Company: BetterServers is a small (but well-funded—see below) Linux and FreeBSD VM-in-the-cloud hosting company (pre-beta).
Position: We need one or two awesome full-stack Perl or PHP devs. We have tons of work, including web design, DB and RESTful API integration.
You'd be employee #6. We have free food, drinks, a beautiful new office at the mouth of Provo Canyon. Our salaries are highly competitive (you'll work hard for it, too). Foosball and table tennis skills a plus.
Even if that's so, we are not getting the second "back". This leap second is a second added to UTC, to adjust for the slowed-down earth rotation. There was never a leap second that removes a second from our UTC clock so far (it may happen in the future).
Replacing water with ice at the poles would mean more mass at the poles, not less, since ice is displacing water and is less dense. So he may have a plausible argument that it's the other way round, but I haven't done the calculations.
It doesn't work like that. The mass of water displaced is equal to the mass of the floating ice itself. Melting a piece of ice has no change on water level.
Both the southern polar cap and the Greenland ice mass rest on ground rather than float in the ocean, which means any melting will cause the ocean levels to rise.
I was talking about the displacement only (which the parent thread discusses). I of course acknowledge the common sense that not all ice is floating on water.
I meant the global warming thing mostly as a joke. It was inspired by the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%94T, which says: "the melting of continental ice sheets ... removes their tremendous weight, allowing the land under them to begin to rebound upward in the polar regions, which ... brings mass closer to the rotation axis of the Earth, which makes the Earth spin faster". If it's on Wikipedia it must be true, right?
It's not melting at the poles, but melting of glaciers. The meltwater flows downhill, causing a net movement of mass closer to the center of the planet.
The parent post is correct about the slowing. The land ice is (mostly) at high latitudes, and the meltwater tends to raise sea level, which moves the mass to lower latitudes, hence farther from the axis of rotation. Thus warming slows the Earth's rotation as its moment of inertia increases.
The parent post is incorrect about getting it "back" however; leap seconds are added because the rotation is slowing (a "day" is getting longer). More ice caps melting will lead to more leap seconds, not fewer (or negative).
It's a fun little puzzle game that operates on rotating the perspective 90° (my kids have been playing it for over a year and seem to keep enjoying it, though I got tired of it after a few levels).
Well-funded startup, full benefits. We're looking for Linux kernel hackers, QA engineers, and full-stack engineers. We use a lot of different technologies, so the ability to learn new things quickly is the most important skill. We're small (currently 20-ish employees) and we love foosball and table tennis. Lots of free sodas and food in the breakroom, etc. It's a nice gig :)
For Linux kernel hackers:
- familiarity with cgroups, scheduling algorithms, etc
- exceptional C skills
For QA engineers:
- knowledge of TAP
- solid Perl skills
- ability to think like a customer and look at our products with fresh eyes
For full-stack engineer:
- working knowledge of HTML/CSS/Javascript
- solid Perl skills
- familiarity with Mojolicious a plus
- Python/PHP skills also comes in handy
- REST API design skills
I think the point is that we vigilantly distinguish "that was stupid" from "that was a stupid person". Judging someone as stupid means we've stopped thinking about possibilities. Derek wisely says there's always more to the story (reminded me of this: http://garrysub.posterous.com/what-does-it-feel-like-to-be-s...)
Labeling people is nearly always a substitute for thinking and empathy (both hard things).
Lest I forget, there is also ignorance-- willful cluelessness; can't be bothered to learn something; won't have a reasoned discussion. I do label these individuals "stupid." Don't get me wrong, it's not immediate prejudice, but it doesn't take much time talking to some people to learn that they are willful in their efforts to remain uninformed.
"Population declines following economic collapse" should be "Population declines following sustained drop in birthrate." The population is going to decline regardless of what the future economy does.
I'm not very familiar with their model, but if the birthrate asymptotes to above the replacement rate, or goes back up, the population won't decline. So the economy might be a factor.
> Computers are an extension of people's minds, not devices like a record player, typewriter, or printing press. Intrusion into somebody's processing and data should be treated the same as intruding into their thoughts. It shouldn't be done.
Well said. This is probably the most challenging analogy for people (and courts) to grasp.
The right of the people to be secure in their ... papers, ... against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
People used to write down their thoughts on paper, for their own private use, no different than using computers today (save at orders-of-magnitude different velocity). Courts have been struggling with this notion for centuries.
