cmurphycode

Couch's design documents are protected, even though they are replicated, as you say. Unless I'm misunderstanding your question, your application will be safe from modification, as it will be update-able only by the author.

I studied this summary before my most recent interview. It's a little abstract (in terms of lacking motivation/examples) for those who don't have experience in the field, but if you read it enough times, you get a decent handle on the idea.

Radiolab is great. However, it presents topics much in the same way that I imagine people who visit this site do- they love to explore interesting surface-level explanations of everything from the multiverse to the nature of consciousness. Don't get me wrong: Radiolab is very good at this, and since it's in audio form, it's the perfect way to learn while commuting, for example. I'm just saying that I have already learned a lot of the stuff they explore on the show, and I suspect a lot of hackers will have, too.

I also find their presenting style annoying sometimes, as they cut in and out of the subject talking and the hosts telling the story, and occasionally the hosts' banter seems forced for interest.

On the whole though, highly recommended!

Edit: It's worth confirming the high quality. I listen on 2x speed and it is almost 100% natural to listen to. Amazing.

I like the tilde tip, but I've noticed Google does this by default quite a bit (and seems to be more and more nowadays). I'm sure that explicitly giving the tilde activates more of the synonym checking, but I'm sure Google's goal is to eventually make it unnecessary to use any of these keywords.

I'm a little surprised to see StumbleUpon so high! I remember using it when it came out, and I never really got hooked. Now that I think about it, it makes a little bit of sense. I hypothesize that the target market is different than sites like Hacker News, Reddit, and even Digg- StumbleUpon requires less effort and less contribution to a "geeky" community. I'm not saying this is necessarily a good thing, but they have found a way to get user submissions from people who would never get themselves involved in other social sites, so it's working for them.

Anyone have thoughts on this theory?

Agreed. This strikes me as a more robust walk-through than traditional Hello World-esque tutorials; as such, there is a little more to do than you'd expect. I'd rather have the details provided here, and I suspect many other hackers would too.

This is great! But are Dark and Grunge really the two latest? It seemed chronological up to Web 2.0, Textures, and even Minimal...but I don't understand why Dark and Grunge come after.

First, I have to say that this looks ambitious. There are some pretty exciting things in the gameplan; I am especially interested in the vmcasts idea. While I have to wonder if they can accomplish all of the ideas they lay out here, given the posts I've seen from catonmat.net before, I think they can do it. From what I can tell, Peteris is not just clever, but very motivated and loves to code and introspect his talents. This is usually a winning combination.

I am excited you decided to open everything, but I wonder if you're going to be able to raise the money necessary to fund the infrastructure. Do either of you have a lot of business experience? If you can seize your opportunities well enough, you can probably monetize your idea while letting others do what they will with the code.

Looking forward to see how this evolves.

Your description of this database sounds like an extension of Lala for all media. Is this what you're going for?

It sounds like UltraViolet is nothing more than a unified standard for video on demand. In this case, multiple providers (e.g. Comcast to your TV, Verizon to your phone) all know about your purchase and can deliver your movie in a variety of formats. This is a win only if UltraViolet is accepted: not only by the movie studios (the typical challenge), but by all of the content providers as well.

Personally, I'd rather see the TV deprecated completely and handle all of my media through the Internet. If this has to happen via many different content providers, that's fine, and it may be better in terms of competition, but I'm not convinced it's all that necessary. It seems to me that the actual delivery of the video is nothing something that matters a whole lot to the average consumer, as long as they are getting their video now. Thus, it's more important to focus efforts on getting all of the content creators (movie and tv studios) to cooperate. Once you have the content, it's a simple matter to create different streams for different purposes and provide the movie on demand to any device. If all of the streams are essentially coming over the Internet, this is easy to do through one channel.

Questionable assertions about overpricing (as petercooper discusses) aside, this article is interesting if only to demonstrate the vertical integration of Luxicotta. FTA: "The eye doctor telling you that you need a new pair of glasses, the sales people helping you choose them and the people who design and make the glasses all work for the same company. "

That sounds like an enviable position for lots of companies. At the same time, it provides insight into current internet heavy hitters' strategies. For example, Google's fiber networks and internet tools (Chrome, JS libraries, etc) are probably all designed to improve the efficiency of their cash cow (search).

Well, that's the trick, isn't it? You have to make people care enough about their "digital remains" to want the service, but not enough to worry about the risk. Will the new generation of techno-literate users find the happy medium and make this startup successful?

This looks pretty interesting. They have some nice explanations of their concept- particularly the fundamentals link: http://www.makanipower.com/concept/fundamentals/

It looks pretty complex, but if the numbers work out right, this is probably the cheapest way to tap into the great winds available high in the sky.

I don't know- the Polar monitor sounds pretty unintuitive to me. It could work well if the non-button actions (such as moving the watch close to the strap) are communicated effectively and are implemented perfectly, but if not, I can see a lot of confusion.

I think those two things (communication and implementation) are what makes Apple's interfaces great. As an example, the iPhone's touch screen is good enough that it almost always does what you expect- which was huge compared to other touch screens at the time the phone was introduced. I remember trying out an LG touch screen in the store, and it felt like using the iPhone screen through a thin layer of mud. Even if their interface was simple and easy to use, a few misinterpreted presses would exasperate new users.

As for communicating features, I think Apple's commercials do a good job of showing how the devices are used. Granted, it's easier to explain interfaces when they are minimal...

DuckDuckGo is a pretty well done site. I don't know if DDG is doing anything revolutionary with their software stack, but the stack is working well enough that one guy is essentially providing a useful alternative to Google. Consider the amount of brilliant engineers working on Google search, and you have to be a touch impressed.

Of course, this extremely light weight development means he can have enough success to live on without worrying about monetizing as effectively as Google. Since he doesn't track searches as much as Google and thus cannot provide advertisers the same amount of targeting, this is important.

I look forward to tracking the site's evolution!