Jake Russo

Cool Things I’ve Read This Week – Week 37, 2023

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Jake Russo

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  • The Razors-and-Blades Myth(s) by Randal C. Picker :: SSRN
    • This one was recommended by Byrne in TheDiff.
    • An interesting “well, actually” story about the origin of the “razors and blades” model
      • Gillette didn’t sell razors at a loss and make up for it with the blades!
      • They actually charged a premium for both their razors and their blades, both during and after the life of their first patents.
      • They invented cheaper, disposable razor blades
    • I shave with a safety razor now, both because I find it easier and because the blades are cheap enough that I don’t have re-use them, and its blades are the thinner ones that Gillette pioneered.
    • Interesting parallels to razor-and-blades lock-in with HP printers — Gillette warned customers against using genuine blades in third-party razors; HP warns about the inverse.
    • The paper probably could’ve been much shorter; 30 pages seemed a little excessive.
  • Charter-Disney Winners and Losers – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
    • Disney caved to Spectrum!
    • A look at the future of video entertainment
    • Ben’s prediction about re-bundling might be coming true.
    • “The Arc of Video — Winner: Consumers” seems like a stereotypical economist’s faith in the system, but it’s true nonetheless.
  • Office of Public Affairs | Justice Department Sues Google for Monopolizing Digital Advertising Technologies | United States Department of Justice
    • Straight from the horse’s mouth, as they say
  • U.S. v. Google: What to Know About the Biggest Antitrust Trial in 20 Years – WSJ
    • I’m biased towards thinking antitrust lawsuits against tech companies are frivolous and annoying.
      • I like many of the big tech companies — many consumers do? — and government hearings have been total jokes.
    • I’ve heard Sherman Antitrust doesn’t work well for tech companies who control demand, not supply.
      • Consumers are free to choose competitors; they don’t because the dominant player is just better.
        • But maybe the dominant players wielded their superior product to effect unfair market conditions where competitors couldn’t compete effectively.
    • Google’s adtech business seems a little shady, and I don’t know enough about it.
    • I’ll keep following this case!
  • A Beginners Guide to Generalized Second-Price Auctions
    • I became really annoyed because I forgot what a second-price auction was when reading about the Google case. This reminded me.
  • The Lindy Effect
    • The effect makes sense intuitively (though might not be applicable in some of the ways in which it seems to be intuitively), and I had been thinking about it sometime during the week or two before I happened upon this link in The Browser.
    • I didn’t understand much of this paper.
      • Most of the math — outside the sliver I remembered from AP Statistics — lost me completely.
      • I circled some things to google.
    • It was fun to read though.
  • How not to be fooled by viral charts – by Noah Smith (noahpinion.blog)
    • I appreciated “not to” as opposed to “to not”.
    • An interesting tour of some stupidly misleading charts, loose heuristics on identifying such charts (though he notes that more concrete rules are difficult to define), gives advice on finding real data (e.g., FRED)
    • Lots of pictures
  • The Trouble with the View from Above | Cato Unbound (cato-unbound.org)
    • I’m impressed with The Browser‘s ability to include things in their newsletters that I’ve thought about lately.
    • The discussion of how governments understand things narrowly and quantifiably, then forcing that view into reality was really cool.
    • I found the writing to be excellent and very engaging.
    • I finally purchased the book!
  • Apple’s iPhone Event; Innovation and Iteration; Pricing, Inflation, and Services – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
    • We’ve reached peak iPhone, at least for the time being.
      • “Boring” Apple keynotes are only boring because the products are so good.
      • Innovation compounds
    • This was probably going to be the year the iPhone switched to USB-C, regardless of the EU’s stupid regulations.
    • The skit about environmental friendliness was really dumb and unfunny.
      • Climate change, to the extent we can or will alleviate it, will be alleviated through technology and innovation.
  • Prologue–Chapter 2 of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
  • Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson review – arrested development | Biography books | The Guardian
    • I read this the day after receiving and starting the book, just to hear it called an “dull, insight-free doorstop”.
    • “Isaacson comes from the ‘his eyes lit up’ school of cliched writing, the rest of his prose workmanlike bordering on AI.”
      • LOL
        • It could probably be shorter and better written, but I’m hardly 3% through, so what do I know.
        • Maybe clever prose is difficult in a non-fiction piece of this length and scope?

I may have read some other things this week and forgotten about them. I’m working on being better at including things in this list, but sometimes I fold up the printout, put it in my backpack, and neglect to look through my bag for several days after.