Posts by Allen Cheung
Solving Human vs. Natural Problems
Sam Altman wrote a short post which questions a premise: Why aren't today's startups more innovative? He notes that society has benefited from the consumer-centric technological focus in the last decade; starting with the smartphone and…
White Label Gaming
I've been slogging through My NBA 2k15 on my phone. The game is based on collecting cards to battle other players offline, and its core is identical to that of another game, WWE SuperCard. In fact, they simply…
What If?
xkcd is one of a kind: the popular stick-figure webcomic for nerds and geeks seems to offer relevant commentary for pretty much any occasion. Its blend of computing, physics, math, and insights on life works well at a time when…
Full Stack Development Interview
I recently did an interview with Talentbuddy. They're a mentorship program that looks to get people started on full-stack web development in about three months time, and wanted me to speak to our front-end technologies at Square, specifically…
Unearthing an Old Programming Document
The internet never forgets. If nothing else, the Wayback Machine does a dutiful job of saving mostly coherent snippets of the web across an impressive breadth of time. I was reminded again a couple weeks ago, when someone sought me…
Think Like a Freak
Freakonomics was the book that, in my mind, started the "pop economics" trend: a brand of economics, applied to subjects that are relatable to the general public, targeted towards a mass audience as a different take on familiar…
