wizzard

I have to agree. I really appreciate the effort to update the site but it seems like there is even less cohesion than before. I think there are at least 20 different combinations of font family/size/weight/color on every documentation page. The arbitrary sizing especially throws me off. And all the images could use some finessing, like the jaggy comment up/down-vote arrows.

It's a really good start though. I'm heartened to see the site get some love.

I found that most of the time it's prompting you when you're stuck in a traffic jam. It auto-detects that and asks you why you slowed down. Since I was already slowed to a crawl, interacting with it (via voice or tapping a button) wasn't much to ask. It's not like it prompts you every half mile with "how's it going?" or something inane.

I really don't see Google incorporating all the Waze functionality. Waze is pretty bandwidth-intensive. And I could see some liability issues with presenting crowdsourced data directly on Gmaps.

I feel like this was simply a "keep Waze out of the hands of our competitors" move, and now it will die a slow death like most other Google acquisitions.

What I find grating about it is that it's worded like he thinks he's a hot commodity and is expecting Vance to woo him. And telling him what your rent is going to cost... wow.

That's interesting and seems like a good idea, except perhaps it should be paramount that the 20-ton beam NOT fall on the following cars! That is an entirely different meaning of "sacrificial"...

He's right, you are unpleasant. This is just ad hominem at this point.

I don't think he's literally saying it would be cheap. He's just saying that the fact that they can get away with not having support means not many people _require_ support, and therefore if support were made available theoretically not many people would take advantage of it.

Which I don't necessarily agree with, but I think the point is worth considering and not "ass-backwards" or completely illogical.

How about putting a giant video file there? Or just embed this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilMx7k7mso (language)

It must be nice to have a designer in your back pocket willing to drop everything and design a flashy landing page for every tiny (~40 lines of JS) pet project you do. This is snobbery at its finest.

This isn't a product you need to sell. It's a tool that people either need or don't. And if they need it then the GitHub readme will probably suffice.

I know the author has a valid point in there somewhere but this is a terrible example. Don't make developers feel like they should be ashamed to release anything until they've paid a designer to slap Kanye West on it.

> The real problem about women being objectified is that women are ready to be objectified - either for money or for some other form of compromise. This is the real problem. As long as such women exist, the product makers and corporations would obviously use them. So, if you want this to stop, you have to revolt when someone from your own gender (male/female) is ready to represent your gender infront of a public audience and accept to be objectified for money. Don't go after the corporation that hired them, instead ask these people why they let them objectify you, on behalf of you/your gender in the first place.

Why do people accept money to do things? What a great question. That ranks right up there with "Why do prisoners want to escape from prison?"

Everyone has a price. If someone told you they'd pay you a million dollars to stand naked for a few hours in front of a gaggle of lecherous old ladies, I bet you'd do it. Scruples don't pay rent or put food on the table. Maybe your price is higher, or maybe it's lower like these models, but at some point you'd do it.

Because having groups of random, untrained people squinting at dangling chads is less error-prone?

What system, in your opinion, would minimize error?

Gruber is trying to make it out to be this chess game of when to release the new map app, but never addresses the main issue: Was it ready?

I guess if you're crowdsourcing map data the only way to start improving it is to get it out there. But don't act like it's all mind games and strategery and say that Google knew that Apple knew that Google knew that Apple was going to drop Google for maps. Reading the past couple of posts was exhausting and doesn't comfort me at all when my phone tells me to drive into a lake.

Maybe I'm missing something, but if I come up with a great idea and have any inkling that it may be patentable, why would I want to post the idea publicly before trying to patent it? Wouldn't that open it up to the possibility of theft?

Sure, the existence of the post could prove you thought of it first, but that doesn't prove that the idea was stolen from there nor does it pay for a lawyer...

This is music to my ears. While I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to say that all management is useless, they certainly seem to go out of their way to create barriers and waste time. They tend not to understand the observer effect: Making programmers spend more than five minutes a day reporting their progress adversely affects their progress.

And you're right about the ego. So much ego...

Well, it seems like fair tactics given the original letter's insulting non-apology: "We regret that our staff’s request that you stop filming in our restaurant offended you."

