Tidbits

Before AWS, Joyent was powering the internet’s biggest platforms. Started in 2004 by a former cancer researcher, Jason Hoffman, it hosted early infrastructure for Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook’s third-party apps (in partnership with Dell). They built their own OS, SmartOS, and used container virtualization via Solaris Zones—8 years before Docker even existed. Their containers were so efficient that one Joyent server could match multiple AWS instances.

But they built everything on Solaris instead of Linux, which most developers preferred. In 2010, they brought in Ryan Dahl, the creator of Node.js, and became its official maintainer. Despite this, Joyent struggled to scale like AWS, which aggressively cut prices, launched global data centers, and focused on developers with free tiers, and events. Joyent stayed niche and shifted focus to big enterprise clients like Telefónica—while AWS went after every developer and startup.

By 2010, AWS had become synonymous with “cloud.” In 2016, Samsung acquired Joyent for just $125M, while AWS was already valued at over $100B. By 2019, it shut down completely—the company that once powered Twitter was now helping customers move to AWS.

In 2019, a blog called EcommerceBytes, run by Ina and David Steiner, published critical articles about eBay. eBay’s top leadership and the CEO grew furious. This led to the company’s own security team headed by Jim Baugh being mobilized to intimidate the bloggers, dubbed as the “White Knight’s Strategy”.

The Steiners were subjected to terrifying harassment campaigns. There house was spray painted , received anonymous deliveries like live cockroaches, spiders, pig fetus, funeral wreath & bloody pig mask. Their neighbors got porn magazines in David’s name. eBay employees even flew from California to Massachusetts and planned to plant a GPS tracker on their car.

After the couple reported the incidents, federal investigation traced it all back to eBay’s corporate team. 6 former eBay employees were convicted on charges like cyberstalking and witness tampering. In 2024, eBay paid a $3 million criminal fine and was placed under a 3-year federal compliance monitor. The Steiners are now pursuing a civil case.

During the A380 program (2004), Airbus discovered a flaw: 500 km of electrical wiring was short by several centimeters across the aircraft.

The French and British teams designed with newer CATIA V5 CAD software. German and Spanish teams were stuck with older CATIA V4. The two systems handled 3D models differently, causing measurements mismatch.

For this, Airbus had to completely redesign the electrical harnesses. 100,000 wires and 40,000 connectors were manually torn out and reinstalled. German and Spanish plants were forced to upgrade to CATIA V5. All A380s were opened up and reworked.

Delivery delays of over 2 years with losses of €4.8 billion. Stock price tanked and Airbus underwent a major management overhaul.

Napoleon Bonaparte, desperately needed cash to fund his wars in Europe. His colonies in the Americas, especially Louisiana, were becoming a burden — hard to defend and not making enough money.

So he sold Louisiana to the USA for $15 million. But the US government didn’t have that much ready cash lying around. So they turned to big British and Dutch banks (Barings Bank in London and Hope & Co in Amsterdam) to finance the deal.

These banks bought US government bonds — meaning British investors’ money was used to pay France. Napoleon grabbed that cash to build ships, train troops, and prepare for an invasion of Britain.

So, the British banks ended up funding Napoleon’s army that was getting ready to invade Britain itself!

One of Boulanger’s key tactics, described in John Reynold’s Citroën 2CV, involved instructing workers to adopt a deliberately slow production pace for Citroën T45 trucks destined for the Wehrmacht. However, his most ingenious move was deceptively simple: he ordered the oil dipsticks of the trucks to be altered. By moving the notch indicating the proper oil level slightly lower, the engines were consistently underfilled with oil. German mechanics, unaware of the alteration, believed the trucks were adequately lubricated.

This subtle sabotage was both cost-effective and devastating. The trucks initially appeared functional, but over time, their engines seized up, often at critical moments during deployment. The damage was inflicted far from Citroën’s factories, leaving stranded Nazi forces helpless and enraged. Boulanger’s plan exemplified quiet resistance, creating significant disruption for the occupiers without drawing suspicion to the factory workers or management.

Instead, the company was found marketing “Doramad” a toothpaste, containing thorium oxide, a radioactive byproduct from their gas lantern production. Originally for German troops, it was advertised as improving gum health by increasing blood circulation and killing germs.

Auergesellschaft, a massive chemical company, saw the end of the war as a threat to their wartime business, such as gas masks. Looking to diversify, they planned to enter the booming post-war cosmetics market by leveraging the popularity of toiletries in the U.S.

Doramad toothpaste, with its claimed “biologically active” radioactive ingredients, was their strategy to capitalize on this trend.

US has large agricultural lands that makes it possible to produce abundant food. During 19th century, the Europeans were struggling to get enough food while US was enjoying abundant grains and meat due to surplus.

