thedarren

Recently came across buildtheenterprise.org , a site containing a plan to build a starship like the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. Despite some huge technical issues, lemme just come out first and say THANK YOU. Whoever you are, BTE-Dan, thank you for dreaming big. The world needs people to dream bigger. There's been an awful lack of big thinking ever since we put a man on the moon (over 40 years ago!). Neal Stephenson, one of my favorite authors, describes the problem in this talk: Just a warning, if you haven't already watched the above - it's kinda depressing. He mentions how "I saw the best minds of my generation writing spam filters." Okay, I might have worked on Gmail.... Point taken, Neal. Anyway, the Enterprise site lays out a crazy plan to build the friggin' Enterprise . Image credit - Chris Martin of Evil Starship Factory It's got some issues, though. One of the big things that I think is completely glossed over is how to actual...

Disclaimer: The below is satire and is for entertainment purposes only. I don't subscribe to cable. When I moved back to San Francisco last summer, I decided to forgo it, despite my apartment coming equipped with a nice flat-screen tv. I do, however, watch the Daily Show pretty regularly, so a few months ago I decided to upgrade my setup (i.e., watching on a 13" laptop screen) so I could start watching like "real television". A quick Amazon purchase of a 10 foot mini-displayport to HDMI cable with pass-through audio later, and I had achieved an incredible feat of modern technology - I emulated a tv setup from 1995, except this one necessitated a $1200 laptop and an ugly cable draped across the living room. Hooray for modern technology. Moving on. When you watch a show online with ads, you annoyingly start to see the same ads, over, and over, and over again. On the Daily Show, I have an incessant loop of Jack in the Box ("If you love bacon, make it official...

I'm not sure exactly when it was that my brain "broke", but I find it nearly impossible to view products or services without thinking about why they don't work and how they could be made better. It's a constant obsession of mine, but I like tinkering, so it's all good. Case in point: I flew ICN-SFO yesterday on one of my least favorite airlines for long flights. Let's call it Airline X. I chose Airline X for this trip specifically because it was significantly cheaper for my multicity itinerary. I usually like to fly Singapore or Asiana, both of which are fantastic, but it was a bit too pricey this time around. Anyway, the experience on Airline X is consistently poor compared to the market leaders. What strikes me the most about it is that every time I fly them, it seems as if it's the crew's first day on the job. That is, they've clearly done the job dozens, hundreds, or thousands of times, but nothing is smooth. For instance, it's a co...

There's a disturbing trend that I'm seeing more and more of lately in Silicon Valley, and it's the commoditization of engineering talent in the minds of non-engineers. I'm not sure what they're teaching in business schools these days, but I keep meeting freshly-minted MBAs who "have a great idea and just need some devs to implement it". So lemme just throw this out there: If you're an "ideas guy", and "just need a couple of engineers" to build your company, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. See, for instance, this recent TechCrunch article which blithely implies that engineers are "coding themselves into irrelevance", and before long, "the business founder [will have] the advantage that today's technical founders enjoy." Huh? Guess what - in healthy companies, it's not such an adversarial relationship. If it is, then you're doing something wrong . There is no greater turn-off to a prospective tech co-...

Couldn't sleep last night, and watched the entire extended interview with Grover Norquist on the Daily Show. It was mostly about tax policy, but towards the end they briefly touched on Medicare reform, since the Norquist tax pledge really has nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with policy reform. The claim from Norquist was that the Republicans' plan is a reasonable reform proposal because Alice Rivlin, former director of the CBO and the OMB, helped co-write it. Jon Stewart replied that he doesn't think Alice Rivlin is a reasonable person. To the internets! I actually found the proposal from the Brookings Institution and read it. To their credit, there's a whole section devoted to why the proposal is a bad idea. It's illuminating. It all comes down to marketing. What used to be called "vouchers" is now called "premium support". To make a long story short (and a complicated issue way over-simplified), voucher programs would rep...

