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Stories from December 21, 2009
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1.How Duke Nukem Forever Failed: Unlimited time, budget and ambition (wired.com)
270 points by TrevorBurnham on Dec 21, 2009 | 75 comments
2.Sugar: The Bitter Truth (UCSF lecture) (youtube.com)
153 points by chipsy on Dec 21, 2009 | 86 comments
3.The official term for the smell after it rains (wikipedia.org)
148 points by scorxn on Dec 21, 2009 | 36 comments
4.Why the HTML5 ‘Video’ Element Is Effectively Unusable (daringfireball.net)
142 points by barredo on Dec 21, 2009 | 77 comments
5.Startup Therapy: Questions to ask yourself every month (asmartbear.com)
125 points by charliepark on Dec 21, 2009 | 8 comments
6.The Worst Ideas of the Decade - Sarbanes-Oxley (washingtonpost.com)
96 points by chwolfe on Dec 21, 2009 | 55 comments
7.Yelp Walks Away From Google Deal, And Half A Billion Dollars (techcrunch.com)
90 points by vaksel on Dec 21, 2009 | 55 comments

I never expected employers to provide snacks and beverages but it is demoralizing when executives take away such perks but continue to fly first-class for the same cost as buying a month of snacks for everyone.
9.How to say nothing in 500 words (apostate.com)
71 points by jonp on Dec 21, 2009 | 18 comments
10.How to obtain and install an SSL/TSL certificate, for free (arstechnica.com)
69 points by abraham on Dec 21, 2009 | 28 comments
11.Google Taps StackOverflow as Official Android Dev Support (readwriteweb.com)
68 points by jot on Dec 21, 2009 | 19 comments
12.Faster, NASA, Faster (nytimes.com)
67 points by vorador on Dec 21, 2009 | 51 comments
13.Setting up Clojure, Incanter, Emacs, Slime, Swank, and Paredit (incanter-blog.org)
66 points by fogus on Dec 21, 2009 | 3 comments
14.Trading Shares in Milliseconds (technologyreview.com)
64 points by raju on Dec 21, 2009 | 30 comments

Absolutely. Another symptom is machine naming. When people who will never themselves log into them tell you to dump whatever whimsical themes you had and call your boxes according to an official convention, you gotta wonder what value they're adding to the organization.
16.Use rsync to deploy your website (breckyunits.com)
58 points by breck on Dec 21, 2009 | 46 comments

10K sounds like a lot of cash for soda

This, by the way, is the very definition of bikeshedding. Everyone knows about soda; everyone has bought it before. So cutting out soda is something that the entire executive team feels competent to discuss -- unlike, say, the efficiency of the QA department's staffing schedule, or climate control zones, or the use of electricity for lighting offices at 3am, or the difficult politics of downsizing particular business units. Soda is a simple theatrical stunt for making the CFO look good. It's a good show.

Of course, as Steve points out, it sends a very clear message to the people who've been drinking those sodas: Your work is no longer considered an investment in the future. Now you're a cost center.

18.2009: The Year in Haskell (haskellwebnews.wordpress.com)
60 points by dons on Dec 21, 2009 | 5 comments
19.JavaScript charting tools: an overview (open-lab.com)
58 points by ppolsinelli on Dec 21, 2009 | 12 comments
20.Tell HN: Cinch, W7-like window management for OSX (irradiatedsoftware.com)
54 points by pxlpshr on Dec 21, 2009 | 39 comments
21.Why Basic is Still Relevant (sourceforge.net)
51 points by fogus on Dec 21, 2009 | 44 comments
22.The meaning of open (googleblog.blogspot.com)
45 points by pavs on Dec 21, 2009 | 18 comments
23.Million Dollar Math Problem (failuremag.com)
43 points by jason_tko on Dec 21, 2009 | 4 comments
24.Automated to Death? (ieee.org)
43 points by pieceofpeace on Dec 21, 2009 | 21 comments

If the accoutants looked at free sodas and snacks as leveraged salary/retention bonuses, they wouldn't suggest eliminating them.
26.Why would Google not pay as little tax as possible? (techcrunch.com)
43 points by swombat on Dec 21, 2009 | 52 comments
27.The Difference between $1 Billion-Plus in Exits and “Success” (techcrunch.com)
42 points by cwan on Dec 21, 2009 | 5 comments
28.Generic Actions in Rails 3 (yehudakatz.com)
43 points by ivey on Dec 21, 2009 | 10 comments
29.Startup Tips from Jay-Z (rjmetrics.com)
42 points by robertjmoore on Dec 21, 2009 | 7 comments
30.Clojure’s :pre and :post (fogus.me)
39 points by bgray on Dec 21, 2009 | 1 comment

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