What Would Jobs Do? - A Custom Steve GPT!

 TLDR:

I have built a custom GPT: What Would Jobs Do?  

https://chatgpt.com/g/g-68f7a59494c481918995e7eecb050617-what-would-jobs-do-wwjd

Becoming a Steve Jobs Fan

When I was 11 or 12, a neighborhood senior kid told me about Apple, Mac and Steve Jobs. I genuinely thought he was bullshitting me thinking that I don’t know about Bill Gates. 

Fast forward, when I wanted to buy a gift for someone very close during my first US trip, a friend was like, if you really want to gift properly and on a budget, get them a iPod mini. It was the entry product and still it was too expensive when compared to other mp3 players. I was like, what this is on budget? 

I was curious and went down the rabbit hole and that is how my fascination and adoration with Steve Jobs got started. It was too strong, I ended up writing a book about him in Tamil. It is been more than 10 years and now and then I still get fan mail for it.

The unfinished (actually unstarted) book on Steve Jobs!

The unintended consequence of deep diving about someone like Steve Job is, me losing my mind over when people (read tech bros, founders) channel their inner “A” and passing it as modeling the Jobsian behavior. Each and every time, I read an article referencing Jobs and the bad behavior of founders, I was like, guys, come on.!

So for a long time, I have always wanted to write a follow up book on Jobs in English. Well actually two. One, was a compilation of all his quotes. Two was to write about how one could learn from Jobs to make a dent in the universe rather than being a painful “A” I wanted to highlight the lessons, takeaways, and how he had evolved as a person and how his best was at his later point of time after learning his lessons.

I had collected, read, made notes on all the books that were available, created a playlist of his interviews running for hours.

I started compiling all his videos, interviews, books that I missed earlier and the books published after my book. (I had to rely a lot on iCon and lot of early articles across publications like Forbes, BusinessWeek, Time, Wired and Fortune to write my book; The Walter Isaacson wasn’t published when I was done with mine)

However, I never got around to writing them. I couldn’t get around to getting the transcripts from the YouTube video complilations. 

Eureka! Eureka! How about a SteveGPT?

With the advent of chatGPT, and NotebookLM, I thought I could give this a shot again. I almost succeeded. ChatGPT helped me to get the transcript of the videos. NotebookLM made the researching from the books, the compilations, pretty easier. They compressed the time, it would have taken me to manually go through my notes, compiling, by a huge factor.

In the meanwhile, I also had to become AI literate and was reading a lot and seeing a lot. I also realized, the best way is to get the hands dirty, and actually build something so I can truly understand how it works. (It is one thing to lead vs actually build)

It was then it also occured to me, I could write a book, get to lot of people, yet people may struggle to apply or make it relevant for them. As one drama coach told me, “sometimes, an event/act is like a dot. There are 360 degree POV to see them”

I started wondering, what If I just don’t use AI, GenAI and LLMs to write a book but also potentially to actually help folks. For e.g people who write self help books, productivity books, run a community, where the readers/audience share their problem, learning’s, and people customize their learning’s. Well, the authors also leverage the readers mail as their content. Most of Dilbert’s strips were inspired by what the readers wrote to Scott Adam’s.

What If I could compile, consolidate, all of these things to model Steve Jobs behavior.

Building the SteveGPT

Initially, I was naive to think, I could just upload the books, give the links of the videos, and my old collection of material and voila the GPT would become a smart Steve Jobs.

Then came the learning’s on how the GPT works, need to chunk, how it stores, how it generates, how to build the knowledge base and at the end of the day, the output is a function of input, and how it really works and contributes to the mission of making the Jobs behavior, advice and input, personalized and customized.

Hopefully, unlike the book on Steve Jobs, sometime soon, I will write in detail on how I built this custom GPT and learning’s and how one could build their custom GPTs.

The name and the irony of the GPT

In the macintosh days, the team always wondered, How would Steve Jobs react to it? The team created WWJD. What Would Jobs Do? More like a play on the famous, “What Would Jesus Do? More like a dig at his messiah like complex then.

However, in the later years, when he handed over the rein to Tim Cook, one piece of advice he shared with him was something to the effect of, "never ask what I would do" and instead to "just do what's right". He often quoted that Disney fell in to trap because people always thought, what would walt do!

