David E. Weekly's Website

David describes selecting his new web hosting infrastructure.

I narrate some thoughts on using voice to express thoughts and the pros and cons versus typing.

MISTAKE: Waiting for resources There’s always a good reason why that next step is elusive. You might be holding out for an investment round…

Current display technology, using HDMI 1.4, can only do 4K at 30fps. This has rather limited the adoption of 4K screens since there has been…

9am, Facebook Headquarters: Cafe 18. My laptop is open next to a plate of kiwi and mango. It’s Friday and my last day of “bootcamp” at…

How do people come to believe a thing? They can believe a thing because of reason, or take something on faith. The realm of reason is…

Unsolicited calls from a tech recruiter are one of the banes of existence of a technologist with a LinkedIn and/or GitHub profile that has…

Written as a Thanksgiving present for Kate Compton OVERVIEW A device you access the Internet with is a computer. Even if you think of it as…

One month ago, we started working on our newest idea, connecting extended families through sharing. We’re now proud to announce the name for…

As posted on the Gaston Labs Tumblr: After firing our first idea two months ago, we decided to start exploring an enormous opportunity in…

Much has been said about the classic “Hacker + Hustler” dynamic, but I think a lot of the discussion misses the subtly of what both bring to…

Here’s a bold bet for the century: manufacturing will return to the U.S. The 20th century was largely about realizing the vision of the…

In this talk for StartupMonthly‘s Demo Day I outline the analogies between hacking together software (not the malicious sort!) and hacking…

In this video, I walk folks at Blackbox through my Guide to Stock & Options and the ins and outs of founder stock, options, term sheets, and…

An interesting development is occurring in the economics of information transfer. It will spell the end of backup and the end of tape for…

A funny thing happens to technical founders: as the company you built takes off and a proper Engineering Team develops, you find yourself…

This recorded talk comes courtesy The Founder Institute, where I am a mentor. Many products fail to gain user adoption because they are…

A talk I gave at TEDxValenciaSt in 2011 on the importance of imagining the ideal freed from the constraints of knowing how you’re going to…

My interview with Karina Pikhart and Peter Cantisani about Karina’s startup 6dot, which is making a new portable Braille labelling system.

David interviews Dr. William Marshall of the NASA Ames Research Center about his current projects to build low cost satellites, the…

David Weekly interviews James Halliday and Peteris Krumins, the CEO and CTO (respectively) of the newly-established Browserling, a browser…

David interviews environmental policy wonk Tim Telleen-Lawton about his work for Environment California.

Dr. Jade Wang of NASA Ames talks about The Game, her long, fascinating voyage to America from China as a child and her time here in Silicon…

Bjoern Lasse Herrmann and Aleksandra Markova describe the Atherton, CA based incubator-house they live in (called Blackbox.vc), how it…

My interview with Jeff Lindsay, with whom I co-founded SuperHappyDevHouse and the Hacker Dojo.

Rhett Butler ofMongabay talks about his upcoming State Department sponsored trip to Indonesia, where he’ll address thousands on the subject…

Interview with Paolo Privitera of DooChoo, talking about innovation and startups in Venice and creating ties and cultural exchange with…

My (now former) roommate Ulrich describes his epic road trip from California down to the southern tip of Chile in his trusty Jeep, with a…

Alan explains how he got introduced to computers, why he went to Stanford and majored in philosophy, and how he ended up as a software…

Alan outlines the three rules of software testing: Rule 0: Write Tests. Rule 1: Test at the highest level that makes sense. Rule 2: Tests…

Jocelyn describes her childhood in Wyoming and coming to Silicon Valley as well as her personal interests.

David Weekly interviews Treehouse housemate Nato Saichek about his hobbyist space vehicle project to build a pico-satellite (measuring…

Background I grew up nearsighted pretty badly in my left eye (20/200, or -3.0) – my right eye too, but to a much lesser degree (20/35 or -…

A talk I gave for Lean Startup Circle at UCSF in 2009. Startups are tough (and fast). You can’t just count on data (use your gut). You’ll…

Curious about the (TM) and (R) symbols by brand names? Interested in whether your company needs a trademark? I hope to here clarify for you…

you must remember that every action matters that few act deliberately that much is decided by those who wish to decide the world is as small…

I’ve been losing weight for a month and have managed to shed around 12 pounds; I’ve still got a ways to go, but I’ve been happy enough with…

I’ve been following with keen interest the development of solid state drives (SSDs), which are basically really fast and reliable flash…

