Suresh Shanmugam

Suresh Shanmugam

I am a PM for AI & Data products.

Posts by Year

2021

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2020

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What’s Jekyll

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Jekyll is a static site generator, an open source tool for creating simple yet powerful websites of all shapes and sizes. From the project’s readme:

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2019

Snowflake Introduction

In this tutorial, we would be going through the process of setting Snowflake with sample warehouse. Next, we would be loading a data file onto this warehouse...

Gaussian Mixture Models

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Gaussian Mixtures A Gaussian mixture model is a probabilistic model that assumes all the data points are generated from a mixtures of a finite number of Gaus...

Apple Services

Apple services especially iTunes and Maps are a sad placeholder in countries like China and India. While iOS is a solid ecosystem with apps, the services fro...

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2018

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2017

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2016

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2015

Blaise Pascal on writing

Blaise Pascal famously wrote in his Provincial Letters, “If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.” —http://jamesclear.com/getting-simple

Uber’s and HERE bid

Uber’s and other auto makers’ interest in HERE shows a third business model. Accurate maps are a key to making vehicles autonomous. More so even than the val...

Norving on Economics

http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/Economics.ipynb —<p>Economics Simulations: key insight</p>

Software in the IOT world

More objects are becoming embedded with sensors and gaining the ability to communicate. The resulting information networks promise to create new business mod...

Marketing Technology is huge

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IDC predicts that the worldwide spend for marketing software in 2015 will be $22.6 billion — and by 2018, it will grow by nearly 50% to $32.3 billion.

Growth hacking

Growth hacking recognizes that when you focus on understanding your users and how they discover and adopt your products, you can build features that help you...

The Pain of Being A Pro

Approaching your goals — whatever they are — with the attitude of a professional isn’t easy. In fact, being a pro is painful.

Do the work every day.

What I usually recommend: get up early. Get up early and work for a couple hours on the thing you really care about. When you’re done, go about your day: go ...

Dunning- Kruger effect

Dunning- Kruger effect— the tendency for some people to substantially overestimate their abilities. (The less competent they are, the more they overestimate ...

GORILLA society

GORILLA society, power belongs to silverback males. These splendid creatures have numerous status markers besides their back hair: they are bigger than the r...

Decisions & Self

Instead of thinking what you want to do, think about who you want to be. Picture how your identity will change as the result of your decision. Are you the ty...

Experiences & Happiness

Our experiences are a bigger part of ourselves than our material goods. You can really like your material stuff. You can even think that part of your identit...

Buying things & Happiness

We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them. —Gilovich

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2014

Quality vs Price

The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten. —

Best & Worst

The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. —W.B. Yeats

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2013

synanthropic ezranetvibes

<p>synanthropic:</p> ezranetvibes: dimantez4ever: TODAY IN TURKEY this is absolutely bone-chilling Holy shit.

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2012

Deliberate Improvement

Deliberate Improvement<p>Ever wonder how some people accomplish so much? They run marathons, write novels, start companies… without making it seem like...

Over the past 15 years, both Internet stocks and houses have demonstrated the extraordinary excesses that can be created by combining an initially sensible thesis with well-publicized rising prices. In these bubbles, an army of originally skeptical investors succumbed to the “proof ” delivered by the market, and the pool of buyers – for a time – expanded sufficiently to keep the bandwagon rolling. But bubbles blown large enough inevitably pop. And then the old proverb is confirmed once again: “What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end.”

Over the past 15 years, both Internet stocks and houses have demonstrated the extraordinary excesses that can be created by combining an initially sensible t...

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2011

Learn an industry like the back of your hand. Be able to tell me the names of each and every CEO and CFO across the industry and what their Modus Operandi in terms of management and capital allocation are. Be able to contact many people in the supply chain to get a sense of what’s going on on the ground for distributors, buyers, etc. Know the customers and how companies are differentiating themselves from one another whether on price, service, quality, etc. Know the Wall Street analysts to get an understanding of the consensus view and be able to tell me why and how they are wrong. Even better, know other buy side analysts and understand their views and why THEY are also wrong. Like Li Lu has said, evaluate and know the business like you inherited it. I think by doing this, you will make yourself much more valuable and marketable for the years to come.

