Work and Ethics

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs // Greg Smith, who resigned today as an executive director of the firm, on recent developments in investment banking (corroborating the stories I heard from a retired chief investment officer). J’accuse: “My proudest moments in life […] have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement.”

Marlow in “Heart of Darkness” // “I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work,—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can ever know.”

Doing and Making Things

Pixel Union: Interview with Buzz Andersen // “I think there are basically two poles of thought about design in the startup business: the Google School (where UX researchers and data wonks aspire to build minimalist, rationalist interfaces that adapt constantly to users) and the Apple School (where intuitive, perfectionistic auteur-visionaries are thought to produce gorgeous, perfect objects of desire users never even knew they wanted).” Not hard to guess where I stand on this question…

Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas // Paul Graham: “Empirically, the way to do really big things seems to be to start with deceptively small things. Want to dominate microcomputer software? Start by writing a Basic interpreter for a machine with a few thousand users. Want to make the universal web site? Start by building a site for Harvard undergrads to stalk one another.”

A Precious Hour // “Each day I blocked off a precious hour to build something. Every day. One hour. No matter what.” (@rands) I did this November through December, and this extra hour of “work” actually boosted my energy instead of sapping it (and I’m quite happy with the result).

Society

How Changing Technology Affects Security // Bruce Schneier: “Changes in security systems can be slow. Society has to implement any new security technology as a group, which implies agreement and coordination and — in some instances — a lengthy bureaucratic procurement process. Meanwhile, an attacker can just use the new technology.”

App of the Week

Circadia // Delightfully novel game. Genius!