I think he means this.

This one doesn't seem so bad, but the way Mozilla has handled SSLv3 deprecation has been a disaster.

I'm not going to go buy a new $900 PDU because the one I have only supports SSLv3 and not TLS1.2. Maybe I should switch it back to plain HTTP "for security"? Sheesh. Obviously a whitelist per-site/device would have been a smart approach, but that's not easy.

Secure isn't easy and security isn't a setting, it's a process and an ecosystem. Pisser when they weaken security overall just to avoid the off chance that a stupid person will erroneously blame Mozilla.

Liquid Fluoride Thorium

Unpopular even pre-9/11.

You're mixing income tax with consumption tax. If you want to tax income, tax income. But if we're taxing consumption, then those who consume more pay more than those who consume less, and those who consume least because they have the least to spend pay the least in taxes because of the baseline exemption. The upper middle class guy who's busting his butt to pay off his student loans, and who saves as much as he can, is not going to pay a disproportionate amount in taxes.

The only reason the particular middle-class guy in your example isn't paying a disproportionate amount in taxes is because he took out a bunch of loans before he became middle class, and thus shifted his spending backward in time to qualify for the exemption.

Or, another way of looking at it would be to say that the guy with student loans isn't really middle-class yet, because $0 income for 4 years plus $75K income for one year averages out to be "equivalent" (in some sense) to a guy making $15K each year. And if the guy had $60K in loans to pay back, and they had to be paid back in one year, then it pretty much would be equivalent.

But I digress: even in the case of somebody with student loans, there are only two possibilities: either the loan payments are a large fraction of income such that the person is "poor" after paying them as in the example above, or the loan payments are a small fraction of income such that the person is still "middle class" after paying them and is inflating his lifestyle and thus paying a disproportionately tax rate anyway.

If he pays off his student loans and still chooses to live modestly, he continues to pay a low tax rate. If he instead decides to start living large, then he'll start paying more in taxes. Either way, he essentially chooses his tax bracket, because he chooses every day what to buy, and how much to spend on it.

Here's the problem: on average, nobody does that! Did you see the graph I linked? The average savings rate, across the entire bottom 90% of the population, is about 2.5%. To say "just save more" is a non-solution because it ignores human nature.

Now, you're right that some people -- weird people -- would save a large fraction of their income and thus make out like bandits. As one of those weird people myself (I'm a big fan of mrmoneymustache.com and plan to be wealthy enough to retire at age 45 or so), I completely agree that it's entirely possible to do. However, I also realize that, when considering society as a whole, people like me are a negligibly tiny fraction. What's advantageous for me and what works for society are very, very different things.

This tax is progressive in that people who choose to live modestly or who cannot afford to live extravagantly pay very little in taxes. Those who are able and choose to live extravagantly pay much more in taxes.

You're ignoring the third category, which is "people who can afford to live comfortably" (but not extravagantly). (And by "afford" I mean "live paycheck to paycheck, saving very little" -- which is a poor definition of "afford," but nevertheless the one most people use.) That category describes pretty much the entire middle class (again, except weird people). Unless you make the exemption cutoff so high that only true "luxury" goods are taxed, they are screwed by your plan.

Finally, although up to this point we've been avoiding discussing why it's important for taxes to be progressive in the first place, I'd like to reiterate that is is indeed important. Money is power, and without a way to siphon off and redistribute excessive wealth, runaway compound interest allows the most wealthy people to become so obscenely powerful that it destroys the political system (and eventually society itself). It happened before the French Revolution, it happened before the Soviet Revolution, and it's happening in the US right now. Insufficiently progressive taxes are dangerous.

This. We work in IT, not in HR.

If your company is finding itself asking this question, and hasn't got a policy in place ... it's your HR and your management who have dropped the ball.

After a user rates Firefox, an "engagement" page may open in the background, with links to social media pages and a donation page

So basically Firefox is going to nag and annoy their users.

Good luck with that.

I understand what you're saying, and generally I agree.

But as often as not it is HR who is the ones enforcing the policy of "get him out the door now".

But many many places treat departing employees as liabilities to be removed as quickly as possible.

It can most certainly be the case that HR is the ones who are treating you like a pariah, and acting like dicks. So, good luck with changing that.

Well, it may be poorly worded, but I have seen several places which have the blanket policy of not keeping people around for their last two weeks.

They're not quite so confrontational about it, at least not directly ... but the assumption is "you've resigned, we no longer care or trust you".

Some employers treat giving your notice as your last day, even if that means they pay you for that time and don't see you.

You know, when a multi-billion dollar company who spends more on R&D than pretty much everyone else hasn't the slightest idea of what they want to build a product for, and no clear picture for it ... that's pathetic

If one of the largest corporations is stumbling around like drunken monkeys and finding success through sheer accident, the the CEO is a grossly overpaid idiot who could be replaces with a bunch of drunken monkeys.

And yet I'm sure Ballmer or whoever it was got paid massive amounts of money to have no better track record than a drunken monkey.

Sorry, I'm not asking for prescience, I'm asking for some measure of competence.

This aint it.

And, as usual, without having the slightest idea of what to do with the technology other than try to get market share.

So I'm forced to conclude most of the successes Microsoft has had in the last decade or more have largely been accidental instead of strategic, and that Microsoft just stumbles around in the dark until something works.

And then they spend years trying to understand why it worked in the first place and how to replicate it.

It's official, Microsoft is the Inspector Clouseau of the tech world.

That's pretty sad.

Well, having seen the videos of dolphins herding fish into a swirling snack-bar using their sonar, and have seen the explanation of them changing their sonar output.

They have a huge chunk of their brain dedicated to doing this stuff, and I thought they could even stun fish with it.

I'm not saying I could do it, but I got the impression this is stuff we've already know they can do.

Hasn't this been known for some time?

I've seen footage of hunting dolphins and whales herding fish into "sonar corrals" and then eating them, and I though I'd heard that the dolphins et al can focus their sonar to fight off things like sharks.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought it had been established for a very long time that these things have really fine control over their sonar and can do all sorts of stuff with them.

Is this actually something new? Or am I just reading this wrong?

Surely if I know dolphins et al can focus their sonar it's common knowledge.

Well,, Microsoft is talking about open sourcing aspects of .NET.

Apparently they can't decide what that actually means.

There's definitely something there.

It means, as usual, Microsoft is trying to get people to use their technology while holding a threat over them. If they're not open sourcing in any meaningful sense of the word, they should be honest about it.

This. The class I'm taking right now has videos that consist entirely (except for the intro) of the professor writing on the screen with a Wacom tablet. It's exactly like watching a lecture, except the whiteboard is a computer. By the way, I've previously taken an in-person class taught by the same guy [when I was an undergrad], so when I say it's the same I know what I'm talking about.