Great Writing

"I hate ads," says Eric Veach, the Google engineer who created the most successful ad system in history.

On Saturday, March 27, Kareem Carr unwittingly stepped on a very famous Twitter landmine. The Harvard doctoral student in statistics posted the following thread, and when I saw it in my feed I knew even before he did that he was about to need a medevac.

I knew we didn't have her story. Not the whole of it. I knew the small daubs of colour she'd excluded from her summary were at least as important as the broad strokes she'd included. The devil, they say, is in the details, and I knew well the devils that lurked and skulked in the details of my own story. But she had given me a hoard of new treasures.

The NSA couldn't hold on to such mathematical machinations any more than an astronomer discovering a previously unknown nebula could cover up the skies to mask its presence to future stargazers.

The Nvidia CEO is so invested in where AI is headed that, after nearly 90 minutes of spirited conversation, I came away convinced the future will be a neural net nirvana.

The meeting of the minds between Steve Jobs and Jony Ive had made Apple products unique, but it was Terry Gou and Tim Cook who would ensure they were ubiquitous.

It's also the case — if you'll forgive a bit of morbidity — that Ellison may not be around if this deal goes sour. He's not worried about the long-term, quite literally, which is perhaps why Oracle is taking this massive risk. At the same time, it's a risk that he and Oracle have been preparing for for a long time, and as an observer of the industry, I find it pretty thrilling.

Honestly, Lord bless Sam Altman for doing this interview. And whoever he has now fired.