Investment Underdogs

“… has a reputation as something of a bargain bucket for international investors. A relatively young tech ecosystem and a historic shortage of local VC money has led to smaller round sizes …, and plenty of space for opportunists from outside to swoop in.”

Sounds like Northern Ireland, doesn’t it? But it’s Spain, a country with a population of 47 million. This article is from Sifted.

We started Raise in 2018 because there was a need for someone to swoop in. The work that had been done in the past by the incumbent organisations was simply not working.

We’re entering the third year for Raise. Our portfolio has never been stronger and our startups are active and receiving investment and not just from Northern Ireland. Opening doors outside of Northern Ireland is vital to the growth of our ecosystem.

We’ve not had help from Invest NI, we’ve not had help from the incumbent government supported funds. We’ve had to go and source new investors from outside the region.

Forcing Serendipity: not the oxymoron you might imagine

13 years ago, while the economy was in the grips of the inexorable slide into recession, I wrote a short article about them need for entrepreneurship in the face of adversity. In this current world, restricted by pandemic conditions, this is probably needed more than ever.

Here’s a sub quote by John F Kennedy (the journalist, not the President):

Enterprise and entrepreneurship are the antidote for unemployment and recession. Encourage people to use computers and broadband to beat the recession, they can work for anyone from anywhere. They can create businesses based on anything from selling stuff on eBay to using their intelligence to write, provide consultancy services or develop technology. This is the way out. Failure to provide them with the tools is economic sabotage. Let’s hope intelligence prevails.

In a Covid-restricted world, none of this is surprising. We have had the technology, if not the means to provide everything that’s been asked for and with business leaders claiming that productivity is up when workers are working from home, this could be a rare opportunity.

But it’s not all roses.

One of the things I’ve noticed from working and studying from home exclusively for nearly a year is that there is a noticeable decimation of serendipity. Those moments which can be inspirational are not happening. The water cooler moments. The flashes of inspiration when two workers collide. We can do our best to emulate these however through direct intervention, even when the only facetime we get is over a videoconferencing call.

My solution when working with startups and larger companies is that serendipity can be forced. This isn’t like trying to force creativity – and yes – I’ve been in the room when a senior manager has walked in and demanded everyone be creative for the next two hours, as they’ve just brought in the sandwiches. You can’t force creativity (it’s a muscle, just like every other muscle, you need to exercise it regularly), but we can force….or engineer serendipity.

We can provide the grist for the mill of creativity by making sure everyone has the opportunity to mix up with everyone. That includes reducing the enforcement of unreasonable company policies about being “online all the time or forcing everyone to turn their cameras on for the company Zoom meeting. It is absolutely about engaging people when they’re in their comfort zone to speak and helping realise that their discomforts are the engine of change.

Are you going to do half a job, like last time?

The Internet is abuzz with the repercussions of the attack on the US State Capitol building by right wing, white supremacist terrorists armed with bombs. Governor Schwartzenegger (himself Austrian) compared it to the Nazi Kristallnacht action and he’s right to do so.

Twitter, Facebook have banned Trump and accomplices. Parler, the latest right wing social media cesspool has been denied AWS processing time from Amazon and Stripe has started to deny transactions from the Trump Campaign.

What took you?

And we have the New Bar Association ready to expel Rudy Giuliani. And the PGA of America and Scotlands R&A ready to exclude Trump and his properties from their future matches.

What took you?

As the attempted Nazi coup of the USA has failed due the will of the people, the continuing coup of the UK continues, faltering only due to the ineptitude of the Prime Minister and his cabinet. The Allies were definitely front and centre in the onslaught. But while we may joke that these idiots are bad people and deserve the odd punch in the face, we have to recognise that we didn’t deal with them properly in the first place.

Demagogues like Oswald Mosley and Enoch Powell in the UK were not put down the way we should have and their interns continue on. You’ll note that some of the young interns from Powells days still serve as MPs in Westminster. My own MP in Lisburn, served as Powells junior. Powell was selected in South Down where, unsurprisingly, the UKIP managed to find a seat as well. Is there a problem in County Down that we simply have not addressed?

And in the US, in 1939, a “Pro-Americanism” Nazi rally was held in Madison Square Garden. 20,000 people attended. That’s 20,000 loose ends who went on to have kids, who then had more kids, indoctrinating them into a way of life that resulted in deaths at the State Capitol.

We have never dealt with the pro-Nazi members of the aristocracy here in the UK, much as the US never dealt with the white supremacy movement or the tens of thousands of active Nazis in their midst. And this is what happens. These people are well organised in a way that the Left cannot comprehend. While the Left are continuing to fragment themselves over rejoining the EU, or whether the plastic bag tax was sufficient; these monsters are designing new ovens. People ovens. They seed dissent through disinformation (yup, anyone denying Covid doesn’t take a lot of scratching to find references to the “great replacement”).

