thingssophiasays-blog

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Life Update

I live in San Francisco, I have a cool job doing R&D for a tech consulting firm, I've made some amazing friends, and I couldn't be happier. Looking forward to learning a lot in the next couple of years, then hopefully doing something big.

And I used a selfie for my introduction email to my new company, like a boss.

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DUCK! animalshugging:

hug attack

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Amazing

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Last day in China, where most people my age do not know about the Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 4, 1989.

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favorite shot of Budapest, definitely recommend viewing in full size

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Duke in the fog a few weeks ago

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Wait-"cloud computing" is a skill?

Top 50 In-demand Tech Skills 2012

Are you in the know?

Source: Venturebeat

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A small sampling of the 300+ photos I took in Europe over Thanksgiving (thanks for putting up with me babe!).

As you can probably tell, I've recently discovered Camera+ and Befunky. The 8 megapixel camera is definitely my favorite feature of the 4S. Thanks Mom!

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Hah! Not an official Microsoft store, but they did a good job of making it look like it might be.

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What brand equity?

They're not even on the same operating system. Two of those are clearly Windows phones, and others are on Android. Some are probably on a shoddy proprietary OS. Some have keyboards and others don't. Anybody who stops and thinks about it for a second must inevitably come to the same conclusion: utter support nightmare. Whereas an Apple genius knows a few products inside and out, a Samsung support technician probably doesn't know much more than you, since he/she's flipping through the same user manual you are.

You don't "choose" a Samsung phone. You "end up with" a Samsung, by some imperfect storm of price, carrier, ignorance, and trivial aesthetic preference. Sure, it's a valid way to do business. But if I were given the choice, I'd make something exquisite that I could be proud of, every time.

Apple vs Samsung

Pictures from minimally minimal via Daring Fireball

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zanthi:

Korean artist Seo Young Deok’s solo exhibition ‘Dystopia’ took place at the INSA/Arko Art Centre in Seoul during the last week of October and showed his nude sculptures, which he made by linking welded metal chains piece-by-piece.

Amazing exhibition. It's an incredible fusion of two themes with the strongest of contrast: the soft, fleshy, biological form of man with the cold, uniform and discrete units of metal. The units are key. They make this particular exhibition entirely unique from any other metal sculpture of the human form.

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The Most Exciting Things, Made Possible By Technology™

Crowdsourcing

Open-source software (and hardware!)

Machine-learning

Freemium (and other new monetization models)

Algorithmic research

Eliminating arbitrage and inefficiency

Complete world knowledge(!)

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Paper sculptures by Calvin Nicholls.

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Cryptography

Both of my lectures today are about public- and private-key cryptography. The first was about the mathematical foundations, the second is about how it's used in networking and security.  

Love it when my classes intersect like this.

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If you don't keep getting better, you're going to do worse.

Jim Simons