Further, as a nerd who lives in flyover country but has at least made the mandatory pilgrimage to San Francisco, I think jwz offers some (admittedly jaded) insight into the culture of SF as a whole. The dnalounge blog and his own LJ feed are practically required reading for those of us who wish to hear what goes on beyond the silicon valley echo chamber.
My degree is in Engineering and I'm still constantly amazed at the amount of sophistication that goes into all the things we take for granted. Scaling web apps to x-million users? Ha, that's nothing compared to what other people do every day.
