Author: Jason D. Rowley

  • Links: September 4, 2018

    Why the Future of Data Storage is (Still) Magnetic Tape (IEEE Spectrum) All Things Sales! 16 Mini-Lessons for Startup Founders (Andreessen Horowitz) The Long Goodbye (To Facebook) (Om.co) How to Fall Asleep in 120 Seconds (Sharon Ackman on Medium) Mastodon and the challenges of abuse in a federated system (Read The Tea Leaves) Teachers Are…

  • News’s Future Formats Favor Fortunate Incumbents

    As a somewhat accidental member of the industry, I spend a fair bit of time thinking about media. It’s for this reason I was so happy to come upon a two-part series from Tristan Ferne of the BBC’s research and development group. Part 1 of the “Beyond 800 words” series, published back in September 2017, opens…

  • Three Markdown Tools I’ve Known And Loved

    Three Markdown Tools I’ve Known And Loved

    There have been many programs that build upon Markdown’s principle of readability in pure-text formatting, and I wanted to share a couple of them here.

  • April 18, 2017

    Cook, Steven A. “RIP Turkey, 1921 – 2017.” Foreign Policy, April 16, 2017. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/16/rip-turkey-1921-2017/. Fitzpatrick, Brad. “Thoughts on the Social Graph.” Personal Site. BradFitz.com, August 17, 2007. http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/. Honan, Mat, and Alex Kantrowitz. “Here’s What Mark Zuckerberg Told Us About The Wild Things Facebook’s New Camera Will Do.” BuzzFeed, April 18, 2017. https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/mark-zuckerbergs-next-big-bet-making-the-real-world-an. Kantrowitz, Alex. “Meet…

  • Refs: April 14, 2017

    Ethan Kurzweil, “An inside Look at Bessemer Venture Partners’ Investment Process for Twilio,” TechCrunch, April 11, 2017, http://social.techcrunch.com/2017/04/11/an-inside-look-at-bessemer-venture-partners-investment-process-for-twilio/. Jeff Bezos, “Exhibit 99.1,” Shareholder Letter, (April 13, 2017), https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312517120198/d373368dex991.htm. Yinmeng Zhang, “How to Measure User Retention and Track Improvement,” Apptimize, July 28, 2016, https://apptimize.com/blog/2016/07/measure-user-retention-track-improvement/. josephg, “Josephg’s Comment on ‘How We Built r/Place,’” Comment, Hacker News, (April…

  • Refs: April 13, 2017

    American Bar Association, ed., Fund Director’s Guidebook, 4th edition (Chicago, Illinois: ABA, Business Law Section, 2015). Kurt J. Berney, Mitchell S. Presser, and David H. Wasserman, eds., Private Equity & Venture Capital Investing: Legal, Financial & Strategic Techniques for Successful Investing, Corporate Law and Practice Course Handbook Series, no. B-1276 (New York, N.Y: Practising Law…

  • April 12, 2017

    Stef Aupers, “‘Trust No One’: Modernization, Paranoia and Conspiracy Culture,” European Journal of Communication 27, no. 1 (March 1, 2012): 22–34, doi:10.1177/0267323111433566. Josh Constine, “Facebook Messenger Hits 1.2 Billion Monthly Users, up from 1B in July,” TechCrunch, accessed April 12, 2017, http://social.techcrunch.com/2017/04/12/messenger/. Dan Motzenbecker, “Fast Drawing for Everyone,” Google, April 11, 2017, https://www.blog.google/topics/machine-learning/fast-drawing-everyone/. Mike Preuss,…

  • An Awkward Twitter Exchange With A Former Employer

    edit: apparently, this article has gotten a fair bit of attention from Hacker News. There’s a link here. edit 2: the HN link was flagged and removed. edit 3: like adults, Kevin and I talked out our differences. I still think he came off as exceedingly callous, and we still fundamentally disagree on several core issues here.…

  • Autogenerating Currency Conversion Formulas In Google Sheets Using GOOGLEFINANCE(CONCATENATE())

    I forgot where I heard this, but on some or another podcast it was declared that “Microsoft Excel is the gateway drug to programming.” And I’m coming to believe this more and more. I’m someone with more than a passing interest in programming who simultaneously lacks any serious proficiency with writing code. Irony of ironies, right?…

  • One Year Ago, I Graduated From College

    One year ago, almost to the date, I finally managed to graduate from UChicago with general honors. I did “the scenic route” through college, taking a long break after three years to work on a startup, only to come back and finish on relatively short notice. It was worth it to go back and finish,…