Misc

Cities have been central to the human civilization. Their dense population provides a platform for the serendipitous interactions and cross-pollination of ideas from different domains, their abandoned portions provide cost-effective real estate to struggling artists and entrepreneurs, their riches provides jobs, sometimes, side-jobs for the innovators to experiment. No wonder innovation in a city grows super-linearly (~(size)4/3) with its size. But the Internet was supposed to destroy all advantages a city has over the rural areas. The Internet was supposed to convert all of us into a global community. It did. But the cities have emerged even stronger, everywhere. One way to rationalize this is to realize that the Internet provided a platform to the cities a rent seeking ability which was extremely limited in the pre-Internet era. When a family in Kansas books an Airbnb in Thailand using Mastercard credit card, books the flight with Expedia, and uses an Uber in Thailand then these intermediaries take a cut. Similarly, when a person in Nebraska buys West Texas Intermediate from New York stock exchange, then New York stock exchange takes a cut. Now, what happens when these companies take these cuts? A big chunk of that is used for salaries, expenses, or charity donations which are usually highly localized activities and benefit the cities where these companies are headquartered. Most of these rent-seeking activities were either non-existent or of limited leverage in the pre-Internet era. ...

The way the human brain learns is different from how it remembers. Good practitioners know how to remember. Good teachers know how to make others learn.

You cannot read a book kept too far or too close to your eyes. You cannot comfortably watch a movie from the first row of the multiplex and you can’t watch it from the other end of a football field either. When you are too far, details are lost. And when details are lost, everything looks similar and boring. When you are too close, the perspective is lost. And when perspective is lost, one gets overwhelmed by the details. ...

They don’t fly on dates 2PM and 8PM on Friday are the same dates but the former flight requires taking a leave from office, latter does not. 11PM on Friday and 1AM on the following Saturday are different dates for the airlines but it’s same for passengers. Discovery of the latter is especially poor on most booking websites. Destinations matter more than the airport The concept of the nearby airport based on the distance is archaic. For example, San Jose (SJC) and San Francisco (SFO) are almost identical for most leisure travelers since most individuals flying into either are going into SF bay area. A bit further one from SFO is SCK (Stockton) which sucks for the lack of ease of connectivity back into the SF bay area. A leisure traveler flying into Kona in Hawaii might gladly take a flight out of Hilo which is on the other side of the island. While I am giving the example of airports I am more familiar with, I think the idea applies to most metros with multiple airports. Airlines treat such a ticket as open-jaw and usually charge a higher price. ...

I am not a swimming trainer. I am neither a professional swimmer either. But I have felt that at least for casual swimming, there is a huge gap in teaching swimming. The traditional method focuses more on peddling than making a person comfortable with the water. Here is a better way to learn swimming. When in water, always inhale from the mouth and exhale through the nose It does not matter whether you are swimming or not. Just following this fixes a lot of issues. If you inhaled water in, you can swallow/spit it out from the mouth. And since the nose is only used for exhalation, the chance of water going in is low. As soon as water enters the nose, people become uncomfortable, their reflex actions go into the motion and they stop in the middle of the water. Get comfortable with water Go to the deep side, hold the ladder and slowly go into the water. Open your eyes. Slowly release the breath from the nose. The standard pool water, being slightly heavier than the human body, will push you up. As you repeat this motion, again and again, you will become more comfortable with having your head on the surface and below the surface of the water. Try floating Don’t move legs, don’t move hands, just float with your face facing downwards. If you have become comfortable with the water, this won’t be hard. Just learn to enjoy this floating. Try swinging your legs Now, since you can float, try moving your legs from the hip, no motion of the knee, just at the hip joint. Later start swinging the ankle joint as well for faster movements. Try moving your arms Now, move the arms, one following the other, cutting straight into the water, in front of your head, and pushing water backwards. Learn to breathe while swimming Breath out from the nose while your head is in the water. Breath in from the mouth, after pulling your head out of the water from the side. That’s it. That’s all you need to become a casual swimmer. ...

If you are driving at a speed of 60 mph (or kmph, it won’t matter) from one city to another and return at 40 mph, then what would be your average speed?