Anyways, it is okay to ignore the Jobs advice, and whenever you are in Jam, whenever you think you need the counsel of Steve Jobs like persona, ask this GPT, “What Would Jobs Do?”

https://chatgpt.com/g/g-68f7a59494c481918995e7eecb050617-what-would-jobs-do-wwjd

Build, Buy or Vibe Code…

 I had just joined the corporate incubator program. I was full on enthu mode to prove myself, make a mark, do this, do that, change this, change that. Super supportive boss definitely added more fuel to my enthusiasm.

Among the many other things that I was raring to do, two things were of high priority to me.

One, to rebrand the program. Rebranding was promptly shut down (However, it eventually happened, and it is a story for another day)

Two to modernize and transform our application process. Startups had to download the word document, fill and mail back the application. As a tech company and tech mentorship as one of the core offering, we all were aligned, we could and should do better.

Boss was supportive, offered budget and all the resources and the empowerment to do the right thing and get it done. Promptly get a tech team to build the application portal and whole shebang.

With all the buzz and discussion going on, one of the first time founder with a rich experience, asked me what I am up to. Full of pride, I told him, we are building the application portal. 

He went on to offer his two cents and said, why not buy some of the offerings available readily in the market. He further went on to say, you also have to maintain it, and need to have someone for it and it will add to your overhead in all aspects. You are better off focusing on aspects to help us rather than spend your time on this. (I get the irony that, ideally I should advice the founders and not the other way around)

The builder in me  was like, how can a tech company as big as us with all the talent around, buy something rather than build. 

Eventually, relearnt the lesson, one should never build if it is not your core and you are better off by buying it. So, when we expanded, to a new geography, we just bought an application management system.

However, I would repeat the same mistake of building another offering for internal use case (again for a good reason) and eventually buy something from the market. (Again story for some other time)

I can’t help but wonder, with all the vibe coding tools available, what would I do today?

P.S: I am a proud vibe coder :) 

Google Keep and Google Gemini

Few days back, wrote a post on good to have things in the NotebookLM. One of the call out was to integrate Keep and NotebookLM.

Actually Google does it one better.

Google Keep and Gemini integration is seamless and super cool. 

Once you enable, Google Workspace under the connected apps in the settings of Gemini, the Keep and Gemini are integrated.

Post that, you can query about your Google Keep from Gemini.

Say for e.g you have multiple to-do lists. I have a label todo for work and personal and maintain a list based on days. I can ask Gemini to give me a consolidated deduplicated task list.

In fact, you can even ask Gemini to add items to your to do list in specific label and it will do that as well. 

who are you and where are you?

 I wrote about the power of peers and that led to me to further thinking...

There is more nuance than to just saying peers. It is about the ecosystem, the environment and all that it encompasses.

Think about the following:

Can Cheetah win a swimming competition?

Can a fish survive in land?

Can crops grow in seasons and environments that are not conducive to them?

Can a seed grow on a rock or when the conditions are not favorable?

So when you succeed, it is not just your effort, your capabilities, your smartness, it is also about lot of factors and the environment you are in that helps you to execute, that helps you to deliver, that nurtures you

Similarly, when you are not firing on all your cylinders, probably, may be it is not about you. Probably, you are a polar bear suffering in the sub-saharan african desert.

Just make sure you are in the right place!! 

Power of peer groups

 One of my friend would often quote the Roger Bannister Phenomenon. Basically until Roger broke the 4 min mile record, people thought it was an unachievable feat. Once he broke, it was like floodgates opened and people started running the mile under less than 4 minutes.

You basically need someone else to show that can be done and everyone thinks it is doable.

It plays out more than ever we could ever imagine or observe.

Think about the following

In certain ecosytems, you would do see a lot of people doing the similar or same thing. Going to the same foreign country for job prospects. Schools sending the kids to a particular college, people from the same college starting successful firms and so on.

As they say, you are an average of 5 people whom you spend time with. 

Though I have heard and have seen this behavior (For e.g I have seen people preparing for Masters in US or applying for specific companies or doing MBA cause their peers were doing) Yet, I was pleasantly surprised to realize I haven't internalized it as much as I should have and was genuinely surprised to see it in action.

For e.g I meet my writing mentor occasionally like once in a blue moon and every time I see him, he would be like you would not continue to write as you are not moving in a circles and as a result you would not be motivated to write. No drive no inspiration and all that, I used to think, he is little upset I am not in touch with him.

