Google Translate, the Half-Life of Code, and a Parkour Robot: Lux Recommends #61

Published in

Lux Capital

5 min readDec 16, 2016

Welcome to Lux Recommends #61, the newest edition of what we at Lux are reading and thinking about (and want to receive this by email? Sign up here). This is the final issue of this year so it’s a bit longer, to enough provide recommendations to last you for awhile. See you all in 2017!

Articles

The Great A.I. Awakening: “How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services — and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself.” — Adam K

Searching for Lost Knowledge in the Age of Intelligent Machines: “As search engines are radically reinvented, computers and people are becoming partners in exploration.” — Sam

Pete Wells Has His Knives Out: “How the New York Times critic writes the reviews that make and break restaurants.” —friend of Lux Tommy Kane

The half-life of code & the ship of Theseus: “As a project evolves, does the new code just add on top of the old code? Or does it replace the old code slowly over time? In order to understand this, I built a little thing to analyze Git projects” — Sam

A Possible Break in One of Evolution’s Biggest Mysteries: “Whales have a history that is among the strangest and least-understood of any animal — and barnacles might be the key to unlocking their secrets.” — Adam K

Finding North America’s lost medieval city: “Cahokia was bigger than Paris — then it was completely abandoned. I went there to find out why.” — Sam

Big Diamonds Bring Scientists A Message From Superdeep Earth: These large, exceptional-quality diamonds originate from extreme depths in the Earth about 200 to 500 miles below us. That’s about as far under our feet as the International Space Station is above our heads. — Adam G

A map of the entire Internet from 1973. — Adam K

You probably can’t tell the difference between Bach and music written by AI in his style: “The machine’s goal isn’t to make an original melody, but instead generate the thee supporting harmonies around a supplied melody.” — Sam

An oral history of ‘Get a Mac’: “How an excruciating seven-month quest for an idea Steve Jobs didn’t hate gave birth to one of the funniest, most effective campaigns in Apple’s history, told by the writers, crew and actors who created it 10 years ago.” — Sam

‘National Geographic’ Reveals Winners of the 2016 Nature Photographer of the Year —Adam G

And The finalists are in — make your pick for Breakthrough of the Year. — Bilal

Books

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis: Lux friend Danny Kahneman is featured in story of his and longtime late collaborator Amos Tversky. It’s an incredible story of their lives and the experiences and worldviews that shaped the direction of their research into human decision making and biases and judgment under uncertainty. We feel lucky to know Danny but not a sliver as lucky as Danny felt to know Amos. Michael Lewis weaves in sports, markets, betting, war and how the most important things in life are the most uncertain. Amidst the odds and the unknowable that dominate, we just tell ourselves stories. And this is a damn good one. — Josh

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Bowder: This is the incredible saga of the meteoric rise of hedge fund manager Bill Browder, and his encounters with the Putin regime’s corruption and human rights abuses. It is a shocking, true-crime thriller that doubles as a memoir of one of the most interesting investors in the world. — Jeff

Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson: Steven Johnson explores everything from video games to public spaces and how they shaped our society. Department stores are explored, and even the spice trade. So much great information contained within.— Sam

Earth in Human Hands by David Grinspoon: Weaves together a huge number of topics, including astrobiology, the Anthropocene, SETI, and how to think about the role of humans in taking care of our planet. Currently reading this and thoroughly enjoying it.— Sam

The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee : on Bill Gates’ reading list and from the author of the enlightening The Emperor of All Maladies. A beautiful, approachable, insightful look at one of the 3 fundamental building blocks of our world (the other two being the bit and the atom). — Zack

No Sleep: NYC Nightlife Flyers 1988–1999 by DJ Stretch Armstrong and Evan Auerbach: I grew up looking at the flyer pages of the Village Voice for shows at venues for hip hop and heavy metal. I saw the Chili Peppers at The Academy in a secret show, the first live show of Bush at CBGB, Korn at Coney Island High, Biohazard and Life of Agony at L’Amours and Helmet, EPMD at Wetlands, De La Soul and Mos Def at Tramps. Guru from Gangstarr’s jazzmatazz at SOBs. This chronicles all the flyers from the 90s. Just amazing someone kept all these. And that someone is half of the DJ duo I grew up on DJ Stretch Armstrong. — Josh

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong: This is pure literary poetic genius. His mind does not work conventionally and leaves a trail of unforgettable semantic and visual twists in your mind. His personal story adds to his inevitably ascendant reputation which will be more widely and uniquely celebrates with time (from a previous Lux Recommends but we loved it so much!). — Josh

Television

13TH (Netflix): Must watch. Educational and emotionally-rousing, anger-inducing documentary on the injustices of the justice system. May it awaken both consciences and consciousness about this reality. There are UNINTENTIONAL things (like Clinton’s presidential actions in mid-90s that he recently regretted because it made the problem worse not better) and gut-wrenching, fist-clenching flat-out disgusting INTENTIONAL things the for-profit prison system and its suppliers intentionally get lawmakers to pass. We have 5% of the population and 25% of the prisoners in the world. It’s insane, absolutely racist and has exploded from 300,000 prisoners in 1970 to over 2M today. Slavery was not abolished it became government regulated in prisons. — Josh

The Man in the High Castle (Amazon): The post-WWII alternate history’s second season is out. — Sam