Claude Lalanne Mirrors for Y
If you're in New York or can be, run to see the mirrors that Claude Lalanne made for Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berger, on display now at Sotheby's Breuer for $15m as part of the Gunzberg sale.
AI Will Erase Complex Reward Calculations Across Industries
I wonder what happens to the profitability of airline and credit card point systems when an agent can do the hard work of calculating how and where to apply your rewards and make the bookings for you, instead of you...
Generative AI's Biggest Flaw: You Can't Verify Results
For every new technology there’s a bunch of stuff that doesn’t work yet, and some of that will be fixed next week, some next month and some not for five or 10 years. The difference for generative AI is that...
Northern Europe Matches US AI Adoption, Others Lag
The spread of AI use across the EU is entirely unsurprising, and look like any other digital adoption stat. Scandi, Benelux and other small northern countries (plus the UK) are at par with the USA and sometimes ahead - others...
AI's Real Impact Hides In
One interesting aspect of AI deployment is that for any given industry, the use case that seems really obvious and immediate to outsiders is quite different from one that insiders immediately think of, and often that’s a use case that...
Chart Reveals Dramatic Trend Despite Revenue Recognition Caveats
There are plenty of caveats to this chart (not least how partnership revenue is recognised) but this is a pretty dramatic story
Airships Could Scout Below Clouds via Cable‑hung Explorer
My new favourite fact about airships is that if you were lost in cloud and didn't know where you were, you could put a man in a capsule and lower him on a cable below the clouds, so he could...
Manned Spaceflight: Expensive Self‑Expression Without Practical Value
My most contrarian opinion might now be that manned space light is a very expensive sort of self expression. There’s no scientific or economic or any other tangible value. We’re not going anywhere, there’s nowhere to go, and there’s nothing...
Study Overlooks Construction Heat, Skews Data Centre Impact
Looking at a viral academic study that claims to analyse local area heating effects of data centre construction on green-field sites, that does not control for the heating effects of *any* construction on green-field sites.
Hold Out for Nine‑Figure Exit, Not Just Revenue
If I had managed to create a media business did 1 million last year, would do 10 or 15 this year and 50 to 100 next year, I would hold out for nine figures as well. It’s not necessarily that you...
AI Agents on PCs Echo 90s Web‑server Hype
This week’s idea that the future of AI is everybody running AI agents locally on their computer reminds me a lot at the moment in the mid 90s when people thought that everyone working in a big company would have...
IPhones Democratize Video; Podcasts Now Cost TV‑level Production
iPhones have massively democratised video production. Also, every 'podcast' is now a TV show with a felt-lined room and $20k of gear.
Scanning a QR Code with CSAM: Who’s Criminally Liable?
A legal thought experiment: if you scan a QR code and it loads CSAM on your phone, who goes to prison?
More Business Seats Push Luxury Travelers Toward First Class
Idly wondering if the airlines’ expansion of business class to half the plane makes a certain kind of person more likely to buy First Class instead.
Subscriber Counts Are Vanity; Track Open Rates Instead
Newletter subscribers is the perfect vanity metric, especially for people with no opt-in or catchpa. What’s your open rate? How many people are actually reading it every week?
