Uncrunched

This is the best explanation I've read about how PRISM might work: http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/11/connecting-the-prism-dots-my-new-theo…

You're right... but start-up culture glorifies the long hours and epic all-nighters[1], that to do otherwise would have you tarred a slacker[2]. [1] "One of the most pervasive myths of startup life is that it has to be all consuming. That unless you can give your business all your thoughts and hours, you don’t deserve success. You are unworthy of the startup call. This myth neatly identifies those fit for mission: Young, without obligations, and few if any extra-curricular interests. The perfect cannon fodder for 10:1 VC long shots." http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3106-all-or-something [2] "Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining" http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/27/startups-are-hard-so-work-more-cry-le…

This, to me, is the best counterpoint I've read to Michael Arrington's rant from a few months back on how startup folk need to work harder and stop crying. http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/27/startups-are-hard-so-work-more-cry-le… Arrington is a romantic, and he believes passionately in the romantic mythos of the startup world. That's what drew him to the valley to start TechCrunch in the first place. And that view of the world is warped as hell. The key is you've just got to match the level of effort you're willing to give to the level of effort required to achieve the goal you've set out for yourself. Not all goals -- including entrepreneurial goals -- require a 120 hour a week personal commitment to succeed.

Mike left Techcrunch. Mike Started Crunchfund and also started blogging at http://uncrunched.com/

Worth reading Arrington's post: http://uncrunched.com/2011/10/28/oh-shit-im-a-racist/ CNN doesn't pass the smell test. Media in the USA is all at the tabloid level these days, and the whole purpose of covering NewMe (as opposed to a non-racially oriented incubator) is to be able to pay the race card. That's why Arrington was sandbagged. It's kind of a sad statement about the state of news media that things like Startup School, Y-Combinator, etc, are not worthy of this kind of coverage in their own right. We've had a revolution in starting businesses in the last 10 years. But, there's no conflict in a radically better way of making the world a better place. However, charges of racism? Ratings gold, right?

jwz commented [1] on a previous discussion of his diary after Arrington linked to it claiming "rah rah rah startups are awesome keep busting your ass [to make me rich] [some editorial liberties taken]" [2]. This is the bit that stuck with me I did make a bunch of money by winning the Netscape Startup Lottery, it's true. So did most of the early engineers. But the people who made 100x as much as the engineers did? I can tell you for a fact that none of them slept under their desk. If you look at a list of financially successful people from the software industry, I'll bet you get a very different view of what kind of sleep habits and office hours are successful than the one presented here. It's well worth thinking about, particularly given the endless whining on here / in the industry that engineers aren't leaping at the chance to give up $40k or $50k a year in salary for a couple basis points in almost-certainly-never-gonna-be-worth-anything options. Therefore there's an engineering shortage that must urgently be addressed at the highest levels of government, which solution must necessarily include open immigration for engineers. [1] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/ [2] http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/27/startups-are-hard-so-work-more-cry-le…

Working as part of senior management of VC-funded startup will not allow you to work a reasonable work week. VCs loooooove long working hours, however unproductive and stupid they may be: https://uncrunched.com/2011/11/27/startups-are-hard-so-work-more-cry-l… As employee in startup it's perfectly possible to work reasonable hours at the at right copmany, especially if you're clear up front about your boundaries.

A $5 instance on DO has significantly more resources than on the equivalent cost box on EC2 https://uncrunched.com/2013/08/07/digital-ocean-v-aws-10x-performance-… for an old comparison. EC2 is, and always have been slow and expensive. its the other bits that make it compelling.

> The OS itself is still visually superior to anything else, but it’s been showing the signs of neglect for a few years now. Can you elaborate on this? Without going into any detail your post reads a bit like a paid promotion. Probably not but you gotta be careful because of stuff like this: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/stealth-marketing-microsoft-payi… https://uncrunched.com/2014/06/17/microsoft-paying-bloggers-to-write-a…

> uBeam promises it will being showing demos to people outside of its team, investors, and partners next year. In May 2012, more than three years ago, Michael Arrington, who participated in uBeam's seed round through CrunchFund, wrote "In a year or so when this thing is productized you’ll be hearing a lot more about Mary" on his blog[1]. [1] http://uncrunched.com/2012/05/23/serendipity/

Why didn't anyone link to this LNKD profile? https://www.linkedin.com/pub/aniruddha-%22ajit%22-nazre/1/230/439 or this http://www.wellington-partners.com/wp/ajit_nazre.html Same person right? This married dude just harassing co-workers left and right. How gross. The way you phrase your argument seems to paint your intentions, less than objective. Workplace affairs aside, what is the indubitable proof to suggest that these things transpired owing to malice, on his part? Has he testified, yet? This reminds me of the Michael Arrington case [1], of people rushing to judgments. [1] http://uncrunched.com/2013/04/11/jennifer-allen-false-defamatory/ http://uncrunched.com/2014/06/24/fifteen-months-later/

Michael Arrington, who funded uBeam's seed round through CrunchFund [0], wrote about a sneak peek of the product [1] two years ago: "She then performs the closest thing to magic I’ve seen in a long time." Investors fund things because they don't understand it. (Although, two years to a Series A is pretty slow in today's climate.) [0]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/11/disruptive-defined-ubeam-lands-750k-t… [1]: http://uncrunched.com/2012/05/23/serendipity/

I'll just leave this here - http://uncrunched.com/2013/10/29/thoughts-on-techcrunch-disrupt/

I don't like the whole affair, and in my opinion, while the discussion might've been appropriate, the turnout is disappointing. And it's been said in here; most actors in this affair didn't act very mature. But what bothers me the most is this: http://uncrunched.com/2014/04/06/the-hypocrisy-of-sam-yagan-okcupid/ (TLDR; Co-Founder of OKC donated to far-right republican opposing gay rights and trying to make abortion illegal; among various other stuff). Assuming that such a harsh action (displaying a message to users with a particular browser and urging them to change) must've been OK'ed at quite a high level, it's not far-fetched to say that somebody is/was quite the hypocrite here.

