dankoss

I totally agree removing friction is key. I have really enjoyed Korg Gadget https://www.korg.com/us/products/software/korg_gadget/ - most people are familiar with the iPad version, but the Mac version has the keyboard mapped out like sampulator for immediate playing like an instrument.

Apple is a hardware company, and you can't WFH using giant anechoic chambers, laser cutting machines, electronics labs, and who knows what else. The products may be manufactured overseas, but there is a lot of expensive hardware needed for designing, prototyping and testing.

I get that Apple does a lot of software these days, but one of the things they are also known for is tight integration between the hardware and software, which doesn't happen without them working side by side.

There may be a significant fraction of employees that can work remotely, but it would significantly change the culture of the company to split the workforce like that.

I agree; I tried standalone boxes like the Electribe 2 and Circuit, and the iPad with Korg Gadget is just way more flexible and quicker. The soft synths available are truly equal to desktop apps now. DAWs like Cubasis and Aria are way more powerful than the OP-1s abilities, although I still feel like the workflow could be improved.

I've only seen this as an internal move, which is how I did it. Ask to take ownership of a project, even a small one. Do it successfully for at least one delivery. Learn the technical ins and outs and the political relationships within the organization. Become known as the $PROJECT person. Every organization handles projects differently so learn and use the specific lingo and process in yours.

Once you do that, you can formally ask for the role.

You mean to say they should have courage?

One way to think about this is traveling to places where connectivity is literally unavailable -- national parks, mountains, etc. Your boss cannot prevent you from traveling to those locations, so even if you aren't somewhere where you are unreachable, why should you be expected to be available?

Most of my bosses have left their contact information for when they are away from the office, but I've never had reason to use it. I would feel bad interrupting someone's time off except in cases of true emergencies, which might happen more often in other company cultures or industries.

I think it's because at the top level, everyone already has perfect grades so schools need additional criteria to limit their selection pool.

Totally agree. I believe Agile works well in environments with shallow tech stacks, but it has worked terribly in my experience in product companies that build hardware, FPGA dev, embedded software, and other disciplines that can't deliver on two week increments or increments that align well with other disciplines.

This is not strictly true. Health insurance has always been available for purchase by individuals, and the ACA expanded access to this by providing income-based subsidies. When you lose your job, you lose access to your employer's subsidy and risk pool.

That doesn't change the fact that heath insurance and healthcare is expensive, it's just pointing out that the only way most people can afford to have it is because their employer is paying for most of it. If that cost was more transparent to salaried people, it might spur a more useful conversation about how to bring down the cost of healthcare.

I second this, it's a great cross-platform scratchpad.

I have talked to several interviewers with a buying mindset, and the thing that annoys me the most is that they always ask why I want to work for $COMPANY_NAME, especially if it's a well known SV company.

They don't understand: I don't need your job, your recruiter called me, so what is it $COMPANY_NAME has to offer me that's better than my current senior level gig?

Agreed, though have you seen Garageband on iOS lately? It has inherited quite a few features from Logic like the drummer, more customizable plugins / inserts, etc. Also, Cubasis and Auria are pretty powerful. Still not as powerful as Logic proper.

Every other manufacturer of battery powered devices, including laptops, does CPU throttling based on battery degradation, and doesn't mention anything about it. It sounds like you were just looking for an excuse to jump ship.

I like it, I use my custom domain as a spam filter and have a short me.com address.

I have a "wireless" thermostat (Honeywell Redlink) and there are a lot of problems you have to think through to make it work. In particular, what is the failure mode when the thermostat can't communicate with the furnace? What if your internet goes down and it can't communicate with your phone? You might need a different failsafe for when it's 0C vs 25C outside, but what if your exterior temp sensor stops working or can't communicate with the furnace? Not to mention the security implications of having an appliance on your network.

All these problems are made much simpler with a wired thermostat and battery backup. I wish it was easier, but in this case "smart" doesn't really buy you much energy or UX savings over a simple programmable wired device.

