A Little Ludwig Goes a Long Way

A smattering of opinions on technology, books, business, and culture. Now in its 4th technology iteration.

Roundup of ideas

09 February 2022

I am continually disappointed by the number of “secure email portals” i am asked to sign into. Every medical provider, every financial institution. And each of these seem to use a different underlying implementation. Some of the smaller medical providers seem to use some SAAS solutiuons, tho these seem like very obscure SAAS solutions.

The most recent one is from a very large insurance provider who should probably know better. Their “security questions” are particularly humorous — “What is the longest book you have ever read”, “What’s your dream job”, “What’s your least favorite city”, etc. A) I will never remember what I entered for these, B) the answers are not stable over any reasonable amount of time. There are a lot of crappy cities I haven’t been to, a lot of books I haven’t read.

It is too bad we can’t have secure end-to-end email like we do messaging.

The Year in Biology – a great overview of biology advances, especially for biology ignoramuses like me.

I need to do a deep trial of Obsidian and/or Dendron. They seem right up my alley.

The great CharlesF on preparing for lower valuations.

Scott Galloway on the importance of choosing your sector: key quotes: “Sector dynamics will trump your talent…someone of average talent at Google has done better over the past decade than someone great at General Motors…Look for the best wave to ride”

Listening through by Kevin Smokler. Great way to understand an artist. I have of course done this for the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, but starting to use it with other lesser known artistis.

Noah Smith on progressive industrialism. A necessary and compelling part of a progressive view.

Nice thread on modest purchases that have had a big impact on people.

Learning how to do timelapse photography on the Canon EOS R or 5R. Thankfully there are a number of cookbooks — the simple way, the harder way.