Links: 7-23-2014

  • Microsoft’s New CEO Needs An Editor | Monday Note
    Loved the hierarchy of ideas of graph, quote: "The top layer deals with the Identity or Culture — I use the two terms interchangeably as one determines the other. One level down, we have Goals, where the group is going. Then come the Strategies or the paths to those goals. Finally, we have the Plan, the deployment of troops, time, and money."
    (categories: strategy business communication writing motivation culture microsoft )

  • Hierarchy of ideas | Chunking | NLP
    More on the hierarchy of ideas, this time as it relates to conflict, quote: "In NLP we learn to use this hierarchy of ideas and chunking to assist others in overcoming their problems, we use it to improve our communication skills (so we understand how others are thinking and how we are creating our own problems). We use it to discover the deep structure behind peoples thinking and the words that they are using."
    (categories: chunking ideas communication strategy conflict negotiation )

Links: 7-6-2014

  • Coordinating technological change in large software organizations
    Quote: "Part of what distinguishes great infrastructure teams is a sense of empathy for those that depend on them. When attempting to move an organization forward with a new technology, such a team will reduce the barrier to entry by addressing any likely concerns and minimizing the amount of work that developers have to do to make the switch. By going the extra mile to ease the lives of others, the team initiating the change improves the likelihood of success and greases the wheels of forward progress."
    (categories: startups infrastructure management software development )

Links: 7-4-2014

  • Six things I wish we had known about scaling — Martin Kleppmann’s blog
    quote: "The kind of system I’m talking about is the data backend of a consumer web/mobile app with a million users (order of magnitude). At the scale of Google, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter (hundreds of millions of users), you’ll have an entirely different set of problems, but you’ll also have a bigger team of experienced developers and operations people around you. The mid-range scale of about a million users is interesting, because it’s quite feasible for a small startup team to get there with some luck and good marketing skills. If that sounds like you, here are a few things to keep in mind."
    (categories: architecture devops scalability databases postgres mysql )

  • Interacting with a World of Connected Objects — Product Club — Medium
    Lots of interesting thinking about IoT and giving said objects personalities. Loved the sample house conversation between the motion sensor, gatekeeper, dishwasher and roomba. Also, the questions you should be able to ask of your devices: a) where are you? b) who owns you? c) what are you currently doing? d) what have you done in the past? e) how much power are you using? have you used? f) how are you currently doing? et…
    (categories: iot robots home devices )

Links: 7-2-2014

  • Why are conservative talk shows so popular and liberal talk shows a failure?
    Quote: "Julia Sweeney has a great line that "listening to NPR is like listening to your mother telling you to clean your room". We have a gas crisis? It would help if you used mass transit more We have an education crisis? It would help if you read to your kids more We have a health care crisis? If you exercised more and ate better, we wouldn’t have such a demand on the system. Coming up next: 3 ways you can add kale to your daily diet. Country <X> isn’t doing what we want? If you were more sensitive to their history, you’d understand why. Let’s have a 15 minute drill-down, shall we…? The typical framing of the typical problem is about what you can/should do to help things get better. On the other hand, if you listen to Limbaugh, you (the listener) are never at fault. You are perfect. You are the heart of America. The problem is them – those liberals, foreigners, feminists, etc., fools at best and traitors at worst, who are screwing things up and preventing the great life you deserve. We have a gas crisis? They refuse to let us drill and use nuclear. We have an education crisis? They have a bias against private schools We have a health care crisis? No we don’t! They just say this as an excuse for Big Government. Coming up next: an ad for Ruth’s Chris Steak house. Country <X> isn’t doing what we want? If they didn’t make us act like such wimps we’d be respected and feared! The Limbaugh approach is much more popular. In my opinion it’s not so much the details of the liberal vs. conservative policies, it’s that the one nags you while the other exalts you."
    (categories: politics framing culture )

Links: 7-1-2014