I first arrived in Silicon Valley in 1977 — 45 years ago. I was 24 years old and had accepted a Stanford fellowship paying $2,575 for the academic year. My on-campus apartment rent was $175 per month and a year later I’d buy my first Palo Alto house for $57,000 (sold 21 years later for $990,000). It was an exciting time to be living and working in Silicon Valley. And it still is. We’re right now in a period of economic confusion and reflection when many of the loudest voices have little to no sense of history. Well my old brain is crammed with history and I’m here to tell you that the current situation — despite the news coverage — is no […]
Paul Graham’s Legacy
Last week there was a press release you might easily have missed. A Distributed Autonomous Organization (DAO) called OrangeDAO is cooperating with a small seed venture fund called Press Start Capital to establish the OrangeDAO X Press Start Cap Fellowship Program for new Web3 entrepreneurs. Successful applicants get $25,000 each plus 10 weeks of structured mentorship plus continued access to the more than 1200-member OrangeDAO network. In exchange, OrangeDAO and Press Start get to invest in the resulting companies, if any, produced by the class.
Big deal, it’s Y Combinator Junior, right?
Wrong. It’s Y Combinator on steroids.
This second-generation YC has […]
What yesterday’s Apple satellite announcement really means
I took the summer off to move with my family from California to Virginia, thus escaping the inevitable fires of doom. I deliberately left my Apple/Globalstar column up so it would be still staring at readers when Apple made its eventual announcement, which was yesterday. That was a gutsy move on my part, but clearly I was correct. Today’s column — my first from our new home in Virginia — looks at specifics of the Apple satellite announcement, placing it in a more informed context.
Apple spent only five out of 65 minutes in yesterday’s product announcements talking about satellites, yet the title of the event — Far […]
Apple’s Space Ambitions are Real
Last summer, a couple weeks before the iPhone 13 announcement, Chinese market analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote that the iPhone 13 would include satellite communication capability.
Huh?
This was a bolt from the blue. No other Apple analysts were writing about satellites at that time. And while Ming has a very good track record based on finding out from Apple’s supply chain about likely details in upcoming products, there was nothing about this satellite tip that even made sense, since it didn’t seem to involve hardware at all.
Generally speaking, a Ming tip is a hardware tip, but this one was not.
Ming’s prediction was widely and quizzically […]
Putin plays his asshole card
It doesn’t look good for the Russian military in Ukraine. Better-supplied and -motivated Ukrainian troops are pushing-back Russian forces even in Donbas— Moscow’s more modest pivot objective after failing to take Kyiv. What gives? Could Ukraine actually win this war? Could Russia actually lose? Or could Putin even be deposed by a coup?
Probably not.
That’s because, while everyone outside of Moscow was gloating over Russia’s lack of military success, Putin was quietly playing his asshole card.
Yes, his asshole card.
Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy said last week that Russia has kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian civilians and is holding them hostage in Russian prison camps. […]
