fubarred

I worked in the nuclear industry a long time ago. The reason some parts are expensive is the documentation (chain of ownership) and testing involved. Some parts must be flame tested (set on fire and self-extinguish in X seconds), so that 50% of the batch are destructively tested in order to meet specific requirements. It doesn't justify excessive profiteering on a setup or per-part basis, but there is reason for connectors costing $90/part.

PGP is fine. People aren't using it correctly.

The point of Web of Trust is to only trust keys that other people you know have also signed. Everything else is garbage until proven otherwise.

Key servers are untrustworthy because anyone can upload random shit to them.

Trying to shift WoT to a third party is trying to get something for free that doesn't emphasize solving the problem: getting everyone you know signing keys of only other people they know.

https://www.kernel.org/signature.html#kernel-org-web-of-trus...

It might be tinfoil, but it makes one wonder why a significant net neutrality opponent (Verizon) is considering purchasing the largest (monetary) proponent (AOL). Granted VZN and AOL had joint ventures previously, but sealing such a deal would have a chilling effect.

Economic and environmental collapse is the frequent Tragedy of the Commons consequence of unregulated human activity (markets)... Cannery Row, Easter Island, Silphium, Raphus cucullatus, extinction of N. American megafauna.

In other words, regulation is a necessary "evil" to make unsustainable behavior illegal.

In order to be successful, as mentioned in other comments, such a project would need more end-users as active co-designers / field testers. Otherwise, it's a pure "design for design's" sake that won't get used. And that would be sad if some extra attention were the difference between a large, branded product company that would be able to reduce the damage and discomfort to millions vs. a concept on a shelf.

Bezos could refocus on DIY, hobbyists and maker culture... classes (or sponsorship thereof) would be a good direction to get the cash register filling. It's hard to compete with online, open-source, but there are some things people would pay for (and want) in-person.

An apropos quote in-lieu of comment for obvious reasons:

"Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, but wonton love corrupteth and embaseth it." ~ someone that hailed from southern Hertfordshire about a century later than in the article

I'm an American with a passport who has lived and grown businesses in Europe. (I attended private and public schools only in the US and half-heartedly finished a top 50 uni because it wasn't a top priority.)

GWB's NCBLA further inculcated standardized testing as an official religion in American education system. It's a complete and utter failure; another in a long line of ill-informed, "top-down solutions" that cause more harm than good.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/a-deca...

Sad to see another awesome bookstore go.

First Bogey's Books in Davis, then even Borders. :(

From what I heard at the time, Powell's (one of the bookstore others would sell their inventory to) was overwhelmed with shipments from closing bookstores and the market rate for used domestic books was quite low for a long time. Has this changed?

Yea, if there were a Go teaching site beyond Go tour http://tour.golang.org/, that would be something. Regardless of language, https://rubymonk.com is one of the nicest interactive teaching with "try out this snippet" and "solve this problem" sites out there. The issue for Go is that it probably needs a little bit more on the video explanation-side for new users (distilled from Google I/O, Gophercon) to explain features. People would probably pay to be taught backend languages (Erlang, Go, ...) and infrastructure in a https://www.codeschool.com format (irrespective of spoon-fed teaching resulting in SRE-calibre practical experience.)

Large shops have huge bull's-eyes painted on them. If they act in bad faith, they will eventually lose reputation and business, spectacularly. This is why top VC's aren't going to do things that tiny VC's might try to get away with.

Also it's worth nothing that going out-of-your way to be fair isn't just "being nice," it selfishly reduces risk of issues, especially in small, highly-connected industries where reputation is the first consideration.

So if we are to take her account at face value, it seems like WB misjudged that word would get around and then lawsuits. (An expensive lesson in hubris.)

Nuclear weapons and forgetting parens (in Perl)

http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol2_1/tpj0201-0004.html

Also, Castle Bravo was ~3x bigger than predicted because of a failure to correctly model the tritium production from lithium-7.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo#Cause_of_high_yie...

