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drinkon The Evil Zynga

Maybe everyone aside from those at EA are too afraid of Pincus to say anything? If you're in the Valley, you know what I'm talking about.

drinkon The Evil Zynga

I think I know how this went down:

Mark Pincus: Hey Mike, since you know we're in our IPO quiet period, can you write a rebuttal to that NYTimes article for me? I'll give you an interview or let you invest in my next deal.

Michael Arrington: Sure thing! You better speak at my next conference!

Mark Pincus: Okay, here are some talking points:

  - Blame everything on EA.
  - I actually think we offer too many perks, point that out
  - I think Roger McNamee is still upset I never let him invest, so he's basically just a sore loser

Can you be sure to include that in the article?

Michael Arrington: This looks great! It will go well with my other piece defending your terrible labor practices!

Mark Pincus: You're the best.

drinkon Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”

Yeah, because an anonymous HN commenter knows more about the state of American education than the guy who ran the company that provided American schools with leading-edge technology for the past 3 decades.

drinkon Brin on Yegge's post: "I stopped reading it after the first 1,000 pages"

... says the guy who created his account an hour ago and has no bio.

drinkon An apology letter to apple. and Facebook got new iOS app & developer platform

What is wrong with this guy. All he can think about is his own rumor mill and credibility. It is pathetic.

drinkon Color.com Pivots to Live Personal Broadcasting

Okay, so you kissed up to Color's PR team, got access to the app early, participated in a carefully staged demo, and it seemed cool?

The problem here is that you have no incentive to tell us that Color sucks. Doing so means that you'll never get access to any previews or exclusives from them. Meanwhile, since we're just a bunch of anonymous nobodies, you can bullshit us about how Color's stupid idea about personal video broadcasting is "surreal."

drinkon Google Buys Motorola For $12.5 Billion

This is the beginning of the end for Android as an open platform. Google will have a financial incentive to release the best phones as Motorola devices. I would not want to be HTC today.

I like how Larry Page talks about IP in the blog post. After all of that talk about how patents were overpriced, Google comes out and spends more money than anyone on acquiring what is basically a terrible handset maker with a large IP portfolio. At the end of the day, Google does what's best for Google.

drinkon DEF CON 19 - hackers get hacked

So it's clear: this post claims that there is a man-in-the-middle attack possible over 4G networks that allows an attacker to own and capture data from an Android device, including texts and calls. If this is true, and if the media gets around to this, enterprise deployments of Android devices are truly screwed.

drinkon Airbnb Offers Unconditional Apology, And $50,000 Insurance Guarantee

Have you ever tried to collect a claim against insurance? They will find any loophole possible to avoid a payout. Have fun trying to turn that $50,000 guarantee into something real.

drinkon Why Google Health Failed—It's because of how Doctors are reimbursed

This post is entirely self serving and misses a key point: Why would I want the world's largest advertising company to have access to my healthcare data?!

drinkon Tech Investors Feel an Aura of Hope, a Touch of Dread

Mr. Nguyen said the company had taken the criticism to heart and charted a new course. He fired Color’s president, Peter Pham, and its engineers are building a new version of the app to be released later this summer.

I'm guessing Peter and Bill aren't exactly best friends right now.

drinkon Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

Strange realization: I am relieved that Microsoft bought this, and not Facebook. Can't remember the last time I was relieved that Microsoft bought a company.

drinkon The City By The Meh: Thoughts On Falling Out Of Love With The Valley

So is the startup in this article Likealittle, CollegeOnly, or something totally new?

drinkon Cappuccino 0.9

Perhaps this has been answered elsewhere and I'm being lazy, but... What's the licensing for Cappuccino and Objective-J? Are people who build on these tools beholden to Motorola?

Edit: I Googled "Objective-J license" to answer my own question -- the answer was LGPL. Awesome!

drinkon Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

Isn't Qt covered under GPL? Could someone else run with it for their development platform? Or would there be patent problems etc?