Worth Reading

…are of course one of the worst and evil habitats in this world. treating passengers like cattle during the entire process of boarding and exiting the plane (let’s not skip the “joyful” stage of buying a ticket, let alone attempting to modify it later) has become - generally - a new standard today. a few months ago I had the opportunity to fly back and forth in Poland on two different days - Monday and Wednesday. on Monday, security screening team couldn’t handle the onslaught of people coming in, so my hand baggage was scanned VERY briefly and team was actually urging me to stop blocking the doorway. there were many people whose baggage was even checked even more superficially - or not at all (despite the lack of cards confirming their air crew status they were allowed to skip the gates totally). On Wednesday, on the other hand, my backpack was completely undressed, including all the individual cables being pulled out. then finally gate securty agent asked me to start the computer and iPad. to my questions about the difference from Monday behavior, he could not give any meaningful answer except that “it is all through the European Union” and that “I am not interested, I have my duties”. I immediately felt better and safer as a passenger… ...

twitter and facebook admit, that at least 10 percent of the user base is likely bots. it’s “official” data, but that article shows, that this estimation may be way undersized. it seems that next dot-com bubble slowly grows and should burst soon. we’ve been discussing this for years now, but it seems the valuation of seemingly worthless, virtual companies producing software is growing year by year. 3 billion dollars for company that builds (poor, by the way) headphones - Apple buys Beats Electronics. but, Beats Electronics at least tries to build something! Facebook just bought WhatsApp for 19.4 billion dollars, that’s about five Nimitz-class aircraft carriers (US has 10 of these), or five and half times more than world health organization spends on food and its distribution in Africa. ...

failure that Tidal came to be and at the same time success to which Apple Watch is experiencing (the same that has trouble keeping it’s bettery up for ONE day) is troubling. on one side we have market, that is able to verify this poor and blatant run for money organized by multi-billionaires, obviously coupled with lack of any style and market research (which would show there are other, better, faster and with wider selection of artists and capabilities services available already), on the other hand - Apple Watch? really? ...

from everything read up to date and noted as worth reading: Think like a freak - great set of anecdotes coming strait from author real experiences. there’s a lot of examples that if you don’t know that something can’t be done - you’ll succeed and amaze people around you. so called “ground truths” are serious problem those days. in most of the cases because people have very shallow knowledge or lack it - so can be easily manipulated. Freakonomics, Superfreakonomics - both good ones, driving such simply yet powerful narrative through our world economy First, break all the rules - interesting one, targeted at people managing other people. a lot of interesting examples, recommendations (4 generic and 12 worth more attention) and a lot of survey results. you could imagine all of that is well known - but it isn’t, believe me. fresh look can save you a lot of problems Dealers of lightning - fascinating story about Xerox PARC. you’ll find a lot of familiar names that extended ideas taken from their time at Xerox, including way of thinking and innovation approach that we could only imagine here in Poland Tankists - “true” history of 1st Armor Bridge. worth reading to understand both context of our popular TV series but also get a clue about how decisions were made on tactical and strategic level during second world war Command & Control - book that mixes narrative of real accident with a lot of background information about nuclear warfare in US. this is accompanied by information about how knowledge and experience shaped operations and helped to avoid errors. it’s worth reading, as nuclear weapons are hard to get right, with a lot of misconceptions. i’m still fascinated by Fight Club. with quotes like ‘Losing all hope was freedom’ it’s book that should be read couple of times. and think it over. ...

as I read a lot of books, at some point I decided to share those worth mentioning here. partly so you can see what I’m reading, partly - to have a good summary about those books. let’s start - over last two weeks I’ve managed to read: How Google tests software - great book for everyone that deals with software development, process optimization or simply building their own company. it demonstrates how important is to get feedback from users, and how hard it is to built whole compliance system right from the beginning. on the other side, the things Google builds and rebuilds - are usually masterpieces Elements of networking style supposedly a classic book, written in very difficult language. it’s worth to read just for the sake of it, but there’s nothing very interesting or suprising inside What If - great book authored by xkcd.com geek. highly recommended! on top of that, I’ve found recently great company selling stickers - stickermule. if you’re in that kind of things, we have polish startup providing printing services. they’re doing this on t-shirts - TeetBee. ...

it’s better not to know, how thick the wall is. you may have too short run. anonymous

let me quote book i’m reading now: A quick hypothesis: say one million monkeys speculate on the stock market. They buy and sell stocks like crazy and, of course, completely at random. What happens? After one week, about half of the monkeys will have made a profit and the other half a loss. The ones that made a profit stay; the ones that made a loss you send home. In the second week, one half of the monkeys will still be riding high, while the other half will have made a loss and are sent home. And so on. After ten weeks, about 1000 monkeys will be left - those who have always invested their money well. After twenty weeks, just one monkey will remain - this one always, without fail, chose the right stocks and is now a bilionaire. Let’s call him the success monkey. ...

Christmas are coming, and traditionally that means good time of the year to push people to buy things they don’t need. in Poland, companies generally don’t care what Customer wants. and don’t listed in the process of ignoring him/her. why are companies selling services choose not to listen? they don’t care? i was talking about this paradox during Cisco Connect, but in reality i was just repeating what everyone sane enough to think shouts left and right - we want customized offer, not something off the shelf. true value that people appreciate and will be loyal is created by listening to what customer wants - and giving to her/him what they really need (it’s actually pretty complex, but that’s basic intro to subject). ...

after reading ridiculous, made up story of british SAS, hiding under alias “Andy McNab”, trying to tell his version of Rambo&Commando-style fictious account of Iraq operation i couldn’t find story that was so exaggerated and made-up. in reality, his total ineffectual commanding style and bravado led to death one of his own team members, and injuries as well as captivity for rest of them. that was independently verified by Michael Asher and Peter Ratcliffe. ...

amazing sweet photo. you can watch this until you drop dead, looking for all details. and this landscape in the background…