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Dell is on a roll with the XPS

2026-07-15 06:04:28

We've been buying servers from Dell since the 2000s at 37signals, but I was never too impressed with their personal computers. They either felt cheap or enterprisey to me. Like they were made exclusively for people who are handed standard-issue laptops by corporate, and not something discerning techies would buy with their own money. But the new XPS line has completely changed my perception.

I've now spent several months with the 2026 XPS 14 and 16, and last week I added the MacBook Neo-fighting XPS 13, and all I can say is that these machines are fantastic! Great chips, great screens, great build quality. Superb packages.

Which is very satisfying to see because there are few American business leaders I respect more than Michael Dell. He's been running his company for over forty years now, and he's still calling the shots! So to see the company pull a turnaround like this, so many years into its run, is very inspiring.

I've written about the XPS 14 before, and as I noted back in April, a good portion of the credit for these new Dell machines being really good belongs to Intel. The 18A process is paying big dividends for both companies (and the rest of the PC makers).

But Dell could still have stuck these chips into forgettable machines, and I wouldn't have had any interest. In fact, they did! Just last year, for the 2025 model year, they shipped new XPS machines with awful capacitive-touch function and esc keys. Two years after Apple had finally thrown in the towel on the ill-fated Touch Bar on their MacBooks!

Dell also killed the XPS branding last year, and went with the truly uninspired Plus/Premium/Pro copycat branding. Like some cheap Chinese knockoff. It was embarrassing, to be honest.

But unlike Apple, which introduced that cursed Touch Bar back in 2016, and then crammed it down everyone's throat for seven long years, Dell rebooted this nonsense almost immediately. Gave us back real function and esc keys, and revived the XPS branding.

You could argue that they should have learned from Apple's mistakes to avoid their own, but the next best thing is surely a quick reversal. And what a reversal it's been.

As I said, I've spent months using an XPS 14 as my main machine. It's been so good I even gave up on using a dedicated desktop machine. Now I just run everything off the XPS 14, connected to an Apple XDR 6K 32" (nobody has yet managed to beat this, and I've owned it for years). It's a great, simple setup.

The XPS 14 is an expensive machine, though. Not more so than its direct competitors, but still, at $2,799 for the 358H/32GB/1TB/OLED unit, it's a lot. I'd spend that in a heartbeat, but not everyone is going to drop that kind of cash on a laptop. Especially if they already have a powerful desktop.

That's where the new XPS 13 comes in. It's part of the PC industry's answer to Apple's new MacBook Neo, which analysts all thought would catch the other side flat-footed. Well, surprise, it didn't! Apple charges $699 for an 8GB RAM/256GB SSD Neo, whereas Dell wants $699 for 8GB RAM/512GB SSD, and even offers a 16GB RAM/512GB SSD version for $899 (there's no RAM upgrade possible for the Neo).

But matching Apple on specs and price wasn't the surprise; it was besting them with a nicer screen and keyboard, and meeting them on build quality. The XPS 13 has a great 120Hz screen (something you don't even get on a MacBook Air at twice the money!), a superb keyboard w/ backlighting (also missing on the Neo!), and weighs 20% less at just 1 kg with every bit as nice an aluminum chassis.

Now I'd forgive anyone their skepticism about 8GB RAM and Windows. Microsoft isn't exactly known for creating a responsive operating system on modest specs these days, but who cares, we have Linux!

Of course, I've been running Omarchy on this thing for the past week, and it's frankly fantastic. As long as you understand the limitations! The Intel Wildcat CPU uses the same performance cores as the full Panther Lake chip, so single-threaded snappiness is all there, but it only has two of those, and then another four low-powered cores. So six total, but not a mix that's conducive to running big multi-core workloads, like local CI.

This is where the XPS 13 meets the moment. As the agent craze has been taking over software development, you might have seen any of the many memes about half-cracked laptops, just so the agents won't halt with a closed lid. The obvious answer is of course to run these agents off a home server in the closet, connect them to something as slim and light as an XPS 13 over Tailscale, and then control it all over SSH.

Used like this, you get a machine that runs a browser as fast as anything on the PC (thanks to those full-speed performance cores) while costing a fraction of a new top-spec machine, and having better close-the-lid ergonomics. Win-win-hurray.