Learn an industry like the back of your hand. Be able to tell me the names of each and every CEO and CFO across the industry and what their Modus Operandi in...

Emerson - Self Reliance

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted t...

Organization structure matters

Nagappan recognized that although metrics such as code churn, code complexity, code dependencies, and other code-related factors have an impact on software q...

I’ve been testing the Series 9, and my verdict is that it is a solid, beautiful, speedy laptop that provides Windows users a good alternative to the MacBook Air. It bests the Air in some respects and trails it in others, but overall, I found the Series 9 satisfying to use. Prospective buyers of the Series 9, however, should prepare to pay a lot—more than what even premium-priced Apple charges for the Air. And, based on my tests, I suspect they will see noticeably less battery life than Samsung claims, and significantly less than on the comparable MacBook Air.

I’ve been testing the Series 9, and my verdict is that it is a solid, beautiful, speedy laptop that provides Windows users a good alternative to the Ma...

Over the last couple of months Google (GOOG) has reached out to the major carriers and device makers backing its mobile operating system with a message: There will be no more willy-nilly tweaks to the software. No more partnerships formed outside of Google’s purview. From now on, companies hoping to receive early access to Google’s most up-to-date software will need approval of their plans. And they will seek that approval from Andy Rubin, the head of Google’s Android group.

Over the last couple of months Google (GOOG) has reached out to the major carriers and device makers backing its mobile operating system with a message: Ther...

Mobitv

Created by MobiTV,  Inc. a Mobile Technology Platform

I wish I’d had the ears to hear in the year or five after graduating from college: primarily, that we never end up anywhere near where we’d expected, and that most of us would have been a lot happier a lot faster if we’d realized that we were often obsessing over the wrong things—starting with how much the world should care about our major.

I wish I’d had the ears to hear in the year or five after graduating from college: primarily, that we never end up anywhere near where we’d expec...

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2010

Machine Learning

This is a list of textbooks about machine learning which are (a) really good, and (b) free on the web. The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inf...

R Reference Material

This post contains pointers to R reference materials, and will be updated.Google search for R Tutorial An Introduction to R (pdf), from the central R web si...

Big Dream

I would like to run a company that does $100 million in sales, before I am 35 years old. Create some wealth through creative use of technology in my corner o...

Coming tablet price wars

How much does Apple spends on the iPad hardware? Recently introduced AppleTV has the A4 chip along with wireless chip and 8GB flash memory. This teardown at ...

Justices Sudhir Agarwal, S.U. Khan and Dharam Veer Sharma all seem to agree on one central point: that the Hindu plaintiffs in the case have a claim to the disputed site because “as per [the] faith and belief of the Hindus” the place under the central dome of the Babri Masjid where the idols of Ram Lalla were placed surreptitiously in 1949 is indeed the “birthplace” of Lord Ram. But leaving aside the question of who “the Hindus” referred to by the court really are and how their actual faith and belief was ascertained and measured, it is odd that a court of law should give such weight to theological considerations and constructs rather than legal reasoning and facts.

Justices Sudhir Agarwal, S.U. Khan and Dharam Veer Sharma all seem to agree on one central point: that the Hindu plaintiffs in the case have a claim to the d...

Android Apps: Case for quality control

The debate over the closed nature of iPhone apps and Android apps has raged over several developer blogs and media outlets. But from the point of customers, ...

Failure is not fun

I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the p...

Writing for engineers

How to make engineers write concisely with sentences? By combining journalism with the technical report format. In a newspaper article, the paragraphs are or...

Notes on India’s default risk

Rating agencies models have come under severe scrutiny in the recent years after their track record on issues related to the sub-prime crisis. In Financial E...

Why Private Equity in India?

Ajay Shah makes a great point in the context of family run businesses that effective management is one of the best reasons for thriving PE industry in India....

As an hedge fund analyst

What does your job entail? I am an analyst for a long short equity hedge fund. My main responsibility is to advise my portfolio manager on investment decisio...

