Recent Articles

We want to start three more camps by 2020. Three new camps means we’ll be able to bring camps to an additional 60 kids per year nationwide! 

I’m shocked this isn’t overfunded at this point. Get on it. Throw money at them.

Jason Kottke:

In five years, Casper will probably have dozens of retail stores and 10 different kinds of mattress at different price points — they already have more than a dozen stores and 3 models ranging from $600 to $1850 — just like the companies they are trying to replace. Their origin story won’t matter…VC-fueled marketing will paper over all of that and, tada, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Unrelated, I have a Tuft & Needle mattress and love it. It may not sponsor every podcast, but it also doesn’t sponsor every podcast. And that’s not an affiliate link, it’s just a link to a fantastic mattress.

Mike Monteiro:

Twitter would have you believe that it’s a beacon of free speech. Biz Stone would have you believe that inaction is principle. I would ask you to consider the voices that have been silenced. The voices that have disappeared from Twitter because of the hatred and the abuse. Those voices aren’t free. Those voices have been caged. Twitter has become an engine for further marginalizing the marginalized. A pretty hate machine.

Note also:

Actor Rose McGowan, one of the accusers of disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, has had her Twitter activity suspended. McGowan had earlier tweeted “fuck off” to actor Ben Affleck and accused him of lying about his knowledge of Weinstein’s history of sexual misconduct.

For me there’s a key line from Monteiro which tells you all you need to know about many things in life:

But I’ll tell you this: a lot of those people have tried, honestly tried to deal with the abuse on the platform. But when leadership doesn’t want something fixed it’s close to impossible to fix it. And when leadership doesn’t see something as a problem, it’s not getting fixed at all.

Speaking of security, it looks like WPA2 WiFi security is totally fucked. This will likely need patches on your OS and routers. What a fucking mess.

This is a fascinating read and shows the true dangers of networks like Facebook, and Twitter as well. What’s most interesting, and most dangerous is that these networks themselves don’t know how they impact the world until well after the fact.

At its core, Medium has two good things going for it:

1. Design, it’s phenomenal and well considered.
2. Desire to be better. They know what they want to achieve.

The problem with Medium is that they have no fucking clue how to actually accomplish the second thing, and so they quickly erode the trust of writers. If you are serious about writing, it’s the worst possible choice you can make for publishing your words.

Daniel Kreiss and Shannon McGregor, reporting on another side of Facebook, Google, and Twitter during the elections:

For example, these firms offer an extensive array of campaign services — including advising campaigns on everything from the content of ads and other communications to the specific groups they might benefit most from targeting, and how best to reach them. Consider the fact that all three of these firms have dedicated partisan teams that work with campaigns. Staffers work with campaigns to guide advertising buys, boost engagement around online ads, and shepherd the use of their platforms.

Zeynep Tufekci:

In a largely automated platform like Facebook, what matters most is not the political beliefs of the employees but the structures, algorithms and incentives they set up, as well as what oversight, if any, they employ to guard against deception, misinformation and illegitimate meddling. And the unfortunate truth is that by design, business model and algorithm, Facebook has made it easy for it to be weaponized to spread misinformation and fraudulent content. Sadly, this business model is also lucrative, especially during elections.

Tony Romm for RECODE:

In some cases, though, congressional aides appeared disappointed with the information Twitter provided. Some on the Senate Intelligence Committee, for example, fretted Twitter had not done more, and sooner, to patrol its website for Russian misinformation, according to a source familiar with its work. Afterwards, the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, thrashed the social giant’s presentation as “frankly inadequate.”

There’s some good momentum for change with social advertising giants. Will be interesting to see what comes of all of this.

Om Malik:

This brouhaha around Twitter’s 280-character mini-experiment is actually a good encapsulation of how despite often touting disruption, change and innovation, the Valley (aka technology establishment) is often resistant to change, dismissive of change and behaving much like the world it wants to disrupt.

See also: iPhone X, MacBook 12”, Outlier Clothing, Headphone Jacks.