Tag: Business

Nostalgic Business: Selling Websites on CDs in the Early 2000s | August 18 2026, 16:31

In the early 2000s, I had a “business” selling the internet at retail – on CDs. I would make agreements with content providers – websites like algolist, openbsd, and cooking recipes to place a “buy this site on CD” banner on every page, and in return I invested time in creating a static version with search functionality and recording it onto discs. Links from the pages led to .nadiske.ru, where there was a large order button and upsells from other projects, related and not. A percentage from each disc went to the content owner. Delivery was done by cash on delivery through the Russian Post (meaning, I sent the discs without prior payment), and I collected the money at the post office. The site effectively had two pages – a product list with checkboxes and an order form. However, there were as many sub-sites as there were partners – on each of them, the main product was listed first, and the rest were upsells. The idea was that since we’re already ordering, let’s get something else too”.

So, several interesting problems arose back then. How to match the money received with the orders posted? For each order, I dynamically formed a price – adding pennies so the price was unique. For the end customer, it made no difference whether they agreed to a price of 150 rubles or 150 rubles and 12 kopecks, but for me, it was convenient for matching. Together with the date, it was quite reliable.

The second problem was where to manage orders with statuses and the like. In the end, I chose Microsoft Access. It pulled XML with new orders from the website. I developed the whole system on Access in a couple of hours. It was ideal. By the way, has Access died out yet?

Interestingly, the top sellers were discs that I had produced just to expand the selection – Unixes and Linux. Understandably, there weren’t any links from partner websites to these, but they were bought as add-ons, and ultimately they topped the sales and were the easiest and cheapest to produce.

Also, I developed a search engine for the CD to search through this content. I don’t remember how, but back then it was possible to embed executable code in the browser that opened index.html from the disc. Either there were ASP inserts and DLLs, or something of that nature.

I closed the project when it became clear that decent internet would eventually reach the regions, and the demand for discs would someday wane. Plus, everything was heading in that direction. Additionally, the disks required updates, and it was a pity to invest more effort and time, especially considering the first point.

Exploring the Booming Business of Pet Waste Removal Services | August 13 2026, 02:05

By the way, a car with the logo Pet Waste Removal periodically drives up to our neighbor’s place. It was a revelation to discover that in the USA there is an entire niche—special services that clean up lawns from dog poop so that little children can more safely run around the same lawn. There are dozens of such companies around me. I never imagined such a thing existed.

(But the funny thing is that the neighbor has a cat. And here my imagination really took a hit. I don’t know, maybe he just has a friend working there, but there are litter box services. They come once or twice a week, completely change the filler, disinfect the litter box, and take away the waste)

So, Pet Waste Removal is indeed a huge industry with a rich internal culture. They have their own professional association — aPaws (Association of Professional Animal Waste Specialists), which holds an annual International Pooper Scooper Week” in April. Some franchises cost tens of thousands of dollars to join, and the market is estimated at hundreds of millions. The logic is simple: the average dog produces about 100 kg of waste per year, there are nearly 90 million dogs in the US, and most owners genuinely hate this part of dog ownership.

There’s even a surreal branch—PooPrints service. Residential complexes and HOAs require residents to submit their dogs’ DNA to a database, and when an “unidentified” pile is found on the lawn, it’s sent for genetic testing to identify the offending owner. Fines range from $150 to $500.

Our Yuki has never (or seems like once in five years) done his business in the yard. Well, never at home, even as a puppy, and never once made a puddle. So he, too, looks at all this with puzzlement. And in the US, dogs are let out through a door, they do their thing, run around— and back inside. Many dogs in the suburbs for years do not know what it’s like to walk on a leash in the usual sense familiar to us.

Redefining Recruitment: AI Agents as the Future of Resumes | August 11 2026, 20:19

I have published a new article about how the interaction between companies and candidates for positions within these companies may look. The main thesis is that we’ve sat too long with these PDF resumes. It feels like a greeting from the last century. There is an interesting trend – essentially, interactive resumes in the form of AI agents for candidates and AI agents for companies, communicating with each other 24/7. Agents in the sense that celebrities and athletes have them. I was quite surprised that there is no movement in this direction, even though technologically, it seems, the required level has been reached.

https://hybrismart.com/2026/08/11/the-cv-as-an-ai-artifact/

https://hybrismart.com/2026/08/11/the-cv-as-an-ai-artifact/

From Bar Joke to Millionaire: The Unbelievable Success of the Pet Rock | August 05 2026, 00:55

