neilk

53 ms·

481.
by neilk 11y ago
Rent in the downtown core is about $1700 for a 1-bedroom. Developers can do decently well in Vancouver, especially if you are employed by a foreign company. I am not sure about typical salary for developers, but I'm doing okay. So, com
482.
by neilk 11y ago
Why would anyone buy bricks in such small numbers, instead of saving up? A wall with two extra bricks on it isn't more useful. Is it just impossible to save money safely?
483.
by neilk 11y ago
We (Sauce Labs, Mobile Team) are experimenting with take-home tests as a first-contact screen. I'm familiar with the take home exam that takes a week to solve, so we went in a different direction. We schedule time with candidates, send
484.
by neilk 11y ago
Think tank researcher and economics professor? These are good careers for people who want to change things? Citation needed.
485.
by neilk 11y ago
Darius Kazemi did a talk on a similar idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw Kazemi is more of an programmer-artist or -comedian, but he releases dozens of side projects a year, all relatively low effort. He uses
486.
by neilk 11y ago
Why are we well past it now, and not then? The 1950s wasn't the dark ages. People in positions of power had already been through the horror of gas attacks in the First World War, which is about the closest equivalent. The Nazis had exp
487.
by neilk 11y ago
> How many of the females are interested in Engineering but majored in Gender or Women's Studies and effectively slashed any chances they had of working as an engineer? The guy who started this site majored in philosophy and identif
488.
by neilk 11y ago
With respect - I don't know why people always say this when government misbehavior comes to light. Other than to demonstrate that they were more jaded than everyone else. Yes -- everybody knows that the government does bad things. Havi
489.
by neilk 11y ago
I did the math and I see your point. I'm also a CrashPlan user. Right now I'm paying CrashPlan about $60/year. My best guess at Tarsnap costs is about 10x that, $600/year. Normally I'm a very privacy-conscious perso
490.
by neilk 11y ago
The thing that's keeping you from using Tarsnap is its costs ? The deltas you're talking about look like they are under $10. It sounds like you are a programmer. At an hourly rate, it probably cost you more just to write that com
491.
by neilk 11y ago
Yup. According to Snowden, the GCHQ is worse than the NSA. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret...
492.
by neilk 11y ago
Chomsky's oeuvre on politics, in general. There isn't one single book that states a thesis, it's about a perspective. So perhaps start with The Chomsky Reader . An easier-to-digest intro is the documentary Manufacturing Co
493.
by neilk 11y ago
I think the conclusion is telling: > And finally, whatever we attempt here has to work for the whole system, not just the developers, not just the managers, not just the testers, not just the users, not just the sponsors. There is no ”us
494.
by neilk 11y ago
Oh yeah, let me say, my year+ of trying this wasn't a waste either. I updated my skills, learned new tech, and tried stuff I never would have got to try in a normal work situation. I got to dick around with pretty UI on Monday and back
495.
by neilk 11y ago
I did this. I advise against this. I had money saved up, and for visa reasons had to spend a year outside the USA. Seemed like a perfect time to indulge in some risky ideas, especially those which were a little idealistic. It ended up being
496.
by neilk 12y ago
I know you probably think you're being a skeptical and intelligent speaker of uncomfortable truths. But you're a lot more like a climate change denier. You're going with your gut and not the facts. This graph says it all, I t
497.
by neilk 12y ago
I don't know anything about the hackathon Gina is referring to. But I think we've all seen the same thing - a faux commitment to diversity by just giving the most brown, female, or otherwise disadvantaged person in the room an awa
498.
by neilk 12y ago
THE NEED TO WIN When an archer is shooting for nothing He has all his skill. If he shoots for a brass buckle He is already nervous. If he shoots for a prize of gold He goes blind Or sees two targets—
499.
by neilk 12y ago
Graydon also created monotone, which was a big influence on git. http://www.monotone.ca/monotone.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotone_%28software%29#Monoto...
500.
by neilk 12y ago
Sauce Labs - http://saucelabs.com/ - San Francisco, Vancouver, or remote - Software Engineer, Mobile R&D We're making mobile devices do things they aren't supposed to. We need your help. People from many diffe
501.
by neilk 12y ago
Mutually assured destruction. If Facebook sued Yahoo, Yahoo could sue Facebook right back. I'm not really sure what Facebook thinks they are gaining with this clause. They aren't going to stop patent trolls, because they are non-p
502.
by neilk 12y ago
I'm on shaky grounds trying to talk about macroeconomics, but I don't think loose monetary policy counts as a bubble, exactly. It would be a bubble if everyone believed that loose monetary policy was going to last forever. The Fed
503.
by neilk 12y ago
My proposal: muse and scribe. It's evocative and if you know the old terminology the initials are the same.
504.
by neilk 12y ago
Maybe! But not funded by a handful of uber-rich people, and more transparent.
505.
by neilk 12y ago
Full disclosure, I used to study journalism. I'm being intentionally provocative. I do want us to question the idea that journalistic writing skills are essential to the goals we have, of an informed public that reacts with wisdom to e
506.
by neilk 12y ago
This is a great point, but we also know that institutional, internal information distribution systems, of the kind I mentioned, don't fall prey to that. (They may fall prey to other things -- agreeing with the boss, groupthink, etc.) A
507.
by neilk 12y ago
Let's say we never had "the news", and we all decided we needed to help society understand and react to novel events. Would we invent newspapers and cable channels? I don't think so. When modern institutions realize they
508.
by neilk 12y ago
Aaron was very precocious. I would expect that at 11 he was following the news a lot like an adult would.
509.
by neilk 12y ago
So why aren't startup valuations published as a range? This is like a measurement with no error bars. I know the "real" reason - same reason why TVs are compared on the diagonal measure. But, why don't later investors in
510.
by neilk 12y ago
That's true if you're running a typical business. But there really is a whole other world that opens up when things are free. Maybe you are a young person, and don't have access to online payment methods. $84/year or mor

More ›