These are my recent Pinboard.in links:

• A VC: Investing In The Cultural Revolution

  "In the middle east, we've seen the power of the Internet in the Arab Spring. I believe we are in for a lot more of that sort of thing and that it will not be limited to repressive governments, but to all large institutions that seek to control people and their free will. This is the cultural revolution that I referred to in my talk with Erick at Disrupt.

  I think investors should be aware of what is coming and seek to invest in it where it is investable. I'm curious what the AVC community thinks of this investment thesis and where we should be looking for opportunities that fit into this thesis."

  disruptive-technology internet investing venture-capital amusing disintermediation-targets startup-culture-must-die

• Time-saving versus work-inducing software

  "What is the underlying thread? Time-saving software tends to be produced by less civilized people.  Software written by large corporations will probably be work-inducing."

  getting-shit-done efficiency corporations software problem-solving reuse

• Weighty Matters: Is sodium a dietary red herring for the effects of processed foods?

  "I think there's at least one more possibility:

  3. Sodium's isn't a causal agent of disease but instead given that processed foods are phenomenally high in sodium, is a useful biomarker for the degree of processed foods a person's consuming, and that it's the huge volumes of sugar and pulverized flour (that's more often than not packaged with gobs of sodium) that's actually causal for cardiovascular disease and death."

  healthcare statistics medical-culture consumerism fast-food

• Why America’s Pissed: Cornel West, Robert Reich and More – The Daily Beast

  "First thing we've got to do is tell the truth. We live in an age where lies are just ubiquitous. The biggest lies are that free markets are self-corrective, that individuals are rich because they're smart, and that somehow America became great because of economic growth as opposed to the moral courage of the citizens of all colors to fight for freedom. We need a democratic awakening. We need organizing, mobilizing. We need to be willing to take a risk to change the world. The Obama moment of hope is over. "

  economic-crisis commentary Cornell-West bankers-should-start-avoiding-lampposts-right-about-now

• Groklaw – Red Hat Makes History With Patent Settlement – Compatible with GPLv3

  "You know what this means? It means that those who claim the GPL isolates itself from standards bodies' IP pledges are wrong. It *is* possible to come up with language that satisfies the GPL and still acknowledges patents, and this is the proof. That means Microsoft could do it for OOXML if it wanted to. So who is isolating whom? Thank you, Red Hat, for innovating again to protect the FOSS community."

  open-source patents litigation GPL precedent

• Philip Greenspun’s Weblog » U.S. house buyers are factoring in the risk of a city or state declining?

  "The potential home buyer today has seen pictures of Detroit, with former neighborhoods being gradually reclaimed by Nature or plowed under into farmland. Recognizing that his or her own city could become like that in 20 years time, the buyer will factor that into the price he or she is willing to pay. In the event of a Detroit-style decline, the house becomes worthless and the cost of ownership for 10 years or so effectively tripled (10 years x 5 percent is approximately equal to 50 percent of the home’s value, then add another 100 percent for the cost of throwing the house away). Suppose the buyer thinks that this has a 20 percent probability of happening. Given a typical person’s risk aversion, that might reduce the market-clearing price for a house by 25 percent."

  economics housing-bubble recovery suburbanism sustainability city-planning experiment

• Falkenblog: High Frequency Trading Paper

  "The point is that in fast moving markets, one needs something a little better than simple historical moving averages of daily closing prices. This is better, and extending the idea of 'volume time' vs. 'chronological time' is an intriguing direction. But one can also look at bid-ask spreads directly, or the VIX futures, or its etf, the VXX, and combinations, to gauge intraday volatility as well. Further, one can better estimate 'buy volume' using the transaction price relative to the then extant bid-ask spread, rather than if the price was weakly increasing, though this then involves syncing the trade information with quote information, and for academics such data are often hard to come by (further, quote information is often 10 times as large)."

  learning-from-data financial-engineering trading analytics nudge-targets

• Nanolaw with Daughter (Ftrain.com)

  "My daughter was first sued in the womb. It was all very new then. I'd posted ultrasound scans online for friends and family. I didn't know the scans had steganographic thumbprints. A giant electronics company that made ultrasound machines acquired a speculative law firm for many tens of millions of dollars. The new legal division cut a deal with all five Big Socials to dig out contact information for anyone who'd posted pictures of their babies in-utero. It turns out the ultrasounds had no clear rights story; I didn't actually own mine. It sounds stupid now but we didn't know. The first backsuits named millions of people, and the Big Socials just caved, ripped up their privacy policies in exchange for a cut. So five months after I posted the ultrasounds, one month before my daughter was born, we received a letter (back then a paper letter) naming myself, my wife, and one or more unidentified fetal defendants in a suit. We faced, I learned, unspecified penalties for copyright violation and theft of trade secrets, and risked, it was implied, that my daughter would be born bankrupt."