Today I found out that the most successful product of Christmas 1975 was a rock. Just a regular rock. Gary Dahl, an advertiser from California, was sitting in a bar and listening to his friends complain about their pets – feeding them, walking them, cleaning up after them – and jokingly said that he had the perfect pet – a rock. It doesn’t need feeding, doesn’t poop, doesn’t die. The joke turned into a business plan over the course of the evening. Dahl bought smooth pebbles from Rosarito Beach in Mexico for about a cent apiece and sold them for $3.95 each. Every rock was shipped in a cardboard carrying box – with air holes “for breathing” and straw bedding inside. And here’s the kicker: the product wasn’t the rock. The product was the accompanying 32-page care and training manual, written stone-faced (pardon the pun): commands like sit” and lie down” are learned instantly, come here” and fetch” are a bit harder, and it executes the command “die” brilliantly.

Within a few months, over a million units were sold, Dahl became a millionaire, he was written about in magazines and invited on television. By early 1976 it was all over, warehouses remained filled with unsold rocks, and attempts to replicate the success with other novelty products failed. Dahl died in 2015, but the Pet Rock brand lives on: the rock in its original packaging can still be purchased today.

(How I came across this. I am currently reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and came across the phrase “They were the Pet Rock of parenting.” – referring to Amy’s parents. I did not understand it and went to google what this Pet Rock was.)

The Rise and Fall of the Pet Rock Craze | August 05 2026, 00:55

Today I learned that the most successful Christmas product of 1975 was a rock. Just a regular rock. Gary Dahl, an advertiser from California, was sitting in a bar listening to his friends complain about their pets — feeding them, walking them, cleaning up after them — and jokingly said that he had the perfect pet: a rock. It doesn’t need to be fed, doesn’t poop, doesn’t die. What began as a joke that evening turned into a business plan. Dahl bought smooth pebbles from Rosarito Beach in Mexico for about a cent apiece and sold them for $3.95 each. Each rock came in a cardboard carrying case — with “breathing” holes and straw bedding inside. And here’s the main point: the product wasn’t the rock. The product was the accompanying 32-page care and training manual, written with a stone-faced (pardon the pun) seriousness: the commands “sit” and “stay” are learned instantaneously by the pet, “come here” and “fetch” not so much, and it performs the command “die” brilliantly.

In a few months, more than a million units were sold, Dahl became a millionaire, and he was written about in magazines and invited on television shows. By the beginning of 1976, it was all over, warehouses remained with unsold rocks, and attempts to repeat success with other novelty products failed. Dahl died in 2015, but the Pet Rock brand lives on: you can still buy a rock in its branded box today.

(How I found this out. I’m currently reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and came across the phrase “They were the Pet Rock of parenting.” – about Amy’s parents. I didn’t understand it and went to Google what this Pet Rock was.)

The Invisible Merchants of Spain: The Manteros of Top Manta | July 31 2026, 18:59

Here in Spain, they are called manteros (mantas sellers)—from the Spanish word manta (blanket or cover). And the process of such illegal street vending is called top manta.

Since their activity is illegal, they have developed a rigorous system of alerts. As soon as one of the vendors spots the police, they signal (often yelling the code word “Agua!”—water). After this, all the manteros on the street in a split second gather their blankets into bags and melt into the crowd. If someone had managed to give them money – apparently, they will run together with them.

The vast majority of manteros are migrants from sub-Saharan African countries (most often from Senegal, Gambia, and Mali). They are not doing this for an easy profit: most of them are status sin papeles (without documents), making legal employment in Spain impossible.

In Spain, the police fight not only the supply but also the demand. By law, if the police catch you in the act of buying a bag or sunglasses from such a blanket, you, as a buyer, can be fined up to several hundred euros.

In Barcelona, the vendors have united into the “Union of Street Vendors” (Sindicato Popular de Vendedores Ambulantes) and made a brilliant marketing move. They registered their own legal brand of clothing and footwear, calling it Top Manta. Now they produce quality sneakers and T-shirts, giving migrants the opportunity to leave the streets and work legally.