Post use of refrigeration technology, US meat was transported across the Atlantic - leading to a glut in mechanised, high quality and low cost meat in Europe which led to massive price reductions.

Bankrupted European farmers forced the govt. to put tax on imported meat. US govt. negotiated, & retaliated by putting tax on European imports - taxing famous French brandies and German cars.

Owing to rugged rural land, imported low cost German pickup trucks were quite popular in US. Post 25% tariffs (dubbed the “chicken tax”), the prices of US pickup trucks were quite favourable - leading Ford & others to wholly dominate the market. The rest is history!

Kazem Khosrowshahi was an Iranian Minster of Commerce who pursued MBA from Harvard and had Ph.d in Economics and Law. Later, his business suffered a major setback with almost $500 million confiscated during Iranian Revolution.

His children lifted the mantle to new heights. Hassan started Future Shop that was later acquired by Best Buy for $580 million. His children Behzad founded DRI Healthcare and Golnar became the founder of Reservoir Media Management. Firouz pursued Ph.D in Physics, Shahram went onto become CEO for 4 companies including Arbor Labs. His children Ali and Hadi co-founded Code.Org, Ali was also the CEO of Neo. Hadi also became an advisor to FB and Dropbox.

Sharam’s son, Darian would become the first intern hired by Facebook in early 2000s. Shahram’s nephews/nieces - Avid Larizadeh became the MD of Google Ventures, Farzad became the CTO of Notion and sold a company to Google that became Google Sheets, Amir sold a company to Intel named Nervana.

Kazem’s second child Azhar’s children - Mehrad became the COo of OceanX, Kaveh became the MD of Allen and Company Investment group and Dara, whoops go onto lead as CEO of Expedia and Uber.

In the 1900s, the Allied powers used fossil fuel to manufacture oil products through distillation which unfortunately had low octane rating and high “knocking” of fuels. Next, General Motors in collaboration with Thomas Midgley secretively found that adding Tertraethyl Lead massively reduced knocking and improved octane rating.

But its usage had side effects with workers hallucinating, & choking with deaths. Upon statewide bans, Thomas did a demonstration in a press conference by washing his hands in a solution of Tetraethyl Lead and also inhaling the fumes to prove it was safe. Unbeknownst to all, Thomas was himself recuperating from acute lead poisoning in Florida, US.

GM next even argued through its lawyers that its workers had duly inhaled something else. This eventually led to removal of bans and use of leaded petrol flourished!

Tinkoff Credit Systems (TCS) is one of the world’s largest digital neobank and also one of the leading providers of Credit Cards in Russia.

In 2008, Dimitri Argarkov, was offered a credit card contract from TCS. He sent an altered contract whereby it had 0% interest with no credit limit. If the bank failed to comply with the rules, he would fine them 3 million rubles. If Tinkoff tried to cancel the contract, it would have to pay him 6 million.

Tinkoff didn’t check the same, signed and provided him a credit card with a copy of the contact. TCS charged him 45,000 rubles for fees and charges which weren’t actually preset in the amended contract. By 2013, Dimitri sued the bank for 24 million for not honouring the contact. Tinkoff managed to sue Dimitri as well.

Later, both of the parties backed out with an out of court settlement.

This story begins with a game developed by Blizzard, called “World of Warcraft”. This is a highly popular game played by millions of players annually. At one point in 2010, Blizzard introduced a feature that led to weakening of powers in characters.

A young boy, was quite unhappy with this new introduction. “I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit.", he later said. At the same time, he developed an interest for crypto coins, worked as a writer and launched his first magazine called “Bitcoin Magazine”.

He later along with his colleague launched a white paper detailing his idea for a “decentralised mining network and software development platform rolled into one”. That white paper would lead to the birth of the now famous “Ethereum”. And that young boy was none other than Vitalik Buterin.

During WWI, in 1915, the British were fighting Germans who had a monopoly over glass lenses used in rifle scopes & binoculars. Due to shortage of glass equipment’s for soldiers, it became an issue.

Later, after much thought, a secret agent was dispatched to Switzerland to negotiate a supply of more than 32000 pairs of Zeiss glass binoculars & rifle scopes. The seller was Germany. Why?

Cause, the British had a monopoly & blocked sales of rubber to Germans, which used it to make tyres, gloves, etc. which were in high demand. Both decided to give in and share.

Surpirsingly, rubber was native to South America. The first saplings of rubber were stolen by Henry Wickham. Only a fraction survived which were distributed to Asian farmers to grow. The saplings survived because of a “Wardian glass” case container used during transportation.

Despite having data concerning size of atom, speed of bombarding neutron, probability and stuff, it was quite impossible to predict the real life events by conventional mathematics. So, what they did was amazing. They hired 100s of women & gave them sheets of paper and asked them to perform mathematical calculations by hand for each neutron. In reality, using random inputs and estimations, they calculated and simulated test scenarios on paper for thousands of neutrons about how they will react and scatter during explosion.

