366
🎈025/366 | 🐫 Do Not Put ‘Product’ In Charge
Don’t get me wrong. I have a lot of time and respect for 🖇️ Dana Blankenhorn - as you can see … so this one caught my attention
There’s a single rule I’ve learned studying technology this last half century. Product must be in charge.
.. and 🔗then he goes on
I totally disagree, so had to comment and did. Reproduced here for posterity
I don’t disagree on taking the finance wonks out .. but not sure I agree on putting product in … I know lots of companies that lead with product .. and it doesn’t work unless there is wider purview which is often missing in product thinking. Our friends in Cupertino don’t lead with product .. though many pundits think they do .. they lead with vision, experience and story that the product delivers against.
The ‘top’ needs to be market, future market, visionary oriented. Disciplines that used to fall under marketing … though sadly not anymore .. as they are all chasing data and models and RoI .. but those people exist. In all of those disciplines. The dude at the top can still be a focussed finance wonk … their ancillary skill (beyond those three core requirements) is to listen to everyone, take advice and pay attention.
Again .. the man at the top of Cupertino is ‘operations and supply chain’ ( by history ) but to the casual observer, that isn’t so obvious. Meanwhile, the man before him was vision and experience and story .. sure he definitely had a say in product … but from an holistic viewpoint -
Just one slice of the holisticism (is that even a word)… how many ‘product’ people get what good design can do.
If they do .. I mean REALLY do .. why are there so many badly designed, poorly performing products out there?
What Do You Think?
Postscript - sometimes the Leonardo images take a few tweaks to get even close to my underlying message - but in this case - third go - and was only generating 1 image at a time. Sometimes I run out of the 150 free credits that I get every day - and have to choose from a bad lot.
This image just spoke volumes to me as ‘the house that ‘product’ built.
Funnily enough - today’s emoji was also absolutely clear.
🎈024/366 | 🍏 Tim’s Job Is Safe
🖇️ This fine piece of writing dates back to June 2016. What? 7 1/2 years ago?
It popped up yesterday when I was searching my site for something else. A few things dawned on me, not least of which … whatever happened to Scoble? Not that I care.
Don’t get me wrong. I am sure he is bouncing around somewhere - I just don’t track him. I am guessing that at some point in time I just closed him out of my mind, because he more often than not wrote rubbish.
That certainly seemed to be my opinion .. what? 7 1/2 years ago! 😃
That all said, posting this as an early (quasi) ‘claim chowder’ (tip o’ the hat to @gruber) entry. I didn’t believe him (Scoble) then - and said so - and though the jury is strictly still out - I am firmly in the camp that the vision pro IS the next big thing and more importantly that it is because of ‘Tim Apple’ - not despite him. In short - I don’t think Tim needs to worry too much. Certainly not about ‘Bob’.
🎈023/366 | 9️⃣ Highlights From Yesterday
A different theme for today’s 366 … nine links to yesterday’s news - complete with pithy comment - courtesy of this author
1️⃣ 🖇️ Remember my post from a couple of weeks ago?
Well, it turns out that though he might have been expecting .. hoping for that … it might not be a slam dunk.
🔗 Tories hire coordinator to get expat supporters to vote in general election.
Who knew?
2️⃣ 🔗 Trump Says He ‘Aced’ Cognitive Test, Mind Is ‘Stronger’ Than 25 Years Ago
.. not exactly a high bar.
3️⃣ 🔗 Flanders government looks to force TikTok and YouTube to share revenue | Belgium.
Some lessons here. Most Governments pay (they don’t use that word … but that is what they are doing) to attract film production.
I think this is the right way round.
4️⃣ 🔗 Rise in measles cases prompts vaccination campaign in England.
Oh .. so it’s ok to get vaccinated now?
5️⃣ 🔗 The Musical Instruments Market Size Is Expected To Reach $14 Billion By 2027.
Wonder what constitutes a ‘musical instrument ‘ these days?
6️⃣ 🔗 January 21, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
I wonder if Dobbs, with its announcement that when Republicans are given power over our legal system they do not consider themselves obligated to recognize an established constitutional right, will turn out to be today’s version of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
No Comment. Yet.
7️⃣ 🔗 Thousands of Māori gather to tell New Zealand’s government: you cannot marginalise us.
