted me to use a new Swift generic syntax, which I had never seen before. With an unfamiliar code editor. In under 10 minutes. Did it matter that I had an Apple Watch product, which he could download from the AppStore and ran super fast on a Series 0? Nope. Did it matter that he could download a 29K Swift based functional ontology that I wrote? Nope.
The point is that there are two skills: writing code and getting past the interview. The latter is often conducted by a 20-something, just out of college. So, there is more emphasis on tacit knowledge of the tools and techniques. It feels more like passing a finals exam.
A few years ago my CEO hired Gayle Laakman to prep the team for an acquisition by a FAANG. I loved the puzzles and read her book [1] cover to cover. But, I hated the premise of avoiding "false positives". A famous false negative is Max Howell [2] (who went on to write Apple's Swift Package Manager)
So, how did I get a gig? I kept trying. Learned new frameworks. Focused on jobs interviews which had a take home. During the on-site, I insisted on using my own laptop. An often overlooked factor in achieving a coding flow-state is muscle memory.
I've been told that some companies are shifting from whiteboard to take-home -- particularly during covid. Post covid, if the option is available to you, try moving to the Bay Area or Austin and attend every single hackathon that looks interesting. If you don't want to leave HI, maybe contribute to an open source project in some way.
Or perhaps, start a company. Maybe there's an opportunity in refactoring Aerospace code? I dunno. Now, I'm guessing ...
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming...
Coincidentally, was searching for David Huffman's Origami paper on origami and found Prof Demaine's paper: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/86200/Demaine...
Prusinkiewicz & Lindenmayer modeled the growth of plants[1]. Each has a shape, which evolved to exploit a certain terrain. Mathematica exploits one terrain. Sun Microsystems exploited another terrain with Java.
I wonder if it possible to map these terrains across all the Github projects?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/world/asia/china-canada-m...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/07/ch...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lank...
IANAL; this is not legal advice.