Video 1.
Are YOU Ready for the INTERNET? by BBC (1994)
Source.
Bibliography:
This is a standard way to embed images in HTML pages with the img tag.
Hardcoded and unique network addresses for every single device on Earth.
Started with 48 bits (6 bytes), usually given as 01:23:45:67:89:AB but people now encouraged to use 64-bit ones.
How they are assigned: www.quora.com/How-are-MAC-addresses-assigned Basically IEEE gives out the 3 first bytes to device manufacturers that register, this is called the organizationally unique identifier, and then each manufacturer keeps their own devices unique.
Video 1.
The Internet Protocol by Ben Eater (2014)
Source.
As of 2023, working with DNS data is just going through a mish-mash of closed datasets/expensive APIs.
TODO was this data also obtained illegally like the Carna botnet
Some interesting usages:
The CIA really likes this registrar, e.g.:
Some cool ones:
  • playinside.me
https://web.archive.org/web/20230509123836im_/https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/033/037/girl.jpg
As of 2021, Ciro Santilli feels strongly that Amazon originals are so much sillier compared to Netflix ones in average.
Of course, everything pales in comparison to The Criterion Collection.
Jeff has spoken a lot in public about Amazon, perhaps even more than other comparable founder, see e.g. history of Amazon. Kudos for that.
Video 1.
Has the laugh of Jeff Bezos changed as he got rich? by Barış Aktaş (2020)
Source.
Her neck is huge! She also redid her teeth at some point apparently. Some good photos at: www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/mackenzie-scott-how-the-former-mrs-bezos-became-a-philanthropist-like-no-other-1.4850049
MacKenzie Bezos' new husband after she divorced Bezos.
Science teacher at the Lakeside School in Seattle.
MacKenzie Bezos went on to marry a science teacher who taught their children.
The contrast with Bezos's girlfriend is simply comical. MacKenzie married the idealistic morally upright science teacher, while Bezos went for a silly sex bomb. Ah, bruta flor, do querer!
MacKenzie Bezos's charity instrument.
www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/mackenzie-scott-how-the-former-mrs-bezos-became-a-philanthropist-like-no-other-1.4850049 MacKenzie Scott: How the former Mrs Bezos became a philanthropist like no other (2020) has some good mentions:
But as Scott's fame for giving away money has grown, so too has the deluge of appeals for gifts from strangers and old friends alike. That clamour may have driven Scott's already discreet operation further underground, with recent philanthropic announcements akin to sudden lightning bolts for unsuspecting recipients.
The name of the organization is a reference to the old man lost his horse.
I wonder where the spray painted sign went: twitter.com/profgalloway/status/1229952158667288576/photo/1. As mentioned at officechai.com/startups/amazon-first-office/ and elsewhere, Jeff did all he could to save money, e.g. he made the desks himself from pieces of wood. Mentioned e.g. at youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=345 from Video 4. "Jeff Bezos presentation at MIT (2002)".
Video 1.
Amazon.com report by Computer Chronicles (1996)
Source. Contains some good footage of their early storehouse.
Video 2.
Jeff Bezos interview by Chuck Films (1997)
Source. On the street, with a lot of car noise. CC BY-SA, nice.
Video 4.
Jeff Bezos presentation at MIT (2002)
Source. Good talk:
Video 5.
Jeff Bezos Revealed by Bloomberg (2015)
Source.
Video 6.
cosine by Jeff Bezos (2018)
Source.
PDE mention in another video from 2009: youtu.be/TYwhIO-OXTs?t=118
Full original video from The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. (2018): youtu.be/zN1PyNwjHpc?t=1544
Bezos also told PDE stuff in interviews as early as 1999: archive.ph/a3zBK.
Bibliography:
  • archive.ph/ucSHN This is what it was like to work at Amazon 20 years ago (2015). Good annecdotes from the first offices.
Apparently posted to ba.jobs.offered Usenet newsgroup?
Jeff's email was bezos@netcom.com at the time.
First Amazon hire, wrote and led the team that wrote v1.
He looks like an older and more experienced dude compared to Bezos at the time.
Bibliography: . www.geekwire.com/2011/meet-shel-kaphan-amazoncom-employee-1/2/ also mentions that unlike California, there's no sales tax in the state of Washington, which is important for selling books.
Video 1.
Shel Kaphan interview by Internet History Podcast (2015)
Source.
Video 2.
Amazon.com Continues to Grow by NBC 15 (2014)
Source. Features short excerpt of filmed interview with Shel.
Figure 1.
Shel Kaphan
. Source. TODO year. Presumably more or less close to publishing date of source at 2020.
