Peter Yared's Musings

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 deep on

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 Seattle are in

The large declining tech company. We’ve all read articles in the tech press and blogs analyzing how once hot companies lost their way. Most of them have followed similar trajectories and have a common set of characteristics. What if we apply the same “large declining tech company” framework to the Bay Area? It turns out that large declining tech companies and the Bay Area actually have a lot in common. It breaks my heart to see what has become of San Francisco. I lived there for almost 25 years. When I first moved to San Francisco in 1997, it was a magical and inspirational place. Remember the Flying Saucer and Survival Research Labs parties? I hope that by analyzing what has gone wrong using a framework we know well, we can find a path to revitalization, and also provide warning signs for other metropolitan areas to not follow a similar policy trajectory. The fall of Yahoo! is a well-documented example of a large declining tech company, and the following five categories are a great fr