troncheadle

Because it's subject to market forces and not the government?

And yes, I still miss my 1/8" jack on my iphone. Every single day.

I'm very curious -- anything thoughts on what will be your next phone? Iphone again, or branching out to new 1/8" jack pastures?

Given what I know about the aviation industry, it's extremely unlikely that this was the first and second time he has done this task. We might be looking at the millionth time and million-and-one time. Memory is probably not a factor.

A couple more things regarding the trivialization of the engineers work:

1: Just because work is done does not mean it is important 2: It is possible to say that the product is not special or unique and yet the hard work that is done to keep that product up all of the time and scale it to many of customers is special.

I can definitely do that. I only collect payments up front, so fork it over and I will have it for you tomorrow, likely even tonight.

I think what I said ("I don't understand what firebase does that is so killer or unique") is very different from what you are reading ("firebase is useless, firebase's engineers do stupid work, and google is full of student execs with money that pay millions of tech that can be build by one dev in an afternoon"). I think your characterization of my statement is more than a bit unfair.

I'm still at a loss for what firebase is beyond a key value store with web sockets. I think it would be a problem to scale a platform like this on ones own -- maybe that's why to use Firebase? I've used it in hackathon settings where I didn't want to roll my own backend, or to mock web-sockets pre Django 1.9 / Channels.

Still, if I had a business that depended on a key value store with web sockets I would definitely build it myself.

I have to say... I don't understand what about Firebase's offering is SO killer or unique. I feel like it would be very easy to roll one's own custom 'Firebase.' I'm unsure as to why anyone would ever choose to predicate their businesses continued existence on another platform, especially one that can be replicated in like, an afternoon.

Thank you!

Forbes is unequivocally the worst website I have the displeasure of being linked to on a regular basis. Readability is quickly approaching 0. This page kept hijacking my scroll thru the article to keep an ad at the top of my window. Horrible, horrible, horrible.

This is a great illustration of how we grapple with the abstraction of scales and key over time.

First, you have tabs, which describe the physical position of the notes on the instrument.

Then, we have root / chord type notation, in which we describe the starting position and shape of the notes on the instrument, and the musician must translate that information to the physical position of the notes, on the fly.

What is important about this second stage is that the musician has a pretty good grasp on how to play, and can usually sight read a piece and get a pretty decent version of it just by tracking chords, or in the case of the piano, just chords and the melody on the other hand, or a small pattern.

Finally, we come to roman numeral notation, which describes the chords based on their relative position to the root note of key, not the chord. This is a powerful abstraction. It provides incredible insight into the relationships between music, notes, chords, and progressions of chords at a level divorced from the 'root' of that key. A 9th played over a minor 7th chord is going to give you a very similar sound in any key. This is a great skill for songwriters and composers, who need to have a strong working intuition about things like what chord will sound good in this progression, or what notes we want to appear in our melody (which is related to the chords beneath it).

The reason why I bought a bluetooth toothbrush was for a ranking system

We are truly living in a modern fall of rome. We will choke on our bluetooth enabled toothbrushes, 700 dollar juicer machines, our fucking fitbits. We've ravaged the earth to adorn ourselves with decadent shackles and we will reap the consequences with fake tans and ultra clean teeth.

In the past year I've gone from being an environmentalist to a big fan of the end times. We're going to eat ourselves out of a home, and a few billion years later, the Earth will still be here, not missing us at all. Fuck it, get three bluetooth toothbrushes next time.

That is crazy. I use Facebook on a 5 year old MBP with no problems. I have Ad Block Pro and U-Block, but even without them, my computer can handle Facebook just fine.

And I would love if my 2001 Honda Accord was compatible with Tesla's autopilot, but I understand it is not a realistic expectation.

I'm not sure why you'd expect the web to be a. Mostly text and b. able to render easily on obsolete devices.

The web is becoming a robust application delivery platform. That is so, so awesome. Most people do not want to be stuck with shitty looking, text only websites. Moving the platform forwards necessitates that it will use more resources. Increased resources availability and consumption over time is fairly consistent across most aspects consumer computing.

So what is the move if you are caught with your pants down, and a LEO is requesting access to your actual phone? Does a factory restore wipe all data, or is in necessary to wipe, fill up with bunk data, wipe again?

I don't know about everyone else but my phone is has data including me talking about controversial opinions, intimate photos, and various other data that I would not want anyone else to have.

Just... so much wrong here. First and foremost, you are still characterizing an entire movement by it's worst actors, so the point of the poster above you stands.

Second -- 'Ferguson' was a community reacting to a state sponsored murder -- not a 'BLM protest'. They weren't out there for BLM, they were out there because Ferguson cops enacted violence on their community.

Finally, calling 'in defense of looting' required reading is not endorsing or defending looting. You aren't a Nazi because you read Mein Kampf. It's an interesting take and I'm sure Deray has a nuanced opinion on the issue -- but nah you're just going to keep mischaracterizing people and movements to fit your world view.

There are things that, in the interest of global freedom, need to be taken out of the hands of corporations and government, permanently, forever. The transfer of value is definitely one of them.

but who knows if the voice data or even the query itself is still stored after deletion, just not visible to us end users.

Almost definitely yes. I've never known a tech company that truly deletes anything

I explained to her the difference between an app and a web site (we're making a web site)

What did you say here? I've been thinking a lot about this lately -- In my opinion, a websites are a part of an 'app': the client.

I'm with you for that reason. It can be a real wakeup call. I thought I had just grown more irritable and less social -- turns out I was just seriously addicted to nicotine.