My coworker Joël and I were today discussing the different ways we can communicate and how “serious” each was. From lightest-weight / most…

This is my first review of an MRE from the Sopakco Sure-Pak 12. I got the version without heaters. The chicken pesto pasta was pretty good…

The front page of CNN.com has a broker about to throw up, under a large red headline talking about the grim state of the Dow. There’s a…

David’s Awesome Tunes You May Not Have Heard (for Brett) – “Tabula Rasa” by Arvo Part – “American Boy” by Estelle feat. Kanye West – “Your…

Also known as: David’s Guide to Getting Drunk in Style. With eight years of wine tasting experience, I’ve now become the sommelier (wine…

A talk I gave at the Peninsula Linux Users’ Group about the history of PBworks.

This could quite possibly be the worst designed elevator interface in the world.

Photo from Barcelona – caution, you might be compelled to breakdance!

This weekend I banged out a very simple location service called L0K8. It consists of a small (1.1MB) Windows download. You install & run, it…

Who am I? Who do I want to be? I want to create, explore, dream to add to the human experience to love and inspire and to give hope. I want…

When I was stuck in Boston’s Logan International Airport for a few hours waiting for a flight, I decided I ought to get some work done; I…

written during an april 2008 trip to boston Although my training is principally that of a computer scientist, I have a deep appreciation for…

With only about 50% of PBwiki’s traffic coming from North America and with preliminary benchmarks showing 3+ second page load times in Paris…

A post of mine from a recent email thread on why a co-op should continue to host a server with arguably distasteful but legal content: “I do…

In honor of pi day (3/14)… If pi has an infinite number of digits in random sequence, then pi must contain all sequences. It is commonly…

The singularity is past. We’re already living in a collective consciousness with behaviors exceeding the capacity of any human or machine to…

Who am I? Who do I want to be? I want to feel pain, sorrow, loss, delight, eat the finest and coarsest cuisines

On September 22nd, 2007, I got together with several of my friends (Eve Phillips, Jocelyn Joy Berl, Travis Kalanick, Nathan Schmidt, and…

Help. My identity has been spread too thin. While I’ve been surfing the Internet since before the web (archie, gopher, and ytalk were my…

In this talk for STIRR FounderHacks, I emphasize that founders should have their product do the simplest thing possible and let their users…

Landmark is a popular and profitable program in the US that claims to teach people how to better master themselves and their perceptions of…

Every person and every animal has built in a desire to survive and to better themselves. Upon this self-centric axiom systems such as…

Much of the “blogosphere” seems to be an echo chamber, with its own terminology (including the word “blogosphere”), cult leaders…

I am rather appalled by the continuing aftermath of the publication of a few single-frame cartoon images of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper…

About half a year ago, I decided to go sign up for a Vonage account. This was mainly because I found myself needing to send faxes quite a…

a very rambling and awfully incoherent saturday writing, done without the benefit of breakfast, or even lunch. I worry, perhaps, that the…

I had a weird experience today chatting with a hacker on ICQ who had taken over my friend’s account. The conversation’s too weird to have…

Some of you may have noticed that david.weekly.org was down last week for several days. Email to me bounced and there was general havoc in…

This article describes modern ad-blocking technique, their effectiveness, and how advertisers are likely to work around them. I’ve had some…

The PS3 will be significant for Blu-Ray. And vice versa. The PS2 sold very well in Japan when it was released for a simple but amazing…

I’m still a business newbie, I’ll admit it. I haven’t made a million dollars yet and I haven’t been on the cover of a magazine in a while…

This article explains why thin form-factor servers like blades may not be a good idea. You may have heard of the superthin form factor of…

This article describes a system for making useful transcripts of Voice over IP (VoIP) chats. If you already have a VoIP based conferencing…

Common programmers may expect to earn at least $60,000/year but it is rare for even superstar programmers to command above $150,00…

A few days ago, it occured to me that it would be useful if my alarm clock knew to awake me an hour before my first appointment of the day…

A number of friends have asked me of late what my take is on podcasting. It’s certainly a hot new buzzword; but is it really the “next step…

The cell phone market bugs me. It seems to have been taken over by marketers utterly out of touch with the reality of what people are…

So here we are, post-election, and George Bush has won. A lot of people, Bush supporters and otherwise, are dumbfounded by the numbers. The…

Your blog can and will be used against you in a court of law. That is the conclusion that I’ve reached today after finding out that our…

