Business on akos.ma

Open Source Forbidden

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0200

What I’m going to tell you today might seem incredible, but just the same way as LLMs are banned from many workplaces these days, or mobile apps were outlawed by many an IT department 15 years ago, I was consulting 20 years ago for a large firm (a very large Swiss firm, actually) in which… Open Source code was explicitly forbidden to ever be put into production.

On Writing and Grading Papers in 2025

Fri, 23 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

I’ve recently read two articles about the subject of how AI is quickly destroying higher education and what can be done about that; one on The New Yorker and another on The Chronicle of Higher Education, and they are quite similar in spirit: both quote similar sources, both deplore the current state of things, and both fail to provide any actionable idea at the end.

WFH in 1998

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The heated “Work from Home” debate of 2024 brought me back memories of my first programming job, when I joined a small “dotcom” startup in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and for the first few months of my employment I quite literally worked from home… in 1998.

Farewell to Software Engineers

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0200

I recently ranted on Mastodon (as one usually does) about a persistent phenomenon, one which I’m quite tired of seeing in this dear software industry I happen to make a living with.

Against Open Spaces

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0200

Regular readers of my ramblings are well aware of my absolute aversion to open spaces, particularly in the context of software engineering.

Notes About "All-in on AI" by Thomas Davenport and Nitin Mittal

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0200

I’ve finished reading the 2023 book “All-In on AI: How Smart Companies Win Big with Artificial Intelligence” by Thomas Davenport and Nitin Mittal, and here go some notes I took.

Notes About "Welcome to AI" by David Shrier

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0200

I recently read the 2024 book “Welcome to AI: A Human Guide to Artificial Intelligence” by David L. Shrier and here’s a quick summary of quotes and important points.

Notes About "HBR Guide to AI Basics for Managers"

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

I recently finished reading the 2023 book “HBR Guide to AI Basics for Managers” by Harvard Business Review, and this post summarizes some of the most important ideas therein.

Notes About "The Coming Wave" by Mustafa Suleyman

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

I finished reading the 2023 book “The Coming Wave” by Mustafa Suleyman and it’s been a revelation, and by far, one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a while.

Microcelebrities

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

My wife is a yarn geek. She knits beautiful garments, but she also dyes and sells her own yarn on her online shop. We often go to trade shows, with a literal truckload of hand-dyed yarns, to sell her products. And in those events I discovered that there are “microcelebrities” in the yarn world, just like there are in the software world.