I am facing the dilemma of whether to go (back) to the industry, where I was working before starting my PhD, or continue in academia as a researcher. On one had you have the job security and better salary offered in industry. On the other hand you have the thrill of scientific work and fewer (albeit not 0) corporate psychopaths.

I decided on Friday that I'll go for academia. My health is failing, I think I have 10 to 15 years if I'm lucky, and life is too precious to waste it on doing something I don't like all that much, just because of money.

Your reply oozes with negativity.

It's pronounced yol-lah. "Jolla" means dinghy in Finnish.

Different strokes for different folks: as a non-american (and non-Brit) myself, I absolutely loved Catcher in the Rye when I first read it (which was in Croatian), and became instant fan of J. D. Salinger. After I graduated, I moved to a Nordic country and with more disposable income, bought all his published works in English - and devoured them!

*Different strokes for different folks, dude.*

The Arduino community is huge and extremely productive/creative.

Google? You mean the Open Handset Alliance - it's a consortium that has oversight on Android. Oh and that grip is so tight that everyone can do whatever they want with it. Any company or individual can modify and customize Android for their needs and don't have to pay Google or OHA a dime. In fact, companies are going quite wild with Android, which now appears on all sorts of devices and customizations.

I don't know or understand all the negativity regarding doing a postdoc or a PhD - I personally am having a blast doing my PhD! I do research in materials science, and while the money is not spectacular, I enjoy myself immensely. And you know, at the end of the day that's really what matters. Maybe the ones who complain are doing postdocs in economics, political or social sciences, humanities... or some other subject that to me does indeed sound boring... I don't know. I can only say that for me it has been rewarding and I would be more than happy to recommend it to anyone with a passion for what they study. I must mention that I have no study debt - in Finland higher education is free for all, so we don't worry about paying back tuition fees and such. Life is good :)

Lame.

Holy shit - that is terrible customer support! I don't usually comment on tech support anecdotes, but this one is so high up on the scale, I couldn't resist.

Nonsense. How can one, with little income, have little to lose? If the fine is proportionate to his or her income, then he/she has just as much to lose - if not more - than the person with larger income. More, because to one who makes near to minimum wage, that little income is spent on essentials - food, clothes, transportation. A person with, say, two orders of magnitude larger net income, will have much more disposable money (after the essential needs have been covered).

This is not entirely true, and it shouldn't be true, either: at least here in Finland, fines for traffic violations are proportional to the offender's income. And I believe this is a very good system, because otherwise, those with lots of money would flaunt the rules, since for them the fines are a pittance. See, for instance, Steve Jobs, parking in the disabled's spot and more than happy to pay the fines.

There is a profound misconception, shared even by intelligent and otherwise well-informed people, and it is that the ultra-rich and powerful people are, somehow, bound by nationality like the rest of us. That's not the case: the powerful US politicians have no allegiance to the US any more than they have to any other country, and would switch places with a prince in Bahrain in the blink of an eye, if they only spoke Arabic. And the bribes they take aren't from US companies only - far from it! International interests are regularly the lobbyists/bribers. Indeed the US armed forces do not protect the interest of the American people as much as they protect the interests of wealthy and powerful people of ANY nationality that has something to win from a war or conflict. All those wars to suppress the "red devil", they clearly weren't in the interest of the American people - they were in the interest of the entrenched international financial elite - as well as anyone who makes profit from arms sales.

The FreeBSD man pages are generally considered best-of-breed software documentation. How could you omit them? Way, way better than the Linux man pages.

It looks like she might have overlooked the glaringly obvious fact that the entire reason why Google X and her job position exist is because of "mind numbing" technologies that serve as ad serving platforms that get in revenue for Google. Ask her to get driverless cars, balloons and a headpiece to start generating income!

She didn't say anything that would indicated that she overlooked what you mention. She stated her opinion about how cool the new technologies her group is working on, are compared to the incremental progress in tablet, mobile phone and apps development. Oh, you though she has a contractual obligation to be politically correct towards her employer? That may or may not be the case (I guess no), but it has nothing to do with whether she overlooked something.

You know, not always do people feel like kissing someone else's ass, when expressing an opinion. Sometimes people are, you know, genuine.

The events surrounding the death of Aaron Swartz have irreversibly tainted MIT in my eyes. Every time I see some colleagues' affiliation to include MIT, I can't help but take a dim view of them.