HTC seems to be encountering a bit of executive brain drain. Jason Gordon, the firm's vice president of global communications, revealed on Twitter that he ended his nearly seven-year-long stint with the handset maker last Friday, but didn't divulge why he left or what his future plans include. Now, The Verge is reporting that Chief Product Officer Kouji Kodera has also flown the coop, following a handful of other execs. According to the outlet's sources, Chief Marketing Officer Ben Ho could be partly responsible for the changes since he's said to be moving the outfit's planning and strategy back to its Taipei HQ. With Peter Chou pinning poor marketing as what held the company back in 2012, it's certainly possible things are being reeled back to home base -- not unlike Nokia's own centralization in recent years. We've reached out to HTC to confirm Kodera's exit and just what the departures mean for the organization as a whole.

Filed under: Mobile, HTC

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Via: The Verge

Source: Jason Gordon (Twitter)

• Microsoft Denmark to share new HQ campus with local community
• Apple's spaceship campus revealed
• A new way to avoid traffic jams
• Microsoft Points are dead (or may be soon) ... long live Amazon Coins
• The world’s largest digital graphic
• "World's greenest commercial building" opens in Seattle

While Amazon Cloud Drive has been on quite the world tour as of late, Canadians have had to watch as seemingly everyone else gets the storage service first. Thankfully, Canucks can now do more than just twiddle their thumbs now that Cloud Drive has gone live in their country. Pricing is virtually on par with what Americans know, with a 5GB free tier and multiple paid tiers that start at $10 per year for 20GB. All the Cloud Drive-focused desktop and mobile apps are now available as well. Cloud Player isn't an option when Amazon MP3 is still missing, but the expansion should otherwise give Canadians at least a small taste of what they've been missing in Amazon's online world.

Filed under: Storage, Internet, Amazon

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Via: MobileSyrup

Source: Amazon

Larger than the hashtag of my aunt

A garden conceived by an alliance of trick-cyclists, architects and professors of "social computing" - and enabled by the wondrous power of Twitter - has won a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show.…

Need a break from all that Xbox chatter? You've come to the right place -- well, after about 14 minutes into this episode of the HD Podcast, that is (we were speculating about what the news would be). With that One bit out the way, it's a good time to catch up with us on the general HD side of things. Ben can't believe he's been around long enough to see 25 years of Madden NFL, while Richard contemplates tuning into the CW more often. You know the drill: Stream the banter below or download and subscribe after the break.

Hosts: Ben Drawbaugh (@bjdraw), Richard Lawler (@rjcc)

Producer: Joe Pollicino (@akaTRENT)

Hear the podcast

Filed under: HD

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• ORIGOSafe aims to keep drivers from texting
• Manfrotto Klyp case caters for iPhone photography
• Livio kit wirelessly transmits internet radio to your car stereo
• 1GHz LG eXpo smartphone features snap on pico-projector
• Palm-sized recorder opens Panasonic D-snap range
• Swivl pans your smartphone to keep you in the shot

Oops...looks like another US intelligence FAIL

The Chinese hackers involved in the Operation Aurora attacks revealed by Google in 2010 may have accessed top secret information on US surveillance targets in the country including suspected foreign spies and terrorists, it has emerged.…

The results from the American Customer Satisfaction Index are in, and parroting a recent study by Consumer Reports, Verizon Wireless is named the front-runner with the most happy subscribers among the big four carriers. The survey takes a number of factors into account, such as call clarity, dropped calls, network coverage, data speeds, helpfulness of in-store staff, diversity of plans and the quality of the carrier's websites. As the dust settled, Verizon notched a three-point gain to chart a score of 73 (out of 100), whereas ACSI's previous front-runner, Sprint, held steady with a score of 71. AT&T is portrayed as "in a statistical dead heat with Sprint," which climbed one point to chart an ACSI score of 70. Meanwhile, satisfaction among T-Mobile customers fell a point, which caused the carrier to pull up the rear with a score of 68.

On the whole, ACSI suggests that subscribers are generally more satisfied with regional providers and MVNOs, as the little dogs hold an aggregate score of 78. Speaking in broader terms, the ACSI reports that the wireless industry has reversed its two-year trend of sliding customer satisfaction to hit a benchmark score of 72, which matches the industry's 10-year high. Naturally, improvements still need to be made across the board, but at least things seem to be moving in the right direction.

Filed under: Wireless, Mobile

Comments

Via: FierceWireless

Source: ACSI

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'You can probably own five percent of the Internet without even blinking'

AusCERT 2013  One of the reasons we can't have nice things like a secure Internet is that vendors of consumer kit can't be bothered.…

• Exploding watermelons with your mind
• Muse lets users monitor their brain waves on mobile devices
• The Mental Typewriter
• MindBall: an arcade game played with brainwave power
• Maryland researchers offer hope of non-invasive portable brain-computer interface
• Breakthrough in quest for mindreading

Remember Yotaphone, the twin-display Android smartphone (color LCD in front, e-ink in back)? Today at CTIA in Las Vagas, Yota devices, the company behind the innovative handset, introduced Ruby, a sleek LTE hotspot with a small e-ink screen. We don't usually get too excited about such devices, but Ruby looks like something out of Jony Ive's workshop, with some interesting features to match. The design recalls the iPod mini but is made of white plastic instead of aluminum.

Along the top edge, you'll find the e-ink display and a two-way power switch -- slide it to the left and Ruby behaves like a secure hotspot, slide it to the right and it's a public access point. The e-ink screen shows battery and signal status, the number of connected devices and a smiley icon to confirm public mode. On the bottom edge is a trick flap that's both a micro-USB socket and a USB Type A plug depending on how it's positioned -- the micro-SIM slot is cleverly hidden behind it. A programmable RGB LED mounted behind the Yota logo completes the package on the front of the hotspot.

Ruby currently supports quad-band EDGE, plus HSPA+ and LTE for the European market, but the radio can be configured (in hardware) to support other bands. The 2100mAh battery powers the unit for about 16 hours of use (60 hours on standby) and can be charged to 70 percent capacity in about an hour. Yota's signed a few deals with carriers in Russia and Europe and the device is expected to become available to Russian customers in two to three weeks for about $120 (unsubsidized). No word on whether Ruby will land in the US (yet). Take a look at our hands-on gallery below.

Gallery: Yota devices LTE hotspot hands-on

Filed under: Wireless, Mobile

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As was the case with another LG device recently, the Optimus F3 is making an appearance before going official. Today we're getting an early look at what appears to be an entry-level member of the Optimus family, courtesy of @eveleaks, and one which will reportedly join Sprint's smartphone lineup pretty soon. Among the alleged specs said are a 4-inch WVGA display, 2,460mAh battery, LTE capabilities and one of the latest versions of Android -- Jelly Bean (4.1.2). Meanwhile, precise availability and pricing deets are still unknown, but, if all goes according to Phone Arena, we'll find all that out here "in the next few weeks."

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, LG

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Source: Phone Arena

CTIA 2013 seems to be dedicated to some of the lesser-known names in the US wireless industry, so it's fit that Chinese manufacturer Coolpad should take advantage of the situation to steal the show. Indeed, we were able to take a look at the phone maker's upcoming stateside model, the lower-end Quattro II 4G. In the past year, its predecessor cranked out roughly a million units on MetroPCS, and Coolpad is hoping to build upon that success to get a foothold in the US. This sequel, which offers stock Android 4.1.2 with a 4.5-inch qHD TFT display, 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8930 chip, 5MP rear camera and VGA front-facing cam, 1GB RAM, 4GB internal storage and a 1,800mAh battery, isn't going to satisfy the tastebuds of power users or high-end flagship seekers, but it's a quality option for those who aren't planning to spend a ton of money on a decent handset. Given the intended audience, the device is perfectly solid with reasonable performance; we appreciated the company's use of a textured back cover. One nitpick: despite our best efforts to get rid of fingerprints, smudges remained with no hope of removal in sight.

Coolpad wasn't able to give many details on pricing or availability, but reps confirmed that it should arrive on C Spire in late June / early July, with it likely hitting other regional prepaid carriers after. Given the original Quattro's $80 price point on MetroPCS last year, we wouldn't be surprised to see the next-gen version offered for around the same cost. The company's still working to expand its presence on some of the larger networks, but it hopes to make its debut in the postpaid world early next year.

Gallery: Coolpad Quattro II 4G hands-on

Gallery: Coolpad 8920 hands-on

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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There are few gadgets more associated with crowdfunding than smartwatches, due largely to the millions raised by Pebble. Now, you can add one more competing for your attention (and your backing). A Kickstarter campaign for the Agent smartwatch kicked off today, promising to deliver a device with better battery life than its competitors and a developer-friendly environment to attract some all-important apps (it's using the .NET Micro Framework, with apps able to be written in in C# using Visual Studio 2012).

As for the watch itself, it packs a 1.28-inch memory display with anti-glare glass, an ARM Cortex-M4 processor (which promises to help on the power-consumption front), Qi wireless charging, motion and light sensors, and a water-resistent design with replaceable wrist straps. If all goes as planned, the company intends to begin full production of the watch in December of this year, with the final MSRP running $249 (or $299 including a Qi charger). Some of the Kickstarter options will get you one for less than that, although many of those have already been claimed.

Filed under: Wearables

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Source: Agent, Kickstarter, Atmel

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wildly fast on the 240 GHz band

It won't make fibre optic networking obsolete anytime soon, but it's still an impressive achievement: German researchers have demonstrated a one-kilometre point-to-point wireless transmission at 40 Gbps.…

• NASA launches latest Landsat mission
• Landsat's first LDCM images show Rocky Mountains in stunning detail
• New Google service lets users "zoom" through years of time-lapse satellite photos
• NASA satellite set to crash back to Earth
• NASA's UARS satellite makes final impact
• Update: NASA Satellite is falling faster than expected and will crash this week

Last week we had lab-grown burgers; this week it's powdered pizza. NASA's gotten in on the synthesized food action by awarding a $125,000 grant to Anjan Contractor, head of Systems & Materials Research Corporation, to develop a 3D food printer. The first device Contractor plans to build under the six-month grant is based on RepRap's open-source hardware and will be designed to print a pizza comprised of three layers of nutritional powders mixed with water and oil. As the final frontier gets further and further away, NASA's need for a nutritious, long-lasting food supply suitable for space travel grows. Since the powders used in Contractor's design -- potentially sourced from insects, grass and algae -- have a shelf life of about 30 years, his 3D food printer would be well-suited to the task. If your appetite's survived the idea of snacks made from pulverized insects, you can watch the grant-winning prototype print some synthesized chocolate after the break.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Via: Business Insider

Taking a page out of Billboard's playbook, Spotify is using its listener data to determine the most popular music in a particular country. Available on the website or as embeddable widgets, the weekly updated charts will reveal which tracks are most listened to for the Spotify 50. The Social 50 list will contain the tracks most often actively shared by the service's users, including via Facebook and Twitter. Another new addition is the ability to see play counts for an artist's top tracks, tracking global plays since October 2008. That's rolling out to desktop clients first and will pop up elsewhere later, while the charts will update every week at noon ET. Hit the link below for this week's list topped by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Daft Punk, although we'll know if it's really taking off when we see a green record on someone's wall in a future episode of Cribs.

