d4nt

I don't think the parent post was suggesting we don't care about it. Just questioning why we care about it more than, say, serial killers.

> Terrorism isn't just an attack on people; it's intended to be an attack on our institutions and our society.

The fact that you're calling it terrorism instead of murder, and that we're discussing this in the context of an OP about the development of new technologies to detect explosives, shows that it's working.

We put ads on sqlizer.io for a while. The CPM numbers were terrible. I think developers all run Adblock.

I think people generally assume that confidence is backed up by reality. I've found that one of the most useful sales techniques is to be friendly and polite but also very confident. People find it reassuring.

Sounds like this guy took it to the extreme though, and lost all perspective on reality along the way.

The transition was subtle, but these days [checking] banks are actually just Software/API companies. They provide an online account that supports the established electronic money transfer protocols in whatever country you happen to live.

The fact that they have a network of retail stores in which you can talk to a salesperson about a loan is just a hangover from history. A bank without those elements would probably have much lower costs.

The way powerful people often maintain control of a situation is through contrivances such as unusual dress, unusual ways of speaking, unusual rituals or by having a large entourage.

If you analyse each element closely it's clear that they're silly. Why do they need earpieces in when visiting Apple? Why must all the cars match? Why must they dress in the same way? Why do they need to bring all those people, what are they all doing?

But the point is, when faced with something new and strange, people often pause and withdraw. This allows you to dominate the situation and prevent dissent.

When I first read "the manly consideration toward Mrs. Dickens" I thought he was talking about sex.

Having assumed that meaning, the next part about how her sister raising the children seemed to suggest that they had not had sex and that the children were not Mrs Dickens's.

But I think I was wrong because, he then goes on to strongly deny having an affair. Why hint at one affair, then deny another.

It's not an in-depth critique, you're right. But there are some interesting themes here, and by mentioning 1984 I'm referencing some deep questions in (what I hope is) a fairly shorthand way.

To be more explicit:

1. Do people 'think in a particular language' such that limitations in language limit their thought? This is something that psychologist have considered. The other comments in this thread suggest to me that there might be something in this.

2. Is it dangerous to allow any kind of authority that tells people what they can/can't say? If the answer to #1 is 'yes' then would such a group be too powerful to be allowed to exist?

Having read 1984, I find the desire to remove undesirable language from our vocabulary quite unnerving.

I realise it has the best of intentions, and nobody is proposing to remove 'to be' from everything. But the discussion here about how adopting E-Prime forces you to rethink what you mean to say, is eerily reminiscent of how Newspeak was used to control people's thought process.

There is a big difference between mass surveillance, and a system of mandatory logging by private companies with warrant based access to individual's records for security officials.

A sensible compromise would be to accept a regime where the security services could read all the internet communications of particular individuals, or compel that individual to reveal decryption keys, subject to a warrant from a judge sitting in a public court who has decided there is reasonable grounds for suspicion.

Sadly, the proposed bill appears to still give too much power to the executive branch of government.

I read the article, but I'm no clearer on what the criteria for issuing a warrant is.

A few years ago it seemed like the answer was "because TERRORISTS", now they're also talking about organised crime and child abusers.

This government have already branded the leader of the opposition a 'treat to national security'. Which leads me to concluded that they are either lying, incompetent, or reading all his internet history too.

Furthermore, I've heard no compelling arguments as to why the idea of an independent judiciary (who should be the only people who can issue these warrants) is broken, or how it should not apply when it comes to the online world.

But the drip drip drip of obfuscated and fear motivated erosions to the balance of powers continues, and it's making me deeply worried about what kind of country my grandchildren will live in.

The idea of just keeping the carbon in the ground makes sense. But it would be simpler (and require a lot less capital) to just impose punitive taxes on coal mines and coal imports.

The mining companies pass the cost on, renewables become more attractive, no complicated capping and trading system necessary.

The only problem I can see with this is that the WTO probably forbids it. But one would hope that everyone involved could get together and make an exception for the sake of saving millions of lives.

I sympathise. I think the best way is to ask lots of questions in your interview. Developers are in demand, so asking some probing questions about the process is not going to hurt your chances at all. If anything it'll improve your standing.

Ask about the development process, what documentation gets produced, and what tools they use. Then listen carefully to the answer.

