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Tech Industry & Business

The most popular blog posts about tech industry & business on Hacker News. 337 posts.

2018
271

Telltale Autopsy

So Telltale Games is out of business. Like most of the rest of the industry – including the employees of Telltale – I had no idea this was coming. I looked at the popularity of their breakout hit The Walking Dead and the overall quality of some of their earlier adventure game offerings and just assumed this was a…

272

Where Yegge’s Wrong

Recently, Steve Yegge published two rants, each of which has gone viral and moved the Internet conversation needle a bit. I liked both of them, thought they were generally well-argued and useful. Unfortunately, there are a few assertions of fact there that are just wrong, and may be damaging. So I thought that, first…

273

AI Nationalism

For the past 9 months I have been presenting versions of this talk to AI researchers, investors, politicians and policy makers. I felt it was time to share these ideas with a wider audience. Thanks to the Ditchley conference on Machine Learning in 2017 for giving me a fantastic platform to get ear

274

How to Pay Remote Employees

Running a remote company in the US requires using terrible government websites and filling out onerous paperwork. Tortuga [https://www.tortugabackpacks.com] has seven US-based employees across four states. Four of those employees have moved between states while working for Tortuga. In total, we've registered with…

279

The Benefits of Thinking Small (2010)

In previous posts I wrote about visionary entrepreneurs, and how to constantly ask how you can 10X your business. However, many startups fail because the founding team thinks *too big* from day one, and doesn't take the time to really define the short term, immediate value their product or business provides.

283

The Cosmetic Class

What happens when a society with a penchant for the cosmetic meets a medium dominated by it? “The medium is the message.” Or so goes the famous saying from media scholar Marshall McLuhan, widely re…

287

The Shirky Principle (2010)

[Translations: Japanese] “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky I think this observation is brilliant. It reminds me of the clarity of the Peter Principle, which says that a person in … Continue reading →

293

I’m leaving Mozilla

It's been five great years, but now it is time for me to move on and try something else. During these five years I've met and interacted with a large number of awesome people at Mozilla, lots of new friends! I got the chance to work from home and yet work with a global team … Continue reading I’m leaving Mozilla →

294

Tesla, software and disruption

Car people often look at Tesla the way Nokia looked at the iPhone. “Nice ideas, but we can easily do all of that, and they don’t understand our industry.” Nokia was wrong - but will the car industry look the same? Maybe not.

297

Some thoughts on equity compensation

A hallmark of startup companies, the tech sector more broadly, and certainly our portfolio companies, is that they include equity in their compensation packages for their employees, often all employees. If you work for a tech company, chances are good that you will get options as part of your compensation package. I…