Blog AF

This weekend I read two completely unrelated documents that have shaped, and in my opinion will continue to influence, the future of technology. Continue reading...

Well, I finished the first season of Startup, and then, I got bored… Take note Alex Blumberg! The reasons why I was enjoying it so much were the SV outsider tone, the feeling of surprise when lingo had to be explained, and, perhaps most importantly, the fact that I listened to a whole season of Reply All before I started with StartUp. To me, Gimlet is just a more interesting business to learn about than Dating Ring (sorry matchmaker aficionados).

Now, since I always NeedMoreContent™, I started a class on coursera and it has been awesome to learn about the low level pieces that make up a computer. It’s been less than a week since I started, and I am already halfway through week 4 of the course. The class is aimed at people with 0 engineering background, and I would definitely recommend it if you are interested in computing.

• The destruction of Alderaan was completely justified
  Sonny Bunch - The Washington Post
  
• Capital Is No Longer Scarce
  Albert Wenger - Continuations
  
• Our Year of Living Airbnb
  David Roberts - The New York Times
  
• "Market Rate" is for Lobsters
  Ernie Miller
  
• Hanukkah, Why?
  Emma Green - The Atlantic
  
• I don’t give a **** if we agree about climate change.
  Arnold Schwarzenegger
  
• Reading the world in 196 books
  Ann Morgan - BBC
  
• In Other Countries, You’re as Likely to Be Killed by a Falling Object as by a Gun
  Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz - New York Times
  
• Pythonic means idiomatic and tasteful
  Andrew Montalenti
  
• A bad citizen in Javaland
  Darren Hobbs
  
• What Makes Tom Hanks Look Like Tom Hanks
  Supasorn Suwajanakorn, Steven M. Seitz and Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman - Graphics and Imaging Laboratory, University of Washington
  
• Chasing Unicorns
  Eric Lefkofsky
  
• How to do anything
  Justin Kan
  
• All the roads that lead to Rome
  Moovel Lab
  
• Teens can't tell the difference between Google ads and search results
  James Vincent - The Verge
  
• The Banality of Trumpism
  Paul Krugman - New York Times
  
• How Four Drinking Buddies Saved Brazil
  Planet Money (podcast)
  
• Auditing ISIS
  Planet Money (podcast)
  

I have been listening to Startup the past couple of days, so I have not been reading that much lately. It provides a view of the tech and startup world from an outsider’s perspective, and when discussing concepts that I take as general knowledge it constantly makes me think “Wait, most people don’t know that?”

If you have not listened to it, you should.

• China’s Renminbi Is Approved by I.M.F. as a Main World Currency
  Keith Bradsher - New York Times
  
• The Weight of the World
  Elizabeth Kolbert - New Yorker
  
• A Simulation in Emoji
  Nicky Case
  
• Pumpkin Pie in Miami: Thanksgiving Flight Patterns
  Josh Katz and Quoctrung Bui - New York Times
  
• My Life After 44 Years In Prison
  Elena Boffetta And Jenna Belhumeur - Al Jazeera
  
• Metadata Investigation : Inside Hacking Team
  Vladan Joler, Andrej Petrovski, Nikola Kotur, Tamara Pavlovic and Jan Krasni - Share Lab
  

Took a break for thanksgiving. Read a lot. Choosing was hard. This week’s winner seems to be Noah Smith.

• The Secret Power of ‘Read It Later’ Apps
  Tiago Forte - Medium
  
• Ben Bernanke on bubbles, bitcoin, and why he’s not a Republican anymore
  Matt Phillips - Quartz
  
• Challenging the Oligarchy
  Paul Krugman - New York Review of Books
  
• The Trouble With Interest Rates
  J. Bradford DeLong - Project Syndicate
  
• The Utopian UI Architect
  John Pavlus - reForm
  
• The McDonalds Monopoly Fraud
  Pricenomics
  
• The New Atomic Age We Need
  Peter Thiel - New York Times
  
• Why Primo Levi Survives
  William Deresiewicz - The Atlantic
  
• The Direct Connection
  Fred Wilson - AVC
  
• The future’s at stake: the left must show it could create an iPad
  Zoe Williams - The Guardian
  
• The day I became a millionaire
  David Heinemeier Hansson - Medium
  
• TV, mobile and the living room
  Benedict Evans
  
• Revenge of the Nerds
  Paul Graham
  
• What Is Holding Back the Economy?
  Mark Thoma - Economist's View
  
• Want Innovation? Try Raising Minimum Wages
  Noah Smith - Bloomberg View
  
• The Cost of Redistributing Wealth
  Noah Smith - Bloomberg View
  
• Unlearning economics
  Noah Smith - Noahpinion
  
• Most of What You Learned in Econ 101 Is Wrong
  Noah Smith - Bloomberg View
  
• Econ 101 and data (reply to David Henderson)
  Noah Smith - Noahpinion
  
• The Yale Problem Begins in High School
  Jonathan Haidt - Heterodox Academy
  
• A Tale of Two Onboardings
  Convox
  
• A Bulge, Not a Bubble
  Albert Wenger - Continuations
  
• Solving Einstein’s Riddle with Ruby
  Sean Handley - Medium
  
• The Hoverboard Life
  Planet Money (podcast)
  
• The Pickle Problem
  Planet Money (podcast)
  
• The Great Inflation
  Planet Money (podcast)
  
• Birthstory
  Radiolab
  

• Living in different worlds
  Benedict Evans
  
• Police Civil Asset Forfeitures Exceed All Burglaries in 2014
  Martin Armstrong
  
• Getting the deal done
  Fred Wilson - AVC
  
• I Turned Off JavaScript for a Whole Week and It Was Glorious
  Klint Finley - Wired
  
• Baseless Calls to Expand Surveillance Fit Familiar, Cynical Pattern
  Cindy Cohn - Electronic Frontier Foundation
  
• The Night in Question
  This American Life (podcast)
  
• Why Coke Cost A Nickel For 70 Years
  Planet Money (podcast)