mistermumble

Not to mention that once this is done in the US, what is to prevent other governments in countries where Apple does business to compel Apple to do the same?

China (or Russia or Germany or whoever) could force Apple to backdoor phones used by CIA informants in that country.

He knows. His question was not a question, it was an aggressive statement of FUD.

He is backpedaling and now saying that "innovation" can be controversial.

https://twitter.com/JohnLegere/status/685236769319587840

What they did to Peoplesoft was evil.

The surveillance state machinery has been a long time building, under the aegis of both parties. I think the Republicans push this with more vigor than the Democrats, but Democratic administrations such as the current one keep the machinery running.

In addition, the product which is marketed as "unbreakable" and "unhackable" technology, appears to be a rebranded version of someone's free product. Further, it introduces a security flaw (the company hardcodes its gmail account and password into the software, which is used for password reset).

Yes, the original article is much more informative.

For convenience: http://gizmodo.com/almost-none-of-the-women-in-the-ashley-ma...

Haven't looked at this closely, but I would think corrections officers would care about keeping their jobs and increasing their pay, and perhaps reducing their work (by lowering the prisoner/officer ratio).

Those incentives seem benign compared to a private corporation, which would be incentivized to increase the prisoner population (build more prisons, more revenue), and increase the prisoner/officer ratio (more profits). These changes would have a negative impact on prisoners, officers, and society at large.

I remember going to RS stores to buy a 99 cent part and the clerk having to write, in long hand, on a triplicate form, my name and address and the item, before entering the amount on a cash register. I refused to give my info, and he said he could not sell me the part without it, so I said: "OK, my name is John Doe at 123 Main Street". He looked at me quizically and then wrote it down on the form without a word.

For a long time I avoided Radio Shack stores because I did not want to go through this charade. Only when desperate ("I need this connector right now"). The desperate-user scenario is not one for business success, especially when selling 99 cent parts.

Agree. The article's main argument is that the Sony attack is similar to one that happened last year -- but provides zero proof that the previous attack came from North Korea.

And a key similarity between the two, according to the article, is the graphics left behind by the hackers: lime-green type on black background, with pictures of skulls. In other words, similar to a ton of hacker sites.

A smokin' JPG is not a smoking gun.

jwz called from 1999, he wants his color scheme back.

  > education health care and the arts flourish

Yes. Music also.

THIS is the Cuba I'd like to see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tozhe0yTAqo

What does getting basic primary care to the population (vaccinations, preventive care, well baby care) have to do with how many research papers get written?

I have worked in one of the top medical schools in the US, with world-class researchers, and know that there is very little there that is directly applicable to a population of rural farmers and impoverished city dwellers.

I highly recommend travel to those countries so that you can observe it for your self. The picture is different than the book.

yes, good points. It seems that Cuba has become something of a health resource for other countries in Latin America, where there is much less access to doctors (and NPs) than in Cuba. Middle-class people in those countries travel to Cuba for health care. At least that is picture I get when I've spoken to a bunch of people in the region over the past few years. I hear about a number of people travel to Cuba, others got to Chile, and almost no one can afford to go to US to get treated.

Plus, as mentioned earlier, this was not an off-the-record conversation.

Problem is that you may test the system now and it all works fine. But the day after you deploy, somebody named Murphy adds or updates a proxy somewhere in your topology that breaks things. Or your organization gets a new customer or partner with a differently configured network.

It seems to me the other way around. I am a high volume user and I have relied on Gmail for almost 10 years. I signed up for inbox (because I am always looking for something better). I found it slowed me down. It was pretty but superficial. I prefer the plain but functional Gmail. Just one data point, I realize.

so Kivin is taking the fight to the streets, or at least to the front door of Amazon HQ, with a daily protest vigil.

http://www.geekwire.com/2014/protesting-outside-amazon-hq-fo...

ESR's post provides a link to a long but worthwhile article by Jelmer Vernooij on the history of Bazaar and why it lost to Git.

The key paragraph:

We lost sight of what mattered for our users, focusing on features that were nice but perhaps not as necessary as we thought. We overengineered. We didn't get rid of the crufty unnecessary features. It's harder to comprehend, contribute to or fix performance issues in a large layered codebase. And the larger a codebase becomes, the larger the surface for bugs, the harder it is to refactor.

https://www.stationary-traveller.eu/pages/bzr-a-retrospectiv...

This is the first time I have read some of these criticisms of Angular on HN. Can you point to threads where there was discussion of these issues? Would like to get more info on these. Thanks.

This was introduced at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.

here's some additional info (because the IamPuls.com does not have a lot of information): http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/15/will-i-am-puls-smartwatch...

For context, see also: http://will.i.am/

That may well be. For me, it sounded like an HR (human resources dept) term: "employee on-boarding" (something that sounds like employee water-boarding but not as bad).

According to the article, the robot can only run for 10 seconds. Wondering why that is. Is it that computation errors accumulate so that it is no longer balanced? Or the robot outpaces the treadmill and external camera in that time?

I agree. Especially if the language is named something that implies high performance.

When Golang first appeared it was quite fast. Swift is not, apparently.

I think he's talking more about the language, rather than the book.

You can have a book on APL or Forth that starts out in the first chapter targeting people new to programming, but that does not mean the language itself is the best choice.

Regarding Golang for novice coders, I would say it is an OK choice for a beginner, probably better than starting with Java, but not a good a choice as Python.

In the case of the "hand of god" goal, it is not just the player, but the (unseeing) referee that allowed that goal.

A complete predictive model would not only have data about players, coaches, weather conditions, etc but also referees.

Clearly you have never run across the same program, first in Perl, and then in Python, and felt the tangible differences in maintainability between the two implementations.

Agree.

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2013/05/i-dont-want-your-fucking-app...

At home I have a Chromebox machine that I only use for online banking and no other purpose.

My other machines are used for the usual consumer Web activities, including Web site administration. I'm wondering if perhaps I should modify my approach to do the admin only from the Chromebox... which brings up the classic tradeoff of security vs convenience.

Yes, great work for a school project.

But realistically, not a good idea. Garamond uses less ink because it is skinnier and less readable. It's a font for young eyes, or for Apple customers (long time user of Garamond).

Not too late. You have a good foundation to build upon. Just need to pick one of several possible directions:

* system admin -- your linux background is impressive, but need to pick up windows admin skills (most small shops require both), firewalls, proxy servers, caching, CDN

* front-end coder -- learn Javascript and related technologies (jquery, Node, requireJS, browserify, handlebars, etc)

* Wordpress specialist -- learn PHP, themes, responsive design, theme frameworks, etc

* other specialties: Drupal, Django, Rails

In addition to freshening up skills, do some networking through meetups. Also flesh out your online presence. Have an active Github profile. Also Stack Overflow. Check out TopCoder.

Lastly, lose the "OldCoder" label. You can only get away with that if you are Kernighan, Ritchie, Guy Steele, or Dave Cutler.