Category: Blog

  • China Journal, Entry 4. “Raid”

    << CHINA JOURNAL >> Dec 15, ’15, 2:45 AM What. The. Fuck. So our hotel has very thin walls. I was awoken out of a very sound sleep by some guy shouting in Mandarin at the next door over. The guy was forceful but calm at first. Then he barked again, louder and more angrily,…

  • China Trip Journal, Entries 1 & 2

    Below are the first entries in a small journal I’m keeping to chronicle my first trip to China. I’m here on what may be the last school-organized trip I ever go on. We’re currently in Beijing. I flew in this morning from Chicago by way of Seoul. We head to Shanghai in a few days.…

  • The Bitcoin Network is 11000x Faster than the Top 500 Supercomputers Combined

    I had a meeting today with an e-commerce company which believes that they can achieve anonymous shipping through Bitcoin. In it, I’ll be examining particular social structures found in the Bitcoin network. I will also discuss in the meeting of how much I’ve been dabbling in cryptocurrency Australia trading and how lucrative it’s been so…

  • Tragedy Porn

    If it bleeds, it reads. That’s been the rule for a long time. It seems like the morbid appeal of tales of mishap and catastrophe is hardwired, just like interest in the erotic. In both cases, demand has been met by a supply historically constrained by the technological limitations of media and the speed of information. Blue film houses, adult bookstores,…

  • Some Speculation on The Future of Payments in Virtual Reality

    Some Speculation on The Future of Payments in Virtual Reality

    Update: Coincidentally, the day after I published this, London-based software engineer Julius Sweetland published Optikey, which uses iris tracking to let users type and use their computer’s “mouse” hands free. This could be great for those people who don’t have good dexterity. Check out the Optikey wiki on Github. “The ideal payments experience would be an…

  • Jack and Jill Went to Sand Hill…

    Jack and Jill went to Sand Hill to raise their Series A They went from Andreessen to Kleiner and Greylock and then to DFJ Jill spoke of disruption Old term sheets’ destruction And when they will move to the Bay.   Jack said said to VCs “Our app’s the bee’s knees” “I see you have…

  • Does The Internet Have An Image Problem? Maybe

    If a picture is worth 1000 words, then we are living in the most verbose of times. On the average day, more photos will be taken during that 24 hour period than any other 24-hour period before.  The numbers, into which will delve a little bit deeper later on in this paper, are truly staggering.…

  • Does Who You Meet First Matter More? Analyzing VC Influence At The Earliest Stages [Excerpt]

    Note: This is an edited excerpt from a research proposal I wrote for a course on network theory. For the purposes of this post, I did not include any of the sections on the data I would gather or the statistical analysis I would perform. If you have questions or suggestions about data or analysis,…

  • Half-Baked Startup Idea: Bibliographies as a Service

    Since I returned to school to finish the rest of my undergraduate degree, I’ve noticed a particular pain point in the academic process. The bulk of the academic work I have to do for my major comes in the form of research papers and proposals. The biggest problem I have, when it comes to writing…

  • A (Very Incomplete) Conceptual Toolkit for Designing Rebellious Software

    Although Snopes corrected my belief that Bill Gates said in an address to high school students, “Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could,” the idea rings true. For what it’s worth, that quote comes from Charles M. Sykes, author of the 1996 book Dumbing Down Our Kids. But it sounds…