However, in recent times, (well not so recent) I started playing wordle. Well, I started playing cause most of people I knew were playing it. Once I started playing other games in NY times app,  others too started playing and it was becoming like a friendly competition. The most interesting thing was, when i played strands, i would use hints and when I saw others not using and solving it, I also started doing the same. I was terrible in connections (I am still) but when i started seeing others solving at ease, even my solve rate has increased before that. 

It is just games in an app yet there is a powerful lesson in human behavior. 

If we see others doing things, we think and believe we too could do the same. 

So it all depends where you are, what you see and what you end up imbibing. 

If you are in a high achievers group, you too are motivated the same way. The irony is, let us say if you are not in high achiever group, the odds of you falling down to the group level than you raising the level of the group is very less.

beware of your peer group. beware of whom you spend your time with and interact with. Talent density matters.

As the cliched saying goes, if you are the smartest in the room, then you are in the wrong room...

Selling AI...

 If you are someone selling AI or AI enabled/powered solutions, it would be good to bear the following in mind.

• Most end customers or end users think AI is all powerful. Magic wand and can solve all the problems. They would say, "This is the problem and it can be solved in this way using AI and why is that it is not solving"  They may not realize that their systems may not be good enough or capable to leverage their AI or their data not good enough to train or be more reliable or even there are better and simpler alternatives than AI
• Most client firms could also possibly have their own tech teams and they might be competing you with intensely than ever before. 
• Most of the clients firms probably have burnt their fingers by the half baked promises and unfulfilled promises and as a result would look at anything you say with lots of suspicion
• It is better to call out what are the features you have already built and what is on the roadmap. Again clients would want to know what is vaporware and what are empty promises and how much of that is real
• Case studies, validations, references and testimonials could help, but you are served by adding caveats as you would not have a better and actual insights on the state of data and how they are organized and how easy or difficult would the training be and how quickly you can get to the 100% reliability. In other words, be transparent, and if anything undersell rather than oversell

As the saying goes, more the things change, more the things remain the same...

What I want from Google...

 Am definitely excited by the Gemini 3 launch as much as any other tech bro...

However, all I would want from Google is the following enhancements to the NotebookLM (as they say in Tamil, that that man that that problem)

1. Ability to upload doc and epub formats. I have many ebooks in epub format and it would really be a great help to upload them directly to NotebookLM

2. Sync up with Google Keep directly. Google Keep is simple, powerful. It is my brain dump, digital note taker. How much I would love to sync my Google Keep directly with NotebookLM

Doing the right thing

 Was reminded off these two events. 

Things being cryptic are intentional!!

Bunch of us were evaluating a bunch of firms. 5 firms to be precise. Most of the firms were represented by the stakeholders themselves. One of the firm had made an exception and sent their senior person. 

None of us were bothered that an agent was sent on behalf of the principal. 

Across the board with all the 5 firms, the discussions were casual. More open, more informal. More friendly. As a result, guard was down and people were speaking freely.

This exceptional firm who had sent a senior person, made an off handed remark, in fact offered an information unsolicited, something to the effect of "Oh we don't do X because it is risky" Basically the person made that statement to showcase they are robust, they have best practices. 

The room was full of men. One of them, responded, "Thank goodness, She (mentioned the name) is not here, if not you would have had a tough time" The aforementioned "She" was the final decision maker for our evaluation. 

This exceptional firm was really exceptional, they were the largest, best, would have ranked the top in all metrics we were evaluating. 

At the end of the day, we huddled up internally for the review to prepare the recommendations before presenting to the decision maker.

The analyst who had prepped the deck outlining pros and cons for each firm had just mentioned, "Not culturally aligned" across this exceptional firm. None, literally none said anything about how exceptional this exceptional firm was or how they were actually crushing. All of us moved on without spending another second. 

Another Incident

Bunch of us were at a dinner. It was me who had organized that dinner with internal and external stakeholders to get to know each other and could help us with one of the critical initiative at the time.

One of the external stakeholder was unnecessarily rude to one of the waiters. It was odd, yet could be considered par for the course. Not always, folks treat the support people in a nice way and if they think not being nice is okay, they behave that way. 

One of my senior stakeholder pulled me aside and said, ensure we don't engage with this person. 

Good culture and Good values and Good principles are about doing the right thing, when no one is watching and even when stakes are really high!!!

Open AI feature requests

 CustomGPTs in chatGPT is such a cool stuff. More especially for non-tech folks to build something cool and powerful without much Tech knowledge.

