Amazon, Apple, Science, and Databases:
- Amazon’s Wheel of Growth — a fascinating diagram in the middle, the flywheel of customer experience driving sales driving sellers driving selection which drives experience again, and all the while lower costs allows Amazon to deliver lower prices and thus lower selection.
- iPhone Sketch — stencils to use when sketching your iPhone app’s screens.
- The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research — thoughts on the value of feeling stupid (“I actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid”) and how PhD programs don’t prepare students for that feeling. “Science involves confronting our `absolute stupidity’. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown. Preliminary and thesis exams have the right idea when the faculty committee pushes until the student starts getting the answers wrong or gives up and says, `I don’t know’.” (via Titine’s delicious stream)
- First Key-Value Storage Meeting Held in Japan — yet more work being done with modernized DBM technology. As Joshua said in his delicious comment, plenty of systems I’ve never heard of before. (via Joshua’s delicious stream)