Below are some of my best upscaled musings from Midjourney. Prompts in caption. Ongoing art series (freq of posting ~3mnths)

v5.0 & below

The year started being super uncertain but massively promising at work - a quarter into the launch of CENTAURI 10Gbps (one of the world's fastest wireless technology) we had all these people knocking at our doors to test out this technology across South East Asia. The team was expanding, we had new markets to look at to the West of Singapore, we decided to run the biggest tech experiment we have run in Transcelestial's history, the stock market had begun it's nose dive, VCs were starting to publish "Default Alive" guides for companies which were basically 180 u-turn of the advice going out during/before COVID and it was starting to look like that 5-day work week in offices would never come back.

Amidst all of that I set a challenge of reading more than 24 books from 2021! While it has happened in bursts, but eventually I ended 2022 with 33 amazing books (+ a few from the past that I re-read)! Some are covered below - mix of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction. Previous reading recommendations can be found here.

My more comprehensive reading updates and forward looking pipeline of books can be found on my Goodreads.

Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang

Recently I attended a talk by Ted Chiang at Singapore Writers Festival on Time Travel in Fiction and Physics. Very few people know that the movie Arrival is adapted from Story of Your Life. The story follows a letter written by a mom to her daughter, chronicling her life and her work identifying the spoken and written language of aliens visiting Earth. Highly recommend reading it even if you have seen the movie. The anthology contains a few other of his stories - my other favorite story being Tower of Babylon. OH! quick recommendation related to the movie Arrival - highly recommend reading Stephen Wolfram's blog post on how he (was the tech advisor for the movie) came up with the visual representation of the alien language using Mathematica.

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

I first saw the TV show and was introduced to it like most people in my generation - a YouTube video of Carl talking about Cosmic insignificance and the journey we are about to embark on as a galactic civlization. It still brings me chills and inspiration like no other video every time I watch it. The book is mainly following a decade of discoveries in space - the First lander to Mars, the First mission to Venus, the Launch of both Voyager probes (they had reached Saturn), LEO Space Stations, the First Black Hole identification (Cygnus X-1) and many others. This book was a primer charting the growth of scientific reasoning and the rise of astronomy to our current day and age. I remembered picking up the book in high school and giving up after two pages - I had just finished the Brief History of Time and this seems too basic in technical comparison. Picking it up as an adult, I noticed the awe of the unbound universe and the frustration of being stuck on a single planet, both come out in equal parts by the author. Something I could 100% relate to. Every page is quotable. Carl's reasoning is very "first principles" and he is a master prose writer as well as an educator. It is a must-read even if you are not moved by the heavens when you look up at the night sky.

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K Le Guin

This is Book #2 in the Earthsea series which I first recommended in my Summer Reading 2021 post. This was the first time I read a strong portrayal of a Hero's Journey from a female perspective. Tenar, the protagonist, is a young woman chosen as the high priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, a sacred site filled with ancient relics and artefacts of the Old Gods. However, as Tenar navigates the expectations and demands of her religion, she meets someone (it's identity is a huge spoiler!) who challenges her beliefs and helps her discover her true identity. The story is a powerful and thought-provoking tale of self-discovery and the complexities of religion. Classic UKLG! In some sense, this is a mirror to Ged/Sparrowhawk's journey in the first book.

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

This has been the highest-value book on genetics that I have ever read. I struggle a LOT with non-fiction books because they can usually be 30% shorter and still convey everything. This book is not. You will follow the world through Siddhartha's eyes learning how most extraordinary people are built through personal circumstances. It broadly covers the history, the science, the advancements and many many "so THAT's how traits and diseases are passed down" moments. Also finally I understood why The Human Genome Project was a massive let-down in its original goal of providing 1-1 mapping of physical/mental traits to DNA. It left me with a deeper understanding of the power and potential of genetics and the ethical dilemmas we MUST navigate as we continue to push the boundaries of what is possible through understanding and editing our code.

Off to Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer

(mild spoilers!) My favourite non-famous book to recommend to gamers looking for science fiction reads! The premise is super simple - a hacker finds that the world is a simulation by discovering the properties file. He does the first thing anyone would - make yourself rich! Untraceable riches alert the authorities and do the only next thing possible - time travel and hide in the past when you can do tricks as a magician. Humour elevates the entire prose from start to the end of this book. I still remember all the major characters and their arcs - this book is THAT good! Sub-recommendation - listen to the audiobook! Luke Daniels is phenomenal in his voice acting and I was laughing until my sides hurt.

Blankets by Craig Thompson

It made me cry. One of the most beautiful coming of age story I have ever read. I bought this as a gift for many friends who wanted to get into graphic novels and are looking for their first read. This chronicles the journey of the author through his childhood to adulthood. The backdrop of the journey is Raina - his first true love. Girls are way more mature than guys of the same age (mostly) - and this captures it beautifully. It also portrays very realistically the love-hate relationship brothers share growing up and how parents are seen from a very different lens when you are younger vs older. This MUST be turned into an animated (not live-action) movie!

Space and Time: Minkowski's papers on relativity by Hermann Minkowski

Bought this a few years back. Few pages in realized I needed to massively level up on Tensors to understand anything at all. Minkowski died early and was Einstein's math teacher at ETH. After Einstein rolled out Special Relativity in his "miraculous year" of 1905 (I have talked more on that here), Minkowski developed the four-dimensional spacetime concept - which Einstein and various physicist use today to treat 3-dimensions of space and 1-dimension of time as not separate but a single 4-dimensional entity. This formulation of 4-dimensional Minkowski Space led to Einstein's research into the Equivalence Principle which led to the full theory of General Relativity. This is the first time Minkowski's actual papers have been translated into English in this book. Must read!

The world seems to be stumbling. Vannevar Bush's words still ring true.

Crazy Volcanic Eruptions, unnecessary wars, mutating viruses, world powers changing hands, inflation (& possibly one of the worst recessions), the proliferation of regurgitated stories packaged in new ways by media houses, fake news, the rise of nationalism, the rise of insensitivity to your neighbour and the endless swiping in dating apps - are some of the things which define our times.

