How to totally screw up my ability to code:

(1) Play music
(2) There is no step 2

I find that code is processed through the same part of my brain that processes music. If you play music, my code will go to crap, since I'm trying to do two things with the same set of neurons.

I totally can not understand how people can produce code while listening to music.

OK, I lied; what I can't understand is how people can produce GOOD code while listening to music.

Apple has been talking about this for a long time.

You really don't want your security people to be contract workers; they have access, at least at the supervisory level, to all sorts of sensitive areas of your building, including Jony Ive's office in the design wing, where they could happily use their phones to photograph prototypes.

Google began talking about doing this about three years ago, when they switched to the same contract security firm Apple used, and the Apple/Google relationship started to become more and more adversarial on top of that (I knew the supervisory staff, and many of the individual contractors at Apple, and recognized them when they came to work for Google.

I think this is being done more to prevent industrial espionage, than anything else.

At both Apple and Google, we moved our trash outside explicitly sensitive secure areas at night, so that the janitorial staff avoided entry. For a lot of it, it was honor system (if you count being on camera but not having a lurking linebacker ready to take you out if you make a wrong move, as "honor system"), where the secure offices without physical electronic security locks has a red sticky dot placed above the room doorknob to prevent people trying to go in.

This also has dick-all to do with any kind of "gentrification" issues that the article claims, since most of the people I know who worked security lived East Bay, and many of them owned their own houses.

Actually you can't just turn your passport in. You have to pay hundreds of dollars to formally renounce. And you can only do so if you're already a foreign citizen.

My first year in Iceland, my US return was so complex that most tax attorneys refused to touch it. One offered to do it for over $1000. I ended up doing it myself. Three years later I'm still dealing with the IRS on it. It was as thick as a book.

My subsequent returns have been simpler but are still really annoying.

Seriously, don't do this to your kids. Just don't.

It's not even just taxes. The US is so weird about all sorts of things that can bite you. When I got engaged in Iceland, Iceland wanted a certificate from the US proving that I'm not already married - it's a standard requirement here, and most countries have such a certificate. But not the US! In the US you can get a certificate proving that you are married from the state you got married in, but not a certificate proving that you're not married. The only way around it is to find the one sherrif's office in the country who considers a signed affadavit to be sufficient to wed (all of the others disagree).

I would never dream of cursing my kids with US citizenship. How mean could you be to them? I can't bloody wait to get my Icelandic citizenship so that I can formally renounce my US citizenship.

NO! You have more freedom having an EU passport than a US passport. I also feel that since the US turned facist that n the long run they would be safer abroad. I would leave if I could.

Why do you want him to get trapped on a bus with Sandra Bullock, and be unable to slow down below 50 MPH?!?!?

A dazed and confused Harrison Ford staggered from the wreckage, grabbed a golf bag, and started walking away with it.

When challeneged by the golf bag's owner, he repeatedly yelled "It belongs in a museum!", until paramedics arrived.

Tourism isn't a big thing in the UAE precisely because of backwards crap like this.

The UAE has a lot of expats and guest workers. The "Guest Workers" are lured from places like India, Bangladesh and the Philippines so mostly they're beneath the notice of the average westerner (I guess we can call this a third world problem) which is a shame as the "Guest Workers" are really mistreated. As for the expats, they should know what they're getting into.

Personally I will refuse to travel to the UAE and try to avoid businesses that originate in the UAE (such as Emirates Airlines) because of the way the UAE operates.

This is a simple is you assume no state is corrupt.

The problem you've got is you assume that US law applies everywhere. It doesn't.

When you enter another country, you become subject to the laws of those countries even if those laws can be applied retroactively. The US respects this convention (well at least openly pretends to) as they want other countries to respect their laws.

So what you do in California could get you in trouble in Russia if you go to Russia.

The only defence and solution to this is not to travel to countries where you may have violated the law in. 99% of these places are backwards shitholes, so it's relatively easy. Put simply, if you slag off the Emirs, you've got to be an idiot to go to the UAE.

Go look at the US ESTA application that all Australians have to fill out before travelling to the US.

There's a metric shitload that will get you rejected. Drugs, being associated with a banned group, moral turpitude (we dont even have anything like that on the books in Oz), having previously overstayed a Visa. If you lie on the application to get entry and the US finds out, they will arrest and deport you. At least they've now stopped asking if I'm a Nazi.

The US is one of the harder countries for Australians to gain entry to. Having a possession charge against you 10 odd years ago because you were caught with a joint means that in order to get authorisation to travel to the US you have to attend an interview at a US embassy to ensure you're not a drug user. Possession is a misdemeanour in Australia, you dont even go to court for it.

OK, no real technical data and some absurd claims here.

First all-digital transceiver? No. There have been others. Especially if you allow them to have a DAC and an ADC and no other components in the analog domain, but even without that, there are lots of IoT-class radios with direct-to-digital detectors and digital outputs directly to the antenna. You might have one in your car remote (mine is two-way).

And they have to use patented algorithms? Everybody else can get along with well-known technology old enough that any applicable patents are long expired.

It would be nicer if there was some information about what they are actually doing. If they really have patented it, there's no reason to hold back.

As I pointed out, the Second London Naval Treaty (1936) was largely violated by all sides.

But it was the previous naval treaties that lead to the development of the aircraft carrier as aircraft carrier tonnage was not counted in the same pool as battleships. The development of American aircraft carriers went over decades, in fact it was the Washington Naval Treaty in 1920 that caused several large battlecruisers to be converted into aircraft carriers after they were laid down (the Lexington class). The first purpose built carrier the US developed was the Ranger class laid down in 1931.

I believe that during the war, the US cancelled battleships that hadn't been laid down in favour of making more carriers.

I would have sailed with confidence in those "treaty battleships" against anything put to sea by the Axis Powers,

Only the most advanced German ships were capable of matching the ships fielded by the allies and as you pointed out, they weren't that numerous.

However the battleship wasn't really a match for the aircraft carrier, this was made even worse by the fact that only British ships used radar controlled AA guns (I think the USN introduced this later in the war). If the US hadn't sunk 4 of the Japanese carriers at midway, they would have been significantly more of a threat than both the Yamato battleships put together.

Not old enough, apparently. If you were a pre-2007 revisionist history "old fart", you'd have two spaces after your period, like the older version of the Chicago Manual of Style demanded, before they pretended that we have always had proportional fonts.

Dual passports is usually a win.

Not only are there some countries that won't like one or the other of your kids citizenships (solution: travel there on the other passport), some countries will give you a really hard time if you try to go there, but have a stamp from another country they don't like.

In addition, if you have a stamp from some countries, other countries won't let you work there. For example, it used to be that if you had an Israeli stamp in your passport, you were barred from Egyptian archeology.

Note that your kids need to do this before they are 18; after 18, they can be required to renounce U.S. citizenship to obtain alternate citizenship, and vice versa; a lot of children of Irish immigrants to the U.S. have found this out the hard way, for example, when they decided after age 18 to claim their Irish heritage, and use that to take advantage of opportunities to study in Europe, rather than going to a U.S. university.

Finally, they can always renounce later, if they become Internet billionaires, like Eduardo Saverin, who the U.S. effectively paid $700M to renounce his citizenship, although there's a 15% "exit tax", so if they go this route, they should do it *before*, rather than *after* the IPO - he'd have been another ~$300M richer if he'd done that and left the country before the actual IPO.