The very well written biography of Marissa Mayer that recently appeared in Business Insider was very illuminating about the current ongoings at Yahoo. Marissa appears to be a very data driven person, always looking for "proof" of display/design feature ideas and concepts, even for whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide.
http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-biography-2013-8

Additionally, she had made a last minute change to the color scheme of the recently revamped Yahoo Mail which necessitated significant man hours at the 11th hour to implement and was detrimental to team morale and cohesion that had been painstakingly developed since her arrival.

I'm sure moving forward there will be more challenges like this that Yahoo will face. It will be interesting to assess whether they are due to the vestiges of incompetency at Yahoo as she believes, or due to her failings as a leader, because let's face it, according to the profile, this type of a UI design change would have had her hands all over it and would've needed final sign-off by her.

UI Design changes are by their very inherent nature controversial, people like things the way they're used to them. Marissa's approach was already problematic at Google, it had problems scaling as the company grew in size, but at least there were people there to manage and mitigate her. There's no-one at Yahoo like that. She is a very authoritative leader.

Disclaimer: I don't know her personally nor have I ever met her or met anyone who has met her. My impressions are all based on profiles of her like the one linked above (which I am not affiliated with but simply found interesting)

You know what's so scary about stuff like this? It's that it makes people afraid of what they will post and discuss. One absurd end of the spectrum is what I've heard Soviet Russia was sometimes like, people always afraid of what they said to whom.

I'm a naturalized US citizen. Due to my country of origin, I'm probably already on some watch list somewhere, despite the fact that I've never done anything remotely dangerous.
Now, I figure that give mes some points on some kind of a danger/threat scale.

This issue is something I care deeply about. Over the last few days, I've been hesitant about drawing attention to it and responding to it online/via electronic communications. I've posted on Slashdot about it, sent emails and texts to friends and relatives, posted about it on my Facebook status, submitted e-mailed letters to my congressional representatives through the EFF website, donated to the EFF and ACLU, read newspaper stories, articles, websites and commentaries, etc.

At each step, I've been afraid. What if being linked to this type of activity gives me more points on some kind of a danger scale? What if I cross a threshold? What if the government starts making my life difficult in subtle ways? Trouble flying? I am planning on marrying someone from my country of origin, what if my application to sponsor them for a greencard is denied? What if, what if?

That's the real trouble, this type of activity raises concerns and issues in people's daily lives. It creates a culture of fear. At the end of the day, I became a US citizen because I believe in the opportunity this country provides, and in the legal basis it was founded on, and the human rights it supposedly supports. I want to do whatever I can to support my country, and exercise my rights as a citizen to correct what I perceive are wrongs.

I'm really hoping that this advocacy doesn't hurt me in the future somehow. That's the real harm when government spies and tracks with a carte blanche, people who are doing nothing wrong but have much to lose are afraid.

One of the best comments was from John Oliver on the Daily Show. In response to Obama's defense that there is the FISA court overseeing this and that member's of congress are briefed, he said great, so it's not just one branch of government acting improperly, all 3 are! That's supposed to be better (me paraphrasing). It's not that these programs aren't illegal, it's the very fact that they aren't that's a problem! (Or aren't considered illegal by the government, many would argue they are illegal in sight of the Constitution).

I'm usually a big government, bleeding heart liberal, but not in the areas of governmental police powers (monitoring citizens, etc). Basically, if the government is helping it's citizens, I support that (healthcare, etc) but if it's looking at it's citizens to protect itself, I don't like that at all.

Here are 2 quotes that were on /. yesterday:
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government."
-Patrick Henry

"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."
Patrick Henry

You know that all you have to do is to click the lower left hand corner of the screen to bring up the desktop, right? It took you 20 minutes to figure that out?

Sure if that's all that was different. I wanted to see how different options were controlled (control panel issues), had weird things happen when moving around the mouse (hot corners etc) and other nuisances. Even after I got to the desktop, the easy list of everything in a start menu was missing.

Again, could've learned it, could've figured it out, there are workarounds, it's not rocket science. BUT WHY? Individually each thing is minor, but the cumulative effect is damned annoying. Why would a company unnecessarily aggravate so many of their users? If you wanted a single OS for tablets and other PCs, give each the interface best suited to it.

In the last 6 months I've bought 2 computers, a desktop and a laptop. And both times I went well out of my way to avoid Win8.

Now I consider myself at least slightly more computer savvy than the average individual, and when I went to Best Buy to play around with Windows 8 (since I'd heard it was different) the 20 minute trial I gave it was VERY FRUSTRATING. I managed to figure things out a bit, and I had no doubt with some time and internet searching I could figure the rest out, but I had no desire to!!

I didn't want to spend time figuring it out! It just pissed me off. I needed a desktop very urgently, and was planning on buying a new computer and buying a copy of Win7 online and just wiping off Win8.

