Would you give your data to this company? Acme Inc, Privacy Policy We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Acme, Inc. if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to: meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request. enforce applicable Terms of Service, blah blah blah blah Acme, Inc, Location Acme, Inc. is incorporated in the People’s Republic of China and is governed by the laws of this country....
Program or be Programmed
Marc Andreesen is good at formulating catchy, provocative statements like this one for a USA Today article: “The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories,” Andreessen says. “People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do.” I like Marc Andreesen for making these wake-up calls in the general media. To be heard, you must be provocative. My world view is similar: If you don’t learn to control a computer, you won’t be in control of your own destiny....
What is the purpose of owning guns?
There is reliable evidence, both in the short term and long term, that we are moving to a post-violence era. Some may romanticize the past where a man was a man and personal security was guaranteed by a piece of metal strapped by your side. But most of us hopefully welcome this shift. Guns are tools of combat and survival of the past. Wars today are won with more advanced technologies....
Delightful Experience of forgetting my iPhone in an Uber
Today I forgot my iPhone in an Uber black car. I couldn’t have imagined a better experience. As soon as I realized it, I logged into iCloud and started playing the lost sound on my phone while tracking it on a map as it sped off on the freeway. After a little while, I watched as the dot on the map came back up the freeway, took a wrong exit, got back on track and a few minutes later, I walked out my front door to greet the Uber driver as he pulled up....
There is no faking it
I often get asked, “what is the best way to get to know Heroku” by people in sales or consulting roles who want to explore Heroku opportunities with their customers or people (usually in management roles) who thinks Heroku might be useful in their organization and want to explore further. We could put together white papers, training tutorials and certification programs (indeed we may get to that one day). But there’s really no way to fake it....
Competition does not always make things better
Google’s iOS Maps app is here after 3 months absense, but as GigaOm points out it’s not going to be the same as before because there is no longer a single, default mapping service for the device that all other apps will use. The next logical step is to treat maps apps as browsers are treated on PCs. The user chooses a default browser and developers can then launch this browser with a simple API call....
Why is P/E of big tech historically low?
Marc Andreessen believes historical low P/E of big tech (Oracle, Cisco, Intel, etc.) is caused by public loss of trust in tech dating back to 2000 crash. I believe it is caused more by the threat of disruption to these companies from the next generation tech companies than from lack of investor interest in tech as a whole.
A rant on healthcare
How hard can this be? Healthcare should be bought by individuals directly, not by companies. Individuals should receive the same tax brake as companies do if they pay for their own insurance and companies should give a substantial refund to employees that opt out of the health plan. Once this market dynamic starts up, it will make the healthcare market much more transparent and more competitive. Individuals will have greater choice and be able to better match their needs with what they’re willing to pay....