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1. Reddit on money.

2. Big data in the NBA:

The technology was originally developed to track missiles. Now, SportVU systems hang from the catwalks of 10 NBA arenas, tiny webcams that silently track each player as they shoot, pass, and run across the court, recording each and every move 25 times a second. SportVU can tell you not just Kevin Durant’s shooting average, but his shooting average after dribbling one vs. two times, or his shooting average with a defender three feet away vs. five feet away. SportVU can actually consider both factors at once, plus take into account who passed him the ball, how many minutes he’d been on the court, and how many miles he’d run that game already.

A business-idea thought experiment I like to play is: in what ways could you generate an extraordinary amount of data from your daily life? Tracking your movements? Social interactions? Brain activity? Here’s a related earlier post.

3. The economy remains weak, but one millstone is lightening up:

In a reversal of fortune, the only recent good news has been from the housing sector. Housing starts were down slightly in May, but that was because of the volatile multi-family sector. The details were better: single family starts were up, revisions to previous reports were up, and permits were up sharply.

The headline number for existing home sales was a little weak, but the key number – inventory – was down in May, and down over 20% from May 2011. However away from housing, the economic data was very weak.

On the fork:

the time of Henry III, fork-owners would have been well-off, and most of them would have had one set of cutlery that traveled with them; there are numerous examples of forks and knives housed in carrying cases that could be slung over a shoulder or around a waist. It wasn’t until the late 1600s and early 1700s that people began to purchase multiple sets of silverware for their homes, which were just beginning to be equipped with rooms specifically set aside for dining. It was also around this time that forks with three and then four tines were made. Even as the fork gained ground, it was not universally accepted.

Twitter went down today and here’s an insightful comment on HN:

I think this is another good example of how we as an industry are still unable to adequately assess risk properly.
I’m fairly certain that the higher-ups in Twitter weren’t told “We have pretty good failover protection, but there is a small risk of catastrophic failure where everything will go completely down.” Whoever was in charge of disaster recovery obviously didn’t really understand the risk.

Just like the recent outages of Heroku and EC2, and just like the financial crisis of 2008 which was laughably called a “16-sigma event”, it seems pretty clear that the actual assessment of risk is pretty poor. The way that Heroku failed, where invalid data in a stream caused failure, and the way that EC2 failed, where a single misconfigured device caused widespread failure, just shows that the entire area of risk management is still in its infancy. My employer went down globally for an entire day because of an electrical grid problem, and the diesel generators didn’t failover properly, because of a misconfiguration.

You would think after decades that there would be a better analysis and higher-quality “best practices”, but it still appears to be rather immature at this stage. Is this because the assessment of risk at a company is left to people that don’t understand risk, and that there is an opportunity for “consultants” who understand this, kind of like security consultants?

The problem, of course, is that risk management will forever be in its infancy relative to risk-generating processes. That’s because the things that cause risk are where the money is made.

Arnold Kling has a nice way of summarizing a more enlightened approach to risk management: “make things easier to fix rather than harder to break”.  Nassim Taleb would phrase the downside to making things harder to break as ‘fragility’.

Consider nuclear technology: fantastic if the risks are managed properly. But the downside to a problem is just so immense it may be the case that there is NO SUCH THING as an adequate safety system.

Remember what happened at Chernobyl, where the big accident happened during a rather benign systems test.

To get accurate results from the test, the operators turned off several of the safety systems, which turned out to be a disastrous decision.

They deliberately turned the systems off. Model that!

In Slate via MR:

My study reveals that, in one way or another, each of the creators became embedded in some kind of a bargain, deal, or Faustian arrangement, executed as a means of ensuring the preservation of his or her unusual gifts. In general, the creators were so caught up in the pursuit of their work mission that they sacrificed all, especially the possibility of a rounded personal existence. The nature of this arrangement differs: In some cases (Freud, Eliot, Gandhi), it involves the decision to undertake an ascetic existence; in some cases, it involves a self-imposed isolation from other individuals (Einstein, Graham); in Picasso’s case, as a consequence of a bargain that was rejected, it involves an outrageous exploitation of other individuals; and in the case of Stravinsky, it involves a constant combative relationship with others, even at the cost of fairness. What pervades these unusual arrangements is the conviction that unless this bargain has been compulsively adhered to, the talent may be compromised or even irretrievably lost. And, indeed, at times when the bargain is relaxed, there may well be negative consequences for the individual’s creative output.

that’s from Barker.

In respect of programmers:

But what exactly do ten-xers do to be so productive? It is not as though they write more lines of software per day. What little evidence there is suggests that, over any given period, all experienced programmers—good, bad or indifferent—tend to produce much the same amount of code.

The big difference is that the best coders keep more of what they have produced, while the worst constantly have to rework whole sections. The high-achievers also make each line of code achieve more. And they know how to avoid writing unnecessary code—by editing routines they have written in the past to accomplish similar things.

More here. Another way of putting this is something a cousin of mine once said: “I don’t really care about working hard. I want to work smart.”

Work” in this case has very little to do with programming and very much to do with intangible related skills: prioritization, communication, adapting work already done. Universally useful skills, too.