In times like these, it's important to know oneself. A quote from one of my favourites comes to mind:

“We read books to find out who we are.”  — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

Here are my recommendations on what you can pick up this summer. Previous reading recommendations can be found here.

My other reading updates can be found on my Goodreads.

The Expanse Series (1-9) by James S.A. Corey

(Warning: mild spoilers!) I first came across The Expanse TV show on Amazon Prime Video last year. The first episode has a massive deep space ice hauler carrying fresh ice from Saturn to Mars do a flip-N-hard-burn to slow down and shift into a new orbit towards a mysterious asteroid. I instantly fell in love. For the very first time in movie history, I was seeing a near-realistic depiction of the realities of space travel where you can't press a button and just "arrive" at another planet - you need to calculate forward and breaking burns to arrive with the right velocity for orbital injection. The Expanse has everything - suspenseful political drama, alien zombie thriller, long range lasercomms, strategy-driven fast-paced space battles, hard sci-fi and amazing characters with distinct, strong growth. The TV show has 6 Seasons (incomplete) but the books are now finished - recommend doing TV first then books, just works better. And yes, Chrisjen Avasarala is hands down my favourite character in both mediums.

Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush

Vannevar Bush was a force of nature. He ran the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during WWII and was directly responsible for the formation of the US National Science Foundation. I knew of him initially through his very famous July 1945 essay "As We May Think" in The Atlantic which talked about the importance of thoughtful computing machines. This inspired Douglas Engelbart who was the person behind The Mother of All Demos (seriously, go check it out!). Pieces of the Action was introduced to me by my dear friend, Ben Reinhardt, who not only wrote the forward for a recent reprint of the book by Stripe Press but also wrote a fantastic Book Thread summarizing the impact of this book. Go read, both the thread and the book.

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

Terry's Discworld series is often treated with the same respect as Tolkien's work, mainly by people with the best sense of humour. It's set in the fictional disc-shaped flat planet, balanced on the backs of four elephants, which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle. There are many sub-series in the main Discworld series and this book kicks off the Ankh-Morpork City Watch set of stories. A group of officers in the city's night watch investigate mysterious events in the city while dark forces of a secretive brotherhood are rushing to bring back a powerful mysterious animal from another realm. Highly recommend the audiobook narrated by Nigel Planer. He adds a layer of comedic timing to all characters beyond the books. I picked this up during a period where things in my life were not great and it 100% delivered on me grinning stupidly for most of the narration.

The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building by Matt Mochary

Gifted to me by a dear friend, Manoj, this book is for people like me who prefer handbooks which tell you exactly a tried-and-tested ways of doing things rather than drum up esoteric business jargon. It's along the same lines as the High Growth Handbook, which I recommended in my Summer Reading 2021 List. One after the other, in short concise chapters, the book covers everything, from GTDs to Energy Audits to Financial Health to Conscious Leadership to Customer Empathy to Meetings to Feedback to Fundraising - the list goes on. Every chapter has something that I have brought back to Transcelestial. e.g. in Energy Audit, he says - "You perform best when you are doing things that energize you. Your goal should be to spend most of your time (75-80%) doing things that energize you. If you do, magic will occur."

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Anson Heinlein

I picked up the audiobook narrated by Lloyd James. It's a primer on how to set up a rebel army under the rule of a stronger presence, set in the backdrop of an Earth-Moon conflict. This book's iconic presence can be felt in a lot of space operas or hard sci-fi that came after. e.g. A key battle tactics for superiority used in this book by the Loonies (people on the Moon) is a pivotal plot point in The Expanse's 5th book, Nemesis Games (so pivotal that it directly dictates the direction of the story in the next four books). Again, The Expanse's 8th book, Tiamath's Wrath, uses the same organizational structure as the Loonies. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is also directly responsible for popular phrases in pop culture like TANSTAAFL ("There Ain't No Such Things As A Free Lunch"). Do read it and get ready to be blown away by the surprise ending (well less surprising given the direction some of our technologies are headed now vs when the book was written in 1966).

Masters of DOOM: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner

Read this first back towards the end of high school - just before moving to NTU Singapore. The software engineering/game dev journey resonated a lot and when I re-read it again 2 years ago, I finally was able to connect with the entrepreneur side of the story. Masters of DOOM is a chronicle of "The Two Johns", although a bit skewed towards John Carmack, who would later go on to become one of the most legendary programmers & game developers in history, inspiring many. My own first introduction to Carmack's programming thoughts came from reading a few snippets from his released .plan files, which were shared with me during my university days at NTU. id Software also set the trend of insane prizes with Carmack giving away his Ferrari at a Quake tournament! Carmack's talks on YouTube (Ansari prize ceremony, Quakecon, Facebook Connect, etc) and various podcast appearances (Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman) are some of the rabbit holes to dig deeper. Or just follow him on Twitter :)

The year ended with some not great news on the family front but we survived and things seem to be looking up going ahead. That got me thinking, amongst other things I have been very thankful for being able to structure in a generous amount of reading (books, articles, podcasts). I had previously shared a mid-year book list in my Summer Reading 2021 post. Now it's time to share the End of Year version.

My more comprehensive reading updates and forward looking pipeline of books can be found on my Goodreads.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

I finished the book, a bit unsatisfied like a 4/5 rating. I couldn't place my finger on why until I read the Epilogue by his wife, Lucy. She puts it succinctly for everyone else feeling the same - "When Breath Becomes Air is, in a sense, unfinished, derailed by Paul's rapid decline, but that is an essential component of its truth, of the reality Paul faced.....Not fully captured in these pages are Paul’s sense of humor or his sweetness and tenderness, the value he placed on relationships with friends and family. But this is the book he wrote; this was his voice during this time; this was his message during this time; this was what he wrote when he needed to write it.". I have no complaints about the ending anymore as it reminds us that one has to be content with the cards dealt by the quantum randomness of the universe. Exceptional read. Do also read Bill Gates's review of the same book which surprisingly mirrors a LOT of my own conclusions and frustrations on the abrupt end.

