Whatever it is, we have been dealing with this and a host of other issues from them for years.

Absolutely love the boards, and some of the staff is really cool, but the company really is abusive when it comes to this sort of stuff.

On the other hand, if the interviewer says "ok, just quickly talk me through an outline of the solution to this one first", you look like you can't answer the question, and also like you were lying to cover it up.

The optical mouse I used on a Sun 3 in the late 80s required a specific surface (reflective, with blue stripes one way, yellow the other, though AIUI for the yellow of it was infra-red reflectivity that actually mattered).
But the Xerox mouse our documentation team used at the same time was less fussy. It came with a specific mat, but would work on a black and white photocopy of it, and on any surface with a more or less regular texture, like the leg of a pair of jeans. (But not on a plain white desk.)

Except that doesn't preserve (ratios of) lengths, so it's not so helpful finding the longest route. It also shows at most half the surface (and needs an infinite map to do that).
No projection preserves both lengths and angles; the globe and string is a better suggestion.

Yes - the longest _land_ route, which the article is about, does have one end near Sagres, Portugal, but the quoted text is describing the longest sea route.

"Finds its way in"? You may have noticed that the folks behind the French attack were born there.

As a society, France isn't doing a very good job of helping immigrants feel like Frenchman -- even two or three generations out. Meaning you get folks who feel like second-class citizens, easy to radicalize and recruit.

And, for that matter, the US has no small problem with homegrown terrorism either. Hello, Oklahoma City bombing. Hello, burning churches. Looking at terrorism as a problem that comes from outside is understating the issue.

I'd move into a house that allowed my wife & kids to have more property for horses & horse related stuff
I'd put in a food forest, silvo pasture & raise some cows, & more pigs.
I'd put in a nice shop, wood working, metal working, laser cutter, cnc, 3d printer or 2. that way I could get back into wood working & just play doing stuff

I'd probably also take a really long trip (30-60 days) with my family to see the US,
I'd spend more time with my kids camping, fishing, horseback riding, etc.

Then possibly go walkabout when their older.

You might try actually looking at some faces for the 360. Hint: They're still centered on the middle of the physical display. Looking at my wrist right now, it's 27 minutes after the hour and all that's cut off is some of the dashes marking minutes; the hand itself is still on-screen, but I expect that at 1:30 proper a few pixels for the edge of that hand might be cut off.

And, y'know what? I can't say that disturbs me overmuch. If (as they claim) this design feature avoids the need for a larger bezel while allowing an accurate light-level sensor, I'll keep it.

[At the end of typing the post, it's :30 after; looking at my wrist, the very tip of the minute hand is indeed occluded -- which answers your prior claims: No dead space, no distortion].

I'd be curious to see if any of the low-cost ink manufacturers for fountain pen ink branch into inkjets, with this development. Both being water-based and having constraints around lubrication, flow, penetration, dry time, etc., I wouldn't be surprised if there were a fair bit of room for knowledge (and chemistry R&D, for a shop with a wide enough range of ink properties) to translate.

Buying bottled ink is already the cost-effective option for folks writing the old-fashioned way -- the equivalent to a sub-$20 4.5oz bottle of waterproof fountain pen ink (current price for a large bottle of Noodler's Heart of Darkness, 8/4/2015, is $19) would, if purchased in rollerball refills, be in the range of 76 to 82 pen refills, priced from $1.66 to $3.20 each; going the bottled route is vastly saner for folks who are willing to buy several years' worth of ink at one go.

(Up-front costs to use bottled ink aren't that high either -- excellent sub-$30 pens include the TWSBI Eco, Pilot Metropolitan and Lamy Vista).

But then -- with an extra-expensive printer, perhaps simply voiding the warranty if someone used a competing ink would be enough to prevent customers from trying to cut costs there. Hmm.

Chinese government corruption has moved away from the central government to the local governments. It's not fair or accurate to say that there hasn't been progress made.

And that has been Tesla's argument for the last ten years, yet they still lose about $9,000 on each car they make.

"On" each car, or "for" each car?

"On" makes it sound like their marginal costs are negative -- that, literally, producing one more car increases their losses by $9K. Were it "for" each car, then they're losing money only after fixed costs, R&D, etc. are taken into account.

That latter makes considerably more sense -- folks can legitimately decide to back a company investing in itself rather than taking out a profit; indeed, Amazon has done that for years.

Tried Parker Quink, or the Noodler's Bernanke series? Both are quick-drying.

I'm actually a right-handed overwriter (rare thing that is), so I feel at least some subset of your pain.

please enlighten us as to why the fountain pin and/or feathered quill is superior to the free pens I get from the bank?

Y'know, I actually don't mind giving this a serious answer.

You don't need pressure to write with a fountain pen -- at all. (The modern competitor is a rollerball, not a ballpoint; rollerballs don't give you amount of flexibility on nib grind or opportunities for flex and shading effects that you get with a fountain, but at least you're not forced to use tons of pressure). Allows different, more comfortable grips.

Also, they're refillable with water-based inks -- meaning that they're not disposable, and that you have a huge amount of choice in terms of color and properties of your ink. Want an ink that's still viscous in below-freezing weather? I've got a bottle on my desk! Want an ink that changes from yellow to red depending on how much you're putting down on the paper? That too! Want an ink that responds to ultraviolet and is completely waterproof you can mix in with other inks that are water-soluable, so you can see where writing that's been washed away used to be under a blacklight?

Lots of room for geekery. :)

We can make modern flex nibs better than the old ones!

(Good flexible fountain pen nibs are pretty much all circa 1950s or prior right now; it's a sad, sad state of affairs).

Far opposite from the truth. I'm no vegan myself -- but growing meat animals requires vastly more inputs (grain, water, etc) than would be needed if skipping the (delicious) intermediate step. Humans consume less grains in sum when consuming them directly, rather than via an intermediate layer.