VyprVPN has mostly been blocked though apparently a few of their servers still work. Their blog post about it is unfortunately short on information: http://www.goldenfrog.com/blog/vyprvpn-server-issues-in-china

I wonder what the endgame is for the Great Firewall. The tech-savvy are only fine with it because of how easy it is to punch through with a small amount of technical knowledge, but those holes are being closed. Two years ago I could use an SSH tunnel through my home computer. Last year that was blocked but VPN worked reasonably well, as long as I bounced around to different servers. This year I'm going to have to try something else. If China makes it practically impossible to use the outside internet securely, how will foreign businesses react? What about local nerds? What about the average people that just want to access foreign websites like Youtube, and previously used a simple browser add-on passed around from friend to friend?

I recently realized what my killer app would be for a screen that is always visible: an infrared camera. Being able to see into the infrared spectrum would give you "superhuman" powers, like never accidentally touching a hot surface, easily finding and insulating the spots where your house is losing heat during the winter, and being able to see pedestrians while driving at night. I think it will take that kind of incredible practicality to amaze people so much that they can't justify opposing Google Glass.

Kind of surprised to see others joining me in the iOS 4.x and below camp. I've got a first-generation iPod touch that I upgraded from iOS 1 to iOS 3 so I could get the app store, even though I had already rooted it and put an unofficial "app store" on there.

That little device is still kicking after over 6 years, and I use it almost daily. It's plugged into my car most of the time now, surviving Minnesota winters outdoors and being totally usable down to at least -19 Fahrenheit (the coldest I've tried it in). Very impressed by the build quality.

Yeah, I was also missing some options in this poll.

• My boss: reasonable
• My employees: motivated and skilled
• My co-workers: intelligent
• The software and systems: we write our own or install what we need
• The bureaucracy and administration: moderate, but appropriate
• The workload: I usually leave at 5
• The point of it all: direct, significant impact on financial results of a large company

Quantitative finance is great if you avoid the long hours (and questionable ethics) of an investment bank or hedge fund. (And we're hiring, if you can code and price derivatives.)

My main issues are that I have to get up early and that I can't do other things that I'd prefer even more, like getting work done around the house or playing games. But the work itself is not a negative. Then again, I always looked forward to school too...

Complete bid history is available. The usernames are obscured, but there's enough to see what you want to know:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=221509460160&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2565

Bids over $1000 were places by more than 10 different accounts! There were 15 total. Now, whether those accounts are legitimate or not is another story.

Well, I love KDE, and have a 64-bit machine and no strong connection to my current distro, Kubuntu. Next time I get the itch (or something breaks), I think this will be the one I go to!

Thanks for posting it. The two reviews were good links, covering different aspects of the experience.

The main thing I'd hope for out of this acquisition is better integration into the Google world. The Twitch Android app is pretty embarrassing (no way at all to watch replays), and neither the app nor the website support Chromecast, despite it being one of the best possible fits for the device.

Interesting that the title does not suggest that the rich are sad, but rather that the materialistic (selfish?) are sad. The book review spends a lot of time trying to equate the two, but without reading the book itself I'm not sure how "materialistic" was defined and whether the book makes the same conflation. While it's tempting so think the rich are unhappy, it seems it's not actually true: richer countries are happier, and richer people within each country are happier.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/money-buys-happiness-and-you-can-never-have-too-much-new-research-says/275380/

(Whether this reflects causation or not is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Nice. Seems like a good choice. Hopefully it doesn't become too popular; a look at the sample questions on their site made it seem pretty easy to break if someone devoted their attention to it.

Assuming you've used both Skype and Hangouts video chat a fair amount, how would you compare the quality/stability etc.? Do you ever use them over a sketchy connection, on either side?