Essential Bukowski: Poetry by Charles Bukowski

After almost a 15 year gap, I have found myself drawn back to poetry! The individual responsible is Charles Bukowski. The first poem I encountered of his was Roll the Dice. It was last year when COVID had just started, and it left such an impression that it now sits on my desk at work. The first few lines (& the entire poem really) are perfect for everyone who dreams of a different world and sets out to create change -

"If you're going to try, go all the way.
Otherwise, don't even start.
If you're going to try, go all the way.
This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind...."

Bukowski's style is often extreme and feels like a peak behind the proverbial curtain. It often feels he is defining various aspects of the human condition by being able to "touch reality" as we know & feel it rather than how we often say it as a society. Essential Bukowski is the best anthology of his work in my opinion compiled by Abel Debritto.

Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson

With all the recent conversations about Metaverse, it is worth going back to where it all started (well technically it was Neuromancer by William Gibson or even True Name by Vernor Vinge but Snowcrash really got the ball rolling). Snowcrash, published in 1992, predicted a provocative dystopian tech utopia which has for decades since inspired & challenged countless engineers and scientists to bring to reality. I first read Snowcrash during my gap year in 2015, after I had left my banking career. Immediately, in my short-lived newsletter, I compiled a snapshot of the cultural and technological impact of the book. The true Metaverse may still be off by a decade or two but I am glad the conversation is now more public than ever!

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Eric Jorgenson

I originally encountered Naval from his appearance on Joe Rogan (during his YouTube podcast days). The quintessential way to follow him is his twitter handle, @naval. Naval's Tim Ferris Podcast appearances are some of the best conversations to hear about angel investing (he started angel.co), crypto and mindfulness in life. His twitter thread on How to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky) was the single largest influence on my own thesis of angel investment and personal wealth creation. The Almanack can be downloaded digitally for free from here as well.

Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde

It is Groundhog Day meets Ready Player One. A gamer, who due to equipment sabotage, is stuck in a medieval fantasy VR Strategy RPG (VRSRPG pronounced "verserperg" ?). The only way out safely, without brain damage, is by finishing the game! Sometimes table stakes don't feel high enough and the ending is kind of predictable. But with a unique and original Banderdash-like non-linear story progression, side splitting banter between characters, soft magic system and a dragon, the overall experience of reading the book is unique. Highly recommend the audiobook - Carine Montbertrand as the narrator is amazing.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Picked this up after a glowing review from Bill Gates. The premise is all too familiar and grounded in reality to some extent. Don Tillman, a genetics professor with Asperger’s Syndrome, starts looking for a wife armed with a questionnaire and a quantitative scale to rank the candidates. Dating is hard and personally the nerd in me found it quite easy to relate to Don, the protagonist. Also Don's obsession with optimizing personal schedule hit too close to home! Once again, I would highly recommend the audiobook - Dan O'Grady has done a marvelous job. Unlike Gates though, I found the sequel book to be a bit repetitive and lacking novelty.

Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction by Damien Keown

Growing up in a devout Hindu household (with a Maithil Brahmin lineage), up until this day, I have constantly struggled to reconcile my growing understanding of the mathematical universe and the rigidity of a structured religion's inconsistencies. I first encountered Buddhism on a family trip during my primary school holidays to Bodh Gaya, which is 300km or 7hours drive from my hometown of Jamshedpur in Bihar (now Jharkhand) in India and is credited to be the place where Buddha achieved Enlightenment. This handbook is a 101, non-BS place intro about Buddhism. Hidden amongst a lot of details about Buddhism, there was an interesting astronomical comment. Following Alice down the rabbit hole - Buddha was known to have memories as far back as 91 Eons (1 Eon ~ 1 billion Earth Years). So that puts access to Mitochondrial memory as back as 91 billion Earth Years. Assuming Panspermia, this means the universe could be atleast as old as 91 billion Earth Years. The current age of the universe, based on CMB, is estimated 13.8 billion Earth years. But as we know, the universe is expanding and maybe even faster than it should be. Every day, more and more stellar matter is going outside of our sphere of visible universe due to the universe expanding. The concept of the Big Bang being a singularity has also been debunked (1), (2). Does this all mean that this seemingly insignificant astronomical statement passed down by generations, that the universe and the life within it is magnitudes older than our current understanding, hold some meaning? Probably not based on this specific evidence but like a good Bayesian, I will assign a small credence to it for now.

When the world forces you indoors, you need to find a way out. If you are faced with a summer with COVID lockdowns in your city, you may want to hit some of these books to explore a different world out there.

My other reading updates can be found on my Goodreads.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

If you have read or watched the Martian, this has very similar pacing and a witty polymath protagonist. I found myself finishing this book within 48 hours of buying it, which is something! As an engineer building a startup in the space industry, the attention to detail around all aspects of deep space travel was refreshing. The villain is a quantum mechanical energy storage mechanism - that was quite new and mind-blowing for me.

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie

I have known very little about Russia’s rich historical cultural heritage and its people. Catherine was a remarkable leader not only for the nation but also geopolitically highly influential amongst the European states. Through her policies and actions, she set the benchmark for what a good leader looks like. One of the examples of her remarkable leadership was how she and her subjects systematically dealt with the Bubonic Plague through structured quarantines. Another brilliant example is her first draft of the social laws against slavery which ultimately served as a reference for the US constitution drafted in the late 1700s

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner

For the longest time, Bell  Labs has been an absolute favourite model for Driving innovation for me. As I went to the stories of different innovators, Nobel Prize winners, inventors, and even managers, I couldn’t help but draw my own conclusions of what made them legendary. Monopolies are often criticized for taking advantage of the market for too long at the expense of what’s right for the customer. But the lines here are more grey here you have a monopoly driving most of the inventions that subsequently build our modern world. How do you explain that!

The Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky & Moebius

I’ll be honest. I had never heard of Mobius before and frankly if you haven’t then you have not known the biggest inspiration in science-fiction movie visuals ever. The book took me a long time to finish as every single panel in the novel has an immeasurable amount of cool visuals and "visions of the future" packed into it. You have flying palaces, inter-dimensional spaceships, crazy new alien worlds, classic old mob riots, and just extremely trippy vistas. At the core, it is a human story, a classic Hero's Journey for someone who could easily be an anti-hero.

