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Dan Bulwinkle

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Real Artists Ship

Version 0.96 Noah Wyle in Pirates of Silicon Valley , the only Steve Jobs movie worth watching A couple years ago I was in Healdsburg, CA with a mission to find some art to decorate my house. There are several galleries in town, and I visited almost all of them. I chatted with the owner of the Harris gallery, which does have some nice art. I kept my mind open when browsing, though I was also…

Two Lessons in Education: Structure and Pace

Version 0.91 Two Computer Science Departments In high school, I participated in a summer program at a university that is consistently tied for the best computer science department in the world. One of the courses I took was Introduction to Computer Science focusing on the C programming language, but at the end of the course there was an option to take the final exam for the version of the course…

Alpha Books

Version 0.96 Several years ago Chris Beiser asked people on Twitter what books no one else would recommend that give you “alpha.” I spent the time sifting through the Twitter thread, collecting the book recommendation into a spreadsheet. Later, the thread resurfaced, and I put them in CSV on Github at the request of others. To the best of my recollection, the criteria were: a) it could…

The Pool of CEOs is Bigger Than You Think

Version 0.95 This evening, Travis Kalanik put out a call for tips to find the right “re-founding” CEO for a company he purchasedcalled eXtremeGammon. People were quick to point out how this was just like January of 2010 when Kalanik solicited tips on a CEO for Uber, and Ryan Graves said he had a tip: himself. Graves went on to be Uber’s early CEO growing the company before…

No Longer an Amazon.com Customer

Version 0.95 A few weeks ago I eliminated my Amazon account . It is the last of the MAMANA (formerly FANG) services to go. I realized that I’m not only an early adopter of technology but an early adopter of banning companies with bad policy. The problem is, most people have no idea about these policies and even fewer care. You’d probably have to hand-hold and explain how you are…

Building a High Performance Home

Version 0.88 Double stud walls provide a thermal break between studs. In 2018, I set out to build a high-performance home, unfeasible in the Bay Area, so a couple years later I moved to the East Coast to find land. Finding a House The problem with living in desirable places is it can be difficult to acquire land. I demanded walkability, further narrowing the market. If the acquisition target is a…

Why Self-Driving Cars Still Don't Exist

Version 0.96 Stanley, winner of the DARPA Grand Challenge. Steve Jurvetson / Wikipedia I had planned to write a version of this in 2018 specifically addressing Tesla, butI think it is important to include the now-autonomous car industry as well. Since I haven’t heard it said explicitly, I will go over 3 specific reasons why autonomous carsaren’t and can’t be autonomous, and why…

Trader Joe's Does Not Have Surveillance Cameras

Version 0.91 Just Looking to Buy Some Low Voltage Wire In February of last year, I went to Home Depot to get some low voltage wire. For some reason, it is secured behind a locked fence. There was no one in the electrical area, so I walked a few aisles down and found someone in paint. Another person joined, and we had a very DL conversation about how I almost just reached behind the fence and…

VPNs should use Public-Key Cryptography instead of long codes

Version 0.9 A few years ago there was a lot of hype around Mullvad VPN, particularly on Hacker News. Whenever I saw an article postedwhere the comments subsequently extolled the virtue of the service, I had to check profiles to gauge the integrity of theposter. VPN services have a spotty history due to internal policies, technical oversights, and shady corporate structures. They are tasked with…

The Best CEOs Respond

Version 0.97 The CEO of Mom's Organic asking for feedback The CEO of a company is responsible for 3 things: the vision of the company, the talent, and cash flow. The latter two are largely affected by the vision. Without a strong vision the company may deteriorate into an unrecognizable asset on the decline. There are different degrees of visionaries. Most CEOs just aren’t visionaries and…

Autocomplete Selections Should Confirm with User

One UX issue that I run into more often than I’d like: when you type in a text box and a list or drop down appears and you tap on it immediately, only to learn that between the milliseconds that your brain executed the tap and your fingers touched the screen a new item replaced your intended target. Sometimes this is a more benign environment where you are searching for something and after…

Automate Hotels

A Hotel Lobby 1 Version 0.95 The Problem I’ll quickly review some issues with the hotel experience, though I imagine they are evident to most people. An obvious issue is check-in. It’s unclear why this process is so time-consuming. I know there areapps that allow you to check in and use your phone as a key (which sometimes fails to workaccording to various hotel reviews), so…

