Author Archives: kevin

About kevin

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links for 2010-09-22

  • When Steadman encountered HotWired’s infamous “Login or Join” home page, he wondered how someone like Rossetto could so misunderstand one of the fundamental aspects of the web. “Because it was necessary to register to read anything on the site, it was impossible to link from anywhere else on the web to HotWired. It was my great concern that, as a leader in the space, HotWired could precipitate many more ‘premium’ content sites that prevented linking content.” He was enough of a pragmatist to know that the only way to affect change at HotWired, to make sure that linking on the web worked, was from within HotWired. He sent a resume by email.
  • good summary of the problems that european teams are in. the essential problem is that winning is linked with spending money, as long as it's zero sum they'll always spend into bankruptcy "UEFA, European soccer's governing body, will implement its Financial Fair Play scheme by the 2012-13 season. It will ban teams that spend more than they earn from continental competitions. Clubs like Chelsea and Manchester City would be in danger of missing out on the tournament, the Champions League, that they spend so heavily to gain access to."
  • for when i get tired of helvetica everything
  • "Taking time to go fuck around abroad has become essential to a well-rounded education," said New York University dean of student affairs Christina White. "We urge all our students to pick a program that's right for them, whether it's six weeks dicking around in the Spanish countryside, or six months sticking your thumb as far up your ass as you possibly can in Japan or South Korea."

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links for 2010-09-21

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links for 2010-09-20

  • So, people are black boxes. You can ask them a question, and they’ll tell you whatever they think you want to hear. So, you’ve got to throw an impulse function at them. I try to keep them off balance. I try to give them a question that feels like a two-by-four between the eyes. Q. Like? A. I’ll start off with, “How smart are you?” People get really uncomfortable. They don’t know what to do, and they don’t know how to answer it. They know it’s kind of a trick, and it flusters them. Or I’ll take a look at something that they did, and I’ll tell them it’s a big mistake and then just see how they react. Do they start crying? Do they get in a terrible rage and argue with you, or do they come back and systematically tell you why you’re wrong, or perhaps agree with you on certain areas? So, I’m looking for that.
  • A progress-centric person who has an interesting idea for a book jumps right into writing it, while an idea-centric person runs the idea through a wringer — talking to agents and writers, looking for similar works that have sold recently, etc. — before deciding to invest the years required to write and market it. A progress-centric person quits his job to start his on blog-based online business, assuming he’ll figure out the details as he goes along, while an idea-centric person invests the months — maybe years — of hard work necessary to find a business idea with a real chance of supporting him, understanding that the right answer might be for him to build a valuable skill before going freelance.
  • The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products.  We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product.  We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to "liberate" their products.  This is our mission statement: Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products.  Our team's goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.
  • The researchers ran a simulation of their approach in the city center of Dresden. The area has 13 traffic light–controlled intersections, 68 pedestrian crossings, a train station that serves more than 13,000 passengers on an average day and seven bus and tram lines that cross the network every 10 minutes in opposite directions. The flexible self-control approach reduced time stuck waiting in traffic by 56 percent for trams and buses, 9 percent for cars and trucks, and 36 percent for pedestrians crossing intersections. Dresden is now close to implementing the new system, says Helbing, and Zurich is also considering the approach.
  • Whoops!
  • Others have been less enthusiastic. Several of the college's computer geeks have rerouted internet access through Canada or Norway or used proxy websites to break through the firewall. Some students have nipped to the nearby Hilton hotel to use its wireless access. Giovanni Acosta, 21, knows how to overcome the blackout but decided against it, as he wanted to see the outcome of the experiment. At first he said he was twitchy. "I had to log on to Facebook even though I knew it was blocked, and I did that every 10 minutes or so, again and again," he said. "But now the itch has gone. I've learnt how much I was being distracted."

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links for 2010-09-15

  • Managers at TheLadders spend more time on talent development in a day than I experienced at Morgan Stanley in a year. Analyst programs in investment banking are typically two years stints, at which point most analysts join Private Equity firms or Hedge Funds for better hours and higher pay. The big banks have a really hard time keeping people, and their HR teams have tried all sorts of things to up retention. Unfortunately for them, they are stuck in a vicious cycle. Since analysts are in and out in two years, and likely only “all there” for 1.5 years (3 months ramping and 3 months of “senioritis”), senior group members have very little incentive to form long-lasting relationships/mentorships
  • "Work With Us" destroys "Free Consultation" Pretty clear to me - the first one conveys high status while the second one signals that they're desperate for work. Bain doesn't give out free consultations. "We know it’s hard to believe that the “Work with Us” beat “Free Consultation,” especially by such a huge 171% lift and considering the later is actually offering something for free. We think this test shows the importance of testing call to action copy because you rarely truly know what’s going to convince your audience to act unless you test it."
  • Funny