High Growth Handbook by Elad Gill

There are certain books which need to read at the right time. This is one of those. I recommend reading this when your startup is entering the Series A journey. There are absolutely tons of things you can pick and implement without a doubt. Chapter 5 on Organizational Structure and Growth talks about the fact that if you are growing fast, you have a different company every 6-12 months. It's nothing new but thinking deeply about it affected how we approached decision-making on hiring, sales, growth, product, and other focus areas.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

I recently finished the entire Earthsea series and by far, it is my top choice for a fictional universe to live in. Best dragons, best wizards, best wizard schools, best lazy port cities, and best oceans. Sparrowhawk (since True Names are confidential) encapsulates how drive, passion, and arrogance can not only corrupt you but also could be used wisely to deliver you from the same evil. UKLG's real life essays on the power of science fiction and  fantasy (SFF) is a must read afterwards.

Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny by Edward J. Watts

Like, Russia earlier, Rome has intrigued me since the days of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in high school. Choosing the right point to delve deeper is important and for me, it turned out to be the ultra stable Roman Republic's downfall. Only during chaos do we truly see the nature of things. I heard the author on Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast (one of my fav episodes in my Podcasts I Like list) and instantly picked up the book to dive deeper. The most impressive aspect to me was the way they would integrate newly conquered regions by giving them citizenship status and a seat at the decision table of the empire. Of course, the way the bureaucracy and the committees worked to establish a highly functioning and self-corrective social & economic order was one of many things to admire.

I have always felt closer to sound. That's why I stuck with learning a guitar longer than painting on a canvas. When I am not performing cognitively demanding tasks e.g. walking in the evenings or cycling to work or in a Grab, I am usually listening to music or podcasts or audio books.

Before I forget, I wanted to compile some of the engaging podcast shows and episodes which I have found to be more engaging and quite a lot more densely packed with information than YouTube videos OR books.

For listening, I use Pocket Casts for my podcasts. The following features won me over - cross device sync of episode progress, web version available, storage space to side load audio books and use the same progress sync feature. The Plus doesn't add much but is a nice way to support the team.

For listening, I use Spotify now.

Top 1-time Mini Series

1. Washington Post - Moonrise
2. BBC World Service - 13 Minutes to the Moon Season 1
3. Maximum Fun - The Outer Reach

Miscellaneous Podcast Shows/Episodes I have loved

1. Business Wars - Nintendo vs Sony (Season 34 Episode 1-6), Boeing vs Airbus (Season 33 Episode 1-7)
2. Game Scoop - What Are the Most Important Games of the Decade?
3. Against the Rules - Season 2 Episode 1-8 about Performance Coaches
4. Tech Deciphered - The wonderful world of productivity, Recruiting Primer Part 1-3
5. The Portal - Peter Thiel, Werner Herzog, Josh Wolfe, Garry Kasparov, Sir Roger Penrose, What if everyone is simply insane?
6. The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard (Existentialism)
7. Invest Like the Best - Charlie Songhurst: Lessons from Investing in 483 Companies (Charlie is an angel investor in Transcelestial)
8. The Handmade Network Podcast - Handmade Seattle 2020 Special: The Race to Replace C and C++
9. Founders - Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters. All of them
10. Idea Machines - Focusing on Research with Adam Marblestone, Invention, Discovery, and Bell Labs with Venkatesh Narayanamurti
11. Thoughts in Between - Anton Howes: The history of innovation - and how to get more of it

Top Recurring Podcasts with some great episodes below

1. Sean Carroll's Mindscape*
2. Lex Fridman's Podcast*
3. The Tim Ferris Show
4. Victory The Podcast (because Entourage!)

*DISCLAIMER: I am a Patreon supporter for Sean Carroll's and Lex Fridman's podcasts

Below are my favorite episodes from the above shows:

Sean Carroll's Mindscape

Solo

• Solo -- Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?
• Solo -- Finding Gravity Within Quantum Mechanics
• Solo | Life and Its Meaning
• Solo: How Time Travel Could and Should Work
• Solo: Are We Moving Beyond the Standard Model?

Natural Sciences

• Katie Mack on How the Universe Will End
• Karl Friston on Brains, Predictions, and Free Energy
• Kevin Hand on Life Elsewhere in the Solar System
• Lina Necib on What and Where the Dark Matter Is
• Scott Aaronson on Complexity, Computation, and Quantum Gravity
• Nick Bostrom on Anthropic Selection and Living in a Simulation
• Fyodor Urnov on Gene Editing, CRISPR, and Human Engineering
• Netta Engelhardt on Black Hole Information, Wormholes, and Quantum Gravity
• Adam Riess on the Expansion of the Universe and a Crisis in Cosmology

Philosophy

• David Chalmers on Consciousness, the Hard Problem, and Living in a Simulation
• Alan Lightman on Transcendence, Science, and a Naturalist’s Sense of Meaning
• Seth MacFarlane on Using Science Fiction to Explore Humanity
• Philip Goff on Consciousness Everywhere

Miscellaneous

• David Albert on Quantum Measurement and the Problems with Many-Worlds
• Edward Watts on the End of the Roman Republic and Lessons for Democracy
• Adrienne Mayor on Gods and Robots in Ancient Mythology
• Marq de Villiers on Hell and Damnation

Lex Fridman's Podcast

Natural Sciences

• Max Tegmark: Life 3.0
• Sean Carroll: The Nature of the Universe, Life, and Intelligence
• Leonard Susskind: Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, and Black Holes
• Sean Carroll: Quantum Mechanics and the Many-Worlds Interpretation
• Jim Gates: Supersymmetry, String Theory and Proving Einstein Right
• #78 – Ann Druyan: Cosmos, Carl Sagan, Voyager, and the Beauty of Science
• #79 – Lee Smolin: Quantum Gravity and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution
• #85 – Roger Penrose: Physics of Consciousness and the Infinite Universe
• #116 – Sara Seager: Search for Planets and Life Outside Our Solar System
• #124 – Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe
• #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua

Philosophy

• Noam Chomsky: Language, Cognition, and Deep Learning
• David Chalmers: The Hard Problem of Consciousness
• #149 – Diana Walsh Pasulka: Aliens, Technology, Religion, and the Nature of Belief

