• "Employees who ate at cafeteria tables designed for 12 were more productive than those at tables for four, thanks to more chance conversations and larger social networks. That, along with things like companywide lunch hours and the cafes Google is so fond of, can boost individual productivity by as much as 25 percent." ([1])


• "Managers avoid dealing with low performers (because they believe the conversation will be difficult), and instead assign work to the employees they enjoy — i.e. high performers ... They end up 'burning out' those same high performers." ([1])


• "Is it really true that using someone else's invention is the actually the same thing as stealing their sheep? If I steal your sheep, you don't have them any more. If I use your idea, you still have the idea, but are less able to profit from using it. The two concepts may be cousins, but they not identical." ([1])


• Clever and simple idea: Attach a little flash memory and a small battery to memory chips ([1] [2])


• Another clever and simple idea: On touchscreens (like your phone), make a knuckle or nail tap like a right mouse click so it does something different ([1] [2] [3])


• Most data visualizations would be more clear done as a simple bar chart ([1])


• When someone comes back to a search result page after hitting the back button, you should add more search results to the bottom of the page ([1])


• For the first time, more smartphone ship than dumbphones, which has big implications, especially for the developing world ([1] [2])


• You can identify people based on just four locations sampled from a mobility trace (cell towers and Wifi nearby) from their cell phone ([1])


• "The problem is that Apple has not been able to sustain its high margin levels" ([1] [2])


• Humor (from The Onion): Weeping Tim Cook spotted screaming for help at Steve Jobs' tombstone ([1])


• Amazingly arrogant executive hired from Apple didn't understand customer base or think he had to, destroyed a major retailer ([1] [2])


• Amazon moves against Google ([1] [2]) and Google moves against Amazon ([1] [2] [3] [4])


• Very soon, only big players -- like Amazon, Facebook, and Google -- will be able to do personalized advertising. A change to third-party cookies will kill off all startups working on personalized advertising, but major websites get an exemption. ([1] [2])


• A new compression library from Google designed for web content, can be decompressed by existing software so no changes required on the client side to use it, just need to recompress the static content on the server to save about 5% in bandwidth ([1])


• eBay successfully moves away from auctions. "Auctions ... are less than 10% of what we do." ([1])


• "At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market ... Radical changes to elements like the user interface and higher costs had made PCs less attractive compared with tablets and other devices." ([1] [2])


• A MacBook Pro runs Windows faster than any PC laptop (but only because PCs have so much crapware installed) ([1] [2])


• "Aereo's founders realized that [a court] ruling offered a blueprint for building [an IPTV] service that wouldn't require the permission of broadcasters. In Aereo's server rooms are row after row of tiny antennas mounted on circuit boards. When a user wants to view or record a television program, Aereo assigns him an antenna exclusively for his own use." ([1])


• The vast majority of people have simple taxes, so simple that the IRS could just mail you a tax return, you'd look it over to make sure everything is correct and sign it, and you'd be done. Why don't we have that? Apparently, "it's been opposed for years by the company behind the most popular consumer tax software—Intuit, maker of TurboTax." ([1])


• Why Redfin has been unable to undermine the absurdly high 6% commission when you sell your home ([1] [2])


• "Personal finance courses ... have no effect on financial outcomes ... [but] additional training in mathematics [does]" ([1])


• "Graduate school in the humanities: Just don't go" ([1] [2])


• At least so far, MOOCs (like Coursera and Udacity) seem to only work for people who are already highly motivated, which isn't the group in the most need ([1])


• Seems to be increasing evidence that some autoimmune diseases (including allergies) are rooted in a bored immune system incorrectly prioritizing threats. Almost a parallel with anxiety disorders, your immune system is seeing threats where none exist, incorrectly prioritizing dangers. ([1] [2])


• "Deep waters have absorbed a surprising amount of heat -- and they are doing so at an increasing rate over the last decade" ([1])


• "Resilience -- building systems able to survive unexpected and devastating attacks -- is the best answer we have right now." ([1])


• The web-based version of blackmailing people who have done something embarrassing ([1])


• Little known fact, the second most used web server is something called Allegro RomPager ([1] [2])


• For most people in the US, the vast majority of entertainment time is still spent watching normal, live TV ([1])


• Odd similarities between distributed denial of service attacks and pollution. As Ed Felten writes, misconfigured DNS servers allow massive DDoS attacks, but it's hard to get people to fix it, because "the resulting harm falls mostly on people outside the organization." ([1] [2])

• First Netflix wanted to be Blockbuster (DVDs), then a replacement for cable (streaming video), now they want to be HBO (making content). ([1] [2] [3])
  
  
• "For raw bandwidth, the internet will probably never beat SneakerNet" ([1])
  
