Hacker News Reader

Sounds like something worthy of a completely new name. That would go for both projects.

compete.com is way off:

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/news.ycombinator.com/?metri...

We are human and we make mistakes. Just don't get too self-absorbed and move on...you've got important work to do.

fiazon "Developing Erlang at Yahoo" - New Delicious was rewritten in Erlang

I was wondering about that...I remember shortly after your acquisition there were a number of job postings for C++ programmers on your blog.

fiazon Posterous: I went to etc., can I still work for you?

Probably because some of the pioneers of Silicon Valley had dropped out of either graduate or undergraduate programs in order to start companies...the products of which we started using like hair on a gorilla...and then those same dropouts were glamorized to no end by the media...

...but that's just a crazy guess on my behalf.

fiazon Microsoft Makes Key Hire in Researcher Danah Boyd

We are entering a different era of computing where being a company as large as Microsoft needs much more than engineers. There is a social aspect to computing in large part due to the internet. To dismiss danah boyd as a cheerleader for Microsoft would totally miss the point of what she actually has to offer in terms of intellectual abilities to Microsoft.

Please remember that Microsoft has been flailing from the beginning when it came to accepting the internet. They need all of the intelligence they can get in order to be ahead of the curve in relation to social impact.

fiazon Microsoft Makes Key Hire in Researcher Danah Boyd

Keep in mind that when those people were hired, there was a lot of maturing that needed to be done in the computer space. These people are titans by today's standards because the timing of their arrival on the scene had much to do with the amount of influence that they had. If you were to take ANY of Charles Simonyi's recognizable mainstream achievements (most notably Word and Excel) from the 80s and transported them to a startup today, they would hardly amount to a drop in a bucket (of course this is subjective, but I think you get the point!).

Today technology is commonplace and more widely distributed. I would place danah boyd in the same category as those you have mentioned because of the fact that the computer/tech/internet worlds are so much larger than it was in the 80s. She is a leading intellectual when it comes to social networking and I hope she has some influence at Microsoft in a positive direction. Because of her large amount of knowledge in the technology space as it applies to its social impact, this is indeed a key hire for Microsoft as they struggle to make heads or tails of how companies like Google and Facebook have had such a huge following.

fiazon Microsoft Makes Key Hire in Researcher Danah Boyd

Sorry, but if she has so much deep understanding of social networks why isn't she creating her own social network?

Because her interest is in the academic studies of social networking and how the current and future generations use them (something that is lacking in academia and needs more attention). If her interest were in creating a business around a web application that has a central theme of social networking then I think your question would be more applicable to danah.

You could ask the same question of Duncan Watts as well, but again, he is an academic who now works for Yahoo!

fiazon New Microsoft Commercials Are Live

This just in...

Apple has changed their advertising strategy: Justin Long is now going to call himself Safari and John Hodgman will be referring to himself as Internet Explorer.

fiazon [dead]

flagging the article is just as effective.

fiazon Im in

There is no "right path" to your own success, there is only "your path" to your own success. I suggest you dive into whatever you are most comfortable first. Go where your curiosity takes you and learn to cultivate your curiosity as you progress.

You are on the right track if you are comfortable with it. When you are learning something new, there is very little you can do wrong in terms of choosing a path. Many of us are constantly learning on a regular basis...

Good luck!

fiazon Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī -- Medieval Islamic Scientist, quite a read...

You could say that he was a hacker ;)

This notion of course goes against the mainstream interpretation of the hacker persona (the geeky, socially recluse male that is more familiar with computers than he is with his own body). But if you peruse the articles here at Hacker News, it encompasses a very diverse range of subjects (anything from health, math, science, business, charisma, etc.) that are not doubt, interesting to hackers.

I would go a step further and say that what hackers today have in common with Bīrūnī is that the diverse subjects he was most interested in were somehow overlapping with one another.

fiazon [dead]

It's really cool that a site like NewsBusters is making it to HN, but really people, I like the fact that this site is a retreat from the stupidity of the politics.

fiazon [dead]

But they haven't collided anything yet. They only turned on the two beams independently of one another to see if it worked or not. So I think there is still hope for those who need to forget about the things that they don't understand the more they think about it.

fiazon Ask HC: Which books on user interface design do you wish your CEO/Cofounders would read?

Emotional Design

http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Design-Love-Everyday-Things/...

Designing Interactions

http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Interactions-Bill-Moggridge/...

fiazon Ask HC: Which books on user interface design do you wish your CEO/Cofounders would read?

