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My First BillG Review (2006)
In the olden days, Excel had a very awkward programming language without a name. “Excel Macros,” we called it. It was a severely dysfunctional programming language without variables (yo…
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 61 posts.
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The trimodal nature of software salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021)
This article is part of a 3-part series on trimodal compensation: * Part 1: The trimodal nature of software engineering salaries in the Netherlands and Europe (2021, this article) * Part 2: The trimodal nature of tech compensation revisited (2024, this article) * Part 3: The trimodal nature of tech compensation in
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1k True Fans (2008)
This is an edited, updated version of an essay I wrote in 2008 when this now popular idea was embryonic and ragged. I recently rewrote it to convey the core ideas, minus out-of-date details. This revisited essay appears in Tim … Continue reading →
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EA: The Human Story (2004)
My significant other works for Electronic Arts, and I'm what you might call a disgruntled spouse. EA's bright and shiny new corporate trademark is "Challenge Everything." Where this applies is not exactly clear. Churning out one licensed football game after another doesn't sound like challenging…
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Why is it hard to buy things that work well?
There's a cocktail party version of the efficient markets hypothesis I frequently hear that's basically, "markets enforce efficiency, so it's not possible that a company can have some major inefficiency and survive". We've previously discussed Marc Andreessen's quote that tech hiring can't be inefficient here and here…
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37signals Leaves the Cloud
Basecamp has had one foot in the cloud for well over a decade, and HEY has been running there exclusively since it was launched two years ago. We've run extensively in both Amazon's cloud and Google's cloud. We've run on bare virtual machines, we've run on Kubernetes. We've seen all the cloud has to offer, and tried…
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Chat log exhibits from Twitter v. Musk case
This is a scan/OCR of Exhibits H and J from the Twitter v. Musk case, with some of the conversations de-interleaved and of course converted from a fuzzy scan to text to make for easier reading.
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Money, money, money (and investing) (2015)
A comprehensive introduction to investing in stocks, mutual funds (managed and index), short-selling, and stock options.
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Crypto trading firm Alameda Research might be insolvent
The hedge fund's finances appear to rest on the same scheme that destroyed Celsius Network. Will it work out any differently for Sam Bankman-Fried?
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I fought the PayPal and I won
Payment processors hostile to freedom of expression hate me for this one weird trick!!
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Apple is not defending browser engine choice
Some folks claim that Apple's mandated inadequacy for browsers and their engines is somehow beneficial to the cause of ensuring a diverse pool of web engines. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but to understand why, we need to understand how browsers are funded. With that understanding, we can see that not only…
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An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking
Michael Thaddeus Professor of Mathematics mt324@columbia.edu thaddeus@michaelthaddeus.org February 2022, revised March 2022
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My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal
This statement is issued in response to id Software Studio Director Marty Stratton’s “DOOM Eternal OST Open Letter”, published on Reddit.
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Games people play with cash flow
One way that first principles thinking fails is when you build your analysis up from a deficient set of base principles. Everything is correct and true, but you still end up mistaken. Here's how that looks like in practice.
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How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
A survey of how tech projects run across the industry highlights Scrum being absent from Big Tech. Why is this, and are there takeaways others should take note of?
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Google Search Is Dying
(There is good discussion on this article on Hacker News and Reddit)
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The Demise of Scientific American
Scott’s foreword One week ago, E. O. Wilson—the legendary naturalist and conservationist, and man who was universally acknowledged to know more about ants than anyone else in human hist…
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10 years since Google said to “hang tight” about Linux support for Google Drive
We've been waiting since April 24, 2012 for a Google Drive Linux client.
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What is money, anyway?
Editor’s Note: This topic is now comprehensively covered in my book, Broken Money. Money is a surprisingly complex subject. People spend their lives seeking money, and in some ways it seems so straightforward, and yet what humanity has defined as money has changed significantly over the centuries. How could something…
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Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)
We’ve all sat in those presentations. A speaker with a stream of slides full of text, monotonously reading them off as we read along. We’re so used to it we expect it. We accept it. We even consider it ‘learning’. As an educator I push against ‘death by PowerPoint’ and I'm fascinated with how we
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Separate Your Billing from Entitlements
Building your own entitlement service is key for supporting a modern, flexible SaaS product. Whenever I read about billing systems, there’s a lot of talk about the billing aspects but not so much around entitlements. In the spirit of sharing, and since I haven’t found any good articles about it, I decided to tell you…
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Finality does not exist in payments
Many people believe some transactions are final. The reality is a bit more complicated, and involves technical, social, and legal factors.
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I regret my website redesign
Mistakes I made working with my first design agency.
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Find a good available .com domain
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
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Why do so many brands change their logos and look like everyone else?
Tech and fashion logos are becoming increasingly similar, all of them using sans serif fonts. Why do they do that? And why it doesn't make sense.
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Final thoughts on Ubiquiti
Last year, I posted a series of articles about a purported “breach” at Ubiquiti. My sole source for that reporting was the person who has since been indicted by federal prosecutors for his alleged wrongdoing – which includes providing false information to the press.
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AI: Markets for Lemons, and the Great Logging Off
What happens when most "people" you interact with on the internet are fake?