Based on what you said you have enjoyed already, I'd highly recommend "A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid and the Kodak Patent War" by Ronald K. Fierstein (http://www.triumphofgenius.com/).
It is a history of Land and Polaroid, together with a detailed, insider's view of the long-running litigation between Polaroid and Kodak (the author worked at the firm which represented Polaroid on the case).
One of the things I found most interesting was just how much Steve Jobs was inspired by and copied Edwin Land.
The place was wild. Land had been dead for a few years when I got there, but they still employed his driver. My recollection is that the driver brought in donuts once per week. The place felt like an upscale hotel with laboratories in it. And $$ was no object. Need a $40k laser? Just write the requisition.
Looks like it was fully taken over by Harvard (at the time it was only peripherally associated).
Another funny Land story... My postdoc advisor was a faculty member at another university in the 1970s and Land and his entourage were there visiting various labs. My advisor thumped Land on the chest and said that he liked his shirt. According to my advisor, Land's handlers were visibly upset, but Land appreciated being treated like a regular human.
Microsoft's board made the right call when they promoted Satya to CEO. Their share price on the day he became CEO was $36.35 and is now $369.84 (and likely to increase again on this news).
Putting together a deal like this whilst maintaining the relationship with OpenAI is impressive enough, but to do it as a cricket tragic when India was losing to Australia is even better.
What stood out for me was the assessments of Peter Thiel's involvement in politics by Steve Bannon and the author of this piece. They both seem way off in those assessments to me, given both the success of Palantir and Anduril and his ongoing ties to the conservative establishment - e.g. his recent appearance at The Nixon Seminar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVOHakxXbMw)
> As a political disrupter, Thiel was a flop. Steve Bannon considered him too flaky for the serious graft of government, which is saying something. But this wasn’t really the game Thiel was in. Mainly it was just for show. What he wanted was to get close to government contracts.
[emphasis mine]
Surely the success of Palantir is a data point in favor of the thesis of the piece?
Perhaps, but his reception at that talk I linked suggests there is more to his involvement than that to me. (I am not American though, so might be reading too much into it)
I don’t think that shows any aptitude for “the graft of government” or goes a ways to disproving the characterization of him as an ideologue whose focus is to assist fiscal conservatism (reduce costs) and to have a cosy relationship with the military industrial complex (increase revenue).
I thought the message itself was okay and posted the article as it shows at least some action since the previous Hacker News discussion. I didn't want to edit the article's title though, beyond cutting the words "for Windows 10" to make it fit.
I am anti-tracking in general, although it feels like that is a losing (or already lost) battle.
Many on here make their living directly or indirectly through being able to track traffic, so I was curious to hear if there were any arguments (ethical or otherwise) against my approach.
