robododo

Bizarre.

I wonder if, in 10 years, WebKit will be viewed as the next IE6 when the latest/greatest HTML rendering engine comes along?

What happened to standards compliance?

I, unwittingly, nearly pulled the same scam with Dell about 10 years ago.

I had a new notebook shipped to my house. It cost about $1600 new. The tracking information said it was delivered, so I hurried home to get it as I didn't want it on my doorstep. I get there, and no box. I checked the deck out back (where the UPS guy would sometimes leave things), and nothing. Crap.

So I call Dell, and after working with them for 20 minutes, I have a new replacement on the way. I basically had to "super pinky promise" that the notebook never really made it to me.

10 minutes later, my neighbor comes by and says "Hey, got a package for you!". Holy moly... I just social engineered the poor Indian lady at Dell. After a quick call back, the replacement is canceled.

To this day, I'm both shocked and very happy that Dell made it so easy. I like that they trusted me (a return customer) and tried to do the right thing. However, that trust is so easy to exploit.

I'm not sure what the answer is here. In this case, I can't blame amzn. I mean, they are trying to be helpful. How do you setup a system that's truly helpful w/o leaving wide gaps for scammers? Things like 2-factor auth, sms codes, etc will annoy most non techies (IMO).

Maybe he knows where you can buy a good laptop for $300.

For those not in the know, semiaccurate is not exactly reliable. They post just about any rumor, and get things wrong as much as right.

Take this with a grain of salt, and file it into the "hrm, this might happen" category.

Oh. Awesome.

So when will Valve let me install their software with Ubuntu Software Center?

So when will Steam let me add third party repositories for software?

This is all FUD being spun up by Valve because they don't like competition for their app store.

But... it does kind of look like a calculator.

Wow, they need a new name. I came in here thinking they'd invented some sort of new electric forced induction mechanism [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercharger]

If you don't read the article, at least read my comment ;)

Where did that come from... Did you read the article?

"All devices will have a diagonal screen size between 10.1 and 11.6 inches, weigh between 520g and 1200g, and be between 8.35mm and 15mm thick. On the low end, 520g and 8.35mm would be considerably thinner and lighter than the iPad 2/3 and Galaxy Tab 10.1. Presumably the 1200g/15mm form factor is a laptop."

Speaking from anecdote, my relatively crappy, rural, public education in the USA was not like this. I'm guessing the article is written as hyperbole, not to paint a picture of the average US public school.

Of course, it's been ~15 years since high school for me. Perhaps things in the USA have greatly degraded in that time. Public education standards are a major a concern for me with respect to my son's education.

When one's core beliefs have no basis in logic or objective reality, it's simple to maintain consistency. All that's needed is the invention of some new concept to explain the discrepancy.

The world created in days -> but a "day" could be a million years. Evolutionary theory -> but <creator> is driving the evolution etc...

Saying something's feasible if you throw the tests out just doesn't make sense to me.

Without good automated, easy-to-run tests, you're going to blow more time fixing bugs and ad hoc testing in the long run.

Thinking you save time by not testing is a lie on all but the most trivial of projects.

Then explain this. How am I typing this message FROM THE PAST?

Was anyone else reminded of Catch-22?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Minderbinder

"At the beginning of the novel, it [Milo's syndicate] is merely a system that gets fresh eggs to his mess hall by buying them in Sicily for one cent, selling them to Malta for four and a half cents, buying them back for seven cents, and finally selling them to the mess halls for five cents."

Totally agree.

A shockingly small number of candidates I've interviewed have heard of fizzbuzz. The first time I mentioned it to someone, I assumed they already knew it and would just chuckle and crank it out. However, that's actually kind of rare.

When I do talk to a candidate and get that "knowing grin", my estimation of them jumps up a couple of notches. It seems to actually mean something outside of coder forums.

The real downer is how dismaying it as that candidates clearly have never prepared. How could they have done any research ahead of time and NOT seen fizzbuzz?

Richard, MVC JS is great when there’s no way around it.

Nice "..." there.

You trolling? If so, this is the most bizarre topic for trolling I've seen in a while.

s/just as//

In all seriousness, when people ask me what HN is, I reply "It's like /. when it was relevant". Thank you for being here, HN.

Old school trolling is awesome.

"Everyone working at LucasFilm is a Real Programmer. (It would be crazy to turn down the money of fifty million Star Trek fans.)"

Wow, glad I'm not the only one who's seen this.

My problem is convincing managers that good bug fixers don't always make good clean-sheet coders. Nearly everyone has things their good at. The trick is figuring out how to utilize strengths while mitigating weaknesses.

Color me dubious. Just check out Rudin's work on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0748784/

That's a lot of solid movies. I have a hard time believing he'd take something so solid and totally screw it up.

HBO series have a lot of credibility, in general, as well. So I'll hold my breath that it doesn't paint indie/startup developers as total screw-ups.

That's how I've always felt, personally.

Hrm, I think I have to refuse to watch the video then.

The idea of a plexiglass factory is enticing enough that I choose the fantasy over reality.

Conflicting evidence? I honestly don't get what you're saying.

Thanks for the explanation.

That's cool and all, but why wouldn't I just define an interface with method foo(), then override foo on my classes? This feels like class-based OO turned inside out.

I found it really interesting that someone piped up in the blog comments disagreeing with the measure for overweight: "Since so-called overweight – BMI 25-30 – is the longest-lived cohort, parents aren’t the only ones with screwed up perceptions, IMO."

Denial's everywhere, I guess.

Tangentially related: I was buying a coat as a gift for my mother, and was perplexed by the sizes. So I went to my local expert: Me: "What's up with all the women's sizes? They're all 1-X, 2-X, etc." Wife: "Oh, 'woman' sizes mean fat. Misses means normal." Me: DOES NOT COMPUTE

So even sizes in stores work to make people feel they're ok. 1X isn't "extra large" It's "woman sized". WTF?

If you have to work with the US government, it's actually an issue: http://www.section508.gov/

From what I'm told by the "business guys", making your stuff accessiblt to the handicapped is a realy leg-up on some juicy contracts.

It's not shocking at all that they allow firmware updates through the print port. That's very typical.

What's shocking is the claim that the update isn't signed. I'm at a loss as to how to describe how terrifically awful that is. It's /so/ shocking to me, I have a hard time believing it. If true, it's astoundingly negligent on their part.

Too bad HDMI seems to only spec 5V @ 55mA.

I had dreams of just plugging this stick into an HDMI port (TV, monitor, whatever) and having an instant PC. Sadly, it needs external power.