Disqus - Friends of suchire

Re: The Race to Beat Google

BenjaminTseng — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:52:19 -0000

I agree with some of the skeptics here. Good UI or not, to unseat Google you need serious publicity and a database backend that rivals Google's for its reliability and speed. The good UI stuff is simple to conceptualize, but to deploy on a large scale? That's tricky. The core of Google is not only that they've taken very good marginal steps in the directions listed above but also that they have that amazing backend.

Re: Mitt Romney flubs understanding of the VC tax

BenjaminTseng — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 11:18:21 -0000

Just fyi, Romney acted as a leader of the management consultant firm, Bain & Company, but founded the private equity group Bain Capital. The two entities, despite the common name, are completely unrelated entities.

Re: Anything Goes - Magazine - The Atlantic

BenjaminTseng — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:41:12 -0000

I completely agree with #3. My college roommate and I are both fairly neat people -- and yet, the area which was not clearly demarcated, regardless of how generous the two of us were, or how many agreements we had -- was always horribly messy.

Re: Something Fishy - Magazine - The Atlantic

BenjaminTseng — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:09:57 -0000

Long time lurker -- first time poster, but all I can say is -- you guys have libertarian movie nights!?!?!?!

Re: Moving Online

BenjaminTseng — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:22:26 -0000

Laura, make it snarky, and let "anonymous visitors" comment :-)

Eric took the words right out of my mouth. Although it seems that blogs and Wiki's are increasingly converging in terms of functionality, I think it boils down to blogs being more single-person endeavors (in the sense that each entry hypothetically "belongs" to an author) while a Wiki is a more multi-person endeavor (in the sense that each entry is expected to be viewed and edited by multiple people).

And there is one other difference, although it's easily changeable, I detest how standard Wiki interfaces look. Search is a must-have feature, but someone really needs to teach people how to make better looking Wiki's...

Re: Nanosensors: Taking Sensitivity to a New Level

BenjaminTseng — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:08:25 -0000

Mr. Gunn, that's a good point. This isn't my field, but I took a look at the Science paper that this finding was published in. It details two experiments which may be of interest to you:

- The researchers took "unmodified" nanowires and subjected them to a range of pH's from pH=2 to pH=9, and we see minimal impact in conductance until pH ~ 6 (around the Ka of the SiOH coating) when there was a more dramatic increase (due to the SiOH coating becoming de-protonated)
- The researchers designed a calcium ion sensor using Calmodulin attached to the nanowires, but use a negative control to show that the unmodified nanowires did not respond to changes in calcium concentration.

It would then seem that these nanowires are not sensitive to most ions, and are instead, only sensitive to pH. As I mentioned before, this isn't my field, so you'll have to let me know if that's highly unlikely.

Re: Green light | XHIBITING

BenjaminTseng — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:42:08 -0000

Jen, I'm not sure if they've figured it out, but it does seem like a really cool idea!

Re: The netvolution will not be televised

BenjaminTseng — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:22:40 -0000

Hi Anders,

I don't have data to show that the fraction of scientists blogging is shrinking, but even if it weren't true, my point is more about quality rather than quantity:

1. I would maintain, first, that the speed at which the fraction of scientists blogging is growing leaves much to be desired.
2. I would also argue that the quality of scientific blogging is suffering from a general atmosphere of "I won't contribute anything because someone will scoop me".

In all fairness, I probably chose the wrong word -- instead of "more and more", I probably should have used "many".

Re: Why the ranks of chip makers are thinning out

BenjaminTseng — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:27:30 -0000

The Semiconductor IP investment claim is somewhat misleading. Yes, Semiconductor IP revenues overall are growing much faster than the broader chip industry, but:

1. It's a tiny chunk of the broader semiconductor industry (by at least 2 orders of magnitude)
2. The companies involved are miniscule in size. Even ARM, the largest of the semiconductor IP players, only has a revenue of $260 million and a market cap of less than $3 billion. The vast majority of players are tiny, one-product shops.
3. Each company's revenues are extremely volatile, depending on lawsuits and end-product launches which these companies have no say in, or no real touch in either.
4. Each company's margins are razor thin as a result of their small size (fixed costs are enormous, and these companies are trying to increase market share by selling at large discounts) and the relative commoditization of the industry (do you really think these firms can differentiate on the quality of their Ethernet physical interface IP?)
5. Larger companies like Synopsys and TSMC have already started entering the semiconductor IP space -- rendering many of these companies essentially defenseless against commoditization by the very players that they depend on to reach their customers.

Does any of that sound like good prospects for investment?

Re: I can has widgetz?

BenjaminTseng — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 11:26:46 -0000

Update LinkedIn -- good.
Keep my blog on your blogroll -- good.
Failure to understand Aptana (which is way more than a CSS editor, you can use any text editor to open those) -- loss of geek cred :-P

Re: The modern college student

BenjaminTseng — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:15:35 -0000

All the value in a college education is just being able to say you got one -- I think, if you're sure that this social media thing is the way to go for you, then you've made the right choice.

Oh, and when you're rich and famous can I have some of your money? I was your friend before it all happened!

Re: I aten’t dead

BenjaminTseng — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:04:15 -0000

Just wanted to say that I regularly read your blog and have been missing my mystery rays these past few days, so its good to know that you haven't just quit :-).

