"Frequently" Asked Questions

No. I could not have built this site without lots of help. In no particular order, I'd like to 😘 give credit to Strikingly and S. Czajkowski (author of the underwater background loop video I borrowed). My lifestyle today is also only possible because we live in the universe that included, but was not limited to, in no particular order, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, Ada Lovelace, Emmy Noether, my mom and dad, my kids, my soulmate, and all of you exactly as you are.

Mostly. I own all work on this site and any site wherein I share content (All rights reserved. CC BY-SA 4.0 © 2023), unless I attributed it to someone else, in which case then they hold the copyrights. I try to capture the source of that which I share but sometimes I forget to, and then all I have is the content itself without a trackback for attribution. This does not mean that I imply ownership. If you feel that I have posted something without permission, please let me know and I’ll correct it.

Copyright is at once a simple and a complicated matter. Most of the 📜 legal framework around copyright was set into place before the Internet came onto the scene and is biased towards large corporations rather than creative individuals. No matter what my opinion on the matter is, the current copyright regime is the law and affects almost all usage of creative materials. Wikipedia’s copyright page has a lot of good information. (As an aside, please donate to Wikimedia and support efforts to keep Wikipedia complete, if you can.) Basically, none of the content here can be reprinted without letting folks know where you got it; I'd appreciate it if you asked first though.

Yes. I'm really me. This website used to have an encrypted validation tag, but it was abused by some sad soul to send me spam so I removed it and now you'll just have to take my word for it. Well, that and the publications, talks, interviews, patents, endorsements, etc.

No. I also don't keep any information about you. That’s a policy, I guess. Voilà.

For what it's worth, if you have not been careful about your browsing habits and setup, I 🕵 can probably see a lot of "anonymized" information about you. It's 😱 pretty scary when you think about it. You can use Tor if you want to keep your connection information anonymous and protect your privacy. You can also opt out of many of these services. Please also note that I use many intermediary services to make this page possible, and accept no responsibility for any liability attributable to any of them. As far as I'm aware, all services I knowingly use have a privacy and protection compliant data retention policy. There are also services I could but do not use (such as Google Analytics, for instance) because they are bundled with other services I use to build and host this page. There are no affiliate links and I do not make (even fractional) money from anything you click on this website.

I ask for your 💌 email in the contact form on this site. To be clear, I have no interest in spamming you. I will neither sell nor share your data with anyone for any reason without your express and explicit consent, unless required by law. To date, I have never sent a single email to anyone who's given me their info except in order to answer their specific request.

Carefully. When I talk about 💰 monetary quantities, please note that they are discussed in original year indices, and do not account for price-index, capital market, or inflation adjustments.

Sometimes. We can't escape the matter of semantic and semiotic instabilities, which are only compounded by the fallibility of our sensory mechanisms in objectively describing reality. Also it turns out that objective reality might not even be a thing, so who knows really. 🤷‍♀️

Frankly, in the grand scheme of things (with regards to the vast majority of human knowledge), most of the time 🤠 I have no idea what I'm talking about. As a mathematician, a recovering individually contributing data scientist, and an executive at a publicly-traded company, I tend to simplify things in order to be able to understand them. I may also be bound here and there by non-disclosure, non-disparagement, and other negotiated and non-negotiated agreements.

For instance, I may have agreed at times not to make any disparaging statements 🤐, oral or written (including, without limitation, internet postings) concerning a given company or any of its affiliates or current or former officers, directors, shareholders, employees or agents. I may have further agreed not to take any actions 🫥 or conduct myself in any way that would reasonably be expected to affect adversely the reputation or goodwill of a given company or any of its affiliates or any of its current or former officers, directors, shareholders, employees or agents. These non-disparagement obligations would, obviously, never in any way affect my obligations to testify truthfully in any legal proceeding.

Ergo... grains of salt and all that.

Please keep in mind at all times that I am not a lawyer ⚖, a doctor 💉, a journalist 🗞, or an engineer 🛠; I also don't have a math license. There are more things that I am not an expert in than there are things in which I am an expert. Don’t blame me if you lack common sense.

I make no guarantees as to the accuracy, relevance, or quality of the content herein. I make no guarantees as to anything else herein either. I accept no liability for issues with the content of links (due to reasons including but not limited to deprecation, machine error, human error, human success, or meteor impact), or for the consequences of any actions taken on the basis of the information provided. Risks are inherent in the use of the Internet 🛰. Contact your vendors for additional information.

No. But I live in and love the greater Boston area and, in case you weren’t aware, there may be NSFW words here and there. They are part of the charm 💩. Expletives also have analgesic effects, fuck yeah!

I also end sentences with prepositions; it's grammatically fine, and it's just something you'll have to learn to deal with. Remember, and this is important: you came to this site, this site did not go to you. I do this to entertain me, not you.

Yes. Even though I work with 🤖 computers, data, and machinery, I am not one myself. Like all humans, I'm complex and I contain multitudes.

When I talk about the life I'm balancing with (or building around) my career, it helps break down stereotypes. I agree with Katie Mack that it can be an especially good opportunity for women or minorities in STEM to become role models 💁 for young people hoping to follow the same path.

Who knows? But just so you know, if you choose to comment or tweet at me about stuff I'm not interested in or in an aggressive, sea-lioning manner, then I’ll just mute you. 😏 You won't even know. Or I'll block you. If you have an opinion, good for you—you don’t necessarily need to tell me about it. You do you.

Fun fact: that’s not censorship. I know because I took a test and everything.

I also do not reply to 🗑 cold emails from vendors or service providers. If you're looking for a surefire way of getting on my "mute" list, this would be it.

I've seriously no idea. I use a few block-together tools to keep things sane. I'm liberal with the use of the block button because I don't want to engage with anyone who's displayed seemingly unnecessary aggression 🤬 to someone else—so I block them before they get seemingly unnecessarily aggressive with me.

If I have blocked you, it is very unlikely that it implies that I believe you are some combination of ignorant or evil; I might simply mean that I don’t want to hear from you anymore and I want the algorithm to know about it. I don’t mean to censure you or to curtail your ability to talk to others. I just, for whatever reason, at some point, thought that I would likely rather not want to risk a bad interaction. You could even take it as a compliment; maybe I’m scared of you and I want to make sure we don’t ever cross paths because I can’t be trusted not to say something stupid that’ll get me in trouble.

It might have been a misunderstanding on my part. Oh well, we'll live.

You can use the contact form. But I'm zen 😌 about it: the formatting is just going to be crap sometimes. Call it personal growth: I'm allowing it to stay crap and not obsessing over it. Really, I'm not secretly obsessing 😳 over each and every broken carriage return.

Not really, unless we've worked together. Basically, if it'd feel inappropriate for me to ask you a professional favor, or if it'd be awkward if I did you a favor just because... then it's unlikely that we'll connect on LinkedIn.

Nope. There is no advertising on my site. In fact, I pay someone to host this, so you are actually costing me money being here. You should feel bad 😞 for doubting my integrity.

I also do not pay for marketing. 🙅 Please do not inquire.

Well... Since you've been reading this far, I feel empowered to ask you to donate some money to 🏥 the Shriners Hospital for Children, 🐶 the ASPCA, or 😻 the ACLU. The money goes to kids, puppies, and lolcats.