The Local Maximum with Max Sklar
Episodes
Ep. 29 - Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Decentralization with @clydevanel of the New York State Assembly
28 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Assembly Member Clyde Vanel and I talk about new technology that affect the State of New York and the world!- The rise of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies...
Ep. 28 - Alex Jones, Jack Dorsey, and the Censorious Social Media Reporters
21 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Twitter's Jack Dorsey is being pressured by a bunch of social media reporters from CNN to silence voices like Alex Jones; and all of the big socials a...
Ep. 27 - Big Algo, Fat Tails, and Converging Priors
14 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we dive into the current Bayesian flame wars on Twitter. Do Bayesian priors converge? As Nassim Taleb (@nntaleb) points out, not necessarily unt...
Ep. 26 - Chris Messina on Conversational Commerce, Relationship Design, and the Future of Brands
07 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Messina and I go over a recent article of his on the evolution of conversational commerce and bots, and how to steer the industry towards better...
Ep. 25 - The Great Twitter Purge of 2018
31 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I may be on vacaction, but I still snuck in some time to put together a show! Decided to go solo this week and focus on Twitter's purging of bots and ...
Ep. 24 - Enjoying the A.I. Summer with Christian Hubbs
24 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Artificially Intelligent Host Christian Hubbs talks to Max about what he's learning in the field of AI through his work. Industries and use cases for ...
Ep. 23 - NLP in the Lands of Foursquare with Kris Concepcion
17 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Kris Conception talks about Natural Language Processing, Natural Language Understanding, and machine translation. We then go into how we build the tas...
Ep. 22 - Bayes Rulez, Death to P-Hacking!
10 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
So the overall theme of the show today is applying what we learned last time. Bayesian Probability is good. P-Value hacking - is where we get into tro...
Ep. 21 - Probability, Belief, and The Truth
03 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I explore the nature of probability, and my approach to thinking about facts and belief. I talk about problem solving a lot; here I go into the fundam...
Ep. 20 - Imperfect Bots, Marketplaces, and the AI Economy
26 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Aaron and Max have a stream-of-consciousness discussion where we look at some recent discussions on the tech web: Fred Ehrsam on Blockchain AI Marketp...
Ep. 19 - Information Theory with Daniel Kronovet, Horse Racing, and Fractional Bits
19 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Kronovet and Max discuss the world of information theory. We go into how it was invented by Claude Shannon at Bell Labs, the meaning of informa...
Ep. 18 - AI Gone Psychopathic, Embellishment vs Fact
12 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
An article about MIT research claims that they've built a psychopathic AI. We think the article is a little off base, and try to determine what's actu...
Ep. 17 - Comedy and Big Data Mixed Up with @robbiethefire
05 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Run Your Mouth Podcaster and Stand-Up Comic Rob Bernstein joins me on the Local Maximum to talk about Comedy, Podcasting, Facebook, AI, Big Data, and ...
Ep. 16 - Overfitting Toddlers and Underfitting Curmudgeons
29 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today's concept is underfitting vs. overfitting. Someone who underfits doesn't adapt quickly enough to new data. But if you think that's bad, an overf...
Ep. 15 - Poke, Chipotle, Green Needle: Data to Headline with Sarah Spagnolo
22 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Spagnolo tells us how we turn data insights into news stories. Does marijuana legalization affect bar-going? What's it like to go on TV? I also ...
Ep. 14 - Robot Communism Sucks, and AI on line one
15 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A Washington Post OpEd believes that advances in AI will lead to a new centrally-planned economy. Google's Bots call unsuspecting businesses to save y...
Ep. 13 - Applied Artificial Intelligence with Mariya Yao
08 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I talk to Mariya Yao about AI and Machine Learning as applied to a variety of business problems and across industries. We cover:- What are some of the...
Ep. 12 - Virtual Friends & Enemies, Building Products that look out for us with Marissa Chacko
01 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Aren’t you getting tired of using an internet that’s built to waste YOUR time - I know I am!Product Manager Marissa Chacko and I discuss the promi...
Ep. 11 - Max speaks to CS Undergrads @ The Yale Computer Society
24 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Engineer and Podcaster Max Sklar shares his story about building software from his time at Yale to the Foursquare Innovation Lab. He’ll cover:What h...
Ep. 10 - Zuckerberg Testifies, The Great Moderation War Continues
17 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Aaron comes back on the program to discuss the Mark Zuckerberg testimony before congress, particularly the part pertaining to moderation and censorshi...
Ep. 9 - Fixing Facebook and Lindy's Law
10 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today I answer the question of how I would handle moderation for Facebook and Twitter - and I break down the problems that they're facing and why. Don...
Ep. 8 - Bad Ideas, the Power of Suggestion, and Marsbot
03 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today I post-game my discussion with Dennis Crowley. I share his goal of wanting people to execute on their ideas, but what are the common blockers? I...
Ep. 7 - Dennis Crowley on Inspiration, Innovation, and Future Tech
27 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talk to famed Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley. His approach to being a tech entrepreneur has inspired us all! Just listen.We talk about his ...
Ep. 6 - Facebook Data and the Election, Decentralization to the Rescue
20 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The big news right now is around an analytics company that used a dataset from Facebook - gotten by the company under false pretenses - to help the Tr...
Ep. 5 - Bitcoin, Ethereum, and What's a Smart Contract Anyway?
13 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It seems like yesterday when we had to get used to Bitcoin, and now new currencies are cropping up all the time - including the crypto-juggernaut Ethe...
Ep. 4 - Codebreaking, Bizarro Harry Potter, and the Proper way to Gerrymander
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
IN WAS NDE BESN OF NIZES IN WAS NDE WORSN OF NIZES IN WAS NDE ACE OF WISTOZ IN WAS NDE ACE OF FOOLISDGESS IN WAS NDE EPOUD OF BELIEF IN WAS NDE EPOUD ...
Ep. 3 - The Perfect 10, Foursquare's rating system
27 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I have a discussion with Stephanie Yang about how we used machine learning and sentiment analysis to build Foursquare's critically acclaimed venue rat...
Ep. 2 - Maryam Aly on Building a Global User Base: Translation, Localization, and I18n
19 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In my first interview, I speak to Google engineer Maryam Aly who worked on Foursquare's Internationalization Stack for several years. This includes ma...
Ep. 1 - Bayesian Inference Applied to the Hawaii ICBM Scare
13 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the rest of my discussion with Aaron, we discuss the how Bayes rule can apply to news items like the Hawaii ICBM Scare, the murder of DNC Staffer S...
Ep. 0 - The great beginning, and how to Update Your Beliefs
03 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Max Sklar starts off the Local Maximum podcast. He goes over the purpose of the podcast, and the push for 10 episodes. Aaron Bell interviews Max on Ba...