Government Should Incentivize High Performance Home Builders

Passive House in Brooklyn. Photo by Sam McAfee. Version 0.92 In the US, new homes built today vary by the standards set by local governments. Standards may include specificeffective R-values for walls of the building envelope and usually a larger effective R-value for the roof. This,however, is not ideal because leaks can occur through cracks, the concrete slab, and thermal bridging. Thermal…

Ask VCs for Referrals Anyway

Version 1.0 Some years ago I saw a well-known 1 investor on Twitter say, in effect, thatif he decided not to invest in you, don’t ask for referrals. From an investor’s perspective, this often makes perfect sense. Great investorsplace their money with people they believe will succeed, and perhaps therewere so many red flags the investor couldn’t possibly recommend the…

Phone is Still the Best Way to Order Pizza

Version 0.9 When ordering pizza for pickup, there is no easier way to do it than usinga phone. On average, it takes no more than 20 seconds: Dial number Say: “Large Pizza for Pickup” Hear: “OK. 15-20 minutes.” There are many, many websites and apps that partner with local pizza shops.Often these apps require you to sign up or add excess information. Why isone required to…

New Blogging Paradigm: Drafts

One of the challenges for blogging consistently is finding the time to do itand make good posts. Posts like “Who is Satoshi” or “YC Bookmarklet” weresimple enough to knock out, so I did. For some time I’ve wanted to write about in depth topics like self-drivingcars. This is what I’ll post next; and while I try to keep a positive vibeon this blog, that next post…

Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto?

The mystery surrounding the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin,has been entertaining and somewhat frustrating to observe. When that reporterfound a random guy with the name Nakamoto and turned his life upside down, it wasprobably peak “we have no idea who this is” and yet it is still frustrating to seefrom time to time bright people say, “Aha! It is x!” with…

The Curious Case of the Y Combinator Bookmarklet

I frequent the /new page of Hacker News, usually to find interesting articlesthat were missed by the masses 1 . In recent years I noticed that people weresubmitting “ Y Combinator Bookmarklet ”at least several times a week. From time to time, this would get a small number of upvotes. After a while I started wondering why people were submitting this so frequently.Reviewing the…

There Should Be More Mergers

In February 2000, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk met at a cafe on University Avenue in Palo Alto to discuss merging Confinity and X.com, their respective companies. Here is how Thiel tells it in Zero to One : If you can’t beat a rival, it may be better to merge. By late 1999, we were in an all out war… the focus was defeating X.com. In February 2000, Elon and I were more scared about a…

"How Do You Know?"

In spring of 2017 I was about to move from San Francisco down the peninsula. I had just decided to pause an ambitious side project that attempted to further unsupervised machine learning by automating clustering and instead turn my attention to another project dealing with art 1 . Y Combinator had announced their first startup school; I applied and was able to join a group of other entrepreneurial…

How I Use Streaming Services

Participating in the transition from Blockbuster through Netflix online streaming service was an interesting lesson in change of market dynamics. Netflix realized you could be cost effective at sending DVDs through the mail, while Blockbuster snoozed assuming people would browse in store forever. Sure, browsing in real life is an experience, but it was also something of an annoyance for similar…

You Can't Top Bitcoin

I consider myself a crypto altruist; I don’t subscribe to any sort of maximalism of any cryptocurrency. I want to see everyone have access to this technology regardless of the particular implementation, so long as it is entirely open source and has been peer reviewed by computer scientists 1 . When I began studying cryptocurrencies a few years ago, I recognized that they were flawed. They…

Grocery & Meal Delivery

I still go to the grocery store in part for the experience and the discovery process. Often times, however, I’ve wished I could just skip the store and have the groceries appear within a day. The problem with that is then I need to sign up for some delivery service and still spend time paging through an app to find dozens of necessities. Retail as end-point for physical logistics is often doomed.…

Hyperloop May Create New Cities

Hyperloop concept from the original SpaceX white paper. Were I to create a hyperloop company I may call it R-Loop to emphasize keeping out the hype. If I was lucky maybe one day it would be known simply as “The R” just as elevated trains in Philly and Chicago are known as “The El.” It’s been just a couple years since two major hyperloop companies have been in existence and the outlook is dubious.…