People seem to only consider potential (and exponentially more common) misuses of their data by a malicious individual or organization, but never the rare advantages that could be provided to them by an individual or organization bent on helping people and understanding the world better.

In case you don’t know, Facebook announced sweeping changes to their strategy and technology at their f8 conference on Wednesday. If you’re a stakeholder in a business with any web presence whatsoever, you can’t afford to ignore this fundamental shift.

The long tail plankton strategy is not limited to aquatic creatures. Google, Amazon, the iTunes store, Netflix, Twitter, and eBay are all examples of companies that got their foothold and then surpassed their competition by targeting and leveraging the long tail in one way or another.

What you need to do early is get comfortable with uncertainty and confident in your ability to seek and find the information you need. The internal workings of your computer can be a paralyzingly daunting subject at first, but that very computer also provides the tools that allow you to comprehend it at a rate unavailable in other fields.

You need to start getting to know how to use a text editor as Drake says “sooner than later”. As such I couldn’t justify going any further without teaching you how to use my best friend in the robot world, emacs.