However for a tool that making life easier, it could be far better and make life easier, if following few notes and error handling, enhancements and instructions are available.

First and foremost, the access to the editor and precondition to access it.

1. The editor is not accessible in the app mode. It can be accessed from the browser

2. Even from the browser, customGPT is available, starting only from Go users. If you are not a paid member and if you try to access, it should have a message that one has to be a paid user and have a CTA or redirect link to become a paid member. Well, In India, all users are go users, so at least for the next year, editor will be accessible for India based users. It can be and should be fixed for users in other regions.

3. The profile pic file limit. Though Dall E image generation for the profile image is cool, if i try to upload an image, have no idea what are the file formats supported and the size limit. I tried uploading a 5.5MB file and just got a random error message than a specific message

4. The description doesn’t support any formatting. It would be good to have formatting. In addition it also has character limit and it is not mentioned upfront. 

5. In the knowledge section, there are limits to the file size and and number of files that could be uploaded. The message/info could be made available than to try and figure out later.

What Would Jobs Do??

TLDR:

I have built a custom GPT: What Would Jobs Do?  

https://chatgpt.com/g/g-68f7a59494c481918995e7eecb050617-what-would-jobs-do-wwjd

Long Story:

When I was 11 or 12, a neighborhood senior kid told me about Apple, Mac and Steve Jobs. I genuinely thought he was bullshitting me thinking that i don’t know about Bill Gates. 

Fast forward, when I wanted to buy a gift for someone very close during my first onsite trip, a friend was like, if you really want to gift properly, get them a iPod mini. It was the entry product and still it was too expensive when compared to other mp3 players. 

I was curious and went down the rabbit hole and that is how my fascination and adoration with Steve Jobs got started. It was too strong, I ended up writing a book about him in Tamil. It is been more than 10 years and now and then I still get fan mail for it.

The unintended consequence of deep diving about someone like Steve Job is, me losing my mind over when people (read tech bros, founders) channel their inner “A” and passing it as modeling the Jobsian behavior. 

Probably, one of the most misunderstood personality. Thanks to the way, he was portrayed by most of main stream media (For what it’s worth, folks close to Steve himself felt the authorized biography of Walter Isaacson itself didn’t do justice and they got Brent Schlender and another author for redux of Steve Jobs bio)

So for more than few years, I have been meaning to write two books in English.

One, compile all his quotes and put it as a book.

Two, based on quotes, based on pivotal moments, write about how one could learn from Jobs to make a dent in the universe rather than being a painful “A”

I started compiling all his videos, interviews, books that I missed earlier and the books published after my book. (I had to rely a lot on iCon and lot of early articles across publications like Forbes, BusinessWeek, Time, Wired and Fortune to write my book; The Walter Isaacson wasn’t published when I was done with mine)

However, I never got around to writing them. I couldn’t get around to getting the transcripts from the YouTube video complilations. 

Later, I started playing around with NotebookLM and chatGPT to write scripts to compile the transcripts from videos. Meanwhile, I also wanted to be AI literate and was reading around and playing around with tools. 

Then it occured to me, wait a minute, what if I use AI to model Steve Jobs behavior. I have these many books, these many articles, videos and I could give it Open AI’s GPT builder.  Simple. (I couldn’t be more correct as well as more wrong; Correct cause, it is still relatively easy to use the GPT builder but still it is not that simple to build the Knowledge files to serve as inputs to the GPT builder) 

One, using the books as a whole would violate, Open AI’s usage guidelines which prioritizes fair use boundaries.  

More than that, the Input Token limits and practicality. 

The GPT file upload system doesn’t “absorb” the entire content at once like training a model. Instead, it uses retrieval techniques that pull in relevant file snippets (based on the prompt) when generating a response.

• Even If you upload an entire 700-page book, or books it won’t be searched efficiently.

• You may get partial context, or the model may miss relevant insights buried deep in long documents.

• There’s also a token cap (~100k per request) which limits how much of the file it can process per response.

And Quality of Responses Decreases with Raw Bulk

Feeding a GPT unstructured, untagged, long-form books:

• Makes the assistant guess context too often.
• Reduces precision in responses.

So, I realized this was more challenging (in a way) than writing a book cause, you still have to create topic notes from books, themes, organize it and not just that, these files should explicitly call out as  the GPT wouldn’t automatically “know” what’s from Jobs and what’s from me unless I make that distinction explicit in the formatting. It needs, content in a specific format, with attributes and tags, calling out, Quote, Source, Comment, Interpretation and the files cannot be ambiguous or cannot have unclear content. GPT may not know where the quote ends and where my comment begins. It might conflate my interpretation with Jobs’ own words.

