garry’s posthaven

First, Sarbanes-Oxley mandated byzantine corporate bureaucracy to 'protect' investors. Then, the SEC damaged the Silicon Valley economy by forcing companies to count stock options twice, both as dilution and as expense. As a result, Silicon Valley, for decades the bright spot of the American economy, produced only one [initial public offering] in all of 2008. Now, Geithner wants to regulate venture capital firms to protect us some more. It's like watching children deface an economic work of art.

--TJ Rodgers, CEO of Cypress Semi via online.wsj.com

OK, lets get this straight.

Enron and Worldcom destroy trust in corporations and line their pockets along the way, and tech pays the price. Sarbanes-Oxley took cash directly out of the pockets of almost every tech entrepreneur out there, burned most of it, and gave the rest to accounting firm and auditors.

High flying masters of the universe on Wall Street use their quant models to yet again fleece the American public, and now tech is going to suffer yet more heavy handed regulation when DC puts a choke-hold on access to life-giving venture capital?

I was never a libertarian, but I'm certainly coming around.

Wow, Kirk Mastin taped a Flip video camera to a $3,500 Canon XH-A1 + pro mic, and filmed a mini-short with both of them filming identical footage. He then runs through it one after another, and you can barely tell the difference. The main difference actually is the sound quality, and even that isn't significant at all.

This is apparently the video blog entry that caused the NYTimes to pick up the Flip camera. Anyway, Kirk Mastin, your blog rocks.

And also I just finally ordered a Flip Mino HD myself. I'm absolutely inspired by the storytelling possibilities.

Inspired by Röyksopp's Remind Me music video.

Really strong work.

Millions of people might be tempted to erase a severely painful memory, for instance — but what if, in the process, they lost other, personally important memories that were somehow related? Would a treatment that “cleared” the learned habits of addiction only tempt people to experiment more widely?

Neuroscientists have discovered a possible way to erase memories, the New York Times reports today.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind may be coming to a cul-de-sac near you. Or perhaps more sinisterly -- what might an authoritarian/totalitarian state do with this power?

Wish I could have made it to this talk, but was too busy coding. However, thanks to the power of the Internets, we can timeshift it to... well, the weekend. ;-)

There's definitely something powerful in the approach. It feels more right than a build-it-and-they-will-come mentality. We're still learning too.

Want more on how to startup the right way? Eric Ries, Dave McClure, Andrew Chen, and Mike Speiser are some of the most prominent thought leaders of scientific / metrics-oriented startup approach.

Also, building the tech to track and make decisions like that is almost always custom rolled, which is just a development overhead that ideally could be avoided. Our friends at Mixpanel are working on that -- to help startups apply the same kind of metrics-oriented decision-making done at Slide for startups like yours and mine.

Classic hip hop -- this is what it was about -- just good flows, good beats, and the fundamentals. No flash, all substance.

Give me 90's NYC hip hop over MTV hip pop any day.

Huge open spaces were created to stimulate idea sharing and creativity. A plush cafeteria was put in, complete with a gourmet chef. Couches were scattered throughout the offices so that researchers could take naps or even sleep there overnight, which many of them did. And the soft-drink machine was wired to a terminal. Researchers who wanted a drink simply typed in their choice.

In short, Thinking Machines was becoming a hacker's paradise. The thinking, says Lew Tucker, one of the company's research directors, was that "if they were fed, they'd practically live at Thinking Machines."

I lived it. Palantir Technologies was just like it. It's definitely a thing of beauty when it comes together. (Blatant plug: They're hiring too.)