It is the broken incentivization killing media companies everywhere.

I've moved twice in the past four years and I have gone to yelp for food recommendations a few times -- totally useless, sadly. Always wants me to go to Papa Johns or some other chain. The days of interesting food discovery via yelp are over. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

See if you can find sales numbers for your elitist 5 button vertical mouse vs. the trackpad.... Then we'll talk about who the 'rare bird' is. Grow up.

Yup. I've been bringing my 3DS instead of my Ipad on flights for a couple years now, and it's just a better experience. If I need to get real work done wherever I am flying to, I'll have my laptop with me.

That is what the press release says.

Every company that you listed produces a product other than Ad Space / eyeballs. Even Facebook has diversified to sell something other than ads -- I still probably wouldn't invest, as their continued success relies on such an ephemeral foundation -- millions of people continuing to log on to Facebook every day. Smart money says that when I am 70 years old, people will not be logging into Facebook every day. If they are, great for Facebook! However you would not catch me betting my retirement money on that. Have you ever walked in to Facebook? How the hell are they going to pay all of those engineers when people stop caring about Facebook and the ad money stops flowing? Same goes for Linkedin -- unless they can make a very strong play into the recruiting space I would not bet my retirement money on their continued success. Based on what I know about recruiting I doubt that Linkedin will be able to penetrate -- if you want to be a personnel supplier for a Kaiser or a Chase Bank you need deep personal connections, you need to wine and dine, you need to go golfing. They aren't amenable to the speed dating model the internet encourages. They want a man or woman they can trust who can demonstrate their value transparently. But I digress.

Snapchat sells ad space. That, to me, is not a sustainable business model. Ask traditional publishers how that model worked when the took it to the web. Won't work (in the long run) for Snapchat either. I think it's an entirely different class of business than AMD, Sun, Tesla, etc.

Related question -- How do I choose a mutual fund / 401k / pension / etc that is guaranteed never to take part in these insane silicon valley IPOs?

Bluetooth headphones outsold standard audio jack headphones in the US last month for the first time. This is perfectly timed.

I think you've got me pegged wrong.

You're right, I definitely did. Sorry about the assumptions and thanks for furthering the discussion despite that.

I also seem to be misunderstood -- I don't think that your success is only due to your privilege. I see that positioning a lot and it is a dangerous way to think. I think your privilege had a hand in your success, not that it is entirely responsible for your success. I also think that basic income is a way to give that privilege to a wider swath of the population without taking away opportunity from other people.

I think that basic income is a good strategy to lift the norm so it's not so necessary to be a mold breaker to build a high quality of life from impoverished beginnings -- raise the baseline and I think we give more people a chance at success.

'First class citizen', while not really used outside of programming, was likely meant in contrast to a 'second class citizen.'

"A second-class citizen is a person who is systematically discriminated against within a state or other political jurisdiction, despite their nominal status as a citizen or legal resident there." - Wikipedia

He's saying you probably did not suffer much at all because of systemic discrimination, and pointing out the glaringly obvious -- that you don't realize that majority of the people in this country DO suffer because of systemic discrimination.

Ok, I'm replying to you down the chain a bit because this is a great example of you just not getting it at all.

Do you have a college education? Did you go to a good high school? Do you have motivated peers? Growing up, did you have enough food to eat every day and every night? Do you have two loving parents? Or even one? Did you have a roof over your head every night? How many times did you change houses, schools, districts?

These and more are the factors out of the individual's hands that can severely negatively impact their ability to grow up and become successful.

You didn't 'just have a laptop and a desk.' You had a laptop, a desk, an education, a stable upbringing. MOST PEOPLE DON'T GET THOSE THINGS AND THAT IS THE OPPORTUNITY GAP. Again -- MOST PEOPLE DON'T GET THOSE THINGS AND THAT IS THE OPPORTUNITY GAP.

This comment I am replying to is just the worst kind of ignorance -- no, dude, there are SO many people in this country that can't afford a laptop. And if they could -- do you know how fucking expensive it is to learn to code??? You need one of 3 things -- 1: lots and lots of free time 2: a $50k education 3: an exceptionally great free public education ( I say exceptionally great because <20% of american schools teach coding).

I'm not going to be that commenter that just says 'ugh google privilege and you'll get it.' You had privilege in excess, and now you have ignorance in excess. You need empathy and humility. I'm honestly disgusted by your comments. The kids I work with every fucking day don't have half the shit you grew up with and it makes ALL of the difference in their lives.

That's just willfully ignorant. For majority of people, differences in opportunity are SO much more influential in their lives than differences in skill or intelligence.

Consider three kids -- one is rich, suburban white, IQ is 170. The other is rich, suburban white, IQ is 75. The third is poor, inner city black, IQ 170.

In this situation, which lives do you think look most similar to one another? If you answered 'obviously the white kids', then great! You get it. If you answered 'the two kids with an IQ of 170' then you need to spend some time in the real world.

Let's add kid #4 -- poor, black, inner city, IQ 75. If we want to compare across QoL, opportunity, really almost any metric, we're going to group across socio-economic lines, not IQ.

If you find yourself thinking 'Well what if that young black kid catches a lucky break and gets out of poverty' you're almost there -- the need to catch a lucky break to escape is a defining aspect of poverty and it works against even the most naturally skilled people. The amount of skill needed to overcome that lack in opportunity makes it silly to bring skill into the equation when talking about opportunity.

Really, come on. That kind of 'they can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps' is ignorant enough to sound like dog whistling.