Daily

College timewaster

Retro gaming: Duke Nukem 3D

This was one of the favorite multi-player games in college. We played this is so many times. Besides the great fun playing the game, it had these funny quotes (spoke by Jon St. John). For instance this one – it still cracks me up: The gameplay held up pretty well given it is over 20 […]

Your data is out there

Control your personal data

This week Quora got hacked and the account information of 100M users was exposed. The week before Starwood admitted they were hacked for several years and details of an estimated 500M people were exposed. And then there were the hacks of: Yahoo (3B accounts) Equifax (143M accounts) JPMorganChase (83M accounts) Anthem (80M accounts) Target (70M accounts) […]

Ad revenue isn’t really a lot

Would you pay 2 cents to read an article?

I’ve been using ad blocking for a long time. I wrote about that in an earlier post. I do realize that media companies need revenue and journalists need to be paid. I was wondering how a page view actually brings in revenue-wise and found this interesting analysis. If you do the numbers, a page view […]

An important driver for success

Who wants you to win?

An important driver for success is if you can answer the question who wants you to win? This is especially important when you’re disrupting existing industries and markets. Sometimes it’s the customer like and sometimes it’s your suppliers. Here are a few examples. Google Android won because the industry wanted to offer a smartphone which […]

A16Z’s view on Insuretech

Managing risk and uncertainty

If you’re into insurance and startups, this is an excellent presentation by Angela Strange from a16z. In only 25 minutes – and without speaking like bat out of hell – she gives a great overview on the opportunities and challenges of starting a company in the insuretech – interestingly enough she doesn’t use that term […]

It ain’t done when it’s done

Little things

A few years ago, I bought a car. I had a great conversation with the sales guy and the whole experience was very pleasant. I got to test drive it and we discussed a couple of things which were wrong with it and they would fix them. At closing, I asked if they could put […]

Cymbidium orchid

Bloom

My Cymbidium orchid started to bloom. This is the first time since I bought it over 18 months ago. I got it at the orchid show at the New York botanical gardens. I’m super excited I got it to bloom again.

Please, take all my money!

Retro gaming: After Burner II

When I was around 13 or 14, they had this arcade in my town which I loved visiting and spend some money. My absolute favorite game was After Burner II. They had this deluxe cabinet with a moving seat and stick control with triggers. It was quite the contraption. Here’s a photo: I spent a […]

Until something better comes along

Replacing Path with a finsta

A couple of months ago, Path – the social network – was shut down. I guess it was inevitable, but it left me without a social network to share. Facebook isn’t a social network anymore and beyond them, there isn’t much else. Except maybe Instagram. A month ago, I setup a private finsta account. I […]

New toy

Oculus Go

Four times a year, I treat myself with a “toy”. Usually, at this time of the year, it would’ve been a new iPhone, but this year I got myself an Oculus Go. It was on sale on Cyber Monday and I’ve been eyeing it for a while. Yesterday it got delivered. My first impressions are […]