Links - January 09, 2017
- The Ten Year Anniversary of the Apple TV Ben Thompson - Stratechery
Ten years ago today, Steve Jobs unveiled two products that could change the world. One did. The other one was the Apple TV. Ben reminds us that how much he’s idolized, “it’s worth remembering that even Steve Jobs hedged his bets.”
- Grappling With My Family’s Identity in a Post-'Brexit' Europe Katrin Bennhold - The New York Times
It is too easy to start listing groups which you identify with. The author talks about her family, and their identities. What does it mean for her to be European, when she’s faced with the contrast between her spouse’s Welsh-ness and her own German-ness? What does it mean to have a name, or a passport? More importantly, what will it mean in 10 years, or 20?
- Why read old philosophy? Katja Grace - Meteuphoric
I had never thought about how Philosophy is studied in such a different way than pretty much any other discipline. What does this tell us about how we should study science, or how we should teach mathematics?
- Reserves Fred Wilson - AVC
While obviously biased, Fred has good points about the importance of having experienced venture capitalists backing your company. I knew that reserves, and follow-up rounds, were an important aspect of the business, but its always good to understand the mechanics in a deeper way.
- The Economics of Fake News Matthew E. Kahn - Environmental and Urban Economics
It is easy to draw a matrix to group the cases of what might be fake news, based on the belief of its publisher and its consumer. It is a simple confusion matrix, where the only quadrant we should really worry about is the one where “the supplier knows the story is false but the demander believes the story is true.” Kahn exposes important issues about the economic environment in which a market for fake news might arise.
- Entrepreneurship Is Intellectual Immigration Brad Feld - Feld Thoughts
A quick read. The idea of moving away from your comfort zone, and perpetually moving towards new things is definitely an appealing one to most entrepreneurs.
Links - January 7, 2017
2017 is off to a busy start. After posting on books I read last year, gathering links from the year before that, and sharing photos of my last trip it is about time I curate some fresh links. Enjoy:
- Things as authorities Nick Szabo - Unenumerated
Humans have learned to defer decision making and process to “things” since time immemorial. The main goal of this is to offload brain cycles into simple rules, and ease our interactions with the world around us. Szabo brings up examples like clocks ands traffic lights, which enable coordination between humans that would require way more effort otherwise. We can also think of learned heuristics, encoded in folklore and religion, as other means of offloading. Clocks ease friction as long as we agree on their time, just like ideas of good and evil ease friction as long as we agree on their base truth. Clocks and religion are trust-offloading mechanisms.
- Why Hayek Was not a Conservative David Glasner - Uneasy Money
New ideas are not worth listening to because they are new, but shouldn’t be disregarded for that reason either. Conservatism is a stupid idea. I wonder how it came up in the first place. Definitely related to my argument on Szabo’s article above.
- The Age of Fake Policy Paul Krugman - The New York Times
The perverse effects of signaling becoming more important than reality.
- Why Many Young Russians See a Hero in Putin Julia Ioffe - National Geographic
I’d say this title is misleading. The article really is about the world views and identities built by young Russians since the break up of the Soviet Union. The author focuses especially on those in rural areas, who long for more urban lifestyles, even if that means a lower standard of living. In many ways, the story isn’t that different from that of the US.
- World War Three, by Mistake Eric Schlosser - The New Yorker
The scary story of the 1960s technology that manages the world’s nuclear arsenal. They had TDD back then, right?
- Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People Maciej Cegłowski - Idle Words
There are way more immediate ethical issues with AI than “oh noes, it’s going to kill us!”. We can keep researching and building better systems, and in fact I’d argue we should, but instead of thinking about how to regulate the companies’ ability to kill us, we should regulate their ability to collect data indefinitely, as we don’t know where it will land. I am more scared of humans than machines.
- A Bigger Problem Than ISIS? Dexter Filkins - The New Yorker
It’d be great if governments, and whoever is striving for power could care about real problems. “A dam in Mosul that’s about to fail and potentially could kill a million people” sounds like a bigger issue than “those westerners are teaching us their disgraceful customs and insulting our god!” Kinda like how gun violence in the US is a bigger problem than bombs on airplanes.
- There is No Now Justin Sheehy - ACM Queue
Time is complicated, especially in massively distributed computing systems. I’d love to understand this topic better. If you have recommendations on what else to read, please let me know.
- Alexa: Amazon’s Operating System Ben Thompson - Stratechery
I have had an Echo for several months now, and I still see it as a gimmick, but I understand why the strategy behind the device has so much going for it. Amazon is building a platform that makes a lot of sense, but the technology isn’t quite there yet. It’ll be interesting to see this pan out.
- Jeremy Heavyweight
I recently tweeted that about one of Gimlet’s new podcasts, Heavyweight, calling it “Curb Your Enthusiasm, podcast version”. Stories about people, told in a really fun way. This one is about young people developing their identities, and grappling with their religious beliefs. Two stories about two people who met as they were going in opposite directions 30 years ago, meeting again today.
- The Last Bank Bailout Planet Money
A story about the most recent crisis, and how Neel Kashkari, who worked at the Treasury at the time, and is now the president and CEO of the Minneapolis Fed, plans to avoid the next one. As the podcast put it, the fact that Bernie Sanders and the WSJ editorial board agree that Kashkari’s proposal is a good way to move forward means that there is some intellectually solid ground in it.
Books read in 2016
January 6, 2017 One of my goals for this past year was to read at least one book a month, purely for leisure. At the current rate, it’ll take me roughly 30 years to read all the books in my list. That’s a scary thought. While not a super ambitious goal, 12 was a step in the right direction. Continue reading...
New Years in Chicago
January 5, 2017 For the first time in several years, I did not go home to Costa Rica to celebrate the new year. Instead, we went to Chicago, and while we had packed expecting the polar vortex, the city welcomed us with warmth. So did our friends.
Oddly, this time around my photographs show way more of the city’s character than on my previous trip. Perhaps I’ve started to appreciate Chicago more, being away. More...
101 Links From 2015
December 30, 2016 Yeah, that’s not a typo. You’re in for a few throwbacks. Last January I compiled a list of the best content I had read over the year. With 2016 almost over, I was about to repeat the exercise, and noticed I never shared my v1. Luckily, most pieces have aged well. Continue reading...