Decentralized Internet

 

• Dove into the fascinating world of decentralized internet building blocks developed by Blockstack.  These are the things I learnt
  • Blockstack is trying to build decentralized building blocks for the internet. The basic blocks like TCP, DNS are already decentralized but the cloud apps built on top of them are not. 
  • It is building a decentralized identity system
  • It is building a decentralized database (which only encrypts and can save it anywhere)
  • It is building a blockchain system for security and privacy (used for identity and smart contracts)
  • What this enables is that there is no one who owns your data but you yourself. Then there will be no difference between your data and cryptocurrency. They are all encrypted by the same keys
  • What that means in real life is
    • it will become easier for new startups to emerge once enough users own their own data as they can easily share the data with new companies without permission of google or fb
    • It also means that things will not be free (paid by ads) though that is also possible and it will be a more direct transaction than the indirect transaction that is today
    • Users should also get used to paying for their username, database to store things (Google is already moving in this direction anyway, but this has the benefit of being privacy preserving). Given the purchasing power differences between different currencies, if the price has to be same everywhere, this might be out of reach for most of the world. 
    • What this also means is that things will be a little slower (data has to be encrypted and decrypted) compared to the centralized applications which has huge implications for the deployment of these apps. If this problem is solved then it means a totally different set of companies will come up.
    • Having things centralized also had the benefit of faster iterations and machine learning. But if this approach of DApps becomes popular, then it directly improves the development of privacy preserving machine learning approaches where models are trained on device.

Investing policy

 This policy is mostly influenced by Ramit Sethi and Warren Buffet. 

Invest in cheap index funds. Don’t try to beat the market. Just buy into well run businesses with lot of profit and hold for a long time for compounding to work its magic. 

Generate your alpha with your work. Invest in yourself and succeed. 

Innocent Jokes

These are things I found funny when I was talking with my son.

My son and I a looking at the globe talking about various countries in the world. He asks - "Dad which countries have you been to." I said "USA and India". He asks - "Why didn't you go to any other country. Are you not interested to go anywhere else?" I say - " Not it is not like that. It is just that I don't get the time." My son know I work in a start up, so he says - "Dad, since you have lot of work in a start up, why don't you join an endup. There you will have time to take a vacation." :)



My son and I  wanted to go to the park. It was cloudy outside, so I said lets check the weather and I go to weather.com and see that it is going to rain soon. My son's ear is red and I tell him -  "Looks like you scratched the ear a lot. Let me apply some cream to reduce the itchiness. " He says - "No I don't want that." I say - "Upto you. It might itch more." He says- can you open 'mirror.com', I want to see how my ear looks :) 

Hold the space for your cravings.

Here is a quote from Tamara Levitt, a mindfulness instructor in the Calm app.

Hold the space for your cravings, observing them until they pass. To heal, we must bravely stay, rather than run. 

This is a great idea and as always it requires a lot of practice. The author also asks us to focus on our breath while observing the craving. Hope this helps.

She has a lovely video up on her website with the message that failure is a brave effort that should be celebrated. We all need that reminder once in a while.

Year of articulation

This year I want to focus on articulating my thoughts. I want to have and express an opinion on things that are relevant to my work. I want to be able to persuade people to see my point of view. I want to practice using logos, ethos, and pathos to be an effective communicator. This will be the focus of my speaking, reading, listening and writing practice. 

I to use this to communicate my thoughts, persuade people to use my design, debate the merits and demerits of my architectures. I want to use this to make allies, to motivate people and generally be an effective communicator. 

I want to do this so that I don't try to translate things from my mother tongue and waste precious time or create awkward pauses when speaking. I want to do this to sound confident and fluent. 

I want to be able to do this to move to a better role and to make a bigger difference in the world. All my heroes are very articulate and great speakers. In the direction where my work is taking me, this is a superpower and I want to learn that and wield that. 

Year of Focus - Update

Last year my main goal was to work with focus. Though I cannot say I have achieved it 100% of the time, having that goal helped. I was able to work with focus when I was intentional about the work I wanted to do.

I also found that the Deep Work Manual helped a lot in maintaining the focus. I also found out ways I can overcome getting distracted. This is still though a work in progress. The top things that helped me stay focussed were

1. Being intentional about what I  do
2. Periodic check-ins to see what I focused on
3. Eliminating distractions in the environment as much as possible.
4. Ritualizing and having strict rules about using the internet
5. Recommitting every time I slip out of focus
6. Performing regular self-care maintenance - sleep, water, exercise, and meditation

I built up a focus routine that I can enter into whenever I can create the intention for focus.
This year, I will improve further by starting every task with intention.