Linked List: December 4, 2020

Friday, 4 December 2020

More on the Ties Between HP, Apple, and Silicon Valley ★

“When I was 13, I think, I called up — Hewlett and Packard were my idols — and I called up Bill Hewlett, because he lived in Palo Alto and there were no unlisted numbers in the phone book. Which gives you a clue to my age… And he picked up the phone and I talked to him and I asked if he’d give me some spare parts for something I was building called a frequency counter. And he did, but in addition to that, he gave me something way more important: he gave me a job that summer. A summer job at Hewlett Packard.”

‘Tony Hsieh’s American Tragedy: The Self-Destructive Last Months of the Zappos Visionary’ ★

Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans, writing for Forbes:

Instead, these old friends say, Hsieh retreated to Park City, where he surrounded himself with yes-men, paying dearly for the privilege. With a net worth that Forbes recently estimated, conservatively, at $700 million, Hsieh’s offer was simple: He would double the amount of their highest-ever salary. All they had to do was move to Park City with him and “be happy,” according to two sources with personal knowledge of Hsieh’s months in Utah. “In the end, the king had no clothes, and the sycophants wouldn’t say a fucking word,” said a close friend who tried to stage one of the interventions, with the help of Hsieh’s family. “People took that deal from somebody who was obviously sick,” encouraging his drug use, either tacitly or actively.

“He fostered so much human connection and happiness, yet there was this void,” the close friend continued. “It was difficult for him to be alone.”

Ultimately, that may have been a fatal trait. “When you look around and realize that every single person around you is on your payroll, then you are in trouble,” Jewel wrote in that August letter (a representative for Jewel declined to comment). “You are in trouble, Tony.”

Heartbreaking.

Apple Silicon Games for Mac ★

Nifty new site by Thomas Schranz — a directory of Mac games showing whether they work (and if so, how well, and through what mechanism) on M1 Macs.

How Oisín Moran Made a Self-Quoting Tweet ★

I love a well-explained programming exercise.