danko

This is a classic microeconomics case study in opportunity cost and externalities. From an accounting perspective, yes, money was coming in that exceeded expenses in labor and overhead. But the opportunity cost of the effort to support it -- as well as the negative externalities caused by the distraction effect (as well as the negative impact it may have on their brand) -- means that the $75K figure is more of a canard.

If I was a Microecon professor with a 101 class coming up, I know I'd have this article spiked and ready to use for an upcoming semester.

Granted, but there's a potential that this is being launched by an enterprising Google employee, and not as a part of a corporate stratagem.

Of course, if it is corporate strategy, I suppose the big G could always get an employee to take the fall and tar them as a "loose cannon" for press purposes, but I guess I'm still clinging to the shards of "Don't Be Evil".

I built my startup using this exact outlay, so it's wonderful to have this guide in hand for when we need to scale Mongo across multiple EC2 instances. This presentation from Jared Rosoff of 10gen was extremely helpful on the first go, and it's satisfying to see that the AWS paper corroborates the content.

http://www.10gen.com/presentations/mongosf-2011/running-mong...

Couldn't be happier with the performance so far.

Google is precisely the brand that a non-Google third-party would use to launch a scam like this, so I'm going to wait a few hours before getting the flamethrower out. This really doesn't seem like Google's style from a technical quotient, even if you ignore the ethical angle.

I'm glad that this provides scientific justification for that napping danger zone between 45 and 90 minutes. Having taken naps that have ended in that precarious time span, I can attest that it feels like you're worse off than when you started.

A pretty good array of interview tips which can be summarized as follows:

(1) Make yourself as comfortable as you can, so that you can:

(2) Make it clear what you're thinking and how you think (which is the point of the interview).

I'm not signing on for the concept of always doing your interview in Python, however. Do your interview in the language you're most comfortable in, unless it's something so esoteric that it's likely to throw the interviewer off balance. Python is a great language for these sorts of exercises if you know it, but don't force the issue if you don't, because then you're violating (1) above. I know Python well myself, but I'd do an interview in Java because that's "home" to me, and you need all the "home" you can get during an experience as alienating as your standard interview.

This type of analysis can be performed for any of the early Nintendo-designed NES games. They knew what they were doing. The first few levels of Super Mario Brothers are ingenious at how they subtly teach the player the context of the world and the physics of moving Mario. It is the artistry of these subtle touches that distinguished these games from ordinary, competent platformers long after they'd been knocked off to oblivion.

What this article taught me is the mind-boggling plethora of Python web frameworks out there. I'm heavily into Django myself, and it does well enough that I'm curious as to the demand for the other frameworks. How many Python web frameworks do you really need in 2012?

I appreciate the thoroughness of the analysis, even as my eyeballs started to swim amidst the typographical lingo. The article doesn't so much 'explain' the font, though, as explain the constraints under which the font was designed.

Even in understanding the constraints, I can't help but feel that Roboto is a font that's outsmarted itself. All of this hyper-sensitivity to the finer points of smartphone typography is great, but I think it may be achieving effects so subtle as to just not be there for most of the audience. In the meantime, it punts on actually providing a detectable personality (at least IMO). Helvetica has a personality, and eighty years of baggage and connotation that goes with it. A frankenfont is never going to have that.

People like to put their mouth where their money is more than they like to put their money where their mouth is. Tech partisanship is largely because of this -- if you dropped a serious chuck of both your time and money on a product, and there's a competing product, you want to defend your critical thinking skills by asserting that the product you bought is better than the other. The more insecure about it you are, the harder you defend.

Also, if you're in the media, it always pays to stir the pot. Always.

Good list -- I think it hits the essentials.

Most of these issues can be traced to a single cause, which is that as companies grow, there's a growing 'diffusion of responsibility' effect that takes place in terms of people's responsibilities towards one-another. Bosses and managers are clustered and have an ever-changing set of direct reports, ergo they see the responsibility of engaging and keeping talented people as a 'company' problem and not their problem. Similarly, talented people see the company as an uncaring monolith, and not a set of individuals that can help them get to where they want to be.

