User vote/comment RSS feeds in order to allow integration with friendfeed.com.

No, it doesn't really make sense. What it the AP wouldn't write about something that Reuters already did? News is news, but demanding first or nothing is a very poor technique.

I wouldn't worry about it. TechCrunch is not always a huge traffic driver (nor is Mashable obviously) and I wouldn't want to reward their petty games anyway.

What's TC's goal? Covering web startups or covering web startups that Mashable hasn't written about? The content at TC has been going down hill for a long time, but this is really pathetic.

>For all the company knows, I (and countless others) could be the best developers they'd ever meet. And yet we're automatically excluded from even applying.

The game is about probability, not possibility. The assumption is:

P(qualified | degree) > P(qualified | no degree)

That's probably reasonable, since schools do filter out at least some idiots. To find a candidate, one must interview roughly 1/P candidates. If interview costs are high (e.g., face time is precious), you want as many easy filters as you can get.

This is especially true if you don't trust HR to properly find the "diamonds in the rough" (I certainly wouldn't).

It's amusing that people still avoid JavaScript for absolutely no reason. 1998 called, they want their unfounded fear back.

Don't self link, that's called spamming.

Actually they are fairly rigid about not writing about a launch that has already been covered, especially by Mashable.

For those following along at home, the unpretentious word for "autodidact" is "self-taught"

A sign of this is not loving other people's work. People who love to write, but not to read, produce dreck.

There are lots of people who love to program. But how many people love to read really good source code, or learn from books that teach difficult concepts in programming?

Can somebody translate this to English? I can't tell what parts are sarcastic, and I can't decode the cryptic in-jokes.

Anti-intellectualism will be the death of us all.

If the company is great, but HR acts as a filter, skip HR. Contact the department you're looking at directly and be prepared to wow them.

Translation (as I read it):

Twitter was down due to a bug in their Jabber APIs.

Although FriendFeed does not use this API, I obviously don't know that, so I'll pretend to act smart and smugly blame them for Twitter's downtime.

Also, FriendFeed has nothing going for them minus Twitter. Forget about their 34 other supported services, evangelical community, and the fact that we already proclaimed them this years Twitter (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/14/friendfeed-is-this-year...). Yup, nothing.

Now if you'll forgive me, I must return to sucking on the teat of my God that is Twitter.

In other news, I am high as a kite.

The assumption does not hold with more information.

First, self teaching processes filter out idiots too, since idiots can't self teach.

P(qualified | (no degree + autodidactic)) > P(qualified | (Degree + little self teaching ability))

Is autodidact such an unusual word in English?

(I would find a perfectly acceptable - but I am not a native speaker though. That's why I am asking.)

Is it just me, or does anyone else find 14 interviews (11 on site, 3 phone; one more if you count the fair) a bit ridiculous? I mean I know people are the most important thing and you have to make smart choices but damn!