Here's the original post unearthing this from Uncrunched - http://uncrunched.com/2014/04/06/the-hypocrisy-of-sam-yagan-okcupid

"So, neither MS online mail products, nor online office systems can be trusted any more! Any business owner should know this and withdraw from usage of any MS owned online systems" FYI: Google and Yahoo have similar policies and similar histories of abuse. If you feel this way about Microsoft, you should feel this way about Google products, sites and services too. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/21/yahoo-google-and-app… http://uncrunched.com/2014/03/21/google-spied-gmail/

I don't think these two incidents are comparable. Jamie's diary page (src: http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html ) says at the top that the excerpts might serve as a cautionary tale about working in a startup (and Arrington also says in his infamous article (src: http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/27/startups-are-hard-so-work-more-cry-le… ) that people who think they are working too hard or sacrificing too much should quit their startup), but aside from that it's a just a bunch of entries from a personal diary, not a rant with an overarching message or thesis statement. Arrington used the diary entries as evidence that the startup experience was hard in 1994, but (correct me if I'm wrong) he never modified jwz's quotes or tried to make it appear that jwz had an opinion that he didn't have.

I like the explanation that it's basically a REST api with a required has_fisa_approval field[1]. In practice this gives unrestricted access because FISA only requires a hearing to be held after more than a week of surveillance against a single target. The existence of the has_fisa_approval checkbox allows the companies to (dubiously) claim "no direct access" even though it is all but equivalent in practice. 1: http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/11/connecting-the-prism-dots-my-new-theo…

http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/11/connecting-the-prism-dots-my-new-theo… See links to primary sources, including David Kravets: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/spy-court-stats/

I agree, the wording "direct access" is indeed very suspicious, and I tend to believe Arrington might be into something: http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/06/triangulating-on-truth-the-totalitari… I re-read the Larry's response carefully, and he did NOT refute the claim, that they are giving data to some 3rd party (who then forwards it to the government). He just says that government do not have direct access to it. But the issue that someone else can have the access is avoided, and it is exactly the same as the Zuck's response.

This is answer written by Mike Arrington in 2011 after this article - http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/28/burnouts-vc-cons-and-slave-labor-a-ma…

There seems to be quite a bit of substance[1]. > just to stifle Allen's discussion of the relationship She accused him of multiple rape. That's not a "discussion of the relationship." [1] http://uncrunched.com/2013/04/11/jennifer-allen-false-defamatory/

The AirBnB leaked email fiasco was seriously wtf. (http://uncrunched.com/2011/10/01/chamath-palihapitiyas-statement-on-ai… I could almost see a third party who wasn't invested in a company criticizing it like that (but, if you're an active investor, it's still probably a bad idea; I doubt Airbnb or any of their investors were happy with it, and you might want to do deals with them in the future, even if not that round). But, if one of your own investors fucks you like that, in public, you should figure out a way to get them out of your cap table. I'd offer a slight premium to buy their previous-round equity out at the new round valuation.

Response from Arrington http://uncrunched.com/2013/04/07/response/

Yeah, my impression was that the VC community is actually getting a bit pissed about all the acqui-hires. Sorry to link just to Arrington, but I can't seem to find the other sources I had read on it: http://uncrunched.com/2012/08/26/investors-dont-like-acqui-hires/

A fairly well-designed photo sharing app that let users organize their iPhone photos into albums, that could be shared over Twitter and Facebook http://uncrunched.com/2011/10/27/batch-may-be-the-perfect-mobile-photo…

It may be harder than you think to get the credit card company to stop the charges. http://uncrunched.com/2012/08/26/my-undead-credit-card/ Like it or not they have a good business model. And the VCs probably don't care if they're ethical, as long as they get a good ROI.

Arrington hinted in his post that there is more to this story than is being revealed: > I also think VentureBeat should fully disclose any other issues they have that might be affecting their judgement about Y Combinator, but I’ll leave it at that. from: http://uncrunched.com/2012/09/07/turning-the-drama-down-on-y-combinato… this is starting to become so weird that I believe there must be more to it edit: that post has a HN thread that was just submitted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4491894

Business owners seem to enjoy being acqui-hired -- not as much as selling company for a couple millions, but it's still quite good nonetheless. On the other hand, investors may get little, if any, of return on an acqui-hire. See article in which Michael Arrington admits openly that http://uncrunched.com/2012/08/26/investors-dont-like-acqui-hires/ If an acqui-hire is failure for anybody, then it's a failure first and foremost for the investors. In his `About', Jacques states openly that he represents investors' point of view: >I do this [[verifying that what a company says it sells and owns is actually true]] work for several renowned Venture Capital firms in Europe(...)