skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm tired of these kind of generalizations. Our open plan office is geared towards developers and quiet and peaceful 95% of the time. Standing rule is, you wanna talk, you take it outside into the kitchen or the meeting room. Simple.

Also, people can work from home whenever they want. Most prefer to be in the office because it's nice and quiet.

The problem isn't open spaces, the problem is the people in it.
This is true, I've never been to an office more sick than and open-plan office. HALF the office was off sick during 1 week in a flu season. It was unreal.
Do you need a license or insurance to own a vehicle? Likewise do you need those to operate a vehicle on private property for private i.e. non-commercial purposes?
I used FreeBSD for a couple of years around 2003, other than that I have been running GNU/Linux since the Atari ST days.
I could be wrong, but at one point I calculated that the HD280s meet OSHA requirements for hearing protection for certain noise levels.
Has the tech sector really come to the point where coders/geeks can't even be socially awkward anymore?

I thought coding was one profession where socially awkward geeks could make an honest living.
Really curious (I only have second-hand experience with it) - you made cmd.exe or cygwin work for you? I keep hearing from people who tried it that they gave up after a while, switching to an OS with native bash/zsh.
How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub (2008)
Linux and Windows, the former mainly.

I have both installed in both my PCs (Desktop and Laptop) and I boot into whatever I need to do the work (Or gaming) I need.

Although lately I rarely boot Windows, and if I do: It's for playing some games.
I don't like Apple's direction with OS X ML. Windows for gaming and GNU/Linux for dev work. I also personally think Windows is snappier than OS X.
The evolutionary landscape
This is one I'm really curious about. I triple boot, but most of my time is spent in Linuxm but most of the time I'm on a PC I'm trying to be productive.

For me I had to vote for all of them:

Linux - 70% - Development and experimentation

OSX - 20%- Development and Leisure browsing

Windows 10% - .Net development or running something that wont run elsewhere

Other - Something I'm playing around with, FreeBSD, Unix etc.

Unless you count my time at work, then Windows is much higher, as I'm forced to use it there.
I wrote an article on my blog in January to the same effect: http://jonblack.org/2013/01/29/open-plan-offices-are-a-night....

The funny thing is, in spite of all the signs, our office are knocking walls down to make rooms bigger!
>What exactly is the purpose of being here if all you are doing is somewhat stochastically deciding between a few sterile choices presented to you by a computer?

As though you aren't stochastically deciding between a few sterile choices presented to you by your chain of previous deterministic actions
OS X because it obviously is useful for Mac and iOS work, but works well for everything else (except Windows, obviously, but a VM fixes that). XAMPP gives me a setup for playing around with LAMP, and iTerm and a Linode gets me going for dedicated Linux work. None of that would matter if I had to run OS X on crap hardware, but MacBooks make for some of the best laptops. The downside is that if you DO want to run on lesser hardware, you're out of luck without a lot of hassle. (I've done hackintosh in the past, and though fun to hack around, if your time is worth more than minimum wage you're not saving money.)
Was there anything specific that you felt especially annoying in OS X or something missing that was available in Linux?
Amazing how osx is winning over devs
While your stats are true, people typically aren't aiming their car at someone.
In a well-designed building, that's not hard.

All of your network drops would all be connected to the switches in advance (if network security was a concern, you could do 802.1X controlled VLAN / port-based authentication). In this type of setup, you've now made it "port on a switch = physical location in the building" (within the length of an ethernet cable - say 6-9 feet).

With the right automation tools, when a port goes active, it would be possible to poll the client workstation information connected to it and automatically update directory information with the physical location based on the port that user is connected to (assuming a 1-to-1 user to computer assignment).
I am a lifelong Mac OS user (started with System 6), and currently use OSX on a MacBook Air, but my next purchase will be a non-ultrabook form-factor generic PC, possibly a ThinkPad, running Arch Linux.
Step 1: Get your team working "as it should."
Errr, we're wealthier, manufactured items are a lot cheaper, and it's a lot easier to keep a gun in working condition now that we're using smokeless powder and non-corrosive primers. Crime's a lot higher, I gather, so city folk have a greater need to be armed.

I don't have figures, and most of academia was delighted to celebrate a fraud who claimed very very few owned guns in colonial times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America) so data is probably hard to come by, but I wouldn't presume that at all.
Using the same setup and I've been loving it so far (almost 3 years now).

The package manager is just so sweet.
Why would you follow our recommendations? Just try for yourself and make an opinion.
I do design, art, sound and development (web applications and games). So the OS X is the choice. It has *nix environment combined with natively working Adobe Creative Suite apps and a lot of platform exclusive graphic and sound editors.
How is the end of the article different from wearing makeup and nice clothes and trying to live in nice neighborhoods?
I am using OS X because of the built in terminal and Retina display and until recently I was using Windows. I don't see how Mac is better.

