Aaron Greenspan

This is still the best essay I have read on the topic: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20130404/in-search-of-the-cookie… I've left Silicon Valley since I read it. And having read it, I hope to never move back.

I remember seeing a great post about this a few years ago: "In Search of the Cookie Dough Tree"[1] by Aaron Greenspan. It stands out all these years as a vivid, personal account of an issue I simply hadn't thought about before. [1]: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20130404/in-search-of-the-cookie…

Actually, PlainSite depends upon RECAP, and I think it's a great product, which is why I mentioned the Princeton team. The essay was about PACER's pricing scheme, not about RECAP, but I fully encourage everyone to use it. http://www.recapthelaw.org Not only that, but I've pledged $5,000 to anyone who can extend RECAP to Chrome: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=83

Sure, Aaron Greenspan/thinkcomp complains too much about Facebook. But here he absolutely has the State of California dead to rights. This is about as clearcut a concrete example as you can get of how "regulatory uncertainty" kills businesses dead. The key bureaucrat involved won't even state the net worth you need to be a payment processor in CA! His name is: Jacob Appelsmith [email protected] A polite email asking him why it is now official CA state policy to persecute payment startups might be useful. EDIT: Mr. Greenspan, your exhibit at the end made me laugh out loud: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20111019.aaupacket.pdf Awesome and very funny. You might want to make these pdfs bigger, or just make the webpage one long html file.

Aaron has some biases but could be worth watching his reality check report from december 2023 "OpenAI, Inc. Video Reality Check: Decoding Non-Profit Tax Returns and Business Structure": https://youtu.be/PdQxPQf_1EQ ...and reading his perspective from November 2023 ( http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20231122/openai-gets-pushy/ ): "They are smart people. About that I have no doubt. But I’ve seen how they treat rules. I know what they think of ethics. Good idea? Enter Larry Summers, who was just added to OpenAI’s Board of Directors—now that all the women are gone—to be Sam’s babysitter, so far as I can tell. Why? Because with Sam at the helm, OpenAI clearly violated its non-profit charter, repeatedly. The company is likely looking at an impending investigation by the California Attorney General, which has authority over tax-exempt organizations in the state, and perhaps an uncomfortable audit by the Internal Revenue Service as well. By having Larry on the Board, the company can plead that there’s now an “adult” in the house"

Little known fact: high concentration of TCE permeates the Bay Area in cites like Palo Alto and Mountain View. The concentration is so bad that these superfund sites are regularly monitored by the federal government.[1] I lived next to the superfund site of Palo Alto, which was right under Mayfield Soccer Complex. Little had been done to monitor the risks for the children [2]. Reading this article linking TCE to Parkinson's disease, I hope there will be more awareness about Silicon Valley toxic undergrounds. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/lens/the-superfund-sites-of-silicon… [2] http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20130404/in-search-of-the-cookie…

I've been to Gasworks Park and I agree, it's a strange idea. Nice park though. Reminds me of the "cookie dough" smell in Palo Alto: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20130404/in-search-of-the-cookie… > So it was that while running, but not so much as to force my body into open rebellion, I noticed something odd. When I was heading down the gently sloping hill on Peter Coutts Road towards Stanford Avenue, I turned right as usual to head back home, passed along the edge of a grassy area, and smelled...cookies. But not really cookies. Raw cookie dough. Outside.

Reminds me of this previously posted essay about contamination in College Terrace: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20130404/in-search-of-the-cookie…

I thought that this was public knowledge. I think this article is the first time I read about it http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20111026/the-harvard-people-i-kn…

You should read the book "The Accidental Billionaires", the screenplay is based on that book. As with every movie, they had to shortening some scenes like "hacking" houses websites and coding Facemesh in one night (in the book and in reality it was not that case - it took several days/nights). And the book is missing a side-"story" too. There was already a "Face Book" kind of website called houseSYSTEM. And Zuckerberg tricked this guy: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=80 So the reality is even wilder than the movie.

Are you smelling the famous peninsula Trichloroethylene plume? Some people describe it as unbaked cookie dough: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=88

Don't forget the self-published screed about the houseSYSTEM/Facebook saga: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/authoritas.html

Strong corroboration from the source for your first point: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=60

it looks like its basically an anti-competitive law that requires a $500,000 license to be any sort of payment processor in California. The law was pushed through by a lobby group of existing big name financials companies. some recent developments http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=86

Previously: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/zuckerberg.html

A very large chunk of his articles are negative http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/index.html Not saying they aren't all true, I'm sure they are. Why focus on the negativity? Recognize it and move beyond.

I don't think that is the issue. I just think it is point blank the cost of a license that I 'believe' costs around $500,000 in California. See here: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/brown.html

At first I was confused about why you were addressing the parent poster like that; this may provide some background for others: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/letter/index.html

I think Jason knows exactly what he's talking about. After reading this: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/letter/index.html and this: http://venturebeat.com/2007/09/02/who-founded-facebook-aaron-greenspan… The quote seems very fitting towards you. I understand that this may come off harshly, but I believe it: it's a good thing Mark didn't take the advice you gave in your open letter.

