talentdeficit

stack ranking actively hinders managers from retaining exceptional performers. if you only have 2 A grades to give out and you have five people deserving of it ALL of them are going to be motivated to switch to lower performing teams or entirely new employers.

any sort of 'objective' evaluation of employees is prone to being gamed and any gaming of evaluation is actively harmful to corporate culture/performance. witness google where lower profile or troubled projects are abandoned en masse by any employees with the ability to turn them around

don't hate the playa, hate the game

none of these companies are leveraging truly novel patents in their lawsuits. few of these companies are even generating novel patents. they're all accumulating (likely bogus) patents to wield as a club against their competitors. the theory was mutual assured destruction would keep all parties in line but Intellectual Ventures pioneered tactical patent strikes that forced all players into an ever escalating cycle of violence. now they're all just scrambling trying to stay ahead. put simply, it's sue or be sued

it sucks, but until there's meaningful patent reform, it's how things are going to be

the server seems to be written in erlang (using cowboy and rabbitmq?) but there's no erlang client library available. what gives?

They are temporary because they are granted for situations where Apple has not yet implemented an API or formalized an entitlement. Apple bends over backwards to be developer friendly, they are not going to pull the rug out just for the hell of it.

i think the point is that when designing clocks we didn't just attach some gears and a timing mechanism and some hands to a sundial, we threw the sundial out. computers are complex because we hardly ever remove anything, and we still bare their cost aeons after they're relevant.

if google gives privileged access to android to motorola (earlier access to os builds for testing, for example), that's just going to motivate samsung, htc, sony etc to differentiate further, as they will have a disadvantage in time to market

i don't work at valve, but i work at an organisation with a very similar management structure (there is none) and payment scheme (autonomous self organizing teams are paid by clients and distribute payments as negotiated by the group). we have virtually zero overhead and minimal residual or recurring income so we are not identical to valve, but their employee handbook could very easily be ours

we have a number of 'bad apples', but they generally find themselves ostracized very quickly. as we have no downside income guarantees (we are organized as a group of independent contractors), people very quickly fall out of the organisation

i assume valve accomplish similar by minimizing payments to individuals who act in bad faith. as they are probably primarily financially motivated and valve is likely a great entry on a cv, i'm sure they don't stick around long

serious question, do people not realize you can use the wireless apple keyboard with the ipad? it pairs with bluetooth and it's fairly small of it's own accord. it's also much cheaper than most of these 'laptop' accessories

diamonds aren't artificially scarce to control demand, they're artificially scarce due to low demand. bringing a gigantic chunk of platinum to earth isn't going to increase the utility of platinum, although if prices fall far enough it may increase the utilization

you can't fix sexism (or racism, or classism) by pretending they don't exist. this isn't the venue for a debate on the topic, but you can read up on male privilege if you'd like to know more

HiPE is the native code compiler, BEAM is the VM.

otp is fantastic, however

Galiano isn't that remote. It's less than an hour from Vancouver International Airport by floatplane, or a couple hours from downtown Vancouver by the (2+ times daily) ferry.

It is beautiful though, and I envy him. I have a place on Salt Spring Island (right next to Galiano) and I don't spend nearly enough time there

google have slowly been rebuilding AOL's walled garden for five years now. if anything, they're jealous apple and facebook beat them to it

While you can get cheap housing in Sacramento or Stockton, the California equivalents of Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto are just as unaffordable as those cities. Maybe more so. If you think commuting Clarington to Toronto is bad, try Inland Empire to Los Angeles or Union City to San Francisco.

I commute between Portland and Vancouver fairly frequently. Initially I drove because I never really considered not driving, but round trip expense wasn't really that much cheaper than flying ($120 in fuel costs compared to $175-$250 to fly) and time in airports and on planes was time I could be somewhat productive, while my ten hour round trip drive was completely wasted.

Then someone tipped me off about the train. It takes slightly longer than driving and about twice as long as flying, but it's almost all productive time. It's cheaper than flying and about the same as driving (depends what days you travel), and it's a much more pleasant experience than flying.

The only drawback is limited service (it's daily, but with limited direct service), but with better promotion and subsidies to increase demand, there's no reason service couldn't be more frequent. I'm sure there's equipment upgrades that could be made to shorten service times also.

Amtrak, in the pacific northwest at least, really is a hidden gem. It's a shame it's not more popular.

deterministic memory usage is a good start

Here's why HBO requires you to subscribe to their channel to watch Game of Thrones.

If you watch Game of Thrones, maybe you'll also watch Veep or Girls or Eastbound & Down or Life's Too Short. You might notice that HBO staggers their series so they overlap for roughly half their run. The Sopranos and The Wire never ran in lockstep, The Wire would start roughly halfway through The Sopranos run. They're trying to get you to continuously subscribe, rather than just subscribe for the 13 weeks Game of Thrones is on.

I know, you're too smart to fall for that, you're just gonna PVR Game of Thrones and stop recording exactly when the episode ends. You're never going to see anything except Game of Thrones no matter what HBO does. You, however, are still atypical. Maybe the day will come where HBO's trick doesn't work and their subscribers routinely cancel and resubscribe so it's most advantageous for them, but for now it works well enough that offering Game of Thrones a la carte is a money losing proposition for them. The sales they'll get from MG Siegler and yourself will not offset the subscribers they'll lose who would rather just pay for HBO continuously than go without Game of Thrones.

HBO (and other content producers) may be stubborn and short sighted, but they are not stupid. They've run the numbers. If you want to change their minds, you have to change the numbers and, regrettably, that means you have to boycott them completely. Pirating their content just signals it's valuable and HBO is right to keep availability costly (whether through direct pricing or obnoxious distribution terms).

Mike Daisy exploited a story about violations of human rights to benefit himself. This is not a greater good situation.

I fly into the US via YVR Vancouver approximately 18 times per year, and it's almost always a terrible experience. ICE officers are surly, impatient and unpleasant, even when there's no lineup and no urgency. There are exceptions, there is one officer who knows me on sight and always asks how my previous visits were. The majority can't even be bothered to make eye contact or do anything beyond order me through the fingerprint scans and photographs. Once, one accused me of hating America for living in Canada but doing business in the USA.

By car, however, the experience has almost always been excellent. One border agent told me an extended anecdote about why Andrew Jackson was called 'Old Hickory' when I paid my VISA fees with a $10 bill. Another greeted me with 'you know weezy? good times?'. They seem relaxed, friendly and happy in general.

There definitely seems to be a difference in culture between the airport personnel and the land border personnel.

for the most part, facebook can only target you when you're on facebook. google now targets you across their properties some of which have significant lock in. it's not as easy to escape google being creepy as it is to escape facebook being creepy.

That's only 7.5 million per corrupt official, which is about the cost of the houses they buy in Shaughnessy, North Vancouver and Point Grey.