So, I decided to visit a Twitter account of another friend, and, well… my experience was largely the same. It would certainly be nice if the available information was more organized, and indeed there is useful information in there. Alas, apparently that’s what my blogging efforts are for.
20190103/https://twitter.com/rishmishra
Also, I decided to revisit the website of this friend, and I’ve found it to be retooled with WordPress, rather than using GitHub Pages Jekyll.
20190103/https://jamesmishra.com/2018/12/17/turning-dropbox-paper-notes-into-latex/#more-10
Ah! So you’re wondering about that one has repository that James
Mishra made? You can find out from Twitter, the reason why this
repository was made was so that this URL can be constructed.
20190103/https://github.com/jamesmishra/has/issues
Anyways, here are the Twitter things that I couldn’t sort into any other category, or I couldn’t yet place into a candidate for a non-random category. I have additional blog post articles with corresponding categories and tags when I did find a reasonable category to sort the information into.
Very interesting. African Americans are found in jobs that are more vulnerable to replacement by automation than other demographic categories. In light of this, we need to make sure that education and workforce retraining resources are also as well available to them as they are to other demographics.
20190103/https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/automation-and-the-future-of-the-african-american-workforce
Ha! An AI saw an Ad with a human face in it and claimed the person depicted was jaywalking.
20190103/https://www.caixinglobal.com/2018-11-22/ai-mistakes-bus-side-ad-for-famous-ceo-charges-her-with-jaywalkingdo-101350772.html
Job prospects about working for Facebook? Well, that’s not a company people really want to be working for anymore. Also, more and more prospective hires are asking about the ethics of their job positions, in light of many past activities performed by such companies.
20190103/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/technology/jobs-facebook-computer-science-students.html
Wow, this is shocking. Gender bias in cardiology? In 2017, prospective women candidates are still being asked about their intent to have children, as was the case in 1995. There’s also some other general discussion about ways to reduce gender bias. Being “good-ish,” trying to be good but admitting you may be unconscious about your flaws, is better than being “good.”
20190103/https://www.cardiovascularbusiness.com/topics/practice-management/taking-small-steps-address-gender-bias-cardiology
Interesting. This man had a tweet storm about a stolen van and not liking the San Francisco law’s about stolen rental vehicles imposing such large delays until action can be taken. After that, some of the laws did get changed for the better.
20190103/https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/SF-man-s-tweetstorm-over-stolen-van-leads-to-13222061.php?utm_campaign=twitter-premium&utm_source=CMS%20Sharing%20Button&utm_medium=social
Wow, now this is really interesting. Endocrine disruptors from chemicals found in modern materials like plastics have been causing a multi-generational decline in sperm count. Industrialization purportedly is the overarching environmental variable that is not disputed here. Eventually, if this keeps going at at the current rate, it will lead to the extinction of the human species, due to being unable to reproduce.
20190103/https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero
This is interesting. A surprising way to close the gap in college admissions is to make sure that people of minorities are informed that retaking the ACT or SAT test is an option. Many minorities do not consider retaking the test, but those of non-minority background typically retake the test one or more times.
20190103/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/upshot/a-surprisingly-simple-way-to-help-level-the-playing-field-of-college-admissions.html
Interesting article about why you should interview engineers. When you as the interviewer participate, you are also helping improve your own related conversational skills.
20190103/https://blog.usejournal.com/5-reasons-why-you-should-start-interviewing-other-engineers-c43fe6a6406e
Not particularly informative. A short article touting that trust in people is the new economy that drives startups like Uber and Instacart.
20190103/https://coinlabs.co/trust-in-people-is-the-new-tech-currency-960190032aa6
Now we cover lots of subjects about Uber.
Uber engineering: don’t just measure differences in the mean or median, look at the entire distribution if you want to understand if a change is really an improvement across user groups.
20190103/https://eng.uber.com/analyzing-experiment-outcomes/
Mapbox visualization being used in Uber? I’ve got to look into what that entails. Well, unfortunately it appears Mapbox is proprietary, so it may be of limited use to me.
20190103/https://eng.uber.com/uber-visualization-mapbox/
20190103/https://www.mapbox.com
Uber Eats, Uber food delivery is purportedly a fast growing business. And here, with Uber Eats, their prioritizing the food delivered more so than the restaurant. Even more interesting is that they are building up special “Uber Eats exclusive” food venues in locations where their data points to high demand but a scarcity in local supply.
