iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 7h

Just had the biggest IT win of my life when I helped my kid solve the mystery of the Roku TV that just wouldn't work. I got to pass on the knowledge of Turn It Off And Turn It Back On Again to the new generation and it was beautiful...

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Apple News really is the underdiscussed winner of 2020s journalism. Absolutely massive amount of readers. Love to see it.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The big question: 3-hour podcasts that keep your interest the whole time or half hour podcasts you can finish in a single sitting?

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Love how the rise of GEO and LLM-optimized web copy is leading to a resurgence of human-written longform articles and technical writing. Brilliant.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Today's thank you is to Civilization, Sim City and Transportation Tycoon for tricking me into learning about infrastructure and interconnected systems when I was an impressionable kid 😂. Still paying dividends all these years later...

static.klipy.com

Sim City SNES Title Screen

ALT: Sim City SNES Title Screen

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Parenting things I'm grateful for, part 700: - Movie theatres with $7 tickets - Indoor foam basketballs - Every time a picky eater tries something new How about you all?

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Brooklyn Brewery NA beers = Absolute works of booze-free art. Purchased at Binny's in Chicago. 10/10 would drink the hell out of them.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Kevin Kelly argues the next frontier for AI is understanding the physical world and built environments just as well as they understand the written word. What do you think? kevinkelly.substack.com/p/worldbuild...

kevinkelly.substack.com

Worldbuilding with Spatial Intelligence

The next stage in the development of AIs is to give them spatial intelligence.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Highly recommend resetting with a Palm Springs/Joshua Tree/Los Angeles vacation if you can. A++.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

performative outrage social media posting vs polished PR posting vs talking to a small audience posting vs caffeinated unhinged posting. only one will win.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I worked in journalism for years. I know so many colleagues who left the industry in the 2010s & 2020s because of job collapse. The ones who THRIVED did it because they knew how to translate their skills (and journalism teaches you a lot of them!) over to very different fields.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

AWS customers going multicloud for backup, Google Cloud ups Claude integrations and cloud on the Pluralsight Podcast. All this and more in this week's Scale:

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

My 7-year-old son just discovered Scooby Doo, asked why the monsters/villains are all so similar, and we just started a home storytelling school right here. Love it.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Truth: The two silent engines driving half of all software updates are European Union and state of California regulations. Compliance, compliance, compliance.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Just remembering the freelance journalism world ~2010ish when I could make an easy $1000 doing a travel listicle for a print mag. Lord o Lord how times have changed.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Azure pricing changes for non-US customers, new info on Meta's rumored AWS competitor + more. All that and more this week in Pluralsight Scale:

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

SaaS gets disrupted by vibe coding: 20-70 employee firms are swapping Salesforce/Hubspot/ServiceNow for Claude, per a sharp piece by Laura Bratton in The Information. Cost savings are real. So is the extra dev time. Curious what others are seeing.... www.theinformation.com/articles/sma...

theinformation.com

How Small Firms Use Claude to Quit Salesforce

The world’s largest companies may not be hurriedly replacing traditional enterprise applications with vibe coded alternatives, but some smaller firms are. Greenleaf Management, an Atlanta-based real e...

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

The new house has old DSL and Y2K-era ethernet hardwired into the walls. Old school satellite internet dish on the roof from the pre-broadband everywhere days. Some serious nerdery took place here and I'm all for it.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Linux on Azure *finally* gets easier and new details on the new Google-Blackstone cloud company. All this + more in Pluralsight Scale.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Cory Doctorow on Twitter/X: "People still use Twitter. Hundreds of millions of people are wading through the enshittification, which rises every day, and continuing to use the service..."

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Had a great time visiting Chicago AI Week and learning about the latest developments in responsible enterprise and public sector AI. 💯

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Some light Cory Doctorow reading for the weekend.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Victor Frankl gets it: "Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you."

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Time for the semi-annual hello post. My name is Neal, I'm based in suburban Chicago, and I write about cloud computing for a living. In my past work lives, I worked as a business and technology journalist, an advertising copywriter, a ghostwriter, and a bunch of other things.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Shoutout to the team at Pluralsight for some great sticker swag from our ambassador program. Digging it.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Looking behind the scenes at AWS' networking tech stack, inside the Anthropic-Google Cloud deal and more in this week's Pluralsight Scale. Read in full here: www.pluralsight.com/technews

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Spring pea galette and espresso from the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Chicago AKA the Best Starbucks You'll Ever Go To.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Email pitches generated with AI about AI, AI slop covering Reddit and LinkedIn and X and Threads, 2020s Clippy showing up in all my software. That said, I still love hearing about *real ways* people use AI to accomplish cool business, personal and creative stuff.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

I swear, Apple's greatest victory was becoming just as much of a lifestyle brand as they are a tech company.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Write with your human, weirdo, unique voice. Internet's flooded with AI-generated slop and Mad Libs SEO copy spam. Basically... Write for people, get seen by people. That's it.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

OK what did homeowners do before YouTube videos for repairs. Serious question.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Today's tip: Don't think of AI as your friend or your companion. Think of it as a very smart spreadsheet you use by talking to it.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Chag Pesach Sameach. Enjoy the fanciest matzoh ball soup I ever had (LA, 2010s?) and a vintage Singable Seder CD. Wishing you and yours a great Passover.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

The Daily Bugle newsroom at the Spider-Man ride in Universal Studios Orlando is the best.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

"We have Malort" - The Berghoff at O'Hare Airport does Chicago breakfast right.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Somewhere along the line, social media changed from trading ideas, learning new things and meeting new people into tribalism & performing your identity in public. The way you use social media is up to you... Do it in a way that will make your life better when you wake up tommorrow. Anyway, carry on.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

If you work in any sort of B2B journalism -- tech, business, you name it -- most important thing you can do is get your audience news that *is materially relevant to them and helps them at work* Random TikToks and Twitter feeds don't help them... But you can.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Talk to your neighbors. Grab a coffee with them. Tell them terrible dad jokes. That is all.

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Reposted by Neal Ungerleider

THE FAR SIDE DAILY @bot.cowtools.org · 09/03/2026

“Wait a minute! Isn’t anyone here a real sheep?”

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

This week in Scale, my cloud computing roundup for Pluralsight: Drones attack AWS data centers in UAE, Bahrain, the best cloud data platforms, AWS VPC Encryption Control pricing announced. Subscribe link in comments:

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

You're doomscrolling, I'm playing two hours straight of online speed chess with strangers in a country I never heard of. We are not the same.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Relearn the fine art of boredom. Use the app timers on your phone aggressively. Lock down your social media and video and games to 1 hour a day total. Stand in line at the store without looking at your phone. Wait for the train without watching TikTok. Your soul will thank you.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Congrats, we now live in the weird sci fi future.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

...And Pluralsight now has a podcast! We interview Will Thalheimer, founder of Work-Learning Research on why workplace training often fails and *how to make learning stick*. Check it out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or your favorite podcast platform. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDR9...

youtube.com

Why Most Training Fails (and How to Make Learning Stick) | Dr. Will Thalheimer

YouTube video by Pluralsight

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Lunch at a mystery location in downtown Chicago. Can you guess the spot? Hint: Known for their Reubens.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Yo, internet stranger. I hope you're having a great day and I hope you know you have more influence over your life. than you think.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Journalism industry vet here. Your friendly reminder that 90% of the stories you see or hear were originally pitched by a PR person. That is all.

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Neal Ungerleider @nealunger.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Being a teenager in 1990s NYC basically meant living on $1.25 pizza slices, Jamaican beef patties, Chinese Mexican food and Halal cart chicken and rice. It was the best.

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