Speaking on behalf non-militant vegetarians... no, you really should be sure a vegan hears you, because it's usually hilarious to hear the squealing.;-)
I'm that vegetarian that says "I hear the calamari here is awesome, you should try it".:-P
Is that meant to be a recursive insult because, you know... pot, kettle, black...
Yes, absolutely.
It does seem to be a recursive definition based on who perceives whom to be a hipster and why.;-)
And trying to define it, either makes one a hipster (and therefore not a real hipster), or not a hipster (and therefore a real hipster), and then as soon as you become all smug and ironic about the fact that you are or are not a hipster you become one... and then you get over the whole notion of hipster and the cycle starts all over again.
Because there clearly is meant to be some smug irony in there somewhere. Or, not.
As I said, very meta.;-)
Here on slashdot, most people I see using the term "hipster douchebag" are themselves hipster douchebags.
Companies rush to get these products out the door, and are both designing it to be easy for the consumer and themselves.
So they take shortcuts, utterly fail to think about real security, and themselves become security holes.
This is why I won't buy things like a wifi thermostat, and why I think the internet of things will prove to be a terrible idea as we get inundated with products which have such crappy security they shouldn't exist.
So screw your fancy thermostats and all of your other crap. Until I see a lot more evidence vendors have any care or ability to implement security, I just treat these things like they've been implemented by indifferent and incompetent people.
Because, really, they probably have been.
I consider this story not remarkable because there was a security hole, I consider it remarkable because people believed there wouldn't be.
They think the other person has a superiority complex so they beat them to the punch with their own. Basically if you call someone a hipster you are probably covering up your own insecurity and couldn't think of a more creative insult.
LOL, that sounds like a very hipster thing to say. Sounds very meta.
Can I get this translated into the standard "nerd, jock, student council, and stoner metalhead" cool kids/dorks magic quadrant we used to have in the 80s?
Unless it's a hipster thing to do that. In which case I'm pretty sure I've never qualified.
Is it sad that I've actually written VAX assembly before?
As someone else who has done it, no. At least, not to someone else who has done it.
I still find myself floored by the fact that someone, somewhere thought it was absolutely necessary to have an assembly language instruction for calculating polynomials.
Well, you're describing what was the PDP/11 architecture... and by that point, people knew it was something which came up often enough to want implemented in hardware. Because things like FORTRAN could benefit from it.
It's also the platform which gave us UNIX. So, in terms of pedigree, I'd say it's up there.
Hell, that platform gave us standardized memory/disk chunk sizes, and all sorts of other goodies we take for granted these days. This was back when Digital did some really cool things.
OK, I was never that much of a fan of VMS, that much is true. But the hardware and its descendants had a lot going for it.
If he's spent the last 6 years getting it, and hasn't got other relevant experience in that time... then the big giant gap in his resume will make him even less employable.
Because, when they ask WTF you've been doing the last 6 years, and you go, "err, ummm, I was getting the PhD which isn't on my resume"... what do you think happens next? I doubt it's the one where he gets the job and everybody has a good laugh.
If you aren't going to fess up to it, why take it in the first place? And if you have to pretend like you're some n00b straight out of school (except with a 6 year gap not actually working), you're really screwed.
You may need to downplay it, or put some context around it, or try to phrase things in such a way as helps you... but if you lie, or leave a 6 year gap in your employment history, you're probably screwed.
Hell, if you have to, be proud of it, highlight the fact that you did really cool things and still actually coded, but that you've realized that academia wasn't a route you were looking for, and just want to get back to playing with cool stuff.
Their fancy modern cut skinny suit, the skinny tie... and shoes with toes that extend several inches past their feet... oh, and the Justin Bieber/swirly haircut, that seems to be mandatory.
Of course, the sad thing is we now have a bunch of middle aged geeks who were never cool, trying to come up with a definition for hipster, which we're clearly not qualified to understand -- so there's limited utility in it.;-)
I don't think people are looking for someone with a PhD as a software developer. You're overskilled.
By the time you have a PhD, you're expected to be the guy in charge of developing cool new technology, or working in academia.
I've known one or two PhDs in comp-sci who worked in the private sector. And they've been responsible for creating and developing new technologies for a company... and I think they'd gone back and gotten their PhD after having been there a while.
