“A man is measured by the size of things that anger him.” – Geof Greenleaf
一個人的格局是由他在乎事情的大小來衡量
Thank you!
July 19, 2014
July 4, 2014
Flash boys
The finance and tech industries have been the whipping boys for American inequality. Lie in their junction are the algorithm traders.
A specific form of algorithm trading, with high frequency as depicted in this book, is to arbitrage the time differentials between signals traveling through different electronic routes.
For example, say you want to buy or sell a block of stocks too large for any single exchange to fulfill. Your order is then broken down into smaller blocks, each routed to a different exchange. A high frequency trader, by placing small orders for all stocks in all exchanges all the time, like a fisherman placing baits, can detect your order arriving in the first exchange, and quickly insert itself as the counter party of all your other orders arriving later in other exchanges. This allows the trader to make a small amount profit multiplied by a very large number of trades.
In order to pull this off, a high frequency trader has to be on the frontier of high performance computing.
This is a highly entertaining read like many of Michael Lewis’ previous books. But the distinction is not all that clear between the narrated protagonists and antagonists, who are all wealthy financiers.
Instead, the most intriguing character I found in the book is Sergey Aleynikov, a former Goldman coder whose prosecution triggered the start of the book, in which he was quoted:
If the incarceration experience doesn’t break your spirit, it changes you in a way that you lose many fears.
You begin to realize that your life is not ruled by your ego and ambition and that it can end any day at any time. So why worry?
January 9, 2014
Tolerate only A players
Quote from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs:
You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players. “It’s too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players,” he recalled. “The Macintosh experience taught me that A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can’t indulge B players.”
October 23, 2012
Iron curtain
This book should be a required reading for dictators all over the world.
Quote from the Economist review:
Human beings, as Ms Applebaum rousingly concludes, do not acquire “totalitarian personalities” with ease. Even when they seem bewitched by the cult of the leader or of the party, appearances can deceive, she writes. When it seems as if they buy into the most absurd propaganda—marching in parades, chanting slogans, singing that the party is always right—the spell can suddenly, unexpectedly, dramatically be broken.
August 13, 2012
Rules
“Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind” – Douglas MacArthur
Add-on #1: just don’t get caught. 🙂
Add-on #2: if you do, pretend you don’t know the rules. 🙂
It takes courage to break rules, intelligence to know which rules to break and how, and imagination to get away with it.
This is why I consider breaking rules as both a good training and testing.
June 17, 2012
The Host
A while ago I stumbled upon this trailer video of an upcoming movie, The Host, which turned out to be the film adaptation of the same titled novel by the very same author responsible for the hugely popular (in terms of box office, not critic) Twilight series.
Yes, I know a lot of people think Twilight is stupid and suitable for teenage girls only. I agree with that, after making a fatal mistake of actually buying a ticket to watch the first one in a movie theatre in Seattle during a raining evening. The weather and location turned out to be the main motivator, because the story backdrop happens in Seattle, in the thesis that lack of sunlight provides natural camouflage for the vampires. (I really want to advocate Beijing as a far better locale due to its heavy pollution, but let me not derail.)
The thing is, I really wanted to know why stories written by the author, Stephenie Meyer, tend to be so popular. There is no way I am even going to get near the Twilight books, but fortunately, The Host contains two major themes that I tend to enjoy, sci-fi, and conquering humans. So I read the book during a long distance flight.
I like the book tremendously, not just for the sci-fi and (conquering) human components. A theme that is really special behind many of these Stephenie Meyer stories is the study of relationships among entities that have quasi-human souls embedded in quasi-human forms. Like vampires + werewolves + humans (Twilight), or brain snatchers from outer space (The Host). So, essentially, these are romances embedded in an expanded sci-fi universe with extra dimensions for all the love, hate, and intrigue.
This being said, I still plan to allocate more my novel quota for Neal Stephenson. Brain snatchers are intriguing, but less so than brain computers who can alter the past and the future.
March 29, 2012
Details
God is in the details
Devil is in the details
So which one will be there
When we look into the details
February 16, 2012
Sleep
Numerous studies have concluded the importance of sleep for the wellness of brain functioning. A good night’s sleep not only refreshes the mind but also, in my personal case, often yields good ideas, and solutions to difficult problems. The best description I have seen so far is this:
We cannot do anything else when we are sleeping because it is when we work the hardest.
– Neal Stephenson, in Anathem
September 11, 2011
A year of no significance
1587, a Year of No Significance (Chinese: 萬曆十五年) is a book by historian Ray Huang (Chinese: 黃仁宇) which described how a sequence of seemingly insignificant events precipitated the eventual downfall of the Ming dynasty, as well as China itself. I remember getting totally fascinated by this book as a high school kid. The book is not flawless, but it is fascinating in highlighting how significant long term trends, which usually happen slowly, are often preceded by very small signs.
It is like the famous Chinese proverb, 一葉知秋: from a falling tree leaf one can know that the autumn is coming.
If future historians are going to write a similar book about the eventual downfall of the America (dynasty) as well as the entire West, the analogous year will be 2001, or probably even a specific day, September 11. Contrast to 1587, this is a year of *major* significance. But THE event is no less precipitating than those in 1587.
I am looking forward to read this book, and I hope it will be as enthralling as the one by Ray Huang.