It all started innocently enough. Sally was enjoying a cup of sustainable coffee at the corner cafe when she spotted it. ZOMG. Cutest. Cat. Ever. An explosion of uncontainable fluff wrapped in a hamburger bun sweater with a toy iPhone 4S hanging around its neck. My friends have to see this, thought Sally. And thus it began. Not with a virus, nor a worm, but a cat. An insanely cute cat. The picture that brought down the Internet was captured at 12:21PM on December 21, 2012 with a slightly abused white iPhone 4S. It went vintage before going viral, cause honestly, sepia makes everything better. And off it went. Sally's Instagram auto-posted to her Facebook, where 237 of her closest friends (she has 1,649 friends, but I mean, at least  400 are just, you know, on there) immediately saw The Cat. Sally's above-average hotness meant that her re-share rate hovered around 10%, and sure enough, 26 of the initial viewers re-shared to their combined total of 4,013 friends. The Initia...

Disclaimer: Don't take medical advice from engineers. The New York Times has an article out today about the side effects of statin drugs:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/health/fda-warns-of-cholesterol-drugs-side-effects.html . Seems that the more time that goes by, the less clear it is that statins are actually worth taking. I'm not going to claim that statins don't help - if you're interested in that line of thought, read this , for example. But I do think the massive over-prescription of statins endemic in Western medicine is illustrative of the problem of treating symptoms rather than causes. The line of thinking goes something like this: People with heart disease have been found to have elevated levels of bad cholesterol (LDLs - which incidentally aren't even cholesterol, but instead transport  cholesterol). Statins lower LDLs. Thus people should take statins in order to reduce risk of heart disease. The goal, of course, is to go from this logically fall...

Had an interesting conversation with a friend last night about innovation. I tend to align pretty squarely with the Peter Thiel school of thought , i.e., that innovation has stagnated massively in relative terms over the past 50 years, and we're generally not solving hard problems anymore. My friend thinks innovation is flourishing because "tools" and "frameworks" have gotten significantly better over the past 10 years or so, allowing people to go from  idea to prototype (or company) in record time. While that's true, I'd argue that this has actually led to a decrease in innovation rather than an increase, because it's so easy to build something silly and turn it into a play company. For instance, most of you have probably seen the parody of stuff that Silicon Valley people say . But I actually hear about companies like this all the time. So today, I'd like to officially announce the pre-alpha release of BurgerFlux ™ , a.k.a Instagram for Hambu...

I'm a bit ashamed to say that prior to Christopher Hitchens' death, I don't think I had seen any of his interviews. I started YouTubing around the other day, and I was amazed at the videos I found. Regardless of whether you agree with his beliefs, it's clear that he was an amazingly vibrant intellectual mind and an incredibly skilled debater. So I was also surprised to discover shortly into the first video that Christopher Hitchens was a stutterer! As a stutterer myself, I possess the strange ability to spot other stutterers that non-stutterers usually can't. I remember once during university, a very prominent politician came to give a talk, and it was clear in her opening remarks that she was a "covert stammerer" (i.e., pauses and substitutes words, but doesn't repeat syllables). I asked my friends afterwards if they noticed anything strange about her speech, and no one did. I told them she was a stutterer, and they were quite surprised. In any ...

I've spent about six months each in Tokyo, Shanghai, and Seoul, and there are some huge differences in cultural norms for personal hygiene and cleanliness between the East and the West. I picked up some good habits there, and look back now with filthy horror on certain breaches of sanitation that are considered normal here in the West. Here are three of the worst offenders: 1) Shoes in the house. Everywhere I've lived in Asia, you take your shoes off as soon as you enter the house. It makes a lot of sense - you've been walking around all day on god-knows-what, and if you then walk all over your home, you've brought all that stuff inside. Take your shoes off - your house will stay cleaner as a result. 2) Street-clothes on the bed. This one really bothers me now. I know tons of people in the States who will sit down in a disgusting city subway, lean back on a grimy seat at the movie theater, go hiking through a dusty forest, whatever, and the first thing they do whe...