Got to say .. ‘Cristopher (sic) and crew’ were warned.
8️⃣ 🔗 DeSantis Might Be the Worst Presidential Candidate in Recent Memory
Say what now?
Isn’t The Orange Clown a Presidential candidate? Problem nailed .. ‘they’ve forgotten already .. and he is in the fucking race!
9️⃣ 🔗 It seems that ‘God sent a quitter’
If his campaign is remembered at all, it will be for setting fire to a pile of money big enough to be seen from space in order to win a grand total of nine Iowa delegates.
ROTFFLOL
🎈022/366 🤖 AI Experiment
… is a picture I took this morning while I sat with a cup of coffee.
If you have been following along with these posts recently, you will have noticed that a lot of images I use in the 366 series are generated by an AI. (More often than not Leonardo.ai) I do not spend a lot of time on creating the perfect prompt. I am really just playing around and creating a little eye candy whilst learning what I can. Which got me to wondering, what would Leonardo make of my view?
I used this prompt.
“I am looking at Auckland Harbour from a balcony in the viaduct. The sun is shining, but the day is still quiet. Create an image for me that you think reflects what I am seeing.
I ran the prompt three times and these were the results.
I decided this was the closest to the right result as in ‘matching the prompt’.
- It has Sky Tower - so ‘Auckland’ - except if I was looking at the harbour from a balcony - Sky tower would be behind me.
- It is very clearly a balcony.
- I rejected the bottom left, because really - to match the prompt ‘I’ wouldn’t be in the picture.
- There were others that were as acceptable. None were ‘right’/
So - why no boats in the AI images? Because they weren’t included in the original prompt.
Just for kicks I modified the prompt
“I am looking at Auckland Harbour with some moored boats from a balcony in the viaduct. The sun is shining, but the day is still quiet. Create an image for me that you think reflects what I am seeing.”
Am I happy with the finished results? Well - no.
But if i didn’t have access to the actual image, for a few minutes of work - the results weren’t too bad.
(These are the results from the free version of Leonardo. I know they would be massively improved if I subscribed and added access to the other models they have available. First though, I want to learn as much as I can for free.)
What do you think?
🎈021/366 👮🏼♂️ The Seven Laws of Identity
I was listening to 🎙️this podcast and of course duly reminded of Kim Cameron’s 7 Laws of Identity, so replaying here for posterity. You can 🔗 read a quick summary here.
Law 1: User control and consent
Technical identity systems must only reveal information identifying a user with the user’s consent
Law 2: Minimum disclosure for a constrained use
The solution which discloses the least amount of identifying information and best limits its use is the most stable long-term solution
Law 3: Justifiable Parties
Digital identity systems must be designed so the disclosure of identifying information is limited to parties having a necessary and justifiable place in a given identity relationship
Law 4: Directed Identity
A universal identity system must support both “omni-directional” identifiers for use by public entities and “unidirectional” identifiers for use by private entities, thus facilitating discovery while preventing unnecessary release of correlation handles
Law 5: Pluralism of Operators and Technologies
A universal identity system must channel and enable the inter-working of multiple identity technologies run by multiple identity providers
Law 6: Human Integration
The universal identity metasystem must define the human user to be a component of the distributed system integrated through unambiguous human-machine communication mechanisms offering protection against identity attacks
Law 7: Consistent Experience Across Contexts
The unifying identity metasystem must guarantee its users a simple, consistent experience while enabling separation of contexts through multiple operators and technologies
Down here in sunny New Zealand, I have been helping a local man with his identity solution. More on that in due course - because - guess what - its pretty much ‘tops’ .. and expression I learned last night which is the antonym of ‘pants’ … but I digress.
It turns out his system hits all seven laws - and that’s just how it worked out, to because he designed to them. This gives me even more confidence that we are on to something. It would be kinda like building a robot and then realizing it is ‘Asimov compliant’.
🎈020/366 | 🔮 Future Vision
Over the holidays, down in Wellington, I somehow constantly found myself in conversations about ‘local politics’ … council, city, region … and dare I even say national? (On a global scale ’national thinking’ for a small country like New Zealand is still ‘local’.) No need to talk about the topics discussed - the usual, but my recurring observation that was never rejected is that long term planning anywhere for housing, climate change, infrastructure, EV cars, bike lanes … you name it .. is never that long term because the elected officials - even if they had the vision .. and often they don’t’ (but that is a different story) - don’t think beyond their election cycle.
