Weekly Round-up

Here are my favorite links from the week:

  1. A fantastic Jack Ma interview (Executive Chairman at Alibaba) about his success, his philosophy and management style, among other things
  2. Here’s a dry, long one: The Single Greatest Predictor of Future Stock Market Returns.
  3. An hour-long, in-depth overview of Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) from DEFCON last year. This is the processor on your iPhone that securely stores some of your data. It’s a fairly technical talk that will require a rudimentary understanding of OS concepts. I learned a lot from this — I had no idea this chip was so sophisticated. It’s basically a dedicated SoC with its own OS and applications.
  4. Uncle Bob Martin on Operating Behind the Power Curve – I’d argue it’s not really startup culture that encourages operating behind the power curve, it’s leadership and management decision making. It’s not a simple task to explain why the engineering team needs to take time off in order to move faster, later. In fact, good leaders should provide constant tension to move faster and faster. Engineering management needs the ability to provide the counter-tension without becoming adversarial. This is tough for many people.
  5. Someone built a class browser for python. This is really cool. It reminds me of my own project, RubyTalk (an attempt to build a system browser for ruby in the spirit of SmallTalk.
  6. A fascinating thread on reddit by a Stanford engineering requesting help retrieving a malfunctioning weather balloon payload 3 miles off the PCT
  7. A video from 1983 showcasing Smalltalk-80
  8. See with your ears: Spielberg and Sound Design
  9. An interesting glimpse into the world of bitcoin mining in Venezuela
  10. A relevant quote from the movie Hackers: “Snoop onto them as they snoop onto us”. A story about the Dutch infiltration of Cozy Bear, Russia’s hacker group
  11. I agree with this: I miss blogrolls. I have recently recovered all my old Google Reader RSS subscriptions from an archive I forgot I made and began using NewsBlur. It’s wonderful.
  12. The startling link between sugar and Alzheimer’s

Have a great weekend!