David and Goliath

I wanted to read something from this author for a while and finally got this book.

I enjoyed the beginning with all the analysis about David vs Goliath. The underdog wins 68-70% if follows the underdog rules. And underdog tactics are hard. The story about the female basketball team that just pressed the rivals and won games is hilarious. The summary is the advantage has always disadvantages and the disadvantages has advantages.

Effort can trump ability and that conventions are made to be challenged.

Any fool can spend money. But to earn it and save it and defer gratification, then you learn to value it differently

Another concept is the inverted U that follows nearly everything of consequence. There is nothing such as infinite good. All positive traits, states, experiences have costs that at high level may begin to outweigh the benefits. Examples: School classes with very few students, children from rich families matching their parents (as they dont go through the same problems as the parents)

So being bigger, stronger and richer is not always in our best interest.

Other concept is the “Being big fish in a small pond or being small fish in a big pond”. For this he uses the example of the Impressionism art. And I learned many new details about how they all worked and supported together. For the them, the big pond was the Salon, where only the considered best, were exhibited. But that would kill their meaning as artists. So they created their own pond, it was smaller compared to Salon but they were the big fish there, and time has put them in their place. As well, the inverted-U applies here too. Another example for the big fish/small pond theme, is education. I was surprised about the amount of drop-outs in the top universities compared with the non-top ones. And this touched a fiber. I believe, I am engineer because I studied in the UCM. If I had attended the Polytechnic University, maybe I wouldn’t finish it or I wouldn’t enjoy networks as much. Why that happens? You form your impressions locally, comparing with people on the same boat as you. So you are surrounded by genius, you are going to have a hard time if you are not one of them. The countries with higher suicide rate are in theory, the happiest countries…. This reminds me to Instagram… And there is an inverted U here too. If it is too hard, you fail, but you need some difficulty. That brings me to climbing and work. You want to be the weakest (climbing/engineer) in the room so you work/push harder to be better. I spent 7y in a firma being the dumbest, I learned a lot! I improved a lot, never caught up with the others, and didnt care, I compared with myself, and could see the improvement. Like climbing, I try hard routes, that’s the only way to improve. The obstacle is the way. But again, the inverse-U, too hard, you fail. I can’t solo El Capitan. And somehow, I feel that learning bachata, I feel too clumsy.

Dyslexia is another example of David vs Goliath. The examples of the founder of IKEA and his adventure in (communist) Poland and Gary Cohn. Your learning difficulties make you find alternatives.

Another character, Emil Freireich. He developed the chemotherapy program, while working with dying kids… “There are things that either build you up or put you down” I think we can choose most of the times.

There is another topic that covers Martin Luther King‘s activities, London Blitz , Northern Ireland conflict and Brownsville NY. This is regarding the limits of power. And that applies to school classes.

Most revolutions are not caused by revolutionaries, but by the stupidity and brutality of governments.

When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters the most, how they behave. This is the principle of legitimacy:

  1. The people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice.
  2. The law has to be predictable. The rules for tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as today
  3. Authority has to be fair. No groups treated differently.

The near miss

What is right? Most often as not, is simply the way that people in power/privilege close the door on those on the outside.

And many things in life, are actually just “time and chance” although we love to find logic to all. (I am impressesed/scared with so many interpretations of that text…)

The last is a bit harsh. It is about forgiveness and is connected to the power points above. And follows the inverse-U, the three-strikes law didnt do that good. Putting people in jails is expensive. We need a different approach. Not easy at all to do that, even more if your kid is killed cold blood.

Huawei AI Cloud, Ironwood TPUv7, do the thing, TV garden Worldwide, Hacker Laws, Daylight, NVIDIA Photonics, Xsight, Finger Strength

Huawei AI Cloud: Power hungry, all optics, etc. Interesting take from China to NVIDIA. And even more interesting, how to fence off all the tariffs and restrictions…

Google Ironwood TPUv7: “It scales up to 9,216 liquid cooled chips linked with breakthrough Inter-Chip Interconnect (ICI) networking spanning nearly 10 MW” I wonder how is the network… but doesnt give low level details, just marketing.

Do the thing.

TV garden: TVs from around the world…. just in case you want to learn a language?

Hacker Laws: So many I dont know

Daylight: Looks so nice!!! And it seems it can read kindle books. Tempting

NVIDIA Photonics: I read about co-packaged from some Sherada post’s… but I didn’t see it coming so fast in production. With my network operations hat on…. how is the troubleshooting done? It the part where the fiber breaks, you replace the whole device? I guess this has been thought very deeply.

The power consumed by optics in the network is enormous and so is the capital expense. Anecdotally, we have heard it said many times that the majority of the cost in a datacenter-scale cluster is in the optical transceivers at both ends of a link and the fiber optic cable between them. Some the pieces that link switches to network interface cards is 75 percent to 80 percent of the cost of a network, with the switches and the NICs making up the other 20 percent to 25 percent. 

