atlasunshrugged

Not right now, working to get it on Bookshop

I'm almost finished with a project that has taken up quite a lot of my life for the past few years, a book on Estonia! After working for their government and returning to the U.S. I wanted to better understand how the country modernized so effectively after gaining their independence from the Soviet Union so I did a fair amount of research into the topic and many interviews which culminated in a book, Rebooting a Nation.

If you're interested in Estonia, e-government, building tech hubs, and the future of the nation state I'd love if you take a look (and let me know what you think). It's available on Kindle now but Oxford University Press will be shipping out physical copies May 15 and buying from a smaller press is always appreciated!

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/rebooting-a-nation-9...

Mostly posting because I think the visualization done here is really impressive

I've heard good things about "The Other Significant Others" by NPR's Rhaina Cohen (with the disclosure that the author is the partner of a friend of mine)

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250333025/theothersignifi...

FWIW I have no affiliation with any of these companies but I have a book coming out soon and have been researching AI audiobook tools and Elevenlabs seems to be far and away the consensus for that at least

I'm also curious about this for longform content. Will this be competitive for something like creating an audiobook?

Ha, should have guessed that!

I guess you could put that on the U.S.'s plate and no doubt America has caused many issues around the world, but I think in generally its a good actor. Biggest conflicts today: Ukraine -- I would squarely put this on Russia, nothing to do with the U.S.; Sudan -- Maybe lack of knowledge, but I don't think it's fair to place much responsibility on the U.S. (esp relative to other actors); ditto DRC/Rwanda

Yes, many defensive uses of technologies can be used for offense. When I say defense, I also include offense there as I don't believe you can just have a defensive posture alone to maintain one's defense, you need deterrence too. Personally I'm quite happy to see many in Silicon Valley embrace defense-tech and build missiles (ex. recent YC co), munitions, and dual-use tech. The world is a scary and dangerous place, and awful people will take advantage of the weakness of others if they can. Maybe I'm biased because I spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, but I much prefer the U.S. with all our faults to another actor like China or Russia being dominant

I'm guessing this will be a somewhat controversial view here, but I think this is net good. The world is more turbulent than at any other time in my life, there is war in Europe, and the U.S. needs every advantage it can get to improve its defense. Companies like Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, can and should be working with the government on defense projects -- I would much rather the Department of Defense have access to the best tools from the private sector than depend on some legacy prime contractor that doesn't have any real tech capabilities.

Huh, yeah I think that's maybe the Virginia delegation's favorite airport but I'm highly skeptical it is for other members as it's pretty far and while it does have more flights, I don't think it's incredible. For international flights when traveling for work, many Congresspeople will use milair anyways. For reference, I worked as a staffer in Congress for a couple of years and just picked this up although I've never done any in-depth research

What is Congress' favorite airport?

Not OP but the only thing I'm aware of is new Senator Jim Justice who seems to use a private plane to get to the airport which seems relatively rare.

https://punchbowl.news/article/senate/jim-justice-takes-priv...

Great twitter thread analyzing the Supreme Court decision from a former Congressional Staffer who now leads a think tank doing tech-focused policy work: https://x.com/marcidale/status/1880274466619691247

This is very much a shameless plug but I wrote a book, Rebooting a Nation, on how the country of Estonia was able to modernize post re-independence in the early '90s and become a leader in e-government (99% of government services accessible online) and a tech hub (Skype, Transferwise, Bolt, etc.). I tried to draw out practical lessons for policymakers in other countries, especially in the U.S. as I wrote it after having worked for the Estonian government and advised some members of Congress in DC on tech policy. It's available for pre-order now and comes out in a few months, link below.

https://www.rebootinganation.com/

Link to the report: https://www.speaker.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/AI-Task-F...

Great feedback, thank you!

Wow, what was being stationed in Antarctica like? Have you written about your experience?

R Street (the think tank which published this) is pretty widely listened to in R offices and likely with the Trump admin, so I expect their predictions to be more accurate than many other prognosticators.

I wonder if this pushes them closer to being willing to sell off their US operations (I'm skeptical they ever will but who knows)

I second The Hard Thing About Hard Things

This is good news -- cheap imports of fast fashion items coming from China via Temu and Wish are flooding U.S. markets. Undoubtedly they have extremely poor labor practices (possibly using Xinjiang slave labor) given the prices they charge, and most of it is junk that will end up in landfills soon anyways.

I remember way back in February the FTC was already up in arms over Microsoft layoffs post-acquisition. I wonder if there'll be more action on it now.

https://www.polygon.com/24065269/ftc-microsoft-activision-de...

Not too much detail yet but could be quite interesting if they bring in whistleblowers and people like Leopold Aschenbrenner

I was thinking the same for my 12 mini. Love the form factor but the battery life is just atrocious.

Link to the full court decision: https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/797361df-8d...