skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's how to use Twitter as a personal marketing tool, but I personally block and mark as spam every person like that who follows me.

Here's the real secret to making Twitter Work For You If You're A Real Person: follow people you know and like. Look at who they talk to, follow those people if they seem decent. Talk to the people you follow as if they're your actual friends, because if they're not already eventually they probably will be.

You won't get four thousand followers. You might get new opportunities and contacts, and actual meaningful relationships with people. A direct application of this tactic, applied in the days before Twitter and Facebook, managed to get me a wife, so I think I'm doing better than the OP.
I'm not convinced by the music thing. We have music at our office but in practice it rapidly trends towards whatever offends the least people which is normally some kind of "easy listening" dreck. This doesn't seem to work for most people, given that a fair number of us still listen to our own music on ipods or whatever.

I suppose it would be a nice little benefit if the music played was interesting and cool, but I'm not convinced that's likely to actually work very often.
I used to work for a web retailer selling outdoors gear (skis/snowboards, camping, climbing, &c). During the ski season, on powder days, we were encouraged to go play in the snow before showing up at the office. People at their desks before noon when there's fresh on the slopes were often asked what they were doing at work, and executive "going to get a couple runs in" lunches were the norm the rest of the time.

On top of that, we were eligible for significant discounts on season passes to many of the local resorts (in the Salt Lake City area). Between that and the free day passes that were handed out as rewards by team leads, project managers, and the like, it was hard not to get in some serious slope time.

(And, of course, there was the discount on gear...)
Nap room. Seriously. I'm often dragging a bit by 3-4PM, between general tiredness and food coma from lunch. I'd love to be able to crash out for an hour or two, and come back to what I'm doing refreshed.
What does "shrill" mean in the context of writing?
Not wanting a picture displayed at the top of his profile doesn't mean he wants to erase her from his history.

(Keep in mind this is hypothetical in the sense that I have not asked him how he feels about this; I'm imagining how I would feel in his situation.)
Hackwire?
Delivering Happiness

It made me think of what makes me happy and how I can help make the people around me happy, while still being entrepreneurial (which makes me happy).
Along the theme of "unexpectedly resonant books for startup entrepreneurs", can I submit "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain?

(Medium Raw, a 2010 book, was also pretty good --- although probably only if you're into the high-end restaurant scene).
That site is currently under trouble.
Actually from what I understand, only a small number of users got the change you're describing, and that happened when they introduced Questions (which neither I nor many of my friends have yet--I still have the "Twitter-style status posting")
Was a little worried people would see this as me trying to win over Jason's favor. Trust me, a blog post isn't going to do that. He sees my work all day every day and if I'm not delivering, a blog post isn't going to help my relationship with him. He has a pretty good sense of "sucking up" and from what I've seen it doesn't get you far with him. :)

The purpose of the post was 1. to have a discussion about the level of commitment founders should expect from employees and 2. brag about the fact that I love my job and Mahalo it is actually a really cool company.

While I agree that hearing from previous employees would be less "biased", Mahalo has never been healthier than right now. The only people who know what Mahalo is like are those that are currently working there.

That being said, there are obviously a ton of people who have worked with Jason over the years who each have their own experiences. I can't and don't want to speak for them. Just sharing my own personal experience.
IME, that works a lot better in smaller offices. When there's only a handful of folks among whose musical tastes we needed to coordinate, it was a lot easier. More than that, and I'd just fall back to headphones.
Santa Claus *is* Real
http://last.fm? Loads fine for me in Chrome.
The Foundation trilogy, because it rekindled my interests in the relationship between determinism, humanity, choice and the succession of time.
One consequence of this behaviour is that you will only get the attention of people who use Twitter the way you do.

Some of us read all our tweets and only follow people who make this reasonable. We can't really follow people who post 10 times a day, so you're losing us as a potential audience. It's possible this is a worthwhile tradeoff.

Related plug: One of my side projects analyzes someone's Twitter account and tells you if you could reasonably follow them: http://www.unladenfollow.com/u/justinvincent
Between my experiences at several jobs:

-In office music
-In office shower. Somewhere to store extra clothes and items
-In office kitchen (and a good one at that)
-Bike rack
-Basic bike tools on-hand at office
-Easily accessible set of basic hand and small power tools in office. Stuff happens. You need them.
-Motorcycle parking
-Chair budget. Get what you want/need to work best
-I liked Pixar's office/cube budget, although I've never worked for them, search for it.
-Ability to have whatever keyboard/mouse/display/computer best suited me. Don't make me use the shitty company's logo mousepad if I want something else. Don't force an IDE on me. If I use textmate, allow me to use that. If I'm a vim or emacs guy, allow that. Results matter- not my IDE.
-Give me a software budget, or better yet no budget at all. If I want software that is tangentially related to my work, I should be able to get it
-Massive company library. Geeks love books/knowledge. Being able to take these home is good. Being able to order anything and add to it is even better.
-Food and drinks available.
-Cabs home if needed- no questions asked.
-Ability for me to receive packages at work (that may not be work related). When I have an office I *always* ship my packages there as to not miss them.
-I loved being able to do laundry at betahouse.
-Encourage and pay for employees going to social events, even if they aren't 100% tied to their daily work functions. Social employees are worth much more.
-A 'quiet room' where someone can work/study/sleep without being bothered. A nap/dark room is a good idea too if you can fit it space-wise.
-Your office layout matters. Think how you position people and how the arrangement of power sits. I liked sitting right beside the CEO at my first startup (and we were 20 people, so this wasn't a given). I count him as a good friend because of this.

But also, don't skimp on basic benefits either. Make sure everyone is financially sound. If someone has something they need bailed out of, let them know you are there. The last thing you want is some employee worrying about the bills from replacing a major appliance that blew up at home. Issue small loans, or better yet, convenient bonuses on a need-only basis. Make sure your employees are healthy. Find out what they actually feel about their health insurance. Most younger employees will not care, but a few will. Listen to them. You want them healthy and happy- their families too. Most companies these days skimp on partner healthcare and no longer support the needs of a family.

Other small things that we miss now in society do matter to people.

-Anniversaries, birthdays and important dates to that person. Doing more that just posting to facebook is a way to show thoughtfulness. This can just be a card.
-Even in politically correct 2010 and with many of us working at home, we do have holidays that we appreciate having noticed. Small gifts are very noticed.
-Just as you want your employee to go above and beyond, think about how you can go above and beyond for them. This will come back to you.
It's difficult to not be "biased" when I am working for a company that I love working at. I'm not trying to give any kind of assessment of Jason Calacanis as a person over the course of his life. I'm not qualified to do that.

What I am qualified to do is share that I honestly love working at Mahalo under Jason Calacanis. I knew I would take greif for that but I wasn't going to let that stop me from just being honest about the fact that I love my job.

Thanks for the feedback.
The entire Culture series is of like caliber. I just finished Surface Detail in a little over a day, wall clock time. Having just finished The Player of Games, I think you might really like Surface Detail.
Polemic, passionate in a one-note way, pleading, to an extent that sacrifices the narrative. Two great examples from Krakauer: _Under The Banner Of Heaven_, which veers into a straight-up litigation against the Mormon faith†, and _Where Men Win Glory_, whose latter third is practically tear-stained.

Note: I'm not saying either of those books are bad; I liked them. I loved _Into The Wild_.

† I'm not one.
My Bash and Vim setups
I was impressed by Squarespace.
Men Are For Android, Women Are For iOS, Nielsen Study Says
A toss between 'The Big Short' by Michael Lewis and 'Too Big To Fail' by Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Both books are about the financial crisis on Wall Street. They provide excellent insight into how smart people made very bad decisions that had repercussions around the entire world. The last time I remember getting such an insight into this important industry was Lewis' own 'Liars Poker'.

I think it is important for people to understand what went wrong with the most recent financial crisis, and these two books do an excellent job of informing us from an insiders perspective.
I read that about 10 years ago. I need to revisit it again since I don't think I have ever managed to finish it without long periods of rest inbetween parts.

That said I totally agree. Excellent book.
Very good point. You're absolutely right.

However I wouldn't say I get 99% and my followers get 1%. I think they get a much better deal than that.

I've made a commitment to find the best content on a daily basis for 365 days a year. Out of 8400 tweets I've posted I would lay bets no more than 100 have been self promotional.

Also, when people ask me questions directly I try to answer them (i.e. when they put @justinvincent)

So although it is impossible to follow the entire tweetstream I do feel like I connect with the folks who connect with me.

I also use the Pluggio streams feature to watch the select few that I find "especially" interesting! ;)

Of course YMMV and it's different for everyone. I've just tried to show how it's worked well for me :)
it was due to "low usage rates" according to http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/402
Some people are very good at recognizing talent and using it. It is a common attribute of many top CEO's in any industry.

As an outsider looking in, I perceive Jason's value to a company may be found both in his skill to identify valuable people and to market the company he is involved with through his personal exploits. Sometimes, companies work well in spite of the leadership they have as staff comes together to form and execute ideas.

At Weblogs, Brian Alvey and a slew of talented people pushed both the platform and the content to form a successful company. At Mahalo, iteration after iteration drives the product while a revolving door of staff comes and goes. Jason's latest projects including his video podcast network and independent startup conference are further examples of time and trial. On the surface, Jason's value has been to identify the right people and use each company as a platform to market himself and then his role within the company.