When I posted my enthusiasm on X about this new XPS 13, I got at least three replies with "Is this an ad???". No. This is not an ad. I bought the XPS 13 with my own money, and frankly, you couldn't pay me any sum to use a laptop I didn't like. I did try Dell's laptops a few years back, didn't like what I saw, and ended up spending a few years using Framework computers instead (they're still great too).

I'm simply excited that the PC isn't giving up without a fight. That Linux has been on a run among early adopters. That companies like Intel and Dell are here to keep Apple honest. Competition is great. It was Apple's M chips that rejuvenated the laptop market, and they held a supreme lead for years. So it's lovely to see Intel, Dell, and others actually being ready to meet the challenge from the low-cost Neo right out of the gate.

So I tip my hat, once again, to Michael Dell. Forty-plus years at the helm, not too proud to pivot quickly, and now the maker of my favorite Linux laptops. Well done, sir.

The will to power will return

2026-07-13 02:46:19

In the 1980s, France started 43 nuclear reactors across 14 sites. On average, each reactor took just seven years to build. Forty years later, all but one of these reactors are still running, and they continue to produce nearly half of France's electricity.

Can you imagine France doing something like this today? Or any other country in the West for that matter? The past is a foreign country. But why is this? Why did the West lose the will to power?

A popular meme would explain it as the inescapable good-times-hard-times circle: Hard times (WWII) create good men, good men create good times (Les Trente Glorieuses), good times create weak men (The End of History), weak men create hard times (now).

The Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe offers a theory for this wheel of time by tracing the last five centuries to the same four recurring phases: High, Awakening, Unraveling, Crisis.

It was the good men of France's hard times who planned the country's incredible nuclear build out. This hero generation, as Strauss and Howe calls them, planted the trees of power that would provide shade for several generations to come. It seems inconceivable to expect similar bold plans and action from the current cohort of the European political establishment.

But The Fourth Turning argues this was ever thus. The decline that always sets in once we enter the unraveling phase of the century (or saeculum, as the book calls it) inevitably leads to a crisis. We're on the cusp/in one of those right now. So pessism is perhaps a rational response.

And yet, the night is darkest before the dawn, and the current Crisis is likely to lead to another High, if the past five centuries and Strauss and Howe's theory are any guide. If so, we should expect the next hero generation to reject this managed decline of our present turning, and once again taking up the mantle of ambition.

The circle of the saeculum is both a prophecy and a roadmap. We're not supposed to live like this forever: weak, ineffectual. This too shall pass. And when it does, once the Crisis becomes another High, we'll marvel at the time wasted, but with the pity due a pathetic period of the past, not from within an eternal prison of decline.

We just have to make it out of the current Crisis alive. The last one brought us a total war. Would be nice if we could get back to the High without something quite as devastating, but don't bet on it.

But Y

2026-07-12 07:41:48

It's no mystery to me why the Tesla Model Y is the world's best-selling car. As a total package, I could make a fair argument that it's simply because it is the world's best car.

I'm no stranger to Teslas at this point. We've owned a Model S Plaid, the Model X we traded in on the Y, and we still have the Cyberbeast too. But as impressive as all those cars are, the Y towers above them in several key respects, but first and foremost, value.

The premium all-wheel-drive white-on-white seven-seater we just got was right around $55,000. That's not exactly cheap, but it's less than half of what we spent on any of the other Teslas. It's a quarter of what we spent on the Porsche Taycan Turbo S. It's a sixth of what a new Aston Martin DBX would set you back. And, if I could just have one car, I'd pick the Y over all of them.

The first thing you notice coming from earlier Tesla models is just how well-built the new Model Y is. The gigapress process that produces these new cars results in a package that feels reassuringly solid: no squeaks, no rattles, no flex. This couldn't be said about any of the earlier S and X models we had.

But compared to other makes, it's not exactly revolutionary that a brand-new car feels well put together. Many other makes have managed to perfect that process over the decades. Tesla has now merely leapfrogged itself to the front of the class. But what very much is revolutionary is just how effortless owning the Y feels.

It starts with entry and exit. Once you've paired your phone, you never think about keys or starting or stopping the car again. It just happens. There's no on/off button, no starter, no unlock. Again, other makes have made attempts at this, but none that I've tried is even close to the effortlessness that Tesla's superior software stack is able to deliver.

Speaking of software: It just works. Every time. Going anywhere. You don't miss Apple CarPlay or Android Auto for a second. The navigation, the Spotify integration, the setup. Everything feels like it was written by a leading American software company. Not subcontractors out of India or firmware developers forced to deal with user interfaces.

