..., almost like finding a long lost and cherished childhood toy. I remember my Apple II days, programming assembler, writing routines to directly address the disk drives. Then my project for the computer science class we had in High School (Germany 1984), where I had gotten my hands on a disassembly of the entire ROMs and from that figuring out how the mathematical formula interpretation worked (simulated stack and all). Finally, a year later, getting my hands on the schematics and figuring out how the video logic actually worked. Only once did I feel that powerful again in my life, when I recreated that feeling in 1996 by designing, building and programming an embedded 68000 computer for a piece of medical diagnostic equipment. Designed the system, built the prototype, debugged the hardware, routed the PCB (by hand, we had no money), wrote a round-robin multitasking system in assembler and finally the actual application as well. Still have a copy. That, and the discovery of sex :)

I prefer usability over design. The current /. site is unusable on a Blackberry browser (and probably other handhelds as well). First, all the ads, menus and sidebars come first (I am sick how many times I have scrolled past 'the equation that changed the world'). Then when you find an interesting article, you cannot read the comments ('you are forbidden to view that page'). If I can't read the comments, I can as well read digg.