Best of web.archive.org on Kiwi News
Most upvoted by Kiwi News readers
12 stories from web.archive.org have been shared on Kiwi News since 31 July 2023, with 27 upvotes and 2 comments in total. The latest was shared on 16 August 2024. They are listed below, most upvoted first.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Internet Archive Snapshot of Kiwi News on April 15, 2023
- Evaporative Cooling Effect of Communities
The author argues that online communities tend to lose quality as their most valuable members leave, a pattern called Evaporative Cooling, and that designers of social products must address it. Openness speeds this decline, while social gating, such as BayCHI's niche content, slows it. Facebook is cited as having scaled while keeping quality, which the author attributes to users seeing only a small "warren" of the service rather than a shared "plaza." The article notes that roughly 80% of about 100 social product pitches the author heard in the Valley would, as conceived, be undermined by this effect.
- Don’t Call Yourself a Programmer
The article, titled "Don't Call Yourself a Programmer," argues that engineers should understand how businesses work and frame their careers around increasing revenue or reducing costs rather than around programming itself. It notes that most programming jobs are in line-of-business software, such as an internal travel expense form that could save a 2,000-employee company $250,000 a year at $50 per hour. It cites Peter Drucker's distinction between Profit Centers and Cost Centers and says engineers are usually Cost Centers. It also says that describing oneself as a "programmer" invites replacement, and that most jobs are filled through personal introductions rather than public postings.
- Thoughts on Flash
Apple's 2010 open letter "Thoughts on Flash," attributed to Steve Jobs, explains why Flash is not allowed on iPhones, iPods and iPads, arguing that the decision rests on technical grounds rather than business ones. The letter says Flash is proprietary and closed, while HTML5, CSS and JavaScript are open standards. It cites Flash's security record, its poor performance on mobile devices, and its shorter battery life for video, where software decoding plays under 5 hours versus up to 10 hours with H.264. It also argues that a third-party cross-platform layer would hold back developers from Apple's platform innovations.
- The 'Dead-Internet Theory' is wrong but feels true
The article argues that the dead-internet theory, the claim that the internet is now mostly AI-generated and bot-driven, is wrong but feels true. It cites a Macintosh Cafe forum post by a user named IlluminatiPirate, which claims the internet "died" in 2016 or early 2017 and that the U.S. government is gaslighting the world with AI, and which has been viewed more than 73,000 times. The author says Max Read's 2018 New York story supports the theory's core point, noting that a majority of web traffic probably comes from bots and that YouTube once feared "the Inversion."
- Lost in Wonderland
Crypto gaming projects are losing sight of their actual customers, the players, and the article argues that developers must build for players rather than token holders, speculators or land buyers. It contends that governance tokens are mostly bought by investors, speculators and lenders who do not play the game, which introduces competing masters for the team. Virtual land mechanics, such as plots near the spawn point being worth more, are cited as creating barriers to player discovery and engagement. The article points to Nintendo and Riot's League of Legends as examples of long-term value built around players.
- Remembering Nikolai Mushegian
The article sets out six design principles for the Rico project, a system for synthetic financial assets, which it says differ culturally from earlier iterations. It argues that incentives act like natural law, so any incentive-incompatible feature will eventually be exploited, and that "gradual decentralization" is therefore a strategic error. It also holds that credible neutrality is a competitive advantage, that power users are the primary customer, and that developers should show the system as it is with full visibility into its mechanics. The principles further reject centralization points as attack vectors, citing DNS hijacks and GitHub account hacks, and call for systems that are easily auditable and minimal.
- i was a dethroned dotcom ceo that went to work the counter at mcdonald's
Scott Heiferman, a former dotcom CEO, took a counter job at a Manhattan McDonald's in October 2000 to get back in touch with the real world and experience a large, well-run company. He reports that at $5.75 an hour, a full-time schedule would yield about $11,960 a year before taxes, and that he gained respect for low-paid workers after a six-hour shift earned him about $30. He also describes his co-workers as rude to customers, says nobody at the store thanked him, and writes that his experience taught him the value of employee appreciation.
- Designing around a core mechanic
The author presents a "Core Diagram" for game design, placing the core mechanic, the most frequently used purposeful interaction, at the center with secondary mechanics, progression systems and narrative forming outward layers. The article says the best games have a strong core mechanic that is easy to grasp, with each layer gating the one outside it and giving context to the layers inside. It applies the model to Super Mario Bros., Portal, Flower and fantasy RPGs, and argues that Angry Birds has awkward, arbitrary links between its layers while CityVille's inner layers are tightly woven but its narrative is weak.
- Humor on the web & how to stop it
Humor on the web is largely performative rather than meant to amuse, according to this essay on social software design. The author argues that humor online serves to prove worth, intelligence, belonging or superiority, a pattern traced to an "Internet citizenry" that formed among people who felt rejected offline. Memes and catchphrases act as credentials of in-group membership, and parody answers on sites like Quora are described as attempts at validation rather than help. The author also suggests that community builders who ignore these factions, citing the Chevy Tahoe "Make your own ad" campaign, the Time 100 4chan stunt and Mr Splashypants, have run into trouble.
- The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Eric S. Raymond argues that open-source software can be developed effectively in a "bazaar" style, with open participation and frequent releases, rather than the "cathedral" style of centrally planned development, and he supports this with the history of his fetchmail project. He describes how he took over the popclient POP3 client from Carl Harris in June 1996, after building on fetchpop code by Seung-Hong Oh, and how a need for automatic reply-address rewriting drove the work. The article's central claim, stated as "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow," holds that open review makes bugs easy to find and fix.
- Community-controlled games
Community-controlled games, where many players steer one avatar, can create a symbiotic form of storytelling with community-written narratives. Twitch Plays Pokemon Red was completed within 16 days, according to a post on the site's blog, and drew 9 million unique viewers, with a peak of 121,000 at one time. Its subreddit, which has almost 100,000 subscribers, produced the Book of Helix, a 27-page work submitted by Audry Dijeau that wove the top-rated contributions into one text. Zach Gerlock, creator of Twitch Plays Zelda, says such games need a "no failure state" because players cannot lose progress.