columbo

Doesn't seem all that surprising, these kinds of things have been around for years:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/secret-insignias-fro...

http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/top-10-most-sinist...

Patches seem more like a game of one-upmanship.

I do like this patch's story, sounds just like something a bunch of engineers would come up with:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/NROL49_pa...

> This patch for NROL-49 depicts a phoenix rising from the flames with the flag of the United States in the background. The Latin words “Melior Diabolus Quem Scies” roughly translates to mean “The Devil You Know,” as in the phrase “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know”. Cryptic. According to NASA, this saying refers to the return of the use of an old system after attempting to use a new one, which had resulted in failure.

Here's a talk in the 80's from Douglas that covers some more details:

https://archive.org/details/XD302_86ACM_Prese_AugKnowledgeWo...

The Q&A session at the end is very interesting. People asking about gestures and using a pencil (stylus) instead of a keyboard (note this is back in 86).

> Surely the disagreement should be obvious? If they interview 50 candidates and get each candidate to do a free day of work, they're exploiting the candidates and the market.

If the application is so simple that you can get actual productivity in someone in the first couple hours then stop trying to hire candidates and outsource the entire thing to India for a fraction of the cost.

Otherwise it's a pair-programming test with massive hand-holding from another developer which is ridiculously more expensive for the company.

I'd choose to spend a few hours on the employer's actual application over any other form interview.

Obviously there are extreme cases (hey we'd like you to spend a few weeks working on this API, you know, for the interview), but I don't get that vibe from this article.

My personal advice to all small-business-owners: Don't get into pissing matches!

Yeah, I don't like Sam Bowne's approach. His initial email read as someone looking to make a name for himself (this is the biggest security flaw I've ever found! You have 6 days to respond!).

Despite this, if I had received an email like this I would have sent back a personal thank you followed with an outline of action steps. If I get another email from Sam asking more questions I'd reply as quickly as possible. Every transaction between him and I would be professional.

I'm reminded of a time when someone was convinced I was a hacker. It's a bit of a long story; I was tasked with creating a certification course for 2,000 employees. They all get emails telling them to log in and one guy saw the domain (companyname.columbo-companyname.com) and thought it was a Phishing scam. This employee then pulled up my company, does a WHOIS, called my cell phone a few times* and then promptly sent an email to the CTO (and about 6 other VPs) about a rogue hacker.

The whole thing turned into a massive cluster, suddenly I'm getting emails and phone-calls about a hacker in MY site (the CTO assumed I had been hacked and they had been hacked by proxy, nobody knew what was going on).

Took a few days to sort out and when they found out where it started the CTO sent me an apology to which I responded "Hey, it's no big deal, it's great you have an employee willing to raise alarm bells like this.".

Problem Solved.

There's nothing to gain from pissing matches or threats.

* I suspect he's the one that called me, got a strange call & text right before all this went down from a number I didn't recognize.

I can see why they would want to set up rules instead of allowing anything to happen.

For example, if I was to set up a bounty I really wouldn't want people at random contacting current or former clients trying to phish for passwords; I completely understand this is a threat, but I would want to personally manage something like that.

With that said, if something like this was found I'd pay the person. There's a point where you just recognize "Oh shit, that's a big hole, pay the man.".

I don't think there's anything that will change the class names, but there are minifiers

http://yui.github.io/yuicompressor/css.html

Changing the class names would be difficult as it wouldn't pick up any dynamic class names, like

    var className = 'user_' + user.getState(); //'user_deleted' or 'user_active'

If it was fully functional it could be useful for automated testing. Write your tests in javascript, execute them at the point of integration in Go.

I don't think I can really answer without checking all the boxes. Spending time working for a company is like investing. The amount I'm willing to invest is related to my expected return.

1 - When I was working for a large company (10,000+ employees) I typically was out the door at 40 hours. The company was established, my equity was nonexistent and I gain nothing for supporting their inability to plan.

2 - If I'm working for a startup I believe in and have significant equity then I'm working day and night on it.

3 - If I don't have tangible equity and I'm working for a startup or small company then I'm willing to wear multiple hats and put in additional hours. However this isn't something that I'll do for an extended period.

4 - If I'm a contractor being paid at market rate then it's however many hours you want me there. 40, 80, 120... doesn't bother me.

