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Web development in C: Crazy?
Preliminary verdict: crazy like a fox (ish)
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Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application
The start of my sabbatical has given me a moment to reflect on my publications. But my CV only shows a list of neatly cataloged papers: title, authors, conference. Each one appearing no different from another. But how each paper ended up published is its own story, a story about people and opportunity.
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Amazon, Apple, and the beauty of low margins
[As always, I preface any discussion of Amazon and Apple by noting that I own some stock in both companies, and that I worked at Amazon from 1997 to 2004] A lot of folks, especially Apple supporters, like to characterize Amazon as irrational, even crazy, for its willingness to live with low margins
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Python Shortcuts for the Python Beginner
The following are just a collection of some useful shortcuts and tools I've found in Python over the years. Hopefully you find them helpful.
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“Working Too Hard And Not Getting Anywhere”
Continuing the case method on MBA Mondays, I am going to tell a story about a business model pivot that was not a full business pivot. In the lull between Flatiron and Union Square Ventures, I made a few angel investments and the best one was in a company called TACODA that went on to […]
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Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
“I’m an ambitious 19 year old, what should I do?” I get asked this question fairly often, and I now have a lot of data on what works, so I thought I’d share my response. Usually, people are...
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Evading Airport Security
The news is reporting about Evan Booth, who builds weaponry out of items you can buy after airport security. It’s clever stuff. It’s not new, though. People have been explaining how to evade airport security for years. Back in 2006, I—and others—explained how to print your own boarding pass and evade the photo-ID…
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Hyperloop: riding sound’s density peak to exploit the drag equation?
Super short version: if you ride along with a low enough frequency soundwave at the speed of sound, you can trade reduced incoming particle velocity for increased incoming particle density; the dra…
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Tesla's ingenious strategy
Tesla motors has huge ambitions. Tesla founder Elon Musk has said he envisions Tesla as an independent automaker, aimed at eventually mass producing fully electric cars at a price affordable to the average consumer. This is a very difficult goal to achieve for several reasons. If you want to produce cheap cars you…
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"Attrition is a group statistic. It doesn't apply to me."
10 years ago I sat down with my brother. He was about to attend a high attrition special forces course. The vast majority of candidates drop out. Aren't you concerned about the failure rate? ...
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Battlecode: MIT's longest-running hardcore programming competition
As MIT’s Independent Activities Period draws near, I’ve received quite a volume of inquiries from underclassmen about “what should I take?” or “which of these competitions is better?”
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The Cinematography of "The Incredibles"
Here is Part 1 of 3 on a case study of the shot compositions from Pixar's film "The Incredibles, I'll go over how the relationships of all ...
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A Chat With Aaron Swartz
Aaron Swartz , now in his early twenties, rose to internet fame as technology whiz kid a couple of years ago, working on such things as W3C standards or the Creative Commons. He was also blogger behind the very successful Google Weblog. Via instant messenger, I interviewed him on Reddit, activism, Google and more.
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I couldn't wait for the new Mac Pro
For those of you coming from Hacker News wondering why I need OS X it’s because I’m an indie developer that makes this. I’m not sure if it was the after the 4th or 5th time my Macbook Air hard crashed rendering in Final Cut Pro that my planned upgrade timing would need to be brought forward. In any case, the writing…