Gawker: valleywag, ted dziuba

Uncov editor takes paternity leave from Web 2.0

Paul Boutin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:20:00 EDT

"I'm going to be a father in March and need some stability, but also because I'm tired of the fight," whines Ted Dziuba, the formerly fearless voice of Web 2.0 hateblog Uncov. It's a lie. Ted loves a fight, but he's got a sixth sense of when to quit. The math major got his dream job at Google, then bailed on Google to start Persai with two friends. Now he's quitting Persai, recently renamed Pressflip, to get steady work for the kid. It's too early in the morning to roust him on IM, so I don't know if he'll continue writing his Fail and You column for The Register. My guess is he will, because Ted needs to complain and The Reg pays better than Denton.

Uncov relaunches with loser-generated content

Owen Thomas — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:20:00 EDT

The downturn has an upside: Uncov, the vicious startup blog run by Ted Dziuba and Kyle Shank, has returned to life. The twist in its new incarnation: Anyone can write for it, and the best takedowns of overfluffed ventures will be published to Uncov's homepage. We can better that offer: The best things published to Uncov's homepage may well get plucked from obscurity and featured on Valleywag.

Another IT truth

Paul Boutin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:00:00 EDT

"If there's one thing all engineers love to do, it's create APIs. It's so awesome because you can draw on a whiteboard and feel like you put in a good day's work." — The Register's Ted Dziuba on the proliferation of software platforms no one uses.

Elite journalism school offers scholarship for programmers

Owen Thomas — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:40:00 EDT

Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, is offering to pay the tuition for hackers who want to turn themselves into hacks. "Are you a skilled programmer or Web developer? Are you interested in applying your talents to the challenge of creating a better-informed society? Do you want to learn how to find, analyze and present socially relevant information that engages media audiences?" More to the point, is your startup running short on funding? The official deadline has passed, but the school takes late applications on a space-available basis. Quick, grab this alternative financing before Ted Dziuba, the supremely sarcastic Pressflip cofounder who has a column in The Register, snaps it up.

Uncov blogger wins America's CTO contest

Paul Boutin — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:20:00 EDT

Narrowingly beating out Hans Reiser in a tight reader vote, The Register's newest columnist, Ted Dziuba, has won the IT snark site's poll for CTO of America. Yeah, it's stupid. But after reading all those bloggers who seriously expect Barack Obama to come to them for sage counsel, I needed a break.

The last thing the Internet needs: more solutions

Melissa Gira Grant — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:20:00 EDT

Cherished crank Ted Dziuba, the cofounder of news-search startup Pressflip, still hates the Internet. His latest target: OpenID, a technology he accuses of being "too San Francisco" — all idealistic posturing, no practical application. OpenID is a universal user-authorization scheme created by Brad Fitzpatrick back when he was at LiveJournal. An average user, Dziuba complains, doesn't need OpenID if they want to have a shared login across multiple websites — they just use the same login and password across multiple websites.

This inefficient behavior bothers people like Fitzpatrick, but not the ordinary Web users who take reregistering for granted. "This shit is too pedantic, too convoluted, and violates too many preconceived notions of how authentication works," writes Dziuba. While it's always fun to watch Dziuba go off, he's also got a point in asking why more software is the answer to, as he puts it, "a problem that doesn't exist." (Photo by adactio)

IBM makes environment easy to bookmark and forget

Paul Boutin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:20:00 EDT

"Energy-efficient computers powered by sunshine. This will be an instant hit," grouses chief bitterness officer Ted Dziuba in his latest opinion column for The Register. "There will be greenhouse gas output dashboards with neat little Ajax widgets." Mystery contributor theodp points out that IBM already sells it.

So you've decided to be an iPhone developer — now what?

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:00:00 EDT

A year and some after the Facebook platform's launch, few of its widgetmakers have made any real money — unless you count the venture capital they've raised. Just a month after the iPhone 3G launch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs says that $30 million has already changed hands through the iTunes App Store. Even the guy behind the do-nothing "I Am Rich" application made a few thousand bucks. So you, wantrepreneur Web developer, you're thinking: Gee, I made, like, four-and-a-half Facebook Zombie widgets this past year. Maybe I should cook myself up an iPhone app. But hold on there, Steve Jobs Jr. Do you really know what you're getting yourself into?

According to Iminlikewithyou's Charles Forman, who's working on porting his startup's copycat games to the iPhone, there's not much in common between the platforms besides the word "app."

A Facebook app is easy. It's a Web app. The hard part is all the viral "mutherfuckery" that they do. iPhone is like writing a program. Theres a big upfront learning curve. It's a totally different ballgame. A shit developer can make some Web app. But you have to be a good developer to make an iPhone app.