This is very cool!

I'm worried about the long term stickiness of the LEDs/Timers/ICs. If I was to buy this I'd probably stick foil to the adhesive bottom of the components so they can be rested on top of the copper tape. That or put a few pins on the +/- areas. That way you can tape the copper to cardboard instead of paper and then punch the components through the tape.

I struggle with calling this dystopian, even though I partially agree. I think it's great that we push work-life balance, and I believe we should disconnect but I can see where these advertisements might be comforting to some.

Back in the 70's my dad worked in an office and wasn't home until 7:30. He only made it to a handful of sporting events and school events. If you asked him, in the 70's, would he prefer to be in the office making that phone call or be sitting at <insert kid's> <insert event> he would choose the latter without hesitation.

For a more recent example, my sister is in sales and will get phone calls any hour of the day. For her, being able to go out and do things with the occasional 5 minute interruption is an absolute game-changer. Not just answer phone calls, but to bring up the customer information and maybe write a quick email.

I know he mentions people doing their own googling, but I'd like to recommend this coursera course: https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink

It's one of my favorite MOOCs of all time, a fantastic intro to mathematical thinking.

Have you looked at nand2tetris? http://www.nand2tetris.org/

Going even farther back up the chain there's stuff like this: http://www.jpmsupply.com/servlet/the-1082/AM,-Radio,-Solder/...

Could just be false signals for people googling "Go" the game and not the language. Golang is the first search on a generic search for "Go" (https://www.google.com.hk/webhp?hl=zh-CN&sa=N&tab=lw#hl=zh-C...).

It's interesting. Bad capacitors (http://news.cnet.com/When-good-capacitors-go-bad/2100-1041_3...) maybe?

Scaled down to 1/1000th of it's current size and that would be an interesting way to perform complex operations, like brain surgery. No more cutting in a straight line, instead you can move around objects. Though by that time we'd probably have little self-propelled nano-bots doing this work more efficiently.

Dynamic stabilization would be interesting. This could "fill" in an area, say the sudden damage to a building, perhaps even a space station or spaceship.

Movement could be another feature. This could serve as wheels to move over complex terrain (up mountains, through the bottom of the ocean). They could go from fins, to wheels, to little hands or claws, etc...

It's a pretty common sci-fi term and books have been named it as early as 1958. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_(disambiguation)?1=1

Have you looked at Blank Ink?

It's still in early-early-early-beta but it's the first product I looked at and thought "woah, there's something that is actually interesting in the design space".

[1]: http://www.bleank.com/BlackInk-a115.html

[2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77GlldH06kY

Flex...

I thought flex was great. I really did. The funny thing is I used to do a bunch of cold fusion work back in the day so I already had firsthand experience with Adobe's complete lack of interest in supporting a developer platform. All I have to say is "allaire homesite", most CFdevs should remember.

Nevertheless I got involved a handful of huge flex applications. This was back when it was Apollo, so 07/08. Firefox was gaining traction but not much, Jquery didn't really exist and google was for searching, not web browsing.

These apps looked beautiful, every pixel was accounted for, they were responsive(ish) and, the best part, when they were done they were DONE (mostly). No more trying to support IE5.5 or IE6. Flex was something you could sell to an enterprise shop.

Then native technologies finally caught up. The IPhone, perhaps rightly so, gave a huge middle finger to Adobe. Then JQuery, then Bootstrap comes into the picture and... amazingly... the shit actually works. Seriously, this is not expected behavior when dealing with html/css/js libraries.

Flex was really just a means to an end. For devs like me it meant I didn't have to code another $#@! table layout or drop-down-select or menu-navigation or accordion.

On one hand I feel the industry caught up to Flex and the better player (native support) won. I feel that I shouldn't personally blame Adobe on this one. On the other hand I know that Adobe has killed off so much through their process of atrophy-driven-development that I can't help but want to point a (very specific) finger at them.

Eh, yeah, at this point when I hear Adobe I walk away, I can't blame them for everything, but I've lost all faith in their ability to deliver.

Good deal, I think I'll buy this.

When it comes to buying games or apps me or our kids the "Unlock All" option is more than just a nice to have, it's a necessity. For me personally it doesn't have to do with convenience or perceived value: Rather it's because I feel that I am not buying into a scam.

