anxx

As a Turkish person, this is the best and most accurate analysis of the situation I've read.

Also, I would like to express my sympathy for the mentioned journalist Serdar and outrage at the media institution that fired him. It is truly frightening what the leading party can do now that it has such a strong grip on the media, police force, and legislative branches.

Same here. When I heard about the large Buddha sculptures in Bamyan Valley (Afghanistan) destroyed by the Taliban, my heart sank.

Is it normal for a company to go down with no indication of it on its webpage?

I am not sad for these particular investors, because they could've become very rich if it had taken off. With great chance for cash comes great risk of losing it and they knew it. I do feel for the early adopters, though; I hope Better Place finds some money to compensate them.

For future investors, Better Place will be a reminder not to invest in ideas that are too disruptive, even if the founder and the team seems right for the job. The companies that might never be due to this precedent is the real loss, I think.

Related question: is there a limit on email address length? Like a real fundamental limit, not arbitrary decisions Gmail or Yahoo folks might have come up with.

My Google interviewer was a HS-educated guy. My parents couldn't believe it. I tend to think - if he is as good at the job as me, what does his education matter? Why should I be offended that a HS-educated guy is in the same room with me?

Education is meant to produce a difference in job performance; it's good for the worker, not directly to the employer. If I with my college degree can't get a better job than a HS-graduate, it's on me to change.

My parents find my lack of ego around this subject so weird. Also, the world at large is probably more similar to my parents.

With the internet, most education is free. When we pay education, we mainly pay for 1) exclusivity (there are not a million other people attending Harvard) and 2) standards (standard exams within an accredited curriculum, so the GPA and major will mean something). Increasing the amount of online education preserves the standards, but removes / broadens the exclusivity. I am not sure this is a great thing for people from Georgia Tech; they now have to compete with a lot more people for similar jobs.

An online education with tough admissions would be better if one tries to preserve the brand (and thus provide insurance* to the program trainees).

* by insurance, I refer to insurance of employability, like Peter Thiel described in his PandoMonthly interview.

That depends on how often you do need to contact them. If you don't call/text/IM them, then you could have no contact info and not miss it.

I also think that it is relatively easy to find somebody's phone number once you do wish to call/text them. You can just ask a common friend or Facebook them from a throwaway.

I have gone cold turkey from Facebook, after years of checking/updating multiple times a day. And it wasn't hard, because I just realized that I wasn't interested in the lives of the 80% "acquantainces" any more. The fact that somebody I knew at some point got married is really not important to me (and my "Like" doesn't mean much to them). And I feel that if I need to contact a friend after a long time, it is rather easy to pick up where you left off.

That is actually a good point. I wondered why the US is so adamant about its citizens paying taxes while living abroad. Theoretically - you are not taking advantage of any of the US infrastructure like roads and parks while you're abroad. I kind of think a citizen living abroad should be taxed, but much less (because the cost is not zero - think embassy expenses).

replying to iNeal: really? My school turns my school.edu to alum.school.edu.

It's only in the US that I have seen advertisements for a product include direct bashing of a competitor's product. I am not talking about a list of features where you show in which way yours is superior; that is still acceptable (although also deceiving much of the time). I am talking about ads like the Nimoy-Quinto Audi commercial where Nimoy had stupid problems fitting stuff into the Mercedes.

This is such a jarring way to advertise, it's like watching a bully beat a defenseless kid - does anybody feel more sympathy towards the product this way?

True, but eventually the hardware PIN has to become a software PIN that will be transmitted. Why is it more difficult to sniff out hardware PINs?

This is curious, why can it only be entered in hardware? Is it a safety precaution?

I find myself agreeing with you on many things. I first noticed your username after the real-googler discussion and what you saw at Google is so similar to what I saw in my job in a bank. Without external or positional prestige, there is little interesting work for even the bright young staff engineers.

I am planning on doing a PhD because of financial benefits in the long run. Here's why:

- Immediate respect. It is harder to question the authority of a (technical) PhD. This is much more pronounced in 3rd world economies. Also Germany. Basically anywhere besides the non-super-meritocratic US. This is a huge benefit: my opinions are more likely to be listened to, my consulting fees are likely to be higher and be more credible, career breaks (maternity) will not set me back by much, because a PhD proves technical mastery of an area as well as tenacity, responsibility, and independence - all of which non-PhDs will continously try to prove to new coworkers and new management.

- Universities are forever open, but not so with Masters. That gives immense job security as a private university lecturer for the rest of your life, in any country (flexibility to travel and find a job even in countries you don't speak the language of). Private universities in rich countries pay a lot to be able to say they have a, say, MIT-PhD on their faculty. I knew a person who had a data-entry job and saw the faculty salaries in Saudi Arabia. The profs were making 396$k/year, housing and living costs fully compensated by the university.

