_mulder_'s comments

The question is though, where would he be working today? Government Sciences or Google/Tesla, et. al.?

Music is like your own personal life-diary that you don't even have to write. Music is such an important trigger for memories (along with smell which is even more powerful but less controllable) but the majority of people seem to take it for granted and make no effort to preserve these memories. It's staggering how hearing a song you haven't heard for 20+ years can immediately put you right back to being a kid, or some other nostalgic memory, even if only fleetingly.

Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to having my music memories overwritten; I've been known to leave clubs or bars or turn off the radio if a particularly personal song is playing because I don't want my original memory to be overwritten. My friends don't understand, to them music is just music and something to dance or shout along to. A handful of songs provoke extremely potent memories in my mind of when I was a kid. Hearing these songs is the only channel I have to experiencing that time of my life. The problem, and half of the beauty of it, is that I don't actually know what the songs are until I hear them. I keep intending to compile a list of which songs trigger these memories.

Infact I, along with most people I imagine, have a whole library of songs that read as mile-posts dotting throughout their life. Perhaps a particular song triggers a memory of a summer holiday, or high school party, or road-trips as a kid, or even just what you listened to whilst coding your first successful project.

The single worst thing that can happen to music is for it to be used for advertising. What may be a catch song to a marketer could be someone's last memory of a dead parent or friend. I commend artists, especially Radiohead, who vehemently forbid their music to be used for anything after it's been released. Thom Yorke (I think) did a great interview on the subject but I can't find it, annoyingly.

Perhaps the decay times on the trails is too long, but I can't really detect any patterns here, other than that people seem to walk, run, cycle and drive down roads. After a few mins, all this seems to do is highlight the road structure of a city. A shorter trail decay would highlight the people commuting and show activity for transport type by time of day.

Another interesting metric would be to adjust brightness based on length of journey.

An equally interesting, and perhaps more useful, question I always follow that with is "What's the worst thing about workign here"... The cop out answer is usually 'it's a big company so you get some politics and inefficiencies'.. I suppose a good follow up would be; "how does the company intend to change this going forward?" or even "how does it compare to other places you've worked"

This does seem to make sense, the more aware of your environment you are (the more you know), the more modest you become when you realise you don't know it all.

I hardly think modesty is a curse.

Isolated community bubbles are present in many industries with equally damaging effects. It's arrogance to assume it's just Tech because the 'unique selling point' of tech seems to be intelligence (ironically, probably the most common 'unique' selling point). Fashion, Film, Finance, Politics all have their own problems stemming from a self-selecting isolated elite.

A great response would be to just say "hold on", whip out your phone and Google the answer, show it to them and finish up with "How long did it take your other candidates to complete that task? next..."

Point being, you're demonstrating initiative and, that old cliche, thinking outside the box. Think Will Smith in Men In Black.

Some interviewers might be impressed with your lateral thinking, others might be annoyed at your attempt to be a 'smart ass' and avoid the intention of the question. But that's always the problem with these type of interview questions, it depends so much on the expectations of the interviewer.

I think I just had an "A-Ha" moment. It took me about 5 seconds to think it through. Good question.

I'd suggest starting the answer to each question with a clear Yes or No, Right or Wrong so people can skim through.

Example:

>7. Fine, but I still get to send users their passwords once they created them so they don’t forget them, right?

No, Email is not a secure medium.....

Project Eurler[1] is a great way to familiarise yourself with Eratosthenes and learn some coding too!

[1]https://projecteuler.net/

Think about it, wavelength (or frequency, they're effectively the same measurement here) determines how fast you can transmit those 1's and 0's. It's not slower, it's just that you can't transmit as much information in the same time period.

Also, laser light for Telecoms is not normally Visible, it's usually Infrared which has a wavelength shorter than Microwave radio but longer than visible light.

Another bonus fact; in a vacuum, Radio and Light waves travel at the same speed. However, when light travels down an optical fibre it is slowed down by the glass so Fibre Internet is actually slightly slower than radio.

The big problem is getting through the Earth's Atmosphere. Space observatories are nearly exclusively located on mountains or areas with little atmospheric 'pollution'. I'd imagine even the OPALS system can only be used when it's not too cloudy/rainy.

This technology does exist on land however. Free Space Optics[1] has been around for a while but hasn't taken off in a big way because it's less reliable than sending light down a fibre cable, even though it is cheaper.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_optical_communicatio...

