Welcome back to Tech Tuesday. We are still in the process of wrapping up the initial series on programming. In the interim review I had identified a couple of high level questions that had not yet been answered dealing with code that has been written. Just before the end of the year we looked at bugs and debugging and I mentioned that there are two types of testing: unit testing and black box testing. More on these today. One key purpose of testing is to identify bugs before they are exposed ...

Welcome back to Tech Tuesday. We are still in the process of wrapping up the initial series on programming. In the interim review I had identified a couple of high level questions that had not yet been answered dealing with code that has been written. Just before the end of the year we looked at bugs and debugging and I mentioned that there are two types of testing: unit testing and black box testing. More on these today. One key purpose of testing is to identify bugs before they are exposed ...

In my blog posts about employment I have made the point that computers are getting better and better at carrying out tasks that previously required humans. The strongest case in point here are Google’s self driving cars. As recently as 2004, the year of the first DARPA Grand Challenge, it looked like a driverless car was a long, long way off. We seem to have hit a major acceleration point in what can be accomplished at the intersection of large and real time data sets, massive compute power a...

In my blog posts about employment I have made the point that computers are getting better and better at carrying out tasks that previously required humans. The strongest case in point here are Google’s self driving cars. As recently as 2004, the year of the first DARPA Grand Challenge, it looked like a driverless car was a long, long way off. We seem to have hit a major acceleration point in what can be accomplished at the intersection of large and real time data sets, massive compute power a...

First: Happy New Year! Second: Tech Tuesdays will resume next week. And now on to the topic of this post. Washington is starting us off into 2013 with a whimper. In a slightly past the artificial fiscal cliff deadline compromise we find ourselves with a nano bargain that amounts to the proverbial rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic. There are lots of analyses published today about what’s in the bargain (increased taxes) and what isn’t (debt ceiling). Also lot’s of talk about what th...

First: Happy New Year! Second: Tech Tuesdays will resume next week. And now on to the topic of this post. Washington is starting us off into 2013 with a whimper. In a slightly past the artificial fiscal cliff deadline compromise we find ourselves with a nano bargain that amounts to the proverbial rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic. There are lots of analyses published today about what’s in the bargain (increased taxes) and what isn’t (debt ceiling). Also lot’s of talk about what th...

Money Ball was a good movie (I have to admit to not having read the book) with a crucial theme: statistics beats human intuition in complex situations. With the predictions for the 2012 elections we saw the same theme play itself out as Nate Silver crushed the pundits by using data. There are is also a fantastic example in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow (which I did read) of a relatively simple data based model outperforming all “experts” when it comes to predicting the future pric...

Money Ball was a good movie (I have to admit to not having read the book) with a crucial theme: statistics beats human intuition in complex situations. With the predictions for the 2012 elections we saw the same theme play itself out as Nate Silver crushed the pundits by using data. There are is also a fantastic example in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow (which I did read) of a relatively simple data based model outperforming all “experts” when it comes to predicting the future pric...

2012 was a great year for me personally but also one that points to big challenges ahead for all of us. On the personal side we moved back to Manhattan after nearly 10 years in the suburbs and couldn’t be happier. Chelsea has turned out to be terrific not just because of proximity to the USV office and the kids’ school but also because it has a wonderful neighborhood feel. For the first sixth months of the year we home schooled our kids which was a wonderful experience that also served to con...

2012 was a great year for me personally but also one that points to big challenges ahead for all of us. On the personal side we moved back to Manhattan after nearly 10 years in the suburbs and couldn’t be happier. Chelsea has turned out to be terrific not just because of proximity to the USV office and the kids’ school but also because it has a wonderful neighborhood feel. For the first sixth months of the year we home schooled our kids which was a wonderful experience that also served to con...

China is going through a crack down on social media and is apparently now requiring verified real identities online. This is very clearly an attempt to silence criticism and suppress unrest by making it easy to track down who said what online. I am strongly in support of pseudonyms which is one of several reasons why I prefer Twitter to Facebook. It is also why recently proposed bills to outlaw online impersonation are potentially problematic. But what about going the opposite direction? What...

China is going through a crack down on social media and is apparently now requiring verified real identities online. This is very clearly an attempt to silence criticism and suppress unrest by making it easy to track down who said what online. I am strongly in support of pseudonyms which is one of several reasons why I prefer Twitter to Facebook. It is also why recently proposed bills to outlaw online impersonation are potentially problematic. But what about going the opposite direction? What...

I had a topic in mind for today’s post but in light of the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, that can wait until another day. As a father of three, the thought of children being killed by a gunman is horrifying beyond any comprehension. I have written before that I support stricter gun control. The research on gun violence across states and countries supports the view that limiting access to guns helps reduce gun violence. Common sense tells us the same. We have to make acce...

I had a topic in mind for today’s post but in light of the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, that can wait until another day. As a father of three, the thought of children being killed by a gunman is horrifying beyond any comprehension. I have written before that I support stricter gun control. The research on gun violence across states and countries supports the view that limiting access to guns helps reduce gun violence. Common sense tells us the same. We have to make acce...

One of our goals for 2012 was to get scuba certified as a family. We took a first run at it in a rushed fashion early in the year but abandoned that effort after a less than pleasant pool dive in Manhattan. In the fall we decided to start the process over and go with a proper PADI certification program. We found a dive center in Playa Hermosa in Costa Rica called Diving Safaris and structured our vacation around that. Instead of wasting time on location with theory, we took the theory classes...

One of our goals for 2012 was to get scuba certified as a family. We took a first run at it in a rushed fashion early in the year but abandoned that effort after a less than pleasant pool dive in Manhattan. In the fall we decided to start the process over and go with a proper PADI certification program. We found a dive center in Playa Hermosa in Costa Rica called Diving Safaris and structured our vacation around that. Instead of wasting time on location with theory, we took the theory classes...

As a board member I am often actively engaged in helping to recruit new hires to a company. A lot of people have written about the importance of cultural fit. I want to add the idea of “mission desire” to the characteristics companies should look for. That’s not just true for companies that would self identify as mission driven (as in having a social component to their business) but all companies. By mission desire I mean a candidate’s desire to work in this particular domain and on the speci...

As a board member I am often actively engaged in helping to recruit new hires to a company. A lot of people have written about the importance of cultural fit. I want to add the idea of “mission desire” to the characteristics companies should look for. That’s not just true for companies that would self identify as mission driven (as in having a social component to their business) but all companies. By mission desire I mean a candidate’s desire to work in this particular domain and on the speci...

For many years we used to have Au Pairs to help with our children. The screening process to find a new Au Pair was quite cumbersome and mostly paper based. It was difficult to go through many possible candidates and try to form an opinion on them. That all changed when the agency we were using asked Au Pairs to start recording short videos of themselves. Now we were able to skip many profiles after just a short look at the video and focus on the ones we could imagine living with us for a year...

For many years we used to have Au Pairs to help with our children. The screening process to find a new Au Pair was quite cumbersome and mostly paper based. It was difficult to go through many possible candidates and try to form an opinion on them. That all changed when the agency we were using asked Au Pairs to start recording short videos of themselves. Now we were able to skip many profiles after just a short look at the video and focus on the ones we could imagine living with us for a year...