Recent submissions

Comment · 12 years ago
The cost differential is about right given that Indian labor, skilled and unskilled, is about 1/10 the cost of the US. This mission employed 2500--not exactly Spartan.
Comment · 12 years ago
This particular design doesn't take a lot of skill to create, and I'm not sure the author knows what problem to solve. The triviality of the redesign should be embarrassing to the creator.
Comment · 12 years ago
- The photo is the most important feature of the badge; for security reasons, it should be as large as possible.

- First and last names are not as important as one's email address

- The logo is a security risk; should a badge go missing, it's a clue as to where to (mis)use the badge.

Comment · 12 years ago
Hiring #1 is tricky: you need to find someone good, but also naive. In this era of the ray startup, it makes little sense for a great engineer to work for someone else: the first employees work almost as hard as the founders, but receive 1/50 the ownership of the company. In the age of the acqhire founders' risk is very small.
Comment · 12 years ago
Because there was other intelligence to be gleaned which was not the result of spying on Americans. Only the law firm was American; the rest of the parties were not. It's possible (likely?) that the NSA said, "give us everything with a non-American source" which would keep them within the law. I have not seen any evidence from Snowden that the NSA deliberately breaks the laws that bind them, though they make give the law liberal interpretations at times.
Comment · 12 years ago
If students didn't do this, it's unlikely their works would be read by more than a handful of people in their lifetime.
Comment · 12 years ago
Most bit rot isn't due to cosmic rays, but rather to decay on the disk itself.
Comment · 12 years ago
This has been done dozens of times. Not sure why it hasn't taken off. I think some people crush everyone then claim they were joking, thereby burning the other side. There should be a limit on the number of crushes allowed.
Comment · 12 years ago
This could be more accurately titled, "why entrepreneurs thought they failed." Personally, I'm not sure failed entrepreneurs are qualified to make that diagnosis.
Comment · 12 years ago
TL;DR Title is misleading, possibly false. The Aussies spied on a trade negotiation and offered to share the intel with America. It is not known whether or not the Americans accepted any information which was the result of spying on Americans, or passed it on to negotiators. We only know they provided "clear guidance" about what information they would accept.

EDIT: Title fixed.

Comment · 12 years ago
Hotels are a form of progressive taxation: rich out of town travelers pay more for housing than permanent residents. Generally travelers are richer than non travelers because traveling is usually a discretionary expense or paid for by a corporation.

AirBnb eliminates the progressive taxation, thereby raising living expenses for poorer residents. Rich people love it, poor people hate it. Sure, you can make some money in the short term by renting out your spare room, but in the long term, as rents rise, this process involuntarily turns your two bedroom apartment into a one bedroom + strangers' room apartment.

Just wait until San Francisco "Google bus activists" get a whiff of AirBnb.

Comment · 12 years ago
This is a great example of the the danger of consuming "raw" corporate propaganda. Without professional journalists to fact-check, look for other perspectives, and filter corporate self-interest, many readers will come out misinformed. Information supply becomes further tainted by attempts to manipulate the average Joe.

I really hope the NYTimes and Washington Post don't go out of business; I rely on them to adjudicate most of my news.

Comment · 12 years ago
Not necessarily. Snowden took mainly metadata: PowerPoint presentations and the like. I have not heard tell that he took any actual intercepts or personally identifiable cell phone data. I suspect the latter is what is audited.

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