On Sunday, March 12th I got a ride down to the Computer History Museum for TEDxNewWallStreet. My friend, Harvey, a fellow financial and economics geek and all-around awesome guy, told me about it. The CEO of the company he works for was giving a talk. The Computer History Museum is what my dad would call … [Read more…]
Peter Diamandis 2012-03-06 Recording “He has founded over 15 companies.” “Can you guys hear me ok?” “Let’s begin.” “The only thing you cared about was within a day’s walk.” “Nothing is more important to us than survival.” “Your mind will focus in on the negative stories.” “Every generation thinks it’s the last.” “Here are some … [Read more…]
More interesting books, to find interesting problems. The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers ISBN: 9780137081073 vii[He and I shared a passion for programming and for clean code.] xiv[It was the sort of environment in which some people complain, and others point out that “pressure makes diamonds.”] xiv[We got things done.] xvii[Somehow, … [Read more…]
My brilliant friend Harvey Multani recommended a strategy to narrow your focus on interesting problems. He said to go to a bookstore and walk around, picking up the first 10 books that look interesting to you. Then sit down, read the first 2 pages in each. Put in this initial burst of effort to find … [Read more…]
Thiel vs Gilder Debate Stanford 2012-03-01 Recording “So that the next generation is better than the last.” Reading notes is lame, dude. No way to make that exciting. “Cell phone penetration will reach 70% soon.” “Three of the smartest, most insightful and thoughtful people.” “Positive feedback loops.” “most perceptive, greatest commentators on the Internet” “legendary … [Read more…]
Bioinformatics 2012-02-07 Stanford “Let me remind everybody where we were last time.” “Variants to the model.” histogram “The point here is not just to be mathematically elegant.” “One very elegant way to do this…” “The most important question: How does this help you? How can you use this?” “Is there a biological explanation for this … [Read more…]
Vision and Eye Movements 2012-02-02 Stanford “All these topics are covered in the book.” “You have an upside down action-potential.” “The permeability for different ions never goes to zero.” “Just memorize the anatomy and understand the concepts.” “Don’t memorize everything in the book.” “Perception is an interpretation of reality.” “This is the mantra driving cognitive … [Read more…]
Bioinformatics 2012-02-03 Stanford “Very similarly…” “So this is the difference in the two algorithms.” It’s better to be doing addition rather than multiplication of small numbers. viterbi epsilon “To put it a little bit in an example, imagine…” “Now I’m running on reserve power so that’s not zesty.” Sorry, I didn’t understand the question. “The … [Read more…]
2012-02-03 Stephen Laberge on Lucid Dreaming Stanford Cultivate your own internal garden with lucid dreaming. How we can use lucid dreaming to study the mind? nightmares and personal development prescriptive memory the key to lucidity is remembering “It’s just a matter of practice.” “You don’t believe yourself when you say some things, rather you want … [Read more…]
Stephen Wolfram “Science, Mathematica, and the Making of Wolfram|Alpha” 2012-02-12 4:15pm Wolfram Recording “People just create crap data.” “It at first seems a little crazy.” “This seemed very interesting thing to do, but it’s very hard.” “Every ten years or so I re-asked, is it now possible to do this?” “If you have an operation … [Read more…]