See https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007spxp

Time: 16:40

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. – Rob Siltanen

Flying in a plane recently I realised I’d never seen a bird outside the plane window.

I assumed it was because birds didn’t fly that high.

Turns out I was wrong. There are birds that fly at the altitude of commercial aircraft.

For one, the Rüppell’s griffon vulture which has been seen at 37,000 feet.

Even the common crane flies to 33,000 feet which it does when flying over the Himalayas to avoid eagles in the passes when migrating.

More info https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_heights

So the reason you don’t seem them at this height is because they only do it where necessary. Or rarely. Eg there are very few Rüppell’s vultures remaining.

Really like this blog post on deliberate practice.

The Importance of Deep Work & The 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

I cannot believe the column inches this article got. The title is:

Even algorithms are biased against black men

whereas it should have read:

Poorly designed algorithm incorrectly predicts bias but rather than getting a smack on the hand and getting some machine learning experts to do the job properly we’ll blame the problem on the software and create some confusion and mass hysteria by publishing it in the national press

Just because the authors of this algorithm were from ProPublica does not make the algorithm correct. The only sentence worth a modicum of merit in the entire piece is the first sentence of the last paragraph which reads:

The big puzzle is how the bias creeps into the algorithm.

However, it’s not a big puzzle. It’s simply a bad machine learning algorithm.

We might be able to understand how if we could examine it. But most of these algorithms are proprietary and secret, so they are effectively “black boxes” – virtual machines whose workings are opaque

And this is just scare-mongering. The solution is called validation data.

For those wanting to read this piece of claptrap go here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/26/algorithms-racial-bias-offenders-florida

John Naughton and the Guardian should be ashamed of themselves. This type of rubbish belongs in the Sun.

I believe that within 50 years the vast majority of all physical doctor’s surgeries will have disappeared.

Why’s that?

Simply because people will be using their mobile phones to connect with their doctors.

Now I can see a lot of people that come up with instant arguments such as:

• but what about something that needs physical examination like a knee problem OR
• but people prefer to see their doctor’s in person

I’m not even going to attempt to try and answer these. My view is that there will be answers to these questions. I don’t necessarily know what they are but some people out there do know these answers (if you’re one of these please leave a comment!).

We’re roughly in the pre-mass-market car era. I guess that would be somewhere in the 1920s?

According to this article (http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=144565) in the USA in 1915 there were 20 million horses. By the 1950s and 1960s this had dropped to between 1 and 3 million. Note that now this has increased to around 7 million (I’ll come back to that).

Back then, if you talked to someone and said that in 50 years time between 85% and 95%  of all horses would have disappeared to be replaced by cars people would have looked at you as if you were mad. There would be questions like:

• what if you got a puncture?
• why would anyone want to drive to a distant gas station and spend a huge amount of money on gas when you can simply put your horse out to graze on your land?

It seems easy to answer these now. But back then, trying to answer them clearly and successfully would have been really difficult. For example, if you answered, you would get a mechanic to drive out to fix a puncture, they would answer but there aren’t any local mechanics. If you answered that you would have to fix it yourself, they would say but that would require some complex skills. Fixing a horseshoe is very simple. And there are loads of horse vets in every town. And loads of spare horses if you need a new one.

Back to the 7 million current horses. Why has this gone up? For various reasons:

1. there was a correction. In the 1950s it would have seemed obvious that horses should completely disappear. However, horses have found a niche. For example, they’re a great way for police to establish a presence in a not-too threatening way. They are also being used for racing rather than as a source of power (i.e. a work horse).
2. the GDP of the USA has increased tremendously since 1915 (https://ourworldindata.org/gdp-growth-over-the-last-centuries/). Hence why horses have an increasingly large role in the leisure sector as race horses.

So, my belief is that the vast majority of doctor’s surgeries will have disappeared in 30 to 50 years time. There may be a correction but it will be for a particular niche.

Disclosure: whilst this doesn’t change anything about this post and my beliefs, I have equity in a telemedicine startup called Dr Medy.

Many people already know that exercise is good for you.

Studies show it changes the structure and function of the brain. E.g. studies in animals and people have shown that physical activity generally increases brain volume and can reduce the number and size of age-related holes in the brain’s white and gray matter.

It also augments adult neurogenesis (i.e. the creation of new brain cells in an already mature brain). Exercise doubles or even triples the number of new neurons that appear after exercise in the animals’ hippocampus, a key area of the brain for learning and memory, compared to the brains of animals that remain sedentary.

