I am a long time Apple fanboy, really love the iPad. But honestly, I am starting to get annoyed with some missing customizations that Android has had for ages. Not talking themes.

For example: Intents. iOS 6 looked like Apple was headed that way with the way you share pictures or links. However, only a few select companies are integrated with it. I want to be able to add a screenshot right into Evernote. Use a different "read later" provider. I use Chrome on the desktop, which doesn't integrate with iCloud reader. Same thing goes for bookmarks. I use xmarks for syncing across multiple machines and I primarily use Chrome. Xmarks is also awesome for having work profiles. iOS xmarks integration is very limited because of Apple.

Widgets: I can't believe that after all these years of widgets in OS X they haven't brought them over to iOS. It would be very nice to have a dashboard for lets say system status at work. I don't want anything too abusive on system resources, but allowing one of these widgets to update in the background or via notifications would be awesome.

I was honestly considering picking up a Nexus 7 once the LTE version is announced. The announcement of factory images for the Nexus 7 has sealed the deal for me. Will I customize it to that level ? Not sure. But I would like the option.

I go to interviews wearing my normal t-shirt and jeans. To me, putting on cloths that I wouldn't wear to the job is misleading.

Let me clarify that the puzzles I am talking about have no use in case in technology ever. They are random hypotheticals that prove next to nothing and only waste the times of both people.

I am totally ok with and encourage someone to walk in and say. Ok, we have this specific project and ran into this problem. What would you do to fix it ? What technologies, tools or methods would you use to fix it ? How would you know you accomplished it ? If this failed what would you do next ?

For example:

On a very high traffic site you have a list of recent users that is updated very frequently. You are currently using memcache but every time the key expires it creates a heavy spike on your database. How do you solve this ?

There are quite a few ways this question can be answered. This is a totally legitimate interview question. You can apply a lot of different technologies to this in many creative ways.

You will get *FAR* more out of the interview asking this compared to asking riddles about the number of elephants in bathtubs and how much they weigh.

Without a doubt there is no one magic formula. In the end you have to be able to read people. I have had people come in and clam up almost instantly because they were intimidated by me or nervous about the interview. Those are the times I take a short breather to chat about some random shit. Once they relax I get back into the thick of things. I have seen many people interview people and fail at this. They might know the answer but are overwhelmed. But this is also a good indicated of how well they will fit into the place. Some companies I have been at were chaotic, fast paced and high stress. Obviously, someone who cracks under pressure might not be what we want.

I change up my interview style a lot over time. Mostly because each company is very different and has very different needs. I wouldn't interview someone at a startup the same way as a larger established company. I also don't interview juniors and seniors the same. I don't expect a junior to have all the answers, I might need to drop them a few hints or lead them a bit. Do they understand the core concepts ? Did they learn something during a chat ? Were they interested in what they learned ? And it sounds strange but did they enjoy it ?

I have walked out of job interviews where they asked nothing but puzzles. I solve technical challenges and write code. If you really have trouble determining how many toasters you can use to cook 50 pancakes, guess what. I am not the right person for you. If you are looking for someone who can code their ass off, I am the right person.

I have interviewed hundreds of candidates over the years. I have been the hiring manager a few times and never once pulled the puzzle bullshit. I have found the best indicator in the world is to just casually bullshit about technology. You can very quickly find someones strengths, weaknesses and if they are full of it. In a casual chat, people let their guard down and you get a look in.

Ever since I switched to Mac I have been so much happier. My work flows have drastically improved and I am far more productive. I haven't used Windows for anything other then testing a site in IE or pure gaming on a Windows box in many years now.

I have Windows 7 installed for a few games (DCS for one) and I tell ya the UI is a train wreak. It is a cluttered mess that you can't ever find anything. Hell just launching an application is painful. Where did this application install ? Did it install based on the company name or the product name ? Did it install in program files or some other random directory ?

With OS X it has a very clean system layout that makes sense. Where are my apps installed ? /Applications. Where are my pictures, movies, music. In ~/

The system settings page is well organized and I can find what I am looking for very easy. The single navbar makes life a lot easier as well. No guessing where this app has the menu or digging through confusing ribbon menus.

Linux ... is just as bad as Windows on the desktop. There is no unity or no organization. It's just a hot mess.

This is clear proof that god exists

If I only had mod points

I live in an apartment building and only use the landline to buzz someone in. I am currently using Comcast for the landline service. I have explored getting something else but here is the problem.

You lose the package deal with you remove one of the 3 services. Comcast does this to prevent you from leaving of course. But, the advantage to having the phone service is uptime. VoIP providers (at least here) are required to restore service quickly. If my internet connection is down, I generally get my restored faster than friends. The longest outage I had was like half of a day when someone took out a utility pole.

