- Q&A with Khoi Vinh at the New York Times
- “We draw inspiration from what’s happening in digital media at large, regardless of whether or not a news organization is explicitly involved, and often regardless of whether a given digital product deals in the news at all. That means that sites of miscellaneous classification like YouTube, Wikipedia, Craigslist and Facebook — and countless others, many of which might have only recently emerged from their founders’ garages — are of as much interest to us as top-shelf competitors like The Guardian and our other peers.”
- Do you focus on bad luck?
- “Remember that whatever you pay attention to grows in your mind. If you focus on what’s going wrong in your life—especially if you see it as ‘bad luck’ you can do nothing about—it will seem blacker and more malevolent. In a short time, you’ll become so convinced that everything is against you that you’ll notice more and more instances where this appears to be true. As a result, you will almost certainly stop trying, convinced that nothing you can do will improve your prospects.”
- You weren't meant to have a boss
- “Another thing you notice when you see animals in the wild is that each species thrives in groups of a certain size. A herd of impalas might have 100 adults; baboons maybe 20; lions rarely 10. Humans also seem designed to work in groups, and what I’ve read about hunter-gatherers accords with research on organizations and my own experience to suggest roughly what the ideal size is: groups of 8 work well; by 20 they’re getting hard to manage; and a group of 50 is really unwieldy.” [tx Sean]
- Is Apple creating some kind of a virtual world environment?
- “[One of Apple’s latest patents] would clearly indicate that there’s a store front involved here in order for a user to know that it’s a sunny day in the fall in this virtual world. Something a little outside of the box I’d say and definitely far beyond anything known by any of us shopping at the Apple Store today.”
- Making long-distance work partnerships succeed
- “Technology makes it possible to run a business from practically anywhere on the planet. But what if your business partner lives in a different city or a different time zone? How do long-distance partners make it work? The answer appears to be with lots of planning and smart use of technology. And even in the best long-distance arrangements, an old-fashioned in-person meeting now and then seems to reignite the spark.”
- Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch
- “Emmy-nominated series Deadliest Catch returns for a third season of daring adventures on the high seas. Viewers once again voyage to the Bering Sea and follow the brave captains and crew of eight crab-fishing vessels as they struggle against the treacherous weather conditions doing one of the deadliest — and most lucrative — jobs in the world.”
- Timeframe date picker
- “Click-draggable. Range-makeable. A better calendar…I’m just sick of multiple date pickers on the same page.”
- Scott Raymond nails the recent Twitter flap in the blogosphere
- “Twitter must be really grateful for the goldmine of free technical and business advice they’ve gotten in the last 24 hours.”
Ricky Irvine
on 26 Apr 08This would be awesome to see. Yet, our friend Aaron Marrs died 3 years ago doing this very job, along with most of his shipmates.
Dean
on 26 Apr 08There’s no such thing as luck, only probability.
Javier[EmaStudios]
on 26 Apr 08Ohhh, that timeframe date picker is amazing! it drags! oh may, this one goes into my new web app. This one is VERY hot; if I clear the code for IE I will definitely email the author.
Javier Emastudios
Mel Kirk
on 28 Apr 08Great post! I really enjoyed reading Khoi’s response… :)
Drew
on 28 Apr 08There is a difference between believing that “luck” is a force of nature that can somehow influence probability, and using the term “luck” to describe things which have happened for good or ill over which we have no control.
The nature of probability means that lives do NOT necessarily “balance out”. To say so is to misunderstand probability. If a person’s life was infinitely long, you should find a trend towards balance. But it isn’t, and some folks really do have more unfortunate and unpleasant things happen to them that are out of their control than other people do during the short span of their existence. This is not predictive. To have experienced bad luck is not to be destined to do so again, it simply means they happen to be an edge case on the probability curve in a way they did not choose.
Do we have a word for someone who has been consistently an edge case on the probability curve… someone who has had a lot of bad things happen to them that were beyond their control… hmmm… it’s right on the tip of my tongue…
Oh, right: “unlucky”.
It’s easy to say, for example, that someone born into poverty and starvation is not “unlucky”, they simply are part of a probability curve. For THAT PARTICULAR person, that particular consciousness who was born into suffering, they have experienced “bad luck”. Anyone who tries to claim that everything in our lives is due to our own actions can kiss the a$$es of my friends who have been seriously injured by drunk drivers, died from a rare form of cancer, etc etc. Were their lives controlled by some force called “bad luck”? Certainly not. Did they experience things which were “bad luck”? Unquestionably.
This discussion is closed.