Same impression (from Brussels, Belgium). + as a freelancer, it's actually quite possible to get rates in Brussels that are around 80% of what you can get in California (500€/day is totally possible).

For the record, for the rent of a 1 bedroom appartment in SF, you can get a 240 square meters house in the center of Brussels.

For the metric impaired, that's about 2400 sq feet, which sounds like a king's palace and in the center of the city to boot!

And I forgot to mention that it is to pay a mortgage on the house, not renting it. (Renting would be a bit less expensive).

This is actually very very similar to the UX of checkthis. See here: http://checkthis.com/new

Checkthis certainly has a beautiful UI/UX. I like the fact that the add-content bar between blocks doesn't interfere with the block spacing (With Sir Trevor the add content bar adds height between blocks), and the grouping of blocks in the add menu of Checkthis is going to work better for a larger number of block types than the Sir Trevor horizontal list.

The drag-and-drop repositioning is also much slicker with Checkthis, as you get to see the other blocks shuffle around the one you're moving, rather than partially so with a copy of the block.

Sir Trevor is a good start though!

If your experience of programming becomes worthless after 10 years, then you probably did not focus on the good skills. I don't see how learning how low level hardware works, some time tried languages (C for example), data structures, networking details, debugging protocols of all kinds, structuring programs, working in teams and so on and so forth... could become worthless.

For the idea that parents and older programmers have different priorities, that may be true, but you downplay experience way too much. That said, trying to find 150% dedicated younglings, that don't spend a lot of time on side projects and just enjoying life is not that easy either

Does somebody know if appgratis informed its users that apps were paying to be featured?

I would say that this is an important point to find out if this can qualify as an ethical business model

I had used it a while ago for a few days. I had no idea that people paid to get a app listed. I figured they made money by affiliate links. But everything they recommended and I tried was pretty shitty. So it all makes sense now.

The release text is not that clear. Is that a new big security issue?

These are new security issues that are mostly related to the latest yaml problems. The issues are explained in detail in the linked CVE. One of the issues affects only rails < 2.3.17, but the second is critical enough to warrant immediate updates unless you're sure you're safe.

You should also update your JSON gem.

The CVEs go into more detail. There's a way to circumvent attr_protected.

If you know more recent data, I would be interested (I made the map).

Another alternative, which is not in private beta but offers the same kind of ease for editing is http://checkthis.com. Disclaimer: I work there.

That said, checkthis is not distraction free. It's more about getting easily a beautiful page on the web, with good social network integrations and a possible instant feedback through the comment pane on the right of your page.

(And regarding some comments not so far, we are supporting Unicode quite well, we have lots of page in Russian for example).

With all this talk about how the good days of the app store are over, it is good to see a relatively unknown company making it. I also noticed that a big part of the Apple selection for the end of the year is made by indie developers, like Super Hexagon, Letterpress or the education stuff from l'Escapadou, which means that they will probably make a lot of money.

With talent and flair, it is still possible to do it. Easy success for trivial apps is over but what Apple did to remove the barriers to entry for indies still makes the app store very interesting.

Now, I wouldn't say that Supercell is an indie developer. They have an experienced team of game industry veterans and over $10M dollars of funding from the beginning.

But that doesn't take away from the fact that CEO Ilkka Paananen and guys are running a stellar company with interesting culture: small teams of 5 people form "cells" that work independently on their own prototype game. Lots of prototypes are killed and these "failures" are celebrated with bottles of champaigne.

I thought that too might prevent foundries to license their fonts, but it turns out that services like typekit are in fact already putting these fonts online, without any real guarantee against pirating. It's just not very convenient to do right now, but definitely doable, as stated by typekit themselves : http://blog.typekit.com/2009/07/21/serving-and-protecting-fo...

So, if foundries are allowing that on the web, why the special treatment in native apps? That is one of the points of the article.

Exactly, there is pine/mutt/alpine for that.