A very scary privacy fact :

But it was only an early mile marker in Sweeney’s career; in 2000, she showed that 87 percent of all Americans could be uniquely identified using only three bits of information: ZIP code, birthdate, and sex.

Latanya Sweeney’s (hard to find) draft research on the topic, seems to indicate 87% identifiable, however, Philippe Goll, revisted her study and was only able to reproduce 61-63% hit rate.

This is still a rather spectacular hit rate in my opinion.

I always thought data mining was boring.

This rings so true…

SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.

But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption.

Over the months, I’ve blogged about Vodacom’s complete inability to develop a seemingly reliable web based system, and for quite a  few months now I’ve been surprised that I’m able to print my monthly statements online without hassle.

Thus, I guess I could be forgive to think that maybe they had sorted their shit out, or hired someone with a clue…

Today, when registering my son’s phone on their website of course, I get the following.

Is it possible for their website to do anything but serve gif's ?

I was actually quite surprised that I got the error so late in the process. I mean, I had actually already pressed the submit ONCE before reaching this error! This means that some code ran successfully on their server PRIOR to this message, which is actually AMAZING!

Muppets…

In reference to a post by Joe (quoting James Altucher), let me quote something from James too, that I found to be true, in exactly the time space-time-continuum that this article relates to… (Emphasis added by me.)

How I screwed Yasser Arafat ….

…

But I did learn several things that became incredibly important to me later. :

A) if you have to raise thirty million to start your business, its probably not a good business (at least for me). All of my good businesses (businesses that I started that I eventually sold and made money on) started off profitable from day one and never raised a dime of money.

B) Most M&A transactions don’t work. When you buy a company, its very hard to keep the owners of the old company incentivized. 90% of acquisitions don’t work. Build your business. Don’t buy it.

C) A lesson I learn repeatedly: traveling for business almost never generates more revenues. New York (and America) are big enough places to generate revenues. You should never travel. In the course of doing this business I traveled repeatedly to the west coast, Denver, England (to try and buy a company), Sweden (where Ericsson was based), Germany (Ericsson wanted me to show up at a conference for one day), Georgia, Florida, Boston, etc etc. Not a single meeting generated any revenues for the business but wasted hundreds of hours of my life.

D) Hiring smart people doesn’t work if you aren’t smart. Everything ultimately comes form the top down.

E) Spending a lot of money on branding and marketing materials is a waste of money for a startup. If you don’t know who you are, no amount of money will create materials explaining who you are.

F) If you are going to raise thirty million for a business, then raise a hundred million if you can. Don’t turn down Henry Kravis’s five million. It doesn’t matter how badly you get diluted. If you have to raise money, take in every dime you can.

G) MOST IMPORTANT: If you raise thirty million, spend none of it. Warren Buffett once said, “if you know a business will be around 20 years from now then its probably a good investment.” With thirty million we could’ve stayed in business for 20 years or more and eventually figured ourself out. Instead, I spent forty million in the first month or so. I learned a lot, and over a hundred million was lost.

Not-so-startup food for thought eh?. Apparently my blog is a great startup. Having to field around 10 to 20 spam posts (after kismetting) a day must mean something right ? Hah!

I’m just posting a bunch of really cool Nick Cave videos embedded into my site, so that the muppets from VEVO, and the rights holders don’t get to show me an utter bunch of nonsense.

Like “Rihanna Cheers, [Drink To That]” when you’re watching a Nick Cave video! The gall of it!

It really spoils the entire experiencel… Just click on the “Watch on Youtube” to see the “youtube commercial” effect, and how disgustingly disparaging it is to the artist.

Henry Lee

I did it for me. Cause it’s easier for me to post an embedded video on my own site, that skips all the crap “tinsel” on Youtube.

Can you imagine it … ? Rihanna next to Nick Cave. No wonder the record industry is conking out. They clearly have no clue, and have completely disconnected with their audience.