I think I saw a movie about this ... the defensive network was called Skynet.

Read the actual complaints and you will see that this guy was being very creepy. This is more then just showing the article to a co-worker.

Um, Apple has tested each iPhone outside of the lab. I remember seeing some pictures of the original iPhone being used on Caltrain way before release and shortly after it was announced. Of course the person using it didn't know they had their picture taken using it.

This is just the first time that Apple lost any of the devices.

The connectivity issues with the iPhone are not because of the device, its because of the awful AT&T network.

Nope, it works perfectly. 1 is the execute bit, which when applied to a directory allows you to read a file from inside that directory ONLY if you know the absolute path to the file. However, since the parent is 701 you can't find out what that unique directory name is without already knowing it.

Apache can read this because its looking for index.php inside that vhost's DocumentRoot. Now, you might be asking ... well, just look at the vhost and grab the DocumentRoot from there. You can't, the directory that contains the vhost files is also set to root.root 700. Apache can read this at start up before it switchs to a non-privileged user.

Here, try this out:

mkdir -p /web/blog1/abc/
mkdir -p /web/blog2/def/
mkdir -p /web/blog3/ghi/

chmod 701 /web/blog1
chmod 701 /web/blog2
chmod 701 /web/blog3

chmod 701 /web/blog1/abc
chmod 701 /web/blog2/def
chmod 701 /web/blog3/ghi

touch /web/blog1/abc/index.php
touch /web/blog2/def/index.php
touch /web/blog3/ghi/index.php

Now, try an ls of /web/blog1 you will get a Permission denied. You can't find out that unique directory name inside /web/blog1 without already knowing it, which Apache does. However, you can do a ls /web/blog1/abc/index.php

Wordpress doesn't need to look at files inside those directories so its ok. It also gets its current running (DocumentRoot) from PHP (which is being passed via environment variables) so everything works as normal.

Even lsof won't show what directories are currently open. /proc won't list it either, as those files won't allow you to read about those processes as a non-privileged user.

I am not quite sure what you are trying to accomplish security wise by mounting those with noatime. That's a performance benefit.

I have been dealing with a large number of Wordpress installs in the past 2 years and I am hear to tell you this is NOTHING new. This is a very common attack that is being used and its hard as shit to find. Sometimes they embed it in Javascript, sometimes its in PHP. Sometimes they encode the PHP or Javascript in base64. Sometimes they have it binary encoded inside image files. They go to great lengths to hide the code.

There is also a large number of free themes out there that come with this crap included. You can typically find it by looking at the footer include file. Look for a large base64 string. Most people ignore those because there are a number of developers who find it amusing to put that crap in their footers that if removed it will prevent the theme from working. Sure, I understand they want to prevent people from removing their credit but come on. Its leading to security issues across the board.

The only thing that I have found that helps limit these attacks is to only make the wp-content/uploads directory writable by the webserver. Everything else is owned by the user or root. To take things further, each install is placed inside a unique directory name that is chmod'd to 701 (its parent is also 701). If an attack manages to crack one install, they can't just attack another by going through the file system.

Not trying to trash Wordpress here, its just too popular and they have had a number of security mistakes in the past. Wordpress installs require a lot of maintenance to keep up to date. Wordpress makes it easy on attackers by listing the version number right in the damn HTML. Sure, they say that it doesn't matter because people can figure it out anyway. But hey, why not just leave your house unlocked at night. Attackers are just going to get in anyway.

Music makes me code faster. When I am going into a code grind I will pop in some electronic music and start kicking some ass. The repetitiveness of the music really helps me with writing some of the same statements over and over. It also gives me a flow to keep up with. This type of music also makes it easy to tune out when I am working on a more critical section of the code.

If I was told tomorrow that I am not allowed to listen to music at work, I would immediately without even thinking twice start looking for a new job. It really sounds like this is the type of boss who would complain about me taking a 5 minute break to read Slashdot or whatever. Not the type of company I would work for. Treat your employees like humans not slaves, and you will get far more productivity out of them. Humans need a few minutes of casual browsing to help break up the day and reset them selves for the next steps in a project.

I couldn't work in an office that was completely silent. That's more distracting then anything and would drive me crazy.

Now of course I use headphones all the time. It would be very distracting to be forced to listen to a style of music that you aren't into. All coders are into different styles of hacking music. I know some that are into speed metal where others are into classical. Whatever works for ya.

When I am at home (working on my own projects) I will generally have a movie playing on the other screen. For the most part I don't really watch it except for the really cool action scenes. I watch movies that I have seen a number of times so I don't have to watch every little part.

A wise man told me once that you shouldn't look for a good job, look for a good boss.