Maszman Speaks!

The story of Facebook’s IPO disaster

Tom — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:54:11 +0000

The Facebook IPO was supposed to be the biggest thing ever yet it turned into one of the biggest flops. While most investors ended up losing money as the stock price fell, a few selected ones did quite well. This is the story of how that happened.

What’s next Google? Dropping SMTP support?

Tom — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:45:14 +0000

Now that Google Reader is dead, Google has just announced that they’re dropping XMPP support with their new “Hangouts” messaging service and replacing it with a proprietary protocol.

If you’re not aware, XMPP is also known as Jabber and is the basis of the Facebook chat feature and was also part of Google Talk and Google Wave. As Gruber sarcasticly says, “Open always wins.” In other words, Google talks about open, but then does the opposite.

Laurent Eschenauer has it right, “we do not need Google to build the open web for us. We are developers, and hacking the future is what we do best.”

Is bitterness ruining craft beer’s reputation?

Tom — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:35:33 +0000

Adrienne So in Slate claims that hoppy beer is awful—or at least, its bitterness is ruining craft beer’s reputation.

My wife would probably agree, at least about the awful part, but certainly not about the reputation part. The thing to keep in mind that hoppy IPAs are just one style of craft beer. There are lots of styles under the craft beer umbrella; the whole movement is a reaction to the monolithic “light lagers” of the megabreweries. If you’re a craft beer lover you should know better than to hand an IPA to a newbie, but you don’t have to. There are so many other great craft beers out there for them to discover and enjoy.

Strongbox and Aaron Swartz

Tom — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:51:03 +0000

A while back The New Yorker asked Aaron Swartz to design an anonymous inbox to make it safer for whistle blowers to get their stories to journalists. The resulting system, called Strongbox, is now up and available for use.

The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

Tom — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:22:56 +0000

Bruce Schneier writes in The Atlantic that the most important thing for us to do is refuse to be terrorized.

Introversion Is Not a Personality Fail

Tom — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:38:30 +0000

If you’re an introvert like me, you’ve gotten a lot of “advice” from extroverts over the years about how you should be more outgoing yadda yadda yadda. But there’s nothing wrong with us, we’re just different.

McDonald’s Theory

Tom — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:24:28 +0000

Jon Bell has the McDonald’s Theory – stimulating creativity by suggesting the worst possible thing and letting people come up with better ideas to avoid it.

#243 Do Me A Favor? | Adventures of the Insider Box

Tom — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:35:56 +0000

#243 Do Me A Favor? | Adventures of the Insider Box.

Dropping In on Gottfried Leibniz

Tom — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:04:30 +0000

Stephen Wolfram of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha fame had the chance to visit the archives of German polymath Gottfried Leibniz in Hanover. Despite being almost 300 years old, his papers are still in good condition and show some of the mind of someone who was interested in many things beyond mathematics.

The news media is even worse than you think – MarketWatch

Tom — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:27:10 +0000

The news media is even worse than you think – MarketWatch.