PinnedHey, let’s fire all the devs and replace them with AI!AI is going to get really, really good at writing code. It is also thousands of times cheaper than humans. What does this mean for the software profession? This is a kind of companion piece to my recent CACM article, The End of Programming. In that article, I asked the…Artificial Intelligence7 min readArtificial Intelligence7 min read
PinnedUsing Rust at a startup: A cautionary taleRust is awesome, for certain things. But think twice before picking it up for a startup that needs to move fast. I hesitated writing this post, because I don’t want to start, or get into, a holy war over programming languages. (Just to get the flame bait out of the…Rust10 min readRust10 min read
Published in Startup Stash·PinnedEverything I Wish I Had Known About Raising a Seed RoundHow to survive the process as a first-time founder. A couple of months ago, we closed the seed round for Fixie.ai, a new startup that I am building with three incredible co-founders. (You won’t find anything about what we’re up to on the web just yet — stay tuned.) Over…Venture Capital10 min readVenture Capital10 min read
Published in Level Up Coding·PinnedThe End of ProgrammingThe end of classical Computer Science is coming, and most of us are dinosaurs waiting for the meteor to hit. I came of age in the 1980s, programming personal computers like the Commodore VIC-20 and Apple ][e at home. Going on to study Computer Science in college and ultimately getting…AI8 min readAI8 min read
Nov 29, 2020Mercator: An ESP32-based spherical persistence-of-vision displayA spinning ring of DotStar LEDs creates a programmable globe. — I’ve been working on this project for the last few months, and finally got to the point where I can finally declare it done. Mercator is a spherical persistence-of-vision display based on a ring of DotStar programmable LEDs and the Adafruit HUZZAH32 ESP32 dev board. …10 min read10 min read
Dec 11, 2019Escher — The world’s first cloud-controlled Etch-a-SketchHow I built a robotic Etch-a-Sketch that can be controlled from anywhere. For the last year, I’ve been working on a side project at home which I call Escher. It’s a robotic Etch-a-Sketch that can be controlled over the Internet from anywhere in the world. It’s made possible by the…Arduino11 min readArduino11 min read
Jun 12, 2019Startup Life: Three Months InJoining a startup after years in Big Tech has been a breath of fresh air. — A little more than three months ago, I left a long-time position at Google (as head of the Chrome Mobile teams in Seattle and Kirkland) to join Xnor.ai, an early-stage startup developing AI for embedded devices. In an earlier post, I wrote about my reasons for jumping ship for a…Artificial Intelligence9 min readArtificial Intelligence9 min read
May 16, 2019True AI on a Raspberry Pi, with no extra hardwareBuilding a camera-based person counter using Xnor’s AI2GO platform — My new employer, Xnor.ai, develops deep learning AI models that run efficiently on low-power CPUs and microcontrollers, including the Cortex ARM processor on the Raspberry Pi. No GPU or TPU needed! In this post, I’m going to walk though how to use Xnor’s AI2GO platform to build a Raspberry Pi-based…Raspberry Pi6 min readRaspberry Pi6 min read
Feb 22, 2019Some thoughts on running successful teams at GoogleA few strategies from a long-time Google engineer and manager. Over my eight-plus years at Google, leading a fairly large and successful team, I’ve developed a set of principles that are core to my own approach to management. Since I’m about to leave Google for a startup, I thought now…Management6 min readManagement6 min read
Feb 11, 2019Why I’m leaving Google for a startupA long-time Googler jumps out of the frying pan and into the fire. After more than eight and a half years as an engineer and manager at Google, I’ve decided to tackle a new challenge by joining XNOR.ai, an early-stage startup developing AI for embedded devices. …Startup5 min readStartup5 min read