You are standing in a queue waiting to buy food, order drinks, or buy tickets. The queue is long and is moving slowly. You are grumbling about the people standing in the front, why are they asking so many questions, why can’t they make choices beforehand. And then your turn comes. You are prepared. You know what you want. But it took so long to reach here. why not confirm your choices? After all, you stood for so long, at least you can spend a minute or two confirming that you are making the right choice. If you made an incorrect or an incomplete order, who would stand again in this long queue to correct it? ...

What’s not cruel Burning bee hives (homes) of billions of bees for extracting the honey they spent their life gathering Raising hens, in millions, solely for their eggs & meat Slitting throats of millions of animals and let them bleed to death ( halal) Skinning millions of cows for their leather Impregnating millions of cows repeatedly for milk Selective breeding of millions of Turkeys, so that, they provide more meat but are too heavy to survive Neutering thousands of dogs and cats, so that, they can be used as pets Boiling shrimps alive for food Killing deer and bears in the name of population control during the hunting season What’s cruel Whatever happened at the Tiger Temple

Day 1 Great leaders are great because they handle challenges and setbacks well - John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Real education is like building a house - you set a good foundation first and then you build the house, floor by floor. Traditional education forces everyone to move at the same uniform speed and does not do justice to learning - Sal Khan, Khan Academy It is important to have a growth mindset (anything can be learned) as opposed to a fixed mindset (eg. I am good at X and Y but not A and B) - Sal Khan, Khan Academy Choice of narrative always triumphs over the choice of selection in the long run - Amit Agrawal, Head, Amazon India Hard things like entrepreneurship should not be tried half-heartedly since anything less than a full-fledged effort is going to go nowhere - entrepreneurship panel Keeping emotional highs and lows in check is critical to success - entrepreneurship panel Good mentorship is valuable, relationships are more important than results and an idea without data backing it up is not worth talking about- Patrick Gelsinger, CEO, VMWare Both Andy Grove and Larry Ellison are amazing but ruthless people to work with - my observation based on talks (and in-person conversations) of (with) a few people who worked with them. Day 2 You start a company not to compete with others but for a mission to make the world better - Elizabeth Holmes, CEO, Theranos. Don’t just think about what you are doing, also, consciously think about what you won’t be doing, there is always an opportunity cost of doing something. Most people don’t like risk, therefore, most won’t do anything interesting. Tech is my religion. Normal jobs will be gone in 50 years. Experience is another word for bias, systems with too much of experience are frozen, therefore, innovation happens at the edges. Have an internal compass, spend time following it, not reacting to what’s expected out of you. Steam engine challenged humans in muscle power, machine learning will challenge them in mind power. In face of driverless cars, rigid public transport like railroads is a bad idea. Spend more time doing things which can not only make a difference but makes you happy as well. - Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures Lessons in Product Development from Deep Nishar, MD, SoftBank Know thy user User’s use LinkedIn on iPad differently (more at night) compared to LinkedIn (on the desktop), therefore, the iPad app is designed differently than desktop (focuses more on leisure content). Focus on simplicity An average human cannot hold more than 7 things in their head at a time. 80% of request for new features which Microsoft gets are already in one of the 35 toolbars but users cannot find them. Embrace constraints How nutella was invented Data is your guide but don’t fall off the cliff while following it Innovation is not instant Multiple lead bullets lead to one silver bullet. There were productive phones, beautiful phones, easy-to-use phones before the iPhone, except iPhone combined everything into one. Adapt to changes Or someone else will win in changing environments. Expect success Believe that you will succeed and engineer systems accordingly. Work and entrepreneurship are a means to an end goal of having a more satisfied life and not end in themselves - Mallika Sarabhai

Ownership is an innate human desire, except, we make the mistake of confusing it with control. In the name of ownership, we end controlling things, and then we end up wasting disproportionate time reasserting our control. How to differentiate between ownership and control? A simple rule of thumb is that control can be taken away (or lost) much more easily than ownership. As an example, since books can easily be lost or stolen, possessing books is a matter of control, while possessing knowledge is a matter of ownership. Possessing money is a matter of control, while possessing skills to earn money is a matter of ownership. Along the same lines, jewellery is about control while beauty is about ownership, car is about control while travel experiences are about ownership. ...