A VC - Latest Comments

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

William Mougayar — Thu, 02 Jan 2020 19:19:16 -0000

It sounds complicated :)
I'm just running a simple blog, not unlike AVC or Feld.com. But thank you for your thoughts.

Re: Video Of The Week: The Game Changers

Jim — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 09:23:53 -0000

The study showed a 50% chance of cancer in men who drink milk. Think for yourself! Look it up! Don’t believe these charlatans. Sometimes these “debunkings” are like watching the Darwin Awards.

Re: Video Of The Week: The Game Changers

Ian Cruz — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 18:47:19 -0000

What are your thoughts on regenerative agriculture and its ability to sequester carbon into the soil and have a net positive effect on the climate (as opposed to conventionally raised meat or the highly processed vegan foods like Beyond Burgers. etc.)
https://blog.whiteoakpastur...

I'm not even going to respond to many of the outlandish health claims of the documentary (Iceberg lettuce has more antioxidants than Salmon!). I only advise my friends that switched after the documentary that going plant-based means going plant-based, not grain-based, high-carb (and if so, it should be high-fiber, low glycemic load), high-sugar, with processed fake meats like the Beyond Burger (which uses Canola oil as it's second most common ingredient). And then when you do restrict such a large food group, get bloodwork/vitamin testing done regularly. A simple example of a common deficiency is for essential fatty acids, the ALA in plants has a low 1:10 conversion rate to EPA/DHA, so I would supplement that (along with B12, Choline, Creatine, Zinc, D3, Selenium, Carnitine, Carnosine/Beta Alanine, Taurine, and Essential Amino Acids). Oh, and having insanely low cholesterol probably isn't good (read Cholesterol Clarity by Jimmy Moore) and beware of lectins (read Plant Paradox by Steven Gundry) and prepare vegetables properly (shop for fruit in season, peel veggies, soak nuts, etc.) . Going vegan isn't as simple as switching from chicken nuggets to Quorn, and burgers to Impossible Burgers, after all.

Re: Adversarial Interoperability

sigmaalgebra — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 18:37:50 -0000

Okay, I sense that the key words are big, distributed and open.

Or, the idea is good versus bad, as in formula fiction and the US TV westerns white hats versus black hats, and other such dichotomys involving evil, greed, deception, duplicity, sin, etc.

I'm beginning to see: Ozone good; Freon bad. Artisanal good; factory farm bad. Organic good; fertilizer bad. Wind and solar good; fossil fuels and nuclear bad. Vegetables good; meat bad. Chastity good; sex bad. Just really purely bad, carbon.

Sounds like we have moved several hundred years back into the Dark Ages of Europe.

Then it appears that now we have the Trilogy Catechism: (i) Distributed good; centralized bad. (ii) Small good; big bad. (iii) Open good; proprietary bad.

In this it's not clear just what centralized, big, and proprietary is the target.

Maybe after we swallow the Trilogy Catechism we will get some specific applications!!!

E.g., we should spend $94 T on the Green New Deal because renewable good; carbon bad. There is not so much as a single tinny tiny drop of good evidence that human sources of CO2 will have any measurable effect on the temperature of the earth, yet we just skip over that point.

Sounds like yet another effort to convince the public with a Bernays narrative also borrowing from Nazi Dr. J. Goebbels's IIRC "If you repeat a lie often enough, then people will believe it. Eventually even you will come to believe it."

So, I can see it now: A nighttime candle lit procession of drugged zombies in hooded long robes slowly marching in a miles long line of twos chanting in unison "Small tech good; big tech bad." "Wind and sun good; carbon and nukes bad" "Vegetables good; meat bad." ....

So, let's set aside such generalities and consider the Trilogy Catechism:

(1) Big

I'm concerned about big. My startup needs quite a lot of computing. For that I get to pick (and settled on) (i) a processor instruction set (64 bit Intel), (ii) processor chips (AMD or maybe later Intel), (iii) motherboards (so far Asus), (iv) an operating system (Windows, especially 7 64 bit Professional and Windows Server 2008), and (v) infrastructure software, middle-ware, (mostly Microsoft's .NET and SQL Server). Later I will pick LAN switches and IP routers with Web site load levelers (likely Cisco).