Forman couldn't deliver a cogent explanation of the differences — something to do with the "real-time" nature of iPhone apps. So we asked our favorite developer with a heart of gold and a tongue of acid, former Uncov blogger and Pressflip cofounder Ted Dziuba, to elaborate. The best he could do, below.

You're going to have to figure out how to store data without MySQL. Years of PHP development has warped your mind to think that everything must be object relational. There's no 12-step program yet, Apple will release it with the next firmware update.

We know you like to live a life free of authority and rules, but there's one rule you're going to have to follow: Objective C syntax, and the compiler will taser your ass if you get out of line.

Information wants to be free, right? Well, not Apple's. Especially the developer documentation: that will cost you $99. But you already own more than $8,000 worth of Apple equipment, what's another few bucks? Anyway, since I'm not forking over $100 to look at documentation, that's really as far as I can go.

Uncov blogger lands column with The Register

Paul Boutin — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:30:47 EDT

Ted Dziuba — don't ask me how to pronounce it — was the brains behind Uncov, the blog that ruthlessly shadowed TechCrunch by bashing the technology of Web 2.0 startups. Ted's secret weapons: A math degree, a brief stint at Google, and a unique, hilarious writer's voice. I tried to get him to write for Valleywag or Wired, but it didn't happen. Instead, Ted will post every other week at UK-based IT infotainment site The Register. He'll make a fine American foil to The Reg's equally cynical Andrew Orlowski. We can't really call this a scoop, because we're sure Ted knew that mentioning his new gig in IRC was as good as posting it on Digg. Screengrab below.

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman needs Ted Dziuba's guide to weight loss

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:20:00 EDT

In today's Los Angeles Times, reporter Jessica Guynn calls LinkedIn founder, Facebook investor and PayPal veteran Reid Hoffman "Silicon Valley's biggest social networker." Guynn means that just the way you'd think, reporting that Hoffman gains about 10 pounds per year, refuses to see a trainer and "doesn't step on scales." Some might deem Guynn's language rude, but since Hoffman's unhealthy-seeming weight is exactly the kind of thing everyone in the Valley won't admit they talk about, we're rather glad she called attention to it. Fortunately for Hoffman, Persai cofounder Ted Dziuba is ready with an intervention. Lately, Dziuba's been writing servicey items about coder life on TedDziuba.com instead of eviscerating TechCrunch-covered startups on Uncov. A recent post is perfect for the rotund Hoffman. But at 725 words, "An engineer's guide to weight loss," the busy Hoffman will never take the time to read it. Below, a slimmer, 100-word version Hoffman can squeeze into his schedule.

Dieting and exercising suck. You are not going to have fun. The science is simple: eat fewer calories than your burn. Start quantifying. I use FitDay to track calories. Run a 1,000 calorie per day deficit. Go easy on the drinking. Take up smoking — a zero-calorie alternative. Eat one serving. Drink more coffee, an appetite suppressant. Low-fat ice cream has around 120 calories per half cup. After two weeks, your stomach will shrink. Step two is exercise. It's awful. Use an elliptical machine. Treadmills make you run. One hour per day, hard. You should be close to vomiting. Easy, huh?

(Photo by mandj98)

Mahalo enables Freedom of Speech

Paul Boutin — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:00:00 EDT

We hold these Truths to be self-evident: Wikipedia's Tyranny of the Mob sucks. Every time I run an item about Jimmy Wales, my page gets hacked. So what about Jason Calacanis's pursuit of happiness over at Mahalo? Former Uncov blogger and army of one Ted Dziuba has posted a step-by-step pictorial guide to practicing your First Amendment rights using the search index's new open editorial system. Try this on Wikipedia, and someone from the armed and unregulated Militia of Truth will likely kill your edits on sight. But on Mahalo, only Calacanis's paid mercenaries will bother to fix pages. At $10 an hour, there's no way they'll be able to keep up. Let freedom ring!

Facebook's new Lexicon feature lays site demographic bare

Owen Thomas — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:40:00 EDT

To track the frequency of words in Facebook Wall posts, the social network has created a Lexicon feature. Programmer-gadfly Ted Dziuba suggests this search: "pregnant, tequila."

Uncov editor switches to photo art

Paul Boutin — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:42:53 EDT

Terrible Ted's Photoshop remix of an Owen-and-Julia party shot is so good I had to pull it up out of the comments.

Why Microsoft wants Yahoo — it's losing at paintball

Owen Thomas — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:00:00 EDT

Can Microsoft's army of programmers write software for the Web? Judging by a spate of recent outages, no. Hotmail, Messenger, and other services targeted at developers and partners have broken down recently. Which is bizarre: Writing an operating system is a vastly more complex affair than coding a website. "Like war versus paintball," says Ted Dziuba, the programmer and former editor of startup-debunker blog Uncov. Therein lies Microsoft's problem. Once you've trained to fight a real war, you can forget about winning at paintball.

