When I was 28 years old, found I had high blood pressure. Over next 7 years I took BP meds but also lost weight and worked out. Doctors ran tests but never found a root cause - it was just high for no assignable reason and I was told to take meds. At 34 years old, was in best shape of my life, except still taking BP meds. That year, I stopped taking the meds, but monitored BP every few months. It was borderline high but not crazy.
So this year, I turned 38, off the BP meds more than 3 years now. Then, last month while in China with my family, I had a full blown stroke. Result was lost 2cm of my left brain directly in the region that controls speech and right arm & hand motor skills. Spent 8 days in a Chinese hospital.
For about one week, I talked like a stone cold drunk and my right arm was useless. I thought I might be that way forever. Luckily, after two months, I'm basically fully functionally recovered. Bottom line is the path from a risk indicator like high blood pressure to a stroke or heart attack can be fairly short. Now, at 38 I know I must make some radical change if I'm going to live to 70, no less not be a paralyzed half brain dead invalid.
I'm certainly interested in quantified self tech now. The problem is everyone that needs a doctor to take an intense personal interest in their long term health cannot possibly find a doctor to do so, for any number of reasons. Opportunity is to empower the individual non-medial experts to easily monitor their own health and risk factors over time. Will likely be moving into product development in this space myself.
If there is one thing I've managed to become sure of in my time on earth, it is that existing financial systems are explicitly designed by the status quo to be abused by the status quo.
From burritocop (linkdead):
Hacking Secret Ciphers with Python
http://inventwithpython.com/hacking/
I haven't yet read the book but I've heard good things about it.
It looks like it's a beginning programming book that also teaches cryptography
How about looking into paying this man for his honest bug finding work? The response from FB on this is disgusting.
"We are unfortunately not able to pay you for this vulnerability because your actions violated our Terms of Service. We do hope, however, that you continue to work with us to find vulnerabilities in the site.
We have now re-enabled your Facebook account.
Joshua
Security Engineer
Facebook "
This is senior high school analytics and stating failure as a certainty with this simple model is over-reaching, not to mention, Mark Shuttleworth's money.
