Are you indispensable?

By Seth Godin

Wait! Are you saying that I have to stop following instructions and start being an artist? Someone who dreams up new ideas and makes them real? Someone who finds new ways to interact, new pathways to deliver emotion, new ways to connect? Someone who acts like a human, not a Cog? Me?

Yes

Who is Seth Godin?

Seth is most widely known through his blog where we writes a short business-focused message daily and has been for over a decade now! One of Seth’s first companies was Yoyodyne which he later sold to Yahoo in 1998 and introduced to the world…

My exam notes covering all aspects of amazon’s entry level qualification

The majority of my learning was done through following the Linux Academy course and so my notes will follow the same format (it is a great course that I would highly recommend!)

So what is the Cloud Practitioner Exam?

The CPE is Amazon’s introduction to the cloud. It is a non-technical qualification which allows individuals to demonstrate an understanding of the cloud.

The exam has a passing score of 700/1000 and is comprised of four sections with differing weight:

• Cloud Concepts — 28% of the exam
• Security — 24%
• Technology — 36%
• Billing and Pricing —…

A Very Short Introduction

By Dawn E. Holmes

What is Big Data?

Holmes describes how we the size of the data in itself is cannot be a standalone metric for whether something is under the banner of ‘Big Data’.

Instead, we can use the three V’s — Volume, Variety and Velocity:

• Volume — “Refers to the amount of electronic data that is now collected and stored… In 2012, IBM and and the University of Oxford reporting the findings of their Big Data Work survey. In this international survey of 1,144 professionals working in ninety-five different countries, over half judged datasets of between 1 TB and 1 Pb to…

A Very Short Introduction

By Margaret A. Boden

The Missionaries and Cannibals Problem

The M&C problem is a classic puzzle in Artificial Intelligence. The puzzles goes that:

On one bank of a river are three missionaries and three cannibals. There is one boat available that can hold up to two people and that they would like to use to cross the river. If the cannibals ever outnumber the missionaries on either of the river’s banks, the missionaries will get eaten.
How can the boat be used to safely carry all the missionaries and cannibals across the river?

Wikipedia describes how AI could understand the problem stated.

A system for…

Lessons in Creative Leadership

By Robert Iger

Innovate or die, and there’s no innovation if your operate out of fear of the new or untested.

Who is Robert Iger?

Robert Iger is currently Chairman of the Walt Disney Company following his 15 year tenure as CEO starting in 2005. Over his time leading the company, the market cap of Disney rose from $48 billion to over $250 billion. Most noticeably, Iger led the acquisition of Pixar, Marvel and Lucas Film.

Iger’s ten principles of true leadership

At the beginning of the book Iger details ten core principles of leadership:

1. Optimism — “Simply put, people are not motivated or energised by pessimists”
2. Courage — “This…

The Art & Science of Prediction

By Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner

Who is Philip Tetlock

Philip Tetlock is currently the Annenberge University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania where he is cross-appointed at the Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences.

Tetlock is most widely known from his work “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” which tries to answer the question of whether experts predictions are consistently more accurate than non-experts and the degree which they should be trusted. Super-Forecasting uses this previous work as a foundation to further our ability (or lack their off) to predict future events.

On the Expert Political Judgements Project

The Expert Political…

The Power of Transcendental Meditation

By Bob Roth

Maharishi taught us the the simple yet precise technique of how to personally teach any individual to transcend — to effortlessly access the deep stillness that lies within every human being

Scientific Studies of TM

“From his earliest days of teaching TM in the world in 1958, Maharishi focused on researching and understanding the science of Transcendental Meditation…Since then, more than four hundred scientific studies have shown the wide-ranging benefits of the TM technique for improving brain and cognitive functioning, cardiovascular health and emotional well being.”

Some studies which stand out include:

• American Heart Association: 5-year randomized controlled study on patients…

The Rise of Pointless Work and What We Can Do About It

By David Graeber

A YouGov poll found that in the United Kingdom only 50% of those who had full-time jobs were entirely sure their job mad any sort of meaningful contribution to the world, and 37% were quite sure it did not. A poll by the firm Schouten & Nelissen carried out in Holland put the latter number as high as 40%.

The definition of a Bullshit Job

A bullshit job is a form of employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

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