The post is about "An investment mentality that hollows out our culture." Even if the folks that profit from the hollowing give the money away, the hole's still there. To be specific to the example in the article, it's not like Rockefeller's heirs are literally giving money to Mom and Pop delis to compete with banks for New York's street corners.
Because they benefit from YC's value prop, it's in Sama's and PG's interest to beat the Big Startup, Fast Growth, VC train, Silicon Valley drum. It's not disingenuous, it's literally what they believe and are committed to. But it's not the only way to be happy as a technologist. I'm not even convinced it's the best way to be happy as a technologist. YC put those materials out 1) as a branding and marketing effort and 2) to be helpful (part of their brand). In order for us to get quality resources like these for doing something small instead of big, we need folks who have a sustained interest and experience in beating that drum as well. Maybe we need a "Slow Tech" movement akin to the Slow Food movement.
I stopped using Dropbox after the Rice appointment. Here's the thing - I'm not concerned that she's going to spy on my stuff or let the govt spy on my stuff any more than, say, Google. I'm concerned that she lacks integrity. Now, either the board knows this and doesn't care (b/c they lack integrity) or doesn't know this and doesn't care (which makes me question their judgment). Perhaps they appointed her b/c of her ties to govt and academia in the hope that she could help open new markets. OK. Has she? Perhaps they appointed her b/c they want to see more women and people of color on startup boards. Bravo! Wrong choice. And this is coming from a person of color.
The ability to wiretap was a side effect of the POTS. But a side effect doesn't need to be a required feature of future technology. There's a good argument to be made that there's more rights in our constitution for protected and private speech by individuals than there are for the government to have access to it.
Technically no, if we're talking about installs of OS on platforms. Bad business decisions and uninformed consumer decisions don't necessarily line up with "voluntary". Voluntary on the part of the manufacturer, yes. But less obviously so on the part of a less informed consumer. And complicated further by the fact that some of those manufacturers later came to regret the deal they entered - specifically that MSFT got a cut of all shipped machines regardless of whether their OS was installed.
We went through a TOS kerfuffle recently with our startup. As a team we fall pretty far on the side of users' rights and privacy. I can't speak for Spotify, but I can say we found it to be a bit of a challenge to balance users' rights with future feature ideas, privacy controls within a mobile OS, corner cases, and legal fees. We wanted to keep options open around business models and features without having to go back to our lawyer (and our users) with every new release. It was instructive to be on the other end of crafting a TOS and realizing just how complicated and expensive it can get to try to do the right thing.
Something about "startups fail because they simply don't listen to us, get confused, and stop working" feels wrong coming from the President of YC. It bothers me that there's no institutional or personal responsibility being taken. It also bothers me that the risk the founders took isn't being acknowledged - that all the failures are being placed back on the founders' shoulders. YC selected these founders from thousands in an incredibly selective process. Why is Sama crapping on alumni? Wouldn't you want your president going to bat for you and defending your efforts?
I was more in the Sampras camp - I liked Agassi's rebellion but hated his fashion sense ;) That said, he's aged well and I read his autobiography, Open, a few years ago. Really blown away by his candor, insight into himself and the price to compete. Recommended reading even if you aren't a tennis nut.
Some island countries experience daily outages of power, actually. It winds up being pretty easy to work around when you've planned to expect it (this includes things like backup power sources and so forth).
This is YC advice boiled down to its essential and most generalizable terms. Because it's general (applies to almost all their founders) it's also generic - the patterns matched across hundreds of humans. It leaves out the human toil, mistakes and doubt - but most importantly the emotions. It doesn't tell you why you should follow this advice. It doesn't show you what happened to the folks that did. It takes for granted its assumptions about what's valuable. Same for success.
It's the Cliff's notes for the YC ideology. So it could be the Cliff's notes part you find hollow, or it could be the YC ideology part you find hollow.
Many Americans are uninformed and many are apathetic. But Thucydides said the same thing about Athenians. I don't believe it's as simple as blaming American citizens.
Americans get information about the world through substandard education, uninvestigated journalism and high-fructose entertainment. The reporting on American policy outside America is far better than the reporting on it inside the country. Yes, Americans inherit this government, but as long as America is a superpower, so does the rest of the world.
No, but I used to work in film, so for me there's a ton to learn and appreciate about the craft - camerawork, writing, pacing, editing, performances, sets, locations - the creation of an immersive world that you experience with the characters.
I had heard of Cacophony Society, John Law, reference to parties on(in?) The Golden Gate Bridge and their connection to Burning Man. But I hadn't known about Cacophony Society's origins in Suicide Club... which sounds like a Chuck Palahniuk book, which isn't surprising as he was apparently a member of Cacophony Society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacophony_Society
While I share your sentiment, in actuality they were likely already a laughing stock in 1985 when this Jobs interview ran, "Radio Shack is totally out of the picture. They have missed the boat. Radio Shack tried to squeeze the computer into their model of retailing, which in my opinion often meant selling second-rate products or low-end products in a surplus-store environment."
http://longform.org/stories/playboy-interview-steve-jobs
Google's looking to attract top talent, talent is looking for "Quality of Life" and those driving factors correlate strongly with said "screwed-up housing markets"
What if "intelligence? is a red herring and really what we're talking about is conscious awareness? And what if that's a naturally occurring property like gravity (but more rare)? I'm not a physicist or a mystic but my lay knowledge says that some quantum experiments require an observer in order to resolve themselves. I suspect it would be more productive to be looking for artificial consciousness.
Because this view of reality was the American dream promised (literally and figuratively) by politicians, companies, churches, schools, families and advertisements in the 20th century.
Knowing how to spell doesn't make you a writer. I think the parent is trying to explain that there's a cultural bias and inscrutability with respect to how music theory is taught. Does learning a notation system make one a theorist? One can be a western musician in, say, a jazz tradition, understand theory, have theories and play music and have never used the system of notation explained in the otherwise awesome comic.