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There Are Plenty of Power Publicists. But Only One Works for Taylor Swift [Allie Jones/WSJ] – Tree Paine (as the owner of what I think is also a great name, I salute you Tree) seems incredible competent. It’s amazing how compelling that is these days. And of course, as a Swiftie myself, I remember her scenes from the Miss Americana documentary.
How Jensen Huang’s Nvidia Is Powering the A.I. Revolution [Stephen Witt/New Yorker] – One might make the case that Nvidia is the most important company in technology right now and this classic New Yorker profile gets you inside his history, his head, and their future. Also, an immigrant!!!
Perhaps Huang’s most radical belief is that “failure must be shared.” In the early two-thousands, Nvidia shipped a faulty graphics card with a loud, overactive fan. Instead of firing the card’s product managers, Huang arranged a meeting in which the managers presented, to a few hundred people, every decision they had made that led to the fiasco. (Nvidia also distributed to the press a satirical video, starring the product managers, in which the card was repurposed as a leaf blower.) Presenting one’s failures to an audience has become a beloved ritual at Nvidia, but such corporate struggle sessions are not for everyone. “You can kind of see right away who is going to last here and who is not,” Diercks said. “If someone starts getting defensive, I know they’re not going to make it.”
Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg’s Freedom Grants and Audrey Scholars – I so appreciate my friend Matt and love the creativity + intention he brings to the world. Both of these programs are aimed at open source software community contributors. Freedom Grants helps them relocate from areas of the world that are incompatible with OSS community values. Audrey Scholars pays for the education of children with parents/guardians who are OSS contributors.
You Can Buy Hemingway’s Typewriter. But Would You Use It? [David Waldstein/NYT] – Typewriters are having their moment again, and the ones used by famous folk are especially valuable.