In the end, there is no 'company', there are only the individuals that compose that company. Their decisions make things happen. The less agency you give those individuals (or perceive those individuals to have), the harder it's going to be to keep the most talented around.

Here's the posting on Scott Hansen's blog about the making of the original Jotly video. Quite inspired, although I shudder to think what would happen if Jotly actually proves to be a success. I'm not ready for anti-marketing copycats.

http://blog.iso50.com/25994/jotly-share-everything-with-ever...

Incidentally, Scott Hansen is also the guy behind Tycho Music. I just love unexpected connections like that.

What I've found for myself is that there's a certain part of my mind that just needs constant distraction, and if I can somehow parallelize that distraction with the continual work that the rest of my brain is capable of, I'd be in good shape.

That's where music and podcasts come in. One steady IV drip of distraction to placate the rebels while the rest of my brain gets down to business and stays there.

Attractively presented article with some interesting points.

I think the most interesting element, though, is the cited Scientific American article that discusses how the actual capacity of the human brain is calculated. Just a reminder that the most complicated and technologically advanced piece of hardware out there is the human mind.

Concur wholeheartedly. Van Gogh's unusual color choices are a feature, not a bug. The author asserts that the muted color pallet for 'The Harvest' imbues the painting with an autumnal glow. For me, it removes the element of the painting that I find most interesting. The other comparisons fall along similar lines.

Of course, this is art, and it's not truly possible for either of us to be 'wrong'. Taking a new perspective on Van Gogh's art is itself interesting, so this is a great read, even if I disagree with some of his conclusions.

This is a well-written and persuasive, and I think Elgan does a terrific job at structuring his argument around the 'product-to-feature' angle.

What I don't agree with necessarily is the framing that Google's success is fait accompli. One skill that Google has NOT established is their ability to integrate separate services such that the whole is at least as much as the sum of its parts. One might argue the only case where they've had success in this is AdSense. Tell me if I'm forgetting something.

While Google's scale and technological advance is a major plus, if you don't design these integrated products cleverly enough, you end up with a bloated, confusing, nebulous morass that people can't grasp as easily as they would independent services. I'm sure Page is aware of this, but the devil is in the execution, and again, the precedent so far is not encouraging. It'll be intriguing to see how well they do this in 2012.

There have been a metric ton of these articles, and there are going to be a metric ton more. And that's great, because it means that engineers are becoming increasingly aware of the market for their own service, which means that they're better prepared to get compensated properly.

In the end, any negotiation boils down into a pure tug-of-war, where both sides pull as hard as they possibly can, and the ribbon ends where it ends based off of the relative leverages of the two parties. To this point, engineers have been handicapped not just by not knowing their leverage, but not knowing they were even playing the game in the first place. That seems to be changing.

It would be, in effect, a Bill Brasky or Chuck Norris Facts sort of situation, except YOU are Bill Brasky.

It's absolutely true that Facebook encourages a sort of 'happiness' arms race, where most people seek to convey the brightest possible interpretation of their own lives to match the same projections they see in others. That isn't Facebook's fault (insomuch as they actively encourage this), it's just a natural human reaction ported to a new context and environment.

The reason this hits the HBR crowd particularly hard is because it adds another, ubiquitous front to the battle of positive image. It used to be, you only had to be an assertive, bright, shining star when you were around people or talking on the phone. Then you could go home, pour yourself a belt of Glenlivet, and be miserable for a while to blow off steam. Now you have to keep it up ALL of the time, on a medium that's everywhere and never stops. It hits hard, particularly when you're a hard charger whose career depends on being perceived as relentlessly successful and upbeat.

Although the glibness of this piece is annoying, I think his core message is on the mark. A lot of top technical talent is being directed at problems that are really just manipulating user data in unimaginative ways.

Although I think there is innovation happening in this field -- and that this innovation is legitimately useful and valuable -- it doesn't change the fact that there are knotty problems with great potential that the current SV tech scene seems unwilling to deal with (despite being equipped to do so).