Peter Hagen

He led by saying he was “annoyed both personally and on behalf of the search team.” in a long email, he explained how one might increase engagement with Google Search, but specifically added that they could “increase queries quite easily in the short term in user negative ways,” like turning off spell correction, turning off ranking improvements,... See more

My whole life, I have had to change my values. I was a complete pacifist and now I understand that sometimes you need armies. I used to despise religion and I really came to respect the Catholic nuns I met during my time in Africa. The work they were doing and their reasons for doing it were amazing. I didn’t believe in giving aid through... See more

This made me think of the other recent case against Apple from Epic, where Apple's response to the court was essentially trolling. The judgement required Apple to allow apps to advertise outside marketplaces where users could purchase in-game items. So apple responded by allowing developers to apply to place exactly one text-only (non-hyperlink),... See more

Probably the bigger change, from what I've heard, was losing Amit Singhal who led Search until 2016. Amit fought against creeping complexity. There is a semi-famous internal document he wrote where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning, or at least contain it as much as possible, so that ranking stays... See more

The OpenAI chief executive officer planned to spin up an AI-focused chip company that could produce semiconductors that compete against those from Nvidia Corp., which currently dominates the market for artificial intelligence tasks. Altman’s chip venture is not yet formed and the talks with investors are in the early stages, said the people, who... See more

My take on it is that fun comes from interacting with a system with enough depth for interesting stuff to emerge - maybe even things that will surprise you as a designer. I find that this happens when you get a few simple systems, get them working well independently, and then find as many ways as possible to interconnect them.

I really like the approach of Netflix of 10 years ago when it was still small. They hired mature people so they could get rid of processes. Indeed, they actually tried to de-process everything. As a result, things just happened. Non-event was often mentioned and expected in Netflix at that time. Case in point, active-active regions just happened in... See more