Filed under: Internet

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Source: Spotify Top Tracks

Legal black hole becomes internet black hole

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, the enclave of Cuban territory leased by the US government, has switched off its WiFi service and cut access to social networks for fear of attack by Anonymous.…

• Wearable ViSi Mobile System lets doctors wirelessly monitor patients
• Wearable microchip monitors vital signs, draws power from cell phones
• Miniature implant monitors cardiac pressure
• Monitor blood pressure while scrolling and clicking with the MDMouse
• AliveCor heart monitoring smartphone case cleared by FDA
• Scosche RHYTHM simplifies fitness monitoring

Coders confess their crimes, like the spam-bots they write in spare moments

An anonymous developer has admitted to writing comments in code as limericks.…

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fat lady singing

Norway's gift to the world of technology, the Opera browser, is now available for Android in an entirely new version.…

Second Amendment meets 007

American gun manufacturers will have to fit smart technology to their products if a new bill from US Representative John Tierney (D-MA) comes into force.…

Andrea Rossi's E-Cat rig tested by boffins

Italian entrepreneur Andrea Rossi has surfaced again to restate his claim that his E-Cat low energy nuclear reaction kit puts out more energy than goes in. And so it is that the “cold fusion” debate will be re-ignited – this time with new voices in Rossi's corner.…

3D augmented reality specs coming your way this year

Watch out, Sergey! A new startup is hard at work on a device that's far more ambitious than Google Glass, and it has just signed on wearable-computing maven Steve Mann as its chief scientist.…

• Xbox Surface tablet could be a winner
• Microsoft announces subscription-based Xbox 360
• Microsoft to launch low-cost Xbox TV console?
• Microsoft introduces Xbox Music
• Microsoft announces 4GB Xbox 360, gives Kinect a price
• Microsoft releases My Xbox Live for Android devices

If you just can't wait until "later this year" to put your order in for the Xbox One, you've got a duo of options to jump on the bandwagon at this very moment.

The Microsoft Store is taking pre-order notification sign ups, meaning you can enter your email address to receive an alert about when you can actually pre-order the console.

There is an incentive to signing up now in the form of $10 promo code, good for the next purchase you make in the Microsoft Online Store.

Hit up Amazon

Amazon is also accepting get-an-alert sign ups for the world's newest console.

Simply head on over to Amazon.com, search for Xbox One, and hit the yellow "sign up" button on the right. You can also put in word you want to know when the console's controller becomes available through the online retailer as well.

Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One during a live event in Redmond, Wash. today, giving us a look at its first console in eight years.

It's fine for gaming, we're sure, but Microsoft put a lot of weight in the console's TV and entertainment capabilities, rarely referring to the Xbox One as a gaming device.

We've gathered all the data on this new entrant into the console wars in our hub page, so give it a gander if you're curious whether the wait was worth it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hot on the heels of Optus' 4G expansion announcement this week, Telstra has passed its own milestone, activating its 1,500th 4G tower.

The telco claims that the LTE network is well on the way to reaching 66 per cent population coverage by the end of June this year, by which stage it plans to have more than 2,000 towers pumping out 4G signals.

It's been a rapid expansion for Telstra's 4G network, with more than 2.1 million devices connecting to the LTE service, and coverage jumping from around 40 per cent at the start of the year to the 66 per cent Telstra hopes to achieve by the end of the financial year.

Long road ahead

It's going to require a lot of hard work for Telstra to pull off its plans though. The goal of hitting 2,000 active 4G towers within six weeks is going to challenging.

Especially when you consider that it took the telco 12 months to activate its 1,000th LTE tower, and has only activated 500 in the past 12 months.

Still, Telstra Networks Executive Director Mike Wright has claimed that the rollout is on schedule.

"The program is now running at pace and is on target – our technicians are now installing literally dozens of 4G base stations each and every week. It's great to mark the 1,500th milestone but we've committed to installing over 2000 base stations by the end of this financial year and we'll keep working to meet this target," Wright said in a statement.

What does a car with built-in 4G feel like? GM, in partnership with AT&T, set out to answer such a question, showing off a conceptual cook-up of what a connected vehicular future might look like during CTIA 2013.

The car is a 2014 Cadillac ATS, the company's current flagship and winner of the Detroit Auto Show's Car of the Year award. The connectivity is AT&T 4G, of course.

In February, the companies announced a partnership to bring the high-speed waves to GM cars starting in 2014, with the end game to eventually have all vehicles coming off the car maker's production lines armed with 4G.

Attendees of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona got a taste of this connected concept car, but this is the first time this 4G ATS has been shown on North American soil.

Equipped with 4G, a GM car could, for example, stream videos to passengers, provide in-vehicle Wi-Fi hot spots, allow for speedier hook up to custom apps and give car owners views from cameras mounted on the vehicle.

Imagine, a GM rep asked us, working late and wanting to know if there was a stranger lurking around your vehicle. Cameras, and 4G, would let you hop on your phone or tablet and instantly get four-sided views of the environment around your car.

The vehicle on display had cameras mounted on the front, rear and both sides, providing real time images of what was going on outside the ATS to a tablet.

Internally, the demoed ATS was equipped with internal cameras as well, perfect for spying on passengers you suspect are leaving crumbs in your whip.

GM is developing its own HTML 5-based app ecosystem, and we were told the company is looking to court more developers as the 2014 launch time frame approaches.

The first vehicles to see these types of services will be 2015 Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac models available in the U.S. and Canada. The features shown may have been prototypes, but they provided a glimpse at what a connected car future could be quite well.

• Home version of iPet Companion lets owners tele-play with their pets
• iPet Companion lets people play with real kitties over the internet
• Microsoft robotics developer builds remote dog-sitting bot
• Dive Commander lets you control a real sub via the internet
• Pintofeed lets you remotely feed your pet using your smartphone
• Completely remote PowerPoint presentation tool

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Nestle making tastier ice cream with avalanche research
• Generating hydrogen fuel from waste energy
• Electronic displays could benefit from new class of liquid crystals
• Liquid crystal lubricants promise close-to-zero frictional losses
• Edible sponge captures and stores carbon dioxide
• One-atom-thick germanium sheets could replace silicon in semiconductors

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Jaguar pounces on the water with speedboat concept
• Jaguar Land Rover launches "industry's most advanced" digital showroom
• Jaguar debuts a "Firesand" orange F-Type in North America
• Jaguar's new generation XK sports car unveiled
• Pininfarina 2uettottanta and Range Rover Evoque take car design awards
• 2006 Jaguar Super V8 Portfolio

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The first shots have been fired in the PS4 vs Xbox One console war now that both Sony and Microsoft have announced their next-generation systems.

While Sony confirmed the PlayStation 4 specs back in February, Microsoft is only now drawing its line in the sand by unveiling the Xbox One specs.

To its credit, though, Microsoft did show the video game press the official Xbox One console body.

Sony, in contrast, is waiting until E3 2013 to announce what the PS4 looks like.

For now, we can take a look at what's inside the mystery system and the newly revealed Xbox One with confirmed specs.

Agreeing on an AMD CPU

As much as the two warring systems are different, the heart of the Xbox One and the PS4 remain very similar.

That's because they're both running x86 octa-core CPUs, and these eight-core processors are built by the same chipmaker, AMD.

The use of AMD in the Xbox One and PS4 is certainly a switch for both companies.

Previously, Microsoft had used an IBM PowerPC processor, while Sony partnered with Toshiba and IBM on its own complicated Cell processor.

While the Xbox One will run a heavily modified eight-core AMD processor, PS4 will utilize a x86-64 "Jaguar" CPU.

AMD's Graphics Core Next

Both console makers are also relying on AMD to design their next graphics processors that will produce the next-generation visuals that differentiate console games from the emerging smartphone market.

The Xbox One marries its GPU to the CPU in a system-on-a-chip design, according to Wired, with Direct 11.1 support.

The single 40-nanometer SoC really contrasts with the two dedicated 90-nm chips found in the Xbox 360.

However, it only marginally contrasts with the PS4, which also combines its AMD CPU with the chip maker's GPU.

In the case of PS4, the graphics processor is described as semi-custom AMD Radeon that runs at 1.8 TFLOPS.

Sony scores with 8GB DDR5 RAM

One of the most impressive things about the PS4 specs has been its use of 8GB GDDR5 RAM.

Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One to have 8GB RAM as well, but it's GDDR3 memory variety.

That may mean more to game developers in the long run as opposed to gamers themselves right now, but it's still an interesting choice for the Xbox One.

Which has the better controller?

The Xbox One controller vs the PS4 DualShock 4 controller is a debate that won't be won anytime soon, mostly because gamers' already have a locked-in preference.

The reason for this is that neither Sony nor Microsoft have radically changed their respective controllers over the years - they're more like evolutions 2000 and 2001.

The DualShock 4 is a little bigger in the next-generation thanks to its unique front-and-center touchpad. Sony stuck with the dual analog sticks down in front, but at least have a central divot recess for easier gripping.

Microsoft also didn't mess with success, only slightly modifying its controller in the jump to the Xbox One. It's 40 design innovations are subtle, including the tweaked D-Pad on the bottom-left of the game pad.

Xbox One Kinect vs PS4 Eye

While Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will appeal to "core" gamers with mature launch titles, Microsoft and Sony are charging forward with motion-sensing devices.

The Xbox One Kinect was unveiled along with the system during the May 21 announcement, when Microsoft refered to to the advanced camera as "human control for a human experience."

Expanding on that motto, the packed-in 1080p Kinect 2.0 will be able to process 2GB of data per second, analyzing more joints, the slight rotation of a wrist or shoulder and your heartbeat.

Less is known about the PlayStation 4 Eye, but Sony did state that its similarly shaped camera bar contains two two 1280×800px cameras.

The PS4 DualShock 4 controller will come into play with the PS4 Eye thanks to its multi-colored light bar. It will also be compatible with those PS4 Move motion controllers that have gone unused.

It's here. It's alive. It's packed to the brim with features, and it's called Xbox One.

So why do we love it already? Why give you one reason when we can give you 10?

1. It's adaptive in the best way possible

Before the big reveal, we were worried that the new Xbox would be too focused on multimedia and not focused enough on the games.

While the reveal show was mainly about hardware and features, there was enough game talk to keep us happy for the time being.

Microsoft Studios announced that it has 15 exclusive titles coming to Xbox One over the next year, eight of which will be brand new franchises.

We also got a look at the range of new EA Sports titles coming out way, including Fifa 14 and Madden 14. Call of Duty: Ghosts also got its world premiere trailer, showcasing the brand new engine.

The One is certainly changing with the times, but it doesn't feel like the gamers are losing out as a result. And guess what? It doesn't require an 'always on' internet connection to play. Phew.

2. TV and film just got better

TV integration is one of the killer apps of Xbox One, and we were suitably impressed with what Microsoft had to show off at the Redmond event.

The Instant Switching feature lets you change between programmes and live TV with ease, while Snap Mode lets users run more than one service at any time. You can check your emails while watching a movie, for example.

All in all, Microsoft's new console is perfect for a generation of 'second screen' users and offers itself as the ultimate multimedia device for our living rooms.

3. Voice control

Xbox chief Don Mattrick had our attention from the moment he said "Xbox on" to power up the console, but it didn't stop there.

Voice commands can be used to navigate between TV viewing and gameplay on the console. For example, you can say "watch TV" to, yup, you guessed it.

Overall recognition has been greatly improved, while hand gestures can also be used as a form of control.

4. New Kinect

Xbox One Kinect is "rocket science-level stuff" according to Microsoft. We knew Kinect would be baked into the new console and we're impressed with how far it's evolved.

The new sensor is vastly improved with an extra wide field of vision meaning more people can get involved. The new Kinect can better analyse your body movements, picking up motion in just 13 billionths of a second, and can even detect your heartbeat.

It also has a 1080p camera to make that picture sparkle on your HD TV. Can't argue with that.

5. Exclusive content

One thing that kept coming up during game discussions was exclusive content that would be coming to Xbox One users firtst.

EA Sports announced that exclusive content for Fifa 14 will be coming to Xbox One, adding that it had formed a "special relationship" with Microsoft.

It was also announced that DLC for the upcoming Call of Duty: Ghosts will also be exclusive for Xbox One at first. These exclusive deals will be a huge pull for the hardcore gamers.

6. The controller rocks

With no console to show, the PS4 announcement was very focused on the controller, which it had a lot to say about as it turned out.

The first thing that struck us about the Xbox One controller was that it's keeping with a winning formula. Not a lot has been changed: the D-pad has been tweaked and the Xbox home button has been pushed up.

But all in all, the design holds onto all the best features of the 360 controller with just a few small changes that should make it feel even more amazing in our hands.

7. It has enough power to stand up to the PS4.

8 Core CPU, 8GB RAM, 500GB HD – these specs put it in good footing for the next-gen race. Blu-ray support is another big feature we're happy to see on board too.

