Benedetto Vigna: “When you change the culture of a company, it’s never a revolution. It’s an evolution. If you have a revolution, you will have a lot of passive resistance and you will be inefficient. You will waste a lot of energy for a small gain.”
NYTimes: “Americans are getting increasingly impulsive about hitting the cancellation button on their streaming services. More than 29 million — about a quarter of domestic paying streaming subscribers — have canceled three or more services over the last two years, according to Antenna, a subscription research firm. And the numbers are rising fast. The data suggests a sharp shift in consumer behavior…Among these nomadic subscribers, some are taking advantage of how easy it is, with a monthly contract and simple click of a button, to hopscotch from one service to the next. Indeed, these users can be fickle — a third of them resubscribe to the canceled service within six months, according to Antenna’s research. “In three years, this went from a very niche behavior to an absolute mainstream part of the market,” said Jonathan Carson, the chief executive of Antenna.”
Linus Torvalds: “Linux for me solved all the problems I had, way back in ’92, maybe ’93. And if it wasn’t for the fact that others came around and said ‘Hey, I need this,’ I would not have continued. The things that keeps projects going are the fact that ‘Hey, this is actually useful to other people’. Because if it’s only something for me, it’s not really interesting in the long run.”
Venki Ramakrishnan: “Humanity has wondered for a long time about why we die and what limits lifespan. We’re probably the only species that knows about our mortality. We know that because we have developed language and ability to communicate and ever since, humans have wondered about mortality. This is an existential question. It is only in the last 50 years that we’ve come to grips with the underlying biology of why we age and what eventually causes death. A lot of things are happening in the field. And at the same time, there’s also an enormous amount of hype in the field because there’s a lot of private investment. There are people who want to extend lifespan. Societies are growing older around the world. So, I wanted to discuss all that and felt there was a need for someone who’s a molecular biologist but who also doesn’t have a vested interest in the field. My work on protein synthesis is related to one of the central causes of ageing. So, you can think of me as somebody who works in an area close to ageing, but I don’t work on ageing myself. That also makes me less, I would say, ideological or biased.”
Breakthrough Prize: “[It] celebrates the research achievements of the world’s top scientists, awarding more than $15 million in prizes annually. Each Breakthrough Prize is $3 million and presented in the fields of Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics, and Mathematics. Additionally, each year New Horizons Prizes in Physics and Mathematics ($100,000) are awarded to outstanding early-career researchers, as well as the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize ($50,000) that recognizes women mathematicians who have recently completed PhDs and produced important results.”
