Zed Shaw’s NYC VCs Can’t Do Math poses a theory on why California has so many tech startups:

There are several reasons why technology just doesn’t take off [in NYC] the way it does in Silicon Valley. The primary reason in my mind is that California has laws that protect employees from their employers stealing off-hours work. In California, tech workers have no problem working on the next hot start-up in their spare time because they know Megalo Corp won’t own it when they’re done. I believe California is the only state in the US that has this law, and wow look, it’s the only state with a rampant churn of startups and innovation that now rivals the banking industry in capital.

I had no idea California’s law was so unique. How the heck do you start a tech company these days¹ if not in your off-hours from work!?

1. When the .com bust happened, there were a lot of startups funded by severance pay and savings, but those heydays are gone. ↩

If you are being text spammed by a short-code (a mobile number typically 5 digits long), just reply with “STOP”. This should work if it’s a service that cares to not piss off its recipients. This probably won’t work for an annoying relative. In my case, spam was coming from a service called Kadoink, and after I sent “STOP”, I got back a text that said I’d receive no more messages. I suspect this is some sort of industry accepted command: I found it in AT&T’s, What YOU can do to control cell phone spam.

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