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

The picture above is my brand new HomePod Mini and its power adapter. You can buy HomePod Minis in 5 different colors to match your decor!  And they all come with a stark white power adapter. This is what I expect if I buy something from Logitech or Belkin or

I’ve related this story before, but it seems relevant. In 1995, as the Internet was exploding, Microsoft was abuzz internally with efforts to build Internet products.  Every product team was thinking about the Internet and what they should do.  There were multiple teams building authoring tools, servers, and browsers.