Nah you're right, I'm just an idiot. I was replying to a few things at the same time, and mixed up non-competes with NDAs.

My post made no sense when talking about an NDA. Whoops!

If his NDA is written with the standard terminology used in states that allow them, the wording is probably something along the line of "You agree not to take a position for a competitor in a field that specifically compete with what you were doing here". Even if its not worded that way, its historically how they're enforced in the few tech hubs situated in states that have enforced them.

That is, if you, let say, work for a retail chain, and jump ship to another retail chain, that isn't enough. If you're in the analytics department of retail chain A and go in analytics department of retail chain B, that starts being warmer. If you're the lead database architect of the analytic department specialized in cloud computing of a shoes retail chain A and go to be lead database architect of the analytic department in cloud computing of shoes retail chain B, THAT is when you're in trouble.

And reading the article, its basically what the guy did. Its unbelievably narrow, and he basically hit all of the triggers, precisely. You have to try really hard to do that, but he did.

Those agreements are silly and shouldn't be allowed...but in this particular case, if he went to Google doing the same job, but in a different department, he'd have been fine, even if you take his non-compete agreement verbatim...

The guy really pushed the limit there.

I absolutely agree there simply shouldn't be non-competes, and in some states, that's the case.

That said, if you have a case of someone working for company A, in a very specific division, and maintains a customer/contact list, then goes to the #1 or #2 competitor of that company, in precisely the exact same division of a fairly narrow field, physically across the street, that's definitely pushing it in term of ethics.

I still think you should totally be allowed to do that. But at least it isn't a case of "Tech worker goes to another tech company and gets sued over non-compete". Its a fair bit narrower than that.

You can't sign away your rights.

Depends where you are. I think they're unenforceable in California? I don't know about Washington.

A big chunk of Amazon's AWS division also sits in Cambridge, MA, where they can be enforced for certain high profile positions or something very meaningful in related businesses...so a senior software architect who designed key infrastructure, or a salesman with a list of customer, could get slapped for moving to a related business 2 blocks away to Google.

I just skimmed the article so aside for which journal published it as a hint, I didn't see where the employee was located, Seattle or Cambridge...so it really depends, and even if the former, what exactly is that state's stance on non-competes?

HTML5 local storage. Not useful for large documents, but more than enough for most purposes.

Because modern browsers are the closest thing we've ever gotten to an actual cross-platform ecosystem with an efficient distribution system baked in. While not 100% by any mean, we're pretty close to a point where you write an app for Chrome, and it will just work in other browsers, including IE back a few versions. You have to make sure not to use certain features, but you don't need annoying abstraction libraries like you would in native code to support *nix vs Windows, nevermind mobile operating systems.

And because of that, the ecosystem around the language is blooming, and the code written can then be used in other environments, like server/client (node.js) and data (mongo). The language sucks, but what was made around it is blissful.

More generic interpretation:

People get good at doing stuff they care about.

This.

First, you start with the talent pool, which is very low on minorities and females.

Then you cut off the 95% bottom part, as these companies get more applicants than the average tech company, and can be somewhat more picky. You have even fewer (not because women or minorities can't be good, but certain demographics statistically do better at showing off their strengths in the shark pool).

Now of whats left, these companies have a biais to hire ultra monitivated/no work life balance/eat and dream computer science people. That cuts off anyone whom's life doesn't revolve around the field.

And then the coup de grace, they favor younger applicants, and women and minorities usually have kids younger (the gender age gap stereotype of women usually dating older guys doesn't help here...it means usually the woman will be significantly younger when they have kids). So a young man is more likely to not have kid than a woman of the same age, and thus will have more time to dedicate to the career.

All that together means you end up with white males, asians and indians. Its just the correlation between these groups and the criteria the hyper-competitive companies use to hire that cause this.

The article uses energy and electricity to mean the same thing. So if you have a gas water heater, then it won't be in the same bucket as the box.

I do have a 50 gallon electric water heater, and its definitely a distant third in electricity consumption, behind the HVAC and the gaming computers (only if we put both computers and count them as one thing though)

The laundry machines are a joke, especially if you have a gas dryer. In summer, my stove/oven + dryer together cost me 6 bucks a month to run.

IMHO upgrading javascript to a full blown programming language that can run in, or outside of a browser would be sufficient

Node.js. Node-Webkit if you need client UI.

Boom. Done.

You can turn off the ability to locate (or at least get a general idea of the location) your cell via triangulation? WOW!

yes, exactly :) I hadn't been able to find it in a while. Thank you!

The evidence shouldn't be too hard to come by. For a while Youtube offered a page showing statistics for your ISP's streaming rate vs other ISPs in the same general area.

I was on FiOS at the time, and the streaming speed was pitiful (could barely stream 360p during peak hours on youtube), while the average in the area was significantly higher. Switched ISPs (yeah, I had a choice at the time), and sure enough, it was all better.

Its a knee jerk overreaction to people being so freagin retarded in this country. If you don't have laws, enforced laws, with teeth, people do whatever to the full extent of what is allowed, with no common sense whatsoever.

Now, everywhere in the world has that issue, but just not to the full extent the US has it (as far as the "first world" goes). I've lived in multiple countries for a number of years, and now I'm in the US, and its just shocking. People smoking while leaning on a no-smoking sign. People screaming on top of their lungs in the street at 3 in the morning. People letting their dog bark for hours while cheering it on. Lines while waiting at a busy bus stop? Hell no! If there's no risk of jail time, not only someone will do it, but a LOT of people will do it.

And people pointing laser pointers at anything and everything.

Its such a ridiculous society that doesn't give a flying duck about their neighbor. EVER. So you end up in a world where everything has to be fucking spelled out with someone in uniform wacking them behind the head all the time like little babies, or they won't apply the slightest bit of common sense.