Irrelevant Hacks

Irrelevant musings of a hack blogger


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The Up Selling of Education, part 1

I’ve been talking with people about the university system here in the States and it somehow always surprises me that even a Bachelors Degree is of limited value on the job market. With online schools trying to get people to “continue their education” by offering Masters Degrees or MBAs, while putting you in even more debt makes the higher education system seem even more like the payday loan system (you’re never educated enough for a job, but you end up being too old for that position). Continue reading →


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The Sony Hack and Bandwidth

Ever since the GOP (Guardians of Peace) released corporate emails and data from Sony, there’s been huge amounts of speculation. Both by media and by security professionals alike. To sum it up, there are two lines of thought that have come up:

  1. North Korea is behind this (Media & FBI)
  2. It’s an inside job (IT Security experts)

But one thing has been on my mind, if it’s true that the GOP really has 100 Terabytes of files from Sony, how long would it take them to actually get it from Sony via the Internet?
Continue reading →


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Guy Kawasaki, the Twitter resolution

So after replying to Guy Kawasaki’s tweet regarding Amazon, he apparently took offense to my response. Here’s his tweet that started this:

And here’s my reply:

While my disparaging comment about him being a “corporate schill”, is a bit off (I don’t know if he’s currently working with Amazon or not), but either way he took offense.

My first reply was regarding the comparison of Hachette as a company, to the act of buying a Kindle and having delivered in less than 24 hours. Continue reading →


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Guy Kawasaki, from Product Evangelist, to Corporate Shill

I’ve been following Guy Kawasaki’s twitter feed for a while. For those too young to know who he is, Guy Kawasaki worked at Apple for years trying to increase the popularity and acceptance of its Macs. You can read up more about him on his Wikipedia page.

Generally his twitter postings are reblogs from the site “Holy Kaw! All the topics that interest us.” (will not link to another Buzzfeed clone). While these reblogs at times can be interesting, it’s just the usual blathering and using one’s “geek fame” to self promote a website which only reblogs articles from other sites. But occasionally, he will blog something himself, such as today’s:

So he’s throwing himself into the Hachette – Amazon debacle (albeit a little late). The problem is that there seems to be a disconnect between reality and what he’s posting. Since, based on the tweet, he’s comparing ordering a physical Kindle off of Amazon on a Sunday and receiving one Monday as something that Hachette can’t do (in a negative sense). But in this cognitive dissonance, I think he’s forgetting that Hachette is a publisher, and not a retailer. Heck, they don’t even sell their own ebook readers.

Maybe this tweet can be considered as an insult? Insinuating that Hachette can’t sell books through Amazon while Amazon can sell their own products in an expedited way. Still, pretty low for someone who once considered himself a “Product Evangelist”, and not a lowly “Corporate Shill”.

And even his argument falls flat. Many Barnes & Noble stores are open on Sunday till late, and many local independent book stores are also open on Sundays. And if it’s too late, and everything is closed on Sunday in your area, well, you can always go to the store on Monday morning. Amazon’s main business strategy is not to offer everything from A to Z, but to sell it in a way that requires the least expenditure of time and EFFORT from the client. Convenience has it’s limits, and not getting out and being part of your local community is one of these. If you want instant gratification, you’ll still have to wait for Amazon to deliver your stuff. Go to a local store and buy from them. 20 minutes and you’ll have the book/game/thing you want in your hands, and that’s something that Amazon can’t do.

That is unless they start using those drones, but then it’ll be open hunting season for them as they fly over people’s houses.