indescions_2018

Thanks for publishing. Very informative. Am just setting up NeverWare as a devenv for Android. With localhost ADB connections. Could prove a powerful platform for Android automation.

Also noticed there is a web "demo" of Fuschia experimental OS. That can be run in a single Chrome tab (click "guest"):

https://mgoulao.github.io/fuchsia-web-demo/

Awesome List of P2P resources:

https://github.com/kgryte/awesome-peer-to-peer

Personal bias tilts to web tech. WebRTC will require you to centrally implement all your peer broker and logic. But take a look at something like Peer5 Video CDN to appreciate scalability:

https://www.peer5.com/

Have revisited 2001 recently. Particularly the scene just before Intermission. Where HAL is reading the lips of the astronauts in the pod. It just really holds up. Apart from the genius editing and sound design. It feels even more a cautionary moment for modern minds on AI. As it must have been to American audiences during the height of the Vietnam War era.

Ridley Scott's original Alien and Blade Runner remain immensely watchable 30+ years on. Perhaps even more so. Which makes it high time not to just complete Clark's monoliith films. But write the next chapter in "Dystopian AI" cinema. One in which a super-intelligence doesn't merely write off the necessity of humanity. But actively yet surreptitiously nudges us to produce more powerful versions of itself ;)

I'd like to see the full curve of scientists vs productivity. Extended back to say 3000 BC. Assuming the population density of natural philosophers is roughly constant with time. We are probably just getting started on the parabolic arc of new discovery.

Before my time, sadly. But am familiar with the title from Masters of Doom, the id Software story

In 1990, Richard Garriott's company Origin, released a space-themed combat flight simulator called Wing Commander, which became a favorite around the id lake house. Carmack figured he could do better. Flight sims, he thought, were painfully slow, bogged down by their heavy graphics and leaving the player to snail through the game play. What he and others preferred was the fast action of arcade games such as Defender, Asteroids and Gauntlet. Carmack tried to see how he might do something that hadn't been done before: create a fast-action game in 3D

Cool. YC brand, plus application pre-screen should ensure high quality. Will the demo stage be broadcast?

Algorithmia also just launched its own smart contract for ML model validation. Two's a trend ;)

Trustless Machine Learning Contracts: Evaluating and Exchanging Machine Learning Models on the Ethereum Blockchain

https://blog.algorithmia.com/trustless-machine-learning-cont...

Author of go-kit microservices framework, which has several nice examples with which to get up and running

https://gokit.io/examples/

Another interesting recent project is Truss which allows you to autogen go-kit handlers from protobuf definitions

https://github.com/TuneLab/truss/blob/master/TUTORIAL.md

I believe the end goal is some proof of extraterrestrial life. As sensing becomes more accurate, we may be able to detect certain biochemical signatures. Even of a hypothetical alien variety. At even great distances.

Its an answer to the age old existential dilemma: are we alone in the cosmos. And would indeed provide a modicum of hope for the future of humanity ;)

Exoplanet hunters rethink search for alien life

https://www.nature.com/news/exoplanet-hunters-rethink-search...

We are nearing crisis mode regarding long term home health for the elderly here in US. Cost per visit for even non-nursing, personal care workers can easily exceed $100. Medicare coverage eligibility is subject to political risk. It's a significant tax on working families. And with 30-40M families requiring such workers. It's trivial to see how there may never be sufficient labor market supply.

But a subscription service model for those that can afford the highest quality home care for the elderly. Represents a phenomenal startup growth opportunity.

And only 700 light years away ;) It would be nice to compare the atmospheric spectrum of WASP-39b. As well as other candidate exoplanets in habitable zones. With the baseline of our own home planet.

High resolution transmission spectrum of the Earth's atmosphere -- Seeing Earth as an exoplanet using a lunar eclipse

https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.4780

The "Learning How To Learn" course is also one of the most popular MOOCs

https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

Learning at scale via MOOCs seems to be enormously effective. EdX alone issued 250K certificates for 2.5M registered users. Mostly in CS.

I'd be interested to see YC Startup Schools own results as well. Do at least 10% of Startup School 2017 grads go on to full time work on their companies?

The bottomless bowl of Peanut M&Ms I keep within arms reach.

Just pre-compute everything. Put your vector fields in textures at map design time and be done with it. No point in overthinking this once its a simple lookup per frame.

The real fun is designing the agent's AI: exploration, avoidance, engagement ;)

Crowd Pathfinding And Steering Using Flow Field Tiles

http://www.gameaipro.com/GameAIPro/GameAIPro_Chapter23_Crowd...