There is no such thing as the best OS there is only one that suits your needs. Anyone who says Win or Mac or Linux sucks are just dumb.
> You cannot sell, rent, lease or lend the software.

I am not a lawyer, but AFAIK this clause is unenforceable in the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_sale_doctrine
I think you might be arguing against something that I didn't actually say.

The operative words in "concealed carry license" and "hunting license" is "license", which was exactly my point.

The number of printing press deaths in the US, and likely worldwide is probably quite small.
In all seriousness, if it's just an occasional missing package, consider adding it to Homebrew. It's a relatively painless process and adds a tool to everyone's working palette. This is a mitzvah.

If that was a polite way of saying "many missing packages", that's a different story.
Been using Slackware for the last years. It started out as a learning experience and I haven't had any reason to switch yet. I've gotten the games to work mostly on wine and on the off chance I'm dual booting with windows on the laptop purely for games.

I highly recommend using a tiling window manager (I'm happy with xmonad). No more resizing windows with the mouse, things simply work. That I'm on a dual monitor setup is a big plus for that as well.
They would all be channeled through your local law enforcement though.

If swedish police comes to you directly, you don't have to comply, but if they go through the proper channels, the request to you, comes from canadian police.
I'm an engineer too, and many years ago I read a book that I really found illuminating: http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Visual-Interfaces-Communicat...

The examples about applications design are outdated, but the principles and clarity of exposition are still top notch.
While I appreciate where you are coming from, I actually prefer the blog post's vernacular when operating in the startup world. Where language is deliberately used as a mask, it's refreshing to hear things presented in the straightforward manner - it does away with the complexity for which there is little time on either side, the entrepreneur's & vc's.
We use a similar thing internally at Wolfram to diff Wolfram Language expressions, though I believe it doesn't have the subexpression matcher. But the diffs are much clearer when you have full m-expressions instead of s-expressions.

The coder who wrote it (@wmacura) now works at Tumblr.
Just made the jump to Linux. I'm using Pear OS, a Ubuntu-based Linux distro that's a decent clone of OSX.

Linux finally getting unofficial Netflix support was the last thing holding me back. I have three iPhones, two iPads, and an Apple TV but Macs are too expensive, especially when you already own a PC.
I made God's temple. God loves me. God hates you.

God says...

Mine remittest buzz not_in_my_wildest_dreams boiling usage
excitement perfecting embarrassments obtaining Lovely
linger imbibed mockers tenderness danger insult findeth
impatient healed Cup widow smiling heretics capacities
Isn't_that_special no_news_is_good_news passion dispraised
tie physic vile settled searching impute associated Foul
Presence lingered XIII homo entireness renderest exhort
prejudice angel thinking lashes biggot glorieth humanity
breathedst broughtest consulters pangs consolations produced
fearlessly exchanged essayed whit beheld beauteous secrecies
bold-faced waged Praetorian briars eluding sweet-attuned
Body until anticipating creature incoming hit mingled
appropriated charmed pearl sent arithmetic maturing att
deformity meanest electronic sacrifices servants nowhere
ardent honest wisdom freedom might so_let_it_be_written
view insolently rove equalled leaves auditor are unthought
justify excellencies even seemeth plunged Devil ministry
thinketh cursing congregations popularity Innocency inaccurate
however bereaved excused worse Alexandria hurts_my_head
not straighten_up tip badge finds Whom Minerva orbs unexpectedly
sell unskilfulness lusteth weal dearer 92 GET Clearly
cosmetics CONTRACT fellow hardship conquests awaiting
Redemption profoundly tending jeer parts glue
Do guns absolutely need to be lethal? If so, why? Would you (assuming you own a gun) forego all your lethal guns if someone gave you one with comparable stopping power, but which was much less lethal?
Linux user here. Aside from being free and running on just about anything, the fact that you're familiar with Linux means you're likely to end up frustrated with UI shortcomings or (intentional) system limitations that you can't get around (by design) in OS X.

Of course, if you just happen to love everything Apple has baked inextricably into their OS... then awesome, and you'll certainly be happy! For the rest of us, though, the flexible, stable, useful devil we know is likely a better choice.
I was really pleasantly surprised when I ugpraded to Windows 7. With enough ram, it is very responsive and a fairly pleasing experience.
Why Open Source Developers Dont Contribute Back
One of the challenges I face is on temperature. The HVAC unit on our building was not really designed to do even temperature control of an open 60 x 100' space. So we get warm and cold spots, and adjusting one can screw up the others. I've done a bit of research on it and their are two challenges for our particular system, one the number of mixers in the ceiling which can change air temperature and the way in which thermostats feed back into the system.