True, except for freshwater availability. Denver already has to pipe water in and hope for plenty of snowmelt. Climate changes could impact that.

Similarly, I look at it as "what new thing does this enable me to do?" Performance increases are great if they can better race to sleep and improve battery life. But otherwise, better screen / camera / speakers don't enable anything that I couldn't otherwise do with a 7 year old phone.

This is just my speculation, but I think the utility of facebook declined when external linking took over user created posts on facebook. I don't go to facebook because I want to know how my friends feel about political news; I go to facebook because I want to know what they are up to. I think Instagram and Snapchat got this right, because even though you can regram something or paste a screenshot, that's not the default way to interact with the platform.

I would check facebook a lot more often if they had an option to hide all external links / images. I know there are browser plugins that enable this but they're not on mobile.

I totally agree. There are enough "open" social networks like Twitter and Instagram that are public by default, the point of being mutually authenticated friends on facebook only seems useful if you interact with that person in real life (or did at one time). Otherwise why not just make Facebook public by default like the others?

I like my Vivoactive HR and can confirm its reliability. Just be aware it's pretty large compared to a fitness band, more like the size of the Apple watch. Also, I wish they had contoured the heart rate LED bulge; it digs into my skin occasionally. Nothing else comes close to its combination of activities tracked, battery life and low cost.

A colleague of mine actually patented this technique: http://www.google.com/patents/US8538038

What you are describing is basically Instagram. No "sharing" or "reposting" other content, only original posts from friends. Some have found ways around that but it's not the default.

I'm not familiar with Snapchat but I expect they have a similar mechanic. It seems like the newer social networks are avoiding the problems caused by virality, and getting back to the original reason we wanted to join social networks: to see what our friends are up to.

This is just my speculation, but people might use smartphones sitting next to their laptop for a variety of reasons:

- Streaming video on laptop while doing something else

- You can't text message or snapchat from your laptop

- It might be quicker to hit an app icon than load a webpage for checking the weather

- You're on your work laptop but you get a personal email on your phone

I think the author's point about a "better" internet is that ubiquity / portability will eventually trump any other advantages you get from accessing the internet from your computer. A larger laptop screen doesn't really help if you don't have wifi access.

There are definite advantages to accessing the internet with a real keyboard and a large screen, but over time those advantages will shrink. Consider this "reversed" review of the Macbook Pro: http://www.speirs.org/blog/2015/11/30/can-the-macbook-pro-re...

I'm surprised so many at HN disagree. The mobile tech trends he describes are some of the biggest drivers of recent startups. I expected us to be more forward thinking.

Yup. Mobile has a camera, video support, NFC, bluetooth. While these are technically usable on a laptop, they're not very useful since they're much less mobile.

Cell connectivity and the ability to access internet anytime, almost anywhere trumps the limitations of a smaller form factor. And mobile device browsing speed keeps increasing every generation.

Did you read any of his linked articles? The smartphone use comment is backed by market research. And his PC internet comment is addressed in the same article, describing the additional capabilities of smartphone internet over PC internet.

http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/9/1/forget-about-mob...

I agree. I bought a Vivoactive to replace my Fenix 2. I love the battery life and the fact that it's small and tough enough to wear all day, every day. The smart features were secondary but they've become more useful over time. I take for granted that the transreflective display is always on.

If Apple puts GPS and full waterproofing into Watch v2, Garmin is pretty much done with the category because they don't have a comparable developer community. I considered it, but the SDK is really limiting right now.

The dynamic visualizations are terrific here, I find that signals problems in textbooks are hard to understand when they are static. Awesome job!

Having just gone through this, I agree completely. Even if they post a range, employers still play hardball with salary. The only way I had any leverage at all in the last negotiation is because I knew what the range was in advance, otherwise I would have seriously undervalued my skills.

I highly recommend https://www.silvrback.com for all of these things. Great code support, custom domains, and a bio page. Just a happy customer reporting in.