541
How Asus and a Microsoft Bug Almost Broke Remote Work
A couple of years after it happened I'm sharing this story about the intersection of an OS bug, a network hardware quirk, and a global pandemic. A chain…
542
RIP Stack Overflow Jobs
Stack Overflow have announced they are going to kill off sunset their popular Jobs product. In this post, I talk about what Jobs was, why it was great, and why so many (myself included) will be sad…
543
The map is not the territory (2015)
The map is not the territory reminds us that our mental models of the world are not the same as the world itself. It cautions against confusing our abstractions and representations with the complex, ever-shifting reality they aim to describe.
544
How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?
How can you tell the companies who are earnestly trying to improve apart from the ones who sound all polished and healthy from the outside, whilst rotting on the inside?
545
The Asymmetry of Open Source
A comprehensive guide to funding open source software projects
546
I live in the country with the most expensive Apple products on the planet
I live in Brazil. Brazil is a developing country. It is definitely not a rich country, but it is definitely not among the poorest either. We are placed on 84th in human development index rankings. You will find Brazil similarly in the middle of other rankings like per-capita income, education or life expectancy. There…
547
How prestige outlets get away with copypasta
On the anatomy of malpractice
548
Norvig's Law (2002)
In July 1999, there was a news article stating that PC usage had doubled yet again, reaching penetration of 50% of homes. People were hailing this as yet another sign of the inevitable climb of technology, but I saw it as a warning sign that the glass was half empty, and coined the following:
549
Why people make dumb financial decisions on purpose
Probabilities vs. the real world when it comes to big money decisions.
550
Lock-In and Multi-Cloud
Alone in a room with the customer’s CTO, I said “So, I spent this morning talking to your people, and it looks like you’re using low-level generic tech for everything and managing it yourself. You could save a shit-ton of money by using high-level managed services and get load-scaling for free.” “Yeah,” he said, “but…
551
Interview with Marc Andreessen on learning to love the humanities, and RSS
The real challenge to building on the frontier? Figuring out human behavior.
552
The Financial Times has had an error on its “Market Data” page for 18 months
Market Data section of the Financial Times US Edition print edition from May 5, 2021. If you’ve flipped through printed broadsheet newspapers, you’ve probably seen pages full of tiny te…
553
The Great Steepening
Record supply to the market along with rising inflation expectations suggest that the yield curve will steepen materially.
554
Against All Applications
Imagining better ways of picking people
555
The silence of risk management victory
Sometimes risk mitigation works.
556
A few months ago, a complete stranger gave me $10k (2021)
When I worked in magazines, almost twenty years ago, something we always held true was that sales went up twenty per cent when the words…
557
Email Is Async
Email is often used as a synchronous (real-time) comms channel when it shouldn't be. Learn why email is async and how to keep it that way.
558
The Death of Quanta Magazine
Yesterday Quanta Magazine published an article written by Natalie Wolchover, Physicists Create a Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer . I’m shocked and disappointed. I thought Quanta Magazine was the most respectable source of science news, they have published several quality, in-depth articles in difficult topics. But…
559
Don't build useless features
One of the most important core product management skills is the ability to triage unsuccessful products and avoid spending unnecessary effort on products that are destined to be losers.
560
How rate hikes are affecting the economy
Through Wages, Investment, Employment, Output, and More
561
AWS is not a dumb pipe
In 1997, David Isenberg wrote an article called the Rise of the Stupid Network. Isenberg worked at Bell Labs, the R&D lab of AT&T, and was responsible for some significant breakthroughs during the PC and the early int...
562
Energy vs. Sovereign Bond Markets
October 9, 2022 Latest Articles: A Look at the Lightning Network Energy: The Area Under the Curve This newsletter issue focuses on recent problems with developed country sovereign bond markets and how energy supply constraints pose an ongoing problem for them. The Sovereign Bond Bubble During much of 2019 and 2020…
563
Behind the Scenes: The pots, pans, and people that make millions of meals
Our recipe for feeding includes giant paella pans, combi ovens, and a lot of love!
564
The Bitcoin Investment Thesis Is Broken
Informed Tip of the Week: Take a look at our recent series of posts covering Informed’s premise and our business model. We will be adding additional content over the next few weeks. At the beginning of the year, I wrote about most of the obvious bubbles out there and how Continue Reading
565
Twitter, when the wall came down
I, like many people, have a complicated relationship with Twitter. As Adam and I regaled in a recent Twitter Space , it started when debugging the Twitter fail whale in the offices of Obvious in 2007, where I became thoroughly unimpressed with their self-important skipper, Jack Dorsey. In part because I thought he was…
566
Milton Friedman’s Interest Rate Fallacy
Milton Friedman’s interest rate fallacy is one of the most mystifying and counterintuitive facts in modern finance.
567
Glut of Fake LinkedIn Profiles Pits HR Against the Bots
A recent proliferation of phony executive profiles on LinkedIn is creating something of an identity crisis for the business networking site, and for companies that rely on it to hire and screen prospective employees. The fabricated LinkedIn identities — which pair AI-generated profile photos with text lifted from…
568
Why are maps so hard to make?
Announcing Felt's public launch and $15M Series A. Maps are fun now! Margins is back!
569
Things Delta told the SEC about its SkyMiles program
Delta filed its SEC 10-K and buried in the 272 pages are several interesting tidbits about the SkyMiles program.
570
Thin Platforms
The Microsoft and Stripe developer keynotes were both examples of the rise of Thin Platforms