Frank Hecker

Which industries will self-driving cars disrupt?

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 12:31:07 -0500

Which industries will self-driving cars disrupt?:

Potentially interesting implications for suburban areas like Howard County.

Inequality and Its Perils

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 23:32:13 -0400

Inequality and Its Perils

Learnable Programming

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 01:18:29 -0400

Learnable Programming:

Will be interesting to see if this ever results in a system one can actually use.

Causality: a chapter by chapter review

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:12:33 -0400

Causality: a chapter by chapter review:

I’ve seen this book mentioned favorably in several places, so it’s nice to see an overview of it.

Building and configuring BIND 9 in a chroot jail

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 18:44:48 -0400

Building and configuring BIND 9 in a chroot jail

Lift Talk Notes - Dancing with Handcuffs: The Changing Geography of Trust in China

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 10:55:20 -0400

Lift Talk Notes - Dancing with Handcuffs: The Changing Geography of Trust in China:

Video of Tricia Wang talk plus notes plus references.

Book: A Futurist's Manifesto

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 13:00:47 -0400

Book: A Futurist's Manifesto:

Unfortunately I don’t think this will answer my own particular questions, like when will ereaders support EPUB3, how best to create standard ebooks with mathematics, and so on.

Top N Twitter Accounts (Academic) to Follow For Genomics

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 13:39:44 -0400

Top N Twitter Accounts (Academic) to Follow For Genomics:

I don’t follow Twitter anymore, but might be a good source of pointers to blogs.

Starting a Django project the right way

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 07:14:12 -0400

Starting a Django project the right way:

“Projects live in a web of best practices for source code management, deployment, testing, and migrations.” (via O’Reilly Radar)

The Slow Web

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 10:10:19 -0400

The Slow Web:

“Real-time interactions happen as they happen. Timely ones, on the other hand, happen as you need them to happen. Some real-time interactions, like breaking news about an earthquake, can be timely. But not all timely interactions are real-time. I’d argue that most are not. And where the Fast Web is built around real-timedness, the Slow Web is built around timeliness.” (Via Paul Kedrosky)

Some additional thoughts: First, this is why I’ve largely abandoned Twitter; it’s not “timely” in the sense described above. Second, this line of thought intersects with Nicholas Carr’s musing on “realtime” in his “realtime chronicles” series of blog posts (google it if interested). Finally, I should think about trying one or more of these services out; I’ve started with Budge, because I do need someone reminding me to floss.

Ten Lessons from Peter Thiel's Class On Startups

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 10:24:37 -0400

Ten Lessons from Peter Thiel's Class On Startups:

A summary of Peter Thiel’s arguments in his Stanford class on startups. Includes a link to the detailed class notes taken by the author of this column. The full set of notes is well worth reading by anyone interested in startups and the future of economic innovation.

Tidy data

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:10:03 -0400

Tidy data:

A proposed approach for formatting datasets for easier manipulation and analysis. I should look into doing this for any future projects of this type.

Shape Escape

Sat, 19 May 2012 22:25:09 -0400

Shape Escape:

I don’t know if this will be useful to me, but I spent some time tracking down the reference so thought I should record it.

The hierarchy of innovation

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:42:17 -0400

The hierarchy of innovation:

Nicholas Carr on why innovation seems to have stagnated: The innovation being rewarded is for improvements at the upper levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. Invent new ways to connect to friends? You win. Invent new technologies that don’t directly impact people’s inner selves? It’s a tough slog.

Some points here: First, the argument is obviously overdrawn, given that innovation in other areas is still occurring and still being rewarded. However Carr’s point is on the *relative* rewards and attention to different areas, and I think in this sense his argument is plausible: Mark Zuckerberg gets on the cover of magazines and has a movie made about himself, while (for example) the folks who invent new energy technologies don’t.

Second, this ties in to my previous comments about Edward Conard’s “we need to direct increased fractions of total income and wealth to innovators” argument. If we take Carr’s argument as true, this would simply cause the “popular” forms of innovation to be even more highly rewarded than they are now, while the “unpopular” forms would still receive less attention.

Finally, Carr’s argument applies to the U.S. and other countries at a similar level of social and economic development. We’d expect it to be less salient for developing countries like China, India, etc., and thus we’d expect to see more attention paid to and innovation occurring at the “lower” levels of technology in such countries, especially with respect to what Carr calls the “technologies of prosperity”. Arguably this is indeed the case.

The Purpose of Spectacular Wealth, According to a Spectacularly Wealthy Guy

Sun, 13 May 2012 19:49:00 -0400

The Purpose of Spectacular Wealth, According to a Spectacularly Wealthy Guy:

Do we need increased inequality to drive increased innovation? Edward Conard makes the case. I haven’t read his book, but right off the bat I can see two problems with this theory in terms of achieving Conard’s stated goal:

First, not everyone capable of great innovation is motivated primarily by money. (This is why there are still theoretical physicists and mathematician who don’t work for hedge funds.)

Second, the more money goes to reward ostensible innovation, the more tempting it will be to people who really do care primarily about money, even to the exclusion of almost everything else, including innovation. Hence it’s likely more effort would go into “innovation” that really isn’t (but has a plausible enough narrative to attract gullible investors), “innovation” that is unproductive or even actively harmful (e.g., many financial “innovations”), and even “innovation” in outright fraud.

These issues may or may not be addressed in Conard’s book—I should take a look at it sometime. But if they’re not addressed then I’ll remain skeptical of this and similar arguments.

Arthur Brooks and Ayn Rand on the Moral Case for Free Enterprise

Tue, 08 May 2012 22:17:46 -0400

Arthur Brooks and Ayn Rand on the Moral Case for Free Enterprise:

The dilemma of the moment in libertarian philosophy: Does justification of social institutions (most notably including the market) rest on their positive effect on the (working) poor (the BHL approach), or rather on a chain of reasoning based on rights of self-ownership, the non-aggression principle, and similar considerations (the “hard libertarian” approach)?

5 Minimalist Static Blog Generators to Check Out

Tue, 08 May 2012 12:03:01 -0400

5 Minimalist Static Blog Generators to Check Out:

Maybe someday I’ll get tired of Wordpress and decide to self-host my own blog again. And if I do, here are some options. (But not Blosxom: been there, done that.)

7 Must-Read Books on Education

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:39:56 -0400

7 Must-Read Books on Education:

Not sure all of these are truly must-reads, but what the hey.

Herbert Gintis Amazon reviews

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:02:51 -0400

Herbert Gintis Amazon reviews:

Hundreds of reviews of books on topics I’m interested in. At first glance definitely looks like a useful resource. (Via Will Wilkinson)

The Academy For Software Engineering

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 23:41:30 -0400

The Academy For Software Engineering:

A new high school in New York City focused on teaching programming.