Category: Education

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The Sad Truth About the Facebook Movie

The Valley used to be a place run by scientists and engineers, people like Robert Noyce, the Ph.D. physicist who helped invent the integrated circuit and cofounded Intel. The Valley, in those days, was focused on hard science and making things. At first there were semiconductors, which is how Silicon Valley got its name; then came computers and software. But now the Valley has become a casino, a place where smart kids arrive hoping to make an easy fortune building companies that seem, if not pointless, at least not as serious as, say, old-guard companies like HP, Intel, Cisco, and Apple.

Read the article: The Sad Truth About the Facebook Movie – Newsweek

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Art Business Education Health Life Meta Science Social

The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working

For most of my adult life, I’ve accepted the incredibly durable myth that some people are born with special talents and gifts, and that the potential to truly excel in any given pursuit is largely determined by our genetic inheritance.

During the past year, I’ve read no fewer than five books — and a raft of scientific research — which powerfully challenge that assumption (see below for a list). I’ve also written one, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, which lays out a guide, grounded in the science of high performance, to systematically building your capacity physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Read the article: Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything

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Education Finance Health History Life Social

Why are the East of Cities usually Poorer?

Many older cities rapidly expanded during the Industrial Revolution, as workers flocked to the urban centers. As the towns and cities expanded, the residential areas for the workers tended to be in the east, with the middle and upper-classes in the west.

Read the article: Why are the East of Cities usually Poorer?

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Education Health Life Nature Science Social

Bilingual brain affects research

“The very act of being able to speak, listen, and think in two languages and of using two languages on a daily basis appears to sharpen people’s abilities to pay close attention to a aspects of tasks relevant to good performance,” she added. Research carried out already had also shown having two languages helped protect against the decline in the brain’s abilities when ageing,” she added. “We already know that language processing is one of the most complex activities that our brains carry out.

Read the article: Research to find effects on brain of bilingualism

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Business Education Finance Life Social

Paul Buchheit: “What do I do with my money?” & “What do I do with my life?”

Although today’s poster only asked, “What do I do with my money?”, there’s a second, related question that’s also very important, “What do I do with my life?” In both cases, I think the right answer is, “start slow, and avoid making any big decisions now”, though as always, there are exceptions.

Read the article: Paul Buchheit: What to do with your millions

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Art Education Life Meta

Tips for Successful Self-Learning

The longest path is the shortest and the shortest path is the longest. Learning is all about abstractions.

“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.“

Read the article: Measuring Measures – 7 Tips for Successful Self-Learning

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Business Education Finance Life Social

The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

What I learned is that burning out isn’t just about work load, it’s about work load being greater than the motivation to do work.

Read the article: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

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Business Education Legal Technology

Google on its transparency and not-so-secret formula

Recently the European Commission opened a preliminary inquiry into competition complaints. Part of the complaint alleges that Google operates without sufficient transparency into how and why web sites rank in our search results. The notion that Google isn’t transparent is tough for me to swallow. Google has set the standard in how we communicate with web site publishers. Let me tell you about some of the ways we explain to sites how we rank them and why.

One of the most widely-discussed parts of Google’s scoring has always been PageRank. That “secret ingredient” is hardly a secret. Here it is. That early paper not only gave the formula for PageRank, but mentioned many of the other signals in Google’s ranking, including anchor text, the location of words within documents, the relative proximity of query words in a document, the size and type of fonts used, the raw HTML of each page, and capitalization of words. Google has continued to publish literally hundreds of research papers over the years. Those papers reveal many of the “secret formulas” for how Google works and document essential infrastructure that Google uses. Some of these papers have spurred not only open-source projects but entire in their own right.


Read the article: European Public Policy Blog: Google, transparency and our not-so-secret formula

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Education History Life Meta Politics Social Technology

The Millenials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change.

Generations, like people, have personalities, and Millennials – the American teens and twenty-somethings currently making the passage into adulthood – have begun to forge theirs: confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat and receptive to new ideas and ways of living. [pewsocialtrends.org]

Comment: Personally, I think being around 75% Millenial is good any above that may actually be deteriorating, but that’s just a perspective, take the quiz yourself to know how ‘Millenial’ you are.

Read the article: Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next – Pew Research Center

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Business Education Energy Finance India Innovation Life Nature Science Technology

Is the Bloom Box energy nirvana?

A Silicon Valley inventor claims that a new technology called the Bloom Box will revolutionize how households use the electrical grid. The Bloom Box is a fuel cell that converts oxygen and an energy source – natural gas, biofuels, or even solar – into electricity. K.R. Sridhar, former NASA scientist and founder of Bloom Energy, revealed the technology Sunday night on “60 Minutes,” and plans to hold a news conference Wednesday in San Jose. He envisions every house having a Bloom Box power plant installed in the back yard.

Google, eBay, and FedEx are currently testing the Bloom Box. The prototype devices are the size of refrigerators and cost around $700,000. eBay claims the Bloom Box saved the company $100,000 in annual energy costs. Details on operating and maintenance costs, however, are sketchy. Fuel cell technology has been around for a long time. It normally requires precious metals such as platinum, making it too expensive for widespread applications. Bloom Box fuel cells are constructed instead with ceramic wafers coated with a special ink.

If Sridhar has truly discovered a way to make fuel cells affordable, it will transform the electrical grid. If not, the Bloom Box could be a bust.

Read the article: Bloom Box: Segway or savior?