I forwarded this along to my Japanese wife, who went and researched into the issue. Her response:

If the situation was the case as Japan Probe reported, there would be some more mainstream news sources picking up on it (Asahi, Yomiuri, BBC, etc). I would evaluate their article with a grain of salt.

tmux and byobu are the modern alternatives. I have quite a hefty .screenrc, but the modern iterations are easier to use and customize.

Intel graphics and wifi has a good Linux reputation. Atom was an exception because they used a 3rd party GPU (PowerVR).

Thinkpad with a full Intel stack (CPU, graphics, wifi, SSD) is the preferred route. I prefer the T430 (14") or X230 (12"). The biggest draw back is low resolution (1600x900 or 1366x768). You may want to look into the X1 Carbon as well.

If cost is an issue, I would choose an X220 or T420. I actually prefer the older models as they have 7-row, traditional Thinkpad keyboard vs the newer 6-row chiclet style (Apple) keyboard. You can find them on Lenovo refurbished or off eBay / Craigslist. If the X220 had better resolution, I'd be stockpiling them in my closet. As it is, I'm pretty damn happy with my X220. I even have audio output through my Display Port working in Arch! (Is that awesome or kind of sad?)

If you're looking for a non-Thinkpad solution, the biggest headaches are usually graphics chipset, wifi. AMD / NVIDIA? Check chipset support. With wifi try to stick Intel once again, some Atheros chipsets are nasty and require a flaky ndiswrapper. Paying an extra $10 - 20 to upgrade to an Intel chipset is worth avoiding problems down the road. For touchpad, you usually want to make sure it's Synaptics for multi-touch support. I've had ACPI issues with desktops, but not with laptops thus far (Dell Inspirons / Latitudes, Asus EEE PCs, and Thinkpads).

Google's search engine was originally in Python, but the company has since moved on to use Java on the front end, C++ on the back end, and Python has been relegated to glue code.

On the other hand, Dropbox has been using Python for its entire stack. I believe they made a few performance related contributions to CPython as well.

Guido is a great engineer (besides being a language designer), and still writes a lot of code. He probably would get more satisfaction working at a growing company where Python is a first class citizen rather than at Google.

Python list comprehension method:

Or you could just use Python's filter() which is conceptually the same as PHP's version:

        filtered = filter(lambda x: x.foo == 'bar', unfiltered)

Python has better syntax than PHP, but this is one of the weaker examples.

Is the Nexus 4 comparable? The 16GB version is $350 off contract. A 16GB iPhone 5 is $650 off contract.

They have similar ppi resolution, Nexus 4 has a bigger screen. iPhone has better battery life.

I added more details in another response here. I was born and raised in North Dallas, but I really don't like area. When I was job hunting, I only looked for opportunities in Austin, Seattle, or Silicon Valley.

My family still lives in DFW, and constantly raves about how cheap everything and how low taxes are. Then again, they have never lived anywhere else. To be honest, I felt the same way until I followed my wife to Hawaii and Japan. After living in the heart of other major cities, extended stays in Seattle, and backpacking through Europe, I realized I don't care for the suburban lifestyle anymore.

So, I'm picking up and moving to SF. Maybe it works out, maybe it doesn't. I've regret missing opportunities in the past, and am not going to make the same mistakes again. I'm not going to live my life on cruise control. This post (cache version) resonates with me a lot.

I've been to SF before, as well as lived in Hawaii and Japan so I'm not really fazed by high prices. Before I accepted the job offer I did use a cost of living comparison calculator. There are also other mitigating factors such as my wife's employability skyrockets in west coast cities.

Even then, there are other intangibles that you can't measure with a cost of living calculator. I knew quite a few people who took significant pay cuts (25 - 60% decrease) to move to Hawaii. I am interested in working for small companies and / or startups. While Austin's startup community is fairly strong, there really is no comparison to Silicon Valley. People move to NYC for the similar reasons, despite better cost of living situations elsewhere.

In either case, I can always move back if San Francisco doesn't work out.

Depends on where you live. The cities are diverse, the rural areas are not. I've lived in Texas for ~3 decades, and will be selling my house to move to SF / SoMa soon. I am used to being the only non-white when visiting Lockhart, Mineral Wells, Fredericksburg, College Station, and other smaller towns around the state.

FWIW, the SV offers I received were about double what I got from Austin companies.

My wife's research is in this field (linguistic development in children), mostly doing case studies on non-Japanese children learning in Japan.

These kids are typically from lower income households with busy parents. Rather than gaining full mastery of one language, many only develop partial mastery in two languages. This partial mastery negatively impacts their scores in testing as they have more difficulty expressing certain high level concepts in either language.

Now, obviously does not apply to everyone. I also grew up in a bilingual household and picked up two more languages later on in life. While bilingualism is achievable, it requires more resources and time that may not be available to everyone.

The main argument of my wife's research is that if a child does not have a strong foundation in at least one language, he/she will have difficulty learning more advanced concepts than children who have single language mastery.

For example, if you only have a basic understanding of C and Lisp it may be difficult implementing advanced data structures or algorithms if you don't know about pointers or monads.

For reference, I come from a LAMP + CodeIgniter background. I've done some Java stuff for university and at IBM, but nothing on the web side.

If you're coming from a Java background, I'd suggest a Python + Django (heavier framework) / Flask (lighter framework), or Ruby on Rails on top of Heroku. PHP is cheap for hosting, expensive for developing. What's more important to you?

You can Google the differences between Python / Ruby. They're roughly the same, with Python requiring you to be more explicit while Ruby tends to do a little more "magic". Also, whitespace code blocks is a deal breaker for some people. I like Python more.

Heroku is free for a single web worker and a small shared database. They're built on top of AWS and charge a premium for the convenience of abstracting away dev ops. It's cheaper to use AWS directly or using a VPS, but at a time cost. How much time do you really want to spend doing dev ops rather than working on your core product?

I would worry about the web app first, then expose an API for use with mobile apps when it comes to it.

Web app development is drastically different from enterprise code. It's about constant iteration and deployment, scaling if necessary. Breaking out of your Java comfort zone will also help you grow as a programmer. You're going to have to learn HAML / LESS / JavaScript anyway for the front end.

He writes a decent amount of popular code if you check his GitHub profile.

You're not going back far enough. I'm referring to the Steve Wozniak days at Apple.

I'm also referring to the hardware lockdown in Apple products over the past decade.

Slashdot has fallen quite a bit for such a misinformed, rambling post gets modded insightful.

You're projecting a lot of MS's business practices onto Bill Gates, conveniently ignoring the other players. Someone who lacks imagination does not drop out of Harvard to start a new company that managed to revolutionize desktop computing.

Someone who cares more about money than good products would not start the Buffets-Gate Giving Pledge, and contribute significant portion of their wealth via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

OTOH, Steve Jobs cut all corporate charity programs after taking over in 1997.

While the original Apple products where hacker friendly, that certainly was not the case after Steve Jobs returned.

This is a load of fanboy horseshit I'm not going to even bother debunking.

This is what's great about LBE Privacy Guard (requires root).

When an app requests contact info, location data, etc. LBE gives the usual warning up. The difference is when you say no, LBE feeds the app dummy information rather than directly block thus avoiding the force close issues that plague other implementations.