Intelligence is prediction. And it comes in two flavors: intuitive and reasoning. AGI is intuitive.

Note: I stopped posting here on my wordpress site and have been posting at substack. But on April 7 twitter made it hard post links to substack. So this is a copy my April 5 substack post, which I can link to from twitter. I’ll cross post both places until the dust settles. Jeff Hawkins’… Continue reading Intelligence is prediction. And it comes in two flavors: intuitive and reasoning. AGI is intuitive.

Why is Christmas music so bad? Answer: 1950’s television.

Why is Christmas music so bad? The answer is television. But not today’s television. We’re haunted by evil zombie undead television from the 1950s. Let’s find out why. Below is a great xkcd chart on when currently popular Christmas songs were first released. See how they bunch around the 1950’s? Just beneath this I made… Continue reading Why is Christmas music so bad? Answer: 1950’s television.

Why did boomer become an insult? Because the internet is shattering industrial era politics and culture

1. The puzzle. Why did OK Boomer take off? On Oct 29, Taylor Lorenz posted ‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations. Quote: “Ok boomer” has become Generation Z’s endlessly repeated retort to the problem of older people who just don’t get it, a rallying cry for millions of fed up kids. Teenagers… Continue reading Why did boomer become an insult? Because the internet is shattering industrial era politics and culture

Published
Categorized as Politics

Saturday links 30-Mar-2019: status as a service, niche superstars, screentime, Model T as hatkiller

Here’s links and commentary on recent reading. 1. Status as a Service. It’s a nearly 20,000 word (70 page) post by Eugene Wei. Long but great! At least if you’re into understanding tech and social media. Wei explains how social networks can be thought of Status as a Service, acronym StaaS. Some quotes below in… Continue reading Saturday links 30-Mar-2019: status as a service, niche superstars, screentime, Model T as hatkiller

Published
Categorized as Link post

Sunday 17-Mar-2019: College admissions, Waymo, Wigner’s friend, Zebra flies

Here’s links with commentary from recent reading. 1. Notes on the College admissions scandal. The New York Times has a good explainer. The primary ways people cheated on college admissions where: 1) paying someone else to take SAT tests, and 2) bribing coaches to fake sports resumes. The context here is elite colleges face unrelenting… Continue reading Sunday 17-Mar-2019: College admissions, Waymo, Wigner’s friend, Zebra flies

Published
Categorized as Link post

Sunday links 10-Mar-2019: Facebook privacy, DNA shell casings, workism, our baby shark future

Here’s links/commentary on interesting things I’ve read recently on the internet. 1. Zuckerberg’s social networking privacy statement. Last week Mark Zuckerberg wrote A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking. Much commentary ensued. Below is my summary, where anything in quotes “” is Zuckerberg: Growth in public social media (think Facebook proper) is dead. Private messaging is… Continue reading Sunday links 10-Mar-2019: Facebook privacy, DNA shell casings, workism, our baby shark future

Published
Categorized as Link post

Saturday links 16-Feb-2019: Campus disinvitations, reducing suspensions backfires, college loans, Fortnite is all about the social

1. Campus disinvitations are way down. People have been freaking out about disinviting college speakers (in particular conservatives) for the past two years. The chart below is great, because it means now we can all go fight about something else instead. link 2. Stopping school suspensions backfires. New results from a large scale test of… Continue reading Saturday links 16-Feb-2019: Campus disinvitations, reducing suspensions backfires, college loans, Fortnite is all about the social

Published
Categorized as Link post

Saturday links 9-Feb-2019: climate and epidemics, ur DNA r belong to us, Alzheimer’s gum disease, Aphantasia

Here’s a list of links/commentary on what I found interesting this week. 1. European arrival in Americas may have caused enough death to cool climate. When Europeans discovered America in 1492, they brought along smallpox and measles. The resulting mass epidemics killed roughly 90% of the population, dropping from 60 to 5 million. Previously cultivated… Continue reading Saturday links 9-Feb-2019: climate and epidemics, ur DNA r belong to us, Alzheimer’s gum disease, Aphantasia

Published
Categorized as Link post

Apple revoking Facebook’s certificate was a strategic err which may come back to haunt the tech industry

Let me explain why I think Apple’s decision to revoke Facebook’s developer certificate was a strategic err. Not just for Apple, but for tech in general. First the background. For an app to run on an iPhone, it has to be signed by an Apple certificate. Apple provides app developers with both an enterprise certificate,… Continue reading Apple revoking Facebook’s certificate was a strategic err which may come back to haunt the tech industry