In fact, I just had my 8-week follow-up body composition test with the bioengineer who’s overseeing my diet and training program and she was blown away by my results. But I’ll talk more about that on the show we’re recording tomorrow. 😉

It sounds like the main problem is getting the evolution to be performed in realtime, like an actual brain does it. Basically the “fitness function” for the optimization needs to be evaluated in parallel with new inputs that are entering the system. I would guess that reprogramming FPGAs takes too long to be done in anything even approaching realtime, but I’m no expert and that’s just a wild ass guess on my part.

Anyway this makes me even more excited to explore this field 🙂

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvable_hardware

The most interesting story I’ve heard was of the circuit that evolved to its specific silicon:

http://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/

“The plucky chip was utilizing only thirty-seven of its one hundred logic gates, and most of them were arranged in a curious collection of feedback loops. Five individual logic cells were functionally disconnected from the rest– with no pathways that would allow them to influence the output– yet when the researcher disabled any one of them the chip lost its ability to discriminate the tones. Furthermore, the final program did not work reliably when it was loaded onto other FPGAs of the same type.”

In other words, the chip’s circuit evolved specifically for that chip alone given the chip’s underlying atomic characteristics. An atom or two more on a wire could have evolved a completely different circuit! Pretty damn cool 🙂

I’ve been thinking lately that it would be really cool to play around with ASICs that simulate other biological processes — protein folding, etc. I got a degree in biochemistry before I got in to firmware engineering, and I’ve been thinking about getting a Master’s degree in EE. Your novel approach with the PhD tutor is something I’ll have to look into 🙂 thanks!

1. Mike Taber and I had the same discussion about Hacker News on Startups for the Rest of Us a couple episodes ago. Turns out Paul Graham stepped down from moderating and handed it over to someone a few months back. The front page has totally changed since then. Far less startup and marketing-type posts make it there (even with enough votes), and as you guys discussed, it’s mostly code stuff. Which is ok, but IMO only in moderation when mixed with other topics.

2. I really want to like Halt and Catch Fire, but I share Jason’s sentiment that since you’re not rooting for anyone it’s hard to like the show. I’m 4 episodes in and continuing to watch purely for my love of tech. If it wasn’t about 1980s computing I would have been gone 2 episodes ago. Unfortunately, that doesn’t bode so well for the show.

Thanks for continuing to put out shows, and wish I could make the TZ summit in October. I would absolutely be there (only a 3.5-hour drive for me), but I’ll be out of the country at the time.

I really appreciated a show about computers that cared about the technology details and didn’t dumb stuff down for the audience (Amazon’s Betas and Silicon Valley both do this to some extent). It was also great to see Donna (the wife) and Cameron both as strong, intelligent women that could hold their own. Signs aren’t good for a season 2, but here’s to hoping 🙂

I don’t recall if you’ve (Justin/Jason) have seen these TV series, but I’ll recommend them again: Black Mirror (Twilight Zone with modern twist), Orphan Black (excellent scifi serial drama with big twist in Episode 1 that I won’t spoil), The Wrong Mans (a TV version of “Hot Fuzz”/”Shaun of the Dead”-type movies), Nathan For You (deadpan comedy spoofing business advice reality show)