It is cause of the way, how the GPT works.

When you upload a file to a Custom GPT, it doesn’t “read” the whole thing every time. Instead, it:

1. Searches for the most relevant chunks of content related to the prompt.
2. Pulls those chunks into the response as background.
3. Uses context to decide what’s a quote, what’s commentary, and how to blend it into the answer.

The clearer your formatting, the more accurate this retrieval. So how to build the files.

Q1:.txt or .docx — Which Is Better?

Format	Pros	Cons
.txt	” Lightweight, loads fast✔ No hidden formatting✔ GPT parses text cleanly	No headings, styles, or tables Can get messy with long documents
.docx	Supports headers, bolding, bullet points, tables✔ Good for structured documents with commentary	Slightly heavier Risk of hidden metadata (tracked changes, formatting issues)

Recommendation:

• If you’re uploading clean, well-structured material with multiple sections, .docx is better.
• If you’re uploading shorter, raw text content like quotes or notes, .txt is fine.
• In both formats, use clear headers or tags ([QUOTE], [COMMENT], etc.) for GPT to parse meaningfully.

You can use .docx files with tables, and GPT can infer structure better from them than from unformatted .txt.

 One Big File vs. Multiple Small Files?

Approach	Pros	Cons
One Large File	Easy to manage✔ Avoids GPT file upload limit (“10 files max)Good for a single tightly themed topic	Retrieval becomes fuzzy if file mixes many unrelated topics❌ Hard to update incrementally GPT may struggle to find the most relevant snippet
Multiple Small Files	Better for topic-based retrieval” Easier to test and update individually” More accurate context matching	More upload effort (GPT Builder has file count limits) Slightly harder to maintain if not organized well

Best is to use multiple small files grouped by theme or purpose.

Why this works:

• GPT fetches only what’s needed based on your prompt (e.g., hiring questions won’t trigger irrelevant product quotes)
• Easier for you to add/update one theme without breaking the others

Eventually, I ended up with a guideline of max of 20 files, with each file at 100-200 pages /25-35K words per file.

• Each file must be ≤ 512 MB  .
• Text/doc files are capped at 2 million tokens per file

(More on the 20 file limit and 2 million tokens per file are at the end of the article)

So Now my challenge was with all these video transcripts, articles, and books, how do i organize the files and with the format to train the GPT!!

So when the files are uploaded properly, 

• GPT indexes each file separately
• When a user asks a question (e.g., “What would Jobs say about launching MVPs?”), it:
  
1. Searches for relevant files (e.g., Design + Product + Risk files)
2. Extracts relevant quotes/snippets
3. Uses those to inform the response

➡️ Better-separated files = better semantic matches, fewer irrelevant quotes, and faster processing.

I was wondering what could I do to create the files in a better way (read as without going through the pain/pleasure of reading each and every line of the content again, write notes and organize it for the machine to understand)

That is when I realized what If I could use NotebookLM. So uploaded all the content I had to NotebookLM. Asked it create mind maps. It helped me to come up with the themes. Again fed the mindmaps to chatGPT and Gemini and asked it to build the themes that should be covered. Then I gave the themes and asked the chatGPT to create prompts for each theme to query in notebookLM and created theme based documents with both prompt and response which became the knowledge builder files.

From there, it was easy to build the GPT builder following the instructions and prompting the chatGPT on how it could be built. 

The shocking secret anatomy of a Dan Brown Novel

For a while, was resisting the temptation to read the latest Dan Brown Novel. His last one, Inferno, was a disappointment  and me in my Locked In Mode, felt I am better off reading non-fiction, and AI related stuff.  

Last Saturday night, woke up in the middle of the night and I really needed a break to take my mind off of things and thought, what the hell, let me give it a shot.  Though it was a usual Dan Brown, it didn’t disappoint and it was unputdownable and there in lies his genius. 

More than 2 decades back, I read Da Vinci Code in a single sitting and was so amazed for few days.  In fact for a while until i read the secret of the success by the Author Sujatha. He said, the success is due to the factor, he mixes the fiction and non-fiction in the right proportions and you as a reader at the moment of reading, cannot discern which is fiction and non-fiction. After reading this it was like, lifting of the veil/disappearance of the fog. 