I suspect if you sat down with Lennox or Crane and said "we want to design an HVAC system that will work in this environment." they would come up with something very different than what we currently have. Sadly its going to take a bit to convince the landlord to rip out the old system and put in a new one.
You'll never know how good your contracts are until somebody sues. I'd contact a lawyer (and am doing so, for a separate project!)
Posted an update with the new bounce rate (~10%) thanks to a flood of hits from HN: http://drawingablank.me/blog/fix-your-bounce-rate.html
Pretty much my worst working experience was in an open plan office (the boss had their own office, natch), where the boss would walk into the room, "Hey guys...", everybody takes their headphones off and looks up, and he starts talking about something that is relevant to two, maybe two and a half, people. This would happen about once per hour.

Policy against headphones, is that a thing? Shudder.
Background checks examine the person, not the gun!

You may not know this if you've never bought a gun at a gun store, but they call in your identifying information, they say nothing to the Federal government about the gun or guns to be bought except if they include handguns as I recall.

There are forms to be filled out that do include recording the serial number, but that came long before the national background check system (1968 vs. mid-90s).
Implementing a BTree in Haskell with GADT's
Slot machines, FarmVille, Twitter feeds, I think they all work the same: push a button, you might get a reward. I'll leave it to the armchair psychologists (or even real ones) to put a label on it, but that's the commonality I see in my own behavior. Or maybe it's just the constant influx of stimulation, I don't know.

What I do know is learning to sit and do nothing is valuable. When data-connected phones came out, I thought it a boon because never again would I need simply stand in line. I could check email, surf the web, fill that time with something of "value". Then I realized that, for me, checking a Twitter feed isn't of any more value than just standing there aware of what's going on around me.
There really isn't a non-diplomatic response that works here. If you just want answers saying one or the other, there's the poll in the comments, but that's just personal preference to some extent - and I'm sure "personal preference" counts as diplomatic too.

The best I can do is that there's more Android devices, but I'm not sure which platform downloads more apps, particularly paid. Last I heard most of the money came from iOS.

If costs are an issue, then Android is likely to be cheaper to get started with, but that depends what you already have. I believe you need an OS X device to program for iOS, if you don't have one and costs matter, that's a big one. If you want a suite of testing devices, Nexus 4, 7 and 10 are cheaper than iPhone 5, iPad Mini and iPad in general. You probably have something from there already though, so that depends. iOS has a $99 developer fee, if costs matter that's another.

So, I won't give an answer that it depends on the kind of app you're developing, but I will say it depends on lots of factors you haven't given us. It might help if you detailed what you have gathered from your own studies on the platforms, and what specifically you wanted from this question.
A true paranoid would go to a store as far as possible!
Poll: What mobile OS do you use?
Add a comment if you have any particular reason for choosing this OS.

To draw a line between smartphones and normal phones (since it's a poll option): any phone that has 3g+ and a webbrowser with Javascript is a smartphone.
No smartphone
No mobile phone
Other OS
Cubicle offices make people less happy, open-plan offices make people less happy.. Maybe it's just working that makes people less happy.
I use OSX with a Windows & Linux VM on standby for anything that I can't easily do on OSX natively. I don't have to use them very often but I like having options. Occasionally I need a Windows-only app or need a bleeding edge release of some package that won't build easily on OSX. I used Linux as a desktop OS for about 6 years before switching to OSX and I have no desire to go back. The amount of time I wasted just trying to get things working properly was not worth it and OSX (Windows also) just have much better desktop software available.
"...and requiring those who do to carry third-party insurance in case an accidental discharge ends up injuring someone is an absolute minimum."

The thing here is that accidental discharges don't happen if you properly maintain your weapons and ammunition, and if you handle them properly.

As an example, I wouldn't store any weapons with a round chambered, wouldn't store weapons loaded, and wouldn't use any rifle or pistol rounds in an apartment for self-defense because of over-penetration concerns. The case where you have an accidental discharge and it hurts someone or something is entirely preventable using common sense, and so I don't believe that we should require insurance against what is honestly improper and unsafe tool usage--that burden should rest on the person who caused the accident.
I keep expecting to see more research into side channel attacks for encrypted video. A fair amount of work has been done for similar attacks on audio streams with VBR codecs. Secure encrypted voice requires using a codec in CBR mode, but that's not really possible for video. It's perhaps likely that video is too complex to leak anything usable through that type of side channel, but I haven't seen much discussion either way.
This is awesome. I wonder how long it will be before this technique shows us something we don't already know.
I think the point you're making is that autonomy alone won't produce a high-quality product. You're right. There are dangers in giving too much autonomy, which is probably why google-time is fixed at 20% and not 90%.

The point I was trying to make was that giving developers more control over what they work on better suits the problems they are trying to solve and allows the business to harness some of the passion developers have.