Ignore the buzz words, and focus on actual tangible artifacts. Saying "we're agile" or drawing a flow chart on the white board doesn't mean anything. Can they show you the scope of the current sprint? A Kanban board? A burndown chart? Some wireframe drawings?

If they can't show you anything tangible, that's a warning sign.

If you've been told to work on something else, and you get a call from the customer asking about project status, the correct answer should be to refer your customer up to their allocated project/account manager.

If your boss is re-assigning you then not keeping the customer informed on progress, that sounds like bad management, not a flaw in the agency model.

I run a software outsourcing company and I recognise many of the issues raised.

I did spot a few problems with the article though. Firstly, you should never outsource in order to save money. The author kind of assumes that is why you're outsourcing. That doesn't work.

The main reason to outsource should be to buy in expertise. Many companies do not really know how to document software requirements, or what a non-functional requirement is, or how to design user interfaces, or what makes good UX, or what a good test plan looks like, or how to run user acceptance testing.

Some companies don't even realise that those things are important. They just think that if they just hire a few Ukrainian Java Devs, they will get good software out the other end.

Some dev shops don't even realise that those things are important either. They just act as a middle man. Connecting you to the Ukrainian Java Devs.

Even if the customer does understand what's involved in running a software project successfully, sometimes it just has no desire to employ developers. Maybe they are not the kind of company that can attract and retain good technical talent, maybe they just prefer to stick to what they do best. Either way, using a dev shop offers an attractive alternative to contractors because the team doesn't disappear the moment you stop using them. The team sticks around and retains a certain amount of knowledge ready for next time you need some changes.

I don't think the technology, and who sold it to whom, is the real story here. We all know that the NSA and GCHQ have similar capabilities. I imagine China, Russia and several other states do too. The point is, this power will corrupt.

Consider this quote:

> people deemed dangerous to state security like government officials and opposition politicians are being surveilled

What happens if Labour look likely to win the election and someone decides Jeremy Corbyn is "dangerous to state security" because he opposes renewing Trident. What institutions exist to ensure that he can't be surveilled?

I suspect vertical integration is more efficient and wins out, so long as you accurately read the market and don't throw your advantage away.

IBM didn't bring the personal computer to market early enough, which left the door open to Apple, Commodore and others. Then they signed the MS-DOS licensing deal... and the rest is history.

In other words, until apple makes a stupid mistake, they're unstoppable.

> A smart startup that pulls a user's Facebook/Twitter feeds and mixes in any other RSS/Atom, as well as allowing users to post back to Facebook/Twitter/Atom could potentially spell the death of proprietary timelines.

A few years ago I would have said you were crazy. But after the race to replace Google Reader, the failure of Google+, the general sense of malaise that many people have with Facebook[1], and the political echo chamber and general bot fest that is Twitter[2], I think there's room for another player here.

[1] despite, importantly, continuing to use it all the time

[2] my default working assumption when someone follows me is now that it's a bot

Neat idea, you could get pretty close to that experience right now by running http://databaseimportscriptor.com, then Alt+Tab-ing into MySQL Workbench.

Problem is, I can't really see a market for it. You're trying to write SQL on your database, so you're a developer, and how much would you really be willing to pay to have the experience streamlined down to a couple of clicks?

My theory is that people are shopping around for better employers and better cultural fit, and that it's not just a question of taking the highest offer any more. That would explain why wages are not rising.

This aligns with my person experience in a startup incubator. If I was a ruby/php/js guru willing to work for £25,000/year plus a bit of equity, I could take my pick of 100s of jobs.

Unfortunately, there are still many bosses who would be put off by a mental health issue in someones past though.

In a former role, I interviewed a candidate who cited burnout as one of the reasons for a career change a few years earlier. After the interview my boss (who was in the interview) made a big thing about how that put him off. I think it was his main reason for rejecting the candidate.

It is important we do talk about these issues though. At the time I did not feel able to say "that's not ok" to my boss in the same way that I might if he had been put off by the candidate's sexuality. I should have.

