Peter Yared's Musings

Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he is dropping censorship in the U.S. for Facebook and Instagram was accompanied by a comment that he is going to work with the U.S. government to encourage other countries to not censor content. Upon acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk dropped censorship and soon learned that government mandates from across the world censor content. In 2024, Brazil blocked Twitter until it complied with censorship demands, France arrested Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov, the EU censored additional Russian outlets and wrote letters to Twitter mandating more content moderation, and Australia announced it will fine platforms for misinformation. The current U.S. administration had a heavy censorship hand and had threatened to revoke Section 230 which protects Internet sites from liability about their users’ content. Zuck indicated in his announcement and a letter to Congress in November that Meta felt coerced to comply. Twitter under Jack Dorsey was also coerced to censor, as ...

This post was also published with the Industry Association of Privacy Professionals. It seems like every day there is a new report of a major personal data breach. In just the past few months, Neiman Marcus , Ticketmaster , Evolve Bank , TeamViewer , Hubspot , and even the IRS have been affected. The core issue is that user data is commonly spread across multiple systems that are increasingly difficult to fully secure, including database user tables, data warehouses and unstructured documents. Most enterprises are already running an incredibly secure and hardened identity system to manage customer login and authorization, commonly referred to as a customer identity access management system. Since identity systems manage customer sign-up and sign-in, they typically contain customer names, email addresses, and phone numbers for multifactor authentication. Commercial CIAMs provide extensive logging, threat detection, availability and patch management. Identity systems are highly sec...

This post was also published in Refresh Miami Dubai reopened aggressively during the pandemic with extensive testing and vaccination programs. It has since outpaced its primary competitor, Singapore, as the key destination for the wealthy seeking sunshine, lifestyle, and lower taxes. Dubai now stands alone in the Eastern hemisphere as the nexus point for the wealthy of the Middle East, Asia, Russia, and many Europeans. Similarly, Miami became a top destination for the wealthy through the pandemic and has now emerged as the Dubai of the Western hemisphere. Already considered the “capital of Latin America,” Miami has become the nexus point for the wealthy of the U.S., Canada, and Europe for the same reasons as Dubai: sunshine, lifestyle, and lower taxes. Very much like Dubai, the culture of Miami encourages emigration, success, capitalism, and wealth. The city government, led by Mayor Francis Suarez, actively seeks to expand the city and attract new business. The new people Fo...

I’m excited to soft launch Summary.News , an AI news aggregator that helps news readers know what's really happening by summarizing perspectives such as liberal, mainstream, and conservative. We aim to restore trust in the news with a more holistic view of stories. Many people were shocked when inflation was not transitory, Kyle Rittenhouse was declared not guilty, a miracle vaccine did not stop spread, and the Ukrainian counter-offensive quickly ground to a halt. A select few newshounds were not surprised by these outcomes, but it takes a lot of time and energy to hunt, peck, and distill through various news sites to triangulate on what’s really happening. Trust in the news has unfortunately dropped to only 11% for newspapers, which to be clear are primarily mainstream publications and does not include Fox News. Popular news media typically operates from a factual basis but often omits vital facts. Articles about the Supreme Court Dobbs decision will include opinion polls about...

In his 1941 book, The Managerial Revolution , James Burnham predicted that a class of managers and administrators would rise above people performing actual tasks. Later dubbed the “ professional–managerial class ” by John and Barabara Ehrenreich, no one could have predicted that a vast swath of the upper middle class would become administrators, project managers, program managers, compliance officers, and the like. The growth of managers and administrators From hospitals to schools to companies, there are more managers and administrators than individual contributors working on what the organization actually creates. Thirty years ago, if you walked into a three-doctor physician’s practice, one receptionist would be at the desk. Now, an army of schedulers, insurance submitters, transcribers, and other paperwork managers serve the three doctors. What do managers and administrators do all day? These college-educated professionals make presentations, checklists, align, strategize, check off...

I’m excited to share the soft release of Syndichain ! Syndichain is a censorship-resistant news aggregator with open algorithms and news context. Syndichain is built on a new Layer 1 blockchain that is purpose-built to syndicate content using an eventually consistent consensus mechanism. Syndichain was inspired by a systemic issue with news aggregators like Google News, Apple News, Twitter, and Facebook filtering content to a very narrow Overton window. These apps have recreated AOL’s walled garden of sanitized content. Many people are happy with an AOL experience. Syndichain is the app for people interested in a news aggregator that automatically includes alternative perspectives on issues like the Ukraine war and COVID response, as well as niche topics of interest.  It’s been a two year journey of stealth development. Building a Layer 1 blockchain, news aggregation middleware, and a full app experience was a much bigger endeavor than we initially expected! It’s also fun to go dee...

As the President said this week, the pandemic has ended. What also ended are the fantasies in San Francisco that “after the pandemic, everything will come roaring back” and “the harder we lock down, the better the economy will bounce back.” California has the same  age-adjusted excess mortality  as Florida, so the destruction was wrought for naught. Why do I write about San Francisco more than two years since departing? There are profound lessons to be learned from the San Francisco experience. These lessons need to be heeded in other cities and states where people are staunchly advocating for similar decision-making that will inevitably lead to similar results. There are five clear trends that are now irrefutable and near-term irreversible. 1. An empty downtown results in massive budget cuts San Francisco’s downtown is empty. There’s a narrative that the buildings are vacant because it’s easy for tech companies to go remote. However, Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Seattl...