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23 Sep 2010 21:15

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U.S.: Why Facebook broke: A configuration error, a feedback loop

  • Early today Facebook was down or unreachable for many of you for approximately 2.5 hours. This is the worst outage we’ve had in over four years, and we wanted to first of all apologize for it.
  • Facebook employee Robert Johnson • Explaining why Facebook was so broken today. Simply put, there was a configuration error so huge that it caused the entire site to fall over itself. It created a feedback loop in a cluster of databases and couldn’t handle the number of requests. All engineers could do to stop it was turn off the site for two and a half hours. That’s right. The entire site. It’s not often that Facebook crashes at all, let alone in the middle of the day on a weekday. That was epic, eh? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

23 Sep 2010 10:35

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U.S.: Who’s richer, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg? Click and find out!

  • $6.9 billion the value of Mark Zuckerberg’s portfolio, according to Forbes
  • $6.1 billion the value of Steve Jobs; note that this is mostly on paper source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

22 Sep 2010 20:12

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Tech: Facebook wants to wholly, completely integrate with your phone

  • No, Mark isn’t building a phone. But the Facebook CEO does have some very bold, audacious goals for mobile: He basically wants to allow phone-makers (and end-users) to use Facebook to automatically personalize phones on the fly. “On phones we can actually do something better,” he told the dudes at TechCrunch. “We can do a single sign-on if we do a good integration with a phone, rather than just doing something where you go to an app and it’s automatically social or having to sign into each app individually.” That could be pretty friggin’ rad if that’s the case. Or friggin’ scary. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Sep 2010 10:55

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Tech: Rumor mill: Facebook’s building a phone, we scoff and stuff

  • rumor Facebook is reportedly working on their own phone, according to TechCrunch. The guy behind the iPhone app is one of the reported principals on the project.
  • skepticism Phones are a lot different from friends. Is Facebook really suited for this? And with all the privacy problems they’ve had, would anyone trust them? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Sep 2010 21:14

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Tech: Diaspora, post-release: No love at all from programmers

  • Haters gon’ Hate. If you’ve read Hacker News lately, you might have noticed a recent trend of programmers basically tearing apart the code from Diaspora. There are lots of reasons for this, but the biggest one is that the security backbone appears to be lacking. This guy put it this way: “The more I read, the more bad things I found. They’re going to need a complete overhaul to fix this.” These wet-behind-the-ears college students have now been accused of creating some of the worst clearly marked pre-alpha code known to man. Which leads us to ask, have they seen the new Chatroulette? If they really want to feel manly, they should stop ripping on NYU students and start ripping on 17-year-old Russian kids that are friends with Sean Parker. That’ll show ’em.  source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Sep 2010 10:46

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Tech: Greenpeace makes a really douchey attack on Mark Zuckerberg

  • Uh, what? Look Greenpeace, we know you guys are the environmental version of PETA and stuff, but come on. The broadsided attack on Zuckerberg was kinda douchey and other companies are doing way worse than the Zuck. At least “The Social Network” will have a Trent Reznor soundtrack. This just seems like an organization attempting to stay relevant. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

15 Sep 2010 23:19

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Tech: Here’s their hard work: The boys of Diaspora show their stuff

  • There it is guys. Diaspora. The Kickstarter project that led to many thousands of dollars in donations now has a code release. It’s now open-source. It’s not a real release yet (that’s coming in October), but it’s definitely off to a good start. Imagine it as Facebook without any of the ads and extra crap that makes Facebook Facebook. Too early to decide if it’s overhyped yet. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 4 Comments • Permalink
 

15 Sep 2010 11:01

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Tech: Eric Schmidt: Google’s doing social integration, not “Google Me”

  • Everybody has convinced themselves that there’s some huge project about to get announced next week. And I can assure you that’s not the case.
  • Google CEO Eric Schmidt • Regarding the rumored launch of “Google Me,” which is expected to be a Facebook killer. But it may not be that. Rather, Schmidt makes it sound like a full-site integration of social features akin to Facebook’s “Instant Personalization.” “If you think about it, it’s obvious,” Schmidt continued. “With your permission, knowing more about who your friends are, we can provide more tailored recommendations. Search quality can get better.” So, in other words, a actually useful Google Friend Connect. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

14 Sep 2010 10:25

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Culture: Facebook movie trip report: Zuckerberg’s a jerk in the film

  • It’s just as rough on the Facebook CEO as his people feared it would be. Not because of scandalous scenes involving sex and drugs–there aren’t many of those, and they’re quite tame. It’s because the film portrays him as an insecure jerk who screws over people and becomes a much-richer insecure jerk.
  • Wall Street Journal reporter Peter Kafka • Offering an early assessment of the most anticipated film of the season, “The Social Network.” While Kafka notes the rumored coke-and-boobs scene is fairly tame (no boobs anymore, sorry), he notes that the film may not be totally accurate. But it’s still a harsh image. “At the end of the movie,” he writes. “there’s a suggestion that Zuckerberg may not actually be a jerk–he may just be someone who acts like one. That’s about it when it comes to the upside of his character: He’s the bad guy in his own creation myth.” A creation myth directed by David Fincher. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Aug 2010 20:27

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Tech: Diaspora to launch September 15th, crush under its own hype

  • We are spending a good chunk of time concentrating on building clear, contextual sharing. That means an intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their coworkers and what goes to their drinking buddies.
  • The dudes from the Diaspora project • Giving an end-of-Summer update on their well-funded project. While some of the more technical things won’t make the launch, they plan to have a working version ready to go by September 15, which means we get do decide then whether or not these guys are full of crap or actually have the goods. To celebrate, we’re going to set our Facebook settings to the loosest available. We don’t need it anymore; we have the goodness that is Diaspora. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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