whyme

"You would have been stopped at the border for that at any point in the last 100 years."

Comparing an action that occurs in our world today to a same action occurring 100 years ago does not invalidate the parallel being drawn because you are not accounting for the world being completely different.

As I see it, the technology advancements over that 100 year period have created a world that's much more sensitive to any encroachment in freedoms. So that same action can and, I believe, does align well to establish the parallel being drawn.

Wow, I guess I'll try not to have a little fun along the way... Sheesh.

That model seems ineffective. While it operates in parallel, spawns a plethora of threads and does, I imagine, aim to end in eventual consistency, it also seems to lack any form of shared state. If I was me I would make sure I overlap myself on each new instance and not deal with that restart time. I'd also suggest picking a different tool rather than the current one... I think I might be using LISP (Lost In Self Protocol).

Great article.

Note that much of the attitude comes from a belief that what is good for the company is ultimately good for the engineer.

However, I'll suggest that's not always the case. Take for example one of the OA's reflections:

"Technical debt should be weighted against the actual ROI, because in many cases it is more cost effective to launch early. This way, though you may be accruing technical debt, you are also accruing revenue immediately, and you can reconcile the debt over time."

Unfortunately, dependant upon your company, that last part may never happen and if I were to frequently experience that at a company, well, you better believe I would rather quit and if I couldn't quit I still would rather put my foot down and pump the tech debt argument for all it's worth, otherwise, in the longer term, working there would be a living hell.

I know I'll get a lot of flak for this take, but all I can say is that while I've quit companies like that, I understand why some people couldn't do the same, and at that point it may require some tough love people management in effort to create a brighter future with a healthy work place.

If you can get past the first few minutes discussing the non-sense nazi topic there's an interesting conversation about SanFran's current dilemma.

Not from there so it really hit home when I realized the less privileged residents are being evicted from their places to make room for wealthier tenants.

To me this is one of those examples where you might re-think the whole problem from the ground up, then take a step back when realizing the absolute solution is not the perfect solution.

Take for example, the clap-it lights; while yes it requires less effort than walking over and flicking the switch, it's also extremely annoying to do. Likewise, I would get really annoyed when lights go on and off according to where I walk.

Of course I don't have a Nest either and yet it does fill a need for some people.

This reminds me of car ownership... When you ask people if they like their car, most will say yes they do; that is until they decide to get a new one. It's then that they quickly come up with a large con list to warrant an upgrade. Afterwards, they will almost always say that last car was never any good. After all look at the current car vs. the con list of the last. The thing is, they'll be doing this again with their new car until they outgrow it or find problems with it too.

And my point is: Hindsight is always 20/20 when your current perspective conveniently matches the narrative for your newly made situation.

So Theo would rather shutdown instead?

Change is hard, but I think it's worth a shot. And you never know maybe spending more time focused on real needs will create a better product from all the extra attention given to things that are work worthy.

I don't see why they're proposing a all or none situation when they could choose to move and in doing so, limit the number of platforms they support. If anyone complains about a specific platform being dropped, well have them pay for the overhead associated with it.

It's hardly a charity when it creates real value for ycombinator.

thank you; you just made my year!

Dopamine my ass. They are simply spending more time doing what makes them happy over doing what others perceive is good for them.

While we have all been there, we may not all be there according to our own measures.

Yeah, I notice this using the light table IDE all the time. Didn't know it was a chrome thing till now.

> Is the answer to build a new social network? No.

I don't see why not. Quite a few of my friends are leaving social networks these days, mostly due to the lack of a specific purpose. I.e too much non sense. So I can totally see hooking up to new social networks that have specific purposes that accommodate my needs. I don't have an immediate need for this one right now, but I'm not adverse to trying it should I come across a situation where I do.

It's possible that you're both right. According to the author they had hired new management spots. It could be that this new management decided they needed certain specialists positions filled, but didn't have the budget to do so unless, of course, they could free up budget by letting others go. And that's often the problem with generalists; if they can't place you into a specific 'need' spot on the org chart then you often have a target on your head instead.

In other words, maybe he didn't get fired for being a generalist, but instead was fired in favour of a hiring a specialist.

Actually if you watched it, the claimed purpose is not for commercial, bloomberg is just trying to tie that link for reporting purposes.

Besides that, it's a govt run op... do the math.

I can't understand why the American people are not protesting drone use.

Given everything learned about US govt surveillance and their obvious intentions is it not absolutely crazy to let this happen?

I read that they acknowledge they made the default to not scrub...

"As a result, we switched the default mode away from scrubbing to improve performance, given that customers would have complete control over this action themselves."

Also, I think they presume a leak to be qualified by the data being sensitive which would not be leaked had it been scrubbed, for which they provide an option. This has to be assumed, otherwise one would never need to scrub.

Still, certainly looks to be a pretty big mistake in communications.

The scale of the attack had me thinking the PINs were taken from a server. I feel much better with the answers provided here, but yeah, I'm still going to start changing my PIN periodically. At what frequency I'll have to see...

Thanks for all the answers.

I'm surprised you're so confident considering how many experts were shocked to discover how far the US govt had been able to go.

There are un-marketable features to consider, which make it quite compelling and emotional.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Godwin's law does not apply.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

"Godwin's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Nazis – often referred to as "playing the Hitler card". The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering known mainstays of Nazi Germany such as genocide, eugenics, or racial superiority, nor, more debatably, to a discussion of other totalitarian regimes or ideologies,..."

So things are much more sinister than I had originally believed, and this does explain why the US is not genuinely worried about the national debt!

"I honestly don't have the time to get more involved"

So don't. It sounds like you have quite a bit of work landing at your door to make the above claim. If that's the case then choose to work on the projects that you feel have the most potential to succeed. Doing so will, assuming you're correct, build a better portfolio and reputation for you, which will then lead to more opportunities and better pay.

Everyone should just use some form of a Pig Latin user name. Maybe then add some spice to the name as well.

This way we can reasonably claim our good reputation if the result of our actions turns out ok, but if not we can borrow from each other and all get second chances.

I'm pretty sure Pig Latin will fool the NSA too. :)

"I have a lot of respect for the authors of the report, and I trust their integrity"

Respect and trust are lost much more easily than gained.

Lol,... Me too.

What I'd like to see is a link to their policy supporting transparency for clients.

What's surprising is the lack of alternative services (even outside the US) that clearly state any service they provide will in fact shut down before not being transparent. I have cancelled quite a few services over the last few months, but struggle to find real alternatives.

Also, I doubt even transparency in the aggregate would be enough to make me go back into US based offerings.