Scientists believe that exercise has similar impacts on the human hippocampus.

A recent study however compares exercise types – distance running, weight training and high-intensity interval. You can read more about it here

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2016/02/17/which-type-of-exercise-is-best-for-the-brain/

but, in a nutshell, distance training does the magic. And the greater the distance an animal runner covered during the experiment, the more new cells its brain now contained. From the study, sustained aerobic exercise might be most beneficial for brain health also in humans.

A few organizations I’d like to highlight that work with Youth on social issues (referred by a colleague at the United Nations):

• https://www.ushahidi.com/

Technology leader in Africa with a handful of products that serve people with limited access in hard-to-reach places. HQ Nairobi.

• http://spatialcollective.com/

Data collection and visualization experts. Based in Nairobi.

• http://www.sisiniamani.org/

Innovative approaches to communication to increase civic engagement & prevent violence in Kenyan communities. Also based in Nairobi.

• https://www.ureport.in/

Social messaging tool allowing people to respond to polls, report issues, support child rights and work as positive agents of change. India.

http://www.zambiaureport.org/home/

An example of the platform in use. The Zambia U-Report platform provides confidential, free of charge, individualized and interactive counseling services on HIV and STIs to adolescents and youth.

• http://unhabitat.org/books/ict-urban-governance-and-youth/

The ICT, Urban Governance and Youth report is the fourth report in the Global Youth-Led Development series.

I had a chat with some friends last weekend about how people get into web programming. They were hardly newbies but probably had 3 or 4 industry years under their belts.

Having worked in the web industry for over 20 years I’ve accumulated a ton of knowledge along the way. I said I thought it must be hard for newbies to get into web programming.

Their response was that there were more facilities available now – e.g. coding courses are online and that I had had to learn from a book.

This was partly true. I had learned some stuff from books. However, there were other tools about in my time such as IRC and, believe it or not, websites! The whole web thing was being invented as I got into programming.

However, this doesn’t answer the problem.

It’s not just about learning to program. The issue is you’re going to run into a ton of issues en route. For example, say you develop on a Mac. Here are a very few issues you’ll encounter:

• setting up your web development environment (e.g. Unix file permissions, Apache conf files, error logs, mod_rewrite, .htaccess files)
• problems upgrading software – e.g. look at the thousands of questions and posts about this simple MySQL problem – https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=RROR+1045+(28000)%3A+Access+denied+for+user+’root’%40’localhost’+(using+password%3A+YES)
• using all the tools you’ll encounter – e.g. vi
• managing your environment – e.g. killing a process with -9

It’s just one reason why StackOverflow is so wildly successful.

But I don’t think StackOverflow necessarily answers questions with any depth. It promotes copy and paste fixes with little to no understanding. Not to say I don’t use SO or Google’ing – I do.

But it takes a lot of time to develop the filters that help you realize which answers are useful and which aren’t – there’s an awful amount of rubbish out there!

I recently had to go back to the UK and found I had a pile of paper correspondence.

Among them were various statements from one of my investment accounts.

I converted my accounts with the same bank (via a deliver-all online toggle switch) to online-only so I was surprised to still be receiving them.

I called and was told that due to legislation/regulations they have to deliver paper versions. I was shocked. Email has existed since 1971 although it would be fairer to say that it has existed as a mass medium since the mid nineties. To not be able to offer an online-only version means the legislation is around 20 years out of date. I asked them if they could change the address to an HSBC branch (e.g. 1, The Bin, HSBC, Tottenham Court Road) however they said it has to go to a personal residential address.

I was curious whether there were older forms of communication and it is certainly not the oldest – the papal message is delivered via coloured smoke up a chimney – however that’s due to tradition. Legislation that’s out of date is not down to tradition. I refuse to believe that the law-makers won’t change the law because they believe sending out the statements on paper is more “traditional”. The more plausible  answer is security. Either the law-makers believe that paper is more secure (it isn’t as various humans handle the paper envelopes on their physical route whereas email/web can be encrypted) or a critical part in the the bank delivery chain hasn’t been updated due to fear of a lack of security.

The more feasible is the latter. However the person on the call was adamant – paper delivery was because  legislation demanded it. I’d be interested to know of similarly ridiculous cases – where, due to archaic legislation, there is similar waste and expense.