Archives for 2023

One of the best implementations of AI in a consumer product that I’ve seen in recent times is Chess.com.

It’s been a few years since I last used the product, and most of the improvement seems to have been AI packaged up in a great UX, but it’s still taken an impressive leap.

The best feature is an AI coach that uses natural language processing to explain the reason why each move was either excellent, average, or poor.

A less useful feature, but one that’s amusing nonetheless, is how they’ve modelled the playing style of a set of celebrities so you can play against famous YouTube stars and NBA players.

Finally there is “adaptive” computer opponents that adjust their difficulty based on your playing performance. I think this also somewhat simulates the randomness that can be found in online matches.

Overall, Chess.com has a great UX that helps the user understand the “why” behind a move, which is often the hardest thing to grasp when playing a complex game. I’m a fan!

I’ve officially moved my password manager from Lastpass to Bitwarden.

Lastpass had a security breach in 2022, and their response couldn’t have been worse.

PC World explains it well, “LastPass’s disclosures about its 2022 security breaches was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. First came the initial announcement in August, which claimed that no customer data was affected—just a developer environment. Then three months later came an update that customer data was affected. Nearly a month after that, the company revealed that customer information and password vaults had been stolen. Not only that, but elements in those vaults (including URLs) had not been encrypted.”

I’m sure the company knew of the severity of the issue in August, but the refusal to be transparent about how user data got into the wrong hands is unconscionable for a password management company.

When you’re known for one thing, and you don’t do that one thing well, it’s no surprise when you lose customers.

When I moved to Bitwarden, an open-source end-to-end encrypted password manager, I painstakingly changed each password manually for every online account to eliminate the risk from the LastPass breach.

Despite the hassle, I’m happy with my move, and hope to avoid a situation like this in the future with my new choice in password manager.

The best books are a dialogue.

The author puts forward their story, thesis, and point of view. The reader then fills the margins with notes, picks what they agree and disagree with, and chooses how their world view changes—or doesn’t.

The author puts something worthy out into the world. And the reader turns it from a one-way monologue into a two-way conversation.

When traveling to see family over the Christmas break, I’m usually changing timezones by 8-12 hours. The change is particularly difficult on the West to East journey.

I end up building up sleep debt over the course of a week—consistently getting fewer hours per night than I normally do.

The issue with sleep debt is that it’s invisible; making it easy to ignore. But eventually, the debt comes due. So I consciously try and take afternoon naps when changing timezones because the cost of not doing so is a higher risk of illness and feeling a bit like a zombie.

Sleep debt is an simple example, but most debts are invisible, and require the same level of attention and proactive repayment.

Chess boxing is a real thing.

How it works is there is eleven rounds that alternate between chess and boxing. The game swings between rounds of intense physical contact and analytical thinking until a competitor either wins by checkmate or knockout.

The lack of overlap in the Venn diagram of skills for chess and boxing is precisely what makes Chess Boxing appealing to a small but passionate audience.

And although I initially thought Chess Boxing was absurd, the more I think about it, the more I believe that life is Chess Boxing.

In our jobs, families, friendships, and communities, we all play multiple roles. Rarely do we specialise in one thing. For example, think of a parent coming home after a stressful day of fighting fires at work, the moment they walk through their front door they put aside the pressures of the day to be present with their children.

To succeed, we end up learning how to code switch between environments, and to turn up for people in different ways depending on the need of the situation.

Chess Boxing isn’t absurd. Life is Chess Boxing.

My high school drama teacher described theatre as “life without the boring bits”. It also works for novels, films, and poems.

In these stories, we typically meet characters at a critical turning point in their lives. We observe them work their way through a physical, intellectual, or moral dilemma that will forever alter them and their life’s journey. We witness them at their most vulnerable, decisive, timid, and triumphant.

It’s not that life on stage or screen is more exciting, it’s just that they are only showing us the peak moments.

There’s only a short window—perhaps 3-4 years—between which a child (1) can comprehend, and (2) still believes, in Santa.

My nephew is firmly in that window, and everyone in our family is relishing watching his joy. He skipped and laughed his way to bed (making sure he was asleep before Santa arrived), but not before he put out milk, cookies, and a little something for the reindeer.

It’s a window that comes and goes quickly, so we’re savouring it.

Restaurants, theme parks, customer service centres, ecommerce sites, and almost all services businesses: each have their own versions of “lines and waiting times”.

In simple terms, they can either (1) make people wait longer, keep utilisation high, and keep costs down, or (2) server people faster, have less efficient utilisation, and have a higher cost per unit of output to pay for the slack in the system.

Too far in one direction of and the business dies from churn. Too far in the other direction and the business dies from not making enough money.

There is no universal waiting time ratio. Each business decides what game they’re playing, and what objective and time period their optimising for.

When I think of the businesses I love, they’re almost always playing the long game at some expense to short term outcomes. And I’m certain that isn’t a coincidence.

I recently heard that no matter the talent or years of experience of a pilot, they’ll still use a pre-flight checklist.

I’m always on the hunt for examples of the basics done well, and this is one of them.

No pride, no arrogance, no hubris.

Just turning up and doing the rational thing over and over again.

I recently had an issue with a reservation made via Booking.com.

So I called them. They picked up the phone fast and resolved the issue promptly.

To provide that level of service, there needs to be some slack in the system. Someone needs to be trained, present at work, and waiting to take the call. Some people would view that as inefficiency ripe for trimming.

I view it as an investment in winning me over for the long haul. And it’s working!

“When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?”—John Maynard Keynes

If the formula is so simple, then we ought to investigate the when and the why behind holding on to beliefs longer than we should.

Changing our mind with enough time to act is a prized skill.

I get to see my nephew every 6 months if I’m lucky, and every 12 months in a normal year. I wish our reunions were more frequent.

A consistent theme each time were together is play. He’s a boy’s boy, so there’s a lot of wrestling, and running races, and lego building.

I used to think I was being helpful by suggesting activities, or leading the play session. But I’ve since switched to allowing my nephew to do all the leading. He decides what games we play and how we play them.

Young kids live a pretty structured life with school and their parents deciding what happens most hours of the day. But play time is different. It’s the one time where there are few limits, and they can decide how everything works.

I love seeing my nephew create worlds, and games, and rules, and ideas for how we should play. Seeing his creativity at work is a joy, because he’s not bound by anything.

Many people will rush to frame the problem as an ‘either / or’.

‘Either / or’ situations are simple. They’re binary. They’re clear.

However, too few question if that ‘either / or’ could be turned into an ‘and’—and thus miss out all the other possibilities that come with that change in mindset.

The holiday season is almost here, and when my family gets together, we usually play a lot of board games. And over the years, I’ve tried to move us away from competitive games to cooperative ones.

Even in the fiercest of games, we were never at risk of getting angry with one another, but the joy of overcoming challenges and succeeding together in cooperative games far outweighs the enjoyment derived from the more competitive games.

We’re tackling a time trick tackling card game this year called, [Crew]. The story evolves over 50 missions as the group aims to explore the outer reaches of the solar system to discover a new planet.

I was talking with a friend recently about writing for self vs. writing for others.

It reminded me of a [post] that Rohan wrote back in 2019—a whole 6 months before I started daily writing.

At it’s essence, the trade-off is between the intrinsic benefits from writing for yourself (e.g., growth, clarifying one’s thinking, enjoyment) and the extrinsic benefits from writing for others (e.g., a larger readership, reputation as a subject matter expertise, the opportunity to sell products and services).

I’m glad I chose to write for myself. I think I would’ve lost patience and interest long ago had a picked a niche and had to stick to it.