Matt Mireles

The Golden Gate. (Taken with Instagram at Fishing Pier at Crissy...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:07:33 -0800

The Golden Gate. (Taken with Instagram at Fishing Pier at Crissy Field)

Photo

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 02:28:00 -0800

Over Regulated America

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:38:38 -0800

Complexity costs money. Sarbanes-Oxley, a law aimed at preventing Enron-style frauds, has made it so difficult to list shares on an American stockmarket that firms increasingly look elsewhere or stay private. America’s share of initial public offerings fell from 67% in 2002 (when Sarbox passed) to 16% last year, despite some benign tweaks to the law. A study for the Small Business Administration, a government body, found that regulations in general add $10,585 in costs per employee. It’s a wonder the jobless rate isn’t even higher than it is.

"Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you..."

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:08:12 -0800

“Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.”

- http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:56:53 -0800

Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But that’s a distraction. The real social gap is between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent. The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness.

It’s wrong to describe an America in which the salt of the earth common people are preyed upon by this or that nefarious elite. It’s wrong to tell the familiar underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites.

The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids.

Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.

Smarter Woman = Better Sex

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:43:00 -0800

In a forthcoming paper from the Council on Contemporary Families, Oriel Sullivan, a researcher at Oxford University, reports that the higher a woman’s human capital in relation to her husband — measured by her educational resources and earnings potential — the more help with housework she actually gets from her mate. The degree to which housework is shared is now one of the two most important predictors of a woman’s marital satisfaction. And husbands benefit too, since studies show that women feel more sexually attracted to partners who pitch in.

Speaking of which, educated wives also get better sex, whatever their partner’s educational level, according to the sexuality researchers Pepper Schwartz and Virginia Rutter. They are more likely to receive as well as give oral sex, to use a greater variety of sexual positions and to experience orgasm regularly.

Trend: Men Are Starting to Like Educated Women

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:38:57 -0800

Studying national surveys on mate preferences,David M. Buss, a psychologist at the University of Texas, and his colleagues found that in 1956, education and intelligence were together ranked 11th among the things men sought in a mate. Much more important to them was finding a good cook and housekeeper who was refined, neat and had a pleasing disposition. By 1967, education and intelligence had moved up only one place, to No. 10, on men’s wish lists.

But over the past 30 years, these prejudices have largely disappeared. By 1996, intelligence and education had moved up to No. 5 on men’s ranking of desirable qualities in a mate. The desire for a good cook and housekeeper had dropped to 14th place, near the bottom of the 18-point scale. The sociologist Christine B. Whelan reports that by 2008, men’s interest in a woman’s education and intelligence had risen to No. 4, just after mutual attraction, dependable character and emotional stability.

Dinner w/ @hobolovemojo & @snboyle (Taken with Instagram at...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:38:29 -0800

Dinner w/ @hobolovemojo & @snboyle (Taken with Instagram at Park Tavern)

"Almost anything you build on the web has already been tried in one form or another. This should not..."

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:18:00 -0800

“Almost anything you build on the web has already been tried in one form or another. This should not deter you.”

Human Learning, Machine Learning

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The fundamental mode of learning of human beings is experiential. Book learning is a layer on top of that. Most knowledge, especially that having to do with physical, perceptual, and emotional experience is not explicit, never written down. It is tacit. We cannot say all we know in words or how we know it. But if human knowledge, especially knowledge about human experience, is largely tacit, i.e., never directly and explicitly expressed, it will not be found in books, and the Kurzweil approach to knowledge acquisition will fail. It might be possible to produce a kind of machine as idiot savant by scanning a library, but a judge would not have any more trouble distinguishing one from an ordinary human as she would with distinguishing a human idiot savant from a person not similarly afflicted. It is not in what the computer knows but what the computer does not know and cannot know wherein the problem resides.

-Mitch Kapor

Gorgeous night in SF. (Taken with Instagram at Pioneer Park)

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:13:09 -0800

Gorgeous night in SF. (Taken with Instagram at Pioneer Park)

The New Renaissance

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:03:16 -0800

Silicon Valley is more of a state of mind than a physical location. It has no large monuments, magnificent buildings or ancient heritage. There are no tours of companies or venture capital firms. From Santa Clara to South San Francisco it’s 45 miles of one bedroom community after another. Yet what’s been occurring for the last 50 years within this tight cluster of suburban towns is nothing short of an “entrepreneurial explosion” on par with classic Athens, renaissance Florence or 1920’s Paris.

Me and the dog. #snuggle (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:48:05 -0800

Me and the dog. #snuggle (Taken with instagram)

Humanoid: Accuracy and Fraud on mTurk (Case Study)

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:12:58 -0800

Humanoid: Accuracy and Fraud on mTurk (Case Study):

gethumanoid:

Through algorithmic analysis, Humanoid’s software identified 61 workers (8% of the workforce) engaged in fraud and banned them as a result. Once fraudsters were weeded out, mTurk workers generated 78% “per data field” accuracy.

Through applying various quality assurance and improvement techniques, Humanoid ultimately delivered an accuracy of 98% to Fooducate.

Organization Man, 2012

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:22:00 -0800

This seems to be a moment of fervent protest movements that are ultimately vague and ineffectual.

We can all theorize why the intense desire for change has so far produced relatively few coherent recipes for change. Maybe people today are simply too deferential. Raised to get college recommendations, maybe they lack the oppositional mentality necessary for revolt. Maybe people are too distracted.

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Effective rebellion isn’t just expressing your personal feelings. It means replacing one set of authorities and institutions with a better set of authorities and institutions. Authorities and institutions don’t repress the passions of the heart, the way some young people now suppose. They give them focus and a means to turn passion into change.

Molester proof. (Taken with Instagram at Civic Center Plaza...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:34:22 -0800

Molester proof. (Taken with Instagram at Civic Center Plaza Playground)

Management strategy session. (Taken with Instagram at...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:45:28 -0800

Management strategy session. (Taken with Instagram at SpeakerText)

Happy Birthday @tylerkieft! (Taken with Instagram at Warakubune...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:56:59 -0800

Happy Birthday @tylerkieft! (Taken with Instagram at Warakubune Sushi Restaurant)

"For tech news, I’ve tried pretty much everything new that comes along, and for the past four..."

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:19:34 -0800

“For tech news, I’ve tried pretty much everything new that comes along, and for the past four or five years now, nothing beats the duo of Techmeme and Hacker News for me.”

"Foxconn has managed to make a leviathan manufacturing company as nimble and hungry as any Silicon..."

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:37:35 -0800

“Foxconn has managed to make a leviathan manufacturing company as nimble and hungry as any Silicon Valley startup. And as we know better than any other place in the world, nimble and hungry can beat nearly anything.”

- Sarah Lacy,

Why China Wins