simulations...

I think therefor we compute.

Been thinking about what matters if we're all in a simulation. Is life meaningless? Often times when we run simulations, we do it to extract answers about specific questions, run on software that is more convenient to run in isolation. The answer to the question has some value in order to justify the setup of the virtual machine, or simulation if you will. It's possible we're just cute pets -- an anthill to the next simulation. It's also possible that we have some other value such as a natural resource of some kind. Possibly something expensive or rare.
This lead me to think what's the most rare thing in the simulation? Life or true love, or maybe it's really the shape of 'space' our universe occupies? Those are exceeding rare. If you follow that we compute not only tangible things like what is the distance to the moon on a given date, but create algorithms, and complex thought. Both of which could be the resource in question.
Of course there's no way to prove or even know if this is correct given our limited tools. Working on better tools that show a deeper and more complete understanding of physics, would be a start, and bio-lace would make this all faster.

Ah, life in a simulation.

gender pronouns and science

When I was younger, say in the first or second grade, I reasoned that if I wanted to become a scientist, I had to see gender pronouns as gender neutral. That way I'd never think I was excluded from science, and everything would be fine. I know, logic of a young child. It worked except other girls didn’t think the way I did and were confused that I liked science and didn’t want to play and worse some didn't want to talk to me as I was the weird one that was more interested in science. I just chose to focus on science when I had the chance. The downside is that I was very isolated save a few good friends.

Now days young girls have much more support in staying supported in science, and having a normal social life. If you know of any young one, lift her chin a little higher, and tell her science can move the world. We got to the moon, who knows where we’ll go next. And more importantly she can make it happen.

A fun book for little ones, Flatterland.

Demystifying fundraising - a brief post with resources

No woman or man for that matter should ever feel they are at the whim of a VC because they don't understand the language of venture funding. Thank you Internet!
This is a quick starter in fund raising and getting started. (updated 2021)

Venture Funding

Venture Deals: How to be smarter than your lawyer and venture capitalist - it covers the nuts and bolts of the mechanics of funding: term sheet terms, capable forecasts, and negotiation.

A now free class: Venture Deals, Venture Deals (updated link 2020)
By Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
I took this class when it wasn't free. This is The class to learn about funding. It's a thorough look at the entire process of funding raising for an entrepreneur and gives insight about the VCs perspective to enable the entrepreneur to best find the best matching VC/fund, which deal structure and cover all stages of fund raising.

Open Startup Legal Docs

Use your own common sense, consult an expert regarding the context in how you plan to use, or which one or parts of one would best fit your needs.
There's a whole host of docs online from all the majors, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Orrick, Cooley
http://startuplawyer.com/venture-capital/y-combinator-open-sources-funding-documentsventure-lawyers-leave-office-early
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4122412
http://www.openlawlab.com/2014/08/05/githubbing-law/

YC Startup School

Most of the resources/topics/tips/techniques below are superseded by the lectures for the YC (Summer) Startup School. http://www.startupschool.org/. I do keep a listing of the underlying resources as they are still referenced by entrepreneurs in the SUS curriculum. And visit the library: https://www.ycombinator.com/library

Stanford CS 183b

This is based on the Stanford Computer Science class on Entrepreneurship. It's a video lecture format by notable Entrepreneurs and Stanford Alumi based on the class taught by Peter Thiel and later transcribed by Blake Masters.

How to Start a Startup

 https://blakemasters.tumblr.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup 

Other additional lectures are archived at Sam Altman's site: http://startupclass.samaltman.com

Specifically about starting a startup product conducting the search for a viable product with an initial MVP -Technology Entrepreneurship

Beside the resources mentioned above, here's other blogs and resources by industry notables with great advice, who I felt honestly are looking for the best of breed entrepreneur no mater what form-factor you're in.

Resources

Jessica Livingston https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/, http://www.startupschool.org/
Paul Graham YC co-founder
Fred Wilson  Union Square Ventures
Andreessen Horowitz
Steve Blank
Eric Ries, http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/, http://theleanstartup.com/
Arlan Hamilton https://www.itsaboutdamntime.com/
Stanford eCorner: https://ecorner.stanford.edu
YC Startup School Library: https://www.ycombinator.com/library

Nope, Still wage disparity in Tech

The Quartz article had a very catchy title of “There is no gender gap in tech salaries”. Unfortunately that statement although catchy, and wishful-thinking, it can’t be applied to all of the technology sector as it can’t be proven from a single study of 14,000 new graduates freshly hired in the year 2009.