- Flexibility to find jobs forever (especially because of the university thing). Normally I imagine it would be harder to be a salaried employee after 65 years of age. Nobody will hire you because it is so weird to have an employee your dad's age. Ageism is real. But because you can always lecture, you are pretty much unretirable.

The 4-5 year salary cut is nothing compared to a lifetime of these benefits and zero anxiety about job prospects after 50. I personally want to work and earn money in a respectable job well into my 80s.

I kind of find myself being more sympathetic to landlords in this case. Yes, if everyone did that there wouldn't be any space to live, but looking for short-term subleasers is also a lot more risky. They need to be found, first of all - you're competing with every other of their residence choices - and after that, they have a greater risk of damaging your property. But if after this pro/con analysis, it is economically better for you to do short-term leasing - I think you should be able to.

Also hotel safety laws do not exist in a vacuum. AirBnb renters should be properly informed that the building they are entering has passed building inspection codes, but cannot guarantee hotel-level hygiene and fire code safety. Once fully informed, if the renter still chooses AirBnb, it's their call. People can sleep over at their friends' houses, or at strangers' houses without exchange of money anyway - the fact that money does change hands doesn't change the facts about the parties involved.

Can I ask what led you to dropping out? The parent commenter is not so irrational - he can always go back. But you, if you actually dropped out (and not simply taken a "leave of absence") and if it was actually your choice (not expulsion) seem to have made quite an odd choice - after bearing through premed classes and 3 years of MD classes.

An MD has lifelong financial stability and the chance to do residency and earn even more. You completely burned the bridge when, after just a year, you could've done tech and preserved the bridge, no?

I hope Tesla wins. I hate these made-by-middlemen-to-protect-middlemen laws. Recently in Turkey, there was a huge fight between banks and goldsmiths because banks decided to trade gold as well at better rates than offered by goldsmiths. Lots of fight later, banks are now restricted to accept and trade in 2-3 gold types. But I hope the industry is going to open up.

It is the middleman's job to remain relevant in changing economies, not resist changes so that relevancy is guaranteed. I think competition laws should be encouraged.

I agree. The goal of increased education doesn't make sense to me - increased potential for future prosperity should be a goal in my opinion.

The stigma might be associated with jealousy. I know I would be annoyed if the median income of a HS-degree profession were higher than my college-degree income. If not watched carefully, that would lead to thinking that while they are better off financially, they lack in other areas, like small world view, no critical thinking, etc - in other words, stigma.

I like this, even though I'm not in the user demographic, I hope you get lots of users!

The sports car thing must be a phase. I can't wait for the day I walk in to a dealer and drive out with an Audi R8 Spyder. And I am very non-luxurious with the rest of my expenses.

50,000 cars sold globally makes it the best selling electric car? I thought that number was very low and then I googled some stats - it seems that the mini cooper for example sells ~100,000 cars per year. Somehow I'd have expected for cars to sell like a million units to make their whole manufacturing profitable.

I agree that employers are way too nosy these days. Drug tests, background checks, credit score checks are personal; employers shouldn't be able to request them even. It should be taboo, like asking religion.

The need to reduce the risk of hiring a bad employee should not come at the expense of the privacy of all employees. The risk should be on the business to make the interview process tougher, to reach out to their connections and check the person's references, to follow their hired employees carefully to make sure they're not embezzling or muffing things up.

I have a credit card that had the contactless payment feature. It is more convenient, but the lack of 2 FA (have card, know PIN) made it really weird to use. Eventually I turned off the contactless feature (via the internet banking branch).

I interned at a big telcom and worked at a bank. Amount of crappy software that needs to be used is mindboggling. Amount of money that is spent to license that crapware is even more mind boggling.

There is a real market for these beautiful b2c software products that can make their services store data on the bigco's servers (as opposed to their own - security is a concern) and write decent, mostly .NET interface to communicate with the company dabatabases.

ok, in which countries do sex workers identify themselves with their name and actual profession and it is completely ok? likewho would even create a profile like this?

don't other families don't trash her as a bad mother, doesn't it affect their employment prospects, are their kids or parents not harassed etc?

if there is a country like that i want to live there.

I have a tangential question: What screen capture software is this?

It's unlike any other I've seen, because the screen looks like it is viewed from an upper left angle (like at 0:10). Really brings the video alive; I'd love to use this software to make some video tutorials.

I am about to return to grad school after working a bit in industry; so this article is very relevant to me. I will be doing a Masters right now, but I do plan on doing a PhD afterwards.

I am constantly splitting my brains about how I can work on an "important" problem; something where my expertise will be relevant years after grad school, too. And I don't want to become a professor and there is a chance I might choose to go back to my home country (not much of compsci products, but very good e-commerce and banking); so my expertise should be of value even in a consumer-of-technology (not producer) economy.

If anybody has ideas about how to pick an area for research, I'd love to hear.