Linda Xie:

A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is a group organized around a mission that coordinates through a shared set of rules enforced on a blockchain.

One of the main benefits of a DAO is that they are more transparent than traditional companies since all actions and funding in the DAO are viewable by anyone. This significantly reduces the risk of corruption and censorship. Publicly traded companies must provide independently audited financial statements, but shareholders only get to see the financial health of the organization at a snapshot in time. Since a DAO’s balance sheet exists on a public blockchain, it is completely transparent at all times, down to every single transaction.

DAOs typically are more globally accessible and have lower barriers to entry than companies. Given the transparency and lower barriers to entry, there will likely be lower switching costs for DAO members who don’t agree with the rules and actions. DAOs sharing a similar mission might need to compete for members and are incentivized to be as transparent as possible and not extract too much rent from the group so that they are able to attract top members. DAOs might also need to quickly evolve to meet the members’ needs.

Consumers Deserve a Data Dividend

Digital identity scheme shot down by voters over data privacy concerns

The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

Three east London boroughs were already at breaking point. Then the pandemic struck 

Saudi Arabia’s Bold Plan to Rule the $700 Billion Hydrogen Market

Gig workers would pay higher taxes under Democrat Party coronavirus aid bill

However you cut it, what we’re talking about when we say “science” just isn’t close to the thing it was seventy years ago.

All Measures Short of a Cross Straits Invasion

The New ‘End of History’

‘your problem, Dad, is that you’re bored by the present’.

Google UX commentary

“O’Brien and Pottinger recommended that Trump immediately ban travelers from China or anyone who had recently been there. Every Trump official opposed the move, even the health experts such as Fauci”.

$38B+ Taxpayer Electronic Medical Record subsidy waste, part X

Complaint Publicization in Social Media

Does Competition Improve Service Quality? The Case of Nursing Homes Where Public and Private Payers Coexist

T-Mobile Is Taking All of Your Sweet, Sweet Data… Unless You Tell It to Stop

Inventor of cassette tape Lou Ottens passed away

Bats and the origin of outbreaks: As the World Health Organization reaches its findings on the zoonotic origins of the novel coronavirus, we explain why bats make such ideal hosts for disease-causing viruses.

Retracing a Donner Party Path, Nearly Two Centuries Later

San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin recall campaign approved

Toyota Chief Says Apple Should Steel for Long Haul if It Enters Auto Industry

Covid-19: NHS Test and Trace ‘no clear impact‘ despite £37bn budget

Apple Tilts to iPhone Playbook for Car as Automaker Talks Stall

Green Bay, Democrats dispute report that private group took over city’s election administration

Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

Keep Calm & Defend Work

Wheels to Meals: Measuring the Economic Impact of Micromobility on the Local Economy

What a TAZ (temporary autonomous zone) provides

That they are angry and upset is irrelevant.

Grocery store workers are working, meat packers are working, hell bars and restaurants are open in many parts of the country but FDA inspectors aren’t inspecting. It boggles the mind.

If Big Tech has our data, why are targeted ads so terrible?

MacArthur fellow and Stanford professor Heidi Williams ’03 explores the forces that impede advances in healthcare.

It would be helpful if China released Phase III trial data on its vaccines before demanding that people take them

Fortunately the US then had judicial restraints. Judge William Morrow ruled that the San Francisco Board of Health’s actions were “boldly directed against the Asiatic or Mongolian race as a class, without regard to the previous condition, habits, exposure or disease, or residence of the individual” — and were therefore unconstitutional.

Robert N. Charette:

A core issue, he states, is that most EHRs are not universally interoperable, meaning health and other relevant patient information they contain is not easily shared either with other EHRs or government public health IT systems

Notes and links on our back door electronic medical record subsidy disaster. We were promised interoperability….

Singapore develops new standard for cross-border verification of COVID-19 test results

Epic systems employee climate

I chased the American dream. It brought me back to my father’s deathbed in China.

Xinjiang investigation

Facebook & Privacy

Notes On the Slate Star Codex Controversy

Their goal is to become entrepreneurs. But instead of building products, they create content. Or even worse, they do research and take courses on how to create content.

The Whole Web Pays For Google And Facebook To Be “Free”

Toyota Develops Packaged Fuel Cell System Module to Promote the Hydrogen Utilization toward the Achievement of Carbon Neutrality

TSMC at the head of history’s tide: two high walls and one sharp knife

EVs Could Make Dealerships a Thing of the Past, Too

The Brown M&M’s Principle: How Small Details Can Help Discover Big Issues

India’s new intermediary liability and digital media regulations will harm the open internet

Stupid lessons: It turns out that selecting all objects and changing storage class doesn’t change storage class on all objects. Instead, you have to create a lifecycle rule to transition objects, and tell the lifecycle rule to clear multipart uploads. Otherwise, many objects (in our case, most of them) won’t transition.

This tool lets you confuse Google’s ad network, and a test shows it works

How to poison the data that Big Tech uses to surveil you

The Factual: Best Covid-19 News Sources of 2020

Health Experts Are Telling Healthy People Not to Wear Face Masks for Coronavirus. So Why Are So Many Doing It?

‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This’: Chaos Strikes Global Shipping

How Did Absentee Voting Affect the 2020 U.S. Election?

BMW CFO Brushes Off Apple Car Threat: ‘I Sleep Very Peacefully’

Imogen Heap: Decentralising the music industry with blockchain

First flight nears for Berlin Airlift Foundation’s replacement airplane

?? Chen Shuai:

In December 1989, Taipei’s cold rain was drizzling, and Samsung head Lee Kun-hee (???) went to Taiwan for a study trip. He secretly invited Morris Chang (Chinese: ???/Morris Chang[a][b][c][d]), the founder of TSMC, to have breakfast for one purpose: to poach the 58-year-old veteran.

At this time, TSMC has been silently established for two years, and it is still unknown in the industry. Its “foundry” model was not the mainstream approach of the chip field at that time, and people couldn’t understand it. In 1987 when TSMC was founded, Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul (???) passed away, and his third son, Lee Kun-hee, took charge of Samsung. As soon as he took office, he shouted the slogan “Start-up Again (????)” and made a foray into electronics and semiconductors.

Morris Chang is the talent that Lee Kun-hee badly needs. In 1983, he stepped back from the position of “third-in-command” of Texas Instruments. Although he could just enjoy the American dream of “one house, two cars, three dogs,” he was always unwilling. So two years later, when Sun Yun-suan, “Chiang Ching-kuo’s successor,” invited him to take up the post of president of the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan, Morris Chang decided to risk it and get out of his comfort zone.

Alexa Ura:

To this day, officials in Waller contend the litigation over the 2018 early voting schedule is not a continuation of past suppression tactics. They balk at today’s Waller County being painted with too broad a brush based on a history in which current leaders say they played no part.

Although he grew up in the region, County Judge Carbett “Trey” Duhon didn’t arrive in Waller County until 2005, when his family bought a 10-acre plot on the northern end of the county and he opened his law practice in the area.

Since taking the helm of the county in 2015, he’s come to realize how the county’s decisions today are tormented by its past. But he rejects the notion that there’s any overlap and argues county leadership has actually moved to expand access for students during his tenure.

Silent Running: The sci-fi that predicted modern crises

Cascend: Data Shows Wind-Power Was Chief Culprit Of Texas Grid Collapse

How Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn’t

Transcript: Matt Pottinger on “Face the Nation,” February 21, 2021

Want To Live Longer, Be Happier, Stay Healthier? Studies Say Go To Church Regularly!

Vehicle Dependability at All-Time High, J.D. Power Finds

Do farmers have the right to repair their own equipment?

Off grid “free” land

A COVID-19 vaccine life cycle: from DNA to doses

Bloomberg New Economy: How Elon Musk Won Trump’s China Trade War

Whistleblowers: Software Bug Keeping Hundreds Of Inmates In Arizona Prisons Beyond Release Dates

Why Tech Moguls Are Obsessed With Building Utopian Cities

Swedish officials report ‘escalated’ threats and hate in coronavirus debate

Massacre in the mountains

Silicon Valley runs on Saudi

Reimagining our great political experiment may save it from terminal decline

But more than that, the study says something fascinating about how we perceive the world around us: that visual cues can effectively override our senses of taste and smell (which are, of course, pretty much the same thing.)

“Location-Based Pay” – Who Are You to Complain?

Armenia Is an Orphaned Client State

Grant Thornton ‘failed to check Patisserie Valerie cash levels’

How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

The U.S. fumbled a lot of things during this pandemic, but compared to almost every other peer nation, it is handling vaccination well.

Once again. Facebook (and Google) relies on and collects a majority of its data from *when you’re on products they don’t control and you’re not intending to interact with them.* That’s why they fear iOS privacy changes, data protection (aka privacy) laws & antitrust scrutiny. /1

Colorado City mayor resigns, responds to his controversial Facebook post

Taking a Fall

What went wrong with America’s $44 million vaccine data system?

Facebook reported revenue it ‘should have never made’, manager claimed

How Oracle Sells Repression in China

Citibank just got a $500 million lesson in the importance of UI design

The Fantasy of Opting Out

RightBooks: American Carnage

Two recent obituaries.

Darwin Ness

We frequently worshipped with Darwin Saturday evenings. Observing his drive, devotion and faith was humbling, to say the least.

David Villa

I met David – wearing a Santa tie – while we were marooned at O’hare. This occurred when United Airlines’ ORD – MSN flight performance was modeled after a random number generator (2008-2009).

Take your chances: canceled, on time or delayed. The odds grew against the paying traveler as day turned into evening.

Thus we stood at the gate, not at all surprised that our last flight of the day to Madison was cancelled.

We shared a rental car to Madison that evening, swapping family and business tales, including the recent big bank bailouts.

Our paths occasionally crossed and included lunch or tea conversations.

Life on earth is fleeting; our “time of grace”, for sure.

PS. After enduring endless ORD – MSN flight misadventures, I phoned Air Wisconsin’s VP – Operations.

I simply asked when they might stop with the random number generator? Laughing, he said that United determines where and when they fly. (Air Wisconsin continues to provide “regional jet” service to the large “mainline” airlines).