I would argue from a productivity perspective: yes. If you were like me, you would get bogged down "in the weeds" fixing every single little bug encountered, no matter the time investment or how trivial, and wouldn't ship as much. It's productivity self-bikeshedding / developer "gold plating" in a way that I'm probably avoiding "real" work. By being semi strategically-lazy, it's possible to get more done.

So based on personal style, it's possible to get better by walking a middle path of not too crappy and not over-crafted.

(The real work is the stuff that needs doing or somehow seems "most important.")

Another interesting bit: "Perl and Nuclear Weapons Don't Mix"

   If fired, they would have missed their destination by thousands of miles.

http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol2_1/tpj0201-0004.html

Note: a maths user error, not a "Perl sucks" rant.

Meta: automate things that are frequent, not things that are risky; hence: no WOMPR, Wing Attack Plan R or "Big Red Button."

2 Qs: How have tiger-human relations/(co/non)existence changed in the last few decades? Are there more/different interactions in rural, suburban, urban (?) settings?

(Anyone from/in India or the nearby area know?)

From considering the demand-side point-of-view only, I would tend to agree. It gives content distributors a false sense of control at the expense of complicating the average customers' lives. ("Penny-wise, pound-foolish" like a neighborhood coffee shop that requires a key to use the restroom and doesn't put out napkins whereas the Starbucks next door making far more money does neither.)

From the supply-side point-of-view (film maker, movie theater, on-demand service), it depends. Artists can choose to release for free like The Beastie Boys are other doing, knowing enough people will still buy the retail package to keep them afloat. But to see your blood, sweat and tears shared without people paying a dime, might be tough. It's further complicated because you don't want to tick off freeloaders that can be converted to customers or whom happen to be major customers in same-brand products/services.

Both taken together, it's becomes a self-selecting, personal choice to vote with one's wallet.

A book about the related, long-term trend of decrease violence explained with different angels:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...

(Religious extremists, totalitarian regimes notwithstanding.)

Currently, https://disconnect.me/ browser extension says https://www.healthcare.gov/ uses:

- 0 Facebook, 3 Google, 0 Twitter

- 0 Advertising

- 6 Analytics: 1 ClickTale, 4 MixPanel, 1 Chartbeat

- 0 Social

- 6 Content: 3 Google, 3 Optimizely

Nope, Musk did http://www.whps.co.za Merely an observation that early environment shapes attitudes to life, learning, etc. which can either drive out curiosity and/or ambition or amplify it. (Excluding crucial social navigation and team dynamics, hitting most all of intelligence, ambition, curiosity, confidence (and so on) to do well, but not developing one or more of those tends to become self-limiting factor/s.) Overcoming adversity (being bullied) also helps.

NSA diode candiate, unfortunately :(

For edge devices, it's a criminal that high security standards are not more pervasive. Though given the nature of retail products, it's not a big surprise even though it is still disappointing. (How many of these boxes even work for longer than 5 minutes without spontaneously rebooting (crashing) or having a xfer rate within an order of magnitude of the channel bandwidth?)

PS: If there were a minimal OpenBSD/(x86|arm) based pfSense-alike project that could be easily themed, minified and plugin-ed, that would rock... and potentially dramatically reduce the attack surface by reducing the duplication of awful embedded web app implementations. (Yes, there are DDWRT and other Linux embedded network gear projects and pfSense (which is great)... OpenBSD for fewer lines of code.) It seems like what might happen going forward because the existing vendor stacks are often terrible and likely expensive for them to maintain. (Kickstarter for hw+sw or enterprise "crowd"-funded perhaps.)

Folks requesting pfSense ARM support: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=34707.0

Streaming: it really depends on the scale of use-case: denormalized datawarehousing vs. financial tranasctions vs. MMORPG user state vs. etc. For some apps, a subscribe / notify pattern for responding to streams of messages (a-la MQTT) might be more workable.

