rmason

No Freep subscription: https://archive.is/QtaIV#selection-311.0-311.71

Biggest takeaway quote is that the executives automating with AI and then laying off employees have no idea what their humans do.

Had the pleasure of meeting Vint Cerf when he spoke at Michigan State a decade ago. He gave a terrific speech highlighting the history of the Internet and modestly detailing his part in it.

I got my amateur radio license in the sixties. There was an old timer on 80 meters who was the leader of a chat group that met daily. Any ham could join the conversation with one exception. He had a phrase: "no kids, lids or space cadets." Just like Gen Z these days he did not like Boomers ;<). That phrase to this day brings a smile to amateur radio operators of a certain vintage.

Caught my attention for a different reason and that's the name - REO Motors. I live in the Lansing area and until entering college there were two companies building vehicles here, GM (Oldsmobile) and REO.

Ransom Eli Olds created the Oldsmobile. Olds created the assembly line for manufacturing his cars. Everyone believes it was Henry Ford who created the assembly line but Ford (and mainly his chief engineer C. Harold Wills) who perfected the assembly line as we know it today. Olds got into a tangle with his investors and left. The company was sold to General Motors.

So Olds created a new company which was named after his initials. R.E.O. originally made both cars and trucks but after WW2 they dropped cars and specialized in heavy duty trucks. One famous model was the REO Speedwagon made even more famous by the rock band.

The new REO Motors is based in Texas and is going to build gasoline powered Japanese style KEO trucks. I am much more interested in an entrepreneur in Detroit who also started a company, Mutiny Motors, who is building his own Japanese KEO trucks except his will be EV's. He bought an old Lincoln plant, he is bootstrapping and will be selling the trucks as kits that you assemble.

Actually in the latest J.D. Power initial quality ratings they took a big step up in quality. I think it was the first time in 15-20 years that they were on the list of recommended major brands.

https://archive.is/VcL8c

I am a lifelong resident of Michigan and sadly the state keeps doubling down on what isn't working. Politicians like to think they're smart enough to pick winners and they're horrible at it.

When Governor Jennifer Granholm was governor a guy approached the state needed investment for a factory in Flint. It would create thousands of jobs. They were delighted because that is something that never happens in Flint. They not only gave him the money but he posed him holding a $9.1 million dollar check with the governor. The picture of the two of them together was in all state media. You know when something sounds too good to be true you might want to do a little checking? When people in Flint saw the picture they informed the state that this guy was a well known conman who had just got out of jail and was living in a trailer. Luckily they were able to recover the money.

https://www.mackinac.org/12345

Another Gov. Granholm story was the time an old line Boston VC firm approached the state for investment. So the state pulled funds out of the employees retirement plan to invest in the next round. The idea was that this would give the state more venture investment. But again no one did any due diligence whatsoever. This firm was not obligated to open an office in the state but only come a couple of times a year looking for investments. They were under no obligation to make any investments in the state and in fact did not. Due diligence would have revealed that the firm offered a very low return on their last several funds. So in the end the employees retirement funds grew more slowly and the state got no venture investments. That venture firm wasn't able to raise another fund and closed.

Back in the nineties Ford ran a lot of ads about how quality was job one. But in the last twenty years their quality declined by a large amount at the same time other brands were getting better. I say that as a lifelong fan of Ford, quality was why I left the brand two years ago.

I started out as journalist so I always appreciated great writing when I reinvented myself as a tech entrepreneur. There were three writers beginning in the nineties who were my tech troika: Kevin Kelly, George Gilder and Om Malik. Sadly now the only one still writing regularly is Kevin Kelly.

For those lacking a subscription: https://archive.is/GoDZ9#selection-679.0-679.64

This is unenforceable and imho ridiculous. Canadians are now going to be able to buy Chinese vehicles under a agreement just signed between those two countries. So we are going to arrest them when they try to cross the border in Detroit to catch a baseball game?

Mu sister and I gave my late parents sizeable library to the East Lansing public library, a place the entire family adored. They gave us a document that detailed that most of the books would be sold and the money would be used to support the library. We were OK with that and knew in advance that would happen. They have two large sales a year and receive more money than if they just sold them to a broker and the books stay in the community.

This doesn't happen everywhere. I have an old friend who like me is a fan of Michigan history. Every time he bought a book on his rural county or its towns he'd give a copy to his local library. Twenty years in he found out they were just selling them to brokers for ten to twenty percent of the cover price. Now he gives the list price of the book to the library with the understanding they use it for books of history.

In Detroit copper theft was an epidemic a few years back. Once the easy stuff in abandoned houses was gone thieves went further afield. .

A few brave thieves went after power substations. For some thieves a lack of knowledge was fatal.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2017...

Before becoming a ham I was an avid shortwave listener, both of radio and TV. You could learn so many things about the different countries by listening to their shortwave stations. Even get a little Communist propaganda from Radio Moscow ;<). Guess you can blame shortwaves demise on the Internet. Canada's CHU has been transmitting for 103 years.

