Peter Yared's Musings

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

California, Florida, and Texas are among the largest U.S. states, and all three shut down before the Coronoavirus was widespread. They also have similar demographics, and a mix of city and rural populations. I have been writing about the relative success of the coronavirus virus response in Florida and Texas compared to California since last August . The coronavirus is a deadly plague that has affected countless lives. The data now shows that the quasi-lockdowns implemented by some U.S. States, with California at the forefront, did not have a material impact on death rates. California’s lockdowns have saved 3,500 lives versus Florida and 8,000 lives versus Texas, simply by extrapolating the per capita death rate and not adjusting for demographics such as Florida’s elderly population. 3,500 to 8,000 lives are not a trifling number of lives to lose and the impact of loss on families and friends is heartbreaking. That said, we must consider that California is a large state with a populati