Notes from 17/2–23/2/2019
so this week was basically getting through some preliminary interview material and preparing for the university’s dialogue and open house. Extremely long but somewhat fulfilling.
1. The book of secret knowledge
It is intended for everyone and anyone but especially for System and Network Administrators, DevOps, Pentesters and Security Researchers.
i think this is worth an entire article by itself. (note to self)
2. The difference between heartbreak love and steady love
Obsessive passion is what makes dramatic relationships fail. It stems from an insecure sense of identity and a lack of trust. To have a stable relationship, focus on cultivating harmonious passion. Build trust, have a life outside of your relationship and do fun things with your partner. Do this and you will have one of the foundational pieces of a good relationship in place.
Taking this entire quote because it summaries the entire passage. From my perspective, it seems that love need not be seen as a form of sacrifice or be all-consuming. Instead one ought have a strong sense of self in order to know how one may fit in the context of another’s life.
3. She Will Never Be Me
I.. am not sure why I was recommended this article. It seems to be written as a form of catharsis of self-deception, I can’t tell. And yet these moments seem oddly familiar to me.
4. In brief: Google Singapore unveils new space for Southeast Asian developers
Google will also support activities run by community groups such as Google Developer Groups, Google Business Groups, and Women Techmakers.
5. When Empathy Isn’t Enough
We must start thinking about disability from the inception of a project, rather than just a checklist at the end. These tenants will provide designers with an incredible opportunity to make a positive impact on society, no matter what they are designing.
It’s all about sincerity. Check your biases and destigmatise disability.
6. Between gods and animals: becoming human in the Gilgamesh epic
First, that humanity for the Babylonians was defined through society. To be human was a distinctly social affair. And not just any kind of society: it was the social life of cities that made you a ‘true man’
Second, we learn that humanity is a sliding scale. After a week of sex, Enkidu has not become fully human. There is an intermediary stage, where he speaks like a human but thinks like an animal
In short, the new fragment reveals a vision of humanity as a process of maturation that unfolds between the animal and the divine. One is not simply born human: to be human, for the ancient Babylonians, involved finding a place for oneself within a wider field defined by society, gods and the animal world.
That humanity is shaped by humans. Becoming human as a process. Puts perspective in the importance of conscious growth.
Blockchain
1. Coins vs Tokens
Coins — inherent to incentivise participation within the network
Tokens — application-specific currency, tend to represent something
From a narrative point of view, perhaps a comparison table might have worked better in this article. I’m still unclear as to the point of this but it seems that it’s the intent of the product that separates that of a coin and that of a token.
2. The Best Intermediate-ish Crypto Resources
Really like the article on Bitcoin Data Science
I suppose these are non-technical intermediate resources as the list is dominated very much by opinion pieces by thought leaders and whitepapers. Nonetheless, a good read to get a firm foundation on some of the key concepts that underly the current ecosystem.
3. Why It’s Hard to “Get” Bitcoin: The Blockchain Spectrum
Cryptography — provides a defender’s advantage but it’s not easy to wield effectively until the internet came along. Used as a means of error correction and defending against malicious actors
Distributed systems — provide robustness through built-in redundancy. Many of them use an append-only log to store global state of system. This is done through a merkle tree in blockchains.
Economics — incentives for behaviour
Politics — greater transparency, governance without centralisation
4. Secure wallet systems
(EN) The invention provides a computer- implemented solution for controlling access to a computer-related resource such as, for example, a digital wallet. In one or more embodiments, the wallet may be implemented using a blockchain such as the Bitcoin blockchain but the invention is not limited in this regard. Use of the invention during the initial set-up of the wallet can enable subsequent operations such as wallet transactions to be handled in a secure manner over an insecure channel such as the internet. A method according to an embodiment of the invention can comprise the steps of splitting a verification element (such as a private key in an asymmetric cryptography pair) into a plurality of shares; determining a common secret at two or more nodes in a network; and using the common secret to transmit at least one share of the verification element between the two or more nodes. The shares can be split such that no share on its own is sufficient to arrive at the verification element. This means that no one party stores the entire private key, providing for enhanced security of the key. Two or more shares are required to restore the key. The shares are stored at separate locations one of which is an independent back-up or safe-storage location. If one of the other shares becomes unavailable, the share can be retrieved from back up to ensure that the key (and thus the controlled resource) is still accessible. To ensure safe transmission of the share(s), the common secret is generated at two different nodes independently of each other and then used to generate an encryption key. The encryption key can be used to encrypt at least one share of the verification element, or a message comprising it, to ensure that the share(s) are transmitted securely.
