What happened yesterday in Boston so sad and awful. And it’s deeply scary. All of the communities I’m part of — family, work, school, city — have been shaken by this.

But the most important thing we can do coming away from this is not get scared in our core. If that happens, they win and we lose – way bigger than we lost yesterday.

I’ve been scared before — deathly scared. For me, it was 1991-1993 when I was 12-14 years old, growing up in Brooklyn. At that precise time, there was a lot of street crime in New York. Pretty much everyone I knew got jumped, robbed, or beaten up doing things like walking home from school.

For me it started when I was 12, riding my bike home from baseball practice in Prospect Park. Two kids stopped me and relieved me of my bicycle (hand-drawn “Nick” license plate and all). I was upset that day, and cried when I got home. But the “terror” didn’t set in until sometime later — when I started getting harassed (usually in small ways, sometimes in larger ways) nearly every day.

The world went from being a place to joyfully explore to being a place to be fucking terrified of. I didn’t want to leave my house, not even to go two blocks to the grocery store. Taking the subway home from school was a mission. I detoured my route at the slightest sign of danger on the horizon. I was in a constant state of condition orange. It sucked.

The terrorists (in my case, the kids on the street who were bigger and badder that I was) totally won. I hated it. I wanted to get as far away from NYC as fast as I could. And in fact, by the end of high school, that’s exactly what I did (even though things were better by then).

I lived for years — a small number of years, but formative ones — in terror. And when I got through with it I vowed never to live that way again.

Part of what makes it possible to live without terror is to be in it together. If my 1992-era self had had a bigger posse (no offense, Dave; we did what we could), things would have been different, easier.

I don’t mean that we need to be in a constant state of vigilance together — rather, we need to be there to help each other keep calm and carry on. We — people in the US and elsewhere who don’t want to live in fear — have to be each others’ posse, coach, shoulder, and heart.

I refuse to be scared by this.

Over the weekend, Christina pointed me to Uber’s new policy white paper on ridesharing. In a nutshell, Uber has decided to compete (with Lyft, Sidecar and others) in the ridesharing space, and will use a framework for deciding how and where to do that, based on the perceived regulatory friendliness in each city. Here’s their rubric:

Uber’s Ridesharing Policy
Uber will roll out ridesharing on its existing platform in any market where the regulators have tacitly approved doing so.

• If a competitor is operating for 30 days without direct enforcement against transportation providers, then Uber will interpret that as “tacit approval” of ridesharing activity.
• If clear and consistent enforcement has taken place within 30 days of a competitor rolling out a ridesharing service, then Uber will not roll out its platform for ridesharing in that jurisdiction.

In the absence of regulatory clarity, Uber will implement safeguards in terms of safety and insurance that will go beyond what local regulatory bodies have in place for commercial transportation.

• At minimum, there will be a $2,000,000 insurance policy applicable to ridesharing trips. This insurance applies to any ridesharing trip requested through the Uber technology platform.
• Extensive and strict background checks will be performed on any ridesharing transportation provider allowed on the Uber platform. The criteria for which a driver will be disqualified will be stricter than what any existing local regulatory body already has in place for commercial transportation providers.

Conclusion
Innovation and consumer safety are at the core of Uber’s culture. Until this policy shift, Uber hesitated to engage in a market perceiving extreme regulatory risk. Finding the principles for engagement with such risk in this market was crucial. We wanted to set the rules in a place where everyone would agree that safety and welfare of consumers was taken care of while regulators catch up to the innovation they are letting flourish. We look forward to ridesharing spreading across the country but look to do so only after first getting a read from regulators on this new relaxed approach to transportation licensing and enforcement.

I think this is a pretty brilliant move. Rather than wait for cities to challenge ridesharing and react defensively, Uber is leading with a clear and reasonable policy position. This puts cities in an interesting position as they consider how to respond — both in terms of allowing ridesharing or not, and also in terms of being consistent and not playing favorites.

It’s also interesting as an example of Uber’s philosophy re: disruptive competition. As new and disruptive as Uber has been to the traditional taxi market, ridesharing presents a similarly disruptive threat to Uber. In his post, Travis makes a point of calling this out and highlighting the fact that Uber is choosing to compete in the marketplace rather than fight using legal means:

In the face of this challenge, Uber could have chosen to do nothing. We could have chosen to use regulation to thwart our competitors. Instead, we chose the path that reflects our company’s core: we chose to compete.

