Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Since this was written in 2012 things have gotten much worse, with deep fakes, audio and video, fake news and misinformation in general added to everything described in the post. Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) is more true now and more important than ever before.
Do you look for peer reviews, such as those on Yelp, Amazon and most consumer sites, before buying the product, visiting the restaurant or booking the hotel?
Before the Internet we asked our friends and checked critics’ comments in newspapers and magazines, in order to increase the odds for a favorable experience.
“The wheels of online commerce run on positive reviews,” said Bing Liu, a data-mining expert at the University of Illinois, Chicago (…) Mr. Liu estimates that about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake.
Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth. They purport to be testimonials of real people, even though some are bought and sold just like everything else on the commercial Internet.
Do rankings based on the number of followers people have influence your trust level or opinion of them? But how do you know they are real?
And it’s not just ego-driven blogger types. Celebrities, politicians, start-ups, aspiring rock stars, reality show hopefuls — anyone who might benefit from having a larger social media footprint — are known to have bought large blocks of Twitter followers.
Are you impressed when someone’s Facebook wall is filled with beautiful people?
His idea, he said, was “to turn cyberlosers into social-networking magnets” by providing fictitious postings from attractive people. The postings are written by the client or by Mr. Walker and his employees, who base the messages on the client’s requests.
If having to choose between being a chump and a cynic isn’t up your alley, perhaps the best advice when it comes to reviews, followers and friends is ‘buyer beware’ and ‘if it seems to good to be true it probably is’.
Now scientists from Stanford University, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Princeton University, and Adobe Research are making faking it even simpler.
In the latest example of deepfake technology, researchers have shown off new software that uses machine learning to let users edit the text transcript of a video to add, delete, or change the words coming right out of somebody’s mouth.
The result is that almost anyone can make anyone say anything.
Just type in the new script.
Adobe, of course, plans to consumerize the tech, with a focus on how to generate the best revenue stream from it.
It’s not their problem how it will be used or by whom.
Yet another genii out of the box and out of control.
You can’t believe what you read; you can’t believe what you read or hear; it’s been ages since you could believe pictures, and now you won’t be able to believe videos you see.
It’s the last day of June and I’m a bit burned out. So I’ve decided to do something I have done in the 12 years of this blog.
I’m going to take the entire next week, July 1-7 off. Call it a mental health week.
Rather leave you with nothing to do while I’m gone I thought I’d share a three valuable links and one excellent joke (or maybe it’s a meme)
A techie and his wife were having a conversation about their attitudes towards life and death.
The techie had very strong feelings about his end-of-life preferences. He said didn’t want his brain frozen or any other Silicon Valley ideas.
“Never let me live in a vegetative state, totally dependent on machines and liquids from a bottle. If you see me in that state I want you to disconnect all the connections that are keeping me alive, I’d much rather die.”
At that point, his wife got up from the sofa with a look of pure admiration on her face and came towards him.
She gave him a hug and proceeded to disconnect the Cable TV, DVD, computer, smart phone, iPod, Xbox, and Alexa.
Then she went to the bar and threw away all the whiskey, rum, gin, vodka, along with the beer from the fridge.
Then she held him tenderly and used mouth-to-mouth to help him breathe.
Because her husband almost died.
As to the links,
Obvious as it sound, watching experts does not improve your skills.
A pair of researchers from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business conducted six separate experiments in which people who watched an expert demonstration of a particular skill experienced a big surge in confidence in their own skill-doing ability, and zero increase in their actual ability.
Freakin’ Awesome Karaoke Express (or F.A.K.E., for short). I made it up and paid strangers to pump up its online footprint to make it seem real. I didn’t do it to scam anyone or even for the LULZ. I wanted to see firsthand how the fake reputation economy operates. The investigation led me to an online marketplace where a good reputation comes cheap.
Impressive. John Perry Barlow founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, contributed to the Grateful Dead as a lyricist and in figured out what it took to be a good adult.
According to his Reddit AMA four years ago: “I found myself so surprised to have reached an age of indisputable adult that I wrote up a set of “adult principles” that I’ve been trying to live up to for 35 years.” The rules below are concise, practical, and can be applied to nearly every aspect of life: from waiting in line at the market to having a difficult conversation with a loved one.
Have a fabulous Fourth of July and I’ll see you on the 9th.
Fake news. People everywhere in the US and in all walks of life are talking about it.
There’s no question that fake news is subversive, whether created by humans or driven by AI.
But what about unfake fake news as served up by mainstream and new media alike?
Think you’ve never seen it?
Sure you have.
Frequently in financial reporting.
From CNBC: Twitter rockets more than 20 percent after the company reports first-ever net profit.
