Earlier this year, I watched Microsoft roll out its AI assistant Sydney – It seemed like just another version of ChatGPT. However, as the New York Times found out , it became something entirely different. Sydney had a dark side, and when you dove in, you found something quite human about the way she conversed. This was something new, and different. It was only a matter of time before Microsoft…
Remote work sucks. At the beginning of the pandemic, it seemed fun - a welcome change, a common experience. But now it has run its course. Sure, you don’t have to commute. Sure, you can live anywhere you want (not really true). Sure, you can create your own work space. Sure, you can have a more flexible schedule. But I really miss people. I really miss coming into the office and hearing the quiet…
When I was a child, the first wave of the internet was kicking into gear. You could practically feel it taking off from under your feet. Everything was going online, nobody knew which way was up, and there was this new world to be explored. At first I was confined to the walls of AOL and I don’t remember knowing much about the web. I loved to chat with strangers and download new programs to try.…
CloudFlare has a fantastic feature where you can use their DNS and CDN service and get free HTTPS. This is great because having a domain people can access securely should not be costly or difficult to set up, and they should be commended for leading the way on something that will surely be the norm in years to come. However, there is a catch to CloudFlare’s implementation which opens up a…
A while ago, several companies (Facebook, URX, Quixey, etc.) took on the task of solving a problem that exists in Apple and Google’s mobile ecosystems: the disconnect between URLs on the web and the URLs that exist to help apps interlink amongst each other. Despite some creative efforts, there exists no canonical way for app developers to the share the URLs which would open their apps, or for a…
Joel Monegro writes about his experience purchasing some furry boots from a deep web marketplace . Much of what he describes sounds similar to any nascent P2P marketplace. However, given the illegal nature of the products being offered, there are some interesting measures to create anonymous identities. In particular, this example stood out where a buyer identifies himself through the possession…
“I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists and creators of this music. And I just don’t agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free.” It seems rather old-fashioned to continue beating this dead horse, otherwise known as rejecting various forms of digital distribution.…
Marc Andreessen just stepped down from the board of Dalton Caldwell’s Mixed Media Labs shortly after Caldwell accused Facebook of using underhanded negotiation tactics to silence a competitor. It is likely that Andreessen stepped down on Facebook’s request since they viewed his involvement as a conflict of interest. This is not the first time this kind of thing has occurred. Blocking Andreessen’s…
David Karp of Tumblr shares some interesting insights about how he looks at creating products. There are only a handful of companies where products are driven by feeling and understanding of human behavior rather than metrics. I’ve found that metrics are typically a popular, but overly simplistic, proxy for understanding how people behave and use a product.
From George Anders at Forbes on Amazon’s work environment: Bezos keeps an eerily tight rein on expenses, eschewing color printers in favor of trusty old black-and-white models. No one flies first class (though Bezos sometimes rents private jets at his own expense). Experiments are hatched and managed by the smallest teams possible; if it takes more than two pizzas to feed a work group, Bezos once…