Feb 3Rapunzel and Career DevelopmentMany of you will be familiar with the German folk-tale of Rapunzel — the young lady held captive in a remote tower by a witch who used Rapunzel’s extraordinarily long hair to climb in and out of the lofty chamber in which she lived with her prisoner. Spoiler alert! …Career Advice2 min readCareer Advice2 min read
Published inXR4work Blog·Dec 20, 2021VR headsets: a serious business tool disguised as a games consoleI thought that buying a VR headset would be a fun way to turn a crypto windfall into something tangible, and I was not wrong! A modern headset like the Oculus Quest 2 can’t match the graphical realism of a games console, but it makes up for it with a…VR4 min readVR4 min read
Published inNerd For Tech·May 28, 2021AI Adoption & Business value: a lesson from the Ireland of 1908As a founder of Rigr AI, I’m quite literally betting on Artificial Intelligence to feed my kids. So, you might think I’m expecting AI to be everywhere in about, oh, 5 minutes. My actual view is much more nuanced and heavily influenced by the adoption cycle of earlier general-purpose technologies. …AI4 min readAI4 min read
May 17, 2021When is a new company “real”?Sending a two-line email to my accountant — actually not even my accountant, at this point in the story the extent of our relationship is that we’ve chatted on the phone for half an hour and exchanged a couple of brief emails — I feel like a bit of a…Entrepreneurship2 min readEntrepreneurship2 min read
May 10, 2021Why I left a great job to start my own companyLeaving a stellar company like Intel — amazing colleagues, an incredibly broad range of opportunities, six-digit salary and great benefits (#GreatPlaceToWork, more on that here) to start a tiny company is an odd move — so why do it? I can give you a logical-sounding rationale for that — and…Entrepreneurship4 min readEntrepreneurship4 min read
May 4, 2021Leaving Intel / “I will always love you”“Parting is such sweet sorrow” Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet I joined my first INTC-owned Legal Entity in September 2011, when I went to work for McAfee, a wholly-owned subsidiary; during a machine vision project at my previous firm that turned out to require “statistical modelling”. I had gotten hooked on…3 min read3 min read
Oct 27, 2020Quantum Computers, what are they good for?It has been generally known for some time that quantum computers can in principle solve problems that are intractable on classical computers — like factoring large numbers to break public-key encryption (companies like Google have already increased the key lengths they use, as a precaution against early breakthroughs). With multiple…Quantum Computing5 min readQuantum Computing5 min read
Oct 5, 2020My first 3D printerI’ve wanted a 3D printer more or less ever since I heard that they existed outside sci-fi. …3D Printing2 min read3D Printing2 min read
Published inThe Startup·Jun 5, 2020Self -Driving… Chemistry?“Materials science” doesn’t have quite the pulse-raising associations as, say, “aerospace” or “robotics”. This is a shame! Stone tools — with wooden shafts — were key to the elevation of an ape with rather underdeveloped teeth and claws to the top of the food chain. …Machine Learning10 min readMachine Learning10 min read
Published inAnalytics Vidhya·Nov 26, 2019Google AutoML Tables vs XGBoostGoogle is the prototypical machine learning company. As a young and hungry startup, they first used “statistical modelling” to correct the spelling of search terms, and they’ve never looked back. These days, they even use machine learning to invent the new the machine learning, mechanising the invention of new deep…Machine Learning3 min readMachine Learning3 min read
