Creator here, I used a camera so that I would have video of everything that is happening. As seen in the follow-up post [1], I rebuilt the system so that the nut-release is triggered by a proximity sensor. The camera only records now.
I think he meant it more in the context of olden times, where neither pirates nor navy had "high tech playtoys" and piracy was a little more common than today
Wall street just followed a general theme among banks. Once upon a time they were institutions built to control capital flow, from where it was available to where it was needed, to provide some social value by allowing enterprises to thrive. But apparently the credit interest was not a big enough margin, so they decided to do all kinds of other shit, investment banking was born. Which mostly makes rich people richer, without any kind of social benefit.
The major problem with the much cheaper taxing of capital gains remains the growing inequality: Of every you dollar you earn through your own labor, you get less (until you pass the max threshold). And this while your capacity of personal labor is clearly somehow limited. On the other hand, people earning one million dollars from capital gains are taxed equally with people who earn one billion.
Great subset, one has to hope people do not read this as "this is how you game the interview process" but rather as "reflect about your idea with these points in mind".
This might be another incarnation of the "Nobody ever gets fired for using IBM" phenomenon. HR are more likely aiming at avoiding errors, and not necessarily hiring the best people possible, if those come at a risk. So you can always say "but he had x years experience with Rails" if the hire doesn't pan out.
The "quickly" argument is a strawman, if you plan on having a working relationship that lasts longer than 3 months or so. If you just need someone to upgrade your current Rails 2.3.8 project to 3.0.6 and then move along, by all means get someone with Rails experience.
But if you intend to employ that person longer, the specific experience is of diminishing importance.
This is a very big problem: the constant focus on tools and specific technologies instead of looking at the people and their abilities.
A great developer will always be able to pick up a new language/framework/paradigm quickly. So if you plan to have a longer relationship with your hire, you can by all means afford not to check every bullet point regarding technologies. By strictly requiring explicit experience in the fields you are working in, the only thing you really accomplish is to drastically reduce the number of possible applicants.
For example, since Django is still a lot less common than Rails, if you need a Django developer and specifically require Django experience, you will not have an awful lot of candidates. If you broaden your search to anyone with experience with a web framework, you are almost guaranteed to attract some more good candidates. Once you screen those, you pick the best. Best case: he/she was already familiar with Django, congrats to you. Worst case: the dev was not familiar with Django, but still a better fit than ALL the candidates with Django experience. Sounds like win-win for me...
This is more likely just a publicity stunt to calm down the people, since there are elections coming in several federal states and the reigning party CDU already lost a lot of ground. I would be surprised if anything really changes
[1] http://blog.ulfster.com/post/114942851719/squirrel-feeder-v2...