Halloween is coming up. But if you really want to scare yourself, I suggest you read this interview with an associate director at the CDC about the “end of antibiotics.” Essentially we are not only seeing more bacteria that are resistant to absolutely every medication we have but these bacteria are now spreading outside of hospitals and are more rapidly sharing their genetic antibacterial immunity with other much more common bacteria. In the meantime there are no (as in zero) new antibiotics ...

Halloween is coming up. But if you really want to scare yourself, I suggest you read this interview with an associate director at the CDC about the “end of antibiotics.” Essentially we are not only seeing more bacteria that are resistant to absolutely every medication we have but these bacteria are now spreading outside of hospitals and are more rapidly sharing their genetic antibacterial immunity with other much more common bacteria. In the meantime there are no (as in zero) new antibiotics ...

I am implementing a radical change to my scheduling: my default is going from saying yes to a meeting request to no. For a long time I have tried to meet with pretty much everybody who sincerely reached out to me. Sometimes it would just be a short meeting, sometimes I would push the meeting out for quite a while but essentially I made myself available. I have met a lot of interesting people that way over the years. And I did it because rightly or wrongly I felt being accessible was a way of ...

I am implementing a radical change to my scheduling: my default is going from saying yes to a meeting request to no. For a long time I have tried to meet with pretty much everybody who sincerely reached out to me. Sometimes it would just be a short meeting, sometimes I would push the meeting out for quite a while but essentially I made myself available. I have met a lot of interesting people that way over the years. And I did it because rightly or wrongly I felt being accessible was a way of ...

As promised (threatened?) Tech Tuesday is embarking on a look at the theoretical side of computer science. We also call this the theory of computation and it deals with two big questions: first, what are the limits to computation (known as computability) and second, how efficiently can we compute things (known as computational complexity). Now in order to be able to make formal arguments in trying to answer these questions it helps a lot to have models of computation that are simpler and more...

As promised (threatened?) Tech Tuesday is embarking on a look at the theoretical side of computer science. We also call this the theory of computation and it deals with two big questions: first, what are the limits to computation (known as computability) and second, how efficiently can we compute things (known as computational complexity). Now in order to be able to make formal arguments in trying to answer these questions it helps a lot to have models of computation that are simpler and more...

It is definitely Homeschool Wednesday in our household, as Susan has a blog post out about raising active decision makers. My post today will be about math. There are a great many problems with how math is taught in schools but the one I want to focus on is motivation. Generally math is presented as something you just have to know, i.e. as a requirement for other things. In the lowest form that’s a requirement for passing the upcoming test or eventually the SAT to get into college. This is es...

It is definitely Homeschool Wednesday in our household, as Susan has a blog post out about raising active decision makers. My post today will be about math. There are a great many problems with how math is taught in schools but the one I want to focus on is motivation. Generally math is presented as something you just have to know, i.e. as a requirement for other things. In the lowest form that’s a requirement for passing the upcoming test or eventually the SAT to get into college. This is es...

I was asked on Twitter what I think about SecureDrop. The short answer is that I am thrilled to see it. Just like I was thrilled about the New Yorker’s StrongBox which is based on the same original code by Aaron Swartz. Now I think the reason the question was asked in the first place was because I have written about how more crypto is not the answer and this would seem to be more crypto. So here is the longer answer. I have long believed that government operates with way too many secrets. Sec...

I was asked on Twitter what I think about SecureDrop. The short answer is that I am thrilled to see it. Just like I was thrilled about the New Yorker’s StrongBox which is based on the same original code by Aaron Swartz. Now I think the reason the question was asked in the first place was because I have written about how more crypto is not the answer and this would seem to be more crypto. So here is the longer answer. I have long believed that government operates with way too many secrets. Sec...

Last Tech Tuesday I celebrated the second anniversary by providing a big recap of what I had covered to date. I was planning to then conduct another survey today about what to write about next. Then it struck me that in order to keep going I need to pick something that will have me jazzed. And so while it may not be immediately useful I have decided to write a bunch of posts on the some of the theory behind computing. Here are some of the things that I am planning to cover: finite state machi...

Last Tech Tuesday I celebrated the second anniversary by providing a big recap of what I had covered to date. I was planning to then conduct another survey today about what to write about next. Then it struck me that in order to keep going I need to pick something that will have me jazzed. And so while it may not be immediately useful I have decided to write a bunch of posts on the some of the theory behind computing. Here are some of the things that I am planning to cover: finite state machi...

At MIT one of my statistics classes was taught by Prof. Jerry Hausman (of the Hausman test). In every class Prof. Hausman would at some point reach a result and then exclaim “and this proves that life is unfair” (usually it was that your statistical test had less power than you would have hoped for). Reading Nick Bilton’s Twitter story in the NY Times Sunday magazine reminded of that. I read it not because I expected to find something new but because it is always fun to see an event described...

At MIT one of my statistics classes was taught by Prof. Jerry Hausman (of the Hausman test). In every class Prof. Hausman would at some point reach a result and then exclaim “and this proves that life is unfair” (usually it was that your statistical test had less power than you would have hoped for). Reading Nick Bilton’s Twitter story in the NY Times Sunday magazine reminded of that. I read it not because I expected to find something new but because it is always fun to see an event described...

I am often asked about what has changed in Venture Capital and how that has impacted startups. Inevitably I answer that the right place to start when looking for impact on startups is Amazon. My line is: “Amazon has done more for startups than all early stage investors combined.” Why? Because founders can now generally get a service up and running on AWS with a close to zero upfront investment. And of course once you have something fundraising gets a lot easier and you probably have to sell a...

I am often asked about what has changed in Venture Capital and how that has impacted startups. Inevitably I answer that the right place to start when looking for impact on startups is Amazon. My line is: “Amazon has done more for startups than all early stage investors combined.” Why? Because founders can now generally get a service up and running on AWS with a close to zero upfront investment. And of course once you have something fundraising gets a lot easier and you probably have to sell a...

Growing up in Germany I was always bored in math class, despite going to “Gymnasium” (the branch of Germany’s multi-tiered system that leads up to university) and even taking the most advanced math class in our school (the so-called “Leistungskurs Mathematik”). The math we were doing included some multi-variate calculus and some probability but I never felt really challenged nor was there a clear opportunity to take something more advanced. In fact, I wasn’t even aware that one could do the s...

Growing up in Germany I was always bored in math class, despite going to “Gymnasium” (the branch of Germany’s multi-tiered system that leads up to university) and even taking the most advanced math class in our school (the so-called “Leistungskurs Mathematik”). The math we were doing included some multi-variate calculus and some probability but I never felt really challenged nor was there a clear opportunity to take something more advanced. In fact, I wasn’t even aware that one could do the s...

One of the skills we want all of our kids to learn is how to present. This seems like one of those universally useful things: being able to get up in front of an audience and get them to listen to you. Doing this with or without the help of images. Answering questions from the audience. Pretty much anything you might do, even say create art, is likely to require this at some point (eg the opening of your art show). So every weekend we are now having presentations. We have created a nice setup...

One of the skills we want all of our kids to learn is how to present. This seems like one of those universally useful things: being able to get up in front of an audience and get them to listen to you. Doing this with or without the help of images. Answering questions from the audience. Pretty much anything you might do, even say create art, is likely to require this at some point (eg the opening of your art show). So every weekend we are now having presentations. We have created a nice setup...