Insights by Danielle Fong

TLDR; LightSail Energy, now LightStore, is effectively a defunct company that owns and licenses IP, which is far from the worthy and world changing company it could have and should have been. And...

https://daniellefong.com/2022/01/12/long-overdue-updates-re-lightsail-energy/

noun, aeronautics an adjustable tab or airfoil attached to a control surface, used to trim an aircraft in flight. in other words, a rudder for a rudder too large to be turned directly. a lever to...

https://daniellefong.com/2015/11/27/trimtab/

Hello everyone, missed you! Firstly, I wanted to encourage the readers who visit this blog to follow my twitter. I’m fair bit more active there these days, possibly because it’s less of a tim...

https://daniellefong.com/2015/02/17/another-list-of-frequently-asked-questions-about-lightsail-energy/

As 2013 was winding down, James Temple of Re/Code asked me about the most exciting science of the past year. That article is available here. It’s hard to pin down exactly one “breakthrough.�...

https://daniellefong.com/2014/01/07/lightsails-danielle-fong-on-the-most-exciting-science/

Some futurists and bioethicists, argue that, on a planet with finite resources, prudence dictates that immortality is not to be aspired to — that the resources used by a life lives by the old m...

https://daniellefong.com/2013/11/15/a-case-for-immortality-in-a-finite-universe/

Vannevar Bush, with the first modern analog computer “The National Research Foundation should free from the obligation to place its contracts for research through advertising for bids. Thi...

https://daniellefong.com/2013/11/15/as-we-may-discover/

Laura Schewel, someone who has been a personal inspiration to me, and who has been an amazing friend, has been named by MIT Technology Review as one of the world’s top 35 innovators under 35. S...

https://daniellefong.com/2013/10/10/a-systems-thinker-a-systems-doer/

One of these days, I’ll try to write up the rules of thermodynamics so that people stop getting mislead. This is not a particularly well edited essay, but it should go up somewhere. Apparently ...

https://daniellefong.com/2013/06/22/a-brief-note-on-thermodynamics/

https://daniellefong.com/2012/10/28/eulogy/

This article first appeared in issue n.16 of Oxygen, sponsored by the Italian energy giant Enel The powerplants we are building now will define the biosphere of our planet for the next 5000 years...

https://daniellefong.com/2012/08/27/defusing-the-carbon-bomb/

Your revolution will not be stolen. Great ideas can’t change the world by themselves. They need people. There are two kinds of revolutionary ideas. The explosive, and the subversive. The explos...

https://daniellefong.com/2012/01/23/trade-trade-secrets/

I’ve lived a lifetime this year. It sometimes feels as if so much is happening that one can feel however one chooses. Yet, sometimes, life gives you so much to feel happy about you can’t help...

https://daniellefong.com/2012/01/22/green-dreams-life-in-the-year-of-the-rabbit/

One month ago, I was interviewed by Jane Affleck as a profile piece for my Alma Mater, Dalhousie University. Unfortunately, long form responses weren’t quite what they were looking for — so I...

https://daniellefong.com/2011/08/02/ecopragmatist-danielle-as-interviewed-by-jane-affleck-of-dalhousie-university/

If there’s one thing I’ve been surprised by while trying to start startups, it’s the extent to which the business landscape is shaped by law. Skin Cancer One of my first serious startup bus...

https://daniellefong.com/2010/02/11/how-law-shapes-the-business-landscape-and-a-patent-puzzle/

I don’t understand the reasoning of so many ‘climate change skeptics.’ Let’s imagine the climate in question is not Earth’s, for a moment, and is instead the climate of a black box, hov...

https://daniellefong.com/2009/10/11/climate-change-skeptics/

Where laughter becomes more hilarious than whatever half-forgotten thing preceded it. Also known as H.E.H.

https://daniellefong.com/2009/03/30/the-humor-event-horizon/

I discovered today, to my amazement and horror, that the otherwise exceptionally advanced and useful Mathematica 7 has only a single level of undo in its notebooks. And no redo. Furthermore, the ...

