Ummagumma makes top 10 new species list ... I didn't know that there was  bug named after Floyd's album.

Dear Friend,
I am Patrick Kumuila Mbaye, former Head of Accounts Department at the Diamond Mining Company of Sierra Leone. I and my partners (two others) are in urgent need of a foreign associate to work with us to facilitate the transfer of a large sum of money which we intend to invest into profitable areas of business in your country.
The money involved is eighteen million five hundred thousand US Dollars.
I am writing to know if you could be our overseas associate to handle the transaction privately at your end through your bank account.
We propose your commission shall be 20 per cent of the total money been transferred.
I wait your response to provide you with more information.
Regards,
Patrick Kumuila Mbaye

Geldof, Brown, Thompson, Blair, Sugar… you just took one hell of a beating – The Sun

... it's not whether you agree with the Sun - it is knowing that their circulation is the largest of any newspaper in the UK #influence

Wondering how to set up 1999 on AWS - wonder no more. Mr Andy Sylvester has published a 'hot to' guide on Kindle.

.. has now been added to the 1999 family. Very cool .... and now the style of the comments should have changed. But it hasn't.

Now it has !

Just posted this to my blog

For nearly 2 months, specifically since April 21st, I have been playing around with a product called 1999 from Dave Winer. It is pretty cool. Since launching in fact, I have planted some 144 posts. My first on April 21st. The last on June 10th. All hosted on my river, that Dave has kindly been hosting. In parallel, I have signed up for an AWS account and with the help (strictly speaking me clicking and cutting and pasting words that my new friend Andy told me to) into my river that he is hosting.

It’s a cool product actually. And personally a very big fan of what Dave is trying to do.

... BUT

"Does it matter that we might be living in a simulation?" That question has been raised more often since Elon Musk suggested the possibility in a recent interview. He's not the only one who thinks it's a possibility (or even a likelihood). If we're part of a computer simulation, then this election year seems like a good time for a system software update. The New Yorker's Joshua Rothman helps explain why the posthuman future has never been easier to imagine -- especially for those who work at the forefront of technology.? (After reading this, I had a terrible dream that I was reincarnated as part of a Windows Phone.)

... Dave Pell - Next Draft

Reminded of this here

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

Seems like we don't need to make robots - we just need to turn people into automons ... 

Today, it's a technology company. Every step Bill takes, every mile he drives, is tracked. His truck is a rolling computer. From the time he punches in in the morning until he gets back to base at night, the company is watching. The company is also constantly thinking, and strategizing about even the most minute decisions and choices. UPS wants to figure out how Bill can do his job a little bit faster, a little more efficiently, right down to which pocket he uses to hold his pen.

In other words, you can almost see the Warriors as a metaphor for the way the tech industry improves, but also unexpectedly risks ruining, pretty much everything it touches.

Read All About It.

Read All About It

Marvellous Stuff

Blair, frustrated by the repeated delays in the production of the report, has been meeting his allies to discuss his response, but is not planning to make any speech or intervention before publication on 6 July.

... how about the truth Tony ?

Read All About It.

Too many people are data-driven - if it is all about the data - you will be replaced.

Data-first vs data-second.

Another way to frame this is 'data-driven' vs 'data-informed'. Data-driven investors ask questions about data first, while data-informed or data-second investors look at the data, but it is second to their intuition and common sense. Wikipedia has definitions for data-based (or data-driven) vs data-informed decision making as it applies to education. I believe data-informed to be a much better approach. In doing a bit of research, I stumbled on this gem – a couple years ago, a test showed that combination AI and human 'data-informed' chess players regularly beat the pure data-driven players. Andrew Chen made a nice post about how data-driven decision making can lead to local maximums and weak decision making. I choose to modify the labels to data-first vs data-second because the data acts as either a first or second pass filter.
In the VC world, data-second investors will always beat data-first investors. 

Santana IV and Bruce Soord's new solo - tucking in now. And most excellent, particularly Bruce's.

"He had gained notoriety among the city’s hippie community when he and a biker buddy, Hairy Henry Kot, came across a candlelight march on Haight Street, turned their bikes around, and led the parade. The police stopped the procession, and Kot was arrested for letting a woman from the group stand up on his 'buddy seat."

Read All About It