(Side Note: Basic economic supply and demand, Pro Edition of Win8 cost ~$60, Home Edition of Win7 online cost ~$150. Hmmmmmm)

I got lucky because the guy working at Best Buy said they had a desktop at 25% off only because it had Win7. Looked at the tech specs, was good, just what I wanted and left happy, getting a discount to get what I wanted.

A few months later I needed a laptop (was travelling a lot). I deliberately went to the Lenovo and Dell business line sections to search since the machines for business users still have Win7 (ended up getting a ThinkPad).

Now, I paid the MS Win tax regardless both times. I wanted a Windows machine. But Win 8 so frustrated me that I went out of my way to avoid it, when it would've been simpler to just buy a machine with it. I was ready to spend more online to buy Win7 and overwrite the default installation.

I can't be the only one that's done this recently.

There is a key important point missing in this argument (didn't read TFA, might be there). And that is that most of these foreign students in STEM fields are in US grad schools, not undergrad; and the undergrads pay tuition (often at full price with no aid) anyway.

For the grad students, you could say well we won't help others become competitive by denying them admission, but who will do all the research at US universities that actually makes them so good? US universities are world renown due to the publications, IP they generate, etc. Guess what, the vast majority of the grad students who do all the work are foreign. Take them out, and very soon the US universities won't be so good.

And it's not as if the foreign students are displacing Americans. Believe you me, most grad departments and Professors would prefer Americans, but Americans in general don't want to go to Grad school for STEM fields.

That was one of the coolest things I have ever seen! Thanks for sharing that Slashdot!

Some interesting observations/thoughts I had watching that (most of them centered around things I never thought about but are obvious once you think it through):
1) Never thought about it, but of course without any gravity, hair does not fall straight down, so her hair is flying in all directions giving a slightly âoecrazedâ look.
2) Very cool to see how they sleep, and the cozy little cubbies they have
3) Again never thought about it, but all the exercise equipment like bikes are not rigidly but rather loosely attached so the walls of the station, otherwise the force they exert during exercise will actually be exerted on the station itself, which would not be good, so they exert force, and the machines just kind of bounce around a bit. I wonder how that affects the quality of the exercise as you have to constantly adjust to a moving platform.
4) It was fascinating to see some of the mundane things like the bathroom shown. One could argue it is not the most PR/polished thing to show, but it was very cool to see how they have thought through everything. Again, something else that did not occur to me but is obvious in hindsight is that the waste disposal tubes have a little bit of suction in them so that the waste matter is pulled away from the person and the station.
5) The port for solid, #2 waste is really small, and she made a good point about aiming well. I shudder to think about occasions when somebody has more of a liquid #2 waste due to indigestion or other problems.
6) They have clips everywhere to clip things on to so they do not fly away. All the spare parts were tied down with rope. They also have strips of cloth or something to clamp down their feet so they do not fly around everywhere
7) She can identify the different cloud and soil types and can figure out what part of the world they are over by just those!

She is a funny, very personable and good guide. Definitely worth watching!

Some other questions I had after watching that they did no get into are how they handle dust, and other matter shed by the human body, hair, skin, etc. There is little to no bacteria there to decompose it and it will get lodged into places.

Also, what about laundry? Water tends to float around, so what about sweat, while working hard or exercising?

1) Can the older folks actually remember all their passwords? Or are they writing them down?

2) On a related note, if they only have one or two passwords to remember (email and maybe something else) that's easier than younger more tech-savvy individuals who may be trying to remember MANY MANY passwords (email 1, email 2, bank account 1, bank account 2, social media website 1, 2, 3, online forum 1, 2, brokerage 1, 2, iTunes Store, Amazon, Ebay, some app, electricity bill, wireless plan, phone plan, credit card 1, 2 ,3, etc, etc, etc).

I am by no means young, I'm 31, but am part of a more tech savvy generation. I have so many passwords to remember, even after trying to keep them the same, that now I have a whole Gmail label called login info where I store my passwords for everything. Not the actual password but mnemonics that are relevant to me like :"firsthousenum+first name first crush, no space or caps" which would be the street address (house number ) of my first house and the first name of the first girl I had a crush on, with no spaces or Capital letters. That is just an illustrative example, they're actually more obscure.

And this is after I made a concentrated effort to have categories of passwords, like all financial ones (bank, credit card, brokerage, etc) would be the same, but different systems have different requirements (letters, capitals, numbers, special characters, length) that it didn't work out, plus some force you to change passwords periodically, it's a mess.

On a different but kind of password related note, I wish that there would be a concept of a temporary password to use for accounts. For instance, I recently travelled abroad for a week, and was worried about key loggers or some other stuff getting my gmail password when I log on in hotels, cafes, other people's houses. What I would've loved is to set up a temporary Gmail password that was only valid for 1 week (in addition to my normal one) and use that while traveling. The temporary password would have limited access, I could send and read emails, but not change any account settings (like passwords, etc.) That would've been fantastic.

Instead, I changed my Gmail password to another one, but now that I'm back, Gmail won't let me change my password back to the original one (as previous passwords can't be reused). This is something new as I'd done this before while traveling.