Re: When Neutrophils Attack

BenjaminTseng — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:52:09 -0000

It's been a while since I've taken immunology so this may be a "dumb" question, but what attracts the neutrophils to the artificial beads? Recognition of PAMPs driving a strong response to L. major makes sense to me, but how do the neutrophils recognize random matter as foreign? Do the neutrophils respond to KIRs?

Re: 10-Step Resume Refresher Course

BenjaminTseng — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 01:13:23 -0000

:-) It's funny that you should ask... http://bnjammin.blogspot.co...

I agree with all of the above, but especially on "don't be vague". I did resume reads for my firm's college-level applicants, and nothing stands out as "useless" as a vague sentence saying absolutely nothing.

Re: 10-Step Resume Refresher Course

BenjaminTseng — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:16:15 -0000

Hi Shang! :-)

Re: 10-Step Resume Refresher Course

BenjaminTseng — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:57:31 -0000

I can't really overstate how important LinkedIn is. I've had numerous recruiters find me through the site, and I have been able to use the site to find subject matter experts to talk to and -- well, frankly, no one can do the topic the same justice that Guy Kawasaki can, who lists out 10 ways to use LinkedIn: http://blog.guykawasaki.com...

Re: On Barbies, Mexico, and life in general

BenjaminTseng — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:50:05 -0000

Happy birthday, Teresa. You... clearly have learned a lot?

Re: Nvidia pitches “personal supercomputers” to scientists

BenjaminTseng — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:15:12 -0000

It's only standard C in the sense that legalese is the "standard English": on some level it's true, but substantively it's not. For the parallelism of the GPU to work, the code structure has to be adjusted, special libraries need to be linked in, and the code needs to be run through a special compiler which outputs machine code that the GPU can understand.

Re: Nvidia pitches “personal supercomputers” to scientists

BenjaminTseng — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:20:10 -0000

That would be an interesting application. I'm not sure how well it would work -- CUDA is typically used for mathematical applications (where you break a sophisticated mathematics problem into smaller parts that parts of the GPU can solve) and not for nonmathematical operations like database queries.

The closest I found to what you're describing is this paper on using CUDA to do a search of a DNA database: http://www.biomedcentral.co...

Re: Novafora buys microprocessor maker Transmeta for $255M

BenjaminTseng — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:24:11 -0000

Whoa -- does this mean that there will be a new player in the x86 CPU space?

Re: Breathtaking Capital Destruction

BenjaminTseng — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:29:41 -0000

I'll admit to not being an auto industry expert, but it seems to me that your government ownership logic is somewhat oversimplified. Just because government funds own a piece of a business does not mean that (a) the business is nationalized or (b) that the government acts differently than any other profit-seeking group. You use the example of R&D subsidies -- that's a good example of how a government stake would induce the government to improve its investment's profitability, but, not only do I doubt that R&D explains the large cost gap between the Detroit 3 and other manufacturers, I think that what a government stake in a business means is that the government is actively controlling the costs of production -- forcing worse terms on labor and suppliers.

As someone who's a bit pro-market, I would much prefer unions demanding terms rather than the government exercising its supreme authority to force workers and suppliers to charge less, regardless of how "profitable" (one wonders how "profitable" to society if society as a whole is forced to charge less just so a few select businesses can benefit) that result is.

Re: IBM aims to replicate the brain with cognitive computing project

BenjaminTseng — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:21:34 -0000

It begs the question -- does IBM just have infinite money that they can continue to funnel and cool, albeit commercially dubious projects?

Re: In Which I Showcase my Royal Dorkiness

BenjaminTseng — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:21:28 -0000

Seriously. I'm worried about meeting Teresa in real life -- I don't know if she'll live up to her social media personality :-/

Re: Applications are reshaping mobile industry competition

BenjaminTseng — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 01:23:30 -0000

"Root access IS a security issue." You took the words right out of my mouth. It's a bit odd to me that this presents it like a good thing...

And I also agree with you that there is a big distinction between open source and open to developers.

Re: Applications are reshaping mobile industry competition

BenjaminTseng — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 01:37:04 -0000

To echo kaizyen's thoughts -- its a fallacy to treat the cell phone market like one would the game console market or the PC market -- where applications truly are make-or-break for a platform. The reason is that the PC and the console need only compete on things like performance, support for industry standards, and application availability -- the cell phone market needs to deal with two extra things: form-factor constraints and the carrier.

The carrier can drive or destroy an application or a feature (esp. in the US where they wield a disproportionate amount of power), as they need to deem it necessary and beneficial to their bottom line. The form-factor (e.g. battery life, UI, etc.) limits the types of applications that can be run. So if the phone hardware is poorly built or if the carrier happens to hate your application (think about the numerous complaints about the iPhone App Store's policies -- some of which are probably motivated by AT&T), your application will still suffer, regardless of the quality and openness of the underlying operating system.

While I'm not willing to bet on the iPhone as the mobile device winner of the future, I am willing to put it out there that perhaps Apple has outdone itself this time on its business model -- its staked out the perfect space where its maniacal need to control every aspect of a device (carrier relation, form-factor, software) is beneficial to both users and developers.