This task was spearheaded by Stanislaw Ullam, a polish nuclear scientist, who code named this activity as “Monte Carlo” which came to be regarded as the famous “Monte Carlo” simulations in mathematics.

The United Fruit Company, gained massive trade concessions and controlled extensive public land, becoming the world's leading banana exporter due to non-communist leaders like Jorge Ubico and Manuel Cabrera from 1900 to 1944.

In 1950, a democratic government led by Arbenz implemented extensive reforms, impacting United Fruit's business by expropriating public land for private use. To retaliate, the company heavily lobbied the US government, leading to a CIA-backed coup called PBSuccess.

This coup removed the democratic government and installed a military dictatorship under Carlos Armas, all in an effort to eliminate "Soviet influence" from Guatemala. Tragically, this event triggered a 35-year Civil War, claiming 200,000 lives, all stemming from a private company's quest for resource monopolization.

The man who eventually identified the accused, Ross Ulbritch, who had been FBI Most wanted Man for 2 years+ was Gary Alford, the IRS officer. The most amazing thing was that Gary used Google search to do his job.

Gary’s habit was to read every document two times strictly. According to him, he remembered the stuff well and was able to decipher the information better. He started hunting down information from online chat forums regarding the chatter about Silk Road, the Dark Web market for Drugs that did a million dollar business a year.

He came across a user “altoid” who first talked about the website. After inspection, Gary discovered a chat reply from 2011, where the person used his personal email as a contact. And that’s how Gary hit the bullseye which the DEA and FBI had been trying to do after spending millions of dollars of tax money!

So in the late 1900s, McDonald’s used to have a specific variety of potatoes called the “Russet Burbank Potatoes” which were mainly grown in Idaho.

So the potatoes turned into crisp prices when fried in oil. Also, McDonald’s used to keep a check on the variety of shapes & color of these potatoes which were discarded if they had any brown strips or patches which normally occur due to pests.

To avoid this, it was sprayed with a highly hazardous insecticide - Monitor. So much so that farmers didn’t go to fields for days after it was sprayed. Later during harvesting of potatoes, they were stored in a football field sized shade places for 6-7 weeks just to let off the insecticide gas from the potatoes.

As of now, Monitor has been banned globally.

In comes the 1948, US vs Paramount that cracked down on the relationship of Movie Studos with Theatres and the ensuing Monopoly. This led to MGM losing direct channel to theatres and the profits as well. The dent came in when Kirk Krekorian became the owner of MGM. Kirk was into real estate, went about revamping MGM and even built the famous MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas.

MGM started seeing losses as Kirk even sidestepped movie production to a great extent. MGM reported the first ever loss in 1957. It later went on to be bought by TBS in 1986. TBS went about selling the MGM holdings as it were making losses. TBS gained controlling rights to MGM archive of more than 1000+ movies which at the time became important as TV channels started showing the same to viewers. MGM lost a goldmine to this.

Fact: MGM filed for bankruptcy in 2010!

The cleaning has to be done every single day. Yet, after cleaning, the machine throws error which requires cleaning it again. When frequent error comes up, the franchisee calls Taylor technicians that charge thousands of dollars for checkup. Taylor has 25% of its annual revenue coming through maintenance operations! In fact, Taylor never mentions the possible troubleshooting tips or type of errors in its manual.

In 2020, a startup called Kytch used a tracking system that could identify errors. But McDonald’s barred it citing warranty expirations and had Taylor install their own tracking. This led to a $900 million lawsuit by Kytch who allege that Taylor reverse engineered their system & showing confusing messages and prohibiting users to access menu controls that can help them repair errors on their own.

But as Roman kingdoms fell, and trade routes disrupted, it disappeared & remained a staple diet with Southeast Asia. By 16th century, Chinese merchants transported the recipe back to mainland called “ke-chiap”.

Dutch and British colonisers transported back this recipe which was a mass hit. Fish was substituted with any local flavours that could give the dark pasty. By 1800s, the recipe had been perfected with a tomato paste by James Maese.

By 1876, John Heinz developed the famous Heinz ketchup with salt and vinegar and sugar that remains to this day!

John Queeny, was a salesman for Meyers Brothers Drug Company. He left it, and started a chemical company. In the initial years, he focused on developing saccharin and processing tea leaves for caffeine,becoming a trusted supplier of Coca Cola for its soft drinks business. This would be the turning point.

The business became profitable. During World War 2, it was deeply involved in many chemicals including purifying Polonium used in the famous Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project of 1940s.

It would later become a ubiquitous household name for its GM seeds and crops, Agent Orange (during Vietnam War) and Roundup, a glyphosate fertiliser that revolutionised agri-farming.

That company is Monsanto Company, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018 for $66 billion.