pulsewave

you - yes, you! - can teach yourself how to program.

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:40:05 -0500

you - yes, you! - can teach yourself how to program.:

in the beginning was the question
…
a friend of mine asked me that a couple of nights ago, to my delight. my answer, of course, was
…
as a matter of fact, any self-respecting programmer you’ve ever met is mostly self-taught. that’s because as soon as a neophyte starts coding, they find out…

The Panic Status Board

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:57:00 -0500

The Panic Status Board

"Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an inveterate skeptic I have..."

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:38:45 -0500

“Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I haven’t ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can’t be perfect of course; you can make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.”

- Carl Sagan, “The Burden of Skepticism”

The full story of how Facebook was founded

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:27:09 -0500

The full story of how Facebook was founded

Goddamn Electric Bill - Ten Thousand Years

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:30:52 -0500

Goddamn Electric Bill - Ten Thousand Years

Photo

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:03:38 -0500

Photo

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:36:00 -0500

Mozilla Ubiquity dies an incredibly quiet death

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:35:05 -0500

Mozilla Ubiquity dies an incredibly quiet death:

“Let me start off by saying I personally think Aza Raskin is a genius. Really. When Windows Phone 7 Series just came out, everyone was all amazed about how ‘the data is the UI’, and how everything is so semantic and clean. Well, it’s been done.”

sudobyte: szymon: New York City gets Two Feet Of Snow

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:59:49 -0500

sudobyte:

szymon:

New York City gets Two Feet Of Snow

The Essential Man: On Friends

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:57:28 -0500

The Essential Man: On Friends:

Your time is valuable.

Time is like currency, and who you choose to surround yourself with and spend that currency on reflects who you are.

If you are to spend your money to buy crack, there is a high likelyhood you are a crackhead, or at the very least, increasing your chances to be one.

There…

Marco.org: Business Insider will probably add an inflammatory headline about Joel Spolsky or Jason Calacanis here

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:27:38 -0500

Marco.org: Business Insider will probably add an inflammatory headline about Joel Spolsky or Jason Calacanis here:

In a recent Stack Overflow podcast episode, Joel Spolsky mentioned that he’s probably going to formally end his popular Joel on Software blog next month.

He has been talking to someone named Jason who’s doing a pretty good job convincing him to “blog” privately instead, via email, only to a…

computersnob: age distribution on various social networking...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:26:12 -0500

computersnob:

age distribution on various social networking sites

Hunch

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:35:00 -0500

Hunch:

A collective intelligence decision-making system. From the site: “Hunch gives customized recommendations and gets smarter the more you use it.”

"Whether you’re a programmer or Web designer or developer, an artist, help-desk geek, or tech..."

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:45:53 -0500

“Whether you’re a programmer or Web designer or developer, an artist, help-desk geek, or tech supporter, a filmmaker or writer, you’re a part of the Geek Ascension. People need you. They hire you. They can’t afford to be contemptuous. Life isn’t a breeze, but it sure is different. You have an open invitation to what is, at the moment, the greatest party in the world: the Internet and the World Wide Web.”

- Geek - Jon Katz, introduction (submitted by brklyn) (via fuckyeahcomputerscience)

Texting is more popular than calling in the U.S., despite costs

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:42:30 -0500

Texting is more popular than calling in the U.S., despite costs

The argument clinic (Monty Python)

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:25:00 -0500

The argument clinic (Monty Python)

clientsfromhell: Client: “[Indian outsourcer] says he can do this site for $200. Why should I go...

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:47:15 -0500

clientsfromhell:

Client: “[Indian outsourcer] says he can do this site for $200. Why should I go with you?”

Me: “Has he done any work for you in the past?”

Client: Yeah! He did [Other Site] for me.

[I load the other site]

Me: “The entire site’s done in Flash.”

Client: “Huh?”

Me: “It’s a site for iPhone users.”

Client: “I know. Cool, huh?”

Me: “It’s a site for iPhone users… none of whom can see it…”

Client: “Huh?”

Me: “The iPhone doesn’t support Flash.”

Client: “Well it looks fine on my PC!”

Me: “Do you have an iPhone?”

Client: “No.”

Me: “…”

Client: “Tell you what, I’m just gonna go with [Indian outsourcer]. He seems like he knows what he’s doing and I’m not sure you do.”

Me: “Have fun.”

Study at Stanford Finds Computer Science Students are Biggest Cheaters

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:25:21 -0500

Study at Stanford Finds Computer Science Students are Biggest Cheaters:

fuckyeahcomputerscience:

A recent study by the San Jose Mercury News shows that at Stanford, cheating in computer science classes account for 22% of the university’s total honor code violations, despite accounting for only 7% of student enrollment…

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. Or are they?

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:26:00 -0500

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. Or are they?:

Last spring, I took a security course. In one of the lectures, the professor put forth a strikingly similar argument. Open-source advocates belittle proprietary code as “security by obscurity,” but before you shout “oh yes!” consider the following two issues.

Interesting open-source software is huge, and requires a lot of effort to read and understand. Security-critical components like servers, kernels, device drivers, and crypto packages are difficult to figure out even when you do have the source code available. A majority of programmers would be hard-pressed to even understand what is going on in that code, let alone find and fix bugs in it. This is all before acknowledging the fact that most users aren’t even programmers to begin with. It’s not hard to see why “open source == more eyeballs” might not be as true as we think.
If bad guys find bugs, where’s the incentive to report them? Zero-day exploits like those used in Aurora are prized possessions and can be sold for money within the hacker underground. In fact, it’s not that far-fetched believe that these “black hats” have greater motivation to pick through open source software for bugs than white hats. It may well be that of the few external entities auditing the code, most of them are doing so for exploitation.

Why smart people defend bad ideas

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:46:30 -0500

Why smart people defend bad ideas