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I think the bigger lesson is probably something along the lines of:

First, make sure they can do the job technically, within some sort of parameters of what they can currently do and what can be learned on the job. That's your baseline.

Then, try and suss out if they'd be good to work with. That will come naturally through the way they interact with you in the interview and how they answer questions (whether they are the questions in the article or completely different ones).

If you reckon they tick the boxes for those two major attributes, it's then just a matter of weighing up how much of each attribute they bring to the table and if the balance is right.

> The specialisation means that work for "web designers" has declined IMO.

Yep, exactly. There isn't really such thing as a "web designer" anymore (or rather, there isn't going to be). The job has been split into several different specialised roles.

It's no longer enough to just be able to design and build a good website, because that level of service has become commoditised.

I think that like in most industries, the low-end has become commoditised.

Want to sell stuff online? It used to cost thousands of dollars to get an online store up and running.

Now you can sign up to Shopify and start selling your stuff the same day using a theme that, to be honest, is more than good enough for what it costs.

The same goes for brochure sites, a space now filled by Squarespace and Wix and so on. Cheap or free options have always been around, but now you can get a theme that is more than good enough.

But that's great for web designers, right? Anyone wanting to only pay $25/month for that kind of product is going to be a terrible client for anyone trying to make a proper living in the space.

Work for web designers isn't drying up overall, it's just that the low-end – the work we didn't want to really do anyway – has become commoditised.

The higher-end work – the more challenging problems to solve, the ones that need proper design thinking to solve – is still around, and it's become much more specialised.

I agree that at some point (probably reasonably early on actually) it would start taking longer to say the number out loud than one second, so you'd fall behind.

However we're talking about counting which is not necessarily saying it out loud. You could just be pushing a button every second, or watching a drop of water fall from a pipe at a constant rate.

Anyway, I remember learning this little fact as a kid and it making the numbers (and the difference in magnitude between them) much more tangible.

For context, at a rate of 1/sec/sec:

  1             = 1 sec
  10            = 10 sec
  100           = ~1.5 min
  1000          = ~17 min
  10,000        = ~3 hours
  100,000       = ~1 day
  1,000,000     = ~12 days
  10,000,000    = ~4 months
  100,000,000   = ~3 years
  1,000,000,000 = ~32 years

They are using it, they just don't reference it specifically in the article.

You can try the demo: https://s3.amazonaws.com/gabe-cc-form/index.html

Interesting - what trouble did you have with the banks here?

I am a NAB customer and when we got married it was one form to fill in (with associated documentation) to update my wife's details across all of the accounts, including having new debit/credit cards sent out by post within the week.

My parents were incredibly insistent that my sister and I understand how they did their personal and business finances and it's among the best things they taught us (neck-and-neck with how to cook).

They ran their own business until I was in my mid-20s, so during school holidays we would often go with them to work. In addition to us helping out in their warehouse, they also used to get us to do things like writing up the deposit slips for incoming cheques to take to the bank.

They seemed like menial chores at the time to keep us busy, but it really did help us understand how the whole thing worked. They essentially showed us "this is how we do it and why" rather than saying "this is how you must do it" and considering nothing like that was taught to us at school, in hindsight I am very grateful for it.

So yes, definitely bring your kids in as much as possible on finances - even the most basic things like budgeting to live within your means is essential.

You needed iTunes to act as a conduit to get songs onto the iPod, but you could either sync it with one iTunes library, or leave it in manual mode and load songs from any iTunes.

It worked then exactly the same way as it does now[1].

You couldn't sync songs on the device back into iTunes though[2] - if you had it in manual, put some songs on it (from another iTunes library, a third party app or anywhere else) and then tried to sync it with your iTunes, it would remove everything on there before syncing over your iTunes library.

1: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201593 2: Without one of many third-party helper apps. Sentuti was a lifesaver!

> The fact that the Apple Watch doesn't "fit beneath the shirtsleeve" as OP points out is a major ding: form is as important as function for such a jewelry/tech hybrid. A 2x slimmer second generation of the Apple Watch will get /everyone/ on board.

I agree. I think they will sell a boatload of the first generation, but two or three years down the track it will get its equivalent of the iPod-on-Windows or App-store-for-iPhone moment and take off. Everything will suddenly click and everyone will want one.

I'm not sure your follow up clarifies your point, but it's entirely possible I'm misunderstanding it.

Are you saying that the only way Apple can sell their products for such a profit (over the raw cost of materials) is because of the Reality Distortion Field? We know that they've been working on this for years with all of the associated costs of designing and developing a product in that time.

I think this is a key point that's further backed up by Apple's recent hiring of people from the high-end fashion space.

It certainly seems to me that Apple aren't even trying to directly compete for the audience that Android Wear attracts.

Ben Thompson[1] has been talking for months about Apple moving properly into the luxury goods sector. The Watch seems like their first real push in that direction.

