I think one of the best ways to think about the advancement that FaceID represents is to realize that it’s removing an action instead of adding one. True perfection is achieved not when you have nothing left to add, but when you have nothing left to take away. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery So the goal for mobile device…
Archives for October 2017
Unsupervised Learning: No. 99
This is episode No. 99 of Unsupervised Learning—a weekly show where I curate 3-5 hours of reading in infosec, technology, and humans into a 30 minute summary. The goal is to catch you up on current events, tell you about the best content from the week, and hopefully give you something to think about as well… This week’s…
On the Luxury of Abandoning a Nice Corporate Job for the Freedom of Freelancing
I think in the future these are the types of statements from rich people that are going to cause riots in the street. I was just reading the post that this quote came from and I was having feelings. First, it’s a great post. Definitely valuable for anyone looking to up-level from just having a great corporate job…
It’s Not Bias When Artificial Intelligence Tells Us Something True and Uncomfortable
I think many are confused about bias in artificial intelligence. I think what it should mean is when you present training data to an algorithm that doesn’t represent reality. So you thought you were telling the AI how the world really is, but for some sampling-related reason you fail to do that. The result is poor predictive capabilities…
The Difference Between Narcissism and Self-Esteem
Well this explains a lot. Whereas self-esteem tends to be at its lowest in adolescence, and slowly increases throughout life, narcissism peaks in adolescence and gradually declines throughout the lifespan. Therefore, the development of narcissism and high self-esteem show the mirror image of each other throughout the course of human development. Source: Narcissism and Self-Esteem Are Very Different…
The New Luxury of Having Good Information
There’s something of a trend right now to identify various things that only the rich seem capable of these days and calling those luxuries. Some examples include: boredom, creativity, caring about the environment, philanthropy, etc. They’re things that, as it turns out, have a lot of prerequisites—most important among them being time and money. It’s not easy to…
An Idea on How to Build a Conscious Machine
I’ve been consuming a lot of content about AI lately. I’m reading What to Think About Machines That Think, which is a compilation of tons of expert opinions on the topic, and I’ve also read a few other books and follow the a16z and Waking Up podcast where it’s a frequent topic. These inputs don’t make me an…
InfoSec Needs to Embrace New Tech Instead of Ridiculing It
Amazon just announced a new service called Amazon Key where you can install an approved electronic lock and give the Amazon delivery person a one-time use code to put your package inside your door. Listen to the audio version of this essay. The responses are witty, humorous, and predictable. Amazon Key = Nope— Matt Speed (@MatttSpeed) October 25,…
The Life Dashboard
One of the most exciting things that the combination of the Internet of Things and AI will bring us is the concept of a life management and visualization system, or a Life Dashboard. Imagine as a head of household being able to define your family’s goals for education, savings, investments, diet, exercise, media consumption, travel and vacations, etc.,…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 98
This is episode No. 98 of Unsupervised Learning—a weekly show where I curate 3-5 hours of reading in infosec, technology, and humans into a 30 minute summary. The goal is to catch you up on current events, tell you about the best content from the week, and hopefully give you something to think about as well… This week’s…
Maybe the Current Trend For Society is Fragmentation
I’m reading about the situation in Spain, where we’re basically talking about secession. We had Brexit. Now we have the U.S. being torn apart from within by Trump, Russia, and its various internal factions. I wonder if there isn’t a clear overall trend here, which is something like: Income disparity and limited resources cause tension. High immigration in…
Beware of Alternate Meaning Loops
As I write about in the philosophy of Westworld, life is really about meaning loops. They’re the structures that make us want to strive and improve, and that make life matter. Everybody has them. For some people it’s raising kids and being a good parent. For others it’s about becoming famous for their work. Others want to make…
On the Effects of Shaming Sexual Harassers in Hollywood and Tech
The movement happening right now regarding sexual harassment in Hollywood is pushing my emotions around. First we had Weinsein get called out for what must have been decades of behavior that was simply unbelievable. Then we had multiple male friends, including people like Clooney and Tarantino, come out and say that the feel horrible because they should have…
How I Would Build my Life If I Could Engineer It From Scratch
I like to periodically think about long-term goals and whether or not I’m moving towards them. One idea that I stumble into every once in a while related to that is the the question of an ideal life. If I could script my own path, from the very beginning, what would I want it to look like? It…
