throwaway90999

If you insist on continuing to be disingenuous we can simply end the conversation.

This isn't a complicated statement. Why are you struggling with it?

Google does not open source the VAST majority of their code -- it remains tightly restricted. Surely agree this is an accurate statement?

What has happened with Java in recent years?

Your feigned ignorance is disingenuous. An enormous legal battle over the platform took place within the past decade.

We are very lucky that the outcome was favorable and that the platform has been able to continue to improve.

Microsoft's board cares, which is why there was a change in leadership. That's the subject hga raised and is what my reply is in reference to.

I see the misunderstanding. When I say "contribute code freely" I mean "without restriction."

You are certainly aware that the vast majority of code is under strict restrictions and will be leveraged for competitive/controlling purposes rather than being shared. Employees wishing to freely contribute code in these domains will have their requests denied.

We've both been employed by large SV companies; we both know how this works. The majority of software will be used in an attempt to control the market.

By all means contradict me. Do they open source more than 25% of their code written?

More than 10%?

More than 1%?

Vista and Windows 8 aren't the problem. Lack of presence on servers and mobile devices is the problem -- those are the two key spaces where OSS platforms have won out.

Linux is still not a significant player on desktops. Microsoft is still completely dominating that space.

Microsoft is opening their codebase because they've been crushed by the enormous efforts of open source. This concession was hard won over the course of decades.

Apple and Google do not contribute code freely, nor do they contribute a significant amount of their code. The contributions are limited to areas in which an advantage exists. One only has to look at the machinations present in other development platforms to realize the threat. Consider what's happened with Java in recent years. Or look to Swift. Or to the entire Microsoft ecosystem which was built in part on a foundation of open source. BSD licensed code permeates the Windows environment; to ask "what's the concern" belies a rather stunning ignorance of Microsoft's behavior over the three prior decades.

It is also common to write cents/fractions either as superscript, superscript with a line below the cents value, or as a full fraction 99/100

"with goals beyond pure financial gains and rock-bottom self-interest."

This doesn't paint an accurate picture. Google isn't deploying Fiber out of any notion of selflessness. This is a competitive play, and a very good one at that.

You say selfless ideals, I say this is exactly how "the market" and "competition" are commonly understood to function -- in the absence of corruption, regulatory capture and state granted monopolies.

"Sad that we still don't have any kind of common libraries or whatever"

We do have those. In this case the common library is called "libc." In this case (and in a few others) the Go team decided to intentionally avoid providing an interface to this function.

The good news is it would take just a few minutes to add support for go to call strftime directly from libc.

" A brand new Android flagship for the price of a months' rent. An utterly imaginably spectacular device."

But this isn't an utterly imaginably spectacular device. It's merely a run of the mill consumer-grade portable computer according to modern standards.

Your rent would be insignificant compared to, for example, the cost of a truly spectacular computer by modern standards, such as a modern search engine cluster with a price tag of perhaps a half billion dollars not counting ongoing opex.

That's not true. Working 40 hours in a week is not a problem. A contractor can put in an unlimited number of hours if they wish. 20, 40, 80 - it doesn't matter.

The differentiator you're probably thinking of is whether the worker chooses which hours they work. If the worker decides independently how much they will work and at what times then the IRS doesn't tend to consider the relationship employment -- regardless of how much time is put in. This is precisely how these driving services operate.

If the employer is scheduling a fixed schedule, say 9-5 M-F, then the IRS considers it an employment arrangement. Regardless of the number of hours worked. But that is not at all how these services operate.

Well I live a lot further away than Oakland. I commute from along the 680 corridor which is further than may are willing to endure, I think. Luckily there's still quite a lot of affordable housing in safe neighborhoods in San Leandro, Hayward and El Cerrito (to name a few), all of which are much shorter commutes than mine.

But the more general answer to your question: When supply outstrips demand the only reasonable response is to build more housing.

Complaining that driving jobs have low value isn't constructive. The value of those jobs will approach zero soon due to technology. Instead, address the economic imbalance and let supply meet the demand.

Why would a lyft driver be paying SF rent? The notion that low income earners ought to be renting in extremely expensive neighborhoods is nonsense.

If I can commute across the bay so can everyone else.

