The first serious infowar is now engaged
by John Perry Barlow Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.We have no elected...
Using Fibonacci Numbers to Convert from Miles to Kilometers and Vice Versa
I recently learned an interesting fact about Fibonacci numbers while watching a random number theory video on YouTube. Fibonacci numbers can be used to approximately convert from miles to kilometers and back. Here is how. Take two consecutive Fibonacci numbers, for example 5 and 8. And you're done converting. No...
Most common words unique to 1-star and 5-star App Store reviews
I wrote a script to crawl U.S. App Store customer reviews for the top 100 apps from every category (minus duplicates) and compute the most common words in 1-star and 5-star reviews, excluding words that were also common in 3-star reviews.
How much startup stock options are worth
Startup pay kind of sucks. This is not a well-kept secret. A great startup with a dozen or so people will typically pay its employees about a third less than a big company. Some will argue that that’s because of the value of the equity that startups give you. I argue that that’s the price of doing something that’s…
Here's to the Next 3 Years (Yehuda Katz Moves On)
I officially joined Engine Yard on January 1, 2008, about a week before we announced our Series A funding, becoming its twenty-second employee. I was Engine Yard's very first "Engineering" hire, and I would spend the next year working on Ezra's Merb project, finally releasing Merb 1.
Collusion (Fred Wilson's thoughts on the Bin38 meeting)
Mike Arrington posted about a secret meeting of angels and super angels in San Francisco the other night. In the post he suggests that they are colluding to keep valuations down, terms intact, and traditional venture capital firms, such as ours, out of their deals. It's the kind of blog post that Mike has become […]
Every time an engineer joins Google, a startup dies
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
Dear American Website Owner
Jan Rychter: Tech Consulting, Product Development, Data Science.
Why are restaurant web sites so bad?
On Twitter, my friends Shani and Erie are engaged in a bit of time-honored kvetching about the legendary and general awfulness of restaurant Web sites. Who thinks it’s good idea to blast annoying music at people going to your site? Why do they so often rely on Flash, which doesn’t really add anything to the…
Raising money for StackOverflow
A few people heard me on This Week in Startups (starting at 15:45) asking Jason if we should take money from the first VC who fell into our laps, or spend time doing the Sand Hill Road rounds, meet…
32 years on, K&R's "The C Programming Language" still stands alone
It’s 32 years old, and it remains the single greatest book ever written about a programming language. Its crown is secure; even if you’d not already read the title of this article, you…
HTTP cookies, or how not to design protocols
For as long as I remember, HTTP cookies have been vilified as a grave threat to the privacy of online browsing. I don't quite agree, but I f...
Thank HN: Design for Hackers
Last week, I signed a contract to publish Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty with John Wiley & Sons. I still have plenty of work left to get this book onto shelves – and to exist at all – but I’m extremely excited about it, and wanted to share the news with everyone, especially visitors coming
1.0 Is The Loneliest Number
Many entrepreneurs idolize Steve Jobs. He’s such a perfectionist, they say. Nothing leaves the doors of 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino without a polish and finish that makes geeks everywhere drool. N…
37signals' Chalk Dissected
Update 2010-11-05: I dove into the JavaScript a little and explained most of it. Sam Stephenson tweeted that Chalk is written in CoffeeScri...
Dammit, MySQL
Update May 2018: This is more rant-ish than I would write now, but it’s my only post to hit the front page of HackerNews (it got to the number 2 spot back in 2010; I saved screenshots), so has a soft-place in my heart.
A Shocking Truth About CSS
Create pay stubs, W-2s and 1099s for the people you pay. Federal and state withholding calculated for you. Preview first, then download as a PDF from $8.99.