What kinds of jobs are you looking for? Because I can't imagine someone is looking for a PhD to do C++ development, and the perception may be that you're overqualified and looking for a temporary job until something better comes along.
PhDs are researchers, not code monkeys.
Back when I was a code monkey, if we got an application from a PhD we'd have tossed it. Because either you're aiming really low, only going to stick around a little while, or are going to try to rebuild everything the way you'd have done it in a perfect world. At least, that was the perception.
The PhD was on a very technical topic that has very little practical application
And that's kind of the problem with a PhD. You've spent 6 years working on something with little practical application. You now are looking for jobs which don't need a PhD, and wondering why nobody is hiring.
Whatever you'd wanted to be when you grow up, you may have taken software developer off the table.
The fact that they're not forcing G+ on you anymore means that after 5 years of trying, they gave up trying to beat Facebook and decided not to piss off their core users any further.
I'm really hoping this is signalling a shift that, yes, social media exists... but it's not the be-all and end-all of technology.
Because I've seen way too many corporate presentations saying how everything was going to be done in social media, and "OMG! Teh Social!".
And, at the end of the day, these tools don't always pan out, don't actually help you get your work done in some cases, and leave people thinking that somehow getting a badge in the company social media site was anything of value.
I like the idea of Google going back to giving me really awesome services which provide the information I need, without the supposition that I'm going to go all social on everything I see and blog about it to my friends. If I want to do that, I'll send them an email or text them.
And, yes, I know... I am nowhere near the core market for social media... I'm old and fat... get off my lawn and all that... but the over-hyping of social media has made me have to actively avoid it in some cases. And in a few cases, I get forced to use it so that the "visionary" who foisted this on the company can pretend he was onto something. And then over time they stop getting used as people realize that it's not actually adding anything to they job.
Social media exists, it will continue to exist. But not all things are social media, nor should they be. But once it became the latest craze, that's what everybody treated it as, then it became the defacto "if we don't have social media we're falling behind".
But, like the self tweeting toilet... some things don't really add value to people, and don't reflect how they use the service.
Well, there was the whole real name policy. And not giving a damn about G+.
It was getting to the point that almost everything you did on any Google service was getting the nag messages of "hey, wanna use this thing?"
In all honesty, I have no real idea of what G+ was, is, or WTF I'd want it for. I just know I've spent the last few years having to say "no, I don't care" to avoid having it foisted on me.
On Android, Google has been steadily making it harder and harder to avoid... and in a few cases when trying to log into my gmail account from a web browser, I'm confronted with authenticating with YouTube. I'm not using YouTube, I'm using gmail. Leave YouTube out of this.
Google+ for me has always been something I don't want which was increasingly difficult to avoid. So, I welcome this news.
Because, really, it was fast becoming the pushy salesman of technology.
If you were really like you say, you'd just have a flip phone and be done.
If it weren't for the better keyboard on my Android phone, I probably could. I liked my old Motorola Krazr... long battery life, small to carry. But it sucked as a keyboard for texting. All I did is swap the SIM and be able to text better. But I've subsequently uninstalled all apps, and do not have access to data. So I could go back to my krazr and not actually have much of a difference.
I'm actually thinking you are finding out you really are a hipster. A lacking one... perhaps wannabe vs failure?
LOL... fuck, it's high school all over again.
I'll go with middle aged geek, with a waning interest in technology just for the sake of it. It's cool, has its purposes, but plays a very circumscribed role in my life these days.
Anyone who wants to claim that they adopted anything before it became mainstream yet wouldn't be caught dead in anything that isn't popular yet is a hipster.
LOL, awesome... then I should be orthogonal to the set of people which are classed as hipsters.
Mission accomplished!!
Although, it's probably hip to not be a hipster, in which case I'm a stealth hipster. Unless knowing that not being hip makes me hip, in which case I'm a wannabe, which may or may not be the same as being a hipster. Unless I'm ironic about the whole thing, and then I'm back to being a hipster.
LOL... that, sir, is the first time I've been accused of anything like that.
Please, do take it, but in the mean time, shut up.