So I’m back from Ghana, safe and sound minus a nasty cold I picked up on some continent. (I never get sick!) The camp was a resounding…

Oh, every day has such ups and downs! It’s hard to compress it all here. Immediately after the last update, I think I gave the talk of my…

I just got done teaching the morning session; with two classes a session and two sessions a day, I have to lecture the same material four…

Busy Internet strikes again. Internet here is 12,000 cedis per hour. The exchange rate is (very roughly) 10,000 cedis per dollar. (It’s…

I’m at “Busy Internet” in Accra right now. We’ve been calling the people who did and didn’t manage to make the program. It seems that…

So I’m writing this from a computer lab in Accra; it’s nicely modern, with about 50 pentium 4-2000 machines, but it’s about 1500ms to…

Oh boy. I’m two days away from hopping on a plane to Accra, Ghana to go teach kids about science, technology, and the Internet. Much of our…

I would like to thank President Bush for his efforts to expand democracy around the world. He’s done a really incredible job, but not in the…

The following is the poem “Ithaca” by the famous Greek poet Cavafy, in its translation by Rae Dalven, the original Greek, and also with my…

I wrote the following letter to my pastor Brian Emmet at Covenant Ministries, in response to his latest newsletter, which decried permitting…

The middle east is pretty damn annoying. Specifically, the whole Israel / Palestine deal. I mean, it feels like there’s good evidence that…

I’ve recently employed a very simple mechanism for spam control. So far, it’s been quite effective and required the installation of NO new…

This message was posted on October 27, 2003 to a mailing list in response to a post that claimed that IPv6 would be widespread by 2005 due…

For protocols there’s Ethernet, TCP, IP, UDP, AIM (in ICQ, OSCAR, and TOC flavors!), Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, IRC, SOCKS5, HTTP…

Unicode is just about the coolest thing since sliced bread. It’s the kind of thing after which you wonder how things possibly worked…

I’ve learned a lot in the last two years about what it means to be professional. Here are some of the things I’ve learned; I hope you can…

DISCLAIMER This conversation didn’t happen. I don’t even know a Christine. We sat down in front of Cafe Borrone in the warm night. It had…

Over the last few days a subtle error on the part of our home’s gateway to the Internet rendered Google inaccessible. I was in agony. I was…

Apache administrators: beware ETags if you have more than one webserver! (If you only have one webserver this article will not be useful to…

Written mid-2002, this is a letter from the future. My name is Philip. The year is 2014. I am a citizen of the United States of America. I’d…

Just now, I did something horribly mean. I ignored a nice person on AIM that was having a delightful chat with me. And *BAM*, I ignored them…

Looking at the great inventions and awesome creations of art that humankind has collectively produced, I can’t help but notice a common…

Steganography is the study of how to tell someone something without anyone else even knowing that anything was communicated. This is…

originally posted to the Apache Development mailing list Hello! I apologize if this has been discussed in this fashion many times, but I…

sidestory (how i got my laptop) I recently had the joy of acquiring an Apple Titanium G4 Laptop. This is kind of interesting in and of…

I find myself dealing sometimes (and indeed am guilty) of a phenomenon that I would like to call “Presumed Backing.” It is neatly summarized…

So, I just found a new place to move into. Just like last year’s adventure, this spin around was every bit of a madcap little hunt for a…

_The following letter was sent regarding recent lanugage in the FTAA draft agreement that would require, effectively, all nations in the…

There are, in my view now, two kinds of optimism. There is the pleasantly naive optimism that comes from living a relatively sheltered…

There have been a definite lack of updates to my website over the last half year (early 2001-mid 2001). Some of you have been asking about…

written for the pho list I think that those of you who have known me and my progression of thoughts throughout this whole insane MP3 thing…

intro This discussion is consequent to a discussion I had two nights ago with my two roomates: Dan and Jay. I’m writing this while a little…

Just for the sheer, unadulterated hell of it, I’ll put some aphorisms of mine here. They may alternately amuse, disgust, or bore you. You…

Realtime textual dialog, such as in IRC, ICQ, AIM, or ytalk, is a unique communication form. Allowing for two or more participants to…

the below was how I described myself as of early 2001, fresh out of college. {sound?} I had been on the Internet for some time playing with…

I’m hired. I got a job at Legato Systems today. It’s a big company – a couple of thousand people. It looks like I’ll be one of their…

written for the pho list Well, what net news giveth it taketh away. Apparently Microsoft has gone ahead and incorporated “Secure Audio Path…

written august 13, 1999 Didn’t the SDMI folks say that SDMI was a general wrapping specification into which many technologies could fit? But…

written for the pho list To be honest, Gnutella is not doing very well. There are about 2300 gnutella hosts on the network accepting…