However, both consoles do use different types of RAM. Xbox One uses DDR3 while the PS4 uses GDDR5. This means the PS4 will have higher bandwidth when dealing with large-scale stuff, while Xbox One will be better at performing lots of smaller tasks at once.

Whether this will put Xbox One at a disadvantage remains to be seen, but we're confident right now that it's more than ready for what the next generation of gaming has in store.

8) Better Xbox Live

Microsoft say the new Xbox Live service will react dynamically to gamers as well as bringing DVR functionality that lets you record and upload in-game footage to the internet.

We also know that it will be jumping from 15,000 to 300,000 servers, which is pretty impressive if you ask us.

Another cool feature we're keen on is Trending, which will show you what's currently popular among friends and within the Xbox Live community, a little like the Wii U does.

9. Spielberg's producing a Halo show for Xbox-ers

'Nuff said really. One of the biggest surprises of the Xbox event was the announcement that a live action Halo TV series is being made, and Steven Spielberg will be producing it.

We've been waiting for a Halo movie for ages, but we'll be just as happy with a TV show. No mention of a new Halo game though, but we expect we'll hear about that at E3.

10. This is just the start

Microsoft's reveal might have been more comprehensive than Sony's, but there are still plenty of things we're yet to see.

TechRadar was promised at a special event that this is just the first part, with E3 being the second. We can't wait to see what else Microsoft has to share, especially with regards to the live TV features and Xbox Live.

Of course, we'll be at E3 to see the rest of the reveal play out, when we'll also finally see the PS4 shown in all its glory. It'll be at that moment that the next-gen console war will really kick off.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Flipphandle stem streamlines bicycle storage
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• Red Rocket Travel Slider is for film-makers on the go
• Fenix bike light line to include affordable 800 lumen unit

We're back in the desert sun of Las Vegas for a tech show, and no, not CES.

We're joining thousands of journalists, exhibitors and eager attendees in populating the Sands Expo & Convention Center for four days of seminars, press conferences, interview hunting and exhibit floor meandering for CTIA 2013, the annual industry tech show.

We hit up MobileCon (hosted by CTIA) in San Diego last year, and though a name reversal may be in order, CTIA 2013's got a more mobile and consumer focus than the Southern California show.

We don't expect a large number of product unveilings, though there's always the chance someone could decide to surprise the crowd.

Oh yeah, and Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Lopez will both be here.

Here's all the latest coming out of CTIA 2013:

CTIA transforming into 'super show'

The opening day's key note speech had some interesting insights into the future of CTIA Wireless.

It was announced that CTIA is moving away from having two separate shows, and will merge them both into one super show that will be held in the fall.

Read more about the future of the CTIA Wireless show.

Cat B15 makes US stand

On the first day of CTIA (OK, it's not officially underway yet) we got to rub elbows with the Cat B15; a rugged, rubberized handset from the people behind Caterpillar.

Hands on: Cat B15 review

If Android 4.1, a dual-core processor and $349 without a contract don't appeal to you, then perhaps the fact it can survive a 5.9-foot drop and survive for 30 minutes in 3.2-feet of water may play to your gritty side.

Read more about the Cat B15

Here's what we were hoping to see before the show's kick off:

Sit-down with Sprint

Pull up a seat. It's time to talk Sprint.

There's a lot going on with America's third place carrier, least of which are bids by two parties to purchase the company outright.

We plan to get to get a read on which way Sprint is leaning - Dish or Softbank, as epic a decision as Jacob or Edward - plus how the company plans to compete in the 4G LTE space when we have some one-on-one time with the company in the Vegas desert (OK, it will be an air-conditioned hotel, but you get the idea).

There's much more to come, but know we have it out to sniff what's up with Sprint.

This Digital Life

AT&T brought its home management and automation system, Digital Life, to life in 15 markets April 26, marking the first time the service is available for consumers.

The carrier plans to bring D.L. up to 50 markets by the end of the year, and we expect to hear a good amount about how these plans are progressing at CTIA.

Kevin Petersen, senior vice president at Digital Life, is giving a keynote speech during "Connections," a connected home conference within the larger CTIA umbrella. We also have some sit down time scheduled with Petersen during the conference, where we'll pick his brain on where Digital Life is going on how AT&T plans to take it there.

Though it's not a flashy new phone, as connected homes become a greater part of the digital conversation (just look at CES 2013), we envision many more companies jumping on the bandwagon and offering service's such as this. We'll look for insights on the march towards a more connected life at CTIA, so stay tuned for more.

Verizon wants us to save the date

What's this in our inbox? A save the date invite from Verizon for May 22?

"Join Verizon Wireless for a Special Announcement at CTIA," it read. Intriguing.

During MobileCon, Verizon reveled in it's 4G LTE dominance, and we wouldn't be surprised if the company took yet another opportunity to talk up just how many American's its high-speed network covers.

Another take is that we'll get word on a new product, with our hearts hoping it's Verizon's own version of the HTC One.

TechRadar will be there live, so tune in at 11 a.m. May 22 for more.

Deutsche Telekom talks T-Mobile

Thomas Kiessling, chief product and innovation officer at Deutsche Telekom - T-Mobile's parent company - is scheduled to deliver a keynote speech during CTIA 2013.

Kiessling's job description alone is reason enough to want to hear what the PhD has to say: According to his bio blurb on the CTIA website, Kiessling is in charge of Group-wide innovation strategy, product development and corporate R&D. He controls DT's product portfolio and defines the amorphous Group's product roadmap.

Inviting enough, but we expect Kiessling to give us a little taste of T-Mo-related news during his speech.

The carrier only recently completely re-invented itself, doing away with annual contracts and offering premium phones at up-front affordable prices. Handsets like the iPhone 5 recently landed on its door step, and more - such as the Galaxy S4 and HTC One - are on the horizon.

As if it wasn't busy enough, T-Mo is also pushing 4G LTE out a steady clip and plans to blanket 100 million U.S. customers by mid-year, so we expect Kiessling to have many topics to talk about.

Sprint, AT&T and U.S. Cellular spill on consumer goods

Based on our MobileCon experience, carriers are more keen on talking up the enterprise side of things than the consumer side, but that's only on surface.

Once they get chatting, carriers are quite willing to spill the goods on things that matter to the Average Joe.

We'll pin Sprint, AT&T and U.S. Cellular down to talk coverage, competition and upcoming devices at CTIA. In fact, Mary Dillon, president and CEO of U.S. Cellular, will be in the house, so we fully expect to get the low down on the smaller carrier's plans for growth. It intends to sell Samsung's S4, so you know this "little guy" has some big offerings.

We expect news from all of the above on how many Americans each is covering with 4G LTE, whether anyone is working on LTE Advanced, and insight into newly announced and still unrevealed devices.

Maybe we'll catch wind of the iPhone 5S or iPhone 6?

Sony elaborates on contactless ecostyem

Sony, which made a splash at CES and MWC, is heading to Sin City for CTIA, but plans to show a slightly different side of its business than mobile phones specifically.

At the Sony booth, there will be plenty of near-field communications (NFC)/FeliCa enabled devices and products that fit into the lattice work of what it calles the "contactless ecosystem." FeliCa, by the way, is a contactless IC card that Sony developed for transactions that can be completed in approx. 0.1 seconds.

We'll see the company's NFC Dynamic Tag tech and the uses it has in both healthcare and wellness through a variety of OEM partner products.

We're anxious to see what Sony has in mind for this tech. Are we talking connected home, advanced transactions at various retail locations, improved healthcare and fitness, or a everything under the contactless sun?

Sony is sure to have plenty of answers.

American Express, Visa vent on NFC

Speaking of NFC, both Visa and American Express (through its Open proxy) will hit the Strip for some convention love, and we're gearing up to hear how we can knock down our credit card payments.

Just kidding.

With the States' preeminent credit card companies occupying a chunk of exhibit space at a mobile-focused show, we can only expect some NFC and other mobile commerce-related announcements and products to rear their head.

At MobileCon we got an earful from industry leaders in the mobile commerce space on challenges facing mobile wallets, but what solutions do traditional credit card companies have to offer for a world that is increasingly mobile?

How can we keep sensitive information secure while also bringing greater convenience to our lives, particularly as a growing number of mobile devices adopt NFC tech?

We expect to find out all at CTIA.

Is your phone App-solutely secure?

As more and more of our personal and professional lives gets tucked away onto phones, tablets and laptops, mobile security is an inescapable concern. So how secure would you say your phone is? Or that app you used to pay your friend back for lunch?

If we've gotten you a bit nervous, perhaps a trip to App-solutely Security: The State of Mobile Security, will make you feel better. Or maybe it won't. It all depends on the conclusions drawn at this half-day educational event. It kicks off at 1pm on May 20, with a cocktail reception to calm worried nerves to follow.

Qualcomm calms down while giving us an earful

Qualcomm and Vegas seem to go together like a bachelor party and bottle service - not well.

The chip maker had a press conference it would probably like to forget at CES 2013, and thankfully its CTIA presence will be more subdued....we think.

Mass production of its 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 processor is supposed to get underway in May, and we don't think Qualcomm will miss the chance to quack about its chips in Vegas. Perhaps we'll even catch a whiff of when the 800 will start making it out to phones and tablets, and which ones will house it.

During MWC 2013, the company spoke at length about how its chips can help solve 4G LTE fragmentation in the U.S. and Europe, and we expect much of that dialogue to carry over into CTIA as well.

We just hope we don't see Big Bird running around.

Enter the iZone

Apple is ever the host, never the guest. It either puts on an event, or doesn't show up at all. So while you'd never catch an official iPhone presence at a CTIA show, there's always a plethora of booths hawking the latest case or accessory for the MacBook, iPhone, iPad or whatever iThing is coming down the pipes.

This year, CTIA has officially acknowledged the abundance of Apple accessories in attendance by granting them their own section of the show. They'll all be corralled in the iZone, a 17,000 square foot shrine to some of the world's most popular mobile devices. CTIA already published a list of iZone denizens, which includes noted case maker Incase, maker of stylish phone and laptop skins DecalGirl, and screen protection mogul iShieldz, to name a few.

Obviously, these manufacturers aren't limiting themselves to just iPhone and iPad accessories. Maybe they'll already be selling straps for the rumored Apple iWatch?

The wonderful World of Tablets

Tablets have quickly become a common device for everyday life. They're a great way to read, game, browse the web or occasionally get some work done. But for as much as they already do for us, there are those that are looking ahead to see how tablets can do more, and remain secure while doing so.

The World of Tablets will take place on May 22 from 11:30am - 5:30pm. Host Open Path products has already published a laundry list of subjects it plans to broach. Here are the ones we find most intriguing:

• Tablet strategies to increase productivity

Will that mean blocking games like The Walking Dead and Infinity Blade II? We hope not.

• The rise of phablets

Can we address renaming/eliminating that awkward term?

• Tablets and interactive television: The second screen revolution

SmartGlass and HBO GO are a match made in heaven, unless you'd like to actually concentrate on your show.

• Consumer usage habits- What will they pay for?

A very good question, since being free and charging a mere ninety-nine cents can mean a huge difference in downloads. A lot of companies are still trying to crack this one.

Ashton Kutcher and J. Lo?

CTIA's suit and tie crowd may be surprised to learn that Ashton Kutcher, of "That 70's Show" fame, will be featured as a keynote speaker. Kutcher made waves in the early days of Twitter, beating CNN in a race to one million Twitter followers. More recently, he's taken on the meaty role of playing Apple founder Steve Jobs in an upcoming biopic, not to be confused with the one Aaron Sorkin is currently writing.

So Kutcher is obviously a modern dude who loves tech, but what does he have to offer the CTIA crowd? Perhaps a cautionary tale about thinking before you tweet? Kutcher had an awkward moment in November of 2011 when he tweeted "How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste," unaware that a Penn State sex abuse scandal was breaking. Obviously, he's apologized, and has since handed the keys to his Twitter account over to his PR team. We wonder what the man would suggest for those without PR hacks to give our tweets a once over.

Jennifer Lopez is best known for her role in 'Selena,' as a judge on "American Idol" and for that Grammy dress, but Jenny from the Block is also the chairman and CEO of Nuyorican Productions Inc., a film and television company.