Amazon is apparently notorious for having bought off many competitors, many of them just to kill off the competition and clear the way, not to actually reuse them.
youtu.be/tfAhTtBlb2Q?t=849 from Video "Jeff Bezos Revealed by Bloomberg (2015)" clearly shows Tim O'Reilly saying that very clearly about Bezos.
I do know of a number of cases in which he [Bezos] has acquired companies in order to take out competitors, potential future competitors. Rather than because he actually wants that business to continue.
Perhaps O'Reilly who is the bookselling business is not the greatest fan of Jeff. But still. My God.
www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.pdf Amazon's Antitrust Paradox by Lina M . Khan from The Yale Law Journal raises this incredible issue.
Like Google custom silicon, Amazon server operations are so large that with the slowdown of Moore's law, it started being worth it for them to develop custom in-house silicon to serve as a competitive advantage, not to be sold for external companies. Can you imagine the scale required to justify silicon development investment that is not sold externally!
Page contains a good summary of their hardware to date. They seem to still be the centerpiece of silicon development. There are still however people outside of Israel doing it, e.g.: www.linkedin.com/in/laurasharpless/ says as of 2021:
My team develops software for our next-generation Machine Learning accelerators: HAL, firmware, and SoC models.
2021: networking chip reports emerge: www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2021/3/30/22358633/amazon-reportedly-custom-network-switch-silicon-aws, presumably contesting with the likes of Cisco?
ARM-based servers.
One of the least evil of the big tech companies of the early 21st century, partly because Sergey Brin's parents fled from the Soviet Union and so he is anti censorship, although they have been tempted by it.
Google only succeeds at highly algorithmic tasks or at giving infinite storage to users to then mine their data.
It is incapable however of adding any obvious useful end user features to most of its products, most of which get terminated and cannot be relied on:
This also seems to extend to business-to-business: twitter.com/MohapatraHemant/status/1343969802080030720 ex-Googler tells how they lost the cloud to Amazon.
More mentions of that:
Too many genius engineers. They need some dumber people like Ciro Santilli who need to write documentation to learn stuff.
Ciro Santilli actually attempted two interviews to work at Google in the early 2010's but very quickly failed both on the first phase, because you have to be a fast well trained coding machine to pass that interview.
Ciro later felt better about himself by fantasizing how he would actually do more important things outside of Google and that they would beg to buy him instead.
He was also happy that he wouldn't have to use Google crazy internal tools: someone once said that Google's tools make easy tasks middle hard, and they also make impossible tasks middle hard. TODO source.
The 1997 Wayback Machine archives are just priceless: web.archive.org/web/19971210065425/http://backrub.stanford.edu/backrub.html. I'm so glad that website exists and started so early. It is just another university research project demo website like any other. Priceless.
In August 1998 they had an their first investment of $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, Sun Microsystems co-founder. Some sources say September 1998. This was an event of legend, the dude dropped by, tested the website for a few minutes, said I like it, and dropped a 100$ check with no paperwork. Google wasn't even incorporated, they had to incorporate to cash the check. They were apparently introduced by one of the teachers, TODO which. Some sources say he had to rush off to another meeting afterwards:
Tried to sell it for 1 million in early 1999... OMG the way the world is. It would be good to learn more about that story, and when they noticed it was fuckup.
One of Google's most interesting stories is how their startup garage owner became an important figure inside Google, and how Sergei married her sister. These were the best garage tenants ever!
Video 1.
Google garage (1998)
Source. Description reads: "The company's sixth employee made this video tour of the office in 1998" so this should be Susan's garage, since the next office move was only in 1999 to 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto.
Video 2.
Andy Bechtolsheim's 100.000 check by Discovery UK (2018)
Source. Contains interviews with Andy Bechtolsheim and David Cheriton. The meeting happed in David Cheriton's porch. Andy showed up at 8AM, and he had a meeting at 9AM at Cisco where he worked, so he had to leav early. Andy worked at Cisco after having sold his company Granite Systems, which David co-founded, to Cisco. Particularly cool to see how Andy calculated expected revenue quickly on the back of his mind.
Video 3.
Larry Page interview on the choice of name "Alphabet" by Fortune Magazine (2015)
Source. Shows his voice situation well, poor guy.
This was the original name of Google Search.
One wonders if this name has some influence from the LGBT culture in San Francisco! The sexual innuendo is palpable.
"Back" is of course a reference to "backlinks", since Google Search relies on incoming links (AKA backlinks) to a webpage to determine its importance.
The guy who coded the initial version of BackRub, the first version of Google Search, but left before the company formed. TODO how did he meet Largey Brage? Why did he leave Google?
In 1997 he cofounded eGroups, a mailing list management website, together with the mysterious Carl Victor Page, Jr., Larry Page's older brother. eGroups was sold to Yahoo! in 2000 for $432m, just before the Dot-com bubble burst.
