Economy and Business
Money, markets, trade, logistics, companies, and work.
#5572: Renting Out Your Spare Room, Car, and Boat
Airbnb, Turo, and the platforms turning idle private assets into income — and the regulatory reckoning catching up with them.
#5565: Inside the Factory: Why Plant Tours Are Addictive
Boeing, Ford, and Shenzhen's Future Factory: why watching a bottling line is mesmerizing, and where to find real golden tickets.
#5562: What "Heavy Industry" Actually Means
It's not about weight — it's about capital intensity and cycles. Why the heavy/light split is younger than the factories it describes.
#5553: When 52 Volts Meets a 12-Volt Modem
A fried fiber modem raises the real question: where do you draw the line between preparedness and "done enough"?
#5552: Why Ireland and Israel Feel Poorer Than Their GDP Says
Ireland ranks 2nd in the world by GDP per capita. Israel's prices rank 5th highest. Neither number tells you how wealthy life actually feels.
#5534: When Your Carrier Sells You Coverage It Can't Deliver
Daniel's phone went from reliable to useless after a cheap SIM swap. Here's what's actually happening when a network claims coverage it can't deliver.
#5519: Mobile Warehouse: Racking That Travels With the Tech
What happens when your inventory tier gets wheels — and how Milwaukee and Bott keep drawers shut at 50 km/h.
#5505: Send a Bot to Your Next Sales Call
Daniel wants a bot that takes his sales meetings, asks hard questions, and ends the call when the pitch is spray-and-pray.
#5504: Motolola and the Art of the Near-Miss Knockoff
From a Motolola walkie-talkie to barcode-cloned counterfeits, how knockoffs calibrate just enough distance to trade on recognition.
#5484: When Governments Own the Pipes: Telecom's Open-Access Model
Could the state own all telecom infrastructure while private companies compete on top? New Zealand and Stockholm already tried it.
#5479: Why Number Porting Takes 30 Minutes
Routing a ported number takes milliseconds. So why does the SIM swap take hours? We trace the signalling behind "keep your number.
#5473: The Kindle Refund Trick and the Return Policy Arms Race
From market olives to a two-year Kindle refund scheme — where's the line between sampling and stealing?
#5472: Can Anyone Scan a QR Code From a Landing Plane?
A New York printing startup wants to tow a QR code behind a plane on the airport approach path. We rate the idea.
#5469: Open Source's New Map: India, Croatia, Ethiopia
One in three new GitHub developers now comes from a country outside 2020's top ten. What that shift means for open source.
#5451: Who Captures the Savings: Zoning Windfalls vs. Import Margins
A zoning windfall gets audited. A tariff cut doesn't. Why two public decisions that create private value are treated so differently.
#5447: The Models That Never Talk Back
Some models read text, score it, and return a number. No chat, no reasoning, just decisions — and they're running under every router you use.
#5441: Dollar Plumbing: Why Bessent's Iran Threat Has Teeth
One line from Treasury can ground an airline worldwide. The reason lives in New York's clearing houses, not the currency itself.
#5402: Amazon Go and the Humans Behind the AI
Amazon promised a store with no checkout. The Information reported 700 of every 1,000 sales needed human review in 2022.
#5401: When Companies Hide Humans Behind the AI Curtain
A system prompt and a cheap model can make human decisions read like bot output — and that's exactly the point.
#5400: Amy, Presto, and the Thousand Workers Behind "AI
From X.AI's Amy to Amazon's Just Walk Out, the humans quietly doing the "intelligent" part while the product says AI.