Trump emboldened these people. He made it socially acceptable to be racist in public, with no fear of censure. Is that what we have become on the Left, so willing to accept everyone as an equal that we allow the Extreme Right to do whatever they want? How many people do they have to kill before we stop wringing our hands about whether we are hurting their feelings when we put them in jail forever.

So, what the hell took everyone?

Why did it take so long? And are we all going to let them scuttle back under their rocks to re-emerge with greater numbers in another 50 years?

Two Books on sale at DriveThruRPG

In an attempt to calm this raging passion I have for writing, I’ve begun to embark on putting my books on DriveThruRPG – the pre-eminent site for selling RPGs online.

Testament and Creed are two books of a trilogy of games. Both are set at the end of the world, in the Jude-Christian sense. The Rapture is upon us and in the first book, Testament, the players are witnesses to the Rapture. In the second, Creed, they are part of the problem with their sorcerous ways.

The third book, Rapture, where the player takes the role of an Angelic Being during the Rapture and the Apocalypse, will be written if the other two do ok.

A First For Apple

Much has been made of the new M1 processor-equipped Macs from Apple – the fabless MacBook Air, the diminutive Mac mini and the peerless MacBook Pro 13″. They’re currently wowing everyone with their power efficiency (and battery life in the laptops) and their heat characteristics (they’re silent or fanless) and lastly, and probably most relevantly, their speed. They’re toasting the vast majority of x86 (Intel and AMD)-based PCs out there and faster for most people than any previous Mac. And they’re available for new low prices which make it a no-brainier for businesses to invest in one for testing purposes.

The speed isn’t just about how quickly they can render video or process images, it’s all about the useful life of the device as well. My guess is that Apple just extended the useful life of a Mac by a couple of years – and this is a series of machines that routinely is a workhorse for 5-10 years.

I can’t give a better illustration than a render I did last night (I haven’t got my M1 Mac yet) from an 2016-vintage Intel MacBook Pro 13″. It took 2.5 times the length of the footage to render out (1080p). When I did a similar export from my iPad Pro 2020 model, it took a fifth of the length of the footage to render. These devices are a lot faster than the latest models and they’re even faster than the ones they’re intending to replace.

So, it’s great that Apple is currently vending the fastest laptops and micro-desktops on the market.

But that’s not the first I’m talking about.

Apple has always made great hay out of being a system designer. That the tight integration of their hardware and software makes for great computers. We were able to see this with iPhone and iPad – devices which are much lower specifications on paper, but which easily smoke the competition in benchmarks and real-world usage. And this is the thing – it’s only been a few years that Apple has been designing their own chips for the i-Devices. Before that they were like everyone else – using someone else’s chips.

They bought chips from Intel for the Intel Macs.

They bought chips from IBM for the PowerPC.

They bought chips from ARM and Intel for the Newtons.

And they bought the 68K processor series from Motorola for the original “classic” Macs.

This is the first time that Apple can honestly talk about an integrated system when it comes to the Mac. This is hardware designed for software. This is software designed for hardware. This is the dream that Apple has been flogging for nearly five decades. It came to light with the iPhone, it’s come to full truth with the M1 Macs.

Finally!

The M1 Processor is not designed for the high end. It’s fast, but look at that IO. Only one controller (for thunderbolt/USB) which means a limited pipe in. And it’s hardware wired for a maximum of 16 GB of RAM.
There’s room fo something else.

The next thing on the agenda is what happens with the higher-end Macs. Is there a need for an iMac Pro or is it just the “best” in Apple’s traditional Good/Better/Best product matrix? Will there now be room in the product roadmap for a thin and light return to the MacBook form factor? What’s a Mac Pro going to look like? Is there finally room for a Macintosh computer that’s got some expansion (like the Mac Pro) but sits on a desktop? Maybe for one Mac that can take an internal graphics card without having to buy a high end Workstation-class machine that consumes the power of a small mid-American town in winter.

Will this be like the i-Devices – with a M1X and an M1Z on the horizon? Or will Apple go all-in with a whole new no-holds-barred series (I’m calling them P1) which has multiple controllers, a special bridge to expandable RAM and up to 64GB of RAM on the SOC.

Will Apple be chasing the graphics market next? After decades of being poorly served by the graphics companies out there, isn’t it time they served themselves? They’ve been pushing Metal hard for exactly this reason. And Apple is always keen to provide a solution when the market has been providing something substandard and getting away with it.

Private Sector to double Dept of Infrastructure Cycling Budget

PRESS RELEASE

As a sport, a pastime and a way to commute, Cycling has had a fair share of ups and downs in the local industry. Before the internal combustion engine ushered in the dominance of the car, Belfast was awash with trams and bicycles.

The North of Ireland has the dubious position of being the only region in the UK and Ireland where use of cycling and public transport for commuting is actually decreasing. This is due, primarily to the horrendous provisions for cyclists around the province.

The Department of Infrastructure recently appointed a Cycling and Walking Champion whose role it is to accelerate the adoption of these “alternative” modes of transport. The Champion could not be reached for comment. Nor could anyone describe them, or find their office.

