After about eighteen months of concentrating my technical endevours almost entirely on Palantir (I helped build Sandra a website, but can't think of much else), I want to spice things up a bit. I'd like to put in roughly ten hours a week to a technically interesting project. Any suggestions?

I suspect I will have more fun and will be less likely to flake on the idea if I work with friends or friends-of-friends (as opposed to picking an open source project out of a hat). I have experience primarily in algorithms -- in a two years ago previous life I was a theory grad student -- and backendy Java, which is my day-to-day. I'm open to working on just about anything, but I do want to implement (and move the clock on my 10,000 hours).

Things I would prefer:

• Not needing to boot Windows (well, anything except OSX, actually) to contribute
• Physical meetups in South Bay

Finally, if I'm doing this wrong, I'd appreciate feedback on that as well.

Facebook has launched a twitter-style lite interface at http://lite.facebook.com/,

This is mostly the news feed, so it's basically a  "media rich" version of twitter. There's no technical reason I can see that prevents Facebook from completely duplicating twitter's interface (if they wanted to). Not sure what twitter's response should be -- sell to Google? I think Facebook has the  upper hand here, even if twitter has more buzz.

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In March, I suggested that Facebook could easily implement all of Twitter's functionality. Today, TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook is testing Facebook Lite, "a faster, simpler version of Facebook".  

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As with RSS, it is always a mistake to underestimate the power Winer’s bearhugging of technology can muster. But the context in which RSS emerged has as many differences as similarities with today’s circumstances. In particular, RSS was supported by two kinds of media — the emerging blogosphere and, eventually, the mainstream media. Today, these two medias have merged, primarily as a result of RSS and its democratic impact. It’s as though the New York State Thruway suddenly smashed all of its toll booths and allowed free travel. The impact was seismic, like the Guttenberg press. Shelf space became infinite. -- [techcrunchit] 

Emphasis mine, but how could anyone compare RSS to the Guttenberg press with a straight face?

 If you don't know who Soulja Boy is, then the following youtube videos are for you:

 Shout out to Mr Autotune himself, T-Pain @

"The drive to explore and learn -- to learn about the physical world and the inner self -- is a basic human trait. Without exploration and risk, and without facing the problems that come with risk, cultures are doomed to secondary status. Societies atrophy. We have to fight that tendency all the time."

Buzz Aldrin, in Life

When you see a reference to American Idol, remember that societies atrophy, and we all have a responsibility to fight that entropy. I should probably also stop reading Page Six.