I just finished This Is Where the Serpent Lives, the story of a young man in modern-day Pakistan who tries to climb the ladder but is ultimately crushed by corruption and his own ambition and ego.  The story of corruption is both enlightening and concerning here in the US,

Seattle The Seattle area has its share of problems.  High cost of living.  A moribund downtown.  Homelessness.  High government spending with insufficient results.  The Mariners.  As the fall rains start to arrive, it is easy to become grumpy. But then this study comes out — Seattle Ranks 4th in Oxford Economics

I’m cranky this week.  Everything I read is irritating me.  First up, Amazon and Muse. I’ve been an Amazon.com customer since they launched in 1995.  Initially I loved Amazon.com — the early experience as an online book store was fantastic and gave me access to books I

This university has made a Faustian bargain with Silicon Valley, one that has enabled its meteoric ascent and allowed for its corruption. – Theo Baker, How to Rule the World I’ve been reading How to Rule the World, the inside story of power and networking at Stanford in the past

I was in a high-end retail store recently, and there, next to the checkout counter, I saw a floor outlet with an absolute mess of plugs, chargers, Ethernet connectors, and the like.  It was shocking to see it in an otherwise thoughtfully designed and expensive retail space.   We all

We are awash in maximalist thinking and news.  Token maxxing.  Billion-dollar valuation rounds.  TAMs larger than the entire tech sector.  Hyperscalers.  Trillion-parameter models.  AI that is going to change every job or eliminate every job.  National government involvement.  Everything is big, has massive impact, is changing everything.   And

What is the worst that can happen if I write something dumb here? When I was about 13 years old, I sat out one summer night looking up at the stars and the Milky Way.  The vastness of the universe really hit home. I saw thousands of stars and the

In the early 90s, I was leading a team in the Systems Division at Microsoft working on a version of Windows.  The Microsoft campus in those days was still pretty small; you could count the buildings on two hands.  The company was growing very fast, with new employees showing up