richieb

I switched mostly to using an RSS reader to see the headlines, and then read what is interesting. Plus I follow several writers that I trust (eg. Heather Cox Richardson).

I don't want to get my news from social media.

Machines are mostly used to count votes. Ballots are still on paper.

For one thing, why is the text of posting light grey on greyish background? It's almost unreadable on a phone.

So, number of software developers doubles roughly about every 5 years. So if you have been in the field for 5 years, half of the developers will be younger than you, if you were in the field for 10 years, 3/4 will be younger than you. You can do the rest of the math.

I've been working as a developer for 40+ years, so most other developers are younger than me. Although, on my current team there are two people older than me.

As I recall, Assembler was the first "no-code" tool. After all you could get rid of all those pesky programmers who knew all the number codes for instructions. Anyone could write "ADD R, R2". See!

As a comedian once said "They say that alcohol kill brain cells. Yeah, but only the weak ones!"

Who owns the wires?

You need an app to give your seat up to a pregnant woman?! WTF? What happened to manners?

There is a great advantage to an e-Reader (like Kindle) in that you can turn any book into a large print book. As you get older and you eyesight gets worse this is no small advantage, since you can continue reading the stuff you like.

There are some magazines (looking at you New Republic) that we stopped subscribing too because the font is too small to read - I can still see it, but trying to read it causes eye strain.

Actually the health cost really ramp up when 20 or 30 somethings start having kids.

LOL. They had to drop the public option just to get the Democrats to in the Senate to vote for the bill. Single payer would not have gotten anywhere.

Never mind that it's the Congress that passes bills, not the President.

Krugman often reviews his past predictions and admits when he is wrong: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/31524-ten-years-later-...

I think he does admit his mistakes: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/mistakes/

The book "To Engineer is Human" by Henry Pertroski describes many, many examples of this. Every software engineer should read it.

As a parent of two grown children, I can tell you that the answer is a big NO.

Make sure your kids have fun and are happy, and develop into compassionate people.

Check out this course: https://www.udacity.com/course/deep-learning--ud730

The Poles certainly got the ball rolling (see http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/poles/poles.htm), but the organization at Bletchley Park took decryption and analysis of Enigma traffic to an industrial scale. By the end of war Bletchley employed around 10,000 people. See Alan Turing's and Gordon Welchman's biographies for more details.

The story of the Enigma is quite complex. But by 1941 the Allies knew how the machine worked (there were commercial Enigmas sold before the war). The Naval Enigma was somewhat more secure (more rotors to choose from) and obtaining the daily setting book would be the most important thing, not the machine itself.

Polish mathematicians broke the early Enigma in the late 1930s (http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/poles/poles.htm), they passed their information to the British in 1939 and that was used as a starting point of the work at Blechley Park.

If you are interested in the details, check out the book "The Hut 6 Story" by Gordon Welchman. He was a peer of Turing who worked on the Army and Air Force Enigma, while Turing worked on the Naval version.

Of course Turing's biography by Andrew Hodges also has a lot of details how the Engima was broken.

It's bit of history. At one time all this info was transmitted via telegraph/telex where number of characters mattered.

Maybe http://www.google.com/ideas/projects/project-shield/ can help?

The New Yorker had a pretty good review of this movie: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/01/keeping-secrets...

There are plenty guitar amplifiers still made with tubes. Look up Fender Twin for example.

Next time you are on an airliner think what kind of "work ethic" you'd like your pilot to have. One who puts in 80 hours a week, or a "lazy" one who only works 30 hours per week.

(Note that FAA actually limits how many hours a week an airline pilot can fly. I think the number is close to 30).

Unlike in the past when the elderly lived and were supported by their kids....

Not much stability with the current Congress.

Wow! Exactly what happened to me :)

It's not unusual to have first takes used on jazz albums. In fact you can read about making of "Kind of Blue" (http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Making_of_Kind_of_Bl...).

What you hear on that record is not only the first complete take of each tune, but also it was the first time the tunes were played at all.

Whatever happened to reading stuff for entertainment and fun?

Definitely Web Scale!

http://nosql.mypopescu.com/post/1016320617/mongodb-is-web-sc...

Here is something that I always wanted to do, but haven't had the nerve. At the end of the interview, when you are asked "Do you have any questions?", I'd like to say: "Yes. There are 5 sailors marooned on a desert island, and they collect all the coconuts (.....). So what is the number of coconuts?"