Goldman Sachs doesn’t think anyone cares if it is betting against a security it is trying to sell

“What clients or customers are buying is they are buying an exposure,” Blankfein said. “The thing we are selling to them is supposed to give them the risk they want. They are not coming to us to represent what our views are. They probably, the institutional clients we have, wouldn’t care what our views are. [...]

How does Google debug problems in a large, distributed infrastructure?

It’s incredibly difficult to debug errors and performance bottlenecks in a large, distributed computing system. Many different components and computing nodes touch each transaction, and it’s extremely time consuming to determine what, exactly, is going on inside the system.
Answering basic questions like “What kind of requests do we handle poorly?” and “Which component of the [...]

Tuning those privacy controls on Facebook

I’m extremely impressed with what Facebook launched at F8 last week — big ideas launched with stunning speed. At the same time, I have to chuckle at some of the unintended consequences of a brand new, not so well tested, social internet.
“This past weekend, one poor woman from Adelaide, Australia named Kate Miller found that [...]

Just in case you wondered where Apple’s revenue comes from

Today, Silicon Alley Insider released their excellent chart of the day for Apple’s latest revenue figures. Note that Apple receives most of their revenue selling devices like the iPhone, not software. But they spend a heck of a lot of software and content (iTunes) in order to stimulate demand and differentiation for their hardware products.
From [...]

Foursquare/Gowalla/Yelp check-in app growth: This is your tenth check-in here, have a free burrito

How do you accelerate growth for checkin-apps? Create a loyalty program for local businesses, and they will promote your checkin app for you AND users will have an incentive to check-in often.

iPad User Tests: Kids, grandparents, moms, and more try it out

I continue to be fascinated with the iPad, which was just released on Saturday. I think this is because it’s a new kind of device — not quite a laptop, not quite a smartphone. And previous attempts to create a tablet market have failed pretty badly and at great expense. Just 2 days ago, I posted some [...]

The iPad faces the Mom Test

I was on the phone with my mom today and she mentioned she had been to the Apple store to check out the iPad.
I’m a bit of a product geek and so I thought to myself, what a perfect opportunity to see what her perspective is on the highest profile tech product launch in recent [...]

whoa, 6.9 quake in northern ba…

whoa, 6.9 quake in northern baja today (close to san diego)! http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/dyfi/events/ci/14607652/us/index.html

Want to increase employment? Make it easy to start, finance, and grow a startup

Thomas L Friedman wrote a short opinion pience in the New York Times today called Start-Ups, Not Bailouts. It’s worth reading and connects to several other trends I’ve witnessed recently regarding regulation and the startup ecosystem.
A short excerpt: “…Between 1980 and 2005, virtually all net new jobs created in the U.S. were created by firms [...]

Interesting reading: Clay Shirky on the collapse of complex business models

The Collapse of Complex Business Models
“When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the moment where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler, which is to say right up to the moment of collapse. Collapse is simply the last remaining method [...]