Last Tech Tuesday, we looked at complexity classes which group problems by their intrinsic difficult. There we encountered one of the great unsolved questions of Computer Science. Is P = NP? The class P is easy to define. It is the set of all problems that can be solved by a Turing machine in polynomial time, i.e O(n^k) for some k. So you might think that NP stands for non-polynomial time but you’d be wrong. Instead the class NP has the same definition as P except for a non-deterministic Turi...

Last Tech Tuesday, we looked at complexity classes which group problems by their intrinsic difficult. There we encountered one of the great unsolved questions of Computer Science. Is P = NP? The class P is easy to define. It is the set of all problems that can be solved by a Turing machine in polynomial time, i.e O(n^k) for some k. So you might think that NP stands for non-polynomial time but you’d be wrong. Instead the class NP has the same definition as P except for a non-deterministic Turi...

Later this morning I am participating in a panel called “Angel Investing in Action” at the 2014 Pipeline Fellowship Conference here in NY. The goal of the Pipeline Fellowship is to have more women angel investors (currently only about 1 in 5 in the US). This is a terrific endeavor as it will ultimately also help women entrepreneurs raise angel financing more easily. in preparation it occurred to me that while I had blogged tangentially about angel investing I had never written a dedicated pos...

Later this morning I am participating in a panel called “Angel Investing in Action” at the 2014 Pipeline Fellowship Conference here in NY. The goal of the Pipeline Fellowship is to have more women angel investors (currently only about 1 in 5 in the US). This is a terrific endeavor as it will ultimately also help women entrepreneurs raise angel financing more easily. in preparation it occurred to me that while I had blogged tangentially about angel investing I had never written a dedicated pos...

This will be the last Homeschool Wednesday post for quite some time. Not just because we will be going away on a trip to Africa but when we come back I will switch Continuations around a bit. I will use it (almost) exclusively to expand the ideas from my “Are We The Horse?” talk. Now I can make that change without asking anyone for permission because I am my own publisher. That is an example of “permission-less innovation” and is one of the key messages we are trying to convey to our children...

This will be the last Homeschool Wednesday post for quite some time. Not just because we will be going away on a trip to Africa but when we come back I will switch Continuations around a bit. I will use it (almost) exclusively to expand the ideas from my “Are We The Horse?” talk. Now I can make that change without asking anyone for permission because I am my own publisher. That is an example of “permission-less innovation” and is one of the key messages we are trying to convey to our children...

Brief post today with an update on an important case that I wrote about last year: the federal prosecution of Barrett Brown. As I wrote back then, linking is the essential building block of the web. Criminally prosecuting someone for linking threatens this foundation. I am therefore relieved that yesterday the prosecution decided to drop these charges. While this is great news it is important to point out that Barrett Brown has been imprisoned since the fall of 2012 – that is not a typo. The ...

Brief post today with an update on an important case that I wrote about last year: the federal prosecution of Barrett Brown. As I wrote back then, linking is the essential building block of the web. Criminally prosecuting someone for linking threatens this foundation. I am therefore relieved that yesterday the prosecution decided to drop these charges. While this is great news it is important to point out that Barrett Brown has been imprisoned since the fall of 2012 – that is not a typo. The ...

I am generally not a big fan of strategies that involve pursuing business A now in order to pursue B in the future. I tend to believe that you should go for B right away. For example, if you are planning to disrupt textbooks I would likely prefer a strategy that figures out how to peer produce those instead of one that first tries to make the renting and exchange of existing textbooks more efficient. Why? Because there are few businesses that have pulled off the “A now, B later” trick – most ...

I am generally not a big fan of strategies that involve pursuing business A now in order to pursue B in the future. I tend to believe that you should go for B right away. For example, if you are planning to disrupt textbooks I would likely prefer a strategy that figures out how to peer produce those instead of one that first tries to make the renting and exchange of existing textbooks more efficient. Why? Because there are few businesses that have pulled off the “A now, B later” trick – most ...

The last few weeks in Tech Tuesday we have looked at various aspects of computational complexity. So far whenever we have looked at a sample problem, such as finding words on a web page, we have studied the characteristics of a particular algorithm for solving the problem (in many cases starting out with looking at a brute force solution). But we have skirted the central question of computational complexity: how hard is the problem? Or asked differently, for a given problem, what is the best ...

The last few weeks in Tech Tuesday we have looked at various aspects of computational complexity. So far whenever we have looked at a sample problem, such as finding words on a web page, we have studied the characteristics of a particular algorithm for solving the problem (in many cases starting out with looking at a brute force solution). But we have skirted the central question of computational complexity: how hard is the problem? Or asked differently, for a given problem, what is the best ...

I posted a few days ago revisiting the inflation versus deflation argument. I provided a very brief comment there on Then yesterday Marc Andreessen asked on Twitter about the arguments linking computers to deflation. I am sure others have data on this but here are some of the different vectors that I see: 1. Moore’s law – this is the obvious one. We have had incredible progress in hardware that has driven down the price of computers and anything else that requires computation. 2. Automation –...

I posted a few days ago revisiting the inflation versus deflation argument. I provided a very brief comment there on Then yesterday Marc Andreessen asked on Twitter about the arguments linking computers to deflation. I am sure others have data on this but here are some of the different vectors that I see: 1. Moore’s law – this is the obvious one. We have had incredible progress in hardware that has driven down the price of computers and anything else that requires computation. 2. Automation –...

I posted yesterday in Homeschool Wednesday about my first time at jury duty. Here is a quick follow up. It turns out I wasn’t chosen for either of the two trials that were under consideration and surprisingly wasn’t asked to come back today. So the only comments and observations I have are about the selection process itself. There is lots of room to use technology to improve this process. In particular, when you are first selected, you should then fill out a juror questionnaire online that in...

I posted yesterday in Homeschool Wednesday about my first time at jury duty. Here is a quick follow up. It turns out I wasn’t chosen for either of the two trials that were under consideration and surprisingly wasn’t asked to come back today. So the only comments and observations I have are about the selection process itself. There is lots of room to use technology to improve this process. In particular, when you are first selected, you should then fill out a juror questionnaire online that in...

I became a US citizen in the mid 2000s (I have forgotten the exact year) and recently got called for the first time for jury duty. I am very excited about this as it is both a central part of the functioning of the judicial system (and hence civil society overall), as well as a great personal and family learning opportunity. I am writing this blog post in the waiting room seeing if I will be called for a jury selection. Germany, where I grew up, doesn’t have a jury system. Instead, judges not...

I became a US citizen in the mid 2000s (I have forgotten the exact year) and recently got called for the first time for jury duty. I am very excited about this as it is both a central part of the functioning of the judicial system (and hence civil society overall), as well as a great personal and family learning opportunity. I am writing this blog post in the waiting room seeing if I will be called for a jury selection. Germany, where I grew up, doesn’t have a jury system. Instead, judges not...

A couple of days have passed since the news of the monster acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook broke. More people have written about it already than I can possibly link to so I won’t even try. My immediate reaction just based on financial metrics was that Facebook massively overpaid but I wasn’t sure about the strategic side. Having had some time to think about that I am now convinced that this deal makes no sense. Why? Because phone number based messenger apps can bootstrap very rapidly off ...

A couple of days have passed since the news of the monster acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook broke. More people have written about it already than I can possibly link to so I won’t even try. My immediate reaction just based on financial metrics was that Facebook massively overpaid but I wasn’t sure about the strategic side. Having had some time to think about that I am now convinced that this deal makes no sense. Why? Because phone number based messenger apps can bootstrap very rapidly off ...