Bruce talks about Nerd Brawn, his high-minded vision of vertically-integrated computing infrastructure for helping local producers compete against giant multi-nationals.  Prabhakar pushed him to be more specific about a) what tradeoffs he (and others) should make for the sake of local control, and b) what value proposition would entice producers to work with him before he had overwhelming scale.  In particular, Prabhakar argued that if Bruce really wanted to help local retailers, he would need custom solutions for each community, rather than assuming technology itself would suffice.

In that vein, Bruce suggested homelessness is an urgent issue for his local community that would be worth addressing.  The biggest challenge is perhaps nobody really "owns" the problem, only specific solutions that are often unworkable for those most vulnerable.  Hopefully next week we can at least figure out how to think more clearly about the problem...

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