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Facebook: The 2019 Feel-Good Tour

Facebook: The 2019 Feel-Good Tour

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Mark Zuckerberg was back on Capitol Hill last week, testifying before Congress about the proposed cryptocurrency, Libra.

“I don’t control Libra” was the central theme of the Facebook  CEO’s testimony,” according to TechCrunch. “The House of Representatives unleashed critiques of his approach to cryptocurrency, privacy, encryption and running a giant corporation during six hours of hearings. Zuckerberg tried to assuage their fears while stoking concerns that if Facebook doesn’t build Libra, the world will end up using China’s version.” Read More...

The NYC Tech Inferiority Complex

The NYC Tech Inferiority Complex

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The New York Post recently reported that Amazon is eyeing a return to New York City. This came on the heels of the Amazon/NYC as second headquarters debacle when Amazon abruptly pulled out of the deal thanks to protests orchestrated by a certain Queens member of Congress.

But that’s not what this is about. As we’ve been hard at work on our StartupOneStop app, which will not be limited to NYC information, West Coast readers, et al, two things occur to us: Read More...

Summer in the City: Tech and the #NYCBlackout of 2019

Summer in the City: Tech and the #NYCBlackout of 2019

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Tech has long been held up as the great disintermediator and a panacea when it comes to making our lives easier. That may be true, for the most part, but what happens when the power grid goes down, which is precisely what happened this past Saturday evening, July 13, thanks to a Con Ed equipment failure that left the west side of Manhattan from 30th to 72nd Street, without electricity for some four hours.

We were there, right in the thick of it. Read More...

Overdue: The Internet Declaration of Independence

Overdue: The Internet Declaration of Independence

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Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

The U.S. just celebrated Independence Day, when we pause to take stock of what the founders fought for: liberty and justice for the citizenry, which were not necessarily granted to them in the countries from whence they’d come.

There are always fireworks.

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger recently published his proposed Declaration of Digital Independence, and it’s a must-read. “Humanity has been contemptuously used by vast digital empires. Thus it is now necessary to replace these empires with decentralized networks of independent individuals, as in the first decades of the Internet,” he begins, and he does delineate the many abuses of the tech oligarchs, including: Read More...

Why the Food Hipsters Are Pissing Me Off

Why the Food Hipsters Are Pissing Me Off

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Image by Ross Cains from Pixabay

Disclaimer: we know that the information here applies to none of our readers, and is not to be taken personally.

 

Here’s the thing about hipsters: they want to be different, re non-conformist, so they adopt a unique way of dressing. Of course, those accouterments then become the hipster uniform, and so much for non-conformity. Read More...

Pay Attention to the Insights of Co-Founders

Pay Attention to the Insights of Co-Founders

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If you’ve ever applied to an accelerator or approached (many) investors for funding, one of the most important points they check, especially in the case of investors, is team.

Above all, they want to know about the co-founders, and truth be told, most investors shy away from a startup with a solitary founder, the stated reason most often being that you should be able to find at least one person who shares your vision or passion and is willing to throw in with you. It’s also difficult to operate in a vacuum: much easier if you have that other person off whom to bounce ideas, and to keep you in check, if need be. Read More...

As the FAANG Founders Turn – On Each Other

As the FAANG Founders Turn – On Each Other

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

You have to give Mark Zuckerberg credit. Love him or hate him, he does act very deliberately, even if you might believe that it is with malice aforethought.

Netflix founder and CEO Reid Hastings resigned from the Facebook board this past week. Peggy Alford, currently senior vice president of Core Markets for PayPal, will be nominated to join the board of directors and become its first black member, but there’s a clear case of missing the forest through the trees here.

Facebook is reportedly spending $1 billion on producing original content. When Hastings joined the board in 2011, he said that he had been trying to figure out how to integrate Facebook and make Netflix more social, so getting on the board was a good deal, according to Business Insider. Read More...

Beware Big Companies ASKING to be Regulated

Beware Big Companies ASKING to be Regulated

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In a seeming change of heart, Mark Zuckerberg backs stronger Internet privacy and election laws: ‘We need a more active role for governments’, he said, and no, there wasn’t a sudden rip in the universe. Zuckerberg penned an opinion piece in the Washington Post entitled The internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas, which are harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.

The editorial, no doubt, comes on the heels of the attention that Facebook, Twitter, Google and Amazon have been getting from Congress and various Presidential candidates, and as a result of the recent announcement that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube execs face jail and multi-billion pound fines over terror videos. “Australia could become the first country to introduce prison terms and fines if firms fail to speedily remove terror videos like the Christchurch massacre live-stream,” reports The Sun. Read More...