I watched yesterday’s 80 minute TypeScript documentary,TypeScript Origins: The Documentary. TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that transpiles, with static typing, into JavaScript so it can run inside a web browser.
The enlightening part of this documentary is that it starts with Microsoft employees talking about what a paradigm shift it was for Microsoft to embrace open source software development. It highlights the differences in leadership between Gates/Ballmer and Satya Nadella who took over as CEO in 2014. Nadella saw the importance and power of goodwill with open source while transitioning the company to providing cloud services. That’s a huge culture shift for a behemoth company like Microsoft which is one of the largest companies in the world.
It’s interesting to see how a company, like Google, has shifted away from, “Don't be evil,” while Microsoft has become more open and supportive of the developer community.
Here's a fascinating Regular Expression for identifying prime numbers:
/^1?$|^(11+?)\1+$/
A Regular Expression is a sequence of characters that specifies a match pattern in text. For example, it could be used when writing code for a website to detect if someone entered a properly formatted phone number, ZIP code, etc.
Instead of entering numbers in base 10 or binary (base 2), this Regular Expression uses the unary numeral system (base 1). Base 1 is probably how the earliest humans first counted. 111 = 3, 11111111 = 8, etc.
It seems the more I learn about Regular Expressions, the less I know. 🤷♂️
Here's a ten minute explainer video that demos regex101.com for testing Regular Expressions.
Apple's Vision Pro introduces spacial computing to consumers. But will it catch on?
Key benefit: Integration of a computer with multiple, large screen displays in a three dimensional, interactive environment. This is the first standalone Apple product introduced by Tim Cook, as CEO, that isn't an add-on like the Apple Watch.
Price: Starting at $3,500.
Adjusted for inflation, this is roughly the same cost as the Apple I computer released on April 11, 1977, which required assembly.
Price Comparison: Comparable to HoloLens 2.
Personal Thoughts: This is version one of a prosumer product in an entire new area of personal computing and human-machine interactions. Keep in mind that the Pro designation implies it's not a low-end consumer device. While smartphones have virtually connected while physically isolating individuals, the Apple Vision Pro certainly does an impressive job of making remote people feel more present while interacting. Apple also has been thoughtful about how others see and interact with the user. Specifically, when people approach a person using the Vision Pro, the user can see them. Additionally, a person can see the eyes of the Vision Pro user they're interacting with. In other words, the outward facing display is solely for the benefit of others. A nice touch.
A few months ago I became interested in meditation.
Today, I returned from a ten day silent retreat in the desert city of Twentynine Palms, California where we learned the Vipassana silent meditation technique. This technique involves a remarkably impressive method of visualization.
For the last 10+ days, a group of about 80 of us literally lived like Buddhist monks & nuns that involved the following code of discipline:
1. No talking (Noble Silence, in other words we took a vow of silence where we, the students, never spoke amongst ourselves. This included no hand gestures, signaling, or eye contact. I only spoke about two sentences, each day, to my instructors and some days I literally didn’t speak a single sentence.)
2. No contact with the outside world. (No phones, no electronics, etc. We turned over our phones and car keys at the beginning of the course and didn’t get them back until the end of the tenth day.)
3. No reading
4. No writing
5. No exercising
6. No rituals
7. No stealing
8. No lying
9. No sexual activity
10. No intoxicants
For ten hours a day, for ten days, we meditated. A gong woke us up at 4 am, each morning, and we began the day with two straight hours of meditation at 4:30 am. The final daily meditation ended at 9 pm.
For ten days, no one left the training center compound (unless they quit or were expelled). Fortunately, there were walking paths through the desert within the grounds.
Why did I attend? Simply to learn this technique of meditation.
The course is 100% free including full room and board (breakfast, lunch, and a late afternoon tea break). It’s strictly donation-based. And donations are only accepted from students who have completed the course. Vipassana has close ties to Buddhism. Keep in mind that Buddhism is a philosophy practice, not a religion, making the Vipassana meditation technique highly compatible with most any other religion, including atheism.
What do I think of the experience? It far exceeded my expectations.
