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Insurance is like gambling, don't overdo it
Insurance companies, like betting companies, need high margins to keep operating. You are paying that margin.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,121 posts.
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Obvious and possible software innovations
There are a number of things that people theoretically know how to do, but which aren’t possible because of how software gets made. Some of these are almost forgotten, but there are at least …
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The “API Mandate” memo at Amazon
The personal website of Christopher Laing.
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Taxes Are for the Little People
If you wanna do crimes, make them incredibly complicated and technical. Like the hustlers that came into the bookstore I worked at and spun these long-ass stories about why they needed money for a Greyhound ticket home.
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Amazon’s HR Failures
The cruelty is the point
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There is no “us” in team
I’ve talked before about the non-team team dynamic that is “one person per task”. Where the management and engineers collude to push the organisation beyond a sustainable pace by making sure that at all times, each individual is kept busy and collaboration is minimised. I talked about the deleterious effect on…
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The Document Culture of Amazon
A look at Amazon's culture of writing and reading
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Neo4j raises $325M series F
Eurazeo leads Series F funding round, raising company valuation to over $2 billion representing the largest investment in database history.
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How Notion pulled itself back from the brink of failure (2019)
The story of its last-minute pivot and epic comeback.
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Your product is a joke: lessons from improv to build better product
The rules that help make good improv comedy can surprisingly help make good product too. Let's run through interesting parallels between the two, and how you can apply some lessons from improv to build better product.
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The collapse of the IRON stable coin
How Polygon’s first billion-dollar protocol unraveled.
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What happens in an IPO? – Part 1
Read time: 23 minutes
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Internal competition can often be the most dangerous kind
How internal competition can often be the most dangerous kind
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I Read the Entire Cybersecurity Executive Order; Here's What You Need to Know
Cybersecurity is hard enough. Doing it across federal agencies is a mammoth task.
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My EC2 Wishlist
While I've made engineers inside Amazon aware of all of these at various times, I think it's time to post my wishlist here — both so that a wider audience inside Amazon can hear more about these, and so that the FreeBSD community (especially the people who are financially supporting my work ) can see what I'm aiming…
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Well-behaved bubbles often make history
The right kind of bubble brings together the right group of people at the right time — it's a coordinating mechanism that can do a surprising amount of good.
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What we learned doing Fast Grants
We launched an abnormally fast source of emergency science funding during COVID-19. The results revealed flaws in current science funding models.
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DraftKings: a $21B SPAC betting it can hide its black market operations
Initial Disclosure: After extensive research, we have taken a short position in shares of DraftKings, Inc. This report represents our opinion, and we encourage every reader to do their own due diligence. Please see our full disclaimer at the bottom of the report.
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Europe's Software Problem
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Europe’s communication needs are currently almost exclusively delivered by Chinese hardware that connects us to US-based platforms. For a variety of reasons, this is not a good idea. As stated recently by Charles Michel, President of the…
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Universities have formed a company that looks a lot like a patent troll
Imagine this: a limited liability company (LLC) is formed, for the sole purpose of acquiring patents, including what are likely to be low-quality patents of suspect validity. Patents in hand, the LLC starts approaching high-tech companies and demanding licensing fees. If they don’t get paid, the...
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Avoid News, Part 2: What the Stock Market Taught Me about News
It’s been a decade since I blogged about the benefits of avoiding news. In that time I mostly followed the advice I gave. I kicked my addiction to The Daily Show in late 2016 after it switche…
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Google Workspace for everyone
By bringing Google Workspace to everyone, we’re making it easy for people to stay connected, get organized and achieve more together.
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Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by Andreessen Horowitz
With the new resources, Solana Labs will launch an incubation studio to accelerate the development of decentralized applications and platforms building on…
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Merck Statement on Ivermectin use During the COVID-19 Pandemic
KENILWORTH, N.J., Feb. 4, 2021 – Merck (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, today affirmed its position regarding use of ivermectin during the COVID-19 pandemic. Company scientists continue to carefully examine the findings of all available and emerging studies of ivermectin for the…
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Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists
Mostly the reason I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists as an institution is that their primary value add is marketing, their due diligence is a joke, and they are functionally equivalent…
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The Elephant at WWDC
Every developer should watch the 5 videos about DocC from WWDC. But it’s really a plaintive cry for help. Until Apple squares up and addresses the problem, it can only grow worse.
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The Enterprise Eats Software
Just now, Avdi had a miserable experience buying curtains. He went to pick up an order that he placed last night, but Lowe’s didn’t have it. The order was sent to the wrong store and it…