Week 26

Hi Reader,

This week, Ben Thompson has outdone himself once again with his value chain post. He presents a constructive and potentially predictive theory of what drives profits of technology companies.

I also encourage you to listen to the podcast version. I'm choosing to share this in the introduction because it will be a piece of tech writing hard to beat in its applicability for those who study it.

It feels like a powerful generalization on the 1) monopoly view of profit generation (more concentration, more profits) or 2) defensibility (more moats, more profits).

🐦 Tech (mainly) tweets I'm reading

Arjun Balaji shares his favorite podcasts (many investing related).
Delian Asparouhov lists Keith Rabois' effective executive principles.
Patrick Collison reinforces the importance of developer tools for successful companies.
Brian Armstrong thinks about how to improve scientific research.

⌨️ Hardware

Yaron Minsky of Jane Street shared this tweet about unpredictable behavior due to the way hardware works. I've been spending some time thinking and learning about computer architecture, studying these two books: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles and Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach. I recommend both (in the above order). While a lot of productivity gains are now coming from software, hardware has been a driving force in cloud, mixed reality, mobile computing, deep learning, crypto and many other areas.

Without understanding computer hardware, you simply won't have the full picture of how the software world works today and where it's evolving.

P.S. Did you know iPhones now have better CPUs than Macs?