If I see item (X) on the market for "Free" + in-app purchases I'm flat out not going to spend any time on it. You offer the same (X) for $5-$20 with everything unlocked and no gimmicky BS sales tactics then I'll pick it up without hesitation.

There are too many applications out there designed to be time and money sinks. The focus tends to be on giving the user just enough and then stalling until they spend more money. It's a dirty, scummy industry.

If you're selling a product (game, book, series, otherwise) and feel it can stand on its own merits then offer a fair price for the complete item with no strings and I'll most likely purchase it.

Step (1) Know what you need.

I wish more companies were honest about the exact type experience they actually need.

[A]: "I need someone to fix bugs. We're talking head-scratching-mind-numbing bizarre behavior bugs. Most of the time you'll be starting out in the UI tracing connections back to the API then walking through the API into the core system until you can find out what actually happened."

[B]: "I need someone to make the application faster. It's an archaic enterprise system that is responsible for performing very important calculations. It's hundreds of thousands of lines of banking logic wrapped behind all sorts of enterprisey buzzwords. The first task you will have is to sort out why we are getting intermittent heap errors. You'll need to setup everything yourself as we have no dev environment."

Both these roles might be in the same technology space, and both will probably have identical resumes (5 years of experience with <foo>) but the types of people you will want to hire and the questions you will want to ask them are going to be vastly different.

Would a more modern version be the pedal assist bikes? ( http://www.amazon.com/Alation-Step-through-36v11Ah-Samsung-B... )

I've been thinking of getting one of these because they bridge some rules about motorized vehicles: since you are still peddling you can take them on bike trails, but since the assist kicks in there is almost no resistance allowing you to maintain higher speeds...

Ah! Ok that makes more sense then

<script id="test">

        E = (function() {  

            var F = function(x) {  

            var secret = 42, key = 0xC0C0ACAFE;  

            return x===key ? secret :0  

          };  

          return function G_F(x) {  

console.log(document.getElementById("test").innerHTML.split("secret")[1].substr(3,2));

             return F(x>>>0);  

          }  

        })();  

        E();  

</script>

The above is very hacked together... does this break the security? Or am I misreading this?

I quickly realized how little value the endorsement system in linkedin was when my uncle endorsed me for Groovy. In my mind I like to think he was picking it as a personality trait and not a skillset.

I used to work for a company that writes and administers these tests. This company broke the cardinal rule.

#1 - Only give personality tests in their native language.

This is unacceptable, a personality test is NOT a language aptitude test.

Personality tests will have questions like this:

        True or False I am happy when others are taking advantage of me.  
  

Non-native speakers may not appreciate that "taking advantage" is a negative term and might read it as "I am happy when others are taking advantage of my abilities". Hell I WORKED for the company and had to double-triple take some of the questions.

Some of these personality tests are even written for English / UK-English because of the nuances involved.

Use the advanced search, map out your ideal response api: http://archive.org/advancedsearch.php And build a better ui.

I tried it out and made a little music player in under a few hours.

Example (url may break): http://archive.org/advancedsearch.php?q=description%3A%28amb...

Why wait for soylent?

Bag of flaxmeal, Bananas ,Oats ,Yogurt

Mixed Nuts, Raisins, Power bar

Blend & drink the first four, munch on the nuts & raisins during the day, have the occasional power bar, take a multivitamin and toss in a nice diverse meal once a week to catch anything else and... profit?

Good job on this list, for decades titles have been really lousy in this industry.

I didn't see Technical/Web/Application Architect on the list. It's been very common to add "architect" to the end of a title, even to go as far as to have Application Architects under Sr. Application Architects... I wonder if eventually we'll have "Sr. Principal Application Architects".

I'm curious to see what HN would consider calling an Application/Technical/Product Architect and if there is a better name or more clear description.

This was years ago, but I remember I was unable to test one of our vendor API calls locally because it had to hit something like api.association-of-commercial-something-or-others.com... turns out the corporate filter didn't like the word "ass".

Like everyone else has mentioned this is a very dangerous move.

The label doesn't look like it includes all of the required information ( http://www.ttb.gov/pdf/brochures/p51902.pdf ).

This could be bad, very bad, if something like this happens ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16742167 ) who is responsible?