OK, that may still be too "Hollywood" for the subject matter of CTIA, but Ms. Lopez is participating in a panel on the growth of Latino mobile use. She'll be joined by Verizon COO and Executive VP Marni Walden as well as Brightstar chairman and CEO Marcelo Claure. We expect some fascinating insights and ideas about new innovations - and how those can be shared by more people - to come out of the discussion.

A three-day AppWeek

Love apps? Of course you do. So make a visit to the Mobile Apps Pavilion in the middle of the CTIA show floor. For three days it'll be home to specialty app designers and their products. While that's a few ticks short of a week, we'll let them get away with it. They're promising a place to sit down, kick up your feet and watch demos of new and upcoming apps on big screen televisions.

These aren't the typical apps you'll find on Google Play or iTunes, either. This is mobile software designed for internal use with government, medical, financial, entertainment and other industries. Pay a visit and you just might find the mobile designer your business needs, or get inspired for a new way to be productive on your device of choice.

When it debuted at Mobile World Congress back in February, Nvidia's Tegra 4i mobile processor impressed with its ability to reach speeds of 100mbps.

Nvidia returned with the Tegra 4i at CTIA 2013, and somehow managed to boost those speeds even further without altering the structure or hardware of the chip.

Thanks in large part to its i500 LTE modem, Nvidia was able to update the chip's software to push the capabilities to Cat 4 150mbps.

Even though no marketed phones currently house the Tegra 4i chip, Nvidia demonstrated the full power of the processor while also making calls and streaming video over AT&T's LTE network.

Little chip, big power

At 40 percent of the size of a traditional LTE modem, the Tegra 4i packs a lot of punch into a diminutive chip.

Nvidia attributes this to the Deep Execution Processors design, which offers "fast, high performance" in a highly adaptable modem.

During the demo, Nvidia's Phoenix concept smartphone was also tested to show off the LTE-Advanced prowess with special emulation, as there are currently no such networks available.

Though the Tegra 4i will be compatible with LTE-Advanced, the chip has also been designed to be backwards compatible with earlier cellular networks.

This means you'll be able to use any Tegra 4i device on LTE Cat 3, 3G, and 2G whenever 4G isn't available, providing an incredible amount of flexibility for any phone housing the processor.

Qualcomm hasn't truly been challenged by another processor in the mobile space as of yet, and it will be interesting to see how the competition heats up as the cellular market expands.

How long it will be until the first true smartphone with Tegra 4i arrives remains to be seen, but the quicker it's certified, the sooner we'll get to use the impressive chip ourselves.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has announced the new Xbox One games console at its Redmond HQ!

The company described the Xbox One as "the ultimate all in one entertainment system - one system for a new generation." It has the second generation of Kinect baked in nice and deep and has powerful specs similar to those of the Sony PS4.

The Xbox One wants to be the one-stop entertainment solution for your living room, integrating live TV, games, movies and web services like Skype, all controlled using Kinect's improved voice recognition features.

Xbox One specs

No big surprises here, really. The Microsoft Xbox One comes packing an x64 8-core AMD CPU, USB 3.0 ports, 500GB hard drive and 8GB DDR3 RAM. Connectivity-wise you've got 802.11n Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi Direct functionality for exchanging data between devices - specifically the new Xbox controller.

There's also the addition of a Blu-ray drive, which marks Microsoft's first move to embrace the disc format created by Sony et al, which vanquished HD DVD back when TechRadar was but a glint in someone's eye.

So as expected, then, the Xbox One is more like a mini-PC than any Microsoft console that's come before. These specs put the console on a par with the PS4 and bode well for developers who want to make cross-platform games.

The console has not only an HDMI-out port but also HDMI-in too. This is for interfacing with set-top boxes in order to integrate the Xbox One with your TV-watching experience. As far as you're concerned, you'll only have one device instead of two.

Xbox One: Kinect

The Xbox One has Kinect functionality built into its very core. To turn the console on, you need only say the words "Xbox on" - the console is always listening.

A live demo at the launch event showed Kinect instantly responding to hand gestures and voice commands. That simply isn't possible on the current hardware with the Xbox 360 and suggests that Kinect v2 is the gesture and voice controller we always wanted it to be.

The demo showed the ability to switch between games, videos, music and live TV instantaneously using simple voice commands such as "Xbox watch TV". You can even ask to watch a specific channel - HBO was an example they used - and Xbox will take you there straight away.

Microsoft says that Kinect 2 is to fast and powerful that it detects motion in just 13 billionths of a second - the time it takes light to get from you and into the camera.

The Kinect sensor as a resolution of 1080p which means its footage will look great on your HD TV, and it captures video at 60fps which means footage that's lovely and smooth.

The camera aslo has a field of view that's 60% bigger than the original Kinect which means less faffing around trying to stand in the exact spot it tells you to. That combined with the more powerful means you'll be able to get a lot more people gaming with Kinect all at one time.

What's more, Microsoft says that the new Kinect uses infra-red, which means it works in complete darkness.

Xbox One: Discs

The Xbox One games will come on Blu-ray discs but they're only for one-time use. Once you've installed the games onto your hard drive, you no longer need them as the game is tied to your Xbox Live account. This is a similar idea to that employed by Steam and Uplay on the PC.

Xbox Live upgraded

Live is the most popular online gaming platform on the planet and it's getting a huge behind-the-scenes overhaul for the new generation.

While current games servers number roughly 15,000, Microsoft is expanding that to a barely conceivable 300,000 in order to ensure you have instant access to your games and content no matter where you are.

Xbox One personalisation

You can turn on the Xbox One by simply walking over and talking to it. It turns on instantly, and Kinect will recognise you and take you straight to your own personalised home screen. Here you have access to your own personal movies and music, as well as leaping straight into your own save games.

Xbox One: Always on? Nope!

One rumour that put the fear of God into many gamers was that the new Xbox would require an always-on internet connection. But this is in fact not true. "No, it does not have to be always connected," says Microsoft, "but Xbox One does require a connection to the Internet. We're designing Xbox One to be your all-in-one entertainment system that is connected to the cloud and always ready. We are also designing it so you can play games and watch Blu-ray movies and live TV if you lose your connection."

Xbox One games

Microsoft has announced that its own games studios will release 15 games in the first year of the Xbox One's life cycle. Other than that, we also know that FIFA 14 will launch on the console with exclusive content, and the new COD game, Call of Duty: Ghosts, will also have exclusive content on the Xbox.

Xbox One: Backwards compatibility

Because the Xbox One uses a completely different system architecture to that of previous Xbox consoles, it will not be compatible with any Xbox 360 games.

However, it is yet to be seen whether the cloud might come to the rescue and allow games to be streamed over the web. Perhaps E3 has the answer...

Xbox 720 release date

Microsoft sadly made no mention of a release date during its Redmond launch event. However, more details are promised for E3 in July which is when we should find out when we can expect to get our hands on one. However, that hasn't stopped retailers opening pre-orders already.

Many industry experts actually predicted that we'd finally get some hard Xbox 720 info at GDC this year but Microsoft confirmed to TechRadar that turned out not to be the case.

All indications are that the next Xbox will arrive in time for Christmas 2013.

Microsoft briefly stated that the new Xbox is imminent in an interview with the Verge before swiftly backtracking and issuing a moderately embarrassing denial.

This is further backed up by a Microsoft job advert which confirms a new Xbox launch is imminent.

Further rumours of an Xbox 720 release date of pre-Christmas 2013 was backed up at the end of November 2012 by a Bloomberg report which cites sources at Microsoft and says we are likely to see the Xbox 720 make its debut at E3 2013.

But then! In January, a report from Game Informer suggested that we'd actually see Microsoft bust out an all-singing all-dancing event to launch the Xbox 720 around Game Developers Conference in March.

Why no E3 reveal? Because Microsoft wanted to make a splash away from the noise of the mega-show. Unfortunately, the report indicated that Sony had the same idea for the PS4...

Xbox 720 price

No pricing info has yet been revealed by Microsoft - expect this when we get official confirmation of worldwide release dates.

That leaked document we mentioned earlier mentions a $299 (£190) price point which sounds gloriously ambitious to us. Expect the Xbox 720 price to be a bit more than that but assuming the PS4 launches around the same time, expect some competitive pricing.

Xbox Mini

Strong rumours are building that Microsoft is planning a double assault on the console market. The new Xbox will allegedly be joined in the cabinet by an Xbox MIni - a small, Apple TV-like device based on Windows 8, with the ability to stream Xbox 360 games from the cloud.

The Xbox One has been unveiled, described as "the ultimate all in one entertainment system - one system for a new generation."

Microsoft says the console will be released "later this year", but there's no word on pricing just yet. Of course, that hasn't stopped some places taking pre-orders already.

BlockBuster is kicking things off by already taking pre-orders on its site with a £20 deposit.

Game has announced it is also taking pre-orders on its site also with a £20 deposit - and in stores starting May 22.

Zavvi has the console listed on its site for pre-order at £399.99. We're yet to confirm whether this is an official RRP or not, but will update as soon as we know more.

Developing...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The UK marketing director for Xbox in the UK has confessed to TechRadar that he didn't know that the new console would be called the Xbox One until the name was revealed on the live feed.

Speaking to TechRadar at the UK launch streaming event, Harvey Eagle admitted that he was on tenterhooks as to the brand, but that he was delighted with the simple moniker.

"Truthfully, I learned tonight. It was closely guarded and I found out at the same time as you found out," he said.

One was surprised

"I love the name, I love a few things - I love the fact that it surprised me and therefore I assume surprised everyone in the room.

"I've seen the names that were out there, from Infinity to 720 to Durango. I said to myself on the way in 'I don't know what it is I'm going to be surprised in realtime like you guys - wouldn't it be great if it was a new name that had never been reported'.

"When I heard it - given what I saw and knowing our vision - it makes perfect sense to me. It is an all in one gaming and TV device and we've repeated that over and over again and so the name Xbox One just works."

Eagle's honest admission makes us feel a lot better about not being on the small list in the know. And although HTC may be both honoured and miffed by the choice, it certainly seems an obvious choice given the remit of the Xbox One.

I get a surprising number of emails from career programmers who have spent some time in the profession and eventually decided it just isn't for them. Most recently this:

I finished a computer science degree last year, worked about a year in the Java EE stack. I liked requirements engineering and more 'management stuff' in university, but let's face it: you tend to be driven to be a programmer.

I enjoy programming itself. I'm not doing it that badly, I even do it better than some people. But it's too frustrating. Stupidly complex stuff (that people consider "standard" even if it's extremely complicated!), fighting against the computer, dumb errors, configuration, and stuff that people even worse than me implemented and I have to take care of. New stuff which is supposed to be incredibly easy, and it's just one more framework.

I think I realized I don't want to program because I landed at a company where people are quite good. And I honestly think I won't achieve that level, ever. And I don't enjoy programming as a hobby.

I'm sure that I'm good enough to be able to make a living continuing as I am … but I don't want to.

And this:

Since the first year of studying programming at university I have known in my heart that computer programming is not meant for me, but I was afraid to do anything about it and here I am now 12 years later programming with no passion. I am a career programmer and an average one at best.

I come to work every day with no passion I just do it to pay the bills. I have done some good projects but I am not at all into it.

It was always our hope that concrete, substantive programming career questions could be asked on Stack Overflow, and some early ad-hoc polling indicated that career questions might be accepted by the community, but if you look at later poll results, it's clear that the career questions came out juuuust under the cutoff point as determined by the Stack Overflow community.

Well, what about the rest of the Stack Exchange network? How about our sister site at programmers.stackexchange which is less about programming problems with source code and more about whiteboard style conceptual programming questions? Apparently, career questions are not welcome there either. But wait! Surely programmer career questions are a fit on a site that's explicitly about career related topics? The very same question was asked on workplace.stackexchange:

I'm graduating soon with a Bachelor's in Software Engineering, however during the course of getting my degree I decided I do not want to be a programmer.

I minored in Business Management and really enjoyed that, particularly the management side of psychology and the basics of the processes involved with restructuring a business, but don't really want to throw away my programming degree either.