Here's the other part - USV did not hire two analysts in an experiment to see if the new agents could replace them. They found out they could not and are once again looking for two analysts. That doesn't mean the experiment failed, the agents were useful but couldn't do it all.

https://avc.xyz/usv-analyst-20

I run an Adobe user group for over 25 years and I have been banned twice on Reddit for merely posting notices of livestreams and YouTube links of finished videos. Never failed to get less than 10-15 upvotes yet I still got banned.

That is Reddit's problem, not yours. However it does help to spend some time in the forum, answer a few questions and get known before posting about a product. It is also not a problem when answering a question to have a link to your product in the signature.

Here are three quick things I see:

1. Always have price on the top menu bar. don't make me scroll to the bottom of the page to see what it costs

2. Need on Chrome at least some padding between the headline and the green box

3. Why are all the videos cockeyed? Its possible it is a styling thing but you are better off having them level

I love the idea, just not certain that people giving testimonials will submit video ones. If they do a video testimonial could be a much stronger one because you could see emotion in a video which would make it far more powerful.

Pretty certain Dang won't ban you on here for listing the URL of your company. Not that you can't go over the line in self promotion but I specifically asked you to post it.

It would help immensely if you posted your website so we could look at your product and marketing.

Working on SEO is a lot of work and it can take six months to see results but it has always been the bootstrappers friend. If you have the time now this might be a good use for it. AI is fine for doing research for articles but you are far better off writing them yourself. If you want what you write to look more professional take a look at lex.page. Had a friend use it and he said it was like having a good copywriter looking over my shoulder.

The QLINE was a project of Detroit's billionaires who paid part of its cost. It didn't connect any specific destinations. It had to follow traffic like a car and was so slow you could walk faster. People would ignore the no parking signs in its assigned lane and it would have to stop and wait until police would tow away the vehicle blocking its path.

I love tech but never could see any point to it. Detroit has done a lot of amazing things, rising from the ashes just like its motto but this wasn't one of them.

A rare piece by Om that is not about tech but I think the guy is on to something. When I was younger I followed fashion trends, even owned a Nehru jacket when they were in style.

Now that I am older I have a pretty good sense of what looks good on me and pay no attention to the current style. Certain things are timeless.

Lack a WashPost sub: https://archive.is/4v2O1#selection-237.0-237.63

Kids reward for saving his family from the Russian drone was to become a target. So now they live hours away but still have to return to tend their crops.

Have to admit that I want to some of this 'Bad Boys' currency. I think basketball was more exciting in the eighties when the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons were winning titles.

It absolutely hurts me he couldn't find any great food. Detroit is full of terrific food, cuisine from all over the world. Some people who worked in great restaurants in New York City are moving to Detroit where the cheap real estate allows them to bootstrap a restaurant of their own. They do not need investors.

I can't also believe he missed the Ford Piquette Plant, Motown Museum, NewLab, TechTown, Techstars and the restored Michigan Depot which is Ford technology center.

Actually there is an alternative to noise and that is the closed loop liquid cooling. I have visited one of those and there is virtually no noise outside the facility. Inside it was loud like any other data center that I have visited. People walk by it every day and I'd bet they aren't even aware its a data center.

Heard an interview with the former head of Loudoun County who is now an evangelist for the data center industry. They got the county completely out of debt. They tripled the amount they spent on parks and art. But the kicker was the fact they have a $1 billion dollars in their rainy day fund! The data centers are all located in four townships out of sixteen in the county.

We need to win in AI and to do that we must have data centers. The solution I believe is for the people building them to get creative.

1. Build them in the industrial part of town. I'm from Michigan, there are neighborhoods in our cities filled with manufacturing firms stamping steel and making all kinds of noise with few houses. Yes the real estate can be more expensive and sometimes needs pollution removed but there are usually willing economic development departments willing to help.

2. Make the data centers bring their own power.

3. Find ways to creatively help the community. Saw pictures of a data center recently where they created two huge public swimming pools that are open all winter long, There is a power plant on Lake Michigan where they heat all the sidewalks. Imagine waking up in the morning and not having to shovel or spread ice before going to work.

4. Find ways to repurpose unwanted buildings. Detroit wants to tear down two of the five towers of the Renaissance Center which is on the Detroit River. One of the towers would have the first two floors occupied by the University of Michigan which would offer training classes on technology to the community. The rest would be a data center for the university. Power would be two gas turbines on the roof. The other tower would be a partnership with Detroit Public Schools that would offer a dormitory for all the school age kids living on the street. Educate these children from 6-18. Most American cities have at least one empty skyscraper that could be repurposed as a vertical data center.

5. Repurpose old shopping centers as data centers. South of the Mason Dixon line where solar has a higher ROI you could cover the entire parking lot with solar cells. You could offer free or nearly free shaded parking, maybe even let campers have extended stays.

For those lacking a Medium subscription: https://archive.is/Rd1EA

I don't know what happened to GEM. As someone who used them all GEM was superior to both Windows 1 and Windows 2. Macintosh had them all beat although it was a slower machine. But GEM didn't seem to advance and when Windows 3 came out they were toast.

For me Windows 3 (and especially 3.1) was the first time where you could work all day without having to drop to the DOS prompt to get work done. I was running Windows 3.1 when I first used the Mosaic browser on the then new world wide web and my life was never the same again.

For those without a NYT subscription:

https://archive.is/xZgBI#selection-505.0-505.55