J.R.McHale

A new business model: low profit limited liability companies (L3C)

[T]he most frustrating bit of The Social Network is … . . its failure to even mention the real magic behind the Facebook story … . that Zuckerberg’s genius could be embraced by half-a-billion people within six years of its first being launched, without (and here is the critical bit) asking permission of anyone. The real story is not the invention. It is the platform that makes the invention sing … . . For less than $1,000, [Zuckerberg] could get his idea onto the Internet. He needed no permission from the network provider. He needed no clearance from Harvard to offer it to Harvard students. Neither with Yale, or Princeton, or Stanford. Nor with every other community he invited in. Because the platform of the Internet is open and free, or in the language of the day, because it is a “neutral network,” a billion Mark Zuckerbergs have the opportunity to invent for the platform … . The tragedy … . . is that practically everyone watching it will miss this point. Practically everyone walking out will think they understand genius on the Internet. But almost none will have seen the real genius here. And that is tragedy because just at the moment when we celebrate the product of these two wonders—Zuckerberg and the Internet—working together, policymakers are conspiring ferociously with old world powers to remove the conditions for this success. As “network neutrality” gets bargained away … . the opportunities for the Zuckerbergs of tomorrow will shrink. And as they do, we will return more to the world where success depends upon permission. And privilege. And insiders. And where fewer turn their souls to inventing the next great idea.

Granta has announced its Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists issue. To be published first in Spanish as Los mejores narradores jovenes en español with an English edition to follow on November 25th. The novelists:

ANDRÉS BARBA – Spain, b. 1975
OLIVERIO COELHO – Argentina, b. 1977
ANDRÉS RESSIA COLINO – Uruguay, b. 1977
FEDERICO FALCO – Argentina, b. 1977
PABLO GUTIÉRREZ – Spain, b. 1978
RODRIGO HASBÚN – Bolivia, b. 1981
SÒNIA HERNÁNDEZ – Spain, b. 1976
CARLOS LABBÉ – Chile, b. 1977
JAVIER MONTES – Spain, b. 1976
ELVIRA NAVARRO – Spain, b. 1978
MATÍAS NÉSPOLO – Argentina, b. 1975
ANDRÉS NEUMAN – Argentina, b. 1977
ALBERTO OLMOS – Spain, b. 1975
POLA OLOIXARAC – Argentina, b. 1977
ANTONIO ORTUÑO – Mexico, b. 1976
PATRICIO PRON – Argentina, b. 1975
LUCÍA PUENZO – Argentina, b. 1976
SANTIAGO RONCAGLIOLO – Peru, b. 1975
ANDRÉS FELIPE SOLANO – Colombia, b. 1977
SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN – Argentina, b. 1978
CARLOS YUSHIMITO – Peru, b. 1977
ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA – Chile, b. 1975

The first step to fixing the Android Marketplace has nothing to do with the Android Marketplace

Why Thinking of Nothing Can Be So Tiring: Brain Wolfs Energy to Stop Thinking

nevver:

​L​i​b​r​a​r​y​ ​R​e​f​e​r​e​n​c​e​ ​D​e​s​k​ ​M​a​d​e​ ​o​f​ ​O​l​d​ Books: G​O​O​D

Without some form of forgetting, forgiving becomes a difficult undertaking.

David Fincher’s upcoming film (October 2010): The Social Network, about the founding and founders of Facebook.

When people need to kick back, have fun, and party, I will be there, unlike your pathetic fonts. While Gotham is at the science fair, I’m banging the prom queen behind the woodshop. While Avenir is practicing the clarinet, I’m shredding ‘Reign In Blood’ on my double-necked Stratocaster. While Univers is refilling his allergy prescriptions, I’m racing my tricked-out, nitrous-laden Honda Civic against Tokyo gangsters who’ll kill me if I don’t cross the finish line first. I am a sans serif Superman and my only kryptonite is pretentious buzzkills like you.

nevver:

5.9

“Through the Lens of Zoe Strauss”, a short film (5:38) by Ted Passon on Philly photographer, Zoe Strauss (Zoe’s blog; Zoe’s flickr – a storage spot for her raw and unedited photos).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9qE-qXI11I

Music for the World Cup: Botswana guitar picking.

