Hong Kim

An old TED talk I rediscovered and it’s really a gem. Years ago, I read his book on this subject of Flow. You might think Flow is a bullshit concept from a productivity or self-help book, but I promise it isn’t. It’s the answer he arrived from a life-long intellectual journey in attempt to answer "What makes a life worth living?"

Google probably has the most robust urban self-driving car technology, which makes this guy the world’s leading authority. https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_sees_the_road?language=en

Is hands down the best movie I’ve watched in the past few years. Watch alone at night with good headphones for maximum appreciation.

If you have never heard of lithography, like me until today, take a look at this video. It is a remarkable printmaking technique.

The reason it works is because water and oil resist. When ink is rolled over, it would only be applied to the initially greasy area. It turns out this is how most of modern printing is done as well.

One of the things I’m glad I did this winter break is take this course. The subtitle of the course is “Programming a Robotic Car" and that is exactly what it is about. It is taught by Sebastian Thurn who led both Stanford and Google’s self-driving car efforts. It doesn’t get any better than this.

My mother always wanted me to be an architect. Sometimes I wonder why I didn't. Wonderful talk by Bajrke Ingels, the founder of the architecture firm BIG.

I try to shit on Steve Jobs just because people seem to show so much reverence, but damn in this video he is phenomenal. It is a video of an internal meeting from 1997 where he is talking to Apple executives and managers, just a few weeks after he returned to the company. You get a peek into the mind of a marketing genius. The funny thing is that there is no gimmick, no trick, but rather a belief. That is what made Apple, at the time, special.

They are the most amazing dancing couple in the world. Not even kidding. Just watch a few videos. Maybe this or this. Also discovered this great interview today. Their dance is the definition of excellence. It is effortless and beautiful.

Nolan is by far my favorite director. I love that his movies are serious but entertaining, long but fast-paced, and complex but consistent. NYTimes recently wrote an close-up article on his character and recent movie “Interstellar." I worthwhile read for his fans.

Ben Horowitz recently gave a lecture about management at the popular Stanford course “How to Start a Startup." The whole lecture itself is pretty useful, but the story he gave at the end of the lecture is just insane. It just takes about 10 minutes. Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVhTvQXfibU&t=26m33s

Reed Hastings is an entrepreneur that I really look up to. A recent talk that he gave at Stanford two weeks ago. There is a moment where he talks about how he tries to create a distributed network of excellent decision makers rather than formalize a golden process or have a small number of amazing product visionaries. I like that idea a lot. A more formal description of that philosophy is given in this slide deck, which is really worth looking at.

If you were wondering, Kurt Vonnegut is an American writer most famous for Slaughterhouse-five. His five minute lecture on the shapes of stories is priceless.

The guy who created the retail Apple Store. His talk at Stanford is quite lengthy but worth the watch. You can stop around when he finishes his story about Apple if you want.

Larry: Why should big companies focus on a small number of things?

Larry runs the business while Sergey searches for moonshots. A promising duo. http://www.khoslaventures.com/fireside-chat-with-google-co-founders-larry-page-and-sergey-brin

This talk given by Mike Olson at Stanford is worth watching because the story of Cloudera is hugely different from popular startup stories like that of Facebook. He was not young when he co-founded Cloudera (my guess is mid-forties). He analyzed the business opportunity of an emerging technology he did not develop. He teamed up with three other like-minded entrepreneurs. The company started before the product. The company has an enterprise-focused opensource-based freemium business model. You might have noticed, but none of this is sexy. Which is why we should pay more attention.

American Beauty, The Usual Suspects, LA confidential, Se7en… all these movies that we remember Kevin Spacey for are all 10+ years old. Why? Because he had left Hollywood to lead as artistic director at Old Vic, a historic British theater. It is remarkable that he could just leave at the peak of his career, and go back to pursue the origins of his passion. Even more so, knowing that he returned after a decade with a disruptive show like House of Cards. An interview and speech that I both recommend. His online scrapbook if you feel more interested.