Is there a field for someone with a Software Engineering degree who wants to get into business management instead of programming? I'd like to combine my knowledge of making software with some kind of business process oriented work. How should I go about changing to this field? Is this possible without going back to school?

I am sympathetic to this quandary because career questions, by their very nature, tend to be so narrow and opinionated that they are frequently only useful to the person who asked – which is completely counter to the goal of Stack Exchange. You know, endless permutations of things like "My boss Jeff is a total jerk, he constantly changes my code without asking and overrides me all the time with his BS arbitrary decisions, should I quit?"* I can understand deciding to outlaw the entire class of career questions because they're frequently soft, opinion-y, and highly specific to the person asking. It's easier to throw out the whole category rather than do the painful work of sifting through them all to reveal those few rare workable gems.

Stack Exchange wants questions that are as useful to as many people as possible, and actively closes (sorry, "puts on hold") the ones that are not. I will now reprint my favorite diagram, ever, which attempts to explain this:

The colored part in this target that says "All Programmers"? That's the goal at Stack Exchange. Well, maybe "all bicyclists", or "all cooks", but you get the general idea.

We try our best to teach you to ask questions that hit this sweet spot: answers that get you the information you so desperately need, yes, but also help your peers along the way without devolving into meaningless opinion honeypots. Overshoot and you get either "Too Broad" or "Too Localized". Hitting that target with our questions – or at least making a best faith effort to attempt to, anyway – is how we maximize the results of our collective efforts. Write once, read many.

But back to the topic: what career options are available to programmers who no longer want to program? I feel there is a way to answer this question that would be helpful to many other programmers, that is supported by facts and data and science.

Programming is indeed a field that does require some passion. If you've been programming for a few years and haven't developed a taste for it by now, it seems doubtful to me that anyone would suddenly develop one overnight. However, if you were able to stick with doing something you're not very enthusiastic about for a period of years, maybe there's still a kernel of something there to work with. Or perhaps you're just wearing golden handcuffs.

Environment plays a big part in any job, no matter how intrinsically amazing that job might be. Who do you work with? What are you working on? What kind of environment do you program in:

• A startup?
• A small business?
• A big business?
• A consultancy?
• Freelance?

The "programming" in each of these situations, and the other peer programmers you'll be working with, will be radically different. Consider if the environment and peers may be the problem. Have you tried changing those up, first, before conclusively deciding you need to leave the field forever?

Beyond that, there are lots of related fields where programming skills are advantageous, without having "sit down and write code all day" as part of the job description. So let's think. What jobs exist where …

1. Programming skills and a deep technical background are typically in the hiring requirements.
2. There is a documented record of ex-programmers moving into these positions and being successful.
3. There are a reasonable number of such jobs available worldwide.

Here's where I really wished I could have asked this on Stack Exchange, because I'd much rather crowdsource data to support the above three points, but the best I could come up with on my own is:

• Product/Program Manager
• Project Manager
• QA / Testing (good testers are worth their weight in gold)
• Build Engineering (this stuff is hard)
• System Administrator
• Technical Sales
• Technical Writer
• Business Analyst / Programming Analyst

In many of these roles, people that truly know the nuts and bolts of programming are quite rare. That's unfortunate, because a deep technical background lets you actually understand and explain what is going on, to customers, to business stakeholders, to peers on related teams. At the very least nobody can dazzle you with technical BS, because you're equipped to call their bluff.

I've seen less "adept" programmers self-select into related roles at previous jobs and do very well, both financially and professionally. There is a lot of stuff that goes on around programming that is not heads down code writing, where your programming skills are a competitive advantage.

Career questions are tough, because ultimately only you can decide what's right for you. But if you're a programmer who no longer likes to program, your technical background can at least open the door to a number of related professions.

* Yes, you should quit. Jeff is a total jerkface.

I've been a Microsoft developer for decades now. I weaned myself on various flavors of home computer Microsoft Basic, and I got my first paid programming gigs in Microsoft FoxPro, Microsoft Access, and Microsoft Visual Basic. I have seen the future of programming, my friends, and it is terrible CRUD apps running on Wintel boxes!

Of course, we went on to build Stack Overflow in Microsoft .NET. That's a big reason it's still as fast as it is. So one of the most frequently asked questions after we announced Discourse was:

Why didn't you build Discourse in .NET, too?

Let me be clear about something: I love .NET. One of the greatest thrills of my professional career was getting the opportunity to place a Coding Horror sticker in the hand of Anders Hejlsberg. Pardon my inner fanboy for a moment, but oh man I still get chills. There are maybe fifty world class computer language designers on the planet. Anders is the only one of them who built Turbo Pascal and Delphi. It is thanks to Anders' expert guidance that .NET started out such a remarkably well designed language – literally what Java should have been on every conceivable level – and has continued to evolve in remarkably practical ways over the last 10 years, leveraging the strengths of other influential dynamically typed languages.

All that said, it's true that I intentionally chose not to use .NET for my next project. So you might expect to find an angry, righteous screed here about how much happier I am leaving the oppressive shackles of my Microsoft masters behind. Free at last, free at least, thank God almighty I'm free at last!

Sorry. I already wrote that post five years ago.

Like any pragmatic programmer, I pick the appropriate tool for the job at hand. And as much as I may love .NET, it would be an extraordinarily poor choice for an 100% open source project like Discourse. Why? Three reasons, mainly:

1. The licensing. My God, the licensing. It's not so much the money, as the infernal, mind-bending tax code level complexity involved in making sure all your software is properly licensed: determining what 'level' and 'edition' you are licensed at, who is licensed to use what, which servers are licensed... wait, what? Sorry, I passed out there for a minute when I was attacked by rabid licensing weasels.

   I'm not inclined to make grand pronouncements about the future of software, but if anything kills off commercial software, let me tell you, it won't be open source software. They needn't bother. Commercial software will gleefully strangle itself to death on its own licensing terms.

2. The friction. If you want to build truly viable open source software, you need people to contribute to your project, so that it is a living, breathing, growing thing. And unless you can download all the software you need to hack on your project freely from all over the Internet, no strings attached, there's just … too much friction.

   If Stack Overflow taught me anything, it is that we now live in a world where the next brilliant software engineer can come from anywhere on the planet. I'm talking places this ugly American programmer has never heard of, where they speak crazy nonsense moon languages I can't understand. But get this. Stand back while I blow your mind, people: these brilliant programmers still code in the same keywords we do! I know, crazy, right?

   Getting up and running with a Microsoft stack is just plain too hard for a developer in, say, Argentina, or Nepal, or Bulgaria. Open source operating systems, languages, and tool chains are the great equalizer, the basis for the next great generation of programmers all over the world who are going to help us change the world.

3. The ecosystem. When I was at Stack Exchange we strove mightily to make as much of our infrastructure open source as we could. It was something that we made explicit in the compensation guidelines, this idea that we would all be (partially) judged by how much we could do in public, and try to leave behind as many useful, public artifacts of our work as we could. Because wasn't all of Stack Exchange itself, from the very first day, built on your Creative Commons contributions that we all share ownership of?

   You can certainly build open source software in .NET. And many do. But it never feels natural. It never feels right. Nobody accepts your patch to a core .NET class library no matter how hard you try. It always feels like you're swimming upstream, in a world of small and large businesses using .NET that really aren't interested in sharing their code with the world – probably because they know it would suck if they did, anyway. It is just not a native part of the Microsoft .NET culture to make things open source, especially not the things that suck. If you are afraid the things you share will suck, that fear will render you incapable of truly and deeply giving back. The most, uh, delightful… bit of open source communities is how they aren't afraid to let it "all hang out", so to speak.

   So as a result, for any given task in .NET you might have – if you're lucky – a choice of maybe two decent-ish libraries. Whereas in any popular open source language, you'll easily have a dozen choices for the same task. Yeah, maybe six of them will be broken, obsolete, useless, or downright crazy. But hey, even factoring in some natural open source spoilage, you're still ahead by a factor of three! A winner is you!

As I wrote five years ago:

I'm a pragmatist. For now, I choose to live in the Microsoft universe. But that doesn't mean I'm ignorant of how the other half lives. There's always more than one way to do it, and just because I chose one particular way doesn't make it the right way – or even a particularly good way. Choosing to be provincial and insular is a sure-fire path to ignorance. Learn how the other half lives. Get to know some developers who don't live in the exact same world you do. Find out what tools they're using, and why. If, after getting your feet wet on both sides of the fence, you decide the other half is living better and you want to join them, then I bid you a fond farewell.

I no longer live in the Microsoft universe any more. Right, wrong, good, evil, that's just how it turned out for the project we wanted to build.

However, I'd also be lying if I didn't mention that I truly believe the sort of project we are building in Discourse does represent most future software. If you squint your eyes a little, I think you can see a future not too far in the distance where .NET is a specialized niche outside the mainstream.

But why Ruby? Well, the short and not very glamorous answer is that I had narrowed it down to either Python or Ruby, and my original co-founder Robin Ward has been building major Rails apps since 2006. So that clinched it.

I've always been a little intrigued by Ruby, mostly because of the absolutely gushing praise Steve Yegge had for the language way back in 2006. I've never forgotten this.

For the most part, Ruby took Perl's string processing and Unix integration as-is, meaning the syntax is identical, and so right there, before anything else happens, you already have the Best of Perl. And that's a great start, especially if you don't take the Rest of Perl.

But then Matz took the best of list processing from Lisp, and the best of OO from Smalltalk and other languages, and the best of iterators from CLU, and pretty much the best of everything from everyone.

And he somehow made it all work together so well that you don't even notice that it has all that stuff. I learned Ruby faster than any other language, out of maybe 30 or 40 total; it took me about 3 days before I was more comfortable using Ruby than I was in Perl, after eight years of Perl hacking. It's so consistent that you start being able to guess how things will work, and you're right most of the time. It's beautiful. And fun. And practical.

Steve is one of those polyglot programmers I respect so much that I basically just take whatever his opinion is, provided it's not about something wacky like gun control or feminism or T'Pau, and accept it as fact.

I apologize, Steve. I'm sorry it took me 7 years to get around to Ruby. But maybe I was better off waiting a while anyway:

• Ruby is a decent performer, but you really need to throw fast hardware at it for good performance. Yeah, I know, interpreted languages are what they are, and caching, database, network, blah blah blah. Still, we obtained the absolute fastest CPUs you could buy for the Discourse servers, 4.0 Ghz Ivy Bridge Xeons, and performance is just … good on today's fastest hardware. Not great. Good.

  Yes, I'll admit that I am utterly spoiled by the JIT compiled performance of .NET. That's what I am used to. I do sometimes pine away for the bad old days of .NET when we could build pages that serve in well under 50 milliseconds without thinking about it too hard. Interpreted languages aren't going to be able to reach those performance levels. But I can only imagine how rough Ruby performance had to be back in the dark ages of 2006 when CPUs and servers were five times slower than they are today! I'm so very glad that I am hitting Ruby now, with the strong wind of many solid years of Moore's law at our backs.

• Ruby is maturing up nicely in the 2.0 language release, which happened not more than a month after Discourse was announced. So, yes, the downside is that Ruby is slow. But the upside is there is a lot of low hanging performance fruit in Ruby-land. Like.. a lot a lot. On Discourse we got an across the board 20% performance improvement just upgrading to Ruby 2.0, and we nearly doubled our performance by increasing the default Ruby garbage collection limit. From a future performance perspective, Ruby is nothing but upside.

• Ruby isn't cool any more. Yeah, you heard me. It's not cool to write Ruby code any more. All the cool people moved on to slinging Scala and Node.js years ago. Our project isn't cool, it's just a bunch of boring old Ruby code. Personally, I'm thrilled that Ruby is now mature enough that the community no longer needs to bother with the pretense of being the coolest kid on the block. That means the rest of us who just like to Get Shit Done can roll up our sleeves and focus on the mission of building stuff with our peers rather than frantically running around trying to suss out the next shiny thing.

And of course the Ruby community is, and always has been, amazing. We never want for great open source gems and great open source contributors. Now is a fantastic time to get into Ruby, in my opinion, whatever your background is.