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links for 2010-09-14

  • "Ryan’s game plans are designed to create confusion and anxiety in opposing backfields. There is always the suspenseful feeling that sorties of blitzers are about to come. Sometimes they do arrive in numbers, sometimes they travel alone and sometimes it’s “simulated pressure” and nobody comes at all. Players who are listed in the program at one position turn up elsewhere: defensive ends retreating to safety; linebackers morphing inside and out like peppered moths — so many linebackers flying around the flame. It’s a hybrid landscape and a distorted one. There is the unsettling realization that trouble can come from anywhere. During Ryan’s 10 seasons with Baltimore, the Ravens allowed fewer points than any other defense and the fewest running yards. Skeptics noted that fortifying Ryan’s play-calling was a human portcullis — middle linebacker Ray Lewis, the best defender of his time. Then last year Ryan arrived in New York, where immediately the Jets defense ranked first in the N.F.L
  • False confessions are common: "But more than 40 others have given confessions since 1976 that DNA evidence later showed were false, according to records compiled by Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Experts have long known that some kinds of people — including the mentally impaired, the mentally ill, the young and the easily led — are the likeliest to be induced to confess. There are also people like Mr. Lowery, who says he was just pressed beyond endurance by persistent interrogators."
  •  [T]here are two technologies for producing automobiles in America. One is to manufacture them in Detroit, and the other is to grow them in Iowa.
  • author sets aside $10/week to give to homeless, a friend of hers writes a yearly check and doesn't give any money. i'm always interested in solutions to this problem
  • guys that barely survive impending danger
  • within-store marketing to customers, e.g. "shopper marketing," is booming: "Although the “science” of this kind of marketing is sometimes debated and questions constantly arise about the messy, qualitative side of this discipline—something I can discuss more, later on—powerful statistics act as a call to shopper marketing. Namely: —70% of brand selections are made at stores —68% of buying decisions are unplanned, and —5% of consumers are loyal to the brand of just one product group (Stahlberg & Maila 2010) In other words, while sometimes highly effective, there seems to be something very ineffective with traditional marketing, advertising and branding efforts. As a result, shopper marketing budgets are growing rapidly."
  • excellent: "What the issue of job creation illustrates is the problem of treating government experts as responsible for a problem that cannot be solved by a single person or a single organization. Economic activity consists of patterns of trade and specialization. The creation of these patterns is a process too complex and subtle for government experts to be able to manage. The issue also illustrates the way hubris drives out true expertise. The vast majority of economists would say that we have very little idea how much employment is created by additional government spending. However, the economists who receive the most media attention and who obtain the most powerful positions in Washington are those who claim to have the most precise knowledge of "multipliers.""
  • Paradoxically, the very things that made the stimulus more effective economically may have made it less popular politically. For instance, because research has shown that lump-sum tax refunds get hoarded rather than spent, the government decided not to give individuals their tax cuts all at once, instead refunding a little on each paycheck. The tactic was successful at increasing consumer demand, but it had a big political cost: many voters never noticed that they were getting a tax cut.
  • According to New Hampshire’s WMUR Channel 9 News, three local men, Mario Rojas, Leonardo Barroso and Victor Rodriguez, have burglarized more than 18 homes in the Nashua area of New Hampshire simply by checking status updates on Facebook and then pillaging the houses of victims who announced on the social network that they were not home.
  • I think there are five different variables being represented here, in x, y position, size of circle, country name and denomination (color). Cool chart. Clustering of high-population Muslims in top left

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links for 2010-09-13

  • In a winner-take all economy, however, small differences in skills can mean large differences in returns and we have moved towards a winner take-all economy because technology has increased the size of the market that can be served by a single person or firm
  • Author figures out how to stack a deck of cards so that no matter how they are cut, the dealer still wins the hold 'em hand. Really cool
  • "loneliness occurs in clusters, extends up to three degrees of separation, is disproportionately represented at the periphery of social networks, and spreads through a contagious process. The spread of loneliness was found to be stronger than the spread of perceived social connections, stronger for friends than family members, and stronger for women than for men. The results advance our understanding of the broad social forces that drive loneliness and suggest that efforts to reduce loneliness in our society may benefit by aggressively targeting the people in the periphery to help repair their social networks and to create a protective b
  • “Why were you in China?” asked the passport control officer, a woman with the appearance and disposition of a prison matron. “None of your business,” I said. Her eyes widened in disbelief. “Excuse me?” she asked. “I’m not going to be interrogated as a pre-condition of re-entering my own country,” I said. and it gets better from there...
  • wow
  • Sobering - Most laymen probably assume that the 350-year-old institution of “peer review”, which acts as a gatekeeper to publication in scientific journals, involves some attempt to check the articles that see the light of day. In fact they are rarely checked for accuracy, and, as a study for the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think-tank, reported last year, “the data and computational methods are so seldom disclosed that post-publication verification is equally rare.” Journals will usually consider only articles that present positive and striking results, and scientists need constantly to publish in order to keep their careers alive.
  • Rejection Therapy consists of only one rule: You must be rejected by another person at least once, every single day. Please notice the wording of the rule. It doesn’t say you must “attempt” or “try” to be rejected. The rule is you MUST be rejected by another human being. In this game, rejection is success. No other outcome will meet the requirement of this program. To put yourself in a situation where rejection is likely, but to your surprise your request is granted, is not a successful outcome. Why? Because you weren’t rejected. You didn’t ask for too much.
  • Other words on the list include "Lady Gaga," "rude," in reference to departing "American Idol" judge Simon Cowell, and "Asperger's Syndrome" , the autism disorder seen on the Emmy Award-winning HBO film, "Temple Grandin."

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links for 2010-09-12

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