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lancewiggs

2,970 karma · joined August 28, 2010

Punakaiki Fund and Climate Venture Capital Fund Based in New Zealand. Both AIP investor approved funds.

Web: Punakaikifund.co.nz climatevcfund.com email: Lance@lancewiggs.com

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/lancewiggs; my proof: https://keybase.io/lancewiggs/sigs/UNJ3a77ypKmF2mHG2ejSkyVdmCdGfjzPTqUNOXYzbUM ]

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lancewiggs··on Show HN: Subvocal – Talk to your computer without making noise
Including those who lose their voice due to illness. Huge, hungry market.
lancewiggs··on New Withings Users Must Pay $99/Year for Apple Health Syncing
Not at a good one.
lancewiggs··on Switching to electric stoves can dramatically cut indoor air pollution (2025)
That appears to have poor feedback about the induction cooktop itself, and is inferior to, say, Bosch. Cycles on and off, poor pan detection, lower peak power, areas being affected smaller than the lines on the top etc.
lancewiggs··on After the AI Crash
Have a read of Jeremy Grantham’s book. Seeing bubbles is reasonably easy. Forecasting when they pop and when to get out is very hard. For example GMO as at the end of April were forecasting through the bubble that returns for large US equities would be negative over the next seven years. But since then the market has gone up by over 30%. It could pop any day, or could grow for two more years. Advice is to diversify your investments and make sure you avoid systemic risks. Read books by value investors.
lancewiggs··on The Free Market Lie: Why Switzerland Has 25 Gbit Internet and America Doesn't
Yup. For those interested we have a similar approach where the fibre to the home is owned by a regulated provider that is required to offer its service to all retail service providers (RSPs) at the same price. Competition is strong.
lancewiggs··on Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
The rise in sales of GLP-1 products also coincides with the decline in self-help books. Those products are highly effective at delivering some of the hardest self-help outcomes, so why buy a book when you can inject?
lancewiggs··on Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down
Perhaps think of the stock as a value stock, not a growth/momentum stock.

The thesis is that they should survive and thrive as an investment asset through the AI bust, but performance during the AI bubble is poor. If you are a longer term investor then B2B SaaS valuations appear cheap right now, but you need to be able to weather the storm of missing out on the AI infused bubble.

As evidence the BVP Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index is at all-time lows for EV/revenue multiples. While some of the companies will see growth rates impacted by AI, that only explains a little bit of the drop in multiples versus the past.

lancewiggs··on How to breathe in fewer microplastics in your home
And to add - tea is graded at source, and buyers purchase based on grade. So a low quality tea bag will have tea that is objectively worse than a high quality one, while the best tea is never near a bag.
lancewiggs··on EFF is leaving X
Those numbers are the real news here - that's a brutal drop in traffic. Are other organisations seeing the same?
lancewiggs··on Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
WSJ reports they can pay in Chinese yuan instead of Bitcoin.
lancewiggs··on Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones
Yeas ago I motorcycled a lot, all over the world. I escalated to an air horn and hi-viz. But I pretty quickly realized that these made no tangible difference to the behavior of larger vehicle drivers. So I ended up for later vehicles with a stock horn and hi-viz only for heavy rain.

These days our family cycles a lot for commuting. It’s really easy to observe that people in vehicles treat us far better if we look like humans, wearing normal street clothes, rather than wearing high-viz or, far worse, cycling gear.

The bike bell is for polite notice, not alarming. The best alarm system you have is your voice, which is variable volume and tone. For ultimate effect slap the panels of cars, as it is very loud inside the vehicle.

lancewiggs··on Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
I like it. In particular the descriptions of how he reacted when confronted. The public key anecdote is a red herring - there is far more convincing evidence in the article.
lancewiggs··on OpenAI should build Slack
An alternative perspective is that if someone sends me a Google sheet link then I know almost immediately that is probably not a “serious” document. Similarly with Google Docs, as “serious” documents with proper tracking of changes and so on are in Word.

Of course the uses of serious spreadsheets are often in finance and serious documents are in law.

lancewiggs··on Data centers in space makes no sense
It's exiting the 5th best social network and the 10th (or worse) best AI company and selling them to a decent company.

It probably increases Elon's share of the combined entity.

It delivers on a promise to investors that he will make money for them, even as the underlying businesses are lousy.

lancewiggs··on A flawed paper in management science has been cited more than 6k times
I found mistakes in the spreadsheet backing up 2 published articles (corporate governance). The (tenured Ivy) professor responded by paying me (after I’d graduated) to write a comprehensive working paper that relied on a fixed spreadsheet and rebutted the articles.

