July 2012
1 post
“I love knowing what goes into everything—the economics, the technical aspect,...”
– Louis C.K.
The more I hear and read about this guy, the more I have incredible respect for him. This quote describes very closely how I try to live my life.
(via iamanauthorityonnothing)
June 2012
2 posts
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May 2012
9 posts
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Try(ing) Bloc
For the past week and a half, I’ve been working with an awesome Bloc cohort, guided by the awesome (sorry for the dearth of descriptive adjectives, here) Hani Sharabash. I read about Bloc for the first time from a post on Jared Tame’s Posterous that appeared on Hacker News, and I’m glad that I ventured to read it.
As it has turned out for me, Bloc has been much more than...
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Is the iPhone's potential 4 inch display a...
All of the news regarding the potential 4 inch display on the new iPhone reminded me of this post from Patently Apple that I read awhile back. The patent describes a use for a “smart bezel”, in which the bezel of the iPhone acts as a secondary/auxiliary display, potentially to add extra controls for gaming and/or productivity purposes.
If you look at the current iPhone (4S), this...
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Gruber on point again →
“UPDATE: I’m not sure what Businessweek’s headline means, though: “Apple, the Other Cult in Hollywood”. I think they’re comparing Apple to Scientology, but who the hell knows.”
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“Mr. Cohler has put his own money into Path, a photo-sharing application formed...”
– The NYTimes needs to check its facts. While photo sharing is a component of Path, it hardly constitutes the primary value that Path offers. Anyone familiar with Path would call it a micro social network, emphasizing intimacy, not photos. This is sloppy reporting.
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Text Only Instagram →
Hilarious descriptions of archetypal instagram photos. Sure, it’s mocked the fuck out of types of photos I’ve taken, too. But I mean, what doesn’t get skewered on the internet these days. Plus, these are hilarious.
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“If I wanted to be a dick, I’d suggest that these surveys skew toward Android...”
– John Gruber, commenting on why he thinks the Android may still be showing a “greater market share growth” than the iPhone
I love when Gruber’s a dick
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“IF YOU’RE MAKING THE CUSTOMER DO ANY EXTRA AMOUNT OF WORK, NO MATTER WHAT...”
– Aaron Levie, CEO and cofounder of Box, from The Simplicity Thesis (via fastcompany)
Truth
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“The best technology is that which reminds us of our humanness.”
– Jack Dorsey in an interview with Charlie Rose
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April 2012
12 posts
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Why I love Marco Arment's blog posts →
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“It’s no wonder that the few students who are passionate about ideas find...”
– The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
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"It’s time to give up on Microsoft’s word...
Just read this piece in Slate, and couldn’t agree more. If anyone has talked to me about my startup ideas, they know how I feel about MS Word and other traditional word processors. They’re riddled with useless features that 90% of people don’t understand. They try to do too much, and that which they do offer, is often done poorly. Most people use Microsoft Word or Pages because...
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“Facebook was scared shitless and knew that for first time in its life it...”
– Om Malik | Here is why Facebook bought Instagram (via courtenaybird)
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A Few Words on the Acquisition of Instagram by...
I woke up to this post this morning by Jenna Wortham saying Facebook had acquired Instagram for $1 Billion.
My initial response was that my jaw-dropped: 1 Billion? It was only a month ago that estimated valuations were half that, and not long before that Instagram was still running on $7.5 Million funding. So in a matter of a few months, Instagram has gone from a team of 10 people working...
March 2012
12 posts
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Bijan Sabet: Hiring from the community →
Bijan Sabet on point as usual. Great post.
bijan:
Many startups in our portfolio hire their early team by focusing their recruiting efforts exclusively on their community.
In the early days, Twitter and Tumblr heavily favored hiring folks that were active and engaged users of their respective products.
It’s one of the best filters around as far…
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Disruptions: Time to Review F.A.A. Policy on... →
My god, this testing process is tedious. Here’s to hoping they go through with it all quickly.
Abby Lunardini, vice president of corporate communications at Virgin America, explained that the current guidelines require that an airline must test each version of a single device before it can be approved by the F.A.A. For example, if the airline wanted to get approval for the iPad, it would...
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Why Pandora and other category-based music taste...
I never got into Pandora. There’s a lot of reasons as to why, but I think the biggest one is that whenever I entered in a song to be matched with my music taste, I never found that many songs that I liked from their results. It’s like they almost had it, but not quite. And I think I know why.
Music is a very visceral experience for people. Songs remind us of times, people, places and...
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PayPal's answer to Square →
PayPal, a service I hate, rolled out an answer to Square (a service I love) today. I sincerely hope that this doesn’t cause greater adoption of PP. I wonder if the payments also take 20 years to process like they do online or if they’ve optimized it to have them process in Square’s markedly svelte time frame.
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“It would be a disaster if we all had to keep running an obsolete version just...”
– Paul Graham, addressing the evolving nature of the concept of “property”. Read his phenomenal piece here.
