My Background

I started OMSCS in Spring 2019 and am wrapping up in about a week. My academic background was Economics from Cornell with minors in tech areas (Computer Science, Information Science); I started while in another (FT) grad program, I got my first job about halfway through the program so dropped out of that one and kept on with OMSCS. I am working as a SWE at PayPal.

I took this program for two reasons:

(1) my old grad program was not offering significant career assistance at the time (it has since improved), (2) I had a good bit of free…

I’ve created a Blockchain course covering crucial technical topics, including and beyond those mentioned in this article, which is available here and entirely free to take. https://chain.courses/

This article aims to provide an introduction and survey into the research-based, technical foundations of Blockchain in under 10 minutes, by providing a specific example of a technically complex, innovative solution within Blockchain. There are over 25 citations at the end of the article as references for future learning.

Author: James Gan is a Software Engineer II at PayPal, and a graduate student in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. James’s…

Most of us have been through this experience: finding an apartment or job where the first thing asked of us it to provide our social security number (SSN) and a copy of our passport. In some cases, we may submit them through a secure and professional looking website. Other times, we are asked to fill out a simple, unencrypted word document. I was motivated to write this article after I was asked by a housing company to share my SSN, birthday, signature, and DL/passport over email in plaintext. Here are my top recommendations for protecting your identity.

1. Freeze your credit.

Freezing your credit…

Over the past 5 years I have run ~20 events for organizations including Microsoft Philanthropies and The Tezos Foundation, during which I have been able to save hundreds of thousands of dollars on costs and to regularly increase the NPS of events. From those experiences, I have found 3 major areas where I have been able to increase value in a relatively straightforward manner.

1. Find a good deal on a venue

I have worked with various venues including coding bootcamps, startups, and universities to gain access to venue space at highly discounted rates, or for free. Typically, venues can make up a substantial portion of an event…

I’ve created a Blockchain course covering crucial technical topics, including and beyond those mentioned in this article, which is available here and entirely free to take. https://chain.courses/

Introduction: This is converted from a paper written for the University of Washington’s Global Innovation Exchange. As such, the article covers certain introductory material, including blockchain, cryptocurrency, and supply and demand. There are some shortcomings in the article (glossed over some types of stablecoins, and poorly justified some personal opinions) that I hope to revise and improve at a later date. …

Overview

This design thinking study was undertaken as part of the Masters of Science in Technology Innovation program at the University of Washington’s Global Innovation Exchange. I spearheaded work on:

• Product design: leading brainstorming sessions and fleshing out my team’s initial solution and refinements.
• Creating prototypes: designed and created a paper prototype for cooking, including an adjustable stove.
• Quality assurance: ensuring that all written deliverables maintained high level of professionalism.

We focused on the design question: “How can we make it easier to teach University of Washington students, who have no/little cooking experience, the basic cooking skills needed to make a…

Project Overview

This fabrication project was undertaken in partnership with Andrew Luck: he made an accompanying base to connect to my “Space Needle” model. He also created the initial model with threading for the enclosure. You can view the portfolio piece that he wrote about his work here. Andrew’s piece also includes a lot of wonderful GIFs demonstrating the movement and fit of the enclosure.

Project Summary: This portfolio piece details the creation of a Space Needle which will house an Adafruit Feather Mini Arduino, and the bottom of the model will connect to a base which will house another Adafruit Feather…

I’ve created a Blockchain course covering crucial technical topics, including and beyond those mentioned in this article, which is available here and entirely free to take. https://chain.courses/

Disclaimer: we did not bring these issues to the attention of the Bancor team, and we did not publish them publicly. This article is not intended to denounce the project, but rather to point out potential areas of improvement.

I co-authored a research paper on Bancor earlier this year. Bancor is an automated market maker: they determine the price of various cryptocurrencies, and allow users to buy or sell those cryptocurrencies at the…