Consider this example:

I run the EMEA division of a multinational, I want to justify a bigger budget and/or get a bigger bonus and so I hire a data analyst to prepare some reports showing my division in a favourable light. The reports are well received and have desired effect for the first year or two until my competitor who runs AsiaPac realises what's happening and also hires a data analyst. The situation then returns to normal, but the company now employs two more data analysts than it did a few years ago. Neither one of us will fire our data analyst for fear of looking bad, but the data analysts are in competition and so have no net benefit to the company's performance or humanity as a whole.

News is an entertainment show. News editors edit actual events into an engaging narrative in the same way that reality TV shows edit the events that occur in their show's domain into a narrative. There is plenty of raw material to work with. On any given day there are wars, injustices, political in-fighting, dishonest or fraudulent behaviour, and amusing stories about dogs on skateboards (or whatever). They're just editing it together.

Those in positions of power are so good at manipulating the news agenda too. Everyone from the government to the British Royal Family to Beyoncé to ISIS are at it; essentially pitching stories to news editors in the hope they get picked up.

Personally, I try to avoid it. I find news uses fear and outrage too much as a way to keep you watching, and it engenders a sense of hopelessness. Come election time I do some research and vote accordingly, the rest of the time I avoid it.

So are some aren't. I can buy a voice over on fiverr, I can send them a script and a few notes and get back an MP3 within 24 hours. Over the next 50 years these people are at risk of loosing their jobs to computer synthesised voices.

If all Starbucks outlets look the same, sell the same stuff and use the same process, I'd say the manager is largely just following the manual.

As for taxes, mine are already prepared by a computer then just checked over by a human. That's not to say there aren't also high end accountants designing company structures and doing financial planning.

I agree, some trades people will design solutions to problems, some people will just turn up and screw in pre-assembled units. The existing category will split into two.

I have a theory that the classification of working class, middle class and upper class will disappear as we go through the 21 century. They will be replaced with two types of job:

1. Jobs were you design things (code, graphics, marketing campaigns, franchise models, sales scripts, hedged trades, screenplays, new business models, retail store layouts, art, fashion etc) 2. Jobs were you follow basic instructions (flipping burgers, voice-over artists, uber drivers, sales, retail manager, factory line worker, tax accountants etc)

The first category is a subset of the current middle class, but it's much smaller.

Everyone in the second category is in for a rough ride. They will be constantly competing with machines, algorithms and millions of other people who can all follow the same manual that they have. Even jobs like sales where you'd think there has to be a human involved will be gradually eroded. Human intuition will increasingly be replaced by scoring algorithms and CRM reports. Their persistence in following up with people will be replaced by lifecycle emails, tracking algorithms and chatbots. And ever more transactions will be pushed online anyway.

I also believe that we're at the point of saturating our hierarchy of needs. Some people will try to monetise things like love, acceptance and respect of others (I can already buy a Facebook girlfriend on Fiverr). But I think this will be largely un-monetisable. Meaning we're in for mass unemployment. This is not necessarily a bad thing though, so long as we drop the stigma. People can be kept warm, dry, well fed and entertained with games and box sets, with relatively little cost.

I've noticed Family Guy do this quite a lot too. In an episode I saw recently (season 4 episode 4). Meg is turned down by a boy at school and ends up having a makeover at the mall (plot 1). Meanwhile, Peter, Joe, Cleveland and Quagmire try to stop the Clam going out of business and discover Karaoke as a solution (plot 2). So they decide to start a band but their first gig goes badly and so Peters family step in and put on a good performance (plot 3). Peter's family then go on tour and Meg, now the attractive lead singer of the band, lets success go to her head (plot 4). Meanwhile Brian tries to suppress his racism (subplot to plot 4).

This relies on the assumption that there are things Joe wants that Bob can supply and vice versa. But as we climb higher and higher up the hierarchy of needs that may not be the case.

We are already very effective at keeping people alive and mildly entertained indefinitely. (Although we currently look down on these people as trash for not contributing to society). But I can envisage a time when meeting all my material needs requires almost no human input and meeting my emotional needs cannot be monetised.

I find it strange that there's a debate about this. When it comes to cooking, medicine, law, architecture, hairdressing, design or sales, the best people manage a team and continue to practice themselves.

When a dev team manager doesn't understand the architecture of the systems and exactly how everything works, they cannot be in full control of the team.

Businesses need crossover people. People who can code AND who "get it" at a commercial boardroom level.

True, it is planned though. Feel free to vote for that feature: http://querytree.uservoice.com