A Quantum Immortal

Everybody’s talking about “Viral marketing” and “viral videos”. This is a story of how viral marketing is done right.

Meetme.so is a great way to save scheduling time for busy people. If you want to schedule a meeting with me, head on to meetme.so/RonGross. This simple statement appears at the bottom of my signature, and I tell this to people who want to schedule meetings with me.

This simple idea – that you no longer need two people online at the same to schedule – and its succinct implementation – is spreading like wildfire, with a high vitality coefficient. No marketing. No ad campaigns. Just pure p2p spread – I don’t even try to convince anyone to use it, I just use it myself and demonstrate how it saves time for me.

People are adept at identifying “good shit”, and copying/using that whenever they can. Still waters run deep – such a strategy can work much better than pouring $500,000 into a marketing campaign. Good job MeetMe!

Oh – and thanks David Johnston for introducing me to Meetme – I’ve saved literally hours of my time thanks to this simple introduction.

See details on our blog.

($6000 referral bonus!)

Please send relevant CVs to jobs@mastercoin.org

This is obvious to anyone who understands web, but a lot of browser extensions can read all the data on all the websites you visit. If you use any Bitcoin web wallets, exchanges, or anything financial in a browser – please for your own good, make sure to do it in a browser that’s completely clean.

You can use an alternate browser (Firefox if your default is Chrome), use an anonymous/incognito browser tab, or setup a unique profile for that … what is important is that the browser you use for financials does not have any extensions.

Extensions do declare their requested permissions … but these change over time and it’s hard to keep track – the safest approach is to make sure no extensions are installed on that browser.

This has been exploited already in the wild by some Bitcoin-specific extensions, but a Bitcoin-stealing module can be added to other unrelated extensions – better safe than sorry.

Disclaimer – I assume the information in this article is correct. There has been talk about it for some time … let me TL;DR and translate it for you:

The head of the Prime Minister’s Office, Harel Locker (not the PM!), is expected to publish in the coming weeks reforms to limit the use of cash, which will ban cash transactions in payment of more than NIS 5,000 (~1500 USD)…

Reform was born after officials from Visa Europe arrived in Israel and presented to a member of the governmentm Knesset members and officials from the tax authority a study research that estimate the volume of the black economy in Israel.

The obvious thing that SHOUTS OUT here is that there is a strong business interest and complete lack of transparency here, not to mention … how is it even possible that such a ruling can be made without an orderly law-making process.

What’s less obvious, and for me is painfully clear, is just how wrong this is – the only “competition” (other than Bitcoin) to banks and credit companies will now be banned. Over the past year, we witnessed firsthand the degree of power banks have. For almost an entire year, it was very hard or impossible for individuals to buy bitcoins in Israel … because of the sheer whim of bankers.

When you went to your local bank, and asked them to take your money, and send it to a Bitcoin exchange … the answer was almost always “No”. Not because any rules or laws were broken, but because the bank management and compliance officers decided it was “too risky for them” to allow their customers to do these transactions. The same can happen with other legitimate businesses, not just Bitcoin. In fact in the U.S it has happened with the sale of Cannabis, which is legal in some states. WikiLeaks is another such example. True, these examples are “controversial”, but what’s considered controversy today is clear cut tomorrow … banks should not be given the sole power to control the flow of funds, because their decisions and interests aren’t necessarily aligned with the good of the public.

This is too much power that banks already … forbidding cash transactions over a certain sum is giving them absolute power.

I honestly hope that the article I quoted is mistaken, and that the resolution hasn’t been made yet. Luckily, Bitcoin users aren’t expected to be affected in any way … it’s highly unlikely any regulation they draw here will include Bitcoin in its prohibition, as it is my estimate that this will take the Israeli government some more time to properly understand Bitcoin.

You may remember how I looked for an assistant a few months ago. Well, my current assistant has moved on to her full time position (good luck H!), and I’m on the market again.

This time she made me prepare a list of job requirements and not just fire a general plea into the void … so if you think you got what it takes, please email me at ron.gross+assistant@gmail.com

(Note I’ll be away for a few weeks on a conference, H will be aggregating the results in the meantime)

Oren Ellenbogen taught me so much along the years. He was my manager/team lead for a year, and I’ve learned from and worked with him on several other occaisions. I would love to co-found a startup with him one day.

Engineering management has been his passion and dedication for years. Finally – he achieved his dream and codified his passion into an eBook & package: Leading Snowflakes, The Engineering Manager Handbook. I highly recommend it for anyone wishing to increase their leadership abilities.

If you don’t want to commit or don’t have the time right now, you can start by subscribing to his weekly newsletter – Software Lead Weekly – it’s one of the most known newsletter that investigates and teaches engineering management.

… to join the Mastercoin Foundation and head the Omniwallet project. For more details, please see here. We also have a few other positions open (a “jobs” page TBD)