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The Dropbox Comp
Dropbox has filed its S-1, but comparisons with Box, Atlassian, and Slack demonstrate how difficult it is to tell just how good its business is.
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The Most Important Software Innovations (2001-2017)
This paper identifies the most important innovations in software, removing hardware advances and products that didn't embody significant new software innovations. Its results may surprise you.
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The future’s so bright, I gotta wear blinders
“This is only the beginning,” writes Kevin Kelly in an essay in Wired’s 25th anniversary issue. “The main event has barely started.” He’s talking about the inter…
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Patents: how and why to get them
Some of my points are a bit naughty. But I maintain that they're based in fact and fairly widely known. So well-known, in fact, that I'm surprised to have never read it somewhere else.
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Data Factories
Facebook and Google and other advertising businesses are data factories, and regulation will be most effective if it lets users look inside
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Spend analysis of 6 years, 686 rides, and $12k spent on Uber (2017)
What I learned from my Uber data I save $703/month using Uber versus owning 2 cars (🚙🏎). I’ve spent $12,041 on 686 Ubers over 6 years. By comparison, car ownership cost $11,783 per year, most of it depreciation. What could $703/month buy you? Well, four years of $703/month and you’ll save enough to climb Mount…
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Open source confronts its midlife crisis
Midlife is tough: the idealism of youth has faded, as has inevitably some of its fitness and vigor. At the same time, the responsibilities of adulthood have grown: the kids that were such a fresh adventure when they were infants and toddlers are now grappling with their own transition into adulthood – and you try to…
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Facebook Lenses
Facebook was down dramatically after its last earnings; to decide if it is justified it is worth looking at the company through many different lenses, both financial and strategic.
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How Does FreeConferenceCall.com Make Money? (2012)
I've always been surprised at how freeconferencecall.com never tries to up-sell me on monthly services. The least I'd expect is that their call recording service would come at a price, or they'd remove the "welcome to ...
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Building a Treasury Bond Ladder
A US treasury bond ladder is a great alternative to a high-yield savings account or CDs to invest short-term funds that you don't want to put at risk. Treasury bills, notes, and bonds (treasuries) are US government debt securities that may pay interest and return the principal at a specific time. While not FDIC…
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The cost of games
Yesterday I was in Anaheim giving a talk called “Industry Lifecycles.” (click here for slides and video).
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Yubico sent marketing email to address submitted for product replacement
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
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Coherence Penalty for Humans
This is a brief aside from my ongoing series about avoiding entity services. An interesting dinner conversation led to thoughts that I needed to write down. Amdahl's Law In 1967, Gene Amdahl presented a case against multiprocessing computers. He argued that the maximum speed increase for a task would be limited…
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Why not program right?
(Originally published on CACM blog.) Most of the world programs in a very strange way. Strange to me. I usually hear the reverse question: people ask us, the Eiffel community, to explain why we program our way. I hardly understand the question, because the only mystery is how anyone can even program in any other …
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Peak Valley?
The Economist has a cover story this week called Peak Valley. The article suggests that Silicon Valley’s lead as a hub for innovation has peaked and other regions are rising. It ends with the concern that innovation more broadly has peaked. I somewhat agree with “the rise of elsewhere” narrative and disagree that…
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Twitter Killing Its Mac App
Holy smokes: For the full Twitter experience on Mac, visit Twitter on web. ???? https://t.co/fuPJa3nVky — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) February 16, 2018 I’m glad Twitter got rid of all of the Nazis and Russian bots on their platform before this.
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The Unhealthy Desire for Prestige
There is an unhealthy desire for prestige and money that is ruining people's lives. At the end of all the striving, you might end up feeling empty inside. The desire for prestige and money is why we: 1) spend an outrageous sum of money on education despite it being free, 2) kill ourselves at jobs we
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Apple’s New Ad Conversion Tracking Will Benefit User Privacy
Apple has released new developer APIs that will allow mobile advertising conversion tracking while protecting individual user privacy. The new APIs are part of the StoreKit framework and include a …
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The European Commission versus Android
Examining the history of Android explains why the European Commission may be right to fine Google for its actions around Android, even as the reasoning feels off.
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Theology majors marry each other a lot, but business majors don’t
The American Community Survey collects data on the college majors of people who’ve graduated college. This excellent data has lots of untapped potential for family research, because it tells …