It's #1. Hiring is hard; everyone makes mistakes. Or sometimes people simply don't perform well in certain roles. Their deck goes into detail on this point IIRC. Try to fix it and if you fail, acknowledge the failure and move on.

Acknowledging that you will need to fire some portion of those you hire is an adult approach to the issue. Likewise from an employee's perspective. It's not a big deal to plan for things possibly not working out.

Yes I am aware. I am discussing the replies above me, not the article.

There were mentions of both technologies and I was replying to devindotcom who was talking about how high latency satellites are still useful. Here's a link to that comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8920059

That is why I was careful to specify traditional satellite internet services. It appears the distinction was lost.

No, the latency for traditional satellite internet is between 600ms to 1000ms (one full second). Cite: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/satell...

I think you might be confusing "fires low performers" with "fires people who have occasional misses." There's a world of difference between the two.

I have a few friends who I worked with at a large company, the kind with a large bureaucratic, broken management system that shuffles around incompetence without ever purging it. They went on to work at Netflix and they tell me how much they love it. They no longer have to deal with terminally incompetent divisions. They're top performers; there's no fear. If Netflix were stupid enough to fire them they'd instantly be buried in new opportunity. Of course, Netflix isn't that stupid.

Consider the economic incentives: A strong will-fire policy is a great negative incentive to prevent incompetent hires in the first place. It's not so scary if you're competent and capable -- and that's precisely the kind of people a company will want to hire..

Indeed. The ruling is quite clear that penetrating radio waves into the residence is presumed to be unacceptable. Even the dissent in Kyllo (FLIR) agrees on this point in regard to x-ray.

There's already been a ruling saying this isn't ok: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States

Kyllo was about thermal imaging but the opinion is quite clear. There's a much, much stronger case for thermal imaging equipment than there is for a device which probes via radio waves.

Most of the perceived absurdity comes from disingenuous framing of the issues. Here are some examples:

Over half of all quoted gun deaths are suicides. [edit: removed mention of suicide survivability as I don't have a reference handy. But remember: The most likely person to shoot you is yourself.]

Let's remove suicide from the discussion and talk about violence. The primary driver for violence is socioeconomic. The US has a huge wealth and education disparity problem, exacerbated by a drug war which focuses primarily on the lower economic classes. Most political rhetoric surrounding gun violence focuses on denying lower-class individuals access to firearms and is inexorably linked to institutionalized racism [ cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_night_special#Economic... ]

What these stats don't show is the EXTREME socioeconomic skew involved in violent crime. If we look at gun deaths by wealth quadrile we find that the upper 40% have very, very few gun deaths -- on par with the nicer areas in Europe. Our inflated gun death statistics come almost entirely from the lower 40%. That is, gun deaths are emblematic of America's class divide.

The right to self defense is a convenient target for politicians to score easy wins. Constructively addressing the USA's violence problem is a very different issue and frankly is almost entirely unrelated to firearm legislation.

It doesn't require it, but it does help frame the issue as to whether high school is a "waste of time."

For example, much as you describe, I scaled back my high school senior year to less than a half day in order to make time for community college courses. If I did not partially pull myself out of high school I would not have had enough time to pursue my education.

Looking back decades later I am pleased with my choice.

The field of history is fascinating and valuable but I completely understand this attitude towards history classes in the public high school system.

If you're really interested in history take a college level course. Grade and high school history subjects often contain absurdly simplified material -- sometimes to the point of incorrectness. One can miss high school history entirely and end up better informed.

Yes, that's the honesty and transparency. The truth is that Google doesn't care; this bug isn't a priority. So the options available are 1) leave the bug open and ignore it or 2) be honest and close it as "obsolete"

Both options have the same result: no bugfix. However option #2 is a lot more transparent. Part of that transparency is your being aware that Google simply does not care.

The vast majority of humanity still depends on domesticated animals for labor and food. Goats are very commonly used to convert inedible wild plants into human ingestible calories in impoverished regions who do not have modern factory farming infrastructure.

Certainly we can find other philosophical approaches which are more reasonable.

Applying your logic there is a vital need for us to imprison animals for the same reasons (sustenance, as well as utility). We've already made the utility-based decision to cage, raise and domesticate animals.

You could argue that caging an orangutan in particular is not important, however you could just as easily argue that the world might manage if we all stopped growing potatoes.