Integrity is hard, but reputations are lifelong.

lancewiggs··on Our approach to advertising
Whether it not this is AI slop, it places a huge burden on everyone here to read it, which we will not. Please be thoughtful, and just stop.
lancewiggs··on Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15
AI bot-like behaviour.
lancewiggs··on Largest cargo sailboat completes first Atlantic crossing
Generally you pack it into a crate and fly it. You may well need a Carnet and/or other paperwork, and it only makes sense for longer trips.

Consider buying a bike in Europe instead - generally cheaper and you can get something more appropriate to the terrain.

lancewiggs··on Ask HN: My university wants all my IP (PhD Student) is there anything I can do?
Talk to a VC as well. Or more than one, and ideally ones that are in the medical device space and have done similar deals with others from your university. If they are interested then they can apply pressure on the university too, to get to a solution that works for everyone.
lancewiggs··on Please stop asking me to provide feedback #8036
2: is not optional as the pop-up has occurred and the interruption done, and 4-6: are not obvious nor easy for almost everyone.

I recommend people always respond with the lowest possible score (1, not 0) when presented with popups like this.

lancewiggs··on US falls out of 10 most powerful passports list for first time in 20 yrs
The New Zealand Active Investor Plus resident program requires $5m NZD, which is under $3m USD, but that would take everything. There is another program mooted where you buy a business for less than that.
lancewiggs··on The Gold Card
NZ’s Active Investor Plus program is more like EB-5 than this. AIP requires that migrants invest their funds, not donate them. The Growth category requires fewer residency days and a NZ$5m (~US$3m) investment in “growth” companies or funds, including VC funds and companies that VC funds invest with. The Balanced category requires double the investment and has a wider range of asset classes, but also a longer duration and higher number of days of residency required.
lancewiggs··on Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?
Fun but scammy.

If you copy the generated url and put it into the entry field (and repeat) then you end up at a bitcoin site. As Bubblerings has pointed out that has malware.

lancewiggs··on YouTube to be included in Australia's social media ban for children under 16
I clicked and there is absolutely is content that is not acceptable, to me, visible on the front page. Everyone has a different opinions of what’s acceptable, which is why we have ratings systems so society can draw a line.

If a platform doesn’t curate then governments or the legal system, or lobbyists targeting payment providers will step in.

lancewiggs··on NSF plans end to lone U.S. Antarctic research icebreaker
A lot of excellent climate research is done in the polar regions.
lancewiggs··on How to not pay your taxes legally, apparently
If you are a US citizen then US tax will apply to you wherever you are. People form other countries switch off their home tax if they do not meet residency requirements.

There is no capital gains or wealth tax at all in New Zealand, but only for domestic investments. For offshore investments there is a deemed return that you treat as income, so if your wealth is tied up in illiquid stock then it can be dire.

lancewiggs··on Major reversal in ocean circulation detected in the Southern Ocean
Look at London. Draw a line west. Compare climates. Now do the same for New York and go East. Ocean currents are what keeps London warm and NYC cool.

So this is a huge deal. I’ve been down to the Southern Ocean, lectured all the way by scientists.

North of the Antarctic is the only place on earth where the sea can rotate completely around the world without hitting a land mass, and it is deemed the engine of the world’s oceans. Those oceans are what have absorbed most of the excess CO2 that we’ve emitted, and a lot captured has been buried in deep ocean. But the ocean warms, and can capture less CO2, and bad days are ahead.

This news signals not just a slowing in that absorption for an area, which not just sends more CO2 into the atmosphere, but has more terrifyingly unknown downstream implications for other ocean streams.

lancewiggs··on BYD's Five-Minute Charging Puts China in the Lead for EVs
BYD is moving so quickly - the ones I’ve seen recently in NZ are surprisingly innovative, superb quality. Obviously not all markets are getting all vehicles, and the best are yet to leave China. Check out the EV Shark and Denza D9.
lancewiggs··on Mary Meeker's first Trends report since 2019, focused on AI
Here’s the PDF. https://www.bondcap.com/report/pdf/Trends_Artificial_Intelli...
lancewiggs··on Uber to introduce fixed-route shuttles in major US cities
Sure - if you do it by passengers and not by vehicle count. Busses are hilariously more efficient at moving people.
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