Philosophy Mondays: Human-AI Collaboration
Today's Philosophy Monday is an important interlude. I want to reveal that I have not been writing the posts in this series entirely by myself. Instead I have been working with Claude, not just for the graphic illustrations, but also for the text. My method has been to write a rough draft and then ask Claude for improvement suggestions. I will expand this collaboration to other intelligences going forward, including open source models such as Llama and DeepSeek. I will also explore other moda...
Intent-based Collaboration Environments
AI Native IDEs for Code, Engineering, Science
Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?
One thing that keeps surprising me is how quite a few people see absolutely nothing redeeming in web3 (née crypto). Maybe this is their genuine belief. Maybe it is a reaction to the extreme boosterism of some proponents who present web3 as bringing about a libertarian nirvana. From early on I have tried to provide a more rounded perspective, pointing to both the good and the bad that can come from it as in my talks at the Blockstack Summits. Today, however, I want to attempt to provide a coge...
Philosophy Mondays: Human-AI Collaboration
Today's Philosophy Monday is an important interlude. I want to reveal that I have not been writing the posts in this series entirely by myself. Instead I have been working with Claude, not just for the graphic illustrations, but also for the text. My method has been to write a rough draft and then ask Claude for improvement suggestions. I will expand this collaboration to other intelligences going forward, including open source models such as Llama and DeepSeek. I will also explore other moda...
Intent-based Collaboration Environments
AI Native IDEs for Code, Engineering, Science
Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?
One thing that keeps surprising me is how quite a few people see absolutely nothing redeeming in web3 (née crypto). Maybe this is their genuine belief. Maybe it is a reaction to the extreme boosterism of some proponents who present web3 as bringing about a libertarian nirvana. From early on I have tried to provide a more rounded perspective, pointing to both the good and the bad that can come from it as in my talks at the Blockstack Summits. Today, however, I want to attempt to provide a coge...
Share Dialog
While gathering up additional data for the next post on wealth, here are some thoughts on the Heartbleed security vulnerability. At USV we sent out a notice of the issue to all the heads of engineering as well as all of the CEOs. This was easy to do since as part of the USV network we have these groups pre-defined. It was immediately clear based on the severity of the issue that this requires CEO level attention. For an example of an excellent response from one of our portfolio companies, here is a detailed disclosure by Twilio.
I have posted frequently in the past that crypto alone is not the answer to questions of privacy and security. Whenever I write along those lines someone shows up with a “but math defends us” argument. Well, cryptography math isn’t something abstract. It lives in code. And that code can and will have errors. There will inevitably be endless arguments about bounds checking and programming languages and so on focused on how the particular bug could have been avoided. Again this misses the point. Systems todays are layers upon layers and cryptography will never be the only answer. We need to focus as much if not more on protecting people rather than data and systems.
If we want to have a debate on the code and technology side it should be around the future of
Share Dialog
While gathering up additional data for the next post on wealth, here are some thoughts on the Heartbleed security vulnerability. At USV we sent out a notice of the issue to all the heads of engineering as well as all of the CEOs. This was easy to do since as part of the USV network we have these groups pre-defined. It was immediately clear based on the severity of the issue that this requires CEO level attention. For an example of an excellent response from one of our portfolio companies, here is a detailed disclosure by Twilio.
I have posted frequently in the past that crypto alone is not the answer to questions of privacy and security. Whenever I write along those lines someone shows up with a “but math defends us” argument. Well, cryptography math isn’t something abstract. It lives in code. And that code can and will have errors. There will inevitably be endless arguments about bounds checking and programming languages and so on focused on how the particular bug could have been avoided. Again this misses the point. Systems todays are layers upon layers and cryptography will never be the only answer. We need to focus as much if not more on protecting people rather than data and systems.
If we want to have a debate on the code and technology side it should be around the future of
For both the political and the technological debate I hope that Heartbleed serves as a wake up call especially to technologists. Again, the two key issues I would like folks to focus on are (a) the importance of political and social changes in preventing the abuse of data that has and will be leaked and (b) the necessity for a truly decentralized identity-key mapping infrastructure.
For both the political and the technological debate I hope that Heartbleed serves as a wake up call especially to technologists. Again, the two key issues I would like folks to focus on are (a) the importance of political and social changes in preventing the abuse of data that has and will be leaked and (b) the necessity for a truly decentralized identity-key mapping infrastructure.
>500 subscribers
>500 subscribers
No comments yet