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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 104 posts.

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2007
34

hacker

1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users' Glossary , usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the…

37

The Future of Web Startups

October 2007 (This essay is derived from a keynote at FOWA in October 2007.) There's something interesting happening right now. Startups are undergoing the same transformation that technology does when it becomes cheaper. It's a pattern we see over and over in technology. Initially there's some device that's very…

44

The Power of the Marginal

June 2006 (This essay is derived from talks at Usenix 2006 and Railsconf 2006.) A couple years ago my friend Trevor and I went to look at the Apple garage. As we stood there, he said that as a kid growing up in Saskatchewan he'd been amazed at the dedication Jobs and Wozniak must have had to work in a garage. "Those…

51

Revenge of the Nerds

May 2002 "We were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp." - Guy Steele, co-author of the Java spec In the software business there is an ongoing struggle between the pointy-headed academics, and another equally formidable force, the pointy-haired bosses. Everyone knows who…

56

The Option Pool Shuffle

“Follow the money card!” – The Inside Man, Three-Card Shuffle Summary: Don’t let your investors determine the size of the option pool for you. Use a hiring plan to justify a small…