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UT Austin researchers use supercomputing to assess the impact of climate change on the country’s growing season

The good stuff:

“While the ground team worked to gather data from local farmers, Cook and Vizy ran climate models to examine changes to the growing season through the mid to late 21st century.”

"First, we run a control simulation for the present day (1989-2008), so we can evaluate the model by checking it against actual data to assess the model's strengths and weaknesses," Vizy said. "Then we run the model for 20 year time slice periods, 2041-2060 and 2081-2100, to get an overview of how climate will change in the region."

“many of the IPCC AR5 global climate models use spatial resolutions 100 kilometers or coarser. This distance does not allow the global models to adequately resolve regional topography or the physical processes involved in intense rainfall, as these convective systems mainly operate on spatial scales of less than 10 kilometers.”

Working at a startup has been an enlightening experience. I have learned, if nothing else, the importance of structure in beginning a business, and, looking forward, in running a business. If there is not a skeleton, something like a business plan, for employees (including the CEO) to work from, then it makes it very difficult to assign tasks and develop benchmarks for progress. If there are not agendas for each meeting, then meetings become unnecessarily inefficient and people lost focus, get impatient, and get discouraged. There always needs to be a platform for people to suggest their ideas, for other to evaluate the ideas, and for the feedback to get to those people in an organized and time efficient manner. If this doesn’t happen, then the people like developers, designers, and project managers will become discouraged and less willing to work for management. It’s up to the management to maintain organization at all times, for the greater benefit of every department. Without a cohesive platform, progress is slow and the disorganization will cause frustration.

#sharing #startup #mangement #improvement

Do you understand power?

Watch: http://unplugthetv.com/post/102548669733/how-to-understand-power-eric-liu

Notes from the video:

Civic Arena 1. Physical Force 2. Wealth 3. State Action - Use of democracy to do/not do what they do 4. Social Norms - Peer to Peer 5. Ideas - Boundless 6. Numbers - Crowds show opinion

Power is never static. - If you aren't taking action, you're being acted upon.

Power is like water. - Flows through everyday life - Politics is work of harnessing that flow in a direction you prefer. - Policy is power frozen.

Power compounds

Read powers - pay attention to as many texts of power as possible. - See society as a set of texts - Map out who has what kind of power - Why has it turnedo ut this way? Who wantst to keep it so?

Frontal attack Indirection

Read so you may write. - You must believe you have the right to write.

Practice consensus building; practice conflict. See what works. Adapt. Repeat. ^ Citizenship ^

Why? - Benefit you or others, too? - Pro-social or anti-social? (about character)

Power + Character = Great Citizen

#power #character #citizen #politics

Pledge to Vote

But I haven't done any research on any of the candidates! Should I really be pledging to vote?

#pledge #to #vote #pledgetovote

Taxes in Germany vs. America & the Complications a "Free" Education

Germany's taxes are higher than ours. Approximately 10% higher according to measurements shown here.

Germany offers a free education to any American or German student. But is it free? Of course not.

TINSAAFL (There is no such thing as a free lunch)

There is no such thing as a free education.

Is America ready to pay for higher education? We already do... to an extent. By paying state taxes, many students can receive in-state tuition rates after becoming a resident of that state. We will have to determine if an educated society in the masses is more valuable to us- or to the ruling population- than a more educated select group of society. An age old question.

#free education #taxes #america #germany #socialism

One Down

Just finished my first Lynda course. It was in XML, called "XML Essentials," and went over the basics of XML code. It was more of an overview of what XML provides, as well as some of its counterparts: XSLT, Document Type Definitions (DTDs), and XML schema. Overall, I look forward to using the language in Android apps and web application development.

"XML is a really great way of taking information and making it widely available and easily accessible over the internet." - Joe Marini

#XML #language #coding #Lynda #happy coding

Internet History is a Form of Self-Expression

From every bit of history- what we've recorded in things as obvious as what we wear, what we buy and what we say to things as minuscule as how we swing our arms or how high we hold our head. These are forms of self-expression.

Internet history should not be discluded from this. It is more evident of our intellectual expression than our physical by nature of conducting a search or watching a video, but it is expression in one provable form.

#expression #philosophy

At technology conferences over the past couple months I’ve had the opportunity to meet some amazing startups by talented people from around the world. Unfortunately, I’ve often had to determine that their startups were interesting by deciphering a... | Justin Kan | YC Partner and I started some companies.

Speak slowly.

Your pitch should follow this basic flow: market and problem, your solution, evidence that your solution works or will work (traction, sales, your team’s expertise, etc).

Explain everything simply in plain language.

Don’t do a demo.

Don’t show full screenshots.

Make sure everything on the screen is legible.

Don’t put up a full Excel screenshot of your P&L or your Wikipedia page. No one is going to read that. Yes, this means that you are limited to only a small amount of written text on your slides, and that is a good thing. Your slides should emphasize the points you are making verbally.

