Category: The Internet

83: The Fall of Facebook

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Back in 2006, I loved Facebook. I loved connecting with people and friends from around the world. The updates were great to see. The world needed it. I was convinced that social networking was the killer-app for the internet, and I still think that was true.

But then the world matured. By now we’ve all gotten used to it. The novelty has worn off. We take that online social connection for granted.

In today’s world, it’s not just enough to connect people and share the information, you need to provide context around that connection and that information. This is how people get news and information.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. When Trump posted last week “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” the employees at Facebook wanted to label that post as offensive, but Zuckerberg was adamant that all posts go up without being altered. Hundreds of employees are pissed after the company took no action.

Mark also went on Fox News and criticized Twitter for fact-checking Trump’s posts on mail-in ballots. He said he didn’t want his company to be an “arbiter of truth” on political issues. I think he’s the only one who feels that way.

Come on Mark. Let’s be honest, the reason you care so much is because (a) you don’t want to sign up to do the work. It’s a lot to label posts as incorrect or violent and once you set the precedent that you can’t go back, (b) the alt-right and other groups (Russia) are paying customers and it hurts the business to take sides, and finally (c) when your core product is harmful, you wants few warning labels as possible.

For all of these reasons, my views are switching. I’ve always viewed Facebook and its ability to connect others as a net positive in the world, even with all its flaws. But considering the recent actions and lack of conscience I hear from Mark, I’ve come to think of them as a net negative.

With over a billion monthly users, I only hope it turns around and gets better as they have enormous influence and power in the world.

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The Oura Ring

82: Fitness Trackers, More Like Sickness Trackers

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I was a person who never wore a watch. I didn’t like the feeling it had on my wrist. That is, until 2 years ago when I got an Apple Watch as a birthday present. I haven’t taken it off since. I love it My watch face looks like this:

The thing I like most is the personal tracking. I track my daily water intake (upper left), my exercise (30 minutes a day – the green circle), and my sleep every night. The gamification of my water intake – showing my progress all day, every time I look at my watch – has resulted in my consumption of at least 66 ounces a day for the past year.

The watch tracks my movement and heart rate as I sleep. Tracking my sleep has shown me how much alcohol impacts my nightly rest and how my mood correlates very closely with my 3-day average number of hours of sleep. Here’s are some other things my sleep app shows:

I bring this up because I recently read that wearable devices like the Apple Watch and the Oura Ring are being used to predict when COVID-19 cases might occur. From the article:

Data from a wearable device can reveal coronavirus symptoms days before you even realize you’re sick. That means fitness trackers could be on their way to becoming sickness trackers.

The Oura Ring can predict up to three days in advance when people will get a fever, coughing or shortness of breath. If these devices can signal when someone is getting sick before they know it, then we can detect sooner and keep the population healthier.

There’s obviously a long way to go and privacy concerns, but I’m a sucker for new technology especially if it will allow us to live more socially but still be safe.
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Day 32: Tech to the Rescue

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What I’m Thinking About: Tracking Through Tech

I’m really interested in the privacy implications and the technology behind how we track people who have recovered and keep track of those are infected as we will need to do to get back to our lives. Without doing this, this shelter-in-place will just continue until a vaccine arrives – which is just too damn long.

Google/Apple have formed an alliance that will help track people that are infected. The way it works is:

An app on your phone will pass a random and anonymous code to all other phones within a few yards of you, wherever you are (and vice versa). If you test positive, you tell the app, and every other phone in the region checks the codes they’ve seen in the last 14 days, and if there’s a match they can say ‘you’ve been exposed’. This is anonymous and automatic.

This is very cool, but am skeptical that it’ll ever happen because it really only works if governments mandate it and I just don’t see that happening.

On a related note, there’s a new San Francisco company called Onfido that is working with European governments to develop phone-based “immunity passports” for those who have already recovered from COVID-19. This is happening in Europe and is similar to what’s in China. Oh, and just yesterday they raised an additional $100 million.

At My House

We’re digging into the remote learning more deeply this week as our school is starting to get more involved and attentive to what’s happening at home.

That only takes half the day. The other part is spent enjoying the great weather we’ve been sent

Fitness

One of my friends sent me this today. I’ll be joining him:

I do one plank a day during the pandemic, holding it for as long as I can. Have made it to three minutes the last three days. Join me.

… and then I make myself a cocktail almost immediately afterward.

Other Stuff

Now this is a great use of modern technology. Here we have a Twitter account that is judging people’s video call background. Just what the world needed (thx Lizzie)

Thanks Jackie!

Check these out. Might as well keep safe in style:

Cases

New York added two thousands deaths to their list who were people they hadn’t tested:

(spreadsheet)

Only 64 more days to go

 

Business Week Zoom

Day 27: Zooming All Over

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Zoom is the accidental social network of the coronavirus pandemic

What I’m Thinking About: Zoom

This has been an incredible rise and a little bit of a fall for Zoom.

In the past month, they went from 10 million daily users to 200 million. Wowza. In the past week 90,000 schools across 20 countries have used it to conduct remote classes. Ninety thousand schools.