Xsight: Another network silicon vendor. The article mentions Tofino P4.. I hope doesn’t end that way. I didn’t know anything about Avigdor Willenz

In part, that expectation for big change comes from the fact that Avigdor Willenz is the company’s founding investor. Willenz founded Galileo Technology, a maker of Ethernet switch ASICs that sold to Marvell in 2001 for $2.7 billion, and that wealth has been spread around. Willenz invested in Annapurna Labs, which sold to Amazon Web Services in 2015 for $350 million and which has created its Nitro DPUs, Graviton CPUs, and Trainium and Inferentia AI engines. He was president (now chairman) and first investor in distributed flash block storage maker Lightbits Labs. Willenz was a co-founder of AI chip maker Habana Labs, which sold to Intel in 2019 for $2 billion and is the foundation of its Gaudi compute engine line.

Finger Strength: “I’ve never seen strength like this before” true story

TFCC wrist injury: part of life…

The Last Crusade

This is by favourite film as a kid, and after reading the first books about the movie, I got the final one. The book is identical as the movie, and felt like watching it. Good old memories.

Muhammara (Roasted Red Pepper Dip)

Watched this video, and decided I had to try. My food processor is small so I can’t make that much.

Ingredients:

  • 1 jar (480g) roasted red peppers: I used all pieces but one as I wasn’t sure if my mini processor was enough
  • 120g walnuts
  • 6 tbsp breadcrumbs
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp pure pomegranate molasses (I found it in a Turskish supermarket, but not sure if it is 100% pure pomegrenate)
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 tbsp chilli flakes
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp ground cumin (I didnt have it)

Process:

  • Heat a frying pan over medium heat. Toast the walnuts, stirring from time to time.
  • Add the breadcrumbs to the walnuts, don’t burn them! Stir until brown.
  • let it cool down for a couple of minutes.
  • In the food processor, add the garlic, walnuts and breadcrumbs. Blend until getting fine crumbs.
  • Add the roasted peppers (drained!), olive oil, pomegranate molasses, lemon juice, all spices and salt.
  • Pulse! don’t blend! Do several times until to get a consistency like the video.

Ready to eat. You can top it up with walnuts, pomegranate seeds, olive oil, mint, etc.

Very easy, quick and tasty!

The new new thing

This is an ebook I bought because it was an offer and I have read some other books from the author.

I didnt have a clue about the book for a start. So it is about the booming years of Silicon Valley from James Clark. It starts with Silicon Graphics, that just learned that XFS was opensource from them, and other interesting bits, then Netscape, the 1st browser, JavaScript, HTTP cookies, SSL, etc that eventually ended being Mozilla! and the idea came from Marc Andreesen (that is actually a co-founder of the VC Andreesen Horowitz). Then founded Healtheon, that I have no clue about but looked like a killing business in a 1.5T healthcare market…. it doesnt look like the healthsystem in USA is any better? And that finishes there. As well, there is a lot story about the boat Hyperion, that looks a bit boring in some part.

The good things, it how at the Healtheon startup, he wanted to make millionaires the engineers. And as well, there is an important point in the Silicon Valley boom “caused” from many Indian engineers produced by the equivalent of India MIT: IIT.

It is interesting how Micro$oft was at the end “killing” those business as they wintel platform became better at graphics and MS had a monopoly of the workstations so installing a browser from a 3rd party wasn’t going to be made easy….

It is not one of the best books from Michael Lewis, but was nice to read the Silicon Valley history from another point as we mostly remember the companies that have survived till today.

Carob Cake

This is a typical Portuguese cake. I have done it before, but some years ago so time to repeat. And this is the original recipe.

Carob can be used as a replacement for chocolate. It is a pity is not used much more.

Ingredients:

  • 6 eggs (divided into whites and yolks)
  • 200g sugar (brown if possible)
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract
  • 200g melted butter
  • 180g of self-rising cake flour (if not, normal flour)
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 60g carob powder (as much pure as possible)
  • 50g chopped nuts (almonds, walnuts, etc)
  • optional: 1 tbsp of alfarroba (carob) liquor or almond liquor (amarguinha)

Process:

  • Pre-heat oven 180C
  • Beat the egg yolks, sugar, vanilla and butter until it becomes an aerated mix. You can use a hand mixer for this.
  • Shift the flours and baking powder together, and add gradually into the wet mix. Mix with a wood spoon!
  • Beat the egg whites into soft peaks, then fold into the batter.
  • Once all mixed, add the chopped nuts. Be sure they spread equally
  • Butter a cake pan. Then spread evenly the batter.
  • Bake for 30-35 minutes. The goal is to have a kind of brownie, moist. So try to not get the center fully dry. This is the most difficult part for me. So if the top is baked (with a crust) and using a toothpick doesnt come 100% clean, it is ok.
  • Take the cake and let it cool down

Before getting into the oven

Day after:

The look is quite “chocolaty” and tastes very good! But I overbaked it… the cake should be less dry.