I used Siri for the first time a week or so ago, and I was exquisitely underwhelmed. It's basically a somewhat decent speech recognition system attached to a crappy version of Eliza, which was a simple question-and-answer artificial intelligence program written over 30 years ago. All of which begs the question - why do people love it so much? Simply, Apple succeeded by humanizing Siri and then marketing the hell out of it (her?), even so far as to inspire various parodies such as the husband and wife argument . I've watched people use Siri with fascination, trying to tease out "sassy" responses, and searching for Easter eggs beyond what was reported in the press. In fact, I've seen this use case much more than actually useful things. But it's interesting anyway to compare with Google Voice Search, which has been around way longer and shares a similar feature set. Google Voice Search is the best speech recognition system I've personally used. It's b...

Tonight, I finally gathered the courage to watch The King's Speech . Why did I need courage to watch a movie, you might ask? The reason is both simple and intricately complex: I'm a stutterer (Edit: person who stutters; "stutterer" is not who I am, but something that I do from time to time), and I have been for as long as I remember. Well, there it is - I've said it. To be fair, I actually don't remember stuttering when I was little. My first very distinct memory of stuttering was sometime in seventh grade, when I had trouble saying "nosotros" (we/us) in Spanish class. But I also remember knowing I was going to have trouble saying it, because we were going around the room, and I counted ahead to see what I was going to have to say. Which means by that point I was already stuttering. When did it start? That's a question for another day. So why am I publicizing this fact now? First, I'm in the midst of a lifelong attempt to "cure...

I recently got back from a two and a half week trip abroad, and the comparative lack of connectivity was refreshing. I often feel that here in Silicon Valley, we're progressing ever more rapidly to a world in which no one looks up anymore, and relationships and friendships take place entirely in the unfulfilling desert of the virtual. Getting out every now and then is a good way to reset your perspective. For instance, during the nine days I spent in Korea, I had a phone that was "merely" capable of sending text messages and making phone calls (to be fair, it was an iPhone 4, but the 3G was disabled). Knowing that you can't  check your email even if you want to is glorious! I ended up checking my email once or twice a day at the hotel, and didn't miss it. The main thing I really missed was GPS. But believe it or not, it's possible to find things without it. And people tend to be helpful if you ask them for directions! I then went to China, where G+ and Fac...

I decided at the age of 30 that I wanted to learn how to play piano. Unfortunately, that's about 25 years beyond the optimal age if you ever want to get "good". But since I'm fascinated by both neuroscience and music, I figured it was at least worth a shot, plus I'd have the added benefit of being able to observe my brain as it tries to learn this new skill. I think it was this TED talk that finally convinced me to start playing. Benjamin Zander speaks about music and passion, and how classical music can tell a story. At the time, I was living in my friend's basement, and there was a beautiful Kawai grand piano in the living room that went largely unused. One day, I went up to the piano, sat down, and opened one of the books to a random song. Although I knew how to read the notes (at least the ones close to the staff), I couldn't fathom playing two independent parts (left and right hands) simultaneously, while also keeping track of the pedals, tempo, vo...

A couple months ago I needed to get a new phone in Korea, but Galaxy S2 wasn't out yet, and the only carrier willing to sell me a phone was SKT, so I decided reluctantly on an iPhone4. It is to date my most regretted electronics purchase ever, but I'm stuck with it. Here are some reasons why I hate my iPhone 4: 1) It friggin' sucks as a phone. Okay, call me old school, but I firmly believe that voice is by far the best way to convey a lot of information in a short amount of time. And unfortunately, my beautiful iPhone is near worthless as a phone. For some reason, iPhone on SKT is a terrible combination - reception sucks, 3G always drops out, and if I hold my phone like, well, a phone, the call drops. Sure, I can stick a lame bumper on it, but that's like buying a Ferrari and putting cardboard on the doors to protect it from scratches. 2) The UI is great in some places, terrible in others. Why isn't it obvious how to mute an incoming call (I Googled it, but ...