Personal Sensors Are the Next Breakthrough in Consumer Electronics
I’ve thought for a while now that the next big leap in consumer electronics will be personal sensors, meaning—most importantly—video and audio. If people were just recording video and audio while they walked around, that might have some sort of utility, but probably not much. It’d be more effort than it was worth to sift through the content…
Why I Call Myself an Atheist Instead of an Agnostic
There is much debate in the non-religious community about the word atheist. Is it too strong? Does it do harm? Can anyone really be sure enough to be atheist vs. being agnostic? Etc. I think I have a very simple way of describing why atheism is the right word for not believing in god, and why agnosticism is…
Why I Call Myself a Feminist
A reader emailed me recently commenting on something I wrote about feminism and said the following: Wanting what you and I want doesnt make us feminists, it makes us decent human beings. He has a point, of course, but I see it a bit differently. Here was my response: I think the issue is that these things combine…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 97
This is episode No. 97 of Unsupervised Learning—a weekly show where I curate 3-5 hours of reading in infosec, technology, and humans into a 30 minute summary. The goal is to catch you up on current events, tell you about the best content from the week, and hopefully give you something to think about as well… This week’s…
The 4 Podcasts I Recommend to Everyone
I listen to a lot of audio—probably at least 15 hours a week. And when people ask me about how to get started with listening to podcasts, these are the four I always recommend. Patrick’s background in journalism really crystalizes the excellence of this show. 1. Riskybusiness, by Patrick Gray Risky Business is an information security podcast by…
Russia is Trying to Destroy America, and Here’s How They’ll Do It
There is a lot of fallout around how Russia used Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks to sow dissent within the U.S.—especially around election time—for the tactical aim of getting Trump elected. At the time I thought this was because they wanted to make Trump a major enemy of the world, diminish America’s prominence as a world…
Medium is the Bud Light of Typography
I’ve been working on my new site design and was eager to show off my new typography, so I took a screenshot of the same content in Medium right next to the same content in my new site theme (see above). Remarkably, and to my utter dismay, most people said they liked the left one because, “it was…
It’s Time to Let Go of Our Data
A long time ago, back when you had to go to your living room to use the telephone, there used to be public lists of everyone’s names, addresses, and phone numbers in something called a phone book. A few people asked not to be listed, but most just accepted it as understood that if someone wanted it, your…
On the Meaning of School and Company
I recently learned the origin of the world “school”, and was reminded of the origin of the word “company”. We know school as a place to train for future life—to learn things—and if you’d asked me what its origin was I’m sure I would have said something like, ‘to learn’. It’s not. School comes from Greek, and it’s…
The Reason Business Doesn’t Take InfoSec Seriously
I saw a thread recently where someone was complaining about Dave Kennedy making a hilarious inside joke on CNN without any of the participants knowing. Evidently people on Twitter said this is why InfoSec isn’t taken seriously. Then someone else showed up with this reply, which prompted my response. The reason infosec is not taken seriously is because…
The Difference Between Violence and Terrorism
A lot of people, including @BayoumiMoustafa writing for the Guardian, are saying it’s racist not to call the Vegas gunman a terrorist. Listen to the audio version of this essay. The argument is that if this were a black person, or a Muslim, they would have been labeled a terrorist immediately. The position is particularly specious given the…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 96
This is episode No. 96 of Unsupervised Learning—a weekly show where I curate 3-5 hours of reading in infosec, technology, and humans into a 30 minute summary. The goal is to catch you up on current events, tell you about the best content from the week, and hopefully give you something to think about as well… This week’s…
Unsupervised Learning: No. 95
This is episode No. 95 of Unsupervised Learning—a weekly show where I curate 3-5 hours of reading in infosec, technology, and humans into a 30 minute summary. The goal is to catch you up on current events, tell you about the best content from the week, and hopefully give you something to think about as well… This week’s…
The Invisible Line Between Order and Chaos
The Las Vegas shooting yesterday forced me to write about something I’ve been thinking about for years. It seems entirely too easy to produce chaos in a large society. And in fact if you told me that millions of people would put themselves in metal boxes and fly down a street at nearly 100mph, separated only by their…