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The Death of the Magazine
Or what happens when journalism forgets about quality writing
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The Public Interest Internet
What if the internet were public interest technology? Is that too wildly speculative? I think not. I am not talking about a utopian project here — a public interest internet would be a glorious imperfect mess and it would be far from problem-free. But while there is a lot of solid thinking about various digital issues…
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"All your base are belong to us" intro to my 2004 MIT Spam Conference talk
As I've mentioned before my talk at the 2004 MIT Spam Conference was about using one machine learning system to beat another. In that case ...
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What makes housing so expensive?
Buying a home is by far the largest purchase most of us will make, and paying the rent or mortgage will be our largest monthly expense.
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Creative workers deserve better than a choice as to who rips them off
Spotify's relationship to artists can be kind of confusing. On the one hand, they pay a laughably low per-stream rate, as in homeopathic residues of a penny. On the other hand, the Big Three labels get a fortune from Spotify. And on the other other hand, it makes sense that the rate for a stream heard by one person…
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A Theory of Grift
Plus! Buy The Change You Wish to See in the World; Schmuck Insurance; Uncertainty; Block Trading; Ads
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The Most Expensive Eating Disorder
Disclaimer: I have never personally met Bryan Johnson. Reading this again, I realized that this article is quite harsh at times. Overall, I do like him and I am grateful that someone like Bryan exists as he is propelling the whole field of longevity forward by making it more popular. I also like the way […]
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Faking William Morris, Generative Forgery, and the Erosion of Art History
Buying fake William Morris prints on Etsy and other early signs of epistemological collapse
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America's best-paid CEOs have the worst-paid employees
Broadly speaking, the role of an establishment economist is to come up with new ways of saying, "actually, your boss is right." In other words, the world we're living in is the best possible world, and the fact that you got contact burns from collapsing on the scorching sidewalk outside of the grocery store where you…
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The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
People are starting to take geoengineering seriously.
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PSA: Internet Archive "glitch" deletes years of user data and accounts
Recently at Internet Archive a “glitch” (their choice of word) deleted a great many accounts, including my account that had been at archive.org/details/@ging...
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Flags Are Not Languages
Famous Birthdays has been described as a “ Wikipedia for Gen-Z ”. It’s an insight into popularity across the internet of influencers, not just from traditional stage and screen but also social media channels such as TikTok and Instagram.
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How bad are satellite megaconstellations for astronomy?
Over the last number of years, our planet has become encircled by Starlink, OneWeb, and other “megaconstellation” satellites.
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Notes on China
Deeply researched interviews
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Don't bet on the joys of pokies (2011)
When I was working in the Cairns Casino I’d often arrive on the floor to replace a guy who had been in the industry as long as casinos had b...
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Punk is dead and so are we
footnotes
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Up to a Quarter of Rental Inflation Is Due to Price-Fixing
From 2020-2024, rent prices spiked by a third. How much of that is due to collusion by corporate landlords and a software coordinator? And where is the Fed?
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Apple Silicon MacBook batteries can't be replaced under warranty by third party
I bought a new M1 MacBook Pro in April 2022. A little over two years later, I'm seeing a service recommended message, and the maximum capacity of the battery is now down to 78%. Admittedly, my MacBook Pro experiences heavy usage: basically all day, every day. The batteries in my previous 2014 Intel MacBook Pro, which…
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Vision 1993
I’ve plowed through the first wave of AVP (Apple Vision Pro) reviews, and it seems pretty obvious that, at the current price and form factor, it’s not gonna be a best-seller. But I remain a strong believer in Augmented Reality (the AVP is VR not AR, for the moment). As I was diving into the reviews, a little voice in…
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Simplicity of IRC (2022)
During discussions with my friends and colleagues, whenever the topic of chat protocols comes up, I often remark how simple the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol is and how this simplicity has fostered creativity in the lives of many young computer hobbyists growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For many of…
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An Interview with Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut (1999)
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As the interview progressed it grew sort of
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Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
I often drive between Boston and New Haven. While on the road, I find myself pondering a simple question: If my only goal is to arrive as fast as possible, how fast should I drive? Ignoring things …
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The business of wallets
How digital wallets work, and how payment costs drive a lot of product decisions inside and around them.
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