>you only need to worry about the Earth's atmosphere

I assume you're meaning this is the main source of attenuation (signal loss) if we assume the space between Earth and Mars is an empty vacuum. This (technically called scattering) is not the main source of loss for such a system.

Coherent just means the light is all in phase, it doesn't mean it doesn't spread out as it travels. If it didn't spread out at all, your receiver on earth would be just as wide as the laser transmitter (about the size of a coin), and you'd have to be locked on the entire time... not very practical. It looks like NASA has intentionally focussed their LASER into a wide cone for precisely this reason.

The distance from Mars would cause the beam (cone) to spread out too much, thereby reducing the power received on earth. You would have to increase your laser power on Mars to compensate for this or make the beam more directional with some focusing optics.

Are you really suggesting a Hitleresque racial motive behind these experiments? Or just sad that black males (in that locale) have a higher incidence of homicide, and therefore more likely to be suitable for this procedure?

That could really work, especially as most frauds like this are performed using PAYG mobile SIMS, however, they're more likely to exploit it with a 'number unknown' similar to what we have today with Caller ID.

This could work really well, and be easy to implement, with a VoIP service too.

B4RN are great but they're unique, primarily because they have local access to backhaul fibre. There are some key fibre routes travelling through their area and there are existing fibres (originally used to connect local schools) that run to the nearby Lancaster University (where the CEO of B4RN used to work), and from there onto Telecity in Manchester.

Organising a fibre across some fields and your neighbours gardens is one thing, but connecting into the national fibre network can be quite another, especially for "real" remote villages where the nearest fibre point is many miles away.

Of course you then have to lease the fibre capacity too which is very expensive (£20k-40k+ a year for 10Gb backhaul) and ultimately at the operator's discretion, some operators will just not sell to customers who they see as direct competition. I seem to recall in B4RN's case they had such a clash with BT that they pretty much burnt their bridges with them for any future assistance.

This lack of existing infrastructure is why you couldn't (cost effectively) replicate B4RN in rural Wales for example, even if you had fibre to all of the houses in a village.

You could try looking at these previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1753080

http://blog.zeromail.com/2013/03/27/zeromail-goes-live-perso...

This is very good advice. However, it would be great if Google could introduce a time element to filters. i.e; 'apply label 'ToRead' if email is over 5 days old and is unread and move to 'unread' folder'. Or 'mark message as 'priority' if unread after 4 hours and from [email protected]'

My suggestions would be:

1. Seperate work and personal - There is no need to be receiving emails from friends, Amazon or whoever when you're at work. Have a separate Inbox to process these, they will be waiting for you when you chose to look at them, not to distract you when replying to work emails.

2. Unsubscribe from everything - When was the last time you looked at or read a promotional email or weekly newsletter? If it wasn't recently (a month), then unsubscribe.

3. Manage your contacts - Do you need to be CC'd into every email? If you don't want to receive so many emails from a colleague, just email politely and say, due to the amount of emails you get, please don't CC me unless it's vitally important. This may have the added benefit of drawing their attention to what they're doing and make them reconsider who else they're CC'ing.

4. Consider separate email accounts for separate purposes - Running a businesses, a non-profit (as per OP) and you attend conferences alot? Why not have four email accounts? That way you can separate each of your 2 'jobs' and have one email for your personal friends and family, The Queen and Amazon. A separate 'public profile' account can be used to field incoming requests for help or advice or meet-ups from strangers or acquaintances that you may meet at Conferences or on your blog. These are unlikely to be high-priority but you can have a scan through at your leisure when you get the time without them interrupting your normal work flow.

However, I can't help but feel sometimes, people who receive thousands of emails it's because they actually like to receive thousands of emails because it makes them feel and look more important and popular than they perhaps are. How many of those email chains were actually started by you sending out emails to other people? Or inviting people to contact you on websites or conferences? We've all heard someone subtly boasting about coming back from holiday and having x hundred emails. All they're really saying is "look how popular I am and how much people need me". The irony of course is that, even with all of those unanswered emails, it's amazing how things just kept working as normal.

The problem with linking karma to up/down votes is that it prevents people from posting anything that is contrary to popular opinion and therefore downvoted, even if it may be well thought out or, shock horror, factually accurate too!!

The end result is an ever increasing alignment of 'group-think' where popular opinions are boosted and differing opinions are hidden.

Up/down voters just need to take a second and consider what they're voting for. If it's just because they agree, then don't. If they agree and they've learned something new, then do. If they disagree and but they think the arguments are well presented or they've learned something new, upvote.

Down voting should be reserved only for inappropriate comments, not disagreement.