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Eight years of victory
The big story this year was last month's surprise acquisition of Pinboard's long-time nemesis Delicious. This illustrates the importance of always having a backup nemesis, an area where Pinboard leads the industry.
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 1,309 posts.
Tech Industry & Business
Any year
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ICOs and VCs
The Brave browser team concluded an ICO for their Basic Attention Token yesterday in about thirty seconds. This led to this tweet: The Basic Attention Token (BAT) ICO just raised 30 million dollars in 24 seconds. VC’s didn’t even have time to put on a sweater vest. — briantobal (@briantobal) May 31, 2017 Of course…
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Apple to EU: "Go fuck yourself"
There's a strain of anti-anti-monopolist that insists that they're not pro -monopoly – they're just realists who understand that global gigacorporations are too big to fail, too big to jail, and that governments can't hope to rein them in. Trying to regulate a tech giant, they say, is like trying to regulate the…
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The map is not the territory (2015)
The map is not the territory reminds us that our mental models of the world are not the same as the world itself. It cautions against confusing our abstractions and representations with the complex, ever-shifting reality they aim to describe.
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Why talent agents for engineers don’t exist
People often ask me if I’m a talent agent for engineers, in the same way that actors have talent agents in Hollywood. In a lot of ways, the way I work is closer to a talent agent than a traditional recruiter — rather than sourcing for specific positions, I try to find smart people first, […]
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Norvig's Law (2002)
In July 1999, there was a news article stating that PC usage had doubled yet again, reaching penetration of 50% of homes. People were hailing this as yet another sign of the inevitable climb of technology, but I saw it as a warning sign that the glass was half empty, and coined the following:
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The Long Shadow of Checks
A lot of more modern financial infrastructure follows the paths blazed by checks, at least in the U.S.
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This Apple-HTC Patent Thing
There are two aspects surrounding Apple’s patent litigation against HTC that demand further consideration. First, the severe problems with the U.S. patent system as a whole, particularly regarding software patents. Second, the strategic implications of Apple’s decision to file suit.
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The iPhone 5S and 5C
My review of Apple’s new iPhones.
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A Day of Communication at GitHub
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
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Why didn't we patent the spreadsheet? Were we stupid? (1999)
We didn't patent VisiCalc at Software Arts because you really couldn't patent software prior to 1981, and VisiCalc was shown to the public in 1979.
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Another Way of Looking at Lee Sedol vs. AlphaGo
Imagine a contest in which we are going to pit man against machine. But instead of measuring who is best in playing the game of ‘Go’ we are going to measure who is fastest. In the one corner: Human, all of 175 pounds of extremely well trained runner. And in the other corner, a Formula 1 racecar with a remote control…
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I’ve Made $216,688 From Products This Year
Hey, would you look at the time? It’s getting late. Just two months until the deeply introspective blog posts start comin’ hot & heavy. It’s still on
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Why Web Pages Suck
Everyone complains about web pages that suck, but the reality is that it is advertisers who call the shots. This should, at a minimum, put Facebook’s Instant Articles and Apple’s News a…
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The Brexit Possibility
Brexit’s downsides are clear; might tech help realize upsides in building something new based on a new world order?
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Leaked Google document: “We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI”
SemiAnalysis published something of a bombshell leaked document this morning: Google “We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI”. The source of the document is vague: The text below is …
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Why This Tech Bubble is Worse Than the Tech Bubble of 2000
Ah the good old days. Stocks up $25, $50, $100 more in a single day. Day trading was all the rage. Anyone and everyone you talked to had a story about how they had made a ton of money on such and such a stock. In an hour. Stock trading millionaires were being minted by the week, if not sooner.
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The first thing that ever sold online was pizza (2018)
If you happened to live in Santa Cruz in 1994 you could sit down at your computer, open up your […]
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People are realizing that degrowth is bad
The mad schemes degrowthers advocate are a fantasy that distracts us from real efforts to save the planet
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Pivoting
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
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A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy
What a week it's been as a Ruby Central Board Member.
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Ransomware gangs now outing victim businesses that don't pay
As if the scourge of ransomware wasn’t bad enough already: Several prominent purveyors of ransomware have signaled they plan to start publishing data stolen from victims who refuse to pay up. To make matters worse, one ransomware gang has now created a public Web site identifying recent victim companies that have…
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