janus

Thanks but no thanks. Having just become a productive Rails programmer and grasped a lot of complexities, use cases and diversity of the framework, I'd rather use the shotgun that Rails is to kill any fly that stands in my way.

As long as the fly is dead, Rails did its job.

And today, with the wide availability of books in electronic formats, not having an interesting book to read is no longer a valid excuse.

Like always, if you can't trust your machine, you should stop using it and reformat it. The only security comes with a controlled behavior in which software is installed in your computer, which websites you visit, etc.

Any software switch can be overriden by a silent hack. Besides, overhearing conversations is the least of your problems if your computer is compromised. I would worry more about documents and web browser data.

They are missing an underscore there... #founder_sex_ehh... #founders_exchange

Becoming an expert at something is hard. Training requires a lot of mental and phisycal effort, and not a lot of people are willing to sweat it.

I believe that in order to stay motivated to become an expert, you need to have a clear goal. Why do you want to go the gym everyday? Why would you spend hours after office researching and learning about new technology? If you can't define the why, you will probably fail.

Here's a hilarious one https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

I think you have to slide two fingers to opposite sides of the screen for they keyboard to split. (At least that is what was showed in the iOS 5 videos, I don't have an iPad)

This. Having goal allows you to measure your current performance compared to them. Without any goals you will always be stuck as the same person you were yesterday.

This is what scares me about backing up your files only to the cloud. They could go down any day and you would lose everything.

The fact that a local copy is kept is what I like about dropbox, and why I also keep local backups in an external HDD.

I agree, but in a paranoid alternative world, the bank employees could share your bank account balance information with criminal organizations that would investigate you and your family, and one day kidnap you and take you or any of your family members, and ask for an amount of money they know you possess.. It's still a trust issue.

I think that the key point in this issue is "trust".

Just as you trust the bank to guard your money, and many of their employees have access to your current account balance, the convenience of using these kind of services need you to trust the organization.

Build what you build, as long as you help one person, you are contributing to society. You don't need to affect end users directly to sit back and think that you are really helping the world to be a better place.

Reputation and karma systems are very good at reminding. They normally engage the users as if the site was some sort of "game" and persuading to have a high score.

See HN, Stack Exchange sites, forum's post counts, xbox live gamerpoints, etc.

Does anyone have an up-to-date snippet package for Rails 3.0+ ? The snippets included in the default installation are incomplete.

I work remotely with a web designer (I'm a programmer), and we mostly use a combination of Skype, GitHub and Gmail (for asynchronous communication)

We haven't found collaboration software for documentation and such good enough for our needs yet, but we are trying Trello.

Well, normally frameworks give you for free a standard set of practices that make it easier to build a secure and maintainable application, so it's normal that web development is being moved to frameworks.

I find that most web applications or websites built from scratch, normally in PHP, to be written by amateur developers that have little knowledge of security, maintainability, best practices, database design, etc.

In my opinion, biometrics won't yield much more data about the average citizen than what is currently available in the wild.

The lack of personal information privacy in Argentina is astonishing. Having lived in other countries, I find it really scary that every retail store asks you for your DNI number the first time you make a purchase, and that public databases exist in the web with your address, phone number, date of birth, upper billing limit (with the CUIT number), etc.

What's also funny, a lot of software here use the DNI number as the primary key for their associates / customer / people tables.

Any other country would find this unnacceptable.

I've found 15-20 minutes naps after having lunch, to be amazing. I can wake up really quickly and being fully alert to keep working, without any drowsiness or performance hits.

I wish I could wake up with the same mood in the morning. I find it really hard to even wake up without putting the alarm in snooze at least twice.

I agree. At least an optimal extended battery would be nice.

Nevertheless, I think that the problem with current smartphone batteries is that the leap from a day of use to a little more than one day loses the convenience of charging it at home at night.

For example, I'm used to charge my iPhone at night in my bedside, and the iPhone lasts about a working-day of charge.

A battery that lasted 1.5 days would not be as useful, because the battery would probably drain somewhere where having access to the battery charger is not as convenient as the one plugged at your bedside.

It's even smoother than the iOS version in Chrome 16 for Mac. Amazing implementation.

I have found gitimmersion (1) to be really useful for beginners.

(1) http://gitimmersion.com/

I do like Unity, but I find that it still needs a lot of polish. There are some bugs that make it unacceptable to use, IMO

Well I wish it was as easy as changing your operating system. The truth is, that living in a small city, in a third-world country, makes it hard to find people with hobbies aligned with yours, especially if you have uncommon hobbies.

I'm in my twenties but I feel much older. I've been working in software development for a few years, part time, earning a good salary for my age and area, and dreaming of going solo and being independent.

The only problem with my current life is that even though I can say I'm happy (with my family and girlfriend), I can't socialize with most people my age, because they are in a different state of mind (only thinking about partying, the girl they hooked up last weekend, etc)

The big question is, how do you train yourself to get ´in the zone´ when you are working in a project you don´t like with tools you don´t like?

Thank you for these great resources.

Are there any recommended books for backend developers / hackers / programmers, about introduction to design?

I really wish Canonical would focus into making a really great desktop experience (that was getting better each year until 2011), instead of trying random shoots everywhere and seeing what sticks.

I found your post really intriguing.

I'm really interested about this 'flow' state you mention. I have found that I can get lost coding for hours but only if the problem / project is interesting enough. When doing something really really boring for a client or someone else, and without the tools and languages of my preference, I'm perhaps as 10% as productive as opposed in the environment of my preference.

The thing is, you can't always choose the projects you work on, and you can't always choose the tools you'd like to work with. Do you have any advice for improving productivity when you have these things against?

Very well implemented. Prezi it's amazing except that it needs flash.

The year of the linux desktop