smartt

If you only want to receive mail at aliases it's easy: just setup an email catch-all on your domain ;-) To send is another matter; and unfortunately, I haven't found a way to easily do this with fastmail.

FWIW, I switched my order to the stripped-down "angel" and did eventually receive it but it was non-working junk. Some sensors didn't work; others produced garbage for data. So disappointing.

I'm in the same boat. I backed the original Ubuntu Edge indiegogo campaign, but it never happened. And I would check the site periodically to see if there was a phone that shipped/worked in the States (and there never was) or if it was running on anything newer than a Nexus 5.

FirefoxOS phones were pretty much the same story. Limited hardware that wasn't available in the US market.

With both, it may not have been a lack of global interest; but a lack of interest in the limited markets they chose to release in.

Just to be clear, Google Fiber in Austin is more marketing than reality. A small area of town has it--most do not. And while the other players have now introduced fiber, their coverage is also limited to select neighborhoods.

So, I don't agree that it's nice for Austin. This removes the incentive for the other providers to continue expanding coverage, and the core of the city will likely be stuck on the old cable lines for much, much longer.

I loved the size, weight, and screen of the MacBook instantly, but put off getting one after reading all the flak about it not being usable for "real work". Heck, I've even heard sales people at the Apple Store say it. But eventually, my love of ultra-portability and retina-displays won, and I got one anyway (to replace my rooted, Arch-running, ex-Chromebook.) And I love it. Sure, I don't expect as much out of it as my 13" Pro (work machine), and I spend most of my time in the shell and vim rather than post-processing video or 3D rendering, but this thing is a joy to use.

It's not for everyone (or every computing task), but if you have a preference for the smaller screens and portability, and are aware that you're willing to trade raw machine grunt for this portability, then I wouldn't write off the MacBook just because "someone on the internet" said it wasn't usable.

Completely agree. It's unfortunate how many Americans don't realize how poorly they're treated as employees. I don't think it even becomes obvious until you've traveled globally and had children.

True, but this is an edge case that is unlikely given the toll that pregnancy takes on a woman's body and the challenges for the family. If you have kids, can you honestly say that you think this would be a good thing to try?

Another issue is where the parental-leave financial support comes from. Should it be the company's responsibility, or is this a government initiative to invest in the health of its citizens? Would you support the idea if the company had zero financial responsibility for the paid-leave (and only had to bring the parents back on once leave is over?)

It's definitely not common. Partly because $120k doesn't go as far as you'd think if you live in a nice city, and partly because not everyone wants a Porsche. If you're into cars, and really wanted one, you could be driving a used 911 on that salary (if your other bills/expenses are reasonable, and you go with a tame model.) The thing to remember about expensive cars though, is the high cost of ownership. Insurance will cost more; Parts will cost more; Repairs will cost more; Tires and gas will cost more...

I'm curious about this "bad, bad idea" theory too. For our site, I have a handful of hard-coded scoring functions that the site can select from based on search context, and it's far more supportable and debuggable than some of the dynamic query assembly approaches I've tried in the past.

ElasticSearch is a wonderful product that is a real pain to tune, so I'm curious if there's a better approach I'm missing.