bhiggins

I don't travel much, but the last time I had the option I opted not to go through the body scanner. At that time, the alternative was the usual metal detector. I plan on travelling next month and I am considering doing the pat-down since in some sense I find it more honest than the body scanner.

If our leaders did release their images publicly I would at least feel that they were acting in good faith and I would be much more wiling to go through the body scanner knowing that they had really put themselves out there...

I'd have no problem going through the backscatter body scanner every time if the government would just do this to make me feel better:

- I could see the body scan of the TSA agent who is scanning me.

- The body scans of John S. Pistole (TSA administrator), Janet Napolitano (secretary of Homeland Security), and Barack Obama were made public.

I feel that if body scanning is so important then our national leaders should lead the way in showing how it's not a big deal.

The first sentence makes sense but the second one does not follow. Grow a brain.

PHP: by amateurs, for amateurs

You get to tell your friends you work at Facebook and they get to be like oh sweet and they say what are you working on and you get to say oh the billing platform for virtual goods and they get to say like whoa that is so exciting!!

on the flip side, here's an experiment for converting JavaScript to Python, and then if it turns out to be valid RPython (a subset of Python where among other things the types of variables don't change), converts it to a native executable.

http://mozakai.blogspot.com/2010/07/experiments-with-static-...

drains battery too fast

Yeah we never do stuff like that here.

I still have a problem with using a VM on a phone and having GC on a phone. (I also have a problem with Objective C's function call overhead.)

I've only surveyed what's out there a little, but I am impressed with Protovis's demos and apparent flexibility: http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/

fine. here's some information, then: you're promoting cargo cult thinking.

your enthusiasm is infectious in a bad way.

hey sorry to burst your bubble but this is pointless.

someone directly copied my answer to 2+2. boo hoo.

It's time Yahoo just gave up.

something has to pay for those four day work weeks and Isilon storage

yeah totally. viral too.

Foursquare did add more MongoDB servers, the problem was that the 5% of records that were migrated off of the full server were small, so the removal didn't result in many memory pages being released, so it didn't help. This article does not address how any of the alternatives address small records and rebalancing with small records.

Why don't you go start a company and show us how great you are at headcount?

Be professional, don't push your religion on other people.

I'm curious, is the title of the documentary a Nietzsche reference?

he's also wrong about when to use continuations

CouchDB removed my appendix. I didn't even have appendicitis though.

Schmidt's strategy seems to be to make himself and Google look bad, but since Schmidt is a smart guy and I'm an idiot, I'm trying to figure out what's really going on... Will Google be entering the housing construction market and offer protection from Street View? Does he want people to immigrate to third world countries without a Google presence? Does he want people to stop using roads? The mind boggles!

apparently, because all the wealth somehow got redistributed to a small minority. that's what you're talking about, right?

a web programmer should perhaps not speak of things he does not understand

"Thiel’s remarks were largely motivated by his understanding of the tech sector."

Facebook is not in the tech sector. They're in, I don't know, some kind of nonsense social sector. Technology is more incidental to their business, just like with Craigslist, eBay, Foursquare, YouTube, Reddit, and so on... all these sites eventually had serious technical challenges, after they successfully filled a social need. Not the other way around.

And that doesn't mean you're going to continue to be successful. Just look at MySpace, LiveJournal, Friendster, Digg, delicious, and so on...

Like strict vs. lazy evaluation by default...?

Just make sure you don't pointlessly store continuations when you don't need to, like on Hacker News.

improving Erlang performance... by not using Erlang. neat.

next step: stop using CouchDB?