Verifying the Origin of Media in an Algorithmic World
A walkthrough of the C2PA content authenticity specification and its Rust SDK1970s Transamerica building in San Francisco. Midjourney.Distinguishing authentic human-produced media from deepfakes or other algorithmically generated media is notoriously difficult. Existing tools produce a probability that given media is generated, but certainty is elusive. In the coming years, verifying the
Read moreThe scoop on Gen-Z and how they are rewriting the rules of the Internet
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Welcome to an old-school Equity tradition: the bonus show! Despite getting through our regular episodes this week, we have one more
Read moreA small programming language
Paul Graham said “Programming languages teach you not to want what they don’t provide.” He meant that as a negative: programmers using less expressive languages don’t know what they’re missing. But you could also take that as a positive: using a simple language can teach you that you don’t need
Read moreMy ten year quest for concise lambda expressions in Java
My ten-year quest for concise lambda expressions in JavaA mission to hold off the horde of for loops in Java.Photo by Fivos Avgerinos on UnsplashA series of fortunate and unfortunate eventsI started learning Java in 1997. I thought initially Java would be a fad and that Smalltalk would emerge as the victor in
Read moreQuadrature rules and an impossibility theorem
Many numerical integration formulas over a finite interval have the form That is, the integral on the left can be approximated by evaluating the integrand f at particular nodes and taking the weighted sum, and the error is some multiple of a derivative of f evaluated at a point in
Read moreThe mugshot that launched a thousand memes
Memes can happen in the blink of an eye, like a Jeopardy! contestant who accidentally makes a sexual innuendo under the pressure of stage lights, or a kid who randomly gets interviewed on a playground and professes his undying love for America’s most plentiful crop, corn. But as soon as
Read moreFive takeaways from Instacart’s S-1 filing
On-demand grocery delivery giant Instacart has finally dropped its much anticipated S-1. The company, actually named MapleBear, is one of the best-known unicorns on the IPO shortlist. Instacart’s public-offering filing has been long awaited due to not only its massive fundraising history, but also its sheer anticipated heft. Instacart is,
Read moreBitcoin startups remain undercapitalized as funding drought drags on
The crypto industry has not had a great run over the past year. Along with increasing regulatory scrutiny and skeptical investors, capital deployment has pulled back significantly from the highs of 2021, which has left many young startups struggling to raise funds. This capital crunch is affecting the Bitcoin ecosystem
Read moreHow founders raised money so far in 2023
Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. This week, DocSend dropped a big load of statistics about the VC activity over the past half year or so. For TC+, I did a deep dive into the trends that are starting to show
Read moreVFX artists show that Hollywood can use AI to create, not exploit
Hollywood may be embroiled in ongoing labor disputes that involve AI, but the technology infiltrated film and TV long, long ago. At SIGGRAPH in LA, algorithmic and generative tools were on display in countless talks and announcements. We may not know where the likes of GPT-4 and Stable Diffusion fit
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