Need to contemplate the difference and overlap between "being genuine" and "being a jackass."
Also, focus: the good and the bad.
Wastebook
“I’m still in my pajamas — haven’t changed since Tuesday night. I’m also drinking a fair amount…” ProfG.
“My conspiracy theory has a much higher budget.” Lordess.
“To create this post, I used a cascade of AIs.” Tomasz Tunguz.
“improvident” is an adjective meaning lacking foresight or failing to plan ahead, often resulting in wasteful or reckless behavior without considering future consequences. Culturally, the term is often used to critique individuals or societies that prioritize immediate gratification over long-term well-being. In literature and folklore, improvident characters frequently serve as cautionary examples, highlighting the importance of prudence and planning in various cultural contexts. From the 🤖.
“He’s a serial boat-burner.” On Elon Musk, Sharp Tech, Nov 7th, 2024.
Relative to your interests
Gartner Raises IT Spending Forecast For 2024 Again - “Gartner thinks that spending on servers, storage, and networking for the datacenters of the world will rise by 34.7 percent in 2024 to just a hair over $318 billion. We have not seen this kind of growth since the recovery after the crash in IT spending during the Great Recession, and this time around it is different because there is no crash ahead of such growth. Rather, this is a transformation in IT systems that is probably more impactful than the Dot Com boom.” // This is almost unbelievable. Where do you suddenly find 35% more money? // Well, it’s probably just the public cloud companies: “The typical enterprise is definitely not spending anywhere near as much as the hyperscalers and cloud builders do on IT hardware and software. Enterprises spend more on services, relatively speaking compared to revenue size, because they do not have vast pools of IT talent like the hyperscalers and cloud builders do.” // Also, see the Gartner press release.
Useful built-in macOS command-line utilities - Some useful MacOS command line utils - not the usual Linux ones.
“Social media basically brought us to something like an oral culture” - “There’s always a current thing.”
It’s the parasocials, stupid - On the podcast election theory, that bring: (1) podcasts and videos are a big channel now, (2) the format is to hangout and “be genuine,” (3) for many voters, being a jackass is OK, even preferred, (4) if can be a jackass for three hours, you can go for the jackass vote. // Need to contemplate the difference and overlap between “being genuine” and “being a jackass.”
Conferences
GoTech World, speaking, Bucharest, Nov 12th and 13th. SREday Amsterdam, speaking, Nov 21st, 2024.
Discounts! SREDay Amsterdam: 20% off with the code SRE20DAY. I won’t be at KubeCon US this year, but my work has a 20% off discount code you can use for registration: KCNA24VMWQR20.
Logoff
I’ve been thinking a lot about “focus” recently. I don’t focus on things. In work life, this means I say yes to everything and end up doing…a lot? Doing a lot of things can leave you feeling like you’ve done little of import. Being busy, but not consequential.
For example, I know that enterprise AI is the most important thing I could be working on, probably 80%, even 90% of my time. But, there are so many other things that come and go. I know that I should focus most of my “free time” attention on learning Dutch. The pay off for both would be huge.
But my mind doesn't think in long-term payoffs, and I definitely don’t go to the extreme of the irrational rationalist: if you have a chance of a 5x payoff, you should do it. Like most of humanity, I find it almost impossible to sacrifice the present (often, just being bored) for future gains.
Related, when your job makes focusing a bad strategic move:
“I feel like we’re just reactive,” marketing people have said to me over the years. This means they just do marketing (planning, managing, strategy, content) based on the most urgent need at the moment. There is little long-term thinking.
If you live in a reactive state, it means your long-term thinking is also dangerous: what you planned to do two months ago in your campaign strategy may not longer be relative. You were planning on having thought-leader content about the intellectual merits of fidget spinners, but now your company sells toy-slime. This is a bad cycle, and marketing gets blamed for the misalignment.
This spiral is usually driven by a corporate agenda that is also near-term focused, ever shifting to meet the needs of the last meeting. A lack of focus cascades from the top, but as with most problems in a corporate system, we all share in the responsibility, just some more than others.
//
Ironically, this morning I thought: what if I just publish what I have every morning before 7:30am? That’s the time when we start getting the kids ready for and off to school. And: here we are!