Author: Daniel

Daniel https://turnings.phrasewise.com/ In the 4th grade Daniel was asked to step in into the hall because he was coaching fellow students on a similarity assignment he provided the class. Since then, Daniel’s passion for helping people has propelled him to be a creative developer of software and systems, and a team coach who excels at successfully delivering business value. Daniel founded QuietlyHelping in 2009 in order to have a direct hand in helping families with the struggles of debilitating disease. QuietlyHelping is an organization of compassion and empathy that brings ease, comfort, smiles, laughter, healing, and love to people battling cancer and other diseases. Spare time activities include cycling, occasional work as a musician, woodworking, photography, and reading books he never got around to in school. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is able to cook minute rice in just under thirty seconds.
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Music Lessons (that work for publishing, too) – The Domino Project

Music Lessons (that work for publishing, too) – The Domino Project:

  1. The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now.
  2. Past performance is no guarantee of future success
  3. Copy protection in a digital age is a pipe dream
  4. Interactivity can’t be copied
  5. Permission is the asset of the future
  6. A frightened consumer is not a happy consumer.
  7. This is a big one: The best time to change your business model is while you still have momentum.
  8. Remember the Bob Dylan rule: it’s not just a record, it’s a movement.
  9. Don’t panic when the new business model isn’t as ‘clean’ as the old one
  10. Read the writing on the wall.
  11. Don’t abandon the Long Tail
  12. Understand the power of  digital
  13. Celebrity is underrated
  14. Value is created when you go from many to few, and vice versa

[Go read the whole thing, because a lot of this applies to everyone.]

David Garcia Studio: Pessoa Clock

David Garcia Studio: Pessoa Clock:

In an attempt to formalize the ritual of waiting, a clock was devised to leave traces of poems while it was turned on. The clarity of the traces is directly proportional to the amount of time one has to wait. The text engraved in the base is a poem by Pessoa, depicting concepts of time, and the futility of understanding them fully. Cinnamon is slowly dropped by the rolling cylinder, leaving traces on the street.

[I’d want up with cinnamon everywhere… but I like the idea of creating some art while I wait. I dislike waiting when it’s because the other party is late…]

Source: Chris Adler

Give it five minutes

Give it five minutes:

And what did I do? I pushed back at him about the talk he gave. While he was making his points on stage, I was taking an inventory of the things I didn’t agree with. And when presented with an opportunity to speak with him, I quickly pushed back at some of his ideas. I must have seemed like such an asshole.

[Been there. Trying to teach “give it five minutes” to my son. Might be one of the better things I can do for him.]

When to call bull****

When to call bullshit:

If I had one bit of advice to someone thinking of a startup—including myself, at times—it would be this. Solve a genuine problem, even a trivial one, that you actually have, and that isn’t being adequately solved by an existing solution. Then think about how you can get money for solving that problem. Be wary of scenarios in which your revenue base and your customer base have no overlap.

If I had a second bit of advice, it would be this. Is the elevator pitch for your new startup—no matter how sincerely you believe in its fantastic future—at its heart a variant of, “Think [well-known service name] but with [added feature or new twist]”? If it is, you’d better know somebody willing to call bullshit.

[Seems like right fine advice…]

Source: Coyote Tracks

Is this the beginning of the “Success by UX” era?

Is this the beginning of the “Success by UX” era?:

At first read I agreed with Cross completely, but you know, there’s still a lot of successful products out there that don’t provide a good user experience. Apple is successful by (mostly) providing very good UX and that’s certainly influencing the current generation of designers, but it’s not the only path to success—and there’s an awful lot of work influenced only by Apple’s superficial aesthetics.

[In the end… it’s not about aesthetics. It’s about making tasks easier to accomplish. And about understanding what people were trying to do when they did something and being smart about how you react to it. the aesthetics are the final piece to a very complicated and difficult puzzle. ]

Source: Coyote Tracks

Stop justifying your lack of ethics

Stop justifying your lack of ethics:

Matt and his moronic clique will never actually consider that hey, if we all publicly boycott shit, the people we dislike aren’t making money, and hey, we aren’t a pack of thieves. Because that dear reader, would inconvenience Matt, and lemme tell you about douchey little millenials like Matt: They won’t do shit that inconveniences them

[The whole piece is on point if, as usual, you have to wade through the invective.]

Source: bynkii.com

Edwin Black: IBM’s Role in the Holocaust — What the New Documents Reveal

Edwin Black: IBM’s Role in the Holocaust — What the New Documents Reveal:

Particularly powerful are the newly-released copies of the IBM concentration camp codes. IBM maintained a customer site, known as the Hollerith Department, in virtually every concentration camp to sort or process punch cards and track prisoners. The codes show IBM’s numerical designation for various camps. Auschwitz was 001, Buchenwald was 002; Dachau was 003, and so on. Various prisoner types were reduced to IBM numbers, with 3 signifying homosexual, 9 for anti-social, and 12 for Gypsy. The IBM number 8 designated a Jew. Inmate death was also reduced to an IBM digit: 3 represented death by natural causes, 4 by execution, 5 by suicide, and code 6 designated “special treatment” in gas chambers. IBM engineers had to create Hollerith codes to differentiate between a Jew who had been worked to death and one who had been gassed, then print the cards, configure the machines, train the staff, and continuously maintain the fragile systems every two weeks on site in the concentration camps.

Newly-released photographs show the Hollerith Bunker at Dachau. It housed at least two dozen machines, mainly controlled by the SS. The foreboding concrete Hollerith blockhouse, constructed of reinforced concrete and steel, was designed to withstand the most intense Allied aerial bombardment. Those familiar with Nazi bomb-proof shelters will recognize the advanced square-cornered pillbox design reserved for the Reich’s most precious buildings and operations. IBM equipment was among the Reich’s most important weapons, not only in its war against the Jews, but in its general military campaigns and control of railway traffic. Watson personally approved expenditures to add bomb shelters to DEHOMAG installations because the cost was born by the company. Such costs cut into IBM’s profit margin. Watson’s approval was required because he received a one-percent commission on all Nazi business profits.

[In an odd coincidence, I was discussing IBM’s role in the holocaust just this weekend. Thanks T., for the pointer to the article.]

Managing Node.js Dependencies with Shrinkwrap « node blog

Managing Node.js Dependencies with Shrinkwrap « node blog:

Put differently, it’s understood that all software changes incur some risk, and it’s critical to be able to manage this risk on your own terms. Taking that risk in development is good because by definition that’s when you’re incorporating and testing software changes. On the other hand, if you’re shipping production software, you probably don’t want to take this risk when cutting a release candidate (i.e. build time) or when you actually ship (i.e. deploy time) because you want to validate whatever you ship.

You can address a simple case of this problem by only depending on specific versions of packages, allowing no semver flexibility at all, but this falls apart when you depend on packages that don’t also adopt the same principle. Many of us at Joyent started wondering: can we generalize this approach?