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So, which one you chose: Github, Bitbucket, GitLab, other?

GitHub Free users now get unlimited private repositories

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GitHub Free users now get unlimited private repositories

Toshiba to Close the Book on Its Laptop Unit

TOKYO—Toshiba Corp., which was the first in the world to commercialize laptop computers in 1985, is selling the business to Sharp Corp., a symbolic step marking Toshiba’s withdrawal from most consumer businesses.

Sharp is paying just ¥4 billion ($36 million) for an 80.1% stake in a business that once was at the forefront of the global move toward mobile computing. Osaka-based Sharp, controlled by Taiwan-based iPhone assembler Foxconn Technology Group, has been expanding its consumer goods lineup because Foxconn wants to establish itself in branded electronic products.

The deal, disclosed by the companies Tuesday, highlights a contrast between the two electronics makers, both of which faced multibillion-dollar losses and management turmoil several years ago. Sharp has managed to turn itself around quickly under foreign management while Toshiba, which received more support from the Japanese government during its restructuring, is still trying to streamline its unprofitable portfolio.

Source:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/toshiba-to-close-the-book-on-its-laptop-unit-1528175106

In 2008, Tom Preston-Werner turned down a $300K job with Microsoft to work on his startup, Github, which paid him all of $0. Today, Microsoft bought Github for $7.5 billion. That’s over 20,000x that salary that Tom turned down.

Tom began GitHub as a site to host and share open source code. Faced with skeptics and critics when he quit his job to follow his dream, what did Tom do?

He wrote a blog called “How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub”.

Tom writes in the 2008 blog that while in a full-time job with a search engine company, Powerset, he launched GitHub with co-founders Chris Wanstrath and PJ Hyett:

“We publicly launched the site on April 10th. TechCrunch was not invited. At this point it was still just three 20-somethings without a single penny of outside investment.”

“I was still working full time at Powerset on July 1, 2008 when we learned that Powerset had just been acquired by Microsoft for around $100 million. This was interesting timing. With the acquisition, I was going to be faced with a choice sooner than I had anticipated. I could either sign on as a Microsoft employee or quit and go GitHub full time.”

“At 29 years old, I was the oldest of the three GitHubbers, and had accumulated a proportionally larger amount of debt and monthly expenditure. I was used to my six digit lifestyle.”

“Further confounding the issue was the imminent return of my wife, Theresa, from her PhD fieldwork in Costa Rica. I would soon be transitioning from make-believe bachelor back to married man.”

“To muddy the waters of decision even more, the Microsoft employment offer was juicy. Salary + $300k over three years juicy. That’s enough money to make anybody think twice about anything.”

“So I was faced with this: a safe job with lots of guaranteed money as a Microsoft man or a risky job with unknown amounts of money as an entrepreneur. It was do or die time. Either pick GitHub and go for it, or make the safe choice and quit GitHub to make wheelbarrows full of cash at Microsoft.”

“If you want a recipe for restless sleep, I can give you one. Add one part “what will my wife think” with 3,000 parts Benjamin Franklin; stir in a “beer anytime you damn well please” and top with a chance at financial independence.”

“I broke the news to my boss at Powerset on the day the employment offer was due. I told him I was quitting to go work full time on GitHub. Like any great boss, he was bummed, but understanding. He didn’t try to tempt me with a bigger bonus or anything. I think deep down he knew I was going to leave. I may have even received a larger incentive to stay than others, on account of my being a flight risk.”

“Those Microsoft managers are crafty, I tell you. They’ve got retention bonuses down to a science. Well, except when you throw an entrepreneur, the singularity of the business world, into the mix. Everything goes wacky when you’ve got one of those around.”

Tom wrote this blog while still earning $0 from GitHub. 10 years later, GitHub has grown to 28 million developers with 85 million code repositories, making it the largest host of source code in the world.

Today Microsoft announced it is buying GitHub for $7.5 billion.

At the end of his blog he writes –

“In the end, just as Indiana Jones could never turn down the opportunity to search for the Holy Grail, I could no less turn down the chance to work for myself on something I truly love, no matter how safe the alternative might be.”

“When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.””

You can read Tom’s blog at http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-300k.html

If you’re at the same stage in your journey that Tom was, do the same thing. Write a blog about why you’re committed to the path you’re taking. It’ll make great reading when you look back 10 years from now.