Go fuck yourself.;-)
Meanwhile, I'll be enjoying reading and watching vids on my "phone", which is really more of a e-reader+media player.
You know, there are many of us who don't use our phones like that, and have no interest in it. At all.
I don't have a data plan on my cell phone, it gets used for texting more than anything else (my HTC Desire is not actually very good as a phone without bluetooth). In fact, I'd have to go looking for it to know exactly where it is as the moment.
If I need to travel with a device, I have my tablet. If I need more, I have my laptop. I have friends you can't really have a conversation with, because their face is always buried in their phone. So, yes, I'm behind the curve and plan on staying there.
My point is that, by the time you're up into a 7" phablet, unless you are using speaker phone (in which case you're probably an annoying ass when out in public), or a bluetooth headset (which we used to consider annoying asses, but have adapted to it)... holding a 7" phone up to your face looks pretty ridiculous. Anything bigger is going to look sillier. (And I also assume very uncomfortable to hold onto)
It's a trade off or having a single device which has more utility. I get that with screens, bigger is better.
But, thankfully, life hasn't forced me to be constantly tethered to a device like this.
So, in the mean time, I will laugh at people holding a huge phone up to their face, and shake my head at people who can't be away from their phone for long enough to go to the bathroom. Because, really, nobody likes a Twitter Shitter.
For me, I neither need nor want that kind of functionality. My wife, however, is stuck carrying around a cell phone so she can monitor her email. But that's at least better than being tethered to a desk.
Wait, I thought hipsters were the guys who liked the new things?
I've never been convinced it's well defined.
It sometimes seems to carry some form of ironic post-modern cynicism, and some fashion sense which is either very modern or 70s/80s style in an ironic manner.
In other cases it seems to be "people who like new things".
Either way, I'm closer to the sore hip age than the hipster age, and they (fortunately) don't make skinny jeans for me.:-P
I've seen people using a phone which looks around the size of my Nexus 7.
And using it as a phone almost looks like a sight-gag.
Kind of like when I got my first-gen iPad and a friend held it up to his head and started saying "can you hear me now?".
Some of these phones don't look like they'd be either easy to carry around, or actually use as a phone. Because it's like holding a paperback novel up to your head.
Like desktops, the vast majority of people will never truly tax their CPU, and haven't for a long time.
Memory almost always becomes a bottleneck, and I'm of the opinion there's seldom such thing as too much of that, and almost never enough.
So, my older Android phone, or my Nexus 7 tablet... a newer generation has more CPU power, and more memory, and would probably be an improvement. Between two of the latest and greatest phones... probably not so much.
But, in terms of device longevity, in a few years when the OS has been updated numerous times, and your old device is old and busted, you will see it fall behind.
Which is kind of annoying, because my Motorola Krazr was an awesome phone which I had for almost 10 years. And I can't say I'm overly keen to get on the upgrade treadmill because new OS versions are out or the vendor has added some bauble to the phone.
1) A retro-reflector naturally formed, is perfectly aligned, and we stumbled on it without having been there and have been able to use it for decades in experiments 2) Aliens placed it on the moon, and we've somehow discovered it's there (again, without having been there), and that it's properly aligned, and have been using it for lunar ranging experiments for the last 45 years or so
You're either good at humor, or terrible at science.
Because the ONLY way there is a retro-reflector on the moon, that we know about, and that is aligned properly, and which has been used in lunar laser ranging experiments for decades... is that we put it there.
Unfortunately, joke or not, to the people who believe it was a hoax... no amount of facts or evidence will do. Because they're always going to believe this bit of stupidity.
How he gets away with his nonsense when all his followers are (admittedly, self-described) skeptics is beyond me.
Nonsense? Followers?
These are a bunch of people who debunk claims of supernatural phenomenon which are either:
1) Magic undocumented things, which nobody has been able to prove yet, and for which no physical laws would apply 2) Active scams and hoaxes
Are you suggesting there is some dishonesty in Randi's willingness to give you $10 million dollars if you can give repeatable evidence under controlled circumstances that you can do something amazing?
