San Francisco

The whole point of driverless cars is that they can be programmed to follow the law even if the people in them don’t want to. There’s no point in deploying this technology if the code in it will break the law.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

A very useful and necessary list by the FT of who’s behind all the awfulness emanating from the X1 website.

Refreshing to see Brian Cantrill talk about ’trust’ and ‘accountability’ in the tech industry. These days it almost seems as if both of those have become dirty words.

Both placing these ads and serving them should be illegal in any reasonable market/democracy.

When comedians say that Silicon Valley CEOs (and Mark Zuckerberg especially) are bitch coded, this is what they mean.

I still haven’t upgraded to the new iOS and seeing these reports, I’m not sure whether I should.

At some point you have to ask yourself how many predators work at Meta. They seem hell bent on targeting children. You don’t have to be a predator to work at Meta but it helps.

How much time for an innovative/edgy/creative agency to copy this (poorly) in Berlin?

This may sound harsh, but it’s a lot fairer than they deserve: “But since the product is no longer jumping exponentially in capabilities, they will need to fall back on proper product development if they want to be competitive. They need to accept that they are software—plain old software—and that means people need to be able to use it.”

Wasn’t it the CEO of META going around telling everybody that free speech was the most important thing at the moment?

Not a major surprise that minorities would be treated poorly at a nazi charity like the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Sam Altman and OpenAI are consistently unreliable. One more example that by this point should not surprise anybody.

Let’s hope for a quick ending to Twitter.

A quick look to what’s awaiting Germany-which has bet heavily on hydrogen cars-several decades in the future. California has a hydrogen highway which looks like it is on its way out.

The people in the Silicon Valley Trump cult, here represented by Balaji Srinivasan and all the people around a16z, are depraved and dangerous.

As always, the people most intent on having children should be the ones having the least:

“Meta is building the future of human connection.”

After the hysteria a bunch of VCs whipped up over the weekend around the SVB collapse, questioning whether they actually do what they claim is more than justified.

Why am I not surprised that somebody like Marc Andreessen would be a NIMBY while at the same time being a hypocrite?

I was amazed at how closely this article about product development at Facebook tracks with how I approach it: “PMs are 100% accountable for the results of your team.”

but I like working with PMs who went into it through channels other than the official ones, and are motivated out of their passion for building things and solving problems. Not because they feel it’s something they’re supposed to do, or because they think it’s prestigious, or because it is the default path from whatever elite school they went to.

It’s nice that these startups guys take a public schooling so well. It would be nice if we could see more of that on Clubhouse instead of the endless rows of bad panels.

“This is all to say that Paul Graham is an effective marketer and practitioner, but a profoundly unserious public intellectual. His attempts to grapple with the major issues of the present, especially as they intersect with his personal legacy, are so mired in intuition and incuriosity that they’re at best a distraction, and worst a real obstacle to understanding our paths forward.”

Reading this account by the former COO Francoise Brougher, I’m disappointed to learn how badly Pinterest failed at Diversity and Inclusion.

The Zendesk story of how they built a globally distributed company is quite amazing, but there are many more like this by now.

An excellent overview of the issues around Slate Star Codex without having to read a single word of the blog yourself. That’s an excellent service.

“The best engineers can toggle back and forth between manager and IC roles. Make sure your technical foundation and fundamental skills are solid enough to pull that off.”

A bunch of very relevant guidelines of how to setup a product team at various stages of a company from the CPO of Credit Karma.

This lament on SF does not sound that far off from where Berlin is. The city is a lot bigger and less boring, but without measures, it could go the same way when it comes to property prices and hollowing out of public services.

“It’s no coincidence that co-living start-ups have gravitated to cities like Berlin, San Francisco, London and New York. Ostensibly ‘winning’ the battle for capital and talent, they are urban testing-grounds, where rootless and cashed-up tech workers, heated real estate markets, and rising housing pressures add up to a recipe for experimentation.”

Boeiende vinger aan de pols in open overheid Amerika met Noel Hidalgo (New York), Dmitry Kachaev (Washington D.C.) en Alissa Black (San Francisco).

De vervoersmaatschappij van San Francisco geeft de voorspelde aankomsttijd van het volgende voertuig op een willekeurige halte vrij in een handig XML-formaat. Daarmee kun je leuke dingen bouwen, zoals bijvoorbeeld een horloge wat de volgende tram aangeeft.

Ik hou van veel en lekker eten en ik merk dat ik daarmee in het buitenland beter terecht kan dan in Amsterdam. Hier een paar restaurant-tips die voor mij in Amsterdam ontbreken en waarvan ik denk dat ze weleens een succes kunnen worden.

I’ve recently used my first OV-fiets and it was a fantastic experience 1. It’s a great way to bridge the last couple of miles on your transit experience and I think an important addition to the public transportation system.

As per Kottke fished out of my iCal and my Dopplr, hat tip Mark:

In some of Adam Greenfield’s backpages “Whatever happened to serendipity?” he recounts how he used to scrounge for punk rock records and how the difficulty and uncertainty of the experience was part of what made it worthwhile:

Last day in San Francisco we went up to Twin Peaks for this absolutely stunning view over the city:

Freshly one day back in from San Francisco some adjustments need to be made. The time difference has been reduced from 9 hours to 8 thanks to our splendidly European invention: DST. Along with the time difference there is also a slight difference in daylight and a large difference in temperature (15ź centigrade) and precipitation (nearly non-stop rain the past day).

I’ve always wanted to go there and tomorrow I’m finally going. Some vague plans, tads of serendipity and friends pushing me over the edge were enough to have me book the ticket, I think, only three weeks ago. Tomorrow Lufthansa will take me over an ocean for the first time of my life 1.

Ik schreef al eens over het gebrek aan een high tech kantine in Delft (buiten de TU om dan).

Ik raak er steeds meer van overtuigd dat San Francisco een ontzettend leuke plek is om te wonen en werken.

Erg leuk verslag van Frackers over de handelsdelegatie van Amsterdam naar Californië. Erg belangrijk om een goede relatie te hebben tussen dat blijste, vrijste, high-techste deel van Amerika en ons Amsterdam.