Hi, I'm the CEO/Founder at InCountry and Layer3.press . This site hosts articles I've written for TechCrunch, VentureBeat, CNET, BusinessWeek, and other pubs. Previously, I was the CTO/CIO at CBS Interactive and founded six enterprise infrastructure companies that were each acquired. Find me at LinkedIn and Twitter .
Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he is dropping censorship in the U.S. for Facebook and Instagram was accompanied by a comment that he is going to work with the U.S. government to encourage other countries to not censor content. Upon acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk dropped censorship and soon learned that government mandates from across the world censor content. In 2024, Brazil blocked Twitter…
This post was also published with the Industry Association of Privacy Professionals. It seems like every day there is a new report of a major personal data breach. In just the past few months, Neiman Marcus , Ticketmaster , Evolve Bank , TeamViewer , Hubspot , and even the IRS have been affected. The core issue is that user data is commonly spread across multiple systems that are increasingly…
This post was also published in Refresh Miami Dubai reopened aggressively during the pandemic with extensive testing and vaccination programs. It has since outpaced its primary competitor, Singapore, as the key destination for the wealthy seeking sunshine, lifestyle, and lower taxes. Dubai now stands alone in the Eastern hemisphere as the nexus point for the wealthy of the Middle East, Asia,…
I’m excited to soft launch Summary.News , an AI news aggregator that helps news readers know what's really happening by summarizing perspectives such as liberal, mainstream, and conservative. We aim to restore trust in the news with a more holistic view of stories. Many people were shocked when inflation was not transitory, Kyle Rittenhouse was declared not guilty, a miracle vaccine did not stop…
In his 1941 book, The Managerial Revolution , James Burnham predicted that a class of managers and administrators would rise above people performing actual tasks. Later dubbed the “ professional–managerial class ” by John and Barabara Ehrenreich, no one could have predicted that a vast swath of the upper middle class would become administrators, project managers, program managers, compliance…
I’m excited to share the soft release of Syndichain ! Syndichain is a censorship-resistant news aggregator with open algorithms and news context. Syndichain is built on a new Layer 1 blockchain that is purpose-built to syndicate content using an eventually consistent consensus mechanism. Syndichain was inspired by a systemic issue with news aggregators like Google News, Apple News, Twitter, and…
As the President said this week, the pandemic has ended. What also ended are the fantasies in San Francisco that “after the pandemic, everything will come roaring back” and “the harder we lock down, the better the economy will bounce back.” California has the same age-adjusted excess mortality as Florida, so the destruction was wrought for naught. Why do I write about San Francisco more than two…
The large declining tech company. We’ve all read articles in the tech press and blogs analyzing how once hot companies lost their way. Most of them have followed similar trajectories and have a common set of characteristics. What if we apply the same “large declining tech company” framework to the Bay Area? It turns out that large declining tech companies and the Bay Area actually have a lot in…
California, Florida, and Texas are among the largest U.S. states, and all three shut down before the Coronoavirus was widespread. They also have similar demographics, and a mix of city and rural populations. I have been writing about the relative success of the coronavirus virus response in Florida and Texas compared to California since last August . The coronavirus is a deadly plague that has…
After the initial shutdowns in March, ventilators, PPE, and testing shortages were mostly solved by early May. Florida, Texas, and other states that followed the original plan to flatten the curve for hospitalizations have re-opened their economies while maintaining hospital capacity. California opted for a novel virus suppression strategy that has destroyed its small businesses with a profoundly…
Three months ago, my wife and I moved from San Francisco to Miami. I previously lived in San Francisco for over 23 years, where I started multiple companies and worked at companies like Sun Microsystems. Given the spate of people now moving, I thought it would be useful to aggregate the unique characteristics that have turned Austin, Miami, and Nashville into such hot destinations. Globalization…
From March to early May 2020, the U.S. caught up on ventilators, PPE, and testing. In May there was a juncture: continue the “flatten the curve” strategy, or attempt to suppress the virus with an extended shutdown. States that continued with the “flatten the curve” strategy and re-opened had a lower unemployment increase and a similar death rate as states with extended shutdowns. Sweden is much…