Mind-Blowing Facts About SQLite: From Naval Beginnings to Mars | June 18 2026, 12:48

Today I learned some mind-blowing and brain-blasting facts about SQLite — the most widely used database in the world (A trillion installations. In every smartphone, browser, vehicle, A350 aircraft, even on Mars). So, it was born on the military destroyer USS Oscar Austin. It’s developed by JUST THREE people. Open source. But. You can’t just walk into this open source – it’s invitation-only and through an affidavit. The company is called Hwaci (“Hipp, Wyrick & Company”). Also involved in music (founder’s wife is a musician). Check out the website. Office — in a residential house in Charlotte. 600+ lines of tests for every line of code. 100% branch coverage and MC/DC. That is, they simulate OS crashes, power outages, I/O errors, and memory shortages. The main test suite is proprietary and closed. Imagine that, open source with paid private tests. Want access — join the consortium for $120,000 a year.

And the strangest thing — the spirit of the project is almost monastic. Instead of a Code of Conduct, they have a Code of Ethics, taken from chapter 4 of the Rule of Saint Benedict (literally 1500-year-old “tools for good deeds”). At the beginning of each source file instead of a legal notice — a blessing: “May you do good and not evil…”.

(They have not yet found a suitable version control system and wrote their own for themselves — Fossil (based on SQLite, of course). And their parser-generator Lemon is also homegrown. Just like Linus with Git.)

AI Revolutionizing Decision-Making in Sports and Business | June 14 2026, 02:06

Today, I pondered how AI is changing age-old, even centuries-old concepts about how people should make decisions in various situations, especially in sports and probably in business. It’s far more interesting than just automation. It’s more about fixing bugs in how people have long considered something to be correct and true.

For example, in the game of “Go,” it was believed for decades that invading the corner (3-3 point) was crude and premature. AI then proved otherwise: early capture of the corner is efficient, and chasing after “beautiful” shapes loses to pragmatic control over the center. Or consider the famous 37th move by AlphaGo in the match against Lee Sedol, which was very strange: people did not play that move because they thought it was “playing into empty space.” It was first taken for an AI mistake, but then recognized as brilliant (there are plenty of analyses on YT). In esports, OpenAI Five demonstrated that aggressive early buyback of fallen heroes in “Dota,” which people considered a waste of gold, works.

Pure mathematics almost erased the mid-range shot from the NBA: it has an accuracy of about 40-42% and yields ~0.8 points per attempt, while a three-point shot with even 35% accuracy brings 1.05 points per attempt, and clubs have restructured for pure profit. Well, this is not AI, but mathematics and statistics. The under-basket shot (lay-up/dunk) turned out to be statistically the most effective.

In soccer, there’s the xG – expected goals metric; AI debunked shots from 35 meters and from outside the penalty area as ineffective (chance of scoring ~5% and 20% respectively) and ultimately teams patiently bring the ball into the penalty area, where the xG of the shot increases to 15-40%. It turns out, DeepMind had a project with Liverpool, a system advising coaches on corners – TacticAI. Expert assessors in 90% of cases preferred TacticAI’s recommendations over the tactical setups used in practice.

So, interestingly, if this continues, will a team or athlete using more powerful AI have an advantage due to more successful methods than a team that does not have such knowledge? Will AI game methods be so complex that they can’t be “stolen” to another team through outside observation – just like in the case with Go?

The Evolution of Telegrams: A Luxury Legal Service in the USA | June 07 2026, 15:04

WHOA, in the US, telegrams haven’t yet been blocked, and they have transformed into an insanely expensive elite legal service, monopolized by American Telegram and iTelegram (both successors of Western Union). An urgent cable costs $34.95 base plus $0.79 per word. Additionally, they officially charge a $20.00 surcharge for home delivery, $25.00 for sending on a weekend, and up to $200.00 if you dictate the text to a live operator. Even sending a regular e-mail through their service will set you back $14.95.

The main source of income is the emergency cancellation of commercial contracts under the federal “3-day rule.” By law, contracts are terminated the second a telegram is sent. Companies are required to recognize the timestamp of American Telegram, authorized by the FCC, which provides ironclad protection in court. For 100% legal force, the service cunningly imposes on clients a delivery report and an archive copy — at $12.95 for each checkbox.

Their rates still include astonishing rules: “a word” is considered any group of characters up to 7 signs (more than that counts as two words), and a fee of $10.00 is automatically imposed for text in any language other than English. Special “War Zone” rates for messages to soldiers still apply ($20.00 base + $0.89 per word) and international cablegrams to sea vessels are sent strictly at the “risk and peril of the sender” with no guarantee of response.

Imagine, to save money, entire code books were published in the early 20th century that replaced complex thoughts with a combination of letters that looked like a word (link in the comments). POTUS and SCOTUS are from there.