Category: General

November Update

I haven’t had much mindshare to blogging lately but I feel that some updates are owed so here we go.

Investing

I think we are finally at the ‘bottom’, bottom not in the sense of a pit or valley but in the sense of stability and sensibility (not volatility, of course). Until overal economy shows sign of recovering, I’ll be looking to buy into gorges and sell out of hills as market over-reacts on news in either direction with an eye toward accumulating quality.

Economy

America needs to overhaul the auto industry, creating an environment that favors smaller and nimbler car makers over mammoth ones, rewarding entrepreneurs over union workers. I want to see hundreds if not thousands of little car makers and value added resellers backed by world-wide mesh of auto part makers. I want to see a huge cloud of chaos out of which new engine of American economy will emerge from.

Startup

We are already in closed beta and working toward private beta. There are still challenges to overcome but the service is looking pretty good already. To address those challenges, I’ve withdrawn myself from daily activities at the startup to focus on our core technologies.

Obama! Wow!

Acceptance speech by Obama was simply the best I’ve witnessed live and at par with John F. Kennedy’s Ask-Not speech emotionally. Wow. He wobbled a bit after opening whomp but, boy, he piled it on and on. So good that he brought tears to people’s eyes, the good kind.

New Economic Solution: Whining

I was wondering how Paulson throwing money at banks would unfreeze the credit market. Looks like the answer is whine until bankers can’t stand it anymore. Ridiculous. What’s next? Accuse banks of being anti-American unless they lend?

IMHO, it makes more sense to measure each bank’s lending practice and adjust central bank lending rate for the bank. In essence, it’s a measure of how much leverage a bank offers over US economy. I think it’s reasonable that banks that offer the government more control over US economy should get lower lending rate over those who offer less.

To banks, this change would just introduce a new business factor to consider instead of the political and bureaucratic mess being thrown at them now. Banks know how to deal with business problems, not the other.

Looking for the Bottom

Despite the long (well, sure felt long) decline and bounces, I am still all cash. Throughout the rollercoaster ride, there were many luring moment but none felt true because I don’t think it’s the bottom when people are still joking and ranting about the market. To me, it’s bottom when no one wants to talk about the market.

When? I think the start of the last leg of the journey is about to start. It’s kind of funny that, while people know what’s happening now is a global crisis, many don’t fully realize what that really means. Imagine what would happen when practically every aspect of world economy shrinks by 1/3. That’s what’s happening now in the stock markets which is, in essence, the mirror reflection of the business world.

The bottom will be where the reflection meets reality because people won’t be crying wolf anymore when it’s sitting right in front of them, drooling.

Media Bias Against McCain, Palin?

While I am solidly in Obama/Biden camp and see McCain/Palin’s recent attacks against Obama as disturbing trendwise, I am also disturbed by apparent general bias in the media against McCain and Palin. It’s not unlike tech media’s obsession with anything Apple makes.

What I am not sure about is whether the bias is in the selection of news media I consume or not. If yes, I should balance my news diet, consuming more from the ‘otherside’. If not, it’s amazing that Obama has only 5 percent lead over McCain. Either way, it’s annoying that objectivity in news is being decentralized to news consumers.

Restart

After blogging for 7 years using my own blogging software, I’ve decided to move to WordPress platform. Why didn’t I set up my own WordPress server? Not enough time to install as well as track upgrades and patches. Old posts and comments will take some time to appear, probably not until the year-end holiday season. Identicons will also return…eventually.

Anyway, welcome to my new blog!

Granting H-1B by Public Review

I think granting H-1B visa by public review might be more effective than the way it's done now. The idea is to let any U.S. citizen participate in to the selection process. One way to do that is, with H-1B application and applicant submitted resume available online, give N opinion points for each volunteer to express positive or negative opinion on N applicants. Authentication can be done with the same way electronic tax filing is done.
There is lots of room for abuse but, conceptually, I like this idea.

Mad Cow Disease Hysteria in Korea

Hysteria over mad cow disease is reaching boiling point in South Korea (photos of candle vigil), triggered by recent pre-FTA concession by South Korean President Lee to remove ban against US beef and boosted by a timely sensational episode on PD Notebook, a Korean version of 60-minutes.
Regardless of all the arguments for or against US beef export to Korea, I find it interesting that people are desensitized to countless deaths-by-car yet hysterical over the possibility of death-by-food. And it's ironic that Korean automakers stand to gain significantly from the US-Korea FTA if it goes through.

Mozilla Engineer Needed

My company is in need of a consultant in Menlo Park area who is highly knowledgable about mozilla source code platform, enough to build a custom version of Firefox. You must know mozilla's platform layer, network, and security manager layer, XPCOM, and XUL like back of your hand.
Please send your resume to me (click on my photo).

Dave’s New Thingy

It's been coming for a while in plain sight but Dave has now put a name to it: FlickrFan. Is it something new? Seemingly not but, knowing Dave, I know he is seeing something I currently cannot see. And the chance of mis-focusing is pretty high. Software is magic, folks. Like the way one can put meanings between lines of words, one can capture something wonderful between lines of code, even crappy code, code that anyone can write but all too often fails to capture anything but vain eye candy or crippled features.
I still remember hearing about Dave's Living Video Text two decades ago. It seemed mundane at first glance and it took many years before I saw it on store shelves. But his outliner idea dawned on me eventually. Since then, there were scriptable apps, blogging, and podcasting.  I don't know why ideas he gets attracted to always end up being late bloomers but, thankfully, his persistence gives us time to come around eventually. When a mountaineer points at something, one should not focus on his finger.
Is FlickrFan a start of something wonderful or will it be much ado about nothing? Frankly, I don't know but I also don't see much return in being a premature critic or a flip-flop.
This is what I am seeing in FlickrFan at the moment:

FlickrFan captures and projects images from a user's social network without all the clutter of web user interface. Photos of friends floating by on the big ass screen you paid thousands of dollars for, every day and every glance, in every gorgeous detail, each throbbing HD pixel filled with bits and hearts of the world you choose to care.

Now, if you had to choose between the FlickrFan show and "Deal or No Deal", which would you choose?