Linchpin - Seth Godin - Summary

Quieting the lizard brain How can I explain the never ending irrationality of human behavior? We say we want one thing, then we do another. We say we want to...

Future of artists

Seth Godin talk about artists and their leverage in the new connected world. Today, I listened to Sophie Madeleine. She is so talented. She chose to sell her...

Clustering stocks in a sector

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Quantitative clustering techniques solely rely on grouping a bunch of stocks based on returns and their correlations, seems to fail while trying to classify ...

Getting started with quantmod

I got quantmod installed on R at work and home couple of months ago. Here are the instructions for installing them from the R command line. install.packages(...

I’m not a disciplined person. Having bipolar affective disorder doesn’t help but I suspect that even if I didn’t have it, I’d still find any kind of predictable routine or structure uncomfortable or confining.
In order to be as successful as I have been, I’ve had to resign myself to a relentless internal conflict. I impose on myself an unforgiving regimen that ensures a reasonable amount of work gets done (and not just in the studio) every week. At the same time, I struggle to resist the fast shifts of mood, stray impulses and occasional surrender to lethargy that conspire to erode it.
Most days, I achieve a precarious but productive balance. Some days I don’t. Then, nothing at all gets done. When I fuck up, there are always plenty of good excuses. But I’ve learnt that cutting myself even a little slack makes it harder, not easier.

I’m not a disciplined person. Having bipolar affective disorder doesn’t help but I suspect that even if I didn’t have it, I’d still f...

Selling ebooks on Amazon Kindle

Today, I got really intrigued by the Kindle Digital Text platform for publishing ebooks. Amazon recently announce that it would increase the royalty paid for...

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstan...

Apple Tablet

I wish Apple could make a computing device that would make Wacom Cintiq redundant. Cintiq behaves like a hardware peripheral made by elves and not like a com...

I have no talent. What I do have is a lot of practice. And I am not talking about occasionally dabbling in Ruby on the weekends. I am talking about the kind of practice where I beat code that isn’t working into submission (though often times the code wins). The kind of practice where all of a sudden I realize that it is 2am and I’m exhausted physically so I should go to bed, but mentally I feel on fire so I let the code have me for another hour or two (I imagine this state to be like a marathon runner or ironman near the end of their race).

I have no talent. What I do have is a lot of practice. And I am not talking about occasionally dabbling in Ruby on the weekends. I am talking about the kind ...

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always st...

You see people, the alpha males have business degrees. They can be fat and pasty, pretty boy douchebags, or even ugly serial killers, but if they have an MBA from a 6 month “executive program” then they’re ALPHA. They have the ideas. They have the balls. They’re full of testosterone. Now me, I learned to actually do something with my brain besides take people’s money, which means I’m not a real man. My ideas don’t mean anything and I’m just supposed to let the adults talk.

You see people, the alpha males have business degrees. They can be fat and pasty, pretty boy douchebags, or even ugly serial killers, but if they have an MBA...

my year in 2009

My year in 2009 was pretty adventurous and difficult at times. Time with family was crucial and helped stabilize emotions. Boo and I are making progress towa...

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2009

Do something you’re very passionate about, and don’t try to chase what is kind of the ‘hot passion’ of the day. I think we actually saw this. I think you see it all over the place in many different contexts, but I think we saw it in the Internet world quite a bit, where, at sort of the peak of the Internet mania in – say 1999 – you found people who were very passionate of something, and they kind of left that job and decided, “I’m going to do something on the Internet because it’s almost like the 1849 Gold Rush in a way.” I mean, you find that people – if you go back and study the history of the 1949 Gold Rush you find that, at that time, everybody who was within shouting distance of California was – you know, they might have been a doctor, but they quit being a doctor and they started panning for gold, and that almost never works. And, even if it does work, according to some metric, financial success, or whatever it might be, I suspect it leaves you ultimately unsatisfied. So, you really need to be very clear with yourself. And I think one of the best ways to do that is this notion of projecting yourself forward to age 80, looking back on your life, and trying to make sure you’ve minimized the number of regrets you have. That works for career decisions. It works for family decisions. I have a 14-month old son, and it’s very easy for me to – if I think about myself when I’m 80, I know I want to watch that little guy grow up, and so it’s – I don’t want to be 80 and think, “Shoot! You know, I missed that whole thing, and I don’t have the kind of relationship with my son that I wished I had,” and so on and so on. Another thing that I would recommend to people is that they always take a long-term point of view. I think this is something about which there’s a lot of controversy. A lot of people – and I’m just not one of them – believe that you should live for the now. I think what you do is think about the great expanse of time ahead of you and try to make sure that you’re planning for that in a way that’s going to leave you ultimately satisfied. This is the way it works for me. There are a lot of paths to satisfaction and you need to find one that works for you.

