Gary Hill

Dad. Senior director in Texas. Interested in tech, business, design. willing to learn new stuff.

[stanfordgsb]

What does it take to be a product manager?

XSeed Capital Partner Alan Chiu (MSx ‘11) kicked off his Stanford GSB talk, “Career Pathways in Product Management,” by first exploring the definition of product management. “If you asked 10 people, you might get 12 answers,” he shared. “It...

[felixsalmon]

“The worst situation is when people confuse dry and sweet,” Mr. Flosse said. “It happens quite often. They say, ‘I’d like to have a sweet wine.’ They don’t mean a dessert wine. So you have to describe exactly what you think they’re thinking, then you bring a wine, and they say, ‘I don’t like that.’ ” His solution is to bring a sauvignon blanc, a chardonnay and a viognier and let them try. Their choice? “It’s almost always the chardonnay,” he said. “It’s not sweet. It’s a dry grape.”

NYT

Mr. Flosse is the wine director at A Voce, and this is, frankly, everything I hate about sommeliers in one quote. If you’re trying to describe your taste in white wine, and you’re not talking about dessert wines, and you use the word “sweet”, then I, for one, know what you mean, and what you mean is likely to be something in the general neighborhood of a California-style oaked Chardonnay. But Mr Flosse seems to be more interested in playing some weird kind of gotcha game, where he serves you three different dry white wines, you pick the sweetest of the three, and then he goes “that’s not sweet, it’s dry!” Ugh.

(via felixsalmon)

[diy]

4 Ways to Introduce Kids to Electronics

Interested in electronics, but don’t know where to start? Start becoming a circuit bender with these few tools. Learn how to work motors and LEDs, create amplifiers and intelligent machines.

littleBits: The fastest way to get acquainted with electronics. LittleBits allow you to easily explore a circuit board by moving around magnetic pieces that snap together. Make synthesizers, games, prototypes, and more with littleBits. 

Arduino: A company that makes circuit boards and an easy programming language to make any electronic project imaginable. Arduino is perfect for all skill levels and can be used simply to control LEDs or to control a robot. 

Learn to Solder: Soldering allows you to secure the wires on your project. After playing around with Arduino and littleBits, use soldering to finalize your electronics creation.

Circuit bend a toy: All electronic toys are great starting points for an electronics project! Pull apart any toys that light up, make noise, or move, and you’ll find a circuit board that you can repurpose. 

[minimaldesks]

[cabinporn]

Circus wagon cabin in Brandenburg, Germany.

Contributed by Roberlina.

[continuations]

Why Are We Here?

We spend a lot of time in tech inventing and building new things. Some people are perfectly happy doing so without needing a deeper reason — some simply want success, others wealth, and many are excited about the potential to make the world a better place. Still I am struck by an undercurrent of dissatisfaction even among people who have accomplished a lot. I attribute that to the lack of a deeper purpose. Few people in tech seem to accept an easy religious answer to the question of why we are here. I have struggled with that myself but feel comfortable with what I believe now.

If you have followed my blog for a while you know that I have written about personal change in the past. Part of that exploration for me has been reading key works in Hinduism and Buddhism. One of the foundational precepts of Buddhism is that everything is ephemeral. Human pain comes from our failure to accept this impermanence. We become attached to people or things and when they inevitably disappear we suffer. I have found this to be a profound insight with powerful consequences for everyday life. Letting go of attachments is the way to overcome most if not all of our fears of the future and regrets of the past.

Yet I also believe that there is an important exception: human knowledge. I have previously argued that knowledge is the information that we as humans choose to replicate over time. It thus includes historical accounts, scientific knowledge and cultural artifacts (including literature, music, art, etc). Knowledge is unique to humans at least here on our planet. Other species don’t have externalized information that outlives them individually (I say externalized to contrast knowledge with DNA).

Human knowledge in principle has the potential to be eternal. It could exist as long as the universe does (and as far as I know we aren’t sure yet whether that will come to an end). Knowledge could even outlive humanity and still be maintained and developed further by some artificial or alien intelligence that succeeds us. Although I would prefer for the contributors to include future generations of humans.

For me the very existence and possibility of human knowledge provides the answer to the question of why we are here and what we should try to accomplish in life. We should endeavor to contribute to knowledge. Given my definition this can mean a great many things, including teaching and making music and taking care of others. Anything that either adds to or reproduces knowledge is, so far, a uniquely human activity and why we are here (“adding” includes questioning or even invalidating existing knowledge).

Once our basic needs are taken care of I believe we should devote much of our time to knowledge. We can still do things like create new products or start new companies (or invest in them). But we shouldn’t be mindless consumers of stuff or information. And we should focus on products or services that either contribute directly to knowledge or help others do so including by helping take care of basic needs (food, shelter, clothing, health, transportation, connectivity). This is also why I support the idea of a universal basic income.

Now at first blush the focus on knowledge sounds value free. What if you are inventing the nuclear bomb or worse? I have written about how values are important to guide what systems we build. I am convinced that many (and maybe all) of the values I believe in can be derived from the foundational value of knowledge, including, for example, conservation of the environment. I will write more on that in future posts.

This view of the meaning of life is what works for me personally and I am sharing it because it might work for others also. In doing so I am being consistent with the very belief I am describing. If these ideas have merit they will get replicated by others and carried forward over time and have a chance to become part of knowledge itself.

It is also likely that others have thought of this approach to the meaning of life before me. Knowledge is far vaster than what any one person can possibly know. And so as always when writing, I look forward to comments that point me to related work and people.

[parislemon]

Jony Ive: 5,000. Thomas Edison: 2,332.

In an exclusive interview - in which Ive's promotion is revealed for the first time - Stephen Fry meets Jony Ive, and his boss, Apple chief executive Tim Cook, to talk spaceships, design and Steve Jobs.

Stephen Fry:

With control over both, Ive has been able to migrate the mobile and desktop operating systems from their old-fashioned skeuomorphic rendering of app icons as real world representations (ring binders and even torn page effects on the contacts and calendars apps, for instance) into a brighter, clearer set of exquisitely designed images that speak for themselves. Ive’s inventiveness can perhaps most starkly be expressed by revealing that he has nearly 5,000 patents to his name. To give you some point of comparison, Edison was granted 2,332.

One such patent: the brilliant new UK power plug. 

As for the matter of this being a promotion or a “promotion” for Ive, my view is that this sums it up pretty well.

[minimaldesks]