This should be a great case study in trying to establish certainty in the face of ambiguity. I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

It’s been pretty awesome to watch the roll out of Google Fiber.

For those who haven’t been following, Google is piloting a program to deliver gigabit internet service (symmetrical — equal speeds for uploads and download), starting with Kansas City and coming soon to Austin, TX.

This is important and interesting for several reasons: 1) the state of broadband access in the US is shameful, 2) the incumbent wired internet providers (Time Warner and Comcast) have divided up the US and essentially operate as unregulated monopolies in most markets, resulting in crappy + expensive service, and 3) gigabit service a game-changing 10-20x faster than the typical high-end cable service (which is 50-100mbit).

So it’s been entertaining to see everyone react to Google Fiber. I love Mike Masnick’s coverage yesterday of AT&T’s bullshit response to gFiber coming to Austin (“Hours After Google Announces Google Fiber In Austin, AT&T Pretends It, Too, Will Build A 1 Gigabit Network There”). See also: “Likely pressured by Google Fiber, Time Warner ups speeds, slashes rates”.

Maybe this is an argument that true competition is possible in the wired internet access space; I’m not sure. Google has successfully negotiated unusually favorable terms in each of these pilot cities so far, which may make it hard or impossible to do this on a nationwide basis.

I keep coming back to the idea that it may cost as little as $100 billion to lay fiber to every home and business in the US. $100 billion is certainly a lot of money, but it pales in comparison to the cost of other infrastructure projects. To put it in perspective, that’s about the amount of cash that Apple has on hand, and about 8x Comcast’s 2012 profits.

I am intrigued by the idea that we (we being everyone that has an interest in expanding opportunity on and by way of the internet) could just raise that $100b and build the fucking thing. Maybe it would take the form of a nonprofit utility-like company; maybe it could pile on to an effort like Google Fiber (with conditions about neutrality and perhaps wholesale resale); I’m not sure.

But the one thing I’m sure about is that the benefit of symmetrical gigabit fiber to every American is incalculable.

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a law that intends to protect computer systems from intruders and criminals.

For those that haven’t been following, this is also the law that Aaron Swartz was prosecuted under for downloading too many academic papers at MIT.

Right now, Congress is considering updates to the CFAA. It’s widely acknowledged that the way the law is written now, it not only doesn’t accomplish its goal effectively, but it also (like any good over-reaching internet law) makes criminals out of everyone. From FixTheCFAA.com:

The CFAA is so broad that law enforcement says it criminalizes all sorts of mundane Internet use: Potentially even breaking a website’s fine print terms of service agreement. Don’t set up a Myspace page for your cat. Don’t fudge your height on a dating site. Don’t share your Facebook password with anybody: You could be committing a federal crime.

Unfortunately, the latest proposed changes to the CFAA don’t make it better; they actually make it worse.

It’s absolutely important that we protect our networks and computer systems through technical and legal means. But the way to do it can’t be to criminalize tons of pretty regular behavior and quash the kind of experimenting and hacking (the good kind) that has been at the root of so much of our innovation and progress.

So, add your voice to the cause and let’s make sure congress doesn’t make things worse than they already are.

Today I turn 34.

For some reason, I can’t get Fred’s post about turning 17 for the third time out of my head. As I have been approaching this milestone, I can’t help but feel like I’m turning the corner to a new phase.

I definitely feel like the last 17 years have been about figuring out how to be an adult. I owe a lot of that learning to Frannie.

And I’m pretty excited to look ahead at the next 17, and to figure out how to be a really good professional, husband and dad.

I’m not big on birthdays, and generally don’t like to make a big deal out of them. But Frannie and I have arrived at a really nice way of celebrating ours — we’ve started taking days off together on each others’ birthdays, playing hooky and doing something fun. Last year on my birthday we rented a tiny little boat and cruised around Boston Harbor in 45 degree weather. This year on hers we caught a matinee movie and made an early escape for a few cocktails. It’s a really nice thing to do and I hope we keep doing it forever.

I’m excited for the next 17. If they’re anything like the last 17 they will be twisty and turny, but will hopefully end up taking me (and us) in a good direction.