Lies, Damn Lies and LIBOR
I've been hesitant to write about the LIBOR scandal because what I want to say goes so much further. We now know that Barclays and other ma...
The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition
Photo by psiaki Based on the title of this post you might be thinking I have mad stacks of money in the bank. That I’ve had a few “exits” and instead of hunkering down and writing code for 6 months I opted to talk to a few of my buddies at the yacht club and purchase a primed and growing s
Clearing up some things about LinkedIn mobile’s move from Rails to node.js
There’s an article on highscalability that’s talking about the move from Rails to node.js (for completeness: its sister discussion on Hacker
Yahoo Lays Off Flickr Support Staff
nolan caudill's internet house
The Product is the Byproduct
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
Startups Are Bands for Hackers
Growing up as a young musician in suburbia, I fantasized about being in a band: playing music in front of thousands of people, signing a record contract, enjoying the successes (and excesses) of...
Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy
I wrote this thing on Twitter this morning about the MegaUpload shutdown, and it’s gotten some crazy traction on the old internet. In addition, I’ve just done a couple of interviews for NPR on the subject, and I think I may have said some crazy, provocative things. There are many comments and questions out there…
Google Voice lost my business number. How I got it back, and what I learned.
My Story of When Google Voice Lost My Number Google Voice lost my number August 12th, 2012, at around 5pm central time. I was able to log into Google Voice and check my messages at around 1pm that …
Buying Adobe Photoshop CS6
It was Friday morning. I was sitting at gate 74 at SFO, hoping to get some client work wrapped up before my flight. I’ve been using the CS6 beta of Photoshop...
Compelling Startup Pitch Archetypes (with examples from YC companies)
Over the past few weeks, I’ve helped a handful of startups work on their YC applications and interviews. I spent much of the time brainstorming with the founders on the best way to explain their business in the most clear and compelling way possible. These founders knew a lot
The Macroeconomics of Chinese kleptocracy
China is a kleptocracy of a scale never seen before in human history. This post aims to explain how this wave of theft is financed, what ...
An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
The following article, and the two addenda that follow, were written by an investment manager who works with very wealthy clients. I knew him from decades ago, but in 2011 he e-mailed me with some concerns he had about what was happening with the economy. What he had to say was informative enough that I asked if he…
The "Wash my Ferrari" Problem: A Meditation on Risk
The Setup Let’s pretend for a moment that you own a car wash. For $5, customers can drive in for a hand wash and wax. One day, in the midst of the stream of Hondas and Subarus, a customer pul…
Tacocopter Basics
The Tacocopters are coming. Sure, the original pitch was a clever troll aimed at credulous and impatient fast-food junkies. But the numbers don’t lie – a typical taco weighs less than a pound, and aircraft that can autonomously fly a few dozen ounces of payload to your doorstep are already available for around a…
Paulo Coelho advertises on Pirate Bay front page
The Pirate Bay starts today a new and interesting system to promote arts Do you have a band? Are you an aspiring movie producer? A comedian? A cartoon artist? They will replace the front page logo with a link to your work. As soon as I learned about it, I decided to participate. Several of…
You're solving the wrong problem
Problem-solving is an important part of everyday life, from organizing your video library to deciding whether to buy a car. Small problems (like trying to
Duck Duck Go Passed 1mm Searches Per Day
I'm a bit late with this news about our portfolio company Duck Duck Go but I am super excited about it so I'm posting it anyway. I'll let a tweet tell the story: We received over 1,000,000 direct searches yesterday for the first time ever!duckduckgo.com/traffic.html — duckduckgo (@duckduckgo) February 14, 2012 One…