As a result it is a brave group of politicians that put in place 25 to 30 year plans for anything … much less real long term!
Enter 🔗 The Ministry for the Future - New Ideas From Ancient Wisdom. - with my highlights and annotations on Readwise. It’s not quite the same idea and far more ‘financially technical’ than I might ever hope to completely understand - much less explain - but it is all connected and makes for a fascinating - if technical - read.
Unless you’re a policy wonk or a certain kind of federal contractor, you can be forgiven for not knowing what the discount rate is.
BUT - so you know …
Seperately …
📼 A Long Now talk from Kim Stanley Robinson : Climate Futures: Beyond 02022 (referenced in the article, not yet watched - but is now in my queue). Also, that 02022 is not a typo - it’s a ‘Long Now’ year. I like them just from that simple switch in thinking. It positions us in time very differently to 2022. (Not sure if it is also unseen inspiration behind the numbering system of my series for 2024.)
‘nuff said for now. Suffice to say, I am going to do some further exploring around the ‘social discount rate’. This bear hadn’t stumbled across it previously - but it seems to be an excellent way of thinking about a reason why ‘our’ policies are so broken.
🎈019/366 | 🤩 Excited About The Future
You might think today’s choice of ’image’ is a little odd. I mean, is a black rectangle even an image? And what does it mean anyway? But for me it speaks volumes.
It is a similar theme to yesterday’s post … The Future … and yet, I’m talking about a totally different future. A more personal one, not a societal one.
That all said, not yet ready to talk more publicly about what is going on. I just wanted to capture this day in the ‘live journal’ to remember that the business cards were ordered yesterday, Jax catching a plane to the U.S.A. on Saturday and will be gone for the next three weeks working on this.
‘Pumped’ doesn’t even start to describe my feelings.
🎈018/366 | 🔮 A Better Future
A short one today because the 🔗 📼 Biden video speaks for itself.
For me? One of the best, passionate most comprehensive campaign speeches I have ever heard. In fact, the qualifier ‘campaign’ is probably unnecessary.
If you are reading this post on my site, the inline video might me giving an 'error'. That is generally because the creator wants you to go to YouTube to watch it. To do that - click on the link above.
🎈017/366 | 🪙 Both Sides Now
No. Not the song.
I don’t blame you if you haven’t been keeping up with ‘SubstackGate’. I have .. so you don’t have to … you are welcome.
Bottom line .. Fascism, Nazis, Support, Deplatform … you get the picture.
🔗 Why the Kākā Is Staying on Substack
🔗Why Platformer is Leaving Substack
My Thoughts?
I am on Substack and read some bit of it each and every day. Never seen a single piece by a Nazi. Never been recommended to go visit a Nazi. The fact is that they are always going to be somewhere - even in real life. On the blogging / newsletter side of the platform - I don’t see the issue - BUT - on the social side of it - yes - it COULD - and when / if I do - I will reconsider - but for now … kinda like Bernard wrote up there.
🎈016/366 | 🌴 Greener Grass Over There
Somebody else’s grass is greener. Always.
Just finished a conversation with a Turkish gentleman who has now lived in New Zealand for 10 years. Came here to learn English. He has. Now moving to Perth …
You can earn twice the money and buy twice the house for half the money. What can go wrong?
Indeed, what can go wrong? So much, but then doing nothing solves nothing and it still can go wrong. Plus his journey time ‘home’ will be halved - as will the cost of the flight.
If people leaving their own country to get a better life in New Zealand are leaving to get a better life in Australia - is it any wonder that so many Kiwis do exactly that?
I hear of this talked about amongst people - a lot. At the policy level - not so much.
If you think housing is expensive where you live, consider New Zealand - where a ’tradie’, a doctor, a teacher, a nurse, a coder, a … pretty much any skill class you can think if can emigrate across the Tasman sea, earn twice the money and buy a similar property for half the price - is it any surprise that they are?
Meanwhile, I know a few Kiwis who have lived abroad for most of their life and will be ‘coming home’ to retire.
Does anyone else see a problem?