rmason

I didn't include the link but here is the last series part 1:

https://dvorak.substack.com/p/the-covid-decision-tree-part-o...

He wrote about COVID for six years. Someone should compile all those columns into a book or at least a single PDF.

In the early PC days back in the eighties the bible was PC Magazine. They had a number of really talented columnists but towering above all of them was John C. Dvorak. He wrote so well, he was at times opinionated and other times intensely funny. Whether you agreed with that weeks opinion or not you felt you were better for having read it and that is truly rare.

Then along came PC TV and he got introduced to an entirely new audience. He had a blog for awhile and then I lost track of him. Then he reentered my world when he started a SubStack, actually several. One I didn't read and that was where he pontificated on things political.

Then during COVID he touched a live wire on his political SubStack, detailed why he didn't get 'the shot' and why you should too. He also correctly called out the players and what was really going on with COVID. He discovered a third new audience and became an enemy of the administration at the same time. That people was one hell of a career. He will be missed.

Sadly this worthwhile project is paused because the Trump administration has cut its funding. For less than a million dollars we could place names on soldiers who fought the revolutionary war. Our nation has been pretty good about using DNA to identify soldiers from the second world war on but not before.

They built the power in hopes of attracting more industry. With Michigan's high taxes and aggressive unions the state isn't as desirable as other locations. Now they've succeeded in attracting data centers who want to use the power, bring both high paying jobs and tax money but they are turned away.

Travis makes a strong argument that the city that birthed Oldsmobile and REO Motors would probably reject those companies today if they wanted to build there.

I do not know what GHG means but isn't the overwhelming amount of France's electricity generated from nuclear power?

In Lansing's case as he mentioned the power is already being generated and sold to other utilities. If it powered local data centers instead it would generate high paying jobs and rather large tax revenues.

I'm from the Lansing Michigan area where there has been a big fight over four proposed data centers. Travis was a childhood friend of the founder and an executive at Liquid Web. He helped them build four data centers and even though he was head of marketing at the company he knows everything about the business.

I am saddened that the industry hasn't spoken out and let the opponents define the debate.

I have run the local ColdFusion users development group for over 25 years. I have heard variations of this same conversation more than I can count. Sometimes there are good reasons to move, company got bought and doesn't want five percent of their code to run on a different platform. But a lot of times the new CTO only knows asp.NET or Java or PHP so he commits the organization to a multi-year transition when they can't take on new work.

I have written programs in Node, Ruby on Rails, Nuxt. Ported programs to PERL and PHP. I just happen to like coding in CFML and I do not judge someone having another preference.

I have had people say ColdFusion isn't modern. But when I dig a little bit I inevitably find out their understanding of the language dates to 98-99. Python and PHP have changed a great deal since then why wouldn't CFML have done so? Did you know for example there are two open-source versions of CFML?

I grew up in Detroit where the city Chestnut trees were everywhere. I remember as a young boy when they all got this disease and quickly died. Our entire family was sad one summer when the big Chestnut tree in our front yard was cut down. Has anyone under sixty ever tasted roasted chestnuts?

Northern Michigan was full of Chestnut trees and supported a large lumber industry. Now they were replaced by a spindly scrub pine that has little value. For that reason there are few jobs with those counties being lightly populated. I think if they could plant these news trees that in fifty or so years the state's lumber industry could return. But I do not know if the state's politicians would be bold enough to make that long an investment.

No Freep subscription: https://archive.is/QtaIV#selection-311.0-311.71

Biggest takeaway quote is that the executives automating with AI and then laying off employees have no idea what their humans do.

Had the pleasure of meeting Vint Cerf when he spoke at Michigan State a decade ago. He gave a terrific speech highlighting the history of the Internet and modestly detailing his part in it.

I got my amateur radio license in the sixties. There was an old timer on 80 meters who was the leader of a chat group that met daily. Any ham could join the conversation with one exception. He had a phrase: "no kids, lids or space cadets." Just like Gen Z these days he did not like Boomers ;<). That phrase to this day brings a smile to amateur radio operators of a certain vintage.

Caught my attention for a different reason and that's the name - REO Motors. I live in the Lansing area and until entering college there were two companies building vehicles here, GM (Oldsmobile) and REO.

Ransom Eli Olds created the Oldsmobile. Olds created the assembly line for manufacturing his cars. Everyone believes it was Henry Ford who created the assembly line but Ford (and mainly his chief engineer C. Harold Wills) who perfected the assembly line as we know it today. Olds got into a tangle with his investors and left. The company was sold to General Motors.

So Olds created a new company which was named after his initials. R.E.O. originally made both cars and trucks but after WW2 they dropped cars and specialized in heavy duty trucks. One famous model was the REO Speedwagon made even more famous by the rock band.

The new REO Motors is based in Texas and is going to build gasoline powered Japanese style KEO trucks. I am much more interested in an entrepreneur in Detroit who also started a company, Mutiny Motors, who is building his own Japanese KEO trucks except his will be EV's. He bought an old Lincoln plant, he is bootstrapping and will be selling the trucks as kits that you assemble.

Actually in the latest J.D. Power initial quality ratings they took a big step up in quality. I think it was the first time in 15-20 years that they were on the list of recommended major brands.

https://archive.is/VcL8c

I am a lifelong resident of Michigan and sadly the state keeps doubling down on what isn't working. Politicians like to think they're smart enough to pick winners and they're horrible at it.

