[hunterjrj]

Well, this story was posted in 2011 and although Yegge doesn't specify a date, I think it's safe to assume that the story took place years before the blog was posted as Yegge had by then already moved on to Google.

So this means that Bezos was thinking about data mining and machine learning in a presentation about generalist engineers at least 1/2 decade before this became common place.

[nikofeyn]

that still doesn't really hold up. i mean amazon was dealing with massive data a lot sooner than most. it's a pretty natural instinct to think those (not all that young) fields are important. and generally the story makes no sense. yegge acted like it was an obvious thing, immediately saying oh yea i forgot that. how is that alien-level genius at play? bezos may be smart, but yegge's exposition does nothing to demonstrate that. it's hard to believe yegge got famous as a writer.