Quantum Computing without the Hype
Several weeks ago, I had a great conversation with Sebastian Hassinger about the state of quantum computing. It’s exciting–but also, not what a lot of people are expecting. I’ve seen…
The General Purpose Pendulum
Pendulums do what they do: they swing one way, then they swing back the other way. Some oscillate quickly; some slowly; and some so slowly you can watch the earth…
D-Day in Kyiv
My experience working with Ukraine’s Offensive Cyber Team By Jeffrey CarrMarch 22, 2022 When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, I had been working with two offensive cyber operators from…
Epstein Barr and the Cause of Cause
One of the most intriguing news stories of the new year claimed that the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is the “cause” of Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and suggested that antiviral medications or…
The Human Web
A few days ago, I recommended that Tim O’Reilly invite someone to our next FOO Camp. I thought she had been to a prior FOO event, though I didn’t meet…
Andy Warhol, Clay Christensen, and Vitalik Buterin walk into a bar
In 1962, Daniel Boorstin crystallized a notion that had been around since at least the 1890s, writing of the new kind of celebrities: “Their chief claim to fame is their…
Remote Teams in ML/AI
I’m well-versed in the ups and downs of remote work. I’ve been doing some form thereof for most of my career, and I’ve met plenty of people who have a…
The Quality of Auto-Generated Code
Kevlin Henney and I were riffing on some ideas about GitHub Copilot, the tool for automatically generating code base on GPT-3’s language model, trained on the body of code that’s…
Two economies. Two sets of rules.
At one point early this year, Elon Musk briefly became the richest person in the world. After a 750% increase in Tesla’s stock market value added over $180 billion to…
Code as Infrastructure
A few months ago, I was asked if there were any older technologies other than COBOL where we were in serious danger of running out of talent. They wanted me…