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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 913 posts.
Now A No-Evil Zone
As of this morning I work for Google. The title is “Developer Advocate”. The focus is Android. Fun is expected.
Why No Jobs
Around the time of the Great Depression, a man named John Maynard Keynes made an incredible discovery. The reason so many people were out of work was not really because of irresponsible banks or high taxes or reckless government policy. It was really much simpler than all that: there wasn’t enough money.
Rackspace passwords are visible to customer service
I just had a very disturbing conversation with a Rackspace Cloud CSR. It went something like this: CSR: Can I have your account user name a...
Jason Calacanis’ Backup Plan For Replacing Content: Steal It From Wikipedia
/sigh Ok Jason, we get it, you’re desperate. But stealing content from Wikipedia in order to replace what you deleted? Come on! I am flipping through Mahalo.com today, just seeing if you’re keeping your word or not, when all of a sudden I notice this huge amount of pages with odd names that somehow I ... Read more
ZumoDrive rolls a hard six
[EDIT 2010-03-11 18:00 I mention this below, but to place my conflict up front: I'm the author of the Tarsnap secure online backup service, which is in some ways a competitor to ZumoDrive.]
Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal
I feel for Google – Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too. In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass*, Steve called my office to let me know the graphica…
Rework is now in stores
Alright, the big day is finally here! REWORK is now available in stores. You can order the US version online from the following booksellers: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble Borders Indie Bound 800 CEO READ International versions are either out already or coming so…
EFF on Apple's iPhone Developer Program Agreement
The entire family of devices built on the iPhone OS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) have been designed to run only software that is approved by Apple—a major shift from the norms of the personal computer market. Software developers who want Apple's approval must first agree to the iPhone Developer...
NYU Professor Scott Galloway: Ouch
A student in the NYU Stern School of Business wrote an email to business school professor Scott Galloway complaining about the professor’s late policy. He arrived one hour late and the profe…
Mahalo's new spam is worse than old
Last week, after Matt Cutts gave Jason Calacanis a warning about Mahalo.com’s spammier pages (and probably a few stern looks as well), Jason changed a few items. He had them rename their spambot from “searchclick” to “stub”, thinking a less obvious name would throw off anyone looking into the spam situation. Very…
Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags
Last week at SMX West, during the Ask The Search Engines panel, moderator Danny Sullivan asked Matt Cutts why he didn’t ban Mahalo.com for spamming Google. Matt stated that he had talked to Jason Calacanis, Mahalo.com CEO, about the issues, and warned him that Google might “take action” if Jason didn’t make some…
Time tracking app Mite reveals numbers for first 20 months
37signals , poster child of our industry, claims to serve more than 3 million users. What they don’t tell is, how many of those people pay for the premium version of their web apps (Basecamp, Highrise et al). All of them are served in the freemium business model , which is: use a basic version of the product for free…
Six Months of HackerNews Front Page Data
Back in September 2009 I launched a small web app called HNTrends.com, a tool for visualizing the movement of stories on HackerNews’s front page over time. I haven’t worked on the site …
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.