Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 126 posts.
Thunderbird: Stability and Community Innovation
Thunderbird provides an open-source, cross-platform email alternative for those of us who still use stand-alone email clients (and I am one). It’s trust-worthy, it’s under your control, and it’s built to reflect the Mozilla mission. Once again we’ve been asking the question: is Thunderbird a likely source of…
Right versus pragmatic
At a previous job, the shared men’s bathroom for the floor was laid out like this:
A High Frequency Trader's Apology, Pt 2
In a previous post I discussed the mechanics of HFT. If you haven't read it, go read it now. Now I'll discuss it's social utility and cost. About the title Many people were misled by it, and this wasn't my intention. I was merely alluding to the book by Hardy …
VC Insanity, Explained
…or, why VCs do what they do (Note: this post also appeared as a guest post on Techflash) VC behavior sometimes looks insane, but generally it’s just sound economics. It’s crazy but true: if you know how a VC gets paid, you can pretty much read their mind. Here’s a few examples: VCs don’t actually seem to want to take…
Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool
It’s tough being a journalist, especially if you’re covering technology and living in Silicon Valley, because it seems as if everyone around you is getting fabulously rich while you’re stuck in a job that will never, ever make you wealthy. What’s worse is that all these people who are getting rich don’t seem to be any…
20 lines of code that beat A/B testing every time
<img src="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/bandits/MAB-2.jpg"/> A/B testing is used far too often, for something that performs so badly. It is defective by design: Segment users into two groups. Show the A group the old, tried and true stuff. Show the B group the new whiz-bang design with the bigger…
No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.
The other day I got to chatting with a lovely woman who reached out after reading my blog. She was interested in talking about an idea she had, how she might get it off the ground, and if I might …
An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
The following article, and the two addenda that follow, were written by an investment manager who works with very wealthy clients. I knew him from decades ago, but in 2011 he e-mailed me with some concerns he had about what was happening with the economy. What he had to say was informative enough that I asked if he…
What Amazon's ebook strategy really means
It seems to me that a lot of folks in the previous discussion don't really understand quite what makes Amazon so interesting—and threatening, for that matter—to the publishing industry.
Amazon Data Center: 450,000 Estimated EC2 Servers
(Edit 3/16/2012: I am surprised that this post is picked up by a lot of media outlets. Given the strong interest, I want to emphasize what is measured and what is derived. The # of server racks in …
Scroogled (2007)
Cory Doctorow wrote this Creative Commons-licensed fiction story for Radar Online magazine .
Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn
Child pornography is a toxic subject, but a very important one that cannot and should not be ignored. This is an attempt to bring...
Software Inventory by Joel Spolsky
Imagine, for a moment, that you came upon a bread factory for the first time. At first it just looks like a jumble of incomprehensible machinery with a few people buzzing around. As your eyes adjus…
Steve Yegge and Grok
Bryan Summersett's home page.
Outlawed by Amazon DRM
Bekkelund.net er en blogg om teknologi, samfunn og politikk skrevet av Martin Koksrud Bekkelund