the first driverless city
The World’s First Driverless City May Be In China Longer-term, says Jing, the hope is that a successful all-autonomous city will provide an example not just to the Chinese government, but to any city. If the experiment works, then other cities may be more likely to try it for themselves. Other cities are already experimenting […]
expectations
What’re your expectations? Steve Jobs was in this zone when he talked about dogma in his wondrous Stanford speech: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. […]
little aliens
Growing up, I was always aware of how different my parents were from everyone else’s. It’s not just that we ate different food at home, that they dressed differently, or even just that they had accents. It was all of it; this feeling that they could never understand me. I now recognize this as the […]
Google, P&G, and Insidious Interviews
Interesting article in the NY Times about what Google has learned about hiring over the years. The highlights: 1) GPA & standardized test scores were uncorrelated with employee performance. 2) Ability to answer brainteasers was uncorrelated with employee performance. 3) Behavioral interviews were effective in predicting employee performance. In 2007, I shared with Google my […]
america isn’t free.
Freedom isn’t free is a more catchy title, but doesn’t bullseye my point. America isn’t free. We like to pretend that it is. While we might hate to even approach the premise, but here goes: 1) Having a republic requires an informed electorate. While an autocracy like China gets results much quicker, a democratic republic […]
the brilliance of the thiel fellowship.
A pretty cool documentary airs tonight on CNBC, 20 under 20: Transforming Tomorrow. It follows the selection process for the inaugural class of the “Thiel Fellows”. I saw an early version and really liked it. Edited together in the style of a reality tv show, it manages to transcend the banality of that format to actually […]
our anchors.
Traveling was a great chance for me to get lost in thought. Interestingly, the bulk of the threads in my head were long-simmering ideas that I now pulled on further. I traveled alone for most of my trips. In practice, this meant that I was constantly surrounded by new single-serving friends in each new city. […]
what the debt committee actually said.
For immediate release 4:15PM EST [We’re releasing this statement after the US stock market closes. We don’t want you to see a cute chart on CNBC of the markets dropping as everyone realizes just how little we give a shit about actually doing our jobs. See: we’re not that stupid. Wait. Maybe that should be […]
obama’s failure.
It’s good to be declarative when talking about presidents. They should own things. Think ‘Bush’s War’ for Iraq. And, now, it seems ‘Obama’s War’ for Afghanistan. So, I’m declarative here: Obama’s failure. I’ve wanted to write this for a long time. It really built over 2010. As my feelings grew stronger, I felt trapped by […]
random end of march thoughts.
Lacking the clarity to focus on a specific topic, I’ll blog the randoms in my head: 1) When I moved to SF, one of the things that I was most stoked about was being surrounded by ridiculously smart, ambitious people. One of those people is Ramit. To compound his already ridiculous awesomeness, he just released […]