On July 11 at noon I will be teaching my Skillshare class on Bayesian Probability and a Theory of Life again. I am really looking forward to doing so for a bunch of different reasons. First, I really enjoyed teaching the first one and it’s been way too long. Second, I get to test out some brand new Skillshare features that are still in limited beta. Third, all the proceeds will go to Pencils of Promise. Fourth, the issue of fundamental misunderstanding of probability keeps popping up. For ins...

On July 11 at noon I will be teaching my Skillshare class on Bayesian Probability and a Theory of Life again. I am really looking forward to doing so for a bunch of different reasons. First, I really enjoyed teaching the first one and it’s been way too long. Second, I get to test out some brand new Skillshare features that are still in limited beta. Third, all the proceeds will go to Pencils of Promise. Fourth, the issue of fundamental misunderstanding of probability keeps popping up. For ins...

This weekend marked the celebration of Alan Turing’s 100th birthday. Turing was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century and made major contributions to cryptanalysis and started the theory of computability. He died shortly before his 42nd birthday from cyanide poisoning in what is widely believed to have been a suicide although some claim that it was an accident stemming from essentially a DIY bio experiment. I have mentioned Turing repeatedly during the Tech Tuesday series and als...

This weekend marked the celebration of Alan Turing’s 100th birthday. Turing was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century and made major contributions to cryptanalysis and started the theory of computability. He died shortly before his 42nd birthday from cyanide poisoning in what is widely believed to have been a suicide although some claim that it was an accident stemming from essentially a DIY bio experiment. I have mentioned Turing repeatedly during the Tech Tuesday series and als...

Google has been showing off a lot of neat goodies at Google I/O. But the most interesting announcement as far as I can tell of the day is the availability of Chrome for Android. The existing Android browser is relatively wonky and not exactly fast. It also is surprisingly behind the iPhone browser in the adoption of some of the HTML5 javascript APIs. Chrome could really change this equation and as a by product make HTML5 apps a reality far more quickly. My best guesstimate is that we are stil...

Google has been showing off a lot of neat goodies at Google I/O. But the most interesting announcement as far as I can tell of the day is the availability of Chrome for Android. The existing Android browser is relatively wonky and not exactly fast. It also is surprisingly behind the iPhone browser in the adoption of some of the HTML5 javascript APIs. Chrome could really change this equation and as a by product make HTML5 apps a reality far more quickly. My best guesstimate is that we are stil...

I love what I do as a VC at USV. Being involved with many different companies each with unique opportunities and challenges is absolutely amazing. But it does mean that I have very little time to build things myself. So this weekend for Father’s day Susan and the kids gave me the best present ever: a full day of building stuff! Susan has an idea for a new service and I worked on an alpha version. There are three things I really love about developing software. First, more easily than with anyt...

I love what I do as a VC at USV. Being involved with many different companies each with unique opportunities and challenges is absolutely amazing. But it does mean that I have very little time to build things myself. So this weekend for Father’s day Susan and the kids gave me the best present ever: a full day of building stuff! Susan has an idea for a new service and I worked on an alpha version. There are three things I really love about developing software. First, more easily than with anyt...

Some fine folks have been hard at work to draft a Declaration of Internet Freedom. I couldn’t agree more with the preamble:We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. To keep the Internet free and open, we call on communities, industries and countries to recognize these principles. We believe that they will help to bring about more creativity, more innovation and more open societies.So please go and read the Declaration. If you agree with it, you can sign it by fo...

Some fine folks have been hard at work to draft a Declaration of Internet Freedom. I couldn’t agree more with the preamble:We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. To keep the Internet free and open, we call on communities, industries and countries to recognize these principles. We believe that they will help to bring about more creativity, more innovation and more open societies.So please go and read the Declaration. If you agree with it, you can sign it by fo...

About 3 years ago, I wrote how phone numbers might be an important part of mobile identity. I started to change my mind on this last year. Now I am thinking that phone numbers may in fact much more rapidly be approaching the end of their useful life. Why? Because of my recent experience in London with a data only SIM card. Having tired of crazy international roaming charges, I picked up a 1 GB data onlyl SIM card from a vending machine at Heathrow for 20 pounds and popped it into my phone. I ...

About 3 years ago, I wrote how phone numbers might be an important part of mobile identity. I started to change my mind on this last year. Now I am thinking that phone numbers may in fact much more rapidly be approaching the end of their useful life. Why? Because of my recent experience in London with a data only SIM card. Having tired of crazy international roaming charges, I picked up a 1 GB data onlyl SIM card from a vending machine at Heathrow for 20 pounds and popped it into my phone. I ...

Last night I went to a fundraiser for Venture for America here in New York. I am happy to report that the place was hopping and hopefully a lot of money was raised. Congratulations to Andrew Yang and his team for taking this from an idea just a short time ago to a well running organization. The core mission of Venture for America is to get more young graduates excited about startups as a career option (as opposed to say banking or consulting). The Venture for America fellows are being placed ...

Last night I went to a fundraiser for Venture for America here in New York. I am happy to report that the place was hopping and hopefully a lot of money was raised. Congratulations to Andrew Yang and his team for taking this from an idea just a short time ago to a well running organization. The core mission of Venture for America is to get more young graduates excited about startups as a career option (as opposed to say banking or consulting). The Venture for America fellows are being placed ...

This will be the third and final part of talking about data types as part of the programming cycle on Tech Tuesdays. Part 1 introduced the basic issue. Part 2 went under the hood and showed how explicit type declarations are one way to solve the problem. Today we will look at another approach and none of this will make much sense if you haven’t read the first two parts. Last week I showed how an address table can be used to keep track of what the current value of a variable is. I then also sh...

This will be the third and final part of talking about data types as part of the programming cycle on Tech Tuesdays. Part 1 introduced the basic issue. Part 2 went under the hood and showed how explicit type declarations are one way to solve the problem. Today we will look at another approach and none of this will make much sense if you haven’t read the first two parts. Last week I showed how an address table can be used to keep track of what the current value of a variable is. I then also sh...

Yesterday my partner Brad announced our investment in Duolingo. Duolingo is an ambitious attempt to provide free language learning and use all the work by the learners to provide a translation service. You can watch Luis von Ahn’s TED Talk where he describes the genesis of Duolingo from his work on Captcha and Recaptcha. The critical take away is that at the heart of Duolingo is the realization that with the Internet you can cost-effectively assemble tiny units of work from a very large numbe...

Yesterday my partner Brad announced our investment in Duolingo. Duolingo is an ambitious attempt to provide free language learning and use all the work by the learners to provide a translation service. You can watch Luis von Ahn’s TED Talk where he describes the genesis of Duolingo from his work on Captcha and Recaptcha. The critical take away is that at the heart of Duolingo is the realization that with the Internet you can cost-effectively assemble tiny units of work from a very large numbe...

Just as a reminder, on Tech Tuesday I am currently going through what will be a pretty long cycle on programming. The overview post sets out a series of questions to be answered. The most recent posts on Variables, Constants and Literals and then on Data Types (Parts 1, 2 and 3) provide some of the basics for answering overview question 4 about how programs can refer to concepts as opposed just concrete things. There is a lot more to say about this but first we will turn to overview question ...

Just as a reminder, on Tech Tuesday I am currently going through what will be a pretty long cycle on programming. The overview post sets out a series of questions to be answered. The most recent posts on Variables, Constants and Literals and then on Data Types (Parts 1, 2 and 3) provide some of the basics for answering overview question 4 about how programs can refer to concepts as opposed just concrete things. There is a lot more to say about this but first we will turn to overview question ...