For your first query, DDG returns StackOverflow link which I think could be even more important for those searching about how to remove an item from python list.
Yep, this incredibly low price is just for creating a rough prototype (which the client is typically never interested in). As I said, once the client comes to discussion table, I then bring the topics of well-maintained and commented source code, unit and integration testing, benefits of cloud hosting on AWS, etc. and then we start forming real estimates.
Yeah, what you say applies to firms who care about their intellectual properties (like software companies or music companies) but most clients who hire freelancers don't fall in that category. Its mostly custom development work for their website or app and the clients are typically startups and small businesses who perhaps don't even care about these things.
$20 is for a standard prototype or a quick wireframe, its a marketing strategy to bring to client to the discussion table. I don't do full web app gigs for that price! The other two packages (standard & premium) is where most of the development happens.
I've read somewhere that Sundar's biggest achievement (and rise in power structure) relates to the saving of day by using practical business sense.
Back in around circa 2006, Microsoft one day suddenly decided to remove Google search and replace it with Bing on their default browser, IE (which was still number one back then). This threatened Google's revenues to a considerable extent as online search is one of the major source of their income.
At that time, it was Sundar Pichai who was in the forefront of managing some quick OEM contracts with Dell, HP, etc., so that Google toolbar was installed by default on all their computers. Google toolbar ensured that users were shown a confirmation dialog and were given the option to make Google search the default again! This later ensured Sundar's rise in power and respect that ultimately made him CEO one day.
One can of course argue that Google is such a superior engine compared to Bing that the users would have visited google.com anyway (which will also result in that option to make it default). However, its also true that most users will not take the pain of changing their setup if it already works! So who knows, if Sundar's intervention hadn't happened at that time, maybe Bing and Google would be on an equal footing today!
>> Notably, while both BGP routes and traceroutes completing into Syria drop to zero during these blackouts, the number of DNS queries surges. This suggests the outage may be asymmetrical —packets can egress the country but cannot enter...Visualizations such as these will now be widely available to the public.
Not a network engineer, but this isn't a rocket science, right? Linux tools like traceroute, etc. can do this since ages?
There is no dearth of amateurish shenanigans in node infrastructure, there is a reason that people are still reluctant to switch from php/python despite so many selling points of node.
We have the chicken and egg problem there. Google have that results because it has terabytes of information on everything and that's because millions use it. If more and more people start using DDG, their results will also improve.
I just tried that with DDJ out of curiosity (I develop mostly in Flask, but also Django occasionally). It did display a few imdb movie results (though the top one still referred to the framework). However, when I searched for "django python", the intent became quite clear and I got the relevant results. So basically, what you say about personalized search applies only to normal users who don't have much "googlefu" skills, for power users like us who know exactly what to search for, its not much relevant.
Let me put it this way, Apple is all high on secrecy stuff and have these black cloths, NDA and every other secretive procedure that a developer has to go through. OTOH, Android OEMs like Samsung, HTC, etc. don't do any of that and just use pure open source android, and yet they too manage to sell their phones like hot cakes exactly like Apple!
To answer my own question, I've found voat.co to be a good alternative to reddit. The community is small, but the content is about as great as HN or some good quality sub-reddits.
Their management had a huge fiasco in India a couple of years ago. They already had an exclusive deal to sell Cyanogen branded phones with One Plus earlier, and they broke it and made another deal with Micromax company overnight. There was a large shitstorm in the android and open source world, and Cyanogen's image had suffered.
Because its all about making compromises to manage an app and achieve its goals. You are right about the time to market and launching the product sooner should be the number one priority. But of all the factors that make your product worthwhile, performance is a pretty darn good factor.
There are several websites today on the internet who have the potential to become great, if only they pay some heed to the performance factor. Take the Upwork freelancing site for example, its performance was really solid when it was oDesk, its predecessor. Its basically, because of the earlier oDesk goodwill that it still even has a sizable userbase today. Sometime in 2013, along the lines of your thinking, some management guru must have cut corners in development of the repolished upwork site, and the result was an absolute performance nightmare! As a freelancer, Upwork is a third or fourth priority for me now, whereas the former oDesk was actually number one.
Another example of a nightmarish performance is Quora - it has a fantastic readership that supplies solid content to the site. Its a solid proof that really good content is so much valued in the online world - that despite its lagging performance, people are willing to endure a site with good content, but that doesn't mean its ideal. Quora still has a lot of potential, it can match or maybe even surpass the levels of Reddit and HN, or even Facebook and Linkedin if they pay heed to the performance factor, but I don't see that happening soon!
> There's a digital currency in our future, but I guarantee that it won't be decentralized and that the government will have the signing keys.
That might be possible, but its too early to say anything at this point in time. The thing is that Bitcoin has technologically established itself as a stable crypto-currency and also an open-source wallet software. In future, some governments may also come up with their own centralized digital currency, but it will be too little and too late compared to something like bitcoin or litecoin.
Besides, bitcoin is international and a lot of people have started transacting in it already. Now, the government has to tread carefully about this, despite all the talk of sovereign nation and government upholding its economic control, no government can go against its own people in this day and age.
Also, actually persecuting the public for using crypto-currencies is against their own interest as it will create something like a Streisand effect. Right now, only the technically inclined know about bitcoins, blockchains and wallets, the rest treat it like some magical buzzwords. But if they start persecuting, a lot of other non-technical folks will also come to know about it and they will also start using it.
In short, the future depends on the mood of the people of the nation and not the governments. Its a fallacy that money begets is value as a legal tender by the government. Rather, it gets is value because its "generally acceptable", in other words the people accept it. People of a nation are above the government, not the other way round.
>> ..cuts to the core of what it means to be a nation state, and no state is ever going to renounce that monopoly.
Yet, some countries have started willingly renouncing that monopoly.
For example, Australian Reserve Bank has clearly stated that "There would be nothing to stop people in this country deciding to transact in some other currency in a shop if they wanted to. There’s no law against that, so we do have competing currencies."[1]
Similarly, The South African Reserve Bank has come to the conclusion that "The Bank does not oversee, supervise or regulate the Virtual Currency (VC) landscape."[2]