In this episode, we pay our respects to John Conway, a legendary mathematician known for the Game of Life and Surreal Numbers. Our math Stack Exchange paid respects to some of his lesser known results.
Jon and Adam give us a rundown of some of their favorite April Fools projects from the past, many of which they helped build. Adam has a soft spot for Unikong, while Jon is more of a rubber duck man.
Don't forget to check out DevAroundTheSun for ways tech folks can support those impacted by COVID-19.
The Covid-19 pandemic has showcased the value of IT and digital transformation and organizations should use this time to accelerate the transition. Global government digital transformation expert and IDC analyst, Adelaide O’Brien joins to discuss how governments are responding to the challenges being faced right now, and the key areas and technologies they will be looking to procure.
Dmitry Korkin is a professor of bioinformatics and computational biology at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he specializes in bioinformatics of complex disease, computational genomics, systems biology, and biomedical data analytics. I came across Dmitry’s work when in February his group used the viral genome of the COVID-19 to reconstruct the 3D structure of its major viral proteins and their interactions with human proteins, in effect creating a structural genomics map of the coronavirus and making this data open and available to researchers everywhere. We talked about the biology of COVID-19, SARS, and viruses in general, and how computational methods can help us understand their structure and function in order to develop antiviral drugs and vaccines.
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This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon.
Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
OUTLINE:
00:00 – Introduction
02:33 – Viruses are terrifying and fascinating
06:02 – How hard is it to engineer a virus?
10:48 – What makes a virus contagious?
29:52 – Figuring out the function of a protein
53:27 – Functional regions of viral proteins
1:19:09 – Biology of a coronavirus treatment
1:34:46 – Is a virus alive?
1:37:05 – Epidemiological modeling
1:55:27 – Russia
2:02:31 – Science bobbleheads
2:06:31 – Meaning of life
Jason Tan started his love of tech back in middle school, when his Dad showed in the wonders 0f connectivity through dial up internet. After taking some beginner programming classes in high school, and graduating with a CS degree from the University of Washington, he found himself drawn to crating powerful abstractions within software, to produce outcomes for users. Though previously a hardcore video gamer – playing such well known games like Diablo 2 & 3, he has since moved on to dabble in freestyle rapping & singing. And in 2006 post college, he worked for startups in Seattle, like Zillow and Optify. Finally, in 2011, he moved to San Francisco to start his current company and go through Y Combinator. Through some discovery, he figured out that a large area ripe for innovation and disruption was fraud. He then set out to build Sift, a product to power digital trust and safety, empowering companies to unlock revenue without risk.
Jon is the team lead for Public Q&A, which is what we call the platform that hosts the 172 community sites across Stack. Adam is a senior software developer on the community team and a former community manager.
Jon describes his job these days as intercepting all the meetings, phone calls, and busy work that would keep the devs on his team from actually writing code. That, and to deliver product on time and to spec, with the hope that a predictable product pipeline is the best way to keep all stakeholders happy.
Adam spends most days writing code, although his most productive days are the ones when he deletes more than he creates. He was part of the team that helped ship our recent Dark Mode feature.
If you want to learn more about some of our plans for upcoming changes to Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange, tune in Friday for part two of this episode.
Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, and theoretical physicist who is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, a company behind Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Language, and the new Wolfram Physics project. He is the author of several books including A New Kind of Science, which on a personal note was one of the most influential books in my journey in computer science and artificial intelligence.
This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon.
Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
OUTLINE:
00:00 – Introduction
04:16 – Communicating with an alien intelligence
12:11 – Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey
29:06 – What is computation?
44:54 – Physics emerging from computation
1:14:10 – Simulation
1:19:23 – Fundamental theory of physics
1:28:01 – Richard Feynman
1:39:57 – Role of ego in science
1:47:21 – Cellular automata
2:15:08 – Wolfram language
2:55:14 – What is intelligence?
2:57:47 – Consciousness
3:02:36 – Mortality
3:05:47 – Meaning of life
Monday's big story on Bloomberg was that the US unemployment system was being slowed by problems with an "ancient" programming language. Well, yah heard it here first. Also, ancient seems a bit extreme for something that is 60-years-old, but perhaps in the world of software, that does qualify as nearly pre-historic.
After that, we switch to the biggest news in tech, or perhaps in the world, over the last week. Apple and Google have released a spec for a contact tracing system. As countries around the world work to slowly reopen their economies, contact tracing is a powerful tool for preventing new surges in coronavirus outbreaks. The system the duo of tech giants devised includes specs for bluetooth, cryptography, and APIs. You can read Paul's deep dive take on it at the link above.
Last but not least, if you're interested in donating to help those affected by COVID-19, Sara is working with the .NET foundation on a project called Dev Around The Sun. They are providing assistance and mentorship to folks impacted by this pandemic, and you can learn more about how to donate time or funding at the link above.
Be safe, be well, and we'll talk to you again on Tuesday.
