In my book World After Capital, I open with a section on the duality of technology: since the days of inventing fire we can use technology for good and for bad. The technology itself simply broadens the space of what’s possible. We have to choose how we want to use it. Interfacing human brains to computers is another great example of this duality. Earlier this week Elon Musk launched Neuralink, a new company for brain interfaces to add to Kernel, which Bryan Johnson funded with $100 million l...

Today’s Uncertainty Wednesday is a further continuation of the PSA Test example, but I got tired of the boring title and wanted to give the post as more, well, specific one. Last Wednesday I wrote that sensitivity and specificity are “widely used to assess the quality of medical tests.” Here are their definitions taken from Wikipedia Sensitivity = probability of a positive test given that the patient has the disease Specificity = probability of a negative test given that the patient is well U...

In my book World After Capital, I open with a section on the duality of technology: since the days of inventing fire we can use technology for good and for bad. The technology itself simply broadens the space of what’s possible. We have to choose how we want to use it. Interfacing human brains to computers is another great example of this duality. Earlier this week Elon Musk launched Neuralink, a new company for brain interfaces to add to Kernel, which Bryan Johnson funded with $100 million l...

Today’s Uncertainty Wednesday is a further continuation of the PSA Test example, but I got tired of the boring title and wanted to give the post as more, well, specific one. Last Wednesday I wrote that sensitivity and specificity are “widely used to assess the quality of medical tests.” Here are their definitions taken from Wikipedia Sensitivity = probability of a positive test given that the patient has the disease Specificity = probability of a negative test given that the patient is well U...

Yesterday the Republican-controlled Senate voted to allow ISPs to sell customer data including browsing history without prior customer consent. I tweeted that in response it is “Time to tunnel all home traffic through a proxy.” First let me explain for a less technical reader what that means. At the moment your ISP can see every web request you make. They can’t see inside encrypted requests and much of the web is encrypted these days (https versus http). But they can see whether you are going...

Yesterday the Republican-controlled Senate voted to allow ISPs to sell customer data including browsing history without prior customer consent. I tweeted that in response it is “Time to tunnel all home traffic through a proxy.” First let me explain for a less technical reader what that means. At the moment your ISP can see every web request you make. They can’t see inside encrypted requests and much of the web is encrypted these days (https versus http). But they can see whether you are going...

A non trivial part of my time is spent reading and writing a lot of email. Here are some things that I have learned and that work for me. There are only two legitimate uses for bcc. First, explicitly moving someone to bcc who no longer needs to be part of the ongoing exchange. Second, to send email to a large group of people by putting all of them on bcc. I strongly recommend never using bcc any other way. If you want someone to know about an email you sent, send it and then forward it … Avoi...

A non trivial part of my time is spent reading and writing a lot of email. Here are some things that I have learned and that work for me. There are only two legitimate uses for bcc. First, explicitly moving someone to bcc who no longer needs to be part of the ongoing exchange. Second, to send email to a large group of people by putting all of them on bcc. I strongly recommend never using bcc any other way. If you want someone to know about an email you sent, send it and then forward it … Avoi...

Last time in Uncertainty Wednesday, I announced that we would look at the PSA Test Example using absolute numbers instead of probabilities. Now you may recall that we defined probability as how likely something is to happen. And in introducing the PSA Test Example, I provided the probabilities for the elementary events for a 50-year old male as follows: P({AL}) = P(healthy *and* low PSA) = 0.907179 P({AH}) = P(healthy *and* high PSA) = 0.089721 P({BL}) = P(cancer *and* low PSA) = 0.001519 P({...

Last time in Uncertainty Wednesday, I announced that we would look at the PSA Test Example using absolute numbers instead of probabilities. Now you may recall that we defined probability as how likely something is to happen. And in introducing the PSA Test Example, I provided the probabilities for the elementary events for a 50-year old male as follows: P({AL}) = P(healthy *and* low PSA) = 0.907179 P({AH}) = P(healthy *and* high PSA) = 0.089721 P({BL}) = P(cancer *and* low PSA) = 0.001519 P({...

