1) The Future of Venture Capital, Tech Valuations and the Fate of Tech Incumbents - Conversation with Bill Janeway (Forbes) - Very interesting conversation on the shrinking state of venture capital with one of the guys who pioneered it. If you're at all interested in VC, this one's for you.
2) Mark Cuban's 12 Rules for Startups (Entrepreneur) - These are really, really good rules. I don't think I've ever started a company without an exit strategy in mind. Maybe that's why I've never sold an app for $1 billion.
3) THE INTERNET IS FUCKED (but we can fix it) (The Verge) - Absolute MUST READ of the week. Then head over to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and become a donor. Then watch the Video of the Week and get on the right side of this fight.
4) Nearly one in three American households have no choice when it comes to their internet (Quartz) - In case you thought #3 was hyperbole, here's the data to back it up.
5) Here's The Technology That's Going To Make Your Phone's Internet 1,000 Times Faster Than 4G (Business Insider) - Wow. Just...wow. Yes, please.
6) This Insane New App Will Allow You To Read Novels In Under 90 Minutes (Elite Daily) - This is basically the coolest app I've seen in months, and it will be an absolute game changer for me because I do 95% of my reading on my Kindle. Finally a reading app that makes reading better. Pure genius. Go check it out and see how fast you can get to 500 words per minute.
7) Hemingway (Hemingway App) - If I'm going to plug a reading app, I guess it's only fair that I plug a writing app. I absolutely love Hemingway. Wanna sound smarter? Less passive? Even for something as mundane as a comment on WSO, Hemingway will make you a better communicator.
8) Dear America, I Saw You Naked (Politico) - This will both enrage and enlighten you. I know it's a couple months old now, but in case you haven't seen it you owe it to yourself. Airport security is theater, plain and simple, and this was written by one of the actors who chose to exit stage left.
9) Netherlands Closing 19 Prisons Due to Lack of Criminals (Blindfold) - I was just in Amsterdam two weeks ago and I saw firsthand how legalization/decriminalization works. In short, it works like a fucking champ. Bad news for the prison industrial complex in the US if we ever pull our heads out of our collective asses.
10) New Zealand man given ridiculous 99-character name after losing poker bet (The Telegraph) - Hilarious.
Video of the Week:
Words are utterly inadequate to express how much respect and admiration I have for the organizers of this year's SXSW and the COLOSSAL MIDDLE FINGER they gave the NSA and other government shitheels with the following video. I present to you the most wanted man on Earth, brought to you through seven different Internet proxies to mask his location. If you're in the camp that thinks Snowden is some kind of traitor, this will change your mind. Make no mistake; there is a war raging in cyberspace. You want to be one of the good guys. I love his analogy that the government is trying to burn down the Internet and you guys (the young, the tech savvy) are the firemen tasked with saving it. Get to work:
That's it for this week, guys. Have a tremendous weekend, and let me know what you think about this week's Bananas in the comments!
I love the idea behind Spritz app, but I need to know a release date. That app has been everywhere over the last few weeks but no mention of when itll be available to the rest of us.
Already out here.
Re: the Hemingway app -- I applaud the effort, but I think good writing is much more than just short sentences and writing in the active voice. Would recommend this book. Best book on writing I've ever seen. Will improve your game ten fold.
4 250 words per minute I could handle, 350 was a bit tougher, 500 was near impossible for me. Very cool though.
9 This would never work in the US until our prison system is revamped. Lots of people in low level prisons get caught ON PURPOSE during the winter for free food and shelter. Think about that real quick....
9 (in response to @yeahright) - It costs $16,000 a year to support a homeless person on basic housing and food. It costs $50,000 plus to house an inmate per year. The problem has the same dynamic driving it as the auto retailer fiasco in NJ that bribed the gov't to keep them in business through bad policy. And this is the NJ GOP pulling this shit. Legalizing weed is a HUGE step in the right direction. Worst example for prisons: California. The prison lobby is SO powerful that every sitting governer meets with the union heads before even running. Now that prisons are privatising, the financial motivation to keep bad policy going is stronger than ever. Again, to quote Darwin directly 'If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.' In our current state, regardless of partisanship, America is going to hell. We absolutely can do better, we just collectively choose not to. Let me put this in perspective: America has a higher incarceration rate than North Korea. 'Murica, WTF
3 - I'm posting to my facebook. Go ahead, say it out loud. The internet is a utility. I love it.
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@"UFOinsider" Utah has a radical new approach to the homeless problem: they're giving the homeless no-strings-attached housing. Definitely cheaper than incarceration:
http://www.policymic.com/articles/81507/the-most-unlikely-state-in-amer…
+1
Well this is cool. I hope there's followup over time so it can be seen how it plays out. Realistically, sending people to prison is used to deal with a bunch of other shit that certain people don't want to be bothered with. Think of the lost GDP alone from potential workers locked up for smoking a joint or some other non-issue, it's probably several percentage points.
Love the bonus bananas. Once again, some great articles!
I have to say that #3 is perhaps one of the most half-baked, disingenuous, intellectually empty pieces of journalism on which I have ever laid eyes. One is truly at wit's end to produce a single informative sentence from this fustian wasteland.
I simply cannot, for the life of me, understand why cable & internet companies take so much heat from the press and consumers. Even the most elementary observations about cable & internet infrastructure refute the entire angle of this article: 1) the U.S. is among the best countries in the world as measured by affordability of entry-level fixed broadband connections, 2) internet speeds have been consistently and rapidly rising in all parts of the world, including the U.S., 3) pricing for broadband internet has remained largely flat over the last 5 years in the U.S., and 4) there are a number of competing and substitutable methods of providing internet service to customers with dozens of independent agents at different parts of the value chain holding economic interests in the efficiency of delivery.
Alarmism about how internet plans are priced, whether content providers or customers pay for bandwidth, and which companies consolidate is overblown - and this article embodies that reality.
I can read 1000 words per minute without any app...it's called skimming. Same result.
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