“Be willing to delay short-term gratification for long-term greatness.” ~ Mandy Hale

Source:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10160216034415411&id=834545410

Microsoft is officially buying Github, the internet’s largest source code repository, for a cool $7.5 billion in stock, with Microsoft VP Nat Friedman assuming the role of GitHub’s CEO. The acquisition isn’t without its detractors, who say they are already ditching GitHub and looking elsewhere. Concern over GitHub’s management in the future, along with Microsoft’s checkered past with open source, might be the biggest hurdle the company has to overcome.

See the whole article here.

It only took 1 hour for Amit Agarwal to create a Chrome Extention that serves as an alternative to Google Reader. When the extention hit 30000+ users, a person asked him to buy it for a four digit figure. A jackpot for Amit so he agreed.

But, here’s what happened next.

The extension was sold, they sent the money via PayPal and I transferred the ownership of the extension to a particular Google Account. It was a smooth transition.

A month later, the new owners of the Feedly extension pushed an update to the Chrome store. No, the update didn’t bring any new features to the table nor contained any bug fixes. Instead, they incorporated advertising into the extension.

These aren’t regular banner ads that you see on web pages, these are invisible ads that work the background and replace links on every website that you visit into affiliate links. In simple English, if the extension is activated in Chrome, it will inject adware into all web pages.

Read the whole story here:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/sold-chrome-extension/28377/

http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10/22/2253211/how-to-lose-172222-a-second-for-45-minutes

How To Lose $172,222 a Second For 45 Minutes

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday October 22, 2013 @08:14PM
from the step-one-accrue-at-least-$172,222 dept.

An anonymous reader writes"Investment firm Knight Capital made headlines in 2012 for losing over $400 million on the New York Stock Exchange because of problems with their algorithmic trading software. Now, the owner of a Python programming blog noticed the release of a detailed SEC report into exactly what went wrong (PDF). It shows how a botched update rollout combined with useless or nonexistent process guidelines cost the company over $172,000 a second for over 45 minutes. From the report: ‘When Knight used the Power Peg code previously, as child orders were executed, a cumulative quantity function counted the number of shares of the parent order that had been executed. This feature instructed the code to stop routing child orders after the parent order had been filled completely. In 2003, Knight ceased using the Power Peg functionality. In 2005, Knight moved the tracking of cumulative shares function in the Power Peg code to an earlier point in the SMARS code sequence. Knight did not retest the Power Peg code after moving the cumulative quantity function to determine whether Power Peg would still function correctly if called. … During the deployment of the new code, however, one of Knight’s technicians did not copy the new code to one of the eight SMARS computer servers. Knight did not have a second technician review this deployment and no one at Knight realized that the Power Peg code had not been removed from the eighth server, nor the new RLP code added. Knight had no written procedures that required such a review.’"

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/12/20/2335226/mit-research-shows-new-magnetic-state-that-could-aid-quantum-computing

MIT Research Shows New Magnetic State That Could Aid Quantum Computing
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday December 20, @08:20PM

alphadogg writes"Researchers at MIT and other institutions have demonstrated a new type of magnetism, only the third kind ever found, and it may find its way into future communications, computing and data storage technologies. Working with a tiny crystal of a rare mineral that took 10 months to make, the researchers for the first time have demonstrated a magnetic state called a QSL (quantum spin liquid), according to MIT physics professor Young Lee. He is the lead author of a paper on their findings, which is set to be published in the journal Nature this week. Theorists had said QSLs might exist, but one had never been demonstrated before. ‘We think it’s pretty important,’ Lee said, adding that he would let his peers be the ultimate judges."

Read the whole article here:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/02/whats-up-with-whatsapp-facebook-might-want-to-buy-it-thats-what/

bhagwad writes"The patent that was the cause of so much grief to Samsung in the recently concluded trial with Apple has been tentatively invalidated by the USPTO. The challenge was filed anonymously, but it obviously could have been filed by any smartphone manufacturer. Will this have an effect on further proceedings in the case or perhaps more importantly on the inevitable appeal?"

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/10/23/1551229/us-patent-office-invalidates-apples-rubber-banding-patent

These are the things that RIM should do right now to save the ailing BlackBerry :

http://www.eweek.com/mobile/blackberry-survival-10-ways-to-rescue-rim-from-extinction/