  
• Data caps are "a strategy for ISPs to increase their revenue per user ... The trend is driven in large part by a woefully uncompetitive market that allows the nation's largest providers to generate enormous profits" ([1])
  
  
• "Maybe it will eventually dawn on [ISPs] that the only way to fight the scourge of cheap, fast broadband is to provide it themselves" ([1] [2])
  
  
• "Too many companies think of their call centers as a cost to minimize ... it's a huge untapped opportunity ... [for] word-of-mouth marketing ... [and] to increase the lifetime value of the customer" ([1])
  
  
• Mary Jo Foley says, "I keep scratching my head over who Microsoft expects to buy the Surface Pro" ([1])
  
  
• "Taking the bitter pill would mean backing off the Surface idea while smoothing over the worst parts of Windows 8. Admit that being different just for the sake of being different is a losing strategy. Go back to software engineering 101. But I don't see Ballmer making that tough decision. It's just not how he rolls. Then it'll be up to the board of directors to hold him responsible when this dogmatic strategy fails." ([1])
  
  
• "Dell outsourced the management of its supply chain, and then the design of its computers themselves. Dell essentially outsourced everything inside its personal-computer business—everything except its brand— to Asus ... Then, in 2005, Asus announced the creation of its own brand of computers. In this Greek-tragedy tale, Asus had taken everything it had learned from Dell and applied it for itself." ([1])
  
  
• "The Dreamliner was supposed to become famous for its revolutionary design. Instead, it’s become an object lesson in how not to build an airplane" ([1] [2])
  
  
• A deal protects Apple, Google, and a few others from being sued by Kodak's patents, but no one else. "Kodak patents may well be popping up in future patent troll suits in the future." ([1])
  
  
• Mark Cuban says, "Dumbass patents are crushing small businesses" ([1])
  
  
• Detailed technical discussion of the Superbowl power outage and what could have been done to prevent it ([1])
  
  
• The book "Thinking Fast and Slow" and implications for artificial intelligence ([1])
  
  
• "We understand the meaning of an object in terms of the meanings of other objects – other chunks of reality to which our brains have assigned certain characteristics. In the brain’s taxonomy, there are no discrete entries or 'files' – just associations that are more strongly or more weakly correlated with other associations ... Might 'meaning' itself simply be another word for 'association?'" ([1])
  
  
• On global warming: "There is only one thing we can do: develop renewable technologies that are substantially cheaper than coal, and give these technologies to the developing countries." ([1])
  
  
• Good summary of a Davos panel on education ([1] [2])
  
  
• Funding at Garfield High School in Seattle is just $5,600/year/student ([1] [2])
  
  
• Fascinating example of novel work in a field (in this case, literature) by blending it with computer science. ([1] [2] [3])
  
  
• Companies should stop talking about "mobile", start splitting out tablets and smartphones separately. ([1])
  
  
• People talk about tablets killing the PC, should be talking about tablets killing the e-reader ([1])
  
  
• Clever optimization idea from Google: "sending a hedging request after a 10ms delay reduces the 99.9th-percentile latency for retrieving all 1,000 values from 1,800ms to 74ms while sending just 2% more requests." ([1] [2])
  
  
• "Any time you access Google, you probably are in a dozen or more experiments" ([1])
  
  
• What could we do in a distributed database if we could rely on all servers having exactly the right time? ([1] [2])
  
  
• Spotify rediscovers what others found a decade ago, social recommendations don't work, that "no matter who you are, someone you don't know has found the coolest stuff." ([1] [2] [3])
  
  
• "Amazon sells things to people at prices that seem impossible because it actually is impossible to make money that way .... Competition is always scary, but competition against a juggernaut that seems to have permission from its shareholders to not turn any profits is really frightening." ([1])
  
  
• Amazon goes after personalized ads: "This platform lets the company retarget its users across the Web based on their browsing and purchase habits on Amazon’s owned-and-operated properties. That could be a game changer ... given Amazon's recommendation engine" ([1])
  
  
• "Consumers want more targeted and humorous ads ... 67 percent of respondents would be willing to be answer a question to make their ads more personalized and enjoyable ... Consumers understand the exchange of free content for advertising, but they want to make sure their time tradeoff of watching ads also benefits them. They found coupons, contests and links as the most positive forms of engagement." ([1])
  
  
• "Advertisements are 182 times as likely to deliver malicious content than pornography" ([1])
  
  
• Dilbert on effective mobile advertising ([1])
  
  
• The future of maps on smartphones: "It'll be like you're a local everywhere you go. You'll know your way through the back alleys and hutongs of Beijing, you'll know your way all around Paris even if you've never been before. Signs will seem to translate themselves for you. This kind of extra-smartness is coming to people." ([1])
  
  
• Shocking to see Acer bragging about Google Chromebook sales while lambasting slow Windows 8 sales ([1])
  