Because I'm afraid you're going to need to provide some evidence for that claim. That nobody has claimed that prize means that so far anybody who claims to have supernatural powers is full of shit.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking on behalf non-militant vegetarians ... no, you really should be sure a vegan hears you, because it's usually hilarious to hear the squealing. ;-)
I'm that vegetarian that says "I hear the calamari here is awesome, you should try it". :-P
Sure, say that now.
But when Mothra is terrorizing cities, don't say we didn't warn you. ;-)
In other words, it's Hipsters all the way down. ;-)
Yes, absolutely.
It does seem to be a recursive definition based on who perceives whom to be a hipster and why. ;-)
And trying to define it, either makes one a hipster (and therefore not a real hipster), or not a hipster (and therefore a real hipster), and then as soon as you become all smug and ironic about the fact that you are or are not a hipster you become one ... and then you get over the whole notion of hipster and the cycle starts all over again.
Because there clearly is meant to be some smug irony in there somewhere. Or, not.
As I said, very meta. ;-)
Here on slashdot, most people I see using the term "hipster douchebag" are themselves hipster douchebags.
Really, is anybody surprised by this at all?
Companies rush to get these products out the door, and are both designing it to be easy for the consumer and themselves.
So they take shortcuts, utterly fail to think about real security, and themselves become security holes.
This is why I won't buy things like a wifi thermostat, and why I think the internet of things will prove to be a terrible idea as we get inundated with products which have such crappy security they shouldn't exist.
So screw your fancy thermostats and all of your other crap. Until I see a lot more evidence vendors have any care or ability to implement security, I just treat these things like they've been implemented by indifferent and incompetent people.
Because, really, they probably have been.
I consider this story not remarkable because there was a security hole, I consider it remarkable because people believed there wouldn't be.
No, "grandpa" or "the crazy old guy down the street".
Now get off my damned lawn, you backy wastards! ;-)
LOL, that sounds like a very hipster thing to say. Sounds very meta.
Can I get this translated into the standard "nerd, jock, student council, and stoner metalhead" cool kids/dorks magic quadrant we used to have in the 80s?
Unless it's a hipster thing to do that. In which case I'm pretty sure I've never qualified.
As someone else who has done it, no. At least, not to someone else who has done it.
Well, you're describing what was the PDP/11 architecture ... and by that point, people knew it was something which came up often enough to want implemented in hardware. Because things like FORTRAN could benefit from it.
It's also the platform which gave us UNIX. So, in terms of pedigree, I'd say it's up there.
Hell, that platform gave us standardized memory/disk chunk sizes, and all sorts of other goodies we take for granted these days. This was back when Digital did some really cool things.
OK, I was never that much of a fan of VMS, that much is true. But the hardware and its descendants had a lot going for it.
Good times.
If he's spent the last 6 years getting it, and hasn't got other relevant experience in that time ... then the big giant gap in his resume will make him even less employable.
Because, when they ask WTF you've been doing the last 6 years, and you go, "err, ummm, I was getting the PhD which isn't on my resume" ... what do you think happens next? I doubt it's the one where he gets the job and everybody has a good laugh.
If you aren't going to fess up to it, why take it in the first place? And if you have to pretend like you're some n00b straight out of school (except with a 6 year gap not actually working), you're really screwed.
You may need to downplay it, or put some context around it, or try to phrase things in such a way as helps you ... but if you lie, or leave a 6 year gap in your employment history, you're probably screwed.
Hell, if you have to, be proud of it, highlight the fact that you did really cool things and still actually coded, but that you've realized that academia wasn't a route you were looking for, and just want to get back to playing with cool stuff.
Some hipsters wear suits. I've seen them.
Their fancy modern cut skinny suit, the skinny tie ... and shoes with toes that extend several inches past their feet ... oh, and the Justin Bieber/swirly haircut, that seems to be mandatory.
Of course, the sad thing is we now have a bunch of middle aged geeks who were never cool, trying to come up with a definition for hipster, which we're clearly not qualified to understand -- so there's limited utility in it. ;-)
I don't think people are looking for someone with a PhD as a software developer. You're overskilled.
By the time you have a PhD, you're expected to be the guy in charge of developing cool new technology, or working in academia.
I've known one or two PhDs in comp-sci who worked in the private sector. And they've been responsible for creating and developing new technologies for a company ... and I think they'd gone back and gotten their PhD after having been there a while.
