The first red flag was up there in the first paragraph:

> blessed" with "what I'm told is a better-than-average ability to spot repeating patterns,"

Why is this even relevant.. somebody who thinks they are better than everybody else having nothing more fulfilling to do in their life fulltime except reporting problems in the work of others... Sounds like a really pleasant person..

That sounds just like the stock market.. that's why the stock market has regulations in place that when everyone sells, trading will be paused. Sounds familiar? E.g. NYSE "A market-wide trading halt can be triggered if the S&P 500 Index declines in price as compared to the prior dayâ(TM)s closing price of that index."

s/feature/user/

I have no idea what the fuzz is about.. i have been an active Google Hangouts feature since they started.. and still had support for xmpp..
When time came to switch to chat i simply switched.. it is literally zero change.. and compatible with all existing contacts.. and you still have your whole chat history.. who cares how it is called ðYââ(TM)ï and whether you tap the Chat icon or Hangouts icon..

How long until the new and shiny wears off? Been waiting for 10 years...

that's weird, who uses their mouse to open a new tab, or reload? do i want to know what your other hand is doing that it can't press cmd+r/w/t/... (okay, never thought about people using the mouse with their left hand.. is there an option to mirror keyboard shortcuts?)

Could you imagine the amount of getting-rich economy books and youtube video this guy would have made, if his casino gamble worked out.

... and many other apps. No idea why they really need those permissions just so users don't need to copy over a verification number. This is ridiculous... i wonder if they did research what more users would accept.. having their app require the permission to read *all* SMS .. or just requiring the user to occasionally type a one time password from the SMS app into the twitter/facebook/whatever app.

this is really something android has to solve.. something like optional permissions for the lazy users who really want to have that single features which requires all your personal data.. it's not just as a user, but it's also annoying as a developer - i could obviously also just make the user download 3 different apps for each functionality, and have fine grained permissions this way, but this can't be the best solution..

i guess the main features was an open, distributed protocol (like xmpp) where everyone could set up a server.. try that with a google docs..
in addition i think it allowed adding much more "rich" widgets with their own set of features.. so i guess you could get wave as a combination of google drive (real time editing) and google hangouts (various real time widgets) .. except that part that it was supposed to have an openly documented protocol..

It's a bit disturbing that you got from a story about a DDoS attack to pregnancy.. A DDoS attack can be a little successful.. Him joining might have made it a bit worse, but he can't be made responsible for the full amount of damages?

i imagine most even coded it themselves.. billmonk, splitwise, or even my own implementation at https://tabsplit.net/ to name a few ;-) maybe it's just me, but nowadays there are dozens of services out there, even mobile apps of some bank institutes start adding this functionality to remember social debts & split bills. it got quite crowded after billmonk has been down every few minutes and ultimately got sold..

wouldn't it be a more of a free market, if companies could hire world wide, without control of the government (ie. without the restriction to hire US employees)?
I think arguing with "free market" for preventing immigration is really a bit strange.. so in a free market IT wages would significantly drop, because there is no shortage of good educated IT personal willing to immigrate .. (until the wages aren't high enough any more to be motivation enough obviously..)

well, sometimes it could make sense, e.g. if news stories contain the publish date in the local time of the site and doesn't localize it, it would be reasonable to also display the local "current" time somewhere, so visitors know how old a story actually is.. nowadays all global sites localize times for the user, but i could see why a british news outlet might simply display UK timestamps all over the website no matter where the visitor is located..

there are many good reasons to start your own company.. but wanting to pay more to your coworkers is not one of them.. how should that work.. you offer the same service as the established company.. just without any proven business relations, any success stories, but with much higher prices.. doesn't sound like a good business plan to me..

umm.. i'm not sure, but i think they also had a pretty popular search engine..