Contribution and abundance

We do not know how, why, or when the X algorithm devalues posts with links, but it does—without telling you, and by a lot—and it makes the experience there worse. Without links, information on X is headlines without stories, commentary without context, magic without the prestige. We do not know by how much the inability to share or see...

A couple of years ago, I posted a slight criticism of Elon Musk that led prominent venture capitalist Marc Andreessen to block me on X. Since then, I have been unable to view his posts1, which is a shame because I valued his thoughts and opinions. Today, X engineering announced changes to the “block” feature: Soon we’ll be launching a change...

Last week, Tesla unveiled two world-changing products: Robotaxi1, a fully self-driving taxi with no steering wheel or pedals, and an autonomous humanoid robot, called Optimus2, that can walk and has fully functioning hands and feet. Both of these products have been depicted in science fiction for decades, so the fact that a company is working on...

In 2009, Microsoft released an enormous 200lb coffee table with an embedded 30-inch touchscreen called Surface. Although the iPhone had been around for a little while, the larger screen made Surface feel absolutely futuristic: in the Photos app, you could toss around pictures like they were physically in front of you. It cost $10,000. Very few...

About ten days ago, when I went to update a few apps in the App Store on my Mac, I was met with a curious error. The internet is filled with stories from people whose Google accounts were locked for unexplained reasons, causing them to lose all of their data, including years of email, so I was somewhat concerned. But I’d never heard of similar...