ICU is medical reason. A heterosexual can't visit with children there half the time, and if you fail to fill out the correct HIPPA form, the hospital can't even acknowledge that you exist at all.

The hipsters should arm themselves. Michigan's gun laws aren't too restrictive, and with the money saved on housing they should be able to afford to arm and train themselves well. Your average hoodlum barely knows how to operate his gun, which is often a piece of junk, so the bar isn't too high.

I'm sure that's true if you're counting traditional engineering fields, meaning not including software engineers. I'm not sure it would still be true if you included software. Of course many would argue that software engineering isn't yet mature enough to be a real engineering discipline, but it definitely is a big part of "tech", which is the subject of discussion.

And, of course, they completely miss the irony in their own statements.

Shouldn't be too hard... in the sense that solving the Halting Problem shouldn't be too difficult. I conjecture that with an appropriate set of assumptions it's possible to use Rice's Theorem to prove that security analysis is equivalent to the Halting Problem.

Of course, static analysis can catch some vulnerabilities, and can highlight potential vulnerabilities. That's what Coverity does. But I don't think any mechanical process can defeat a creative attacker.

This analysis is based on an erroneous assumption which is derived from an inductive fallacy. Specifically, the author assumes that because one researcher who found one bug believes he could have found a second for roughly the same level of effort means that the researcher believes this process could be repeated indefinitely. I'm certain that if Kohno were asked he would deny the validity of this assumption. I'm sure he would say that his team could find a handful of similar bugs for similar level of effort, but once the pool of low-hanging fruit bugs was exhausted, the cost and difficulty would rise.

The desk I have is motorized. Push a button, takes about five seconds. Another option is to get a desk that is always positioned at standing level and a tall chair. That seems cheaper and more convenient but there are some downsides. One is that you have far fewer options in chairs than if you're getting normal-height chairs. Another is that changing the level of the desk is difficult, which is particularly problematic if the seating gets rearranged regularly.

Just remember to deduct that $100 next year (for those that don't know, tax prep fees are deductible).

Not always. Tax-prep fees go in a part of Schedule A for which there's a minimum you have to meet (2% of adjusted gross income) before you can deduct anything. The $500+ my wife and I forked over to H&R Block last year? Not deductible. :-P

OTOH, I was able to do my own filing this year by looking at what forms had been generated last year and making changes where appropriate. I grabbed the fillable forms from the IRS website, filled them in with Okular, printed them out, stapled our W-2s to them, and stuffed them into an envelope. Since we still owed money (less than $100 this year, vs. $3000+ last year...w00t!), I don't care how long it takes for the mail to get through and for the IRS to do its processing.

And I'd recommend a sit-stand desk to anyone at all. Even if you don't stand all the time (I don't), being able to spend part of your day standing will make you feel better without discomfort, in fact being able to switch back and forth is more comfortable than sitting.

Obviously not, but you may not realize how open the company is internally. Larry Page stands up in front of the entire company every week, for example, and takes -- and answers -- live questions. There are no negative consequences for asking hard questions, and hard questions do get asked. Sometimes the executives duck or dance around them, but not very often, and questions that aren't really answered continue getting asked until they do get answered.

In addition to that, other than things like acquisitions there are very few "top-level executive decisions" at Google. Most decisionmaking is driven from the bottom up.

You're probably still not impressed. Whatever. I'm just giving you my perspective and opinion. I would think that an intelligent insider's viewpoint would be of use to you; you're certainly free to dismiss it, whether or not that makes any sense. Time will tell, and I'm quite confident that the future will bear out my statements.

Not according to YouTube employees who made the transition.

This is why it's not a "standing desk" but a "sit-stand desk". The idea is that you alternate between sitting and standing, changing position every hour or two.

Then it's not the same as mine. I've also followed the company from the beginning... and I have the benefit of the insider view.

YouTube was a very obvious acquisition. What YouTube needed to survive and grow was low-cost scalability and a way to monetize the views it was getting. What Google had was massive data centers and network connectivity, plus a proven revenue model. YouTube also needed a better search engine, and Google was interested in finding ways to index and search non-textual content. It was an ideal match, technologically.

The basis for your claim is?

The basis for my claim is three years of seeing how the company operates and what decisions it makes, and how, from the inside.

You can if the power you are given is entirely superficial. Like Obamacare.

You mean 1997.