concerto

There are 4 real-life examples quoted at the end of the article under the heading "How rare is Braess's Paradox?"

Isn't the problem for startups the lack of developers rather than the problem for developers a lack of startups? This seems to be aimed at the developers but in order to solve the startups' problems?

This is actually Reinout Scholten van Aschat, a Dutch actor who played Cruyff in a TV series

I was confused by the use of "sanctioned" in the byline. They meant it mean "had sanctions imposed", but I understood it as "given permission" which set the article in a completely different tone. What an odd word.

I am from Liverpool and got 98% British using my normal accent

Surely that's even more rare than a black swan?

Terry Pratchett had over 70 books published in his lifetime, and so his legacy is in his published works, while Kafka's masterpieces were largely unpublished at the time of his death and he was not widely known, so they are not really analogous situations.

Maybe Facebook knows something we don't...

Everyone's choice is personal, and while it is not fair for people to say your hypothetical choice would be selfish, I would also ask you to be careful about your judgements on others who are actually facing this and have made a different choice.

Yes, I guess it must have been a customer loyalty scheme or something.

The article claims GCHQ used a Surespot exploit.

I approve

Parts of them are open to visitors. Well worth a visit.

http://www.williamsontunnels.co.uk/

"In the late 1700s, however, teamsters in France and the United States began hauling farm products in big wagons pulled by several pairs of horses."

I am interested about this statement and why it didn't happen in the UK which was also majorly agricultural in the same period.

In case you can't see what I get: http://i.imgur.com/k5aAvtv.png

It is slightly ironic that that comment was deleted on a post on this subject. Did the poster do it themself or were they censored? Part of the conspiracy?

Unfortunately, many car drivers ignore this and pull into the box when the light is red.

I love this article. It aims to show the political spectrum through a detailed study of a microcosm. While certain issues might be very specific to this constituency, through the piece it details the wider picture such as the battle between the hard left and the hard right for the same voters, and the issues they hold in common. I love it. I wonder how true this is of other countries or whether it is specific to the UK. Greece has had a similar situation with Golden Dawn and Syriza, although to a much larger scale as it is unlikely that UKIP or a socialist alliance/Greens could ever take power given the first past the post system.

Is it an April Fool if you can actualy do it? More like an early Easter Egg?

Not on the Highstreet. Happy Hatchery - hatch at home eggs ordered online.

http://www.notonthehighstreet.com/happyhatchery

Conversely, I have had a lot of work from companies switching from Java to Ruby due to the high costs and relative slow speeds of such developments. As someone who started out mainly working in Java, but now works mainly in ruby/rails I think the whole "rails == amateurs" argument you are making is oversimplistic. All languages are tools and there are always situations where one is more appropriate than another.

Obviously the author has more of a historical overview, but, anecdotally, I am getting the same quantity of contact concerning roles as I have ever done, but there seem to be more and more recruitment companies moving into the ruby space. I would say it is also possible that what the author is seeing is less of a slowdown in the ruby market and more of increased competition in the recruitment market.

Having dealt with the author previously (though never having taken a role through him) I hope his approach of specialising in a technology stack and pursuing that as a specialist, gaining knowledge of both the hirers and potential contractors, wins out over the LinkedIn profile fishers.

I think relevance is the thing to work on. I did a search in a space I know a lot about and the majority of first page results were domains for sale. The company I have an interest in, which is the first result for certain keywords on Google and Bing, wasn't to be found anywhere in the first 4 pages on here. It would be interesting to hear a bit more about your plans for moving this forward.

I have a few questions it would be great to hear about either here or in a follow-up blog post:

* Is your reimplementation in JS a translation of your current from Pascal or a redevelopment?

* Why have you decided to move from Pascal to JS rather than spending the effort improving the current implementation?

* What lessons have you learned from your current implementation that you are attempting to overcome with your new version in JS?

Interesting. I wonder if the current Ebola outbreak is going to lead to major, lasting changes in how people greet each other.

E.g. Liberia loses its handshake: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-29260185

Two stories next to each other on the home page with someone called Ryan Shapiro in them, in both cases he is 37. One where he is an foia activist [1], and this one where he runs a company profiting from prisoner's families. Are they the same people or is this just a strange coincidence?

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8390642

If the majority of users take the small bag, which seems logical, then I can't imagine you would be able to upsell them easily to a product that was 5x the price (indeed the author acknowledges that), the upsell opportunity there would be to a medium bag, but as there is no difference to him financially in the sale of a small or medium bag, what is his incentive?

The sales incentives make no sense. He made 1/3rd commission on the smallest bags, 1/5th on the medium and 1/6 on the largest bags. It is better for him to sell lots of small bags than 1 big one. In addition, assuming most customers buy the small bag, then upselling to a medium bag would bring no extra financial reward. Putting aside the idea that buying the biggest bag might lead to faster consumption, and assuming that the customers were tied in to the supplier, he would have been better off downselling as the customers would still buy the same amount, just in more transactions, leading to higher returns for him (especially as his transport costs were paid).

You say fortunate, I say foresighted. In any event. I imagine that he started building it to meet his own needs and the growth of revenue now is a happy side-effect.

I am considering switching to Amazon RDS, but would welcome hearing other suggestions too

Mine are paid for, so I will need to pay for another provider to take them over - not to mention the migration/testing time. They are still listed as a provider on Heroku too.