cml

A single mediocre experience optimized to work ‘most of the time’ for ‘most people’ is quite contrary to the narrative that has made Google such tremendous amounts of money (“let us surveil you so that you can have a more personalized experience”) though, isn’t it?

Given all of the data collected about Google users, ought not one of the applications of that data be some way to give users specifically what they are searching for if their past behavior suggests that they mean what they type? Couldn’t the “search only for <exact query>“ option be a very good data point on making that determination automatically, or enabling a user setting for “give me exact results based on what I actually typed by default”?

It seems possible to me that this behavior has more to do with the value of ads for “big” keywords than with (poorly) inferring user intent.

I appreciated the way that the reports are organized by problem-being-solved. It might be nice to be able to filter for specific constraints (like "SSO Support") so as to exclude services in each category that are non-starters.

It seems like Tooltip is focused on the procurement/administration side of things. What about being a user? I mentioned SSO above because maintaining credentials for a lot of different services is cumbersome even with a password manager. Re-discovery of information I know I have seen somewhere suffers since it's harder to remember on which platform I saw it when there are multiple possibilities.

This is how the lead author of the study we are discussing interprets the new information: “Our paper, which had a global impact within 24 hours of publication, provides important support for the following crucial public health actions: vaccinate the unvaccinated ASAP; give boosters to all those who are eligible ASAP; maintain social and public health measures despite vaccination.” (This is the fifth paragraph the linked article).

Is it possible you are agreeing with the author?

Most of my utilities are console command line utilities instead of full GUI and they are very cumbersome to use. That's because I prioritized the dev experience over the UX.

As the user you prefer command line utilities, and so I interpret your building command line utilities as prioritizing the user's experience.

On the other hand, if you needed a program that could exist very efficiently as a command line utility but, desiring to learn how to use some new GUI toolkit you built a GUI instead, I might interpret your action as prioritizing the developer experience (in which you are focused on the details of the implementation) over the user experience (in which you are focused on the results).

Location: Seattle

Remote: Possibly

Willing to relocate: SF/NYC/LA

Technologies: People management, JavaScript/React/Redux, d3, Ruby, AWS, JIRA

Resume: https://angel.co/u/cmlaidlaw

GitHub: https://github.com/cmlaidlaw

Email: cmlaidlaw@gmail.com

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I enjoy and am good at people management but am open to an IC role for the right opportunity. I am a US Citizen.

I am also semi car-free in Seattle and can attest to a very satisfying quality of life. I moved here last year.

If anyone is toying with moving here and has questions: chris.laidlaw@socrata.com.

(We're hiring!)

Oops: cmlaidlaw@gmail.com

Thanks!

a spreadsheet containing all the tasks, issues and risks, with owners and dependencies identified is usually enough. >telling people when you're waiting on things from them

I'm working on something a lot like this right now that does all the coordination by e-mail. I would be grateful if you dropped me a line so I can get your feedback when it's up and running. E-mail is in my profile!

Your grandfather's experience is evidence that something was working well. But this is advice that Jack Welch is giving in 2014, and as someone who is clearly still trying to be a public figure I would expect him to be a bit more in tune with the current state of affairs. It just strikes me as a little disingenuous.

Edit: typo.

I don't disagree with your sentiment, but I think that Mr. Welch's advice could be read as extremely cynical as well: maybe he's just telling people what they want to hear, which has the added benefit of encouraging (perhaps unwarranted) loyalty in lower-ranking employees. Like a self-serving Socratic "noble lie" for corporate types?

Author here: Thanks a million!

The code is easier to read on GitHub (https://github.com/cmlaidlaw/waaah) rather than view-source, if you're curious.

Roughly: 1. The letters and punctuation which comprise a computer program in human-readable form can be translated into a string of numbers.

2. That list of numbers can be looked at as if it were one really large number instead of a list of smaller ones.

3. By being a bit clever about how the original program text was translated into numbers, the resulting very-large-number was made to be prime, i.e. not evenly divisible by any numbers other than itself and one. Prime numbers hold a special place in the hearts of many mathematicians.

4. The social implication of all this is that what would have been illegal (rightly or wrongly) in the form of a computer program entered the public record instead in the form of a large number with mathematical significance.

It has been a while since I read that series of articles, but the gist of it was:

-The author predicts that the business side of entrepreneurship will become increasingly commoditized, with programs like YC supplanting business school as the expected qualification for executives. The author parallels the unique skills required by railroad and steel entrepreneurs (access to funding networks, an ability to act on incomplete and indistinct market data and so on) with those of today's tech entrepreneurs and then observes how those skills became less valuable as the railroad and steel markets matured and consolidated to the point where the risk-taking entrepreneurs were no longer necessary and were replaced by dry MBA-types.

-The author predicts that the tech side will evolve into something like the guild system used by artisans prior to the industrial revolution, since engineers are still the gatekeepers to technology.

-Finally, the author predicts that both of these groups will become increasingly beholden to finance-types, albeit with the engineers having quite a lot more leverage if they can manage to establish some kind of collective bargaining platform (i.e. a guild). By nature of being individually indistinct and for the most part interchangeable in terms of skills as tech markets become less risky, business-oriented entrepreneurs are therefore the new labor in the way that manufacturing jobs were the old labor.

By the way, I thought it was a long but pretty fantastic read and would highly recommend it if you can find a few hours of free time.