KFCblog - December 2024

Life

Happy Holidays! I love the weeks leading up to Christmas - more smiles, more kindness - it is the most wonderful time of the year! And if Christmas is approaching, that means I've written another year's edition of the Mostly Techie Gift Guide which you can find here on LinkedIn.

I was fortunate to spend the Thanksgiving holiday down in Myrtle Beach with the whole extended family. Not a lot of ocean action, but the putt-putt and ice cream held up well for the cooler months.

Sports World

The Bears have fired their head coach during the season for the first time in their 105 year history. Poor clock and time management in a hopeful comeback against the 10-1 Lions was the final nail in the coffin.

The NBA seasons is flowing - we're about to hit the quarterfinals of the NBA Cup (wait...what???)

Hello, World

I took my first post-COVID trip to India in November. The 5 year gap in between India trips is by far the longest since I have been visiting India since the early 2000s. I spent some time in Delhi and Bengalaru. Unfortunately, I picked up a bug there that hit me with pneumonia the day I got back to Chicago.

It was great to spend some time with our engineers, covering topics from security code scanning to dynamic environment management. Our HashedIn by Deloitte pods are stepping up both the capability and capacity to improve overall project velocity.

The other exciting event last month was the official handover from the Paris 2024 team to the LA 2028 team. Over the course of several days, the Paris 2024 team shared their lessons learned, the smart choices they made and a few near disasters! While the public saw a near flawless Olympics, understanding all the moving pieces and the orchestrations pulled of by Paris 2024 was awe-inspiring. Congratulations again to Bruno Marie-Rose Pascal Wattiaux and the entire team for setting a very high bar for both Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026 and LA28 Olympic & Paralympic Games .

Puzzle Corner

Last month's puzzle corner:

Take the four numbers, 8, 8, 3, and 3 and using only addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, make and expression that evaluates as 24. Remember, no exponents, factorials, etc.

Answer: 8 / (3- 8/3) - shockingly simple :)

Caught My Eye

My favorite tech blogger, Ben Evans, just published his annual tech presentation entitled AI Eats the World. This is a must read if you are in tech.

Windsurf.ai is a new tool for developing full applications and deploying them (locally or in the cloud) all from an LLM type prompt. I was able to create a Wordle clone in under 5 minutes and than add my own features to it in 5 minutes more. This is the future of "no coding" development.

When I moved last year, I reluctantly parted ways with my very large baseball card collection (as none of my children had an interest). This essay captures the feelings of those who think baseball cards to be magical.

There are a lot of automated driving skeptics out there. This long read from Wired follows a reporter who is now a true believer.

Great article from former Microsoft exec Steven Sinofsky on disruption. Lovely examples of things that had no chance of working (home grocery delivery, phone without keyboard, etc.)

Are we in a sports gambling bubble? Personally, I liked when it was a little more separate.

A state of the art virtual reality experience from...the Vatican? Explore St. Peter's Basilica

Did your kids (or you) participate in robotics competitions? Before Dean Kamen's FIRST initiative, he was inspired by MIT Professor Woody Flowers and a little class called 2.70 (or 2.007)

Remember the Oracle of Kevin Bacon? NetworkofTime is similar in connecting two people from history with links of photographs. I tried Michael Jordan and Teddy Roosevelt - the connection was Jordan-Obama-Queen Elizabeth-Charlie Chaplin-Harry Houdini-Teddy Roosevelt.

From Menlo Ventures, 2024: The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise

Closing Quote

“How could it be so? It came without ribbons!... it came without tags!... it came without packages, boxes, or bags!” – The Grinch