There is a fundamental problem with energy conservation as it relates to homes that are rented from a central organization, such as a…

The first dot-com boom has come and gone and we now find ourselves in the gritty interim period, where only innovation, cunning, and…

September 1, 2020: I had a mini-mailing list I started at the end of college and sent out a few life updates. 20 years later, I’ve…

I don’t know what pay ranges are like for any of these, so I can’t compare based on salaries yet. xDegrees Pros – really intellectual…

this quikie written for KoreanZ.com Bill Gates opened the CES show floor on Friday morning with the second keynote of the show. Bill brushed…

this quikie written for KoreanZ.com Craig Barrett, the President and CEO of Intel opened CES on Friday night. The show opened in a jubilant…

this quikie written for KoreanZ.com It was a scant two and a half years ago that the first piece of consumer MP3 hardware was released: a…

this quikie written for KoreanZ.com This year’s CES saw largely incremental improvements of existing technologies, with only a handful of…

posted january 3, 2001 revised january 18, 2001 I’ve been working at home for the last two months on my own projects and doing a little…

exclusive for Digital Mogul KaFOOM! Wasn’t it so exciting, in 1999, to see online file trading taking off in a massive way? To see Shawn…

exclusive for Digital Mogul with Rafael Queseda note: this article was heavily edited by Rafael Queseda and the editors at Digital Mogul…

You should have a website. You have something to share that only you can share, something that other people can enjoy, learn from, and be…

Things are grim financially for dot-coms. Well…duh. You can’t try to make millions of dollars out of thin air, although it’s a pleasantly…

for KoreanZ.com This year’s COMDEX/Las Vegas showcased all that is hot with investors right now. While there were many cute and innovative…

I occasionally undertake mildly subversive activities, like posting documents describing how proprietary protocols are organized, setting up…

Trees, how I love you, but I love you not today. The shade you have brought, with your gentle boughs, The comfort I had sought, resting upon…

In the coming days, the now-familiar “frozen” sign should be disappearing from the site. That’s right, I’m back and I’ve got an itching to…

So, I’m actually not in San Jose right now (despite recently getting housed there) and a lot of you have been writing in to see what I’m…

Whoo, boy. I just got housed! I hope to share with you some of the joy of finding a house in Silicon Valley here. =) The short of it is that…

Well, I’m back. I spent two weeks in New York, two weeks in Italy and France, two months in Sweden, two weeks in Boston, and have now…

Back in early 2000 I was approached by a publisher to write a book about about MP3 audio technology; I only wrote the first two chapters…

< MP3 Book Home Back in early 2000 I was approached by a publisher to write a book about about MP3 audio technology; I only wrote the first…

< MP3 Book Home Back in early 2000 I was approached by a publisher to write a book about about MP3 audio technology; I only wrote the first…

MP3 Book Home Back in early 2000 I was approached by a publisher to write a book about about MP3 audio technology; I only wrote the first…

< MP3 Book Home Back in early 2000 I was approached by a publisher to write a book about about MP3 audio technology; I only wrote the first…

I found out from an anonymous email account that my website is being censored / blocked by the University of Central Florida, i.e., students…

A new model is emerging from the Internet. It represents the culmination of years of incremental evolution in the structure of the network…

There has been a fair amount of hype surrounding XML, or the eXtensible Markup Language, over the past year and the hype is slowly but…

Hounded by open formats like MP3 that encourage free copying of music, record companies have been praying for an escape: a high-quality…

A recent set of technologies have been devised to help websites learn about their users and take intelligent actions accordingly. These…

Email is, arguably the killer app of the Internet. It was what launched it and still is one of its primary uses. When surveying current…

Okay, I’m dying over here. Just for fun a month ago, I saw a posting on a contest for the “Sexiest Geek Alive.” Giggling, I went to their…

While spending a weekend at Hopkins Marine Station, where my girlfriend is studying this quarter (it’s a bit of a drive!), I was introduced…

WARNING: This is a bit of a rant. You may think I am an idiot after reading this. I’ve been playing with computers since I was five. This…

Regarding the DVD injunction: I’m pissed off. I understand why they would want it; it makes sense. They don’t want their videos flitting…