Computing

• Eric Schmidt: Google
• Elon Musk: Tesla Autopilot
• Garry Kasparov: Chess, Deep Blue, AI, and Putin
• Bjarne Stroustrup: C++
• Judea Pearl: Causal Reasoning, Counterfactuals, Bayesian Networks, and the Path to AGI
• Donald Knuth: Algorithms, TeX, Life, and The Art of Computer Programming
• Jim Keller: Moore’s Law, Microprocessors, Abstractions, and First Principles
• #72 – Scott Aaronson: Quantum Computing
• #83 – Nick Bostrom: Simulation and Superintelligence
• #109 – Brian Kernighan: UNIX, C, AWK, AMPL, and Go Programming
• #130 – Scott Aaronson: Computational Complexity and Consciousness
• #160 – Brendan Eich: JavaScript, Firefox, Mozilla, and Brave
• #162 – Jim Keller: The Future of Computing, AI, Life, and Consciousness

Miscellaneous

• #82 – Simon Sinek: Leadership, Hard Work, Optimism and the Infinite Game
• #118 – Grant Sanderson: Math, Manim, Neural Networks & Teaching with 3Blue1Brown
• #122 – David Fravor: UFOs, Aliens, Fighter Jets, and Aerospace Engineering
• #166 – Cal Newport: Deep Work, Focus, Productivity, Email, and Social Media
• #174 – Tyler Cowen: Economic Growth and the Fight Against Conformity and Mediocrity

The Tim Ferris Show

Entrepreneurship & Investing

• #97: The Evolutionary Angel, Naval Ravikant
• #367: Eric Schmidt — Lessons from a Trillion-Dollar Coach
• #392: Ben Horowitz — What You Do Is Who You Are >> Lessons from Silicon Valley, Andy Grove, Genghis Khan, Slave Revolutions, and More
• #403: Tony Fadell — On Building the iPod, iPhone, Nest, and a Life of Curiosity
• #473: Naval Ravikant on Happiness, Reducing Anxiety, Crypto Stablecoins, and Crypto Strategy
• #487: Dr. Martine Rothblatt — A Masterclass on Asking Better Questions and Peering Into the Future
• #506: Balaji Srinivasan on The Future of Bitcoin and Ethereum, How to Become Noncancelable, the Path to Personal Freedom and Wealth in a New World, the Changing Landscape of Warfare, and More

Philosophy

• #444: Hugh Jackman on Best Decisions, Daily Routines, The 85% Rule, Favorite Exercises, Mind Training, and Much More
• #485: Jerry Seinfeld — A Comedy Legend’s Systems, Routines, and Methods for Success
• #502: Jordan Peterson on Rules for Life, Psychedelics, The Bible, and Much More

Natural Sciences

• #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face
• #478: Scott Kelly — Lessons Learned from 500+ Days in Space, Life-Changing Books, and The Art of Making Hard Choices

Ones I have been interviewed on!

1. EF's Scaling Ambition - Transforming Communications Technology and Maximising Your Personal Impact
2. Founders Unfiltered - Building for Space

Keep Listening!

I turned 32 yesterday and I wanted to do this last year but Transcelestial's Series A raise kept me busy.

Below is a non-comprehensive list of elements from my personal framework that I have built over the years. It's a glimpse of how I think, what I believe in and care about and what I have practiced.

After planning to write these for almost 2 years, I pretty much wrote most of below in a single sitting few months back.

1. Don't only read what everyone else is reading or what is recommended on a bestsellers list. This will make you think like everyone else. Pick a topic you love and find an obscure book/poem/song about it.
2. Invest by stock picking. Invest in companies making products you really like, invest in companies who are working towards a goal you believe in OR can see earlier than everyone else. Recommend 1-5 years holding.
3. People change every decade of life lived. Your parents or friends are not the same people you remember from 10 years ago.
4. Unlearn bad eating habits picked up while growing up. Paid Nutritionist as a short term advisor is worth the cash. Nutrition is 70% health.
5. Don't ever tell a good friend that you are too busy to meet. Figure a time, date and place out and stick to it. You are less busy than you think you are.
6. Be comfortable in being alone. Early morning or evening walks with a podcast OR some music is a great way to start. Being alone lets you confront your thoughts and observe who you really are as a person.
7. Rules were made by people. Never be too afraid to break them for something better.
8. People are very attached to past mistakes. It was never your fault, even when it was. Just hold yourself accountable going ahead.
9. Time is the only valuable resource in the long term. Always optimize for recovering as much future time back as possible.
10. Majority people are terrible at what they do - including pilots, doctors and other mission critical roles in our society.
11. Mountains are better than beaches.
12. Get Gym trainers over Gym memberships.  
13. Own a bookshelf, not just books
14. 80s was the best decade for music, movies and games
15. Learn at least 1 joke and 1 poem. You will inevitably be asked to quote one of these at least once in your life.
16. Talking or thinking about death is extremely healthy. The ultimate question is why do anything at all? Figure out your answer for that question. Spend your life with someone who buys into that answer.
17. Think of your body as a machine that needs constant observation, proper maintenance and regular checkups to work correctly. You should go to a doctor not when you have a problem but to make sure you don't have one.
18. Don't be cruel. It is a never ending zero sum game for our civilization as a whole. So math dictates that it will come back to you or your children or your loved ones.
19. Find a quiet corner and look up at the stars for a few silent minutes, once a week. We are not alone. You are not alone.
20. Actively find people who add value to your life, personally or professionally. A basic test for adding value is that in your first meeting with the person, you should have learnt at least one new thing valuable to you.
21. Build Strong Convictions. Share them often.
22. The earlier you get your mind away from institutionalized religion, the better. Take some time off, then re-think who you are as a person, what do you care about, read teachings of as diverse people as possible and then decide what core beliefs you want to live on and pass on. Your teens and your 20s are a good time to experiment with stuff like this. Do note, this does not mean disrespecting what other people around you believe in.
23. Introduce your kids (or young ones around you) to science fiction early on. Science fiction & fantasy (SFF) to me is a natural conclusion of a "Thought Experiment". It's thought experiments all the way down. Summation of all previous thought experiments is our current civilization and I strongly feel that SFF is how you learn to discover the Thought Experiments of the future
24. This world around us and the rules that run it up were made up and enforced by people like you and me. So people like you and me should also be able to change it if we think something else is better. People don't say this often enough to ourselves.
25. Try paying for someone's meal when you meet them for the first time. The worst that can happen is that the person will get a free meal but there is no limit to the potential upside.
26. Home is where your heart is - it could be an hour away, on another side of the planet OR tucked away in a fraction of a moment 10 years ago. When you are feeling sad or lonely or just lost, battling internal demons, try to remember home. It helps.
27. On that note, figure out a way to protect yourself from sudden and extreme pain OR loss (life is long and it will happen to you).  For me it was to deep dive into intellect building pursuits within theoretical physics. Some turn to a higher being with some degree of effectiveness but IMHO it's dangerous to manage one strong emotion by another stronger one.
28. The value of your network is a function of what valuable 2nd and 3rd degree connections your 1st degree connections open up.
29. Pre block your lunch and dinner timeslots in your calendar. Then use it to catch-up with mentors, clients, friends, or loved ones.
30. Figure out how to tune yourself to someone's favorite personal FM station - WIIFM (What's In It For Me). You will be crazy effective in your life.
31. Dual sort your relationships on the basis of Most Valuable and Most Enjoyable. That's the most important person in your life right now. If it's not one person, keep looking.
32. Although the skill of specializing is awarded in our world, aim to be a polymath.