As of 2021 his net worth was of "only" $1b, even though his original Google shares would have been worth $13b. He must have sold too much too early to do other cool stuff. archive.ph/IgkMI:
When Mr. Page and Mr. Brin founded Google in 1998, Mr. Hassan bought 160,000 shares for $800. When Google went public in 2004, the shares were worth more than $200 million. The shares, now in Google’s parent company, Alphabet, would be valued at more than $13 billion today [2021].
Did Largey give him this nice deal as a way to thank him for helping start the company, or was it just that they had no big hopes and $800 seemed right? youtu.be/pmXDtTD6vQY?t=146 suggests the stocks were part of his compensation for 3 months of coding work. Also mentioned at: nypost.com/2021/08/20/google-founder-created-revenge-site-against-estranged-wife
In 2001, Scott married a Vietnamese chick called Allison Huynh from university and they had three children.
In 2014 Hassan asked for a divorce, and the proceedings were a shitshow, lasting more than 7 years.
In 2004 he tried strike a $20 million[ref] post-nuptial after Google went public, which she declined, so things were already crappy back then.
Then, during the divorce, Scott even created a revenge website for her as well. He's so petty! Down as of 2024 of course. There are only some weird redirect archives now: web.archive.org/web/20210915000000*/https://allisonhuynh.com redirecting to sites.google.com/view/allisonhuynhcom
To be fair, he did work on a lot of cool stuff after BackRub for which he deserves credit, not the least the company that created the Robot Operating System, which is a cool sounding open source project, which is awesome. But this divorce story is so damning! He should just own up to it, split the cash, and move on... The fact that the Google money came from an investment before marriage likely complicates things.
The fact that he does not have a Wikipedia page as of 2022 is mind blowing, especially after divorce details. Maybe Ciro Santilli will create it one day. Just no patience now. OK, done it June 2022: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Hassan let's see if it lasts. The page lasted but ended up being Ciro Santilli's first Edit war, how exciting:
Looking a the history, he just kept revealing different IPs and continuously reverting, which other people put back in. Another of his IPs:
  • 24.234.111.66 is marked as being from Las Vegas online.
There is also an interesting edit from 2600:1700:5470:5c50:7566:9580:1b60:ab41 which mentions without source the little known fact
after working at Washington University's Medical Libraries Group (having been recruited out of SUNY Buffalo for the summer).
so it could be Hassan adding some actually good and interesting information to the article. That one however also has an edit to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Nagel so maybe it's not him.
Figure 3.
Screenshot of allisonhuynh.com by the Daily Mail
. Source.
Scott Hassan's ex-wife. She is a "Vietnam immigrant who attended Stanford University on a full scholarship".[ref]
Video 1.
Why former Obama donor Allison Huynh is backing Trump by The Daily Signal
. Source. 2024, before the 2024 United States presidential election, possibly language barrier.
Video 2.
Silicon Valley Billionaire's Divorce Makes Headlines by NBC Bay Area
. Source. 2021.
Allison Huynh's zombie gaming company.
Their flagship seems to have been this game: "MyDream" store.steampowered.com/app/348860/MyDream/, a Roblox-like. This is seen in 2015 at on web archive.
They had a child educational focus and also made some attempts in cryptocurrency.
Company co-founded by Scott Hassan, early Google programmer at Stanford University, and Carl Victor Page, Jr., Larry Page's older brother.
They were an email list management website, and became Yahoo! Groups after the acquisition.
The company was sold to Yahoo! in August 2000 for $432m and became Yahoo! Groups. They managed to miraculously dodge the Dot-com bubble, which mostly poppet in 2021. After the acquisition, Yahoo started to redirect them to: groups.yahoo.com as can be seen on the Wayback Machine: web.archive.org/web/20000401000000*/egroups.com The first archive of groups.yahoo.com is from February 2001: web.archive.org/web/20010202055100/http://groups.yahoo.com/ and it unsurprisingly looks basically exactly like eGroups.
Scott Hassan's shitty telepresence robot startup. Looking at the demos it is so painfully obvious why they failed, that feeble tall screen on wheels. But hindsight is 20/20... It is almost as bad as OurBigBook.
The most notable usage of the product is Snowden Snowbot, which is sad, the product name seems to have been "Beam". Who would use that if not for theatrics with an exilee when everyone already has a screen in front of their face all the time?[ref]
At least this phase produced some of the only videos of Hassan in existence such as:He's got a perfect american accent, so likely not a first generation immigrant.
Has some good mentions, but often leaves you wanting more details of how certain things happened, especially the early days stuff.
