brianwillis

...people will know that you're faking it.

Yup, I'm one of those people.

I don't use Facebook, and it's unreasonable to expect me to sign up for a Facebook account so that I can use your service.

I do use Twitter, but I'd rather not share my account details (even just the username) with someone I've just met.

I've always thought that being able to explore the web of information out there about me was kind of creepy, and I'm not about to make it easier for someone to do by creating connections between the accounts I have with disparate service providers. I like when my data is siloed, and only shared on my terms, with my explicit consent.

My forefathers fought the great war of emacs and vi in the 1980s. Those were dark times, which many still refuse to speak of. When I think of the horrifying atrocities committed by both sides, the snarky BBS posts, the bickering over usenet, it shudders the mind.

My generation got off relatively lightly. There were a handful of skirmishes during the browser wars which were difficult on the civilian population. Tables being used for layout, limited CSS support, that sort of thing. While many a fine web developer met their end at the hands of Internet Explorer 6, a lot of us (some would say, the less patriotic) chose to ride out the war as desktop application developers, avoiding the draft entirely.

Today I see many of the young and impressionable being manipulated in an ardent search for desperate glory. They get roped in by blog posts, conference talks, friends and coworkers who are too young to remember the atrocities of old. I fear this generation's war will soon be upon us. It will not take place in mobile as many had expected (the Android/iOS battle was a classic case of corporate manipulation), but instead will be fought in Java Script.

It's clear to me how cringe worthy some of my earlier work is, and that leads me to think that I'll feel the same way in a few years time about the work I'm doing now. This makes me reluctant to put myself and my work out there, which makes it look like I don't get anything done, which is in many ways worse than doing work that you later regret.

One of the first comments on the Ars Technica page is "you're holding it wrong". It's a predictable joke, but I'll begrudgingly admit that I laughed.

Something has been brewing at Cupertino, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Between this and E3, this week is like nerd Christmas.

I also want world peace, m&ms for breakfast, and a pony.

The hamburger-button menu which slides in from the left overlaps the content, but the notifications panel which slides in from the right pushes the content out of the way. Inconsistencies like these break my mental model of where I am in an app.

The pull-to-refresh rainbow zebra stripes look awkward, don't provide any hints about what's going on, and are inconsistent with the folding circle animation that Google uses in its other iOS apps (like Gmail).

This business of having cards fly in diagonally as you scroll bothers me too. It's cute the first couple of times, but breaks the flow when you're trying to read from top-to-bottom.

Yup. New Zealand's internet speeds are just abysmal. On behalf of kiwis everywhere, can I ask that you all stop writing your own wrappers for web based videos? Instead, upload your videos to YouTube and embed that on your site. Their buffering is orders of magnitude better than some of the half baked crap I see from other people, probably because streaming video is YouTube's core business so they've focused a lot of time and attention on getting it right. If you live in urban parts of United States or Asia it's not a problem you'd notice, but for the rest of us it's a daily nuisance.

I thought Twitter was a solution looking for a problem too. Interestingly, Twitter's usefulness (at least for me) stems from it's popularity rather than its content. Pretty much everyone I care about listening to is there, but most of the tweets that I'm interested in link me to some place that isn't Twitter.

A big part of Instapaper's success comes from the fact that Marco's done a great job at steering the ship. He really is a world-class product guy who knows what to say no to.

Congratulations to Marco and Betaworks. I hope it works out well for all of us.

[1]: http://www.feedafever.com

[2]: http://reederapp.com/

I agree with Ben on this point, but don't really understand why things are this way. In looking for a replacement for Google Reader I found a bunch of high quality self hosted options. Similarly, hosting a website on your own server (or one you rent from someone else) is a pretty trivial exercise for anyone that reads Hacker News.

So why is email so damn hard? Where is the Wordpress of email?

I've been racking my brain trying to think of the first service that I used regularly that was shut down. Pownce maybe? (anyone else remember that?).

I'm currently hunting for a replacement for Gmail that is self-hosted, or at least a solution where the cost of switching providers is low (i.e. I could shift my email to a new host without changing my email address or losing my message history). I'll probably end up using some sort of IMAP provider. There are a lot of features I'd stand to lose though. Conversation view is hugely useful, and Gmail's spam filter is just unbeatable.

1) Do you do exiting interviews?

If they say no, that's a huge red flag. Even in a small company, asking someone "why are you leaving?" isn't hard and doesn't require a tremendous amount of resources.

2) Following up from question 1: What do most people state as their reason for leaving?

I've never met an interviewer that could rattle off statistics like "last year X% of resignations were attributed to issue Y" - but I'd be seriously impressed by one that could. Retention of talent is a huge issue for employers right now, so if your interviewer is in management they should have at least a vague idea what the answer to this question is.

3) How would you describe your company's culture?

Every answer you get to this question will be biased. It's virtually impossible for anyone to objectively measure culture, and it's even harder to do from an insider's perspective. At best, you'll get an answer where you have to read between the lines. At worst, they'll totally bullshit you. If your bullshit detector is finely tuned, then this can be a very revealing question. Either way, the resulting discussion is often more illuminating than the answer itself.

4) What's your intellectual property policy? Can I work on open source projects on my own time?

I've received answers to this question that span the full spectrum from totally incompetent ("I have absolutely no idea") to totally absurd ("we own every line of code you write, regardless of context").

The market has handed Microsoft several monopolies. Many times they've squandered those opportunities, leaving a bunch of pissed off customers in their wake.

I don't really see any evidence that anything has changed recently at Redmond.

I'm not in a place where I can make changes right away, but I'll trim back the measure and fiddle with the line height until I find something I'm comfortable with.

I'm not sure about the contrast though. Getting that one right is tough. My first attempt was a burn-your-retinas-out white that was so bright it almost hurt to read. Perhaps I've dialed it down too far.