Explains Dziuba:

When you play with someone who has been in the military, they spend 10 minutes before the match going over strategy when all you really want to do is play. In the end, the civilians on the team end up shooting the marine because he's barking orders to everyone on the field who is just trying to have a good time.

Microsoft bid $44.6 billion for Yahoo to get a paintball team. Can you imagine what will happen when they send in the marines from Redmond? "War" does not begin to describe it.

(Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Leah Culver gives Kyle Shank the cupcake treatment

Owen Thomas — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:10:07 EDT

Former Uncov guy and Persai CEO Kyle Shank, at center, recovers from an unsolicited cupcake smearing by Pownce's Leah Culver. The attack, likely motivated by Uncov accomplice Ted Dziuba's frequent gibes directed at Culver, took place at Flickr's fourth birthday party. Flickr's Cal Henderson, right, is said to have served as Culver's accomplice. Speaking of, can anyone confirm whether Henderson and Culver are dating? The two were inseparable at SXSW. If so, snaps to Culver: We hear Henderson's website is highly scalable. (Photo by magerleagues)

Amazon.com gives startups a 50-percent-off sale

Owen Thomas — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:20:32 EST

Jeff Bezos likes to say he's in the business of delighting customers. And then he delivers that howling, hooting laugh. The latest guffaw-provoker: Amazon EC2, a service which lets startups run their programs on servers housed in Amazon.com's datacenters. When it launched, Amazon promised "the equivalent of a 1.7GHz x86 processor" — in other words, a fairly low-powered server, but at the cost of a dime an hour. Ted Dziuba, the acid-tongued former editor of Uncov, found that Amazon actually delivered half that performance. Why haven't you heard more about this? Likely because most of the me-too, slapdash websites making use of Amazon's EC2 aren't running anything more processor-intensive than an index-hit SQL select.

Update: SmugMug's Don McAskill, also an Amazon customer, thinks it's all a big misunderstanding. The short version: Not all gigahertzes are created equal.

Don't FAIL to meet Ted Dziuba at Moose's

Dianne de Guzman — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:00:00 EST

What better way to celebrate a week of turning down TechCrunch job offers and reducing its writers to obscene Twitters than drinking at Moose's? Persai's Ted Dziuba is our guest of honor for tonight's Valleywag Friday. Read on for the rest of the calendar:

GDC 2008 is wrapping with Video Games Live, where your favorite videogame soundtracks will be performed by a live orchestra. Weekend Apps is happening in Santa Clara starting at 6 p.m. and continuing through Sunday, where developers will sit around and try to make as many Facebook apps as they can in one weekend. (Let's just hope they're not as annoying as those pesky vampires) Tomorrow night, io9 is co-sponsoring the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund at 111 Minna.

Got something to add to the calendar? Send it to calendar@valleywag.com.

TechCrunch races us to bottom, wins again

Paul Boutin — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:49:37 EST

TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley offers a more colorful description of Persai programmer and Uncov blogger Ted Dziuba than I could ever, ever come up with. If you missed it, TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington recently tried unsuccessfully to hire Dziuba to port his Uncov-style nastiness to Arrington's platform. Style points to Riley for his use of c*nt. I had no idea he was a Unix guy.

TechCrunch fails to hire Uncov editor

Paul Boutin — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:58:31 EST

Give Michael Arrington credit: He tried to hire his worst best critic, Uncov editor Ted Dziuba, who spent several months shadowing TechCrunch posts with scathing, technically astute slams of Web 2.0 startups and their products. Arrington's offer sounds pretty sweet: "write a weekly or monthly column for us. we'll call it a counter balance to our hype. No rules or restrictions on what you write," was Arrington's email, according to Dziuba. But from what I know of Ted, he has two reasons not to take the offer.

First, he's making far more money as an engineer for Persai than anyone will ever pay him to write. (B) Ted's probably afraid that by appearing on TechCrunch he would, to use his own words, "get classified in the same short bus as all of the other failboats in there."

MySpace non-platform launches

Owen Thomas — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:58:54 EST

MySpace has launched a so-called "developer platform," allowing glorified Web designers to write widgets slightly more sophisticated than a photo slideshow for the News Corp.-owned website. I asked Ted Dziuba of the late, lamented Uncov what he thought. Here's what he said:

c++ standard library: developer platform
java with hibernate & struts: developer platform
ruby on rails: developer platform
myspace: not a developer platform

Exactly. But calling it a "platform" lets MySpace pitch itself as the next Microsoft, and its "developers" fancy themselves the next Linus Torvalds. It benefits everyone, except for real programmers who have to explain to their CEO why they don't have a platform, too.