So, I'm depending heavily on "big tech"; mostly I'm depending on Microsoft.

Alternatives might have been Linux (some distribution), Apple, or, likely still an option at least in principle, IBM. That's about it.

(2) Open.

Sure, PCI cards, Ethernet, USB, TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP, HTML, and more are open. Fine with me!

For .NET, IIRC for that Microsoft has ".NET Core" which is open source and intended to run on nearly anything from microwave ovens and wrist watches to Oak Ridge supercomputers. Fine with me, but I'm ignoring .NET Core and just continuing to use .NET 4.x.

For SQL Server, I'm using it and hope to continue, but IIRC SQL is an ANSI standard.

In simple terms of direct relevance for my startup, .NET Core and ANSI SQL do not concern me, are far away on a back burner, way down in my TODO list.

(3) Distributed.

It's tough enough to get everything running as desired in one place. Distributed is harder.

If my startup gets annual revenue approaching, say, $1 billion, then I will take seriously being distributed. For now, distributed is far away on a back burner and way down on the TODO list.

In particular:

(a) I really like Microsoft's products; I just wish they were better at technical writing, say, as good as Jim Buyens. All the talk that Microsoft is a threat does not concern me.

I hope Microsoft gets bigger; then they will be able to do more, maybe more for my startup.

(b) Google. I use it a lot and like it. I especially like YouTube, e.g., for Christmas music. Somehow recently full shows of Hannity are harder to find, but I don't know the cause and don't really need Hannity much anyway.

(c) Facebook. I have an account but log on likely less often than once a month. For now, there is one person there I "follow". Later for publicity I may make more use of Facebook.

To me, the talk that Facebook is a threat of some kind does not concern me.

(d) Apple. I have no Apple products and want none. I have no beef with Apple.

For more in big tech, open, and distributed, I don't care -- see no need for concern.

Re: Video Of The Week: The Game Changers

Ian Cruz — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 18:10:49 -0000

Wilks just yelled over Kresser for a couple hours, not "exposed him". There are so many fallacies in Game Changers, it really shouldn't be taken seriously at all.

Re: Adversarial Interoperability

Steven Roussey — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 18:01:07 -0000

One of Google's potent weapons in its arsenal is that it controls login to its services to such a level that only approved browsers are allowed to access those web pages (just ask linux users). And it is not just browser competition that suffers, but services like ours that issue GDPR/CCPA requests on user's behalf.

Re: Adversarial Interoperability

Sebastian Wain — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 17:02:31 -0000

My two cents from 2012: Cloud Development: the dictatorship of the mainstream services’ APIs.

Re: Adversarial Interoperability

Michael Brill — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 13:33:20 -0000

Yes, I was wondering what are the magical standards that allow big tech to thrive while eliminating their competitive advantage. One thing that seems quite feasible and doesn't really require much, if anything, in the world of interoperability is to allow users to define or subscribe to third party content filters. Define the end goal requirement, not the means. This doesn't solve all problems, but it solves perhaps the biggest one right now and could implemented in 2020, not 2030 when all this is likely to be made irrelevant by some inevitable technology platform shift that'll take out incumbents anyway.

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

kidmercury — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 12:27:38 -0000

as a heads up in case you were not aware, you may see a decline in traffic from search due to the broken theme. (title and meta tags are gone, html is invalid)

Re: Adversarial Interoperability

William Mougayar — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 12:12:13 -0000

Not only does interoperability results in a level-playing field for competing players, it also fuels user adoption.
This says it all "Fix the Internet, Not the Tech Companies" from the other Cory article of the same title:
https://www.eff.org/deeplin...

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

Susan Rubinsky — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 11:49:01 -0000

yeessssss. A vibrant marquee! I almost forgot about those.