Exactly. The reason policy changes like this kill morale is because there are only two outcomes. 1) The problem in the email was not caused by me, yet I am being penalized for it, so I am resentful towards management and the policy abusers. 2) The problem in the email was caused by me, and my coworkers are probably aware of that fact, and now they resent me for bringing about this policy change.

> brilliant gorilla marketing tactic

Best homophone mistake ever.

It all makes sense. Having a higher-resolution monitor increases the resolution of HD video! Somehow!

Thanks for the laugh. Wow.

It seems like whenever people say this they are only considering wiretapping or similar invasions that don't cause them any personal inconvenience. They're not thinking about the TSA, personal searches, searches of their property, confiscation of their property for further investigation, etc.

My response is something like "so you'd be fine with a random mandatory search of your house twice a year, that takes 12 hours, during which all your electronic devices will be confiscated for two weeks of processing?" They'll say "no, that doesn't happen." But it will with their attitude.

I agree. This is a legal issue about 1) patent law, 2) Apple store policies. Whether your kid really needs the app or not is pretty irrelevant. I don't mean to sound heartless, but I think the emotional outpouring weakens the case for what you're hoping to achieve. The way it reads to me is "SfY is probably in the wrong here so I'm not going to defend them, but please just let everyone keep using this infringing software."

My whole take is that a patent for a device that plays a sound when you push a button with a picture on it is a complete joke. Surely there is prior art.

It's been my experience that the people who share/photocopy textbooks aren't doing it to screw publishers, they do it because they cannot afford to buy the book themselves. It is a lot of extra work to pirate textbooks this way; I doubt anyone would bother without a good reason.

Once again, it seems like all it's going to do is make legitimate customers jump through hoops, while the pirates find loopholes or simply fail... neither of which results in additional revenue for publishers.

Agreed. All classes are derailed by jerks like this, not just women-only classes. Everyone rolls their eyes and tunes out, not just females.

And a simple "let's save the rest of these questions for after class" to the jerk is often effective.

I'm surprised so many people are balking at the "incompetent until proven otherwise" clause, especially with the clarifying reasons you listed. When I read that I thought it was a great policy. I've worked at a few places where we hired people that didn't work out, but nobody would step up and fire them. It was a horrible situation, because we had to keep trying to work with incompetents and dead weights who either couldn't or wouldn't do their jobs and usually made our jobs a lot harder. It was awful for morale.

What is the problem with terminating people who aren't pulling their weight? A month seems like enough time to figure out someone's M.O.

I don't think interviews, even with technical components, can tell you even with 75% certainty how a candidate is going to perform at the actual job. There are considerations like work ethic and how well someone can grok the actual issues the company faces (as opposed to a toy problem) that you just can't really know until they're actually doing the work (or not). Some people are really smart but turn out to be lazy. How do you weed them out in an interview?

I keep seeing comments about how the tax is a tradeoff for certain rights. Last I checked, legality is determined by laws, not by paying $5. I don't pay a "freedom of speech tax" or a "suffrage tax" when I protest or vote.

Are you thinking that the money would be distributed to the actual artists? What a crazy notion.

Same here. I think the idea of a BSc in Software Development is excellent, and I think some colleges are starting to think along those lines. For instance, the SaaS class from Berkeley on Coursera would have been far more useful to me than the circuit design and formal theory classes I had to take.

However. There is definitely something to be said for SOME kind of structured education for developers. The author's anecdotal evidence notwithstanding, I have met many aspiring self-taught programmers who just don't have it. There seems to me to be a strong correlation between a person's drive to learn something and their willingness to pursue a formal education... not surprising if you think about it.

I also know an absolute genius programmer who is 99% self-taught. But just because people like Wozniak exist doesn't mean they're the norm.

This is awesome. I know of scammy companies that have gone out of their way to use actual live subscriber counts on their sites, yet this idiot uses a fake one.

I was enjoying the slideshow until I got completely distracted by the pool table shot. The arrangement of the pool cues made me irrationally angry.

Exactly. How is reading articles helping you reach your goals? How is just writing down your ideas productive?

Maybe the reason you're not excited about doing those things is because you know that doing them does not equal progress. Being productive means producing something, and not just words on paper (unless you're a writer).

Pick an idea you're really interested in -- something you actually want to use yourself -- and start working on it.