When Governor Jennifer Granholm was governor a guy approached the state needed investment for a factory in Flint. It would create thousands of jobs. They were delighted because that is something that never happens in Flint. They not only gave him the money but he posed him holding a $9.1 million dollar check with the governor. The picture of the two of them together was in all state media. You know when something sounds too good to be true you might want to do a little checking? When people in Flint saw the picture they informed the state that this guy was a well known conman who had just got out of jail and was living in a trailer. Luckily they were able to recover the money.

https://www.mackinac.org/12345

Another Gov. Granholm story was the time an old line Boston VC firm approached the state for investment. So the state pulled funds out of the employees retirement plan to invest in the next round. The idea was that this would give the state more venture investment. But again no one did any due diligence whatsoever. This firm was not obligated to open an office in the state but only come a couple of times a year looking for investments. They were under no obligation to make any investments in the state and in fact did not. Due diligence would have revealed that the firm offered a very low return on their last several funds. So in the end the employees retirement funds grew more slowly and the state got no venture investments. That venture firm wasn't able to raise another fund and closed.

Back in the nineties Ford ran a lot of ads about how quality was job one. But in the last twenty years their quality declined by a large amount at the same time other brands were getting better. I say that as a lifelong fan of Ford, quality was why I left the brand two years ago.

I started out as journalist so I always appreciated great writing when I reinvented myself as a tech entrepreneur. There were three writers beginning in the nineties who were my tech troika: Kevin Kelly, George Gilder and Om Malik. Sadly now the only one still writing regularly is Kevin Kelly.

For those lacking a subscription: https://archive.is/GoDZ9#selection-679.0-679.64

This is unenforceable and imho ridiculous. Canadians are now going to be able to buy Chinese vehicles under a agreement just signed between those two countries. So we are going to arrest them when they try to cross the border in Detroit to catch a baseball game?

Mu sister and I gave my late parents sizeable library to the East Lansing public library, a place the entire family adored. They gave us a document that detailed that most of the books would be sold and the money would be used to support the library. We were OK with that and knew in advance that would happen. They have two large sales a year and receive more money than if they just sold them to a broker and the books stay in the community.

This doesn't happen everywhere. I have an old friend who like me is a fan of Michigan history. Every time he bought a book on his rural county or its towns he'd give a copy to his local library. Twenty years in he found out they were just selling them to brokers for ten to twenty percent of the cover price. Now he gives the list price of the book to the library with the understanding they use it for books of history.

In Detroit copper theft was an epidemic a few years back. Once the easy stuff in abandoned houses was gone thieves went further afield. .

A few brave thieves went after power substations. For some thieves a lack of knowledge was fatal.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2017...

Before becoming a ham I was an avid shortwave listener, both of radio and TV. You could learn so many things about the different countries by listening to their shortwave stations. Even get a little Communist propaganda from Radio Moscow ;<). Guess you can blame shortwaves demise on the Internet. Canada's CHU has been transmitting for 103 years.

Here's the other part - USV did not hire two analysts in an experiment to see if the new agents could replace them. They found out they could not and are once again looking for two analysts. That doesn't mean the experiment failed, the agents were useful but couldn't do it all.

https://avc.xyz/usv-analyst-20

I run an Adobe user group for over 25 years and I have been banned twice on Reddit for merely posting notices of livestreams and YouTube links of finished videos. Never failed to get less than 10-15 upvotes yet I still got banned.

That is Reddit's problem, not yours. However it does help to spend some time in the forum, answer a few questions and get known before posting about a product. It is also not a problem when answering a question to have a link to your product in the signature.

Here are three quick things I see:

1. Always have price on the top menu bar. don't make me scroll to the bottom of the page to see what it costs

2. Need on Chrome at least some padding between the headline and the green box

3. Why are all the videos cockeyed? Its possible it is a styling thing but you are better off having them level

I love the idea, just not certain that people giving testimonials will submit video ones. If they do a video testimonial could be a much stronger one because you could see emotion in a video which would make it far more powerful.

Pretty certain Dang won't ban you on here for listing the URL of your company. Not that you can't go over the line in self promotion but I specifically asked you to post it.

It would help immensely if you posted your website so we could look at your product and marketing.

Working on SEO is a lot of work and it can take six months to see results but it has always been the bootstrappers friend. If you have the time now this might be a good use for it. AI is fine for doing research for articles but you are far better off writing them yourself. If you want what you write to look more professional take a look at lex.page. Had a friend use it and he said it was like having a good copywriter looking over my shoulder.

The QLINE was a project of Detroit's billionaires who paid part of its cost. It didn't connect any specific destinations. It had to follow traffic like a car and was so slow you could walk faster. People would ignore the no parking signs in its assigned lane and it would have to stop and wait until police would tow away the vehicle blocking its path.

I love tech but never could see any point to it. Detroit has done a lot of amazing things, rising from the ashes just like its motto but this wasn't one of them.

A rare piece by Om that is not about tech but I think the guy is on to something. When I was younger I followed fashion trends, even owned a Nehru jacket when they were in style.

Now that I am older I have a pretty good sense of what looks good on me and pay no attention to the current style. Certain things are timeless.

Lack a WashPost sub: https://archive.is/4v2O1#selection-237.0-237.63

Kids reward for saving his family from the Russian drone was to become a target. So now they live hours away but still have to return to tend their crops.