I was perfectly happy with Firefox bookmark syncing until it decided my carefully organized bookmarks all needed to be moved out of their folders and put into the top level of the bookmarks menu. Oh, then let's sync that across all Firefox instances. Had a backup so I brought those SQL files back into my profiles directory, then tried many things to get it to stop doing that and it would not. So I had to kill off Firefox syncing and I'm looking for a replacement.

Yeah, not something you expect. I should file a bug report but have yet to do so.

Beyond some unknown future economic potential that Mars could provide that the Earth simply could not, once you go past the scientific/adventure angles, there's really only one compelling reason to go to Mars - survival of the species. We are presently a one-planet species, but even if we cleaned up our act and made the Earth a sustainable place to live for the very long term, we're one catastrophic event away from oblivion. Pick any time horizon that you like, we're eventually extinct. Once we're a viable two-planet species, and by that I mean there's a self-sustaining human presence someplace else, the end of humans can at least be forestalled.

But there's so much we don't know still. Even if we could convert lava tubes into viable habitats for some protection from radiation, and grow food, and have a long-term self-sustaining energy and manufacturing infrastructure - if we could simply bootstrap long-term human viability on Mars - we don't know what making babies in a place like that is like. Will we bring the right microbiome with us to impart healthy immune systems? How fundamentally tied to the Earth are we?

We could spend a tremendous amount of money and have a lot of astronauts/colonists die finding the answers. I think it's worth trying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Oh come now, it has a "butt-mounted Velodyne VLP-16 system". What's not to understand?

With the number of pills taken by the elderly these days, not to mention people who die in the hospital who may have all sorts of compounds pumped into them before they die, I wonder if the composting process fully breaks them down, or at least to safe levels. I didn't see any mention of it in TFA.

What leads you to believe that? My empirical observations from owning two Toyota vehicles ('05 Prius, '06 Highlander hybrid) is that even with the complex systems on these vehicles, they have required nothing but regular maintenance. Seriously, I had to replace the water pump on my Prius at 175K miles due to seepage at the seal, and that's it. Both vehicles have been trouble-free. My brother's Avalon is pushing 200K, and he abuses vehicles. So I'm honestly curious whether your experience has differed from mine.

I can't quite grok what form this might take, but whatever it might be, it surely needs to be a Kickstarter campaign.

This.

The point made earlier by a poster regarding acceleration lag is very true, he described it perfectly. Other than that, the Prius is a great car. Mine has 160K miles on it and it runs the same as the day I bought it, and it has been more reliable than any other car I've ever owned (and I have owned many). Brake linings never replaced. Not a bunch of rattles and squeaks, although it's not the quietest care on noisy roads. I'm planning to take mine to 300K miles if at all possible, and I know others who feel the same - keep it as long as possible, there's no real reason to replace it.

Conspiracy may be too strong a word. Tech companies want to be able to hire in a buyer's market, which almost certainly requires a larger pool of talent to pick and choose from than would occur naturally. Having a position go unfilled for weeks or even months due to a lack of qualified talent isn't in their best interest, and if there's anything we can agree upon, it's that companies will always act in their perceived best interests.

That said, I must agree whole-heartedly with your statement regarding "qualified". Having participated in many phone screens and in-person interviews, it is astounding how much resume inflation goes on. If you say you know Perl, I'm going to ask you about it and ask you to write a short, easy script. Oh, you meant that you once ran a Perl script written by a co-worker? That's nice. And in most cases, when there's one inflated claim like that on the resume, there are more.

Beyond that, so many candidates say they know how to do something in particular - driver development, firmware, chip design/verification/layout, etc. But when you delve into the qualitative aspects of the job, many can only cover the mechanics of the tasks they perform -- they don't show more than a surface understanding of it. Yet they are already employed and have titles that have "Senior" in them, and they expect a raise and maybe even a better title.

The ratio of mediocre to "OMG this person really knows their shit!" talent is not nearly what I think it ought to be.

Was curious if anyone noticed it here.

Do we still hate Bill Gates here? Haven't visited in a while.

Yes, but we usually recognize things as belonging to one or more of these categories. For better or worse, trying to explain to the vast majority of the population what a Bitcoin is has been akin to saying "Play Minecraft for fun and profit!"

That's quite possibly fair. But if you buy into the theory that all of the gold on Earth was likely created during numerous supernova billions of years ago, you just might have a hard time comparing that to a Bitcoin.

I used to do the exact same thing re: the desktops, but as I said, I kept just popping up terminals on the screen I was on until I'd made a total mess of it. The interesting thing about gnome 3's system is that switch desktop only switches the main monitor unless you have a plugin installed, which means I now have right screen - what I'm working on now, left screen - all the other stuff (eg. email in one desktop, browser in another, music player in another). I normally have 6 or 7 open by the end of the day. Then after changing a few keyboard shortcuts, I can flip between them as needed.

The cool thing about the above is that you can drag a window into the left monitor as a sort of holding pen so you can switch the other desktop and keep that window on screen. So if something comes up in my email that needs me to check something on the web, I open the email into a new window, drag it to the right screen, then switch the left to the browser. It's a different approach, but once I was used to it I didn't want to go back. Incidentally, I came from KDE 4 which I'd used since KDE 2, with a brief spell using ION 3 which I quit when the author started acting like a dick :-)

would it be possible for this post to contain responses which don't just say which desktop they're using instead? I don't bounce on the mate posts and say HAHAHAHAHA MATE IS SHIT, I'M USING GNOME 3!!! honestly, get over it. If mate makes you happy, then stop whining and use it. I was hoping to read some interesting stuff about what's actually in 3.6 here. that "offtopic" flag is being seriously underused here.