As John Nash once said - "Rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person’s concept of his relation to the cosmos."

Characteristic of my growing years, I hope I can retain some irrationality going ahead.

I have pondered on this question for years.

Today, while I was watching the anime Rurouni Kenshin, finally the answer hit me like a brick.

Strong Convictions

My thesis is that Strong Convictions in anime characters are the main reason why I like anime so much - whether they are good or evil characters, main or secondary. These characters are often 1-dimensional in how they behave but their predictability in moral decision making and conviction towards a certain belief allows us to cheer for them and on a base level relate to them. Take anyone - Naruto, Ichigo, Luffy, Kenshin, Major Kusanagi, any of the Ghibli leads, even Ryuk - all of them hold extremely strong convictions about the world, its people and its future.

A keen fan might point out that there are some characters like Spike from Cowboy Bebop who on the surface do seem like "fluid" but I would argue that even though they seem to be confusing on the surface, you are still (even from the moment of introduction) aware of what their convictions are or will be given a situation. Like when someone is in distress or when there is money involved or something else.

The problem with the real world is the following emerging dichotomy -

Our social interactions are becoming shallower, caused by our incapability to understand or convey across, boldly, our strongest convictions. Hence, even though we may have strong convictions about things but we feel more disconnected now (more than ever) as it is easier to not invest time and effort in understanding the other person's core convictions, be it people around you or just strangers

How to fix it?

Simple. Share your strongest convictions as boldly and as publicly as possible.

Chances are people who believe in it and will come to you, cheer for you, argue with you or fall in love with you.

Don't hide behind yourself.

Hope everyone had a great holiday. Last month has been a bit busy. So my “experiment” with this kind of correspondence was on a hiatus.

On the flip side, I have a lot of really good things to share in the coming weeks.

Books

Snow Crash – Written by Neal Stephenson, this is a cornerstone for virtual/augmented reality, online avatars and just general cyberpunk. It is set only a few years in the future where the hero, Hiro Protagonist, is a hacker/samurai swordsman/pizza delivery guy and is after a software drug called Snow Crash – which was a virus created by the ancient Egyptian gods – helping to unravel a plot by a fibreoptics executive to use the drug to infect people and their digital avatars. It sounds very “out there” but being released in 1992, it has influenced the creation/popularization of many things over the years:

• Avatars: Across games and social media, the concept of avatar allows us to talk to friends, share things,buy/sell stuff,etc. The concept of using the word avatars to represent online virtual bodies was introduced and popularised by this book.
• MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games):  Games like World of Warcraft were inspired by the “Metaverse” inside the book. MMO’s existed before this book but Stephenson brought a fantastic reality to the concept which changed MMOs.
• Google Earth/Maps – The “Earth” developed by the Central Intelligence Corporation in the book is literally what became Google Maps and then Google Earth. Overlaying cloud, vegetation, road networks, wind patterns,etc over maps in near real-time are some the many features that have been used from the book.
• Magic Leap / Microsoft Hololens / Google Glass – The concept of both virtual reality and augmented reality were popularised by this book. People in the book connect to the virtual world using a technology very similar to what all these companies are developing now. In fact, Magic Leap, which has raised $1.4 billion till date, made Neal Stephenson their “Chief Futurist”.
• Second Life: The founder was inspired to build the exact “Metaverse” from the book after his girlfriend gave him the book in college. (For those who don’t know about SL, its one of the most popular online virtual world since 2003)
• PayPal – Not exactly the concept of online payments and banking but PayPal’s founder Peter Thiel has mentioned that the culture of the company had Snow Crash’s story at the core.

Articles

The Resolution of the Bitcoin experiment – One of the core developers of the Bitcoin foundation, who was with the cryptocurrency since the early stages, quit 2 days ago. This is a big “nail” in the metaphorical coffin. In this extensive post, he explains why Bitcoin has failed. It’s an absolute MUST read for anyone remotely interested in the world of cryptocurrency and/or those who have constantly heard how cool Bitcoin is from their friends/peers (yes I know for some of you that person is me 😐 ). I always supported the concept of cryptocurrency and the underlying blockchain technology – which I think is what will remain in the aftermath – but it has been evident since some time that Bitcoin in it’s current form will not sustain/exist. So go ahead and have a full read through – some technical bits can be glossed over if you wish.

Papers

Are we living in a simulation? – It’s was a paper put forward by Nick Bostrom, Oxford professor of philosophy, in 2003. It proposed that we all could be living in a computer simulation and it uses some basic math and a lot of philosophy to bring out the argument. Basically the idea proves that a sufficiently advanced society has so much already in terms of computing power that they can simulate a full universe inside a computer.

