Top all-time · #2635
Niall Kennedy
Personal blog · niallkennedy.comwebstartupsprogramming
Niall Kennedy's personal blog at niallkennedy.com covers web, startups and programming. Since 2007, 32 different Hacker News readers have linked it 35 times, most often “Facebook v. Power Ventures”. The last post was in 2013, but the archive is still widely read.
Niall Kennedy lives and works in San Francisco, California.
Most-linked posts?
- Facebook v. Power Ventures3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-01-04
- Facebook's photo storage rewrite3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-04-06
- The story behind Google Chrome (2008)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-06-28
- The story behind Google Chrome2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-09-03
- Sniff browser history for improved user experience2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-02-09
- Every good domain is taken. Here’s why. (2007)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-12-30
What Hacker News says?
Interestingly if I recall correctly a lot of the original talent for Chrome/Chromium originally worked at Mozilla and were poached by Google. [1] [1] https://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2008/09/google-chrome.html...
Comment linking /blog/2008/09/google-chrome.html
on “DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome”Submitted Facebook's photo storage rewrite as a story · 60 points
HN discussionGuido apparently wrote a web-based code review tool for Google: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/11/google-mondrian.htm...
Comment linking /blog/2006/11/google-mondrian.html
on “Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum”Submitted WebKit and Chrome prerendering as a story · 44 points
HN discussionLet's take a small step back here; just like the anti-Google sentiment that was about a few months back it seems is Facebooks turn to face the fire (mostly their fault). A lot of what they are doing is, at best, ethically unsound or, at worst, privacy invading. In this case I'd say (from initial reading) it sits on the scale slap bang in the middle of "a douchebag thing to do" . But. It doesn't feel hypocritical bec…
Comment linking /blog/2009/01/facebook-vs-power-ventures.html
on “Facebook Tries to Make Violations of Terms of Use Into Criminal Violations”Submitted Google search referer changes as a story · 28 points
HN discussionI don't know the details, but Guido has written Mondrian, a code review system for use at Google - https://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/11/google-mondrian.ht... - it was later replaced by something else, in a different language.
Comment linking /blog/2006/11/google-mondrian.html
on “The GIL and its effects on Python multithreading”Submitted Sniff browser history for improved user experience as a story · 22 points
HN discussionChrome team wasn't actually that big when they launched; IIRC they got their Founder's Award soon after I started at Google and all the team member names fit on 2 PowerPoint (well, actually Google Presentation) slides. This was almost 2 years after they had launched for internal dogfooding, so the initial team was likely quite a bit smaller. I would chalk it up to the massive amount of experience among the early tea…
Comment linking /blog/2008/09/google-chrome.html
on “Goodbye Mozilla”Submitted Google Reader API as a story · 17 points
HN discussionI'm a gnu/eff booster most of the time. However, it's worth looking at more of the details here: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2009/01/facebook-vs-power-v... "Collecting Facebook usernames and passwords is at the heart of the dispute. Power.com impersonates a Facebook user after collecting their username and password." I would still side with power BUT a TOS that says "you can't give your password to third partie…
Comment linking /blog/2009/01/facebook-vs-power-ventures.html
on “It's Your Data, It's Your Bot: It's Not A Crime”Submitted The story behind Google Chrome as a story · 13 points
HN discussionBut that's just rent. The apartments 2.4x mine appeared to be in worse neighborhoods with higher crime, worse schools, etc. than my current neighborhood. And commuting is expensive. I have a 10 minute bike ride right now, there's no way I could afford to live close enough to SV to bike to work. It's almost enough to erase the rest of the cost difference. http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/03/silicon-valley-comm...
Comment linking /blog/2006/03/silicon-valley-commute-costs.html
on “2015 Engineering Salaries Reviewed”Submitted Google App Engine for developers as a story · 13 points
HN discussionHad never heard of Haystack before. A few relevant links in case anyone is interested (It is the system powering facebook's photo storage infra): - https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/osdi10/tech/full_papers/... - https://web.archive.org/web/20140906020211/https://www.faceb... (The note is not up anymore) - http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2009/04/facebook-haystack.h...
Comment linking /blog/2009/04/facebook-haystack.html
on “Makeitopen.com – new Open Source learning site from Facebook”Submitted Facebook v. Power Ventures as a story · 10 points
HN discussionMark Fletcher (founder of bloglines) gave a good talk which touched on this. Here's a transcription: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/05/mark-fletcher-blogl...
Comment linking /blog/2006/05/mark-fletcher-bloglines-onelist.html
on “Ask YC: How would you sell your business?”Submitted Sniff browser history for improved user experience as a story · 9 points
HN discussionWell, the release early and release often mantra still stands. Make something basic but that works well and get it out - tell people about it. Tell us about it. Take the feedback you get and if you agree adopt it and grow this way. Run a blog on your site and let people know about your plans. Have a read of this. I found it interesting: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/05/mark-fletcher-blogl...
Comment linking /blog/2006/05/mark-fletcher-bloglines-onelist.html
on “How to prepare for public beta? Readiness checklist”Submitted The anatomy of cloud computing as a story · 8 points
HN discussionGo for San Francisco: 1. Space The rents are actually in many cases less here than in other parts of the valley. (My office is $1 per s.f. per month!) A huge building boom is finishing up in the SOMA area of the City with hundreds (maybe 1000+) new apartments entering the market. This is good news for downward pressure on rental prices. 2. Convenience : Within walking distance of both my office and my apartment are…
Comment linking /blog/archives/2005/08/yahoo_leasing_san_francisco_of.html
on “San Francisco or Palo Alto for a new startup?”Submitted Rewriting Twitter for web best practices as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe article by Niall Kennedy (a couple of links in) on facebook's new storage system, Haystack, and its implementation was pretty interesting. http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2009/04/facebook-haystack.h...
Comment linking /blog/2009/04/facebook-haystack.html
on “Who Has The Most Photos Of Them All? Hint: It Is Not Facebook”Submitted The story behind Google Chrome (2008) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThere's some ways to get megs of storage on the client using Flash and other things ( http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2007/01/ajax-performance-local-storage.html) to store a few megs of content locally. I wonder why they didn't go with that, in order to avoid the plugin?
Comment linking /blog/archives/2007/01/ajax-performance-local-storage.html)
on “Google to release Google Gears on Thursday - take applications beyond the web and challenge Microsoft on desktop”Submitted Every good domain is taken. Here’s why. (2007) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe perils and consequences of hot linking. Just because a link is live and safe today, doesn't mean it always will be. The following link is SFW, but in turn contains potentially NSFW links. http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/12/microsoft-copyright...
Comment linking /blog/2006/12/microsoft-copyright-photograph.html
on “Trump tweet 'Hacked' by buying expired domain”Submitted Every good domain is taken. Here’s why. (2007) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionA similar thing happened to Microsoft ten years back, when they hotlinked to an image on flickr and violated the CC licensing by doing so. The owner of the image swapped out his original image at the link, replacing it with the infamous goatse image, which appeared on Microsoft's site for some period of time. The image owner wrote it up on his blog. You don't really need to follow links to the goatse image or a scre…
Comment linking /blog/2006/12/microsoft-copyright-photograph.html
on “Submit a Pull Request to Inject Arbitrary JavaScript Code into Trump's Site”Submitted Underpants gnomes business plan as a story · 2 points
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