What I learned this week

Software

Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’

Ruining postgres

VC!

Web app for decoding

Big O Caml

hyrumslaw

“With a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody.”

Business/Finance

Taking a break

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee. And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

  • Emily Dickinson:

Math/Stats

Travel

Other

Nan-in (南隠), a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!” “Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

“Expression, carrying the elegance that comes from compressed energy, is like a perfectly tuned stringed instrument: the strings are taut to exact degrees to correspond to exact pitches that stand in exact relations to one another. The pitches and their relations exist before the strings are tuned. Each string is tuned to a pitch and the results are judged by comparison to this pre-existing reality. A musician tuning an instrument is not finished until everything is exactly right, but once it is exactly right, there is simply nothing left to do.” – Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose, Thomas, Turner.