This history is somewhat unusual and confusing when compared with traditional employers. Especially for those that Jason prefers to hire. Young, fresh out of school, energetic and bright, Jason leverages his abilities to identify talent in order to "scoop" people who can trade their time for the chance to work for a true online legend. In many cases, it's a fair trade. However, when looked at from afar, Weblogs, Mahalo, This Week In and TechCrunch tell an interesting story that may make those with more experience, knowledge or connections think twice. "To each his own" is a valuable sentiment conveyed well by Travis in the original post.

Beyond history, I have learned to judge powerful people with a simple measure of good vs. evil. When given the opportunity, some people unknowingly make decisions that have a positive impact on the people and processes around them. Others feel more comfortable operating somewhat negatively while justifying their path by saying things such as, "I make the hard decisions" and "I'll fight until the last breath". There is no right or wrong way to make decisions but the impact of those decisions on the people and processes around them uncover what type of person they are.

With my definition of good vs. evil above in mind, and using Mahalo as a specific example, Jason can be viewed as evil. It's not always easy to do, but I strongly believe that working with people who are fundamentally good produces happy, healthy, engaged employees who truly care about the success of their company, it's culture and their leadership. Working for people who are evil produces a turnstile of employees who typically last less then 3 years at their desk and require regular additional extra curricular motivation in order to offset their frustrations.
Quick video shortcuts:

60-second demo of the xylophone playing itself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR3xmof8rZY#t=11m50s

Machining our own solenoids on our lathe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR3xmof8rZY#t=5m5s

Fun fact for the programming-minded folks: Songs are programmed in with C macros. GCC kept trying to inline the note-queueing function, but that bloated the compiled program size tremendously (despite specifying -Os on the command line). We had to use a GCC directive to force it not to inline...
One of my top five books. I've read it so many times that the binding broke and the book is now in three pieces. I'm amazed that James Clavell managed to capture the culture so well.
"White Fang", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London

Klondike "like" experience, forges determination.
They editorialized and dumbed the story down to a fairy tale, and made Zuckerberg look like a childish fool. Why oh why would anyone voluntarily be on this show?

EDIT: At least they did in 2008.. apparently I'm watching the old interview. I'd like to see the new one if it's available on a working video site.
In fairness, Github's complete transparency is likely to be understood by Githubbers. A technical explanation from Tumblr is far more likely to be met with "so what, where are my cat macros?" than Github's explanations are.
I liked Delivering Happiness too - a great book.

For me "How We Decide" has been the best book of the year as it gave me quite some insights into human brain works and how to deal with different situations.
I use the Pluggio streams feature (which is basically the twitter lists feature re-skinned). It lets me curate really interesting people into groups that can be followed more easily.

No need to use Pluggio for that tho, Twitter lists on twitter.com works perfectly well.
Some folks have paid to use Tumblr - premium themes, for example.
His Hindsight Is 20-20 (NYU Professor installs a camera in the back of his head)
I'm doubt their all entitled morons, but it does remind me of my favorite Louis CK bit - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itn8TwFCO4M&feature=playe...
We have fairly healthy food. The signs are all labeled green, yellow, or red to indicate healthfulness and there's salad and vegetables every day. Of course no one is going to stop you from going up for seconds if that's what you want to do, but I've found I eat much healthier at work because it's difficult and time consuming to prepare that variety of food and vegetables for a single person. One of my coworkers lost 60 pounds since starting.
Seneca's On The Shortness of Life. It's extremely short and to the point on how best to spend one's life and how we have enough time to do whatever we please - I summarized/heavily quoted it at http://peterc.org/pedia/seneca-shortness-of-life/
I contacted Linode earlier this afternoon, and they very politely (and reasonably) said no. I'd also like to find a VPS for this. One in a foreign country with no good reason to release their customers' billing information would be extra nice. So far, the most promising one I've found is PRQ -- which already hosts Wikileaks.
I've heard it both ways on this (from people directly involved, and from friends of friends, etc). My understanding is that this is the exception, not the rule. Maybe someone can point me in the direction that refutes this thought.
Along with your comment about a powerful machine and choice of OS, I'd like to add root access.

I don't have root access on my current computer, and it's a royal pain. For some boneheaded reason, no idea why, svn wasn't installed on it. I had to bother IT for three days to get it installed.

