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October, 2013

... But here's what's awesome about San Francisco

If you can get shit done, you can get shit done. If you're in technology, there is nowhere else in the world to be. Period. The critical mass of talent, investment and employment opportunity mean that - if you're the kind of person who already has the skills and circumstance to ...
October 30, 2013

San Francisco: the shine has come right off for me

I guess I must be missing something obvious about the land of opportunity. Here's how health insurance works, in a nutshell: I pay hundreds of dollars a month, either directly or through my employer. Then, when I go to the doctor, I may still need to still pay some money. If ...
October 30, 2013

We'll never be Google (Royals)

I've never seen a Blade rack in the flesh I cut my teeth on a VPS and Ruby And I'm not proud of my address IP v4, no traceroute envy But every post's like: Node scripts Varnish GitHub integration Mongo Redis Graceful degradation We don't care; we're running Facebook in our dreams But every blog's like: Seed round B round Term sheets and some leeway YC Creamery Tesla ...
October 24, 2013

Getting a Linksys AE3000 Wireless-N USB dongle to work on a Macbook Pro

A while back, my out-of-warranty Macbook Pro's wireless antenna died. I had the card replaced; no dice. And unfortunately the antenna is in the screen, so to get working wireless back I would have had to get that replaced at a very high cost. I went another way. If you walk down ...
October 23, 2013

Is your startup on the user's side?

Some questions to ask yourself about your startup: Does your business aim to "lock" users into your product? Do you take ownership of content and/or data that your users create? Do you create artificial barriers for billing purposes? Do you sell your user data behind their backs? (Burying it in your terms & conditions ...
October 23, 2013

Why I support unions and the #BARTstrike

The BART strike is over: at the time of writing, they're expecting Bay Area Rapid Transit trains to start rolling at 4am, with a full service up and running by sometime in the afternoon. That's great news: the roads have been gridlocked here, and it's felt like the Bay Area ...
October 22, 2013

Why "engineers first" matters

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has a great line on his Twitter bio: "engineers first!" Note: not sales first; not biz dev first; engineers first. In most traditional organizations, unfortunately, engineers are not anywhere near first. Often, once you've cut through the extensive political hierarchies, layers of management, "ideas" people, and various other ...
October 17, 2013

Outsider leaders are the agents of change

One often-seen trope in tech industry commentary is: "the geeks will inherit the earth". It's a nice idea, which appeals to a lot of people in this ecosystem; there's even a lovely symmetry to the idea that the people who were probably bullied and ostracized in school, at least to some ...
October 14, 2013

Phones aren't relevant in 2013 - so why am I forced to pay for one?

I've had a Samsung Galaxy S2 for two years, and I'm trying to decide which device to move to next. When I moved to California a few years ago, I decided to go with T-Mobile, which has proven to be an excellent decision. Between dropping phone contacts and removing international data ...
October 13, 2013