Alex Howell

Recovering founder. Reluctant twitterer. Enthusiastic adventurer

[Scott Bell @sbell021]

Fun fact: Michigan just had as many first-round picks selected in a 30-minute window as Tom Izzo has had in the last 10 years.

[Joe Cohen @CohenSite]

Last year, LA produced LESS market-rate multifamily housing than at the height of the great recession

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Ring paid somewhere between $8 and $10 million for a 30-second Super Bowl spot to tell 120 million viewers that their cameras now scan neighborhoods using AI.

The math is wild. Ring has roughly 20 million devices in American homes. Search Party is enabled by default. The opt-out rate on default settings in consumer tech is historically around 5%. So approximately 19 million cameras are now running AI pattern matching on anything that moves past your front door. Today the target is dogs. The same infrastructure already handles “Familiar Faces,” which builds biometric profiles of every person your camera sees, whether they know about it or not.

Ring settled with the FTC for $5.8 million after employees had unrestricted access to customers’ bedroom and bathroom footage for years. They’re now partnered with Flock Safety, which routes footage to local law enforcement. ICE has accessed Flock data through local police departments acting as intermediaries. Senator Markey’s investigation found Ring’s privacy protections only apply to device owners. If you’re a neighbor, a delivery driver, a passerby, you have no rights and no recourse.

This tells you everything about Amazon’s actual product. The customer paid for the camera. The customer pays the electricity. The customer pays the $3.99/month subscription. And Amazon gets a surveillance grid that would cost tens of billions to build from scratch, with an AI layer activated by default, and a law enforcement pipeline already connected.

They wrapped all of that in a lost puppy commercial because that’s the only version of this story anyone would willingly opt into.

[Alex Howell @alejohowell]

@BredesonMax Legend

[Alex Howell @alejohowell]

@Alex_Drain Minter

[Alex Howell @alejohowell]

What's it like to be a startup founder in 2016? @firstround surveyed 700+ leaders to find out: https://t.co/f4xf1OZD0Z

[Andrew Wilkinson @awilkinson]

Business Kryptonite: Why razor-thin margins are going to make life hard for startups like Instacart: https://t.co/5mQjz6Pe9g

[Alex Howell @alejohowell]

@littlebits standing up for inventors and creativity. https://t.co/jUG00QA616

[littleBits @littleBits]

From One Muslim Inventor to Another, our founder @ayahbdeir's letter to Ahmed http://t.co/vF0SX93HA2 #IStandWithAhmed

[Simon & Schuster @SimonBooks]

"Heffernan is new species of wizard, able to perform literary magic upon supersonic technology"-@kevin2kelly of @wired, MAGIC & LOSS @page88

[Alex Howell @alejohowell]

Not to be missed. Smart canvas-style breakdown of startup brand strategy. Watch the video too! http://t.co/2JF69GY3vs

[Medium @Medium]

“Sending emails to see who can make the other person experience the most profound sense of panic” @ftrain vs @page88 https://t.co/XIkyc71hJt

[Keith Rabois @rabois]

Usually you recognize product market fit emotionally before it shows up in your official KPIs.

[Alex Howell @alejohowell]

0% chance that the @umichbball band at @barclayscenter is the genuine article. Victors or November Rain? @mgoblog

[Alex Howell @alejohowell]

@FlyFrontier you sure tricked me! $50 at the gate to fly with carry-on. Hope it was worth it. #neverflyagain #despicable

[Alex Howell @alejohowell]

I hate music. No puppies. Never ice cream. You know what I love? @mgoblog @davebrandonad http://t.co/xw0vpEux8P

[Alex Howell @alejohowell]

Summer dresses. Bless them. @ Prospect Park Bandshell http://t.co/ZhT4UwqTiQ

[Philips @Philips]

Looking forward to welcoming @IncomparableCo to our HQ next week & be inspired by their #startup journey

[Philips @Philips]

.@IncomparableCo won our @SXSW #DigitalInnovation challenge:http://t.co/x7NfQSFhqr. We're excited to welcome them next week in our office.

[Alex Howell @alejohowell]

@dsamwel you using @quibb at all? It's become a fairly great curator of content for me.

[Alex Howell @alejohowell]

setting up my Quibb, to share links about work. not sure what that means exactly, but am curious to find out http://t.co/zXqnPoUGAV