I came across this paper back in university but recently it has come back to me due to some recent developments – (1) Latest research in Quantum Physics & String Theory indicates that we might all be just be a hologram – a 3D representation of information stored on a 2D surface;  (2) A video game called “No Man’s Sky” which “procedurally” generates a galaxy-sized galaxy with its own laws of physics, chemistry & biology AND has 31 sextillion planet-sized planets to explore by players – a task which would take an estimated 5 billion years to complete by any one person (to put this in context our real universe is 13 billion years old – just slightly more than twice of that in the game) ! So we are already entering an era where simulated universes are not a dream and this question is more than relevant now.

There is a very engaging discussion on this topic between Richard Dawkins (foremost mind in evolutionary biology since Charles Darwin) & Brian Greene (probably the most celebrated physicist of our generation) – see below

The discussion on this topic of simulated universe is roughly 4-5 mins but they cover the paper at a very high level including a scientific and evolutionary view. If you have an hour’s time free, I suggest watching the full discussion – some of the topics covered are absolutely riveting.

Cheerio!

In this installation I won’t be providing any book or paper suggestions. Instead I will summarize some of my thoughts on the previous list.

Papers

Not adding a new serious paper this week in order to give time to those who are still on Mr. Einstein’s papers. For the non-scientific readers, I do want to highlight some of the implications of these individual papers:

Photoelectric Effect (Paper #1) : Light falling on some materials produces electrons.

• Without this single paper, probably, there wouldn’t be any solar energy. Solar cells are based on the Photoelectric Effect.
• 178 GW of clean solar energy generated today worldwide by solar cells.
• More than 95% of space operations (including all satellites, space telescopes & space shuttles) depend on solar cells.
• Without this single paper, probably, there wouldn’t be any photocells (something which regulates current based on light falling on it)
• Applications of photocells include – sound in movies, ALL cameras (in order to regulate entering light a.k.a. exposure), street lights , hand held calculators, low voltage landscape lighting, automatic car head lights, battery charges, automatic rest room controls, etc.

Special Relativity (Paper #4) : Speed of light is the upper constant limit of speed in our universe

• Time Travel – If you have a really fast ship, you can easily time travel into the future but cannot go into the past.
• Time slows down for you if you increase your speed.
• CERN & other particle accelerators – work only because of the point above. Sub-atomic particles are accelerated at high speeds in order to slow down time for them and make them discoverable by scientists.
• E=mc^2

E=mc^2 (Paper #5) : All matter is energy and all energy is matter

• Explained nuclear fission & fusion AND answered 2 questions: “How the Sun burns?” and “How to make a nuclear bomb and completely incinerate cities full of people & thus win World War II ?”
• A single human body can power United States for 16 years.

Books

I just finished Zero to One 2 days ago and would like to talk about a few things which I think is not only applicable to people starting a company but also to people in general – a reason why everyone should read it (**SPOILERS BELOW**)

• “Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule. If you can identify a delusional popular belief, you can find what lies hidden behind it: the contrarian truth” – I have found it increasingly true in all aspects of society: politics, businesses, law & order, religion, etc. The financial crisis, the dot-com bubble, the US housing bubble, early bitcoin madness & even the Great Depression of 1930s are all examples of such conventional mass beliefs which started in delusion and ended with the truth coming out.

• “Non-monopolists exaggerate their distinction by defining their market as the intersection of various smaller markets. Monopolists, by contrast, disguise their monopoly by framing their market as the union of several large markets” – Google does it really well. They have a monopoly in search but they say they are a tech company building mobile, ads, cars, wearable computers, etc which makes them look like just another player in the competition. On the other hand, every Fast & Furious movie tries to showcase its monopoly by exaggerating how this time “this film will combine various exciting elements in entirely new ways” – it doesn’t.

• “All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition” –  I find it true not only for companies but also teams within companies. Talking from my experience in RBS, most of the big banks on the street have dropped their Research teams but not their FX teams. This is primarily because Research teams in most big banks were pretty much coming out with the same thing, content or delivery wise, hence they failed to escape the competition a.k.a. Independent Research firms, offering the same analysis at cheaper prices. On the contrary, FX teams have flourished and even grown in some places because most of the big players are solving a unique problem (cross asset hedging, internalized transactions, desktop/web/mobile tech platform, faster execution, ease of accepting cross-currency payments, retail vs corporate focus, etc.)

• “Indefinite optimist thinks the future will be better but he doesn’t know how exactly, so he won’t make any specific plans” – Our world currently is almost definitely indefinitely optimistic. Finance, politics, philosophy and even our outlook towards life fall under this category. South America was discovered only because Spaniards wanted to find the Fountain of Youth. Somehow now we are very content  with the fact that insurance companies tell us our “statistical life expectancy”. This seems absurd because best minds in history had thought of death as something to defeat and somehow we have lost that spirit. In philosophy, politics and business as well, often, process trumps concrete plans for the future.

• “Our schools provide institutionalized education which traffics in a kind of homogenized, generic knowledge” – I find it strange that we are taught the same things, tested to find out who has done the best job at knowing it and then when we join the workforce we are somehow expected to be creative and different! I am not saying that everyone needs to learn something different but just that everyone has a different learning and thinking appetite and somehow we need our schools to understand and implement that if we are looking for a better society.

Article

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html – Fermi Paradox tries to seek an answer to “Where are the aliens?”. And as the article mentions, it’s because either “We’re Rare or We’re First or We’re Fucked“. One of the best articles which has stayed with me (and a lot of people I know) for a really long time.

Cheerio!

Shifting gears a bit, I have decided to add in a few papers,books, articles that I found quite riveting last few weeks.

Papers

Starting at the beginning – with the greatest minds of our century – A. Einstein. He published 5 papers in a single year, 1905 a.k.a Annus Mirabilis – the quality of theory in each paper was so high that they say it might easily have taken a whole year for a normal scientist to write just one.

Concerning an Heuristic Point of View Toward the Emission and Transformation of Light – Paper on Photoelectric effect winning him the Nobel prize.

On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat–  This is effectively just Brownian Motion. But Einstein’s unique insight into classical hydrodynamics and kinetic theory helped arrive at equations to find mean free path between collisions (Jean Perrin confirmed this using experiments and got a Nobel Prize for that)

A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions – This is his PhD dissertation. Remember that there was no electron microscope at that time so even though people knew atoms existed, there was no conclusive proof of its existence and size. His paper showed how to calculate the size of molecules and atoms.

