My girlfriend (who is responsible for most of the art in the examples) and I pretty much reacted the same way when we first got the algorithm working. It was one of those things that went from 'not working at all' to 'suddenly working perfectly when you fix one broken thing'. Good times.

Oh and thanks for the offer of thrown money!

Companies like LinkedIn are training users (at least me) to report as spam instead of unsubscribing because it's an exercise in futility to try to opt-out of their spam.

I was one of those who was laid-off, or fired, or whatever you want to call it. I've been really confused over the last week because the reasons for my termination were pretty vague. But wow, after reading that, so many things make sense now.

One of the areas this type of a bell-curve system falls apart is for highly specialized and well-qualified teams, such as the one I was working on. Who knows, maybe I was a poor employee, but after all the raises, accolades, and the promotion I received (by my firing manager), I'd like to think that wasn't the case and it was just a manager put in a tough spot.

Regardless, it was a nice run and the job market is great. I'm taking a bit of time off, but if you are a company in SF and looking for someone with lots of JavaScript, Node.js, and frontend experience at startups and (of course) big companies, links are in my profile.

Of course they did. Everyone told you they would. Copyright is not just something that a bunch of greybeards imagined and have been lying to young programmers about.

Simple steps to protect yourself:

* Try not to clone commercial products to the pixel

* Pay attention to software licenses. Sometimes they matter

* If prominent news websites accuse you of doing something illegal, consider what they have to say

This is a terrific developer-specific list. The realism about acceptable answers is quite good.

Here's my own list of 20 interview questions, from a more generic business / process / employee life perspective:

1. What's the biggest change your group has gone through in the last year? Does your group feel like the recession is over and things are getting better, or are things still pretty bleak?

2. If I get the job, how do I earn a "gold star" on my performance review? What are the key accomplishments you'd like to see in this role over the next year?

3. What's your (or my future boss') leadership style?

4. About which competitor are you most worried?

5. How does sales / operations / technology / marketing / finance work around here? (I.e., groups other than the one you're looking to work in.)

6. What type of people are successful here? What type of people are not?

7. What's one thing that's key to this company's success that somebody from outside the company wouldn't know about?

8. How did you get your start in this industry? Why do you stay?

9. What are your group's best and worst working relationships with other groups in the company?

10. What keeps you up at night? What's your biggest worry these days?

11. What's the timeline for making a decision on this position? When should I get back in touch with you?

12. These are tough economic times, and every position is precious when it comes to the budget. Why did you decide to hire somebody for this position instead of the many other roles / jobs you could have hired for? What about this position made your prioritize it over others?

13. What is your reward system? Is it a star system / team-oriented / equity-based / bonus-based / "attaboy!"-based? Why is that your reward system? What do you guys hope to get out of it, and what actually happens when you put it into practice? What are the positives and the negatives of your reward system? If you could change any one thing, what would it be?

14. What information is shared with the employees (revenues, costs, operating metrics)? Is this an open-book shop, or do you play it closer to the vest? How is information shared? How do I get access to the information I need to be successful in this job?

15. If we have a very successful 2015, what would that look like? What will have have happened over the next 12 months? How does this position help achieve that?

16. How does the company / my future boss do performance reviews? How do I make the most of the performance review process to ensure that I'm doing the best I can for the company?

17. What is the rhythm to the work around here? Is there a time of year that it's all hands on deck and we're pulling all-nighters, or is it pretty consistent throughout the year? How about during the week / month? Is it pretty evenly spread throughout the week / month, or are there crunch days?

18. What type of industry / functional / skills-based experience and background are you looking for in the person who will fill this position? What would the "perfect" candidate look like? How do you assess my experience in comparison? What gaps do you see?

19. In my career, I've primarily enjoyed working with big / small / growing / independent / private / public / family-run companies. If that's the case, how successful will I be at your firm?

20. Who are the heroes at your company? What characteristics do the people who are most celebrated have in common with each other? Conversely, what are the characteristics that are common to the promising people you hired, but who then flamed out and failed or left? As I'm considering whether or not I'd be successful here, how should I think about the experiences of the heroes and of the flame-outs?

I can't help but feel that university admissions officers should stay the hell out of determining the bounds of acceptable discourse for their applicants, since their determinations are inevitably going to be loaded with political connotations (especially when the story specifically mentions tracking an applicant "involved in a political cause"). See http://thefire.org/ for copious examples.

In this case it seems to be entirely a royalty dispute, and has nothing to do with the patent. Hasbro properly licensed the product, the just didn't properly pay out the royalties.

Also, the patent reform bill[1] that was featured not so long ago isn't about holding companies, it's about making the trolling process harder. One of the provisions is requiring the "real party of interest" to be exposed in the litigation, so a shell company litigating on behalf of microsoft would have to get microsoft involved with it. The other big thing has to do with validity and pleading. In many cases the lawsuits are brought about without any valid claim, and are just used as a harassment tactic to get small companies to pay up their fee instead of going through an expensive and painful legal process. Under the bill, the discovery process is halted until the patent is interpreted, and it forces the patent holder to be more specific about which claims are actually at issue.

None of the things put in that bill seem like they would affect the likes Johnson, had this case even been about patents, as he has legitimate and valid patents, and he himself is the real party of interest.

[1] https://www.eff.org/issues/current-legislative-proposals-pat...

convergence of three things really.

When I heard the iPhone 5 was going to use a sapphire lens cover I decided to lookup more on the technology and found that GTAT had what looked like the best know-how in its manufacture.

I had also previously seen a story on some tech being created by a company called Twin Creeks that looked pretty cool, and was surprised to see that GTAT had acquired it's assets. That made me think the company was being aggressive in it's pursuit of acquiring/developing cutting-edge manufacturing processes.

Plus, I think solar power is a major part of the future and things will be pretty bleak if it can't deliver long-term, but I like to be an optimist, so why not put my money there?

It's a nice article, but it overlooks one fact: There needs to be a brain drain out of academia, because academia can't absorb more than a fraction of its own production of talent.

That feeling in your gut that there's something wrong with what you're doing, even though you know what you're doing is completely reasonable, is from having internalised the dominant culture's view on work, which from an anglo-american context probably means suspicion of anything which doesn't place an emphasis on a projection of looking busy like a labourer on a factory line with some kind of neurotic rendition of the protestant work ethic.

Obviously if your boss is a tool, or has issue with it, even though its reasonable, whether to continue on with it any way is up to you.

But if you know its reasonable, and its just the feeling, screw that feeling. Your life will be better off if you can get rid of it completely. Its the same feeling that makes bankers stay at the office for 12 hours even when they don't do anything for 6 of them. Not only will you do your job better if you're spending some time researching and thinking about the task, but if your boss is a tool, you'll likely be upskilling your future self for your next job as well.

All this is assuming you work at a job or living a life where your skills are actually the important thing, and not just the impression you are constantly working...

It's supposed to show that the Tesla car is structurally sound and prevented the object on the road from ripping further into the car than it otherwise would have. It's also supposed to show that the car got the driver out of a dangerous situation by displaying warnings early. Finally, it is supposed to show that the car is resilient when bad things happen because it is still drivable.

I'm just explaining the viewpoint of the letter since you were unsure. I'm not opining that it is effective/ineffective or productive/counterproductive.