Hello Professor Nass. My name is David Weekly. I am the student who approached you after class just now to ask you what would happen if I…

what is multicast? A very sleek, hip, and powerful word. Multicast technology, about a decade old, enables a computer to “broadcast” a…

A lot of people out there are quite juiced up about online music. MP3.com just IPOed at a market valuation of well over a billion dollars…

Two years ago, before the days of the Rio or even Saehan’s MP-Man, a tall, somewhat balding British man came by my dorm room to talk with me…

So much has changed and so much is the same since last year’s MP3 Summit. The first and most noticeable difference is the sheer quantity of…

Successful leaders will have to undergo the change from perceiving themselves as managers to perceiving themselves as facilitators. It was…

sponsored by Audio Explosion So you may or may not have heard, but there’s been some buzz in the media concerning digital music. There’s all…

The human mind thrives on classification. We like to put things in boxes. We love to learn about something that we don’t know by lumping it…

sponsored by plug.com As an artist, you may be scratching your head, wondering what the heck is going on with all of this babble about music…

sponsored by Audio Explosion It was a grand event when Edison first managed to reproduce his own voice by scratching grooves on a wax…

At Stanford, there’s a Technology Career Fair that pops up at least once a year. The idea is that students will hustle down there with their…

sponsored by Audio Explosion The Japan-based Kobe Steel has apparently entered into a licensing agreement with NTT (Nippon Telephone…

a story for you As Tzu-Gung was traveling through the regions north of the river Han, he saw an old man working in his vegetable garden. He…

For the last century, the Western world has been in possession of two technologies created for the primary purpose of transmitting speech…

The Internet is about sharing. Designed to prevent even nuclear bombs from inhibiting its never ending ebb of data, it is the most…

Wednesday afternoon, I came home to a wonderful sight: a slender, foot-long cardboard rectangle sitting in front of my door, addressed from…

NOTICE This writeup of the conference is highly opinionated. I represent myself only and am in no way affiliated with MP3.COM, even if I…

These are some old poems from high school and early college days (1994-1998) that I only recently (2020) managed to recover, thanks to the…

i feel a little dead lately, like i’m missing the point in a lecture. someone is telling me their life story, but i am not listening. my…

love is so much like code a crude analogy perhaps, but to the programmer as to the romancer no greater highs come when all works together…

This month, the very fundamentals of the First Amendment are held in question. On February 1, 1996, a revision to the Telecommunications…

The girl sitting across from me on the flight back to school somehow reminded me of a million things from back home. Her tight, determined…

Who am I? I, to the outside world, am comprised of the sum of my actions. What is precious to me? The things that I carry inside of me…

Monday, May 20, 1996 Today was my first day back at the Physics Labs. I thought that it went really well. It was kind of fun — I just…

WE’RE DONE! WE’RE ALL DONE WITH HIGH SCHOOL! (Let’s give THANKS!) cheer, and wait for it to quiet down quite a bit But now what? Where to…

The pungent odor of industrial detergent filled my nostrils as hot plates scorched my palms through thin plastic gloves. I quickly stacked…

This speech was delivered to the 1996 class at Lexington Christian Academy. WE’RE DONE! WE’RE ALL DONE WITH HIGH SCHOOL! (Let’s give THANKS…

Pushing numbers up one down one. computing thinking pondering the numbers flew by the pencil SCRATCHes against the paper in a flurry one…

Wrinkles are good. I like bumps. Coarseness makes things real. Things that are scratchy are realistic; nothing real is smooth. Life is thick…

“letsjustbefriends” thewordsofdreadappear arefocused concieved and delivered. (ouch) butthisisdifferentsomehow idontknowitjustseemsatypical…

buspeople superbusy have to stop for a moment on the bus. they cannot cut in line while sitting, cannot increase their wealth, cannot move…

people. ohwhysohardtounderstand? thoughtsrunliketangledspoons intheturbulentdishwasheroflife oriswashingdishesallthatiamsupposed…

“Flee, flee! Run for your lives!” how much we would all like to flee this grim reality, these strange set of experiences in this odd world…

feet, those strange estranged things on the ends of ones legs i love them many people think that feet are digusting gross things but i love…

she had a wonderful smile (yes everyone said it was beautiful) and she was always laughing (a smile on our lips) but somehow beneath that…

O, empty page! How in thee is written volumes! O, terrible silence! Thou bespeak’st much! Even th’unwitted speech of fools Does comfort and…

beautiful aging one i stare at the wrinkles on your hand. nervously you laugh “Isn’t it ugly?” no mother i think to myself it is beautiful…