Taken from the patent page
I wonder how this performs in actuality. Splitting the key into multiple shares and using a secret to encrypt the shares seem to be adding a layer of redundancy into key protection. But does this take longer? Also what if the backup gets compromised or is lost.
The example given is that of a multiple share system (2-of-3) to provide some sort of redundancy. What’s the optimal number for this? It specifies taht this protocol is to allow for distributed signing of a transaction.
5. A Timeline of Blockchain Development in Australia (So Far)
Big companies seem to be leading the charge in blockchain development in Australia. Not much mentioned in the start-up space. I think it does provide a signal as to what blockchain can be best used for.
Large-scale systems that are willing to place a premium on reliability
Blockchain-Ethereum
1. Here’s All the Cool Blockchain Stuff that Happened at ETHDenver
BuffiDai — localcoin digital asset created for use at the event to purchase paraphernalia
ETHTTT — Dapp if-this-then-that point-and-click no-code interface, now that’s one heck of a UX improvement
2. How to build a distributed voting app on Ethereum
Check that you are constituent -> Allow you to submit proposal -> People can vote on it->If vote passes, voting period ends
Protects against sybil attack by giving votes a limited amount of tokens and putting them into a list once they have voted.
When do these tokens regenerate? So does this mean people can vote with multiple tokens? Does this become some sort of a bidding system instead? Perhaps this concept can mutate into some sort of generalised opinion sharing system (isn’t that just a vote too?)
3. Ethereum | Explained
Interesting why he chose to mention the funds raised. Otherwise it’s really an extremely broad overview just mentioning Ethereum’s core innovation of allowing smart contracts.
For something written in Dec’18, I think it doesn’t explain much without juxtaposing it with the amount of change that has occurred in the ecosystem.
4. Open Letter: The Ethereum Community Calls for End to Threats and “Toxic” Behaviour
I’m glad this piece was produced in it’s entirety. I’ve had the privilege to watch how this unfolded in the community chatgroup and I must say it does bring some confidence into the maturity of the people trying to build our world.
Yet… what is this article about? It simply reproduces the letter. Which, by the way, ended up being posted on 4chan and totally vandalised. So much for rational discussion
Machine Learning
1. Using Machine Learning to Build Better Machine Learning
A few AutoML applications now exist that are used at scale.
TransmogrifAI by Salesforce — to improve the sales pipeline
AzureML by Microsoft Research — to improve model selection
Waymo’s product — exploring CNN architectures for LiDAR segmentation tasks
Organisations
1. Suneet Bhatt on the best onboarding practices for a distributed startup
The first step, before making any drastic changes, is to see how the current team functions against the company’s priorities, with clear goals and outcomes, clear priorities, and, ideally, with obstacles removed
Evaluate where you are now
Keep it simple and align your teams with the customer experience. To me, teams are groups of people who have everything they need to solve a problem.
Know why you are growing your team, with a focus on who you are serving
Structure, goals, expectations — with those in place, you will very quickly learn where customers aren’t happy. You’ll learn what your team can or can’t do, and you’ll learn where you have the right people, tools, and strategies
Turn it into a process
START WITH A PAID PROJECT
ONBOARD IN COHORTS
ASSIGN HOSTS AND STEWARDS FOR EACH NEW COHORT
PAY IT FORWARD WITH A LOG AND SUCCESSION PLANNING
MAKE SPACE FOR PERSONAL CONNECTION
RESPECT BOUNDARIES
EMBRACE THE SOCIAL CONTRACT — balacnce personal needs with team needs
CREATE STRUCTURE FOR ALIGNMENT — daily update
I suppose these are the specific steps for intra-company alignment. But how about communities? I suppose the trick would be to scale this by modelling the way.
