Five Things Tech: Global Tech Outage, Costly Coding Glitches, Biohacking, Hillybilly Elegiac Startups, Next Big Thing

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This Friday the whole world got to experience what it means to be dependent on tech. Millions of people rejoiced as Teams calls were not possible and they could finally get some work done. Also, we saw how lots of tech investors from Silicon Valley showed just how greedy they are by putting their business interests front and foremost, totally neglecting the threat to democracy that Trump and Vance pose. Sure, libertarian traits are nothing new among the tech elite in Silicon Valley, but this shows once again, how little they care about anything except their own fortune. It sickens me, how these guys like flirting with desaster. Of course, Elon Musk is their front runner and Peter Thiel is pulling the strings from the back. Disgusting.

So, there’s a lot to unpack this week and hopefully these five articles help a bit with it.

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Chaos and Confusion: Tech Outage Causes Disruptions Worldwide

It’s kind of amazing how our IT-infrastructure got more complex over the last three decades and amazing tech got invented to make systems more stable and secure - and then there’s still a single point of failure, something I dealt with as a CTO two decades ago. Thanks to Microsoft, it is still a problem even in 2024. Hopefully some clever CFO will start to calculate all the costs involved in running systems based on Microsoft.

Also, did you try to turn it off and on again?

Btw, it’s nice that Hamburg gets featured in the New York Times, but the Hamburg Airport didn’t suffer that many problems as only four airlines couldn’t access their IT-systems.

(CLICK HERE!)

How a Single Line of Code Brought Down a Billion Dollar Rocket

While the global outage certainly was not the first one we experienced, I still don’t understand why we haven’t learned from the bad examples outlined in this article, put together by

Dr Milan Milanović

.

(CLICK HERE!)

Blood transfusions, lithium, meth: Can biohackers rejuvenate aging leaders like Biden?

While I think that Biden is a strong leader with a clear mind, it is nonetheless interesting to discuss how currently available longevity products and biotech in general could help aging people these days.

(CLICK HERE!)

Every startup in JD Vance's VC fund, ranked from least to most hillbilly elegiac

Brian Merchant

has compiled the list of startups JD Vance invested in. Quite an interesting “investment focus”. This guy is a total opportunistic libertarian douchebag. I’m still annoyed that I liked his book so much.

(CLICK HERE!)

I'm Tired of the "Next Big Thing"

Yes, me too.

Stephen Moore

certainly has a point. And at the same time, I’m always looking forward to the next big thing, I always do think that stuff will get better and that tech will evolve. It’s complicated.

(CLICK HERE!)

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading! If you missed last week’s Five Things Tech, you can find it here:

Five Things Tech: Energy, Materials, Robotaxis, Mars, 1994

— Nico