byteclub

Would be awesome to see some of these games implemented with Node.js and HTML5... Angry Birds and others have demonstrated that HTML5 is good enough for graphics, and Node.js is a good fit for server-side logic.

I've been meditating for a few months now. It helps reduce stress, improves ability to focus and resist distractions. Love it.

I'll argue that not everything about this is "sad". Knowing JavaScript opens new opportunities when it comes to the kinds of products you can develop and kinds of audiences you can reach. You don't have to look at it as a burden. JS might not have the best design, but it's not horrible, either. It's just a tool, and it's up to you how to use it.

"Sarbox ... also prevented/delayed the Facebook IPO"

Could you elaborate? (I'm genuinely curious)

"Increasing the value of the firm they are investing in? Great job guys."

Did Goldman increase the number of Facebook's users or add a new awesome feature? Did they address the privacy concerns of Facebook's users? Did they make Facebook experience better for the users? No, no and no.

All they did is increase the "perceived financial value" of the company, which as we know from not too long ago, is intangible and fleeting at best, and total BS at worst (Reminds me of the $100bn "valuation" that 37signals got http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1941-press-release-37signals-...)

As far as I am concerned, Goldman can do whatever it wants as long as its actions don't have negative effects on the rest of us. Internet bubble of 90's hurt many people, and so did mortgage bubble of late 2000s. I don't want Goldman to contribute to and profit from another one of those. How do we make sure it doesn't happen?

Or, to put it another way: meditation.

Another impressive aspect is how quickly Kinect hacks are coming out. Some products seem to strike a chord with the enthusiasts, plus all of these things look very cool in videos, which makes for good publicity.

"To work around that problem hospitals needed to, as one medical physicist put it, essentially trick the machine into thinking it was using a different attachment, which it did recognize. To do that, users had to enter additional data into the SRS system."

Scary.

Started with Basic around 10yo on a simple 2mhz machine with 32kb of RAM. Fun times.

I've been on both the tech editing and author sides. It really depends on the quality of people that you get working with you.

The argument for ditching dead tree books is especially valid for books that have short shelf half-life: the ones that deal with quickly changing topics, such as technology. By the time that "Programming for iBlahBlah 1.2" appears in the nearby B&N, iBlahBlah itself has moved on to version 2.0 and readers are disappointed

The Google giveth and The Google taketh away... Moral of the story: diversify your income stream as much as you can. I don't know much about advertising world, but it seems that AdSense is a bit of monopoly, and that sucks.

Random idea for a biz opportunity here: A service that insures content providers against AdSense account termination by routing all of the clicks through a filter to prevent "overeager" clicking by your fans, in exchange for a small fee. If your AdSense account is terminated, you'll be paid for it (just like if your car is totaled, your insurance company pays for it)

2 points: 1. Moral issues aside, the key is to get the idea out of your head and have other people go at it. There is a class of people that can't spend enough time focused on one project because all these great new ideas keep coming and coming ("uninformed optimism"). Getting external feedback might help regulate this process a bit. 2. Break out of your echo chamber and talk to complete strangers. I believe the best and most innovative ideas come from being exposed to all sorts of industries/occupations. Talking to a random person in a coffee shop could be your way to add serendipity to your meme pool. (Starbucks in some parts of the country might have some homogeneity in the customer population when it comes to designers/developers/etc, making it not the greatest choice, but you get the idea).

In a word: "serendipity"

Sounds like the initial investment into reengineering their software to handle distributed environments well turned out to be quite large, which is why it does sound a bit like they brought the troubles upon themselves. But presumably they now have 2 advantages: ability to scale horizontally, and having their software adapted to distributed environments (which means that technically they are not limited to AWS, in case problems arise with Amazon's service). Sounds like the foundation of their house is stronger now, which was probably the whole point of the exercise.

If you do decide to adopt your very own pet Chaos Monkey in your next project, make sure you ARE able to gracefully degrade your service in case of failures. Otherwise your customers will see the monkey in action, manifested by "we'll be back shortly" messages. It's easier said than done, since a lot of the time all of us forget to write (or feel lazy, or have no idea how to properly handle) the "else" statements in case of errors/unavailable services/unreachable databases.

Otherwise, good idea. It forces you to think about the perils of distributed environment from the very beginning, as opposed to leaving it to be an afterthought.

I especially like point #7: "You get a baseline. Then you go and try to do it better."

One possible interpretation: "learn as much as you can about your enemy, then use that knowledge against them." :-)

I think what that post is trying to say is this: focus on your core competency. Amazon is good at cloud computing, Netflix is good at renting/streaming movies.

However, there are some cases where "core competency" is a vague term. Take Facebook for example - could they outsource their infrastructure to somebody else? Given how much data they have to handle, probably not. When you get to the point where scaling requires very low-level (Hunch) or massive (Google or Facebook) optimizations/deployments, you might be entering the business of handling intricate infrastructure yourself.

That's ok, we'll just replace honey with high-fructose corn syrup - problem solved!