The New York Times has been running a great series about high end real estate ownership in the city titled “Towers of Secrecy”. The upshot is that much of it is owned by people who are rarely if ever here. I believe there should be a special tax on apartments that owners spend very little time in and that tax should be heavily progressive, meaning get a lot more expensive the higher the purchase price. The tax should be high enough to actually deter some of these purchases. Why? Because it is...

The New York Times has been running a great series about high end real estate ownership in the city titled “Towers of Secrecy”. The upshot is that much of it is owned by people who are rarely if ever here. I believe there should be a special tax on apartments that owners spend very little time in and that tax should be heavily progressive, meaning get a lot more expensive the higher the purchase price. The tax should be high enough to actually deter some of these purchases. Why? Because it is...

Keeping this short because I am on family vacation but there have been two stories this past week that we should all take note off. First, there was the revelation that the NSA had installed spying software deeply in the firmware of hard drives. Then, details about the breach of SIM card maker Gemalto were published that show how GCHQ and NSA obtained encryption keys for cell phones. Yet we keep insisting that somehow these crypto wars can be won. That somehow we can build a “trusted” computi...

Keeping this short because I am on family vacation but there have been two stories this past week that we should all take note off. First, there was the revelation that the NSA had installed spying software deeply in the firmware of hard drives. Then, details about the breach of SIM card maker Gemalto were published that show how GCHQ and NSA obtained encryption keys for cell phones. Yet we keep insisting that somehow these crypto wars can be won. That somehow we can build a “trusted” computi...

It is my birthday today and thanks to Susan’s planning we had a fantastic day as a family starting with a yummy blueberry pancake and bacon breakfast. After a great Korean lunch we went and saw Cabaret. The kids were a bit stunned by how dark it is. There was a “why see *that* on your birthday?” reaction. But it was also clear that Cabaret had left a lasting impression. And it will be something we will talk about not just today but on many future occasions. As such it is the best of all possi...

It is my birthday today and thanks to Susan’s planning we had a fantastic day as a family starting with a yummy blueberry pancake and bacon breakfast. After a great Korean lunch we went and saw Cabaret. The kids were a bit stunned by how dark it is. There was a “why see *that* on your birthday?” reaction. But it was also clear that Cabaret had left a lasting impression. And it will be something we will talk about not just today but on many future occasions. As such it is the best of all possi...

I don’t (yet) worry about a Terminator or Matrix like scenario where machines take over the world and subjugate humans. But it is useful to remind oneself of the rate of progress that has been taking place. I started programming computers in my early teens which is now almost 35 years ago. During that the first 25 of those years progress towards any kind of artificial intelligence was painfully slow. For instance, as late as 2004 when DARPA ran the first Grand Challenge it looked like we were...

I don’t (yet) worry about a Terminator or Matrix like scenario where machines take over the world and subjugate humans. But it is useful to remind oneself of the rate of progress that has been taking place. I started programming computers in my early teens which is now almost 35 years ago. During that the first 25 of those years progress towards any kind of artificial intelligence was painfully slow. For instance, as late as 2004 when DARPA ran the first Grand Challenge it looked like we were...

Yesterday FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced that he would be pursuing Title II classification for wired and wireless ISPs as a way to ensure net neutrality. This is potentially a big step forward on a topic that I have written a lot about here on Continuations. The devil is of course in the details and there is a big fight looming with some of the large cable companies. So we won’t know what we actually get for quite some time. In the meantime a this is a good moment to thank the organizatio...

Yesterday FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced that he would be pursuing Title II classification for wired and wireless ISPs as a way to ensure net neutrality. This is potentially a big step forward on a topic that I have written a lot about here on Continuations. The devil is of course in the details and there is a big fight looming with some of the large cable companies. So we won’t know what we actually get for quite some time. In the meantime a this is a good moment to thank the organizatio...

Slightly belated we have another topic of the over at usv.com: The Ethics of Algorithms. I have written a bunch about this topic in the past, for instance when discussing the need for an opposing view reader or the danger of information cascades. Both the people working on algorithms, such as filtering a feed and making recommendations, and the endusers of these applications need to weigh in on the discussion. So head on over to usv.com and join in. PS If you don’t really know what an algorit...

Slightly belated we have another topic of the over at usv.com: The Ethics of Algorithms. I have written a bunch about this topic in the past, for instance when discussing the need for an opposing view reader or the danger of information cascades. Both the people working on algorithms, such as filtering a feed and making recommendations, and the endusers of these applications need to weigh in on the discussion. So head on over to usv.com and join in. PS If you don’t really know what an algorit...

API pricing requires striking a tricky balance between the needs of developers and the cost/profitability of the provider. I am on the boards of several companies that provide APIs as their primary business model, including Twilio, Dwolla and Sift Science and have been in long discussions about the relative merits of pure usage-based pay versus some type of bundle pricing (sometimes also referred to as t-shirt pricing). This morning Ziggeo which provides video recording, storage and playback ...

API pricing requires striking a tricky balance between the needs of developers and the cost/profitability of the provider. I am on the boards of several companies that provide APIs as their primary business model, including Twilio, Dwolla and Sift Science and have been in long discussions about the relative merits of pure usage-based pay versus some type of bundle pricing (sometimes also referred to as t-shirt pricing). This morning Ziggeo which provides video recording, storage and playback ...

Yesterday evening I participated in an interesting meeting at Columbia University to talk about the efforts of the Committee on Global Thought. While the name does sound somewhat ominous (vaguely Orwellian? Stalinist?), I believe it is important to call out “global” explicitly. The three most pressing challenges of the world are global in nature: technology’s impact on the economy and society, climate change and infectious diseases. These each have wildly varying local impacts but are fundame...

Yesterday evening I participated in an interesting meeting at Columbia University to talk about the efforts of the Committee on Global Thought. While the name does sound somewhat ominous (vaguely Orwellian? Stalinist?), I believe it is important to call out “global” explicitly. The three most pressing challenges of the world are global in nature: technology’s impact on the economy and society, climate change and infectious diseases. These each have wildly varying local impacts but are fundame...

I have written on and off about my ambivalent feelings about a society where we value individual privacy over collective intelligence. Whenever I bring up this argument there is a counter to the effect of “but we need secrets” or “concealment is a condition of civilization” (from this piece by the NYU philosophy professor Thomas Nagel). While I completely agree that our society at present is constructed in a way where secrets and concealment abound, it still seems fair to ask whether that is ...

I have written on and off about my ambivalent feelings about a society where we value individual privacy over collective intelligence. Whenever I bring up this argument there is a counter to the effect of “but we need secrets” or “concealment is a condition of civilization” (from this piece by the NYU philosophy professor Thomas Nagel). While I completely agree that our society at present is constructed in a way where secrets and concealment abound, it still seems fair to ask whether that is ...

We will be going on family ski vacation, so there will likely be no new posts until week after next. In the meantime though here are the books that I am bringing with me:The Peripheral by William Gibson. I am a huge William Gibson fan in particular Pattern Recognition and of course Neuromancer. Sex at Dawn by Christoher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. I am about halfway through this fascinating book about the earliest origins of human sexuality and their potential implications for our behaviors today...

We will be going on family ski vacation, so there will likely be no new posts until week after next. In the meantime though here are the books that I am bringing with me:The Peripheral by William Gibson. I am a huge William Gibson fan in particular Pattern Recognition and of course Neuromancer. Sex at Dawn by Christoher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. I am about halfway through this fascinating book about the earliest origins of human sexuality and their potential implications for our behaviors today...