Mike Stachowiak

The Highlight Blog: Funding, Worldwide Launch, and SXSW

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:25:46 -0800

The Highlight Blog: Funding, Worldwide Launch, and SXSW:

Phew. Things have been moving fast since we launched Highlight a month ago. It’s been so exciting to see the app in the wild and to hear about your experiences with it. People are getting notified when friends are around the corner, using it to remember people’s names, and seeing random…

Hacker takes control of Water & Sewer Infrastructure in South Houston

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:39:24 -0800

Hacker takes control of Water & Sewer Infrastructure in South Houston:

A district in Texas had HMI (human machine interface) software used to manage water and sewage infrastructure accessible to the Internet and used a password that was just three characters long to protect the system, making it easy picking for a remote attack.

Android has reached >50% smart phone market...

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 12:31:00 -0800

Android has reached >50% smart phone market share.

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-android-is-taking-over-the-smartphone-market-2011-11

Video

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 09:57:20 -0800

Alex Karp, CEO Palantir, on Charlie Rose

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:00:00 -0700

Alex Karp, CEO Palantir, on Charlie Rose:

Fascinating discussion on civil liberties, the fight against terrorism, and how a Silicon Valley company, Palantir, is helping to protect you on both dimensions. Palantir is one of the biggest companies in the Valley you’ve likely never heard of.

Random thought after watching this, a fun connect-the-dots. Peter Thiel was a derivatives trader on Wall Street that went on to found PayPal. PayPal developed very powerful data mining / analytics under Thiel’s leadership that became the basis for Palantir (Thiel founded Palantir with numerous other early PayPal-ers). Conclusion? Palantir’s novel data analysis tools - tools that are being used heavily by the US government intelligence community to combat terrorism in a post 9/11 world - are likely the reformulation of financial data analysis techniques Thiel crafted as a derivatives trader. Skills honed on Wall Street are now leading the charge against terrorism.

Peter Thiel - Civilization is predicated on accelerating...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:57:15 -0700

Peter Thiel - Civilization is predicated on accelerating technological change.

Free public Wifi coming soon?

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:36:00 -0700

Free public Wifi coming soon?:

The new IEEE 802.22 standard has been published and will finally allow manufacturers to start producing standardized devices that will use the white space vacated by analog TVs over two years ago. The standards will provide networking in areas over a 62 mile radius at speeds of up to 22Mbps.

Mobile (NFC) Payments are coming....

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 10:27:52 -0700

Mobile (NFC) Payments are coming....

Death of the QA Team

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:00:00 -0700

I see it happening time and time again, amazing software companies (eg: @BrainTree, @asana) operating without a Quality Assurance (QA) team and producing nearly flawless products. It seems counter intuitive - developers producing quality code when there’s no one to check their work - and yet it’s becoming commonplace. Why are software companies killing off QA teams (or never creating them in the first place) and should you consider killing off yours?

At my previous startup, we had a team of roughly 15 engineers. As we grew and hit 10 engineers, I decided it was time to build out a QA team because that’s what the traditional school of thought advocated. In fact, by all practical standards, I had gone too far without a QA team (10 engineers vs 0 QA). Following this old school mantra, we hired our first QA engineer and set to work building out a new development process that included our new QA “department”. Amazingly, within 6 months we let our only QA engineer go, grew the engineering team 1.5x, and improved the quality of our software. The reasons we succeeded, and the reasons why more and more software companies are ditching their QA department, are outlined below.

Put the onus of quality on software developers

The biggest problem with a QA department is that is creates a mindset amongst developers that quality is not their problem - there’s an outside department for that. When developers have a QA department to constantly check their work, they don’t feel a pressure to verify quality themselves. Errors in production code can be blamed on the QA team (the it’s-not-my-fault-QA-didn’t-find-the-bug excuse).

Developers need to be held responsible for the quality of their work and removing the babysitter helps them do that. It’s not perfect, there are always bugs that slip past a developer, but having peer reviews and automated testing procedures can help.

QA should be at the forefront of your development process (and automated!), not an afterthought

Software developers should be thinking about quality all the time, not as a final step in the development process. By removing the QA team, developers can focus on building quality into the process, a true test driven development environment. Every line of code should be tested and code coverage should always be at 100%.

When you have developers creating automated tests, thoroughly testing for regression bugs is easy. Continuous integration environments become meaningful and keep everyone inline. Developers know in real time of something they are doing is creating a regression bug.

In today’s world, speed is of the importance, and automated testing is your real-time QA department.

jakobkerr: urinals we are not animals. we are men. and as such,...

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:06:57 -0700

jakobkerr:

urinals

we are not animals. we are men. and as such, we should follow basic rules when using public urinals. in the words of Jerry Seinfeld, “we’re trying to run a civilization here.” here’s an easy guide:

- choosing your location -

this is basic — always leave at least a one-urinal gap between you and neighboring urinaters (urinators?) when possible. if choosing a urinal, grab one that has a gap between you and whoever is already peeing. if faced with a completely empty bank of urinals, don’t choose one in the middle — go to the sides to give other guys who come in the chance to create the one-urinal gap. mind the gap.

**exception: this doesn’t apply if you’re faced with a large bank of urinals (say 7 or 8, like at the airport) and only one of them is occupied. in these cases, it is totally hilarious to grab one right next to the only guy who’s already peeing, instead of one of the other five or six available.

- where to stare -

straight ahead. this is not a bazaar. there are not gypsies hawking precious wares. no wandering eyes.

**exception: in a gay bar, wandering eyes are just part of the deal. guys go there specifically to let their eyes wander. if you’re hetero, take it as a compliment. if you’re homo, let it rip.