(However, It's also worth mentioning that Discourse is, if anything, even more of a JavaScript project than a Ruby on Rails project. Don't believe me? Just go to try.discourse.org and view source. A Discourse forum is not so much a website as it is a full-blown JavaScript application that happens to run in your browser.)

Even if done in good will and for the best interests of the project, it's still a little scary to totally change your programming stripes overnight after two decades. I've always believed that great programmers learn to love more than one language and programming environment – and I hope the Discourse project is an opportunity for everyone to learn and grow, not just me. So go fork us on GitHub already!

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Occasionally, startups will ask me for advice. That's a shame, because I am a terrible person to ask for advice. The conversation usually goes something like this:

We'd love to get your expert advice on our thing.

I probably don't use your thing. Even if I tried your thing out and I gave you my so-called Expert advice, how would it matter? Anyway, why are you asking me? Why don't you ask your community what they think of your thing?

And if you don't have a community of users and customers around your thing, well, there's your problem right there. Go fix that.

Like I said, I don't get asked for advice too often. But for what it's worth, it is serious advice. And the next question they ask always strikes fear into my heart.

You're so right! We need a place for online community around our thing. What software should we use?

This is the part where I start playing sad trombone in my head. Because all your software options for online community are, quite frankly, terrible. Stack Exchange? We only do strict, focused Q&A there and you'd have to marshal your proposal through Area 51. Get Satisfaction, UserVoice, Desk, etcetera? Sorry, customer support isn't the same as community. Mailing lists? Just awful.

Forum software? Maybe. Let's see, it's 2013, has forum software advanced at all in the last ten years?

I'm thinking no.

Forums are the dark matter of the web, the B-movies of the Internet. But they matter. To this day I regularly get excellent search results on forum pages for stuff I'm interested in. Rarely a day goes by that I don't end up on some forum, somewhere, looking for some obscure bit of information. And more often than not, I find it there.

There's an amazing depth of information on forums.

• A 12 year old girl who finds a forum community of rabid enthusiasts willing to help her rebuild a Fiero from scratch? Check.
• The most obsessive breakdown of Lego collectible minifig kits you'll find anywhere on the Internet? Check.
• Some of the most practical information on stunt kiting in the world? Check.
• The only place I could find with scarily powerful squirt gun instructions and advice? Check.
• The underlying research for a New Yorker article outing a potential serial marathon cheater? Check.

I could go on and on. As much as existing forum software is inexplicably and terrifyingly awful after all these years, it is still the ongoing basis for a huge chunk of deeply interesting information on the Internet. These communities are incredibly passionate about incredibly obscure things. They aren't afraid to let their freak flag fly, and the world is a better place for it.

At Stack Exchange, one of the tricky things we learned about Q&A is that if your goal is to have an excellent signal to noise ratio, you must suppress discussion. Stack Exchange only supports the absolute minimum amount of discussion necessary to produce great questions and great answers. That's why answers get constantly re-ordered by votes, that's why comments have limited formatting and length and only a few display, and so forth. Almost every design decision we made was informed by our desire to push discussion down, to inhibit it in every way we could. Spare us the long-winded diatribe, just answer the damn question already.

After spending four solid years thinking of discussion as the established corrupt empire, and Stack Exchange as the scrappy rebel alliance, I began to wonder – what would it feel like to change sides? What if I became a champion of random, arbitrary discussion, of the very kind that I'd spent four years designing against and constantly lecturing users on the evil of?

I already built an X-Wing; could I build a better Tie Fighter?

If you're wondering what all those sly references to Tie Fighters were about in my previous blog posts and tweets, now you know. All hail the Emperor, and by the way, what's your favorite programming food?

Today we announce the launch of Discourse, a next-generation, 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

The goal of the company we formed, Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc., is exactly that – to raise the standard of civilized discourse on the Internet through seeding it with better discussion software:

• 100% open source and free to the world, now and forever.
• Feels great to use. It's fun.
• Designed for hi-resolution tablets and advanced web browsers.
• Built in moderation and governance systems that let discussion communities protect themselves from trolls, spammers, and bad actors – even without official moderators.

Our amazingly talented team has been working on Discourse for almost a year now, and although like any open source software it's never entirely done, we believe it is already a generation ahead of any other forum software we've used.

I greatly admire what WordPress did for the web; to say that we want to be the WordPress of forums is not a stretch at all. We're also serious about this eventually being a viable open-source business, in the mold of WordPress. And we're not the only people who believe in the mission: I'm proud to announce that we have initial venture capital funding from First Round, Greylock, and SV Angel. We're embarking on a five year mission to improve the fabric of the Internet, and we're just getting started. Let a million discussions bloom!

So now, when someone says to me …

You're so right! We need a place for community around our thing. What software should we use?

I can reply without hesitation.

And hopefully, so can you.

When Joel Spolsky, my business partner on Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange, asked me what I wanted to do after I left Stack Exchange, I distinctly remember mentioning Aaron Swartz. That's what Aaron was to us hackers: an exemplar of the noble, selfless behavior and positive action that all hackers aspire to – but very few actually achieve.

And now, tragically, Aaron is gone at the tender age of 26. He won't be achieving anything any more.

I never knew Aaron, but I knew Aaron.

Most of all, I am disappointed.

I'm deeply disappointed in myself, for not understanding just how bitterly unfair the government charges were against Aaron. Perhaps the full, grotesque details couldn't be revealed for a pending legal case. But we should have been outraged. I am gutted that I did not contribute to his defense in any way, either financially or by writing about it here. I blindly assumed he would prevail, as powerful activists on the side of fairness, openness, and freedom are fortunate enough to often do in our country. I was wrong.

I'm disappointed in our government, for going to such lengths to make an example of someone who was so obviously a positive force. Someone who actively worked to change the world for the better in everything he did, starting from the age of 12. There was no evil in this man. And yet the absurd government case against him was cited by his family as directly contributing to his death.

I'm frustrated by the idea that martyrdom works. The death of Aaron Swartz is now turning into an effective tool for change, a rallying cry, proving the perverse lesson that nobody takes an issue seriously until a great person dies for the cause. The idea that Aaron killing himself was a viable strategy, more than going on to prevail in this matter and so many more in his lifetime, makes me incredibly angry.

But also, I must admit that I am a little disappointed in Aaron. I understand that depression is a serious disease that can fell any person, however strong. But he chose the path of the activist long ago. And the path of the activist is to fight, for as long and as hard as it takes, to effect change. Aaron had powerful friends, a powerful support network, and a keen sense of moral cause that put him in the right. That's how he got that support network of powerful friends and fellow activists in the first place.

It is appropriate to write about Aaron on Martin Luther King day, because he too was a tireless activist for moral causes.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Let's be clear that the penalty in Aaron's case was grossly unfair, bordering on corrupt. I've been a part of exactly one trial, but I can't even imagine having the full resources of the US Government brought to bear against me, with extreme prejudice, for a year or more. His defense was estimated to cost millions. The idea that such an engaged citizen would be forever branded a felon – serving at least some jail time and stripped of the most fundamental citizenship right, the ability to vote – must have weighed heavily on Aaron. And Aaron was no stranger to depresson, having written about it on his blog many times, even penning a public will of sorts on his blog all the way back in 2002.

I think about ragequitting a lot.

Rage Quit, also seen as RageQuit in one word, is Internet slang commonly used to describe the act of suddenly quitting a game or chatroom after either an argument, extreme frustration, or loss of the game.

At least one user ragequits Stack Exchange every six months, because our rules are strict. Some people don't like rules, and can respond poorly when confronted by the rules of the game they choose to play. It came up often enough that we had to create even more rules to deal with it. I was forced to think about ragequitting.

It's been six years since I wrote Discussions: Flat or Threaded? and, despite a bunch of evolution on the web since then, my opinion on this has not fundamentally changed.

If anything, my opinion has strengthened based on the observed data: precious few threaded discussion models survive on the web. Putting aside Usenet as a relic and artifact of the past, it is rare to find threaded discussions of any kind on the web today; for web discussion communities that are more than ten years old, the vast majority are flat as a pancake.

I'm game for trying anything new, I mean, I even tried Google Wave. But the more I've used threaded discussions of any variety, the less I like them. I find precious few redeeming qualities, while threading tends to break crucial parts of discussion like reading and replying in deep, fundamental, unfixable ways. I have yet to discover a threaded discussion design that doesn't eventually make me hate it, and myself.

A part of me says this is software Darwinism in action: threaded discussion is ultimately too complex to survive on the public Internet.

Before threaded discussion fans bring out their pitchforks and torches, I fully acknowledge that aspects of threading can be useful in certain specific situations. I will get to that. I know I'm probably wasting my time even attempting to say this, but please: keep reading before commenting. Ideally, read the whole article before commenting. Like Parappa, I gotta believe!

Before I defend threaded discussion, let's enumerate the many problems it brings to the table:

1. It's a tree.
   

   Poems about trees are indeed lovely, as Joyce Kilmer promised us, but data of any kind represented as a tree … isn't. Rigid hierarchy is generally not how the human mind works, and the strict parent-child relationship it enforces is particularly terrible for fluid human group discussion. Browsing a tree is complicated, because you have to constantly think about what level you're at, what's expanded, what's collapsed … there's always this looming existential crisis of where the heck am I? Discussion trees force me to spend too much time mentally managing that two-dimensional tree more than the underlying discussion.

2. Where did that reply go?
   

   In a threaded discussion, replies can arrive any place in the tree at any time. How do you know if there are new replies? Where do you find them? Only if you happen to be browsing the tree at the right place at the right time. It's annoying to follow discussions over time when new posts keep popping up anywhere in the middle of the big reply tree. And God help you if you accidentally reply at the wrong level of the tree; then you're suddenly talking to the wrong person, or maybe nobody at all. For that matter, it absolutely kills me that there might be amazing, insightful responses buried somewhere in the middle of a reply chain that I will never be able to find. Most of all, it just makes me want to leave and never come back.

3. It pushes discussion off your screen.
   

   So the first reply is indented under the post. Fair enough; how else would you know that one post is a reply to another post? But this indentation game doesn't ever end. Reply long and hard enough and you've either made the content column impossibly narrow, or you've pushed the content to exit, stage right. That's how endless pedantic responses-to-responses ruin the discussion for everyone. I find that in the "indent everything to the right" game, there are no winners, only losers. It is natural to scroll down on the web, but it is utterly unnatural to scroll right. Indentation takes the discussion in the wrong direction.

4. You're talking to everyone.
   

   You think because you clicked "reply" and your post is indented under the person you're replying to, that your post is talking only to that person? That's so romantic. Maybe the two of you should get a room. A special, private room at the far, far, far, far, far right of that threaded discussion. This illusion that you are talking to one other person ends up harming the discussion for everyone by polluting the tree with these massive narrow branches that are constantly in the way.

   At an absolute minimum you're addressing everyone else in that discussion, but in reality, you're talking to anyone who will listen, for all time. Composing your reply as if it is a reply to just one person is a quaint artifact of a world that doesn't exist any more. Every public post you make on the Internet, reply or not, is actually talking to everyone who will ever read it. It'd be helpful if the systems we used for discussion made that clear, rather than maintaining this harmful pretense of private conversations in a public space.

5. I just want to scroll down.

   Reddit (and to a lesser extent, Hacker News) are probably the best known examples of threaded comments applied to a large audience. While I find Reddit so much more tolerable than the bad old days of Digg, I can still barely force myself to wade through the discussions there, because it's so much darn work. As a lazy reader, I feel I've already done my part by deciding to enter the thread; after that all I should need to do is scroll or swipe down.

   Take what's on the top of reddit right now. It's a cool picture; who wouldn't want to meet Steve Martin and Morgan Freeman? But what's the context? Who is this kid? How did he get so lucky? To find out, I need to collapse and suppress dozens of random meaningless tangents, and the replies-to-tangents, by clicking the little minus symbol next to each one. So that's what I'm doing: reading a little, deciding that tangent is not useful or interesting, and clicking it to get rid of it. Then I arrive at the end and find out that information wasn't even in the topic, or at least I couldn't find it. I'm OK with scrolling down to find information and/or entertainment, to a point. What I object to is the menial labor of collapsing and expanding threaded portions of the topic as I read. Despite what the people posting them might think, those tangents aren't so terribly important that they're worth making me, and every other reader, act on them.

