It seems like once a week on average one comes across an article on why some ideology is the cause of some wrong or right. For example, why capitalism won over communism or why socialism is better than neoliberalism, et cetera. It seems all too obvious that these have almost nothing to do with the outcomes ascribed. I mean is "the economic flavour of the week" to blame for our recent economic woes…
I'm a big Mad Men fan and one favourite episodes is: A Night to Remember . In it, there is a key scene at approx 11:23 -11:27: Quoting Peggy: "...you have to get the girls - it's the only ways the boys will come. Tell them this is the way it works and I know better than them." [My emphasis]. This *is* the way it works. I'm looking at you Ello and Google+. Behind every good social net is a…
I was recently pondering the Turing test as a measure of AI and it occurred to me that what we're really asking it to do is lie to us. Is this the first thing we want to teach our technological-prodigies? First let's unwrap this. Instead of thinking of the Test, let's step back and look at why we do tests. I took the SAT because I wanted to have more post-secondary options. But this is what is…
Recently I added SSL to my google app engine account and I had to change my DNS settings to facilitate this. Unfortunately this caused an issue with my mail delivery. I thought I'd write up a short note on how I repaired it in hopes this will save someone else some time. If you're not getting the emails you expect, the first thing to check is your DNS config. I'm going to assume you have a UNIX…
TL;DR - Should I buy the Moto 360 or any an Android Wear device? No, wait until probably mid 2016 for the vision to meet reality. After having used my 360 since nov 2014, and having a new crop on the horizon feel it might be a good time to now write down my thoughts on the device. The general answer is no, you should not buy any current Android Wear device. My reasons follow. Reason 1: The 360 and…
TL;DR - AI might take jobs but it will be *humans* that make the decisions and that's what we should fear, not AI. One hears a lot on the web these days about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to go all HAL2000 or Skynet on us at any moment. I hope to outline why that isn't the case in our lifetimes at least and what actually is likely. But first what is AI? AI is likely hard to define…
What I think may not be obvious, to even industry veterans, is that what most believe are novel and revolutionary about what Steve Jobs did at his second stint at Apple are neither new nor revolutionary: the ipod, the iphone, itunes, et cetera. These all existed in large part long before any iProducts came out. No, what Steve Jobs should be remembered for is being able to make the business deals…
I've seen a few articles out there on the iPhone 6 and it's competitors. Frankly, I feel they've been lacking as they list specs which are in general not useful to consumers in making decisions. Do authors actually believe average consumers will make a buying choice based on CPU frequency or some such? At any rate in this post I will pit the iPhone 6 against its alternatives in what I believe are…
As a follow-on to my last post, about facebook needing the ability to forget, I'm going to put forward a premise - the Reddit's social features are exactly the features that facebook needs in order to grow. First, what are the issues? Please read my previous post for some reasons but briefly here: Your friends on facebook in general have about an average amount in common with you. This is to say…
I've been asked by a few ppl about what I think about the Apple v. Samsung verdict (Apple was just awarded 1B $ in damages). Here are my thoughts. In Defense of Patents In seems the pat answer on the Internet is to believe that software patents have no merit. This is not true in my opinion. Patents (on anything) encourage companies to spend money (eg pay salaries) to advance technology, improve…