- auto-flush -

there is perhaps no bigger sign of disrespect than when a urinal auto-flushes before you’ve finished and moved away. the urinal is essentially challenging your substance as a man, laughing in your face by implying your physical existence isn’t sufficient to keep it from triggering its flush sensor. this is a direct insult from a machine that thinks its better than you.

in these instances, a response containing physical violence is completely warranted. never let the urinal get the better of you.

- coverage -

this is not the men’s locker room at the YMCA, where “Anything Goes” in the nudity department. it is expected that you keep your business at the urinal to yourself. avoid the premature turn — zip up, then turn and face the rest of the bathroom.

also, guys, it really pains me that i have to go into this, but if you’re wearing skinny jeans and have to slide them down over your ass in order to pee, just go into a fucking stall already. while you’re in there, pull out your iPhone and leave yourself a voice memo to go buy some real pants.

- hand placement -

hands should be placed in front of you, near your crotch. going “hands-free”, while impressive, is not socially acceptable. putting your hands on your sides is a nice alpha position, especially when combined with a wide power-stance, but should be reserved for peeing outside while camping. putting your hands behind your head and reclining should be reserved for peeing off the side of a boat, preferably after 11 beers.

- troughs -

**important note! if peeing in a trough (such as in a shitty baseball stadium or concert venue), ALL BETS ARE OFF. none of the above rules apply. troughs indicate that the bathroom is basically a Lord of the Flies-type situation. take a piss, grab the conch, and make it out alive. those are the only rules.

The kimono is coming off Google+

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:45:02 -0700

The kimono is coming off Google+:

Well done @google, can’t wait to see your social products emerge. You have peaked my interest.

Warren Colbert: Involver + Klout + Audi = Next Generation of Influencer Targeting

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 10:38:29 -0700

Warren Colbert: Involver + Klout + Audi = Next Generation of Influencer Targeting:

cognited:

Who’s Involved? - Audi, Klout, Involver

What is this? Klout & Involver have partnered to offer a new medium for brands to publish “gated” content to their fans and followers. Brands can set gates that are defined by Klout scores, a measurement of a user’s social media influence….

Balance Financial Raises $1.2M

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 15:44:58 -0700

Balance Financial Raises $1.2M:

Congrats Devin, Rebecca and team! I’m excited to be on board, looking forward to a great things.

First Quantum Computer Sold - Brace Yourself for the Storm Ahead

Fri, 27 May 2011 20:04:09 -0700

First Quantum Computer Sold - Brace Yourself for the Storm Ahead

Keith Rabois: Websites are dead, reinvent for mobile

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:05:49 -0700

Keith Rabois: Websites are dead, reinvent for mobile:

Keith is a very bright guy but he’s going to be on the wrong side of history regarding native apps. It will take a little while, but HTML5 will emerge as the dominate app format, much as the web emerged as the dominate format over native desktop applications (less a few computationally intensive applications, eg Photoshop).

Yes, native apps have long held the advantage over HTML5 in terms of functionality and performance, but that gap is closing quickly. HTML5 apps now have access to most native functionality/components - accelerometers, multitouch interfaces, geolocation, camera, contacts list, compass, local storage, etc. The performance of HTML5 is still lagging - multitouch interactions are very clunky and native hardware acceleration doesn’t exist - but that won’t last forever. The browsers on phones will and are getting better, multitouch will improve, and it won’t be long before we see native hardware acceleration needed for games in browsers (Apple will have to keep up with Google on this one to stay competitive).

Developers crave a write-once-run-anywhere application ecosystem - one in which widely supported standards rule the day. The traditional web has taken off because of this paradigm (companies flourish from low development costs and ubiquitous support). If every company has to develop 10 flavors of their application (iOS 3, iOS4, Android 1.3-3.0, Blackberry, etc), everybody suffers. Fewer apps of lower quality for consumers to enjoy.

As a consumer of apps, I hope Keith is dead wrong.

Brene Brown on Vulnerability - amazing talk

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 09:33:13 -0700

Brene Brown on Vulnerability - amazing talk

World's Total Computational Power = One Human

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:36:00 -0800

Ars Technica just published a great article on the total computational power and storage capacity of all the world’s computers. Conclusions? The total “instructions per second that human kind can carry out on its general-purpose computers in 2007 are in the same ballpark area as the maximum number of nerve impulses executed by one human brain per second.” Equally intriguing, the total world-wide storage capacity is roughly the same as a single adult human’s DNA. Roughly speaking, the total power of all the world’s computers are equivalent to one human.

Before you draw too many conclusions about man’s intellectual dominance over machines, bear in mind they’re gaining on us, and gaining fast. According to Moore’s Law, processing power is doubling every 2 years (some would argue 18 months, but I’ll stick with the conservative measurement for this discussion) . Hard disk capacity follows a similar trend, doubling in capacity on the same cycle. On the flip side, human cognitive capacity is stagnant.

Taking it a step further, in 2008 it was estimated there were roughly 1 billion computers in the world. If Moore’s law holds, in 10 years each computer will have 32 times the current processing power (a doubling every two years for a total of 2^5 = 32x). In 20 years, computers will be 1000x more powerful. Somewhere close to 46 years from now a single computer will be 1 billions times more powerful, or as powerful as all computers in the world today. The computer on your desktop will be your intellectual equivalent by 2057.

It seems Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity is just around the corner.

(Note: these calculations are incredibly simplified, but do provide an interesting estimate)

Mary Meeker’s take on the latest mobile trends....

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:58:53 -0800

Mary Meeker’s take on the latest mobile trends. Fascinating read.

Bing - Bing Is Now Google

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 11:21:33 -0800

Bing - Bing Is Now Google:

Interesting news from Search Engine Land - it appears Bing is stealing result data from Google. A little dirty in my opinion.

Proof San Francisco is the Center of Technology

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:02:24 -0700

Proof San Francisco is the Center of Technology