MatthiasP

This sounds like a prejudgment.

"Intel does not participate in anyone’s efforts to decrease security in technology." - This does look to me to be a pretty strong denial.

Bruce Schneier does have vast expertise when it comes to security/encryption and the fact that he is formulating his conclusions in a way that they can be consumed by the general public, is something that is commendable and makes him way more dangerous for the NSA. Which is one of the reaseons why he gets attacked for it, i guess.

It also very much depends on which side of the Atlantic you are living on.

I don't believe in single persons influence in history on a grand scale.

Gavrilo Princip was just one of many 'terrorists' that were supported by Serbia and Russia to extend their influence into Bosnia. The situation was about to explode there, no matter what.

Adolf Hitler was just one of millions of nationalsocialists and the popularity of the Nazis was based on the treaty of Versailles and the huge social injustices in 1930s Germany, not on his rhetoric skills. While he was the reason for many strategic errors on the Eastern Front he was also the person who gave the Blitzkrieg doctrine vs France the decisive support, while many of the German generals opposed it. Germany could have never won the war against the soviets, because the soviets would have always been able to relocate their production and political centers further and further to the east.

The geopolitical situation at the beginning of the 20th century was this: Germany and allies were big enough to threaten the rest of Europe, but not strong enough to dominate them. So there was a long and painful process of subduing Germany and this process is now known as WW1 and WW2.

PS.: If an actual historian finds flaws in my reasoning here i would be very thankful if they take the time to point them out.

'awkward living accommodations in old buildings' I always find it amusing when Americans equal old buildings with subpar living conditions. Most of the apartments in Europe's typical 19th century buildings deliver an extremly high standard of housing that would just not be profitable to build today.

Vienna is nice IF you speak German sufficiently well to get along with the Austrian dialect and you are willing to cope with those four months of harsh winter where you hardly ever see the sun.

Apart of that it's pretty much like every other German speaking city, quality of life is high, but so are the taxes.

Nationwide SMS is dirt cheap in most of Europe too. But the cost goes up rapidly when you send messages across borders, say from Italy to Germany. And international MMS are just ridiculously expensive. A friend of mine once paid ~5€ for a single MMS sent from Croatia to Germany. Croatian, Slovenian and Austrian telcos all wanted their share of roaming fees.

With WhatsApp you don't need to worry about all these things.

I would already be satisfied with a $19M acquisition.

IF there are copyright issues, then they are only with Nintendo.

People still go to greath lengths to get rid of their optical glasses even though those were around for hundreds of years now, are widely-used and are usually associated with positive attributes like intellectuality. For me that's the strongest indicator that anything similar to Google Glass will never become mainstream. Attractiveness beats out easier access to information any day.

If Scandinavia is the "Dark Land" then the British model of society can only be called the "Black Hole".

Yup, that's pretty much my experience too. I think locals are so used to foreigners in a tourist role that they don't want to get more deeply invested into people who may leave in a year or two anyways.

But i also think all this is true for most European cities, not just Barcelona.

I can't be the only one who immediately thought of this xkcd comic when reading the article: http://xkcd.com/451/

I guess he would have a much harder time getting a feeling for a city where he could not casually pick up what people are talking about due to language barriers.

"It's like I go out of my way to not do the work I'm supposed to do." Well, that's exactly what you do and it helps thinking about why you avoid doing some coding. Sometimes this behaviour comes from thinking that you have to be in the right mood to start working, but the truth is, motivation comes while doing stuff, not before you start.

Another reason could be that you are afraid that the task is overwhelming, that you don't understand it, etc.

Try dividing whatever you want to do into tiny steps that don't take more than 15 minutes and tick them off in a list after finishing them.

With the difference that there is no law in Germany that forces companies to introduce backdoors into their products.

It really depends on which layer of the software stack you are working on. The closer you come to the hardware the more mathematical understanding you will need, e.g. writing a compiler.

But it's also very true that if you work with high level languages like C# and python you can perfectly get your job done with just using a clever library that hides the underlaying mathematical problems.

I also totally agree that communication, empathy and writing skills are extremly important for software engineers. Coding is always an act of communication, be it with your client, with the machine or with your fellow co-workers.

But this image of nerds existed way before the Big Bang Theory first aired. They just picked that up, stereotyped it and made a comedy show around it.

Too many students see a PhD as potential career and income booster instead of what it really is, the first step in becoming a scientist.

Comments on HN are probably as good as comments get on the internet. I doubt that there are websites out there with a better community.

A cat that wants to be fed at 6:30 in the morning works wonders as well.

Except for the socially progressive part...

Seems like most of the Holy Roman Empire doesn't want to be streetviewed.

If Snowden fled to Iceland, Switzerland, Germany or France he would be already sitting in a US prison cell.

Out of most jobs in the Valley? Is it really that bad? I still have the illusion that being an IT professional gives you more freedom of having an 'unpopular' opinion than any other industry. As long as your work is in high demand, that is.

I remember when Julian Assange won that poll some time ago. To no one's surprise TIME didn't give him the title but as usual to some mainstream politics lackey.

"The difference between good at math and bad at math is hard work. It’s trying. It’s trying hard. It’s trying harder than you’ve ever tried before."

-while that's certainly true, when people say they are "bad at maths" they usually mean exactly that they have to put in a lot more effort (=trying harder) to reach the same level of math skills as the "gifted" guys.

This sounds a lot like you are suffering from social anxiety. It's a common and widespread mental disease and is usually treated with CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and/or antidepressants. Some studies show that regular endurance exercise like running also helps. Do not wait for it to go away, that rarely happens, usually the anxiety gets worse over time.

All this changes is that from now on Apple will always have a 'we did not receive a 215 warrant' in their transparency report, no matter if they got one or not.