Around this time last year I published a post describing YouTube’s then-new 3D video player option.
This year, they’ve stepped up their game in a big way.
Earlier this week (on Monday, April 7, 2014), while holding a regular tech chat/meeting in my office with my UC Berkeley colleague Lars Føleide (who is also my company‘s Philanthropy Chair) we noticed something new.
YouTube is now offering 2160p 4K resolution (along with 1440p HD) video resolution:
A good friend of mine, Dil, caught me off guard the other day by asking me, “are you watching the debate?” I thought immediately to myself, “the debate?.. it must be something epic.” It was something epic.
Bill Nye (on behalf of science) faces off with Ken Ham (on behalf of genesis, i.e., religious beliefs about human origins) – the entire debate is a back-n-forth over these two viewpoints on ‘where we come from’ – in an ultimate two and a half hour debate.
In this excellent debate broadcasted live earlier this week (broadcast date: February 4th, 2014), my favorite spoken thought came from Bill Nye, at the 1:49:26 mark, where he says:
“…we need scientists and especially engineers for the future. Engineers use science to solve problems and make things. We need these people so that the united states can continue to innovate and continue to be a world leader. We need innovation and that needs science education.”
Check out the video yourself on YouTube and it will likely also remain embedded on the debatelive.org homepage for some time.
I only bring it up because when you look closely you can notice some major differences between what I think I am sending and what is actually sent (who knows what it looks like on the other end…), defeating the intrinsic meaning of the emoticon and thus they message being conveyed itself…
Studying a little neuroscience tonight. Neural networks of various types play the most crucial role in classifying information, used in my company’s trading software. Normally, I just get to look at the algorithms and other scientists’ work/attempts to quantify the way our brain processing information into various programmable languages, like C++, C#, and Python. Tonight, I chose to read a textbook on the subject and it is beyond fascinating to learn about the complexity behind the systems in the human body (especially the brain). Apparently, the human brain weighs three pounds and has over 100 billion neurons.
I decided to open my laptop and find a good diagram labeling the various parts of the brain – to have visible in the background (as I continued reading). Found one quickly, then, I got experimental and created an overlay of one of Van Weeden, et al.’s MRI images. It is transparent and with very little rotation fits nearly perfect on the diagram.
It cannot be helped to love looking at the human brain in its full complexity (in this case, adding some dimension an old useful diagram)!
“Money is not going to make you happy but an absence of money can buy you an awful lot of misery.”
“You are not your past, you are the resources and capabilities you gleamed from it.”
“You what money is like?… it’s like oxygen… you need it to breathe, but there is only so much you can use in one lifetime.”
“This is not a decade where you can just sit on your hands and let be business as usual… you need to do something, because it’s not the status quo… it’s a decade of empowerment – people that make the right moves right now are going to do really really well. The people that subscribe to the old thinking of the past, which is bankrupt thinking, which is just working for a company and thinking the government is going to come in for ya… [no way]… it’s just not the way it’s going to be.”
“four key things [to make it]:
1.) Vision – the ability to create a clear and compelling vision for the future, e.g., Gandhi, Mandela, Branson, Gates, Cameron.
2.) Manage your State – the way you feel in the moment, your physiological state. Be certain about what you are doing, have clarity and have courage.
3.) Beliefs – e.g., a governor on a vehicle (speed-regulation), interpret things how you want and root-out limiting beliefs.
4.) Strategies – essentially, they are essential.
The last things is the glue, which is just your standards (e.g. paying all of your bills) — your must in life. Raise your standards, don’t settle for ‘average'”
When asked what his mentality was during different stages in his life, Jordan’s replies were:
Before going jail: “Money, Power, Sex”
After going jail: “Giving, Family, Freedom”
Interview with Jordan Belfort:
If you are interested, I found a few more good quotes by Belfort on this page.
Update 2-11-2014: A fact about Jordan that I recently came across is that is net worth is estimated to be -$100m. One source, who apparently specializes in estimating the net worth of celebrities, says about Jordan’s financial situation:
“As per the terms of his conviction, Jordan Belfort is required to pay $110 million in restitution to more than 1500 defrauded clients. To date he has only paid back $11.6 million worth of restitution.”
Jacob Irwin 
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