That's the kind of absurd and ill-informed thinking that brought GM to bankruptcy (and yes, this guy is a former GM employee). I moved to China a month ago, and I was astonished to see the number of e-bikes here. There are a lot of cars too, but they are clearly not practical. While US is designed for cars (highways, suburbia life, big stores with parking, etc...) in China owning a car seems extremely inconvenient: No places to park, horrendous traffic jams, stress, narrow streets, not even mentioning the cost of the car itself and maintenance.

In the city I live (Shenyang) a bus ride is 1 yuan (US$0.14). A taxi ride is between 8 to 20 yuan (US$3). Plenty of streets have bike lanes and every store has free bike / e-bike parking. The ROI in owning a car must be ridiculous, and it is very inconvenient.

To believe that every e-bike owner one day will be a electric car owner is totally naive IMO.

Passion for the topic is very important because a lot of what we do for a living is un-charted, un-mapped territory. The passion is required to get past mediocre.

I am a self-taught programmer. I tried to learn in school but my mind wasn't quite molded to the way programming teachers taught back then (1985-ish). So years later I re-visited programming on my own after DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1 came out.

I got the bug and eventually became a professional. I now work on a large magnificent software library used by millions of people whether they know it or not (I won't say what it is).

I consider it a privilege and part of the journey to work with passionate, self-taught people who paved the way.

There would be a lot of empty seats without superstars if we only accepted Ivy types or excluded the self-taught.

I just couldn't be in this field if that were the case.

The exception is probably hallucinogens, which offer some interesting experiences that are probably hard to get elsewhere, and there's some that are largely harmless. I'd advise anyone to be really, really careful about the drugs that are both chemically addictive and tolerance building. Chemically addictive means withdrawal symptoms if you're not using, tolerance building means you need progressively more not to get to the same point. Nicotine, actually, probably gives you the least bang for your buck with a pretty brutal chem addictive/tolerance building mix. Anything that does similar you need to be wary about.

As for the most commonly used things - alcohol and THC (marijuana, hash) - you really, really can get the lower inhibitions, relaxation, creativity, etc. with some mental training. Quitting alcohol was surprisingly easy for me because eventually, I was doing much worse socially on it than without it. When you're comfortable saying and doing what you think sober, alcohol just messes up your reaction times and coordination and makes you fat and sick. The hardest part about quitting was the social aspect, but after about six months when people got the message that I was really done, that fell off too. I always tell everyone drink around me, use, whatever you please, but it's surprising how many of my friends who go out with me eventually quit. It's like a hell of a lot people drink because they're expected to more than because they actually like the effects.

He became one of their developers and the lead developer at multiple other firms, including two he co-founded with me.

I should add that while he hasn't finished his "top tier" undergrad degree, he's very close.

He got hired at Google relatively recently (~2 years back) and is rising through the ranks.

In any case, no matter how astroturf-y the original article was, it does not justify voting this one up.

At least in all the exercise/sleep submissions I have been reading, a lot of posts are on the benefits of getting enough sleep and exercise.

Being out of shape, not eating right, and being sleep-deprived is going to be a lot worse for you than having a few miligrams of a psychoactive substance once in a while. Inaction is often worse than action.

People like big increments, new versions, cool stuff to play with. It is all about marketing.

Like HTML 5, it's new and fun. It wouldn't be the same if it was HTML 4.1.5

Firefox should have been 4.0 instead of 3.5, it has more punch. Next version would be 5.0 and so on. But they missed it. Now we have Safari 4, Opera 10, Chrome 2.

Small increments are always associated with bug fixes.

Stop coding and start marketing.

However, why would one use RFID when you don't want the reading to be easy? There are plenty of technologies that require physical contact to transmit information (like mag strips or smart chips). If they want the passports to have to be inserted into a machine, they might as well use one of those technologies.

I'm all for RFID in its place. It's great for my subway pass so that I don't have to take it out of my wallet. Same for highway tolls where I don't have to stop. But neither of those are instances where I completely care about security. Sure, I don't want anyone cloning my subway pass, but it also isn't a window into my identity like my passport is and so I can choose convenience a bit over security there. Oh, a good example would be something like site passwords. Sure, I don't want anyone getting into my HN account, but it's not quite the same as someone getting into my bank account and, as such, I don't need quite as complex a password for it.

I'm not saying that I like the idea of chips in passports, but if you're going to put one in, why RFID? Why on earth didn't they choose something that requires physical contact to be read? I mean, the article focuses on the RFID problems (that it can be read without you knowing it since it doesn't require physical contact) and doesn't explain how on earth RFID became the choice. While one might not want to have a chip on their passport, at least a chip that needed physical access to read would put the holder (mostly^) in control of who got access to that information.

^I say mostly because there are always pick pockets and such that could swipe it without your knowledge, but that's a much lower risk than someone walking around with an RFID skimmer - it requires the person to physically remove it from your person, put it in a reader, and return it to you without you or anyone else noticing; not impossible, but a great deal less trivial.

I honestly did have to check whois. When I first saw this, I thought it was someone making fun of Microsoft.

The ironic thing is, if it had been a parody, I'd have killed it, because it was (or would have been) so heavy handed. But since it's really from Microsoft, it's on-topic, because it's an interesting data point about how completely the company has lost its way.

Out of curiosity, how would you thin the applicant herd? Say you have 10,000 resumes sitting on your desk for a CS job. You can't read them all so you need to set a few automatable/arbitrary rules to get the pile down to 50 or so. What rules do you use? Years of experience? Google HR can't take the time to get to know 10,000 people.

What Google does is incredibly imperfect, but to trim their resume flow down to a smaller number they haven't made a terrible choice. What's a better one?

I'm proceeding by living my life. I took a loss on my house when I sold it, not primarily because of economic concern, but largely because it was time to move elsewhere (having kids etc). I have a manageable debt, mitigation strategies if that debt becomes undesirable, am not against taking on more if it becomes more desirable. My intent is to diversify into markets that may go contrary to the general economy (particularly petroleum).

I don't think anybody knows what to do. The events of the time remind me of yesteryear's disasters -- the pundits don't have anything to say, but the tape is rolling so they're talking.

To the contrary, the best evidence shows that some drugs can cause permanent (or at least very long-lasting) changes in brain chemistry or brain structure.