onfocus

A list of companies that have become successful without VC funding.

Excellent thoughts on community moderation. "This is why community moderators have real power; they need that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content. People will fight you almost literally to the death over their right to be entertained, and to entertain others."

Hilarious gallery of terrifying horse mask pictures contributed by Amazon users. [via mlkshk]

Handy query to get a quick inventory of a database.

Everyday Carry. Pictures of what people carry in their pockets. [via torrez]

I agree that cutesy error messages are irritating. I'd rather see a more serious "we're on it" notice.

Great collection of miscellaneous tech tips. I have a bunch of these in a text file too. I should make them public like this.

"So maybe, instead of waiting for the MPAA’s next law and changing our Twitter avatars for a few days in protest, it would be more productive to significantly reduce or eliminate our support of the MPAA member companies starting today, and start supporting campaign finance reform."

Russ Cox explains how the retired Google Code Search used to work. It includes links to a similar project you can install locally to search code using the same method.

Great talk from Clay Shirky that tells some of the history behind SOPA and why it's dangerous. "They [media companies] want us all back on the couch: just consume."

"Once the market matures, the pirates go away. They always do. Legitimate markets work better than pirate markets."

"Glue is a simple command line tool to generate CSS sprites." Handy!

Good description of a handy tool that helps test mail server settings.

The annual state of the world.

Not only a fun site to browse, but a good example of taking group Flickr content elsewhere for a new experience.

"Remix culture is the new Prohibition, with massive media companies as the lone voices calling for temperance. You can criminalize commonplace activities from law-abiding people, but eventually, something has to give."

"Like a service? Make them charge you or show you ads. If they won't do it, clone them and do it yourself. Soon you'll be the only game in town!" This is both absolutely true and heartbreaking.