It was grueling to sit for hours and mind-numbing to only focus on your breath and body, but it was so well worth it. It became easier and more rewarding as the days went by. Every single person was glowing at the end of the course, when Noble Silence ended (jokingly called “noble chatter”). I have no plans to become a Buddhist but I’m definitely eager to continue the Vipassana meditation technique.
Now please excuse me while I take some time to catch up on my 294 unread e-mails, along with 68 text messages and a host of other social media notifications and voicemails.
In the 1980s and 1990s, software engineers developed software and then a different group manually operationalized it by either putting it on floppy disks/CDs or deploying it to a server. With the advent of cloud computing, this manual process became automated and the best practices were defined as DevOps.
With the proliferation of data, and the large amount of information that can be generated even from metadata, the consumption of it can no longer be done manually, in the form of ETL (Extract, Transform, Load), to remain competitive. So, similar to DevOps, DataOps is a key part of automating the process of ETL which enhances data analytics.
It's so very interesting to see how society adapts to technology. I'm sure, a hundred years from now, people will look back at us and say, "What was the big deal about AI?" since they would have grown up with it.
When the camera was invented, it was thought that a photo couldn't be copyrighted because there was nothing "created." Obviously, that legal opinion has changed.
We teach Driver's Ed in school, because teens need to learn how to drive in society, but we don't teach "horse maintenance" because we no longer use horses as out primary means of transportation. I'm sure our grandparents were looked down upon by their grandparents for learning to drive and not riding a horse.
Public education teaches personal hygiene, like how to brush your teeth. Now they teach digital hygiene like how to pick a strong password or not leak private data.
It'll take some trial and error, but I'm sure K-12 will eventually figure it out, but only after society, as a whole, figures it out.
Most people don't realize that, for general communications, Air Force One and the police don't use encryption when transmitting over the radio.
While Air Force One certainly has encryption capable radios on board, it still has to communicate with civilian air traffic controllers (ATC). So anyone can listen in.
In 2012, when I was flying my plane from NJ to San Diego, I ended up on the same frequency as Air Force One while flying by Columbus, OH as the president was landing while on a campaign trip. My copilot, who was a commercial pilot, commented that that was a first for him.
Civilians can purchase police scanners to monitor police activity. However, police departments are now moving to encrypted communications to maintain the privacy of citizens. Imagine being pulled over, in another state, and the cop can't run your license on his squad car laptop. So, instead, he has to call it in over the radio, reading your name, home address, etc. Encrypted communications for law enforcement is probably a good idea.
Over the past 25 years, I’ve personally noticed something that I now call entrepreneur syndrome.
In a nutshell, these are wannabe entrepreneurs (nearly always solopreneurs) who spend all of their time going through the motions of entrepreneurship without ever generating revenue by bringing a product or service to market.
Instead of selling, entrepreneur syndrome sufferers end up being very "busy" working on things they like doing and telling people about it, especially through social media. They have the title of CEO on one or “companies” with no employees, no marketing plan, and certainly no revenue. They love to work from wherever they want, like coffee shops, never earning a single cent.
In the end, what they're doing is OK, but what they're really doing is called a hobby, not a business.
Tomorrow, the FDIC will allow access to Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) accounts up to the insured amount of $250,000. FDIC insurance is something that's not available in the crypto world (just ask SBF and FTX). I'm guessing that all of SVB bank accounts will probably recoup at least 80% of their deposit when the dust settles. This is why billionaires buy many obscenely expensive homes since those investments can be insured to 100%.
Last week, the CEO of SVB sold $3.6 mm in stock as part of a trading plan. I don't think there's much to see with the CEO's stock sales if the cash ended up in SVB, not some other bank. If not, he'll have a tough time explaining that.
Although I haven't had any personal experience with SVB, a good friend of mind did when he, as CEO of a startup, raised $2.5 mm about 15 years ago. Part of his fund raising deal was that SVB would loan his company $500K provided that all the funds were kept in a SVB account, which he did. In 2009, when times became tough, my buddy's startup had $600K in cash. This wasn't a problem until SVB invoked their MAC clause (material adverse change), swooped in, and pulled his $500K. Unfortunately, the corporation's fellow board members didn't want to fight SVB because they had other deals with the bank. In other words, these directors put their own business interests ahead of the corporations. But what can you do?
My buddy didn't have kind words for SVB when I asked him for comments on Friday.
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