You seem to have a bit of trust issues in the hiring process. So far, I have not had any issue hiring people and determining that they knew what they were talking about versus faking it. There are some basic things that you expect people to know and, if they don't know them, you expect them to behave in a certain way such as simply admit it instead of trying to BS through it. I remember an interview that I was in and I didn't know the answer to a particular technical question and I said that I didn't know. I ended up getting that job. My opinion is the personality of the person that you hire is more important than technical ability because people can learn to improve their technical ability, but people can't really improve their personality. That isn't to say technical ability isn't important, just the second thing that I look for.

Security experts have been warning about this and saying that two channel authentication (like text messages or emailing codes) is not true two factor authentication. For two factor authentication, it has to be tied directly to a device and the device cannot be changed without a enrollment process (for example, with Google Authenticator, where you see the code once and cannot retrieve it again). In this way, you either have to use a phishing mechanism to get the code or have physical access to the device. Getting access to the users phone number or email address does not allow you to get the code with two factor authentication because it is truly something you have (your device).

Just because someone announces they are going to sue, doesn't mean it is going to go somewhere. Civil lawsuits are pretty much the only way for private citizens to go against large companies and have a remote chance of hurting the company. "Tort reform is the large companies trying to making fighting them impossible or not worth the effort. Meditation in the terms and condition of every product and service imaginable along with using lobbyists and P.R. to get news like this in the press in order to make "tort reform" an issue the private citizens can get behind when in reality tort reform is designed with the SOLE PURPOSE of hurting individuals and helping large companies.

Examples, please. I'd like to hear cases of people suing solely on the basis of being offended and winning those cases.

I'm in the exact same situation. I've worked in Silicon Valley and got paid significantly more than I'm getting paid now, but I went through 3 jobs in 2.5 years. I'm now at a very stable job with decent pay, annual raises, excellent insurance and vacation time, a great retirement plan, and job security. After the turnover that was part of the bleeding edge IT industry, a stable position is very nice to have. I'm also able to do a lot of IT tasks at my current job including systems administration, programming, security, etc. in an effort to keep my skills sharp. To me, happiness and stability are significantly more important than pay (obviously to a point).

It seems to me like the path to knowledge goes as follows:

1. Beginner - you know you have a lot to learn and don't know anything about the subject
2. Amateur - you think you know everything you need to know
3. Expert - you know what you know, but realize there a many things you don't know

If someone says the know everything about something, then, in general, they don't. Amateurs tend to over estimate their ability and experts tend to under estimate their ability. Knowing that there are things you don't know (and attempting to fill in the gaps when required) is the main way to become an expert in a field.

I did a similar thing with a heat gun and a non-functional PS3. I ran the heat gun over the CPU and it bought me another month of life on the unit. After 3 times of doing this and getting less and less life out of it each time, I purchased a new PS3. To my delight, the new one has been working ever since.

I am of the opinion, and have been for a while, that casual coding (i.e. coding something in your free time, not backed by hint of monetary gain) is at the heart of the problem. People code casually because it is fun to do. They don't like writing comments, documentation, or clean code. This is not to mention that these project need good people that can write this complex code and putting massive amounts of rules and coding practices is not going to attract people to code in their free time. When you have code that is backed by money and/or a company, the motivation exists to do the not fun stuff, but the required stuff to make code more secure, more easy to audit, and easier to understand. Without that type of backing, you have people hacking away writing code as quick and dirty as possible. That is the reputation that FOSS is trying to get rid of. That is the reputation that hurts its adoption rate, especially in critical and important systems. That is the reputation that the OpenSSL vulnerability drags kicking and screaming into the limelight. Unfortunately, it is a reputation that has a significant basis in reality and, in my opinion, the Heartbleed vulnerability will have lasting effects for years to come.

Yes, and then they'll get mad when the obviously unintended coupon interaction doesn't get honored, the price error order gets canceled, or the store refuses to honor the post rebate price of an item. They try to screw the system and when the system fights back they start whining about it. I've used a few questionable deals, but those NEVER get on the front page of the Slickdeals, you have to dig into the forums to find them. In every case, the company acknowledged the error and didn't honor the deal. I didn't get mad because it was expected behavior. There are also deals that seem to be too good to be true, but are actually intended as a promotional tool. There have even been deals that weren't that great, but the company ends up refusing to honor them because if the unexpected number of responses to it (those make be feel a bit upset with the company). An example of that is a company offering a free one dollar item without purchase and then later telling customers they intended for it to be with purchase and then proceed put you on their email list anyhow.

I hate it when people have the impression that they are entitled to steal from others. I use the SlickDeals website and a lot of time they have some great deals, but if you dig deeper into the forums on that site, there is a dark side. This is my opinion, if you took a code and used it for yourself, you are stealing, but maybe the temptation was a bit too great. It is like finding a 20 dollar bill on the floor and keeping it. You know it isn't yours, but the person of irresponsible enough to lose 20 dollars so they kind of deserve it. If, on the other, you generated hundreds of codes and start selling them on Ebay, you are stealing and being a complete dick. That is like watching someone drop their wallet, pretending not to notice, picking it up when the person is out of sight, cleaning out all of the cash, and then tossing the wallet in the dumpster outside.

The fear-mongering and exaggerations are quite evident in the comments to the article. You may not agree with the premise behind the article, but the lack of net neutrality does not spell the end of the Internet or any sort of doom and gloom. Comcast still has to keep it's customer base happy enough to stick with them because unlike what some people believe there are other options nearly everywhere. I don't buy into the doomsday talk and I do agree that, similar to the IPv4 doomsday talk, there is a a lot of FUD surrounding this issue and people seem to be talking about it with their emotions and not looking at it logically.

I'm currently using a VPN when using Netflix on Comcast. In my tests, I've found the buffering takes about 4 times less time when using the VPN and the quality is significantly better. When I perform speed tests on my Comcast connection, I get around 30 Mbps download rates. My guess is that Comcast is directing Netflix connections through a shaper or fixed bandwidth pipe in order to limit the amount of data travelling over their network. I have noticed this problem within the last year or so, when I first got Comcast in my area this was not a problem and Comcast behaved just as it now does over the VPN connection.

I had been an avid Opera fan since I first started using it quite a few years ago. I used it when it was the only browser that had tabbed browsing. A feature that is now part of every browser out there. The folks behind the Opera browser were innovators. They had tabs, the speed dial, Opera link (which would sync bookmarks and other items between your browsers), and gestures years before other browsers and they fully believed in being standards compliant. When I heard they were moving away from being a browser developer to being a browser repackager, I stopped using it. They went from innovating to tagging along for a ride. I recently fired up the new version of Opera to be very, very disappointed because it was simply a repacked version of Chrome. Most of the features that I had grown to love were gone and I found no reason to continue using it.

If you haven't seen the other 50th anniversary goodies, I highly recommend them. "An Adventure in Space and Time" is basically the real-life story about Doctor Who's beginning with William Hartnell (http://www.bbcamerica.com/doctor-who/guide/50th-specials/an-adventure-in-space-and-time/) and the "The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot" is an amusing story about the classic doctors trying to get into the 50th anniversary special with some nice jokes for knowledgeable fans of the classic series (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01m3kfy).