VladRussian

Thank you. Sorry for the ban reasons guesswork in GP.

thanks for letting me know, and i appreciate your kind words. When HN pages started to load slow - "slowban" - i guess it was a "big T" for "time to go" :) for me which i didn't recognize.

> for no apparent reason

When i downvoted several PG supporters and upvoted several opponents - zedshaw and the likes - in the yesterday's "Trolls" thread it seems it was the last drop :)

the longer talent stays in (kept in) the less of a talent it becomes. Been there myself and when interviewing people who've been long term with a big company, it is very noticeable how one sided their experience and thinking is. Changing jobs once in at least a couple of years keeps your mind open and up-to-date for the current technological developments.

Following the Adams logic of the opportunity costs, all these "stupid boss, performance review, process" reasons are there to help you to not get comfortable, to help you by providing a motivational nudge to make a move.

>You as an individual is an unknown quantity that they cannot absolutely determine.

well, we can imagine that given more info and better algorithms they would narrow the "unknown quantity" into the range much more narrow and thus less populated than "male, 22 years old, 00000 zip code". From a hundreds thousands peers to just a hundred of peers in the same risk level pool - it would be very different "unknown quantity" then.

The better they differentiate the higher profits they will get by offering lower quotes to no-risk ones while more intensely screwing ones with the risk. This is wet dream of the retail, insurance, etc... business - custom targetted offerings. Lower prices when it is really neccessary to make the sale and screw the customer by jacking up the price when it is possible. To do this they need to _know_ the customer. Thanks Facebook.

>all these gewgaws. There's work to be done, don't get too wrapped up in your tools.

poor Windows people need all these exactly to get work done. (my current job is a windows shop, any simple *nix operation like find/grep/diff and the likes is an epic story scrum style (of course we have that too). Time to make a Xmas gift to myself and move back to a shop where Linux is allowed (that includes no "must-use" Outlook :)

yet his [successful] endeavours look like of a billionaire

>It's disturbing to see that this is an all-too-common pattern with the large internet companies. Stories abound of companies like Google, eBay, PayPal, Facebook and Amazon closing down accounts with what I would characterize as "violence". No explanations. No recourse. No way to reason with a human being. The approach seems so "anti-internet" that it is hard to come-up with justification for the behavior.

it is doesn't matter internet or B&M as [quasi]monopoly is a monopoly. Just imagine how it would feel if your electric/gas company decided to "close your account forever". Because of such great power they weild, they are regulated as public utilities. The platforms you mentioned are formally not yet there [mostly i think because the standard metric of what monopoly on the Internet is hasn't been yet determined], so they allow themselves all kind of behavior that is no-no in the other well established areas of business.

instead they'd better mandate the ultrasound radar in front of the vehicle, similar to parking sensor in the rear, yet with additional chip that would take the speed (and direction of the turn if any) into account to calculate the distance for sound&visual warning to the driver. A cheap solution to so many traffic accidents i see regularly on my commute on 101.

"Both of the main detectors, ATLAS and CMS, have uncovered hints of a lightweight Higgs. If it pans out, the only remaining hole in the standard model would be filled.

Even more exciting, a Higgs of this mass, about 125 gigaelectronvolts, would also blast a path to uncharted terrain. Such a lightweight would need at least one new type of particle to stabilise it."

great to hear that there is plan B for LHC if Higgs is finally found :)

>The real issue with freemium is that I've yet to see a single example that's actually a game, as opposed to one armed bandits masquerading as games.

Today heard on NPR something along the lines that Zinga IPO valuation is 7-10B, and they successfully sell virtual goods inside their games like chainsaws in the Mafia wars. That somehow struck me that i'm possibly missing some important change happening in the world as it sounds that people do really buy the chainsaws! (note: i did my share of Doom and i read Godfather - in my view it is completely different chainsaw (or cutting tools in general) applications)

>I think most of us come from a sort of middle class, well behaved background that prevents us from conceptualizing what it means to be corrupted by power.

from the background i come from it isn't always "corrupted by power", worst/bloodiest outcomes were result of "to have enough power to change the world [or a chunk of it] to the best [as the one having the power sees it]". The unchecked/unlimited power is the main core of the issue, not the specific intentions/people it is being used for/by.

>These reports will be sent to the appropriate LEO to summon and indefinitely detain you. You will be sent to a secret prison.

it may be not the worst what could happen to one. Reading about Kennedy/Oswald/Ruby, i've been wondering how much of a precisely targetted influence one is needed to be made behaving in a specific way. How much of our actions are really "ours"?