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

Susan Rubinsky — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 11:47:20 -0000

Selecting your host is a key issue. Same for your domain registrar.

Re: Adversarial Interoperability

Rob Underwood — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 11:46:48 -0000

"Adversarial interoperability" is great framing for much of the work that we're doing at FINOS now, including / especially projects such as the FDC3 desktop interoperability standards (https://fdc3.finos.org/). Going to reuse and share this idea as it helps to well contextualize a key component of the open source in financial services movement, especially when we get questions like "Why is Goldman open source its modeling language and platform?"

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

Susan Rubinsky — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 11:45:52 -0000

There really is no such thing as a "smooth migration."

I just took a look at your site. If I were the consultant bidding on your site, I'd get your price point first then have an initial strategy consultation (if your price point was high enough). Creating a strategy first is what dictates the form of your website (and all other marketing assets and activities). Often the strategy session completely dismantles what you think you need. The strategy session starts with defining short and long term goals. Then the marketing plan is built around that. Once there is a marketing plan in place, then a website structure plan is created -- which is often much different than the structure in the current website. Then the most suitable platform is selected, based on the structure and on long term goals.

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

Susan Rubinsky — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 11:34:55 -0000

Have you tried Duda? It's got a lot more flexibility than Wix or SquareSpace - https://www.duda.co/

Re: Adversarial Interoperability

jason wright — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 11:33:25 -0000

I read it over there, i see it over here. It's like magic.
As Nick seems to now only permit discussion of his posts via Twitter i will write something here instead.

Quote:"I believe, and we have said at USV many times, that driving interoperability is the best and most effective way to limit the power of big tech companies, and that in today’s environment we should focus on “breaking up the data, not the companies.”."

To break up the data is to break up the companies, no? Without 'their' data they then amount to what exactly? They know that, and unless they plan to become the new rails on which all this diced data will move (Libra?) they are looking at the wall.

Re: Adversarial Interoperability

iggyfanlo — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 11:15:35 -0000

Interoperability for technology and its place in government I believe has a nice analogy with real estate, i.e. eminent domain. It's in the common good for this "area" to be shared, but the owners (those who created the value) should be compensated... perhaps not what they would like but at least some compensation for the efforts to build that value and service.

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

David A. Frankel — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 10:42:42 -0000

Feels like Craigslist....I want my money back.....

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

Laurent Boncenne — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 09:13:08 -0000

while we're on this subject, what happened to the old archived posts comments? it seems now that the posts are locked it doesn't show any of the comments (which a lot of times where where interesting discussion was happening..)

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

Jan Schultink — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 08:26:32 -0000

Very refreshing. Just 2 adjustments:
- Sans serif instead of Times Roman
- Limit the line width, narrower columns are easier to read on today's huge screens.

In short: Paul Graham style: http://www.paulgraham.com/m...

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

WA — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 07:39:04 -0000

Talking Heads “Once in a Lifetime” speaks to the pointlessness of not being happy with what we have. This community, this blog, this very special place of thinkers, makers, students, teachers, mentors, protégées, participants and observers is what is here. An incredible foundation and architecture that provides an “Alexandria” access to knowledge and inspiration. Much else is paint. And every so often a new coat is needed. Like Byrne, Eno and company waxed poetically...Same as it ever was. Thanks for the past decades,all. Happy New Year everyone.

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

jason wright — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 05:57:39 -0000

'Dead head'.

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

jason wright — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 05:56:40 -0000

Indifferent to comfort or luxury. Me too, but i am uncomfortable with the idea that we are building a world on top of technology that we can have a hard time understanding when it does things that we might not have intended and find the results of which less than desirable. Are we in control? Personal human agency (and also as a species) requires us to have a measure of control over our lives. Once we lose it (climate change?) what then are we?

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

scottythebody — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 01:09:36 -0000

^this

Re: What’s Going On With AVC?

Nick Ambrose — Sun, 29 Dec 2019 23:42:05 -0000

I thought it was supposed to emulate upgrading to a new iOS version