2. The Onboarding Secret that Your New Employees Aren’t Telling You
Onboarding has one simple goal.
Get new employees completely ramped up and integrated into the team as fast as possible.
Pre-onboarding — the time between the signed offer letter and the first day. Most managers forget to focus on this critical period.
Orientation — this includes the basic information sharing to the new employee, team introductions, and completing the employment paperwork.
First assignments — the first few projects, especially the first one, need to be scoped extra carefully for new employees to help them get up to speed without overwhelming them. This is done within the first week or a few weeks at most.
Ongoing support — when done effectively, the phases above get new employees fully onboarded within a few weeks. But there’s always an ongoing period of a few months while employees get completely comfortable. They need continued support from their manager and peers during this period.
“Onboarding is not simply an orientation.” Something to keep in mind. I suppose this is something critical for any organisation, but it would be interesting to try this out for a University context. Or even the student government. The difficulty of preparing a student for the trials of university life hasn’t seemed to be overcome well. Most schools take orientation as a ‘fun’ activity but the potential to set the ideal culture would be lost.
3. The Unsung Heroes of Modern Software Development
Reading this more to expand my vision of best practices that foundations do.
- Apache Software Foundation — enterprise-grade software
- Linux Foundation — sustainable open source ecosystem
- Free Software Foundation — maintains projects in GNU Linux ecosystem (Bash, Emacs, Gawk, Make and R)
- Software Freedom Conservancy — Inkscape, PyPy, Git, Selenium
- Software in the Public Interest — develop and distribute open hardware and software (haskell, jenkins, Debian)
- Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) — built around kubernetes containerised cloud microservices
- NumFOCUS — data science projects (NumPy, Matplotlib, Pandas, Jupyter, Julia)
Life Optimisation
1. A Decision Making Checklist That Works With Your Emotions, Not Against Them
Take into consideration the emotional effect of your possible acts and their outcomes.
Evaluate the validity of these emotions.
2. Want to cut your work hours in half? Create an A/B schedule
One hat — one role — at a time. Divide schedule by A and B weeks.
I suppose in this case it’s a bit hard because we take 4 modules and there’s still projects to be done. Instead probably it makes sense to streamline the work you have as much as you can and prevent distractions/bleeding between different pieces of work.
3. Warren Buffett: “Really Successful People Say No To Almost Everything”
20% of our priorities typically account for 80% of our results
The real threats to our time are not obvious distractions that we know are wrong
Only work with people you could see yourself working with forever
The things you do learn and invest in should be knowledge that is cumulative, so that the knowledge builds on itself. So instead of learning something that might become obsolete tomorrow, like some particular type of software [that no one even uses two years later], choose things that will make you smarter in 10 or 20 years
However the entire premise is prerequisited on that idea that you know what your true goals are. I think that’s my greatest challenge and probably why I’ve been in this exploration limbo for a half my time in university so far. But i think it’s getting better.
4. We Studied 100 Mentor-Mentee Matches — Here’s What Makes Mentorship Work
ONE: Don’t use the word ‘mentor’
TWO: Don’t treat it like a transaction
THREE: Show up prepared with questions
FOUR: Don’t boil the ocean in every meeting
FIVE: Ask your mentor to check your blind spots
SIX: Look for themes and organizing principles
SEVEN: Be honest and transparent
EIGHT: Don’t give homework — focus on execution
NINE: Make sure mentors are learning too
TEN: Always have multiple mentors
You’re essentially helping to connect like-minded people… through time. An elder to reflect on his past. A junior to discover the future.
