GCA10

6 ms·

1.
by GCA10 2mo ago
Can we roll back the debate a little? If I'd said "wider audience" instead of "rest of the world," we could explore the question of scope more amicably. I've been at two memorial services in the past six months
2.
by GCA10 2mo ago
Kept out of sight in this rogue essay is the classic question: Who's your audience? If you're writing for yourself (and maybe a very small number of equally erudite readers) cut loose! Embrace "anfractuous density and heedles
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by GCA10 2mo ago
Meta has made some very strange decisions in terms of who it's hired to lead various aspects of AI, including the model-building efforts. Also lots to marvel at re: its ability to coordinate (or not coordinate) various efforts by all t
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by GCA10 4mo ago
I've come to believe that Big Tech's fondness for launch-and-kill approaches to new products is closely related to the career incentives for both PMs and finance chiefs. Both of them are acting rationally to advance their careers.
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by GCA10 4mo ago
JSTOR does exactly this with scholarly journals, and it works out pretty well. Recent issues are accessible only to paying customers. Back issues (usually at least a few years old) are available via JSTOR for free in small amounts and throu
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by GCA10 5mo ago
The timeline doesn't match up here. We're told that historian Stefan Lorant was doing his research in the 1950s. Then we're told that he checked with Teddy Roosevelt's wife and got her confirmation that one of the childr
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by GCA10 5mo ago
Scanning this 998-word essay, I'm wondering if OP accepted a dare to write at length about the current state of book reviewing without ever mentioning Goodreads. His essay proves that it can be done, but -- wow! -- what an omission. Ye
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by GCA10 6mo ago
Ah, but when you're little, if each misstep annoys a few early users who hit a dead-end with your project, the longer-term reputational damage is trivial. You've still got 99.999% of the TAM (total addressable market) that is read
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by GCA10 6mo ago
Hardcore gamblers' tendency to lash out at athletes, when bets go wrong, can get really scary. This is Point No. 2 in Thompson's analysis -- and it deserves a closer look. From what I've seen, the level of threats, abuse, etc
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by GCA10 6mo ago
Professional writer here. On our longer work, we go through multiple iterations, with lots of teardowns and recalibrations based on feedback from early, private readers, professional editors, pop culture -- and who knows. You won't fin
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by GCA10 7mo ago
OP's critique feels like a celebrity economist's variant of those travel magazine pieces that tell us why Zermatt, Phuket or Nantucket is no longer a "cool" vacation spot. On some sort of momentary buzz meter, sure. But
12.
by GCA10 8mo ago
Vibes guy here. I dabbled in Bitcoin for about a year, on the notion that if the world's overall financial system got degraded, more people would view Bitcoin holdings as a safe way to preserve value. Maybe better than owning physical
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by GCA10 8mo ago
Ah, it would have been nice to get OP's perspective on Russian population counts. They've stayed remarkable stable at 144 million for two decades, even though the fertility rate has been long reported at way below the 2.1 that&#x2
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by GCA10 8mo ago
This sounds desperate.
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by GCA10 9mo ago
If Lou Gerstner had put any energy into growing RJR Nabisco's tobacco business, I could see your point. But during that 1989-1993 timespan, RJR Nabisco's leaders at the time (Gerstner plus private equity guys) were focused on wrin
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by GCA10 10mo ago
So a while back, I was interviewing business people still active in their 80s and 90s -- as part of a very intriguing project that got cut short but did produce some fascinating notes. I remember asking one 95-year-old guy still serving (co
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by GCA10 11mo ago
There's a crucial extra factor that isn't in the original article, but ought to be: Money's ability to buy great experiences decreases as you get older. I've seen this with beach vacations, road trips to see a favorite b
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by GCA10 11mo ago
It's worth reading former WashPost editor Marty Baron's memoirs for a little more insight about Bezos's priorities. Back when Bezos was married to MacKenzie Scott, she was a surprisingly strong voice about how to do things. (
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by GCA10 1y ago
Verifiable evidence of them learning key new skills on their own, building passion projects (ideally somewhat comparable to what your startup needs), taking work to the finish line, etc. Press (politely) for extra details via follow-up ques
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An Academic Archive Became a Tech Juggernaut(philanthropy.com)
21 points by GCA10 1y ago|4 comments
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by GCA10 1y ago
Hire people on the way up. Hire people who are going to do their best work ever, for you, after having partially but not fully mastered everything you want, via their previous jobs. It's easy to evaluate a resume. It's harder -- b
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by GCA10 1y ago
Wall Street and the big corporate law firms of NYC/DC have been championing extreme hours since the 1980s. Maybe earlier. So it's interesting to see the short- and long-term effects of this on people's lives. Informal assessm
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by GCA10 1y ago
That's actually the point. Yahoo in 2005 had the financial muscle -- and an interesting starting point via Flickr's user base -- to spin up its own version of YouTube without needing to do an acquisition. Stronger Yahoo leadership
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by GCA10 1y ago
Yahoo did have a unique ability to smother any business that it acquired -- and I think the reasons go way beyond an inability to monetize them. In fact, I'd argue that it was actually Yahoo's fixation with short-term monetization
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by GCA10 1y ago
My father was one of the scientific Principal Investigators (PIs) who analyzed the Apollo 11 lunar samples, back in 1969. Flipping through some of his notes from back then, it sounds as if a rotating assortment of bureaucrats injected thems
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by GCA10 1y ago
Ah, if you've got the budget (and stature) of the U.S. Library of Congress, you can probably figure out how install all the necessary ductwork in a giant, multi-chambered old building that wasn't built with AC in mind. (Fun articl
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by GCA10 1y ago
I've visited that library. It's a high-ceiling architectural joy, but unless you're deeply, deeply into repetitive religious tracts of 600 years ago, most of the collection is more of a curiosity than a valuable resource to m
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by GCA10 1y ago
Lots of corporate boards, university boards, nonprofit boards, etc. make room for folks like her. She understands something about social media and the digital future -- and even if that expertise doesn't impress many folks on HackerNew
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by GCA10 1y ago
It's tempting to blame oligarchs and social media, but I'll argue that readers' own tastes are the most daunting challenge that mainstream journalism has faced for the past 20 years. People will spend a lot more time (and mon
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by GCA10 1y ago
The "Roshamon Effect" always kicks in when people share their personal perspectives about time working at a turbulent organization, but even so, I was surprised that this piece made no mention of Quartz's founding editor-in-c

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