Unfortunately most of the projects I've been on are of the "We want to replace old system A and make a new system B that also has features X, Y, Z" variety. What they want from the new system is usually okay, it's somewhat documented already, you've identified some stakeholders, you can show them prototypes, you can ask for clarifications and their testing validates the feature. Developing new code for genuinely new features is actually quite easy and fun.

The old system on the other hand is more like software archaeology, nobody really seems to have the specs - or maybe a spec 1.0 from 10 years ago that's got nothing to do with reality - and if you're replacing it it's probably because it's crap, uncommented code in an arcane language with poor frameworks and third party components. So you dig and keep digging and try to implement something similar without knowing what's a feature and what's a bug, who'll come yelling if you break something or features nobody told you about and you weren't aware anyone was using disappear.

I had a bit of an epiphany today at work when i finally found out how structure a major piece of the redo I'm working on and I've so far spent ~2 months digging through that code. From a similar job I was doing in another area I thought maybe 2-3 months total, now I'm guessing it'll be 6-12 because of all the rework I have to make and every apparently simple thing has exceptions and special cases. It's wasn't my bad estimation, it's that the conditions are entirely different. Like comparing travel speed for a walk in the park to chopping your way through a dense jungle.

Good managers get my best guess.
Bad managers get my worst case.
Horrible managers get my resignation.

Tag: WORKS4ME

Except for cost. That's what powered the Android drive, it wasn't the technical superiority. There's probably more people gaming on phones and tablets than any other platform when you count Angry Birds, Candy Crush and such. Chromebooks running on Linux also seem to sell reasonably well for the same reason. If Valve can get a a range of steamboxes out there to sell to everything from a $99 box to sell freemium + $1-5 games to a $999 gaming rig to people who don't really care about having a desktop anymore with their tablet/convertible covering those needs there's probably a market for gaming boxes.

It does of course assume that you commit enough to get it off the ground. Nobody wanted to code for Android either before it got popular. And if Valve is backing off now that the Microsoft Store doesn't seem that big a threat after all, it might take many years. But Linux is well propped up by servers, supercomputers, embedded, cell phones, tables, chromebooks... it's not going away. Particularly not in the direction we're going with more cloud, less local it's certainly not going to get worse.

The driving force behind Mesa is Intel, they're certainly not going away. Pretty soon they'll hit the big OpenGL 4.0 and it seems almost all the prerequisities for 4.1 and 4.2 are done once they get over that hurdle. And they certainly want to keep their OpenGL ES current if they want to play in the x86 smartphone/tablet market. AMD also apparently like their open source driver for embedded/custom projects, less legal hurdles for customers who want full control. So maybe they don't win, but I don't see how they could lose much terrain either.

Built one almost like it, but with a 35W Core i7 4765T. It's not exactly a cheap machine though, for a HTPC it's way overkill. You can get a lot cheaper to play 1080p BluRays and probably won't be enough when 4K BluRay arrives, 3840x2160x60fps 10-bit HEVC decoding will need new, dedicated chips.

Guilty as charged, eventually I had to move off 2k for XP. Skipped Vista (went on a Linux hiatus), got 7, skipping 8.x but Win10 looks like the next usable version. Until either WINE is just as good as the real thing or most games are cross-platform I'll probably be stuck with a box with a semi-recent version of Windows. Currently the WINE rating of the game I play the most is garbage.

At that age it's usually not a problem, you're far more likely to do something reckless and stupid that will have consequences for the rest of your life. I'd at the very least temper it with a bit of "Enjoy today, plan for tomorrow". Sure, life might throw you a curve ball but if act like every day is your last the odds are pretty good that you're wrong and have to live with yesterday.

And the "anti-placebo" effect if you know doctors and nurses are liars and frauds so you think the actual treatment which has a pretty good track record is just more astrology/homeopathy/placebo bullshit? I mean you have to have a rather big medical community that knows this is as good as sugar pills. And you have to quite often tell that truth to limit the resources taken away from actual medical treatment to spend on placebo. Yes, the truth can be tough to deal with. No, having our real doctors pushing snake oil and superstition won't help. Now if we were talking about better psychological care to people suffering from severe physical conditions I'd be all for that, but not this.

Liquor licenses apply just to the sale of alcohol, if I'm at a private party and mix a round of drinks I don't need to follow any regulations except those that generally apply like serving alcohol to minors. And if a minor orders it from the robot, I shouldn't be in any more trouble than if they go to my fridge and grab one. I guess they could require "alcohol lockers" the way they do "gun lockers" around here, but we're not there yet.

Actually when I studied in Germany in the school cafeteria they had beer in the soda vending machine. Good times.

And the "expert" system most choose is simply having an account - everyting from e-mail accounts to forum accounts to social media accounts. The users keep their password safe - that's securing the endpoints - and then you trust the system to deliver the email to the recipient and not anybody else. Because if you're handing over the keys to a third party, you might as well hand over the communication too.

Crypto is easy. Ciphers are easy. Here's a key you can use it to sign and verify messages, open and seal envelopes.

Using crypto is hard. People lose keys, forget passwords, don't transmit keys in a secure way, don't store keys in a secure way, revoking keys, checking for revocation, using third party services like webmail and so on. Strong crypto is like losing your house key and being told that sucks, but since it's an impenetrable bunker with an unpickable lock there's nothing you can do but start from scratch.

People want recovery options. If my house burns down to the ground and I escape with no passport, no driver's license, no identification of any kind the government will get me a new one. Work will find a way to get me a new access badge and key fob. That's why all those ways to recover your account exist, they're not necessary per se and you don't have to answer the security questions seriously. But when you have fucked up big and the answer is just gibberish you're pretty screwed. That's why people answer those with actual facts.

It would probably look something like this with the tagline "Encryption? I'll break right through that defence."

The rest of the world don't want products with official US backdoors though. So you'll have a very hard time selling anything US made abroad and you'd have to ban foreign imports that don't comply with your backdoor policy. Probably also all second hand private imports like eBay. And open source. If the NSA didn't cost the US enough money already, it will after that. I remember a time when you had to fight to get non-crippled crypto out of the US, only 40 bits for us schmucks. I guess now you'll have to fight to get non-crippled crypto back in...

PewDiePie is #1 in subscribers on YouTube with 35 million and played a major role as himself in two episodes on South Park, that you've never heard of him probably means your interests don't overlap much. Just like I'm sure there's some big Bollywood celebrities that I have no idea who is, no idea who the other guy is though or if he's got any claim to fame outside his game but PewDiePie certainly qualifies, he's not a superstar but I know many celebrities with less claim to fame.

Doubtful, the reason they've become politically very difficult is not their use during war it's that they last well beyond the war. That there's collateral damage might not be popular, but between enemies using civilians as human shields, bad intel, accidents, misunderstandings and simply being caught in the line of fire it happens but nobody quits, just like you don't end the justice system after putting an innocent man in jail. It's a bit harder to excuse why a 5yo playing out in a field got blown to bits 10 years after the war ended. As long as the killer robots stand down when the war is over, I don't think they'll suffer the same backlash.