Do something you’re very passionate about, and don’t try to chase what is kind of the ‘hot passion’ of the day. I think we actually s...

Walden, Thoreau

Men labour under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a semming fate, commonly called necessity, they are emp...

Sinatra minimal service

# Sinatra example for simple webservice. # Sort lines in a file and return it. require 'rubygems' require 'sinatra'

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit b...

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design helps us to understand a product.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is durable.
Good design is consequent to the last detail.
Good design is concerned with the environment.
Good design is as little design as possible.

Good design is innovative. Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design helps us to understand a product. Good design is unobtru...

The best designers and the best programmers aren’t the ones with the best skills, or the nimblest fingers, or the ones who can rock and roll with photoshop or vim, they are the ones that can determine what just doesn’t matter. That’s where the real gains are made. Most of the time you spend is wasted time on things that just don’t matter. If you can cut out the work and thinking that just doesn’t matter you’ll achieve productivity you’ve never imagined. It’s there if you just don’t pay attention to the things that don’t matter.

The best designers and the best programmers aren’t the ones with the best skills, or the nimblest fingers, or the ones who can rock and roll with photoshop o...

Simple design, intense content.

Tufte codified the design process into six principles: “(1) documenting the sources and characteristics of the data, (2) insistently enforcing appropri...

The start of the New Year is a perfect time to start a stop doing list and to make this the cornerstone of your New Year resolutions, be it for your company, your family or yourself. It also is a perfect time to clarify your three circles, mirroring at a personal level the three questions asked by Smith: 1) What are you deeply passionate about?
2) What are you are genetically encoded for — what activities do you feel just “made to do”?
3) What makes economic sense — what can you make a living at?

The start of the New Year is a perfect time to start a stop doing list and to make this the cornerstone of your New Year resolutions, be it for your company,...

I am lost

Read an inspiring post from Hackernews recent: Poster: I am lost. I don’t own my home, I don’t have lots of savings, I have a job with a difficul...

Put a dent in the universe

To truly be inspired for great work, you need to know that you’re making a difference. That you’re putting a meaningful dent in the universe. That you’re par...

Art & Commercialism

The hard part for us avant-garde post-modern artists is deciding whether or not to embrace commercialism. Do we allow our work to be hyped and exploited by a...

You’re not your job.

You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wa...

Euler Project - Problem 1

1 2 3 4 5 # Project Euler: Problem 1 # Use Module:Enumerable # Sum some numbers (5..10).inject { |sum,n| sum+n } # find the sum of all multiples of 3 and 5 b...

Barney Frank

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cBarney Frank's Town Hall Snapswww.thedailyshow.com</embed>Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorHe...

Risk & Prudence

All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ...

Advise for job seekers

Seth writes as advise for job seekers, I like to do a few things in this list as well Seth writes: Graduate school for unemployed college students Fewer coll...

Jeremy Levine Design

Jeremy Levine Design<p>Awesome architect who uses sustainable technologies for homes. Check out his Eagle Rock home in flickr as well here.</p>

This “talent mind-set”

This “talent mind-set” is the new orthodoxy of American management. It is the intellectual justification for why such a high premium is placed on degrees from...

Soniei’s Contemporary Art

Soniei’s Contemporary Art<p>Art can inspire you and let you make some money on the side as well. Read Soniei’s blog here.</p>

Job interviews

Really useful perspective for this job hunting season. marco: lindsayneedscoffee: I have a job interview tomorrow. Or today for some of you East Coast folk...

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