This post was also published on LinkedIn Pulse. A series on the latent trends that have been accelerated by the Coronavirus Bitcoin advocates have long claimed that Bitcoin was the ultimate hedge against fiat currencies printing unlimited amounts of money. We just experienced this scenario: the U.S. Federal Reserve is buying “unlimited” amounts of debt , and the U.S. Treasury is spiking its debt…
This post was also published on LinkedIn Pulse. A series on the latent trends that have been accelerated by the Coronavirus Population density and hygiene are the two most important factors in the spread of respiratory illnesses. In a post-Coronavirus world, people are going to be more incented to avoid dense urban centers that were experiencing typhoid outbreaks even before the Coronavirus. The…
This post was also published on LinkedIn Pulse. A series on the latent trends that have been accelerated by the Coronavirus After the widespread fear of a pandemic, people are not going to be inclined to get into a crowded train or other mass transit, and will orient towards more personalized transportation whenever possible. In just the past few years, consumers had already flocked to…
This post was also published on LinkedIn Pulse. A series on the latent trends that have been accelerated by the Coronavirus Experts and scientists use hypotheses and models to define their outlook and predictions, which usually are developed, tested and refined over long periods of time. Models can have profound policy implications far beyond experts changing their opinion from don’t wear masks…
This post was also published on LinkedIn Pulse. A series on the latent trends that have been accelerated by the Coronavirus The most obvious Corona acceleration is the online-everything trend. Over the next decade, companies were already on their path to a digital transformation to enable most consumer and business transactions online, and with everyone suddenly at home, the trend has rapidly…
This post was also published with the Industry Association of Privacy Professionals. It’s common knowledge that the U.S. government, with a subpoena or warrant, can compel companies to disclose data about companies and individuals. All governments have some type of legal capability to request data from information providers. What is surprising to many, even those of us in IT, is that with the 2018…
We couldn't build a global cloud that would go bankrupt without massive infusions of cash. We had to apply lean and agile methodologies to our global data center build-out. At InCountry, we face the herculean task of building a global data storage and processing cloud with points-of-presence (PoP) in every country in the world. To make it even more challenging, we need two redundant facilities in…
This post was also published in VentureBeat. As the adage goes, don’t discuss politics or religion at the dinner table. Facebook’s genesis was for friends and family to share what was going on in their lives. Yet over the past couple of years, many Facebook newsfeeds have turned into “Trumpbook,” with a stream of outrage-focused political posts fueling Facebook interactions, especially during…
This post was also published in Entrepreneur. Facebook has had quite a run operating in the completely unregulated, wild world of social media, finally ending with a mea culpa that it needs government regulation in order to manage the massive social and democratic disorder it has created. With its new Libra cryptocurrency, Facebook wants to disrupt the most highly regulated industry on the planet:…
This post was also published in CIO.com. Hourly employees are frequently overlooked in IT strategy — but often present the highest case for return on investment. In IT decision making, the core stakeholder of a business system is typically the business function. The finance department selects the finance system, the human resources department selects the HR system, and so on. Downstream from these…
This post was also published in CNBC. Over the past few decades, globalization has bound countries together into a global supply chain encompassing finished products, parts, agricultural products, food products and energy. But a commingling of seven well-known tech trends will soon make it inconceivable to manufacture a product in China , ship it 7,000 miles to Long Beach, and then truck it 700…
This post was also published in CIO.com. It’s time for a better way to maintain identity in the enterprise. Let’s explore a new identity model, Consolidated Identity, that will simplify how employees authenticate into systems, access data and complete workflows. Today, it is common to use your Google, LinkedIn, or Facebook identity to log into a website. However, in the first generation of the…
This post was also published in VentureBeat. The recent legalization of recreational marijuana in California and other states now totals to 45 states that have legalized some form of marijuana . However, the federal government has never endorsed even medical marijuana. The Obama administration created rules known as the Cole memo where they decided not to enforce federal marijuana laws if states…