Either from having suffered from it themselves or just because it’s so roundly condemned, most managers are alive to the perils of micromanagement. And equally, there is all sorts of wonderful talk about celebrating failure and the importance of giving high-potential employees a variety of challenges in order to grow…

One of the recurring themes running through my professional life has been mentoring. Others have written probably more cogently than I can muster about the difference between mentorship and sponsorship, and it’s sometimes framed in a way that the latter could be taken as always more valuable. It is true…

It is almost impossible to have a reasoned debate about digital assets and ESG. The argument is rife with fear, uncertainty and doubt; red herrings; sophistry; greenwashing; opinions charged by ideological positions and polarization; category errors and oversimplifications. The few times I have done so myself I probably did no…

Bitcoin had survived and thrived over the years despite many threats: multiple market crashes; the crackdowns and eventual ban in China; the collapse of the Texas electrical grid in the summer of 2023 and subsequent outcry against the miners based there; concerns about its impact on the climate. Within the…

One of the things that distinguishes Cosmos is that it is a toolkit for building other blockchains, via the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint Core consensus engine. Their vision of an “Internet of Blockchains” is one of a multi-chain world, and to help make this happen they also developed a native…

This week I have started looking at our core data engineering platform. I have previously worked with Spotify’s Luigi, but a while back news leaked out that they were moving away from it internally and moving to Lyft’s Flyte, so depending on it for the new product did not seem…

In 2016 Peter Thiel made the following observation about the U.S. election: I think one thing that should be distinguished here is that the media is always taking Trump literally. It never takes him seriously, but it always takes him literally. … Whatever your politics or feelings about Peter Thiel…

Off the back of the news about Quentin Tarantino minting seven NFT’s using the Secret Network’s Secret NFT technology, this first Geek Out will take a deeper dive into the technology behind it, based in part on their Graypaper. Motivation While it would be wonderful if bouncers accepted zero-knowledge proofs, sometimes…

(Previously published pseudonymously, 25 May 2019) One of the guilty pleasures of Milton’s Paradise Lost is the appeal of his central character; even though you know you should not be rooting for him and his band of fallen angels, Milton sets up the unfallen angels for a greater Fall: they…