https://daniellefong.com/2009/03/11/acceptably-nonterrible-revision-control-for-mathematica/

you have saved me from an eternity of what if with one moment of yes — M. Volkova

https://daniellefong.com/2008/12/31/yes/

Once upon a time in Northern Mexico, my mother was sick. She had come down with a cold. Sitting on her porch, an old, tiny Mexican man walked up to her and said, “Beautiful lady, why are you lo...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/11/16/the-cure-for-the-common-cold/

The clock stuck twelve. It’s October 30th. In a heartbeat I emerged an adult in the eyes of American law. In an alternate universe, I danced the night into a hazy sunrise. But I left celebratio...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/11/15/tick-tock/

I have here several charts of driving cycles. These are standard plots derived from real traffic data, of velocity versus time. Unfortunately I cannot find the data anywhere. So I hatched a plan:...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/10/26/reconstruction-of-data-from-a-chart-or-graph/

Many believe that technology simply gets better over time: that every class of invention can improve endlessly into modernity. That is not so. Most of the hard constraints on technology are impos...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/09/13/timelessness/

Jenny Boriss and the Mozilla Labs team have helped spark a wildfire of discussion. What can we do to make browser tabs better? I’ve been considering this question for a while now (heck, I pract...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/08/24/enhancing-multitasking-to-enhance-our-minds/

heisenthought, ˈhī-zən-thȯt alt. he-is-en-thought, as in, he is in thought, don’t disturb him… (thanks to Marc Chung @heisenthought) noun. 1. A thought subject to mental collapse triggere...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/08/20/heisenthought/

Our company is going to have graph paper placemats. Jealous? ;-)

https://daniellefong.com/2008/08/20/engineers-a-paper-tablecloth/

analogies, once preserved as mere notes, find harmony as poetry organizations relationships communities as living entities as where no one cell holds the soul of a person no one person, incarnate...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/08/14/living-things/

I base my action upon prediction. Every technologist should. I try to see how the world will be, and then try and see within that future what place I may come to hold. So prediction is fundamenta...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/07/20/keeping-prediction-honest/

During the back and forth of exchange with a technical recruiter, he finally asked me what I was looking for. And so the floodgates opened. This may sound weird, but I pretty much choose employme...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/06/26/the-choice-of-work/

Recently, unusual features of the cosmic microwave background, a 'snapshot' of the early universe, have raised issues with our understanding of the Big Bang. A Caltech team has shown how we might...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/06/08/cosmology-in-ten-minutes/

One perspective on school, achievement, meaning, and life. An article on one bright young man, Moshe, recently appeared on Hacker News. For a long time I've been meaning to write about the subjec...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/05/15/advice-to-the-bright-and-young/

Those who’ve spent time with me over the past few months know both how absorbed I’ve been in the catalysis of our startup, and how poor I am at concealing my admiration for YCombinator. We ha...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/04/11/one-response-to-rejection/

The name problem has been with our band of hackers for a while. At least we were not alone: judging by the perennial popularity of the topic on Hacker News, it would seem to stump many. On such m...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/03/01/on-naming-startups-with-ruby/

Terry Tao’s recent post on a classic logical puzzle has seeded a bloom of activity in the nerdsphere. A friend of mine introduced it to me over mugs of steamed milk in the graduate college coff...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/02/10/blue-eyed-islanders-a-logic-puzzl/

The following occurred to me on a run about two years ago: It’s not given much press, but the the Halting Problem is intimately related to Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem. Indeed it pro...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/01/28/incompleteness-and-halting-godel-and-turing/

The central limit theorem states that if you have many small, independent, random variables, then their sum is distributed approximately as a bell curve. Strikingly, almost everything is made up ...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/01/28/outliers-why-the-central-limit-theorem-is-typically-off/

One morning around the graduate college dining hall, there was a gathering of physicists, finance students, and economists. The physicists are always quite amazed by those people who decide to fo...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/01/28/quantum-field-finance/

Tonight it’s winter in Berkeley. 53 degrees and raining, and outdoors, warmed by a heat-lamp, sheltered by an awning. I draw spiced apple cider through my lips. Classical music plays. An earbud...

https://daniellefong.com/2008/01/28/third-places/