When trying to understand systems, one really eye-opening and fundamental insight is to realize that the machine is never broken. What I mean by this is, when observing the outcomes of a particular system or institution, it’s very useful to start from the assumption that the outputs or impacts of that system are precisely what it was designed to do — whether we find those results to be good, bad or mixed.

Systems: The Purpose of a System is What It Does - Anil Dash

But too many of those who fought to advocate for increasing access to healthcare, or other similar goals, have been pulled into the trap of "reasonableness". Reasonableness is a slow method of failure in which the first step is to concede half of the goal up front, the turning point is losing the passion and backing of the most enthusiastic supporters to disillusionment, and the final step is poisoning the well for future efforts by providing a cautionary example of defeat.

You have to start with the principle. - Anil Dash

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been in a planning meeting, assigning estimates to tickets, and either found yourself multitasking, falling asleep, texting a friend, or otherwise being entirely unengaged in the activity.  If so, you’re not alone. There’s this thing about engineering estimates that is sometimes overlooked: they’re not useful in the way that people often think they are. Instead, estimates are often misused; it’s time for R&D leaders to consider a new framework that makes it so there’s one fewer meeting (or at least a shorter meeting) for you to zone out of.

Zenful Estimates: Ditching Task Estimates to Build a Faster Team

Not only does Musk owe a lot of money to his creditors, but he’s knee-deep in litigation that one might argue would never have been necessary had he abided by existing legal agreements, contracts, and labor law. Yes, it can save money in the short-term to stiff your landlord and cloud provider, or to forego state law-mandated severance payments. But it creates a lot of billable hours for lawyers and expensive potential settlements, along with the threat of regulatory enforcement. (As for reputational damage, Musk doesn’t seem to care.)

We Got a Judge to Unseal a List of X's Shareholders

The person whose public reputation was most damaged by his own Twitter activity was probably Elon Musk, which is why it makes sense that the product roadmap since he took over has mostly revolved around reducing the attack surface for rich and famous users like himself:

What's new in Dimension Apple? - by Max Read - Read Max

I don’t think it’s due to stiff competition, shifting markets, or even tight deadlines—those have always existed. But one significant change has occurred in my daily work routine: I’ve been forced to start working in sprints (usually 1-2 weeks) instead of spending larger chunks of time on larger projects. This shift has had some unfortunate consequences.

Why Scrum is Stressing You Out - by Adam Ard

That's the New York Times' in-house technology rube, Kevin Roose, for my money the most embarrassing journalist presently working in the English language, recapping a public demonstration of the OpenAI company's new talking version of its famous ChatGPT large language model. If anybody else with a byline at a major newspaper fits more boobery and dogshit critical reasoning into a pair of paragraphs before midnight on New Year's Eve, I will eat a goddamn iPhone live on Twitch. Or pull my head off and punt it into a swamp.

If Kevin Roose Was ChatGPT With A Spray-On Beard, Could Anyone Tell? | Defector

And with that, let’s talk Live Nation/Ticketmaster, the conglomerate that seems to have massively driven up ticket prices for concerts, yet argues it makes very little money doing so. I’m not saying this corporation is anything like Crédit Mobilier. But I do have questions about the firms’s financial reporting.

Is Ticketmaster Telling the Truth About Its Finances?

“Some suppliers will have a part in an aircraft they certified in like 1990 and they’re not going to touch it, because why would they? No one’s going to compete,” Mali said. “The aircraft is in service for 30 to 50 years, so they’re just bringing in money every year, making the same thing.”

Palmer Luckey tried to crush aeronautics startup Salient Motion. But Anduril backer a16z invested. | TechCrunch

Google’s search is not ‘best’, because it is operated by Google, a company run by McKinsey consultants and bloodless advertising executives whose sole focus is keeping shareholders happy by driving engagement. Emails in the DoJ’s case detailed Google executives pushing for more ‘query growth’, corporate-speak for forcing people to do more searches by making results less helpful. Google’s search product is worse than its been in years, because the company’s primary concern is increasing the metrics that improve its share price, which runs counter to helping people find things quickly and easily.

Search Party - Google, Hotels, Social Media, and Regulations • Buttondown