What kinds of jobs are you looking for? Because I can't imagine someone is looking for a PhD to do C++ development, and the perception may be that you're overqualified and looking for a temporary job until something better comes along.
PhDs are researchers, not code monkeys.
Back when I was a code monkey, if we got an application from a PhD we'd have tossed it. Because either you're aiming really low, only going to stick around a little while, or are going to try to rebuild everything the way you'd have done it in a perfect world. At least, that was the perception.
And that's kind of the problem with a PhD. You've spent 6 years working on something with little practical application. You now are looking for jobs which don't need a PhD, and wondering why nobody is hiring.
Whatever you'd wanted to be when you grow up, you may have taken software developer off the table.
LOL ... the hacker nature which can be taught is not the true hacker nature.
More like, it occupies a bounded aspect of my life, stays within that, and doesn't spill into the rest of my life.
That would be your definition #2:
Which is exactly how I used it.
I'm really hoping this is signalling a shift that, yes, social media exists ... but it's not the be-all and end-all of technology.
Because I've seen way too many corporate presentations saying how everything was going to be done in social media, and "OMG! Teh Social!".
And, at the end of the day, these tools don't always pan out, don't actually help you get your work done in some cases, and leave people thinking that somehow getting a badge in the company social media site was anything of value.
I like the idea of Google going back to giving me really awesome services which provide the information I need, without the supposition that I'm going to go all social on everything I see and blog about it to my friends. If I want to do that, I'll send them an email or text them.
And, yes, I know ... I am nowhere near the core market for social media ... I'm old and fat ... get off my lawn and all that ... but the over-hyping of social media has made me have to actively avoid it in some cases. And in a few cases, I get forced to use it so that the "visionary" who foisted this on the company can pretend he was onto something. And then over time they stop getting used as people realize that it's not actually adding anything to they job.
Social media exists, it will continue to exist. But not all things are social media, nor should they be. But once it became the latest craze, that's what everybody treated it as, then it became the defacto "if we don't have social media we're falling behind".
But, like the self tweeting toilet ... some things don't really add value to people, and don't reflect how they use the service.
Well, there was the whole real name policy. And not giving a damn about G+.
It was getting to the point that almost everything you did on any Google service was getting the nag messages of "hey, wanna use this thing?"
In all honesty, I have no real idea of what G+ was, is, or WTF I'd want it for. I just know I've spent the last few years having to say "no, I don't care" to avoid having it foisted on me.
On Android, Google has been steadily making it harder and harder to avoid ... and in a few cases when trying to log into my gmail account from a web browser, I'm confronted with authenticating with YouTube. I'm not using YouTube, I'm using gmail. Leave YouTube out of this.
Google+ for me has always been something I don't want which was increasingly difficult to avoid. So, I welcome this news.
Because, really, it was fast becoming the pushy salesman of technology.
If it weren't for the better keyboard on my Android phone, I probably could. I liked my old Motorola Krazr ... long battery life, small to carry. But it sucked as a keyboard for texting. All I did is swap the SIM and be able to text better. But I've subsequently uninstalled all apps, and do not have access to data. So I could go back to my krazr and not actually have much of a difference.
LOL ... fuck, it's high school all over again.
I'll go with middle aged geek, with a waning interest in technology just for the sake of it. It's cool, has its purposes, but plays a very circumscribed role in my life these days.
LOL, awesome ... then I should be orthogonal to the set of people which are classed as hipsters.
Mission accomplished!!
Although, it's probably hip to not be a hipster, in which case I'm a stealth hipster. Unless knowing that not being hip makes me hip, in which case I'm a wannabe, which may or may not be the same as being a hipster. Unless I'm ironic about the whole thing, and then I'm back to being a hipster.
This is all very complicated to an old geek.
I have always treated it like it's an external 3rd party, not the web site I'm visiting, and therefore not an entity I trust.
I've always viewed jquery as about as trusted as doubleclick or scorecardresearch. I don't know or care what you do, I didn't visit your site.
But then, I've learned not to trust the web in general.
With so many sites using this, dumping malware into it means you can get a whole lot of sites easily ... making this a fairly obvious target.
LOL ... that, sir, is the first time I've been accused of anything like that.