From BI: Snap crushed Wall Street’s revenue targets in its fourth quarter, as it filled its Snapchat app with more ads than ever and tapped into a broader group of consumers.
From US News: Tesla Finally Gives Investors Good Earnings News.
Wow! Based on the above headlines they look like great bets to contribute to your retirement.
Maybe.
But before investing your hard-earned dollars you might want to see what the same information looks like sans spin, hype and OMG.
Consider the information, often buried in euphoric media hyperbole, kind of like the fine print in a warranty or lease.
From TechCrunch: Snapchat’s big redesign will reach all users during Q1 2018, up from 40 million users currently. It was due to be fully rolled out by now but that has been delayed following poor reception in countries like the U.K., Australia and Canada. Amongst some of the first users to review the update, 83 percent of App Store reviews were negative, citing a confusing interface, ads mixed into the message inbox via Stories and people who don’t follow you back getting pushed into the Discover section.
From the New York times: The company [Tesla] lost $1.96 billion for the full year of 2017, nearly three times its loss of $675 million in 2016. The company has never made a full-year profit since it went public in 2010.
Everywhere you turn these days you’re told to use social media to create an easily recognized persona that becomes your “personal brand.”
It’s supposed to be the “real” you, i.e., authentic.
It’s also supposed to be the best you, which usually means inauthentic.
Inauthentic, because people typically share all their upside, but rarely the downside.
They post all the fabulous pictures (even helping them along via photoshop-type editing).
Non-fabulous pics are a rarity, unless they are meant to be funny, e.g., morning bedhead before coffee, and those are screened carefully.
We’re not talking spontaneous, rather faux spontaneous.
In fact, everything is carefully curated to enhance and extend one’s personal brand.
But what about personal culture?
As with company culture, your personal culture is based on your personal values.
Values are much harder to curate, since they underlie all actions.
Fred Destin is the latest VC to apologize for his actions, along with Binary Capital’s Justin Caldbeck, 500 Startups founder Dave McLure, and Lowercase Capital’s Chris Sacca.
Apparently it didn’t occur to any of them that their actions towards women were unacceptable, which makes you wonder about their values.
There is no wondering about Donald Trump’s values, since he stated publicly that he could do as he pleased, because he is rich.
The take away here is that no matter how carefully you curate your brand your personal culture will eventually trip you up if your curation doesn’t accurately reflect your values.
I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t want to be considered a great boss by their people from the time they receive that first promotion to the time they finally retire.
It doesn’t matter if they work for a giant corporation, start a company or run a small biz, they want to perceived as a great boss.
The problem is that there is so much advice as to what a great boss is to how to become one that accomplishing it can get lost in the effort.
That’s especially true since much of the advice out there is conflicting — whether with other advice or your own MAP.
Happily, there’s a simple answer to the what part of the question: a great boss is one for whom people want to work.
Period.
The how is accomplished in 3 simple steps.
List the five most important things that you always wanted your manager to do for you.
List the five most important ways in which you always wanted to be treated. (If you no longer have a manager think back to when you did.
Do them for your own team.
Most people who do this learn two surprising facts.
Most of the 10 require no additional budget and can be implemented by bosses at any level.
You will attract and retain people looking for the same things that you wanted from your boss.
They also learn 3 surprising truths.
They don’t like the people who like working for them.
MAP is impossible to sustainably fake.
People are smart. It won’t take long for new hires to recognize that one or more of the 10 are faked and they will leave.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
I’ve been working with entrepreneurs since the 1980s.
Sadly, the mindset has changed significantly—and not for the better.
I’m not the only one who feels that way.
German designer Hartmut Esslinger, who met Steve Jobs in 1982 and told him “Apple’s products were incredibly ugly and wasteful in production,”puts it this way.
“There is a bubble where greed meets hype and fake: Too many want to get rich instead of doing something meaningful for mankind, something for progress, to improve life.”
“Greed meets hype and fake;” what a perfect description of so many apps with billion-plus valuations.
The question you need to ask yourself is, “does it fit mine?”
T. Alan Armstrong said, “If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you.”
A good description of why an entrepreneur becomes an entrepreneur and why people join startups.
But it’s your passion that matters, not what the media or your friends/colleagues say your passion ought to be.
Your passion may lean to a more corporate setting, to a more socially responsible effort or to something else.
Living another person’s passion is far worse than living with no passion—because it is a sham and a sham can not sustain your effort, nor will it drive your success.
What faux passion will do is feast on your energy, suck you dry and leave behind a hollow ghost.
So whatever your passion, just be sure it really is yours.
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I’ve been working with entrepreneurs since the 1980s.
T. Alan Armstrong said, “If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you.” 
