The Diff - Longreads + Open Thread
This is The Diff’s weekly roundup of longreads, books, and open questions. Feel free to drop in links and comments of interest to fellow readers. You’re on the free list for the newsletter. For full access—and to read the back catalog—subscribe today! The Diff is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Longreads
Books
Open Thread
Reader FeedbackLast week, a subscribers-only piece ($) talked about BMW's decision to charge a monthly fee for heated seats. This comment from Levi Ramsey was a spin on it that I hadn't thought of:
And last week’s open thread has some good thoughts on which jobs will be automated and which ones won’t. A Word From Our SponsorsImport millions of rows of messy customer data in minutes “Hey, can you send me a spreadsheet with the following columns at minimum?” Sounds simple enough, but ask 100 customers to do it, and chances are you’ll get 100 different spreadsheets, documents or formats sent back to you. Now try collating all that data into one place, without losing your mind. Or worse, asking your customer to do it. If this sounds anything like your team’s reality then you need to get some help from Flatfile — who have built the ultimate data importing cheat code. Their innovative platform lets your customers drag and drop their data into your system without formatting beforehand. Then the magic starts. Smart matching, file hooks and algorithmic data detection means that a messy file that used to take hours can now be imported, cleaned and validated in literally minutes. The best part? You can embed Flatfile straight into your product, or in a prebuilt hosted page. 1 It's kind of funny that one of the earliest functions of computers was keeping track of lots of details that humans would be prone to forgetting: "Remind me of what every single employee's salary and tax withholding is" was one of the earliest businesses asked computers to do. Computers excel in structured memory tasks but have a ways to go for unstructured memory tasks—not just learning things, but keeping track of what’s important. You’re a free subscriber to The Diff. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber. |
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Correlations go to One, in Good Ways and Bad
Monday, July 18, 2022
Plus! Network Effects, Rebalancing, Leapfrogging, Getting Funding, Diff Jobs
Longreads + Open Thread
Saturday, July 16, 2022
Practice, Three Arrows, Restaurants, Reading History, Majoring in History, P&G
Tech as a Keynesian Quasi-Boom Within a Keynesian Semi-Slump
Monday, July 11, 2022
Plus! Celsius; The Uber Playbook; Price Discrimination and Amortization; Pricing Power; Sanctions; Diff Jobs
Longreads + Open Thread
Saturday, July 9, 2022
Chips, The Grid, TheGlobe, Attribution, Wish, Japan, Apple
The Network Before the Internet
Tuesday, July 5, 2022
Plus! Operational Issues; The Cloud; Rent and Inflation; The Glut; Credit and Macro; Diff Jobs
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