You and your research a stroke of genius: striving for greatness in all you do byR.W. Hamming Little has been written on managing your own research (and very littleon avoiding other people managing yo
I get a couple emails every week asking how I manage to “do it all” or “balance my schedule”, or how I find the time and motivation to work on so many projects, which makes me think people have a real
Helen Frankenthaler, Madame Butterfly, 2000 This is the first post in a series where I explore how love hurts and why. I’ve been in a relationship for a while, but before that I dated for several year
When I was a teenager I often used fantasy as a vehicle for escapism. Some people, when they fantasise, think about sex or dragons or wildly unlikely events like winning the lottery. I fantasised abou
A new $100 million complex built by the University of Toronto will house artificial intelligence and biotech companies. Credit... Brendan Ko for The New York Times Toronto, the Quietly Booming Tech To
Comparing the Same Project in Rust, Haskell, C++, Python, Scala and OCaml During my final term at UWaterloo I took the CS444 compilers class with a project to write a compiler from a substantial subse
The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup. But giving founders an idea almo
About me I’m on sabbatical (supported by Emergent Ventures ). Previously, I led work in science (ML for drug discovery), public health (US COVID response), and AI with major US federal agencies at Pal
[ Editor’s note : At nearly 7,000 words, you probably don’t want to try reading this on an iDevice. Bookmark it and come back later.] Imagine something a wee bit outside your comfort zone. Nothing sca
People ask me about processes all the time. Planning processes, performance review processes, OKRs, et cetera. I think it’s because I was once a COO and people have this vision of COOs as process fien
Theses on Sleep created: 2022-02-10 ; modified: 2023-01-29 Table of Contents Summary: In this essay, I question some of the consensus beliefs about sleep, such as the need for at least 7 hours of slee
What would happen if you gave up your free will? Published in Debugger · 9 min read · Dec 16, 2020 -- Photo: Akwice / Pexels A lgorithms control more of our experiences than ever before. What we watch
Summary This paper introduces a new NFT primitive: Martingale shares, or "Mortys." Mortys are synthetics representing fractional ownership of classes of NFTs. They do not require buyouts or oracles, b
This post also appears on Medium . 12–15 entrepreneurs, driven by entrepreneurial energy and passion for a vision, and a little bit of luck, could change the climate crisis into societal transformatio
December 13, 2020, updated January 9, 2023 This is a list of things you’re allowed to do that you thought you couldn’t, or didn’t even know you could. I haven’t tried everything on this list, main
I know a brilliant young kid who graduated from college a year ago and now works at a large investment bank. He has decided he hates Wall Street and wants to work at a tech startup (good!). He recentl
This is a horror story. The Challenge Like any normal person, I spend a lot of time lurking in the #support channel of the Uniswap Discord. (Disclosure: Uniswap is a portfolio company of Paradigm.) On
Nov 02 2021 stream of consciousness rough When I was a younger, I participated in many piano competitions and festivals where each of the competitors would take turns playing a repertoire of songs in
In years of writing and talking to people about dating the biggest mystery to me has been that most single people seem to spend so little effort on their dating lives. They’d tell me that finding a pa
Research as Understanding October 17, 2021 I misunderstood the nature of research for most of my life, and this prevented me from doing any. I thought significant research came from following the scie
I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion . Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion I’ve seen. David and Chris are two of the most impressive founders and builders (in the sense of b
About me This is about me as a person. , where you’ll find a bio, press links and speaking information. The basics I currently live in Brooklyn, where I’m building a sense of home in the Fort Greene n
Hey everyone! Hi! I’m here! I hope you’ve all had a great start to the year, and please excuse my absence for a good long while. I’m back quickly to say hello, and share what I’ve been working on with
A common defense for conventional wisdom is that it has withstood the test of time. And lots of advice is timeless, or what you could describe as Lindy . Eat your vegetables, for example. But some adv
Hello everyone! Two notes: First, I’m hiring for a couple of very special roles , to work closely with me on crypto products at Shopify. See the end of this newsletter to learn more. Second: Today’s n
Welcome to the 1,265 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since last Monday! Join 47,388 smart, curious folks by subscribing here: Today’s Not Boring is brought to you by… Rows In March, I wrote
by Jason Crawford · April 16, 2021 · 18 min read To fully understand progress, we must contrast it with non-progress. Of particular interest are the technologies that have failed t
“History is hard to know … it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understan
Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse? Written: 19 Jul 2021 by Jeremy Howard Background GitHub Copilot is a new service servicio from GitHub and OpenAI, described as “Your AI pair par programmer”.
It’s Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals-- the Eastern Conference champion Cleveland Cavaliers are in the middle of a staggering comeback against the defending NBA champion and Western Conference champion G
In January 2020 I closed a $5.1M seed round, my first financing for my first company. I’ve closed another ~$6M since then. This is how I raised that first round. Why I’m writing this There are fewer e
« Cleanliness Orientation “Nice Guy” is a pejorative label used almost exclusively to make fun of men who express frustration at the “unfairness” of the romantic world for good, kind-hearted guys. It
Facebook AI Research has built and open-sourced BlenderBot 2.0, the first chatbot that can simultaneously build long-term memory it can continually access, search the internet for timely information,
One of the most influential economics of innovation papers from the last decade is “ Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find ” by Bloom, Jones, Van Reenen, and Webb, ultimately published in 2020 but in earli
Samy didn't want to be everyone's hero. He didn't even want new friends. But thanks to a few clever lines of code, in less than a day, he became the "hero," and a "friend," to more than a million peop
This article is also posted on Medium. Click here to view on Medium. Initially, I wanted to write an article explaining to people how they could currently earn 15%+ annual yield on their USD with cryp
Becoming an educated citizen starts with understanding the lineage of your beliefs. For example, look at this iconic line from one of America’s founding documents: “ We hold these truths to be self-ev
After a disastrous 2020, a lot of us have the climate crisis on their mind. But if you're like I was, you have no idea of how to get started. I've only been at it for a couple of months, but for me, b
Note: Some of these questions are now answered in much more depth in mybook, Weaving the Web. Adults, see also: the main FAQ . Answers for Young People Doing a report? Want to figure out how the web w
You can link to anything on the web. That’s a strength. And yet the right to link has been dragged into court on a regular basis for decades. Why is that? The hyperlink comes with an implicit promise.