Thankfully, I'm about to get a new box on which I have been promised root. :)
I want to second MailChimp. I've had a lot of success with it and initially used it for a signup/coming soon page too (and got 1700 subscribers in a couple of weeks who... I still haven't e-mailed ;-)). Since then, I've started two programming language e-mail newsletters and attracted and delivered news to > 6000 developers in the last couple of months. Big thumbs up to the chimp.
Vast majority of those following more than 500 people would be using a client that enables them to group and separate their stream so they can ignore the bulk of them. Sole reason for following them would be to hope they reciprocate with a follow, but not ignore you.
I just re-read "Microserfs" and "Generation X" by Douglas Coupland. I actually read both of these years ago when they first came out. I am amazed at how prescient they were. So many themes and ideas that I had buried away were right there on the printed page. Looking back over the past decade of my own life I can see that even though I wasn't aware of it, these books had a profound influence on my dreams/ideas/aspirations.
There's also the rule against creating direct incentive for invites, which seems to strike at the heart of many viral mechanics.
You ate at 6 pm and then went back to work? How long was the workday?
I definitely think it's debatable whether or not this is the absolute best way to use Twitter for everyone - I don't like getting 10 tweets from someone a day. However, I really appreciate how well written and convincing this is and likewise, how you're able to "sell" your product without actually selling it. This is a prime example of providing value without expecting much in return. In exchange you're probably end up getting some users.
Hudson is an amazing tool and Kohsuke deserves all the praise he gets.
Which company are you talking about, if you don't mind?

EDIT: Oh, Google. Funny, I just applied for a job there not ten minutes ago, partly because of things like that.
I liked Daemon. A rogue AI story that doesn't depend on strong AI.

This talk by him was interesting (which was how I found out about the book): http://fora.tv/2008/08/08/Daniel_Suarez_Daemon_Bot-Mediated_...
Upload, store and download files with no limits
> I assume that everyone allows delivery at work.

Not a safe assumption, unfortunately. I had to make a huge stink to not get this taken away last year.
Allowing employees to donate 10% of their work time to nonprofits of their choice. Employees feel like their company gives a crap and helps them feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves.
Beyond article / blog post writing, submitting quick designs to theme sites or working the affiliate game...

Have you thought about developing a few small, niche targeted for-pay lessons?

For example, a lot of people want to learn how to design and code WordPress templates to sell on theme sites. Whip up a micro site and a very complete tutorial. Buy an ad on one of the smaller template sites, do some low volume adsense and you should have a few subscribers. Keep it cheap and make sure that you get excellent feedback.

You have a good mix of skills listed above and if you identify some things that people want to learn (use some keyword tools for this), you'll likely have a good source of sustainable income.
Props for not letting Microsoft write the letter accompanying the phone. Candor will bring you a long way.
I’m curious on my end too, are you running Windows?

Firefox is nothing but trouble for me on OS X, but it’s great for my main testing environment on Windows (at work). The latest 4 beta is a lot better, but I’m fairly dependent on OS X’s system-wide text services.
Julian Assange was a committer to Postgres
Yikes. I use Moniker too, and this hasn't ever happened to me. I thought they were better than that.
Django Packages: Reusable Apps, Sites, Tools, and More for your Django Projects
Hope you get well soon with the help of the community...

You are one of the reasons why I picked up programming before I had full computer access in 6th grade..
I would kill to work for a company that bought decent chairs. I mean, I know they seem pricey, but an Aeron chair is at least no more expensive than the computer they buy me. And it will probably last a hell of a lot longer too.
Bloody amazing book. I just reread it a few weeks ago.
I've had some very bad experiences with Moniker in the past.

I would even go so far as to say they are untrustworthy.
Breakfast of Champions by Vonnegut. I've read a ton of books in my life, but for some reason never took the plunge into Vonnegut. I was utterly awe struck by this book. I think every person has a small list of things that they wish that they had created (well, the ability to create them that is). Breakfast of Champions immediately found its way onto my list. The only problem is that such a book makes me embarrassed to have the audacity to ever put pen to paper (or fingers to M-x as it were). I'll keep trying though.
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"Switch" by Chip and Dan Heath. Website here: http://heathbrothers.com/switch/. I don't tend to go out of my way for self-help type books, which this may or may not be. The authors leverage a lot of research and rhetoric that was already familiar, plus some that was not. It was pleasing to learn some new vocabulary, such as "Fundamental Attribution Error" and "Ego Depletion." Since my kids were born, it has been very apparent that the better a human is at manipulating others, the more likely that human is to survive. But we tend to think of manipulating behavior as having negative connotations. "Switch" is full of stories about effecting change by manipulating behavior. Positive stories. As a parent, I found the reminder to look for positive ways to reinforce desired behavior invaluable. And, personally, I found the notion that behavior is highly attributable to environmental forces something of a relief.
Kitchen Confidential seconded. The account is surprisingly honest and also funny. Lots of tips on how to manage a business, how not to start a venture, now to keep on trying after failure, team interactions etc.