John Michael Greer sees Resilience as self-delusion. Enter “resilience,” as another way to talk about what too many people nowadays want to talk about, generally to the exclusion of more useful conversations: the pretense that a set of lifestyles, social habits, and technologies that were born in an age of unparalleled extravagance can be maintained as the material basis for that extravagance trickles away. (Collapse) Most of the troubles that saddled Bucky Fuller with the label “failure-prone” were, like the vast number of leaky geodesic dome houses that sprang up in the Sixties, the product of too much efficiency and too little resilience.

Andrew Chen will be blogging to fill out this Road Map toward Product Market Fit. He's focusing on the B2C category, and has some interesting thinking: the intention is to create a scalable startup that is going after a huge market, and generate huge returns for venture capital investors... the goal is to get to P/M fit in shortest time possible, deferring everything else (monetization)... base it off something that’s already big and already working... figure out the options for competitive differentiation... ideal goal: simple product with fundamentally different core design intention for large pre-existing market... bonus points for baked-in distribution, monetization, etc. but don’t let this lead the idea!!!... usually one killer feature (not a bunch of features) Sounds like the Start Up Lottery game.

Inspired by the Debt Ceiling silliness, Jeff Jarvis started a Fuck You Washington Hash Tag-fest. No, no, Twitter won't do that here any more than it did it in Egypt and Libya. Shouting #fuckyouwashington is hardly a revolution. Believe me, I'm not overblowing the significance of this weekend's entertainment. All I'm saying is that when I get to hear the true voice of the people -- not the voice of government, not the voice of media, not a voice distilled to a number following a stupid question in a poll -- I see cause for hope.

I suspect it's only a matter of time before Google works with a partner to bring out a Home Server based on either Android or Google ChromeOs. Or might they try and have it really just be a Caching Proxy Server to apps running in the cloud? Any Tablet/NetBook/Mobile/Lap Top running Android or Google Chrome as a Remote Control/UI... (more)

Steve Blank notes that all the barrier-reducing going on doesn't make creating a Start Up that much easier. Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile Development and Customer Development, Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. I’m beginning to suspect this assumption may be wrong. It’s not that the tools are wrong, I think the entrepreneurship management stack is correct and has made a major contribution to reducing startup failures. Where I think we have gone wrong is the belief that anyone can use these tools equally well. For the sake of this analogy, think of two types of artists: creators and performers (think music composer versus members of the orchestra, playwright versus actor etc.)... It may be we can increase the number of founders and entrepreneurial employees, with better tools, more money, and greater education. But it’s more likely that until we truly understand how to teach Creativity, their numbers are limited.

Economist (more)

Nokia Cell Phone-s will become Blue Tooth-driven Always On You Web Server-s. Hmm, get the version that runs Python, run a Wiki.... (more)

Anil Dash mentioned how Public Speaking feels weird to a blogger because you can't link to anything you reference. So here's a LazyWeb idea: having your Presentation Software allow you to put links in your slides, and then, as you view a particular slide, its URL-s are pushed to the Back Channel being used by attendees in real-time, whether that's via IrcBot or Twitter Client.

At some point I need to assemble some Personal Finance/Financial Planning info. In the meantime, here are some links. (more)

The nightmare of being a SysAdmin of a Hosted Server (or any server meant to be "highly available"). (more)

Ward Cunningham is becoming Nike's Open Data guru. The Code for a Better World Fellow will work in Nike's Sustainable Business and Innovation team. As a part of this approximately 130-person-strong global team, the fellow will be working to help pave a sustainable future for the company. A future where creation of products isn't tied to scarce natural resources like water and oil; where manufacturing is lean, green, equitable and empowered; and where everyone, everywhere has access to sport. (more)

Open Source software conference held by OReilly

Ex-building associated with NYC, destroyed during terrorist attack (Dealing With Terrorism) on Sept11'01. (after being previously attacked in 1993!) (more)

Fabius Maximus on the Israeli future/destiny (2nd in his Grand Strategy series). No matter how many or great are its tactical successes, Israel’s strategic picture grows dark. Losing allies. Losing land. Losing people. Perhaps even losing internal cohesion. This should surprise nobody familiar with history. Germany proved that tactical excellence cannot overcome strategic weakness. And strategically Israel is very weak... It seems obvious who will win. Israel might last 100 years if its people are both lucky and skillful. Nevertheless, in the future only historians will know that the war’s outcome was ever in doubt. Much as today’s students see the Hundred Years War between England and France, Israel’s end will seem inevitable to them.