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The Highlight SXSW Drinking Game →
I wish I were at SXSW just so I could play this game.
Hi I’m Katie, I’m into PR and I’ll buy you a drink if you don’t interpret that as flirting. #highlighting
Love it.
“Don’t worry, it’s not a sign of weakness. Arguably it’s a sign of sanity. The...”
– Paul Graham describing why entrepreneurs often shy away from the biggest ideas. (via parislemon)
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Is Pinterest setting up its users for big legal...
Some troubling aspects of Pinterest’s Terms of Use detailed in this blog post. Apparently, Pinterest’s main appeal, its sharing of content that users all recognize and love, is really just a huge shift of liability on Pinterest’s userbase. All copyright infringement, unauthorized replication of copyrighted material, and posting of images, merchandise, etc. on Pinterest basically...
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The Creator of Wolfram Alpha Records the Data of... →
This is crazy. Stephen Wolfram, data genius and creator of Wolfram Alpha (used as the source for Siri’s data on the iPhone 4S), plots his life’s habits for the last twenty years and finally analyzes it/plots it. It makes me wonder what would happen if we all took personal data on our habits and aggregated it only to find definitive trends in our behavior that we probably didn’t...
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February 2012
7 posts
“Today’s sysadmin todo list:
0. Get corporate membership with EFF.
1. Identify...”
– foxylad on hacker news
Today’s sysadmin todo list:0. Get corporate membership with EFF.1. Identify all … | Hacker News
(via fred-wilson)
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“It’s empowering to be asked to look at what’s possible, not told how to do it.”
– Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square, Chairman of Twitter
This man continues to be my biggest inspiration in tech. From a FastCo article here.
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parislemon: To Catch A Hypocrite →
Just…fucking…THIS!
parislemon:
Yesterday, Jason Kincaid posted damning evidence of VEVO, the online music video entity jointly owned by a few major record labels, committing piracy at their boozy event at Sundance this year.
Watch the video, then read Jason’s full story. It’s worth it.
Today, VEVO’s CEO has responded….
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A String of Sobering Posts from Heavily Involved...
I stumbled upon this post by Jason Kottke yesterday commenting on the recent announcement by Jeff Atwood that he would be leaving Stack Exchange. Kottke references some other passages from entrepreneurs and the like who have either reduced their roles in their careers or, like Atwood, significantly restructured their involvement in a company into which they had poured their life and soul. Says...
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AAPL Orchard: Not Everyone Copies Apple →
Interesting philosophical differences here.
aaplorchard:
“[Apple is] going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do.”
- Tim Cook in his first email to Apple employees as Apple’s new CEO sent August 25, 2011
“The path [Sony] must take is clear: to drive the…
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January 2012
12 posts
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A Usethis Interview with Mike Krieger, Co-founder...
My new favorite (primarily) tech interview site to peruse is The Setup. It’s a simple, repeated interview format that includes the categories:
Who are you and what do you do? - starts by getting context of the person being interviewed, just in case the audience isn’t totally familiar.
What hardware are you using? - the site’s focus is primarily on finding out what tech a person...
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Udacity - Conducting the Largest Online class...
I just enrolled in an online class that is slated to be the largest ever at udacity.com. It’s technically programming 101, using Python to teach all enrollees about the world of programming. With the course’s material, one should expect to be able to program their own search engine using Python by the end of the course (pretty f*ckin cool). It’s free for anyone interested.
The...
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For Newcomers in Silicon Valley, the Dream of... →
I like that the NYTimes used the word “dream” here. I think no other word communicates the amount of idealism and motivation (to reach that ideal) that seems to be ubiquitous in the Silicon Valley and other tech circles outside of it. This idealism is what draws me to the field in the first place. People in technology startups are, for the most part, refreshingly uninhibited by the...
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“We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues. What...”
– Tim Cook responding to the NYT piece about awful working conditions in Chinese factories where many Apple products are assembled.
It’s not a response to the press, it’s a response to the Apple team, which Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac was able to get ahold of.
It’s a good response, and the right one....
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Continuations: Some Quick Observations on... →
Some interesting thoughts on the MegaUpload situation yesterday. I think that this addresses both sides of the issue well. What I mean by this is that he talks about how SOPA may be unnecessary because there are obviously prosecution processes already in place (although it seems the actual arrests were relegated to New Zealand, not the US). It also talks about how many of the people who overlap...
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Ten Steps of Interestingness
coursekit:
Forbes ran this awesome list of 10 drawings that help you become more interesting.
We included some of our favorites below!
via Forbes
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COLE STRYKER: I am not a hacker. →
Aaaaand this is why SOPA and PIPA are broken at their core.
stryker:
But in my recent research, I’ve talked with a lot of them. Not just the “lololol we r legion” kind either. The real deal. Guys who now work for McAfee or run their own security contracting firms. When I asked them about whether further government restrictions on internet behavior, like SOPA and…