They also revealed that while they’ve been focused on keeping up with growth, they’ve done some not great things. Specifically, they were sending info to Facebook even if you didn’t log in or ever use Facebook. Second, the videos/calls aren’t really encrypted, which means others can see and hear what went on. Oh, and third, many of the videos and encryption keys were routed through China so they were available for the Chinese state to hear and view. Hmm. 🤔

Personally, I don’t care if my personal or work calls are viewed in China but I suspect a lot of more important people and companies do. This could be real bad for them and for Zoom. I’m curious to see what the fallout is.

I’m also curious to see how Zoom integrates itself more into my life. I’ve been doing double-dates with friends, group family chats, happy hours, school lessons and more. It’s a daily app now.

Finally, I usually really dislike recorded Zoom calls, but here’s one I couldn’t stop watching. It’s ESPN reporters inviting famous people to join them.

 

What Else: The Flattening?

Nationally, the number of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. is projected to hit its peak within the next few days. Personally, I’ve been hoping that this is the worst as we had a few days of no growth, but yesterday we had peaks in new cases and deaths in the US and many others charts are saying that we still have some more time to go. 😞

 

Other Stuff

Great ad:

 

Cases

From my spreadsheet:

Have a great Saturday everyone:

Only 64 more days to go

 

Being Remote and Notion

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At Onward, we are building a fully remote company.  We now have 5 employees that are scattered throughout the country and we’ll be fully remote forever.

Why Remote?

There are lots of benefits to working remote. You can read all about it all over the web and on the Twitter-verse.  I’ve now been doing this over a year and the reasons that resonate with me the most are:

  1. No commute. Knocking out the time it takes to drive to/from an office puts hours back in my day.  I never got stressed by the driving. In fact, I always enjoyed the time for podcasts and catching up with people on the phone. However, that lost time was a drag. Now my day is that much more efficient.
  2. Autonomy. While I like being in an office and catching up with co-workers, it also has a downside of co-workers constantly interrupting me and my thoughts. It was hard to control my own schedule. Being at home gives me much more control over my calendar and my day.
  3. Broader employee pool.  When we’re hiring and looking for a potential colleague, we can now look across the entire planet rather than those who live close by. This has already paid dividends as it’s allowed me to work with my good friend Nader and our awesome early employees who are in Pittsburgh, Texas, and Chicago.

The Challenges

It’s not all fun and roses though.  It took me 4-6 months to get used to working out of my house. It takes discipline to focus on the tasks and not be distracted by an empty messy house. Also, there’s a solitude that took some getting used to. Now that i’m in the groove, I do think it’s a better way to work.

Asynchronous is Key

One of the keys to successfully working with my remote colleagues is to be able to work without communicating in real-time. Because my colleague isn’t right next to me, I have no idea if they are working right now or planning on coming online later. This has lead us to use some new tools that are pretty cool.

Notion

The first, and by far my favorite. This is a combination of Google Docs, Asana and a wiki. Before we had Notion, we had a problem where we didn’t know where to post a home page of operations for our company or a division, or where to post decisions and goals for everyone to see and access easily. We tried Google Docs and also tied making an intranet on Google Sites. Both sucked.  This is exactly what Notion solves.

We now have home pages for the company which has a general company handbook, lists all the tools we use, policies and other generic info. We also have a home page for each group which houses the processes, goals, OKR’s, meeting notes, and more. There’s a good overview of how another business is using Notion here which will give you the idea.

Notion Home Screen

Notion in generally is pretty sweet. As a product, it’s incredibly slick. There is so much complexity that’s displayed so elegantly and simply – it’s really beautiful.  It’s clearly seems to be working. In fact, talk about a fundraise that showcases your awesomeness. They raised $10 million on an $800 million valuation. That’s 1% dilution.  A good interview with the founder is here too.

Uber Eats is Crushing

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From those I know who work at GrubHub and other delivery companies, they all claim that UberEats is doing incredibly well. As Uber eyes the IPO next year, I can imagine this being a secret weapon that pushes their valuation higher than most would expect.

There was a good article in this week’s Business Week about how Uber is helping create “virtual restaurants” that have no in-person customers but exist only to deliver on Uber Eats. Uber brings some unique insight into the demand for existing restaurants.

Google Duplex

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If you haven’t seen this demo from last week’s Google I/O

Sundar says,

Our vision for our assistant is to help you get things done….A common theme across all this is we are working hard to give users back time. We’ve always been obsessed about that at Google. Search is obsessed about getting users to answers quickly and giving them what they want.

Google really wants to start doing things for you and Duplex was super impressive. It is, literally, a computer talking on the phone for you.

Check it out.

Elon Musk Email

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In an email to employees last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk explained that the reason for the Model 3 production shutdown in Fremont and Gigafactory 1 is to prepare to increase production. Substantially

 
Musk explained that Tesla is now shooting to more than double production of 6,000 units per week across all production processes and suppliers in order to achieve 5,000 units per week in June.

The move seems to be in response to the recent miss in Model 3 production targets and is very bold in a Musk sort of way.

It’s a great email and I love how he evens gets low-level enough to tell people to walk out of meetings or phone calls if they aren’t well structured.  So good.

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