20190103/https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/02/uber-eats-and-the-6b-bookings-run-rate-the-ai-success-story-no-one-is-talking-about/
20190103/
Uber studies on improving curbsides and congestion pricing to solve the urban traffic congestion problem.
20190103/https://www.uber.com/newsroom/campaign-sustainable-mobility/
20190103/https://medium.com/uber-under-the-hood/road-pricing-a-solution-to-gridlock-b093b3f364f2
Very interesting account here from an Uber engineer that moved his career from financial analyst to software engineer. I’ll summarize some of the things that I like most about this article.
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When starting out, you don’t need to worry about being at a disadvantage compared to othe entry-level engineers that may come from purportedly more experienced backgrounds. Everyone will find their own new niche in the new environment where they will become experienced in and the go-to person for.
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“Engineering is more tedious than difficult.” Modern engineering is more about “impedance-matching” software interfaces. A good analogy is finding the right electrical adapters to get optimum electrical power for modern electronic gadgets.
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The rapid depreciation is “awesome.” What makes the rapid depreciation “awesome”? Mainly, it’s the consequence that because of this, it’s pretty easy to reach an advanced career position pretty quickly in software engineering, whereas it may take 30 years in other slower-moving professions with more legacy to them.
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Being able to quickly search for syntax of an unfamiliar programming language is expected of experienced programmers. You don’t need to worry too much about mastering a programming language.
20190103/https://eng.uber.com/joe-zhou-career-move/
Uber has this whole web page and site about their rebranding and designer activity.
20190103/https://www.uber.design/case-studies/rebrand-2018
Uber’s troubles with getting electric Scooters for ride-sharing into cities. Many places had regulations that made them unable to get successful deployments out.
20190103/https://slate.com/business/2018/09/after-losing-to-uber-cities-are-squeezing-scooters-and-bike-shares.html
Taxi medallions? Wow, this is interesting, a legislative construction that is highly lucrative for the investors but is a great detriment for the drivers and riders. This is one of the reasons why Uber was so competitive against traditional taxi services – and so controversial.
20190103/https://slate.com/business/2012/06/taxi-medallions-how-new-yorks-terrible-taxi-system-makes-fares-higher-and-drivers-poorer.html
Greyball. Now, this is quite a shocking clandestine operation Uber has been running. Originally, Uber created the app Greyball as a means of defence against bad riders. Violation of Terms of Service (VTOS) was its catchphrase for its purpose. But later on, this app was repurposed as a means to evade government authorities that are trying to oppose Uber’s rollout into a new city.
20190103/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html
What happened to Uber disrupting car ownership? Although that was some of the goals of Uber employees, to reduce private car ownership and reduce total vehicle miles traveled, that has not really panned out. At the current levels, private car ownership and driving remains largely the same, and due to the specifics of low Uber vehicle service, some time spent driving between ride requests slightly adds to the total vehicle miles traveled. There are a few reasons for this that could be effectively looked at as “bugs” in the application, such as requiring an on-demand model of transport that reduces the ability to combine rides.
20190103/https://medium.com/@jmnickels/what-happened-to-uber-disrupting-car-ownership-9d7a44b20427
Interesting story of a failed startup that had a goal similar to the Uber model. This one wanted to monetize neighbor’s home catering. Alas, the laws around California were non-permissive. So, the startup had two options. One would be to just go ahead and keep moving with its business ideal, hoping authorities would change their mind once things got going. The other way would be to “play nice” and try to work with the authorities to get the laws changed. Unfortunately, the second option was the option they chose, this does not work well with the venture capital startup company model, they got in trouble with the authorities investigating them when they were trying to work through changes in the laws, and ultimately they ran out of time and money before could go anywhere.
So, here’s the point. For a venture-capital startup, if they want to run in a business that is legally questionable, they should just jump in and keep going until they are doing well from a venture capital standpoint. But, if they want to work things out legally and they are starting small, before company operations in advance, they should do that exclusively, ideally as a non-profit.
20190103/https://qz.com/work/1379900/a-california-food-sharing-bill-came-too-late-for-a-startup-that-championed-it/