Recent Articles

Paul Graham following up on a controversial quote that was attributed to him from the $400/year *The Information*:

> “We” doesn’t refer to society; it refers to Y Combinator. And the women I’m talking about are not women in general, but would-be founders who are not hackers.

> I didn’t say women can’t be taught to be hackers. I said YC can’t do it in 3 months.

> I didn’t say women haven’t been programming for 10 years. I said women who aren’t programmers haven’t been programming for 10 years.

> I didn’t say people can’t learn to be hackers later in life. I said people cannot at any age learn to be hackers simultaneously with starting a startup whose thesis derives from insights they have as hackers.

Of all people [Michael Arrington has a good take on the situation](http://uncrunched.com/2013/12/30/the-disinformation/):

> And really, three sins were committed. The first was changing a quote. You just can’t do that, ever. The second was omitting contextual information which would have made the statement intelligible. And the third was taking a background discussion about Paul’s partner Jessica Livingston and turning it into an “interview” in the first place.

UPDATE: [Jessica Lessin has posted about this on her personal site](http://jessicalessin.com/2013/12/31/on-the-information-and-how-we-operate/) (not the site in question). It’s a shit defense, and her reasoning for editing his quote makes zero sense — unless of course sensationalism is what they wanted.

John Chen CEO of BlackBerry:

> Today, our company is strong financially, technologically savvy and is well-positioned for the future. In less than two months, my team and I have engineered a new strategy to stabilize the company, return to our core strength in enterprise and security, and maximize efficiencies.

That’s all you need to know about the new strategy: it was *engineered*. I think that word alone encompasses why BlackBerry is failing so quickly. They are making data driven decisions, and not decisions that create an emotional connection between the user and the device. In other words: they are trying to accomplish a task, a feature, and not trying to generally make life better for the user.

This is a concept you either get, and therefore accept, or one you don’t get and flat out reject — there’s little middle ground that I can see in the “make life better” business mindset that Apple is preaching.

But, since we have extra words in Chen’s post, allow me to point out two more things:

> When it comes to enterprise, we’re still the leader. Don’t be fooled by the competition’s rhetoric claiming to be more secure or having more experience than BlackBerry. With a global enterprise customer base exceeding 80,000, we have three times the number of customers compared to Good, AirWatch and MobileIron combined. This makes BlackBerry the leader in mobile-device management.

He plays up security the most, but let’s remember that reports are the NSA has a backdoor into BlackBerry servers (likely all devices). At this juncture in time I think it is highly irresponsible to tout digital security.

Lastly:

> In the last 60 days, more than 40 million new iOS and Android users have registered to use BBM. We will continue to invest in this popular service and build out its features and channels, with plans to turn it into a revenue stream in the coming years.

All 40 million of which *used* to be using BlackBerry devices — not sure that is a “win” there Mr. Chen.

Edward Wyatt:

> In Riga, speeds average 42 megabits a second, but many users had service of 100 to 500 megabits as of mid-December, according to Ookla. In San Antonio, broadband speeds average 16 megabits a second. Higher speeds are available through cable TV and phone companies, but the expense is such that many households cannot afford a connection.

There’s another side that these reports often gloss over: upload speed. When everyone first got on the web download was paramount because the web was mostly consumption. I’d argue that now most people also *add to* the web in the form of photos, videos, etc being uploaded. In the US a standard Comcast internet service account is likely 20mbps guaranteed down, and 5mbps guaranteed upload speeds. That is sad.

Even my upgraded Comcast service nets me just 50mbps down and 20 mbps up — and I pay a price for that which most people would flat out refuse to pay.

Faster internet services are among one of the few reasons left to live in densely populated areas.

Tyler Fisher:

> I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but here is a crucial aspect: web services cannot exploit the general user’s ignorance about the web. Even if users do not care about owning their data or understand what owning their data means, the web service cannot take advantage of that and sell their data. This is where the social web has failed us. The social web has exploited the ignorance of the average user of the web for profit.

Great tip from Katie Floyd — I had no idea this could be automated.

The Guardian:

> US district judge William Pauley said the dragnet program “represents the government’s counter-punch” to al-Qaida in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. The decision conflicts with a ruling in another case, increasing the likelihood that the US supreme court will take up the issue.

I think the best thing that can happen is for the Supreme Court to rule on this — one way or another we need an open court ruling and the Supreme Court is the best court to hand down this ruling.

Dr. Drang:
>Many of us aren’t writers, per se, but we end up doing a lot of writing to communicate what our real jobs are. This utilitarian writing often consists of taking a mound of disparate facts and explaining them through organization. This is a complex process that’s hard to do in an information-free writing environment.

He’s got good thoughts on distraction free writing tools. I try not to get caught up in the ideology behind these apps, and instead focus on whether or not they meet my needs better than other tools. So far, writing in an app like Pages or TextMate is more annoying to me than Ulysses or Writer (Pro). The good doctor is right, as it does come down to how you write.

Jared Cosulich:

> For the last 45 years Sudbury Valley schools (and before that Summerhill) have provided students with a K-12 educational environment where the students can do what ever they want, when ever they want all day long.

Those students attend college at a higher rate than the national average too. Wow.

Shawn Blanc on working from his iPad:

> Never once have those limitations hindered me from doing some great work from my iPad. In fact, oftentimes it is the limitations of iOS which empower me to do better work. Because constraint breeds creativity.

He lists out the apps he is using on his iPad, but the preamble leading up to that list is really worth the read.

Joseph Menn:

> As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned.

Well it was a good run RSA, hopefully you didn’t spend all $10 million yet — seems like you will need to hand it over to lawyers soon.