That chart from the BBC got me interested. Looking at the Premier league table distributed by points makes it lot more interesting than distribution by ranks.
So, I downloaded the Premier League data for current season from Football Data, and created some graphs1.
7 straight defeats! Crystal palace really had a crap start to the season!
Continue reading Premier league table – some trends this season
This is the updated, early 2018 snapshot of the list of Chrome extensions and apps I use.
Favourites/recommendations are in bold.
My own extensions/apps are marked with an asterisk (*).
Extensions by Google are marked with a (G)
The previous list, from late 2015, is here.
Continue reading Chrome Extensions I use (start 2018 edition)
A PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.
The “or else” implication, in Mark Twain’s words:
I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.
=SUMPRODUCT(D5:D1009="",C5:C1009,B5:B1009)
Just learnt an easy way to do conditional SumProduct1 calculations in Google Sheets2.
In above example, I wanted the SumProduct of values in columns B and C, when the respective cell in column D was empty.
The solution is to simply introduce the conditional column as another input, with the condition stated in the input.
Sheets does the SumProduct calculations, with each true as 1, and false as 0, thus making it a Conditional SumProduct :)
Continue reading TIL: Conditional sum product in Google Sheets
repeat after me:
biometrics are your username, not your password. https://t.co/niPD8B1CoD
— koush (@koush) April 2, 2017
Biometrics are your username, not your password.
This tweet by Koushik made a lot of sense on first reading. But I couldn’t place my finger on why I agreed with it. Until I read the paragraph below:
All ‘passwords’ should be replaceable. If your credit card gets stolen, you can block it and get a new card. If your Aadhaar number and fingerprint are leaked, you can’t change it, you can’t block it.
Pranesh Prakash in HT
That clinches it for me.
If my password gets stolen, I can reset it to something new, something stronger.
What do I do if my fingerprint is my password? Can’t get a new fingerprint.
Can’t get a new retina, or DNA either. And they’re all a fair bit easier to steal than a strong password.
Sure, use biometrics to identify if you want. But follow the identification with authentication (with a password, or more), before giving that identity any authority.
j/k navigate to next/previous post as expected. However, the more ‘lay’ user-friendly left-arrow/right-arrow versions don’t.esc key works the same as browser’s back button – navigating back through history stack (i.e. going back to last viewed post).
l, works as expected. Adding f as an additional activator would be useful – a lot of platforms use favourite as an alternative to like, and some users may be more behaviourally trained to press f instead of l/ˈplatfɔːm/
noun
“A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it. Then it’s a platform.”
– Bill Gates (as per @chamath), from Stratechery Daily Update 2017-01-12
I’ve been helping my neighbour, David, with his visa application1. Spending time with him over a couple of evenings gave me a chance to get to know him better. It’s been quite a learning experience for both of us. Their life2 is quite a contrast to ours, in areas we wouldn’t even think twice about3.
Why don’t Android phones sold in India come with Google’s Indic keyboard set up as default?
Specially for phones that don’t ship with proprietary/3rd-party keyboards, doesn’t it make a lot of sense to pre-install Indic keyboard over the default English keyboard?
It’s such a small step, yet can be quite a big enabler for the users (and, even, possibly a differentiator) – using the power of defaults to deliver a better user experience!