Since starting my deep dives, I have come across the phrase “Prompt Engineering” repeatedly. The premise was (I thought), that if you give an AI a perfectly crafted prompt, then it would do exactly what you wanted. That seemed counter to my actual goals. I wanted the AI to make me faster. More efficient. If […]
Author: cvanvlack
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First Live Stream is in the Can!
Well, I successfully completed the first live stream! I gotta say, it was not the experience I was hoping for. What I thought it would be like Other Challenges Next Options I know that I still want accountability while I am building things. So what are the options? Definitely going to start thinking about how […]
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Using AI to Create Science
Google Deepmind recently figured out a way for an LLM to break ground in mathematics. FunSearch: Making new discoveries in mathematical sciences using Large Language Models The actual journal article is worth a read. They worked on two mathematics problems: the “cap set problem” and the “online bin packing problem.” I’m fuzzy on the description […]
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Trying to Keep Learning
When we started at LDD, one of the things I implemented early on was starting a LabVIEW User Group. We knew that we needed more people who really knew LabVIEW. So we promoted it (not well) and got a bit of interest. Some of the people who came to those meetings joined us as the […]
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What to do in 2024?
The new year is here, and thank goodness. 2023 was quite the roller coaster with big health issues that were overcome, a new job and a move to a new city. This feels like a rebuilder year after the last failed startup and the move. Things had been feeling like they were on a continuous […]
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Books on the go in 2022
Here’s the current list of books that I am trying to get through: The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects by Andrew Chen What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly Completed Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline The Paper Menagerie […]
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Best Books for Founders
I’ve been asked enough times about book recommendations that I figure it’s time to compile the list of books that I have learned the most from on my start-up journey. Books with an asterisk are the books I think people should read regardless of which position you hold in the company. Start-ups *Build: An Unorthodox […]
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Books on the go in 2021
Here’s the current list of books that I am trying to get through: Still reading: From Start-up to Grown-up by Alisa Cohn The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson Completed The Future Is Faster Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler The Neverending Story by Michael Ende […]
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Books in 2020
Here are the books I read in 2020: Awareness by Anthony DeMello Consciousness Medicine by Françoise Bourzat, Kristina Hunter, et al. How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg Draft No. 4 by John McPhee Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott The Sky-Blue Wolves by S.M. Stirling Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker Loonshots […]
In Part 1 of this series, we spoke about some of the struggles transitioning from academia and learning the programming skills needed to work in a tech start-up. I spent a lot of time struggling to figure out how to build software, but there was a big problem: We were boot-strapped and anxiously watching the […]