Have you heard of the one where you throw an entrepreneur off a 50 story building? His investor checks in with him at every floor to see how things are going. "49th floor, everything's great ... 48...

Before I tell you the flaw, let’s test your instinct for the flaw. Here are two similar startup ideas, which one is better and why? Which startup would you build?

A service to help people come up with ideas for proposing to their partner.

A service to help people help come up with ideas for getting their partner to propose to them.

I use this example because I actually had the idea long ago to start company #1 as a side project. When I proposed to my wife, I spent months planning the event, which included tricking her into believing that a trip to Rome was just a business trip.

I figured that many people would like to maximize the effect of their proposal (big or small) and would be happy to pay to use a service to help them do so.

What is the Flaw?

The fatal flaw is solving a problem people don’t know they have.

A better article than the title suggests. It takes a while for him to explain his point, but he does so methodically and eventually gets there. Worth the read.

If you’re looking to raise money for your startup, have you considered whether your idea is actually fundable?

Sign 1: No Publicly Traded Company Does What You Do

Sign 2: You Are Building a Feature of Another Product

Sign 3: Your Traction Is Slow and Steady

Sign 4: You Have No Co-Founders

Sign 5: You Make No Money

Sign 6: You’re Not Solving a “Hair-on-Fire” Problem

Why does your startup exist? The more primal the need you are solving, the more fundable your startup. Thinking of yet another invoicing startup? What is so frustrating about the existing invoicing systems that would make people want – not just need – your solution? Building a Nest for farmers to track their soil? Sure, they could use it to make more money, but ask yourself: is a farmer the kind of person who spends extra money on newfangled unproven gadgets? You have to understand the motivations, hopes and dreams of your customers to have a fundable business.

At CMU yesterday, I heard a story about how Yahoo Trip Planner has pretty much zero adoption. It has never taken off, though it remains online even today. Yahoo keeps it around because it's...

This points to the deeper problem that underlies every product or service: obscurity. I only have a finite number of slots in my brain. If I don't remember it, I won't use it. And I only remember things that I use often. Just like I order Coca Cola whenever I get a cheeseburger... the consumer web/mobile services I use need to be things I use all the time.

Hmm... Is this the only way to think about travel planning? What if it was an immersive travel site where people could instead enjoy exploring the world virtually, but also gave the option to help plan once the customer has fallen in love with the place(s) they've experienced? This would mean they continue to return to the product, not just for the planning feature.

#tech #ideas #travel #software

Note: this is a non-religious post. This weekend was Yom Kippur, holiest of the Jewish holidays and the day of atonement. It's also the day when most Jewish

jindou

Sales in 2013 started off slow like an old arthritic man sprinting a hundred meter dash. But by the end of the year our team started to get their groove into second gear and things picked up tremendously.

There are a ton of resources for engineers and founders on the web but sales...

Human Adaption to Its Environment in the Age of Technology & What I Want

If we establish that people have adapted to their immediate environment in any age of study, from when people were living in jungles to the the modern post-industrialized era, in both physical and mental (emotional) ways, we can make predictions on how humans will interact with each other with the very recent introduction of technology that allows for social interaction.

It is very reasonable to suggest that humans, in the near or far future, will interact primarily through technology, whether it be simulations, video calls, text, etc. There are concerns about this. Many opposed to the idea argue that the recent increase in depression due to loneliness is technology's doing. They may be correct, but consider that we have only recently begun to adapt to this technology, and most of the innovation is still happening. We are in somewhat of a transitional period, between the creation of the internet and the development of another world on the internet that people can connect to and to others with. With this transitional period, each individual faces difficulties- a learning curve- in working out how they will interact with this technology and use it to interact with others. Will they keep to the computer for most of the day, all of the day, or only a small portion of their day? Will most of their interaction with other people take place over the internet? What will be lost in this reaction that is contained within the virtual world?

What I want are two basic things:

The ability to satisfy my curiosity

The ability to create, to make, to help people

#virtual #future #question about the future #two things #social

Excerpts from an Article on MakerSquare

Excerpts from "Coding For All: MakerSquare Aims to Expand the Programming Corps,":

"They were teaching us about how IT worked, and how to sell and implement it, but they weren’t teaching us how to write the code,” he says. “UT doesn’t teach Web development in the computer science degree. I wanted to learn how to code."

"X: What’s the end goal?

RP: Disrupt education. We started with technology because that’s where there’s a huge demand but this is applicable to all industries: accounting, art, different types of engineers. We can teach product design, production management, marketing. How do you run social media campaigns, paid advertising campaigns? There is no formal education for this. You have to figure out how to do it, and hope you’re doing it right. Maybe find a mentor."

They want to be serious competitors, not just business people.

- Ravi Pariky, UT computer science graduate

#makersquare #coding #alternative education #innovation #on the edge

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