Second post in a series of problems and solutions for Android usability. I'm writing these because I love Android, and if these usability issues are fixed, it'll be even mo betta'. =) 1) No notification on receipt of SMS that needs to be downloaded. WTF? I had a nice argument with the Android team when I was still at Google about something likely related to this. If you receive an MMS that your Android phone can't display, then there's no notification. None. You only notice the new message if you explicitly go into Messages to look for it (or more likely, receive a totally unrelated SMS that alerts you to check Messages). I was told by the Android team that no notification is better than a notification when you can't see a preview of the message. I got far too frustrated arguing with someone who actually believed this to be self-evident, and just gave up (one of many super detailed Android bug reports that never made it past the Android usability gatekeepers...

I think one of the hardest things about Korean (or any language, for that matter) is learning the subtle nuances and differences between grammatical constructions. Typically, when you're learning a new language, you start with super easy, often present tense constructions. We eat food? You go store? I happy. Then you start to learn how to form proper sentences, and learn various tenses: I'm eating food now. She went to the store. I'm happy. For most people, language learning never goes beyond the point of simple sentence construction. But for Korean especially, there are an incredible number of nuances in sentence endings and conjugational forms, and most foreigners either don't use them or use them incorrectly (myself included). Korean is a very indirect language, like Japanese, so simply stating what you think often makes you come across as rude. As a result, there are tons of ways to form "simple" sentences in Korean, all with different nuances. It...

I like my Android phone. It's a quite functional device, and is actually pretty decent for making phone calls (for those of you unfamiliar with a "phone call", imagine a tweet, but longer than 140 characters, and transmitted via human speech). But it has a fair number of usability issues that constantly annoy me. Some have been fixed as the OS has evolved (for example, searching from the Google widget used to only allow vertical mode, but luckily they added landscape mode a while back), but others continue to linger. Here's an incomplete list of some of the usability annoyances I've found, along with simple fixes that would make the experience better. Problem : "Next" and "Done" buttons in text fields. Their behavior is inconsistent at best, confusing at worst. Sure, I know that "Next" moves you to the next text field. But does your grandma know what a text field is? No. So this fails the grandma test. Try handing an Android phone...

One of the super frustrating things for me in learning Korean is the speed at which I'm able to read. It's embarrassingly slow, and makes me feel really stupid whenever I have to read something. I can read in my head faster than I can read out loud, but both are well below "useful" speed. Lately I've been able to level up slightly by forcing my brain out of its comfort zone and trying to follow Korean raps. Rapping (which I love) is faster than normal speech, so I figure if I'm able to follow Korean lyrics in a rap as it's going, then eventually I'll be able to actually read. Working well so far, although I can still only get through about half of the subtitles in an average TV newscast. Of course a big part of this is pattern recognition. When first learning Korean, you have to look at each component (jamo) in a character and consciously process how to put them together to sound out the syllable. As you get better, you start to recognize words. And ...

So, I decided to temporarily put my life as an entrepreneur on hold to become ... well, an entrepreneur =). That is to say, I recently started working with a startup back in San Francisco. I say with  and not at  because geographically I am spending part of my time here in Korea and part of my time back in San Francisco. Sure, there are time-zone issues, but in the grand scheme of things, if it's the right fit, that's a very small detail. What made me go back to being gainfully employed? Well, I found an early-stage company doing very cool stuff, literally in the field that I read textbooks about for fun. I have the chance to work on the kinds of problems I always wanted to work on at Google, but was never quite in the right place. That's not to say that I didn't like the work I used to do - working on a product used by millions of people was actually pretty awesome, and adding features that you could show to family and friends who all use your product was pretty cool...