Later, the more I read, I could realize and appreciate, how they have written the book, how they place the red herrings, how the chapter ends, how the characterization is done and so on. [Until recently, I didn’t realize or know on how to articulate this phenomenon /habit. Apparently it is called reading for form, most of us read for content, we don’t read for form or structure, not with the intent of oh, this is what the author is trying to do, basically, you don’t dissect the anatomy] [In fact, hated the Inferno, mostly cause, second chapter and I was able to figure out the antagonist and it was such a bummer to read]

[Oh, I thought, I figured out the plot twist at two places even here but he did pull a fast one or should I say Sidney Sheldon but it was a good sleight of hand]

However, when I read this latest one, though I could see what was happening, and how it could happen, it was intriguing and kept me on the hook. Though I didn’t finish the book in one sitting (Hello Old age, and other responsibilities of an adult) the book was indeed a good one and would recommend reading

But wait where is the Anatomy??

1. Robert Langdon should do swim in the first few chapters 

2. City as a character. More it is mystic and historical better. [I really do want to know, does he holidays in such places and comes up with the inspiration or does he decide, well, i want to holiday in the city so let me make it a center piece of my novel]

3. Pick up an organization that we all think we know but has more layers to it. Vatican, NSA, and CIA

4. Through out the novel, have few central themes that are focus of interest to public but are little obscure and controversial in nature. The old vs new, the new is not that new, but actually old. Fringe research, interesting anecdotes, trivia that nerds would know but make it mainstream. (For e.g did we really land in the moon, does moon exist, you get the drift]

5. Add conspiracy. Take science fiction and make it look it is plausible. 

In other words, I think the inner prompt he gives himself is, take equal proportions of Michael Crichton, Sidney Sheldon and Jeffrey Archer and dumb it down and take that would appeal/correlate to a large audience. 

After this out of curiosity did as the ChatGPT, “ What are the common themes across all dan brown novels” It is also a good read!! (I also think it is not trained on his latest book)

https://chatgpt.com/share/69076371-8838-8000-a4ad-5107e6e6fa9f

To buy the book: https://amzn.to/43NUxTw

How Mckinsey does it and what we could learn from it ;)

 "McKinsey today is itself truly a global firm, with a non-American majority controlling its shareholder committee and the real possibility of electing a non-American as managing director in the near future."

I strongly believe in two things.

One, History repeats. At the least rhymes. Hence it is important to read history and learn a lot from it which helps to predict the future. Sort of like Machine learning but in a different sense.

Two, No one knows the future. Prediction is futile. So is planning. (Yet, I also annoy some folks with my super optimized planning running different options and scenarios)

As a result, one of my favorite thing is to read archives. Old articles, old books. What better way to time travel. (or Old Movies)

To give you a sense about articles, articles that wrote the obituary of Steve Jobs, Articles that praised the likes of Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried. HBR articles that talk about the might of Yahoo kind of ones are my favorites.

Well, one could argue, "Hindsight is 20/20" Journalists were writing what they say, it was the zeitgeist of the times. No one knew any better (well, thank you, exactly my point)

Neverthless, they are fun and helluva good reads and good intellectual exercises. 

Hence it is rare to read articles, that are balanced, nuanced and in general stand the test of time. (say except for few things here and there, things spoken in the article would be relevant even today)

https://fortune.com/article/how-mckinsey-does-it/ A fortune article on mckinsey written in 1993 is one such article which calls Russia, Eastern Europe, China and India as fledgling markets to Mckinsey. 

The opening lines of the post are from this article. If you haven't guessed it, in the election that happened in the next spring after this article was published, Rajat Gupta was elected as the MD. And yes, again, no where his name his mentioned in the article though it talks about the upcoming MD election and the front runners and favorites. 

One could also argue, the takeaway is not more about the good article but more about Mckinsey

Hello Instapaper, bye raindrop

Someone who knows me very well often tells me, "Hey you are like a machine! No feelings, nothing" At the same time the person also tells, "you are sentimental" I think, probably, more influenced by the "it is the best of times, it is the worst times" quote of Dickens.

Well, the reason I bring this up is, though I don't care about products getting killed and services getting shutdown, I am still reeling with sadness over the demise of Google Reader and Pocket.

(Also the algo change and as a result the user behavior on the platform. Twitter used to be a gold mine for me to discover and come across a lot of interesting articles)

I blame their demise to my digital addiction to Twitter, Insta and Youtube reels.