Don't Make Me Think

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/032134...

fiazon Ask HN: Will you be switching to Chrome?

You have a point with this. I personally prefer to focus on content instead of having to ignore advertising that I will never click on unless I'm actually in a buying mode; when I'm NOT in a buying mode, there is no way in hell I'm clicking on that irritating HP flash eye-sore! If merely being exposed to an advertiser's message is the purpose of advertising on websites, then I would have to politely/respectfully say that I prefer not to be exposed to that which I am not choosing to have exposure.

I'm overwhelmed as it is...ad-blocking really helps turn down the noise. To me the whole approach of blasting users with advertisement is flawed, unless of course I'm actually in the mode of purchasing something, in which case I will gladly jump to Chrome or Safari (on my Mac at home).

I think having the freedom to turn the noise off/on as you see fit is part of a larger trend of the future where you have the option to do as you wish. Afterall, isn't freedom one of the core principles of the internet?

fiazon Ask HN: Will you be switching to Chrome?

Chrome will not interest me until there is some ad-blocking available. Yes, it is superior to anything else out there, but my killer app for the web is still being able to surf the web sans irritating advertising.

fiazon Who cares about Chrome. IE6 Has 25% Market Share

Google Chrome looks cool. But the only thing that would prevent me from "switching" from Firefox is the exclusion of an ad-blocking feature. For me, surfing the web advertisement free is the killer app. I will put up with Firefox's inefficiencies forever provided efficient ad-blocking is available.

fiazon Official Google Blog: A fresh take on the browser

Interesting possibilities for Google here to have a new type of googlebot driven by the user. All browser activities (voting, commenting, contextual browsing, content generation, etc.) can be wrapped up into a single place driven by a human being and then beamed over to Google for efficient indexing far and away more accurate than what any other bot could offer in years to come.

What we need next is a "Google Personal Gateway" so that all of our connections to the internet can be monitored. Google could offer it out as a free virus/spam protection package but then have an even greater view of how people interact with the internet thus giving the consumer an enhanced internet experience.

[please refrain from informing me about how Incognito will protect user information - so called "private browsing" is not a full/rich internet experience]

fiazon Real programmers don't use frameworks

Real programmers understand the value of abstraction. End of discussion.

fiazon Classic Pac-Man Source Code (commented)

Very cool. But apart from the fact that this is all assembly, I have no idea what the hell is happening. Still, very cool...

fiazon Techcrunch redesigned

I agree...but the color scheme reminds me of The Onion.

fiazon Mirror test shows magpies are self aware

but if you recognize yourself doesn't that mean that you have some concept of "self" and therefore "aware of self"?

fiazon Why Apple doesn’t do “Concept Products”

Is it just me or did the G4 cube seem like a "concept" product? Or perhaps even the Anniversary Mac...?

fiazon Study: The Pill Causes Women to Like Different Men

An interesting article describing attraction and smell in humans:

http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-19960...

It's interesting that the pill, which intentionally tampers with a woman's reproductive system, also tampers with what a woman finds attractive in a potential mate, sans the intention of mating for reproduction.

fiazon Is Wikipedia saturated? Yep For a year, at least.

That's a great point. I think perhaps this is exemplary of the notion that they are still confined to their previous paradigm of "encyclopedia" instead of infinite knowledge base.

A good solution to this would be to introduce levels of specificity to Wikipedia such that what we currently have is the first level, and then the second level would be catered towards individuals who have more than a lay perspective, and then the next successive level would be for experts and so forth.

Perhaps this would require different levels of editorship as well, but it is definitely an approach that might give a better organization to Wikipedia that is not flat as is exemplified by traditional encyclopedias.

fiazon Is Wikipedia saturated? Yep For a year, at least.

There is still PLENTY of knowledge that can be included into Wikipedia, but there are too few main editors to actually refine/expand upon the articles. To imply Wikipedia is "saturated" and that it now must grow linearly (because the past year reveals this pattern) is as ridiculous to say that human knowledge is perhaps saturated and must grow linearly because we have not collectively broken out of prevailing models of perception.

I believe that this flat trend (in a larger exponential curve that has yet to reveal itself) is a lack of initiative/participation for the moment that has zero predictive value of revealing the nature of Wikipedia's future growth rate.

fiazon YouNoodle Startup Predictor now live to try it for yourself.

Has anybody tried entering the details for a 1990s dot.com to see what kind of valuation you get?

fiazon Great visualization of olympic medals won by year

Fascinating! It reminds me of cell division shortly after fertilization. I wonder if there is a similar pattern when ideas spread throughout a given population.