I became interested in Bitcoin reasonably early and was fortunate to invest in some early mining (although as with all good investments in retrospect not nearly enough). There is currently a fight brewing in Bitcoin world with the possibility of a hardfork a la Ethereum into two different currencies. Much like the Ethereum fight and resulting hardfork, emotions among the people close to it are running high. If you are inside this community, the stakes seem incredibly high. But it is moments l...

I became interested in Bitcoin reasonably early and was fortunate to invest in some early mining (although as with all good investments in retrospect not nearly enough). There is currently a fight brewing in Bitcoin world with the possibility of a hardfork a la Ethereum into two different currencies. Much like the Ethereum fight and resulting hardfork, emotions among the people close to it are running high. If you are inside this community, the stakes seem incredibly high. But it is moments l...

The publication of the budget is a good moment to revisit my personal opposition to Trump. If you have read my draft book “World After Capital” you know that I want a lot of change. Much of the changes that I am looking for are more radical than anything in the Trump budget. And yet I supported Hillary who was a status quo candidate. Why? Because even though I would love to see a smaller federal government there is always a price of change. And I was not and am not willing to pay the price of...

The publication of the budget is a good moment to revisit my personal opposition to Trump. If you have read my draft book “World After Capital” you know that I want a lot of change. Much of the changes that I am looking for are more radical than anything in the Trump budget. And yet I supported Hillary who was a status quo candidate. Why? Because even though I would love to see a smaller federal government there is always a price of change. And I was not and am not willing to pay the price of...

With the release by Wikileaks of the so-called Vault 7 CIA Hacking tools, the debate has once again turned to the effectiveness and role of encryption. As Zeynep Tufekci (you should absolutely follow her on Twitter) rightly points out, this is all about endpoint security and not about broken encryption. Now we are at the point where it gets interesting and one that I have been writing about for years whenever it comes to the relationship between privacy and general purpose computing. To repea...

With the release by Wikileaks of the so-called Vault 7 CIA Hacking tools, the debate has once again turned to the effectiveness and role of encryption. As Zeynep Tufekci (you should absolutely follow her on Twitter) rightly points out, this is all about endpoint security and not about broken encryption. Now we are at the point where it gets interesting and one that I have been writing about for years whenever it comes to the relationship between privacy and general purpose computing. To repea...

This past Saturday, Susan and Oliver from Ziggeo organized the third New York City Videohackday. Turnout was terrific with over 100 participants and 18 teams submitting a project. The format of a one-day event works well and appears to attract a more diverse group of participants. I gave a brief opening talk describing what it means to hack, which I characterized in this context asTo rapidly build an inelegant but effective solution to a problem, often using tools and parts in ways other than...

This past Saturday, Susan and Oliver from Ziggeo organized the third New York City Videohackday. Turnout was terrific with over 100 participants and 18 teams submitting a project. The format of a one-day event works well and appears to attract a more diverse group of participants. I gave a brief opening talk describing what it means to hack, which I characterized in this context asTo rapidly build an inelegant but effective solution to a problem, often using tools and parts in ways other than...

OK, so technically it is Thursday but as it turns out I had kind of an epic day yesterday and so Uncertainty Wednesday is a day late (thus introducing some uncertainty about when you will get your next dose of Uncertainty Wednesday). Today I will continue with the PSA Test Example. Last time I had shown the probability of having cancer conditional on a positive test, which was P(B | H) = 0.017316. We also saw that the reason this probability, while significantly higher than the unconditional ...

OK, so technically it is Thursday but as it turns out I had kind of an epic day yesterday and so Uncertainty Wednesday is a day late (thus introducing some uncertainty about when you will get your next dose of Uncertainty Wednesday). Today I will continue with the PSA Test Example. Last time I had shown the probability of having cancer conditional on a positive test, which was P(B | H) = 0.017316. We also saw that the reason this probability, while significantly higher than the unconditional ...