But where everything comes together is FSD. The self-driving technology that Tesla pushed against all odds for over a decade is finally here in an utterly magical incarnation. The car not just drives itself anywhere, it drives better than almost any human I've ever been driven by has been able to do. Its ability to anticipate traffic patterns, hit the perfect deceleration curve towards a light, slow down for even minor speed bumps, and gracefully curve around pedestrians or cyclists is nearly unbelievable.

As in, you'd be forgiven the suspicion that there must be a human driver hidden somewhere controlling the car over the internet. But it's just AI, and it's gotten fiendishly better over just the past year or so. All in service of that effortless experience.

In fact, I'd go so far as to call it a luxurious experience. Like you're being escorted by the Queen's own driver to your desired destination. The Queen wouldn't bother with keys or rattles or driving. She'd just get in, be driven, and arrive fresh for a waive. This is the best approximation you can buy for mortal money today.

But then, unlike the old X, it's actually also surprisingly delightful to grab the wheel yourself, hustle it down a hill, lean it into some fun corners, and surge out on that wave of endless torque that electric motors always deliver so well.

No, it's not a Porsche 911, but I'd say it's 90% as fun as a Taycan, at a fraction of the price, in a package that's endlessly more practical, and — did I mention this already? — can drive itself once you're done with the spirited part of the journey.

The Tesla Model Y is a triumph of capitalism. Making the best self-driving technology available to the masses at a price that's accessible to the middle class in a car that even billionaires would appreciate.

Andy Warhol captured this egalitarian celebration well with this sentiment: “A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.”

The Tesla Model Y is an incredible car for nearly everyone.

European Delusions & Danish Drones

2026-06-19 19:03:21

Europe is finally waking up from many decades of naive pacifism. While the continent is loath to give America credit, this is largely where it's due, as Trump has pulled back on blanket security guarantees. Well, that and a major war on its doorstep going on four years now.

That's the thing about delusions. Their upkeep seems free until reality intrudes. And that reality has finally gate-crashed the European continent with all the tact and timing of a drunken sailor. So now what?

"Buy, buy, buy" was what the Danish prime minister declared last year, as she committed another 50 billion kroner to buy weaponry in that year and this. But buy what and from whom? Sadly, there aren't many top European weapon and equipment makers ready, as the continent's defense industry has been starved of investment for thirty years.

As late as 2018, nearly two-thirds of European investors excluded companies involved in conventional weapons production due to ESG considerations, per Eurosif. And this has been going on since the early 1990s.

As always, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now. And this also applies to the tech industry because the next war will depend on it more than ever.

Like drones. They've become the main vector in the war in Ukraine. Fiber-optic cables have covered the battlefield like a spiderweb, and many of the recent advances on the Ukrainian side have been attributed to their superior drone operations.

We need drones in Europe. Lots of them. In all shapes and sizes. Made by European companies, built on open-source platforms, and with local supply chains. And that's exactly what the Danish startup Upteko has been working on for nearly a decade, and is now ready to scale up.

So I invested in Upteko. It's outside my normal, boring invest-in-what-you-know strategy of putting money in Danish SaaS startups, but also not that far away. The future of drones is as much in software as in propulsion. And I know something about that.

But really, it wasn't so much about knowledge as it was motivation. And nobody has brought more of a motivating example to the tech-meets-defense question than Palmer Luckey. His Anduril company is infusing modern weapon-making with the zest and innovation of a Valley startup. It's sorely needed, and deeply inspiring.

Europe needs its own Andurils. Not because it can't also continue to buy systems from the Americans, but because a good ally is self-sufficient, equally inventive, and armed to the teeth with a diverse fleet of awesome, native weapons.

The Rape of Britain

2026-06-17 22:19:34

Rupert Lowe, member of the British Parliament and leader of the Restore Britain party, released The Rape Gang Inquiry yesterday. It details the industrial-scale sexual atrocities committed by predominantly Pakistani Muslims against mostly White British girls in the United Kingdom over decades. It's the stuff of nightmares.

In fact, it's so grim, so vile, and so dark that I can't in good conscience recommend reading the graphic details directly (even just a summary of the accounts is traumatizing). But at the same time, you can't look away either. The report estimates that 250,000 British girls have been victims of these rape gangs over the decades. It's an unimaginable scale of horrors.

