Companies across our portfolio are spending a lot of resources on suppressing various types of undesirable behavior ranging from comment spam to outright financial fraud. Much of this could be avoided through a probabilistic identity system. I have written about this idea before, but nobody has cracked the nut on it and the problem has only grown since. The solution to identity on the Internet is not to try for certainty and systems aiming for certainty will fail because they need to impose t...

Companies across our portfolio are spending a lot of resources on suppressing various types of undesirable behavior ranging from comment spam to outright financial fraud. Much of this could be avoided through a probabilistic identity system. I have written about this idea before, but nobody has cracked the nut on it and the problem has only grown since. The solution to identity on the Internet is not to try for certainty and systems aiming for certainty will fail because they need to impose t...

Years ago I worked with the team at Tacoda on the technology for audience based targeting. Some of my work there wound up in a patent that was sold along with Tacoda to AOL. I don’t know if this patent is part of the patents recently sold by AOL to Microsoft but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were. I also worked closely with Joshua on a number of patents filed for by del.icio.us and sold along with the company to Yahoo. Yahoo of course has recently started a massive patent lawsuit against Face...

Years ago I worked with the team at Tacoda on the technology for audience based targeting. Some of my work there wound up in a patent that was sold along with Tacoda to AOL. I don’t know if this patent is part of the patents recently sold by AOL to Microsoft but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were. I also worked closely with Joshua on a number of patents filed for by del.icio.us and sold along with the company to Yahoo. Yahoo of course has recently started a massive patent lawsuit against Face...

I have long been a fan of the UK’s Guardian. They have embraced the internet like no other newspaper publisher. One of my favorite examples of the many great things they have done was the crowdsourced investigation of the expenses of Members of Parliament. Now they are kicking off a seven day series titled “Battle for the internet” that will cover many of the same topics that make a regular appearance here on Continuations. The series kicked off with a summary of an interview with Sergey Brin...

I have long been a fan of the UK’s Guardian. They have embraced the internet like no other newspaper publisher. One of my favorite examples of the many great things they have done was the crowdsourced investigation of the expenses of Members of Parliament. Now they are kicking off a seven day series titled “Battle for the internet” that will cover many of the same topics that make a regular appearance here on Continuations. The series kicked off with a summary of an interview with Sergey Brin...

I was on a panel for the wonderful iMentor organization earlier this week talking about the future of education. Every time I do that these days I emphasize that instead of talking about education we should focus on learning. Because the Internet is revolutionizing where, when and from whom we can learn. Secondary education in particular is where we are beginning to see the first signs of the dramatic shifts to come. Here are just a few examples of the amazing things that are happening. MIT, ...

I was on a panel for the wonderful iMentor organization earlier this week talking about the future of education. Every time I do that these days I emphasize that instead of talking about education we should focus on learning. Because the Internet is revolutionizing where, when and from whom we can learn. Secondary education in particular is where we are beginning to see the first signs of the dramatic shifts to come. Here are just a few examples of the amazing things that are happening. MIT, ...

Last Tech Tuesday, I introduced programming languages by making a series of analogies to human languages. We will continue the programming cycle today by deepening that analogy with regard to syntax. Syntax is the set of rules that describe how you can put together the words of a language to form a sentence. For instance, part of the syntax of English is that we separate words with a space insteadofputtingthemrightnextoeachother. Another part of the syntax of English is that we end sentences ...

Last Tech Tuesday, I introduced programming languages by making a series of analogies to human languages. We will continue the programming cycle today by deepening that analogy with regard to syntax. Syntax is the set of rules that describe how you can put together the words of a language to form a sentence. For instance, part of the syntax of English is that we separate words with a space insteadofputtingthemrightnextoeachother. Another part of the syntax of English is that we end sentences ...

I don’t know whether to be upset or happy about the machinations that went on yesterday and resulted in the House passing CISPA with a 248-168 vote. There were critical last minute changes to the bill that vastly enhance the government’s ability to use the data for things other than national security. Three more incredibly broad areas of use were added to the bill literally last minute: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children...

I don’t know whether to be upset or happy about the machinations that went on yesterday and resulted in the House passing CISPA with a 248-168 vote. There were critical last minute changes to the bill that vastly enhance the government’s ability to use the data for things other than national security. Three more incredibly broad areas of use were added to the bill literally last minute: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children...

Dave Winer last Thursday had a post called “It’s definitely a bubble.” OK, so it was more of a rant than a post but I share the sentiment of his title. The biggest issue that I see in the venture market right now is the assumption by both entrepreneurs and investors that winner-take-all economics apply in pretty much every market and for pretty much every company. With several billion people on the Internet and much of commerce shifting online that assumption will let you justify ridiculous f...

Dave Winer last Thursday had a post called “It’s definitely a bubble.” OK, so it was more of a rant than a post but I share the sentiment of his title. The biggest issue that I see in the venture market right now is the assumption by both entrepreneurs and investors that winner-take-all economics apply in pretty much every market and for pretty much every company. With several billion people on the Internet and much of commerce shifting online that assumption will let you justify ridiculous f...

On Tuesday we held a wonderful one day event at the USV offices with the title: Hacking Society. The basic premise was relatively simple. Networks are a emerging on the Internet that are disrupting existing hierarchical institutions. Starting from that premise there were lots of angles to explore, such as what the defining characteristics of these networks are and whether they in turn are new institutions. The actual discussion brought together an amazing set of people and even though I took ...

On Tuesday we held a wonderful one day event at the USV offices with the title: Hacking Society. The basic premise was relatively simple. Networks are a emerging on the Internet that are disrupting existing hierarchical institutions. Starting from that premise there were lots of angles to explore, such as what the defining characteristics of these networks are and whether they in turn are new institutions. The actual discussion brought together an amazing set of people and even though I took ...

The purpose of Tech Tuesdays is to provide non-technical employees or founders of startups with background on how technology works so that they can better communicate with engineers and also better understand technological constraints and opportunities. With that in mind I will take a fairly different approach to programming from say Codecademy or Udacity which tackle hands on code writing. I will instead try to provide a lot of context and explain terminology. You should be able to get a fai...

The purpose of Tech Tuesdays is to provide non-technical employees or founders of startups with background on how technology works so that they can better communicate with engineers and also better understand technological constraints and opportunities. With that in mind I will take a fairly different approach to programming from say Codecademy or Udacity which tackle hands on code writing. I will instead try to provide a lot of context and explain terminology. You should be able to get a fai...

This is the first post in the Tech Tuesday cycle on programming. Let’s begin with a simple observation: even though various human languages are quite different from each other they cover much of the same territory – the human experience. We have words for food and activities and threats and so on. There are different words in different languages and sometimes even the symbol set is entirely different (I am struggling to remember Mandarin for our upcoming China trip). But despite those differe...

This is the first post in the Tech Tuesday cycle on programming. Let’s begin with a simple observation: even though various human languages are quite different from each other they cover much of the same territory – the human experience. We have words for food and activities and threats and so on. There are different words in different languages and sometimes even the symbol set is entirely different (I am struggling to remember Mandarin for our upcoming China trip). But despite those differe...