Memos by Brian Swichkow
- Home Assistant
Home Assistant is free, open-source home-automation software that runs locally to monitor and control smart-home devices from thousands of brands through a single, privacy-focused interface. First...
- BILL
BILL (NYSE: BILL), founded in 2006 as Bill.com by René Lacerte, is an American financial-operations software company that automates accounts payable, accounts receivable, and spend and expense...
- Divvy
Divvy, now operated as BILL Spend & Expense, is a spend-management platform that pairs free expense-management software with smart corporate cards, giving small and mid-sized businesses real-time...
- NanoLeaf
Nanoleaf is a Canadian smart-lighting company, founded in 2012 in Toronto, that designs energy-efficient LED products—most recognizably its modular, touch-reactive light panels—for the connected...
- Foundation for Intentional Community
Foundation for Intentional Community is a United States 501(c)(3) nonprofit that supports the intentional-communities movement—ecovillages, cohousing, communes, and cooperatives—serving the field as...
- Matter
Matter is a royalty-free, IP-based connectivity standard for smart home devices, developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance to let products from different manufacturers work together across...
- Millennial Pokemon
Millennial Pokemon is a term for the increasingly widespread use of location sharing with the Find My app, especially among millennials in southern California. By letting people reveal their...
- Rho
Rho is a fintech-company designed to unify business banking and financial management, specifically tailored for startups scaling through various growth stages. Rather than operating as a standalone...
- First Prints for a New Printer
The parts worth printing in a new machine's first week — the ones that make the printer easier to live with, for someone who just unboxed one. Part of Getting Started with 3D Printing. Print for the...
- 3D Printer Starter Tools
What to buy alongside a new enclosed FDM printer — for someone who just ordered one and would rather not spend money they do not have to. Part of Getting Started with 3D Printing. Buy it with the...
- Venting a 3D Printer
Getting print emissions out of the room you sit in — for anyone running an enclosed FDM printer somewhere they also live or work. Part of Getting Started with 3D Printing. Decide between filtering...
- Filament Storage and Drying
How to store filament so a spool opened today still prints six months from now — for anyone whose collection has outgrown the box it arrived in. Part of Getting Started with 3D Printing. Store an...
- Getting Started with 3D Printing
Getting started with 3D printing on a current enclosed machine is a purchasing decision, a storage decision, and a ventilation decision — not a tuning project. Printers now arrive calibrated and hold...
- Bambu Lab
Bambu Lab is a Shenzhen-based 3D printer manufacturer, founded in 2020 by former DJI engineers, known for fast, enclosed CoreXY desktop printers with automated calibration and multi-material...
- 3D Printing Filament Types
Quick-reference for the everyday Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) filaments — what each one is genuinely good at, where it fails, and the printer conditions it demands. Specialty and novelty materials...
- Kaiser Permanente
Kaiser Permanente is an integrated managed-care consortium founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney R. Garfield and headquartered in Oakland, California. It is one of the...
- The Trifecta of Moats
"The trifecta of moats is data, user experience, and community." — Vidya Narayanan The framework identifies three compounding defensibility layers that, when combined, create durable competitive...
- Bugonia
Bugonia is a 2025 satirical thriller directed by Yorgos Lanthimos in which two conspiracy-convinced men kidnap a pharmaceutical executive they believe is an alien. Written by Will Tracy and adapted...
- Harvey
Harvey is a privately held artificial-intelligence platform built for legal and professional-services work, founded in 2022. It applies large language models to the document-heavy tasks that fill a...
- have to
A wholly different way of thinking underlies “I can”, “I choose to”, and “I want to”. The story of powerlessness cannot be told with them. Reflections "Marshall Rosenberg suggests rephrasing every...