The closest comparison to these accounts is the atrocities committed during times of war, but somehow this seems worse: The terror did not come as a result of losing an armed conflict, but aided and abetted by the national institutions sworn to serve and protect. From the report:

Police forces ignored repeated reports, criminalised victims instead of perpetrators, destroyed evidence, and allowed known rapists to walk free on bail.

Social care services undermined protective parents, placed children in trafficking hubs inside children’s homes, closed cases despite clear indicators of exploitation, and retaliated against whistleblowers.

The NHS recorded genital injuries, multiple sexually transmitted infections in children as young as 13, pregnancies caused by rape, and suicide attempts, yet discharged victims back to
their abusers without safeguarding referrals or trauma care.

Schools observed older men collecting girls at the gates, heard disclosures of rape on school premises, and responded by excluding victims rather than protecting them.

Taxi licensing authorities renewed permits for drivers who formed the logistical backbone of the networks and collapsed in the face of organised protests when basic safety measures were proposed.

But that's the collective, general assignment of complicity. The specific examples are so much worse. I promise I won't haunt you with more, but here's just one example from the report:

When Fiona's mother called the police to report her daughter missing and mentioned a history of abuse by Asian men, the call handler told her: “You can’t describe them as Asian men because that’s racist. You should just be glad your child is being taught a different culture.” On one occasion, a police officer returned Fiona to the house where the abuse was occurring and told the men to “have fun with her.” On another occasion, police instructed the abusers that if they could persuade Fiona to sign herself out of care, the police would stop bothering them.

Now let me touch on two related topics. First, the BBC reported yesterday that trust in traditional media is plummeting in many places, but the fall in Britain has been particularly steep:

The research published on Tuesday suggests that public trust worldwide is at 37%, three points down on this time last year. In the UK, it has fallen by five points to 30% - 20 points lower than 10 years ago.

So in 2016, half of Brits had trust in traditional media, like the BBC. Now that's down to 30%. Grim. So imagine my surprise when I couldn't find a single mention of The Rape Gang Inquiry on the BBC's news site from neither yesterday nor today. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce a connection between narrative-driven coverage (and absence of it!) and lower trust.

Second is how the UK wants to track everyone's social media use under the guise of restricting access to those under 16. Which requires every adult to verify they're of age by providing a digital ID, passport, or credit card. Thus ending any hope of anonymity online. All wrapped in Protect The Children dressing.

So a state that not only failed to prevent these sexual atrocities, but in many cases abetted the horrors, now wants to end anonymity online to "protect children", so it can prosecute even more regime critics? The same country that leads the world with 12,000 yearly arrests for online speech already? It's painfully on the nose.

It's tragic what the Brits have had and continue to endure. They deserve so much better. Especially these abused children detailed in Lowe's report. And making them wait much longer is a dangerous cocktail.

A pond of interesting problems

2026-06-03 15:10:51

The great joy of having built a successful business that employs a broad team of talented people is that I get to fish for exactly the kind of problems that most interest me, most of the time.

Usually, this coincides well with the needs of the business. When we moved out of the cloud, I spent months getting Kamal off the ground, so we didn't have to get mired in the complexity of Kubernetes. Fun problem to solve!

And of course, the origin story of Ruby on Rails is that Basecamp gave birth to it all back in 2003. Because I simply wanted Ruby to work well for the web, and we needed a platform to build the business.

But sometimes it's also a bit further afield. We had our big clash with Apple over the App Store's monopoly abuses back in 2020, but it wasn't until 2024 that I severed our exclusivity with the Mac on the engineering side by moving to Linux, and ultimately building Omarchy.

I don't always get to choose, of course. There are occasionally urgent problems that just need our, and therefore my, full attention as a company, or humdrum issues that I just happen to be best qualified to tackle. But this is increasingly rare because of all those great people we've managed to assemble at 37signals.

And that's how it should be! Building a successful business should yield dividends beyond just the financial ones. It should afford you more opportunity to press your comparative advantage, so you spend most of your time on the projects that stimulate a little Call of the Wild.

Never to the point of being too good for anything, mind you. Taking out the trash is still everyone's job some of the time. But mostly, I want to be sitting by the pond of interesting problems, fishing for the ones that catch my eye and hook my motivation.

Who could wish to retire from that?

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