Kurt Vonnegut… gone.

Moments ago I learned Kurt Vonnegut passed.

I don't read much fiction, but I loved Vonnegut. I even picked up his more recent stuff... Like Dylan, even when he was not at his peak, he was still worthwhile.

Sometime around 1986 he did a lecture at the University of Michigan. I somehow weaseled my way into the post-event reception. There was a receiving line to shake Vonnegut's hand. What was outta whack was how formal everyone was... the entire affair was stiff and from another century. But I knew that Vonnegut was insane. So I got in the receiving line, and when I got to him I took his hand and dramatically dropped to one knee... Looked him in the eye, and said something like "You're ideas have moved me profoundly..." It was silly, adolescent and absurd... but somehow true to what I was feeling. Without missing a beat he squeezed my hand and said, "I'm so glad." We had a moment.

Bye bye sir. Your peephole has closed.

Salim Ismail joins Yahoo!

I'm surprised that we were able to keep this under wraps for so long!

Mike Arrington's post at TechCrunch does a fine job of conveying why we think this is a big deal. There are a couple details that I can help clarify though:

"Tomorrow they’ll announce..."

Well, not really... I think that you just announced it Mike! Salim confirmed too! But hey, if you're looking for an official Yahoo! person with a working purple badge to actually confirm... I'll bite! We hired Salim!

He takes over from interim head...

That's not how I'd put it. Caterina's role in my group (and in Brickhouse in particular) is ongoing and formidable. She's not only been the driving force behind making this happen, but also will remain the "north star" that ensures the program rocks. As you point out, Brickhouse itself is "yet-to-be-launched" so we'll be saying a lot more about it and clarifying all this in the near future. But I couldn't be happier or prouder to have both Salim and Caterina involved. Lucky us!

In the really bad pun department... The only shame is that Salim isn't working on Y! Mail... after all, Salim Ismail... And my mentor Ramesh Jain... He's such an Artificial Intelligence pioneer they put AI smack-dab-in-the-middle of his name... Speaking of names, can you guess how many times Caterina has been spell-checked into "catering?" (Not to mention the problems she has with her last name...) Ok... I can hear you groaning. I'll stop now.

Welcome Salim!

We are hiring!

Piggybacking on Jeremy's post...

Yahoo's Advanced Development Division is hiring. This is the team that's brought you Pipes, Hack Day, Open Hack Day, TagMaps, ZoneTag, Checkmates... and as Daniel Raffel wrote "other projects too secret to mention."

We need insanely creative, passionate individuals who are highly motivated to change the internet (and the world) as we know it. We've put together a supergroup already. You'll be working with bona fide rockstars of the industry. It'll be fun, lots of fun.

If you think you're "our kinda people", please drop us a line...

Thanks!