[1]: http://stratechery.com

I use this every day basically for pushing and pulling to and from Github. For pretty much every other git function I use SourceTree.

I find the Github app too limiting for most git functions other than pushing and pulling (and the resulting rebase or merge) to the remote repositories, but the interface is much much better – simpler, quicker and easier – for those specific tasks than SourceTree.

I think you've slightly misrepresented the second driver's intentions. The article says:

"...the guy behind, he sees the two or three seconds and thinks, oh, the guy in front of me is going to floor it too, I'll floor it and we'll both get through the intersection. Whereas the guy in front thinks, OK, I only have two or three seconds left, I'm going to slowdown."

So it's not that the driver in front sees the timer and stops during a green light, whilst the driver behind doesn't see the timer and isn't expecting to stop during a green.

More likely that both drivers see the timer and make conflicting decisions: the driver in front decides there isn't enough time and slows down; the driver behind decides there is enough time and speeds up, having assumed the driver in front would be doing the same.

However, your scenario is plausible too and just as problematic.

Thanks for posting this, I couldn't figure out what they were referring to by "Greek fucks".

I imagine this is a bug; the feature was only introduced in iOS6 (I think, possibly 5)

Anecdotally: We created a Netflix account when S4 of Arrested Development was released, and have kept it specifically to watch House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, obviating the need to torrent* them.

The other content on Netflix is a bonus but our primary reason for having an account is for the Netflix original shows which we have enjoyed thus far. I imagine there are others in similar positions.

*I am in Australia and am using a DNS service to access Netflix, which is clunky and annoying but workable. Torrenting those shows is the only other realistic option.

I may be misremembering, but I have a feeling the per-app volume mixer was available all the way back in Windows XP. Possibly sound-card dependent?

An app called Jack OS X does the job on Mac: http://www.jackosx.com/

Here is a 2010 article, also on TUAW, about the same thing: http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/12/9-41-9-42-the-secret-of-apple...

Funnily enough, the form in the original post validated my credit card number as Amex and then validated a 3-digit CVV number as OK.

Really? Seems a bit unnecessary to take the spot completely out of action because the meter is broken.

Here (Melbourne), if a meter is faulty but the council doesn't know, you can SMS your numberplate and the meter ID to their faults number. The automated response tells you that the time limits still apply and gives you the number to call if you still get a ticket.

If the council knows the meter is faulty and they haven't fixed it, they generally put a locked bag over it so no one can use it with instructions that the time limits still apply.

I found this really helpful insofar as grasping orders of magnitude of big numbers:

1 thousand seconds is 16.7 minutes 1 million seconds is 11.6 days 1 billion seconds is 31.6 years

In my mind the difference between a million and a billion seemed somewhat tangible before hearing this. With that comparison, a billion seems so much more.

I think you mean A5, not A3 (A3 is bigger than A4)

Like what? I genuinely can't think of any.

I agree that there are advantages to Bitcoin over other payment methods. No dispute there.

But your original contention was that Apple want to be able to take a 30% slice of transactions, and they can't do that with Bitcoin so they're banning wallet apps. My gut instinct says that's not the reason but I'm trying to find out more info before deciding.

Apple don't take a cut of any of the transactions done through the PayPal app etc. so I think it's safe to assume that they wouldn't want a cut of similar transactions done over Bitcoin.

So again, I'm probably missing something obvious, but I can't think of any: what are some examples of transactions that are only possible with Bitcoin where Apple would want to take a cut.

I'm probably missing something obvious, but what use cases are possible with BTC but not, say, PayPal?

With PayPal you can pay for goods, receive payments for goods, transfer to an individual, receive payments from an individual, do it all in different currencies and transfer in and out of bank accounts etc.

Aside from the fact that the model itself is rather different, I can't think of any practical uses that can be done with one but not the other?

Edit: for clarification, I mean in the context of the parent's scenario of Apple taking their 30% cut of a transaction. Obviously there are plenty of reasons to use BTC over other payment methods.

You can set up an iTunes account without a credit card quite easily too: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2534

Did you read the next sentence/paragraph?

> In a sense, Google has always followed Kay’s adage. The software that Google was most serious about — web search, Gmail, and so forth — ran in the cloud, and with the company’s legendary data centers, they effectively built their own hardware.

Apple have been required to do this for a long time, they just never really advertised it (and per the ACCC judgement, have been misrepresenting what they are obligated to do).

That being said, they have definitely been repairing products up to two years after purchase for the last little while (up to a year or so). We've had a couple of phones replaced and an iMac repaired that we've had for about 18 months without any issues.

Imagine how many orders they'd get if they made an electric version of their normal cars.

This is a neat idea, but a problem I didn't see discussed in the article is that on iOS (at least), LocalStorage is disabled when running in private mode.

There are ways to detect it and work around it obviously but considering this is pitched as a solution for mobile users, it's probably something to consider.