If only they had been around, I would have been spending more time reading rather than wasting time. 

Anyways, sometime back, I found raindrop.io as the alternate to Pocket. Even exported the pocket articles to Raindrop.

Somehow, never got to read the articles or use them. Nope, it is not that Twitter or Insta was the reason. 

I just felt the UI/UX was off. Just couldn't put a finger on it.

Thankfully, recently came across Instapaper. Interestingly, it is easy to add the articles. Easy on the eye and have been slowly back to reading. 

Oh and also they give 3 month free trial to premium if you export articles from Pocket.

How I wish, Mozilla had open sourced pocket which could be run locally.

Still I feel there are no discovery or recommendation services like the way Pocket did. 

AI Feature Ask

Though I very much like how the various LLM AI apps are outdoing each other with various new feaure launches, I wish they would make the following happen.

1. Ability to pin few of the following conversations.

I might have multiple conversations but few of them are the ones that I might go to often and would use it in a regular manner. It would be helpful to have this feature.

Teams has it, Whatsapp has it. 

Reason calling out that other apps have it is to drive home the point that it should not be that difficult to build it

2. Ability to respond to specific message

When I am having a long back and forth conversations in an app. There would be a need to go and refer one conversation or follow it up from there specifically. Though most of the apps remember context and pick up the cues instinctively, it would be good to have the ability to respond to one particular message and take it from there

3. Table of contents

There are times, a conversation is pretty long. Scrolling up and down and finding one particular thing becomes such a difficult thing. If there are long conversations, it would be good to create an automated table of contents sorta thing which helps in easier navigation.

Blast from the past: Tales of clearance

  With the today's twitter war on accusations by an importer, was reminded off the two tales I heard quite sometime ago...

I was staying in a bachelor mansion kinda place... (Kinda cause it wasn't a mansion mansion per se. Stories about this place is for another day.)

One person who was staying there with us was a customs clearing agent. One day, he had left a huge wad of substantial cash lying around unattended and was sleeping. (To be fair, amongst us, he always carried a huge amount of cash) (I always thought he was the highest earner as well, only later I realized he carried a lot of cash but not earned as much)

One of our other mansion mate chided him for leaving the money that way. The agent man responded, no big deal even if i lose, no one cares. it is all money that anyways, "he gives away" Intrigued me, ended up asking lot of naive questions about what he does how he does.

In simple words, he said, his job was to get the imported goods out of port at the earliest. Money was the best way to get it out. He also explained no one bothered as all the businessmen were focused was to get the goods out of the port at the earliest. More the inventory lied in the port, more the loss.(Then, little did i knew about the cash conversion cycle, inventory turn around and all that but that day, i learnt, faster they got the goods out, it is good for business) He also told me the money spent to get the goods out was literally nothing in a big scheme of things and the money was marginal. He also said the money "spent" to clear the goods was always reasonable as the people never wanted to kill the golden goose.

After hearing about all of it, The naive innocent me asked him a  follow up question: "How did people react to the Indian movie?" (Not the Indian 2, you can have a fair estimate of my age but you would be wrong) Was any one scared, worried? did anyone change?

He laughed and went on to tell me another story. 

One clerk got rich enough to buy a car in a super short time frame. He asked me to guess the quantum of the "scheme" It was one of the toughest case study question, I have come across. Later he revealed, the person was actually selling a form that was supposed to be given free for a single digit value. No one was aware that form was actually free or didn't give a damn as the amount was miniscule. Yet the numbers were so huge for the person to buy a car!!!

Amongst us was also a guy who worked for a large industrial house, who was supposedly known for their squeaky clean image. The industrial house guy was in finance and had to regularly deal with external government offices, clearing lot of approvals, papers, taxes and what not...

 The cynical me (Yeah am naive as well as cynical; go figure) turned to him and asked him, what about this firm? are they really clean or is it all made up stories, and I have never seen you carrying cash as this fellow?

He smiled and said, he doesn't carry cash cause they don't pay and the stories are true. I was like how do you get the work done? Is it because you are too big and powerful? do you deal with different level. 

He said, we flat out refuse. we make it clear, we will follow rules, if the officer wants to delay they could delay.

As a result, people knew they will follow rules and papers move. every now and then there will be a new officer who will try something funny with them. Either they will be patient or the new officer will be schooled by other colleagues that the tactics doesn't work for them.