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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
I joined Google in October 2005, and handed in my resignation 18 years later. Last week was my last week at Google.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 518 posts.
2
My Youtube earnings
How much money I have made with my Lego YouTube channel? Let’s go through the YouTube Analytics. Whether you’re a colleague or an aspiring Youtuber, you may find this information valuab…
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If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing
20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired . I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:
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The Tyranny of the Marginal User
why consumer software gets worse, not better, over time
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Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know
This controversial decision coupled with poor messaging has created anxiety the Open Source community. Learn what's happening and how we can move forward.
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Taking over a Dead IoT Company
5 years after NYCTrainSign collapsed, I investigate why the company failed and end up writing an exploit to take over their fleet.
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I accidentally saved my company half a million dollars
I saved my company half a million dollars in about five minutes. This is more money than I've made for my employers over the course of my entire career because this industry is a sham. I clicked about five buttons.
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Modules, not microservices
Dissecting why everybody keeps talking about microservices.
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What I learned getting acquired by Google
Our 10 person startup gets acquired by Google, we rebuild our product the Google way, and begin to understand that amazing things are possible at Google, if you play the Google game
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Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake
Trying to see the world more clearly
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Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT
Here's a fun experiment to try. Take an open source project such as yt-dlp and try to find it from a very generic term like "youtube downloader". You won't be able to find it because of all of the content farms that try to rank at the top for that term. Even though yt-dlp is probably actually what you want for a tool…
12
Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
I quit my job towards the end of last month. When I started this blog, I told myself, “Don’t talk about work.” Since my employment is in the rear view mirror, I’m going to b…
13
Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
Old law proposes to turn the Bay Area's zoning system into something like Japan's in just two days.
14
ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha
Wolfram plugin gives computationally accurate answers to ChatGPT queries using Wolfram's data knowledgebase and language. Custom visualizations are given as well. Stephen Wolfram explains how it works.
15
How big is YouTube?
How big is YouTube? It's not easy to find out, but we did two years of research and figured out how...
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I would rather see my books get pirated than this
Amazon and Goodreads must take steps to combat the flood of AI-generated content that will mislead readers and damage author reputations.
17
Credit card debt collection
Credit card debt is the waste stream of consumer finance. The debt collection industry ends up being sordid, for complex structural and microeconomic reasons.
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I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it
Or "that time I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it like a week after launch"
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Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users
Microsoft announces vague changes to the default web browser setting for Windows Insider. Nothing but wishful thinking. Still force-opens web links in Edge.
20
The FTC sues to break up Amazon over an economy-wide “hidden tax”
"We have nowhere else to go and Amazon knows it." The FTC and states are going after Amazon, largely for stopping merchants from offering discounts elsewhere.
21
Willingham sends Fables into the public domain
Here, below, is the press release I sent out today to explain what I did and why.
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I worked at Google for -10 days
It’s the story of how I was laid off from Google before I even started to do my job there.
23
The Shit Show
Well, it happened. We knew it was coming. A prick pulled the plug. And what bothers me most about it is how Phony Stark did it. My mom passed away just before Christmas. Her decline was something everyone in the family saw coming and we prepared for her demise. It still hurts like hell, but […]
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Meta is banning people from advertising after running ads for Python and Pandas
Meta's ad bots flagged Python and Pandas courses as live-animal sales, then auto-rejected the appeal. Why the 180-day data retention policy makes it permanent.
26
Dear Red Hat: Are you dumb?
I've had a busy week, so I didn't have time until today to read this news about Red Hat locking down RHEL sources behind a Red Hat subscription. I repeat the title: Red Hat, are you dumb? When Red Hat decided to turn the community CentOS distribution into a leading-edge distro instead of basically "Red Hat Enterprise…
27
Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps
Apple still charges a $99 yearly developer fee, even if you don't want to publish your app on the Appstore. The provisioning certificate that Xcode provides only lasts one week.
28
Costs of running a macOS app studio business
I created The low-tech guys, a brand under which I develop macOS apps for a living. I started this business with a good friend of mine, thinking I could help him stop working long hours at his consulting job and ease into more creative work. However, getting to a state where you earn enough to live off the app sales…
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Firefox on the brink?
The Big Three may effectively be down to a Big Two, and right quick.