screwt

There is a strong case to be made that 37signals should have access to this data for debugging purposes or similar. And as others have suggested, customers trusting 37signals with data should expect this at some level, unless the customers are encrypting everything at their end first.

But should everyone in the company have that level of access, or should access be restricted to the minimum necessary? What I don't see in others comments here (except tghw's [1]) is any recognition of that. It's all very well saying you want to give your devs access, and that you can be trusted, but over time and as your company grows you're exposing yourself to the risk of a rogue operator. And it only takes one person to do something bad to severely damage the trust your customers hold in you.

It's a balance, to be sure, but I'm inclined to think a blanket "we trust our devs, so they have the access they need" could be exposing yourself to a large risk you don't need.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3471338

My soln to "HN-linked page is down" is just to search cache:<link> from Google. Works fine 95% of the time.

> This isn't bayesian, this is just counting boxes on a permutation table.

It's the same thing. Bayes' theorem allows you to shortcut straight to the answer without having to draw out a full probability tree / permutation table. But the underlying math is the same - in each case you have a different probability of B given A, versus B given (not A).

The article says it's an extrusion printer, so gravity isn't needed. Current machines would probably work without further modification (e.g. as others have noted, the RepRap can print upside down).

In terms of what parts can be made, multi-material machines are commercially available[1] that allow a selective distribution of material properties throughout the printed object. This gives the ability to print quite advanced objects, not just dumb plastic parts. Add to that the developing abilities to print electrical circuitry, and you'e approaching a very useful ability and source of replacements.

[1] http://www.objet.com/3D-Printer/Objet_Connex_Family/

You can never do this 100% reliably, but depending on how important it is to you, there are measures that can be taken.

To go to the complete extreme, you could employ someone to shadow every one of your current employees, and report to you if they break any of these rules.

At the other extreme, you could issue a memo saying "Don't let me catch you doing any of this stuff, which will make you more profitable and earn you a bigger bonus, hint hint."

In between turning a blind eye and adding ridiculous amounts of oversight, the CEO can make very clear what is and what isn't acceptable, what the penalties are for employees who break these rules. S/he can also instigate appropriate oversight to make it more likely to catch offenders.

Like I said at the start, this can never be 100% reliable, but it can cut down the rate of offence a lot.

[edit] tl;dr : If it is important enough to you, you'll find a way to ensure it doesn't happen.

I had to write essays for subjects other than English from middle school onwards. IIRC mostly for history, with some geography as well. Key point being from my education, essays have always been about making a structured argument, and not exclusively about literature.

I think that's just a function of power. I have a daylight box that runs at 400W; it lights the room fine, and so does the 600W halogen. Funnily enough a 60W regular bulb doesn't really compare.

I don't think you're right about incandescents - light from them is much yellower than from a full-spectrum bulb. Question: wouldn't an incandescent have to be at the same temp as the sun to produce the same colour black-body output? (Happy to be corrected here if I'm missing something.)

At home we have a 600W halogen that is much yellower than our 400W daylight box. Subjectively the daylight bulb feels much more natural. That's not to say there are or aren't any benefits for SAD/depression of course.

'natural' until you look out the window to see it's dark, of course. For that reason I tend to prefer the halogen if I want light in the evening - the yellow tone provides plenty of light without trying to pretend that it's daytime.

It's not paying 90 days 'late'. It's completely standard in manufacturing for payments to be agreed as due 30, 60 or 90 days after delivery. 90 days fairly long, but not particularly unusual.

It's also not unusual for companies to pay later than the agreed dates, but no-one has said Apple's doing that.

That's exactly the one I had (http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3186671). I was pretty sure it was non-unique, but I'm glad you checked it properly!

Didn't give me a score ...

I'm fairly certain that for my Q8 (2 squares, 2 circles & 2 triangles on each), there was no unique odd one out. For A & C the triangles pointed opposite directions when assembled, and B & D they pointed in the same direction.

Struggling to reconcile the following two points, one from the intro and one from the section on Alignment:

  - "Research shows that people believe that more attractive designs are easier to use than less attractive designs even when they’re not."
  - "Without thinking about it too hard, which form looks easier to complete, the one on the left or the one on the right? ... Most people say the form on the right looks easier to complete."

Have I missed something here?

I can believe that having a form that looks complicated may put people off, but the article doesn't make that point. More importantly, I have no evidence to back up that belief - and given the statement from the intro, I'm surprised the author doesn't attempt to justify it either.

In my experience, 'engineer' has closer connotations to janitor than 'programmer'. Certainly in the UK, engineering as a profession has a big image problem because the average person doesn't distinguish between e.g. a heating engineer (who fixes the boiler) and say, a civil engineer (someone with a Masters degree + 4 years professional experience and accreditation).

People I know who are programmers all have professional jobs and by and large are earning more than those I know who are engineers. That's probably not a representative sample of 'programmers' though.

tl;dr: 'engineer' doesn't sound too professional either, at least in the UK. IMO Software Developer sounds better than either, and that's what I tell people I am.

  I don't think I would say any of those groups act better than others.

As a driver, cyclist & pedestrian in London I second this. Some cyclists are dangerous jerks. Some car drivers are dangerous jerks. Some pedestrians have their heads in their phones and cause a danger to everyone. Rather than ranting about it, I'd prefer each user group to just be more aware of the others & take a bit of care.

That and make all London taxi drivers cycle everywhere for a month to see how they like it ;-)

It does.

  "Linus Torvalds ... reinvented Unix for the internet age"
  "Unix-like systems power several hundred million Apple and Android mobile devices, most internet firms' server farms"

Given the massive amounts of attention shown to Jobs' death, mentioning him gives the article sensible context (especially considering that most Economist readers are unlikely to have hear of Ritchie).

Would be nice to show the port you've accessed in the body (useful for scripting etc).

Possibly interesting, but without data I'm thinking more likely to be chance / propaganda.

I'm worried that the girl will leave a loaded shotgun for someone else to shoot themselves in the leg by writing code that relies on order of evaluation rather than by using parantheses. The girl clearly knew her stuff, but I'd be much happier if she prefaced this example by also saying "it's dangerous to write code like this because...". I wouldn't want to work with someone who writes code that relies on all the features discussed in the C examples.