This submission is about using a sharpie to 'fix' the government's final booklets for its filing in the Supreme Court of the United States [SCOTUS]. The career lawyers thought the government's right was 'plenary' ("2. unqualified; absolute"). The political head of the department didn't agree, but he couldn't get the career lawyers to remove 'plenary', so he finally fixed the final booklets himself. The Supreme Court requires filings in paid petitions be submitted on booklets made of 'magic paper'. This requirement is in Rule 33.1: https://www.supremecourt.gov/filingandrules/2023RulesoftheCourt.pdf#pa… Rule 33.2 allows people filing 'in forma pauperis' to print their submissions on 8.5x11" paper: https://www.supremecourt.gov/filingandrules/2023RulesoftheCourt.pdf#pa… This is an interesting write up about printing booklets for the Supreme Court: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20130217/petitioning-rube-goldbe…

Despite the large upfront cost, nuclear still provides cheap electricity. Currently, the price of the electricity generated by nuclear is more impacted by the way the upfront cost was financed than by the price of the combustible (uranium). You can see the difference between the electricity price for a UK nuclear power plant (private investors), vs. a French power plant (state investor). The private investors request 10% interest. The state investor request few percents. On a ~$10B tab it makes a difference and for a long time. If we get serious about nuclear, we could find a way to build it a bit cheaper, and even faster (and with interests that would make it cheaper). There might be also an argument to make, that nuclear might be too safe for its own good, and we could relax the safety measure. Not trolling here. Given the number of death due to nuclear power plants (near zero) are we too cautious at the expense of its deployment. I suspect that relaxing the safety rules is what some governments might have to decide if the fossil energy becomes just too expensive, they could stretch and extend the life span of the reactors beyond what was previously deemed safe. And the population should be informed about the real risk of nuclear... Nuclear has an underserved extremely bad reputation (maybe due to the bomb A/H, or how media reported on Tchernobyl/Fukushima ?). Earth had natural nuclear reactor that have been running for thousands of years…

>>Consider a different example: someone participates in adding threading to the C++ standard. They then get hired at a development tools company to help implement the standard. Anything unseemly there? Code is objective and apolitical. Regulatory enforcement is a people business, and having the right people on your team can affect how regulatory agencies treat you, irrespective of your actual conduct vis-à-vis the regulations. An open standard can also be studied by anyone. The secret rules and customs of regulatory agencies are only privy to those who worked in the agencies. >>Second, the industry welcomes some level of regulation, in order to reestablish trust with consumers that might otherwise be scared off. Third, regulation gets implemented on the premise that its good for both consumers and for the industry, because it allows the industry to overcome trust barriers. I suspect that is not the main reason industry players support regulations. I think it's far more likely that their support is motivated by a desire to create regulatory moats to competition. An example of this would be the "Money Services Round Table": http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20110510/in-fifty-days-payments-… There is empirical evidence that regulations exacerbate income inequality: https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/McLaughlin-Regulation-Income-Ine… This supports the 'lobbying for regulations as an anticompetitive measure' thesis.

I have often thought that Aaron Greenspan's attitude towards California money transmission law was a little aggressive, http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20141022/the-common-sense-approa… , like, this guy is ranting about obscure laws and there is no way that the government would really abuse this legislation to shut down reasonable businesses. Then, in this complaint, I read ""On March 4, 2014, FORCE asked one of his co-case agents on the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force to run a query in a law enforcement database for Venmo, saying that he wanted to collaborate 'on a suspicious money remitter, Venmo Inc. Venmo has since registered with FinCEN, but I want to know if they have state money license remitting licenses in California and New York. Can you check? If not, I want to seize their bank accounts (need to identify them) a la BRIDGES and [M.M.'s] seizure warrants for Mt. Gox."" Wow. Nope. Aaron Greenspan is exactly right about the effects of this legislative mess.

Your school is a top ranked Tier-1 school isn't it? USNews ranks them in the top25. I've also noticed a similar phenomenon among schools with a strong sports program. (Ohio State cough cough). It would be an interesting little research project to come up with a set of typical self-referential statements like my sample one, and go through every school in the country and see where they show up. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that these are not quality schools by any possible stretch of the imagination. But I'd be willing to bet a dollar that the delta between the average Kettering grad and the average MIT grad in the same field is not as high as the ego driven self-referential usage patterns would imply (the average MIT grad is not 80,000x better or more desirable than a Kettering grad). What's usually surprising is how many of these types of statements ("When I was at...") usually end in a completely banal statement that any university student would be able to complete. Yet these statements are made with the kind of breathless urgency that would make the listener assume there was something really special about this particular permutation of a common experience that only a person who attended that school could really appreciate. "When I was at Harvard College just a few years ago, there was never any question among young women that we would have both successful careers and successful families." - Caille Millner -…

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Looks like Greenspan is headed down the path I suggested in a previous thread [1]: fame as Mark Zuckerberg's Gary Kildall [2]. Even reading Greenspan's book account, it's clear that he dawdled while Zuckerberg executed. Greenspan frittered around with committees ("'Maybe we should put more emphasis on the Universal Face Book,' I thought aloud during a board meeting" [3]), kvetched about media unfairness ("'Can we get _The Crimson_ to give us any decent coverage at all?' I kept asking my board, week after week" [3]), worried idly delaying essential features ("I had considered creating detailed user profile pages at houseSYSTEM's inception, but it seemed like the worst idea possible when students began to fret openly about privacy"[4]), and engaged in redundant academic make-work ("'I can write [a version tracking system],' I offered, not wanting to be the only one without code to write" [5]). If tempted to label someone a 'fraud' (as Greenspan did Zuckerberg in a previous HN thread[1]), consider instead that they may be expressing competencies in a dimension you can't readily perceive. Maybe even the very things you're criticizing ("Even though he was clearly smart, he seemed like he had the capacity to go off in a zany direction at any point in time, totally unconcerned about the consequences of his actions. I couldn't figure out any other scenario that would have allowed for the creation of the facemash site." [6]) are, in fact, strengths. -- [1]…