Author: Gregor J. Rothfuss

Custom PCB

A fun look at what custom fabrication can do.

Of course, there’s a lot of email back-and-forth with the PCB shop to clarify things, and it takes an extra week to process the boards, But, it’s very important not to rush the shop when specifying highly bespoke designs because you want the best machine operators to run your boards, not just the ones who happen to be available that day. When things get really challenging, I know that King Credie’s CEO will personally go on the line to supervise production, but this is only possible because I let them prioritize correct results over fast turn delivery – he’s a busy guy, but it’s well worth the wait to get his personal assistance. He’s an engineer at heart and he knows the company’s capabilities like the back of his hand. And finally, it helps if I make it clear to the shop that for risky production runs like this, I will pay 100% of the quoted price, even if the scrap rate is high and they can only do a partial delivery. I’ve rarely been in a situation where the shop has had to adjust delivery quantities because of yield issues. I was lucky in that the bezel process worked on the first try (subsequent iterations were around refining the antenna shape and cosmetic details), but I’ve definitely had challenging PCBs where I’ve had to pay for 2 or 3 goes at process development before I had a process that worked right and yielded well.

Generic Solutions

Fighting a disease through targeting its pathophysiologies is, in a sense, an attempt to outflank it rather than attack it head-on. Instead of looking for the magic bullet that will kill the virus, or the tumor, it’s about making the body an unfriendly place for the disease to be in.

The main advantage to this approach is that there already exists a formidable arsenal to assist in this fight: 9500 drugs approved worldwide.

“We believe that in the bank of drugs we have now, the 9500 drugs there are in the world, we have the answers for virtually all diseases. Around 500 of them are still patented. So there’s opportunity to work through the other 9000 off-patent drugs — the generic drugs — and look at the impact that 1 can have for $1 a day.”
Cureosity is a repository of manually curated knowledge about novel treatments for serious, chronic, and intractable diseases.

Malleable Systems Collective

  1. Software must be as easy to change as it is to use it.
  2. All layers, from the user interface through functionality to the data within, must support arbitrary recombination and reuse in new environments.
  3. Tools should strive to be easy to begin working with but still have lots of open-ended potential.
  4. People of all experience levels must be able to retain ownership and control.
  5. Recombined workflows and experiences must be freely sharable with others.
  6. Modifying a system should happen in the context of use, rather than through some separate development toolchain and skill set.

Too Clever By Half

The smartest play for coyotes in the meta-game is never to Skirmish with humans. Never. And if you find yourself in a Skirmish-with-Humans game, then the smart play is to act scared, to run away at top speed from a jangling coffee can. But no, coyotes are too clever by half, plenty smart enough to understand and master the reality of their immediate situation, but nowhere near smart enough to understand or withstand the reality of their larger situation. It’s their nature to play the scheming mini-game. They can’t help themselves. And that’s why the coyotes always lose. It’s always the meta-game that gets you.

Organizational Metaphors

NOBL Academy
Machine: an organization is a series of connected parts arranged in a logical order in order to produce a repeatable output
Organism: an organization is a collective response to its environment and, to survive, must adapt as the environment changes
Brain: an organization is a set of functions designed to process information and learn over time
Cultural System: an organization is a mini-society, with its own culture and subcultures defined by their values, norms, beliefs, and rituals
Political System: an organization is a game of gaining, influencing, and coordinating power
Psychic Prison: an organization is a collection of myths and stories that restrict people’s thoughts, ideas, and actions
Instrument of Domination: an organization is a means to impose one’s will on others and exploit resources for personal gains
Flux and Transformation: an organization is an ever-changing system indivisible from its environment

100 Little Ideas

A list of ideas, in no particular order and from different fields, that help explain how the world works.

  1. Depressive Realism
  2. Skill Compensation
  3. Curse of Knowledge
  4. Base Rates
  5. Base-Rate Neglect
  6. Compassion Fade
  7. System Justification Theory
  8. 3 Men Make a Tiger
  9. Burdian’s Ass
  10. Pareto Principle
  11. Sturgeon’s Law
  12. The Matthew Effect
  13. Impostor Syndrome
  14. Anscombe’s Quartet
  15. Ringelmann Effect
  16. Semmelweis Reflex
  17. False-Consensus Effect
  18. Boomerang Effect
  19. Chronological Snobbery
  20. Outgroup Homogeneity
  21. Planck’s Principle
  22. McNamara Fallacy
  23. Courtesy Bias
  24. Berkson’s Paradox
  25. Group Attribution Error
  26. Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon
  27. Ludic Fallacy
  28. Normalcy Bias
  29. Actor-Observer Asymmetry
  30. The 90-9-1 Rule
  31. Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy
  32. Fredkin’s Paradox
  33. Poisoning the Well
  34. Golem Effect
  35. Appeal to Consequences
  36. Plain Folks Fallacy
  37. Behavioral Inevitability
  38. Apophenia
  39. Self-Handicapping
  40. Hanlon’s Razor
  41. False Uniqueness Effect
  42. Hard-Easy Effect
  43. Neglect of Probability
  44. Cobra Effect
  45. Braess’s Paradox
  46. Non-Ergodic
  47. Pollyanna Principle
  48. Declinism
  49. Empathy Gap
  50. Abilene Paradox
  51. Collective Narcissism
  52. Moral Luck
  53. Feedback Loops
  54. Hawthorne Effect
  55. Perfect Solution Fallacy
  56. Weasel Words
  57. Hormesis
  58. Backfiring Effect
  59. Reflexivity
  60. Second Half of the Chessboard
  61. Peter Principle
  62. Friendship Paradox
  63. Hedonic Treadmill
  64. Positive Illusions
  65. Ironic Process Theory
  66. Clustering Illusions
  67. Foundational Species
  68. Bizarreness Effect
  69. Nonlinearity
  70. Moderating Relationship
  71. Denomination Effect
  72. Woozle Effect
  73. Google Scholar Effect
  74. Inversion
  75. Gambler’s Ruin
  76. Principle of Least Effort
  77. Dunning-Kruger Effect
  78. Knightian Uncertainty
  79. Aumann’s Agreement Theorem
  80. Focusing Effect
  81. The Middle Ground Fallacy
  82. Rebound Effect
  83. Ostrich Effect
  84. Founder’s Syndrome
  85. In-Group Favoritism
  86. Bounded Rationality
  87. Luxury Paradox
  88. Meat Paradox
  89. Fluency Heuristic
  90. Historical Wisdom
  91. Fact-Check Scarcity Principle
  92. Emotional Contagion
  93. Tribal Affiliation
  94. Emotional Competence