Fabius Maximus on the Myth of Grand Strategy. We can describe these as "grand strategies", but to do so has an element of falsity. Such intellectual analysis, based on theory, had no place in the hearts of these peoples. History also suggests than leaders cannot manufacture a "PrimalStrategy." You either have it, or you don't (Emergence?)... We can only envy these "primal strategies." The people of a developed western state seldom have a widely agreed goal and the willingness to sacrifice for its achievement. History shows that a mature state often tries to imitate a "primal strategy," a vain attempt to recapture a lost element from its past. Developed states have wealth, income, and security. They have complex societies, whose elements have a wide range of goals and viewpoints (Coalition). Their leaders and people have a large degree of cynicism. All of these make a "primal strategy" difficult to achieve. Europe"s last attempt was burnt out of its culture in the fires of World War I... General Semantics also sees the world in terms of maps. It is a science of applied epistemology invented in 1933 by Alfred Korzybski. The "ABC-s" of General Semantics explain why grand strategies tend to fail, and greater ambition increases the odds of failure. (This is 1st in his 4-part Grand Strategy series.)

John Perry Barlow on Dick Cheney's Grand Strategy. Historically, there have only been two methods by which nations have prevented the catastrophic conflict which seems to be their deepest habit. The more common of these has been symmetrical balance of power... The other means by which long terms of peace - or, more accurately, non-war - have been achieved is the unequivocal domination by a single ruthless power... I believe that Dick Cheney has thought all these considerations through in vastly greater detail than I¹m providing here and has reached these following conclusions: first, that it is in the best interests of humanity that the United States impose a fearful peace upon the world and, second, that the best way to begin that epoch would be to establish dominion over the Middle East through the American Protectorate of Iraq. In other words, it¹s not about oil, it¹s about power and peace. Well, alright. It is about oil, I guess, but only in the sense that the primary goal of the American Peace is to guarantee the Global Corporations reliable access to all natural resources. wherever they may lie... I actually think it¹s possible that, however counter-intuitive and risky his methods for getting it, what Dick Cheney really wants is peace. (more)

Went to see Hiten Shah of KissMetrics speak.

see Caveman Diet

Nassim Taleb on on the limits of Statistics. Examples: Long Term Capital Management, Credit Crisis 2008. Close to 99% of the variations, over the span of 20 years, will be represented in 1 single day. As I show in the appendix, this is typical with ANY socio-economic (Social System) variable (commodity prices, currencies, inflation numbers, GDP, company performance, etc. ). No known econometric statistical method can capture the probability of the (Black Swan) event with any remotely acceptable accuracy... This absence of "typical" event in Extremistan is what makes Prediction Market-s ludicrous, as they make events look binary. "A war" is meaningless: you need to estimate its damage - and no damage is typical... The "WisdomOfCrowds" might work in the first three quadrants; but it certainly fails (and has failed) in the fourth. (more)

Interview with Nassim Taleb. Written highlights so you don't have to listen to Audio. Complexity cannot tolerate Leverage, since no room for error. Since 1980, tripling in leverage, in U.S. and in Europe, ratio of leverage to GDP... Globalization has side effects; produces fat tails... People ask for more regulation. Risk was implemented because the regulators wanted it. Nobody in Washington talked about that this crisis was caused by regulators, Credit Rating agencies. Triple A assets, big premium put on having your asset rated AAA. Pension funds couldn't hold some of their assets in certain categories. FannieMae: VAR. Regulators like VAR. (more)