An explanation of Postgres / Oracle similarities:

Postgres Plus AS (the commercial product) aims to be a drop-in replacement for Oracle, so it's no surprise that Postgres tends to overlap with regard to Oracle functionality. It also makes it safer to choose Postgres as a default starting point, because the migration options to Oracle / Postgres Plus / etc. are there.

http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services-training/produ...

Disclaimer: unaffiliated pimping Postgres Plus because it likely subsidizes Postgres OSS dev. (Postgres OSS code is generally well-engineered.)

Only if AAPL acquires/merges with ORCL.

3rd-party: there's the non-FUSE port https://openzfsonosx.org/

Standardization is, generally, good for maintenance, learning curve and security, not always for retention (fun) though. Too much standardization is like the flip-side of too many one-offs: an extreme that can lead to unintended consequences. It's much easier to accrue technical debt and organizational bifurcation by having too many languages, with a big, painful shake out (technical debt repayment) into just a 2-3 (say Ruby|Python|Node & Go|Scala|Haskell|Erlang|C)... (I've seen this happen at a number of shops go through growing pains at scale).

Overall though, services should expose either a well/self-documented RESTful, zmq or similar API such that they can be rewritten in (your favorite whatever here). Being able to discover the API meta information automagically can be helpful for autogenerating clients.

The other aspect is that services have a risk budget: if the service is conventional and not as crucial, increase the experimentation. If the business/process model is risky/uncertain, use common, stable technologies.

(Gist: Pick from the toolbox, carefully... apply common-sense... Don't get stuck on perfect now or perfect waay later... Anticipate a little now to avoid pain of changing later.)

PS: Enterprise Rails is a great read. It's safe to ignore the Rails bits, because the architecture bits are universal and excellent.

Update: RESTful API metadata formats http://apiux.com/2013/04/09/rest-metadata-formats/ (and also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS )

Thanks. Did anyone see an initial CapEx budget range? Also, OpEx ranges for ongoing lifecycle maintenance by year?

In the US, up-vote for Challenger Schools (at least circa 1980's). They teach successful behaviors and are worth every penny. (Reaching and accelerating kids early is important.)

Ling, the Erlang VM directly on Xen seems neat.[0]

Folks have talked about composable OS frameworks / domain-specific OSes in the usual suspects of Erlang, OCaml, perhaps Haskell... especially useful for soft-realtime / embedded.

Irdis is neat.[1]

0: http://build.erlangonxen.org/

1: http://www.idris-lang.org/

Code rot: LOL and amen. I had to (help) make a nuclear reactor simulator work on Win32. 30+ megalines of Fortran developed by mostly nuclear engrs over three decades. Thankfully it worked in reasonable time by disabling swapping.

Thanks. The speaker mentions Haskell, hopefully the religion isn't so important as the code patterns.

10.10 upgrade was a full reinstall PITA. But the tweaks, hackarounds (EasySIMBL, pqrs.org, etc.) and firewalls (icefloor and hands off) makes the pretty thing fairly usable.

Nit picks:

- iBooks uses up 100% of CPU randomly by pegging storeacountd, even without internet access.

- Mail.app is slow to start and hangs if using email rules to send notifications.

- Not all apps support a dark toolbar.

- There should be more UI LNF's themes that are pluggable.

The cost of Linux though it dependency hell on both Fedora- and Debian-based systems that aren't developed as a whole like FreeBSD or OSX, where library dependencies break things. Sure you can get ZFS going and basically compile most anything on a Linux box without having to wait for the web developers that don't understand UNIX philosophy to maintain a technical dilettante's popular package system. But really, you should be developing in isolated containers as similar to production as possible using something like Docker and Xen|KVM.

Also, the Linux kernel has bazillions of syscalls that change with the wind compared to *BSD and XNU (under a few hundred).

If I had to choose another OS, it would likely be PC-BSD. If that didn't work, the BATNA would be Mint. Failing that: arch.