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You know that scene in Forrest Gump where Forrest sees Lieutenant Dan on the shore and is so distracted by him that he jumps off and swims to shore, allowing the boat to crash into the dock? ...
Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports
Hertz announced a $168 million settlement covering 364 claims against them, at an average of just over $460,000 per customer. There are perhaps a dozen more customers who are suing Hertz, that are not a part of the settlement. I have to think that in many of those cases the customers believe the egregiousness of their…
Amazon Go and the Future
Amazon Go exemplifies how Amazon is building its monopoly in three ways: horizontally, vertically, and financially. Plus, why automation is worth being optimistic about.
Can someone please explain whether Cloudflare blackmailed Canonical?
30 April 2026, 16:33:37 UTC. Canonical’s incident monitoring system marks blog.ubuntu.com as Service Down.
Don't squander public trust on bullshit
a tragedy of the public emergency system commons...
The Pendulum Swings, Again
In the early days of computing, computers were physical monsters, occupying large rooms or even whole buildings. Acess to them was closely guarded, you were lucky if you had access at all, let alone close-up and personal access. That was reserved for the system operators, the people tasked with the relatively boring…
Amazon Health
Amazon Health doesn’t seem like much now, but there are hints it could be the ultimate application of Aggregation Theory.
Yes, The CIA Spied On Congress
Why? The torture report, of course: Late last night, McClatchy reported that the CIA inspector general has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations that the CIA illegally monitored C…
Goodbye YC
I sent this email to the whole team at YC yesterday: When I joined YC 7.5 years ago, there weren’t many people around. PG and Jessica were still running things. We had offices in Mountain View,...
What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?
The old economic world may be leaving us, but its pathologies stubbornly remain.
Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think
It's myth-busting time! The world's richest and largest city is cheaper and roomier than you think.
Deming Paradox: Operationally rigorous companies aren't nice places to work
Is it possible to be data driven and operationally rigorous and still be human centric at the same time? Deming — who came up with these data techniques — believe that it is possible. I'm not so sure.
AWS Ruins Own Attempt at Sabotage
This week’s analysis on multi-cloud being a bad idea is once again pushed back by breaking news. In this case, AWS is suing a former executive, Brian
Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
I believe that Silicon Valley is like Las Vegas, except they make you pass a number of tests before they let you gamble. This means that only a relatively select group gets to sit at the table. The purpose of this post is to analyze the folowing problem:
Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation
Last fall, I conducted an experiment: I quietly removed Instapaper Free from the App Store 1 for three days, leaving only the full, $4.99 Instapaper app . Not only did sales increase incrementally, but nobody seemed to notice.
Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers
Airlines use up to four digits for flight numbers. That means they can have up to 9,999 flights (since there’s no flight zero), and no one comes close. American Airlines operates around 6,700 daily flights including its American Eagle regional services. So they should have plenty of room to grow! Except they don’t…
Don’t pay for 95% (2016)
Your car sits idle over 95% of the time. Your guest bedroom is occupied one week out of every 52. Your kids use the yard less than 40 minutes a week. Yet we consumers love to envision the maximum usage for a particular item - like a house or a car…
In 2025, venture capital can't pretend everything is fine any more
Venture capital is screwed. A bubble in AI is their last hope, and they’re betting everything on Sam Altman. It’s heartwarming. Today, we have the Pitchbook-NVCA Venture Monitor for Q1 2025. This i…
The tech sector might be evil
Or at least, your employer might be. Over the years we in the tech sector have gotten used to being well-regarded. After all, we make people’s lives better, on balance. That’s changing. At the moment it’s rumblings from thought leaders, not pervasive popular anger. The other thing that’s new is that they’re thought…
404 Deno CEO not found
The one where I mourn the best runtime and speculate idly.