Does however paint a good picture of several notable employees, and non-search projects from the early 2000's including:
  • the cook dude
  • porn cookie guy
  • the unusual IPO process
Paints a very positive picture of the founders. It is likely true. They gave shares generously to early employees. Tried to allow the more general public to buy from IPO, by using a bidding scheme, rather than focusing on the big bankers as was usual.
The introduction mentions that Google is very interested in molecular biology and mining genetics data, much like Ciro Santilli! Can't find external references however...
Two of the most compelling areas that Google and its founders are quietly working on are the promising fields of molecular biology and genetics. Millions of genes in combination with massive amounts of biological and scientific data are an excellent match for the Google search engine, the tremendous database the company has in place, and its immense computing power. Already, Google has downloaded a map of the human genome and is working closely with biologist Dr. Craig Venter and other leaders in genetics on scientific projects that may lead to important breakthroughs in science, medicine, and health. In other words, we may be heading toward a time when people can google their own genes.
The book gives good highlight as to why Google became big: search was just an incredibly computationally intensive task. From very early days, Largey were already making up their own somewhat custom compute systems from very early days, which naturally led into Google custom hardware later on. Google just managed to pull ahead on the reinvest revenue into hardware loop, and no one ever caught them back. This feels more the case than e.g. with Amazon, which notoriously had to buy off dozens of competitors to clear the way.
They scanned a bunch of books, and then allowed search results to hit them. They then only show a small context around the hit to avoid copyright infringement.
Bibliography:
When they disabled this from Chromium, it was one of the things that prompted Ciro Santilli to switch to Proton Pass.
Very similar to OurBigBook.com!
Video 1.
How to use Google Knol by Hack Learning (2011)
Source. One of the last users of the website for sure! The owner of that YouTube channel is a Mark Barnes:
Video 2.
Jimmy Wales on Google's Knol (2008)
Source.
Replying to a listener phone-in question WNYC radio, mediated by Brian Lehrer. It was about to launch it seems, and it was not clear at the time that anyone could write content, as opposed to only selected people.
Jimmy then corrects that misinformation. He then clearly states that since there can be multiple versions of each article, including opinion pieces, like OurBigBook.com, Knol would be very different to Wikipedia, more like blogging than encyclopedia.
Video 3.
Google Knol: the future of academic journals? by Doug Belshaw (2010)
Source.
Wikipedia reads:
Any contributor could create and own new Knol articles, and there could be multiple articles on the same topic with each written by a different author.
so basically exactly what Ciro Santilli wants to do on OurBigBook.com. Ominous.
Like any closed source "failure", everything was deleted. wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Knol
www.zdnet.com/article/googles-quantum-focused-sandbox-division-is-being-spun-off/ Google's quantum-focused Sandbox division is being spun off (2022)
Video 1.
Do A Moonshot by Jack Hidary (2016)
Source.
When Ciro finally understood that this is a play on Larry Page's name (of course it is, typical programmer/academic humor stuff), his mind blew.
Was adopted by AskJeeves in 2001.
The Google Story Chapter 11. "The Google Economy" comments:
As they saw it, generation one was AltaVista, generation two was Google, and generation three was Teoma, or what Ask Jeeves came to refer to as Expert Rank. Teoma's technology involved mathematical formulas and calculations that went beyond Google's PageRank system, which was based on popularity. In fact, the concept had been cited in the original Stanford University paper written by Sergey Brin and Larry Page as one of the methods that could be used to rank indexed Web sites in response to search requests. "They called their method global popularity and they called this method local popularity, meaning you look more granularly at the Web and see who the authoritative sources are," Lanzone said. He said Brin an Page had concluded that local popularity would be exceedingly difficult to execute well, because either it would require too much processing power to do it in real time or it would take too long.
googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/03/expertrank-authoritative-search.html mentions
ExpertRank is an evolution of IBM's CLEVER project, a search engine that never made it to public.
and:
The difference between PageRank and ExpertRank is that for ExpertRank the quality of the page is important and that quality is not absolute, but it's relative to a subject.
There are other more recent algorithms with similar names, and are prehaps related:
PageRank was apparently inspired by it originally, given that.
Google has put considerable effort into custom hardware to greatly optimize its stack, in a way that is quite notable compared to other tech companies.
E.g. about.google/ in 2022.
The Google Story suggests that this practice existed in academia, where it was brought from. But I can't find external references to it easily:
At Google, the preference is for working in small teams of three, with individual employees expected to allot 20 percent of their time to exploring whatever ideas interest them most. The notion of "20 percent time" is borrowed from the academic world, where professors are given one day a week to pursue private interests.
Video 1.
Attempting Google's hidden coding challenge by codemastercpp (2022)
Source.
Video 2.
Google's Secret Programming Challenge by srcmake (2018)
Source.

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