September 2011
Everything we want and everything we own, we owe...
My 17 year old son Tom was sick for Roshashana the Jewish New Year that we celebrated last night. I felt sorry for him and asked him if there was anything I could get him that would make him feel better. He answered “I don’t know Dad, all I want I get on my laptop”.
When I was his age being sick meant book, magazines, videos and TV. Now all that comes over the internet.
But...
Skyscrapers need not be ugly. Terrorists need not win. My first job was in the WTC. Nice to see the rebirth.
Facebook’s answer to the accusation that it tracks users when logged off
2 tags
Reply from Facebook to the accusations about...
Gregg Stefancik 4 hours ago
I’m an engineer who works on login systems at Facebook. Thanks, again for raising these important issues. We haven’t done as good a job as we could have to explain our cookie practices. Your post presents a great opportunity for us to fix that. At the same time, your post reaches some incorrect conclusions that I hope to clarify. Generally, unlike other major...
What keeps Spain together
In Spain where I most live, and I say mostly because we travel so much, there are parts of the country, Basques, Catalans, that would like to become independent. Or let’s say there are some people in some parts of the country that would like to become a new country (because I understand that if there was a referendum say in Catalonia and everyone who lives there voted the ...
In favor or against the Palestinian State?
As a Jew I want to see a Palestinian state. I just don’t know how to guarantee that this state will not be Hamas controlled and focused not on its own success but the destruction of Israel. Gaza has been a terrible example of what may happen in all of Palestine. And at the same time I think the Israelis are so in the wrong for allowing more settlements. Having said this, if those...
Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace
I just had breakfast at our NYC home with Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace. I have known Kumi for 11 years. First I would like to remark what a great person he is and how important the work he does at Greenpeace is. Kumi does not just do office activism, read his bio and you will find out more about his life.
During our breakfast we spoke a great deal about what are the most important environmental...
I belong to the tech world. But also to the real world. And the disconnect has never been greater. The tech world is one piece of good news after another. The real world is falling apart. Especially in Southern Europe where I live. But even in NYC where I am now the talk is of gloom and doom.
I am testing Google TV for the first time, it’s like Apple TV + Chrome. The Logitech execution is poor, lots of work to be done. It’s shocking that Logitech put the enter and the delete buttons so close to each other that many times you want to enter, you delete. I don’t think Google’s method of allowing everyone else to build anything off their code really works. At...
Greece should default but pay half of its debt
I believe that the Greek economy is a tumor in the EU economy. I don’t believe all of the EU is as sick and I don’t think we should bail Greece out. Instead for their own good and ours we should let Greeks go back to their old currency, devalue and default. Then we should focus on saving the banks (but not the shareholders of the banks) who lent money to Greece or bought their...
I don’t really like Marc Anthony, the salsa I can take, but those romantic songs are too much for me. But not for my wife Nina and therefore I accepted the kind invitation of Emilio Azcarraga to go and see him and worked on these pictures taken from the second row on a Canon S95. Working on the photos and the video I had a good time anyway. And afterwards we all went for a great dinner....
We are in Miami. In South Beach. This city has grown on us. We bought an apartment here in mid 2009 as an investment only but it turned out that we come much more than we thought we would. I used to find Miami tacky and irrelevant. I don’t anymore, mainly for one reason, Nina are happy and in love in this city. As a native Spanish speaker Miami is the most Spanish of all US...
How to save the Euro
To save the euro ECB needs to guarantee all government bonds issued by EU countries in euros. Once this happens we will end with interest differentials or country risk premiums that themselves are making countries like Spain and Italy go towards default. The finances of Italy and Spain would be much better if these nations could borrow at the same rates as Germany. And their economies are...
Idea to increase retirement age without forcing...
In European countries when people reach retirement age they should have a choice of retiring like now or belonging to a new category of people. The working seniors. Working seniors if employed would not collect pensions (only while employed of course) but also their employer would not have to pay any social charges for them. The underlying principle is that people who reached retirement...
Four quick ideas for Blackberry
-Make it such that when you get a new Blackberry you can clone the old one, apps included, as iTunes does with the iPhone, now it’s just Blackberry services. As a manufacturer you want to make it as easy as possible for people to buy your newer products.
-Create an API for the keyboard and trackpad so any other gadget in the planet, including your iPad, your TV… can be...
Wikileaks should be more transparent
I was looking at the financial statements of Wikileaks online and could not find them. Greenpeace, Oxfam, Wikipedia and other NGOs that solicit money are very transparent about their financial situation. To me Wikileaks becomes much less credible if they do not have that level of transparency but yet they claim to bring transparency to the world.
Oil prices are collapsing. I see this as a mixed blessing. On one side I am happy that oil exporters get to make less money doing nothing. On the other side I am concerned about more CO2 emissions around the world and a slower shift to alternative energy. So what I would love to see is for the US and EU governments to leave gasoline prices as they are now and as oil prices go down to keep...
A perfect ending to our summer vacation
These photos are from the last day of our summer vacation. We spent it on Aphrodite, the family sailboat. We have been sailing Aphrodite for 11 years. We have gone as far East as Beirut and as far West as Mexico. Aphrodite is a 92ft Ketch designed by Andre Hoek and built by Vitters. And don’t ask me why I still work so hard at turning ideas into businesses like Fon and just don’t...
Sailing around Menorca we found this incredible yacht. Maybe somebody who looks at the pictures can tell me her name. In the meantime it was funny to see that some nudists had discovered this ultramodern wet dream ahead of us :) ok now I know it was this yacht the most expensive in the world, $300M to build $1M to refuel, $20M to maintain per year, designed by Starck
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Here’s a question for all you parents out there. During vacation: How many hours of videogames (iPad, PSP, Nintendo Xbox) does your 4 to 7 year old boy play? How many hours of TV? How many hours of outdoor physical activity? How many hours of any other activities? But please don’t tell me what you think is ideal but what is really the case. This activities could be done alone...