  
• Chromebook is the #1 selling laptop on Amazon.com right now, not Apple, not Microsoft's Windows 8. ([1])
  
  
• Marissa Mayer says, "In the future, you'll be the query" ([1] [2] [3])
  
  
• Recommendation algorithms work by finding things other people loved that you haven't found yet and bringing them to your attention. It's computers helping humans help humans. ([1])
  
  
• A good UX can make people very forgiving of high error rates ([1] [2])
  
  
• Stephen Wolfram says, "If heuristics are done well, with serious computation and knowledge behind them, they actually do work, and people like them very much ... So long as everything 'just works', people never think about the heuristics, never try to deconstruct them, and never notice or get confused by the lack of ultimate consistency." ([1])
  
  
• Google discovered the optimal length of an interview loop is 4 interviews. Any more hits diminishing returns. [1])
  
  
• "Granting mothers five months of leave doesn't cost Google any more money." ([1])
  
  
• "Software development at Google is big and fast. The code base receives 20+ code changes per minute and 50% of the files change every month" ([1])
  
  
• Worth knowing and understanding: Android has 42% market share of computing devices, but only generates 5% of Wikipedia's traffic ([1])
  
  
• "Why the Google+ long game is brilliant" ([1])
  
  
• Snarky: "The real sign of Google Apps making a big dent in the business world will be when its own hiring managers are able to stop treating Microsoft Office as the de facto standard." ([1])
  
  
• "When everything is in flux, predicting what will be hot a year from now -- 'skating to where the puck is going to be,' to quote Steve Jobs quoting Wayne Gretzky -- becomes all but impossible. Samsung's strategy is to put a man at every spot on the ice. Be in enough places and you're bound to catch something no one was predicting -- like, for instance, the world’s bizarre love affair with phablets." ([1])
  
  
• Much lower power consumption on GPS trails on smartphones by offloading processing to the cloud ([1])
  
  
• Clever combination of GPS trails and a game: "The idea of cyclists recording ride data is nothing new ... What Strava did was turn ... [that] into a rigorously measured, database-matched, global community with the sudden ability to turn the most banal ride into a race ... Get that satisfaction without turning up at the starting line, in the rain, on a Saturday morning at 6 a.m." ([1])
  
  
• Interesting theory: "I had a small epiphany. The cyclists were hated because they are [viewed as] cheats. They are getting away with something that car drivers cannot." ([1])
  
  
• I love this idea of a bicycle frame completely covered in reflective paint ([1])
  
  
• Out of control: "The American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI seeking details of its surveillance policy -- who it spies upon, and how, and under what circumstances. The FBI sent back two 50+ page memos in reply, each of them totally blacked out except for some information on the title page" ([1] [2])
  
  
• On hedge funds: "The S&P 500 has now outperformed its hedge-fund rival for ten straight years, with the exception of 2008 when both fell sharply. A simple-minded investment portfolio—60% of it in shares and the rest in sovereign bonds—has delivered returns of more than 90% over the past decade, compared with a meagre 17% after fees for hedge funds (see chart). As a group, the supposed sorcerers of the financial world have returned less than inflation. Gallingly, the profits passed on to their investors are almost certainly lower than the fees creamed off by the managers themselves." [1])
  
  
• Appears both Vikings and Polynesians reached the Americas around 1000, well before Christopher Columbus ([1] [2])
  
  
• The weight of glaciers during ice ages might cause an increase in volcanic eruptions ([1])
  
  
• Moderate amounts of play of first person shooters (and similar action games) improve vision, attention, and spatial skills ([1])
  
  
• Randall Munroe (author of xkcd): "I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive." ([1])
  
  
• An art project with a visible pile of pennies and a crank, that "allows anyone to work for minimum wage for as long as they like." Absolutely brilliant. ([1])

The column-store developed as part of PowerDrill is tailored to support a few selected datasets and tuned for speed ... Our column-store relies on having as much data in memory as possible ... PowerDrill can run interactive single queries over more rows than Dremel, however the total amount of data it can serve is much smaller.

Consider a typical use case such as triggering 20 SQL queries with a single click in the UI. In our production system on average these queries process 782 billion cells in 30-40 seconds (under 2 seconds per query) .... Each month it is used by more than 800 users sending out about 4 million SQL queries ... scanning [the equivalent of] 525 trillion cells .... One of our top users ... [in] 6 hours ... [executed about] 12 thousand queries .... Our production system is running on well over 1000 machines, the distributed servers altogether using over 4T of main memory.

[PowerDrill] pushes the "interactivity limit" out significantly ... The majority of queries are fairly discriminative, similar, and uniform ... The store has only a few but often explored tables (as opposed to many tables that are not used very often) ... [For many common queries] our techniques push the limit of interactivity out by one or two orders of magnitude.