Go fuck yourself. ;-)
You know, there are many of us who don't use our phones like that, and have no interest in it. At all.
I don't have a data plan on my cell phone, it gets used for texting more than anything else (my HTC Desire is not actually very good as a phone without bluetooth). In fact, I'd have to go looking for it to know exactly where it is as the moment.
If I need to travel with a device, I have my tablet. If I need more, I have my laptop. I have friends you can't really have a conversation with, because their face is always buried in their phone. So, yes, I'm behind the curve and plan on staying there.
My point is that, by the time you're up into a 7" phablet, unless you are using speaker phone (in which case you're probably an annoying ass when out in public), or a bluetooth headset (which we used to consider annoying asses, but have adapted to it) ... holding a 7" phone up to your face looks pretty ridiculous. Anything bigger is going to look sillier. (And I also assume very uncomfortable to hold onto)
It's a trade off or having a single device which has more utility. I get that with screens, bigger is better.
But, thankfully, life hasn't forced me to be constantly tethered to a device like this.
So, in the mean time, I will laugh at people holding a huge phone up to their face, and shake my head at people who can't be away from their phone for long enough to go to the bathroom. Because, really, nobody likes a Twitter Shitter.
For me, I neither need nor want that kind of functionality. My wife, however, is stuck carrying around a cell phone so she can monitor her email. But that's at least better than being tethered to a desk.
I sincerely hope not. :-P
I've never been convinced it's well defined.
It sometimes seems to carry some form of ironic post-modern cynicism, and some fashion sense which is either very modern or 70s/80s style in an ironic manner.
In other cases it seems to be "people who like new things".
Either way, I'm closer to the sore hip age than the hipster age, and they (fortunately) don't make skinny jeans for me. :-P
I've seen numerous people holding the big giant phone up to their head.
And, yes, it looks absolutely dorky.
Some of those phones are enormous.
I've seen people using a phone which looks around the size of my Nexus 7.
And using it as a phone almost looks like a sight-gag.
Kind of like when I got my first-gen iPad and a friend held it up to his head and started saying "can you hear me now?".
Some of these phones don't look like they'd be either easy to carry around, or actually use as a phone. Because it's like holding a paperback novel up to your head.
Like desktops, the vast majority of people will never truly tax their CPU, and haven't for a long time.
Memory almost always becomes a bottleneck, and I'm of the opinion there's seldom such thing as too much of that, and almost never enough.
So, my older Android phone, or my Nexus 7 tablet ... a newer generation has more CPU power, and more memory, and would probably be an improvement. Between two of the latest and greatest phones ... probably not so much.
But, in terms of device longevity, in a few years when the OS has been updated numerous times, and your old device is old and busted, you will see it fall behind.
Which is kind of annoying, because my Motorola Krazr was an awesome phone which I had for almost 10 years. And I can't say I'm overly keen to get on the upgrade treadmill because new OS versions are out or the vendor has added some bauble to the phone.
So, your assertion is that either:
1) A retro-reflector naturally formed, is perfectly aligned, and we stumbled on it without having been there and have been able to use it for decades in experiments
2) Aliens placed it on the moon, and we've somehow discovered it's there (again, without having been there), and that it's properly aligned, and have been using it for lunar ranging experiments for the last 45 years or so
You're either good at humor, or terrible at science.
Because the ONLY way there is a retro-reflector on the moon, that we know about, and that is aligned properly, and which has been used in lunar laser ranging experiments for decades ... is that we put it there.
Unfortunately, joke or not, to the people who believe it was a hoax ... no amount of facts or evidence will do. Because they're always going to believe this bit of stupidity.
Nonsense? Followers?
These are a bunch of people who debunk claims of supernatural phenomenon which are either:
1) Magic undocumented things, which nobody has been able to prove yet, and for which no physical laws would apply
2) Active scams and hoaxes
Are you suggesting there is some dishonesty in Randi's willingness to give you $10 million dollars if you can give repeatable evidence under controlled circumstances that you can do something amazing?
Because I'm afraid you're going to need to provide some evidence for that claim. That nobody has claimed that prize means that so far anybody who claims to have supernatural powers is full of shit.
Which is the expected outcome.