Random, somewhat scatered thoughts on attention.

Attention is becoming an increasingly valuable asset. The information overload is getting worse. Companies should be happy if people pay any attention to something their offering for free. And for that, many are willing to pay hefty sums. As the saying goes, if you are not paying for something, you are being sold. Attention and time is becoming a kind of a meta-commodity.

Companies acquire rivals just because they are stealing their customers time and attention. Not necessarily because they have a viable business model or a sensible product, but because they one day might. A company with numerous users but not their attention, it cannot advertise directly. The view counts don’t accumulate. In that case, indirect attention grasp via selling data to advertisers is still possible.

The possible disturbances, the attempts to grasp your...

I listen to podcasts quite much. Almost always while commuting, and sometimes during exercise. They’re an excellent fill for dull times. Here’s a few favourites:

• The Joe Rogan Experience
• Jocko Podcast
• Waking Up
• The Tim Ferriss Show
• Hardcore History ( + Common Sense)
• The Paleo Solution Podcast
• The Drunken Taoist

Whichever one I’m listening to, I’m bombarded with facts, ideas, information and inspiration. There is slight problem, though. My mind is filled with bits and pieces of knowledge, and I sometimes forget important details, not to mention sources. “I just heard this somewhere, and I suppose it was along these lines”.

As Jocko mentioned in one of the episodes, audio has some kind of a special way of getting into the brain. That is, as opposed to the written word, and in the sense that immersion and retention is much better.

Even though the technology required to enjoy podcasts...

Kintsugi is Japanese for “golden joinery”. An art of repairing broken pottery with usually golden glue of sorts. The idea is that the resulting ornament is better of after the repair. It becomes one of a kind. It has a story. I can imagine someone breaking shit on purpose.

Software is shipped with functionalities and features assumed necessary. Rarely is one shipped without bugs. Software adapting to trends in the future is rather impossible to make. So it gets broken, becomes outdated, reveals weird and unexpected edge cases. It is then patched up with hotfixes and paskofixes.

These fixes, they can be golden, made of chewing gum, or of the dark essence towards which brownfield sometimes hints.

Yes, this is a far fetched and silly analogy, but what if age old software was more treated as like kintsugified pottery? Most software contain heaps of undocumented features and fixes made...

When an expert underestimates their ability, they are likely experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect. The accumulation of information, knowledge, or skill generates a gnawing understanding of the things yet unknown. The collection of the known unknowns grows larger. The unawareness of the unknown can first manifest as overestimated capability and know-how. But the inevitable overwhelmedness caused by our lack of knowledge exposes us to the impostor syndrome.

I’ve fallen victim to overestimating my knowledge on issues. Some things, they seem so simple at first. Time and again, I’ve come to realise I was only at the beginning of something, and needed to learn more. This has lead to a somewhat paralysing world view, by which I find it difficult to claim anything with certainty. Instead, I aim to only assess things to the best of my ability and current knowledge.

This is not a negative...

Best practices and standards exist for a reason. They encompass the wisdom of crowds, tried and tested approaches or just well-thought-out scenarios. Standards should never be enforced religiously, as contexts vary and technologies evolve.

The standard is best agreed upon by those who implement it. Optimally, it fits the current and particular situation, and is under constant review and scrutiny. Most importantly, these rules should never be based on a single person’s unquestioned opinions.

The mere existence of best practises is not sufficient. Somehow, they must be obeyed.

enforcing the standards

Sooner or later, manually enforcing standards gets tedious and frustrating. To some, detecting errors conflicting with best practices are infuriating. Others, they couldn’t give a single fuck. A perfectly valid remark at the wrong time can be extra vexing, and creates friction between the...

Between lies and truth, there’s omission, white lies, half-truths, confabulation and opinions. Somewhere there, around these themes, is also tact.

skill and sensitivity in dealing with others or with difficult issues.

I listened to Jocko Willink and Echo Charles talk about this as the most important feature of leadership. As it happens, I’m finding the Jocko Podcast to have refreshing ideas on leadership, business, and personal philosophy.

Telling the truth is important. Spouting a serious truth without any consideration for the listener’s mental state can be a dick move.

excuses

I’m in no way advocating lying or omitting facts in fear of hurting someone’s feelings. In fact, telling lies and keeping up and cataloguing them is mentally hard work. In a sense, one has to keep up multiple timelines about different truths, and perhaps even formulate several different versions of...

I wrote a smallish program in Go around a year ago. Today, a colleague shared this article, and inspired by it, I went back and had a look at my now old project. The simplicity of it was surprising.

an argument for any language

One can write good or bad software on any available language. Some languages are easier to adopt and master, some more performant, some academic, others like a double clawed hammer. Though the argument is valid, having no constraints might provoke showing off, or what we’ve come to call technological masturbation. Tinkering with some arcane and awesome features of a language rarely produce much value for the customer or the users.

Simple languages like Go enforce simple usage. I admit to being frustrated for having found no library for functionally manipulating collections, or just doing some basic stuff I’d gotten accustomed to in Scala, Javascript or even in...

Genes and memes are, in their essence, a construct of information that aims to replicate. So far, though, memes are generated by organisms guided by genetics. Memes replicate much faster, only because of tools adopted by the biological organisms. Memes (or genes) alone, aren’t intelligent. But the gist of their being hints at the evolution of intelligence to come.

Genetic information and evolution is rather complex. Coding DNA, non-coding DNA and RNA. A genetic mutation rarely affects the whole organism that much, as it is formed by numerous genes. A single gene is bound to the host organism and it’s surroundings. A meme is only constrained by the interconnected minds, ranging from small groups to the entire humanity.

Memes, tend to be concise, compressed, and short. They have their history and evolution, perhaps chronicled by someone somewhere. But in essence, the easier a meme is to...

I see a lot of discussion on which technology or framework is the best. Too often, the conversation revolves around which on is the best on absolute terms. To make this less abstract, think about React vs Angular, or pretty much just any library, framework, or architecture we’ve had over the years. The idea that one thing is the best option for everything and everyone is of course plain ridiculous.

The opposite - yet still flawed - viewpoint is that of those who declare the chosen framework to be irrelevant. The only thing that matters, is the implementation and overall reasoning. Granted, the chosen technology matters little if the project fails on incompetence or mismanagement. The potential leverage provided by a technology can always end up wasted. There is a multitude of reasons why a framework fails to be the silver bullet, and why a DIY attitude might sound tempting.

But...

Watching Netflix’s Narcos produces conflicted feelings in me. I’m not that familiar with Pablo Escobar, but still quite sure he was a terrible person. Obviously, the character in the show is humanised, and constructed to induce sympathy in the viewer. But what’s actually more conflicting to me, is the underlaying war on drugs and clash of ideas.

What I can’t help seeing in the undertones, are battles against a crime that could be solved in much easier ways.

humanising evil people

Main characters are seldom portrayed as completely inhuman or evil fashion. Even the anti-hero should have some redeeming qualities, and in Narcos, Escobar seems to exhibit familial love and a some kind of an ideological stance on American imperialism.

Escobar somewhat reminds me of Walter White, though Escobar was an actual person. He is shaped by real events, instead of a writer trying to keep his main...