Blog AF

Ha. And here I was thinking I’d post links more often… My stats say that while I used to read roughly 10-12 articles a day, these days I am barely hitting 5. My yearly rolling average peaked in mid-2016.

To be honest, I am not sure what to make of it.

This round-up is full of Apple stuff, so not too many comments on my end, but sharing some interesting perspectives. There’s also a ton on cryptocurrencies, because that’s the latest craze in tech, and I have also been following along.

• A Brief History of the UUID
  Rick Branson - Segment Blog
  

  Identity online is hard - and I don’t mean tying your persona to social media, but actually tagging bits and bytes with other bits and bytes to identify them across machines. The self-incrementing column of integers is a mainstay of traditional databases, but what happens when scaling across machines becomes necessary? Here’s some history of how that’s been solved across the years.

• Apple Isn't a Tech Company
  Neil Cybart - Above Avalon
  

  Posted without comment.

• A Year of Google Maps & Apple Maps
  Justin O'Beirne
  

  Posted without comment.

• Actually good Silicon Valley critiques?
  Noah Smith - Noahpinion
  

  While Noah lives in San Francisco, he’s not really a Silicon Valley insider, so seeing his reaction to Scott Alexander’s Reality Check was interesting. His take? “All in all, Silicon Valley represents one of the least objectionable, most rightfully respected institutions in America today.”

• Tulips, Myths, and Cryptocurrencies
  Ben Thompson - Stratechery
  

  In a strange melding of worlds, Ben moves away from the usual tech talk and goes deep into the history of financial manias. Using Yuval Harari’s notion of shared myths, this post makes a clear difference between bubbles of irrationality, and bubbles of timing. I firmly believe that crypto is one of the latter.

• Bringing back the Somali shilling
  JP Koning - Moneyness
  

  And if you really thought fiat is valuable, think again.

• Blockchains are the new Linux, not the new internet
  Jon Evans - TechCrunch
  

  Evans with the counter-narrative: “It’s easy to envision how and why an interwoven mesh of dozens of decentralized blockchains could slowly, over a period of years and years, become a similar category of crucial infrastructure […] while ordinary people remain essentially blissfully unaware of their existence.” Ah, and nice Fred Wilson burn. I also thought the Rare Pepe story was nuts.

• The consequences of allowing a cryptocurrency takeover, or trying to head one off
  Tony Yates - FT Alphaville (Paywall)
  

  What are the implications of crypto for central banking? The written-in-stone aspect of the blockchain makes monetary policy way more credible, which is a good thing, but at the same time crypto knows no borders, making adjustments by one group of users spill over to others quite easily. A more in depth look here.

• Chicago taxi industry sliding towards collapse
  Aamer Madhani - USA Today
  

  The writing has been on the wall for a while - is not a surprise - but the numbers are staggering: “42% of Chicago’s taxi fleet was not operating in the month of March […] The average monthly income per active medallion has dipped from $5,276 in January 2014 to $3,206 […] medallions hit a median sales peak of $357,000 in late 2013, just before Uber arrived on the scene in Chicago. In April, one medallion sold for just $35,000.”

• Buyer Beware
  Fred Wilson - AVC
  

  Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are all the rage these days. Some people will get screwed in this process, and I am staying away from buying any ERC20 tokens for a good chunk of time.

• Options vs. cash
  Dan Luu
  

  A couple of years ago, right after my college graduation, I was very close to going the startup route, but ended up joining Apple instead. With hindsight, I can tell that financially the decision is a no-brainer: Cash is cash.

• Is the United States Becoming Less of an Optimal Currency Area?
  David Beckworth - Macro Musings
  

  Currency areas, and defining regional economies is one of my long-time favorite topics. There is a trend in the US towards lower labor mobility, which has deep implications for the economy. Historically, if an economic shock hit a state like Oklahoma, its citizens would respond by migrating to California, where things were better. This is no longer the case. As this trend continues, the business cycles of different zones in the country may start to diverge, and at that point the monetary policy set by the Fed might stop making sense.

• Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich
  Richard V. Reeves - The New York Times
  

  A note on inequality, since that’s another recurring theme here.

• When Pixels Collide
  sudoscript
  

  If you haven’t heard about Reddit’s April’s Fools experiment from earlier this year, you need to read this. Emergent behavior is awesome.

• Alpha (A translation of Genesis 1)
  Douglas Summer Stay - Llamas And My Stegosaurus
  

  We’re training our computers to do some really strange things. This one translated Genesis 1 to only use words that start with the letter “A.”

This year I finally got to attend Pycon. Having only attended a way smaller conference before (PyBay 2016) it was awesome to see the insanity that comes with cramming 3000+ pythonistas (!) into one convention center. It was totally worth it. For a less technical view of my trip to PyCon, check out my other Portland post, which has a bunch of photos, too. Otherwise: Continue reading...

This past week I got to travel to Portland for work, and took a couple of extra days to explore the city. I was attending a conference, PyCon, which took up most of my time, but I still got to travel quite a bit. For the nerds out there, here are some notes about my experience at the conference itself. Otherwise: Continue reading...

Although I hate road trips, I love traveling and seeing new places. It didn’t take much convincing after reading about the flower bloom in Southern California to get me excited about renting a car and heading down the highway for 5 hours to see it.

We clearly did not do things right, though. Between missing the fine print on the rental agreement, getting to the campsite after the welcome center had closed, and forgetting to get firewood ahead of time, we were pretty stressed on our ride there. Luckily, getting out of the city and camping in the wilderness has its way of soothing even the most restless of Avys. More...

For some reason, things have been quiet around here lately. I guess work has kept me busy, and I haven’t been too motivated to either take photos or share links on my blog. That’s how you get The Great Link Dump of April 2017.

I wish I had more to share of my day at the races, of my walks through the city, and of these black and white shots. Especially the black and white shots.

This post feels jumbled up. A collection of collections, thrown together due to lack of better options. I’d apologize, but its better than not posting, and I’m hoping it gets the ball rolling again. More...