Flow Field Pathfinding Tutorial

http://leifnode.com/2013/12/flow-field-pathfinding/

At the risk of turning into r/wallstreetbets here. My bias is to the downside. Driven by a cacophany of pundits on CNBC post-IPO with negative outlooks. "There is absolutely no money to be made in streaming music on the internet" and "apple isn't into music for the profits" and so on ad infinitum. As well as significant short interest in the options market.

$SNAP is probably as nearest neighbor as any for price-action historical context.

Market timing (H1 2019) may also be ill-favored generally for anything tech related if we see significant correction.

But I certainly hope I'm wrong. And will be looking to add positions in Spotify, Dropbox, Uber, Lyft, Docker, Snowflake, AirBnB, SpaceX, WeWork, Stripe etc if and when they become available ;)

One of Spotify's engineering managers provided some details on the Discover Weekly implementation.

From Idea to Execution: Spotify's Discover Weekly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A259Yo8hBRs

Wonderful bit of history ;)

Archive collection of works by George Sterling

https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Sterling%2...

Think there would be substantial interest in that "Blockchain Engineering" Masters program if you put it online ;)

There is something inherently counter-intuitive about teaching probability theory. Consider the Monte Hall problem and how many smart, seemingly rational people will refuse to believe the outcome even after rigorous proof.

For more in-depth treatment, see Probabilistic Models of Cognition

https://probmods.org/

My daily reads include the South China Morning Post and TechNode. And the A16Z and YC blogs feature great in-depth insights. But as you might suspect, apart from insider knowledge. There is very little real-time coverage and analysis.

https://a16z.com/2018/01/13/super-apps-china-product-innovat...

https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-hidden-forces-behind-toutia...

Ideally, I'd like to dive right into Android Studio and Kotlin. Since the inherent interest with phones, mobile gaming, cameras, videos, etc is already extant ;)

Another alternative, and I think a strong curriculum could be built around this. Is an intro to systems via Nintendo GameBoy and GBA. Using emulators and custom ROM development. A few college level courses already experiment with this route.

Where the money goes. Seriously. We routinely see Angel and Series A rounds raised by Professors with little business experience that are 5-10X the amount an early stage AI company would get.

I'd really be interested in seeing the blueprint for how to bootstrap a successful synthbio startup starting with a single, garage-sized DNA foundry.

Yes, it's a terrific stepping stone to providing premium services as well. You may find you and your team naturally gravitating to a core competency that really interests you. Such as voice services, media streaming, etc.

Just be aware of the potential liabilities. Clearly demarcate ownership of all assets in contracts. As well as any obligations for future services. At some point a client may decide they can save costs by "cutting out the middle man" and negotiating directly with you!

All good resources. I'd also add Algorithms, Etc. by Jeff Erickson.

http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/

And for practice, Google Code Jam past problems are quite challenging ;)

https://code.google.com/codejam/

Got to see his "Crusade in Central Park" when I was pretty young. Felt like about a million people had come to see a single man speak ;)

New York Hears Words of Hope From Billy Graham

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/23/nyregion/new-york-hears-wo...

Yeah, definitely interested ;)

Any chance the course has room for the other side of the coin? Namely, how neuroevolution and genetic strategies inform deep reinforcement learning?

Am also interested in learning about the state-of-the-art in cloud based packages. I noticed recently Google released a tool called DeepVariant for use on their genomics platform.

https://github.com/google/deepvariant

Creating a universal SNP and small indel variant caller with deep neural networks

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/01/09/092890

"Why does Nature prefer hexagons" also makes for a fantastic interview question ;)

>>> graphene, a discovery with enormous potential that would never leave the lab

Just noticed that LL Bean is selling PrimaLoft jackets with Aerogel tech. When mass demand for something like a flexible graphene based display meets economic viability. Then we can expect exponential adoption. But a priori prediction is shrouded in uncertainty.

There is an inherent poetic quality to the inner workings of nature and living beings. Certainly synthetic biology should reflect that ;)

I also think you've hit upon something fundamental. The use of light and photons as the lowest common denominator in biochemical function. Not just in the optogenetic sense. But as the basic building block in biophysics.

How do you get information out of a living cell without destroying it?

Right now observing neuron function within our brains is limited to tools such as magnetic resonance imaging. But molecular recorders, such as the Crispr Camera system demonstrated here. Provide a mechanism for cells to log their own history. With storage space extensible to a petri-sized population of bacteria totalling billions of gigabytes!

I think the vision is more than data storage however. Synthetic biological constructs typically involve complex and precise steps. By encoding the recipe in biology. It ushers in the path for automating the laboratory workflow.

Movie Replayed From Living Cells' DNA Debuts "Molecular Recorder"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK3dcjBaJyo