We have seen the incredibly poor state of the “drain lanes” in Belfast so-called because every cycle lane painted on the roads is beset with potholes and water drains making a cycling journey an exciting and bone-jarring experience with the added thrill of a near-miss from a speeding car if the cyclist dares to step outside the boundaries of the paint. Paint that’s only present on a small fraction of roads, never continues to roundabouts and most drivers consider it to be a white line that’s “fair game for parking on“.

Despite this, the private sector has stepped in to double the cycling infrastructure budget by investing in 10 tins of white paint. This will ensure at least one more road in Belfast will get a white line that can be ignored by drivers. As a gesture of good will, Derry will also receive four tins of white paint for their cycling infrastructure.

Private sector enthusiasts have also said they will consider another 10 tins of white paint if the Minister raises the ante in providing further white paint for cycling infrastructure.

Green Ways

Wouldn’t it be great to have 10 miles of relatively straight commuter greenway for cycles, ebikes, cargo bikes, scooters and runners alongside the M1 stretching from Lisburn to Belfast with a connection hub at Blacks Road (where there’s already a Park and Ride) and connector greenways from Lambeg, Derriaghy, Dunmurry, Finaghy, Balmoral, Falls, Malone.

Paths and bridges so human commuters didn’t have to constantly dismount. So that they didn’t have to constantly worry about 1 ton death machines piloted by distracted drivers.

We have to start thinking about the future at some point.

Electric cars are a bandaid to the problems of the future. They’re more efficient and less polluting than ICE cars, but their efficiencies are tiny compared to bikes, ebikes and scooters. The average ICE car has an efficiency of about 3%. (That is, about 3% of the gasoline you put into it is used for actually moving you.) Electric cars are also impractical for the thousands of households who don’t have a driveway. How are they meant to charge their cars? Cars as a whole block pavements.

So what happens in 10-15 years when it’s almost impossible to buy a ICE car? Where’s the alternative transport coming from? Why not plan for it now?

But we can add a six lane road in Belfast and 500 more parking spaces in a Brutalist edifice in the city. Where are the 500 spaces removed from the public domain? Why aren’t we converting on-street parking to cycle lanes wholesale? No demand? Well, yes, there’s no demand while you don’t actually have cycle lanes. There’s no demand while cyclists are murdered by drivers. No demand while cyclists are despised by government as much as they are despised by motorists.

Hydrogen

I don’t think that hydrogen is going to be a satisfactory alternative. We need to get out of the mindset of choosing finite resources (we only have a finite amount of hydrogen on earth). We end up just moving the problem down the road. Remembering that the water on our planet is finite and it’s a thin skin on the surface of the Earth should be sobering. Remembering that every hydrogen transaction is lossy. And every hydrogen escape is a permanent loss to the planet.

It’s the same with nuclear. Hydrogen is not renewable, nuclear is not clean.

Much of the energy we use is tied up in cars – they’re horrendously inefficient. Not just in the energy conversion (~70% loss) but in the transportation of 100 kgs of human, we have to also transport 900 kgs of car (and that’s for an average one). So, when you think about it, only 3% of the energy we put in the tank is used to transport a human. Electric cars won’t save us from this – they’re a band aid (and they’re even heavier)

(I question the symbolism of Wrightbus in the photo. I question the commitment of the minister from a party of climate-disruption denialism. I question the use of hydrogen for storage – after all, it’s not like hydrogen under pressure has been a problem in the past.)

Take the long view. Build civilisations to last.

Northern Ireland will never change.

I found this exchange distressing.

Think about it. It’s the son of a murdered terrorist who’s now standing for a party that promotes “can’t we all just get along” which is pretty laudable when the whole world is going to shit. And believe me – I have little interest in the Alliance Party after their past shenanigans* but really, are we “cancelling” people because their fathers did a wrong thing? I mean, really, sins of the fucking father?

Anyway. This place is depressing as shit. Who could be bothered with this.

They think that I’m above all this. These are the same people who think I live in a mansion (er,….nope) or that I’m a son of North Down (errrr, nope – for those who don’t know, they’re talking about the Gold Coast of North Down, heavily populated by millionaires).

They may not realise that I’m much the same. Working class. Raised in a mixed marriage in Northern Ireland (which meant I was as much of target from both sides of the struggle). Never found a political home (until I did….and that went to shit). Lived in a Council house for many of my formative years (and left there about two years before they started burning “my kind” out of there).

However I made choices. I didn’t want to be teaming up with woolly faces to hurt people. I refused to get behind flags which made out that the other side was bad. I never had time for either side even though that ideology was pushed (Nationalism at school, Loyalism at home).

And this is the problem. Twenty years after “peace”, people are busy searching their rolodex-style memories for reasons to be offended. Is there a reason why Emmet can speak about bonfires? Sure. He isn’t his father and he’s taken steps to distance himself from his fathers idiocies.

Northern Ireland; you’re such a fucking bore.

*Alliance did every dirty trick in the book when I was briefly involved in politics and they currently support a Councillor who bullied my friend Lyra relentlessly. So, fuck them.