Full bore, no-holds-barred threading is an unmitigated usability disaster for discussion, everywhere I've encountered it. But what if we didn't commit to this idea of threaded discussion quite so wholeheartedly?

The most important guidance for non-destructive use of threading is to put a hard cap on the level of replies that you allow. Although Stack Exchange is not a discussion system – it's actually the opposite of a discussion system, which we have to explain to people all the time – we did allow, in essence, one level of threading. There are questions and answers, yes, but underneath each of those, in smaller type, are the comments.

Now there's a bunch of hard-core discussion sociology here that I don't want to get into, like different rules for comments, special limitations for comments, only showing the top n of comments by default, and so forth. What matters is that we allow one level of replies and that's it. Want to reply to a comment? You can, but it'll be at the same level. You can go no deeper. This is by design, but remember: Stack Exchange is not a discussion system. It's a question and answer system. If you build your Q&A system like a discussion system, it will devolve into Yahoo Answers, or even worse, Quora. Just kidding Quora. You're great.

Would Hacker News be a better place for discussion if they capped reply level? Would Reddit? From my perspective as a poor, harried reader and very occasional participant, absolutely. There are many chronic problems with threaded discussion, but capping reply depth is the easiest way to take a giant step in the right direction.

Another idea is to let posts bring their context with them. This is one of the things that Twitter, the company that always does everything wrong and succeeds anyway, gets … shockingly right out of the gate. When I view one of my tweets, it can stand alone, as it should. But it can also bring some context along with it on demand:

Here you can see how my tweet can be expanded with a direct link or click to show the necessary context for the conversation. But it'll only show three levels: the post, my reply to the post, and replies to my post. This idea that tweets – and thus, conversations – should be mostly standalone is not well understood, but it illustrates how Twitter got the original concept so fundamentally right. I guess that's why they can get away with the terrible execution.

I believe selective and judicious use of threading is the only way it can work for discussion. You should be wary of threading as a general purpose solution for human discussions. Always favor simple, flat discussions instead.

In the go-go world of software development, we're so consumed with learning new things, so fascinated with the procession of shiny new objects that I think we sometimes lose sight of our history. I don't mean the big era-defining successes. Everyone knows those stories. I'm talking about the things we've tried before that … didn't quite work out. The failures. The also-rans. The noble experiments. The crazy plans.

I'm all for reinventing the wheel, because it's one of the best ways to learn. But you shouldn't even think about reinventing a damn thing until you've exhaustively researched every single last wheel, old or new, working or broken, that you can lay your hands on. Do your homework.

That's why I love unearthing stories like The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat. It's basically World of Warcraft … in 1985.

Habitat is "a multi-participant online virtual environment," a cyberspace.

Each participant ("player") uses a home computer (Commodore 64) as an intelligent, interactive client, communicating via modem and telephone over a commercial packet-switching network to a centralized, mainframe host system. The client software provides the user interface, generating a real-time animated display of what is going on and translating input from the player into messages to the host. The host maintains the system's world model enforcing the rules and keeping each player's client informed about the constantly changing state of the universe.

This was the dark ages of home computing. In 1985, that 64k of memory in a Commodore 64 was a lot. The entirety of Turbo Pascal 3.02 for DOS, released a year later in 1986, was barely 40k.

For the last year or so, I've been getting these two page energy assessment reports in the mail from Pacific Gas & Electric, our California utility company, comparing our household's energy use to those of the houses around us.

Here's the relevant excerpts from the latest report; click through for a full-page view of each page.

These poor results are particularly galling because I go far out of my way to Energy Star all the things, I use LED light bulbs just about everywhere, we set our thermostat appropriately, and we're still getting crushed. I have no particular reason to care about this stupid energy assessment report showing our household using 33% more energy than similar homes in our neighborhood. And yet… I must win this contest. I can't let it go.

• Installed a Nest 2.0 learning thermostat.
• I made sure every last bulb in our house that gets any significant use is LED. Fortunately there are some pretty decent $16 LED bulbs on Amazon now offering serviceable 60 watt equivalents at 9 watt, without too many early adopter LED quirks (color, dimming, size, weight, etc).
• I even put appliance LED bulbs in our refrigerator and freezer.
• Switched to a low-flow shower head.
• Upgraded to a high efficiency tankless water heater, the Noritz NCC1991-SV.
• Nearly killed myself trying to source LED candelabra bulbs for the fixture in our dining room which has 18 of the damn things, and is used quite a bit now with the twins in the house. Turns out, 18 times any number … is still kind of a large number. In cash.

(Most of this has not helped much on the report. The jury is still out on the Nest thermostat and the candelabra LED bulbs, as I haven't had them long enough to judge. I'm gonna defeat this thing, man!)

I'm ashamed to admit that it's only recently I realized that this technique – showing a set of metrics alongside your peers – is exactly the same thing we built at Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. Notice any resemblance on the user profile page here?

You've tricked me into becoming obsessed with understanding and reducing my household energy consumption. Something that not only benefits me, but also benefits the greater community and, more broadly, benefits the entire world. You've beaten me at my own game. Well played, Pacific Gas & Electric. Well played.

This peer motivation stuff, call it gamification if you must, really works. That's why we do it. But these systems are like firearms: so powerful they're kind of dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. If you don't think deeply about what you're incentivizing, why you're incentivizing it, and the full ramifications of all emergent behaviors in your system, you may end up with … something darker. A lot darker.

The key lesson for me is that our members became very thoroughly obsessed with those numbers. Even though points on Consumating were redeemable for absolutely nothing, not even a gold star, our members had an unquenchable desire for them. What we saw as our membership scrabbled over valueless points was that there didn't actually need to be any sort of material reward other than the points themselves. We didn't need to allow them to trade the points in for benefits, virtual or otherwise. It was enough of a reward for most people just to see their points wobble upwards. If only we had been able to channel that obsession towards something with actual value!

Since I left Stack Exchange, I've had a difficult time explaining what exactly it is I do, if anything, to people. I finally settled on this: what I do, what I'm best at, what I love to do more than anything else in the world, is design massively multiplayer games for people who like to type paragraphs to each other. I channel their obsessions – and mine – into something positive, something that they can learn from, something that creates wonderful reusable artifacts for the whole world. And that's what I still hope to do, because I have an endless well of obsession left.

Just ask PG&E.

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I'm a little embarrassed to admit how much I like the Surface RT. I wasn't expecting a lot when I ordered it, but after a day of use, I realized this was more than Yet Another Gadget. It might represent a brave new world of laptop design. How can you not love a laptop that lets you touch Zardoz to unlock it?

(I'll leave the particular unlock gestures I chose to your imagination. Good luck hacking this password, Mitnick!)

I have an ultrabook I like, but the more I used the Surface, the more obsolete it seemed, because I couldn't touch anything on the screen. I found touch interactions on Surface highly complementary to the keyboard. Way more than I would have ever believed, because I lived through the terror that was Pen Computing. If you need precision, you switch to the mouse or touchpad – but given the increasing prevalence of touch-friendly app and web design, that's not as often as you'd think. Tablets are selling like hotcakes, and every day the world becomes a more touch friendly place, with simpler apps that more people can understand and use on basic tablets. This a good thing. But this also means it is only a matter of time before all laptops must be touch laptops.

I've become quite obsessed enamored with this touch laptop concept. I've used the Surface a lot since then. I own two, including the touch and type covers. I also impulsively splurged on a Lenovo Yoga 13, which is a more traditional laptop form factor.

One of the primary criticisms of the Surface RT is that, since it is an ARM based Tegra 3 device, it does not run traditional x86 apps. That's likely also why it comes with a bundled version of Office 2013. Well, the Yoga 13 resolves that complaint, because it's a Core i5 Ivy Bridge machine. But there is a cost for this x86 compatibility:

The size comparison isn't entirely fair, since the Yoga is a 13.3" device, and the Surface is a 10.6" device. But Surface Pro has x86 internals and is otherwise as identical to the Surface RT as Microsoft could possibly make it, and it's still 44% larger and 33% heavier. Intel inside comes at a hefty cost in weight, battery life, and size.

You do get something for that price, though: compatibility with the vast library of x86 apps, and speed. The Yoga 13 is absurdly fast by tablet standards. Its Sunspider score is approximately 150 ms, compared to my iPad 4 at 738 ms, and the Surface RT at 1036 ms. Five hours of battery life might not seem like such a bad tradeoff for six times the performance.

I like the Yoga 13 a lot, and it is getting deservedly good reviews. Some reviewers think it's the best Windows 8 laptop available right now. It is a fine replacement for my ultrabook, and as long as you fix the brain-damaged default drive partitioning, scrape off the handful of stickers on it, and uninstall the few pre-installed craplets, it is eminently recommendable. You can also easily upgrade it from 4 GB to 8 GB of RAM for about $40.

But there were things about the practical use of a touch laptop, subtle things that hadn't even occurred to me until I tried to sit down and use one for a few hours, that made me pause:

1. The screen bounces when you touch it. Maybe I just have hulk-like finger strength, but touching a thin laptop screen tends to make it bounce back a bit. That's … exactly what you don't want in a touch device. I begin to understand why the Surface chose its "fat screen, thin keyboard" design rather than the traditional "thin screen, fat keyboard" of a laptop. You need the inertia on the side you're touching. The physics of touching a thin, hinged laptop screen are never going to be particularly great. Yes, on the Yoga I can wrap the screen around behind the keyboard, or even prop it up like a tent – but this negates the value of the keyboard which is the biggest part of the touch laptop story! If I wanted a keyboardless tablet, I'd use one of the four I have in the house already. And the UPS guy just delivered a Nexus 10.
   
   
2. A giant touchpad makes the keyboard area too large. On a typical laptop, a Texas size touchpad makes sense. On a touch laptop, giant touchpads are problematic because they push the screen even farther away from your hand. This may sound trivial, but it isn't. A ginormous touchpad makes every touch interaction you have that much more fatiguing to reach. I now see why the Surface opted for a tiny touchpad on its touch and type covers. A touchpad should be a method of last resort on a touch laptop anyway, because touch is more convenient, and if you need true per-pixel precision work, you'll plug in a mouse. Have I mentioned how convenient it is to have devices that accept standard USB mice, keyboards, drives, and so on? Because it is.
   
   
3. Widescreen is good for keyboards, but awkward for tablets. A usable keyboard demands a certain minimum width, so widescreen it is; all touch laptops are going to be widescreen by definition. You get your choice between ultra wide or ultra tall. The default landscape mode works great, but rotating the device and using it in portrait mode makes it super tall. On a widescreen device, portrait orientation becomes a narrow and highly specialized niche. It's also very rough on lower resolution devices; neither the 1366×768 Surface RT nor the 1600×900 Yoga 13 really offer enough pixels on the narrow side to make portrait mode usable. You'd need a true retina class device to make portrait work in widescreen. I began to see why the iPad was shipped with a 4:3 display and not a 16:9 or 16:10 one, because that arrangement is more flexible on a tablet. I frequently use my iPad 4 in either orientation, but the Yoga and Surface are only useful in landscape mode except under the most rare of circumstances.
   
   
4. About 11 inches might be the maximum practical tablet size. Like many observers, I've been amused by the race to produce the largest possible phone screen, resulting in 5" phablets that are apparently quite popular. But you'll also note that even the most ardent Apple fans seem to feel that the 7" iPad mini is an inherently superior form factor to the 10" iPad. I think both groups are fundamentally correct: for a lot of uses, the 3.5" phone really is too small, and the 10" tablet really is too big. As a corollary to that, I'd say anything larger than the 10.6" Surface is far too large to use as a tablet. Attempting to use the 13.3" Yoga as a tablet is incredibly awkward, primarily because of the size. Even if the weight and volume were pushed down to imaginary Minority Report levels, I'm not sure I would want a 13.3" tablet on my lap or in my hands. There must be a reason the standard letter page size is 8½ × 11", right?
   
