Top all-time · #8374
Albert Cory
Personal blog · albertcory50.substack.comculturewriting
Albert Cory writes Life Since the Baby Boom, a personal blog at albertcory50.substack.com about culture and writing. Since 2022, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 188 times, most often “Showing Movies at Google”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-05, and you can follow it by feed.
Amusing stuff from a Boomer Flâneur in high tech.
Most-linked posts?
- Showing Movies at Google3 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-10-24
- How About Not Overcoming Fear?2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-05-08
- When Talent Is Not Enough (Google and Reverse Imposter Syndrome)2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-03-13
- No Source Code == No Patent2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-04-17
- Working at Google: Maps Continued2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-02-27
What Hacker News says?
If I can relate this to movies [1], it might be illuminating: Watching a movie, you normally get a "home viewing" license. That does not give you the right to show it at your business (even if you don't charge money and only 10 people come). There's also a Public Performance Rights (PPR) license, and I always had to get PPR's because Google lawyers would shut us down otherwise. PPR costs considerably more than a hom…
Comment linking /p/culture-at-google-part-one-the-movies
on “The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive”Submitted Bring back private offices as a story · 245 points
HN discussionAs I indicated in my post https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/should-elon-lay-off-all-... : Twitter spends more on R&D as a percentage of sales than 5 other large tech companies, even Facebook, and moreover, the percentage is increasing . Where is this "innovation"? It's not a new platform. Its market is, arguably, saturated; I don't see a "next billion users" (as they say at Google) coming from anywhere. So the ans…
Comment linking /p/should-elon-lay-off-all-those-developers
on “Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far”Submitted Anarchy in the US (The Revolution That Almost Happened) as a story · 74 points
HN discussionTrigger warning: Self-promotion here. I'm not selling anything, though. Your brain is part of your body. It's as simple as that. I just celebrated 50 years of running: https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/50-years-of-running I thought long & hard about motivation and how I've kept it up. "Will power" is not it. And I've heard every conceivable excuse about why someone does not exercise. Here's a big one: "people will…
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on “What if regular exercise is the best cognitive exercise?”Submitted ChatGPT is laying you off as a story · 67 points
HN discussionThe best things about being there were things I'd probably never be able to do anywhere else: https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-o... https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-t... https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-more-a... Oh yeah. I did do some work, too.
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on “Mourning Google”Submitted Substack won't make you rich as a story · 52 points
HN discussionThe ONLY companies that last more than a generation or two are family-owned. https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/whats-missing-with-ameri... There are a few exceptions, but for the most part, "professional management" just does not survive for very long.
Comment linking /p/whats-missing-with-american-ceos
on “The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics”Submitted Bring Back Private Offices, Part II as a story · 27 points
HN discussionI wrote a three-part series of articles on "50 Years of Running" [1], and the issue of motivation is specifically addressed, since how else would you keep up something for 50 years? It's not at all about eating, and I'm honestly not sure it'll help you, but the tag in the first article is: If you can't find time to exercise, you'll have to find time to be sick. [1] https://albertcory50.substack.com
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on “‘Anti-hunger’ molecule forms after exercise, scientists discover”Submitted Ken Burns, Faux "Storyteller" as a story · 17 points
HN discussionhttps://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-t... I have the talk by Theodore Gray that I hosted, where he does some experiments with fire. This was a fun one to get approval from Facilities for.
Comment linking /p/culture-at-google-part-two-the-authors
on “A requiem for amateur chemistry”Submitted "Traffic Violence": The Grifters Go After Cars as a story · 14 points
HN discussionAnd you can make coffee with bamboo coffee filters. As I said in here, Jerry and I actually could taste the difference between them and paper filters, in a Triangle Test. https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/google-busts-a-coffee-my...
Comment linking /p/google-busts-a-coffee-myth
on “America lost the chestnut, its "perfect tree"”Submitted Should Elon Lay Off All Those Developers? as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI wrote a whole piece on this topic: https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/how-about-not-overcoming... Basically, getting all macho about "overcoming your fear" is BS. If you want to risk your life for the adrenaline high of surviving, go ahead. But don't try to shame anyone for not wanting to.
Comment linking /p/how-about-not-overcoming-fear
on “Deaths at a California skydiving center, but the jumps go on”Submitted Bikeshedding for Fun and Profit as a story · 6 points
HN discussion.. and the hits just keep on coming: https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/whose-does-layoffs-bette... What was really amazing to me was when I fed his email into Google Translate, had it translate to Mandarin, and then fed the output back to English.
Comment linking /p/whose-does-layoffs-better-ai-or-amazons
on “Amazon to lay off 9,000 more workers after earlier cuts”Submitted The Rule of Law, or Not (When It's Just Negotiating) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI actually wrote three articles on how and why I've been running for 50 years ( https://albertcory50.substack.com/ the first three articles). The subject of motivation is considered deeply, since no trick, not even a wager, will keep you doing it more than a couple years (although maybe a bet with a relative will last a while). The overall answer is "whatever works for you." One saying that I've found does impress p…
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on “I tricked myself into working out 3 times per week”Submitted The Pullman Strike: Aftermath as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI found a couple of bylined articles in the Daily Illini that I wrote as a freshman. Very boring stuff; they didn't give the exciting beats to a newbie. Then I ran them through ChatGPT to see what it thinks "objective journalism" is. https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/ai-does-journalism Conclusion: if I'd done what it suggested, the editor would have red-pencilled it out. It isn't that hard to just write the facts.…
Comment linking /p/ai-does-journalism
on “AI for Data Journalism: demonstrating what we can do with this stuff”Submitted Best Summer Job Ever as a story · 5 points
HN discussionBy the same token, some tech companies, especially Twitter, basically ARE media companies. I tried to analyze News Corp's annual report to find their R&D spending, the same way I did for six tech companies ( https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/should-elon-lay-off-all-... ) Unfortunately, their accounting treatments of software are different, so a direct comparison was quite difficult. NYT sells ads and also subscrip…
Comment linking /p/should-elon-lay-off-all-those-developers
on “NYT reporters had a top-down directive that tech coverage should be critical”Submitted No compliments at the miniature golf place as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThere's an Oxford professor, Bent Flyvbjerg (bonus points for knowing how to pronounce this) who's devoted his career to analyzing very large projects and why they're so terrible. The problems are not limited to transit, and they extend to big software projects and big construction as well. (Spoiler: they're inherent in the organization of bigness.) https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/optimism-hubris-and-stra... Wil…
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on “All Aboard the Bureaucracy Train”Submitted GenZ and Its "Sense of Humor" as a story · 4 points
HN discussionYet another "famous" Googler whom I didn't know. He joined one month before I did. I did know Chris DiBona, at least. Didn't know this Jeanine person. I wrote a number of articles about working there in the early (or earlier) days. Chronologically: https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-google-enterp... https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-google-ads https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-g…
Comment linking /p/working-at-google-maps-continued
on “Reflecting on 18 Years at Google”Submitted That Dream Job (Surprise: It's "Actuary ") as a story · 4 points
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