Despite the excellent QuickStart tools, this was way harder than I thought. For some reason I had the worst difficulty creating a Workspace on AWS for Databricks. Here are some tips that might help others who get stuck. A. Be clear which "Account ID" to enter where My Account ID on DatabricksMy Account ID on... Continue Reading →
SyncHouse: MVC for Enterprise SaaS
A concrete proposal for Imagining a Data Resort as enforcing a Model-View-Controller architecture across multiple Software-as-a-Service applications. The key is replacing transient enterprise data integrations with a persistent "sync house," and making that the one full-service Source of Truth for data, schemas, and business logic. Ingest data from Salesforce, NetSuite, etc. (e.g., Stitch/Talend, FiveTran)Store raw... Continue Reading →
Imagining a Data Resort
A data resort is where data comes to get pampered, so that it is prepared to get back to work. Motivation The good news is that I finally understand how we really need to be managing all the business data in my organization. The bad news is that I don't know how to articulate that... Continue Reading →
Become Like a Billionaire
Obsess over a Wildly Important Problem that has not been properly characterizedIdentify a novel point of technological leverage for solving that problemDiscover a market hurting enough to pay for even a crappy solution to that problemIterate and improve on all the above until you die, fully solve the problem, or hand it over to someone... Continue Reading →
My First Date with Quilt Data
I've known the good folks at Quilt Data for a long time. A company hackathon gave me a good excuse to actually use them "in anger" for an actual demo. These are my notes on how to configure quilt3 and create my first package (and panda data frame) from a CSV Create a Quilt account.... Continue Reading →
SSO Login into Salesforce from Node via samlp SAML IdP
Documenting this in a blog post because it drove us crazy trying to figure out exactly what was involved, even though it was actually easy to implement once we understood all the terminology. In order for our previously-authenticated users to automatically log into Salesforce, we needed to: Create a "/sso-url" on our node server for our... Continue Reading →
Book Review: Quantum Philosophy and the End of Education
Quantum Philosophy and the End of Education, by Roo Pavan (self-published) April 1st, 2019 This self-published book by a retired physicist turned tech millionaire has taken the education establishment by storm -- and not in a good way. Few people had even heard of this book or its author, Roo Pavan, until President Trump mentioned... Continue Reading →
Solutions to Three of the World’s Hardest Problems
The Problems (Drawn from the list identified by Social Capital on December 15, 2018) Disrupting Programming Can we enable people who don’t know programming to build applications? Is there a way to structure, pipe, and manage data better? Disrupting Education Can we educate humans in interesting ways so that they learn to think in multi-disciplinary ways?... Continue Reading →
Three Steps to Startup Success (in 15 syllables)
Own a big problem. Make measurable progress. Together. References 1. Own a big problem Wicked Problem, Horst Rittel Black Swan theory, Nassim Nicholas Taleb Product-market fit, Andy Rachleff Founder-market fit, Chris Dixon Zero to One, Peter Thiel Disruptive Innovation, Clayton Christensen Jobs to be done, Clayton Christensen 2. Make measurable progress Decision Journals, Danny Kahneman One metric... Continue Reading →
A Spirited Defense of Consciousness
Dear Scott, I finally found some deadlines to force me to put forward an account of consciousness. 🙂 Here it is. While rather simplistic, I have found it a useful model for clarifying my own thinking. The key innovation is defining Spirit as "the ability to reflect on our thoughts feelings and desires in order to... Continue Reading →
iHack, therefore iBlog 
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