On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies – Paper on Special Relativity (he preferred to call it Principle of Invariance) – 2 outcomes: laws of physics do not change for any non-accelerating a.k.a inertial frame of reference + speed of light is constant upper limit of speed in the universe.

Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon its Energy Content? – Proposed E=mc^2 .Really a supplement to the paper on special relativity

If you have time to read one paper only, I would suggest the LAST one above – E=mc2 has been the defining equation of our generation. It gave birth to the atomic bomb which ended WWII. It has implications in Quantum mechanics. It runs CERN and other particle accelerators. It is what drives Solar energy – our energy saviour for the present and the future. It’s also a very short paper 🙂

Books

Zero to One (Peter Thiel) – Recommended by a lot of people, I am halfway through but already tons of great insight and advice on starting/building “innovative monopolies”

The Code of Hammurabi – Law book of the 6th king of Babylon – funny to read at times but the simplicity of morality in that age is interesting at the very least – considering how laws and their interpretation is often twisted by the lawyers of today to facilitate their agenda.

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (Carlo Rovelli) – Relativity and Quantum Physics have changed physics for more than 100 years and yet we teach Newtonian physics to young adults. This book explains, using plain english, all the aspects of modern science – covering some recent topics such as Quantum gravity, not-so-black Black Holes,etc. (Website is amazing!)

Articles

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2015/05/13/andrew-ng_n_7267682.html – It’s an interview of Andrew Ng – one of the most respected minds in AI and deep learning. He built the system at Google which recognized cats, founded Coursera and is now running Baidu’s AI branch. Love 3 things that he mentions in this interview:

1. “Follow your passion” is the worst advice adults give
2. Habits contribute more to success than will power (read more to find details)
3. Read a research paper more regularly & don’t watch too much TV

http://wayswework.io/features/design-at-facebook/ – I have seen a lot of articles on insider view of Facebook, but this one really captures the real essence of dev and design at Facebook + how they take care of their employees (its ironic how every company tries to whatever they can to retain employees for long term and how someone with a history of staying at a company for long is frowned upon during job interviews)

http://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades-are-short – When Paul Graham first met Sam Altman, he said “This is how Bill Gates must have been when he was young”. Great pieces of life and career advice coming from the guy who runs Y Combinator.

Cheerio!

Sufficient time has passed since the last social experiment with the “owl” as a pet. This time I wanted to pay a tribute to either the Jurassic Park movies OR the Star Wars movie, both of which have recently released trailers for their upcoming movie in the series.

Ultimately, the dinos won the argument and our hearts. George and I searched though a list of iconic scenes from the first movie and came up with the one below.

P.S. We have added a storyboard of images to show the transition this time from the original to the modified version.

Cool Links

http://raw.densitydesign.org/ – D3 is fascinating but always out of reach for non-JS devs. This is a kickass concept which matches the void between spreadsheet and advanced visualization.

https://medium.com/@sall/using-charted-2149df6bb0bd – Another drop-in charting tool by the Medium Product Science Team.

http://asana.com – Love the task oriented approach of project management

http://slack.com – Rockstar tool for rockstar teams! Makes everything about team communication and sharing so intuitive!

Development

https://github.com/MCluck90/simple-ssh – a really simple wrapper around NodeJS SSH2 module. Fantastic for quick SSH based automation TBH (can cascade commands too!)

https://github.com/facebook/osquery – a SQL like query language for accessing OS stats (solves a personal pain I had joining up various OS data e.g. actual process name,location,port usage,etc in a single screen)

Videos

..And continuing with my subscribed channel list:

• Kanan Gill
• LastWeekTonight
• MinistryOfFunnyTV
• Monty Python
• mtvroadies
• Satyamev Jayate
• Screen Junkies
• TED
• The Onion
• The Slow Mo Guys
• The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
• Trip and Tyler
• wahbanana

Cheerio!

OK I might have gone overboard with the title but the gist is that I usually come across and curate a personal list of links, tools, websites, images, videos, songs, etc.

Sometimes I bookmark them, sometimes I am distracted and the resource is lost forever. So in order to get some order into the randomness, decided to put it in a small list – things I come across during a whole week of “browsing”.

(since this the first one so will probably end up being a small one as trying to get my head around how I want to categorize and share stuff!)

Code

https://github.com/lukesnowden/FSVS – Pretty sweet full page scrolling library (Trending on Github currently)

https://github.com/google/material-design-icons – Love where Google is going with this!

https://github.com/feross/webtorrent – Haven’t tried it out myself but looks cool. Starred it! Will check it out later!

Video

First of all, I will most likely NOT be putting individual links to Youtube videos (since I think there are already WAYY too many websites which do that!) but instead will pen down interesting channels or my own subscriptions + some non-youtube-lying-in-the-unknown videos

To start off, my current channel subscriptions:

• bollywoodgandu
• CinemaSins
• East India Comedy
• Fail Army
• Google Developers
• How It Should Have Ended (HISHE)
• RayWilliamJohnson (DUH!)

…TBC in the next iteration of the list!

Cheerio!

• Yahoo made a good number of acquisitions e.g. Tumblr, Zimbra (which they sold to VMWare), Delicious. But even today these remain as external distributed services rather than a core part of Yahoo services and offerings. On top of this, the acquisitions keep on coming.
• Yahoo has a multitude of product offerings but unlike Google, their user profiles are spread across these services and have no correlation amongst themselves. This gives rise to scattered demographics data (an opportunity for Yahoo to see consistent information trends) and sub-par user experience.
• As an outcome of above, Yahoo lacks the connected analytics needed to drive the user focussed advertising and targeted user experience like Google Now.
• Yahoo’s product line is not unique or better in anyway than the top players in the market – Mail, News, Finance, Photo Sharing,etc. are some of its main services which face really tough competition in the market from better products in terms of features and user experience.

To sum it up, Yahoo is not an efficient platform anymore and the only way it can re-invent is to move in the direction of becoming one single integrated platform, both on the web and in mobile.

Deep Dive

Here is my first impressions/ instant verdict, my first thoughts on what the various products are (a lot of which I had never heard of or used before)