When should you give up on an idea? http://t.co/pe8qi1IY

How intern mentorship works at Khan Academy http://t.co/SA93VH8D

Really great post about what makes a technology company (and what doesn't).

Fascinating article that dives in to how an octopus relates to its environment.

"there are a lot of folks who think gamification means pulling the worst aspects out of games and shoving them into an application. It’s not. Don’t think of gamification as anything other than clever strategies to motivate someone to learn so they can have fun being productive."

Dan Gillmor: "Raise the Crime Rate" -- another look at the devastating results of our prison-industrial complex http://t.co/LWLMYRwo

Longreads: RT @Travelreads: "Vietnam's Bowl of Secrets." @davidfarley, @AFARmedia on cao lau soup in Hoi An http://t.co/YJ9sS3mn #longreads

Longreads: "African Agriculture: Dirt Poor." Natasha Gilbert, @NatureNews on tackling hunger through soil http://t.co/uttyWv2o v @lsarpp #longreads

Longreads: "Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth's Hazing Abuses." @janetreitman @RollingStone http://t.co/ZFK1ec8D v @peterlattman

Longreads: "Minor Cords." @laurarenamurray, @newinquiry on an emancipated minor v. @RobinRespaut http://t.co/JIGasUuR #longreads

Solid description of the challenges facing news organizations.

"It often costs more, but I’ve found it to be the most worthwhile investment you can make. There’s nothing better for your work and your life than a quiet, focused mind."

Fantastic look at how the American military and government assigns color to objects.

Great advice about how and what to open source.

"This is why I say priorities can only be observed. In my book, a priority is not simply a good idea; it’s a condition of reality that, when observed, causes you to reject every other thing in the universe — real, imagined, or prospective — in order to ensure that things related to the priority stay alive."

Facebook's tactics are the same as other sites which browser makers mark as malware. Time to mark Facebook as such.

Great post about the benefits and downsides to working from home.

Cool ideas from Mark Cuban about how the financial industry can change.

"But by imitating the best journalism of yesterday without a full understanding of why that journalism was great and what made it so powerful, our industry is slowly amassing an unsettling amount of cargo cult behaviors: we’re imitating a 20th-century writing style and ethical code without the first idea about how these contribute to journalism that is informative, engaging and fair."

Rands shares some tips for making your presentations the best they can be.

Anil Dash shares his views on creating a large research university in New York.

Fantastic test to gauge how healthy your company and team are.

"The antidote is people. It’s not the physical infrastructure of Silicon Valley that makes it work, or the weather, or anything like that. Those helped get it started, but now that the reaction is self-sustaining what drives it is the people."

Rands writes about the different types of conferences. It's always about the people.

David Carr at the New York Times questions the future of WikiLeaks.

The Times doesn’t have an exclusive on intellect. Their readers have quite a bit of it, and can get the information they want even if the Times doesn’t want to provide it. The Times is on much more precarious ground than internet leaking is.

Cool notes from Carlos about what he's working on at the Union Bulletin.

Jeff Atwood explains the motivation behind game elements in the Stack Exchange model.

Shawn Blanc's observations about what's new and what that means in iOS 5.

"If I’m not paying for the product, I am the product. As is true for many free services on the web today, I have no contractual relationship with IFTTT. I pay for the service it provides by surrendering access to my data. OAuth helps me negotiate how much access, but if I give up none then IFTTT is powerless."

"So the next time you’re tempted to write off the latest hot company: Instagram, Pintrest, Tumblr, Spotify, AirBnB, or whatever – in stead of being envious or dismissive be “dissecting.” Find out what you think in their product is working and what you don’t think matters. Understand why they’re getting user adoption and what you could learn from that."

"The journalism of makers aligns itself with the tiny hotbeds of knowledge and practice where great things emerge, the nascent communities of change. Its aim is a deep understanding of the complex systems of the real world, so that plans for a better world may constructed one piece at a time by people who really know what they’re talking about. It never takes itself too seriously, because it knows that play is necessary for exploration and that a better understanding will come along tomorrow. It serves the talent pools that give rise to our future civic planners, economists, judges, scientists, and leaders — regardless of where in society these people may be found, and whether or not they are already within existing systems of power."

"Learning management systems, authoring tools, and personal learning environments don’t quite get the “it’s the platform, stupid” aspect of the internet. Most of the tools we have available today in education allow us to create content within a system. What a platform enables is very different; it enables the extension of a system."

"There are so many productivity tools and philosophies out there, but it ultimately comes down to our own inner compass and ability to stay on track with whatever we are doing. And the key to that is the ability to be aware."

A tour through the early years of the rap industry.

What will happen to large, incumbent brands as they struggle with finding software engineers to solve their most critical problems.