This post contains the supplemental content for this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning. Some people prefer fewer stories in each show while others prefer more, so I’ve solved that problem by keeping the main show tightly curated and making all the extra stories and links available to members here. It’s basically an unabridged version of the newsletter for…
A Visual of the U.S. Generations
Click image for full size. I get annoyed when I have to figure out the different U.S. generations’ start and end years. I end up Googling 37 different sites—all of which disagree somewhat—and then end up using a set of numbers for that particular piece. Which I then forget the next time. Plus there aren’t really any good…
What is Everyone In Consumer Tech Racing Towards?
I wrote The Real Internet of Things to answer the question of where all this consumer tech was eventually going to lead us. I think I mostly captured it there, but wanted to summarize here. I’m not sure where Microsoft is in this, and neither is anyone else. Right now we basically have Apple and Google fighting for…
A Simple Explanation of the Differences Between Meltdown and Spectre
Many people have pinged me asking for a dead-simple explanation of the differences (and similarities) between these two attacks. Here’s an extremely basic summary: Meltdown applies to Intel and Apple processors and takes advantage of a privilege escalation flaw allowing kernel memory access from user space, meaning any secret a computer is protecting (even in the kernel) is…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 106
This post contains the supplemental content for this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning. Some people prefer fewer stories in each show while others prefer more, so I’ve solved that problem by keeping the main show tightly curated and making all the extra stories and links available to members here. It’s basically an unabridged version of the newsletter for…
Raw Water is the Latest Example of Lupus Liberalism
High-profile Bay Area denizens are skipping tap water in favor of drinking unfiltered, untreated, and expensive “raw” water that comes straight out of the ground, Nellie Bowles reports for The New York Times.Source: ‘Raw water’ is a pseudo-scientific craze that could make you sick – The Verge The first time I wrote about Lupus Liberalism was in reference…
My Thoughts on the Flu Shot
Ok, enough people have asked me about this that I’ll answer here. And please know that I’m not a doctor, a flu specialist, or any kind of medical professional. This is just my own line of reasoning. So, I accept the science that you can’t get the flu from the shot, but anecdotally I’ve gotten sick almost every…
It’s Wrong to Fearmonger on IoT Security
January 9, 2017 — Bruce responded to my criticism in the best way possible. In this blog post, Bruce Schneier is adding to what I’ve been complaining about for a while now in InfoSec—a massive tone of fear and panic around IoT technology and its interaction with humans. Listen to the audio version of this essay. “Everyone wants…
Two Alien Space Forces That Almost Certainly Exist
I was watching the Black Mirror the other night and remembered one idea and had another one. These are both making the not-insignificant assumption of faster-than-light travel. I think there is an extremely high chance that two different types of space force exist in our universe. A force that listens for early civilizations sending out beacons, similar to…
Unsupervised Learning’s Best Links of 2017
This is a special, supplemental content post for site members looking back at the most popular Unsupervised Learning stories of 2017. I basically went through every newsletter and extracted the most clicked stories, and then distilled them that down to this list. How to Email Like a CEO The Future of AppSec Testing A Guided Digital Security Planning…
The Real Internet of Things: Acknowledgments
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. Thanks to Saša Zdjelar, Andrew Ringlein, and Jason Haddix for reading various versions and fragments of this text. Your input and support throughout this precarious first-book experience was deeply felt and appreciated. Thanks especially to Saša for enthusiastically talking through many…
The Real Internet of Things: Colophon
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. San Francisco CA, London UK, Newark CA 2016 macOS Sierra Vim Markdown Pandoc Zomby, Glitch Mob, Technoboy, Ratatat, Cryptex, Behemoth, Opeth, Gojira CHAPTER NAVIGATION
The Real Internet of Things: Afterword
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. There are many who will read this book and see nothing but dystopia. In certain moods, I’m one of those people. What’s important to understand, however, is that I’m not conjuring this reality into existence. I’m not enabling it to happen.…
The Real Internet of Things: What Does It All Mean
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. So we’ve talked through the various concepts. But what does this all get us? How is this the future of technology and humanity? There have been three main themes throughout this book: That we can predict the future of technology through…
The Real Internet of Things: Summary of Concepts
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. We covered a lot of ideas here, so let’s just review the main points. There are basic trends in technology that we can see crystallizing: centralized to peer-to-peer, forced to natural, obvious to invisible, manual to automatic, periodic to continuous, scheduled…
The Real Internet of Things: Details and Examples
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. Each of the chapters you’ve read so far have introduced a single concept per section. I did this to make the concept crisp and simple, which isn’t possible if you start talking about how it might be implemented. In this section…
The Real Internet of Things: Peer-to-peer Value Exchange
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. We’ve talked about how the future of work is largely person-to-person interaction mediated by a daemon-powered tech layer, but the peer-to-peer model goes far beyond employment. What daemonized peer-to-peer really enables is less reliance on centralized institutions. If you are in…
The Real Internet of Things: Desired Outcome Management
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. Now that we’ve talked about the infrastructure for collecting, analyzing, and presenting information, we can move on to a concept I call Desired Outcome Management (DOM). The assumption underpinning DOM is the simple claim that we want to improve things but…
The Real Internet of Things: Getting Better at Getting Better
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. Once we are powered by realtime data and the infrastructure that makes use of it, the intelligence of our algorithms will become paramount. Two areas seem particularly promising: machine learning and evolutionary algorithms. Machine Learning Machine Learning is basically the upgrade…
The Real Internet of Things: The Four Components of Information Architecture
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. There are many different information technologies that will be invented and adopted in the coming decades, but I believe there are four (4) primary categories that they will all fall into. Realtime Data Data Transfer Analysis Algorithms Presentation Interfaces Realtime Data…
The Real Internet of Things: The Future of Work
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. Daemonization will fundamentally alter how people work. Businesses will continue shedding human jobs because humans will become increasingly costly, inconsistent, and low-quality compared to algorithms. The future of work is the exchange of value between individuals and groups of individuals, which…
The Real Internet of Things: Businesses as Daemons
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. The algorithm is the centerpiece of expertise. It’s ultimately the way of doing something, and that’s what makes one offering better than another. In the past, the core algorithm of a business has been combined with a massive number of other…
The Real Internet of Things: Human Enhancement
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. The combination of daemonization and digital assistants will have another application (beyond providing monitoring for safety) that will prove extremely compelling: They will give people extraordinary powers of perception, knowledge, and even action. As you move through the world on a…
The Real Internet of Things: Omniscient Defender
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. We’ve already discussed the concept of continuous advocacy, whereby the digital assistant is constantly studying the world, curating, and presenting you context-sensitive data that might help you in your life. But there’s another use case for your digital assistant being continuously…
The Real Internet of Things: Algorithmic Experience Extraction
These are published chapters from my book The real Internet of Things, published on January 1st, 2017. Connecting algorithms to sensors is going to have a profound impact on how we parse reality, and this effect will be magnified exponentially as people start lifecasting. Lifecasting, as I wrote about in 2008, is where a significant percentage of the…
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