My favorite music of the first half of 2010:
(No particular order)

Cults: 7” single: available here for free.
Dum Dum Girls: I will be
Beach House: Teen Dream
Woods (nu folk): At Echo Lake
The New Pornographers: Together
Otis Gibbs (alt country): Joe Hill’s Ashes
Pascal (swedish rock): Orkanen närmar sig
The National: High Violet
Fang Island: Fang Island

Are Cameras the New Guns?

Here’s How The Government Can Fix Silicon Valley: Leave It Alone. Silicon Valley has fueled much of the growth in our economy over the last few decades and has created amazing (and highly profitable) companies that are making the world a much better and more interesting place to live. All that happened while the government ignored us. We don’t want handouts. We don’t want ‘public-private partnerships,’ and we sure as hell don’t want legislation. Just let us do our thing and maybe say thanks to those companies that create jobs by the hundreds of thousands and send in those humongous corporate tax payments on profits. Because all you can do is screw up something beautiful. Really.

The Paris Review now has a blog.

What you need to learn is that being creative is not enough in this business. You have to become technical. Creative people are born creative – you’re lucky. Technical people however can never be creative. Its something they’ll never get. You can’t buy it, find it, study it – you’re born with it. Too many creative people don’t want to learn how to be technical, so what happens? they become dependent on technical people. Become technical, you can learn that. If you’re creative and technical, you’re unstoppable.

The Globe and Mail: Toronto’s Transformation to Silicon Valley North: “’There’s a new emergent scene going on in Toronto,’ says David Crow, a strategist for Microsoft, and a long-time organizer of the city’s tech community. ‘We have great talent and great opportunity.’ After years of nurturing a tight-knit tech community, Toronto seems to be reaching a critical mass – not just of homegrown companies, conferences, and networks, but of ties to a global industry.”

See also:
Techcrunch: Canada Now Somewhat Less Anti-Startup: “Canada isn’t shy about making life difficult for startups … [b]ut a change in Canadian tax law last week is designed to spur U.S. venture investments in Canadian startups and make Canada less of a leper colony for tech entrepreneurs. The change allows foreign investors in most Canadian startups to avoid ‘literally hundreds of pages of documents’ to be filed and processed on a sale of a startup, sometimes by each limited partner in a venture fund. That burden meant that most venture firms simply ignored the Canadian market.”

VC Experts: Canada’s Federal Budget Scores in Overtime for the Technology Community

Photo © 2010 j.r.mchale.

Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez’s eighty-minute film Double Take.

ArtForum on the film: “‘They say that if you meet your double, you should kill him.’ The mantra in Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez’s eighty-minute film Double Take, 2009, suggests that the real must assert itself against its image to prevent its own defeat in an ongoing battle between fiction and reality. The quotation is from the narrative that anchors the film—written by British novelist Tom McCarthy and based on Jorge Luis Borges’s short story ‘August 25, 1983’—in which Alfred Hitchcock meets an older version of himself.”

Rotten Tomatoes: 70% Fresh

The DataPortability Project [is] a registered not-for-profit that exists for the sole purpose of advocating the portability of personal data residing on websites and in networks … [T]he current ToS and EULA model—those hundred page legal documents you are forced to agree to in order to use a service—are often ignored by consumers and hence they are surprised when they get a service enforcing its terms. We believed a simpler way is needed to communicate what a service does with respect to a person’s data and what rights they have over it. Later this month, we will be formally announcing our initiative which we call the “Portability Policy”. This will be a set of questions a company can answer (with no right or wrong answers) that discloses what people can do with their data.