  copyright fiction lawsuits read-this

• Did UCSD breach professor’s academic freedom? – SignOnSanDiego.com

  "The same month Elman wrote Biernacki a letter ordering him not to publish his work or discuss it at professional meetings. Doing so, Elman wrote, could result in "written censure, reduction in salary, demotion, suspension or dismissal."

  Elman did not respond to a request for comment. But his concern, according to his letter to Biernacki, was that Biernacki’s research and manuscript "may damage the reputation of a colleague and therefore may be considered harassment."

  The Academic Senate’s Representative Assembly voted overwhelmingly Tuesday in favor of a resolution decrying the situation after hearing a detailed and strongly worded report from its Committee on Academic Freedom."

  academic-culture politics wait-how-many-cultures-do-we-have-now-five-or-what

• Paul Graham Offers Some Numbers on the Success of Y Combinator’s Startups

  "Graham notes that funding, while easy to measure, isn't necessarily the best way to gauge the success of the program's startups. "Getting funded is not success. It's just something that makes success more likely." But if the standard measurement for success is value, and if value is measured by exits, then the 6 years of YC's existence isn't quite long enough to adequately assess this. Of the 300-plus startups, "just" 25 YC companies have been acquired, 5 of them for over $10 million, and Graham says that he's estimated the values of the rest of the companies based on these acquisition figures in order to gauge that the average value of companies Y Combinator has funded to be roughly $22 million.

  But coming up with an adequate measurement for success isn't really the point, says Graham. "The real lesson here though is how long it takes to measure performance in this business. We're 6 years in, and we could easily be off by 3x in either direction. Startup outcomes are unpredictable, and the outcomes of their investors doubly so, because it's hard to say whether the big successes are repeatable, or if the investors just got lucky. Even 6 years in, all we can say is that the numbers look encouraging so far.""

  metrics business-culture startups Y-Combinator diversity portfolio-theory-in-practice

• Doctors are human | The Incidental Economist

  "…But this is America. If you want to have the procedure, so be it. You get to choose. That’s the way we roll.

  My question is, did your doctor recommend it? Did your doctor tell you about this study? Do you think that those who recommend and perform this procedure don’t know about this study, and that if only they had this evidence they’d stop?

  Or, do you think physicians are influenced by biases and their personal beliefs? Me? I think they’re human."

  medical-culture statistics healthcare marketing cognitive-psychology evidence-based

• Caregivers Using Copyright Law To Shield Themselves From Public Criticism From Patients | ThinkProgress

  "When I walked into the offices of Dr. Ken Cirka, I was looking for cleaner teeth, not material for an Ars Technica story. I needed a new dentist, and Yelp says Dr. Cirka is one of the best in the Philadelphia area. The receptionist handed me a clipboard with forms to fill out. After the usual patient information form, there was a “mutual privacy agreement” that asked me to transfer ownership of any public commentary I might write in the future to Dr. Cirka. Surprised and a little outraged by this, I got into a lengthy discussion with Dr. Cirka’s office manager that ended in me refusing to sign and her showing me the door."

  via:poormojo copyright medical-culture liability complaints lawyers

• Hey, Remember When Newt Gingrich Was Sponsored By a Human Chip-Implant Company? | BNET

  "The issue of whether Americans should receive subcutaneous wireless RFID chip implants that can link to their electronic medical records emerged again in Wisconsin this week, where former governor and Bush Administration secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson is considering a run for Senate. Thompson was a former board member of VeriChip, the company that renamed itself PositiveID, and once appeared on CNBC with PositiveID CEO Scott Silverman to advocate that everyone receive a chip from birth…"

  Newt-Gingrich politics woops how's-that-whole-Number-of-the-Beast-thing-going?

• Irish Steam Trolley — Crooked Timber

  we need these in Ann Arbor

  public-transportation photography nanohistory

• CultureWorks – Greater Philadelphia

  "Cultural CoWorking: CultureWorks is currently developing Philadelphia's first coworking space specifically for the culture community in Center City. This space will provide networking, peer-to-peer support, technology, and other resources to individual creative workers, start-ups, and small organizations."

  coworking collaboration workantile-exchange