Source: What is the Last Question? – The EDGE Question–2018 | Edge.org, by John Brockman, Editor, Edge
For the 50th anniversary of “The World Question Center,” and for the finale to the twenty years of Edge Questions, I turned it over to the Edgies:
“Ask ‘The Last Question,’ your last question, the question for which you will be remembered.”
Many pages of excellent questions from some very bright people.
Source: Solving Minesweeper and making it better, by Magnus Hoff (2015)
By implementing a full solver for Minesweeper, we were able to develop a variant of the game that gets rid of the bane of Minesweeper; when you risk losing the game randomly after you have invested time and thought into solving almost all of the board. This version is different from the original only in the situations that would require random guessing, so I would suggest that this version is strictly more fun than the original game.
Automating Minesweeper into a game of chance, then backing up a step and removing chance while leaving multi-square logic unsolved.
Source: LARGE x RARE == DIFFERENT: Why scaling companies is harder than it looks
The insight is that scale causes rare events to become common.
Sure, without automated monitoring we’d be blind, and without automated problem-solving we’d be overwhelmed. So yes, “automate everything.”
But some things you can’t automate. … You can’t “automate” the recruiting, training, rapport, culture, and downright caring of teams of human beings who are awake 24/7/365, with skills ranging from multi-tasking on support chat to communicating clearly and professionally over the phone to logging into servers and identifying and fixing issues as fast as (humanly?) possible.
And you can’t “automate” away the rare things, even the technical ones. By their nature they’re difficult to define, hence difficult to monitor, and difficult to repair without the forensic skills of a human engineer.
with high growth, the surprise appears quickly
Source: Brittleness comes from “One Thing”, by Jason Cohen
If there is only one of something in a system, and the loss of that one thing would break the system, then that “one thing” is a source of brittleness for the system.
The obvious solution, although expensive, is to duplicate One Things in order to acquire robustness.
As you scale, the size of the “chunks” that create brittleness also scale
Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential. As if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out and I guarantee you’ll hear about them. To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.
Source: A Cartoonist’s Advice