This is a contentious issue, we need more data to find out if, and how radical is the wage difference. The AAUW report was on the DoE Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study 2009 that sampled about 14000 new graduates compared to the US Census reports there are about 6M degree holding census respondents in the 25-29 age group. What would be great is if we can get the US census information broken out by gender. I’ve only seen the data by decade groups by age, i.g.: 20-24, 25-29 years old groups. I’d love to see some STEM group that conducts similar survey data and prompt them to fully break out this data as well as poll women from groups like IEEE,  ACM, Grace Hopper/Anita Borg Institute, WITI, SWE, AWIS, SVforum, etc…

Down to the Numbers

The numbers quoted in the Quartz article begged closer inspection as the graphs quoted from the AAUW study seem to counterintuitive. It seems weird that employment by major should differ from employment by occupation. In page 14 and page 17 of the AAUW study, employment by major and gender is reversed then employment by occupation, earning for engineers and eng tech, is 55,142 for men, and 48,493 for women yet Engineers is listed as the same for men and women at 55,046.

I pulled the raw stats from Department of Education that conducted the study. The DoE stats tool recommended I change my weighting to limit it down from 14600 to 13500. This it to account for data points in the follow-on study from 2012. The numbers from the AAUW study doesn't seem to lineup.

Here's a link to the stats, and DoE table generation information.

For 2009, women made more in Health Care Professionals, Physical Scientists, Other Educators, post secondary Educators, Social Scientists, and Social Service Professionals.

They were statistically the same in Business/Legal Support, PK12.

Men are shown in orange and Women in blue

For 2012, women made more in Health Care Professionals, Physical Scientists, and Post Secondary Educators. They were statistically the same in PK12 and Social Service Professionals.

Men are shown in orange and Women in blue

Women engineers in 2009 made 81% compared to male engineers. And women engineers increased to 88% in 2012 compared their male counterparts.

I wish there was no wage disparity. The fact that there is wage disparity doesn't stop me from personally pushing my envelope. That is what I hope inspires young women to keep going. Those that pursue and achieve excellence will be rewarded. I've been very lucky to find male allies in the workforce such that I felt I was fairly compensated. In times that I didn't feel that I would be fairly compensated, it would cause me to take a hard look at the team, and ask is it worth it? Is their culture hard driving and fair? Do they value correctness more than favoritism? Being a monitory has benefits, I been sought out by diverse teams, i.g., one of the co-founders was a openly gay man. They were one of the nicest bunch of people I've interviewed. 

It's 2016 already. I'm going back to my much needed research as I've taken too much time to talk about something that shouldn't exist. We're all humans, and if we do the same job, and have the same skills, we should be paid the same.

Imposter syndrome and tactics

I attended a Womens in Operations brunch recently for a equality-centric social network company. I was struck at how all of us had actually experienced imposter syndrome (a syndrome where you believe you don't deserve the benefits of hard work despite how you actually put in the hard work), and that it was still relevant to junior engineers. I was so baffled. I thought my experience was isolated and not current. I thought we had solved this problem, simply read LeanIn, practice  emotional self-regulation, talk to colleagues and we're all good. Sadly no, we haven't solved this as junior engineer was asking about it 2015.

More on the syndrome see the nice write up at Psychology Today and LeanIn.

Here's a tactic to defeat the syndrome and one of it's underlying causes not well covered online. If you're feeling the effect, a way to stop the effect is remember and vocalize your passion. Dive into your expertise and explain the aspects that you are most passionate about, the how and why the system or components work the way they do: in short geek out over your expertise. This will put your brain back into problem solving mode, as well as let you reaffirm all the reasons why you know the system or components, thus proving to yourself that you are an expert. Additionally since you've done the work, you do deserve it's benefits.

I've noticed that sometimes colleagues exacerbate this syndrome inadvertently or deliberately by ignoring or silencing female colleagues and their ideas. Unwinding why other colleagues may have ignored female colleagues or their ideas, could be because the idea wasn't conveyed in an expert and firm manner, or body language undermined the delivery and showing collapse of confidence. If that's a case, the TED talk by Amy Cuddy that explains body language and how to build or re-establish confidence.

With knowledge applied, we'll stop having the imposter syndrome preventing people from achieving their goals and dreams.

about moi

This is my personal blog on random science, facts and funzies. My background is in UNIX system administration. I'm a science nerd from way back.

I'm from the Bay Area. I've traveled a bit to some of the worlds great museums - Louvre, British Museum, VA, Museo di Roma, Musei Capitolini, Galleria, dell'Accademia di Firenze, Uffizi, British Science Museum, California Academy of Sciences and Exploratorium.

I'm working on a smart wearable that combines deep learning and hopefully much smaller hardware to make other wearables less intrusive.

I'm interested in audio hardware, deep learning, physics, math, chaos, sound, optics, wearables, getting tech to be less intrusive, green tech, global warming, entrepreneurship, women in STEM, all things STEM, and equality.

If you're in the Bay and want to talk about any of these or SDC/SmartOS, email.

Staying foolish and hungry. Never the same river once,
~~sa