   
5. All-day computing, or, 10 hours of battery life. The more devices I own, the more I begin to appreciate those that I can use for 8 to 10 hours before needing to charge them. There is truly something a little magical about that 10 hour battery life number, and I can now understand why Apple seemed to target 9-10 hours of battery life in their initial iPad and iPhone designs. A battery life of 4 to 6 hours is nothing to sneeze at, but … I feel anxiety about carrying the charger around, whether I've charged recently or not, and I worry over screen brightness and other battery maximization techniques. When I can safely go 8 to 10 hours, I figure that even if I use the heck out of the device – as much as any human being reasonably could in a single day – I'll still safely make it through and I can stick it in a charger before I go to bed.

To appreciate just how extreme portrait mode is on a widescreen tablet, experience it yourself:

This isn't specific to touch laptops; it's a concern for all widescreen devices. I have the same problem with the taller iPhone 5. Because I now have to choose between super wide or super tall, it is a less flexible device in practice.

The Yoga 13, if representative of the new wave of Windows 8 laptops, is a clear win even if you have no intention of ever touching your screen:

• It boots up incredibly fast, in a few seconds.
• It wakes and sleeps incredibly fast, nearly instantaneously.
• The display is a high quality IPS model.
• A rotating screen offers a number of useful modes: presentation, (giant) tablet, standard laptop.
• Touchpad and keyboard work fine; at the very least, they're no worse than the typical PC laptop to me.
• Does the prospect of using Windows 8 frighten and disturb you? No worries, smash Windows+D on your keyboard immediately after booting and pretend you're using Windows 7.5. Done and done.

It's a nice laptop. You could do far worse, and many have. In the end, the Yoga 13 is just a nice laptop with a touchscreen slapped on it. But the more I used the Yoga the more I appreciated the subtle design choices of Surface that make it a far better touch laptop. I kept coming back to how much I enjoyed using the Surface as the platonic ideal of what touch laptops should be.

Yes, it is a bummer that the only currently available Surface is ARM based and does not run any traditional Windows apps. It's easy to look at the x86 performance of the Yoga 13 and assume that Windows on ARM is a cute, temporary throwback to Windows NT on Alpha or MIPS which will never last, and understandably so. Do you see anyone running Windows on Alpha or MIPS CPUs today? But I'm mightily impressed with the Tegra 3 SOC (system-on-a-chip) that runs both the Surface RT and the Nexus 7. Upcoming Tegra releases, all named after superheroes, promise 75 times the performance of Tegra 2 by 2014. I can't quite determine how much faster Tegra 3 was than Tegra 2, but even if it is "only" ten times faster by 2014, that's … amazing.

I think we're beginning to uncover the edges of a world where lack of x86 compatibility is no longer the kiss of death it used to be. It's unclear to me that Intel can ever reach equivalent performance per watt with ARM; Intel's ultra-low-end Celeron 847 is twice as fast as the ARM A15, but it's also 17 watts TDP. In a land of ARM chips that pull an absolute maximum of 4 watts at peak, slapping Intel Inside will instantly double the size and weight of your device – or halve its battery life, your choice. Intel's been trying to turn the battleship, but with very limited success so far. Haswell, the successor to the Ivy Bridge CPUs in the Surface Pro and Yoga 13, only gets to 10 watts at idle. And Intel's long neglected Atom line, thanks to years of institutional crippling to avoid cannibalizing Pentium sales, is poorly positioned to compete with ARM today.

Still, I would not blame anyone for waiting on the Surface Pro. A high performance, HD touch laptop in the Surface form factor that runs every x86 app you can throw at it is a potent combination … even if it is 44% larger and 33% heavier.

I woke up a few days ago and realized I was still carrying the same 32 GB USB flash drive on my keychain that I purchased in 2010. I thought to myself, this is an unacceptable state of affairs. Totally. Unacceptable.

It's been few years since I seriously looked at USB drive performance. Premium USB flash drives typically eke out about 10-20 MB per second, strongly favoring reads, but I've recently purchased a number of inexpensive 4 GB USB drives that barely got to 4 MB per second. That's OK, since they were only intended as cheap floppy drive CD and DVD replacements. Based on that experience, I wasn't expecting much improvement in the status quo.

USB 3.0 is finally becoming somewhat prevalent on PCs and Macs, so I figured I'd:

• Switch to a current-generation USB 3.0 flash drive.
• Bump up to 64 GB storage this generation, one step over the 32 GB model I currently carry.
• Optimistically hope against hope that they've gotten fast enough by now to get anywhere near USB 2.0 throughput limits.

I checked around and the Patriot Supersonic Magnum got good reviews. The price seemed about right at $75 for a 64 GB device. So I bought one. I plugged it in to one of the USB 3.0 ports on my PC and …

Holy. Crap.

237 MB/s reads and 143 MB/s writes? Yes please!

Needless to say, this thing handily saturates a USB 2.0 connection at around 27 - 30 MB/sec but plug it into one of those blue USB 3.0 ports on newer Macs or PCs and prepare to feel like the "blown away" guy in the Maxell ad.

I haven't run a full set of benchmarks on this guy, but the only downside I've noticed so far is that it is a bit chunkier in width than my previous USB flash drive. It might be a bit more to carry, and might not fit some USB ports depending on what's adjacent.

Now I feel like a total dork for continuing to carry around a 2010 era flash drive that I thought had decent performance at 20 MB/sec. Forget that noise. Now we can darn near carry pocket solid state hard drives on our keychains! Nobody told me, man!

So now I'm telling you. Enjoy.

Traditional laptops may have reached an evolutionary dead-end (or, more charitably, a plateau), but it is an amazing time for things that … aren't quite traditional laptops.

The Nexus 7 is excellent, the Nexus 10 looks fantastic, I can't wait to get my hands on the twice-as-fast iPad 4, the new Chromebooks are finally decent and priced right, and then there's the Microsoft Surface RT. In short, it is a fantastic time to be a computer nerd.

I love computers, always have, always will. My strategy with new computing devices is simple: I buy 'em all, then try living with them. The devices that fall away from me over time – the ones that gather dust, or that I forget about – are the ones I eventually get rid of. So long, Kindle Fire! I knew that the Nexus 7 was really working for me when I gave mine to my father as a spontaneous gift while he was visiting, then missed it sorely when waiting for the replacement to arrive.

As I use these devices, I've grown more and more sold on the idea that touch is going to dominate the next era of computing. This reductionism is inevitable and part of the natural evolution of computers. Remove the mouse. Remove the keyboard. Remove the monitor. Reducing a computer to its absolute minumum leads us inexorably, inevitably to the tablet (or, if a bit smaller, the phone). All you're left with is a flat, featureless slate that invites you to touch it. Welcome to the future, here's your … rectangle.

I've stopped thinking of touch as some exotic, add-in technology contained in specialized devices. I belatedly realized that I love to touch computers. And why not? We constantly point and gesture at everything in our lives, including our screens. It's completely natural to want to interact with computers by touching them. That's why the more unfortunate among us have displays covered in filthy fingerprints.

Although I love my touch devices, one thing I've noticed is that they are a major disincentive to writing actual paragraphs. On screen keyboards get the job done, but if I have to scrawl more than a Twitter length reply to someone on a tablet or phone, it's so much effort that I just avoid doing it altogether, postponing indefinitely until I can be in front of a keyboard. By the time that happens I've probably forgotten what I wanted to say in the first place, or that I even needed to reply at all. Multiply that by millions or billions, and you have a whole generation technologically locked into a backwater of minimal communication. Yelp, for example, does not allow posting reviews from their mobile app because when they did, all they got was LOL OMG raspberry poop Emoji.

It's not good. In fact, it's a little scary. I realize that there are plenty of ways of creating content that don't involve writing, but writing is pretty damn fundamental to communication and civilization as we know it. Anything that adds a significant barrier to the act of placing words on a page is kind of dangerous – and a major regression from the world where every computer had a keyboard in front of it, inviting people to write and communicate with each other. So the idea that billions of people in the future will be staring at touchscreen computers, Instagramming and fingerpainting their thoughts to each other, leaves me with deeply mixed feelings. As Joey Hess said:

If it doesn't have a keyboard, I feel that my thoughts are being forced out through a straw.

When I pre-ordered the Microsoft Surface RT, I wasn't expecting much. This is a version one device from a company that has never built a computer before, running a brand new and controversial operating system. On paper, it doesn't seem like a significant change from all the other tablets on the market, and its primary differentiating feature – the touch keyboard – can be viewed as merely flipping a regular laptop over, so the "fat" side is on the display rather than the keyboard.

Surface is just like the first iPad in that it has all the flaws and rough edges you'd expect in a version one device. But it is also like the first iPad in that there is undeniably the core of something revelatory and transformative here – a vision of the future of computing that doesn't sacrifice either keyboard or touch.

Reviewers think Surface is intended to be a tablet killer, but it isn't. It's a laptop killer. After living with the Surface RT for a few days now, I'm convinced that this form factor is the replacement and way forward for the stagnant laptop. I can't even remember the last time I was this excited about a computer. The more I use it, the more I think that touch plus keyboard is the future of all laptops.

How wonderful it is to flip open the Surface and quickly type a 4 paragraph email response when I need to. How wonderful it is to browse the web and touch whatever I want to. And switching between the two modes of interaction – sometimes typing, sometimes touching – is completely natural. Remember when I talked about two-fisted computing, referring to the mouse and keyboard working in harmony? With Surface, I found that also applies to touch. In spades.

This isn't a review, per se, but let me get into a few specifics:

• Yes, it is ridiculous that the keyboard cover is not included in the base Surface, as the near-perfect integration of keyboard with touch is the whole story here. Don't even consider buying a Surface without the touch keyboard cover. Within an hour or so I was hitting 80% of my regular typing speed on it, and it's firm enough to be used on a lap without too much loss of accuracy. Astonishingly, the tiny fabric touchpad is quite good, better than the ones I've used on many laptops. Which probably says more about the sad state of the PC ecosystem than it does about Surface, but still.
• Yeah, yeah, it doesn't run x86 apps. So your beloved copy of Windows Landscape Designer 1998 won't run on Surface RT. You'll need to wait a few months for Surface Pro to do that, but you'll pay the Intel Premium™ in price, battery life, and size. Rumor has it that Intel will get their act together with Haswell, and finally be competitive with ARM in price, performance, and power consumption, but I'll believe that when I see it.
• The hardware design is beyond reproach; I'd even argue it's better than Apple quality hardware design. Unless you're required by God to hate all things touched by Microsoft, There's no way you could handle a Surface and not think that this is a genuinely well made thing.
• The default Surface mail application is an embarrassment and everyone associated with it should be fired. Android and iOS both have decent default mail apps, as well they should, because email is bedrock. Not having this right really hurts. If Microsoft doesn't get their A Team "hey dummies, all you have to do is just copy Sparrow already" team on that soon, they'll be sorry.
• Many of the native applications currently available run poorly on Surface RT due to lack of optimization and testing for the ARM platform versus x86. Probably not terribly different from the iPad 1 on launch day, but it remains to be seen how quickly that will get resolved.
• The web browser is stellar and a model of how the Internet should work on a tablet. You are almost always in fullscreen mode, swiping around with nothing but content on your screen, the way it should be. However, back button performance is bizarrely slow, and the way IE10 handles web hovers is poor, much worse than Mobile Safari and Chrome. Try upvoting a comment on Stack Overflow to see what I mean.

Notice how the 2010 iPad 1 is already obsolete? Expect the same thing with the Surface RT. It's a fascinating glimpse into the future, but it'll be totally utterly obsolete in 2 years. Do not buy this device expecting longevity. Buy it because you want to see tomorrow today.

The received wisdom about touchscreen interaction with computers was that it didn't work. That you'd get "gorilla arm". That's why we had to have special tablet devices. But Surface proves that's not true; typing and touching are spectacularly compatible, at least for laptops. And I'm beginning to wonder about my desktop a little, because lately I'm starting to I think I wanna touch that, too.

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