You're certainly right that there are aspects that never appeal. It's not a black-and-white case of "more autonomy = more results", but in some areas can be rewarding for both developer and business.
:3 that's going to be a lot of fun to set up. Enjoy that!
It could (the same goes for Secure Boot, in some sense). But the three-letter agencies from whom you want to protect yourself here likely have backdoor keys</paranoia>.
To be sure, apartments tend to be smaller when and where more activity occurs outside in common spaces.
I'm becoming increasingly unhappy with the direction Apple is headed.
As with most things: practice. A great way to learn is to find free resources on dribbble, open the PSDs and analyze all of the techniques used on each layer and how they fit together.
I find it troublesome that some of the code in BitMessage seems to be taken directly from Stackoverflow.com responses (it actually reminds me a lot of what I see happening at school). With that being said -- I do appreciate that this is new and can be improved upon quickly by a community of people with interest in such a system.

[0] https://github.com/Bitmessage/PyBitmessage/blob/master/src/a...

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1119722/base-62-conversio...
Apart from "the right thing", one might see this particular behaviour as "quite polite".

It is also better for the relationship. It signifies trust. And every time you hold something back (or lie) you risk damaging a relationship. In this instance, a recruiter might reach out to the employee some other way. The recruiter and employee would then figure out that the business owner may have withheld the mail, even though it was clearly addressed to the employee.
No, those are caricature Americans. No thinking Americans, starting with the founders, made it a point of pride of ignoring what other people think. They may have arrived at different conclusions but the notion they did so because liberty is some function of willful ignorance is idiotic.
That doesn't work at all if it is the actual wording. For point 1 you can find warranty wording in any number of open source or creative commons licenses.

For the second, objectionable requires a definition. For example many would consider the US drone assassination program objectionable, and hence tar US companies and people with the same brush. Does that mean US companies and people can use the software? How many steps do they have to be removed (eg is providing the payroll software to the defense contractor a problem?)

http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hCimLnIsDA

Because of copyright laws, people can do virtually nothing with software. If you actually want to give the user freedoms - see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html - then pick a well known free software license since it will have already addressed all these issues.
I find it impossible to work with music on when I need to concentrate. Any sort of noise on a persistent basis just about kills productivity for me.

Worked in an open plan office before, wouldn't again, not for any sort of reward. Went home every night feeling like I'd been run over by a bus. Go home go to sleep. Not my idea of a good time. There were times when I'd catch myself starring off into space.

Working from home has been much better for me. If someone interrupts, then they have to put a bit of effort in, so they're less likely to do it just because they're too lazy to find an answer themselves or something like that. And the absence of noise and the constant pressure of being available to people all the time has dramatically increased my quality of life.
Yes.

I certainly do not want to kill anyone, but my safety comes first. If my safety would not be any more in jeopardy (aka, same stopping power), I'd be fine with it. My only concern is ME living.

I'm sure most pragmatics would feel the same way.
I agree, and I'm trying :) So far it's just been two packages, one of which has since been added (not by myself) and one is still presenting problems, but it's always a pain struggling to compile something knowing that it's a simple apt-get away on Ubuntu.
State preemption nullifies this law WRT to handguns, as is true in most states.
Four Steps to Google, Without a Degree
This is why these "agreements" start out saying the software is licensed to you, not sold to you.
Yeah, maybe I was a bit too harsh.

It is just that I personally never found Plan9 that interesting, except for its successor Inferno and Limbo.

For me operating systems that explore designs done with regards to micro architectures or safe systems programming languages are much more interesting.

So for me Plan9 tends to be just another OS. And yes I have used it.
This definitely resonates. One of my most productive periods as an engineer was when I was in an open-plan office but had the option to go use a small conference room with no windows to do deep work. I spent about 50% of my time in each location and it worked extremely well-the time in the open office made collaboration easy, and the sealed off time made it easy for me to execute on the ideas I'd heard.
Thanks to open-plan office I developed anxiety, high-blood pressure and stress. I could not concentrate in the office and I had to finish most of my work at home over evenings. I nearly divorced thanks to open-plan office.

I already quit 3 long term jobs a few weeks after company moved to open-plan. At end I just had to start my own business. Now I am single-handily competing with multi-billion companies (and I dare to say with good success).

Open-plan comes with lot of bullsh*t. But at end it is just about a few bucks which company moves from operating cost to management bonuses.

Many developers care about stuff like free soda. I would strongly recommend to care about your working environment and mental health. It takes about 10 years of stress-free work to develop and reach your full technical potential. Working for peanuts and burning-out after 15 years is really bad carier plan.
Android for me. I love the openness of the system and being able to run a full Linux dekstop system in the background. I've got an Xfce desktop that I can open from any computer or by connecting VNC to localhost. It also has an ssh server that allows me to do pretty much anything that I could on my computer. Some dependencies are missing, but with qemu I can even run some x86 software.
It's what happens when an industry becomes democratized, i.e. a reliable source of high-paying jobs.