Hacker News Reader

johnlon Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky?

Those "instincts" are looking like someone's ego dominating over everyone else in the company. Are they going to turn Facebook into a really big "reverse catalog" company. By that I mean instead of grouping goods into a catalog and sending to one person, you send one good to a lot of people (via Facebook) with the added requirement that the good in question matches with the "preferences" of the Facebook person? Would be interesting to see if that works.

johnlon Stuff I've learned at Microsoft

Sounds like he had a good manager. You've heard the saying: Give the employee only enough rope to hang himself, but not enough rope that he can hang the company. I've learned far more from my failures than successes and your ability to recover from a failure shows even more than either the success or the failure.

johnlon Smart People should do Stupid Stuff

First off I don't think that doing anything with a lava lamp as referenced in the article qualifies as "high achievement". But the author does have a point that has been played out in business over and over and that is: Find a niche market and do it well, become the dominating player in that niche and you can make a good living.

johnlon The Browser Wars - Visualized as Tree Rings

Neat. They should add a 3rd dimension with market size as ring size.

johnlon Ask HN: Have you ever had a founder quit or had to fire one?

Ask the others if you can contact him to document the code.

johnlon The start-up chronicles: Learning to listen to unpleasant truths

It all else fails he can always ask the customer. Just phone the sucker up and start a discussion instead of guessing what they want.

johnlon Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information"

Facebook should go in the opposite direction. They should make their information public but forget about getting down to the individual level. They still have to figure out how to monetize what they have. Do themes and summary levels to start with and market that, protecting the user's privacy.

johnlon What Not To Build

I like the "sensor data processing" one. Measuring, grouping and manipulating traffic whether on the web or on the street will give search much more dynamics.

johnlon Not-so-safe Sex

That's the same argument for marijuana legalization.

johnlon Should I become a project manager?

It's a broad topic for sure. Project management is more an art than a science. I would almost say you need more sales skills than technical skills to be successful and enjoy it.

johnlon Darpa announces Network Challenge winner (MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team)

Makes me wonder if this is still true (if it was true in the first place)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

johnlon Geeks trump alpha males on Wall Street

If it doesn't get out of hand, program trading is a good thing. It allows the value and small investors to get in and out of the markets smoothly and cheaply. As an example, moving to electronic trading killed the option market makers life style by dropping the spread between bid and ask to almost nothing. The problem, it will probably get out of hand.

johnlon How to reduce healthcare costs and improve quality

Socialize the judicial portion with flat rates for doctor/hospital boo-boos and a government panel to oversee and "punish". 3 strikes and you loose your license, back to school. No lawyers, reduced insurance, speeder payment processes. = Reduced rates for us.