The personal blog of Evan Savage (candu) about technology, learning, and other sundry things.
Let's start with the requisite bagging on open-office setups: Moreover, the increment of overall workspace satisfaction due to the positive impact of ease of interaction in open-plan office layouts failed to offset the decrements by negative impacts of noise and privacy. - Workspace Satisfaction: The privacy-communication
Building on my goodbye, big tech journey, and buoyed by philosophical , political , and practical thoughts on the matter, I've been thinking: can I replace Big AI in my workflow with performant, cost-effective, and energy-efficient alternatives? I’ve been working with local models since
AIW: looked at one way, this is Yet Another Article about AI, and there are more than enough of those already. Still, as someone who eschews US-based Big Tech in his personal life and is at the same time responsible (and even happy to be responsible!) for leading AI-
People who go for leadership...may be viewed as one of two extreme types. There are those who are so constituted physically and emotionally that they like pressure — seek it out — and they perform best when they are totally intense. And there are those who do not like
Every day, a new five-letter word is chosen, and players attempt to guess it within six tries. After each guess, the letters are color-coded to indicate their accuracy: green means the letter is correct and in the right position, yellow means it is in the word but in
Denmark is often mentioned as a high-trust society, the United States as a low-trust society. Having lived in both places for a number of years, you can feel the difference: in how public and private systems operate; in signage and instruction; in expressed opinions; in psychological safety; in
We Can Do It - an old WW2 production poster from the US. It's been a while since I posted here! Due to a confluence of professional, geopolitical, and medical factors I ended up taking stress leave earlier this year. It was much-needed and enormously helpful, and I&
Over the next couple of years, I'll be slowly moving away from Big Tech platforms and apps. In this post, I'll discuss why I'm doing this, and what it means in practice. This post is also an investigative exercise: what is my Big Tech
A trash-strewn field in Islands Brygge, a waterfront neighbourhood near downtown Copenhagen. Photo LarsKrimi53 on Reddit . Denmark has a sterling reputation as an environmentally-conscious wonderland of cyclists and minimalist design. And there is some truth to this! In Copenhagen, 64% of commuters travel by bicycle . Green initiatives such
Sketch illustrating Hanlon's razor, which is described below. One stick figure is carrying a trash bag that leaks trash through a large hole onto the sidewalk. A second stick figure assumes this is a malicious act and curses at them. Hanlon's razor states: Never attribute to
A yellow trail marker post in Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, with F.C. Hansa scrawled on it in bright blue paint marker. This is maybe 4km from the nearest road, so whoever wrote this really cares about F.C. Hansa, and wants us to know it. I've
Sundial on the island of Christiansø, 18km off the "mainland" of Bornholm, which itself is a Danish island 40km or so off the southern edge of Sweden. Old fort ruins and various low-lying trees, bushes, and flowers in the background, blurred. As Valkyrie and I sit
The first Gartner Hype Cycle chart from 1995, which showcases such delightful items as Information Superhighway, Object-oriented Programming, and Video Conferencing. Big Data. Internet of Things. Blockchain and crypto. Chatbots. Smart home voice assistants. Augmented reality. Generative AI. These are just a few of the hype cycles I'
The 11 Paradoxes of Management: LEGO leadership principles, written as pairs of seemingly opposed values or actions to be kept in careful balance. Examples: "To be tolerant - and to know how you want things done", "To be self-confident - and humble". Near the LEGO headquarters in
Map of the Schengen Area, covering 29 countries throughout Europe. My wife and I were on the train back from a one-week bike trip in Germany and Czechia, and were crossing back into Denmark. As the train pulled into Padborg, multiple border officers boarded the train, systematically checking IDs