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The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made
There was a time in my life when I played quite a bit of basketball. I was leading engineering at a start-up in Scottsdale, AZ, my wife was…
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What Math Do You Need for Physics?
Chad Orzel has a very sensible piece at Forbes, headlined What Math Do You Need For Physics? It Depends, which addresses the question of what math a physicist like him (experimental AMO physics) re…
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A VR Cycling Experience for $40
I’ve made an Arduino thing that can wirelessly talk to a mobile device over BLE and can now meter the revolutions of a wheel with an optical tachometer. I’m using these two hardware fea…
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I'm Writing a Book on Security
I’m writing a book on security in the highly connected Internet-of-Things world. Tentative title: Click Here to Kill Everybody Peril and Promise in a Hyper-Connected World There are two underlying metaphors in the book. The first is what I have called the World-Sized Web, which is that combination of mobile, cloud…
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Why Haters Hate: Kierkegaard Explains the Psychology of Trolling in 1847
“Showing that they don’t care about me, or caring that I should know they don’t care about me, still denotes dependence.”
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The Moon Illusion, an Unsolved Mystery
physics, history of science, pseudoscience, hoaxes, writing, education, skepticisism, humor, quotes, illusions, 3d stereo photography.
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“Write Every Day” Is Bad Advice: Hacking the Psychology of Big Projects
A Flawed Axiom Write every day. If you’ve ever considered professional writing, you’ve heard this advice. Stephen King recommends it in his instructional memoir, On ... Read more
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“Your program is stupid. It doesn't work,” my wife told me (2010)
<img src="http://stevehanov.ca/blog/wheel1.png"/>
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My Journey From Blindness to Building a Fully Conversational User Interface
Apps are a nightmare for the visually impaired. So when I started losing my sight, I decided to fix that.
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The Leica Q: A six month field test
An extensive review of the Leica Q camera — taken on a six month test in the field, in multiple shooting scenarios and multiple environments.
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Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better
Become aware of bad habits that make you less productive and learn how to break them with proper time management skills.
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London vs San Francisco – back and forth
This site is mainly a storage cupboard for things I've tinkered with along the way, such as:
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How becoming a pilot made me a better programmer
Two years ago I trained for my private pilot license over the course of nine months. Besides be...
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Toward an exploratory medium for mathematics
The world's oldest complete piece of surviving music is the 3,400-year-old Hurrian cult hymn . The hymn was found inscribed on clay tablets excavated from the ancient city of Ugarit, in modern-day Syria. Sometime after the hymn was composed, the idea of using notation to record music was lost. Writing two millennia…
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My Distributed Systems Seminar's Reading List for Spring 2017
Below is the first draft list of papers I plan to discuss in my distributed systems seminar in the Spring semester. If you have some suggest...
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Liskov's Reading List for Computer Scientists
Barbara Liskov pointed us in her talk at Heidelberg Laureate Forum to some interesting “must-reads” for computer scientists. The talks will be available here: http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/ . I strongly recommend to watch many talks – including hers.
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Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2
(Note: this is the second part of this story. You can read the first part here.) Despite the rejection from 23AndMe, I kept pushing. I applied to all the big hiring websites. Hired rejected me from...
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The best linear algebra books
If you would follow the road to linear algebra here are some trustworthy signposts.
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The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols
AMONG number systems, the hexadecimal system of counting (or 'radix') has a special place in the hearts of programmers, being closely relate...
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How I Deal with Harassment, Abuse, and Crazies in General
Whenever I write about a topic that upsets me, I calm myself by illustrating it with royalty-free, reassuring stock photos. "People are...
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The Importance of Acoustics in Food Storage
Deep in the archives of San Francisco-based Aquarius Records, buried between several days’ worth of “laptop glitchery” and “brutal industro-crunch,” lies this gem: Insect Noise in Stored Foodstuffs , (INRA, 2000, CD, 19:98).
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Becoming a Professor
Photo by Daderot [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons When I was first appointed as the director of the MIT Media...
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