It is amazing to live in a city like San Francisco, where people can be whoever they want to be, without worrying about what others think. It is sad that something that simple can set this city apart from the rest.
Our identities shape our lives. Might as well pick the ones that make us happy.
Be proud of who you are, whatever that may be. More...
A simple result that should change how we see one of the assumptions that underlies tons of models in economics.
I am very happy that I found Chris Arnade. His posts and tweetstorms provide amazing insight into a part of the United States that I otherwise would simply not have access to.
An inside look at how Facebook runs. The content is a little wordy, but I’d like to read more about this story. Will probably end up buying the book.
The evolution of programming languages depends not only on what new languages allow you to do, but what they don’t. Taking away an engineer’s ability to do X also removes a concern from the picture. Thinking about less things at once means you can focus more on what’s left.
Watching this show would not be half as fun if I didn’t interact with the people it mocks on a daily basis. The caricatures are spot on.
Ross Goodwin keeps pumping them out. Non-sensical, bizarre, and a bit over-dramatized, but interesting.
It has been a while since my last post, so here is some random stuff from the last month and a half around San Francisco. More...
San Francisco and the Gold Rush, both old and new. Labor, unions, and narratives of success.
Another in depth look at modern solutions to artificial intelligence and problem solving. As usual, Karpathy makes complex ideas understandable, this time using OpenAI’s Gym to play Pong.
HTML, Flash, Video, etc, are only a medium. Corporations today are working hard to exploit these new means of distribution.
Great analogy between natural science vs. religion and natural science vs. social science. As Noah points out, the idea of the “God of the Gaps” fits in quite well. I have long been a fan of Paul Davies and his take on the classic fight. Noah gives a good explanation for why they are, in a way, the same.
Understanding that developing markets are fundamentally different beasts, and not just waiting for copies of what has already been done, is both challenging, and exciting. Makes me wonder what I could do if I went back home.
The expanded version of the tweetstorm. Poor people understand optionality, too. If your downside is flat, and your upside isn’t, logic says break the system.
Yes, two posts by Evans today. It’s that good.
A glimpse into what money might become.
The application of these simple machine learning concepts keep impressing me more and more. Autoencoders are a very simple idea. If anything, click through to see the side-by-side video.
Few times does a post involving convoluted math and programming seem so clear. The diagrams help a lot, and the jump to 2D is mindblowing.
An interesting take on the rise of trump. Similar to Chris Arnade’s twitter comments on the implicit understanding optionality of Trump voters, who desire volatility.
It is all a charade. At least the WWE embraces it.
An analysis of how disabilities were seen in medieval Europe, and how those map onto the GoT world. Particularly interesting was the discussion on how mortality and disability can happen to anyone, which is unusual in literature.Spoliers ahead.
Orwell would be proud.