Michael Braun, the former chief of operations for the D.E.A., told me a story about the construction of a high-tech fence along a stretch of border in Arizona. “They erect this fence,” he said, “only to go out there a few days later and discover that these guys have a catapult, and they’re flinging hundred-pound bales of marijuana over to the other side.” He paused and looked at me for a second. “A catapult,” he repeated. “We’ve got the best fence money can buy, and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology.”

Much, much more here. First long form NYT article I’ve enjoyed in a while.

addendum: I’m still only halfway through (it’s long), but I could quote every second paragraph. A must-read.

Forget about intelligence/natural ability, it literally doesn’t exist.

And I don’t even care if that’s a “true” statement. It’s a useful statement. The concept of intelligence wastes a lot of your time. Consider its toxic effect on your study habits.

Scenario 1: you’re really struggling with a problem. You feel stupid. You get depressed. Ugh, you groan, I’ll never get this and everyone else seems to get it so they’re smarter than me. Your ego-rescue mechanism kicks in and you go do something else.

Scenario 2: you solve a tough problem for the first time. Wow, you think: I’m effing smart, look what I did! Your brain floods with all-natural, homegrown narcotics. Studying sucks, it makes you feel stupid and you’re actually smart so you can stop and go do something else.

No matter what you think of yourself, framing learning in terms of smarts encourages you to go do something else before you’re ready.

The most infuriating thing about school is that students compare their performance with each other then attribute the differences to something barely related and impossible to change.

Consider an extreme scenario: you’re studying calculus, a tricky bit of math. Here are two things you can do to get better at it:

1. Allocate 10x the amount of time you’re currently allocating from your life to figuring this out.

2. Spend that extra time on the concepts that calculus uses but have nothing to do with derivatives. Get better at algebra, get better at exponents. Get better at logarithms. Now go back to calculus. Guess what, it’s easier. You’re faster. Stronger on all the ‘hard’ topics. People suddenly think you’re smarter but you know that all you did was work your can off.

Notes are a little ridiculous. You spend all this time writing them and, for exam purposes, they’re useless.

Even if you’re writing an exam where you’re allowed to bring them in, mental recall is orders of magnitude faster than flipping through a pile of paper. If it’s a serious test, you don’t have any spare time.

So here’s the guide to your life without notes:

1. Shorten your study sessions. You can realistically put in about 90 minutes of studying at any given time. ONLY do this when your mind is fresh and clear and calm: mornings are best. This state of mind is a precious, precious resource, use it wisely.

2. Stop after 90 minutes, or as soon as you feel your energy flagging, and go do something else (don’t go drinking). For the next 10-20 minutes, while you’re doing whatever you’re doing, replay all of the topics in your head. If you’ve gone over too much material for this, you studied too much. The point is to see if what you’ve learned can be incorporated into your intuition.

Ok, time out.

Read this quote:

Numerous studies over the past thirty years have shown that when people of any age and any ability level are faced with mathematical challenges that arise naturally in a real-world context that has meaning for them, and where the outcome directly matters to them, they rapidly achieve a high level of competence.

I like to think there are two types of intuition: intuition about nature and intuition about humans.

Nature is the stuff we didn’t invent: physics, biology, chemistry, natural geography. These things are studied by walking around the world and asking questions about it: why is the sky blue? What is gravity? What are earthquakes? etc etc.

Everything else, we invented: history, politics, economics, computers, etc. For these, you must use your intuition for human behavior. Why did Hitler invade Poland? What was the 2008 financial crisis about? What is the difference between a conservative and progressive politician? You learn this by experiencing people and society.

Math isn’t in either list because math, by itself, isn’t knowledge: it’s a tool, a language. I don’t believe in abstract mathematical intuition.

Back to step 2 because this is so important: engage familiar situations with your new knowledge. Reread the quote above. With calculus, for example, you already know what acceleration is: just get into a car and floor it. If you work a calculus problem and your solution says a dropped bowling ball slows down before it hits the ground you know you don’t understand the mechanics of the tool well enough yet. But that’s different than understanding what it’s supposed to do.

If you can’t even get an answer, wind back the clock and study earlier math topics. Don’t be discouraged. You’re trying to run before you can walk.

How about history? Ask yourself: if I was in Republican Rome, what would I do? Would I join the military? Would I assassinate Caesar? Can I put myself there? If not then I don’t understand the history well enough yet.

3. You’re going to realize there are some things you only thought you learned. Write these down and go over them one more time. Spend the most time on the hardest stuff, but not longer study sessions.

4. You’ll have to come back over the whole material again later. And maybe one more time again. Don’t take notes, just read the material and think about every concept.

And always work problems designed to mimic test questions. These are how you’ll be evaluated so you might as well get good at them, even if they’re only incidentally related to learning.

I really dislike the iphone for business use. The moment I need to type more than one sentence, I get really frustrated. It’s the editing iOS sucks at.

So I’m pretty much stuck with a blackberry for the foreseeable future. Yet I remain incredibly envious of my wife’s iphone for EVERYTHING other than business communication. The blackberry’s software just plain sucks.

That’s why RIM needs some help and Linkedin would be the perfect fit, non? The anti-Facebook.

Like a high school dance: